That the chief tortures are applied to the unhappy sufferers, on refusing the diet that is offered them, has been fully mentioned by others. We had our share of them; and the lash was often inflicted until the poor victims fainted away with pain. Two women, by many degrees the two finest slaves in the ship, felt a severity of this kind with such poignancy, that folding themselves in each others arms, they plunged over the poop of the vessel into the sea, and were drowned. We were obliged to put all the women immediately below, as they cried out in a most affecting manner, and many of them were preparing to follow their companions. These are the people whom the good trader's represent, as wanting every kind of sensibility! Were I to transcribe a regular journal of the usage of the slaves on the middle passage, it would be but a repetition of acts similar to the above, and varied perhaps only by the circumstances that attended it. One instance more of brutality I would, however, willingly relate, as practiced by the captain on an unfortunate slave, of the age of eight or nine, but that I am _obliged_ to withhold it; for though my heart bleeds at the recollection, though the act is too atrocious and bloody to be passed over in silence, yet as I cannot express it in any words that would not severely wound the feelings of the _delicate_ reader, I must be content with suffering it to escape among those numerous hidden and unrevealed enormities, the offspring of barbarity and despotism, that are committed daily in the prosecution of this execrable trade. Before I quit this subject of the Slaves, I must mention a circumstance that, I dare say very often occurs, though perhaps seldom with so advantageous a succedaneum. The doctor and his mate being both dead, the medicine chest was given into my charge and disposal: a knowledge of Latin, and a little medical reading, were all my qualifications. What a situation would it have been for an ignorant, an unfeeling, or an indolent man! Medicines or poisons to be dealt out promiscuously to such a number of persons, all afflicted with disease, during a passage through the tedious latitudes across the Atlantic. The only directions I had to go by, were a few remarks on the last stage of the flux, written in a minute or two, by a surgeon at St. Thomas's, on a bit of cartridge paper. LETTER VII.