the Colony.[B] Item, within my own knowledge have I been made familiar with many acts of the Deepest Barbarity. Mistresses, for Jealousy or Caprice, pouring boiling-water or hot melted Sealing-Wax on their slave girls' flesh after they had suffered the worst Tortures of the whip; and white Ladies of Education rubbing Cayenne-pepper into the eyes of Negroes who had offended them, or singeing the tenderest parts of their limbs with sticks of fire. And of one horrid instance have I heard of Malignant and Hellish revenge in Two Ladies who were Sisters (and bred at a Fine Boarding-School in England), who, having a spite against a yellow woman that attended on them, did tie her hands and feet, and so beat her nearly to death with the heels of their slippers; and not satisfied with that, or with laving her gashed body with Vinegar and Chillies, did send for a Negro man, and bid him, under threats of punishment, strike out two of the Victim's teeth with a punch, which, to the shame of Human Womanhood, was done. But enough of these Horrors:--not the worst that I have seen, though, in the course of my Adventures; only I will not further sicken you with the Recital of the Sufferings inflicted on the Wretched Creatures by Ladies and Gentlemen, who had had the first breeding, and went to Church every Sunday. I have merely set down these dreadful things to work out the theory of my Belief, that the World is growing Milder and more Merciful every day; and that the Barbarities which were once openly practised in the broad sunshine, and without e'er a one lifting finger or wagging tongue against them, are becoming rarer and rarer, and will soon be Impossible of Commission. The unspeakable Miseries of the Middle Passage (of which I have been an eye-witness) exist no more; really Humane and Charitable Gentlemen, not such False Rogues and Kidnappers as your Hopwoods, are bestirring themselves in Parliament and elsewhere to better the Dolorous Condition of the Negro; and although it may be a Decree of Providence that the children of Ham are to continue always slaves and servants to their white brethren, I see every day that men's hearts are being more and more benevolently turned towards them, and that laws, ere long, will be made to forbid their being treated worse than the beasts that perish. FOOTNOTES: [A] Captain Dangerous! Captain Dangerous!--ED. [B] That which I have made Captain Dangerous relate in fiction will be found narrated, act for act, and nearly word for word, in the very unromantic evidence given before the first parliamentary committee on slavery and the slave-trade moved for by Mr. Clarkson.--ED. CHAPTER THE SECOND. OF OTHER MY ADVENTURES UNTIL MY COMING TO BE A MAN.