Page:Benezet's A caution and warning to Great Britain and her colonies.pdf/22

[ 20 ] within the narrow confines of a vessel, sometimes six or seven hundred together, where they lie as close as possible. Under these complicated distresses they are often reduced to a state of desperation, wherein many have leaped into the sea, and have kept themselves under water, till they were drowned; others have starved themselves to death, for the prevention whereof some masters of vessels have cut off the legs and arms of a number of those poor desperate creatures, to terrify the rest. Great numbers have also frequently been killed, and some deliberately put to death under the greatest torture, when they have attempted to rise, in order to free, themselves from their present misery, and the slavery designed them, An instance of the last kind appears particularly in an account given by the master of a vessel, who brought a cargo of slaves to Barbados; indeed it appears so irreconcileable to the common dictates of humanity, that one would doubt the truth of it, had it not been related by a serious person of undoubted credit, who had it from the captain's own mouth. Upon an inquiry, What had been the success of his voyage? He answered, "That he had found it a difficult matter to set the Negroes a fighting with each other, in order to procure the number he wanted; but that when he had obtained this end, and had got his vessel filled with slaves, a new difficulty arose from their refusal to take food; those desperate creatures chusing rather to die with hunger, than to be carried from their native country.'"

Upon a farther inquiry, by what means he had prevailed upon them to forego this desperate resolution, he answered, That he obliged all the Negroes to come upon deck, where they persisting in their reolution of not taking food, he caused his sailors to ' lay