Page:Selection of amusing and entertaining Irish stories.pdf/21

21 yet Jamaica is a very fine island, and has many good people in it. But for me, used to see freemen work cheerfully along with their masters, to behold nothing but droves of black slaves in the fields, toiling in the burning sun under the constant dread of the lash of hard-hearted task-masters--it was what I could not bring myself to bear: and, though I might have been made an overseer of a plantation, I chose rather to live in a town, and follow some domestic occupation. I could soon have got rich there ; but I fell into a bad state of health, and people were dying all round me of the yellow fever; so I collected my little property, and though a war had broken out, I ventured to embark with it for England.

“The ship was taken and carried into the Havana; and I lost my all, and my liberty besides. However, I had the good fortune to ingratiate myself with a Spanish merchant whom I had known at Jamaica, and he took me with him to the continent of South America. I visited great part of this country, once possessed by flourishing and independent nations, but now groaning under the severe yoke of their haughty conquerors. I saw those famous gold and silver mines, where the poor natives work naked, for ever shut out from the light of day, in order that the wealth of their unhappy land may go to spread luxury and corruption throughout the remotest regions of Europe.

“ I accompanied my master across the great Southern Ocean, a voyage of some months, without the sight of any thing but water and sky. We came to the rich city of Manilla, the capital of the Spanish settlements in those parts. There I had my liberty restored, along with a handsome reward for my services. I got thence to China, and from China to the English settlements in the East Indies, where the sight of my countrymen, and the sounds of my native tongue, made me fancy myself almost at home again, though still separated by half the globe.

“ Here I saw a delightful country, swarming with industrious inhabitants, some cultivating the land, others employed in manufactures, but of so gentle and effeminate a disposition, that they have always fallen under the yoke of their invaders. Here, how was I forced to blush for my countrymen, whose avarice and rapacity so often have laid waste this fair land, and brought on it all the horrors of famine and desolation! I have seen human creatures quarreling like dogs for bare bones thrown upon a dunghill. I have seen fathers selling their families for a little rice, and mothers entreating strangers to take their children for slaves, that they might not die of hunger. In the midst of such scenes, I saw pomp and luxury, of which our country affords no examples.