Page:Sketchesinhistory00pett.pdf/162

156 masters lectured them on the manners and customs of dogs and men; when one of them ran off he was hunted with dogs; when baffled in the pursuit and the slave escaped, the fact was never acknowledged, but the slaves were called together and told how the fugitive had been torn in pieces by the dogs and left to rot in the woods, and the occasion was generally improved by telling them how much better it was for the poor negro to he killed by the dogs than it would have been to fall into the hands of the savage abolitionists, a kind of people living in the North, who, when they could catch a negro, would fatten him, if he would eat, and then kill and eat him. Such was their education. It will be readily understood, that there were two reasons why Moses, when found by our enterprising agent, was so nearly famished. First, his journey had been prolonged many weeks by his fear of falling into the hands of the abolitionists, so that he had gone all the way to the shore of Lake Ontario without having been seen by any of our agents; and second, he thought that if he was very “pore” the cannibal abolitionists would regard him as of no account, and let him go. It may be doubted that any slave was ever so ignorant as to believe such stories, but many of them have spoken of having been told the same thing, and it is not strange that some of them believed it. Moses had hut a short ride on our cars, and shipped for Kingston, C.W., on a lumber vessel, from the mouth of Salmon River.