Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/143

 He got, however, several of them hauled on deck. Two or three of these died, and most of the rest, before they reached the West Indies, He was down only about fifteen minutes, and became so ill by it that he could not get up without help, and was disabled (the dysentery seizing him also) from doing duty the rest of the passage. On board the same ship he has known two or three instances of a dead and living slave found in the morning shackled together.

The crowded state of the slaves, and the pulling off the shoes by the surgeons, as described above, that they might not hurt them in traversing their rooms, are additionally mentioned by surgeons Wilson and Claxton. The slaves are said also by Hall and Wilson to complain on account of heat. Both Hall, Towne, and Morley, describe them as often in a violent perspiration, or dew sweat. Mr. Ellison has seen them faint through heat, and obliged to be brought on deck, the steam coming up through the gratings like a furnace. In Wilson's and Towne's ships, some have gone below well in an evening, and in the morning have been found dead; and Mr. Newton has often seen a dead and living man chained together, and, to use his own words, one of the pair dead.

To come now to the different incidents on the passage. Mr. Falconbridge says that there is a place in every ship for the sick slaves, but there are no accommodations for them, for they lie on the bare planks. He has seen frequently the prominent parts of their bones about the shoulder-blade and knees bare. He says he cannot conceive any situation so dreadful and disgusting as that of slaves when ill of the flux; in the Alexander, the deck was covered with blood and mucus, and resembled a slaughter-house. The stench and foul air were intolerable.

He has known several slaves on board refuse sustenance, with a design to starve themselves. Compulsion was used in every ship he was in to make them take their food. He has known also many instances of their refusing to take medicines when sick, because they wished to die. A woman on board the Alexander was dejected from the moment she came on board, and refused both food and medicine: being asked by the interpreter what she wanted, she replied, nothing but to die — and she did die. Many other slaves expressed the same wish.

The ships, he says, are fitted up with a view to prevent slaves jumping overboard; notwithstanding which he has known instances of their doing so. In the Alexander two were lost in this way. In the same voyage, near twenty jumped overboard out of the Enterprise, Capt. Wilson, and several from a large Frenchman in Bonny River. In his first voyage he saw at Bonny, on board the Emilia, a woman chained to the deck, who, the chief mate said, was mad. On his second voyage, there was a woman on board his own ship, whom they were forced to chain at certain times. In a lucid interval she was sold at Jamaica. He ascribes this insanity to their being torn from their connections and country.

Doctor Trotter, examined on the same subject, says that the man sold with