Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/148

 door with the ferocity of brutes. Some had three or four handkerchiefs tied together, to encircle as many as they thought fit for their purpose. In the yard at Grenada, he adds, (where another of his ships, the Alexander, sold by scramble,) the women were so terrified, that several of them got out of the yard, and ran about St. George's town as if they were mad. In his second voyage, while lying at Kingston, he saw a sale by scramble on board the Tryal, Captain Macdonald. Forty or fifty of the slaves leaped into the sea, all of whom, however, were taken up again." This was a very general mode of sale. Mr. Baillie says it was the common mode in America where he has been. Mr. Fitzmaurice has been at twenty sales by scramble in Jamaica. Mr. Clappeson never saw any other mode of sale during his residence there, and it is mentioned as having been practiced under the inspection of Morley and of Trotter.

The slaves sold by public auction are generally the refuse, or sickly slaves. These were in such a state of health that they sold, says Baillie, greatly under price. Falconbridge has known them sold for five dollars each, Town for a guinea, and Mr. Hercules Ross as low as a single dollar.

The state of such is described to be very deplorable by General Tottenham and Mr. Hercules Ross. The former says that he once observed at Barbadoes a number of slaves that had been landed from a ship. They were brought into the yard adjoining the place of sale. Those that were not very ill were put into little huts, and those that were worse were left in the yard to die, for nobody gave them any thing to eat or drink; and some of them lived three days in that situation. The latter has frequently seen the very refuse (as they are termed) of the slaves of Guinea ships landed and carried to the vendue-masters in a very wretched state; sometimes in the agonies of death; and he has known instances of their expiring in the piazza of the auctioneer.

Mr. Newton says, that in none of the sales he saw was there any care ever taken to prevent such slaves as were relations from being separated. They were separated as sheep and lambs by the butcher. This separation of relations and friends is confirmed by Davison, Trotter, Clapperson, and Towne. Fitzmaurice also mentions the same, with an exception only to infants; but Mr. Falconbridge says that one of his captains (Frazer) recommended it to the planters never to separate relations and friends. He says he once heard of a person refusing to purchase a man's wife, and was next day informed the man had hanged himself.

With respect to the mortality of slaves in the passage, Mr. Falconbridge says, that in three voyages he purchased 1,100, and lost 191; Trotter, in one voyage, about 600, and lost about 70; Millar, in one voyage, 490, and lost 180; Ellison, in three voyages, where he recollects the mortality, bought 895, and lost 356. In one of these voyages, says the latter, the slaves had the small-pox. In this case he has seen the platform one continued scab; eight or ten of them were hauled up dead in a morning, and the flesh and skin peeled off their wrists when taken hold of.

Mr. Morley says that in four voyages he purchased about 1,325, and lost about 313. Mr. Towne, in two voyages, 630, and lost 115. Mr. Claxton, in