Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/150

 to be ascribed to their thinking so much of their situation. Though several died of the flux, he attributes their death, primarily, to the cause before assigned; for, says he, their original disorder was a fixed melancholy, and the symptoms, lowness of spirits and despondency. Hence they refused food. This only increased the symptoms.

Mr. Towne, the only other person who speaks of the causes of the disorders of the slaves, says "they often fall sick, sometimes owing to their crowded state, but mostly to grief for being carried away from their country and friends." This he knows from inquiring frequently (which he was enabled to do by understanding their language) into the circumstances of their grievous complaints.

We make some further extracts from the evidence, to exhibit the disastrous and fatal effects of the trade upon the seamen engaged in it. Such was the despotic character of the discipline on board of the slave-ships, and such the insensibility to suffering acquired by the officers, that the condition of the seamen was not much better than that of the slaves. To exhibit the mortality among the seamen on board these infected ships, a report was made to the House of Commons, giving an abstract of the muster-rolls of such Liverpool and Bristol ships as were returned to the custom houses from September, 1784, to January, 1790. During this period, it appears that in 350 vessels, 12,263 seamen were employed; of these, only 5,760 returned home of the original crews; of the remaining 6,503, there had died, before the vessels arrived in the West Indies, 2,643. The fate of the 3,860, not accounted for in the muster-rolls, we gather from the witnesses.

The crews of the African slavers, says Captain Hall, when they arrive in the West Indies, are generally (he does not know a single instance to the contrary) in a sickly, debilitated state, and the seamen, who are discharged or desert from those ships in the West Indies, are the most miserable objects he ever met with in any country in his life. He has frequently seen them with their toes rotted off, their legs swelled to the size of their thighs, and in an ulcerated state all over. He has seen" them on the different wharves in the islands of Antigua, Barbadoes, and Jamaica, particularly at the two last islands. He has also seen them laying under the cranes and balconies of the houses near the water-side in Barbadoes and Jamaica expiring, and some quite dead.

To confirm the assertion of Captain Hall, of the merchant service, that the crews of Guinea-men generally arrive at their destined ports of sale in a sickly, debilitated state, we may refer to Captain Hall, of the navy, who asserts that in taking men (while in the West Indies) out of merchant ships for the king's service, he has, in taking a part of the crew of a Guinea ship, whose number then consisted of seventy, been able to select but thirty, who could have been thought capable of serving on board any ships of war, and when those thirty were surveyed by order of the admiral, he was reprimanded for bringing each men into the service, who were more likely to breed distemper than to be of any use, and this at a time when seamen were so much wanted, that almost