Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/162

 pounds applied to their feet. In this situation the crane is wound up, so that it lifts them nearly from the ground, and keeps them in a stretched posture, when the whip or cow-skin is used. After this they are again whipped, but with ebony bushes (which are more prickly than the thorn bushes in this country) in order to let out the congealed blood.

Respecting the whippings in gaol and round the town, Dr. Harrison thought them too severe to be inflicted on any of the human species. lie attended a man, who had been flogged in gaol, who was ill in consequence five or six weeks. It was by his master's order for not coming when he was called. He could lay two or three fingers in the wounds made by the whip.

The punishments in the country by means of the whip and cow-skin appear to differ, except in one instance, from those which have been mentioned of the town.

It is usual for those, says Mr. Coor, who do not come into the field in time, to be punished. In this case a few steps before they join the gang they throw down the hoe, clap both hands on their heads, and patiently take ten, fifteen, or twenty lashes.

There is another mode described by Mr. Coor. About eight o'clock, says he, the overseer goes to breakfast, and if he has any criminals at home, he orders a black man to follow him; for it is then usual to take such out of the stocks and flog them before the overseer's house. The method is generally this: The delinquent is stripped and tied on a ladder, his legs on the sides and his arms above his head, and sometimes a rope is tied round his middle. The driver whips him on the bare skin, and if the overseer thinks he does not lay it on hard enough, he sometimes knocks him down with his own hand, or makes him change places with the delinquent, and be severely whipped. Mr. Coor has known many to receive on the ladder, from one hundred to one hundred and fifty lashes, and some two cool hundreds, as they are generally called. He has known many returned to confinement, and in one, two or three days, brought to the ladder, and receive the same complement, or thereabouts, as before. They seldom take them off the ladder, until all the skin, from the hams to the small of the back, appears only raw flesh and blood, and then they wash the parts with salt pickle. This appeared to him from the convulsions it occasioned, more cruel than the whipping, but it was done to prevent mortification. He has known many after such whipping sent to the field under guard and worked all day, with no food but what their friends might give them, out of their own poor pittance. He has known them returned to the stocks at night, and worked next day, successively. This cruel whipping, hard working, and starving has, to his knowledge, made many commit suicide. He remembers fourteen slaves, who, from bad treatment, rebelled on a Sunday, ran into the woods, and all cut their throats together.

The whip, says Woolrich, is generally made of plaited cow-skin, with a thick strong lash. It is so formidable an instrument in the hands of some of the overseers, that by means of it they can take the skin off a horse's back. He has heard them boast of laying the marks of it in a deal board, and he has