Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/329

 lawless and ferocious cupidity, so excited our people, that it became unsafe for the captain of the slaver, who had come to look on, to remain on the beach. Eight slaves died in harbor before they were landed, and their bodies were thrown overboard."

The slaves, who were from eight to thirty years of age, came starved and thirsting from on board. Caution was required in giving them food. "When it was supposed that the danger of depletion was over, water was poured into a long canoe, into which they plunged like hungry pigs into a trough — tie stronger faring the best."

Still, the kindness of human nature had not altogether been obliterated by length and intensity of suffering. Two boys, brothers, had found beside them a younger boy of the same tribe, who was ill. They contrived to nestle together on the deck, under such shelter as the cover of the long-boat offered them — a place where the pigs, if they are small enough, are generally stowed. There they made a bed of some oakum for their dying companion, and placed a piece of old canvas under his head. Night and day one was always awake to watch him. Hardship rendered their care fruitless: the night after the vessel anchored he died, and was thrown overboard.

The recaptured slaves were apprenticed out to the Liberians, and kindly treated and cared for. An American who visited Monrovia a few years after, found many of them admitted to the churches as members, and others attending the Sabbath schools. The squadron also captured several empty slavers and sent them to the United States.

In 1846 this squadron was relieved, and the sloop of war Marion, brigs Dolphin and Boxer, with the flag-ship United States, Commodore Read, were sent out.

The Dolphin was lying at Cape Mount, watching the American bark Chancellor, which was trading with the suspected Captain Canot, since extensively known throughout the United States by his "Life of an African Slaver." The British cruiser Favorite was stationed off the cape, and the officers stirred up the chiefs, who were bound by treaty to suppress the slave-trade, to attack and destroy the extensive trading establishment of Canot, who they said was making preparations for slaving. The premises were burnt, together with a large stock of goods he had shipped from New York. Captain Canot states in his hook, that his brigantine, stores and dwellings, were fired by the officers and crew of the cruiser, and that he was then engaged in a legitimate business. We leave the narrative of the operations of the cruisers for the present, in order to present some scenes in the life of a slave-trader. This Captain Canot had been engaged for twenty years in the traffic. After his downfall, as related, he embraced, with zeal, the first opportunity to mend his fortunes by honorable industry, and succeeded. His journals and papers were placed in the hands of Brantz Mayer, who wrote out the history of his life. Dr. Hall, the distinguished founder and first governor of the Maryland colony, pronounced him, setting aside his career as a slaver, a man of unquestionable integrity. The N. A. Review, upon sufficient grounds, pronounced the work