Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/327

 to be. And whilst he rowed me in a little canoe, made of a hollowed tree stem, he talked freely about the owners of the plantations that lay by the river. Of one it was—“Good master! blessed master, ma'am!” of another—“bad master, ma'am! beats his servants. Cuts them to pieces, ma'am!” and so on.

On the other side of the river I came to a plantation where I met with the owner himself, who was a clergyman. He conducted me through the slave-village, and talked to me about the happiness of the negro slaves, which convinced me that he himself was a slave of mammon. Certain it is that under a good master they are far from unhappy, and much better provided for than the poor working people in many parts of Europe. But under a wicked master they have fallen into direful and hopeless misery. Sophists, who are determined to see only the sunny side of the picture, deny absolutely that such are ever to be found. But I have already both heard and seen enough of them. That which the North testifies against the South I will not believe; but that which the South testifies against itself, I am compelled to believe. Besides the best master is no justification of slavery, for the best master dies sooner or later, and his slaves are then sold to the highest bidder, like cattle. The slaves out in the fields present a joyless appearance; their dark colour and their grey dress, without a single white or coloured garment to enliven it, give them a gloomy and dull appearance. I must however mention, as an exception, the knitted cotton caps of the men, which have generally a couple of red or blue stripes, knitted into the grey ground-colour. At work in the field they look like figures of earth. Quite different is the appearance of our peasants in their white linen, their showy, ornamental attire. The slave villages, on the other hand, as I have already remarked, have rather a comfortable appearance, excepting that one very rarely sees glass in the windows