Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/149

Rh value to me from the candour and readiness with which he communicates any information which I may desire to possess.

This plantation is much larger than the one I visited in Limonar, and a considerable portion of the slaves—two hundred in number—have lately been brought hither from Africa, and have a much wilder appearance than those I saw at Ariadne. They are worked also with much more severity, because, here they are allowed only four-and-a-half hours out of the four-and-twenty for rest; that is to say, for their meals and sleep, and that during six or seven months of the year! Through the remaining portion of the twelve months, the “dead season,” as it is called, the slaves are allowed to sleep the whole night. It is true, nevertheless, that even now, upon this plantation, they have one night a week for sleep, and a few hours in the forenoon of each alternate Sunday, for rest. It is extraordinary how any human beings can sustain existence under such circumstances; and yet I see here powerful negroes who have been on the plantations for twenty or thirty years. When the negroes have once become accustomed to the labour and the life of the plantation it seems to agree with them; but during the first years, when they are brought here free and wild from Africa, it is very hard to them, and many seek to free themselves from slavery by suicide. This is frequently the case among the Luccomées, who appear to be among the noblest tribes of Africa, and it is not long since eleven Luccomées were found hanging from the branches of a guasima tree—a tree which has long horizontal branches. They had each one bound his breakfast in a girdle around him; for the African believes that such as die here immediately arise again to new life in their native land. Many female slaves, therefore, will lay upon the corpse of the self-murdered the kerchief, or the head-gear, which she most admires, in the belief that it