Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/58

52 sailors, merchants, priests, pirates, buccaneers, and every species of rascal and coward.

An average slave-ship was in those days one of about 500 tons burden; she had a length between 60 and 70 feet, and was built with due regard for speed and other qualities. Her storage capacity consisted in a capacious hold, in which rum, trinkets, powder, provisions, and slave truck were stowed away. There was an open upper deck, with a space between it and the hold, known as 'twixt decks. This space is where the slaves were quartered during the passage. It was less than four feet high, and in some slavers not much over two! In here,—this horrid death-pit, unventilated hole, rotten dungeon,—they packed away the poor negroes by the hundred. The men were usually forward, shackled together two and two. Negresses and children were aft and, though confined, were not chained. All of them were pushed along until they touched each other. In some instances they were rammed in, and compelled to lie spoon fashion during the entire trip of many weeks. In a little while the dead and the living were in there together,—linked together in the dark. Often death claimed three-fourths of them; hunger, burning thirst, and unmitigated misery had them all the time. They wallowed in their own filth, breathing an air pestilential in the extreme; while the women were raped and ravished to the hearts' content of the entire crew. Hundreds of such craft were at one time afloat, swarming the Slave Coast of Africa, taking all manner of chances, and conveying their human cargoes to the West Indies, to Europe, to the American Colonies, and to Brazil. Some fine ships were in the trade though but few of them steamers. Old