Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/109

 slave-dealing firm, whose head quarters were at the city of Washington, the seat of the federal government, and the capital of the United States of America. It was to this place that he intended to carry us. The whole purchase was about forty head, consisting in nearly equal proportions of men, women and children. We were joined in couples by. iron collars about our necks, which were connected by a link of iron. To these connecting links, a heavy chain was fastened, extending from one end of the drove to the other. Besides all this, the right and left hands of every couple were fastened together by hand-cuffs, and another chain passed along these fastenings. The collars about our necks, with their connecting chain, might have been thought perhaps, under ordinary circumstances, a sufficient security; but as our new master had heard from major Thornton's neighbors, who were present at the sale, that we were "a set of very dangerous fellows," he thought it best, as he said, to omit no reasonable means of security.

The drove was presently put in motion. Our purchasers, with two or three assistants, rode beside us on horseback, armed with whips, as usual. The journey was slow, sad and wearisome. We travelled without any good will; the poor children harassed with the weight of their chains, and unaccustomed to fatigue; and all of us, faint for want of food; — for our new master was an economist, who spent as little on the road, as possible.:

I will not dwell upon the tedious monotony of our sufferings and our journey. Suffice it to say, that after travelling for several days, we crossed the noble and wide-spreading Potomac, and late at night, began to enter the federal city. Perhaps I ought to say, the place where the federal city was to be, — for Washington, at that time, seemed only a straggling village, scattered over a wide extent of ground, and interspersed with deserted fields, overgrown with bushes. There were some indications however, of the future metropolis. The Capitol, though unfinished, was rearing its spacious walls in the moonlight, and gave promise of a magnificent edifice. Lights gleamed from the windows. The Congress perhaps was in session. I gazed at the building with no little emotion. "This," said I to myself,