Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/112

 of slave-holding humanity — is becoming every day, more and more common. A very large number of planters have ceased to raise crops with the expectation of profit. They endeavor to make the produce of their lands pay their current expenses; but all their hopes of gain are confined to' the business of raising slaves for the southern market; and that market is as regularly supplied with slaves from Virginia, as with mules and horses from Kentucky.

But the slave-trade in America, as well as in Africa, carries with it the curse of depopulation; and, together with the emigration which is constantly going on, has already unpeopled great tracts of country in the lower part of Virginia, and is fast restoring the first seats of AngloAmerican population to all their original wildness and solitude. Whole counties almost, are grown up in useless and impenetrable thickets, already retenanted by deer and other wild game, their original inhabitants.





were driven into the prison-yard, through a stout gate well studded with iron nails. "The heavy padlocks of the prison-door were unfastened, and we were thrust in, without further ceremony. A faint glimmer of moon-light stole in at the narrow and grated windows of the prison; but it was some time before I was able to distinguish one object from another. When at length, my eyes had accommodated themselves to the faintness of the light, I found myself crowded into the midst of perhaps a hundred human beings, — most of them young men and women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, — closely packed on the bare floor.

A considerable number started up at our entrance, and began to crowd about us, and to inquire who we were, and whence we came. They seemed glad of anything to break the monotony of their confinement. But wearied and fatigued, we were in no humor for talking; and 