Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/185

 towards this same great end, more than a hundred thousand human beings are sunk into the very lowest depths of degradation and misery.

General Carter, our new master, was one of the richest of these American grandees. The plantation to which we were sent, was called Loosahachee; and though very extensive, was but one out of several, which he owned. Coming as I did from Virginia, there were many things in the appearance of the country, and in the way in which things were managed, that were entirely new to me.

I and my companions who had always been accustomed to some small quantity of meat as a relish to our corn diet, found our mere unseasoned hominy neither so palatable nor so nourishing as we could wish. Being strangers and newcomers, we had not yet learned the customs of the country; and were quite unacquainted with many of the arts by which the Carolina slaves are enabled to eke out their scanty and insufficient allowance. Our only resource was an appeal to our master's generosity; and it happened, that about a fortnight after we were put upon the plantation, general Carter, with several of his friends, made a flying visit from Charleston to Loosahachee, to see how the crops were coming on. This we thought to be a good opportunity to get some improvement of our fare. We did not like to ask too much, lest our request should be rejected without ceremony. Indeed, we determined to be as moderate as possible; and after due consultation, it was resolved to petition our master for a little salt to season our hominy, — a luxury to which we had always been accustomed, but which was not included in the Loosahachee allowance, which consisted simply of corn, a peck a week to each working hand. My companions requested me to act as spokesman, and I readily undertook to do so.

When general Carter and his friends came near my task, I walked towards him. He asked me what I meant by leaving my work in that fashion, and inquired what I want-ed? I told him that I was one of the servants whom he had lately purchased; that some of us were born and raised in Virginia and the rest in North Carolina; that we were not used to living upon bare hominy without any