Page:The rising son, or, The antecedents and advancement of the colored race (IA risingsonthe00browrich).pdf/549

 or bag, suspended by her side, and who, on taking her seat, would at once drop off into a sound sleep. This woman was Harriet Tubman, better known as "Moses."

She first came to Boston in 1854, and was soon a welcome visitor to the homes of the leading Abolitionists, who were always attentive listeners to her strange and eventful stories. Her plantation life, where she was born a slave at the South, was cruelly interesting. Her back and shoulders, marked with the biting lash, told how inhuman was the institution from which she had fled. A blow upon the head had caused partial deafness, and inflicted an injury which made her fall asleep the moment she was seated. Moses had no education, yet the most refined person would listen for hours while she related the intensely interesting incidents of her life, told in the simplest manner, but always seasoned with good sense.

During her sojourn in Boston, Moses made several visits to the South, and it was these that gave her the cognomen of "Moses." Men from Canada, who had made their escape years before, and whose families were still in the prison-house of slavery, would seek out Moses, and get her to go and bring their dear ones away. How strange! This woman,—one of the most ordinary looking of her race; unlettered; no idea of geography; asleep half of the time,—would penetrate the interior slave states, hide in the woods during the day, feed on the bondsman's homely fare at night, bring off whole families of slaves, and pilot them to Canada, after running the gauntlet of the most difficult parts of the Southern country. No fugitive was ever captured who had Moses for a leader.