The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1918-09-01

at once easy and hard Food of sort
may often be had for the plucking and
raiment is needless, but aside from the
menace Of the elements human life is
endangered by beasts and reptiles in the
forest, crocodiles and hippopotami in
the rivers and sharks in the sea. In many
districts tse-tse flies exterminate the cattle
and spread the fatal sleeping sickness
among men; everywhere swarms of To-
Gusts occasionally destroy the crops;
white ants eat timbers and any other use
full thing short of metal which may come
in their way, and giant cockroaches and
dwarf brown ants and other pests swarm
in the dwellings continuously. Among
less spectacular things mosquitoes fly in
crowds and leave fevers in their wake;
chigoes bore and breed under the toe
nails; hookworms hang themselves to the
walls of the intestines and other thread
like worms enter the eyebaIls and the
flesh of the body. sunless the negroes
possessed a happy temperament" says
Prof. Phillips, "they could not have sur
vived at all in Guinea"
Slave Transportation.
After Selling or purchasing their prey
in this strange land the slave traders con-
veyed them across the Atlantic in vessels
which seem very small according to mod
ern standards. "The typical New England
ship for the slave trade was a sloop,
schooner or barkentine, of about fifty tons
burden, which when engaged in ordinary
freighting would have but a single deck.
For a Shaving voyage a second flooring
was laid some three feet below the regular
deck, the space between forming the slave
quarters. Such a vessel was handled by
a captain, two mates and from two to six
men and boys
The English slave trading vessels were
usually twice as large, with twice as much
space between decks where the slaves were
carried; but even this did not permit the
negroes to stand erect except along the
centre line Of the ship. On the famous,
or Infamous, Middle Passage, being that
part of the voyage between Africa and
the West Indies, the slaves were allowed
on deck only in the daytime when the
weather was fair, in order to give them
exercise and permit their quarters to be
cleaned; at night and in foul weather
they were always kept below. They were
often kept shackled until the African
coast had been left far astern.
Great as were the iniquities of the
Middle Passage in the slave trade, there
is evidence that the free white emigrants
from Europe to America in that day suf-
fered almost as much as did the slaves.
Henry Laurens, the American statesman
who with Franklin, and Jay negotiated
the treaty of peace with England after
the Revolution, contrasted their condition
thus: "Self-interest prompted the bap-
tized heather to take some care of their
wretched slaves FOR market, but no other
care was taken of the poor Protestant
Christian from Ireland but to deliver as
many as possible alive on shore, upon the
cheapest terms, no matter how they Jared
wy VI III hudt
they were landed"
On the Plantation.
The plantation regime, which was the
distinctive feature of American negro
slavery, was developed in the West Indies
and thence made its way into the North
American colonies, beginning in Barba-
dos and extending to the other sugar
islands, namely, Jamaica, Hayti, Cuba
and Porto Rico. The cultivation of sugar
under slave labor transformed Barbados
from a moderately productive island to
one of the most prosperous and envied of
English colonies. While still enjoying a
high degree of prosperity Barbados was
visited by the youthful George Washing
ton, who there suffered an attack of small
pox, which fortunately did not prove
fatal, or the subsequent history of the
world would have been very different.
The plantation system was next applied
to the growth of tobacco in Virginia and