and saved many a useful life.
In a short time the malicious practice was discontinued altogether.

* * * * *

During the favorable season, I had been deprived of three vessels by
British cruisers, and, for as many months, had not shipped a single
slave,--five hundred of whom were now crowded in my _barracoons_, and
demanded our utmost vigilance for safe keeping. In the gang, I found a
family consisting of a man, his wife, three children and a sister, all
sold under an express obligation of exile and slavery among
Christians. The luckless father was captured by my blackguard friend
Prince Freeman in person, and the family had been secured when the
parents' village was subsequently stormed. Barrah was an outlaw and an
especial offender in the eyes of an African, though his faults were
hardly greater than the deeds that bestowed honor and knighthood in
the palmy days of our ancestral feudalism. Barrah was the discarded
son of a chief in the interior, and had presumed to blockade the
public path towards the beach, and collect duties from transient
passengers or caravans. This interfered with Freeman and his revenues;
but, in addition to the pecuniary damage, the alleged robber ventured
on several occasions to defeat and plunder the prince's vagabonds, so
that, in time, he became rich and strong enough to build a town and
fortify it with a regular stockade, _directly on the highway_! All
these offences were so heinous in the sight of my beach prince, that
no foot was suffered to cool till Barrah was captured. Once within his
power, Freeman would not have hesitated to kill his implacable enemy
as soon as delivered at New Sestros; but the interference of friends,
and, perhaps, the laudable conviction that a live negro was worth more
than a dead one, induced his highness to sell him under pledge of
Cuban banishment.

Barrah made several ineffectual attempts to break my _barracoon_ and
elude the watchfulness of my guards, so that they were frequently
obliged to restrict his liberty, deprive him of comforts, or add to
his shackles. In fact, he was one of the most formidable savages I
ever encountered, even among the thousands who passed in terrible
procession before me in Africa. One day he set fire to the
bamboo-matting with which a portion of the _barracoon_ was sheltered
from the sun, for which he was severely lashed; but next day, when
allowed, under pretence of ague, to crawl with his heavy