able "big men," which
those enslavers displayed. They actually subjugated and put in chains,
like the commonest peasants, native [196] potentates at whose very
names even the warriorhood of their tribes had been wont to blench.
But far surpassing even this in awful effect was the doom meted out to
the bush-handlers, the medicine-men, the rain-compellers, erewhile so
inscrutably potent for working out the bliss or the bale of friend or
enemy. "Lo, from no mountain-top, from no ceiba-hollow in the forest
recesses, has issued any interposing sign, any avenging portent, to
vindicate the Spirit of Darkness so foully outraged in the hitherto
inviolate person of his chosen minister! Verily, even the powers of the
midnight are impotent against these invaders from beyond the mighty
salt-water! Here, huddled together in confused, hopeless misery and
ruin, lie, fettered and prostrate, even priest as well as potentate,
undistinguishable victims of crude, unblenching violence, with its
climax of nefarious sacrilege. We, common mortals, therefore, can hope
for no deliverance from, or even succour in, the woful plight thus
dismally contrived for us all by the fair-skinned race who have now
become our masters." Such was naturally the train of thought that ran
through those forlorn bosoms. The formidable death-dealing guns [197]
of the invaders, the ships which had brought them to the African
shores, and much besides in startling contrast to their own condition
of utter helplessness, the Africans at once interpreted to themselves
as the manifestation and inherent attributes of beings of a higher
order than man. Their skin, too, the difference whereof from their own
had been accentuated by many calamitous incidents, was hit upon as the
reason of so crushing an ascendency.

White skin therefore became, in those disconsolate eyes, the symbol of
fearful irresistible power: which impression was not at all weakened
afterwards by the ineffable atrocities of the "middle-passage." Backed
ultimately by their absolute and irresponsible masterhood at home over
the deported Blacks, the European abductors could easily render
permanent in the minds of their captives the abject terror struck into
them by the enormities of which they had been the victims. Now, the
impressions we touched upon before bringing forward the case of the
Negro slaves were mainly produced by pleasurable circumstances. But of
a contrary nature and much more deeply grave