pressing these
_pass-words_, which the reader will easily divine. I hated the secrecy;
but where slavery is powerful, and liberty is weak, the latter is driven
to concealment or to destruction.

The prospect was not always a bright one. At times, we were almost
tempted to abandon the enterprise, and to get back to that comparative
peace of mind, which even a man under the gallows might feel, when all
hope of escape had vanished. Quiet bondage was felt to be better than
the doubts, fears and uncertainties, which now so sadly perplexed and
disturbed us.{217}

The infirmities of humanity, generally, were represented in our little
band. We were confident, bold and determined, at times; and, again,
doubting, timid and wavering; whistling, like the boy in the graveyard,
to keep away the spirits.

To look at the map, and observe the proximity of Eastern Shore,
Maryland, to Delaware and Pennsylvania, it may seem to the reader quite
absurd, to regard the proposed escape as a formidable undertaking. But
to _understand_, some one has said a man must _stand under_. The
real distance was great enough, but the imagined distance was, to our
ignorance, even greater. Every slaveholder seeks to impress his slave
with a belief in the boundlessness of slave territory, and of his own
almost illimitable power. We all had vague and indistinct notions of the
geography of the country.

The distance, however, is not the chief trouble. The nearer are the
lines of a slave state and the borders of a free one, the greater the
peril. Hired kidnappers infest these borders. Then, too, we knew that
merely reaching a free state did not free us; that, wherever caught,
we could be returned to slavery. We could see no spot on this side the
ocean, where we could be free. We had heard of Canada, the real Canaan
of the American bondmen, simply as a country to which the wild goose and
the swan repaired at the end of winter, to escape the heat of summer,
but not as the home of man. I knew something of theology, but nothing of
geography. I really did not, at that time, know that there was a state
of New York, or a state of Massachusetts. I had heard of Pennsylvania,
Delaware and New Jersey, and all the southern states, but was ignorant
of the free states, generally. New York city was our northern limit, and
to go there, and be forever harassed with the liability of being hunted
down and returned to slavery--with the certainty of being treated ten
times worse