und it much easier to close his affairs
with North Carolina, than it would have been had he been encumbered with
a family. In fact, the only serious difficulty he had to surmount was to
find a captain with whom he could secure a safe passage North. To his
gratification it was not long before his efforts in this direction were
crowned with success. A vessel was being loaded with shingles, the
captain of which was kind enough to allow Miles to occupy a very secure
hiding-place thereon. In course of time, having suffered to the extent
usual when so closely conveyed, he arrived in Philadelphia, and being
aided, was duly forwarded by the Committee.

JOHN HALL, _alias_ JOHN SIMPSON. John fled from South Carolina. In this
hot-bed of Slavery he labored and suffered up to the age of thirty-two.
For a length of time before he escaped, his burdens were intolerable;
but he could see no way to rid himself of them, except by flight. Nor
was he by any means certain that an effort in this direction would prove
successful. In planning the route which he should take to travel North
he decided, that if success was for him, his best chance would be to
wend his way through North Carolina and Virginia. Not that he hoped to
find friends or helpers in these States. He had heard enough of the
cruelties of Slavery in these regions to convince him, that if he should
be caught, there would be no sympathy or mercy shown. Nevertheless the
irons were piercing him so severely, that he felt constrained to try his
luck, let the consequences be what they might, and so he set out for
freedom or death. Mountains of difficulties, and months of suffering and
privations by land and water, in the woods, and swamps of North Carolina
and Virginia, were before him, as his experience in traveling proved.
But the hope of final victory and his daily sufferings before he
started, kept him from faltering, even when starvation and death seemed
to be staring him in the face. For several months he was living in dens
and caves of the earth.

Ultimately, however, the morning of his ardent hopes dawned. How he
succeeded in finding a captain who was kind enough to afford him a
secret hiding-place on his boat, was not noted on the records. Indeed
the incidents of his story were but briefly written out. Similar cases
of thrilling interest seemed almost incredible, and the Committee were
constrained to doubt the story altogether until other testimony could be
obtained to v