look down on the fettered and burdened wretches they were
passing, as on beings of an inferior rank in the creation. Some of the
negroes actually seemed to envy the caparisons of their fellow-brutes,
and eyed with jealousy their glittering harness. In imitation of this
finery, they were fond of thrums of many-colored threads; and I saw one
creature, who supported the squalid rag that wrapped his waist by a
suspender of gaudy worsted, which he turned every moment to look at on
his naked shoulder. The greater number, however, were as unconscious of
any covering for use or ornament, as a pig or an ass.

"The first impression of all this on my mind, was to shake the
conviction I had always felt, of the wrong and hardship inflicted on our
black fellow-creatures, and that they were only in that state which God
and nature had assigned them; that they were the lowest grade of human
existence, and the link that connected it with the brute; and that the
gradation was so insensible, and their natures so intermingled, that it
was impossible to tell where one had terminated and the other commenced;
and that it was not surprising that people who contemplated them every
day, so formed, so employed, and so degraded, should forget their claims
to that rank in the scale of being in which modern philanthropists are
so anxious to place them. I did not at the moment myself recollect, that
the white man, made a slave on the coast of Africa, suffers not only a
similar mental but physical deterioration from hardships and emaciation,
and becomes in time the dull and deformed beast I now saw yoked to a
burden.

"A few hours only were necessary to correct my first impressions of the
negro population, by seeing them under a different aspect. We were
attracted by the sound of military music, and found it proceeded from a
regiment drawn up in one of the streets. Their colonel had just died,
and they attended to form a procession to celebrate his obsequies. They
were all of different shades of black, but the majority were negroes.
Their equipment was excellent; they wore dark jackets, white pantaloons,
and black leather caps and belts, all which, with their arms, were
in high order. Their band produced sweet and agreeable music, of the
leader's own composition, and the men went through some evolutions with
regularity and dexterity. They were only a militia regiment, yet were as
well appointed and disciplined as one of our regiments of the line. Here