d often committed
depredations themselves; especially when they were passing by any part
of the coast, where they did not mean to continue or to go again. Hence
it was (as several captains of the navy and others had declared on their
examination), that the natives, when at sea in their canoes, would never
come near the men-of-war, till they knew them to be such. But finding
this, and that they were not slave-vessels, they laid aside their fears,
and came and continued on board with unsuspecting cheerfulness. With
respect to the miseries of the Middle Passage, he had said so much on a
former occasion, that he would spare the feelings of the committee as
much as he could. He would therefore simply state that the evidence,
which was before them, confirmed all those scenes of wretchedness which
he had then described: the same suffering from a state of suffocation,
by being crowded together; the same dancing in fetters; the same
melancholy singing; the same eating by compulsion; the same despair; the
same insanity; and all the other abominations which characterized the
trade. New instances however had occurred, where these wretched men had
resolved on death to terminate their woes. Some had destroyed themselves
by refusing sustenance, in spite of threats and punishments. Others had
thrown themselves into the sea; and more than one, when in the act of
drowning, were seen to wave their hands in triumph, "exulting" (to use
the words of an eye-witness) "that they had escaped." Yet these and
similar things, when viewed through the African medium he had mentioned,
took a different shape and colour. Captain Knox, an adverse witness, had
maintained, that slaves lay during the night in tolerable comfort. And
yet he confessed, that in a vessel of one hundred and twenty tons, in
which he had carried two hundred and ninety slaves, the latter had not
all of them room to lie on their backs. How comfortably, then, must they
have lain in his subsequent voyages! for he carried afterwards, in a
vessel of a hundred and eight tons, four hundred and fifty; and in a
vessel of one hundred and fifty tons, no less than six hundred slaves.
Another instance of African deception was to be found in the testimony
of Captain Frazer, one of the most humane captains in the trade. It had
been said of him, that he had held hot coals to the mouth of a slave, to
compel him to eat. He was questioned on this point; but not admitting,
in the true spirit of African l