one such
craft now sails. His little counting-room is in the second storey of
the building; its wall-timbers are of oak, and are still sound; the few
remaining planks are grained to resemble rosewood and mahogany; the
fragments of wall-paper are of English make. In the cross-beam, just
above your head, are the pigeon-holesonce devoted to different vessels,
whose names are still recorded above them on faded paper,--"Ship
Cleopatra," "Brig Juno," and the like. Many of these vessels measured
less than two hundred tons, and it seems as if their owner had built
his ships to match the size of his counting-room.

A sterner tradition clings around an old building on a remoter wharf;
for men have but lately died who had seen slaves pass within its doors
for confinement. The wharf in those days appertained to a distillery,
an establishment then constantly connected with the slave-trade, rum
being sent to Africa, and human beings brought back. Occasionally a
cargo was landed here, instead of being sent to the West Indies or to
South Carolina, and this building was fitted up for their temporary
quarters. It is but some twenty-five feet square, and must be less than
thirty feet in height, yet it is divided into three stories, of which
the lowest was used for other purposes, and the two upper were reserved
for slaves. There are still to be seen the barred partitions and
latticed door, making half the second floor into a sort of cage, while
the agent's room appears to have occupied the other half. A similar
latticed door--just such as I have seen in Southern slave-pens--secures
the foot of the upper stairway. The whole small attic constitutes a
single room, with a couple of windows, and two additional
breathing-holes, two feet square, opening on the yard. It makes one
sick to think of the poor creatures who may once have gripped those
bars with their hands, or have glared with eager eyes between them; and
it makes me recall with delight the day when I once wrenched away the
stocks and chains from the floor of a pen like this, on the St. Mary's
River in Florida. It is almost forty years since this distillery became
a mill, and sixty since the slave-trade was abolished. The date "1803"
is scrawled upon the door of the cage,--the very year when the port of
Charleston was reopened for slaves, just before the traffic ceased. A
few years more, and such horrors will seem as remote a memory in South
Carolina, thank God! as in Rhode Island.