tes, and they were often abominably
filthy, and infested with loathsome and venomous vermin. For slight
offences the slaves were thrust into these prisons for several
successive nights--being dragged out every morning to work during the
day. Various modes of torture were employed upon those who were
consigned to the dungeon. There were stocks for their feet, and there
were staples in the floor for the ankles and wrists, placed in such a
position as to keep the victim stretched out and lying on his face. Mr.
H. described one mode which was called the _cabin_. A narrow board, only
wide enough for a man to lie upon, was fixed in an inclined position,
and elevated considerably above the ground. The offending slave was made
to lay upon this board, and a strong rope or chain, was tied about his
neck and fastened to the ceiling. It was so arranged, that if he should
fall from the plank, he would inevitably hang by his neck. Lying in this
position all night, he was more likely than not to fall asleep, and then
there were ninety-nine chances to one that he would roll off his narrow
bed and be killed before he could awake, or have time to extricate
himself. Peradventure this is the explanation of the anxiety Mr. ---- of
----, used to feel, when he had confined one of his slaves in the
dungeon. He stated that he would frequently wake up in the night, was
restless, and couldn't sleep, from fear that the prisoner would _kill
himself_ before morning.

It was common for the planters of Barbadoes, like those of Antigua, to
declare that the greatest blessing of abolition to them, was that it
relieved them from the disagreeable work of flogging the negroes. We had
the unsolicited testimony of a planter, that slave mothers frequently
poisoned, and otherwise murdered, their young infants, to rid them of a
life of slavery. What a horrible comment this upon the cruelties of
slavery! Scarce has the mother given birth to her child, when she
becomes its murderer. The slave-mother's joy begins, not like that of
other mothers, when "a man is born into the world," but when her infant
is hurried out of existence, and its first faint cry is hushed in the
silence of death! Why this perversion of nature? Ah, that mother knows
the agonies, the torments, the wasting woes, of a life of slavery, and
by the bowels of a mother's love, and the yearnings of a mother's pity,
she resolves that her babe shall never know the same. O, estimate who
can, how many gr