RESULTS OF SLAVERY.
It would, however, be a vain imagination, to suppose that this wiser and more humane determination will be spontaneously adopted by those most implicated in this debasing and demoralizing traffic. Indeed it appears from the best information obtained on the subject, that since the vigilance of our cruizers has comparatively put a stop to the trade on the west coast of Africa--where it has received a great discouragement--it has been greatly extended on the east. Could it but have been foreseen by our Government that their efforts upon the west coast, would in proportion as they were successful, only tend to drive the traders in human flesh to the eastward, it is probable that Mombas would have still been retained under our dominion; for such a possession would have enabled us to exercise an effectual control in that quarter: as it is, it gives additional reason to regret that the place was ever abandoned. The horrors of the passage--horrors which no imagination can heighten, no pen adequately portray--are by this alteration in the chief seat of the accursed trade most fearfully augmented. The poor victims of cruelty and fraud and avarice, in their most repulsive forms, are packed away between decks scarcely three feet high, in small vessels of 30 or 40 tons, and thus situated have to encounter the cold and stormy passage round the Cape: the average mortality is of course most frightful, but the smallness of the vessels employed decreases the risk of the speculators in human flesh, who consider themselves amply repaid, if they save one living cargo out of every five embarked!
MORAL CONDITION OF THE NEGROES.
In the meantime cargoes of slaves are almost weekly landed in the neighbourhood of Bahia: the thousand evils of the vile system are each day increasing, and with a rapid but unregarded footstep the fearful hour steals on, when a terrible reckoning of unrestrained revenge will repay all the accumulated wrongs of the past, and write in characters of blood an awful warning for the future!
So far as we could learn, no attempts are made by the masters to introduce the blessings of Christianity among those whom they deprive of temporal freedom. The slave is treated as a valuable animal and nothing more: the claims of his kindred humanity so far forgotten as they relate to his first unalienable right of personal freedom, are not likely to be remembered in his favour, in what concerns his coheritage in the sublime sacrifice of atonement once freely offered for us all! He toils through long and weary years, cheered by no other hope than the far distant and oft delusive expectation that a dearly purchased freedom--if for freedom's blessings any price can be too costly--will enable him to look once more upon the land of his nativity; and then close his eyes, surrounded by the loved few whom the ties of kindred endear even to his rude nature.
It would swell this portion of the work to an unreasonable extent, to give any lengthened details of the working of a system, about which among my readers no two opinions can exist. Let it suffice to say, that the Europeans are generally better and less exacting masters than the Brazilians. Among the latter it is a common practice to send so many slaves each day to earn a certain fixed sum by carrying burdens, pulling in boats, or other laborious employment; and those who return at night without the sum thus arbitrarily assessed as the value of their day's work, are severely flogged for their presumed idleness.
MIDDY'S GRAVE.
During our brief stay at Bahia I paid a visit to the grave of poor young Musters, a little Middy in the Beagle during our last voyage, who died here on the 19th May, 1832, from the effects of a fever caught while away on an excursion up the river Macacu. He was a son of Lord Byron's Mary, and a great favourite with all on board. Poor boy! no stone marks his lonely resting place upon a foreign shore, but the long grass waves over his humble grave, and the tall palm tree bends to the melancholy wind that sighs above it. As I paid his memory the tribute due to his many virtues and his early death, I breathed a prayer that the still and placid beauty of the spot where his mortal remains return to their kindred dust, may typify the tranquil happiness of that world of spirits with which his own is now united!
MR. "VERY WELL DICE."
On the afternoon of Friday the 25th, we left the magnificent bay of Bahia, and after obtaining an offing, stood away to the southward and eastward. I was much amused by a story of Grey's a day or two after we sailed: it seems he had mistaken the Quartermaster's usual call in conning the ship of "Very well, dice" (a corruption of "very well, thus") for a complimentary notice of the man at the helm; and anxious to know the individual who so distinguished himself, had two or three times gone on deck to see "Mr. Very well Dice:" finding a different helmsman each time, completely confounded him; and when I explained the matter, he joined me in a hearty laugh at the mistake!
CHAPTER 1.3. FROM THE CAPE TO SWAN RIVER.
A gale.
Anchor in Simon's Bay.
H.M.S. Thalia.
Captain Harris, and his Adventures in Southern Africa.
Proceedings of the Land Party.
Leave Simon's Bay.
An overloaded ship.
Heavy weather and wet decks.
Island of Amsterdam.
Its true longitude.
St. Paul's.
Water.
Westerly variation.
Rottnest Island.
Gage's Road.
Swan River Settlement.
Fremantle.
An inland lake.
Plans for the future.
Illness of Captain Wickham.
Tidal Phenomena.
Perth.
Approach to it.
Narrow escape of the first settlers.
The Darling Range.
Abundant Harvest.
Singular flight of strange birds.
Curious Cliff near Swan River.
Bald Head.
Mr. Darwin's Theory.
The Natives.
Miago.
Anecdotes of Natives.
Their Superstitions.
Barbarous traditions, their uses and their lessons.
We had, upon the whole, a favourable passage across to the Cape; but on the 17th of September, when distant from it about 500 miles, we encountered a moderate gale from the north. As this was the first heavy weather we had experienced since our departure from England, I was curious to see what effect such a strange scene would have on our passengers. Wrapt in mute astonishment, they stood gazing with admiration and awe on the huge waves as they rolled past, occasionally immersing our little vessel in their white crests--and listening, with emotions not wholly devoid of fear, to the wild screams of the seabirds as they skimmed o'er the steep acclivities of these moving masses. The landsmen were evidently deeply impressed with the grandeur of a storm at sea; nor can the hardiest seaman look with unconcern on such an exhibition of the majesty of Him, whose will the winds and waves obey. Not more poetically beautiful than literally true are the words of the Psalmist, so appropriately introduced into the Form of Prayers at Sea--"They that go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their business in great waters: these men see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep: for at his word the stormy wind ariseth, which lifteth up the waves thereof." My own experience has over and over again satisfied me, that, mingled with many a dim superstition, a deep religious sentiment--a conviction of the might and mercy of Heaven--often rests on the heart of the most reckless seaman, himself all unconscious of its existence, yet strangely influenced by its operations!
ANCHOR AT SIMON'S BAY.
We sighted land on the evening of the 20th of September, rounded the Cape the next morning, and in the afternoon anchored in Simon's Bay. We