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If negroes are held in peonage, flogged, and even murdered on plantations in our own South, within rifle-shot of courthouses and sheriffs' offices and churches, is it to be wondered at that similar conditions can and do exist in the world-distant jungles of Borneo.
It must be remembered that, after the first capture of Port Royal, the outlying plantations along the whole Southern coast were abandoned, and the slaves withdrawn into the interior. It was necessary to ascend some river for thirty miles in order to reach the black population at all.
"The rule, where slaves are hired out, is two suits of clothes per year, one pair of shoes, and one blanket; but as it relates to the great body of the slaves, this cannot be called a general rule. On many plantations, the children under ten or twelve years old, go entirely naked or, it clothed at all, they have nothing more than a shirt.
"But our plantations, our poultry-yard, our corral, all, everything!" exclaimed Pencroft, stamping his foot. "They may spoil everything, destroy everything in a few hours!" "Everything, Pencroft," answered Harding, "and we have no means of preventing them." "Are they numerous? that is the question," said the reporter.
The prospect from this point embraces three-fourths of the island; majestic mountains clothed in virgin forests almost to their very crests; wide-spreading plains, green with the sugar-cane plantations; rich verdure-clad valleys where the shadows drowsily linger; and beyond, and all around, the dark blue shining sea with a fringe of pearly foam indicating the broken outline of the coast.
I slept on a bed little bed home-made bed in the room wid him and she slept in the room with her two girls and my mother slept in the kitchen a whole heap so she be there to get breakfast early. They riz early every mornin'. John Griffins wife owned four plantations more than 160 acres in each one, but I couldn't say how much. "My mother was a field hand in busy times too.
We traversed some miles of desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds a silent, mournful expanse, wherein we saw only three persons Arabs, with nothing on but a long coarse shirt like the "tow-linen" shirts which used to form the only summer garment of little negro boys on Southern plantations.
That with a certain overseer provided: "And whereas there are a number of whiskey stills very contiguous to the said Plantations, and many idle, drunken and dissolute People continually resorting the same, priding themselves in debauching sober and well-inclined Persons the said Edd. Voilett doth promise as well for his own sake as his employers to avoid them as he ought."
"Our white folks didn't whup mah peeple; but de oberseers whup'd de slaves on uther plantations." "De Yankees had camps on de Capitol hill. En dere wuz soldier camps in east Nashville en you had ter hab a pass ter git thro?" "I member w'en de pen wuz on 15th en Chuch, en de convicts wuk'd 'round de Capitol."
Divers merchants of London, interested in the trade of Africa and the British plantations in America, petitioned the house, that as the African trade was of the utmost importance to the nation, and could not be supported without forts and settlements, some effectual means should be speedily taken for protecting and extending this valuable branch of commerce.
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