SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

VOTAGIS AND TRAVELS,

Fifty Days on Board a Slave-Vessel in the Mozambique Channel. in April and May 1g43. By the Reverend Pascoe Grenfell Hill, Chaplain of H. M. S. Cleopatra.

MIDICAL Murray. Diseases of the Lungs from Mechanical Causes, and Inquiries into the Condition of the Artisans exposed to the Inhalation of Dust. By G. Calvert Holland. Esq..

M.D., &c Churchill. Ilisroaz

Outline of the Operations of the British Troops in Scinde and Afghanistan, betwixt November 1838 and November 1841 ; with Remarks on the Policy of the War.

By George Bast. LL.D., editor of " The Bombay Times," Fic. &.c Bombay. FICTION, Allanston, or the lotteel; a Novel. Edited by Lady Chatterton, Author of "Ram- bles in the South of Ireland," &c. In three volumes Newby.

FIFTY DAYS ON BOARD A SLAVE-VESSEL.

THS author of this very small but interesting volume, the Reverend P G. HILL, is a Chaplain in the Navy : he was doing duty in the Malabar, 74 guns, at Rio Janeiro, when the Cleopatra, of 26 guns, arrived on her voyage to the Mauritius, whither she was conveying the Governor, preparatory to a cruise in search of slavers in the Mozambique Channel—the strait lying between Madagascar and Africa. By permission of the Commodore, Mr. Him. volunteered into the Cleopatra; which reached the Mauritius without much incident ; and, after visiting sundry ports in Madagascar, the op- posite coast, and Cape colony, eventually captured a slaver. The vessel of course was a prize ; and Mr. Him. offered to accom- pany the prizemaster and his charge to the Cape. The volume before us contains an account of the horrors of this voyage, with some cursory descriptions of Rio Janeiro and other places at which the Cleopatra touched. Mr. 1411 f, is a pleasant, an unaffected, and even an elegant writer, with a fund of good sense, which enables him to perceive the true circumstances of a case when the conclusions are opposed to his own propositions. But his mind is of a somewhat superficial cha- racter; and he appears not to have possessed sufficient scientific knowledge to enable him to profit fully by his opportunities. At all. events, the information conveyed respecting the interesting but scarcely known coast of Africa which he visited is very slight, con- sisting of little more than description of externals.

The value of the book consists in its facts respecting African slavery, and its suggestions on the deplorable effects that spring from well-intentioned philanthropy ignorantly exercised. Mr. Hun's picture of urban slavery at Rio exhibits, as he admits the reality does, a very different idea from that which the imagination supplies ; and certainly confirms the opinion of Major HARRIS (to quote the last authority) that the Negro is much better off under a mild system of slavery than he is at home in the interior of Africa, where every district is continually ravaged by forays, and he is ever obnoxious to massacre, or slavery of the worst kind. The main interest of Mr. awes book, however, arises from its picture of the horrors that we inflict upon the slave in our vain and badly- managed efforts to put an end to the slave-trade. We are not allud- ing to the increased horrors that have been added to the voyage by turning an open into a smuggling trade, where space for stowage is sacrificed, to speed.; but to the misery and mortality that begin when we have captured the slaver, with the philanthropic object of restoring the Negro to freedom. The number of Negroes on board the Progresso, the vessel taken by the Cleopatra, was 447 ; of which 163 died during the voyage to Natal Bay, besides some more who perished afterwards, giving a mortality on this humanity voyage of about one in three. Some deaths may have been certain under any circumstances whatsoever; but Mr. Ilna. distinctly states that no such mortality would have occurred had the slaver not been captured, from the superior knowledge of the crew, as well from the better appliances and economical arrangements, so to speak, which they maintain on board. Grosser mismanagement than was dis- played in the case of the ill-fated Progresso it seems impossible to conceive ; some attributable without question to the want of thought and consideration on the part of the officers employed, some to an absence of medical qualification, but the greater part chargeable upon the scheme itself, and the home authorities, who do not adopt proper means to carry out the all but impracticable task they undertake. The fearful scenes Mr. HILL describes had their source, no doubt, in the scanty room allotted to the human cargo. The slave-dealers in a measure guard against this by fettering and coercing the slaves ; whose movements and struggles in the hold, are limited, if not prevented. When the vessel was captured, the fetters were removed from the freed men ; but the means of stowage remaining the same, a fearful struggle for air and room took place during the first night, which ended in the death of fifty- four before morning, besides injuries to many, of which they after- wards died. Some idea of preventing this evil had occurred ; and it was proposed to shift one hundred of the Negroes to the Cleo- patra *; but the Surgeon thought the smallpox was prevalent in the slave-ship, though it subsequently appeared that it was only a virulent species of itch. We assume that it was ascertained by inquiry that many of the Cleopatra's crew were obnoxious to smallpox, from not having been inoculated or vaccinated. No blame, therefore, attaches to the Captain for avoiding the risk of infection to his own crew ; but it is certainly cul- pable in the Admiralty to send out vessels on such voyages as this with medical officers who cannot distinguish small- *. We give this as we find it in Mr. HILL'S book. We bad an impression that it is considered irregular, on account of some technical objection, to re- move slaves from the prize till they are brought into port.

Pox from a skin disease. Blame does, however, attach to somebody in the Cleopatra for allowing that vessel to part company without any medical officer being sent on board the Progresso ; though when he afterwards came, his treatment was of no use compared with the empirical methods of one of the slaver's crew, who per- suaded Mr. Elm, to let him attempt the office of medico. The prize was under-manned ; and the crew, as was naturally to be sup- posed, fell sick from the pestilential atmosphere ; a fault charge- able on the Admiralty, who, if they send ships on such services, should amply provide them in every way. Still it strikes us, that there was a want of method and foresight. A little of these qualities, by arranging the Negroes into classes, introducing a sort of disci- pline among them at the outset, and compelling them at nightfall to occupy their appointed places, might have prevented the horrors that ensued, and diminished the number of deaths. Instead of that, every thing seems to have been left to chance. This is Mr. Thr.r's narrative of the first

TWO DAYS IN A CAPTURED SLAVER.

An interpreter being much wanted to communicate with the Spaniards concerning the care and management of the Negroes, I offered my services during the voyage, to which Captain Wyvill having assented, at seven o'clock in the evening I found myself, with my servant and carpet-bag, on board the Progresso, under sail for the Cape of Good Hope. The English previously sent on board were, the Lieutenant in charge, a master's assistant, a quarter- master, a boatswain's mate, and nine seamen.

During the first watch, our breeze was light and variable, the water smooth,

the recently-liberated Negroes sleeping or lying in quietness about the deck. Their slender supple limbs entwine in a surprisingly small compass ; and they resembled, in the moonlight, confused piles of arms and legs rather than dis- tinct human forms. They were, however, apparently at ease, and all seemed going on as fairly as could be desired. But the scene was soon to undergo a great and terrible change. About one hour after midnight, the -sky began to gather clouds, and a haze overspread the horizon to windward. A squaflap- preached, of which I and others, who had lain down on the deck, received warning by a few heavy drows of rain. Then ensued a scene the horrors of which it is impossible to depict. The hands having to shorten sail suddenly, uncertain as to the force of the squall, found the poor helpless creatures lying about the deck an obstruction to getting at the ropes and doing what was re- quired. This caused the order to send them all below, which was immediately obeyed. The night, however, being intensely hot and close, four hundred wretched beings thus crammed into a hold twelve yards in length, seven in breadth, and only three feet and a half in height, speedily began to make an effort to reissue to the open air. Being thrust back, and striving the more to get out, the after-hatch was forced down on them. Over the other hatchway in the fore-part of the vessel a wooden grating was fastened. To this, the sole inlet for the air, the suffocating heat of the hold, and perhaps panic from the strangeness of their situation, made them press; and thus great part of the space below was rendered useless. They crowded to the grating, and clinging to it for air, completely barred its entrance. They strove to force their way through apertures, in length fourteen inches, and barely six inches in breadth, and, in some instances, succeeded. The cries, the heat—I may say, without exaggeration, "the smoke of their torment," Which ascended—can be compared to nothing earthly. One of the Spaniards gave warning, that the consequence would be " many deaths "—" Manana habra machos muertos." Thursday, April 13th, (Holy Thursday.) The Spaniard's prediction of last night, this morning was fearfully verified. Fifty-four crushed and mangled corpses lifted up from the slave-deck have been brought to the gangway and thrown overboard. Some were emaciated from disease, many bruised and bloody. Antonio tells me that some were found strangled, their hands still grasping each other's throats, and tongues protruding from their mouths. The bowels of one were crushed out. They had been trampled to death for the most part, the weaker under the feet of the stronger, in the madness and tor- ment of suffocation from crowd and heat. It was a horrid sight, as they passed one by one—the stiff distorted limbs smeared with blood and filth—to be cast into the sea. Some, still quivering, were laid on the deck to die; salt-water thrown on them to revive them, and a little fresh water poured into their mouths. Antonio reminded me of his last night's warning, " Ya se lo dire anoche." He actively employed himself, with his comrade Sebastian, in at- tendance on the wretched living beings, now released from their confinement below ; distributing to them their morning meal of "farinha," and their allow- ance of water, rather more than half-a-pint to each; which they grasped with inconceivable eagerness, some bending their knees to the deck, to avoid the risk of losing any of the liquid by unsteady footing,—their throats, doubtless, parched to the utmost with crying and yelling through the night.

A heavy shower having freshened the air, in the evening most of the Negroes went below of their own accord, the hatchways being left open to allow them air. But a short time, however, had elapsed when they began

tumultuously to reascend ; while persons above, afraid of their crowding the deck too much, repelled them, and they were trampled back, screaming, and writhing, in a confused mass. The hatch was about to be forced down on them ; and, had not the Lieutenant in charge left positive orders to the contrary, the catastrophe of last night would have been reenacted. Antonio, whom I called at this juncture, turned away with a gesture of horror, saying, "No soy capaz de matarlos como anoche." Oo explaining to him, however, that it was desired he would dispose in proper places those who came on deck, he set him- self to the task with great alacrity. As they climbed nimbly up, he made me feel their skins, which had been wetted by the rain : "Estan frescos "—" they are cool." " No tienen calor, tienen miedo." It was not heat, but fear, which now made them rush to escape from the hold : and he showed me, with much. satisfaction, how soon and quietly they were arranged out of the way of the ropes, covered with long rugs provided for the purpose.

Surely this might as well have been done at first as at last. Yet it was only by the accidental presence of Mr. HILL, speaking Spanish, that it was done at all. They would " manage these things better in France" or anywhere else.

Our space forbids us pursuing the narrative of this disastrous voyage ; but we will quote Mr. HILL'S rational exposition of the causes which inevitably lead to these horrors in a captured slaver.

" It is too manifest that, under circumstances similar to those which I have related, the capture of the 'prize' must be an event far more disastrous to the slave than to the slave-dealer. It cannot be supposed that the accumulated calamities which ensued to the hapless beings on board the Progresso, on ' their transfer to the protection of their liberators, could have taken place had they continued in the hands of their purchasers. As the latter have the high- est interest which men can have in the preservation of an extremely valuable cargo ; so are they, of all men, most qualified for the task, by experience of the system best calculated to provide for their health and safety, and by concur,-, rence of able hands, in ample number, to carry that system into effect. In these respects, the-reverse-may generally be asserted of those who; pa. capture

of the vessel by a ship of war, succeed to their charge. Those who know the naval service are aware that a cruiser, especially on a sickly station, can often but ill spare more hands to send away in a prize than are barely sufficient for their proper duties in working the vesseL The number thus sent away will be farther liable to reduction by sickness, from the tainted, unhealthy atmosphere to which they are introduced, and other causes peculiar to the change of their situation. Thus, in the case of the Progresso, every seaman was in his turn disabled by illness. It is also to be remembered, that the officer in command of the prize, on whose exertions and discretion the welfare of the rescued Negroes mainly depends, is encompassed by professional difficulties of a very engrossing kind, increased in many cases by the novelty of an independent command, and the weakness of his crew, should sickness occur among them in a vessel unproved as to her sea qualities, worse provided in naval stores than those to which he has been accustomed, and on a coast probably strange to him. It is not to be expected that any individual can, in addition to these causes of embarrassment, be equal in the care of five hundred helpless beings to a bur- den usually divided among fifteen or twenty persons well trained to the work, and employed in it day and night. The advantage of improved medical treat- ment offers less alleviation to the sufferings of the Negroes than would be at first supposed. All that medical care and skill, as adapted to European con- stitutions and maladies, could effect, was tried by our assistant-surgeon on the Negroes of the Progresso, without success, that I am aware of, in any one instance. On the other hand, the slave-dealers, in their selection and applica- tion of the large stores of medicines found on board the vessel, may be pre- sumed to have been guided by some experience of their beneficial effects."

The reader should understand, that these occurrences, though perhaps known to him for the first time, and now first presented in detail, are really by no means new. A similar mortality sometimes takes place in vessels captured on the Western coast of Africa, and probably attended by similar circumstances, though only the statistics are procurable. The brief and popular work of Mr. Hthr., well adapted for general circulation; will bring the matter before the eyes of the community, and, directing public opinion to the management of the subject, have a tendency to prevent these wholesale murders in the name of humanity.