On the 13th of February we breasted a small settlement on our left, called Providence, in Louisiana.  We observed on the river’s bank what a man at my elbow (a professor of religion, who had discovered a great propensity to talk about his religious experience before gamblers) coolly designated “a drove of horses, mules, and niggers.”  Observe the order of his enumeration!  Of the “niggers” there were about 100, small and great, young and old, and of both sexes.  The whole “drove” were waiting to be shipped for the New Orleans market, and were jealously guarded by several large dogs.  From individual instances like this, one may form a clearer notion of the internal slave-trade of America.  Thousands every year are thus brought down the Mississippi to supply the Natchez and New Orleans markets.  “Those who are transported down the Mississippi,” says a manual of American slavery, “are stowed away on the decks of steam-boats, males and females, old and young, usually chained, subject to the jeers and taunts of the passengers and navigators, and often by bribes or threats, or by the lash, made subject to abominations not to be named.”  On the same deck, you may see horses and human beings tenants of the same apartments, and going to supply the same market.  The dumb beasts, being less manageable, are allowed the first place; while the human are forced into spare corners and vacant places.  My informant saw one trader who was taking down to New Orleans 100 horses, some sheep, and between fifty and sixty slaves.  The sheep and the slaves occupied the same deck.  Many interesting and intelligent women were of the number.  I could relate facts concerning the brutal treatment of these defenceless females, while on the downward passage, which would kindle the hot indignation of every mother, and daughter, and sister in Old England.  The slaves are carried down in companies, varying in number from 20 to 500.  Men of considerable capital are engaged in the traffic.  Go into the principal towns on the Mississippi, and you will find these negro traders in the bar-rooms boasting of their adroitness in driving human flesh, and describing the process by which they succeed in “taming down the spirit of a refractory negro.”  Here, then, were human beings, children of our common Father, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, classed with the brutes that perish,—­nay, degraded below them, and placed under the surveillance of dogs.  The horrors of such a system it is impossible to exaggerate.

The majority of our fellow-passengers did nothing but gamble, eat, drink, smoke, and spit, from morning till night.  In the afternoon a dispute arose between two of them about ten dollars, which the one maintained he had won from the other.  One of the two quickly drew out his Bowie knife, and would certainly have stabbed the other but for the intervention of the boat’s officers.  When the whites have so little hesitation in shedding each other’s