soft and sweet when speaking to her husband, and exquisitely fine and melodious, when accompanying her guitar, was at such times, shrill, keen, and loud.  She would order the servants of my young mistresses upon her errands, and if they pleaded their prior duty to obey the calls of another, would demand that they should be forthwith whipped for their insolence.  If the young ladies remonstrated with her, she met them with a perfect torrent of invective and abuse.  In these paroxysms of fury she always spoke in French, with a vehemence and volubility, which strongly contrasted with the calmness and firmness of the young ladies.  She would boast of what she had done in New-Orleans, and of the excellent discipline of her father’s slaves.  She said she had gone down in the night to the cell under her father’s house, and whipped the slaves confined there with her own hands.  I had heard the same thing from her father’s servants at New-Orleans, when I was there with my master.  She brought with her from New-Orleans a girl named Frances.  I have seen her take her by the ear, lead her up to the side of the room, and beat her head against it.  At other times she would snatch off her slipper and strike the girl on her face and head with it.

She seldom manifested her evil temper before master George.  When she did, he was greatly troubled, and he used to speak to his sisters about it.  Her manner towards him was almost invariably that of extreme fondness.  She was dark complexioned, but very beautiful; and the smile of welcome with which she used to meet him was peculiarly fascinating.  I did not marvel that he loved her; while at the same time, in common with all the house servants, I regarded her as a being possessed with an evil spirit,—­half woman, and half fiend.

Soon after the settlement of the estate, I heard my master speak of going out to Alabama.  His wife had 1500 acres of wild land in Greene County in that State:  and he had been negociating for 500 more.  Early in the summer of 1833, he commenced making preparations for removing to that place a sufficient number of hands to cultivate it.  He took great pains to buy up the wives and husbands of those of his own slaves who had married out of the estate, in order, as he said, that his hands might be contented in Alabama, and not need chaining together while on their journey.  It is always found necessary by the regular slave-traders, in travelling with their slaves to the far South, to handcuff and chain their wretched victims, who have been bought up as the interest of the trader, and the luxury or necessities of the planter may chance to require, without regard to the ties sundered or the affections made desolate, by these infernal bargains.  About the 1st of September, after the slaves destined for Alabama had taken a final farewell of their old home, and of the friends they were leaving behind, our party started on their long journey.  There were in all 214 slaves, men, women and children.