time with his foot, and singing lal lal la, lal lal la, &c., being joined by the whole group, all jumping as high as possible, clapping their hands, and at intervals twirling round,—­but making rather ungraceful pirouettes:  this exercise they continue until they are completely exhausted.  In their ceremonials they much resemble the howling Dervishes of the Moslems, whom they far surpass in fanaticism.

Within about ten miles of Cincinnati we took up an old doctor, who was going to that city for the purpose of procuring a warrant against one of his neighbours, who, he had reason to believe, was concerned in the kidnapping of a free negro the night before.  This is by no means an uncommon occurrence in the free states bordering the great rivers.  The unfortunate black man, when captured, is hurried down to the river, thrust into a flat boat, and carried to the plantations.  Such negros are not exposed for sale in the public bazaars, as that would be attended with risk; but a false bill of sale is made out, and the sale is effected to some planter before they reach Orleans.  There is, of course, always collusion between the buyer and seller, and the man is disposed of, generally, for half his value.

These are certainly atrocious acts; yet when a British subject reads such passages as the following, in the histories of East India government, he must feel that if they were ten times as infamous and numerous as they are in reality, it becomes not him to censure them.  Bolts, who was a judge of the mayor’s court of Calcutta, says, in his “Considerations on India Affairs,” page 194, “With every species of monopoly, therefore, every kind of oppression to manufacturers of all denominations throughout the whole country has daily increased; insomuch that weavers, for daring to sell their goods, and Dallals and Pykars, for having contributed to, or connived at, such sales, have by the Company’s agents, been frequently seized and imprisoned, confined in irons, fined considerable sums of money, flogged, and deprived, in the most ignominious manner, of what they esteem most valuable, their castes.  Weavers also, upon their inability to perform such agreements as have been forced from them by the Company’s agents, universally known in Bengal by the name of Mutchulcahs, have had their goods seized and sold on the spot, to make good the deficiency:  and the winders of raw silk, called Nagaards, have been treated also with such injustice, that instances have been known of their cutting off their thumbs, to prevent their being forced to wind silk.  This last kind of workmen were pursued with such rigour, during Lord Clive’s late government in Bengal, from a zeal for increasing the Company’s investment of raw silk, that the most sacred laws of society were atrociously violated; for it was a common thing for the Company’s scapoys to be sent by force of arms to break open the houses of the Armenian merchants established at Sydabad (who have from time immemorial been largely concerned in the silk trade), and forcibly take the Nagaards from their work, and carry them away to the English factory.”