These
narrow confines were filled with living beings-beings with souls,
souls sold according to the privileges of a free and happy
country,--a country that fills us with admiration of its greatness.
It is here, O man, the tyrant sways his hand most! it is here the
flesh and blood of the same Maker, in chains of death, yearns for
freedom.
We walk through the corridor, between narrow arches containing the
abodes of misery, while our ears drink the sad melancholy that
sounds in agitated throbs, made painful by the gloom and darkness.
Touching an iron latch, the door of a cell opens, cold and damp, as
if death sat upon its walls; but it discloses no part of the
inmate's person, and excites our sympathies still more. We know the
unfortunate is there,--we hear the murmuring, like a death-bell in
our ears; it is mingled with a dismal chaos of sound, piercing deep
into our feelings. It tells us in terror how gold blasts the very
soul of man-what a dark monster of cruelty he can become,--how he can
forget the grave, and think only of his living self,--how he can
strip reason of its right, making himself an animal with man for his
food. See the monster seeking only for the things that can serve him
on earth-see him stripping man of his best birth-right, see him the
raving fiend, unconscious of his hell-born practices, dissevering
the hope that by a fibre hangs over the ruins of those beings who
will stand in judgment against him. His soul, like their faces, will
be black, when theirs has been whitened for judgment in the world to
come!
Ascending a few steps, leading into a centre building-where the
slave merchant is polished into respectability-we enter a small room
at the right hand.
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