A long passage of four months found many victims to its
hardships, and those who arrived safe were emaciated by sickness.
Into the interior were these taken; and there they founded a
settlement called New Smyrna, the land for which-some sixty thousand
acres-was granted by the governor of Florida. Faithfully and
earnestly did they labour for the promised reward, and in less than
five years had more than three thousand acres of land in the highest
state of cultivation; but, as Turnbull's prosperity increased, so
did the demon avarice; and men, women, and children, were reduced to
the most abject slavery. Tasks greater than they could perform were
assigned them, and a few Italians and negroes made overseers and
drivers. For food the labourers were allotted seven quarts of corn
per week. Many who had lived in affluence in their own country were
compelled to wear osnaburgs, and go bare-foot through the year. More
than nine years were those valuable settlers kept in this state of
slavery, the cruelties inflicted upon them surpassing in enormity
those which so stigmatised the savage Spaniards of St. Domingo.
Drivers were compelled to beat and lacerate those who had not
performed their tasks; many were left naked, tied all night to
trees, that mosquitoes might suck their blood, and the suffering
wretches become swollen from torture. Some, to end their troubles,
wandered off, and died of starvation in the forest, and, including
the natural increase, less than six hundred souls were left at the
end of nine years.
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