further out, to the expanse beyond, the great black, mysterious mass, the race, out of which the tide comes to us. It is at first sight but a black, mysterious mass of brute labour, brought in shiploads, by brute capital, so to speak; the huddling, reeking, diseased, desperate catchings of a naked black humanity, without a filament of the clothing, language, or religion of the white humanity above them. Out of the inchoate blackness individual experience alone could make assortment and classification; features, expression, size, and the doctor's certificate were the quotable values at first, until Banbaras, Congoes, and smaller tribes became known, and figured on change. The damaged lots, the crippled and infirm, were sold for a trifle, and these bargains were eagerly seized upon by the poorer classes, so that a poor man's slave was not the mere term of social reproach which it is supposed to be.
The negroes made their own segregations on the plantations. They are described as singing in unison in the fields; incoherent, unintelligible words, in one recurring, monotonous, short strain of harmony, eddying around a minor chord, as they may in fact be heard in any field or street gang to-day. In the winter, when they were clad in their long capots of blanket, with the hood drawn over the head, they looked like a monastery of monks in the field; their shoes, called "quantiers," were pieces of raw-hide, cut so as to lace comfortably over foot and ankle.
These were the first cargoes, the African bruts, as they were called, going through their first rudiments of religion, language, and civilized training. Le Page du Pratz gives interesting information as to the proper management of them in this stage. The whites' fear
