warning. He actively employed himself, with his comrade Sebastian, in attendance on the wretched living beings now released from their confinement below; distributing to them their morning meal of farina, and their allowance of water, rather more than half a pint to each, which they grasped with inconceivable eagerness, some bending their knees to the deck, to avoid the risk of losing any of the liquid by unsteady footing; their throats, doubtless, parched to the utmost with crying and yelling through the night."
On the 12th of April, when the Progresso parted company with the Cleopatra, there were 397 negroes on board. Of these only 222 were landed at the Cape on the 22d of May; no fewer than 175, a little short of half, having died. Many also died after being landed. The crew escaped, there being no court empowered to try them at the Cape.
Walsh, in his notices of Brazil, in 1828 and 1829, says, in describing a slave-ship, examined by the English man-of-war in which he returned from Brazil, in May, 1829: "She had taken in, on the coast of Africa, 336 males and 226 females, making in all 562, and had been out seventeen days, during which she had thrown overboard fifty-five. The slaves were all enclosed under grated hatchways, between decks. The space was so low, that they sat between each other's legs, and stowed so close together that there was no possibility of their lying down, or at all changing their position by night or day. As they belonged to, and were shipped on account of, different individuals, they were all branded, like sheep, with the owners' marks, of different forms. These were impressed under their breasts, or on their arms, and, as the mate informed me, with perfect indifference, 'queimados pelo ferro quento — burnt with the red hot iron.' Over the hatchway stood a ferocious looking fellow, with a scourge of many twisted thongs in his hand, who was the slave-driver of the ship; and whenever he heard the slightest noise below, he shook it over them, and seemed eager to exercise it. As soon as the poor creatures saw us looking down at them, their dark and melancholy visages brightened up. They perceived something of sympathy and kindness in our looks, which they had not been accustomed to, and feeling, instinctively, that we were friends, they immediately began to shout and clap their hands. One or two had picked up a few Portuguese words, and cried out, 'Viva! viva!' The women were particularly excited. They all held up their arms; and when we bent down and shook hands with them, they could not contain their delight; they endeavored to scramble upon their knees, stretching up to kiss our hands; and we understood that they knew we had come to liberate them. Some, however, hung down their heads in apparently hopeless dejection; some were greatly emaciated, and some, particularly children, seemed dying. But the circumstance which struck us most forcibly, was, how it was possible for such a number of human beings to exist, packed up and wedged together as tight as they could cram, in low cells, three feet high, the greater part of which, except that immediately under the grated hatchways, was shut out from light or air, and this when the thermometer, exposed to the open sky, was standing in the shade, on our deck, at 89°. The space between decks was divided into two compartments, three feet three
