Note 4 — CHAP. V.

The victim of this cruelty was a fine old negro slave, who having been as he thought undeservedly sentenced to receive some hundred lashes by the lacerating whips of two negro-drivers, in the midst of the execution pulled out a knife, which, after having made a fruitless thrust at his persecutor the overseer, he plunged up to the haft in his own bowels, repeating the blow till he dropped down at the tyrant’s feet. For this crime he was, being first recovered, condemned to be chained to the furnace which distils the kill-devil4, there to keep in the intense heat of a perpetual fire night and day, being blistered all over, till he should expire by infirmity or old age, of the latter of which however he had but little chance. He shewed me his wounds with a smile of contempt, which I returned with a sigh and a small donation: nor shall I ever forget the miserable man, who, like Cerberus, was loaded with irons, and chained to everlasting torment. As for every thing else I observed in this little tour, I must acknowledge it to be elegant and splendid, and my reception hospitable beyond my expectation: but these Elysian fields could not dissipate the gloom which the infernal furnace had left upon my mind.