Note 3 — CHAP. XIII.

The particulars of this murder were as follow: during the time that Captain Tulling commanded here, which was a little time before I came to the Hope, it happened that a fugitive negro belonging to this estate had been taken upon an adjoining plantation, and sent home, guarded by two armed slaves, to Mr. Ebber; which fugitive, during the time Ebber was reading the letter that accompanied him, found means to spring aside, and again escaped into the forest. This incensed the overseer so much, that he instantly took revenge upon the two poor slaves that had brought him, tying them up in the carpenter’s lodge. He continued flogging them so unmercifully, that Captain Tulling thought proper to interfere, and beg for mercy; but, as in my case, his interference produced the opposite effect: the clang of the whip, mixed with their dismal cries, were heard to continue for above an hour after, until one of them expired under the cruel lash, which put an end to the inhuman catastrophe. A law-suit was instantly commenced against Ebber for assassination. He was convicted, but condemned to no other punishment than to pay the afore-mentioned hundred guineas, which price of blood is always divided between the fiscal and the proprietor of the deceased slave; it being a rule in Surinam, that by paying a fine of five hundred florins, not quite fifty pounds per head, any proprietor is at liberty to kill as many of his own negroes as he pleases; but if he kills those of his neighbour, he is also to pay him for the loss of his slave, the crime being first substantiated, which is very difficult in this country, where no slave’s evidence can be admitted. Such is the legislature of Dutch Guiana, in regard to negroes. The above-mentioned Ebber was peculiarly tyrannical; he tormented a boy of about fourteen called Cadetty, for the space of a whole year, by flogging him every day for one month; tying him down flat on his back, with his feet in the stocks, for another; putting an iron triangle3 or pot-hook round his neck for a third, which prevented him from running away among the woods, or even from sleeping, except in an upright or sitting posture; chaining him to the landing-place, night and day, to a dog’s kennel, with orders to bark at every boat or canoe that passed for a fourth month; and so on, varying his punishment monthly, until the youth became insensible, walking crooked, and almost degenerated into a brute. This wretch was, however, very proud of his handsomest slaves, and for fear of disfiguring their skins, he has sometimes let them off with twenty lashes, when, for their robberies and crimes, they had deserved the gallows. Such is the state of public and private justice in Surinam. The wretch Ebber left the Hope upon this occasion; and his humane successor, a Mr. Blenderman, commenced his reign by flogging every slave belonging to the estate, male and female, for having over-slept their time in the morning about fifteen minutes.