Page:A pilgrimage to my motherland.djvu/142

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TO MY MOTHERLAND.
133

At Freetown, Sierra Leone, we saw a large slaver, brought in a few days before by H.M.S.S. "Triton." Her officers and crew, consisting of over thirty persons, were there set at liberty, to be disposed of by the Spanish Consul as distressed seamen. They were as such forwarded in the same ship with us to Teneriffe. No wonder that the slave-trade should be so difficult to suppress, when no punishment awaits such wretches as these. What scamp would fear to embark in such an enterprise, if only assured that there was no personal risk—that he has only to destroy the ship's flag and papers on the approach of a cruiser, not only to shield himself and his crew from the consequence of his crime, but to receive the consideration rightly accorded distressed honest men. These villains, of course return to Havana or the United States, procure a new ship, and again pursue the wicked purpose which their previous experience enables them to accomplish with all the more impunity.

The incidents of a voyage to England under every variety of circumstance, have been so often described, that I shall both save myself the trouble of writing, and you, dear reader, the tedium of perusing them.