A VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD.
61
1772.
October.
and chapters of the Koran. As they have no priest among them, they cannot partake of any other acts of worship[1].
The slaves belonging to the company, who amount to several hundreds, are lodged and boarded in a spacious house erected for that purpose, where they are likewise kept at work. Another great building serves as an hospital for the sailors belonging to the Dutch East-India ships, which touch here, and commonly have prodigious numbers of sick on board, on their voyage from Europe towards India. The vast number of men, sometimes six, seven, or eight hundred, which these ships carry out to supply the military in India, the small room to which they are confined, and the short allowance of water and salt provision, they receive on a long voyage through the torrid zone, generally make considerable havock among them: it is therefore no uncommon circumstance at the Cape, that a ship on her passage thither from Europe, loses eighty or a hundred men, and sends between two- ↑ We would not be understood to throw an odium on the Dutch in particular, when it is well known that the negroes, who wear the chains of the English and French, are equally neglected: it was only intended to awaken a fellow-feeling towards an unhappy race of men, among the colonists of all nations; and to remind them whilst they enjoy, or strive to enjoy the inestimable blessing of liberty, to exert themselves in acts of humanity and kindness, towards those from whom they with-hold it, perhaps, without remorse.
and
