the more emaciated sailors were instantly prostrated, and retired to their berths, and the passengers had to work night and day, or go to the bottom of the ocean. In a week after I left New York, my hands were nearly raw with blisters from hauling ropes. The owners permitted the captain to provision the vessel as he pleased, and render his account to them at the close of the voyage, and he nearly starved us, although he charged the proprietors of the vessel for the best provisions the market afforded. I often caught the captain drinking wines and eating luxuries behind the masts, which the passengers should have had, and I denounced him, but to no purpose. I discovered the helmsman asleep at midnight, and the vessel going stern foremost, and aroused the passengers just in time to save all from a watery grave. There was a passenger who had been a skilful mariner, and we acted in concert, or we must have been lost. We watched the helmsman on alternate nights, but got weary of the task, and shared the toil with other passengers. I emerged from my berth at midnight, and found both passenger and helmsman asleep, when I aroused all hands to witness the extraordinary spectacle, and our common peril, and, after that, the passengers formed a Vigilance Committee to unceasingly watch the captain and sailors. In a week, land was discovered, although the captain assured us one hour before the discovery, that we were about one hundred miles from land. It was near sunset, and if we had not discovered land before dark, we would have gone ashore, and been drowned, or butchered by the hostile Indians on the coast of Florida, who were then engaged in their final struggle with the Americans. We had a hurricane soon afterwards, and lost all the apples and potatoes from the deck, but we at last arrived at Key West. We took in water, and some bread and herrings, and steered for Apalachicola, and on the following day, we took four men from a vessel that must have sunk in one hour after we rescued them. The poor fellows had been several days on the wreck, without food or water, and they shivered and cried like children, when they reached our vessel. It was a very affecting scene, and none could restrain their tears. We had a gale in the Gulf of Mexico, and expected to be lost, but we ultimately reached Apalachicola, which I found a perfect desert. My employer, and a wagon with two horses, anticipated my arrival, and we went to Saint Joseph, and thence up the banks of the Chattahoochee River, and often passed near the encampment of hostile tribes of Indians. There had been no rain for two months, and the woods were on fire at times throughout the journey, which presented at night a scene of great sublimity. We were often surrounded by smoke and flame, and were scorched and nearly strangled by the dense smoke that emanated from the burning pine trees. On one occasion, the horses were unmanageable, and ran towards the flames, and we supposed we would be lost, but we subdued the terror of the horses, and emerged from the flames after infinite peril and trouble. The miserable habitations were often thirty miles apart, and we nearly died from thirst, but we reached Franklin, Alabama, after unexampled suffering. I soon repaired to Bennett’s Plantation, five miles from Franklin, and opened my school, near his house, in a log cabin, to which Bennett permitted children to come from the surrounding country. My health was poor, and I nearly died with dyspepsia. I soon discovered that Bennett was intemperate and cruel to his slaves, most of whom had committed grave offences, and had been confined in the prisons of Georgia and Alabama. Bennett’s Overseer whipped the slaves every morning, and my feelings were lacerated almost beyond endurance, when I heard the lash, and their piercing cries for mercy. Mike, a slave, fled in the night, and Bennett and the Overseer pursued and captured him partially drunk in a swamp. They tied him to a tree, near my window, and paddled him with a wooden spade full of holes, which brought blood and blisters at every blow. I had witnessed the executions of murderers at the North, but I never beheld brutality like this. I closed my window, and went to bed, and buried myself in the clothes, so that I could not hear the blows, and poor Mike’s thrilling appeals for succor. Chloe, a slave from Africa, (who was seventy years old, and had been the slave of Bennett’s father,) told a lie to screen one of her children, who had been absent two nights on a drunken frolic, and she was tied to a tree, and severely horsewhipped on her naked back. I shall never forget the moans of poor Chloe, as the whip lacerated her scanty flesh, and aged bones. Mrs. Bennett taught her children, male and female, to whip the children slaves, and when they did not strike hard, she would fly into a fearful passion, and lash her own children for their lenity towards the sinless little slaves. These cruel scenes disgusted and harrowed my heart beyond the power of language to express, and I resolved to resort to honorable stratagem to get away from Bennett’s Plantation. So, on Bennett’s return from his favorite amusement of hunting deer at night, with which the country teemed, he was very proud of his success in killing deer, and was partially intoxicated, and in sparkling humor, and I breathed in his merry ears the following plaintive intelligence. I told him that I was ill, and anticipated a return of fits, which sometimes tormented me for months,—that, at times, when I emerged from these fits, I was wild and dangerous, unless confined in irons, and that I once nearly strangled a child, during my delirium. He started back, and stared like an owl, and his wife opened her mouth, and stretched her large gray eyes prodigiously, and asked me how long I had had symptoms of the return of fits. I said, about two days. Bennett then inquired about how long before I expected they would commence. I replied, in a day or two. He asked me if I desired to return to Apalachicola, and thence to New York, or would rather go by way of Columbus, Georgia. I told him that I had a brother in New Orleans, who was proprietor of the “New Orleans Daily Times,” and I would like to go to him, as he knew how to nurse me, when the fits were on. He said that he would let his slave Edward take me in his wagon down the banks of the Chattahoochee, to the point where the mail stage passed, on its way to Lagrange, where I could get a steamer to Pensacola, and thence to Mobile and New Orleans. I told him that I had no money. He said he would supply me with enough to defray my expenses to New Orleans. In the morning, while the Overseer was whipping slaves in the yard, I started down the Chattahoochee, and, after an encampment of three nights, reached the road that led to Lagrange. On the following day, the stage arrived, and I left for Lagrange. General James Hamilton, of South Carolina, was a passenger, with whom I had many a pleasant conversation. After a tedious journey through the piny solitudes of Florida, we arrived at Lagrange, and left for Pensacola, in a ricketty steamer, in which we came near being lost in the Gulf of Mexico, in about half a gale. At Pensacola, we took the steamer Champion, and proceeded to Mobile, and thence to New Orleans, by way of Lake Pontchartrain. I boarded with my brother Albert in Poydras street, and worked in his printing office. I learned, through the newspapers, that the Captain left Apalachicola for Havana, but couldn’t find it, and went to Key West—that he left for New York, and was capsized in the Atlantic ocean, and only the second mate was saved, who stated in substance that “six of us were on a raft for nine days, and, after we ate the dog, we drew lots for each other, and that he who drew the shortest piece of shirt from my inclosed hand, should die, but have the privilege of resisting the other five in their attempted slaughter of his body for his blood and flesh as their water and food,—that a Hungarian passenger drew the