Having lain during the night lurking in the bushes that surround the estate, they always appear a little before day-break, when unexpectedly falling on and massacring the Europeans, they plunder the dwelling-house, which they next set on fire, and then carry off the negro women, whom they load with the spoil, and treat with the utmost insolence should they make opposition[3].
And now farewell, I hope, ye wretched objects, who have not made the least conspicuous figure in these bloody pages! for which I should be more ready to apologize to the reader, had I not been induced to make cruelty ashamed of itself, and humanity gain ground: that at last, in some measure, my motive may be crowned with success, I most sincerely wish, abhorring every act of barbarity from the very bottom of my soul.
“Why, Christians, rage thine insolence and scorn,
Why burst thy vengeance on the wretch forlorn? [[311]]
The cheerless captive, to slow death consign’d,
Weigh’d down with chains, in prison glooms confin’d;
Of hope bereft, who, by thy minions curs’d,
With hunger famish’d, and consum’d with thirst,
Without one friend, when Death’s last horror stung,
Roll’d the wild eye, and gnaw’d the anguish’d tongue.”