"Why, there is a whole family on that other stand; let us see them. 'There, gentlemen, is a fine lot: Willy, aged thirty-five, an expert boy, a good carpenter, brickmaker, driver, in fact, can do anything, il sait faire tout. His wife, Betty, is thirty-three, can wash, cook, wait on the table, and make herself generally useful; also their boy George, five years old; you will observe, gentlemen, that Betty est enceinte. Now what is bid for this valuable family?' After a lively competition, they are bid off at 1,550 dollars, the whole family.
"As I have before remarked, everything is done in French and English; even the negroes speak both languages. I saw one poor old negro, about sixty, put up, but withdrawn, as only 270 dollars were bid for him. While waiting to be sold, they are examined and questioned by the purchasers. One young girl, about sixteen or eighteen, was being inspected by an elderly, stern, sharp-eyed, horse-jockey looking man, who sported his gold chains, diamond pin, ruffles, and cane: 'How old are you?' 'I don't know, sir.' 'Do you know how to eat?' 'Everybody does that,' she said sullenly.
"Passing up the Esplanade next morning, (Sunday) I saw some forty or fifty very fine-looking negroes and negresses, all neatly dressed, standing on a bench directly in front of a building, which I took to be a meeting or school house: walking by, a genteel-looking man stepped up and asked me if I wished to buy a likely boy or girl. Telling him I was a stranger, and asking for information, he told me it was one of the slave-markets; that they stood there for examination, and that he had sold 500,000 dollars worth and sent them off that morning.
"The above facts are some of the singular features (to a Northerner) of this remarkable place, and I assure you that I 'nothing extenuate, or set down aught in malice;' but may the time come when even a black man may say, 'I am a man!'
"Northrop."
I once relieved a poor black wretch who was starving in the streets of Kingston, and told him where to go to get proper advice and protection: all the thanks I received were that he was sorry he ran away, for he had been a waiter somewhere in the South, and got a good many dollars by his situation; whereas, he said, Canada was a poor country, and he had no hope of thriving in it.
The lower class of negroes in Canada, for there are several classes among even runaways, are very frequently dissolute, idle, impudent, and assuming—so difficult is it for poor uneducated human nature to bear a little freedom.
The coloured people, if they get at all up in the world, assume vast airs, but there are very many well-conducted people among them. As yet neither coloured people nor negroes have made much advance in Canada.
John Bull had visited almost every portion of the Northern and Western States, was a shrewd, observing character, and had come to the conclusion, which he very plainly expressed, that the state of society in the Union was not to his taste, that he could procure lands as cheap and as good for his gold in Canada, and that to Canada he would bring his old woman and his children.