"These people are all from the Opelousas parishes, and all cultivators—well versed in farming, and in all the mechanical arts connected with a farm. Among them are brickmakers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters, etc. Some of them are proficient weavers, who have long been employed making the stuff called Attakapas cottonade, so favorably known in the market. They take along with them the necessary machinery for that trade, and all sorts of agricultural and mechanical implements.
"These eighty-one persons—twenty-four adults and fifty-seven children and youths—compose fourteen families, or rather households, for they are all related, and the eighty-one may be called one family. They are all in easy circumstances, some even rich, one family being worth as much as $50,000. They were all land owners in this State, and have sold out their property with the intention of investing their capital in Hayti."—
Cincinnati Commercial, January, 1860.
THE COOLIE TRAFFIC.
It may be well to put upon record one of those extreme cases of hardship and cruelty which necessarily accompany the transportation of laborers to the West Indies, whether under the name of the slave trade, or coolie immigration. The China correspondent of the New York Journal of Commerce, of a recent date, says: The Flora Temple, an English vessel, had made all arrangements to secure a full cargo of coolies. They were cheated, inveigled, or stolen, and either taken directly to the ship or else confined in the barracoons in Macao till the ship was ready to sail for Havanna—the crew numbering fifty, and the coolies eight hundred and fifty. The vessel sailed October 8, 1859, when the coolies soon learned their destiny, and resolved to avert it at all hazards. On the morning of the 11th, without weapons of any kind, they rushed upon the guard and killed him. The noise brought the captain and his brother on deck, fully armed with revolvers, who by rapid firing and resolutely pressing forward, drove the miserable wretches below; where, without light and air, they were locked and barred like felons, in a space too limited to permit their living during the long voyage before them. Think of eight hundred and fifty human beings all full grown men, pressed into this contracted, rayless, airless dungeon, in which they were to be deported from China to Havana, all the long way over the China sea, the Indian ocean, and the Atlantic!
On the 14th, the vessel struck upon an unknown reef, a gale of wind in the meantime blowing, and the sea running high. Every effort was made to save the ship by the officers and crew; the poor coolies, battened down beneath the decks, being allowed no chance to aid in saving the ship or themselves. Although the yards were "braced around" and the ship "hove aback," she struck first slightly, and then soon after several times with a tremendous crash, the breakers running alongside very high. Pieces of her timbers and planking floated up on her port side, and after some more heavy thumps she remained apparently immovable. The water rapidly increased in the hold till it reached the "between-decks," where the eight hundred and fifty coolies were confined.
While this was going on, indeed, almost immediately after the ship first struck, the officers and crew very naturally became afraid of the coolies for the treatment they had received, and the captain ordered the boats to be lowered, not to save the coolies in whole or in part, but to preserve himself and crew. These boats, even under favorable circumstances, were not more than sufficient for the officers and crew, showing that no provision had been made for the poor coolies in case of disaster. The boats passed safely through the breakers, leaving the ship almost without motion, all her masts standing, her back broken, and the sea making a clear break over her starboard and quarter.
When the boats left the ship, and steered away, without making an effort to save the eight hundred and fifty coolies, or allowing them to do any thing themselves, with their last look toward the ship they saw that the coolies had escaped from their prison through doors which the concussion had made for them, and stood clustering together, helpless and despairing, upon the decks, and gazing upon the abyss which was opening its jaws to receive them. My friend assures me that he knows these poor creatures were completely imprisoned all the night these terrible occurences were going on, the hatches being "battened down," and made as secure as a jail door under lock and bars.
The ship was three hundred miles from land when it struck, and after fourteen days of toil and struggle, one of the boats only succeeded in reaching Towron, in Cochin-China. The three other boats were never heard of. Here the French fleet was lying; and the admiral at once sent one of his vessels to the fatal scene of the disaster, where some of the wreck was to be seen; but not a single coolie! Every one of the eight hundred and fifty had perished.