IN OLD SLAVERY DAYS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 69, 11 March 1908, Page 4

IN OLD SLAVERY DAYS.

A book has lately been reprinted ill London, which was first puidHied in IStil), being an account ol a journey in the slave States in 185:S-4, by a 'man named Olmsted. That was before the American Civil War, though abolition had become a popular cry in the north. -Mr. Olmsted did not believe in emancipating the negroes, though he admitted that there were reasons for the agitation, in the conceit, avarice, and folly of wealthy owners of slaves, lie went among them with favourable preconceptions, but was greatly disappointed. Among the rich planters of .Mississippi the proportion of immoral, vulgar and ignorant ncwly-rieli was greater than in any part ol the United States, lie also found that slavery operated to put a limit upon the natural motives which impel free men to live industriously. Citizen and slave alike disappointed him.

The inore he saw of the people of the South the greater was his disappointment. From the bunks of the .Mississippi to the banks of the James he hardly saw a book of Shakespeare, a pianoforte, a sheet of music, or an engraving of a work of art of the slightest merit. For the reports of Southern hospitality, again, he discovered no justification. Un the contrary: "June times out of ten, at least, 1 slept in a room with others, in a bed which stank, supplied with but one sheet, if with any; 1 washed with utensils common to the whole household; i found no garden, no llowers, no fruit, no tea, no Migar, no bread (for corn pone, let un- assert in parenthesis though possibly, as tastes differ, a very good thing of its kind for ostriches, is not bread; neither does even Hour, salt, fat, and water, stirred together and wanned constitute bread); no curlains, no lilting windows (three times out of four absolutely no windows), no touch—if one reclined in the family room it was on the bare floor—for there were no carpets or mats. For all that, the house was swarmed with vermin."