CHAPTER IV.
BARBADOES AS IT WAS, AND IS.
According to the declaration of one of the special magistrates, "Barbadoes has long been distinguished for its devotion to slavery." There is probably no portion of the globe where slave-holding, slave driving, and slave labor, have been reduced to a more perfect system.
The records of slavery in Barbadoes are stained with bloody atrocities.
The planters uniformly spoke of slavery as a system of cruelties; but they expressed themselves in general terms.

From colored gentlemen we learned some particulars, a few of which we give.

To most of the following facts the narrators were themselves eye witnesses, and all of them happened in their day and were fresh in their memories.
The slaves were not unfrequently worked in the streets of Bridgetown with chains on their wrists and ankles.

Flogging on the estates and in the town, were no less public than frequent, and there was an utter shamelessness often in the manner of its infliction.

Even women were stripped naked on the sides of the streets, and their backs lacerated with the whip.