These not only required answers of themselves, but as they usually related to persons capable of giving their testimony, and contained the particulars of what they could state, they occasioned fresh letters to be written to others.

Hence the writing of ten or twelve daily became necessary.
But the contents of these letters afforded the circumstances, which gave birth to so much suffering.

They contained usually some affecting tale of woe.

At Bristol my feelings had been harassed by the cruel treatment of the seamen, which had come to my knowledge there: but now I was doomed to see this treatment over again in many other melancholy instances; and additionally to take in the various sufferings of the unhappy slaves.

These accounts I could seldom get time to read till late in the evening, and sometimes not till midnight, when the letters containing them were to be answered.