They speak to the heart and to the soul of the thoughtful.

I cannot better express my sense of them now, than ten years ago, when, in sketching my life, I thus spoke of this feature of my plantation experience: I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and apparently incoherent songs.

I was myself within the circle, so that I neither saw or heard as those without might see and hear.

They told a tale which was{77} then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones, loud, long and deep, breathing the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish.

Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.