They had about three hundred slaves with them, who had bivouacked the preceding night in chains in the woods.

These they were conducting to Natchez on the Mississippi River to work upon the sugar plantations in Louisiana.

It resembled one of the coffles spoken of by Mungo Park, except that they had a caravan of nine wagons and single-horse carriages for the purpose of conducting the white people and any of the blacks that should fall lame....
The female slaves, some of them sitting on logs of wood, while others were standing, and a great many little black children, were warming themselves at the fire of the bivouac.

In front of them all, and prepared for the march, stood in double files about two hundred men slaves, manacled and chained to each other." The writer went on to ejaculate upon the horror of "white men with liberty and equality in their mouths," driving black men "to perish in the sugar mills of Louisiana, where the duration of life for a sugar mill hand does not exceed seven years."[33] Sir Charles Lyell, who was less disposed to moralize or to repeat slanders of the Louisiana regime, wrote upon reaching the outskirts of Columbus, Georgia, in January, 1846: "The first sight we saw there was a long line of negroes, men, women and boys, well dressed and very merry, talking and laughing, who stopped to look at our coach.

On inquiry we were told that it was a gang of slaves, probably from Virginia, going to the market to be sold."[34] Whether this laughing company wore shackles the writer failed to say.
[Footnote 33: G.W.Featherstonhaugh, _Excursion through the Slave States_ (London, 1844), I, 120.] [Footnote 34: Sir Charles Lyell, _A Second Visit to the United States_ (New York, 1849), II, 35.] Some of the slaves in the coffles were peddled to planters and townsmen along the route; the rest were carried to the main distributing centers and there either kept in stock for sale at fixed prices to such customers as might apply, or sold at auction.