CHAPTER VII.
LOVE AND MURDER.
I was once sent from Rio to Demerara, an English colony on the coast of Brazil, with a cargo of blacks that we had freed.

Then it was that I had a good opportunity of studying the character of these people certainly in their primitive state, and if ever men and women resembled wild animals it was my swarthy charges.

When I arrived at Demerara I handed them over to their new masters, to whom they were apprenticed for seven years, and from all I can understand they were, during their apprenticeship, treated pretty much as slaves in every respect.
During the time I visited Demerara (and I fancy it is very slightly changed now) it was one of the vilest holes in creation.

It is built on a low sandy point of land at the entrance of a great river, and is almost the hottest place on the earth.

Mosquitos in thousands of millions; nothing for the natives to do but to cultivate sugar-canes and to perspire.