That he had a following is in no way strange, considering his day and generation, but the striking point about this is that, when he was exposed to the horror himself, he tried to automesmerise himself out of it.

After three days he died, as Dr.Francis says, "a victim of his own temerity." And still the gallows stood on the Field of Sleep, and also a big elm tree which sometimes served as the "gallows tree." Naturally, Indians and negroes predominated in the lists of malefactors executed.

The redmen were distrusted from the beginning on Manhattan,--and with some basic reason, one must admit;--as for the blacks, they were more severely dealt with than any other class.

The rigid laws and restrictions of that day were applied especially rigidly to the slaves.

A slave was accounted guilty of heavy crimes on the very lightest sort of evidence, and the penalties imposed seem to us out of all proportion to the acts.