Slave Life in Georgia - African American History

Slave Life in Georgia 55
crowd, increasing my pace as I got further from the quay. I made for a place
where I saw a number of cotton-waggons, tended by the drivers, who were all,
or nearly all, of my own colour. They were carting cotton from the dock to the
presses, and seemed very busy. I went up to them, and after asking a few
questions, learnt that I was in the very heart of slavery, and further off from
England than when I was in Georgia. They were not long in discovering me to
be a runaway, and told me I should be certain to be taken up before night, and
put into the calaboose or prison; and that I should be
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flogged every morning until I told the name of my master. Under these
circumstances I did not know what to do, but having asked them a few questions
about the city, I set off again, thinking, as I went along, what I should do for the
best.
I had ascertained, of the men I have alluded to, that Murrell and Buck Hurd
were well known in New Orleans, and I now thought that if I could meet with
either of them, I might perhaps get them to sell me, and to say nothing about it,
as they would pocket a good sum by the sale, and I might get a good master. It
makes me smile, now, to think of the slender hope there was of my running up
against either of these men; though at the time I felt quite sanguine that they
must be there, and that every thing would fall out as I wished. But it did not,
quite.
After wandering about for some time, without meeting the parties I was seeking,
it occurred to me to look out for some one like them; or for a party who might
be likely to fall in with the plan I had imagined for getting myself sold, in order
to save my back, and preserve any chances of escape a change of masters might
bring me.
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I had nothing to guide me in this apparently mad search, but an instinctive
knowledge of character which I had acquired from a long habit of studying the
expression of the countenance. Nor will this surprise my readers when they bear
in mind how closely I had been forced to watch the changes of my master's
physiognomy, as well as those of the parties he associated with, so as to frame
my conduct in accordance with what I had reason to believe was their prevailing
mood at any given time. Anyhow, I may say, without boasting, that a man's
24.03.2006