Who, smit with thy fair fame, industrious cull
An Indian wreath to mingle with thy bays,
And deck the hero and the scholar's brow!
Wilt thou, whose mildness smooths the face of war,
Who round the victor-blade the myrtle twin'st,
And mak'st subjection loyal and sincere ;
O, wilt thou gracious hear the unartful strain,
Whose mild instructions teach, no trivial theme,
What care the jetty African requires?

Yes, thou wilt deign to hear; a man thou art
Who deem'st naught foreign that belongs to man.

HOW TO EMPLOY THE VARIOUS RACES OF NEGROES.

In mind and aptitude for useful toil,
The negroes differ: Muse, that difference sing.
Whether to wield the hoe or guide the plane,
Or for domestic uses, thou intend'st

The sunny Libyan, from what clime they spring
It not imports, if strength and youth be theirs.

USES TO WHICH THE CONGO NEGRO SHOULD BE PUT.

Yet those from Congo's wide-extended plains, Through which the long Zaire winds with crystal stream,

Where lavish Nature sends indulgent forth
Fruits of high flavor, and spontaneous seeds
Of bland nutritious quality, ill bear

The toilsome field; but boast a docile mind,
And happiness of features. These, with care,
Be taught each nice mechanic art, or trained
To household offices: their ductile souls
Will all thy care and all thy gold repay.

THE BEST FIELD-HANDS; THE GOLD-COAST NEGROES,
PAPAWS, ETC.

But, if the labors of the field demand
Thy chief attention; and the ambrosial cane
Thou long'st to see, with spiry frequence, shade
Many an acre planter, choose the slave
Who sails from barren climes, where want alone,
Offspring of rude necessity, compels
The sturdy native, or to plant the soil,
Or stem vast rivers for his daily food.

Such are the children of the Golden Coast;
Such the Papaws, of negroes far the best;
And such the numerous tribes that skirt the shore,
From rapid Volta to the distant Rey.

AVOID BUYING OLD AFRICANS.

But, planter, from what coast soc'er they sail,
Buy not the old they ever sullen prove;
With heartfelt anguish they lament their home;
They will not, cannot work; they never learn
Thy native language; they are prone to ails
And oft by suicide their being end.

MARKS BY WHICH TO BUY NEGROES.

-

;

Must thou from Afric reinforce thy gang? Let health and youth their every sinew firm ; Clear roll their ample eye; their tongue be red; Broad swell their chest; their shoulders wide

expand;

Not prominent their belly; clean and strong

Their thighs and legs in just proportion rise. Such soon will brave the fervors of the clime; And, free from ails that kill thy negro-train, A useful servitude will long support.

THE CORMANTEE, A LIBERTY-LOVER, DANGEROUS.

Yet, if thine own, thy children's life be dear, Buy not a Cormantee, though healthy, young. Of breed too generous for the servile field, They, born to freedom in their native land, Choose death before dishonorable bonds: Or, fired with vengeance, at the midnight hour, Sudden they seize thine unsuspecting watch, And thine own poniard bury in thy breast.

BUY THE FEMALES OF CERTAIN TRIBES.

At home the men in many a sylvan realm Their rank tobacco, charm of sauntering minds, From clayey tubes inhale; or, vacant, beat For prey the forest; or in war's dread ranks Their country's foes affront: while in the field Their wives plant rice, or yams, or lofty maize, Fell hunger to repel. Be these thy choice: They, hardy, with the labors of the cane Soon grow familiar; while unusual toil, And new severities, their husbands kill.

Term the white eagle; deadly foe to worns.
But chief do thou, my friend, with hearty food,
Yet easy of digestion, likest that

Which they at home regaled on, renovate
Their sea-worn appetites. Let gentle work,
Or rather playful exercise, amuse
The novel gang: and far be angry words,

Far ponderous chains, and far disheartening blows.

USE OF THE CASHEW, AGAINST DYSENTERY AND LEPROSY.

From fruits restrain their eagerness; yet if
The acajou, haply, in thy garden bloom,
With cherries, or of white or purple hue,
Thrice wholesome fruit in this relaxing clime!
Safely thou may'st their appetite indulge.

Their arid skins will plump, their features shine :
No rheums, no dysenteric ails, torment;
The thirsty hydrops flies. 'Tis even averred
(Ah, did experience sanctify the fact,
How many Libyans now would dig the soil,
Who pine in hourly agonies away!
This pleasing fruit, if turtle joins its aid,
Removes that worst of ails, disgrace of art,
The loathsome leprosy's infectious bane.

DIRT-EATING NEGROES.

There are, the Muse hath oft abhorrent seen, Who swallow dirt (so the chlorotic fair Oft chalk prefer to the most poignant cates); Such dropsy bloats, and to sure death consigns, Unless restrained from this unwholesome food, By soothing words, by menaces, by blows: Nor yet will threats, or blows, or soothing words, Perfect their cure, unless thou, Pæan, deign'st By medicine's power their cravings to subdue.

BEGIN WITH EASY WORK.

To easy labor first inure thy slaves; Extremes are dangerous. With industrious search, Let them fit grassy provender collect

For thy keen-stomached herds. But when the earth Hath made her annual progress round the sun, What time the conch or bell resounds, they may All to the cane-ground with thy gang repair.

LOT OF THE PLANTATION NEGRO COMPARED WITH THAT OF THE FREE MINER..

Nor, negro, at thy destiny repine,
Though doomed to toil from dawn to setting sun.
How far more pleasant is thy rural task
Than theirs who sweat sequestered from the day,
In dark Tartarean caves, sunk far beneath
The earth's dark surface; where sulphureous flames,
Oft from their vapory prisons bursting wild,
To dire explosion give the caverned deep,
And in dread ruin all its inmates whelm !
Nor fateful only is the bursting flame;
The exhalations of the deep-dug mine,

Though slow, shake from their wings as sure a death.
With what intense severity of pain
Hath the afflicted Muse, in Scotia, seen

The miners racked, who toil for fatal lead!

What cramps, what palsies, shake their feeble limbs Who on the margin of the rocky Drave

Trace silver's fluent ore !-Yet white men these!

THE NEGRO'S LOT COMPARED WITH THAT OF THE ENSLAVED PERUVIAN, ETC.

How far more happy ye than those poor slaves, Who, whilom under native gracious chiefs, Incas, and emperors, long time enjoyed Mild government, with every sweet of life, In blissful climates! See them dragged in chains, By proud insulting tyrants, to the mines Which once they called their own, and then despised! See, in the mineral bosom of their land, How hard they toil! how soon their youthful limbs Feel the decrepitude of age! how soon Their teeth desert their sockets! and how soon Shaking paralysis unstrings their frame ! Yet scarce even then are they allowed to view The glorious god of day, of whom they beg, With earnest hourly supplications, death; Yet death slow comes to torture them the more!

SLAVES URGED TO BE HAPPY.

With these compared, ye sons of Afric, say, How far more happy is your lot! Bland health, Of ardent eye, and limb robust, attends Your customed labor; and, should sickness seize, With what solicitude are ye not nursed! Ye negroes, then, your pleasing task pursue, And by your toil deserve your master's care.

HOW TO MANAGE SLAVES.

When first your blacks are novel to the hoe, Study their humors: some soft-soothing words, Some presents, and some menaces subdue ; And some I've known, so stubborn in their kind, Whom blows, alas! could win alone to toil.

PLANTERS EXHORTED TO HUMANITY; THE AFRICAN AT

HOME.

Yet, planter, let humanity prevail.
Perhaps thy negro, in his native land,

Possessed large fertile plains, and slaves, and herds:
Perhaps, whene'er he deigned to walk abroad,
The richest silks, from where the Indus rolls,
His limbs invested in their gorgeous plaits:
Perhaps he wails his wife, his children, left
To struggle with adversity: perhaps
Fortune, in battle for his country fought,
Gave him a captive to his deadliest foe:
Perhaps, incautious, in his native fields
(On pleasurable scenes his mind intent),
All as he wandered, from the neighboring grove
Fell ambush dragged him to the hated main.
Were they even sold for crimes, ye polished, say,
Ye to whom learning opes her amplest page,
Ye whom the knowledge of a living God
Should lead to virtue, are ye free from crimes ?
Ah, pity, then, these uninstructed swains;
And still let mercy soften the decrees
Of rigid justice, with her lenient hand.

EMANCIPATION; HOW DESIRABLE!

O, did the tender Muse possess the power
Which monarchs have, and monarchs oft abuse,
"T would be the fond ambition of her soul
To quell tyrannic sway; knock off the chains
Of heart-debasing slavery; give to man,
Of every color and of every clime,

Freedom, which stamps him image of his God.
Then laws, oppression's scourge, fair virtue's prop,
Offspring of wisdom, should impartial reign,
To knit the whole in well-accorded strife:
Servants, not slaves; of choice, and not compelled;
The blacks should cultivate the cane-land isles.

DISEASES OF NEGROES; THE DRAGON-WORM.

Say, shall the muse the various ills recount Which negro-nations feel? Shall she describe The worm that subtle winds into their flesh, All as they bathe them in their native streams? There, with fell increment, it soon attains A direful length of harm. Yet, if due skill And proper circumspection are employed, It may be won its volumes to wind round A leaden cylinder: but, O, beware, No rashness practise; else 't will surely snap, And, suddenly retreating, dire produce An annual lameness to the tortured Moor.

CHIGRES, OR JIGGERS.

Nor only is the dragon-worm to dread : Fell winged insects, which the visual ray Scarcely discerns, their sable feet and hands Oft penetrate, and in the fleshy nest Myriads of young produce; which soon destroy The parts they breed in, if assiduous care, With art, extract not the prolific foe.

THE YAW DISEASE AND REMEDIES.

Or shall she sing, and not debase her lay, The pest peculiar to the Ethiop kind, The yaw's infectious bane? The infected far In huts to leeward lodge, or near the main. With heartening food, with turtle, and with conchs, The flowers of sulphur, and hard niccars burnt, The lurking evil from the blood expel, And throw it on the surface: there in spots Which cause no pain, and scanty ichor yield, It chiefly breaks about the arms and hips, A virulent contagion ! - When no more Round knobby spots deform, but the disease Seems at a pause, then let the learned leech Give, in due dose, live-silver from the mine, Till copious spitting the whole taint exhaust. Nor thou repine, though half-way round the sun This globe her annual progress shall revolve, Ere cleared thy slave from all infection shine. Nor then be confident; successive crops Of defecations oft will spot the skin : These thou, with turpentine and guaiac pods, Reduced by coction to a wholesome draught, Total remove, and give the blood its balm.

Say, as this malady but once infects The sons of Guinea, might not skill engraft (Thus the small-pox are happily conveyed) This ailment early to thy negro-train ?

'WORMS' DISEASE.

Yet, of the ills which torture Libya's sons, Worms tyrannize the worst. They, Proteus-like, Each symptom of each malady assume, And under every mask the assassins kill. Now, in the guise of horrid spasms, they writhe The tortured body, and all sense o'erpower. Sometimes, like Mania, with her head down-cast, They cause the wretch in solitude to pine, Or, frantic, bursting from the strongest chains, To frown with look terrific, not his own. Sometimes like ague, with a shivering mien, The teeth gnash fearful, and the blood runs chill: Anon the ferment maddens in the veins, And a false vigor animates the frame. Again, the dropsy's bloated mask they steal, Or 'melt with minings of the hectic fire.'

REMEDIES FOR WORMS;' COW-ITCH, WORM-GRASS, TIN;

THE TYRIANS.

Say, to such various forms of mimic death,

What remedies shall puzzled art oppose?
Thanks to the Almighty, in each pathway hedge
Rank cow-itch grows, whose sharp unnumbered

stings,

Sheathed in melasses, from their dens expel,
Fell dens of death, the reptile lurking foe.
A powerful vermifuge, in skilful hands,

The worm-grass proves; yet even in hands of skill,
Sudden, I've known it dim the visual ray
For a whole day and night. There are who use
(And sage experience justifies the use)
The mineral product of the Cornish mine;
Which in old times, ere Britain laws enjoyed,
The polished Tyrians, monarchs of the main,
In their swift ships conveyed to foreign realms :
The sun by day, by night the northern star,
Their course conducted.

COMMERCE; ITS EFFECTS ON PEOPLES; INDUSTRY.

Mighty Commerce, hail!

By thee the sons of Attic's sterile land,
A scanty number, laws imposed on Greece.
Nor awed they Greece alone; vast Asia's king,
Though girt by rich-armed myriads, at their frown
Felt his heart wither on his furthest throne.
Perennial source of population thou!
While scanty peasants plough the flowery plains
Of purple Enna, from the Belgian fens
What swarms of useful citizens spring up,
Hatched by thy fostering wing! Ah, where is flown
That dauntless free-born spirit, which of old
Taught them to shake off the tyrannic yoke
Of Spain's insulting king, on whose wide realms
The sun still shone with undiminished beam?
Parent of wealth! in vain coy nature hoards

Her gold and diamonds; toil, thy firm compeer,
And industry of unremitting nerve,

Scale the cleft mountain, the loud torrent brave,
Plunge to the centre, and through Nature's wiles
(Led on by skill of penetrative soul),

Her following close, her secret treasure find,
To pour them plenteous on the laughing world.
On thee, Sylvanus, thee each rural god,
On thee, chief Ceres, with unfailing love
And fond distinction, emulously gaze.

UTILITY AND TRIUMPHS OF COMMERCE; GREAT BRITAIN;
COLUMBUS; PORTUGAL.

In vain hath nature poured vast seas between
Far-distant kingdoms; endless storms in vain
With double night brood o'er them; thou dost throw
O'er far-divided Nature's realms a chain
To bind in sweet society mankind.

By thee white Albion, once a barbarous clime,
Grew famed for arms, for wisdom, and for laws;
By thee she holds the balance of the world,
Acknowledged now sole empress of the main.
Coy though thou art, and mutable of love,
There mayst thou ever fix thy wandering steps,
While Eurus rules the wide Atlantic foam!
By thee thy favorite great Columbus found
That world, where now thy praises I rehearse
To the resounding main and palmy shore;
And Lusitania's chiefs those realms explored,
Whence negroes spring, the subject of my song.

NEGRO SUPERSTITIONS; THE BEWITCHED.

Nor pine the blacks alone with real ills,
That baffle oft the wisest rules of art:
They likewise feel imaginary woes,
Woes no less deadly. Luckless he who owns
The slave who thinks himself bewitched; and whom,
In wrath, a conjurer's snake-marked staff hath
struck!

They mope, love silence, every friend avoid;
They inly pine, all aliment reject,
Or insufficient for nutrition take;
Their features droop; a sickly yellowish hue
Their skin deforms; their strength and beauty fly.
Then comes the feverish fiend, with fiery eyes,
Whom drought, convulsions, and whom death sur-
Fatal attendants! if some subtle slave Tround,
(Such Obia-men are styled) do not engage
To save the wretch by antidote or spell.

THE OBIA, OR GREE-GREE; HOW MADE.

In magic spells in Obia all the sons Of sable Afric trust :- - Ye sacred Nine (For ye each hidden preparation know), Transpierce the gloom, which ignorance and fraud Have rendered awful; tell the laughing world Of what these wonder-working charms are made. Fern-root cut small, and tied with many a knot; Old teeth extracted from a white man's skull; A lizard's skeleton; a serpent's head; These, mixed with salt and water from the spring,

Are in a phial poured; o'er these the leech Mutters strange jargon, and wild circles forms.

POISONING CURED BY THE OBIA; WHICH IS ALSO GOOD AGAINST DEMONS AND THIEVES.

Of this possessed, each negro deems himself Secure from poison; for to poison they Are infamously prone: and, armed with this, Their sable country demons they defy, Who fearful haunt them at the midnight hour, To work them mischief. This diseases fly, Diseases follow, such its wondrous power! This o'er the threshold of their cottage hung, No thieves break in; or, if they dare to steal, Their feet in blotches, which admit no cure, Burst loathsome out but should its owner filch, As slaves were ever of the pilfering kind, This from detection screens; so conjurers swear.

WORK-HOURS FOR SLAVES.

Till morning dawn, and Lucifer withdraw His beamy chariot, let not the loud bell Call forth thy negroes from the rushy couch : And ere the sun with mid-day fervor glow, When every broom-bush opes her yellow flower, Let thy black laborers from their toil desist : Nor till the broom her every petal lock, Let the loud bell recall them to the hoe. But when the jalap her bright tint displays, When the solanum fills her cup with dew, And crickets, snakes, and lizards, 'gin their coil, Let them find shelter in their cane-thatched huts: Or, if constrained unusual hours to toil (For even the best must sometimes urge their gang), With double nutriment reward their pains.

KINDNESS URGED.

Howe'er insensate some may deem their slaves, Nor 'bove the bestial rank, far other thoughts The Muse, soft daughter of humanity, Will ever entertain. The Ethiop knows, The Ethiop feels, when treated like a man ; Nor grudges, should necessity compel, By day, by night, to labor for his lord.

GOOD FEEDING RECOMMENDED; BEANS, RICE, FLOUR, COD,

HERRINGS.

Not less inhuman than unthrifty those Who half the year's rotation round the sun Deny subsistence to their laboring slaves. But wouldst thou see thy negro-train increase, Free from disorders, and thine acres clad With groves of sugar, every week dispense Or English beans, or Carolinian rice; Ierne's beef, or Pennsylvanian flour; Newfoundland cod, or herrings from the main That howls tempestuous round the Scotian isles. Yet some there are so lazily inclined, And so neglectful of their food, that thou, Wouldst thou preserve them from the jaws of death, Daily their wholesome viands must prepare: With these let all the young, and childless old,