[Illustration: THE AFRICAN TORN FROM HIS HOME BY WHITE-MAN.]




CHAP. II.


BLACK SLAVES.

Charles used to go every fine day after his lessons were finished, to
play in the square gardens; and as all the other boys whose parents
lived in the square went there too, he had several friends, and amongst
them one a little older than himself, named Peter Ross, whom he liked
better than any of the rest.

Peter was not an English boy, he was a West-Indian: his father and
mother lived in Jamaica, but they had sent him to England to be
educated, so he lived with his uncle in Euston-square, and went every
day to the London University school. Charles was very fond of talking
to Peter, because Peter told about the slaves that worked on his
father's plantations, for his father was a sugar planter, and had a
large estate in Jamaica, so he was obliged to keep a great many negro
slaves, for all the plantations in the West-Indies, are cultivated by
negroes.

"I wish I had a slave," said Charles to his papa one evening, after he
had been playing with Peter. "Do you know, papa, when Peter was at home
in the West-Indies, he had a slave of his own, a black boy, to wait upon