touch here lengthened into three horrid sweltering hours owing to
the fact, that the intelligent contrabands were paid by the hour for
'toting' the cargo; but off we are at last, thank heaven, and at
length we enter the great canal leading to the North River of Norfolk.

"With chat and jest we were worrying away the leaden-winged hours,
when suddenly thug, splash, and like a huge turtle we were floundering
in the mud. 'No moving,' said the captain, 'till the tide comes up;'
and so for three mortal hours we lay stuck in the mud at the edge of
the great dismal swamp of Virginia. 'Ah,' said the mate, 'there is the
scene of many a horror, there the nigger was torn limb from limb by
the bloodhounds, there the runaway slave chose to endure starvation
and death amid deadly snakes and miasma rather than comfort in
bondage; there I myself saw crowds of black men swinging from limb to
limb like monkeys over reeking scums to their fever-haunted dens to
escape the lash.'

"Thus was the story of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe verified by one of
Virginia's own sons. All the fearful word paintings of Dred floated
again before our mental vision, and we thanked God that the old horror
of slavery is passed, and that the old flag now floats indeed 'o'er
the land of the free and the home of the brave.'

"But these hours of waiting, like all things earthly, at length had
their end, and just as the moon gilded the cypress-trees with golden
glory, the wheels began to move and we again worried our tortuous way
up the North River. 'Ah,' said the melancholy-looking man who had
been long gazing in silence at the sad waves below, 'alas, here I am,
friendless and alone in this wretched country, peddling beeswax
and eggs for hog and hominy, chills and fever; but I was once a