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Show 224 RETURN TO AMERICA· 0 Queen ! of Premier, under t.~JY reign, Some conjnrcr holds the sta.tJOn;. llis name, we take it, is Legerdemain, And thine is Transmutation. Such are the notorious uncertainties of the Gulph stream ; and in the channel through which we were now pass1· ng, se'a men are often exposed to danger. Many a wreck takes place on either side of. it, an.d only a few days before our voyage, a vessel of considerable size was found bottom upwards, on the coast of Florida. For ourselves we passed along, though slowly, yet safely, and found leisure to reflect, that the shores, on either side, were marked by circumstances of a most interesting character. As the low green coast, and keys of Florida, were gradually developed to our view, it was impossible not to mourn over the Seminole war, undertaken against the unhappy aborigines of the soil, in the support as we fear of slavery, conducted at an immense expense of blood and treasure, and now carried on (strange recurrence to ancient barbarism!) by the help of blood-hounds. The subject, so afflicting in its own particular features, was of course connected iu our minds with a general view of that melancholy topic, the maltreatment of the native Indians of North America-witness the cruel banishment of the Cherokees of Georgia, and the projected expatriation of the Senecas of New-York, under the color of fraudulent treatise, and at the expense of every principle of justice and mercy. I am confident that thy sentiments on these subjects, are in perfect agreement with our own. RETURN TO AMERICA. 225 O.m view of the Bahamas was .a very 1. t Istant one. but 1t was .e nough to remind us of the exce1 1 ent ac-' counts which. we h~d received, through Sir William Colebrokc, of the favorable worH' ng o f fr·e ed om · 111 those islands. Sir William was their G ovcrnor, be 1c ore he und. ertook the more. import'a nt char gc o f t 11 e L ee-ward 1slands; and whde we were w1"t) h' · A · 1 Im Ill nti· gua, he received from a friend whom he had left be-hind him, the accounts to which we 'a llu(]e · It appears that a large number of recaptured Africans arc now settled, as free laborers, on the island of New Providence, and are conducting themselvt>s well. The same may be said of the form~r slaves or apprentices, who are. located c.h ie.f ly on the outer islands of th e group. FrJCndly societies, and other benevolent institutions, are .prospering; and free gr·own cotton is now produced, m the Bahamas, under the care of the descendants of American loyalists, who settled in that colony, at the time of the Revolution. I am reminded by this mention of the Bahamas, of our friend J. C. Calhoun's argument in the Senate on the subject of the Comet, the Encomium and th~ Enterprise, one of which vessels was, if I' mistake not, driven by stress of weather, into a port of the Bermudas, anrl the other two wrecked on the Bahamas- each containing American slaves, on their passage from one of your slave states to another. As I have not his speech, of which he kindly gaVf~ me a copy, now before me, J may not be accurate in mv recollection of the particulars; hut I think that, in ail ~~~cases, the slaves were allowed, by the British authorities of the islands, to avail themselves of the law of Q |