frantically, until he reached the brink of the river, where a boat was waiting to take him off.  He dashed into it, and was at once rowed into the middle of the stream, out of reach of his tormentors, who, I quite believe, would have administered more severe lynch-law if they could have got hold of him, for their passions were wrought up to the highest pitch of excitement.  One feature in the scene I could not help remarking—­the negroes all appeared in high glee, and many of them actually danced with joy.  I did not wonder at this, for the negroes always seemed to exult if a white man was in disgrace; which, after all, is no more than might be expected from a class of men tyrannized over as the coloured people are there, and is one of the results of the oppressive system that exacts everything that human labour can furnish, without remuneration, and without (in by far the greater number of instances) any approach to sympathy or grateful feeling.  This alone, without taking into consideration the outrages inflicted on the race by their cruel oppressors, supplies a sufficient cause for such a tendency, if every other were wanting.

Passing through the principal street the day before I left St Louis, an assembly of men, chiefly overseers and negro dealers, who stood at the entrance of a large store, attracted my attention.  Large placards, with a description of various lots of negroes to be submitted to public competition, soon told me I should now be able to gratify my curiosity by witnessing a Missouri slave-vendue.  A man with a bell, which he rang most energetically at the door, shortly after summoned the company, the auction being about to commence.  On a table inside, a negress, of a little over middle age, was standing, vacantly gazing with grief-worn countenance on the crowd that now thronged to the table.  On the floor stood two children, of about the ages of ten and thirteen respectively.  The auctioneer, with the customary volubility of such men in America, began by stating, that the lots now to be offered were the remnants of a preceding sale, which he gratuitously observed had been a most satisfactory one, and after dilating with some energy on the good qualities of the woman before us, whose face brightened up a little on hearing such a flattering account of her good qualities, he earnestly requested a bidding.  The poor creature was evidently in ill-health.  After the most revolting questions had been put to her, and her person examined by the competitors with disgraceful familiarity, she was pronounced all but worthless, “used up,” as one of the company observed, and was, after much demur on the part of the auctioneer, knocked down for two hundred dollars; this sum being, as he remarked, but the moiety of what she ought to have realized.  She was then roughly told to get off the table, and take her stand near it, at a place pointed out by her purchaser, who was a rollicking-looking, big-whiskered fellow, with an immense Leghorn hat, the brim of which