CHAPTER XXIII.

NARRATIVE OF TWO FUGITIVES FROM VIRGINIA.

The settlers in Wilberforce, were in general, industrious and thrifty farmers:  they cleared their land, sowed grain, planted orchards, raised cattle, and in short, showed to the world that they were in no way inferior to the white population, when given an equal chance with them.  In proof of this let me say, that it was uniformly the practice of persons traveling from London to Goderich, to remain in our settlement over night, in preference to going on to find entertainment among their own class of people.  And we believe that the whites are bound to admit, that the experiment of the Wilberforce colony proves that the colored man can not only take care of himself, but is capable of improvement; as industrious and intelligent as themselves, when the yoke is taken from off their necks, and a chance given them to exercise their abilities.  True, many of them had just escaped from cruel task-masters; ignorant of almost every thing but the lash,—­but the air of freedom so invigorated and put new life into their weary bodies, that they soon became intelligent and thrifty.

Among the settlers might be gathered many a thrilling narrative, of suffering and hair-breadth escapes from the slave-land,—­one of which I will tell as ’twas told to me.

In a small rude cabin, belonging to one of the large plantations in Virginia, sat at a late hour of the night, an afflicted slave-man and his devoted wife, sad and weeping.  At length the husband repeated what he before had been saying: 

“I tell you, wife, we must flee from this place, without delay.  Oh, I cannot endure the idea of seeing you sold for the Southern market, to say nothing of myself; and we shall most likely be separated, which I can’t bear!  Oh, Rosa, the thought distracts me,—­I can’t bear it!”

“Are you sure,” said Rosa, “that master thinks of such a frightful doom for us?”

“Oh yes, I know it; I heard master to-day making a bargain with the slave dealer that has been hanging about here so long; and when it was finished, I heard him reading over the list, and our names, wife, are the first on it.”

“Oh, dear!” sobbed the wife, “we shall certainly be retaken and whipped to death; or else we shall starve in the wilderness!  Oh, it is very hard to be compelled to leave all our friends and the old plantation where we were born!”

“Yes; it is both hard and unjust,” said Joe, and an indignant frown contracted his brow,—­“here is our birth-place, and here, for forty years have I toiled early and late to enrich my master; and you, my poor wife, a few years less; and now we are to be sold, separated, and all without a choice of our own.  We must go, Rosa.  If we die, let us die together!”

“It shall be as you say, Joe,” she replied, “but it frightens me to think of the hardships of the way, and the danger of being recaptured.”