that they would be afraid of coming forward in the way I proposed, lest any thing should come out by which they might criminate themselves.  I was obliged then to give up all hope of getting any evidence from this quarter, and I saw but little prospect of getting it from those, who were then actually deriving their livelihood from the trade:  and yet I was determined to persevere; for I thought that some might be found in it who were not yet so hardened as to be incapable of being awakened on this subject.  I thought that others might be found in it who wished to leave it upon principle, and that these would unbosom themselves to me:  and I thought it not improbable that I might fall in with others, who had come unexpectedly into a state of independence, and that these might be induced, as their livelihood would be no longer affected by giving me information, to speak the truth.

I persevered for weeks together under this hope, but could find no one of all those, who had been applied to, who would have any thing to say to me.  At length, Walter Chandler had prevailed upon a young gentleman, of the name of Gardiner, who was going out as surgeon of the Pilgrim, to meet me.  The condition was, that we were to meet at the house of the former, but that we were to enter in and go out at different times, that is, we were not to be seen together.

Gardiner, on being introduced to me, said at once, that he had often wished to see me on the subject of my errand, but that the owner of the Pilgrim had pointed me out to him as a person whom he would wish him to avoid.  He then laid open to me the different methods of obtaining slaves in Africa, as he had learned from those on board his own vessel in his first, or former, voyage.  He unfolded also the manner of their treatment in the Middle passage, with the various distressing scenes which had occurred in it.  He stated the barbarous usuage of the seamen as he had witnessed it, and concluded by saying, that there never was a subject which demanded so loudly the interference of the legislature as that of the Slave Trade.

When he had finished his narrative, and answered the different questions which I had proposed to him concerning it, I asked him, in as delicate a manner as I could, how it happened, that, seeing the trade in this horrible light, he had consented to follow it again?  He told me frankly, that he had received a regular medical education, but that his relations, being poor, had not been able to set him up in his profession.  He had saved a little money in his last voyage.  In that, which he was now to perform, he hoped to save a little more.  With the profits of both voyages together, he expected he should be able to furnish a shop in the line of his profession, when he would wipe his hands of this detestable trade.