Sally, Scipio’s wife, has had two miscarriages and three children born, one of whom is dead.  She came complaining of incessant pain and weakness in her back.  This woman was a mulatto daughter of a slave called Sophy, by a white man of the name of Walker, who visited the plantation.

Charlotte, Renty’s wife, had had two miscarriages, and was with child again.  She was almost crippled with rheumatism, and showed me a pair of poor swollen knees that made my heart ache.  I have promised her a pair of flannel trowsers, which I must forthwith set about making.

Sarah, Stephen’s wife,—­this woman’s case and history were, alike, deplorable, she had had four miscarriages, had brought seven children into the world, five of whom were dead, and was again with child.  She complained of dreadful pains in the back, and an internal tumour which swells with the exertion of working in the fields; probably, I think, she is ruptured.  She told me she had once been mad and ran into the woods, where she contrived to elude discovery for some time, but was at last tracked and brought back, when she was tied up by the arms and heavy logs fastened to her feet, and was severely flogged.  After this she contrived to escape again, and lived for some time skulking in the woods, and she supposes mad, for when she was taken again she was entirely naked.  She subsequently recovered from this derangement, and seems now just like all the other poor creatures who come to me for help and pity.  I suppose her constant child-bearing and hard labour in the fields at the same time may have produced the temporary insanity.

Sukey, Bush’s wife, only came to pay her respects.  She had had four miscarriages, had brought eleven children into the world, five of whom are dead.

Molly, Quambo’s wife, also only came to see me; hers was the best account I have yet received; she had had nine children, and six of them were still alive.

This is only the entry for to-day, in my diary, of the people’s complaints and visits.  Can you conceive a more wretched picture than that which it exhibits of the conditions under which these women live?  Their cases are in no respect singular, and though they come with pitiful entreaties that I will help them with some alleviation of their pressing physical distresses, it seems to me marvellous with what desperate patience (I write it advisedly, patience of utter despair) they endure their sorrow-laden existence.  Even the poor wretch who told that miserable story of insanity and lonely hiding in the swamps and scourging when she was found, and of her renewed madness and flight, did so in a sort of low, plaintive, monotonous murmur of misery, as if such sufferings were all ’in the day’s work.’

I ask these questions about their children because I think the number they bear as compared with the number they rear a fair gauge of the effect of the system on their own health and that of their offspring.  There was hardly one of these women, as you will see by the details I have noted of their ailments, who might not have been a candidate for a bed in an hospital, and they had come to me after working all day in the fields.