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So we went, of course, and after a long siege of tacking with head winds we came to Micaira River. At the mouth was a German fort with thirty men and two cannons to keep the Negroes from coming out of the river. One mile west of the mouth they were on English ground and then free. By land they could not escape through the bogs and morasses.
We should sail eight miles up the river to a sugar plantation to get out load of molasses. We drifted with the tide a piece, but had to anchor when the ebb flowed. Now we found at what a happy land we had arrived. Not a puff of wind - we were about to choke. The mosquitoes, which I thought were bad in New Orleans, were only a drop in the bucket compared to the swarms here that fell on us. It	was impossible to escape.	Sleep was out of	the	question. Many
nights like	that would have	turned us	into lunatics. We	went	very slowly, as
the current	went down eight	hours and	up for only four.	When	we anchored for
the ebb we	amused ourselves	shooting	birds, especially a	flame-colored heron,
of which there were thousands.	The	worst part	was to get them	out of	the
bushes after they were	shot,	as	that would	raise veritable	clouds	of
mosquitoes.
One day we had been	ashore,	and	the captain	had bought a baby	monkey.	It
howled and cried so that	other monkeys came down	from the woods into the trees
near the	ship, so	we could stand on deck	and shoot at	them. We	shot	two	in	this
manner -	one was	a mother with a young	one holding	fast	to her.	We	got	the
baby on board, and, although it was quite young, we brought it alive to Boston.
At last we reached our destination, which was a large sugar plantation worked by three hundred Negroes belonging to a Scotch doctor. The country here is as low as at Demerara, and all transportation goes through canals cut everywhere through the fields. We thought now the mosquitoes would be better, but as soon as the sun went down they were as bad as ever. We stood it for a few hours, but something had to be done, so we all left the ship and tried to get to the sugar-house which lay two miles further up. There was a little path between two canals, just wide enough to pass on, but it poured down rain and about twenty times I slipped into the canal over my head. We were about to die with fright. The banks were full of water snakes. I had lost both my shoes so I had to go bare-footed through the high grass in fear and trembling of stepping
on them.	But it	was as bad to go back	as forward, so we	went	on,	and	at	last
reached the much desired goal, the sugar	house.
The sugar-cane grinding is done by steam. It was strange to see these black people, with their wild fierce faces lighted only by the fire from the boilers, carrying fuel to the tune of an African song. It is easy to recognize Negroes born in Africa by their fierce expressions and the hideous tattooing all over their breasts and faces here, as everywhere in the Holland Dutch colonies,	they are treated most	shamefully.	Among the many that I saw here
there was	not a man who did not	have scars of	the whip so	large that you could
lay a finger in them. Besides, they have to work day and night - not even Sunday was free. For the least wrong-doing they get punished most severely. Thus I saw a young Negro, for a small offense, receive twenty-five cuts with the whip, and each time it cut out a piece of his flesh. They always have black slave-drivers, and they are said to be much more cruel than the whites.
The	next morning we began	to take in molasses. At	night we went up to
the sugar	house, but it was too	far to walk,	when we had	worked hard all day.
So another Dane and I got permission from an old black sheepherder to sleep with him at night, for the mosquitoes do not bother the sheep pens. It did not
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