It has always been a matter of profound thankfulness with me that my evil genius never led me on board a cattle-boat. For I do think that to a man who has any feeling for the lower animals these present scenes of suffering enough to turn his brain. And it does not in the least matter what provision is made for the safe of cattle in such numbers across the ocean. As long as the weather is fairly reasonable, the boxed-up animals have only to endure ten days or so of close , with inability to lie down, and the that attacks animals as well as human beings. The better the ship and the greater care upon the cattle-fittings the less will be the sufferings of the poor beasts; but the irreducible minimum is soon reached, and that means much more cruelty to animals than any merciful man would like to witness. But when a is encountered and the huge steamer wallows heavily in the mountainous irregularities of the Atlantic, flooding herself and aft at every roll, and making the cattlemen’s task of attending to their charges one surcharged with to life or limbs, then the condition of a cattle-ship is such as to require the coinage of special adjectives for its description. Of course it will be said that human beings used to be carried across the ocean for sale in much the same way, and men calling themselves were not ashamed to grow rich on the receipts from such traffic; but surely that will never be advanced as an excuse for, or a palliative of, the horrors of the live cattle trade. I have passed through an area of sea bestrewn with the bodies of cattle that have been washed overboard in a gale—hurled out of the pens wherein they have been to death—when the return of fine weather has made it possible, and I have wished with all my heart that it could be made an offence against the laws to carry live cattle across the ocean at all.  
No, the nearest approach that ever I had to being shipmates with a of live stock was on one never-to-be-forgotten occasion, when, after bringing a 24-ton from a little village up the Bay of Fundy to Antigua in the West Indies, I found myself, as you may say, in St. John, the principal port in that island. The dry rot which seems to have unfortunately overtaken our West Indian possessions was even then very marked in Antigua, for there was no there larger than a 100-ton schooner, and only two or three of them, all Yankees with one exception, a Barbadian craft with the queerest name imaginable, the Migumoo-weesoo. The officer, seeing that I was a certificated mate, very interested himself in me, going so far as to say that if I would take his advice and assistance I would immediately leave St. John in the Migum, as he called her, for that the skipper, being a friend of his, would gladly give me a passage to Barbadoes. I hope good advice was never wasted on me. At any rate this wasn’t, for I immediately went down to the beach, jumped into a boat, and ordered the darky in charge to put me on board the Migum. When we got alongside I was interested to see quite a little mob of horses calmly floating alongside with their heads just sticking out of the water. The first thing that suggested itself to me was that if those horses got on board with their full of legs it would be little less than a miracle, the harbour being notoriously with sharks. But presently I reflected that there was really no danger, the darkies who were busy with preparations for the of the poor beasts kicking up such a row that no shark would have dared venture within a cable’s length of the spot. Everybody engaged in the business seemed to be excited beyond measure, shouting, with laughter, and yelling orders at the top of their voices, so that I could not see how anything was going to be done at all. The skipper was confined to his cabin with an attack of dysentery, and lay himself into a fever at the riot going on overhead for want of his . As soon as I introduced myself he begged me to go and take charge, but, although I humoured him to the extent of seeming to comply with his request, I knew enough of the insubordinate ’Badian darkies to make me very careful how I with them. But going forward, I found to my delight that they had made a start at last, and that two of the trembling horses were already on deck. Four or five darkies[142] were in the water alongside, diving beneath the horses with which were very carefully placed round their bodies, then hooked to a tackle, by means of which they were on board, so by fear that they suffered themselves to be pushed and hauled about the decks with the quiet submissiveness of sheep. There were twenty of them altogether, and when they had all been landed on deck there was not very much room left for working the schooner. However, as our passage lay through the heart of the trade winds, and nothing was less probable than bad weather, nobody minded that, not even when the remaining deck space was up with some very queer-looking .
 
As soon as the horses were on board we weighed, and stood out of harbour with a gentle, leading wind that, freshening as we got farther off the land, the smart craft along at a fairly good rate. This lasted until midnight, when, to the darkies’ dismay, the wind suddenly failed us, leaving us lazily rocking to the gently-gliding upon the wine-dark of the glassy sea. Overhead, the sky, being moonless, was hardly distinguishable from the sea, and as every brilliant star was faithfully duplicated beneath, it needed no great stretch of imagination to fancy that we were suspended in the centre of a vast globe cut off from the rest of the world. But the poor skipper, enfeebled by his sad and anxious about his freight, had no transcendental fancies. Vainly I tried to comfort him with the assurance that we should certainly find a breeze at daybreak, and it would as certainly be fair for us. He refused , insisting that we were in for a long spell of calm, and against his long experience of those waters I felt I could not argue. So I ceased my efforts and went on deck to enjoy the solemn beauty of the night once more, and listen to the gabble of the three darkies forming the watch on deck.
 
Sure enough the skipper was right. Calms and baffling airs, persisting for three days, kept us almost motionless until every of horse was eaten, and—what was still more serious—very little water was left. All of us wore long faces now, and the first return of steady wind was hailed by us with delight. Continuing on our original course was out of the question under the circumstances, so we headed directly for the nearest port, which happened to be Prince Rupert, in the beautiful island of Dominica. A few hours’ sail brought us into the harbour, with its ruined , once grimly guarding the entrance, now overgrown with tropical vegetation, huge trees growing out of yawning............