Our porter on the train crossing the Northern Prairies
was a coloured man named Farrell; he told me that his mother had seven
boys, and that they were all sold away from her, and that it had been
his life-work to try to find his brothers.
He had shipped to Australia
as a seaman, had worked in hotels, and on wharves and rivers, and now
was working on the railway cars endeavouring to find his brothers; he
had advertised for them in the newspapers, but he had never heard of one
of them. When this family was broken up, Farrell and his brothers were
only boys; for it will be remembered that the date of the official
announcement of the total abolition of slavery in the United States was
made on the 18th December, 1862, when upwards of 4,000,000 slaves were
legally declared free men. Another coloured man engaged at this hotel,
who was born a slave, remembered walking with his father, who was also a
slave, and his father's anxiety to get home before nine o'clock at
night, as no coloured man was allowed to be in the streets after that
hour unless he possessed a sufficient authority from his owner. This man
told me that at an auction of slaves at this hotel (auctions of slaves
were held in New Orleans at different places three times a week) a very
fine intelligent young man was sold by auction for 2,100 dollars to a
lawyer who was known to be a cruel man.
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