A Queer Race: The Story of a Strange People — page 141: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

‘ 138 A QUEER RACE, ‘‘No, I don’t think we have; still, there is no telling what may happen. But we are well prepared. Our young men are regularly drilled. You shall seea parade of our archer-guard one of these days.” «« Archer-guard! Are your soldiers armed only with bows and arrows, then?” «Necessarily. Our store of gunpowder, being very limited, is reserved for the artillery, which consists of half a dozen brass pieces, part of the Santa Anna’s arma- ment. That is why I inquired whether you had any gun- powder on board the Diana. But our archers would make “no despicable foes, even when opposed to men armed with muskets.” Mr. Field spoke of the flint-lock muskets of the previ- ous century, and when I saw the archer-guard and ex- amined their weapons, I was quite of his opinion. None of their bows, when unstrung, was less than six feet’ in length; and their arrows were even longer than the cloth- ‘yard shafts which won for Hngland the battles of Agincourt and Crecy, and did such dire execution among the Scots at Flodden Field. ‘The Fair Islanders, moreover, were splendid marksmen; a good shot could easily hit a bull’s-eye at three hundred and fifty yards, and as easily kill a deer (or a man) at four hundred. Compared with theirs, the: native bow was a very in- ferior weapon; and I felt sure, as 1 told Field, that the five hundred Archers of the Guard would be more than a match for three times their number of Calibans or Cariberoes. After some further conversation, I ventured to sug- gest the danger he apprehended might be avoided by abolishing slavery altogether. If I had proposed to abolish the island and declare the memory of Denzil Fane accursed, he could scarley have looked more horrified. ‘‘ Abolish slavery! What on earth put so preposterous an idea into your head? Slavery is a beneficent institu- tion, Scripture nowhere condemns it: the Jews prac- ticed it; the apostles approved of 1t; and so far as we are concerned, my dear sir, the remedy would be worse than the disease. If we liberated these people, they would of a surety conspire against our commonwealth, and en- deavor to overthrow it, for they are fierce and truculent. Moreover, we should all have to become hewers of wood EOmMmiG JOO SH (e(0)