The place where the great slave mart is held is a long winding street called the Vallongo, which runs from the sea, at the northern extremity of the city. Almost every house in this place is a large wareroom, where the slaves are deposited, and customers go to purchase. These ware-rooms stand at each side of the street, and the poor creatures are exposed for sale like any other commodity. When a customer comes in, they are turned up before him; such as he wishes are handled by the purchaser in different parts, exactly as I have seen butchers feeling a calf; and the whole examination is the mere animal capability, without the remotest inquiry as to the moral quality, which a man no more thinks of, than if he was buying a dog or a mule. I have frequently seen Brazilian ladies at these sales. They go dressed, sit down, handle and examine their purchases, and bring them away With the most perfect indifference. I sometimes saw groups of well-dressed females here, shopping for slaves, exactly as I have seen English ladies amusing themselves at our bazaars. 

There was no circumstance which struck me with more melancholy reflections than this market, which felt a kind of morbid curiosity in seeing, as a man looks at objects which excite his strongest interests, while they shock his best feelings. The warerooms are spacious apartments, where sometimes three or four hundred slaves, of all ages and sexes, are exhibited together. Round the room are benches on which the elder generally sit, and the middle is occupied by the younger, particularly females, who squat on the ground stowed close together, With their hands and chins resting on their knees. Their only covering is a small girdle of cross-barred cotton, tied round the waist. 

The first time I passed through this street, I stood at the bars of the window looking through, When a cigano [gypsy] came and pressed me to enter. I was particularly attracted by a group of children, one of whom, a young girl, had something very pensive and engaging in her countenance. The cigano observing me look at her, whipped her up With a long rod, and bade her with a rough voice to come forward. It was quite affecting to see the poor timid shrinking child standing before me, in a state the most helpless and forlorn, that ever a being, endued, like myself, with a reasonable mind and an immortal soul, could be reduced to. Some of these girls have remarkably sweet and engaging countenances. Notwithstanding their dusky hue, they 100k so modest, gentle and sensible, that you could not for a moment hesitate to acknowledge, that they are endued With a like feeling a common nature with your own daughters. The seller was about to put the child into all the attitudes, and display her person in the same way, as he would a man; but I declined the exhibition, and she shrunk timidly back to her place, and seemed glad to hide herself in the group that surrounded her. 

The men were generally less interesting objects than the women; their countenances and hues were very varied, according to the part of the African coast from which they came, some were soot black, having a certain ferocity of aspect that indicated strong and fierce passions, like men who were darkly brooding over some deep-felt wrongs, and meditating revenge. When any one was ordered, he came forward with a sullen indifference, threw his arms over his head, stamped With his feet, shouted to show the soundness of his lungs, ran up and down the room, and was treated exactly like a horse, put through his paces at a repository; and when done, he was whipped to his stall. 

The heads of the slaves, both male and female, were generally half shaved; the hair being left only oon the fore part. A few of the females had cotton handkerchiefs tied round their heads, which, with some little ornaments of native seed or shells, gave them a very engaging appearance. A number, particularly the males, were affected with eruptions of a white scurf which had a loathsome appearance, like a leprosy. It was considered, however, a wholesome effort of nature, to throw off the effects of the salt provisions used during the voyage; and, in fact, it resembles exactly a saline concretion. 

Many of them were lying stretched on the bare boards; and among the rest, mothers with young children at their breasts, of which they seemed passionately fond. They were all doomed to remain on the spot, like sheep in a pen, till they were sold; they have no apartment to retire to, no bed to repose on, no covering to protect them; they sit naked all day, and lie naked all night, on the bare boards, or benches, where we saw them exhibited. 

Among the objects that attracted my attention in this place were some young boys, who seemed to have formed a society together. I observed several times in passing by, that the same little group was collected near a barred window; they seemed very fond of each other, and their kindly feelings were never interrupted by peevish- ness; indeed, the temperament of a negro child is generally so sound, that he is not affected by those little morbid sensations, which are the frequent cause of crossness and ill-temper in our children. I do not remember, that I ever saw a young black fretful, or out of humor; certainly never displaying those ferocious fits of petty passion, in which the superior nature of infant whites indulges. I sometimes brought cakes and fruit in my pocket, and handed them in to the group. It was quite delightful to observe the generous and disinterested manner in which they distributed them. There was no scrambling with one another; no selfish reservation to themselves. The child to whom I happened to give them, took them so gently, looked so thankfully, and distributed them so generously, that I could not help thinking that God had compensated their dusky hue, by a more than usual human portion of amiable qualities. 

A great number of those who arrive at Rio are sent up the country, and we every day met cofilas [convoys], such as Mungo Park [Scottish explorer, 1771 —18061 describes in Africa, winding through the woods, as they travelled from place to place in the interior. They formed long processions, following one another in a file; the slave merchant, distinguished by his large felt hat and puncho, bringing up the rear on a mule, with a long lash in his hand. It was another subject of pity, to see groups of these poor creatures cowering together at night in the open ranchos, drenched with cold rain, in a climate so much more frigid than their own.