[32]
[Footnote 31: Original in private possession.]
[Footnote 32: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Sept. 23, 1818, quoting the
_Orleans Gazette_.]
Overland coffles were occasionally encountered and described by travelers.
Featherstonhaugh overtook one at daybreak one morning in southwestern
Virginia bound through the Tennessee Valley and wrote of it as follows: "It
was a camp of negro slave drivers, just packing up to start. They had about
three hundred slaves with them, who had bivouacked the preceding night
in chains in the woods. These they were conducting to Natchez on the
Mississippi River to work upon the sugar plantations in Louisiana. It
resembled one of the coffles spoken of by Mungo Park, except that they had
a caravan of nine wagons and single-horse carriages for the purpose of
conducting the white people and any of the blacks that should fall lame....
The female slaves, some of them sitting on logs of wood, while others were
standing, and a great many little black children, were warming themselves
at the fire of the bivouac. In front of them all, and prepared for the
march, stood in double files about two hundred men slaves, manacled and
chained to each other.
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