Reverting to the Africans who were conveyed to places other than the States, it will be seen that circumstances amongst them and in their favour came into play, modifying and lightening their unhappy condition. First, attention must be paid to the patriotic solidarity existing [241] amongst the bondsmen, a solidarity which, in the case of those who had been deported in the same ship, had all the sanctity of blood-relationship. Those who had thus travelled to the "white man's country" addressed and considered each other as brothers and sisters. Hence their descendants for many generations upheld, as if consanguineous, the modes of address and treatment which became hereditary in families whose originals had travelled in the same ship. These adopted uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, were so united by common sympathies, that good or ill befalling any one of them intensely affected the whole connection. Mutual support commensurate with the area of their location thus became the order among these people. At the time of the first deportation of Africans to the West Indies to replace the aborigines who had been decimated in the mines at Santo Domingo and in the pearl fisheries of the South Caribbean, the circumstances of the Spanish settlers in the Antilles were of singular, even romantic, interest.
The enthusiasm which overflowed from the crusades and the Moorish wars, upon the discovery and conquest of America, had occasioned [242] the peopling of the Western Archipelago by a race of men in whom the daring of freebooters was strangely blended with a fierce sort of religiousness. As holders of slaves, these men recognized, and endeavoured to their best to give effect to, the humane injunctions of Bishop Las Casas. The Negroes, therefore, male and female, were promptly presented for admission by baptism into the Catholic Church, which always had stood open and ready to welcome them. The relations of god-father and god-mother resulting from these baptismal functions had a most important bearing on the reciprocal stations of master and slave. The god-children were, according to ecclesiastical custom, considered in every sense entitled to all the protection and assistance which were within the competence of the god-parents, who, in their turn, received from the former the most absolute submission. It is easy to see that the planters, as well as those intimately connected with them, in assuming such obligations with their concomitant responsibilities, practically entered into bonds which they all regarded as, if possible, more solemn than the natural ties of secular parentage. The duty [243] of providing for these dependents usually took the shape of their being apprenticed to, and trained in the various arts and vocations that constitute the life of civilization. In many cases, at the death of their patrons, the bondsmen who were deemed most worthy were, according to the means of the testator, provided for in a manner lifting them above the necessity of future dependence. Manumission, too, either by favour or through purchase, was allowed the fullest operation. Here then was the active influence of higher motives than mere greed of gain or the pride of racial power mellowing the lot and gilding the future prospects of the dwellers in the tropical house of bondage.