This illustration shows four men pushing and hauling a cart filled with barrels or hogsheads in Brazil. In the accompanying article, Ewbank explained how these trucks or carts "are as heavily built and ironed as brewers' drays, which they resemble, furnished with winches in front, to raise heavy goods. Each is of itself sufficient for any animal below an elephant to draw; and yet loads, varying from half a ton to a ton, are dragged on them by four Negroes. Two strain at the shafts and two push behind, or, what is quite as common, walk by the wheels and pull down the spokes. . . The annexed is a sketch of one of those trucks, laden with ten barrels of. . . flour, which the four slaves thus brought over a mile" (p. 727). Thomas Ewbank (1792–1870) was an English writer on practical mechanics. In 1845–1846, he traveled to Brazil and on his return published an account of his travels. He was then appointed United States Commissioner of Patents by President Taylor in 1849. Harper's Magazine (also called Harper's) is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance and the arts.

Thomas Ewbank, "A Visit to the Land of the Cocoa and Palm," Harper's New Monthly Magazine (1853), vol. 7, p. 728. Copy in Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library.

English

Image is in the public domain. Metadata is available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

HW9-728b

South America--Brazil

"A Truck", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed October 3, 2022, http://slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/896