"We went to visit the Galleys, being about twenty-five; the Captain of the Galley Royal gave us most courteous entertainment in his cabin, the slaves in the interim playing both loud and soft music very rarely. Then he showed us how he commanded their motions with a nod and his whistle, making them row out. The spectacle was to me new and strange, to see so many hundreds of miserably naked persons, having their heads shaven close and having only high red bonnets, a pair of coarse canvas drawers, their whole backs and legs naked, doubly chained about their middle and legs, in couples, and made fast to their seats, and all commanded in a trice by an imperious and cruel seaman. One Turk he much favoured, who waited on him in his cabin, but with no other dress than the rest, and a chain locked about his leg but not coupled. This galley was richly carved and gilded, and most of the rest were very beautiful. After bestowing something on the slaves, the captain sent a band of them to give us music at dinner where we lodged. I was amazed to contemplate how these miserable catiffs lie in their galley crowded together, yet there was hardly one but had some occupation by which, as leisure and calms permitted, they get some little money, insomuch as some of them have, after many years of cruel servitude, been able to purchase their liberty. Their rising forward and falling back at their oar is a miserable spectacle, and the noise of their chains with the roaring of the beaten waters has something of strange and fearful to one unaccustomed to it. They are ruled and chastised by strokes on their backs and soles of their feet on the least disorder, and without the least humanity; yet are they cheerful and full of knavery."