Arrived in America, Jan finds that to make a living he has to work just as hard as he did back in Sussex and that he can find no one to give him sympathy, help or trustworthy information, nor can he find any Dollar Trees. In search of these he goes south, where he is offered a job as a whipwielding driver of field slaves and when, indignantly, he turns it down he is so savagely beaten for his refusal that he has to be taken into a hospital. Whilst there, walking wounded, he chances upon a slave auction and sees a man and wife sold separately and parted:

(I though ov my poor Mother too,
    An spose the man was I,

An foaced to goo where nubbedy knows,
    I bleve she jest would cry!)

Agin she hugg’s her liddle boy,
    “Oh, de poor Pickaninny” –

Says I to one, “Is dis de way
    You sell folks at Virginny?”

He gruff’d, “What don’t ya like it much?”
    “No not a bit,” I sed –

“Uf I was well I’d goo an crack
    Dat auction fellur’s head!”

Wud dat dey all cum flockin roun,
    An swore, and made me shiver;

Dey sed uf I want shortly off
    Dey’d holl me in de river.

“What! Sell poor men – an women too,
    De loike was never sin:

I’m blowed when I git back agin,
    Uf I don’t tell de Queen!

To Brighton I wull surely goo,
    An tell ur all about ye,

She’s wessels, an she soagers too,
    An dey wull come an rout ye.”