Underground To Canada

Julilly and the other slaves arrive at the Riley plantation in Mississippi. She realizes that the wagon’s driver was a man named Sims, the overseer at the Riley plantation. Julilly is disappointed to see that the Black people on the Riley plantation seem malnourished, and they live in dilapidated huts. Sims orders an elderly woman to take care of the younger children and tells Julilly to join the other field hands in their own cabin. While Julilly had hoped that Mammy Sally might be there, she now does not want her to be since the conditions are so poor.

Julilly enters a filthy cabin full of other girls and meets a “sullen, hunch-backed girl” with “ugly scars” named Liza (35).

The girls in the cabin are quiet and sad. Liza is the only girl who speaks to Julilly, explaining that she had been taken from her family and sold to the Riley plantation last summer. Julilly shares that she has also been separated from her mother, and she cries. Liza reveals that when she tried to escape, Sims caught her and whipped her, leaving scars.