thought, to get a view of my sweet person, or to exhibit their own. One or two were coquetting at a distance with some of the white natives, and laughing with every air of gentleness and good nature. Their persons struck me as being very elegantly formed, light, graceful and elastic; but I was not yet reconciled to their dingy hue, and there was something I thought rather too languid in the drawling tone of their speech. They presented me with a shadock scored, and the thick skin doubled in, naseberries and a grenadilla, with a copious beaker of wine and

water.

After partaking of this, I was accommodated with an umbrella to screen me from the meridian sun, and followed a bare-legged Quashie about the town to examine the stores, and a famous reservoir of water, made for the use of the inhabitants and for the supply of the shipping. In the first, I was surprised to see so many negroes purchasing finery for their approaching holidays, and laying down pieces of money that I had never thought to see in the hands of slaves; for some changed doubloons, gold pieces, worth here five pounds six shillings and eight pence of the island curren

cy. There was an. appearance of gaiety and cheerfulness in their countenances, combined with a politeness of manner, that I had never seen among the labourers of England, any more than pieces of gold in their hands at Christmas or any other season, for the purpose of buying finery; for here all clothing seems superfluous, except for decency's sake.

I returned to the lodging-house, and found a Kittereen whiskey prepared to convey me to an estate at some distance, about eight miles from the town. Quashie seated himself on the footboard, and resting his legs on the steps; performed the part of Automedon in grand style, and with great apparent seriousness; while I enjoyed the whole of the interior of the equipage, a system I should have often preferred in England, where I have been many times horrified by the company and contact of a lubberly stinking groom, breathing gin or tobacco, or at least the miasma of the stable. I was driven through two or three estates, where the negroes were all at work cutting canes, which passed me in huge tumbrils for the mills. Quashie acted as my Cicerone, and told me everything connected with putting in canes and making sugar. He would have

told me the names of the different proprietors through whose grounds we passed, but he knew only the mortgagees, the attornies; and overseers. He pretended great affection for his horse, which he called Romblass, (I imagine he meant Romulus) but I afterwards learnt it was really pretence, as he was in the habit of riding him furiously by night, as if he were an incubus, to see his distant sweetheart.

I asked him the name of a great tree not far from the road, which I should have taken for a cotton tree, but for the different leaf it presented. He told me it was before time (according to his phraseology) a cotton tree, but now a fig tree; for this latter has the property of overgrowing and destroying even this giant of the forest. At first, a small delicate vine, it attaches itself to the bark of the cotton tree, creeps up, and gaining strength, at last envelops it with its own bark. Quashie compared it to the mortgagee strangling the proprietor, or the Scotchman hugging the Creole to death.

I arrived at length at Orange Grove, where I expected to be received by the old gentleman to whom I had been recommended. He

was from home, that is, riding about his cane pieces and superintending his negroes at work. The clatter of a water-mill reminded me again of sugar grinding; the mill-yard was all bustle and merriment, songs and laughter mingled with the shrill braying of mules and bellowing of oxen. I peeped into the mill-house, and saw the cane juice flowing in torrents; though sweet, it looked dirty, and I preferred to chew the cane to obtain a luxurious draught...

The overseer introduced himself to me and took me to the boiling-house, whence the steam from five or six immense boiling coppers soon induced me to retreat. I saw negroes here allowed to take calabashes full of the hot purified cane juice, half a gallon each at least. This, I learnt, is sometimes fermented in bamboos with the chewstick withe, and makes tolerable beer.

...The still-house was no more to my taste than the boiling-house; though not heated, the air had an unpleasant gaseous smell; it was, however, very clean..

As I returned to the house I descried my host, Mr. Graham, dismounting from his horse at the end of the piazza. He came forward and saluted me.n a muslim Ent

CHAPTER II.

A LONG blast from a conch-shell relieved the negroes from their toils. But let me describe the old gentleman, who gave me a vigorous shake by the hand and a cordial welcome to his house. Imagine an old gentleman, sixty-five years of age, upwards of six feet high, and weighing probably seventeen stone, with a set of regular and even handsome features, except one eye missing; an open, generous countenance, whose physiognomy indicated the habitude of no violent or fractious feeling. He wore a white hat whose brims were ten inches wide; had one side been cocked upward, and feathered, it would have done for a Velasquez, or Rubens's Chapeau de Paille; a blue jacket, too short for elegance, (being curtailed to escape the perspiration of his horse) which in consequence of his height