tion when compared with the labours of a day gardener in England. The soil of the cane fields is soft, and easily turned; the fatigue of hoeing is also considerably less than that of digging; and it might astonish some of those who picture to their minds the labor of field negroes as something superlatively dreadful, to see the gaiety that prevails among the gang while pursuing their daily occupation. They would not see them execute their work with the affecting resignation of broken spirits, with the tears of sorrow falling from their cheeks, or the sighs of affliction heaving from their bosoms-they would see them laughing and talking, sometimes with their driver, and sometimes among themselves, passing their ready jokes on the characters and customs of the buckras; and, while they gave vent to a thousand lively and joyous sallies, pursuing their work in an easy and careless manner that would remind the beholder considerably more of indulgence than of oppression.

The same negroes who compose this gang are generally employed in crop time in the boiling-houses and about the mills, and form rather more than one third of the whole body of slaves of the estate.

The second gang have a lighter occupation than the first, and not being composed of strong negroes have easy duties allotted to them, such as weeding the cane fields, stripping off dry leaves, gathering up trash, and so forth. They are chiefly pregnant females, and children of from twelve to fifteen years of age. The minor children compose the third gang,

and, for the little labor they perform, are not, it may be supposed, at their tender age of much service to the estate. To keep them from habits of idleness they are, however, placed under the charge of an old woman, and set to weed the garden of the proprietor, or gather green herbage for the goats and pigs.

These are the three principal working gangs; the other slaves are tradesmen or mechanics, and these, with a few sick in the hospital, and the aforementioned collection of infant fatlings under the superintendence of the old dame in the nursery, complete the muster-roll of negroes on a sugar plantation.

CHAPTER XL.

LEAVING ST. VINCENT.

66

Adieu, lovely isle, may thy blessings increase, "And long be thy mansions the mansions of peace; May health and contentment their sources renew, ""Tis the prayer of my soul, as I bid you adieu." Scenes at Home and Abroad.

THAT time passes with a flight almost as rapid as thought has been too much experienced to be ever denied. Time is a theme on which philosophers have written their reflections, poets their verses, and moralists their advice; and yet the old boy has no respect for any of these venerable characters, but continues going with the same swift pace, leaving every thing behind him, and beating the best steam coaches out and out. Mr. Mackworth Praed, who is, by the way, a very pretty poet, in speaking of "Beauty and her visitors," says,

"I heard a murmur far and wide

"Of Lord, how quick the dotard passes,
"As time threw down at beauty's side
"The prettiest of her clocks and glasses;

"But it was noticed in the throng,

"How beauty marr'd the maker's cunning,

"For when she talked the hands went wrong,

"And when she smiled the sands stopped running."

All of which appears a very ingenious novelty, wherewith to flatter beauty; but I fancy, if we come to the truth, we shall find that time never fails to make his furrows in the fairest cheeks, which all the ingenuity of its lovely possessor is exerted to conceal from the scrutinizing eye of man, but which, however, the said monster, man, seldom fails to discover, unless there is a little yellow deity yclept cash, who blinds his eyes, and draws him gently into the silken noose of Hymen. Then he bears his fate with all the firmness of a philosopher, and inwardly exclaims "L'amour est quelque chose mais l'argent." But this is a digression-well, two years and more have rolled away since I first landed on the black beach of St. Vincent, and so narrowly escaped the wetting that my readers wot of; and now the hour is fast approaching when I must bid farewell to its lofty and gigantic hills, to its sweet and cultivated valleys.

In those two years, however, I can number many happy days, I have acquired some information, and much experience. I have visited the most beautiful parts of the island; ascended the lofty heights of Mount St. Andrew, and pondered over the wonders of the majestic Souffriere. I have seen the dwellings of the Charaibs, and have had the honor of dining tête à tête with the august sovereign of that altered race. I have entered too into all the pleasures of the island-soirées, balls, maroons have followed each other in "numbers numberless." I have participated in the hospitality, so far renowned, of the worthy inhabitants of St. Vincent: and if in the midst of

festivity I have not been always the gayest of the gay; if I have dared to look sombre in scenes of merriment, and sad in the midst of joy, it was only when my thoughts wandered to the jasmine-covered cottage in the valley of my native land, where my own Laura reposed upon the bed of innocence and truth, and dreamt away those fairy dreams of happiness which is farthest from us when we fancy it our own, or where she wandered alone o'er the flowery paths we had so often trod together, where the lilies droop, and the roses wither on their stems, fair but perfect emblems of her own beauty and mortality.

But the experience to which I allude was neither gained on the mountain, in the valley, or at the festive board. It relates to the negroes, and I acquired it on my visits to estates, where I had frequent opportunities of personally observing their treatment, and, what gave me a greater insight into the happiness or misery of their situation, of holding private conversations with them, and of thus learning their own opinions of their own state, that state which is so great an evil to society, but an evil which it requires time, caution, and delicacy to destroy; and though emancipation will be the final remedy, to administer it at an improper season will be to make it tenfold worse than the disease.

If a planter were to advance such an opinion, one might say, and I allow with great justice that he was actuated by interested motives, and that the consideration of self advantage deprived him of the power of making a fair statement; but when one who