found here. The negroes declared, one and all, that if I went away and left them to groan under the same system of oppression, without appeal or hope of redress, they would follow my carriage and establish themselves at Cornwall. I had soon discovered that, although they had told me plenty of falsehoods, many of their complaints were but too well-founded. Trusting to these fallacious reports of the Arcadian state of happiness at Hordley, I supposed that I should have nothing to do but grant a few indulgences, and establish the regulations already adopted with success on Cornwall. It was, however, considerable relief to me to find, upon examination, that no act of personal ill-treatment was alleged against the trustee himself, who was allowed to be sufficiently humane in his own nature, and was only complained of for allowing the negroes to be maltreated by the book-keepers and other inferior agents with absolute impunity. Being an excellent planter, he confined his attention entirely to the cultivation of the soil; and when the negroes came to complain of some cruelty committed by the book-keepers or the black governors, he refused to listen to them, and he left their complaints uninquired into, and consequently unredressed. The result was, the negroes were worse off than if he had been a cruel man himself; for his cruelty would have given them only one tyrant, whereas his indolence left them at the mercy of eight."

Lewis proceeded to establish tranquillity on his property. He appointed a neighbouring gentleman, of a humane disposition, to the office of protector of the negroes: one book-keeper was dismissed for oppressive conduct, which was admitted by the trustee, and stigmatized in the strongest terms; the other book-keeper ran away the next morning: the black governor was also got rid of;-and these sources of discontent being removed, additional holidays, allowances, and other indulgences granted, in a few days he left his negroes, "with tears running down their cheeks, and all with thanks for the protection he had shown them, and ear

nest entreaties that he would soon come to visit them again."

Such were the means Lewis took to improve his plantations: he looked beyond the crops of this year or the next, and he accordingly improved the condition of his negroes, well assured that in so doing he was serving his own interests better than by making it his only study to exact the utmost labour, and to obtain present advantages at any sacrifice of future interests. But what is the use of referring to past times? what need to make long quotations from a work so recently published, and so easily to be procured? The utility of the reference consists in the application of the observations I have cited to the present times. The necessity of quoting these accounts is occasioned by the erroneous opinions that prevail with respect to the condition of the properties of absentees, on which every thing is supposed to be going on well so long as the returns are not suddenly diminished: and that necessity, more strongly suggested itself to me, because the motives of every person who is unconnected with colonial property, who is opposed to the present system of management, are suspected of hostility to Jamaica interests. But Lewis, a proprietor of two valuable estates, the owner of nearly six hundred negroes, cannot be suspected of being desirous of injuring a country from which he derived, I believe, his only means.

Things have not changed with respect to the management of the absentees' estates, since Lewis was in Jamaica. The Abolition Bill has put an end to fieldpunishments, but there are innumerable vexations which that measure has left untouched; and I speak advisedly when I assert that my own experience, in parallel instances, bears out the account of Lewis in all particuJars.

In the parish I am now in, and, I believe, in all the large towns, there are few agricultural negroes; consequently, there can be no grievances of the nature of those I have alluded to. In what I have stated of the management of the country property, I am influ

enced by no feelings adverse to the attorneys: I have never been on any other than good terms with them, and having the pleasure of being acquainted with a great number of them, I freely admit, in private life they generally are as estimable gentlemen, and as honourable men, as any class of persons in any other country. It is the system I object to, and not the agents. The master who has but his own property to attend to, must surely be able to devote more attention to it than an agent who has the management of twenty. That agent, I contend, no matter how conscientious he may be, can never feel a master's interest in the soil. The negroes cannot regard that agent, however lenient he may be to them, as they would their master. There is a natural dislike to delegated authority. The Irish peasant abhors it in the middle man; the negro labourer loves it just as little in the attorney.-I fear I have exhausted your patience; I will tax it no farther than to give you the result of Lewis's experiment on the negro character, and on the condition of his estates, in the last words of his journal: "What other negroes may be, I will not pretend to guess; but I am certain there cannot be more tractable or better disposed persons, take them for all in all, than my negroes of Cornwall, (he had elsewhere spoken as favourably of those of Hordley.) I only wish that in my future dealings with white persons, whether in Jamaica or out of it, I could but meet with half so much gratitude, affection, and good-will." I am, my dear Sir, Yours very truly,

R. R. M.

LETTER XXV.

To DR. JAMES JOHNSON.

MY DEAR SIR,

Kingston, Aug. 20, 1834.

Some of the most fertile lands in Jamaica are situated in the mountainous districts. The soils are as various in the high lands as in the plains;-the common mould, fusca vulgaris; a dark-coloured loam, lutea montana, or yellow earth; a red earth, subpinguis crocea, and various marls, of which the white friable sort is the most abundant. Generally speaking, the quantity of really rich and fertile land is not so great as the extent of country would lead us to believe. Limestone is the principal formation of the mountains. In the St. Andrew's mountains there is a white marble which, I believe, has never been brought into use. Varieties of spars are found in the Blue Mountains: at Port Royal, a species of argillaria, a solid formation of clay and gravel. In most of the high lands, immense masses of transition rock mixed with coral formations, are to be found. Some of the northern rivers, especially Roaring River, have their beds incrusted with depositions of tophus. Livid sulphureous stone is found in the neighbourhood of the most of the hot wells; but I believe real pumice has never been discovered in Jamaica. Quartz abound in every variety, and the thunderbolt stone, lydium, which the Indians fashioned into those forms for domestic purposes which caused it to be mistaken for an ærolite.

The climate in the high mountains is almost European. At St. Catherine's Peak, the height of 5000 feet above the level of the sea, I have seen the thermometer range from forty-five to sixty-five: while, on the Blue Mountain Peak, which is 7700 feet above the sea's le

vel, the thermometer has been known to range from forty-five at sunrise to fifty-six at noon; while in Kingston, at the same time, the temperature would have been from seventy-five to eighty-five. Frost and snow are unknown in Jamaica; mountains of less elevation in other parts of the world are seldom without snow on their summits. In the course of a year I have but once seen hailstones, and then of a size which I never saw in Europe. It may give you some better idea of the comparative heights of the mountains of Jamaica, and those remarkable for their elevation in other parts of the world, to set down the height of each,—the for- . mer from Martin's History of the British Colonies:

The difference of the climate of the mountains of Jamaica from that of the plains is so great, that a stranger might almost fancy himself transported into a European country. I was not aware of the full extent of this great difference till I visited St. Catherine's Peak. A ride of four hours took me from Kingston to Flamstead, in the neighbourhood of which my friend Mr. Dunn resided, in as dreary a mountain-district as a Hermit or a hater of the world might covet for an abode. The following day I intended to ascend the Peak, but the rain set in before day-break, and it fell in torrents throughout the day. In the intervals between the showers, the sweeping of the thin fleecy mist through the declivities of the mountain to me presented a novel and most extraordinary appearance. I had seen nothing like it except in the parish of Thomas in the