University of Virginia Library

JANUARY 3.

I have reached Jamaica in the best season for seeing my property in a favourable point of view ; it is crop time, when all the laborious work is over, and the negroes are the most healthy and merry. This morning I went to visit the hospital, and found there only eight patients out of three hundred negroes, and not one of them a serious case. Yesterday I had observed a remarkably handsome Creole girl, called Psyche, and she really deserved the name. This morning a little brown girl made her appearance at breakfast, with an orange bough, to flap away the flies, and, on inquiry, she proved to be an emanation of the aforesaid Psyche. It is evident, therefore, that Psyche has already visited the palace of Cupid; I heartily hope that she is not now upon her road to the infernal regions.

I passed the morning in driving about the estate: my house is frightful to look at, but very clean and comfortable in the in side; some of the scenery is very picturesque, from the lively green of the trees and shrubs, and the. hermitage-like appearance of the negro buildings, all situated in little gardens and embosomed in sweet-smelling shrubberies. Indeed, everything appears much better than I expected; the negroes seem healthy and contented, and so perfectly at their ease that our English squires would be mightily astonished at being accosted so familiarly by their farmers. This delightful north wind keeps the air temperate and agreeable. I live upon shaddocks and pine apples. The dreaded mosquitoes are not worse than gnats, nor as bad as the Sussex harvest-bugs; and, as yet, I never felt my self in more perfect health. There was a man once who fell from the top of a steeple, and perceiving no inconvenience in his passage through the air, " Come," said be to himself, while in the act of falling, " really this is well enough yet, if it would but

last." Cubina, my young Savannah la Mar acquaintance is appointed my black attendant; and as I had desired him to bring me any native flowers of Jamaica, this evening he brought me a very pretty one; the negroes, he said, called it " John-to-Heal," but in white language it was hoccoco-pickang; it proved to be the wild ipecacuanha.