University of Virginia Library

FEBRUARY 5.

The chief justice went with me to Kingston, where I had appointed the agent for my other estate in St. Thomas's-in-the-East to meet me. The short time allotted for my stay in the island makes it impossible to attend properly both to this estate and to Cornwall at this first visit, and therefore I determined to confine my attention to the negroes on the latter estate till my return to Jamaica. I now contented myself by impressing on the mind my agent (who I am certain is a most humane and intelligent man), my extreme anxiety for the abolition of the cart-whip; and I had the satisfaction of hearing from him, that for a long time it had never been used, more than perhaps twice in the year and then only very slightly, and for, some offence so flaggrant that it was impossible tp pass over it ; and he assured me that whenever I visit Hordley I may depend upon its not being employed at all. on the other hand, I am told that a gentleman of the parish of Vere, who came over to Jamaica for the sole

purpose of ameliorating the condition of his negroes, after abolishing the cart.-whip, has at length been constrained to resume occasional use of it because he found it utterly impossible to keep them in any sort of subordination without it.

There is not here that air of melancholy which pervades Spanish Town, but the place has no pretensions to beauty; and if any person will imagine a large town entirely composed of booths at a race-course, and the streets merely roads, without any sort of paving, he will have a perfect idea of Kingston.