University of Virginia Library

FEBRUARY 6.

The Jamaica canoes are hollowed cotton-trees. We embarked in one of them at six in the morning, and visited the ruins of Port Royal, which, last year, was destroyed by fire. Some of the houses were rebuilding ; but it was a melancholy sight, not only from the look of the half-burnt buildings, but the dejected countenances of the ruined inhabitants. I returned to breakfast with the rector and two other ecclesiastical commissaries ; had more conversation about their proposed plan, and became still more convinced of the difficulty of doing anything effectual without danger to the island and to the negroes themselves, and of the extreme delicacy requisite in whatever may be attempted. We afterwards visited the school of the children of the poor, who are educating upon Dr. Bell's system; and then saw the church, a very large and handsome one on the inside, but mean enough as to its exterior. I was shown the tombstone of Admiral Ben bow, who was killed in a naval engagement, and whose ship afterwards

admiral's Homer informs us.

The church is a large one, but it is going to be still further extended ; the negroes in Kingston and its neighbourhood being (as the rector assured me) so anxious to obtain religious instruction, that on Sundays not only the church but the churchyard that it is so completely thronged with them as to make it difficult to traverse the crowd ; and those who are fortunate enough to obtain seats for the morning service never stir out of the church during the whole day, through fear of being excluded from that

of the evening. They also flock to be baptized in great numbers, and many have lately come to be married; and their burials and christenings are performed with great pomp and solemnity.

One of the most intelligent of the negroes with whom I have yet conversed, was the coxswain of my Port Royal canoe. I asked him whether he had been christened? He answered, no; be did not yet think himself good enough, but he hoped to be so in time. Nor was he married; for he was still young, and afraid that he could not break off his bad habits, and be contented to live with no other woman than his wife; and so he thought it better not to become a Christian till he could feel certain of performing the duties of one. However, he said, he had at least cured himself of one bad custom, and never worked upon Sundays, except on some very urgent necessity. I asked what he did on Sundays, instead: did he go to church ?-No. Or employ himself in learning to read ?-Oh, no : though he thought being able to read was a great virtue (which was his constant expression for anything right, pleasant, or profitable) ; but he had no leisure to learn on week-days; and, as he had heard the parson say that Sunday ought to be a day of rest, he made a point of doing nothing at all on that day. He praised his former master, of whose son he was now the property ; and said that neither of them had ever occasion to lay a finger on him. He worked as a waterman, and paid his master ten shillings a-week, the rest of his earnings being his own profits; and when he owed wages for three months, if he brought two his master would always give him time for the remainder, and that in so kind a manner that he always fretted himself to think that so kind a master should wait for his rights, and worked twice as hard till the debt was discharged. He said that kindness was the only way to make good negroes ; and that, if that failed, flogging would never succeed : and he advised me, when I found a negro worthless, " to sell him at once, and not stay to flog him, and so, by spoiling his appearance, make him sell for less ; for blacks must not be treated now, massa, as they used to be ; they can think, and hear, and see, as well as white people : blacks are wiser, massa, than they were, and will soon be still wiser," I thought the fellow himself was a good proof of is assertion.

I left Kingston at two o'clock, in defiance of a broiling sun; reached Spanish Town in time to dine with the Attorney-General, and went afterwards to the play, where I found my acquaintance Mr. Hill, of Covent Garden Theatre. The theatre is neat enough; as to the performance, it was about equal to any provincial theatricals that I ever saw in England although the pieces represented were by no means well selected, being entirely musical , and the orchestra consisting of nothing more than a couple of fiddles.