FEBRUARY 11. (Sunday.)
I reached Cornwall about three o'clock, after an excursion
the most amusing and agreeable that I ever made in my life.
Almost every step of the road presented some new and striking
scene; and although we travelled at all hours, and with as little
circumspection as if we bad been in England, I never felt a
headache except for one half-hour. On my arrival, I found the
satisfactory intelligence usually communicated to West Indian
proprietors. My estate in the west is burnt up for want of
moisture ; and my estate in the east has been so completely
flooded, that I have lost a third of my crop. At Cornwall not
a drop of rain has fallen since the l6th of November. Not a
vestige of verdure is to be seen; and we begin to apprehend a
famine among the negroes in consequence of the drought destroying their
provision-grounds.
This alone is wanting to complete the dangerous state of the island; where
the higher classes
are all in the utmost alarm at rumours of Wilberforce's intentions,
to set the negroes entirely free; the next step to which would
be, in all probability, a general massacre of the whites, and a,
second edition of the bor rs of St Domingo : while, on the
other hand, the negroes are impatient at the delay ; and such disturbances
arose in St. Thomas's-in the-East, last Christmas, as
required the interposition of the magistrates. They say that the
negroes of that parish had taken it into their heads that the
regent and Wilberforce had actually determined upon setting
them all at liberty at once on the first day of the present year,
but that the interference of the island had defeated the plan.
Their discontent was most carefully and artfully fomented by
some brown Methodists, who held secret and nightly meetings
on the different estates, and did their best to mislead and bewilder these
poor creatures with their
fantastic and absurd
preaching. These fellows harp upon sin, and the devil, and hellfire
incessantly, and describe the
Almighty ans the Saviour as
being so terrible, that many of their proselytes cannot hear the
name of Christ without shuddering. ne poor negro, on one of
my own estates, told the overseer that he knew himself to be so
great a sinner that nothing could save him from the Devil's
clutches, even for a few hours, except singing hymns ; and he
kept singing so incessantly day and night, that at length terror
and want of sleep turned his brain, and the poor wretch dies
raving mad.
