Such is a rapid sketch of the various topics touched upon during our interview with Mr. C. and his family.

Before we left the hospitable mansion of Lear’s, we had the pleasure of meeting a company of gentlemen at dinner.  With the exception of one, who was provost-marshal, they were merchants of Bridgetown.  These gentlemen expressed their full concurrence in the statements of Mr. C., and gave additional testimony equally valuable.

Mr. W., the provost-marshal, stated that he had the supervision of the public jail, and enjoyed the best opportunity of knowing the state of crime, and he was confident that there was a less amount of crime since emancipation than before.  He also spoke of the increasing attention which the negroes paid to neatness of dress and personal appearance.

The company broke up about nine o’clock, but not until we had seen ample evidence of the friendly feelings of all the gentlemen toward our object.  There was not a single dissenting voice to any of the statements made, or any of the sentiments expressed.  This fact shows that the prevailing feeling is in favor of freedom, and that too on the score of policy and self-interest.

Dinner parties are in one sense a very safe pulse in all matters of general interest.  They rarely beat faster than the heart of the community.  No subject is likely to be introduced amid the festivities of a fashionable circle, until it is fully endorsed by public sentiment.

Through the urgency of Mr. C., we were induced to remain all night.  Early the next morning, he proposed a ride before breakfast to Scotland.  Scotland is the name given to an abrupt, hilly section, in the north of the island.  It is about five miles from Mr. C.’s, and nine from Bridgetown.  In approaching, the prospect bursts suddenly upon the eye, extorting an involuntary exclamation of surprise.  After riding for miles, through a country which gradually swells into slight elevations, or sweeps away in rolling plains, covered with cane, yams, potatoes, eddoes, corn, and grass, alternately, and laid out with the regularity of a garden; after admiring the cultivation, beauty, and skill exhibited on every hand, until almost wearied with viewing the creations of art; the eye at once falls upon a scene in which is crowded all the wildness and abruptness of nature in one of her most freakish moods—­a scene which seems to defy the hand of cultivation and the graces of art.  We ascended a hill on the border of this section, which afforded us a complete view.  To describe it in one sentence, it is an immense basin, from two to three miles in diameter at the top, the edges of which are composed of ragged hills, and the sides and bottom of which are diversified with myriads of little hillocks and corresponding indentations.  Here and there is a small sugar estate in the bottom, and cultivation extends some distance up the sides, though this is at considerable risk, for not infrequently, large tracts of soil, covered with cane or provisions, slide down, over-spreading the crops below, and destroying those which they carry with them.