Our informant mentioned two circumstances which he considered remarkable.  One was, that the insurgents never touched the property of the estates to which they severally belonged; but went to the neighboring or more distant estates.  The other was, that during the whole insurrection the negroes did not make a single attempt to destroy life.  On the other hand, the sacrifice of negroes during the rebellion, and subsequent to it, was appalling.  It was a long time before the white man’s thirst for blood could be satiated.

No general insurrection occurred after this one.  However, as late as 1823, the proprietor of Mount Wilton—­the noblest estate in the island—­was murdered by his slaves in a most horrid manner.  A number of men entered his bed-chamber at night.  He awoke ere they reached him, and grasped his sword, which always hung by his bed, but it was wrested from his hand, and he was mangled and killed.  His death was caused by his cruelties, and especially by his extreme licentiousness.  All the females on this estate were made successively the victims of his lust.  This, together with his cruelties, so incensed the men, that they determined to murder the wretch.  Several of them were publicly executed.

Next to the actual occurrence of rebellions, the fear of them deserves to be enumerated among the evils which slavery entailed upon Barbadoes.  The dread of hurricanes to the people of Barbadoes is tolerable in comparison with the irrepressible apprehensions of bloody rebellions.  A planter told us that he seldom went to bed without thinking he might be murdered before morning.

But now the whites are satisfied that slavery was the sole instigator of rebellions, and since its removal they have no fear on this score.

Licentiousness was another of the fruits of slavery.  It will be difficult to give to the reader a proper conception of the prevalence of this vice in Barbadoes, and of the consequent demoralization.  A numerous colored population were both the offspring and the victims of it.  On a very moderate calculation, nineteen-twentieths of the present adult colored race are illegitimate.  Concubinage was practised among the highest classes.  Young merchants and others who were unmarried, on first going to the island, regularly engaged colored females to live with them as housekeepers and mistresses, and it was not unusual for a man to have more than one.  The children of these connections usually sat with the mothers at the father’s table, though when the gentlemen had company, neither mothers nor children made their appearance.  To such conduct no disgrace was attached, nor was any shame felt by either party.  We were assured that there are in Bridgetown, colored ladies of “respectability,” who, though never married, have large families of children whose different surnames indicate their difference of parentage, but who probably do not know their fathers by any other