9.  The apprentices understand the great provisions of the new system, such as the number of hours they must work for their master, and that their masters have no right to flog them, &c., but its details are inexplicable mysteries.  The masters have done much injury by deceiving them on points of which they were ignorant.

10.  The apprentices almost to a man are ready to work for wages during their own time.  When the overseer is severe towards them, they prefer working on other plantations, even for less wages, as is very natural.

11.  Almost all the evils of the apprenticeship arise from the obstinacy and oppressive conduct of the overseers.  They are constantly taking advantage of the defects of the system, which are many, and while they demand to the last grain’s weight “the pound of flesh,” they are utterly unwilling to yield the requirements which the law makes of them.  Where you find an overseer endeavoring in every way to overreach the apprentices, taking away the privileges which they enjoyed during slavery, and exacting from them the utmost minute and mite of labor, there you will find abundant complaints both against the master and the apprentice.  And the reverse.  The cruel overseers are complaining of idleness, insubordination, and ruin, while the kind master is moving on peaceably and prosperously.

12.  The domestic apprentices have either one day, or fifty cents cash, each week, as an allowance for food and clothing.  This is quite insufficient.  Many of the females seem obliged to resort to theft or to prostitution to obtain a support.  Two girls were brought before Mr. Hill while we were with him, charged with neglect of duty and night-walking.  One of them said her allowance was too small, and she must get food in some other way or starve.

13.  The apprentices on many plantations have been deprived of several privileges which they enjoyed under the old system.  Nurseries have been abolished, water-carriers have been taken away, keeping stock is restricted, if not entirely forbidden, watchmen are no longer provided to guard the negro grounds, &c.—­petty aggressions in our eyes, perhaps, but severe to them.  Another instance is still more hard.  By the custom of slavery, women who had reared up seven children were permitted to “sit down,” as it was termed; that is, were not obliged to go into the field to work.  Now no such distinction is made, but all are driven into the field.

14.  One reason why the crops were smaller in 1835 and 1836 than in former years, was, that the planters in the preceding seasons, either fearful that the negroes would not take off the crops after emancipation, and acting on their baseless predictions instead of facts, or determined to make the results of emancipation appear as disastrous as possible, neglected to put in the usual amount of cane, and to clean the coffee fields.  As they refused to sow, of course they could not reap.