his violent struggles enabled him to get one of his hands loose, which he put instantly to his back—­the driver stopped to retie him, and then proceeded to give the remaining four.  The struggles of the poor old man from the first lash bespoke the most extreme torture; and his cries were to me most distressing.  ’Oh! oh! mercy! mercy! mercy! oh! massa! massa! dat enough—­enough! oh, enough!  O, massa, have pity!  O, massa! massa! dat enough—­enough!  Oh, never do de like again—­only pity me—­forgive me dis once! oh! pity! mercy! mercy! oh! oh!’ were the cries he perpetually uttered.  I shall remember them while I live; and would not for ten thousand worlds have been the cause of producing them.  It was some minutes after he was loosed ere he could rise to his feet, and as he attempted to rise, he continued calling out, ’My back! oh! my back! my back is broken.’  A long time he remained half-doubled, the blood flowing round his body; ‘I serve my master,’ said the aged sufferer, ’at all times; get no Saturday, no Sunday; yet this is de way dem use me.’

With such planters, and such magistrates to play into their hands, is it to be wondered at that the apprentices do badly?  Enough has been said, we think, to satisfy any candid person as to the causes of the evils in Jamaica.  If any thing further were needed, we might speak of the peculiar facilities which these men have for perpetrating acts of cruelty and injustice.  The major part of the island is exceedingly mountainous, and a large portion of the sugar estates, and most of the coffee plantations, are among the mountains.  These estates are scattered over a wide extent of country, and separated by dense forests and mountains, which conceal each plantation from the public view almost as effectually as though it were the only property on the island.  The only mode of access to many of the estates in the mountainous districts, is by mule paths winding about, amid fastnesses, precipices, and frightful solitudes.  In those lone retirements, on the mountain top, or in the deep glen by the side of the rocky rivers, the traveller occasionally meets with an estate.  Strangers but rarely intrude upon those little domains.  They are left to the solitary sway of the overseers dwelling amid their “gangs,” and undisturbed, save by the weekly visitations of the special magistrates.  While the traveller is struck with the facilities for the perpetration of those enormities which must have existed there during slavery; he is painfully impressed also with the numerous opportunities which are still afforded for oppressing the apprentices, particularly where the special magistrates are not honest men.[A]

[Footnote A:  From the nature of the case, it must be impossible to know how much actual flogging is perpetrated by the overseers.  We might safely conjecture that there must be a vast deal of it that never comes to the light.  Such is the decided belief of many of the first men in the island.