instances, that the poor victims knew no more why they were punished than the dead in their graves.  The master would be a little ill—­he had taken a cold, perhaps, and felt irritable—­something were wrong—­his passion was up, and away went some poor fellow to the whipping post.  The slightest offence at such a moment, though it might have passed unnoticed at another time, would meet with the severest punishment.  He said he himself had more than once ordered his slaves to be flogged in a passion, and after he became cool he would have given guineas not to have done it.  Many a night had he been kept awake in thinking of some poor fellow whom he had shut up in the dungeon, and had rejoiced when daylight came.  He feared lest the slave might die before morning; either cut his throat or dash his head against the wall in his desperation.  He has known such cases to occur.

The apprenticeship will not have so beneficial an effect as he hoped it would, on account of an indisposition on the part of many of the planters to abide by its regulations.  The planters generally are doing very little to prepare the apprentices for freedom; but some are doing very much to unprepare them.  They are driving the people from them by their conduct.

Mr. C. said he often wished for emancipation.  There were several other planters among his acquaintance who had the same feelings, but did not dare express them.  Most of the planters, however, were violently opposed.  Many of them declared that emancipation could not and should not take place.  So obstinate were they, that they would have sworn on the 31st of July, 1831, that emancipation could not happen. These very men now see and acknowledge the benefits which have resulted from the new system.

The first of August passed off very quietly.  The people labored on that day as usual, and had a stranger gone over the island, he would not have suspected any change had taken place.  Mr. C. did not expect his people would go to work that day.  He told them what the conditions of the new system were, and that after the first of August, they would be required to turn out to work at six o’clock instead of five o’clock as before.  At the appointed hour every man was at his post in the field.  Not one individual was missing.

The apprentices do more work in the nine hours required by law, than in twelve hours during slavery.

His apprentices are perfectly willing to work for him during their own time.  He pays them at the rate of twenty-five cents a day.  The people are less quarrelsome than when they were slaves.

About eight o’clock in the evening, Mr. C. invited us to step out into the piazza.  Pointing to the houses of the laborers, which were crowded thickly together, and almost concealed by the cocoa-nut and calabash trees around them, he said, “there are probably more than four hundred people in that village.  All my own laborers, with their free children, are retired for the night, and with them