the cross aisle, he was instantly, if not forcibly, removed.  Every opportunity was maliciously seized to taunt the colored people with their complexion.  A gentleman of the highest worth stated that several years ago he applied to the proper officer for a license to be married.  The license was accordingly made out and handed to him.  It was expressed in the following insulting style:  “T——­ H——­, F.M., is licensed to marry H——­ L——­, F.C.W.”  The initials F.M. stood for free mulatto, and F.C.W. for free colored woman!  The gentleman took his knife and cut out the initials; and was then threatened with a prosecution for forging his license.

[Footnote A:  Mr. London Bourne, the merchant mentioned in the previous chapter.]

It must be admitted that this cruel feeling still exists in Barbadoes.  Prejudice is the last viper of the slavery-gendered brood that dies.  But it is evidently growing weaker.  This the reader will infer from several facts already stated.  The colored people themselves are indulging sanguine hopes that prejudice will shortly die away.  They could discover a bending on the part of the whites, and an apparent readiness to concede much of the ground hitherto withheld.  They informed us that they had received intimations that they might be admitted as subscribers to the merchants’ exchange if they would apply; but they were in no hurry to make the advances themselves.  They felt assured that not only business equality, but social equality, would soon be theirs, and were waiting patiently for the course of events to bring them.  They have too much self-respect to sue for the consideration of their white neighbors, or to accept it as a condescension and favor, when by a little patience they might obtain it on more honorable terms.  It will doubtless be found in Barbadoes, as it has been in other countries—­and perchance to the mortification of some lordlings—­that freedom is a mighty leveller of human distinctions.  The pyramid of pride and prejudice which slavery had upreared there, must soon crumble in the dust.

Indolence and inefficiency among the whites, was another prominent feature in slaveholding Barbadoes.  Enterprise, public and personal, has long been a stranger to the island.  Internal improvements, such as the laying and repairing of roads, the erection of bridges, building wharves, piers, &c., were either wholly neglected, or conducted in such a listless manner as to be a burlesque on the name of business.  It was a standing task, requiring the combined energy of the island, to repair the damages of one hurricane before another came.  The following circumstance was told us, by one of the shrewdest observers of men and things with whom we met in Barbadoes.  On the southeastern coast of the island there is a low point running far out into the sea, endangering all vessels navigated by persons not well acquainted with the island.  Many vessels have been wrecked upon it in the attempt to make Bridgetown from the windward.