The sun was just rising as we left Kingston, and entered the high road.  The air, which the day before had been painfully hot and stived, was cool and fresh, and from flowers and spice-trees, on which the dew still lay, went forth a thousand fragrant exhalations.  Our course for about six miles, lay over the broad, low plain, which spreads around Kingston, westward to the highlands of St. Andrews, and southward beyond Spanishtown.  All along the road, and in various directions in the distance, were seen the residences—­uncouthly termed ’pens’—­of merchants and gentlemen of wealth, whose business frequently calls them to town.  Unlike Barbadoes, the fields here were protected by walls and hedges, with broad gateways and avenues leading to the house.  We soon began to meet here and there, at intervals, person going to the market with fruits and provisions.  The number continually increased, and at the end of an hour, they could be seen trudging over the fields, and along the by-paths and roads, on every hand.  Some had a couple of stunted donkeys yoked to a ricketty cart,—­others had mules with pack-saddles—­but the many loaded their own heads, instead of the donkeys and mules.  Most of them were well dressed, and all civil and respectful in their conduct.

Invigorated by the mountain air, and animated by the novelty and grandeur of the mountain scenery, through which we had passed, we arrived at ‘Grecian Regale’ in season for an early West Indian breakfast, (8 o’clock.) Mr. Bourne’s district is entirely composed of coffee plantations, and embraces three thousand apprentices.  The people on coffee plantations are not worked so hard as those employed on sugar estates; but they are more liable to suffer from insufficient food and clothing.

After breakfast we accompanied Mr. Bourne on a visit to the plantations, but there were no complaints either from the master or apprentice, except on one.  Here Mr. B. was hailed by a hoary-headed man, sitting at the side of his house.  He said that he was lame and sick, and could not work, and complained that his master did not give him any food.  All he had to eat was given him by a relative.  As the master was not at home, Mr. B. could not attend to the complaint at that time, but promised to write the master about it in the course of the day.  He informed us that the aged and disabled were very much neglected under the apprenticeship.  When the working days are over, the profit days are over, and how few in any country are willing to support an animal which is past labor?  If these complaints are numerous under the new system, when magistrates are all abroad to remedy them, what must it have been during slavery, when master and magistrate were the same!

On one of the plantations we called at the house of an emigrant, of which some hundreds have been imported from different parts of Europe, since emancipation.  He had been in the island eighteen months, and was much dissatisfied with his situation.  The experiment of importing whites to Jamaica as laborers, has proved disastrous—­an unfortunate speculation to all parties, and all parties wish them back again.