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Dear E——.  This is the fourth day that I have had a ‘gang’ of lads working in the woods for me after their task hours, for pay; you cannot think how zealous and energetic they are; I daresay the novelty of the process pleases them almost as much as the money they earn.  I must say they quite deserve their small wages.

Last night I received a present from Mrs. F——­ of a drum fish, which animal I had never beheld before, and which seemed to me first cousin to the great Leviathan.  It is to be eaten, and is certainly the biggest fish food I ever saw; however, everything is in proportion, and the prawns that came with it are upon a similarly extensive scale; this magnificent piscatorial bounty was accompanied by a profusion of Hamilton green peas, really a munificent supply.

I went out early after breakfast with Jack hunting for new paths; we rode all along the road by Jones’s Creek, and most beautiful it was.  We skirted the plantation burial ground, and a dismal place it looked; the cattle trampling over it in every direction—­except where Mr. K——­ had had an enclosure put up round the graves of two white men who had worked on the estate.  They were strangers, and of course utterly indifferent to the people here; but by virtue of their white skins, their resting-place was protected from the hoofs of the cattle, while the parents and children, wives, husbands, brothers and sisters, of the poor slaves, sleeping beside them, might see the graves of those they loved trampled upon and browsed over, desecrated and defiled, from morning till night.  There is something intolerably cruel in this disdainful denial of a common humanity pursuing these wretches even when they are hid beneath the earth.

The day was exquisitely beautiful, and I explored a new wood path, and found it all strewed with a lovely wild flower not much unlike a primrose.  I spent the afternoon at home.  I dread going out twice a-day now, on account of the heat and the sand flies.  While I was sitting by the window, Abraham, our cook, went by with some most revolting looking ‘raw material’ (part I think of the interior of the monstrous drum fish of which I have told you).  I asked him with considerable disgust what he was going to do with it, he replied, ‘Oh! we coloured people eat it, missis;’ said I, ’Why do you say we coloured people?’ ’Because, missis, white people won’t touch what we too glad of.’  ‘That,’ said I, ’is because you are poor, and do not often have meat to eat, not because you are coloured, Abraham; rich white folks will not touch what poor white folks are too glad of; it has nothing in the world to do with colour, and if there were white people here worse off than you (amazing and inconceivable suggestion, I fear), they would be glad to eat what you perhaps would not touch.’  Profound pause of meditation on the part of Abraham, wound up by a considerate ’Well, missis, I suppose so.’  After which he departed with the horrid looking offal.