stature, as she cumbered the earth, must have been, I should think, five feet seven or eight, and her bulk enormous.  She was wrapped in filthy rags, and lay with her face on the floor.  As I approached, and stooped to see what ailed her, she suddenly threw out her arms, and, seized with violent convulsions, rolled over and over upon the floor, beating her head violently upon the ground, and throwing her enormous limbs about in a horrible manner.  Immediately upon the occurrence of this fit, four or five women threw themselves literally upon her, and held her down by main force; they even proceeded to bind her legs and arms together, to prevent her dashing herself about; but this violent coercion and tight bandaging seemed to me, in my profound ignorance, more likely to increase her illness, by impeding her breathing, and the circulation of her blood, and I bade them desist, and unfasten all the strings and ligatures, not only that they had put round her limbs, but which, by tightening her clothes round her body, caused any obstruction.  How much I wished that, instead of music and dancing and such stuff, I had learned something of sickness and health, of the conditions and liabilities of the human body, that I might have known how to assist this poor creature, and to direct her ignorant and helpless nurses!  The fit presently subsided, and was succeeded by the most deplorable prostration and weakness of nerves, the tears streaming down the poor woman’s cheeks in showers, without, however, her uttering a single word, though she moaned incessantly.  After bathing her forehead, hands, and chest with vinegar, we raised her up, and I sent to the house for a chair with a back (there was no such thing in the hospital,) and we contrived to place her in it.  I have seldom seen finer women than this poor creature and her younger sister, an immense strapping lass, called Chloe—­tall, straight, and extremely well made—­who was assisting her sister, and whom I had remarked, for the extreme delight and merriment which my cleansing propensities seemed to give her, on my last visit to the hospital.  She was here taking care of a sick baby, and helping to nurse her sister Molly, who, it seems, is subject to those fits, about which I spoke to our physician here—­an intelligent man, residing in Darien, who visits the estate whenever medical assistance is required.  He seemed to attribute them to nervous disorder, brought on by frequent child bearing.  This woman is young, I suppose at the outside not thirty, and her sister informed me that she had had ten children—­ten children, E——!  Fits and hard labour in the fields, unpaid labour, labour exacted with stripes—­how do you fancy that?  I wonder if my mere narration can make your blood boil, as the facts did mine?  Among the patients in this room was a young girl, apparently from fourteen to fifteen, whose hands and feet were literally rotting away piecemeal, from the effect of a horrible disease, to which the negroes are subject here, and I believe