whose crimson streamers fluttered against the deep blue sky. This place has a very parklike appearance, the grounds being chiefly pasture, intermixed with guinea grass, where herds of cattle and sheep, and numberless horses of a hardy breed, were browsing in pleasant confusion.

THE universal welcome awaited me at the house of Mr. Mathews, the proprietor of the pen and its cattle. If I had observed on other estates the bustle of sugar-making, I was no less struck with the tranquillity that prevailed here. The negroes have a comparatively idle life, being engaged in cleaning the guinea grass, or repairing the stone walls which divide the pastures. Two sorts of grass were pointed out to me, the pimento and the bahama; but, in cases of drought, the cattle are fed with the leaves of the breadnut-tree and the ramoon, as well as with those of the bascedar. If ever Jamaica were to be separated from the mother country, and the rage for sugar were annihilated by any circumstances of necessity, the whole island might form one large pen, of parks and corn

.

fields, so as to maintain an immense population. The resources of Jamaica, I am inclined to think, are very great; but of these hereafter.

This pen consists of eighteen hundred acres, five hundred of which are woods; there are one hundred and thirty slaves, and there are five hundred head of cattle on, it, including oxen, cows, mules, horses, hogs, and sheep, besides abundance of poultry. The negroes are here allowed to have as many hogs as they please, a privilege. they cannot enjoy on sugar estates, where the canes would tempt them into destruction; but they keep them there in styes, and feed them from the produce of their grounds. The negroes are also allowed on the sugar establishments to keep a cow each, if they please, but it more frequently happens they keep one among three or four persons: the offspring is generally sold to their master;> when a second calf is dropped, the first is sold at the price of a doubloon; or they may kill and sell the veal to others if they choose, first asking permission; a very necessary condition, or they might kill their master's calves without a possibility of discovery. A

similar system used to prevail in Sydney and Van Dieman's Land, and still prevails in the island of St. Helena, where no one can kill bullocks without permission; but the restriction there is to prevent famine. There are tanks here, sixty feet long by twenty wide, with running water.

Being the first day of the new year, another holiday is allowed to the negroes. They turned out a little after day-light to show themselves to the overseer, and were again dismissed to prepare for the festivities of the day, which belong to a contest kept up by two parties of the women. I very much suspect this is a remnant of the Adonia mentioned by Plutarch. Each party wears an appropriate colour, one red, the other blue, of the most expensive materials they can afford. They select two queens, the prettiest and best-shaped girls they can find, who are obliged to personate the royal characters, and support them to the best of their power and ideas. These are decorated with the ornaments, necklaces, earrings, bracelets, &c. of their mistresses, so that they often carry much wealth on their persons for the time. Each party has a procession (but not

so as to encounter each other) with silk flags and streamers, in which the queen is drawn in a phaeton, if such a carriage can be procured, or any four-wheeled vehicle which can pass for a triumphal car, that her person may be seen to the best advantage. Thus they parade the towns, priding themselves on the number of their followers, until the evening, when each party gives a splendid entertainment, at which every luxury and delicacy that money can procure are lavished in profusion. The only subject of contest or rivalship is the beauty of the

queen and the

finery of all the individuals. Mirth and good humour prevail throughout, and the evening is concluded with a ball.

As it was my business to see every thing that could interest me in Jamaica, I accompanied Mr. Mathews to the Bay, where one of these entertainments took place in the house of a free mulatto woman. The music consisted of three fiddles, a pipe and tabor, and a triangle. The dancers, male and female, acquitted themselves famously well, and performed country-dances and quadrilles quite as well, if not better, than I had ever seen at a country ball in England. Most of