hope of the colony lay in the education and mental elevation of
its negro population to the standard of the people at home. I have been
informed that the latter part of his life was, like that of many of the
Jamaica planters in their altered circumstances, pretty much a struggle;
and his health at length breaking down, in a climate little favourable
to Europeans, he died about three years ago--with the exception of my
friend of the Doocot Cave, now Free Church minister of Nigg, the last of
my Marcus' Cave companions. Their remains lie scattered over half the
globe.

I closed my connexion with the bank at the termination of its financial
year; gave a few weeks very sedulously to geology, during which I was
fortunate enough to find specimens on which Agassiz has founded two of
his fossil species; got, at parting, an elegant breakfast-service of
plate from a kind and numerous circle of friends, of all shades of
politics and both sides of the Church; and was entertained at a public
dinner, at which I attempted a speech, that got on but indifferently,
though it looked quite well enough in my friend Mr. Carruthers' report,
and which was, I suppose, in some sort apologized for by the fiddlers,
who struck up at its close, "A man's a man for a' that." It was, I felt,
not the least gratifying part of the entertainment, that old Uncle Sandy
was present, and that his health was cordially drunk by the company in
the recognised character of my best and earliest friend. And then,
taking leave of my mother and uncle, of my respected minister, and my
honoured superior in the bank, Mr. Ross, I set out for Edinburgh, and in
a few days after was seated at the editorial desk--a point at which, for
the present, the story of my education must terminate. I wrote for my
paper during the first twelvemonth a series of geological chapters,
which were fortunate enough to attract the notice of the geologists of
the British Association, assembled that year at Glasgow, and which, in
the collected form, compose my little work on the Old Red Sandstone. The
paper itself rose rapidly in circulation, till it ultimately attained to
its place among what are known as our first-class Scottish newspapers;
and of its subscribers, perhaps a more considerable proportion of the
whole are men who have received a university education, than can be
reckoned by any other Scotch journal of the same number of readers. And
during the course of the first three years, my empl