n then had
seen what was probably coming. But I could not accept entirely all that
Mr. ---- had been saying, and had to discount the natural irritation of
a man who sees his fortune sliding out of his hands. Moreover, for
myself, I never listen much to a desponding person. Even when a cause is
lost utterly, and no rational hope remains, I would still go down, if it
had to be so, with my spirit unbroken and my face to the enemy. Mr. ----
perhaps would recover heart if the price of sugar mended a little. For
my own part, I do not care much whether it mends or not. The economics
of the islands ought not to depend exclusively on any single article of
produce. I believe, too, in spite of gloomy prognostics, that a loyal
and prosperous Jamaica is still among the possibilities of the future,
if we will but study in earnest the character of the problem. Mr. ----,
however, did most really convey to me the convictions of a large and
influential body of West Indians--convictions on which they are already
acting, and will act more and more. With Hayti so close, and with
opinion in England indifferent to what becomes of them, they will clear
out while they have something left to lose, and will not wait till ruin
is upon them or till they are ordered off the land by a black
legislature. There is a saying in Hayti that the white man has no
rights which the blacks are bound to recognise.

I walked forward after we had done talking. We had five hundred of the
poor creatures on board on their way to the Darien pandemonium. The
vessel was rolling with a heavy beam sea. I found the whole mass of them
reduced into the condition of the pigs who used to occupy the foredeck
in the Cork and Bristol packets. They were lying in a confused heap
together, helpless, miserable, without consciousness apparently, save a
sense in each that he was wretched. Unfortunate brothers-in-law!
following the laws of political economy, and carrying their labour to
the dearest market, where, before a year was out, half of them were to
die. They had souls, too, some of them, and honest and kindly hearts. I
observed one man who was suffering less than the rest reading aloud to a
prostrate group a chapter of the New Testament; another was reading to
himself a French Catholic book of devotion.

The dawn was breaking in the east when I came on deck in the morning.
The Blue Mountains were hanging over us on our right hand, the peaks
buried in white mist which the unrise