pony carriages;
a lady made tea under the trees; they had amusements and pleasant
society which cost nothing. They were not rich; but they were courteous,
simple, frank, and cordial.

Mandeville is the centre of a district which all resembles it in
character and extends for many miles. It is famous for its cattle as
well as for its fruit, and has excellent grazing grounds. Mr. ----, an
officer of police, took me round with him one morning. It was the old
story. Though there were still a few white proprietors left, they were
growing fewer, and the blacks were multiplying upon them. The smoke of
their clearances showed where they were at work. Many of them are
becoming well-to-do. We met them on the roads with their carts and
mules; the young ones armed, too, in some instances with good
double-barrelled muzzle-loaders. There is no game to shoot, but to have
a gun raises them in their own estimation, and they like to be prepared
for contingencies. Mr. ---- had a troublesome place of it. The negro
peasantry were good-humoured, he said, but not universally honest. They
stole cattle, and would not give evidence against each other. If brought
into court, they held a pebble in their mouths, being under the
impression that when they were so provided perjury did not count. Their
education was only skin-deep, and the schools which the Government
provided had not touched their characters at all. Mr. ----'s duties
brought him in contact with the unfavourable specimens. I received a far
pleasanter impression from a Moravian minister, who called on me with a
friend who had lately taken a farm. I was particularly glad to see this
gentleman, for of the Moravians everyone had spoken well to me. He was
not the least enthusiastic about his poor black sheep, but he said that,
if they were not better than the average English labourers, he did not
think them worse. They were called idle. They would work well enough if
they had fair wages, and if the wages were paid regularly; but what
could be expected when women servants had but three shillings a week and
'found themselves,' when the men had but a shilling a day and the pay
was kept in arrear, in order that, if they came late to work, or if they
came irregularly, it might be kept back or cut down to what the employer
chose to give? Under such conditions any man of any colour would prefer
to work for himself if he had a garden, or would be idle if he had none.
'Living' costs next to nothing