attended to him. Except to deck himself with finery, he had no use for
money; a few would work overtime when they wanted something of that
sort, but the majority did as little as possible.

[Illustration: THE FIRST OF AUGUST.

(_From Madden's "West Indies."_)]

In 1838, when the house servants were to be freed, while the predials
must serve two years longer, the difficulties of such an arrangement
became insurmountable. A daughter or wife might be entirely free, and
the father or husband an "apprentice." Then came the difficulty of
classification, which the commissioners appointed to arrange the
divisions necessarily decided against the opinion of one or the other
disputant, driving him to appeal. All this rendered a continuance of the
system impossible, and slavery was terminated altogether on the 1st of
August, 1838, the planters receiving from the British people twenty
millions sterling as compensation, being about one-third of the
estimated value of the slaves.

The French had received such a lesson from the revolt of Hayti that
they did little for their negroes. However, after the downfall of Louis
Philippe in 1848, the revolutionary Government abolished slavery
throughout the colonies, without compensation.

[Illustration: A RELIC OF THE SLAVERY DAYS--OLD SLAVE BUYING FISH.]

After freedom had been secured in the British colonies the slaves in
neighbouring places naturally became discontented. There were not many
desertions from the islands, but in Guiana, where the Dutch negroes were
slaves on one side of the river Corentyne, and the British free on the
other, the runaways from the former caused a great deal of trouble to
the Dutch. Whenever an opportunity occurred, a party of slaves stole a
boat and made off to the British side, until the Surinam planters became
much alarmed. Ultimately a Dutch gunboat was stationed at the boundary
river, and this put an end to the migration.

Some of the islands were much affected, especially those of the Danes,
which were frequented by British vessels, and were largely English in
their sympathies. Here the negroes soon learnt what had happened, and
began to express dissatisfaction with their own position. However,
Denmark saw that something had to be done, and in 1847 enacted laws for
gradual emancipation in her islands. From the 28th of July of that year
all children born of slaves were to be free, and at the end of twelve
years from that time slavery was to cease alt