lowed him, is not
idle. He is busy cultivating the little lot of ground granted
him, while his wife (if he has one) is preparing food for him and
their children. For it is observable that in this colony, the
children of the slaves are not nourished by their masters, as
they are at the Antilles; their parents are charged with them,
and allowed half a ration more for every child, commencing from
the epoch when it is weaned.

Retired at night to their huts, after having made a frugal meal,
they forget their labors in the arms of their mistresses. But
those who cannot obtain women (for there is a great disproportion
between the numbers of the two sexes) traverse the woods in
search of adventures, and often encounter those of an unpleasant
nature. They frequently meet a patrole of the whites, who tie
them up and flog them, and then send them home.

They are very fond of tobacco; they both smoke and chew it with
great relish.

Nothing can be more simple than the burial of a slave; he is put
into the plainest coffin, knocked together by a carpenter of his
own colour, and carried unattended by mourners to the
neighbouring grave-field. The most absolute democracy, however,
reigns there; the planter and slave, confounded with one another,
rot in conjunction. _Under ground precedency is all a jest!_

"Imperial Caesar dead, and turned to clay,
"May stop some hole to keep the wind away!"--Pope.

Death is not so terrible in aspect to these negroes as to the
whites. In fact death itself is not so formidable to any man as
the pageantry with which it is set forth. It is not death that is
so terrible, but the cries of mothers, wives and children, the
visits of astonished and afflicted friends, pale and blubbering
servants, a dark room set round with burning tapers, our beds
surrounded with physicians and divines. These, and not death
itself, affright the minds of the beholders, and make that appear
so dreadful with which armies, who have an opportunity of being
thoroughly acquainted and often seeing him without any of these
black and dismal disguises, converse familiarly, and meet with
mirth and gaiety.

The only cloathing of a slave is a simple woollen garment; it is
given to them at the beginning of winter. And will it be
believed, that t