of every
slaveholder who hears them? Certainly the use that is second nature has
made the awful injustice in the daily practice of which these people live,
a thing of which they are as little aware as you or I of the atmospheric
air that we inhale each time we breathe. The bulk of the congregation in
this church was white. The negroes are, of course, not allowed to mix with
their masters in the house of God, and there is no special place set apart
for them. Occasionally one or two are to be seen in the corners of the
singing gallery, but any more open pollution by them of their owners'
church could not be tolerated. Mr. ----'s people have petitioned very
vehemently that he would build a church for them on the island. I doubt,
however, his allowing them such a luxury as a place of worship all to
themselves. Such a privilege might not be well thought of by the
neighbouring planters; indeed, it is almost what one might call a
whity-brown idea, dangerous, demoralising, inflammatory, incendiary. I
should not wonder if I should be suspected of being the chief corner-stone
of it, and yet I am not: it is an old hope and entreaty of these poor
people, which am afraid they are not destined to see fulfilled.

* * * * *

Dearest E----. Passing the rice-mill this morning in my walk, I went in to
look at the machinery, the large steam mortars which shell the rice, and
which work under the intelligent and reliable supervision of Engineer Ned.
I was much surprised, in the course of conversation with him this morning,
to find how much older a man he was than he appeared. Indeed his youthful
appearance had hitherto puzzled me much in accounting for his very
superior intelligence and the important duties confided to him. He is,
however, a man upwards of forty years old, although he looks ten years
younger. He attributed his own uncommonly youthful appearance to the fact
of his never having done what he called field work, or been exposed, as
the common gang negroes are, to the hardships of their all but brutish
existence. He said his former master had brought him up very kindly, and
he had learnt to tend the engines, and had never been put to any other
work, but he said this was not the case with his poor wife. He wished she
was as well off as he was, but she had to work in the rice-fields and was
'most broke in two' with labour and exposure and hard work while with
child, and hard work just directly after