above a whisper from utter weakness and exhaustion,
told me she had had nine children, was suffering from incessant flooding,
and felt 'as if her back would split open.' There she lay, a mass of
filthy tatters, without so much as a blanket under or over her, on the
bare earth in this chilly darkness. I promised them help and comfort, beds
and blankets, and light and fire--that is, I promised to ask Mr. ---- for
all this for them; and, in the very act of doing so, I remembered with a
sudden pang of anguish, that I was to urge no more petitions for his
slaves to their master. I groped my way out, and emerging on the piazza,
all the choking tears and sobs I had controlled broke forth, and I leaned
there crying over the lot of these unfortunates, till I heard a feeble
voice of 'Missis, you no cry; missis, what for you cry?' and looking up,
saw that I had not yet done with this intolerable infliction. A poor
crippled old man, lying in the corner of the piazza, unable even to crawl
towards me, had uttered this word of consolation, and by his side
(apparently too idiotic, as he was too impotent, to move,) sat a young
woman, the expression of whose face was the most suffering and at the same
time the most horribly repulsive I ever saw. I found she was, as I
supposed, half-witted; and on coming nearer to enquire into her ailments
and what I could do for her, found her suffering from that horrible
disease--I believe some form of scrofula--to which the negroes are
subject, which attacks and eats away the joints of their hands and
fingers--a more hideous and loathsome object I never beheld; her name was
Patty, and she was grand-daughter to the old crippled creature by whose
side she was squatting.

I wandered home, stumbling with crying as I went, and feeling so utterly
miserable that I really hardly saw where I was going, for I as nearly as
possible fell over a great heap of oyster shells left in the middle of the
path. This is a horrid nuisance, which results from an indulgence which
the people here have and value highly; the waters round the island are
prolific in shell fish, oysters, and the most magnificent prawns I ever
saw. The former are a considerable article of the people's diet, and the
shells are allowed to accumulate, as they are used in the composition of
which their huts are built, and which is a sort of combination of mud and
broken oyster shells, which forms an agglomeration of a kind very solid
and durable for such