state of Amity Hall. On entering the residence of the manager, Mr.
Kirkland, we were most gratefully surprised to find him engaged in
family prayers. It was the first time and the last that we heard the
voice of prayer in a Jamaican planter's house. We were no less
gratefully surprised to see a white lady, to whom we were introduced as
Mrs. Kirkland, and several modest and lovely little children. It was the
first and the last _family circle_ that we were permitted to see among
the planters of that licentious colony. The motley group of colored
children--of every age from tender infancy--which we found on other
estates, revealed the state of domestic manners among the planters.

Mr. K. regarded the abolition of slavery as a great blessing to the
colony; it was true that the apprenticeship was a wretchedly bad system,
but notwithstanding, things moved smoothly on his estate. He informed us
that the negroes on Amity Hall had formerly borne the character of being
the _worst gang in the parish_; and when he first came to the estate, he
found that half the truth had not been told of them; but they had become
remarkably peaceable and subordinate. It was his policy to give them
every comfort that he possibly could. Mr. K. made the same declaration,
which has been so often repeated in the course of this narrative, i.e.,
that if any of the estates were abandoned, it would be owing to the
harsh treatment of the people. He knew many overseers and book-keepers
who were cruel driving men, and he should not be surprised if _they_
lost a part, or all, of their laborers. He made one remark which we had
not heard before. There were some estates, he said, which would probably
be abandoned, for the same reason that they ought never to have been
cultivated, because they require _almost double labor_;--such are the
mountainous estates and barren, worn-out properties, which nothing but a
system of forced labor could possibly retain in cultivation. But the
idea that the negroes generally would leave their comfortable homes, and
various privileges on the estates, and retire to the wild woods, he
ridiculed as preposterous in the extreme. Mr. K. declared repeatedly
that he could not look forward to 1840, but with the most sanguine
hopes; he confidently believed that the introduction of complete freedom
would be the _regeneration of the island_. He alluded to the memorable
declaration of Lord Belmore, (made memorable by the excitement which it
caus