the island to-day, he had no
doubt that, within a week, he could procure free laborers enough to
cultivate every acre.

On one occasion, while among the mountains, we were impressed on a jury
to sit in inquest on the body of a negro woman found dead on the high
road. She was, as appeared in evidence, on her return from the house of
correction, at Half-Way-Tree, where she had been sentenced for fourteen
days, and been put on the treadmill. She had complained to some of her
acquaintances of harsh treatment there, and said they had killed her,
and that if she ever lived to reach home, she should tell all her
massa's negroes never to cross the threshold of Half-Way-Tree, as it
would kill them. The evidence, however, was not clear that she died in
consequence of such treatment, and the jury, accordingly, decided that
she came to her death by some cause unknown to them.

Nine of the jury were overseers, and if they, collected together
indiscriminately on this occasion, were a specimen of those who have
charge of the apprentices in this island, they must be most degraded and
brutal men. They appeared more under the influence of low passions, more
degraded by sensuality, and but little more intelligent, than the
negroes themselves. Instead of possessing irresponsible power over their
fellows, they ought themselves to be under the power of the most strict
and energetic laws. Our visits to the plantations, and inquiries on this
point, confirmed this opinion. They are the 'feculum' of European
society--ignorant, passionate, licentious. We do them no injustice when
we say this, nor when we further add, that the apprentices suffer in a
hundred ways which the law cannot reach, gross insults and oppression
from their excessive rapaciousness and lust. What must it have been
during slavery?

We had some conversation with Cheny Hamilton, Esq., one of the special
magistrates for Port Royal. He is a colored man, and has held his office
about eighteen months. There are three thousand apprentices in his
district, which embraces sugar and coffee estates. The complaints are
few and of a very trivial nature. They mostly originate with the
planters. Most of the cases brought before him are for petty theft and
absence from work.

In his district, cultivation was never better. The negroes are willing
to work during their own time. His father-in-law is clearing up some
mountain land for a coffee plantation, by the labor of apprentices from
ne