, and begged that they
might be allowed to have a meeting in the chapel at sunrise. It is the
usual practice among the Moravians to hold but one sunrise meeting
during the year, and that is on the morning of Easter: but as the people
besought very earnestly for this special favor on the Easter morning of
their freedom, it was granted to them.

Early in the morning they assembled at the chapel. For some time they
sat in perfect silence. The missionary then proposed that they should
kneel down and sing. The whole audience fell upon their knees, and sung
a hymn commencing with the following verse:

"Now let us praise the Lord,
With body, soul and spirit,
Who doth such wondrous things,
Beyond our sense and merit."

The singing was frequently interrupted with the tears and sobbings of
the melted people, until finally it was wholly arrested, and a tumult of
emotion overwhelmed the congregation.

During the day, repeated meetings were held. At eleven o'clock, the
people assembled in vast numbers. There were at least a _thousand_
persons around the chapel, who could not get in. For once the house of
God suffered violence, and the violent took it by force. After all the
services of the day, the people went again to the missionaries in a
body, and petitioned to have a meeting in the evening.

At Grace Bay, the people, all dressed in white, assembled in a spacious
court in front of the Moravian chapel. They formed a procession and
walked arm in arm into the chapel. Similar scenes occurred at all the
chapels and at the churches also. We were told by the missionaries that
the dress of the negroes on that occasion was uncommonly simple and
modest. There was not the least disposition of gaiety.

We were also informed by planters and missionaries in every part of the
island, that there was not a single dance known of, either day or night,
nor so much as a fiddle played. There were no riotous assemblies, no
drunken carousals. It was not in such channels that the excitement of
the emancipated flowed. They were as far from dissipation and
debauchery, as they were from violence and carnage. GRATITUDE was the
absorbing emotion. From the hill-tops, and the valleys, the cry of a
disenthralled people went upward like the sound of many waters, "Glory
to God, glory to God."

The testimony of the planters corresponds fully with that of the
missionaries.

Said R.B. Eldridge, Esq., after speaking of the number emancipated, "Y