is conducted by a colored man, and what is more, as well conducted as any other in the West Indies. Their oaths as witnesses they have long possessed. I believe, but I am not certain, that they vote indiscriminately with the whites in the election of members for the General Assembly. I received the Sacrament myself after a black woman, and the odious custom of burying them and the slaves in a detached piece of ground is not common, and where it did exist a little while ago, I believe it has been since abolished at the earnest instances of the worthy Bishop.

The Moravians are numerous and have many establishments in the island. They labour in stillness, as they say of themselves, and are, I really believe, a good and innoxious class of people; at the same time the United Brethren near St. Mary, Cayonne, ought to look more sharply after the manners of their females. There were ten or a dozen mulatto women entirely undressed and washing their clothes in a brook of water not twenty yards from the high road in this parish. Whether from innocence or impudence I cannot say, but certainly they paid no more attention to our party than if we had been so many posts. However, this is a solitary instance in my experience of the West Indies.

The same practice of paying the clergyman in sugar has hitherto prevailed here as in Nevis, but I hope it is now or will be shortly aban

doned for a more decent and effectual stipend. The sincere and active minister of the Gospel in the West Indies is a most meritorious man; he is the living source of intelligence and good order to every class of people in his neighbour. hood, and to him, animated and strengthened, as he now is, by the exhortations, example, and protection of the Bishop of the diocese, do I principally look for a substantial advancement in the morals, knowledge, and relative behaviour of white and coloured, of bond and free. The planter is as much interested in the abilities and virtues of the minister of his parish as his own slaves can possibly be; and it does really become him now to give up that petty tyranny, which has been hitherto exercised over the colonial clergymen, and to rescue them from that dependence on vestries*, churchwardens and others, which is destructive of the utility of one party, and degrading to the character of both. The money which is spent in the liberal maintenance of a competent number of well-educated ministers in each island is money laid out to great advantage; the secu rity is good, and the returns will be a hundredfold.

The first night of being in St. Kitt's I lodged at a place called the Camp, and slept for half an hour in a bed without a curtain. In this

*It is much to the credit of Jamaica that this object has been effected by a recent Act of the Legislature in that island.

space of time I was bitten almost into a fever by mosquitos of prodigious size and famished ferocity. The air was impregnated with these infernal animals, and a white servant, who slept on the stairs outside my room, awoke in the morning with both his eyes almost sewed up. Colonel Maxwell was merciful enough to give me a bed in his house for the rest of my stay, but I did not recover from the effects of this unparalleled attack of Beelzebub for a week.

There is a spot on the side of a hill, the name of which I forget, in returning from St. Mary Cayonne, from which the vale of Basseterre may be viewed with the greatest advantage. I think there is no place on earth which can surpass the richness and cultivated beauty of this lovely scene. Nothing can be better disposed for completing the effect than the plantations are; the tall and moving windmills, the houses of the proprietors, the works and palm-thatched cottages of the negros embosomed in plantains, present the appearance, as indeed they are the substance, of so many country villages in England. On one side is Basseterre with the ships, on the other the ocean to windward, the mountains behind, in front the broken and peninsular termination of the island to the south, the salt lakes gleaming between the opening of the rocks, and Nevis towering majestically over all.

I agree with Don Christoval,-this island does deserve to bear the name of as great a

man as ever the old world had reason to be proud of. If he considered it so beautiful ere the hand of human industry had levelled the thickets and cast seed into the soil, what would the Admiral say of his namesake now, when, with all its natural charms undiminished, it is breathing, as I verily believe, with a contented and even happy population, and smiling throughout its valleys with the green harvests of the torrid zone! That there are divers particulars which a European philanthropist would wish to see reformed or removed altogether, is certainly true; but it is also true that a majority of the planters are gentlemen of understanding and humanity, and prove by their acts, private and public, and their conversation, that they are sincerely willing to promote the true welfare of every class in their community by all the means within their power. The governor, I know, and the legislature, I think, are both actuated by principles of real liberality towards the colored part of the population; an

has been promptly and unanimously passed to invest the Bishop with full powers, and I am convinced there is no amendment, no change, no practical measure of any sort which could be suggested by him, which would not be carried into immediate effect to the utmost of their political or private power.

I exceedingly regret that I had not time to visit a very remarkable level in the midst of the mountains, which appears to be similar

in its character to the plains between the Cordilleras of Upper Peru. Most of the common vegetables of Europe will grow there, and the face of the country, I am told, is totally different from what it is in the lowland valleys.

Under this government are comprised Nevis, Anguilla, and the British Virgin Islands. The first is naturally attached to St. Christopher's, but the two latter are at a very inconvenient distance from it and from each other. After Trinidad, I should prefer this government to any other in the Antilles; but a man ought to have a good independent fortune to live comfortably in these places. I would no more submit to be kept on board wages by any of their Assemblies than I would to stand court candidate for Westminster. In Tobago they have the unexampled effrontery to deduct so much per diem from their governor's salary for his occasional absence from the island on military duty: for which no doubt, among other causes, they are pre-eminently blessed with yellow fevers and dry belly-aches. Tobago is a fine island; but really the planters ought to behave with more liberality; and let them remember this...the worse they pay, the worse they will have... and there is an end of the matter.