loss of the topmast, however, was apparently an unavoidable misfortune. The yachts arrived in the following order :

The Phantom thus was entitled to the first-class prize, the Marina to the second, and the Vampire won the third. This match was full of excitement from beginning to end, and the excellent arrangements of the Vice-commodore, Mr. W. Green, and the Secretary, Captain Grant, deserve the highest commendation, as they had been indefatigable in their exertions in visiting every yacht before starting, for the purpose of measuring their tonnage and sealing down the ballast, which avoided all disputes, and the match passed off with general satisfaction. (To be continued.)

SKETCHES OF LIFE AND CHARACTER IN THE WEST

INDIES.

COMMUNICATED TO, AND EDITED BY, LORD WILLIAM LENNOX.

CHAPTER V.

Order was preserved amongst the slave population by the occasional visits of special magistrates, each of whom in his own district held a court on the various properties whenever circumstances rendered it necessary. The overseer kept a record of the conduct of the people under his charge; and whenever complaints were made, after hearing witnesses pro and con., the magistrate awarded the punishment. If it was a grave matter, such as murder, the criminal was committed to the county jail, to take his trial at the assizes; but all ordinary cases between master and man were adjudged on the spot. I confess I thought the punishments in many cases very lenient.

I saw a Negro brought up for beating a woman far advanced in pregnancy, and throwing her into a hedge of prickly pear. He was noto

riously a bad character, and his punishment (twenty-five lashes on the bare back) was hardly adequate to the offence. He was tied to a cartwheel, and the flogging with a cat-o'-nine-tails was inflicted by one of the head men, who did not apply it very forcibly.

I never saw people so severe with their children as the blacks and browns in Jamaica. They flog them unmercifully with a long piece of leather, a sort of knout, for the most trivial offence-probably because, in the good old times of slavery, they experienced the same treatment themselves, and they suppose it (in accordance with the advice of Solomon) an essential point in the education of youth. A brown man, who had a small hut near where we lived in Lucca, was in the habit of punishing a little boy with such severity, that I interfered several times to put a stop to it; and finding the poor child one day with a severe cut over the eye, I threatened to charge the father with murder if anything happened to him. I saw numerous instances of the same treatment; and I remember the Scotch clergyman addressing a reproof in one of his sermons to his congregation for similar conduct. Pain, in the mind of a slave, is connected with power; and the direst infliction of pain is deemed by him to be the most positive evidence of that power. As, therefore, reason has no affinity with the punishment adjudged by his master, so, in his exercise of domestic authority, harsh blows become the true symbols of the right of paternity, are property fees of the jurisdiction accorded to the parent over the child. An appeal to reason would be held incentive to rebellion; and as mercy is rarely shown in the law of the white slaveholder, the black slave transfers the doom to his son, in the strictest entail of moral and physical conveyance.

When the slaves and apprentices were required for work, and when their labour in the field was at an end, they were called together from their huts, or sent back to them, by the sound of the conch shell, that was blown at stated periods between sunrise and sunset, from a central part of the estate, generally from the overseer's house. The sound of the shell might be heard at a great distance, and it was re-echoed from hill to valley nearly at the same moment on all the properties, the hours of labour being uniform on all of them. There was something striking in this manner of calling the working people to the rendezvous; the custom was probably derived from Africa, and the conch shell was always used as a rallying sound to collect the rebellious negroes, when the country was in a state of insurrection. Whilst the gangs were at work in the cane pieces and coffee properties, or other out-door labour, some of the women, who had young children in arms, accompanied their husbands to the field, and there, under the shade of temporary tents like those of the gipsies, they were occupied in preparing the dinners of the workpeople. Others, again, remained at home with the children of the female labourers, and superintended the household arrangements of the whole community. There was also a school on all the great estates, for adults and infants, on the Lancasterian system, which were more or less frequented. I was pleased to see the children leading some of the classes, and the older negroes learning to read and write from the rising generation. All this of course took place in the evening, during their leisure hours; but it often happened that the adults, after pursuing their studies for some time, with their natural fickleness, got tired of the monotonous routine of A B C, and gave them up.

Negro children are remarkably forward and intelligent when young, and seem possessed of good natural talents; but as they grow older, they lose a good deal of their quickness of perception, and seldom equal the expectations formed of them from their abilities in early life. Is it from a defect in their education? or is it that their precocious intellects are soon worn out? I am unable to decide; but the fact is as I have stated; and I have often heard the remark made by those who had more opportunities of forming an opinion than I had, there is scarcely a black in a hundred who speaks good intelligible English; and the white people, instead of correcting them, and addressing them as they would their own countrymen, adopt the barbarous idiom of the Negroes, thinking probably to make themselves better understood. The consequence is that their pronunciation is abominable, and the rising generation, notwithstanding the pains taken to educate them, retain the same nasal drawl and patois of their parents. I mention the attention paid to the spiritual and temporal wants of the slave population during the apprenticeship, because a general idea prevailed in England that they were neglected by their owners, on the principle of its being easier to manage uneducated people than those who had a smattering of knowledge. In many respects it may appear a plausible argument, but it was certainly leaving them with very indefinite notions of right and wrong.

The thunderstorms during the wet season are very violent on the hills, and at times they are terrific, generally coming on between twelve and one o'clock, after the sun has passed the meridian. They are usually accompanied, or followed, by heavy rain for two or three hours; after which, towards evening, the clouds pass away to the westward, leaving a fine clear sky, and a delightful freshness in the air. Nothing is more likely to bring on fever than a wetting from rain, especially if the clothes are not immediately changed. It is dangerous even to those accustomed to the climate, but doubly so to new comers. On one occasion, whilst we were at Retrieve, a Negro and two mules were killed by lightning, and a young girl sitting near them on the ground was struck by the electric fluid. She was found, when the storm was over, apparently dead; but when brought to the Great House, she gradually recovered after having been rubbed with brandy, and a small portion given her internally. For a long time afterwards her health was affected by the violent shock her nervous system had received. She, however, ultimately recovered.

We returned to Lucca perfectly restored to health by our visit to the hills. The heat was so oppressive in our wooden house, that I resolved to take a place in the mountains which had been recently offered, called Hill-side, well situated, and surrounded by a charming country. The sweet-cup, a small species of grenadilla, and the passion-flower, which produces the same fruit, of the size of an ostrich egg, abounded in the hedges that border on the roads. The garden was stocked with every description of the finest vegetables; mangoes and star-apple trees were flourishing in various parts of the grounds. The former, when in season, furnish a favourite article of food both for man and beast, and the latter thrive wonderfully on them. When pigs are fed almost altogether on mangoes, the pork is the finest in the world; and horses are so fond of them, that, if turned loose, they invariably go to the trees to eat them

on the lower branches. The island is indebted to Lord Rodney for the introduction of this and other Oriental productions; for chance having thrown in his way a vessel bound from Bourbon to Cape François, in St. Domingo, having on board plants of the mango and cinnamon, he presented them to the inhabitants of Jamaica, where they have flourished, and greatly enriched the country. The former seeds were numbered, and the produce of the parcel marked eleven; having proved the most delicate, it now goes by the name No. 11 Mango. As the stones are thrown away, they take root, and from want of attention, the country is covered with many seminal varieties of the same plant.

The upper part of our house was in wood, the lower in brick; and I believe the former to be preferable to any other material for building. An old resident told me that those in stone were seldom healthy, which may be attributed to the material generally used being of a porous nature, which imbibes the moisture during the rainy seasons. As far as my own experience went, I had reason to think the supposition a correct one.

About this time, I witnessed a very melancholy scene at the barracks. A sergeant, who had been quarrelling with his wife, ran out of his quarters in a great state of excitement, and jumped from the rocks into the sea. The waves were running high, and the current being strong, he was quickly carried away, although we could perceive him making efforts to regain the shore. The next morning my attention was drawn to the spot, from observing the soldiers and their wives running to it. I found, to my horror, that the poor man's body was floating within a short distance of the rocks, surrounded by sharks, which were endeavouring to tear it to pieces. The men were doing their best to keep off the fish with stones; and the women, amongst whom was his wretched wife, were uttering loud eries imploring assistance. A boat happened to be not far distant, and the sergeant's body was brought on shore, not without difficulty, covered with wounds, and his jacket hanging in shreds about him.

Singular enough, a short time before, a private of another regiment quartered in the same barracks, who had lately returned from Montego Bay prison, where he had been confined two years for a heinous case of manslaughter, met with a death somewhat similar. A white jury would not convict him for the capital offence. His character was so bad, and the crime he had committed (stabbing one of his comrades in his bed at night) so atrocious, that he was shunned by everybody. A small bay. formed by a coral rock, that acted as a breakwater, and was supposed to prevent the entrance of sharks, from being a "fleur d'eau," was much used by the troops for bathing. On one occasion, this man, with many others, was in the water, when he suddenly called to his comrades for help; but before any assistance could be given, he was dragged under water, and never seen again. It was accounted for in various ways: the most probable seemed to be that he had been seized on the stomach by a sea-cat, which prevented his rising again to the surface. I was told that the extremities of the legs of this strange fish have much the same formation as those of the fly; for they have the power of fixing themselves by them to a rock, from whence it requires great strength to drag them. They use some of their legs for seizing their prey, retaining a firm hold with the others.

The mysterious death and disappearance of the murderer was con

strued into a providential interference for the punishment of crime. The white soldier shuddered at the just fate of his guilty comrade, and the black man saw with his own eyes the interposition of Almighty Power to remedy the injustice of the system of white judicature.

An imperfect distribution of justice is an accusation of a grave nature. The judgment seat, to be respected, ought to be without partiality in the award of punishment, as it should be above suspicion for the motive of infliction. Whenever it fails to represent truthfully and rigidly the fiat of the divine law in which it originates, contempt is bestowed by the powerful, and disaffection is sown amongst the weak. The wayful and wayward error of the tribunal justifies rebellion, and has always been in every age and climate the cause of successful opposition against Government that directed the sin, and perhaps prompted its commission. So long as the white man may be permitted to commit crime with the probability of receiving the minimum of punishment, and the black man is visited for the same crime with the maximum, however well deserved, there can be no sure foundation for the fidelity of an allegiance not founded on affection, that is authoritatively exacted, without care soever for the well-being or protection of the neglected subject.

To say that in numerous instances no white jury will find a fellow white man guilty of a capital offence that must of necessity condemn him to be hanged by the neck until he be dead, is merely the assertion of a notorious simple fact. This injustice must have had a most prejudicial effect on the black population; it has been used as a weapon of attack in the hands of their advocates, from the which the judicial slaveholder shrunk in fear and trembling. It has worked evil that might and should have been avoided, even if prudence had stood in the stead of a higher notion.

REVIEW OF THE RACING SEASON.

BY THE DRUID.

"Low o'er the Ditch Mound peers the setting sun;
The line of yellow light dies fast away

That crowned the eastern copse, and chill and dull
Falls on the heath the brief December day."

The gloomy things which sportsmen, haunted by visions of war and "money tightness," spake of the prospects of the 1855 season, can be hardly said to have come to pass. Neither Goodwood, Ascot, nor Doncaster held brilliant meetings; but York was remarkable for the number of favourites for the St. Leger and Derby which it tested, by the talented aid of Manganese, Mirage, Wild Dayrell, and Fandango; while the October made up for the shortcomings of the April meetings