the uncultivated hills and deserts. If one half the year was wrapped in frozen, barren winter, like other countries, they would not be allowed blanketting fufficient to shield them from the

cold; nor would their masters, or their remorse_ less deputies, allow them a sufficient quantity of food. When there is a scarcity of provisions on a plantation, each negroe gets a weekly allowance of corn or flour, (two or three quarts) and five or fix herrings. Those who live in pairs together, as man and wife, are mutual helpmates to each other: the men build their huts, and assist to work their grounds; the wo men prog for food, boil their pots at noon and night, louse their heads, extract chiggers from their toes, and wash their frocks and trowsers. I shall here submit the complaint of a negroe man, whose helpmate had deferted him, to your perufal:

How wretched 's my time been of late!
How severe and how bitter my woe !
I've no one to louse my rough pate,
Nor the chigger to pick from my toe:
For Quashiba's gone to the town,

To fee fmarter beaumen than me;
Tho' I often compell'd her to own
How false and how fickle they be.
My fungee, alas! is unboil'd,
My hut is all cover'd with dirt;
I've no one to nurse my dear child,
Nor to wash the falt fweat from my shirt!

Then

1

Then join, fable swains, to bemoan
The hardships of poor Cufty's lot;
He fighs the whole night all alone,
In the day he's deprived of his pot.

He's depriv'd of his pot in the day,
And of love's softer pleasure at night;
O! ye youths who give ear to my lay,
Know, Cufty's quite lost to delight!

QUASHIBA'S RETURN.

Lo! Quashiba's coming this way,
See her arm, how gracefully it swings!
At her prefence all Nature seems gay;...
To greet her the nightingale sings!

My fungee I now shall get boil'd,
No more I'll repine at my lot;
For the who my forrows beguil'd
Is return'd with good things for my pot.

Then I thoughtlessly bid her prepare
The herrings and green caliloo;
I forgot, for a while, all my care;
I forgot that she had not been true.

A

But when we deliciously dined,
And were stretch'd in the tamarind shade,
With anguish it came to my mind
The price for the herrings she paid.

And my heart-strings were rent in twain,
And my breast did with jealousy burn;
I bid the dear nymph to explain
What she gave to Neptune in town.

"Dear Cufty," she gently replies,
" Come, be neither surly or gruff;"
And wantonly rolling her eyes,

دو

She said, "I did give him a."

:

[The rest of the Pastoral was torn.]

The women, when pregnant, work in the fields till a few days before they lie-in; (for work, if moderate, is serviceable to child-bearing women) after they are brought-to-bed, the Overseer sends each about a pound of falt beef, a little flour, a pint of rum, and about a pound of fugar, to comfort them; in a few days after they are obliged to turn out to cultivate the ground, and take their pickinnies (i. e. children) on their backs, to which they are tied with handkerchiefs ; and when they are weary of their burthens, lay them on sheep-skins in the field. There is commonly fome invalid women appointed to take care of the children, to guard them from snakes and other vermin.

When working, though at the hardest labour, they are commonly singing; and though their fongs have neither rhime nor measure, yet many are witty and pathetic. I have often laughed heartily, and have been as often struck with deep melancholly at their fongs:-for instance, when finging of the Overseer's barbarity to them:

Tink dere is a God in a top,

No use me ill, Obissha!:

Me no horse, me no mare, me no mule,
No use me ill, Obissha.

Some masters and overseers, of jealous, pimpa ing dispositions, flog, and otherwise ill treat their black wenches, when they chance to get black children. I have been often diverted, and laughed heartily, when a raw, infatuated gaukey, or a doating, debilitated debauchee has been difappointed, after all his endearing fondness and amorous exertions, with his soft, slobber-chop bundle, to get a black, instead of an olive babe. I shall annex the fong of a young woman

who was in this predicament:-it is in the negroe dialect, and is no less true than curious.

5

AIR. What care I for Mam or Dad.

Altho' a flave me is born and bred,
My skin is black, not yellow:
I often sold my maidenhead
To many a handsome fellow.
My massa keep me once, for true,
And gave me clothes, wid busses:
Fine muslin coats, wid bitty, too,
To gain my sweet embraces.
When pickinniny him come black,
My massa starve and fum me;
He tear the coat from off my back,
And naked him did strip me.
Him turn me out into the field,
Wid hoe, the ground to clear-o;
Me take pickinniny on my back,
And work him te-me weary.
Him, Obissha, him de come one night,
And give me gown and buffes;
Him get one pickinniny, white!
Almost as white as missess.

Then missess fum me wid long switch,
And say him da for massa;
My massa curse her, "lying bitch!"
And tell her, "buss my rassa !"

Me fum'd when me no condescend;
Me fum'd too if me do it;

Me no have no one for 'tand my friend,
So me am forc'd to do it.