the uncultivated hills and deferts. If one half the year was wrapped in frozen, barren winter, like other countries, they would not be allowed blanketting fufficient to fhield them from the cold; nor would their mafters, or their remorfelefs deputies, allow them a fufficient 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 affift to work their grounds; the women prog for food, boil their pots at noon and night, loufe their heads, extract chiggers from their toes, and wash their frocks and trowfers. I fhall here fubmit the complaint of a negroe man, whose helpmate had deferted him, to your perufal : How wretched's my time been of late! I've no one to loufe my rough pate, To see smarter beaumen than me; My fungee, alas! is unboil'd, My hut is all cover'd with dirt; I've no one to nurfe my dear child, Nor to wash the falt fweat from my shirt! Then Then join, fable swains, to bemoan In the day he's deprived of his pot. He's depriv'd of his pot in the day, QUASHIBA's RETURN. Lo! Quafhiba's coming this way, My fungee I now fhall get boil'd, For the who my forrows beguil'd Is return'd with good things for my pot. But when we deliciously dined, And were stretch'd in the tamarind fhade, With anguish it came to my mind The price for the herrings fhe paid. And my heart-strings were rent in twain, I bid the dear nymph to explain "Dear "Dear Cufty," the gently replies, [The reft of the Paftoral was torn.] The women, when pregnant, work in the fields till a few days before they lie-in; (for work, if moderate, is ferviceable to child-bearing women) after they are brought-to-bed, the Overfeer fends each about a pound of salt 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 fheep-fkins in the field. There is commonly fome invalid women appointed to take care of the children, to guard them from fnakes and other vermin. When working, though at the hardest labour, they are commonly finging; 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 ftruck with deep melancholly at their fongs:-for instance, when finging of the Overfeer's barbarity to them: Tink Tink dere is a God in a top, No ufe me ill, Obisfha! Me no horse, me no mare, me no mule, No use me ill, Obissha. Some masters and overfeers, of jealous, pimping difpofitions, flog, and otherwife 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 foft, flobber-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 negroc dialect, and is no less true than curious. AIR. What care I for Mam or Dad Altho' a flave me is born and bred, Him turn me out into the field, Him, Obisfha, him de come one night, Then miffefs fum me wid long (witch, And fay him da for maffa ; My maffa curfe her, "lying bitch!" Me fum'd when me no condefcend So me am forc'd to do it Me |