che uncultivated hills and deserts. If one half the year was wrapped in frozen, barren winter, like other countries, they would not be allowed blanketting sufficient to shield them from the cold; nor would their masters, or their remorfeless 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 four, (two or three quarts) and five or six 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 women prog for food, boil their pots at noon and night, lause 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 deserted him, to your perusal :

How wretched's my time been of late !

How fevere 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 smarter beaumen than me;
Tho' I often compellid her to own

How false and how fickle they be.
My fungee, alas! is unboild,

My hut is all cover'd with dirt;
I've no one to nurse my dear child,
Nor to wafh the falt sweat from my shirt !

Then

Then join, fable swains, to bemoan

The hardships of poor Custy's lot;
He sighs the whole night all alone,

In the day he's deprived of his pot.

He's deprivd 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 loft to delight!

QUASHIBA'S RETURN.

Lo! Quashiba's coming this way,

See her arm, how gracefully it swings! At her presence all Nature seems gayi

To greet her the nightingale sings !

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 The 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.

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 salt beef, a little flour, a pint of rum, and about a pound of sugar, 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 some 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 songs 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 singing of the Overseer's barbarity to them :

Tink

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, Obisha.

Or, thus :

If me want for go in a * Ebo,
Me can't go there!
Since dem tief me from a Guinea,
Me can't go there!

If me want for go in a * Congo,
Me can't go there!
Since dem tief me from my tattá,
Me can't go there!

If me want for go in a Kingston,
Me can't go there!
Since maffa go in a England,
Me can't go there!

1

Some masters and overseers, of jealous, pimpa ing dispositions, fog, 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 foft, Nobber-chop bundle, to get a black, instead of an olive babe. I shall annex the song 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 Dado

Altho'a flave me is born and bred,

My skin is black, not yellow:
I often fold my maidenhead

To many a handsome fellow.
My massa keep me once, for true,

And gave me clothes, wid bufles :
Fine mullin coats, wid bitty, too,

To gain my sweet embraces.
When pickinning him come black,

My maffa starve and fum me;
He tear the coat from off my back,

And naked him did ftrip me.
Him turn me out into the field,

Wid hoe, the ground to clear-o;
Me take pickinning on my back,

And work him te-me weary.
Him, Obissha, him de come one night,

And give me gown and busses;
Him get one pickinniny, white !

Almost as white as mifless.
Then mifless fum me wid long switch,

And say him da for maffa ;
My massa curse her, “ lying bitch !**

And tell her, “ buss my raffa !"
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

Me