WEST INDIA SOCIETY. 209 



sing of thee dearest. But the day dream was gone and I could 

 again attend to nature. Far above, the same wild range we had 

 partly surmounted, continued its vast heaps ; shewing, like what it 

 really was, the skeleton of an island, gnawed and laid bare by the 

 vultures of Time. 



Returning along the channel before mentioned, we struck through 

 a penguin fence near it, and just where the savanna began to lose 

 some of its woodland character, into the little plot of a superannua- 

 ted slave couple. Old Wowski, the female, was soon discovered, 

 cooking a mess of pepper-pot outside her hut : this internally — 

 although it lacked the lime wash and shining wares of our cottages 

 at home — afforded a neat specimen of negro residences. The first 

 room you enter contained their table, with its forms of dark but 

 clean wood, and the few culinary utensils they possessed were ar- 

 ranged with some regard to effect. The next, or sleeping, apartment, 

 divided from this by a wattle, had its door place closed by what at 

 night served for their rug : there was no bedstead, a fixture by the 

 wall gave their couch in the primitive Eastern fashion. The hut 

 itself, of hurdles thatched with leaves of the palmeto, lay embower- 

 ed under arches of tropical foliage, which presently opened on a 

 small garden. Here we found Quamina squatted by a bed of the 

 largest pumpkins I had yet seen. In other parts, heavy stalks of 

 Guinea corn, with here and there bunches of plaintain, the luxuri- 

 ant banana, the papaw also, called mam^e from its resembling the 

 female 43reast, and a few cotton shrubs edging the inclosure — all 

 bore testimony to the old man's diligence. 



This aged couple have lived on their owner's estate near half a 

 century. Both are Africans, and both have been apart from their 

 native land so long without losing its peculiarities : they mutter a 

 scarcely intelligible dialect, which, contrasted with the shrewd re- 

 marks indulged in by them with a license years bestow even on 

 thraldom, gave a ludicrous turn to our conference. I found that 

 they have dwelt faithfully together, although, as in all such cases, 

 the marriage tie has been deemed superfluous here. 



Much as negro marriages have been urged, the propriety of their 

 general introduction seems not altogether clear. A man of colour 

 was inveigled from his paramour, the other day, to wed one he had 

 left for her, but their cohabitation hardly lasted a week : in another 

 case one, whose frail dame had quitted him, sought the Missiona- 

 ries' aid against peril of adultery — he had chosen a more loving 

 helpmate. You may hold a wedding carnival on any estate, and 

 Hymen will be flocked to bv his enthusiasts there, but cai bono ? 



VOL. II.— 1833. "^ c2 



