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by rendering the health of the slave an object of less 

 importance in the eyes of his master. The severest part of 

 their labour is transporting the produce of the soil, either 

 to places of embarkation on the coast, or to Port-Louis 

 direct. This produce, whether it be sugar, coffee, cloves, 

 or grain, is packed up in bags weighing about one cwt. 

 The usual practice is to charge the slave with one of these 

 bags, which he carries on his head, going in a sort of trot, 

 and resting occasionally to draw breath. On the planta- 

 tions adjacent to Port-Louis, they sometimes employ for 

 this purpose an unwieldy sort of cart with immense wheels, 

 which is dragged into the town by a string of thirty or forty 

 slaves, harnessed and voked to it like so many draught 

 cattle. It is to be hoped, however, that this painful and 

 degrading branch of labour will shortly be abolished. 

 Since the British obtained possession of the Island, con- 

 siderable attention has been paid to the state of the roads, 

 and the communication with the capital rendered less 

 difficult. A traffic has been established with the Island of 

 Madagascar, which gives constant employment to several 

 vessels in importing cattle for the use of the troops, and for 

 such of the planters as choose to purchase them. This 

 traffic has, in less than two years' time, reduced the market 

 price of beef from 2s. 6d. to Is. per pound. There is hardly 

 a plantation on the island on which there is not a consider- 

 able portion of waste land, unfit for tillage. These are now 

 converted into pastures, and herds of black cattle are 

 multiplying in every quarter. The example of a few enter- 

 prising planters, who have already begun to train these 

 animals to the draught, will speedily open the eyes of the 

 rest to their own interest, and induce them to transfer the 

 harness from the slaves to their oxen. 



" As a specific against the pectoral disorders to which I 

 have alluded, and to which the whites fall sometimes 

 victims as well as the blacks, some patriotic individual 

 introduced the old empirical remedy. Snails. Here these 

 animals have thriven exceedingly, and mvdtiplied so much 

 faster than the demand for them required, that they are 



