NOTES OF A NATURALIST. 



decidedly inferior in intelligence, activity, and courtesy 

 towards their white neighbours. It is said that the 

 independent class, who live by cultivating small 

 patches of land on which they have squatted, has of 

 late years much improved, and that the increasing 

 desire for purchasable comforts and luxuries has 

 begun to develop habits of steady industry ; but as 

 regards the mass of the people who live by wages, 

 there are many indications of a sullen dislike towards 

 the descendants of their former masters which some 

 trifling provocation may at any time inflame to a 

 pitch of wild ferocity. Some who have lived in the 

 island maintain that a general rising with a view to 

 the massacre of the white population is not an im- 

 possible occurrence, and, however improbable it may 

 appear, there is ample reason for constant vigilance 

 on the part of those responsible for the government 

 of the island. Such vigilance, it must be remembered, 

 is quite as much requisite to prevent acts of real or 

 apparent injustice towards the inferior race, as to 

 repress the first beginnings of violence if some spark 

 should fire the mine of suppressed hatred. 



After a too short visit to this beautiful island, we 

 were under way before ten a.m. on April 4th, and 

 before midday the outline of the Blue Mountains of 

 Jamaica was fast fading in the northern horizon. 

 Throughout the greater part of the run from Kingston 

 we encountered a moderately brisk breeze, which 

 gradually veered from south-east to south-west, and 

 this, according to our experienced captain, commonly 

 occurs at this season. It may be conjectured that the 

 great mountain barrier extending on the south side of 



