CANAL PACKETS SABBATH-SCHOOL CHILDREN. 309 



shop. The passengers are sent on the roof of the packet 

 while the cabin is altering from sitting to sleeping-trim, 

 which does not occupy more than ten minutes, and the pas 

 sengers, suspended in rows when in bed, look like strings of 

 onions in a green-grocer s shop. The eating department was 

 tolerably well managed. 



There was a changing of packets three times in the length 

 of the canal, and a delay of twelve hours at Rochester ; during 

 which I stopt at the Eagle hotel. When standing at the 

 door of the hotel, after breakfast, my attention was attracted 

 to a number of children walking in pairs along the pavement, 

 attended by a few grown-up people, and on enquiry I learned 

 they were proceeding to church, to the anniversary meeting of 

 the Sabbath schools. After many hundreds of both sexes 

 had passed, attended by their teachers, I observed four black 

 children forming the rear of a school division ; and being 

 anxious to see so interesting a sight as the assembled children, 

 I followed the little blackamoors. Knowing the prejudice 

 which white people have to the coloured race in almost every 

 part of the world, I was disappointed at seeing the four black 

 children separate from the others, and instead of entering the 

 church they were conducted round the corner of a street into 

 a building within a court. I still followed the blacks, but 

 seeing none of the people entering the place where they were, 

 I walked to and fro on the outside. At the end of two 

 minutes, about twenty black children came out of the building, 

 attended by five or six white men, and walked into the church 

 amongst the rest of the children. I occupied a place in the 

 gallery, and listened to a very commonplace address to the 

 children, and the meeting separated without religious exer 

 cises of any kind. 



The want of religious exercise appeared to me to arise from 

 a desire of preventing any feeling of jealousy amongst sects 

 regarding minute differences in forms of worship and creeds 

 of faith ; and if such was the case, the inhabitants of other 

 countries would do well to imitate this conciliatory proceed 

 ing. I did not observe, after getting into church, if the black 

 children were kept separate from the white ; but the fact of 

 this hitherto despised race attending Sabbath schools with 



