WANT OF RAIN. 21 



and, for political reasons, refused to receive the 

 visits of any Englishman ! 



I never beheld such an assemblage of wretched 

 and emaciated forms as crowded the streets and 

 beach of Port Praya on our arrival. Regretting 

 our own inability to supply the wants of these 

 miserable objects, we could not abstain from re- 

 flecting in no measured terms on the conduct of 

 a government, which could allow its colonists to 

 be dependant for their very existence on the 

 casual visits of strangers for food, while those 

 very colonists were within a week's sail of the 

 African coast. Captain Harries, who had been 

 here five years before with the African squadron, 

 described the place as then presenting the ap- 

 pearance of a garden; and the natives assured us 

 that forty-eight hours' rain would suffice to change 

 the face of the country. I am sure it stood much 

 in need of it ; — all signs of vegetation had disap- 

 peared, and everything was scorched and wi- 

 thered. 



This was my first introduction to a slave popu- 

 lation, and I was less struck by the appearance of 

 the slaves than I had expected, being fresh from 

 a land where nakedness is never exposed save to 

 excite pity or disgust : but a black man in a state 



