256 TIMEHRI. 
“« > 
possessions, renders him a most useful assistant, and gives 
him the power of superintending the duties of the sick 
nurse effe€&tually. The Manager or a trusty Overseer 
administers and mixes the Prescriptions of the Doétor 
during his absence, A disagreeable duty then occurs, 
the dressing of the sores, which from the dirty and care- 
less habits of negroes, are of a nature and frequency un- 
known amongst Europeans. 
He then inspects the works and building, aiid in the 
different departments of the manufa€ture of sugar, rum, 
drying or cleaning coffee, or preparing cotton for the 
market, his utmost attention is required to the state of 
the weather, the quality of the fuel, the cleanliness of 
the Boiling House, and the attendance of the overseers 
and their negroes to their duties about the buildings. 
He then proceeds to the fields to see that his canes are 
properly cut, weeded and supplied, his fields well-drained, 
his plantains in good order, all fallen ones cut close to 
the stool, and his watchman on the alert, coffee and 
cotton clean and trimmed, and no water sprouts draining 
the sap of the tree from the green coffee. He receives 
the reports of defaulters from the different gangs, com- 
pares them with the entries in the Hospital, and punishes, 
either on the spot or next morning, those delinquents’ who 
have been found missing at their proper hours of duty. 
A casual absence is punished by at the most half adozen 
lashes, but as absentees are generally habitual default- 
ers it becomes often necessary to be more severe. And 
here a few observations are necessary that may tend to 
correét the prejudice amongst Europeans, of believing 
that corporal punishment is amongst negroes infli€ted to 
excess, I make the assertion, and every man of candour 
