NE&RO PROPRIETORS. 



11? 



educational influence, the results of which will soon be 

 much more apparent than they are now. 



Upon their little tracts they raise not only what they re- 

 quire for their own consumption, but a surplus which they 

 take to market, usually in small panniers upon donkies, or 

 upon their heads. Nearly every colored proprietor has a 

 donkey, which costs from seven to ten pounds, upon 

 which he packs his produce, and under the custody some- 

 times of a woman, often of a child, he sends it to town, 

 to be converted into money, with which he purchases such 

 articles of necessity or luxury as his land does not produce 

 and he can afford. One of the most interesting spectacles 

 to be witnessed about Kingston, is presented on the high* 

 road through which the market people, with their donkies, 

 in the cool of the morning, pour into the city from the 

 back country. They form an almost uninterrupted proces- 

 sion four or five miles in length ; and what strikes the 

 eye of an American at once, is their perfect freedom from 

 care. Neither anxiety, nor poverty, nor desire of gain, has 

 written a line upon their faces, and they could not show 

 less concern at the result of their trip if they were going 

 to a festival. One may readily perceive how strong and 

 universal must be the desire of the poor laborers to ex« 

 change their servile drudgery, on the lands of others, for 

 this life of comparative ease and independence. 



Of course it requires no little self-denial and energy for a 



