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Savannah la Mar, with proposals for instructing, 

 the negroes in religion ; and the minister, in his 

 turn, was replaced by one of the Sunday-night 

 thieves, who had been caught while in the actual 

 possession of one of my sheep and a great turkey- 

 cock ; and, to make the matter worse, the de- 

 predator's name was Hercules ! Hercules, whom 

 Virgil states to have exercised so much severity 

 on Cacus, when his own oxen were stolen, was 

 taken up himself for stealing my sheep in Jamaica ! 

 The demi-god had nothing to say in his excuse : 

 he had just received a large allowance of beef : — 

 therefore, hunger had no share in his transgression \ 

 and the committing the offence during the very time 

 that I was giving the negroes a festival, rendered 

 his ingratitude the more flagrant. 



I perfectly well understood that the man was sent 

 to me by my agent, in order to show the absolute 

 necessity of sometimes employing the cart- whip, and 

 to see whether I would suffer the fellow to escape 

 unpunished. But, as this was the first offender who 

 had been brought before me, I took that for a 

 pretext to absolve him : so I lectured him for half 

 an hour with great severity, swore that on the very 

 next offence I would order him to be sold; and that if 

 he would not do his fair proportion of work without 

 being lashed, he should be sent to work somewhere 

 else ; for I would suffer no such worthless fellows 

 on my estate, and would not be at the expense of 

 a cart-whip to correct him. He promised most 



