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tended to go to his provision grounds, among the 

 mountains, on Sunday morning ; but, as he com- 

 plained of a pain in his head, his mother prevented 

 his going, and obliged him to return to the hospital 

 in the evening. On Monday he was seized with 

 fainting fits, lost his speech and power of motion, 

 and this morning I was awaked by the shrieks and 

 lamentations of the poor mother, who, on coming 

 to the hospital to enquire for her son, found, that 

 in spite of all possible care and exertions on the 

 part of his medical attendants, he had just expired. 

 Whether it be the climate not agreeing with their 

 African blood (genuine or inherited), or whether 

 it be from some defect in their general formation, 

 certainly negroes seem to hold their lives upon a 

 very precarious tenure. Nicholas, John Fuller, and 

 others of my best and most favoured workmen, the 

 very servants, too, in my own house, are perpetu- 

 ally falling ill with little fevers, or colds, or pains 

 in the head or limbs. However, the season is 

 universally allowed to have been peculiarly un- 

 healthy for negroes ; and, indeed, even for white 

 people, the deaths on board the shipping having 

 been unusually numerous this year. As to the 

 barracks, which are scarcely a couple of miles dis- 

 tant from my estate, there the yellow fever has 

 established itself, and, as I hear, is committing 

 terrible ravages, particularly among the wives of the 

 soldiers. — This morning several negro-mothers, 

 belonging to Friendship and Greenwich, came to 



