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ever make the exertion of earning their livelihood 

 creditably. Even those who profess to be tailors, 

 carpenters, or coopers, are for the most part care- 

 less, drunken, and dissipated, and never take pains 

 sufficient to attain any dexterity in their trade. 

 As to a free negro hiring himself out for plantation 

 labour, no instance of such a thing was ever 

 known in Jamaica, and probably no price, how- 

 ever great, would be considered by them as a 

 sufficient temptation. 



February 18. 

 The Africans and Creoles certainly do hate each 

 other with a cordiality which would have appeared 

 highly gratifying to Dr. Johnson in his " Love of 

 Good Haters." Yesterday, in the field, a girl who 

 had taken some slight offence at something said 

 to her by a young boy, immediately struck him 

 with the bill, with which she was cutting canes. 

 Luckily, his loose wrapper saved him from the 

 blow ; and, on his running away, she threw the 

 bill after him in his flight with all the fury and 

 malice of a fiend. This same vixen, during my 

 former visit, had been punished for fixing her 

 teeth in the hand of one of the other girls, and 

 nearly biting her thumb off ; and on hearing of 

 this fresh instance of devilism, I asked her mother, 

 " how she came to have so bad a daughter, when all 

 her sons were so mild and good ?" — " Oh, massa," 

 answered she, " the girl's father was a Guinea- 

 man." 



