The Three Counties under the Dutch. 25 
engaged at their employment of spinning cotton. The building was 
very extensive, and we were led by way of a gloomy staircase to the 
upper story, where the blacks were all employed in one deep room, 
which ran through the whole length of the logie, and which, from the 
scene suddenly breaking upon us, created strong ideas of the regions of 
old Pluto. The stairs opened at one end of the long building, and 
the eye at once looked down an immeasurable depth of glimmering 
darkness, through which was obscurely seen a multitude of naked black 
beings, either at rest or skipping about from place to place, without 
our being able to distinguish what they were doing or how employed. 
As we approached nearer to them, we found them to be a gang of 
negroes, old and young, robust and feeble, male and female, all busily 
and variously occupied in preparing cotton, by the aid of one faint 
light suspended in the centre of what seemed interminable darkness. 
Some were squatting on the floor ; some at the ginning wheels ; some 
were crouched upon their haunches ; others standing and moving 
about : each according to the varied employment of ginning, of beat- 
ing and pulling, of fetching and carrying, or of packing cotton. 
Of one of the coffee plantations, which were somewhat 
away from the coast, he writes : — 
This estate differs from the wild fields upon the coast only in being a 
flat surface of coffee, instead of cotton ; but it is rendered rich and 
inviting from being traversed with green walks, shaded with fine rows 
of trees, whose loaded branches bend under the various species of tro- 
pical fruits, serving at the same time to delight the eye, regale the 
olfactories, and refresh the palate. A pleasant path, more than a mile 
in length, and of sufficient width for carriages, leads down the middle 
of the estate, the sides being decorated with mangoes, oranges, avacata 
pears, and many other kinds of fruit. Crossing this walk, near the 
centre, is a thick grove of many hundreds of orange trees clad in all the 
variety of umbrageous foliage, fragrant blossoms, unripe green, and 
ripe golden fruit. 
But the most picturesque and characteristic of these 
descriptions by PiNCKARD is of the reception of 
himself and a party of other English officers on one 
of the most secluded estates in these colonies by its 
eccentric owner :— 
" M. Bercheych is a remarkably fine old man. He is robust and square. 
D 
