28 TlMEHRI. 
played itself about his little cottage home. Plainness and simplicity 
prevailed throughout, but a palace could not be cleaner, nor maintained 
in greater order. A small dairy, of exquisite contrivance, was most 
delicately fitted up, and appeared delightfully fresh and cool ; a little 
poultry yard, enclosed with a fancy paling, was a perfect model of 
taste ; and every thing around exhibited some mark of excellence, some 
testimony of having courted the ingenious hand of its industrious and 
eccentric owner." 
" Around the cottage he has cut a deep wet fosse, which forms a 
prote&ing barrier, and prevents any person from approaching his resi- 
dence but by way of a narrow plank, placed across the ditch direftly in 
front of the dwelling ; and so extremely rigid is he in the exclusion of 
male beings that not even a negro is allowed to cross this plank without 
first obtaining his express leave. In the plan of the new house which 
he intends to ereft is an encircling ditch or moat of fourteen or sixteen 
feet wide, which he expects will prove a complete defence to his retired 
seraglio." 
It is natural for the mind to turn from these plantation 
scenes to the consideration of the condition of the slaves ; 
and of this matter PlNCKARD, who must have surpassed 
most of the educated and non-colonial Englishmen of his 
time in pity for the hardships which were too frequently 
the lot of these slaves, gives an especially full and strik- 
ing account. 
Even at this time the number of slaves in Demerara 
and Essequibo alone was 55,000, and it was still being 
so rapidly increased that ten years later it had reached 
80,000. The largest number, we are told, owned by any 
individual was nearly two thousand human bodies and 
souls belonging to a certain Mynheer BoODE, a planter on 
the western coast of the Demerara river, who, though then 
vastly rich, is said to have reached the colony originally 
as a drummer boy in the Dutch service. 
Within the first few days after the surrender of Deme- 
rara to the English, a slave-ship arrived and landed its 
