21 6 
HISTORY OF THE [book. iv. 
lyare, they are highly, offended. Before they at¬ 
tain the class of the quinterones , there are seve¬ 
ral intervening circumstances which throw them 
back; for between the mulatto and the negro, there 
is an intermediate race which they call samboes , 
owing their origin to a mixture between one of 
these with an Indian, or among themselves. Be¬ 
twixt the tercerones and mulattoes, the quarte- 
rones and the tercerones, &c. are those called 
tente en el ayre , suspended in the air j because they 
neither advance nor recede. Children whose pa¬ 
rents are a quarteron or quinteron, and a mulatto 
or terceron, are salto atras retrogrades; because, 
instead of advancing towards being whites, they 
have gone backwards towards the negro race. 
The children between a negro and a quinteron, 
are called sambos de negro, de mulatto, de terce¬ 
ron, & c.” 
In Jamaica, and I believe in the rest of our 
Sugar Islands, the descendants of negroes by white 
people, entitled by birth to all the rights and liber¬ 
ties of white subjects in the full extent are such as 
are above three steps removed in lineal digression 
from the negro venter. All below this, whether 
called in common parlance mestizes, quadroons, or 
mulattoes, are deemed by law mulattoes. 
Anciently there was a distinction in Jamaica be¬ 
tween such of these people as were bom of freed 
mothers (the maxim of the civil law partus sequiter 
ventrem , prevailing in all our colonies) and such as 
