WEST INDIES. 
34i 
CHAP. V.j 
The buyer having completed his assortment, and 
clothed his newly acquired subjects with a coarse 
German linen, called Oznaburgs, and provided 
them also with hats, handkerchiefs, and knives, 
sends them to the place of their intended resi¬ 
dence:* and now a practice prevails in Jamaica, 
which I myself, unacquainted as I then was with 
the actual management in detail of a sugar planta¬ 
tion, and residing, in a distant country, used to repro¬ 
bate and exclaim against; but to which I now sub¬ 
mit, from a full conviction, founded on experience, of 
its usefulness and necessity. The practice is that of 
distributing the newly imported Africans among 
the old negroes, as pensioners (with some little as¬ 
sistance occasionally given) on their little peculiam , 
and provision grounds. This I used to consider as 
an insupportable hardship on the poor people alrea¬ 
dy settled and domesticated, and I positively and 
expressly forbad a continuance of the custom in 
plantations over which I had authority. 
On my return to the West Indies, I was sur¬ 
prised to find the old established negroes, when 
young people newly arrived from Africa, were sent 
among them, request as a particular instance of fa¬ 
vour and indulgence to themselves, the revival and 
* It is the custom among some of the planters in Jamaica, to mark 
the initials of their name on the shoulder or breast of each newly pur¬ 
chased negro, by means of a small silver brand heated in the flame of 
spit its, as described in a former chapter; but it is growing into dis¬ 
use, and I believe in the Windward Islands thought altogether unne¬ 
cessary. 
