to stir lest I should fall over some of the deplorable creatures extended upon the floor.  As soon as they perceived me, one cry of ‘Oh missis!’ rang through the darkness; and it really seemed to me as if I was never to exhaust the pity and amazement and disgust which this receptacle of suffering humanity was to excite in me.  The poor dingy supplicating sleepers upraised themselves as I cautiously advanced among them; those who could not rear their bodies from the earth held up piteous beseeching hands, and as I passed from one to the other, I felt more than one imploring clasp laid upon my dress to solicit my attention to some new form of misery.  One poor woman, called Tressa, who was unable to speak above a whisper from utter weakness and exhaustion, told me she had had nine children, was suffering from incessant flooding, and felt ‘as if her back would split open.’  There she lay, a mass of filthy tatters, without so much as a blanket under or over her, on the bare earth in this chilly darkness.  I promised them help and comfort, beds and blankets, and light and fire—­that is, I promised to ask Mr. ——­ for all this for them; and, in the very act of doing so, I remembered with a sudden pang of anguish, that I was to urge no more petitions for his slaves to their master.  I groped my way out, and emerging on the piazza, all the choking tears and sobs I had controlled broke forth, and I leaned there crying over the lot of these unfortunates, till I heard a feeble voice of ‘Missis, you no cry; missis, what for you cry?’ and looking up, saw that I had not yet done with this intolerable infliction.  A poor crippled old man, lying in the corner of the piazza, unable even to crawl towards me, had uttered this word of consolation, and by his side (apparently too idiotic, as he was too impotent, to move,) sat a young woman, the expression of whose face was the most suffering and at the same time the most horribly repulsive I ever saw.  I found she was, as I supposed, half-witted; and on coming nearer to enquire into her ailments and what I could do for her, found her suffering from that horrible disease—­I believe some form of scrofula—­to which the negroes are subject, which attacks and eats away the joints of their hands and fingers—­a more hideous and loathsome object I never beheld; her name was Patty, and she was grand-daughter to the old crippled creature by whose side she was squatting.

I wandered home, stumbling with crying as I went, and feeling so utterly miserable that I really hardly saw where I was going, for I as nearly as possible fell over a great heap of oyster shells left in the middle of the path.  This is a horrid nuisance, which results from an indulgence which the people here have and value highly; the waters round the island are prolific in shell fish, oysters, and the most magnificent prawns I ever saw.  The former are a considerable article of the people’s diet, and the shells are allowed to accumulate, as they are used in the composition of which their huts are