In the afternoon, I made Israel drive me through Jack’s new-made path to break it down and open it still more, and Montreal’s powerful trampling did good service to that effect, though he did not seem to relish the narrow wood road with its grass path by any means as much as the open way of what may be called the high road.  After this operation, I went on to visit the people at the Busson Hill settlement.  I here found, among other noteworthy individuals, a female named Judy, whose two children belong to an individual called (not Punch) but Joe, who has another wife, called Mary, at the Rice Island.  In one of the huts I went to leave some flannel and rice and sugar for a poor old creature called Nancy, to whom I had promised such indulgences:  she is exceedingly infirm and miserable, suffering from sore limbs and an ulcerated leg so cruelly that she can hardly find rest in any position from the constant pain she endures, and is quite unable to lie on her hard bed at night.  As I bent over her to-day, trying to prop her into some posture where she might find some ease, she took hold of my hand, and with the tears streaming over her face, said, ’I have worked every day through dew and damp, and sand and heat, and done good work; but oh, missis, me old and broken now, no tongue can tell how much I suffer.’  In spite of their curious thick utterance and comical jargon, these people sometimes use wonderfully striking and pathetic forms of speech.  In the next cabin, which consisted of an enclosure, called by courtesy a room, certainly not ten feet square, and owned by a woman called Dice—­that is, not owned, of course, but inhabited by her—­three grown up human beings and eight children stow themselves by day and night, which may be called close packing, I think.  I presume that they must take turns to be inside and outside the house, but they did not make any complaint about it, though I should think the aspect of my countenance, as I surveyed their abode and heard their numbers, might have given them a hint to that effect; but I really do find these poor creatures patient of so much misery, that it inclines me the more to heed as well as hear their petitions and complaints, when they bring them to me.

After my return home, I had my usual evening reception, and, among other pleasant incidents of plantation life, heard the following agreeable anecdote from a woman named Sophy, who came to beg for some rice.  In asking her about her husband and children, she said she had never had any husband, that she had had two children by a white man of the name of Walker, who was employed at the mill on the rice island; she was in the hospital after the birth of the second child she bore this man, and at the same time two women, Judy and Sylla, of whose children Mr. K——­ was the father, were recovering from their confinements.  It was not a month since any of them had been delivered, when Mrs. K——­ came to the hospital, had them all three severely flogged, a process which