A question which was discussed in the real sense of the term, was that of ploughing the land instead of having it turned with the spade or hoe.  I listened to this with great interest, for Jack and I had had some talk upon this subject, which began in his ardently expressed wish that massa would allow his land to be ploughed, and his despairing conclusion that he never would, ‘’cause horses more costly to keep than coloured folks,’ and ploughing, therefore, dearer than hoeing or digging.  I had ventured to suggest to Mr. ----- the possibility of ploughing some of the fields on the island, and his reply was that the whole land was too moist and too much interrupted with the huge masses of the Cypress yam roots, which would turn the share of any plough.  Yet there is land belonging to our neighbour Mr. G——­, on the other side of the river, where the conditions of the soil must be precisely the same, and yet which is being ploughed before our faces.  On Mr. ——­’s adjacent plantation the plough is also used extensively and successfully.

On my return to our own island I visited another of the hospitals, and the settlements to which it belonged.  The condition of these places and of their inhabitants is, of course, the same all over the plantation, and if I were to describe them I should but weary you with a repetition of identical phenomena:  filthy, wretched, almost naked, always bare-legged and bare-footed children; negligent, ignorant, wretched mothers, whose apparent indifference to the plight of their offspring, and utter incapacity to alter it, are the inevitable result of their slavery.  It is hopeless to attempt to reform their habits or improve their condition while the women are condemned to field labour; nor is it possible to overestimate the bad moral effect of the system as regards the women entailing this enforced separation from their children and neglect of all the cares and duties of mother, nurse, and even house-wife, which are all merged in the mere physical toil of a human hoeing machine.  It seems to me too—­but upon this point I cannot, of course, judge as well as the persons accustomed to and acquainted with the physical capacities of their slaves—­that the labour is not judiciously distributed in many cases; at least, not as far as the women are concerned.  It is true that every able-bodied woman is made the most of in being driven a-field as long as under all and any circumstances she is able to wield a hoe; but on the other hand, stout, hale, hearty girls and boys, of from eight to twelve and older, are allowed to lounge about filthy and idle, with no pretence of an occupation but what they call ‘tend baby,’ i.e. see to the life and limbs of the little slave infants, to whose mothers, working in distant fields, they carry them during the day to be suckled, and for the rest of the time leave them to crawl and kick in the filthy cabins or on the broiling sand which surrounds them, in which industry, excellent enough for the poor babies,