CHAPTER I.

KINGSTON.

Having drawn out in detail the results of abolition, and the working of the apprenticeship system in Barbadoes, we shall spare the reader a protracted account of Jamaica; but the importance of that colony, and the fact that greater dissatisfaction on account of the abolition of slavery has prevailed there than in all the other colonies together, imperatively demand a careful statement of facts.

On landing in Jamaica, we pushed onward in our appropriate inquiries, scarcely stopping to cast a glance at the towering mountains, with their cloud-wreathed tops, and the valleys where sunshine and shade sleep side by side–at the frowning precipices, made more awful by the impenetrable forest-foliage which shrouds the abysses below, leaving the impression of an ocean depth–at the broad lawns and magnificent savannahs glowing in verdure and sunlight–at the princely estates and palace mansions–at the luxuriant cultivation, and the sublime solitude of primeval forests, where trees of every name, the mahogany, the boxwood, the rosewood, the cedar, the palm, the fern, the bamboo, the cocoa, the breadfruit, the mango, the almond, all grow in wild confusion, interwoven with a dense tangled undergrowth.

We were one month in Jamaica. For about a week we remained in Kingston, and called on some of the principal gentlemen, both white and colored. We visited the Attorney General, the Solicitor General, some of the editors, the Baptist an Wesleyan missionaries, and several merchants.