NEVIS.
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cries he, and now Turtle cannot reasonably expect anything better than death and dressing. I rode entirely round this island, with the exception of a mile or two on the windward side, and found it uniformly rich, verdant, and beautiful. The roads are tolerable, though liable, in the lowlands on the north, to be injured by floods. However, you may go whither you please in a gig, which certainly must be allowed to be a great sign of civilization. There were two steam-engines employed in grinding canes, a thing which I had not seen any where else, except in Trinidad. Surely where water and coals may be commanded, the certainty and rapidity of making the sugar would in the long run be worth the additional expense. How frequently does it happen upon large estates, that whole acres of canes are spoilt, or the current year's market lost by the irregularity of the wind! Besides this, the saving of labor is immense, though the steam is not turned in Nevis to half the work it ought to do, and the planters should remember that labor saved is labor got, and that all the time which their slaves now consume in the long lingering crop season under the windmill-system, might be employed in a superior and more minute culture of the soil, in building and repairing houses, in rearing more provisions of various sorts, and in numberless other public works of necessity or convenience, for the nonfulfilment of many of which at present they