ALL SAINTS' CHAPEL OF EASE.
267
made Creole, its mane and tail the colour of flax. Cattle carts were also bringing in loads of sugar, drawn by six miserable-looking oxen two abreast, their poor necks weighed down by the heavy wooden yokes. In one part of the road we passed All Saints' chapel of ease, belonging to the parish of St. John's. It is a very plain building, surmounted by a gothic pinnacle, answering the purpose of a steeple, with an aperture in the middle, intended, I suppose, for the admission of a bell. After passing a ruined estate, where the long grass grew upon the walls of a roofless building, once used as a boiling house, and accomplishing a steep descent, and one or two abrupt turnings in the road, we came to a cluster of houses, known by the title of " the hamlet." Many of these rural dwellings are very neatly built of native stone ; and their little gardens appear to be well stocked with the country produce, such as potatoes, peas, eddoes, arrowroot, &c. A short distance from the hamlet is another similar collection of dwellings, bearing the name of " the village of Liberia," (as a painted board informed us,) and equally abundant in its bright green patches of edibles. The emancipation of the negroes, and their desire to possess a portion of the soil in perpetuity, gave rise to these villages, of which there are many in different parts of the island. Here they erect small houses, and plant ground provisions. Some of these little dwellings are very neatly constructed, being raised a little distance from the ground, and the front door graced with a flight of steps and a small portico, while the open windows are furnished with white curtains. Adjoining the " village of Liberta," lies the Moravian settlement of Grace Hill, snugly ensconced in its leafy fence, and, like other settlements of the kind in this island, breathing an air of happy tranquillity. Leaving Grace Hill, and travelling on some distance, we arrived at an estate called Patterson's, belonging to the Hon. John Athill, and celebrated in Antiguan history, as N 2