94
DOMINICA.
very. Had this visit been paid him twelve or eighteen months ago, four or five would probably have been publicly flogged within sight during the interview. There was a vessel to-day in the harbor, freighted with emigrants to Demerara. One of us went on board, and ascertained by conversation with the people, that they were going of their own free will. They were chiefly mechanics, free persons of color, from the Swedish and Danish islands of St. Barts. and St. Thomas. Some of them appeared very intelligent. They gave as a reason for indenting themselves, that they could not set up in their respective trades in Demerara, without serving at least one year. Not a single apprentice has been hitherto induced to leave Dominica. 20th.—We left at seven this morning in a canoe with W M . LYNCH, to visit one or two estates in his district, on the North West side of the island. The ocean is the high-way from Roseau to most of the estates. The island is, however, encompassed, and also intersected in various directions by roads, wliich are impassable except on mules or horses. The negros are expert rowers, and their long narrow boats, formed out of a single tree, cut through the water at the rate of five or six miles an hour. We had an opportunity of observing the mode of fishing among them. Three or four canoes, loaded with stones, take a large • net about ten feet deep, and from sixty to one hundred yards in length, to some distance from the shore, which they let down ; the lower edge being weighted with lead, and the upper supported by pieces of cork. The stones in the canoes are then thrown with great vio lence into the sea in such a direction as to frighten the fish towards the shore, when a canoe at each extremity drags the net rapidly to the beach, and the fish is se-