GENERAL REMARKS ON BARBADOS.
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of unmixed evil, and though it may appear in some colonies to be a source of temporary profit to the plan ter, yet his real and permanent interests would have been far better secured, by adopting the course which has been pursued in Antigua. The Apprenticeship is not Emancipation, but slavery under another name; and though it appears to be in some respects a modi fied and mitigated slavery; it has also its peculiar dis advantages, which more than counterbalance whatever good it contains. It is not in any sense a state of pre paration for freedom. Its introduction was attended with danger, from the disappointment of the excited expectations of the negros ; its progress is marked by continual irritation, and at its close, all the real diffi culties attending the change of slaves into free laborers, remain to be encountered under the most unfavorable auspices. Barbados being one of the most important of the British Colonies, and differing from the other islands ' in its physical character, state of agriculture, and amount of population, as well as in some of the general features of its social system, the following observa tions may not be deemed unimportant. Though an undulating island, its highest hills are not more than a few hundred feet above the sea. It is, in fact, a coralline formation, covered with a thin layer of soil, from six to eighteen inches deep, except in the valleys and lowlands, where the mould is of great depth and richness. On the higher ground, the rock is in many places exposed. The coasts are so little indented, that it has scarcely what can be called a harbor, but it pos sesses great advantages of situation, being, according to the i-egular course of the trades, the most windward of the islands, and consequently a station from which all