JAMAICA.
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extends for several miles to the sea. It abounds with rare specimens of aquatic plants, insects, and birds, and with eels, fresh-water turtle, &c. The road through it, which has been constructed at great expense, is liable to be frequently overflowed. The exhalations from the marsh are painfully obvious to the senses of the traveller, who is unavoidably compelled to cross it after sunset, or before sunrise. In any other than a slave country, it would long ago have been drained, and would now be teeming with exhaustless supplies of agricultural wealth. The capital is situated on the Rio Cobre, about seven miles from the sea, in a nar-' row plain, which extends in a curved direction, as far' as Kingston on one side, and on the other a consider able distance into the interior of the island. This land: is occupied by a few sugar estates, and pens or farms' for raising cattle ; but the greater part has been aban-'doned, and is now overgrown with brushwood, and the logwood, and acacia trees. As its climate is uncertain, and subject to frequent and severe droughts, the ap-prentices do not cultivate provision grounds ; neither • have they any allowances of food from their owners ; they support themselves by cutting grass and tirewood for the supply of the inhabitants of Spanish Town. They are sometimes reduced to extreme dis tress, when their time has been forfeited by sentence of the magistrate ; and as they can neither collect their bundles of sticks and grass from the property of their masters, without permission, nor take them to market for sale, without a written pass, they are as completely under irresponsible control, as ever they were during, slavery. In the course of the morning, we visited the metro politan girls' school, under the care of J . M . PHILLIPPO, R