tedious wounds he had ever seen, he said, were incurred by the negroes
running these large green thorns into their feet.

This led him to speak of the glory and beauty of the orange trees on the
island, before a certain uncommonly severe winter, a few years ago,
destroyed them all. For five miles round the banks grew a double row of
noble orange trees, as large as our orchard apple trees, covered with
golden fruit, and silver flowers. It must have been a most magnificent
spectacle, and Captain F----, too, told me, in speaking of it, that he had
brought Basil Hall here in the season of the trees blossoming, and he had
said it was as well worth crossing the Atlantic to see that, as to see the
Niagara. Of all these noble trees nothing now remains but the roots, which
bear witness to their size, and some young sprouts shooting up, affording
some hope that, in the course of years, the island may wear its bridal
garland again. One huge stump close to the door is all that remains of an
enormous tree that overtopped the house, from the upper windows of which
oranges have been gathered from off its branches, and which, one year,
bore the incredible number of 8,542 oranges. Mr. K---- assured me of this
as a positive fact, of which he had at the time made the entry in his
journal, considering such a crop from a single tree well worthy of record.
Mr. ---- was called out this evening to listen to a complaint of over
work, from a gang of pregnant women. I did not stay to listen to the
details of their petition, for I am unable to command myself on such
occasions, and Mr. ---- seemed positively degraded in my eyes, as he stood
enforcing upon these women the necessity of their fulfilling their
appointed tasks. How honorable he would have appeared to me begrimed with
the sweat and soil of the coarsest manual labour, to what he then seemed,
setting forth to these wretched, ignorant women, as a duty, their unpaid
exacted labour! I turned away in bitter disgust. I hope this sojourn among
Mr. ----'s slaves may not lessen my respect for him, but I fear it; for