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Show 36 ST. THOMAS AND TOilTOLA. ing them." On the examination of the accounts of two of the properties, it appeared that he was decidedly saving money, by the substitution of free labor, on moderate wages for the dead weight of slavery. After partaking, with several other persons, of this ooentleman's abundant hospitality, he accompanied us ~o Windy Hill, the scat of the President, E. H. Drummond Hay, an agreeable and sensible gentleman, who received ns with great politeness. Our friends had now once more provided us with horses ; and a long ride by rocky paths, over steep mountains, brought us horne to Roadstown in safety-but not until after nightfall. Tortola was once the seat of a little society of Friends, and one of our most eminent travelling ministers of former days, Thomas Chalkley, found there a field of labor, and a grave. There are no members of the Society now on the island, but there is a small community of black people, settled ill tenants in common, on an estate once belonging to Samnrl and Mary Nottingham, Quakers of high cha· racter. About sixty years ago they liberated their slaves, from conscientious motives, and gave them their estate at Longlook, on the eastern coast. A letter of christian advice addressed to their predcces· sors by these pious persons, then living at Bristol, is still cherished by the negroes on the property, about sixty in number, and held as a sort of title deed to the estatc.I We bad great pleasure in visiting them. Their hmd is on the brow of a mountain, and a con· sidcrable part of it is well culti,•ated with yams, and I See Appendix, A. ST. THOMAS AND TO!lTOLA. other vegetables. We held a religions meeting with them, in the largest of their cottages, and were entirely satisfied with their respectable appearance, and orderly behaviour. Our concluding day at Tortola was the First of the week. We had appointed a public meeting for worship in the morning, in the Methodist mP.eting house -the excellent missionaries then stationed there, Bates and Stepney, being kindly willing to make way for us. So effectual have been the labors of these missionaries and their precursors, among the liberated negroes, that they now number nearly 2000 members of their church, besides attenders-morc than a third of the whole population ! The attendance of the laboring people, on the present occasion, was large; they were dressed with the greatest neatness, chiefly in white clothing, which forms a contrast with their sable hue, pleasing to the eye of a stranger, and peculiarly agreeable to their own taste. Without a word being said to them on the subject, they sat for a considerable time in solemn -silence-a practice to which they bad never been accustomed-and afterwards listened to the disconrsc addressed to them, with eager and devout attention. The occasion was one of deep interest to ourselves, and we could not avoid perceiving that freedom was working well as a handmaid to religion. In the afternoon we crossed the water, on a visit to the African settlement at Kingstown hay. It consists of several hundred Africans, taken out of captured slave ships, and located on a tract of land, allotted them hy order of the llritish Govemment. W c had |