population by Kingston. The Kingstonians
themselves are laughably ignorant of the country parts. One of them
assured a clergyman of my acquaintance, with all the gravity imaginable,
that the country negroes lived principally upon fruits! No doubt he has
had the chance of telling some American touching at the port the same
story, who has been able to attest it at home on the authority of a
'Jamaica gentleman of great intelligence.' The Kingston people may be
intelligent, but a good many of them know little more about the interior
of their own island than they do about the interior of Africa.

But ignorant and depraved as the negroes of Kingston are, besides being
three times as numerous as the trade of the place requires, I do not see
that they particularly deserve the reproach of laziness. Mr. Sewell
remarks that he was puzzled to know how they had incurred it when he saw
them crowding around him, all wild for a job. The negro women certainly,
who coal the vessels, appear anything but indolent as they go to and fro
erect under their heavy burdens: if the men let them do more than their
share of the heavy work, it is precisely as in Germany,[C] and for just
the same reason, namely, that the common people of neither country are
sufficiently civilized to treat women as much more than a superior sort
of beasts of burden. That even the Kingston populace have felt the
quickening benefit of freedom, is shown by a little fact related by a
shipmaster who has traded to the port for many years. He says that now
he can always get his ship loaded and unloaded in quicker time than he
could then.

As to security of life and property, there are few cities where both are
safer than in Kingston. I have gone long distances though its unlighted
streets late at night, with as little sense of danger as in a New
England country road. There is a good police of black men, whose
appearance is quite picturesque in their suits of spotless white, and a
force of black soldiers quartered in barracks in the heart of the town,
besides a part of a white regiment a few miles distant. The conduct of
the black troops, however, at an extensive fire some two years ago,
which destroyed a large district in the business part of the town, was
an illustration of what seems a curious peculiarity of the African
character, namely, that while docile and amenable to discipline in the
highest degree in common, the negroes are apt in critical moments to
break out into