ld tell how--to set a scrap of his mainsail,
get his staysail up, and in this condition to lie head to the wind. So
handled, small cutters, if they have a deck over them, can ride out an
ordinary gale in tolerable security. They drift, of course; in a
hurricane the only safety is in yielding to it; but they make fair
resistance, and the speed is checked. The most practical seaman could
have done no better than this boy. He had to wait for help in the
morning. He was not strong enough to set his canvas properly, and work
his boat home. He would have been driven out at last, and as he had
neither food nor water would have been starved had he escaped drowning.
But his three consorts saw him. They knew how it was, and one of them
went back to his assistance.

I have known the fishing boys of the English Channel all my life; they
are generally skilful, ready, and daring beyond their years; but I never
knew one lad not more than thirteen or fourteen years old who, if woke
out of his sleep by a hurricane in a dark night and alone, would have
understood so well what to do, or have it done so effectually. There are
plenty more of such black boys in Dominica, and they deserve a better
fate than to be sent drifting before constitutional whirlwinds back into
barbarism, because we, on whom their fate depends, are too ignorant or
too careless to provide them with a tolerable government.

The kind Captain Churchill, finding himself tied to his chair, and
wishing to give me every assistance towards seeing the island, had
invited a creole gentleman from the other side of it to stay a few days
with us. Mr. F----, a man about thirty, was one of the few survivors
from among the planters; he had never been out of the West Indies, but
was a man of honesty and intelligence, could use his eyes, and form
sound judgments on subjects which immediately concerned him. I had
studied Roseau for myself. With Mr. F---- for a companion, I made
acquaintance with the environs. We started for our walks at daybreak, in
the cool of the morning. We climbed cliffs, we rambled on the rich
levels about the river, once amply cultivated, and even now the soil is
luxuriant in neglect; a few canefields still survive, but most of them
are turned to other uses, and you pass wherever you go the ruins of old
mills, the massive foundations of ancient warehouses, huge hewn stones
built and mortared well together, telling what once had been; the mango
trees, which the own