e of strange destruction, bright blue and red birds, like
living jewels, darted in the brilliant sunshine. I wonder if the fire
has killed and scared away many of these beautiful creatures. In the
afternoon I took Jack with me to clear some more of the wood paths; but
the weather is what I call hot, and what the people here think warm, and
the air was literally thick with little black points of insects, which
they call sand flies, and which settle upon one's head and face
literally like a black net; you hardly see them or feel them at the
time, but the irritation occasioned by them is intolerable, and I had to
relinquish my work and fly before this winged plague as fast as I could
from my new acquaintance the rattlesnakes. Jack informed me, in the
course of our expedition, that the woods on the island were sometimes
burnt away in order to leave the ground in grass for fodder for the
cattle, and that the very beautiful ones he and I had been clearing
paths through were not unlikely to be so doomed, which strikes me as a
horrible idea.

In the evening, poor Edie came up to the house to see me, with an old
negress called Sackey, who has been one of the chief nurses on the island
for many years. I suppose she has made some application to Mr. G---- for a
respite for Edie, on finding how terribly unfit she is for work; or
perhaps Mr. ----, to whom I represented her case, may have ordered her
reprieve; but she came with much gratitude to me (who have, as far as I
know, had nothing to do with it), to tell me that she is not able to be
sent into the field for another week. Old Sackey fully confirmed Edie's
account of the terrible hardships the women underwent in being thus driven
to labour before they had recovered from child-bearing. She said that old
Major ---- allowed the women at the rice island five weeks, and those here
four weeks, to recover from a confinement, and then never permitted them
for some time after they resumed their work to labour in the fields before
sunrise or after sunset; but Mr. K---- had altered that arrangement,
allowing the women at the rice island only four weeks, and those here only
three weeks, for their recovery; 'and then, missis,' continued the old
woman, 'out into the field again, through dew and dry, as if nothing had
happened; that is why, missis, so many of the women have falling of the
womb, and weakness in the back; and if he had continued on the estate, he
would have utterly destroyed all