om my memory. In the middle of the spacious building
appropriated to the operations blazed a large fire, fed by the refuse
of sugar canes. Around lay negroes, some asleep, and others muttering
to each other in an under-tone. Here and there sat one perfectly
silent, wrapped in his own reflections, and apparently brooding over
some gloomy plan. The oxen paced slowly round the pole, which directed
the movement of the cylinders; the animals alternately disappearing in
the obscure background, and returning to the point where the glare of
the fire, falling full upon them, lighted them up as if by the sudden
effect of magic. Behind them stalked a tall black figure, driving them
on with a rod made of brambles. Groups of children were busily
employed in thrusting the full sugar canes between the cylinders; and
after they were pressed, collecting together the sapless reeds, and
piling them up in regular heaps.

Next morning the person who officiated as medical superintendant of the
plantation, showed me all the arrangements of the establishment. He gave
me an account of his cures and operations, and told me that he often
found it necessary to amputate, because the slaves purposely injure
their fingers and arms in the _Phalangeles_ (machines) in order to
disable themselves. The worthy AEsculapius had never in his life read a
regular medical work. He had originally been an overseer of slaves,
and had afterwards turned doctor. He informed me that some time before
I saw him, ninety negroes, his patients, had died of small-pox in the
space of nine months, whereby the owner of the plantation had lost
45,000 dollars. The hospital was clean and well fitted up, but
over-crowded with sick. Most of them died from intermitting fever, and
from dropsy and rheumatism which followed it. Not a few of the male
negroes suffer from a peculiar kind of cutaneous disease, which shows
itself by large pustules on the arms and breast. After suppuration
they dry and fall off, but leave indelible spots, which, on a black
skin, are of a whitish color; on a brown skin, olive-green, and on a
white skin, black. I never saw the disease in any other part of the
country except in this valley. Negroes and persons of mixed blood are
more subject to it than the whites.

The two plantations on the east side of the valley are Chambara and
Quipico. The latter is celebrated for the fine sugar it produces, and is
also well known on account of the original character of it