uttered vibrates on my ear; I repeat it to myfelf; it appears like an eternal adieu!

"I have had nothing to add to my narrative for fome days, at leaft nothing that I like to write on, or that you would like to read; and for the perfons who furround me, I would I could efcape ever naming them! Do you know, Denbigh, that there are three young women here, living in the house, of colour, as they are called, who are, I understand, my fifters by the half blood! They are the daugh-ters of my father by his black and mulatto faves; and the awkwardness I felt when I was first under the neceffity of addreffing myself to them, feemed very wonderful to the people here, who fee nothing extraordinary or uncommon in fuch an arrangement as my father has made in his family. They speak an odd fort of dialect, more refembling that of the negroes than the English spoken in England; and their odd manners, their D 5

love

love of finery, and curiofity about my clothes and ornaments, together with their total infenfibility to their own fituation, is, I own, very diftreffing to me. The youngest of them, who is a quadroon-a meftize-I know not what-is nearly as fair as I am; but fhe has the fmall eye, the prominent brow, and fomething particular in the form of the cheek, which is, I have understood,. ufual with the creoles even who have not any of the negro blood in their veins. As I am a native of this island, perhaps I have the fame caft of countenance without being confcious of it, and I will be woman enough to acknowledge that the fuppofition is not flattering.

"This little girl, however, (for fhe is but twelve years old) I have attempted to inftruct, when I could enough command my fpirits to attend to any thing: but the is fo ignorant, fo much the creature either of origin or of habit, that I can

not make her comprehend the fimpleft inftruction, and our leffon generally ends in her begging of me some ribbon, feather, or other trifling ornament, which I give her on her promifing to attend more another time:-a promife which he never remembers. Alas! Denbigh, my days pafs moft unpleafantly here befides the continual uneafinefs which I fuffer from the uncertainty I am in about you, which would no where allow me a moment's repose, I am most comfortless in having no one to whom I can fpeak unrefervedly, no one who understands me. My father is often abfent. Why am I compelled to fay, that his abfence relieves me from a part of my fufferings?-He is engaged, deeply engaged, in quelling thofe unhappy people whom they call Maroons, who have done him, I understand, confiderable injury, and have now among them many of his runaway negroes; against whom, if they are taken, he meD 6 ditates,

ditates, I find, modes of revenge, which are really fo horrible only to hear mentioned, that I am often under the neceffity of leaving the room. Yet dare I not exprefs the terror and difguft with which fuch inhumanity fills my mind; for, whatever I fay, whatever I do, is related to my father, who reproves me with fo much harfhnefs, that I cannot help finking before him into tears and defpondence, fuch as guilt alone ought to fubject me to. But from mere unwillingness to name it, I delay to tell you-(tell you? Alas! will you ever read this?)-the heaviest and most menacing of all the evils which either furround or threaten me. We deceived ourfelves, my dear friend! while we hoped and believed that my father could have no objection to you; when we took it for granted, because reason feemed to authorife our doing fo, that there could be no obftacle to our union. There is an obftacle my trembling hand

hand, refufes to write, an unconquerable impediment, of which we dreamed not:My father's ftrange refolution to raife a dependent to the rank of his fonin-law; to make the fortune of a man in humble life wholly dependent on, and owing every thing to him. Such a man, willing to be wholly his creature, and to owe his fortune to him, had my father found when he fo peremptorily directed my ill-fated voyage. And hence it was, that, having had fome intelligence, I know not from what quarter, of the attachment you honoured me with, as well as of Mrs. Apthorp's defigns in favour of her fon, he fent orders that no one fhould be fuffered to accompany me hi ther.

"For many days, however, after my arrival, I was kept ignorant of this. But the perfon for whose flave my father defigns me was introduced to me as a friend of his, for whom he had a particular efteem. I hardly looked at

the