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phical speculations, would have been in some danger of arranging his facts according to his conjectures; whereas Mr. Gurney is eminently a matter-of-fact man, and his matters-of-fact he states with unimpeachable honesty; so that even where he may be mistaken in his conclusions, the reader, who has the evidence before him, has the opportunity of forming, what may appear to him to be, a more correct judg

ment.

Our present task will be a very easy one. Assuming that though many of our readers will procure the volume for themselves, yet that there will be likewise many who will not have the opportunity of perusing it, our intention is to devote a few pages to such extracts as we judge, on the whole, will be most interesting. We use the almost technical phrase with the utmost sincerity, when we say that by these extracts our pages will be enriched. Can it be otherwise? Mr. Gurney evidently sees and describes all things in that true sunshine of the soul into which true religion-the love of God, and of man for God's sake -unfailingly conducts all who yield themselves to its divine teaching.

Mr. Gurney left New-York for a religious visit to the West Indies, on November 22d, 1839. Our first extract shall relate to the entrance of the travellers into the tropics, their first sight of land, and their disembarkment at the Danish settlement of Santa-Cruz :

"As we found our way into the tropics, we observed that the atmosphere became clearer and clearer; no mists were perceptible; the sun seldom obscured; and the appearance of the sky and stars, at night, peculiarly bright and clear. The moon, in these latitudes, often assumes an almost vertical position; and many of the stars which belong to the southern hemisphere are visible. Before daylight one morning, the Captain called me on deck to look at the Southern Cross, which is certainly a constellation of rare beauty. When I turned towards the east, I enjoyed a still finer spectacle. The horns of an almost expiring moon, Venus, and Mars, were in all their splendour; and the profusion of azure, lilac, ultra-marine, pea-green,

orange, and crimson, which mantled the sky, about half an hour before sunrise, I never before saw equalled.

"The sunset in these warm regions is also remarkable for mellow beauty; but not, as I imagined, of a splendour equal to the sunrise. One evening, a 'golden edged cloud' suggested a few lines of consolation to one of the ladies on board, who, with much sorrow and anxiety, was nursing her interesting little boy, as he was sinking by degrees into the arms of death:

'A dark cloud was skirting the edge of the sea,
A frown on the brow of the west,
And nature was shrouded in sadness to me,
As she sank in the ocean to rest:

But the sun that was wrapp'd in that mantle of woe,

His radiance begins to unfold,

And the veil that was darkening the billows below

Is fringed and embroider'd with gold.

The scene is a signal for mental relief,

While it charms and refreshes the sight; It bids me believe that the cloud of my grief Shall soon wear a border of light.

The gilding of hope, and the beaming of love,
Victorious o'er sorrows and fears,

Are heralds of mercy from heaven above,
To illumine this valley of tears.'

"No one needs to lack amusement during a voyage, especially within the tropics. Nature is constantly presenting objects of interest; and the sea, in its ever-varying phases, is a sight which never tires. We were amused, one morning, by watching the motions of a great shark, called, from its known discernment and cunning, the sea lawyer. His broad head, agile body, and flopping green fins, with the numerous little myrmidon fishes that accompanied him on his journey, formed a striking spectacle. At another time, a dolphin followed our bait, a much more taper and active fish than I had imagined; his fine blues and greens quite glittered through the waves. On a third occasion, the sea was seen sparkling with myriads of minute blue fishes, speckled with silver. The man-of-war birds,' to all appearance black, with long wings and swallow tails, were often perceptible, soaring above us to a great height. I am told that they form a curious link between the albatross and seaeagle. Their gyrations resemble those of the latter bird; and it is said, that, during the hurricanes, which so often occur in the West Indies, in the autumn, these birds are seen rising in great numbers, and enjoying themselves in the tranquillity of the skies above.

"On the 3d of the twelfth month

(December) we caught our first sight of land; the conical rocky peaks of Virgin Gorda rising before us to a considerable elevation. Soon afterwards we saw Tortola, St. John's, and St. Thomas; all, however, at a great distance. The next morning, those islands were full in sight to the eastward, and in the distant west we obtained a view of the mountains of Porto Rico. The appearance of these tropical islands, rising suddenly from the sea, and forming steep, pyramidal elevations, sometimes of bare rock, at other times covered with greenness, was to many of us a perfect novelty; and one is immediately led, as a matter of course, to trace their existence to some vast impulse from below. There can be little doubt, I suppose, that they are, in general, of volcanic origin; and that they are not of that fathomless antiquity to which some of the geological strata pretend, is plainly evinced by the circumstance, that the fossil-shells and corals, which are found embedded in their mountain tops, are often precisely the same kinds as are still discovered in the Carribean seas. Our course lay through the Virgin Passage. During the clear, but moonless, night, we passed by a precipitous rock, called Sail Rock. Such is its resemblance to a ship in full sail, that, as the story goes, it was once battered, by mistake, as an enemy, by a French frigate. We seemed to be driving directly upon it, our Mate having failed in his endeavours to steer to the leeward of it; but a sudden tack of the ship was effected, so as to prevent the too probable contact. The next morning we were becalmed within sight of Santa Cruz; though at a distance from that island of forty miles. To our right, also at a long distance, lay Crab Island, which is said to be of considerable fertility and value. As we lay motionless on the deep, we observed two Negro boys making their way towards us from a far-distant sloop, in a crazy little boat which they were skilfully working with paddles. We fondly hoped that they were bringing us a supply of fruit; but on their arrival we found that their mission was to beg for a little water and provision. The interview, however, was one of considerable interest; for they were the first of the emancipated British slaves whom we saw in the West Indies. They came from Virgin Gorda, and were employed by the Captain of the sloop, himself a Negro, with three others, in cutting wood on Crab Island, for the use of the hospital in Santa Cruz. Their wages were five dollars and a half per month, for each man, besides board:

thus, under the new system, they were earning their living by honest industry; and they appeared to us to be at once well-behaved and contented.

"The appearance of Santa Cruz, as you approach it from the north, is picturesque and pleasing; to us who had been so long at sea, and were strangers to West Indian scenery, it seemed clad with beauty: a succession of conical hills and mountains, cultivated to their very tops,-partly red, being the colour of the soil, where the hoe had been at work, and partly bright green,—were already covered with the sugar-cane; neat planting settlements visible in various spots, severally consisting of a mansion, a boiling-house, a number of Negro huts, and a windmill on some neighbouring elevation, for grinding the sugar; the green-wooded dells between the hills; and the cocoa-nut trees, with their tall stems, and strange-looking but elegant deciduous branches, scattered over the whole scene. The hot-house warmth of the atmosphere was very perceptible to our feelings on our first landing; but we were soon refreshed with the delightful casterly breeze which seldom fails to blow in Santa Cruz; and certainly it was not without a feeling of heartfelt gratitude to the Creator and Preserver of men, that we first landed on a WestIndian shore. One consideration alone was oppressive to us, we had come to a land of slavery." (Pages 4-10.)

Mr. Gurney very pleasantly describes the feelings with which he beheld scenery now for the first time

seen by him. He writes like one to whom external nature appears, not in the mere diagrams of the utilitarian,-who looks upon rivers as chiefly valuable for their power of feeding navigable canals,— but in the loveliness in which the Creator arrayed it, which he intended it to exhibit, and in which it is contemplated by all who wish to see God in everything which they see, and not to lose a single feature, a single trace, which may serve to show them more of Him. Indeed we may say, once for all, that we have been frequently delighted in the perusal of the volume, with the health and correctness of Mr. Gurney's mind in reference to this subject. There is in some a pretended love of nature, everything about which is morbid and exaggerated.

Sometimes there is a ranting bombast, at others a dying sentimentalism; and almost always either a careful avoidance of religion, or an obscure generalization on the subject, which makes it only too plain that the scriptural idea of God has no lodgment in their heart. Disgusted, as well they may, with such irreligious puerilities as these, there are others who turn from external nature altogether, or who only view it in connexion with the advantages which it affords; and for which, let us do them the justice to say, they are not backward in the expression of their gratitude. But the Creator has clothed all nature with beauty, and fixed in the original constitution of man a power to perceive and admire it; that admiration, contributing to the happiness of the heart in which it glows, and furnishing materials which, laid on the altar of incense, where the sacred fire is kept alive, ascends up before God as a sweetsmelling savour, and thus terminates in Him, "our being's Source and

End."

Mr. Gurney, we have intimated, writes like a man who is able to perceive, that nature is not only highly beneficial, but richly ornamental too. Let the reader" roam "" with him "along the lanes and canefields of Santa-Cruz."

"The charms of a tropical country, when novel, are calculated to make a delightful impression on the mind; and as we roamed along the lanes and canefields of Santa Cruz, during the first few days after our arrival, we could easily conceive the pleasure enjoyed by Columbus, and his followers, when the fertility and beauty of West-Indian scenery first bust upon their view. Almost every plant we saw, as we drove or rode about the country, from the largest tree to the small weed, was unknown to us; and formed the subject of somewhat troublesome inquiry. was a new world to us, as well as to its first discoverer; and several days must be passed amidst these scenes, before one can obtain anything like a familiar acquaintance with the productions of nature. Splendid exotic plants, which would be regarded as rarities even in the green-houses of England and America, are cultivated in the little gardens

It

of Santa Cruz; and the wild flowers are scarcely less attractive. Amongst them, we observed large kinds of convolvulus, white and pink, yellow bell-flowers, scarlet creepers, bright blue peas of singular beauty; and, to crown all, the 'pride of Barbadoes,' sometimes crimson, sometimes yellow, with butterfly petals, long pendent stamina, and acacia-like leaves, adorning the hedges in great profusion. The trees are, for the most part, bearers of fruit; and many of them are covered with luxuriant foliage. To select a few of the most remarkable, I would just mention the plantain and banana, (nearly the same in appearance,) with pendent leaves of vast dimension, and a profusion of finger-like fruit, growing in clusters; the wild orange-tree, covered at the same time with fruit and flowers; the lime, which lines the hedges, and is equally fragrant, producing in abundance a small kind of lemon; the guava, with pink blossoms, and pearlike fruit, also frequent in the hedgerows; the mango, heavily-laden with foliage, and with fruit in its season; the mammee, growing to a great size, and profusely covered with glazed, dark-green foliage; lastly, the tamarind, with its light feathery leaves, and long pods, which contain the fruit used for a preserve, spreading its branches far and wide, like the English oak.

"The branches of the cocoa-nut tree diverge, like the ribs of an umbrella, from one common centre; and just at the centre, far out of reach, hang the clusters of cocoa-nuts. In their halfripe state, they often supplied us with a delicious beverage of sweet milky water, a provision of nature admirably adapted to a hot climate. But valuable as is the cocoa-nut tree in tropical climates, it is much inferior in beauty to the cabbagepalm, or mountain-cabbage, which may be regarded as the greatest ornament of this delightful island. Its straight, branchless trunk, from thirty to fifty feet high, bulges out a little in the middle, and is covered with a smooth grey bark, neatly divided into ringlets which mark the periods of its growth. Out of the top of the trunk rises a second stem, equally straight, of bright green, which contains the cabbage, so much esteemed as a delicacy at table. Above this green stem, the palm-branches spring forth like those of the cocoa-nut, but with greater luxuriance; finally, a thin spiral rod forms the summit of the tree. The high road between West End (or Fredericksted) and Bassim, (or Christiansted,) the seat of Government, about fifteen

miles in length, runs between rows of cocoa-nuts and cabbage-palms, which have been carefully planted on either side. On one part of this road, the latter trees are remarkably lofty and beautiful; and so regular, and even artificial, is their appearance, that one might imagine one's self to be travelling between some of the colonades of Pæstum, or of Tadmor, in the desert." (Page 14.)

That which is "good for food," as well as that which is "pleasant to the eyes," seems to abound in these climates.

"No man need require a more wholesome or agreeable diet than is afforded by the fish, the sweet-pork, and mutton, the edible vegetables, and the fruits of Santa Cruz. The yams, when in perfection, are a good substitute for a mealy potato; the ripe plantains and bananas, especially the latter, are excellent fruits, and when fried, are among the nicest of vegetables; the oranges are delicious; and the shaddocks and forbidden-fruit, when of the best kind, and fully ripe, are not less so. To these may be added, the sour-sop, sugar-apple, sappedilla, bell-apple, pomme-de-cythere, star-apple, and, above all, the mango. This last, when of an inferior kind, has the taste of turpentine; but the better sorts have somewhat the flavour of a peach, and are very luscious. This description applies, with variations, to the other West-India islands. Nature has done wonders for them. Our friend, Dr. Stedman, who has been practising for fifty years as a Physician on the island, sent us a present of the bread-fruit. It round, of the size of a cocoa-nut, and covered with a green rind, divided into hexagons, like the honey-comb. We were directed to keep it for a day or two, then to bake it; and, lastly, to cut it in slices to be toasted for breakfast. We found it a sweet, agreeable, farinaceous food, probably the best substitute for bread that has yet been discovered." (Page 18.)

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the slaves is improved; and their number is now kept up, with a very small increase." (Page 21.)

But he still bears testimony to the evils connected with slavery itself:

"While, on the one hand, this island derives vast advantage from the watchful skill and care of a respectable body of resident proprietors, there can be no doubt that the dead weight of the slaves is severely felt; that many of the estates have passed from the hands of the original owners, into those of the managers; that many others are heavily mortgaged; and that the land, for several years past, has been under a process of gradual exhaustion. The emancipation of the property of this island from its burdens, and the restoration of its soil, is reserved, as I believe, for the annals of freedom." (Page 20.)

"The consequence of these benevolent provisions is, that the condition of

"The degradation occasioned by slavery in the Danish islands; the low physical, intellectual, and moral condition of the slaves, as compared with that of the liberated Negroes of the British islands, is obvious and unquestionable. The worst feature of the system is, the Sunday-market,' as it is called. The slaves are allowed no one of the working days of the week for their own business. The consequence is, that multitudes of them throng from the country (often from a great distance) into the towns of Bassim and West End, on the first day of the week, with their provisions and fruits for sale. The rum-shops are hard by the market-places. The buyers, of course, misuse the day as well as the sellers; and the scene is one, not only of busy traffic, but of noisy merriment, idleness, and dissipa

tion. Before we left Santa Cruz, we called on General Söbötker, the presen Governor of the island, to take our leaves and we ventured to press this subject on his consideration, not without some remarks on slavery in general. He listened to us in a very obliging manner, and seemed to look forward to better

days; but his last words to us, as we went down the steps from his door, were, "Patience, patience, patience.'" (Page 22.)

island, very again, and its demoralizing effects:

In St. Thomas, another Danish our travellers saw sla

"But quiet was not then to be found in St. Thomas's. It was the Negro saturnalia, the slaves being al

Sometimes there is a ranting bombast, at others a dying sentimentalism; and almost always either a careful avoidance of religion, or an obscure generalization on the subject, which makes it only too plain that the scriptural idea of God has no lodgment in their heart. Disgusted, as well they may, with such irreligious puerilities as these, there are others who turn from external nature altogether, or who only view it in connexion with the advantages which it affords; and for which, let us do them the justice to say, they are not backward in the expression of their gratitude. But the Creator has clothed all nature with beauty, and fixed in the original constitution of man a power to perceive and admire it; that admiration, contributing to the happiness of the heart in which it glows, and furnishing materials which, laid on the altar of incense, where the sacred fire is kept alive, ascends up before God as a sweetsmelling savour, and thus terminates in Him, our being's Source and End."

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Mr. Gurney, we have intimated, writes like a man who is able to perceive, that nature is not only highly beneficial, but richly ornamental too. Let the reader 66 with him "along the lanes and canefields of Santa-Cruz.”

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"The charms of a tropical country, when novel, are calculated to make a delightful impression on the mind; and as we roamed along the lanes and canefields of Santa Cruz, during the first few days after our arrival, we could easily conceive the pleasure enjoyed by Columbus, and his followers, when the fertility and beauty of West-Indian scenery first bust upon their view. Almost every plant we saw, as we drove or rode about the country, from the largest tree to the small weed, was unknown to us; and formed the subject of somewhat troublesome inquiry. It was a new world to us, as well as to its first discoverer; and several days must be passed amidst these scenes, before one can obtain anything like a familiar acquaintance with the productions of nature. Splendid exotic plants, which would be regarded as rarities even in the green-houses of England and America, are cultivated in the little gardens

of Santa Cruz; and the wild flowers are scarcely less attractive. Amongst them, we observed large kinds of convolvulus, white and pink, yellow bell-flowers, scarbeauty; and, to crown all, the pride let creepers, bright blue peas of singular

times yellow, with butterfly petals, long pendent stamina, and acacia-like leaves, adorning the hedges in great profusion. The trees are, for the most part, bearers of fruit; and many of them are covered with luxuriant foliage. To select a few of the most remarkable, I would just mention the plantain and banana, (nearly the same in appearance,) with pendent leaves of vast dimension, and a profusion of finger-like fruit, growing in clusters; the wild orange-tree, covered at the same time with fruit and flowers; the lime, which lines the hedges, and is equally fragrant, producing in abundance a small kind of lemon; the guava, with pink blossoms, and pearlike fruit, also frequent in the hedgerows; the mango, heavily-laden with foliage, and with fruit in its season; the mammee, growing to a great size, and profusely covered with glazed, dark-green foliage; lastly, the tamarind, with its light feathery leaves, and long pods, which contain the fruit used for a preserve,

of Barbadoes,' sometimes crimson, some

spreading its branches far and wide, like the English oak.

"The branches of the cocoa-nut tree diverge, like the ribs of an umbrella, from one common centre; and just at the centre, far out of reach, hang the clusters of cocoa-nuts. In their halfripe state, they often supplied us with a delicious beverage of sweet milky water, a provision of nature admirably adapted to a hot climate. But valuable as is the cocoa-nut tree in tropical climates, it is much inferior in beauty to the cabbagepalm, or mountain-cabbage, which may be regarded as the greatest ornament of this delightful island. Its straight, branchless trunk, from thirty to fifty feet high, bulges out a little in the middle, and is covered with a smooth grey bark, neatly divided into ringlets which mark the periods of its growth. Out of the top of the trunk rises a second stem,

equally straight, of bright green, which contains the cabbage, so much esteemed as a delicacy at table. Above this green stem, the palm-branches spring forth like those of the cocoa-nut, but with greater luxuriance; finally, a thin spiral rod forms the summit of the tree. high road between West End (or Fredericksted) and Bassim, (or Christiansted,) the seat of Government, about fifteen

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