The legs and feet had the short, jerking, loose-jointed motion of our negroes in dancing, while the upper part of the body and the arms had that swaying, rhythmical movement from side to side so characteristic of all the Spanish dances. After looking on for a while we went into the garden, where there were cocoa-nut and banana trees in fruit, passion-vines climbing over the house, with here and there a dark crimson flower gleaming between the leaves. The effect was pretty, and the whole scene had, to my eye, an aspect half Southern, half Oriental. It was nearly dark when we returned to the boat, but the negroes were continuing their dance under the glow of a bonfire. From time to time, as the dance reached its culminating point, they stirred their fire, and lighted up the wild group with its vivid blaze. The dance and the song had, like the amusements of the negroes in all lands, an endless monotonous repetition. Looking at their half-naked figures and unintelligent faces, the question arose, so constantly suggested when we come in contact with this race, “What will they do with this great gift of freedom?” The only corrective for the half doubt is to consider the whites side by side with them: whatever one may think of the condition of slavery for the blacks, there can be no question as to its evil effects on their masters. Captain Bradbury asked the proprietor of the island whether he hired or owned his slaves. “Own them,—a hundred and more; but it will finish soon,” he answered in his broken English. “Finish soon! how do you mean?” “It finish with you; and when it finish with you, it finish here, it finish everywhere.” He said it not in any tone of regret or complaint, but as an inevitable fact. The death-note of slavery in the United States was its death-note everywhere. We thought this significant and cheering.