The apprenticeship will not have so beneficial an effect as he hoped it would, on account of an indisposition on the part of many of the planters to abide by its regulations. The planters generally are doing very little to prepare the apprentices for freedom; but some are doing very much to unprepare them. They are driving the people from them by their conduct. Mr. C. said he often wished for emancipation. There were several other planters among his acquaintance who had the same feelings, but did not dare express them. Most of the planters, however, were violently opposed. Many of them declared that emancipation could not and should not take place. So obstinate were they, that they would have sworn on the 31st of July, 1831, that emancipation could not happen. _These very men now see and acknowledge the benefits which have resulted from the new system_. The first of August passed off very quietly. The people labored on that day as usual, and had a stranger gone over the island, he would not have suspected any change had taken place. Mr. C. did not expect his people would go to work that day. He told them what the conditions of the new system were, and that after the first of August, they would be required to turn out to work at six o'clock instead of five o'clock as before. At the appointed hour every man was at his post in the field. Not one individual was missing. The apprentices do more work in the nine hours required by law, than in twelve hours during slavery. His apprentices are perfectly willing to work for him during their own time. He pays them at the rate of twenty-five cents a day. The people are less quarrelsome than when they were slaves. About eight o'clock in the evening, Mr. C. invited us to step out into the piazza. Pointing to the houses of the laborers, which were crowded thickly together, and almost concealed by the cocoa-nut and calabash trees around them, he said, "there are probably more than four hundred people in that village. All my own laborers, with their free children, are retired for the night, and with them are many from the neighboring estates." We listened, but all was still, save here and there a low whistle from some of the watchmen. He said that night was a specimen of every night now. But it had not always been so. During slavery these villages were oftentimes a scene of bickering, revelry, and contention. One might hear the inmates reveling and shouting till midnight. Sometimes it would be kept up till morning. Such scenes have much decreased, and instead of the obscene and heathen songs which they used to sing, they are learning hymns from the lips of their children. The apprentices are more trusty. They are more faithful in work which is given them to do. They take more interest in the prosperity of the estate generally, in seeing that things are kept in order, and that the property is not destroyed.