Now the blacks of Hanover are just the same race as the rest of the negro population of the island. The only difference is that the whites of that parish, instead of treating them with contempt and neglect, have shown something of courtesy and care toward them. The numerous conversations which Mr. Underhill reports with the owners and managers of successful estates show how simple are the rules by which they secure success. To manifest a decent respect for the blacks, to be firm, but temperate and fair in dealing with them, to use the best improvements in machinery, and to exercise a strict economy of management--this appears to be the sum of the difference between prosperous and unprosperous plantations, provided of course that both are equally well situated for success. Metcalfe, the writer's residence during most of his stay in Jamaica, is, like Hanover, a parish of small freeholders, but unlike Hanover, the blacks and the few whites are not on good terms. Excepting what has been done by missionaries, which is not a little, they are little indebted to any but themselves for their prosperity. And as one charged with their religious instruction, the writer can bear witness that for several years they have needed to be restrained from avarice more than to be stimulated to industry. A clergyman, a friend of mine, humorously complained that he had lost by stirring up his people to work, for that now they were so diligently employed upon their own places, that he could get scarcely anybody to work for him. The average number of acres owned by forty families, of which I made lists, is seven--a pretty fair estimate, I should judge, of the whole; and seven acres in Jamaica is equivalent in productiveness to a much larger amount here. One fourth had floored houses, and as large a proportion had sugar mills. Many of the families have one or two horses, worth commonly from L5 to L12 apiece. Not a few have mules, which are much more valuable; and nearly all the rest have donkeys. The proportion of floored and glazed houses, some of them shingled, is steadily though not very rapidly increasing; and I need not say that in that climate, and with their yet rudimentary ideas of comfort, a floor of earth is no indication of indigence. The holdings vary from one to forty acres, but are more commonly from three to six. Almost every freeholder hires land besides, and a great deal of time is lost in going to distant pieces of ground. The wants of the people have increased faster than they reckoned on, and the land was bought up so rapidly around them that now they are subject to this disadvantage in making new purchases. In St. Ann, the Baptist congregations alone spent L10,000 in a few years in buying land.