I, Joice Bampfyld, was, as I say, at the period at which I take up my pen, nearing eighteen years of age, and I dwelt at Pomfret Manor, situated, on the southern bank of the James River, in His Majesty's state of Virginia, the estate being some fifty miles inland from the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, and some ten miles south-west of the township of Richmond. On this manor, which had passed into my hands two years before at the decease of my dear and lamented father, who was of the third generation of the Bampfylds settled there, we raised tobacco and corn in large quantities and had good horned cattle and many sheep, while for the fruits of the earth there was no lack, so that my life from the first had ever been one of ease and comfort, and, even in Virginia, we of Pomfret Manor were accounted well-to-do folk. Yet, comfortable as was the existence here, there was still much in our surroundings that disturbed that comfort, as it disturbed the comfort of all our neighbours. Thus, our negro servants were now-a-days not always to be depended on for their fidelity; sometimes they would project insurrections and revolts which, when put into practice, could only be subdued by bloodshed, while our indented or convict servants--I mean the whites--were even still more troublesome, what with their runnings away, their constant endeavours to seduce the blacks from their allegiance, their drunkenness when they could get at drink, and their general depravity. For depraved they were beyond all thought, being most of them convicts from the jails in England who had saved their necks by praying to be sent to Virginia to be sold as plantation-hands, while the remainder were as often as not criminals evading justice, who, in England, had cheerfully sold themselves into four years' slavery (four years being the limit here, though much longer in the sugar-producing islands of the West Indies) so as to escape from the eye of justice and begin a new life in a new land. And, also, amongst them there were defaulting debtors and bankrupts, men who were flying from their wives and children, women who were deserting their husbands, and, sometimes, wretches who, when drunk in the seaport towns at home, had been carried on board and brought to the colonies, where, although they at first resented their kidnapping, they soon settled down to be as great villains as their fellows. Yet, had it not been for these dreadful people, one knows not how the plantations could have been kept prosperous, since certain it is that no free-born Englishman in Virginia, or any other of the colonies, would consent to toil in the fields, while the negroes were so lazy, and, in many cases, so sullen, that little hard work could be got out of them. Indoors the blacks would do their duties cheerfully enough; they loved cooking and nursing; they took pride in polishing and keeping in order the beautiful furniture which our fathers and grandfathers had imported from England, and in looking to the silver