We Englishmen are not very fond of warm professions, for we rarely make them ourselves, and have no allowance for different customs, blood, and temper. Yet the girl's face looked frank and open; and I invited her to sit down beside us, wishing to extract any information she might possess. It was not much that she could give; for, as I think I have elsewhere remarked, there is not a perfect sympathy between the mulatto and the black race. The former are inclined to be somewhat conceited upon their approximation to their masters; the latter view the mulattoes with a certain degree of contempt and dislike as inheriting a portion of the blood of the slave-holder, without his power or intellect. They often intermarry, it is true; still this latent sort of aversion prevails; and you will always hear the negroes speak of the yellow man or the yellow woman with a cold and slighting tone. On the present occasion, it would seem, many of the mulattoes entertained some apprehension that the vengeance of the negroes would be extended to them on account of the white blood in their veins. This was especially the case amongst the mulatto women; and Minerva told us, she had only ventured to hold communication with some of the people of her own colour. From them she had learned that from thirty to forty white persons had been slaughtered during the preceding night; that being attacked totally unprepared, no resistance had been offered, and that the negroes in the morning, in considerable numbers (swelled doubtlessly by her imagination), and armed and mounted, had marched upon Jerusalem, intending to sack and burn the town. They had been met upon the road, however, at the distance of about a mile from where we then were, by a body of armed white men, who had fired upon and dispersed them. But she added, what was very important in our eyes, that they had since reassembled in greater force than ever, and had murdered a party of four white people whom they had met upon the road. She could not give us any of the particulars, for she had only heard them from a mulatto man, who had heard them from somebody else. We must all have had cause to know--sometimes to our cost--how dangerous it is to rely upon current rumours in times of peril and excitement. It seemed to me, too, that the girl was inclined to shirk some of my questions. I asked Bessy, therefore, in Italian, which she spoke very well, if the woman was to be relied upon. "Oh, yes," she answered; "I have always heard her spoken of as a very good, honest girl, although, doubtless, she, like all the negroes, is inclined to magnify whatever she hears." "Were the white men who you say were killed upon the road armed?" I asked, turning to the girl. "Yes, that they were," she said; "for the gentleman told me there was a terrible fight. But all the white men were killed, nevertheless; de niggers were too many for them." "Can you tell which way the black men went after that?" I inquired.