Under the name of the West Indies, there are many countries:--Cuba, Jamaica, Hayti, Porto Rico, Barbadoes, and others. In Cuba, are found mines of gold, copper, and different other metals; there is a quantity of sugar grown there; and the tobacco is finer than that of most other islands. The trees are principally ebony, cedar, and mahogany, which are hewed down, and sent to foreign countries, to be made into furniture of various sorts. Cedar wood is also used to scent clothes and papers, on account of its sweet perfume. The Cubans are fond of bull-fighting, and of cock-fighting, I am sorry to say. Balls and parties are also a favourite and more innocent amusement. In Jamaica, the principal exercise of industry is in growing sugar, indigo, coffee, and ginger. These are cultivated in what are called plantations, which are attended to by negroes, who used to be slaves, and used to be lashed on to work unnaturally hard with whips; but they are now free in all the British colonies, as I hope they will be every where, long before any of my little friends, who read this book, may die. For not only were men and women kept in a state of slavery, but all their dear innocent little children, both little boys and little girls were treated as slaves. The bread-fruit tree is one of the most useful productions of the country, it not only supplies food, but other necessaries. Of the inner bark is formed a kind of cloth; the wood, which is soft, smooth, and of a yellowish colour, serves for the building of boats and houses; the leaves are used for wrapping up food; some parts of the flowers are good tinder; and the juice, when boiled with cocoa-nut oil, is employed for making bird-lime, and as a cement for mending earthenware vessels. So you may guess how useful it is to the people of Jamaica, and yet it is not a native of the West Indies, but was first brought there by English people, within the last seventy or eighty years. Hayti is now a much more flourishing island than it was; the Emperor, Faustin Soulouque, does every thing in his power to render it a civilized and polite country. He encourages all the arts and industrial sciences; and, in his court is kept up the grandeur of a great and powerful state; though the Haytians are black people, and were for the greater part negro slaves. Barbadoes is an exceedingly warm country, and is unfortunately liable to dreadful hurricanes, which sometimes overthrow whole towns and villages. The products are sugar, cotton, ginger, and rum. The tall sugar-canes, which grow as high as five or six feet, are set in plantations and tended by negroes; and the cotton plants are also taken care of by the negroes, who are almost the only persons who can work in the open air, on account of the heat. The houses of the planters are numerous all over the country; and, with the green hills, and the luxuriance of the vegetation, make an extremely picturesque scene.