Among the passengers was an Englishman who had just returned from Herrnhut, and had also visited the baths of M----. It diverted me highly, unknown to him as I was, to hear his opinions of the plantations there. How much tastes differ, and how little, therefore, anybody needs to despair, you may conclude from this,--that he expressed the highest admiration for that gloomy district, solely on account of the immensity of the 'evergreen woods,' as he called the endless monotonous pine-forests, which appear to us so insufferable, but which are a rarity in England, where fir-trees are carefully planted in parks, and commonly thrive but ill. An American was extremely incensed at being sea-sick during this trumpery passage, after having crossed the Atlantic to Rotterdam without being at all so; and a planter from Demarara, who was in a continual shiver, complained even more of the "impolitic" abolition of the slave-trade than of the cold. He thought that this measure would speedily bring about the total ruin of the colonies; for, said he, a slave or a native never works unless he is forced; and he does not need to work, because the magnificent country and climate afford him food and shelter sufficient. Europeans _cannot_ work in the heat, so that nothing remains but the alternative,--colonies with slaves, or no colonies;--that people knew this well enough, but had very different ends in view from those which they put forward with such a parade of philanthropy. He maintained that the slaves were, even for their owners' interest, far better treated than the Irish peasants,--far better than he had often seen servants treated in Europe:--an exception might be found here and there; but this was not worth considering in a view of the whole subject. I tried to turn the conversation from a subject so distressing to every friend of humanity, and got him to describe to me the mode of life in Guiana, and the majesty of its primeval woods. His descriptions filled me with a sort of longing after these wonders of nature, in a country where all is nobler, and man alone is baser, than with us. The ridiculous element of the voyage was an English lady, who with unusual volubility seized every occasion of entering into conversation in French. Though no longer in the bloom of youth, she carefully concealed this defect even on ship-board, by the most studied toilet. At a late hour in the morning, when we all crawled on deck more or less wretched, we found her already seated there in an elegant 'negligée.'