These slaves are only so employed for one month during the whole year, and perhaps have the remaining eleven months for their own occupations. Domestic slaves are by no means ill treated. They always have plenty of food, and clothing is not necessary, nor is it worn, with the exception of a small piece of cotton cloth tied round the waist. They are always treated as part of the family. Such a thing as actual want is unknown. The beams and planks are, for the most part, of the adoomah, a very large and handsome tree, and excellent timber. It is all sawed by hand and pit-saws. Saw-mills would be of advantage here. Cotton trees of immense size grow in the neighbourhood, some forty-eight and fifty feet in girth. They are only used for canoes, sometimes three and even four large canoes being hollowed out of one tree. Their wood, however, is too soft for any other purpose. The name of cotton-tree causes many people to suppose that it produces the cotton commonly used in manufactures; such is not the case; the cotton produced by this tree is contained in oblong pods, about ten or twelve inches long, and round at each end, like an egg. This pod contains a substance like silk, and is used only for stuffing pillows or cushions. The pods hang down for some length, as if suspended from the end of a piece of twine, a foot and a half long. The dwarf cotton shrub, which produces the material used in our manufacture, also grows spontaneously in this neighbourhood. This shrub seldom exceeds five or six feet, and has several spreading stems. Its flower is beautiful, either red or yellow, and is succeeded by a round and flattish pod, about one inch diameter, which, when ripe, bursts, and its seeds are surrounded by cotton, which, when gathered, is cleared of them. They are black, and in shape much like the stone of our hips and haws.