From the reduction in the number of public servants, owing
to the island having been given up by the East India Company, and
the consequent emigration of many of the richer people, the poverty
probably will increase. The chief food of the working class is rice
with a little salt meat; as neither of these articles are the
products of the island, but must be purchased with money, the low
wages tell heavily on the poor people. Now that the people are
blessed with freedom, a right which I believe they value fully, it
seems probable that their numbers will quickly increase: if so,
what is to become of the little state of St. Helena?
My guide was an elderly man who had been a goatherd when a boy, and
knew every step amongst the rocks. He was of a race many times
crossed, and although with a dusky skin, he had not the
disagreeable expression of a mulatto. He was a very civil, quiet
old man, and such appears the character of the greater number of
the lower classes. It was strange to my ears to hear a man, nearly
white and respectably dressed, talking with indifference of the
times when he was a slave. With my companion, who carried our
dinners and a horn of water, which is quite necessary, as all the
water in the lower valleys is saline, I every day took long walks.
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