The only mode of access to many of the estates in the mountainous districts, is by mule paths winding about, amid fastnesses, precipices, and frightful solitudes.
In those lone retirements, on the mountain top, or in the deep glen by the side of the rocky rivers, the traveller occasionally meets with an estate.

Strangers but rarely intrude upon those little domains.

They are left to the solitary sway of the overseers dwelling amid their "gangs," and undisturbed, save by the weekly visitations of the special magistrates.

While the traveller is struck with the facilities for the perpetration of those enormities which must have existed there during slavery; he is painfully impressed also with the numerous opportunities which are still afforded for oppressing the apprentices, particularly where the special magistrates are not honest men.[A] [Footnote A: From the nature of the case, it must be impossible to know how much actual flogging is perpetrated by the overseers.

We might safely conjecture that there must be a vast deal of it that never comes to the light.