The operatives, of which one contains eighty, and the other nearly as many, are all black and colored.

A large number of them are what the British law terms _apprentices_, and are still bound in unremunerated servitude, though some of them for thrice seven years have been adepts in their trades, and not a few are earning their masters twenty or thirty dollars each month, clear of all expenses.

Some of these _apprentices_ are hoary-headed and wrinkle-browned men, with their children, and grand-children, apprentices also, around them, and who, after having used the plane and the chisel for half a century, with faithfulness for _others_, are now spending the few hours and the failing strength of old again in _preparing_ to use the plane and the chisel for _themselves_.
The work on which they were engaged evinced no lack of mechanical skill and ingenuity, but on the contrary we were shown some of the most elegant specimens of mechanical skill, which we ever saw.

The rich woods of the West Indies were put into almost every form and combination which taste could designate or luxury desire.
The owners of these establishments informed us that their business had much _increased within the last two years_, and was still extending.
Neither of them had any fears for the results of complete emancipation, but both were laying their plans for the future as broadly and confidently as ever.
In our walk we accidentally met a colored man, whom we had heard mentioned on several occasions as a superior architect.

From the conversation we had with him, then and subsequently, he appeared to possess a fine mechanical genius, and to have made acquirements which would be honorable in any man, but which were truly admirable in one who had been shut up all his life by the disabilities which in Jamaica have, until recently, attached to color.