giving a list of properties, and in this list John Steele is given as proprietor of Springbank, owning 65 slaves and 28 stock, the largest owner in the parish having 454 slaves. The editor of the Daily Gleaner, at Kingston, who is a Scotsman, showed me data collected by him in connection with the matter. Mr. Charles Douglas, to whom Burns engaged himself through his brother, Dr. Patrick Douglas, of Ayr, was the owner of at least two sugar properties in the parish of Portland-viz., Ayr Mount and Nightingale Grove. The former was the principal estate, and lay about three miles from Port-Antonio. The Great House commanded a beautiful view, and, although some details of scenery have since changed, the general aspect remains as it was then. The works, of course, are in ruin. The fields of cane have vanished, and instead there are the cultivations of small settlers, with thatched cottages embowered among fruit trees, but the outline of forest and field, the wealth of vegetation, the brilliancy of colour characteristic of this wet parish have never altered. The Rio Grande, the most romantic of Jamaica streams, still winds quietly along after its wild descent from the Blue Mountains, whose lofty ranges tower immediately behind. The estate now comprises only 40 acres, which are divided among one family of negroes. Nightingale Grove was further inland, and has now become merged in Golden Vale, the largest banana plantation in the country. The soil of both properties is extremely fertile, and in Burns's time must have yielded golden crops of canes. Port-Antonio was the shipping place, and counted only some 30 houses. There were about 100 other settlements of various kinds, but the sugar estates were the chief centres of industry, and were in themselves small villages. Of these not one now remains.

Mr. Douglas appears to have personally managed his estates, which were well looked after, and were well stocked with cattle and slaves. He was one of four superintendents of the Maroon negro towns established in the island. That under his direction was Moore Town, built on an almost inaccessible ridge of the Blue Mountains, and for his services he was paid £200 per annum. This was the only public office he held, so far as contemporary records show. Burns had signed a contract to serve as a bookkeeper for a term of three years at a salary of £30, with board and lodgings free. according to this informant, whether he

It is questionable, realised the exact

nature of the work he would be required to do. A bookkeeper then, as now, did not keep books; his duties were to supervise labour in the field and in the boiling and still-houses. On all estates there were three gangs in the fields, one consisting of men, another of women, and the third of children. These toiled from sunrise to sunset, and often at night when the moon shone full. It was the duty of the bookkeeper to follow them and superintend their work in all weathers, and to make them fulfil their apportioned tasks by the free use of the whip. The Slave Act enforced in 1786, not only legalised this practice, but sanctioned the infliction of terrible penalties for the most trivial offences, mutilations, dismemberment, branding, &c. Bookkeepers were not expected to marry, and were often forbidden to do so, but were encouraged to take "housekeepers" from amongst the slave women. They lived, as a rule, in comfortless barracks exposed to the malarious influences so common around sugar-works, and totally devoid of the refinement most of them were accustomed to in Scotland. The death registers of the colony indicate that 90 per cent. of the young white men who went out as employees on estates succumbed to the effects of imprudence and intemperate living. After the first shock of contact they were able to lose the fine sense of moral responsibility acquired in their Scottish homes, and were tempted to spend their scanty leisure time in low debauchery. It may be concluded that if Burns had fully realised the nature of his prospective work he would never have agreed to place himself under the tyranny of a system so degrading.

The editor of the Daily Telegraph, of Kingston, also a Scotsman, had the official records at Spanish Town searched by Mr. Judah, one of the officials there, as to the various Douglasses living in the island in 1786, and furnished me with the following resultant data :

First--Charles Douglas, in Portland, owned property in that parish from 1777 to 1799. He had several estates, amongst which were Finches of 160 acres and Nightingale Grove of 300 acres. In December, 1785, he purchased a negro slave named Andrew from Mrs. Janet Colt of Leitch Hill, in the county of Perth, Scotland. (This was the Douglas to whom Burns had arranged to go.) In his will, dated February 15, 1815, he states:-"All the residue and remainder of my

estate, real, personal, and mixed, wherever found, I give and bequeath to my beloved niece, Janet Douglas (now Mrs. Boswell), the daughter of my brother Patrick Douglas, Esquire, of Garallan, in the shire of Ayr, in North Britain, to her and to her lawful heirs for ever."

Second-Charles Graham Douglas, of St. John (now St. Catherine), who died about the year 1823. He was a person of colour, and was apparently possessed of a good deal of property.

Third-Charles Douglas, of the parish of Vere, gentleman, whose will is dated 1842. He mentions his father, William Douglas, and his mother, Janet Douglas, of the town of Falkirk, Scotland, to each of whom he bequeathed £100, also £100 to his sister, Anne Miller, of the town of Elgin, Scotland, and a similar amount to another sister, Margaret Lawson, of the town of Falkirk. It will be seen from Wallace's edition of "Chambers's Life of Burns" that Janet Douglas (niece of No. 1), who succeeded her father, Dr. Patrick Douglas, in Garallan, married Mr. Hamilton-Boswell, of Knockroom, collector of taxes for Ayrshire, and that Mr. Hamilton DouglasBoswell, great-grandson of Dr. Patrick Douglas, succeeded later as proprietor of Garallan.

Mr. Liddel, of the Surveyor-General's office at Kingston, in Jamaica, showed me a map dated 1804, which gives a property of Douglas's near Golden Vale, in the parish of Portland. This would be Nightingale Grove, which was absorbed in Golden Vale. A map of 1876 shows Ayr Mount of 50 acres overlooking Rio Grande Valley and Port-Antonio. There is also an estate in the neighbourhood called Douglas Mount.

Burns in one of his letters mentions that he was to have gone to Savannah-la-Mar, on the south coast of Jamaica, but that some Jamaican friends informed him it would cost £50 to send him from there overland to Port-Antonio, and it was then arranged for him to wait for a vessel direct to the latter port. This fortunate delay, as is well known, led to his not going at all. A visitor to Jamaica finds it difficult to believe that it would have cost anything like £50 to transport Burns from Savannah-la-Mar to Port-Antonio even in the days in question. Dr. Gillies, of Seabank, Kingston, formerly a minister, now a D.D., and who is probably the oldest white residenter in the island, having been connected with it for

about 50 years, with whom I discussed the matter, was also of this opinion. Even if the £50 were in currency, which would be somewhat less, he considered the amount stated was out of the question.

It might be interesting to speculate what would have been the result had Burns gone to Jamaica. Would he have been dragged down by the degrading associations of a bookkeeper's life, or would he have risen superior to his surroundings? The natural situation of the estate, as has been indicated, is unusually fine, the views of mountain, river, and sea being magnificent. This would no doubt have quickened Burns's inborn love of nature, and would have stimulated his genius in that direction.

It is somewhat sad for the visitor from Britain to find on reaching Port-Antonio that from Springbank, Burns's intended destination, then an exclusively British preserve, he now sees everywhere evidences of the encroachment of Americans. The Stars and Stripes are flying from most of the steamers which frequent the beautiful harbour; the only hotel is American, and it is filled with American tourists; the port is surrounded by American plantations, and the district is practically controlled by an American company. How little could this have been foreseen in the time of Burns!— Glasgow Herald.

THE AULD TOUN, PARTS ADJACENT,

AND THEIR BURNSIANA.

IF

F it be that there are ministering spirits whose business it is to watch over individual man and bear a hand in the regulation of his destinies, why should there not also be guardian angels of communities? The man dies; not so the community. The man is laid away to rest; on and on goes the community from one generation to another. "The days of our years are threescore years and ten," but the community lives, no matter how the churchyards grow. Why, then, should the community not have a ministering spirit, a guardian angel, to itself?

Not seldom have I so thought as I stood looking out, under the moon and when the silent stars shone, over the sleeping town. Its continuous life is upon me-the life that was here when the ancient Briton launched his coracle upon the waters of the river-the life that was heard in the serried tramp of the mail-clad men from Rome-the life that embraced Wallace and Bruce and the heroes of the Scottish War of Independencethe life that was shared in by Welsh and Willock and the dour sons of the Scottish Covenants, that effervesced in the feudalists who reddened the High Street causeway with blood, that brought Cavaliers and Roundheads to share in the alternating fortunes of their troublous times-the life that was here when, in the fulness of time, the inspired stripling from the wayside clachan of Alloway came in to where the Sand Gate used to stand to be taught of Murdoch in the old thatched house on the edge of the sanddrift without-the life that shall still be here when we who to-day inhabit Auld Ayr shall all be laid to rest amid the sands piled up of long silent seas and long-hushed winds, and forgotten of the foot that passeth by.

In this particular sense, in the spirit if not in the letter, the Ayr of to-day is the very same Ayr that Burns knew. Mightily changed indeed as to its stone and lime is the ancient burgh, a twentieth-century-looking place, that, with iron band and electric cable, has knit the venerable Cross of ancient Prestwick to Alloway Kirk and the Doon that flows mid its banks and braes to the sea. But Ayr is the creation of the centuries, and not of the days or the years that are passing, and Burns is as much her son as ever he was, though the Nith, springing to life amid the uplands of his own Ayrshire, has been singing his slumber song these hundred years and more.

High up in the steeple there is a dingy, dusty little bell. Beneath it swings the big town bell that, with clamorous tongue, rouses the royal burghers to work, reminds them that the day is done, bids them to the house of prayer, cries aloud when there is fire abroad, peals its solemn joy