FEBRUARY 12.
A Sir Charles Price, who had an estate in this island infested by rats, imported, with much trouble, a very large and strong species for the purpose of extirpating the others. The new-comers answered his purpose to a miracle; they attacked the native rats with such spirit, that in a short time they had the whole property to themselves; but no sooner had they done their duty upon the rats, than they extended their exertions to the cats, of whom their strength and size at length enabled them completely to get the better; and since that last victory, Sir Charles Price’s rats, as they are called, have increased so prodigiously, that (like the man in Scripture, who got rid of one devil, and was taken possession of by seven others) this single species is now a greater nuisance to the island than all the others before them were together. The best, mode of destroying rats here is with terriers; but those imported from England soon grow useless, being blinded by the sun, while their puppies, born in Jamaica, are provided by nature with a protecting film over their eyes, which effectually secures them against incurring that calamity.
FEBRUARY 12.
Poor Philippa, the woman who used always to call me her “husband,” and whom I left sick in the hospital, during my absence has gone out of her senses; and there cannot well happen any thing more distressing, as there is no separate place for her confinement, and her ravings disturb the other invalids. There is, indeed, no kind of bedlam in the whole island of Jamaica: whether this proceeds from people being so very sedate and sensible, that they never go mad, or from their all being so mad, that no one person has a right to shut up another for being out of his senses, is a point which I will not pretend to decide. One of my domestic negroes, a boy of sixteen, named Prince, was abandoned by his worthless mother in infancy, and reared by this Philippa; and since her illness he passes every moment of his leisure in her sick-room. On the other hand, there is a woman named Christian, attending two fevered children in the hospital; one her own, and the other an adopted infant, whom she reared upon the death of its mother in child-birth; and there she sits, throwing her eyes from one to the other with such unceasing solicitude, that no one could discover which was her own child and which the orphan.
FEBRUARY 13.
Two Jamaica nightingales have established themselves on the orange tree which grows against my window, and their song is most beautiful. This bird is also called “the mocking-bird,” from its facility of imitating, not only the notes of every other animal, but—I am told—of catching every tune that may be played or sung two or three times in the house near which it resides, after which it will go through the air with the greatest taste and precision, throwing in cadences and ornaments that Catalani herself might envy.
But by far the most curious animal that I have yet seen in Jamaica is “the soldier,” a species of crab, which inhabits a shell like a snail’s, so small in proportion to its limbs, that nothing can be more curious or admirable than the machinery by which it is enabled to fold them up instantly on the slightest alarm. They inhabit the mountains, but regularly once a year travel in large troops down to the seaside to spawn and change their shells. If I recollect right, Goldsmith gives a very full and entertaining account of this animal, by the name of “the soldier crab.” They are seldom used in Jamaica except for soups, which are reckoned delicious: that which was brought to me was a very small one, the shell being no bigger than a large snail’s, although the animal itself, when marching with his house on his back, appears to be above thrice the size; but I am told that they are frequently as large as a man’s fist. Mine was found alone in the public road: how it came to be in so solitary a state, I know not, for in general they move in armies, and march towards the sea in a straight line; I am afraid, by his being found alone, that my soldier must have been a deserter.
FEBRUARY 14.
To-day there was a shower of rain for the first time since my arrival; indeed, not a drop has fallen since the 16th of November; and in consequence my present crop has suffered terribly, and our expectations for next season are still worse.
FEBRUARY 18. (Sunday.)
The rain has brought forth the fire-flies, and in the evening the hedges are all brilliant with their numbers. In the day they seem to be torpid beetles of a dull reddish colour, but at night they become of a shining purple. The fire proceeds from two small spots in the back part of the head. It is yellow in the light, and requires motion to throw out its radiance in perfection; but as soon as it is touched, the fly struggles violently, and bends itself together with a clicking noise like the snap of a spring; and I understand that this effort is necessary to set it in motion. It is sufficiently strong to turn itself upwards with a single movement, if lying on its back: some people say that it is always obliged to throw itself upon its back in order to take wing; but this I have, again, heard others contradict. When confined in a glass, the light seems almost extinguished; nothing can be discerned but two pale yellow spots; but on being pressed by the hand it becomes more brilliant than any emerald, and when on the wing it seems entirely composed of the most beautifully coloured fire.
FEBRUARY 20.
I attended the Slave Court, where a negro was tried for sheep-stealing, and a black servant girl for attempting to poison her master. The former was sentenced to be transported. The latter was a girl of fifteen, called Minetta: she acknowledged the having infused corrosive sublimate in some brandy and water; but asserted that she had taken it from the medicine chest without knowing it to be poison, and had given it to her master at her grandmother’s desire. This account was evidently a fabrication: there was no doubt of the grandmother’s innocence, although some suspicion attached to the mother’s influence; but as to the girl herself, nothing could be more hardened than her conduct through the whole transaction. She stood by the bed to see her master drink the poison; witnessed his agonies without one expression of surprise or pity; and when she was ordered to leave the room, she pretended to be fast asleep, and not to hear what was said to her. Even since her imprisonment, she could never be prevailed upon to say that she was sorry for her master’s having been poisoned; and she told the people in the gaol, that “they could do nothing to her, for she had turned king’s evidence against her grandmother.” She was condemned to die on Thursday next, the day after to-morrow: she heard the sentence pronounced without the least emotion; and I am told, that when she went down the steps of the courthouse, she was seen to laugh.
The trial appeared to be conducted with all possible justice and propriety; the jury consisted of nine respectable persons; the bench of three magistrates, and a senior one to preside. There were no lawyers employed on either side; consequently no appeals to the passions, no false lights thrown out, no traps, no flaws, no quibbles, no artful cross-examinings, and no brow-beating of witnesses; and I cannot say that the trial appeared to me to go on at all the worse. Nobody appeared to be either for or against the prisoner; the only object of all present was evidently to come at the truth, and I sincerely believe that they obtained their object. The only part of the trial of which I disapproved was the ordering the culprit to such immediate execution, that sufficient time was not allowed for the exercise of the royal prerogative, should the governor have been disposed to commute the punishment for that of transportation.
FEBRUARY 21.
During my excursion to Spanish Town, the complaining negroes of Friendship, who had applied to me for relief, were summoned to Savannah la Mar, before the Council of Protection, and the business thoroughly investigated. Their examination has been sent to me, and they appear to have had a very fair hearing. The journals of the estate were produced;—the book-keepers examined upon oath; and in order to make out a case at all, the chief complainant contradicted himself so grossly, as left no doubt that the whole was a fabrication. They were, therefore, dismissed without relief, but also without punishment, in spite of their gross falsehoods and calumnies; and although they did not gain their object, I make no doubt that they will go on more contentedly for having had attention paid to their complaints. It was indeed evident, that Nelly (the chief complainant) was actuated more by wounded pride than any real feeling of hardship; for what she laid the most stress upon was, the overseer’s turning his back upon her, when she stated herself to be injured, and walking away without giving her any answer.
There are so many pleasing and amusing parts of the character of negroes, that it seems to me scarcely possible not to like them. But when they are once disposed to evil, they seem to set no bounds to the indulgence of their bad passions. A poor girl came into the hospital to-day, who had had some trifling dispute with two of her companions; on which the two friends seized her together, and each fixing her teeth on one of the girl’s hands, bit her so severely, that we greatly fear her losing the use of both of them. I happened also to ask, this morning, to whom a skull had belonged, which I had observed fixed on a pole by the roadside, when returning last from Montego Bay. I was told, that about five years ago a Mr. Dunbar had given some discontent to his negroes in the article of clothing them, although, in other respects, he was by no means a severe master. However, this was sufficient to induce his head driver, who had been brought up in his own house from infancy, to form a plot among his slaves to assassinate him; and he was assisted in this laudable design by two young men from a neighbouring property, who barely knew Mr. Dunbar by sight, had no enmity against him whatever, and only joined in the conspiracy in compliment to their worthy friend the driver. During several months a variety of attempts were made for effecting their purpose; but accident defeated them; till at length they were made certain of his intention to dine out at some distance, and of his being absolutely obliged to return in the evening. An ambuscade was therefore laid to intercept him; and on his passing a clump of trees, the assassins sprang upon him, the driver knocked him from his horse, and in a few moments their clubs despatched him. No one suspected the driver; but in the course of enquiry, his house as well as the other was searched, and not only Mr. Dunbar’s watch was found concealed there, but with it one of his ears, which the villain had carried away, from a negro belief that, as long as the murderer possesses one of the ears of his victim, he will never be haunted by his spectre. The stranger-youths, two of Dunbar’s negroes, and the driver, were tried, confessed the crime, and were all executed; the head of the latter being fixed upon a pole in terrorem. But while the offenders were still in prison, the overseer upon a neighbouring property had occasion to find fault in the field with a woman belonging to a gang hired to perform some particular work; upon which she flew upon him with the greatest fury, grasped him by the throat, cried to her fellows—“Come here! come here! Let us Dunbar him!” and through her strength and the suddenness of her attack had nearly accomplished her purpose, before his own slaves could come to his assistance. This woman was also executed.
This happened about five years ago, when the mountains were in a very rebellious state. Every thing there is at present quiet. But only last year a book-keeper belonging to the next estate to me was found with his skull fractured in one of my own cane-pieces; nor have any enquiries been able to discover the murderer.
FEBRUARY 22.
During many years the Moravians have been established upon the neighbouring estate of Mesopotamia. As the ecclesiastical commissaries had said so much to me respecting the great appetite of the negroes for religious instruction, I was desirous of learning what progress had been made in this quarter, and this morning I went over to see one of the teachers. He told me, that he and his wife had jointly used their best efforts to produce a sense of religion in the minds of the slaves; that they were all permitted to attend his morning and evening lectures, if they chose it; but that he could not say that they showed any great avidity on the subject. It seems that there are at least three hundred negroes on the estate; the number of believers has rather increased than diminished, to be sure, but still in a very small proportion. When this gentleman arrived, there were not more than forty baptised persons: he has been here upwards of five years, and still the number of persons “belonging to his church” (as he expressed it) does not exceed fifty. Of these, seldom more than ten or a dozen attend his lectures at a time. As to the remaining two hundred and fifty, they take no more notice of his lectures or his exhortations, than if there were no such person on the property, are only very civil to him when they see him, and go on in their own old way, without suffering him to interfere in any shape. By the overseer of Greenwich’s express desire, the Moravian has, however, agreed to give up an hour every day for the religious instruction of the negro children on that property: and I should certainly request him to extend his labours to Cornwall, if I did not think it right to give the Church of England clergymen full room for a trial of their intended periodical visitations; which would not be the case, if the negroes were to be interfered with by the professors of any other communion: otherwise I am myself ready to give free ingress and egress upon my several estates to the teachers of any Christian sect whatever, the Methodists always excepted, and “Miss Peg, who faints at the sound of an organ.”
For my own part, I have no hope of any material benefit arising from these religious visitations made at quarterly intervals. It seems to me as nugatory as if a man were to sow a field with horse-hair, and expect a crop of colts.
FEBRUARY 23.
This morning my picture was drawn by a self-taught genius, a negro Apelles, belonging to Dr. Pope, the minister; and the picture was exactly such as a self-taught genius might be expected to produce. It was a straight hard outline, without shade or perspective; the hair was a large black patch, and the face covered with an uniform layer of flesh-colour, with a red spot in the centre of each cheek. As to likeness, there was not even an attempt to take any. But still, such as they were, there were eyes, nose, and mouth, to be sure. A long red nose supplied the place of my own snub; an enormous pair of whiskers stretched themselves to the very corner of my mouth; and in place of three hairs and a half, the painter, in the superabundance of his generosity, bestowed upon me a pair of eye-brows more bushy than Dr. Johnson’s, and which, being formed in an exact semicircle, made the eyes beneath them stare with an expression of the utmost astonishment. The negroes, however, are in the highest admiration of the painter’s skill, and consider the portrait as a striking resemblance; for there is a very blue coat with very yellow buttons, and white gaiters and trow-sers, and an eye-glass so big and so blue, that it looks as if I had hung a pewter plate about my neck; and a bunch of watch-seals larger than those with which Pope has decorated Belinda’s great great grandsire. John Fuller (to whom, jointly with Nicholas, the charge of this inestimable treasure is to be entrusted) could not find words to express his satisfaction at the performance. “Dere massa coat! and dere him chair him sit in! and dere massa seals, all just de very same ting! just all as one! And oh! ki! dere massa pye-glass!” In the midst of his raptures he dropped the picture, and fractured the frame-glass. His despair now equalled his former joy;—“Oh, now what for him do? Such a pity! Just to break it after it was all done so well! All so pretty!” However, we stuck the broken glass together with wafers, and he carried it off, assuring me, “that when massa gone, he should talk to it every morning, all one as if massa still here.” Indeed, this “talking to massa” is a favourite amusement among the negroes, and extremely inconvenient: they come to me perpetually with complaints so frivolous, and requests so unreasonable, that I am persuaded they invent them only to have an excuse for “talk to massa;” and when I have given them a plump refusal, they go away perfectly satisfied, and “tank massa for dis here great indulgence of talk.”
There is an Eboe carpenter named Strap, who was lately sick and in great danger, and whom I nursed with particular care. The poor fellow thinks that he never can express his gratitude sufficiently; and whenever he meets me in the public road, or in the streets of Savannah la Mar, he rushes towards the carriage, roars out to the postilion to stop, and if the boy does not obey instantly, he abuses him with all his power; “for why him no stop when him want talk to massa?”—“But look, Strap, your beast is getting away!”—“Oh! damn beast, massa.”—“But you should go to your mountain, or you will get no vittle.”—“Oh, damn vittle, and damn mountain! me no want vittle, me want talk wid massa;” and then, all that he has got to say is, “Oh massa, massa! God bless you, massa! me quite, quite glad to see you come back, my own massa!” And then he bursts into a roar of laughter so wild and so loud, that the passers-by cannot help stopping to stare and laugh too.
FEBRUARY 24.
On the Sunday after my first arrival, the whole body of Eboe negroes came to me to complain of the attorney, and more particularly of one of the book-keepers. I listened to them, if not with unwearied patience, at least with unsubdued fortitude, for above an hour and a half; and finding some grounds for their complaint against the latter, in a few days I went down to their quarter of the village, told them that to please them I had discharged the book-keeper, named a day for examining their other grievances, and listened to them for an hour more. When the day of trial came, they sent me word that they were perfectly satisfied, and had no complaint to make. I was, therefore, much surprised to receive a visit from Edward, the Eboe, yesterday evening, who informed me, that during my absence his fellows had formed a plan of making a complaint en masse to a neighbouring magistrate; and that, not only against the attorney, but against myself “for not listening to them when they were injured;” and Edward claimed great merit with me for having prevented their taking this step, and convinced them, that while I was on the estate myself, there could be no occasion for applying to a third person. Now, having made me aware of my great obligations to him, here Edward meant the matter to rest; but being a good deal incensed at their ingratitude, I instantly sent for the Eboes, and enquired into the matter; when it appeared, that Edward (who is a clever fellow, and has great influence over the rest) had first goaded them into a resolution of complaining to a magistrate, had then stopped them from putting their plan into execution, and that the whole was a plot of Edward’s, in order to make a merit with me for himself at the expense of his countrymen. However, as they confessed their having had the intention of applying to Mr. Hill as a magistrate, I insisted upon their executing their intention. I told them, that as Mr. Hill was the person whom they had selected for their protector, to Mr. Hill they should go; that they should either make their complaint to him against me, or confess that they had been telling lies, and had no complaint to make; and that, as the next day was to be a play-day given them by me, instead of passing it at home in singing and dancing, they should pass it at the Bay in stating their grievances.
This threw them into terrible confusion; they cried out that they wanted to make no complaint whatever, and that it was all Edward’s fault, who had misled them. Three of them, one after the other, gave him the lie to his face; and each and all (Edward as well as the rest) declared that go to the Bay they absolutely would not. The next morning they were all at the door waiting for my coming out: they positively refused to go to Mr. Hill, and begged and prayed, and humbled themselves; now scraping and bowing to me, and then blackguarding Edward with all their might and main; and when I ordered the driver to take charge of them, and carry them to Mr. Hill, some of them fairly took to their heels, and ran away. However, the rest soon brought them back again, for they swore that if one went, all should go; and away they were marched, in a string of about twenty, with the driver at their head. When they got to the Bay, they told Mr. Hill that, as to their massa, they had no complaint to make against him, except that he had compelled them to make one; and what they said against the attorney was so trifling, that the magistrate bade the driver take them all back again. Upon which they slunk away to their houses, while the Creoles cried out “Shame! shame!” as they passed along.
Indeed, the Creoles could not have received a greater pleasure than the mortification of the Eboes; for the two bodies hate each other as cordially as the Guelphs and Ghibellines; and after their departure for the Bay, I heard the head cook haranguing a large audience, and declaring it to be her fixed opinion, “that massa ought to sell all the Eboes, and buy Creoles instead.” Probably, Mrs. Cook was not the less loud in her exclamations against the ingratitude of the Eboes, from her own loyalty having lately been questioned. She had found fault one day in the hospital with some women who feigned sickness in order to remain idle. “You no work willing for massa,” said Mrs. Cook, “and him so vex, him say him go to Kingston to-morrow, and him wish him neber come back again!”—“What!” cried Philippa, the mad woman, “you wish massa neber come back from Kingston?” So she gave Mrs. Cook a box on the ear with all her might; upon which Mrs. Cook snatched up a stick and broke the mad woman’s pate with it. But though she could beat a hole in her head, she never could beat out of it her having said that she wished massa might never come back. And although Philippa has recovered her senses, in her belief of Mrs. Cook’s disloyalty she continues firm; and they never meet without renewing the dispute.
To-day being a play-day, the gaiety of the negroes was promoted by a distribution of an additional quantity of salt-fish (which forms a most acceptable ingredient in their pepper-pots), and as much rum and sugar as they chose to drink. But there was also a dinner prepared at the house where the “white people” reside, expressly for none but the piccaninny-mothers; that is, for the women who had children living. I had taken care, when this play-day was announced by the head driver, to make him inform the negroes that they were indebted for it entirely to these mothers; and to show them the more respect, I went to them after dinner myself, and drank their healths. The most respectable blacks on the estate were also assembled in the room; and I then told them that clothes would wear out, and money would be spent, and that I wished to give them something more lasting than clothes or money. The law only allows them, as a matter of right, every alternate Saturday for themselves, and holidays for three days at Christmas, which, with all Sundays, forms their whole legal time of relaxation. I therefore granted them as a matter of right, and of which no person should deprive them on any account whatever, every Saturday to cultivate their grounds; and in addition to their holidays at Christmas, I gave them for play-days Good-Friday, the second Friday in October, and the second Friday in July. By which means, they will in future have the same number of holidays four times a year, which hitherto they have been allowed only once, i.e. at Christmas. The first is to be called “the royal play-day,” in honour of that excellent Princess, the Duchess of York; and the negroes are directed to give three cheers upon the head driver’s announcing “The health of our good lady, H. R. H. the Duchess of York.” And I told them, that before my leaving the island, I should hear them drink this health, and should not fail to let Her Royal Highness know, that the negroes of Cornwall drank her health every year. This evidently touched the right chord of their vanity, and they all bowed and courtesied down to the very ground, and said, that would do them much high honour. The ninth being my own birthday, the July play-day is to be called “the massa’s” and that in October is to be in honour of the piccaninny-mothers, from whom it is to take its name.
The poor creatures overflowed with gratitude; and the prospective indulgences which had just been announced, gave them such an increase of spirits, that on returning to my own residence, they fell to singing and dancing again with as much violence as if they had been a pack of French furies at the Opera. The favourite song of the night was,
“Since massa come, we very well off;”
which words they repeated in chorus, without intermission (dancing all the time), for hours together; till, at half-past three, neither my eyes nor my brain could endure it any longer, and I was obliged to send them word that I wanted to go to bed, and could not sleep till the noise should cease. The idea of my going to bed seemed never to have occurred to them till that moment. Fortunately, like Johnson’s definition of wit, “the idea, although novel, was immediately acknowledged to be just.” So instantly the drums and gumbies left off beating; the children left off singing; the women and men left off dancing; and they all with one accord fell to kicking, and pulling, and thumping about two dozen of their companions, who were lying fast asleep upon the floor. Some were roused, some resisted, some began fighting, some got up and lay down again; but at length, by dint of their leading some, carrying others, and rolling the remainder down the steps, I got my house clear of my black guests about four in the morning.
Another of their popular songs this evening was—
“All the stories them telling you are lies, oh!”
which was meant as a satire upon the Eboes. My friend Strap being an Eboe, and one who had hitherto generally taken a leading part in all the discontents and squabbles of his countrymen, I was not without apprehensions of his having been concerned in the late complaint. I was, therefore, much pleased to find that he had positively refused to take any share in the business, and had been to the full as violent as any of the Creoles in reprobating the ingratitude of the Eboes. Today he came up to the house dressed in his best clothes, to show me his seven children; and he marched at their head in all the dignity of paternal pride. He begged me particularly to notice two fine little girls, who were twins. I told him that I had seen them already. “Iss! iss!” he said; “massa see um; but massa no admire um enough yet.” Upon which I fell to admiring them, tooth and nail, and the father went away quite proud and satisfied.
FEBRUARY 25.
Yesterday it was observed at George’s Plain, an estate about four miles off, that the water-mill did not work properly, and it was concluded that the grating was clogged up with rubbish. To clear it away, a negro immediately jumped down into the trench upon a log of wood; when he felt the log move under him, and of course jumped out again with all possible expedition. It was then discovered that the impediment in question proceeded from a large alligator which had wandered from the morass, and, in the hope of finding his way to the river, had swam up the mill-trench till he found himself stopped by the grating; and the banks being too high for him to gain them by leaping upwards, and the place of his confinement too narrow to admit of his turning round to go back again, his escape was impossible, and a ball, lodged near his eye, soon put an end to him. I went over to see him this morning; but I was not contented with merely seeing him, so I begged to have a steak cut off for me, brought it home, and ordered it to be broiled for dinner. One of the negroes happened to see it in the kitchen; the news spread through the estate like wildfire; and I had immediately half a dozen different deputations, all hoping that massa would not think of eating the alligator, for it was poisonous. However, I was obstinate, and found the taste of the flesh, when broiled with pepper and salt, and assisted by an onion sauce, by no means to be despised; but the consistence of the meat was disagreeable, being as tough as a piece of eel-skin. Perhaps any body who wishes to eat alligator steaks in perfection, ought to keep them for two or three days before dressing them; or the animal’s age might be in fault, for the fellow was so old that he had scarcely a tooth in his head; I therefore contented myself with two or three morsels; but a person who was dining with me ate a whole steak, and pronounced the dish to be a very good one. The eggs are said to be very palatable; nor have the negroes who live near morasses, the same objection with those of Cornwall to eating the flesh; it is, however, true that the gall of the alligator, if not extracted carefully, will render the whole animal unfit for food; and when this gall is reduced to powder, it forms a poison of the most dangerous nature, as the negroes know but too well.
FEBRUARY 26.
I had given the most positive orders that no person whatever should presume to strike a negro, or give him abusive language, or, however great the offence might be, should inflict any punishment, except by the sole direction of the trustee himself. Yet, although I had already discharged one bookkeeper on this account, this evening another of them had a dispute in the boiling-house with an African named Frank, because a pool of water was not removed fast enough; upon which he called him a rascal, sluiced him with the dirty water, and finally knocked him down with the broom. The African came to me instantly; four eye-witnesses, who were examined separately, proved the truth of his ill-usage; and I immediately discharged the book-keeper, who had contented himself with simply denying the blow having been given by him: but I told him that I could not possibly allow his single unsupported denial to outweigh five concordant witnesses to the assertion; and that, if he grounded his claim to being believed merely upon his having a white skin, he would find that, on Cornwall estate at least, that claim would not be admitted. The fact was established as evident as the sun; and nothing should induce me to retain him on my property, except his finding some means of appeasing the injured negro, and prevailing on him to intercede in his behalf. This was an humiliation to which he could not bring himself to stoop; and, accordingly, the man has left the estate. Probably, indeed, the attempt at reconciliation would have been unsuccessful; for when one of his companions asked Frank whether, if Mr. Barker would make him a present, he had not better take it, and beg massa to let him stay, he exclaimed, in the true spirit of a Zanga,—“No, no, no! me no want present! me no want noting! Me no beg for Mr. Barker! him go away!”—I was kept awake the greatest part of the night by the songs and rejoicings of the negroes, at their triumph over the offending book-keeper.
FEBRUARY 27.
The only horned cattle said to be fit for Jamaica work, are those which have a great deal of black in them. The white are terribly tormented by the insects, and they are weak and sluggish in proportion to their quantity of white. On the contrary I am told that such a thing as a black horse is not to be found in the island; those which may be imported black soon change their colour into a bay; and colts are said to have been dropped perfectly black, which afterwards grew lighter and lighter till they arrived at being perfectly white.
FEBRUARY 28.
Hearing that a manati (the sea-cow) had been taken at the mouth of the Cabrita River, and was kept alive at the Hope Wharf I got a sailing-boat, and went about eight miles to see the animal. It was suffered to live in the sea, a rope being fastened round it, by which it could be landed at pleasure. It was a male, and a very young one, not exceeding nine feet in length, whereas they have frequently been found on the outside of eighteen. The females yield a quart of milk at a time: a gentleman told me that he had tasted it, and could not have distinguished it from the sweetest cow’s milk. Unlike the seal, it never comes on shore, although it ventures up rivers in the night, to feed on the grass of their banks; but during the day it constantly inhabits the ocean, where its chief enemy is the shark, whose attacks it beats off with its tail, the strength of which is prodigious. It was killed this morning, and the gentleman to whom it belonged was obliging enough to send me part of it; we roasted it for dinner, and, except that its consistence was rather firmer, I should not have known it from veal.
FEBRUARY 29.
The wife of an old negro on the neighbouring estate of Anchovy had lately forsaken him for a younger lover. One night, when she happened to be alone, the incensed husband entered her hut unexpectedly, abused her with all the rage of jealousy, and demanded the clothes to be restored, which he had formerly given her. On her refusal he drew a knife, and threatened to cut them off her back; nor could she persuade him to depart, till she had received a severe beating. He had but just left the hut, when he encountered his successful rival, who was returning home: a quarrel instantly ensued; and the husband, having the knife still unsheathed in his hand, plunged it into the neck of his antagonist. It pierced the jugular vein; of course the man fell dead on the spot; and the murderer has been sent to Montego Bay, to take his trial.
MARCH 1. (Friday.)
One of my house-boys, named Prince, is son to the Duke of Sully; and to-day his Grace came to beg that, when I should leave Jamaica, I would direct the boy to be made a tradesman, instead of being sent back to be a common field-negro: but my own shops are not only full at present, but loaded with future engagements. Sully then requested that I would send his son to learn some other trade (a tailor’s, for instance) at Savannah la Mar, as had been frequently done in former times; but this, also, I was obliged to refuse. I told him, that formerly a master could pay for the apprenticeship of a clever negro boy, and, instead of employing him afterwards on the estate, could content himself with being repaid by a share of the profits; but that, since The Abolition had made it impossible for the proprietor of an estate to supply the place of one negro by the purchase of another, it would be unjust to his companions to suffer any one in particular to be withdrawn from service; as in that case two hundred and ninety-nine would have to do the work, which was now performed by three hundred; and, therefore, I could allow my negroes to apply themselves to no trades but such as related to the business of the property, such as carpenters, coopers, smiths, &c. “All true, massa,” said Sully; “all fair and just; and, to be sure, a tailor or a saddler would be of no great use towards your planting and getting in your crop; nor——”
He hesitated for a moment, and then added, with a look of doubt, and in a lower voice,—“Nor—nor a fiddler either, I suppose, massa?” I began to laugh. “No, indeed, Sully; nor a fiddler either!” It seems the lad, who is about sixteen, very thoughtless, and un tantino stupid, has a passion for playing the fiddle, and, among other trades, had suggested this to his father, as one which would be extremely to his taste. We finally settled, that when the plough should be introduced on my estate (which I am very anxious to accomplish, and substitute the labour of oxen for that of negroes, wherever it can possibly be done), Prince should be instructed in farming business, and in the mean while should officiate as a pen-keeper to look after the cattle.
Just now Prince came to me with a request of his own. “Massa, please, me want one little coat.”—“A little coat! For what?”—“Massa, please, for wear when me go down to the Bay.”—“And why should you wear a little coat when you go to the Bay?”—“Massa, please, make me look eerie (buckish) when me go abroad.” So I assured him that he looked quite eerie enough already; and that, as I was going away too soon to admit of my seeing him in his little coat, there could not be the slightest occasion for his being a bit eerier than he was. A master in England would probably have been not a little astonished at receiving such a request from one of his groom-boys; but here one gets quite accustomed to them; and when they are refused, the petitioners frequently laugh themselves at their own unreasonableness.
MARCH 2.
Most of those negroes who are tolerably industrious, breed cattle on my estate, which are their own peculiar property, and by the sale of which they obtain considerable sums. The pasturage of a steer would amount, in this country, to £12 a year; but the negro cattle get their grass from me without its costing them a farthing; and as they were very desirous that I should be their general purchaser, I ordered them to agree among themselves as to what the price should be. It was, therefore, settled that I should take their whole stock, good and bad indifferently, at the rate of £15 a head for every three-year-old beast; and they expressed themselves not only satisfied, but very grateful for my acceptance of their proposal. John Fuller and the beautiful Psyche had each a steer to sell (how Psyche came to be so rich, I had too much discretion to enquire), and they were paid down their £15 a piece instantly, which they carried off with much glee.
MARCH 3. (Sunday.)
In this country it may be truly said that “it never rains but it pours.” After a drought of three months, it began to rain on Thursday morning, and has never stopped raining since, with thunder all the day, and lightning all the night; one consequence of which incessant showers is, that it has brought out all sorts of insects and reptiles in crowds: the ground is covered with lizards; the air is filled with mosquitoes, and their bite is infinitely more envenomed than on my first arrival. A centipede was found squeezed to death under the door of my bed-room this morning. As to the cock-roaches, they are absolutely in legions; every evening my negro boys are set to hunt them, and they kill them by dozens on the chairs and sofas, in the covers of my books, and among the leaves in my fruit-baskets. Yesterday I wanted to send away a note in a great hurry, snatched up a wafer, and was on the point of putting it into my mouth, when I felt it move, and found it to be a cockroach, which had worked its way into the wafer-box.
MARCH 4. (Monday.)
Since my arrival in Jamaica, I am not conscious of having omitted any means of satisfying my negroes, and rendering them happy and secure from oppression. I have suffered no person to be punished, except the two female demons who almost bit a girl’s hands off (for which they received a slight switching), and the most worthless rascal on the estate, whom for manifold offences I was compelled, for the sake of discipline, to allow to pass two days in the bilboes. I have never refused a favour that I could possibly grant. I have listened patiently to all complaints. I have increased the number of negro holidays, and have given away money and presents of all kinds incessantly. Now for my reward. On Saturday morning there were no fewer than forty-five persons (not including children) in the hospital; which makes nearly a fifth of my whole gang. Of these, the medical people assured me that not above seven had any thing whatever the matter with them; the rest were only feigning sickness out of mere idleness, and in order to sit doing nothing, while their companions were forced to perform their part of the estate-duty. And sure enough, on Sunday morning they all walked away from the hospital to amuse themselves, except about seven or eight: they will, perhaps, go to the field for a couple of days; and on Wednesday we may expect to have them all back again, complaining of pains, which (not existing) it is not possible to remove. Jenny (the girl whose hands were bitten) was told by the doctoress, that having been in the hospital all the week, she ought not, for very shame, to go out on Sunday. She answered, “She wanted to go to the mountains, and go she would.” “Then,” said the doctoress, “you must not come back again on Monday at least.”
“Yes,” Jenny said, “she should come back;” and back this morning Jenny came. But as her wounds were almost completely well, she had tied packthread round them so as to cut deep into the flesh, had rubbed dirt into them, and, in short, had played such tricks as nearly to produce a mortification in one of her fingers.
The most worthless fellow on the whole property is one Nato,—a thief, a liar, a runaway, and one who has never been two days together out of the hospital since my arrival, although he has nothing the matter with him; indeed, when the other negroes abused him for his laziness, and leaving them to do his work for him, he told them plainly that he did not mean to work, and that nobody should make him. The only real illness which brought him to the hospital, within my knowledge, was the consequence of a beating received from his own father, who had caught him in the act of robbing his house by the help of a false key. In the hospital he found his wife, Philippa, the mad woman, with whom he instantly quarrelled, and she cut his head open with a plate; and as she might have served one of the children in the same way, we were obliged to confine her. Her husband was thought to be the fittest person to guard her; and accordingly they were locked up together in a separate room from the other invalids, till a straight waistcoat could be made. The husband was then restored to freedom, and desired to go to work, which he declared to be impossible from illness; yet he disappeared the whole of the next day; and on his return on the following morning, he had the impudence to assert that he had never been out of the hospital for an hour. For this runaway offence, and for endeavouring to exasperate his wife’s phrensy, he was put into the bilboes for two days: on the third he was released; when he came to me with tears in his eyes, implored me most earnestly to forgive what had past, and promised to behave better for the future, “to so good a massa.” It appeared afterwards, that he had employed his absence in complaining to Mr. Williams, a neighbouring magistrate, that, “having a spite against them, although neither he nor his wife had committed any fault, I had punished them both by locking them up for several days in a solitary prison, under pretence of his wife’s insanity, when, in fact, she was perfectly in her senses.” Unluckily, one of my physicians had told Mr. Williams, that very morning, how much he had been alarmed at Cornwall, when, upon going into a mad woman’s room, her husband had fastened the door, and he had found himself shut up between them; the woman really mad, and the man pretending to be so too. The moment that Nato mentioned the mad woman as his wife, “What then,” said Mr. Williams, “you are the fellow who alarmed the doctor so much two days ago?” Upon which Nato had the impudence to burst into a fit of laughter,—“Oh, ki, massa, doctor no need be fright; we no want to hurt him; only make lilly bit fun wid him, massa, that all.” On which he was ordered to get out of Mr. Williams’s house, slunk back into the Cornwall hospital, and in a few days came to me with such a long story of penitence, and “so good massa,” that he induced me to forgive him.
To sum up the whole, about three this morning an alarm was given that the pen-keeper had suffered the cattle to get among the canes, where they might do infinite mischief; the trustee was roused out of his bed; the drivers blew their shells to summon the negroes to their assistance; when it appeared, that there was not a single watchman at his post; the watch-fires had all been suffered to expire; not a single domestic was to be found, nor a horse to be procured; even the little servant boys, whom the trustee had locked up in his own house, and had left fast asleep when he went to bed, had got up again, and made their escape to pass the night in play and rioting; and although they were perfectly aware of the detriment which the cattle were doing to my interests, not a negro could be prevailed upon to rouse himself and help to drive them out, till at length Cubina (who had run down from his own house to mine on the first alarm) with difficulty collected about half a dozen to assist him: but long before this, one of my best cane-pieces was trampled to pieces, and the produce of this year’s crop considerably diminished.—And so much for negro gratitude! However, they still continue their eternal song of “Now massa come, we very well off;” but their satisfaction evidently begins and ends with themselves. They rejoice sincerely at being very well off, but think it unnecessary to make the slightest return to massa for making them so.
MARCH 5.
The worst of negro diseases is “the cocoa-bag” it is both hereditary and contagious, and will lurk in the blood of persons apparently the most healthy and of regular habits, till a certain age; when it declares itself in the form of offensive sores, attended with extreme debility. No cure for it has yet been discovered: there are negro doctors, who understand how to prepare diet drinks from simples of the island, which moderate its virulence for a time; but the disease itself is never entirely subdued. On the contrary, “the yaws,” although it defies the power of medicine, ultimately cures itself. This, also, is communicated by contact, and that of so slight a nature, that a fly, which had touched an ulcer produced by the yaws, has been known to convey the infection by merely alighting on the wound of a cut finger. It generally shows itself by a slight pimple, which is soon converted into a sore; and this spreads itself gradually over the invalid’s whole body, till having made its progress through the system completely, its virulence gradually abates, and at length the disease disappears all together. As “the yaws” can only be taken once, inoculation has been tried upon the most hopeful subjects; but the disease showed itself with as much violence as when contracted in the natural way.
MARCH 6.
Nato has kept his promise as yet, and has actually past a whole week in the field; a thing which he was never known to do before within the memory of man. So I sent him a piece of money to encourage him; and told him, that I sent him a maccarony for behaving well, and wished to know whether any one had ever given him a maccarony for behaving ill. I hear that he was highly delighted at my thinking him worthy to receive a present from me, and sent me in return the most positive assurances of perseverance in good conduct. On the other hand, Mackaroo has not only run away himself, but has carried his wife away with him. This is improving upon the profligacy of British manners with a vengeance. In England, a man only runs away with another person’s wife: but to run away with his own—what depravity!—As to my ungrateful demigod of a sheep-stealer, Hercules, the poor wretch has brought down upon himself a full punishment for all his misdeeds. By running away, and sleeping in the woods, exposed to all the fury of the late heavy rains, he has been struck by the palsy. Yesterday some of my negroes found him in the mountains, unable to raise himself from the ground, and brought him in a cart to the hospital; where he now lies, having quite lost the use of one side, and without any hopes of recovery. He is still a young man, and in every other respect strong and healthy; so that he may look forward to a long and miserable existence.
MARCH 8.
THE HUMMING BIRD.
Deck’d with all that youth and beauty
E’er bestow’d on sable maid,
Gathering bloom her fragrant duty,
Down the lime-walk Zoè stray’d.
Many a logwood brake was ringing
With the chicka-chinky’s cry;
Many a mock-bird loudly singing
Bless’d the groves with melody.
Fly-birds, on whose plumage showers
Nature’s hand her wealth profuse,
Humming round, from banks of flowers
Suck’d the rich ambrosial juice.
There an orange-plant, perfuming
All the air with blossoms white,
Near a bush of roses blooming,
Charm’d at once the scent and sight.
Of that plant the loveliest daughter,
One sweet bloom-bough all preferr’d;
When his glittering eye had caught her,
Oh, how joy’d the Humming Bird!
Here the fairest blossoms thinking,
Swift he flies, nor loads the stem;
Poised in air, and odour drinking,
Fluttering hangs the feather’d Gem.
Sure, he deems, these cups untasted,
Many a honied drop allow!
Soon he finds his labour wasted;
Bees have robb’d that orange bough.
Wandering bees, at blush of morning,
Drain’d of all their sweets the bells;
Then the rifled beauty scorning,
How his angry throat he swells!
See his bill the blossoms rending;
Round their leaves in wrath he throws;
Then, once more his wings extending,
Flies to woo the opening rose.
(e Mark, my Zoe,” said her mother,
(t Mark that bough, so lovely late!
Thou in bloom art such another—
Such, perhaps, may be thy fate.
(e Some wild youth may charm and cheat thee,
Sip thy sweets, and break his vow;
Then the world will scorn and treat thee
As the Fly-Bird did just now.”
British mothers thus impress on
Virgin minds some maxim true;
Zoè heard and used the lesson
Just as British daughters do.
MARCH 9.
The shaddock contains generally thirty-two seeds, two of which only will reproduce shaddocks; and these two it is impossible to distinguish: the rest will yield, some sweet oranges, others bitter ones, others again forbidden fruit, and, in short, all the varieties of the orange; but until the trees actually are in bearing, no one can guess what the fruit is likely to prove; and even then, the seeds which produce shaddocks, although taken from a tree remarkable for the excellence of its fruit, will frequently yield only such as are scarcely eatable. So also the varieties of the mango are infinite: the fruit of no two trees resembling each other; and the seeds of the very finest mango (although sown and cultivated with the utmost care) seldom affording any thing at all like the parent stock. The two first mangoes which I tasted were nothing but turpentine and sugar; the third was very delicious; and yet I was told that it was by no means of a superior quality. The sweet cassava requires no preparation; the bitter cassava, unless the juice is carefully pressed out of it, is a deadly poison; there is a third kind, called the sweet-and-bitter cassava, which is perfectly wholesome till a certain age, when it acquires its deleterious qualities. Many persons have been poisoned by mistaking these various kinds of cassava for each other. As soon as the plantain has done bearing, it is cut down; when four or five suckers spring from each root, which become plants themselves in their turn. Ratoons are suckers of the sugar-cane: they are far preferable to the original plants, where the soil is rich enough to support them; but they are much better adapted to some estates than to others. Thus, on my estate in St. Thomas’s in the East, they can allow of ten ratoons from the same plant, and only dig cane-holes every eleventh year; while, at Cornwall, the strength of the cane is exhausted in the fourth ratoon, or the fifth at furthest. The fresh plants are cane-tops; but those canes which bear flags or feathers at their extremities will not answer the purpose, as dry weather easily burns up the slight arrows to which the flags adhere, and destroys them before they can acquire sufficient vigour to resist the climate.
MARCH 10. (Sunday.)
I find that I have not done justice to the cotton tree, and, on the other hand, have given too much praise to the Jamaica kitchen. The first cotton trees which I saw, were either withered by age, or struck by lightning, or happened to be ill-shaped of their kind; but I have since met with others, than which nothing could be more noble or picturesque, from their gigantic height, the immense spread of their arms, the colour of their stems and leaves, and the wild fantastic wreathings of their roots and branches. As to the kitchen, nothing can be larger and finer in appearance than the poultry of all kinds, but nothing can be uniformly more tough and tasteless; and the same is the case with all butcher’s meat, pork excepted, which is much better here than in Europe. The fault is in the climate, which prevents any animal food from being kept sufficiently long to become tender; so that when a man sits down to a Jamaica dinner, he might almost fancy himself a guest at Macbeth’s Covent-Garden banquet, where the fowls, hams, and legs of mutton are all made of deal boards. I ordered a duck to be kept for two days; but it was so completely spoiled, that there was no bearing it upon the table. Then I tried the expedient of boiling a fowl till it absolutely fell to pieces; but even this violent process had not the power of rendering it tender. The only effect produced by it was, that instead of being helped to a wing of solid wood, I got a plateful of splinters. Perhaps, my having totally lost my appetite (probably from my not being able to take, in this climate, sufficient of my usual exercise) makes the meat appear to me less palatable than it may to others; but I have observed, that most people here prefer living upon soups, stews, and salted provisions. For my own part, I have for the last few weeks eaten nothing except black crabs, than which I never met with a more delicious article for the table. I have also tried the soldier soup, which is in great estimation in this island; but although it greatly resembled the very richest cray-fish soup, it seemed to be composed of cray-fish which had been kept too long. The soldiers themselves were perfectly fresh, for they were brought to the kitchen quite alive and merry; but I was told that this taste of staleness is their peculiar flavour, as well as their peculiar scent even when alive, and is precisely the quality which forms their recommendation. It was quite enough to fix my opinion of the soup: I ate two spoonfuls, and never mean to venture on a third.
MARCH 12.
The most general of negro infirmities appears to be that of lameness. It is chiefly occasioned by the chiga, a diminutive fly which works itself into the feet to lay its eggs, and, if it be not carefully extracted in time, the flesh around it corrupts, and a sore ensues not easily to be cured. No vigilance can prevent the attacks of the chiga; and not only soldiers, but the very cleanest persons of the highest rank in society, are obliged to have their feet examined regularly. The negroes are all provided with small knives for the purpose of extracting them: but as no pain is felt till the sore is produced, their extreme laziness frequently makes them neglect that precaution, till all kinds of dirt getting into the wound, increases the difficulty of a cure; and sometimes the consequence is lameness for life.
There is another disease which commits great ravages among them; for although in this climate its quality is far from virulent, and it is easy to be cured in its beginning, the negro will most carefully conceal his having such a complaint, till it has made so great a progress that its effects are perceived by others. Even then, they will never acknowledge the way in which they have contracted it; but men and women, whose noses almost shake while speaking to you, will still insist upon it that their illness arises from catching cold, or from a strain in lifting a weight, or, in short, from any cause except the true one. Yet why they act thus it is difficult to imagine; for certainly it does not arise from shame.
Indeed, it is one of their singular obstinacies, that, however ill they may be, they scarcely ever will confess to the physician what is really the matter with them on their first coming into the hospital, but will rather assign some other cause for their being unwell than the true one; and it is only by cross-questioning, that their superintendents are able to understand the true nature of their case. Perhaps this duplicity is occasioned by fear; for in any bodily pain it is not possible to be more cowardly than the negro; and I have heard strong young men, while the tears were running down their cheeks, scream and roar as if a limb was amputating, although the doctoress was only applying a poultice to a whitlow on the finger. I suppose, therefore, that dread of the pain of some unknown mode of treatment makes them conceal their real disease, and name some other, of which they know the cure to be unattended with bodily suffering or long restraint. In the disease I allude to, such a motive would operate with peculiar force, as one of their chief aversions is the necessarily being long confined to one certainly not fragrant room.
MARCH 13.
The Reporter of the African Institution asserts, in a late pamphlet, that in the West Indies the breeding system is to this day discouraged, and that the planters are still indifferent to the preservation of their present stock of negroes, from their confidence of getting fresh supplies from Africa. Certainly the negroes in Jamaica are by no means of this Reporter’s opinion, but are thoroughly sensible of their intrinsic value in the eyes of the proprietor. On my arrival, every woman who had a child held it up to show to me, exclaiming,—“See massa, see! here nice new neger me bring for work for massa;” and those who had more than one did not fail to boast of the number, and make it a claim to the greater merit with me. Last week, an old watchman was brought home from the mountains almost dead with fever; he would neither move, nor speak, nor notice any one, for several days. For two nights I sent him soup from my own table; but he could not even taste it, and always gave it to his daughter. On the third evening, there happened to be no soup at dinner, and I sent other food instead; but old Cudjoe had been accustomed to see the soup arrive, and the disappointment made him fancy himself hungry, and that he could have eaten the soup if it had been brought as usual: accordingly, when I visited him the next morning, he bade the doctoress tell me that massa had send him no soup the night before. This was the first notice that he had ever taken of me. I promised that some soup should be ordered for him on purpose that evening. Could he fancy any thing to eat then?—“Milk! milk!” So milk was sent to him, and he drank two full calabashes of it. I then tried him with an egg, which he also got down; and at night, by spoonfuls at a time, he finished the whole bason of soup; but when I next came to see him, and he wished to thank me, the words in which he thought he could comprise most gratitude were bidding the doctoress tell me he would do his best not to die yet; he promised to fight hard for it. He is now quite out of danger, and seems really to be grateful. When he was sometimes too weak to speak, on my leaving the room he would drag his hand to his mouth with difficulty, and kiss it three or four times to bid me farewell; and once, when the doctoress mentioned his having charged her to tell me that he owed his recovery to the good food that I had sent him, he added, “And him kind words too, massa; kind words do neger much good, much as good food.” In my visits to the old man, I observed a young woman nursing him with an infant in her arms, which (as they told me) was her own, by Cudjoe. I therefore supposed her to be his wife: but I found that she belonged to a brown man in the mountains; and that Cudjoe hired her from her master, at the rate of thirty pounds a year!
I hope this fact will convince the African Reporter, that it is possible for some of this “oppressed race of human beings”—“of these our most unfortunate fellow-creatures,”—to enjoy at least some of the luxuries of civilised society; and I doubt, whether even Mr. Wilberforce himself, with all his benevolence, would not allow a negro to be quite rich enough, who can afford to pay thirty pounds a year for the hire of a kept mistress.
MARCH 14.
Poor Nato’s stock of goodness is quite exhausted; and the day before yesterday he returned to the hospital with most piteous complaints of pains and aches, whose existence he could persuade no person to credit. His pulse was regular, his skin cool, his tongue red and moist, and the doctor declared nothing whatever to be the matter with him. However, on my arrival, he began to moan, and groan, and grunt, and all so lamentably, that every soul in the hospital, sick or well, burst into a fit of laughter. For my part, I told him that I really believed him to be very bad; and that, as he met with no sympathy in the hospital, I should remove him from such unfeeling companions. Accordingly I had a comfortable bed made for him in a separate house. Here he was plentifully supplied with provisions: but, in order that he might enjoy perfect repose daring his illness, the doors were kept locked, and no person allowed to disturb him with their conversation; while, by the doctor’s orders, he was obliged to take frequent doses of Bitter-Wood and Assafotida. Shame would not suffer him to get well all at once; so yesterday he still complained of a pain in his chest, and begged to be blooded. His request was granted; and the blood proved to be so pure and well-coloured, that every one exclaimed, that for a man who had such good blood to part with it so wantonly was a shame and a folly. The fellow was at length convinced that his tricks would serve no object; and this morning he begged me to suffer him to return to his duty, and promised that I should have no more cause to complain of him. So I consented to consider his cure as completed, and he set off for the field perfectly satisfied with his release.