JANUARY 7. (Sunday.)
In spite of their exertions of last night, the negroes were again with me by two o’clock in the day, with their drums and their chorusses. However, they found themselves unable to keep it up as they had done on the former night, and were content to withdraw to their own houses by ten in the evening. But first they requested to have tomorrow to themselves, in order that they might go to the mountains for provisions. For although their cottages are always surrounded with trees and shrubs, their provision grounds are kept quite distinct, and are at a distance among the mountains. Of course, I made no difficulty of acceding to their request, but upon condition, that they should ask for no more holidays till the crop should be completed. For the purpose of cultivating their provision-grounds, they are allowed every Saturday; but on the occasion of my arrival, they obtained permission to have the Saturday to themselves, and to fetch their week’s provisions from the mountains on the following Monday. All the slaves maintain themselves in this manner by their own labour; even the domestic attendants are not exempted, but are expected to feed themselves, except stated allowances of salt fish, salt pork, &c.
JANUARY 8.
I really believe that the negresses can produce children at pleasure; and where they are barren, it is just as hens will frequently not lay eggs on shipboard, because they do not like their situation. Cubina’s wife is in a family way, and I told him that if the child should live, I would christen it for him, if he wished it. “Tank you, kind massa, me like it very much: much oblige if massa do that for me, too.” So I promised to baptize the father and the baby on the same day, and said that I would be godfather to any children that might be born on the estate during my residence in Jamaica. This was soon spread about, and although I have not yet been here a week, two women are in the straw already, Jug Betty and Minerva: the first is wife to my head driver, the Duke of Sully; but my sense of propriety was much gratified at finding that Minerva’s husband was called Captain.
I think nobody will be able to accuse me of neglecting the religious education of my negroes: for I have not only promised to baptize all the infants, but, meeting a little black boy this morning, who said that his name was Moses, I gave him a piece of silver, and told him that it was for the sake of Aaron; which, I flatter myself, was planting in his young mind the rudiments of Christianity.
In my evening’s drive I met the negroes, returning from the mountains, with baskets of provisions sufficient to last them for the week. By law they are only allowed every other Saturday for the purpose of cultivating their own grounds, which, indeed, is sufficient; but by giving them every alternate Saturday into the bargain, it enables them to perform their task with so much ease as almost converts it into an amusement; and the frequent visiting their grounds makes them grow habitually as much attached to them as they are to their houses and gardens. It is also adviseable for them to bring home only a week’s provisions at a time, rather than a fortnight’s; for they are so thoughtless and improvident, that, when they find themselves in possession of a larger supply than is requisite for their immediate occasions, they will sell half to the wandering higglers, or at Savanna la Mar, in exchange for spirits; and then, at the end of the week, they find themselves entirely unprovided with food, and come to beg a supply from the master’s storehouse.
JANUARY 9.
The sensitive plant is a great nuisance in Jamaica: it over-runs the pastures, and, being armed with very strong sharp prickles, it wounds the mouths of the cattle, and, in some places, makes it quite impossible for them to feed. Various endeavours have been made to eradicate this inconvenient weed, but none as yet have proved effectual.
JANUARY 10.
The houses here are generally built and arranged according to one and the same model. My own is of wood, partly raised upon pillars; it consists of a single floor: a long gallery, called a piazza, terminated at each end by a square room, runs the whole length of the house. On each side of the piazza is a range of bed-rooms, and the porticoes of the two fronts form two more rooms, with balustrades, and flights of steps descending to the lawn. The whole house is virandoed with shifting Venetian blinds to admit air; except that one of the end rooms has sash-windows on account of the rains, which, when they arrive, are so heavy, and shift with the wind so suddenly from the one side to the other, that all the blinds are obliged to be kept closed; consequently the whole house is in total darkness during their continuance, except the single sash-windowed room. There is nothing underneath except a few store-rooms and a kind of waiting-hall; but none of the domestic negroes sleep in the house, all going home at night to their respective cottages and families.
Cornwall House itself stands on a dead flat, and the works are built in its immediate neighbourhood, for the convenience of their being the more under the agent’s personal inspection (a point of material consequence with them all, but more particularly for the hospital). This dead flat is only ornamented with a few scattered bread-fruit and cotton trees, a grove of mangoes, and the branch of a small river, which turns the mill. Several of these buildings are ugly enough; but the shops of the cooper, carpenter, and blacksmith, some of the trees in their vicinity, and the negro-huts, embowered in shrubberies, and groves of oranges, plantains, cocoas, and pepper-trees, would be reckoned picturesque in the most ornamented grounds. A large spreading tamarind fronts me at this moment, and overshadows the stables, which are formed of open wickerwork; and an orange-tree, loaded with fruit, grows against the window at which I am writing.
On three sides of the landscape the prospect is bounded by lofty purple mountains; and the variety of occupations going on all around me, and at the same time, give an inconceivable air of life and animation to the whole scene, especially as all those occupations look clean,—even those which in England look dirty. All the tradespeople are dressed either in white jackets and trousers, or with stripes of red and sky-blue. One band of negroes are carrying the ripe canes on their heads to the mill; another set are conveying away the trash, after the juice has been extracted; flocks of turkeys are sheltering from the heat under the trees; the river is filled with ducks and geese; the coopers and carpenters are employed about the puncheons; carts drawn some by six, others by eight, oxen, are bringing loads of Indian corn from the fields; the black children are employed in gathering it into the granary, and in quarrelling with pigs as black as themselves, who are equally busy in stealing the corn whenever the children are looking another way: in short, a plantation possesses all the movement and interest of a farm, without its dung, and its stench, and its dirty accompaniments.
JANUARY 11.
I saw the whole process of sugar-making this morning. The ripe canes are brought in bundles to the mill, where the cleanest of the women are appointed, one to put them into the machine for grinding them, and another to draw them out after the juice has been extracted, when she throws them into an opening in the floor close to her; another band of negroes collects them below, when, under the name of trash, they are carried away to serve for fuel. The juice, which is itself at first of a pale ash-colour, gushes out in great streams, quite white with foam, and passes through a wooden gutter into the boiling-house, where it is received into the siphon or “cock copper.” where fire is applied to it, and it is slaked with lime, in order to make it granulate. The feculent parts of it rise to the top, while the purer and more fluid flow through another gutter into the second copper. When little but the impure scum on the surface remains to be drawn off, the first gutter communicating with the copper is stopped, and the grosser parts are obliged to find a new course through another gutter, which conveys them to the distillery, where, being mixed with the molasses, or treacle, they are manufactured into rum. From the second copper they are transmitted into the first, and thence into two others, and in these four latter basins the scum is removed with skimmers pierced with holes, till it becomes sufficiently free from impurities to be skipped off, that is, to be again ladled out of the coppers and spread into the coolers, where it is left to granulate. The sugar is then formed, and is removed into the curing-house, where it is put into hogsheads, and left to settle for a certain time, during which those parts which are too poor and too liquid to granulate, drip from the casks into vessels placed beneath them: these drippings are the molasses, which, being carried into the distillery, and mixed with the coarser scum formerly mentioned, form that mixture from which the spirituous liquor of sugar is afterwards produced by fermentation: when but once distilled, it is called “low wine;” and it is not till after it has gone through a second distillation, that it acquires the name of rum. The “trash” used for fuel consists of the empty canes, that which is employed for fodder and for thatching is furnished by the superabundant cane-tops; after so many have been set apart as are required for planting. After these original plants have been cut, their roots throw up suckers, which, in time, become canes, and are called ratoons: they are far inferior in juice to the planted canes; but then, on the other hand, they require much less weeding, and spare the negroes the only laborious part of the business of sugar-making, the digging holes for the plants; therefore, although an acre of ratoons will produce but one hogshead of sugar, while an acre of plants will produce two, the superiority of the ratooned piece is very great, inasmuch as the saving of time and labour will enable the proprietor to cultivate five acres of ratoons in the same time with one of plants. Unluckily, after three crops, or five at the utmost, in general the ratoons are totally exhausted, and you are obliged to have recourse to fresh plants.
Last night a poor man, named Charles, who had been coachman to my uncle ages ago, was brought into the hospital, having missed a step in the boiling-house, and plunged his foot into the siphon: fortunately, the fire had not long been kindled, and though the liquor was hot enough to scald him, it was not sufficiently so to do him any material injury. The old man had presented himself to me on Saturday’s holiday (or play-day, in the negro dialect), and had shown me, with great exultation, the coat and waistcoat which had been the last present of his old massa. Charles is now my chief mason, and, as one of the principal persons on the estate, was entitled, by old custom, to the compliment of a distinguishing dollar on my arrival; but at the same time that I gave him the dollar, to which his situation entitled him, I gave him another for himself, as a keepsake: he put it into the pocket of “his old massa’s” waistcoat, and assured me that they should never again be separated. On hearing of his accident, I went over to the hospital to see that he was well taken care of; and immediately the poor fellow began talking to me about my grandfather, and his young massa, and the young missies, his sisters, and while I suffered him to chatter away for an hour, he totally forgot the pain of his burnt leg.
It was particularly agreeable to me to observe, on Saturday, as a proof of the good treatment which they had experienced, so many old servants of the family, many of whom had been born on the estate, and who, though turned of sixty and seventy, were still strong, healthy, and cheerful. Many manumitted negroes, also, came from other parts of the country to this festival, on hearing of my arrival, because, as they said,—“if they did not come to see massa, they were afraid that it would look ungrateful, and as if they cared no longer about him and Cornwall, now that they were free.” So they stayed two or three days on the estate, coming up to the house for their dinners, and going to sleep at night among their friends in their own former habitations, the negro huts; and when they went away, they assured me, that nothing should prevent their coming back to bid me farewell, before I left the island. All this may be palaver; but certainly they at least play their parts with such an air of truth, and warmth, and enthusiasm, that, after the cold hearts and repulsive manners of England, the contrast is infinitely agreeable.
“Je ne vois que des yeux toujours prêts à sourire.”
I find it quite impossible to resist the fascination of the conscious pleasure of pleasing; and my own heart, which I have so long been obliged to keep closed, seems to expand itself again in the sunshine of the kind looks and words which meet me at every turn, and seem to wait for mine as anxiously as if they were so many diamonds.
JANUARY 12.
In the year ‘80, this parish of Westmoreland was kept in a perpetual state of alarm by a runaway negro called Plato, who had established himself among the Moreland Mountains, and collected a troop of banditti, of which he was himself the chief. He robbed very often, and murdered occasionally; but gallantry was his every day occupation. Indeed, being a remarkably tall athletic young fellow, among the beauties of his own complexion he found but few Lucretias; and his retreat in the mountains was as well furnished as the haram of Constantinople. Every handsome negress who had the slightest cause of complaint against her master, took the first opportunity of eloping to join Plato, where she found freedom, protection, and unbounded generosity; for he spared no pains to secure their affections by gratifying their vanity. Indeed, no Creole lady could venture out on a visit, without running the risk of having her bandbox run away with by Plato for the decoration of his sultanas; and if the maid who carried the bandbox happened to be well-looking, he ran away with the maid as well as the bandbox. Every endeavour to seize this desperado was long in vain: a large reward was put upon his head, but no negro dared to approach him; for, besides his acknowledged courage, he was a professor of Obi, and had threatened that whoever dared to lay a finger upon him should suffer spiritual torments, as well as be physically shot through the head.
Unluckily for Plato, rum was an article with him of the first necessity; the look-out, which was kept for him, was too vigilant to admit of his purchasing spirituous liquors for himself; and once, when for that purpose he had ventured into the neighbourhood of Montego Bay, he was recognised by a slave, who immediately gave the alarm. Unfortunately for this poor fellow, whose name was Taffy, at that moment all his companions happened to be out of hearing; and, after the first moment’s alarm, finding that no one approached, the exasperated robber rushed upon him, and lifted the bill-hook, with which he was armed, for the purpose of cleaving his skull. Taffy fled for it; but Plato was the younger, the stronger, and the swifter of the two, and gained upon him every moment. Taffy, however, on the other hand, possessed that one quality by which, according to the fable, the cat was enabled to save herself from the hounds, when the fox, with his thousand tricks, was caught by them. He was an admirable climber, an art in which Plato possessed no skill; and a bread-nut tree, which is remarkably difficult of ascent, presenting itself before him, in a few moments Taffy was bawling for help from the very top of it. To reach him was impossible for his enemy; but still his destruction was hard at hand; for Plato began to hack the tree with his bill, and it was evident that a very short space of time would be sufficient to level it with the ground. In this dilemma, Taffy had nothing for it but to break off the branches near him; and he contrived to pelt these so dexterously at the head of his assailant, that he fairly kept him at bay till his cries at length reached the ears of his companions, and their approach compelled the banditti-captain once more to seek safety among the mountains.
After this Plato no longer dared to approach Montego town; but still spirits must be had:—how was he to obtain them? There was an old watchman on the outskirts of the estate of Canaan, with whom he had contracted an acquaintance, and frequently had passed the night in his hut; the old man having been equally induced by his presents and by dread of his corporeal strength and supposed supernatural power, to profess the warmest attachment to the interests of his terrible friend. To this man Plato at length resolved to entrust himself: he gave him money to purchase spirits, and appointed a particular day when he would come to receive them. The reward placed upon the robber’s head was more than either gratitude or terror could counterbalance; and on the same day when the watchman set out to purchase the rum, he apprised two of his friends at Canaan, for whose use it was intended, and advised them to take the opportunity of obtaining the reward.
The two negroes posted themselves in proper time near the watchman’s hut. Most unwisely, instead of sending down some of his gang, they saw Plato, in his full confidence in the friendship of his confidant, arrive himself and enter the cabin; but so great was their alarm at seeing this dreadful personage, that they remained in their concealment, nor dared to make an attempt at seizing him. The spirits were delivered to the robber: he might have retired with them unmolested; but, in his rashness and his eagerness to taste the liquor, of which he had so long been deprived, he opened the flagon, and swallowed draught after draught, till he sunk upon the ground in a state of complete insensibility. The watchman then summoned the two negroes from their concealment, who bound his arms, and conveyed him to Montego Bay, where he was immediately sentenced to execution. He died most heroically; kept up the terrors of his imposture to his last moment; told the magistrates, who condemned him, that his death should be revenged by a storm, which would lay waste the whole island, that year; and, when his negro gaoler was binding him to the stake at which he was destined to suffer, he assured him that he should not live long to triumph in his death, for that he had taken good care to Obeah him before his quitting the prison. It certainly did happen, strangely enough, that, before the year was over, the most violent storm took place ever known in Jamaica; and as to the gaoler, his imagination was so forcibly struck by the threats of the dying man, that, although every care was taken of him, the power of medicine exhausted, and even a voyage to America undertaken, in hopes that a change of scene might change the course of his ideas, still, from the moment of Plato’s death, he gradually pined and withered away, and finally expired before the completion of the twelvemonth.
The belief in Obeah is now greatly weakened, but still exists in some degree. Not above ten months ago, my agent was informed that a negro of very suspicious manners and appearance was harboured by some of my people on the mountain lands. He found means to have him surprised, and on examination there was found upon him a bag containing a great variety of strange materials for incantations; such as thunder-stones, cat’s ears, the feet of various animals, human hair, fish bones, the teeth of alligators, &c.: he was conveyed to Montego Bay; and no sooner was it understood that this old African was in prison, than depositions were poured in from all quarters from negroes who deposed to having seen him exercise his magical arts, and, in particular, to his having sold such and such slaves medicines and charms to deliver them from their enemies; being, in plain English, nothing else than rank poisons. He was convicted of Obeah upon the most indubitable evidence. The good old practice of burning has fallen into disrepute; so he was sentenced to be transported, and was shipped off the island, to the great satisfaction of persons of all colours—white, black, and yellow.
JANUARY 13.
Throughout the island many estates, formerly very flourishing and productive, have been thrown up for want of hands to cultivate them, and are now suffered to lie waste: four are in this situation in my own immediate neighbourhood. Finding their complement of negroes decrease, and having no means of recruiting them, proprietors of two estates have in numerous instances found themselves obliged to give up one of them, and draw off the negroes for the purpose of properly cultivating the other.
I have just had an instance strikingly convincing of the extreme nicety required in rearing negro children. Two have been born since my arrival. My housekeeper was hardly ever out of the lying-in apartment; I always visited it myself once a day, and sometimes twice, in order that I might be certain of the women being well taken care of; not a day passed without the inspection of a physician; nothing of indulgence, that was proper for them, was denied; and, besides their ordinary food, the mothers received every day the most nourishing and palatable dish that was brought to my own table. Add to this, that the women themselves were kind-hearted creatures, and particularly anxious to rear these children, because I had promised to be their godfather myself. Yet, in spite of all this attention and indulgence, one of the mothers, during the nurse’s absence for ten minutes, grew alarmed at her infant’s apparent sleepiness. To rouse it, she began dancing and shaking it till it was in a strong perspiration, and then she stood with it for some minutes at an open window, while a strong north wind was blowing. In consequence, it caught cold, and the next morning symptoms of a locked jaw showed itself. The poor woman was the image of grief itself: she sat on her bed, looking at the child which lay by her side with its little hands clasped, its teeth clenched, and its eyes fixed, writhing in the agony of the spasm, while she was herself quite motionless and speechless, although the tears trickled down her cheeks incessantly. All assistance was fruitless: her thoughtlessness for five minutes had killed the infant, and, at noon to-day it expired.
This woman was a tender mother, had borne ten children, and yet has now but one alive: another, at present in the hospital, has borne seven, and but one has lived to puberty; and the instances of those who have had four, five, six children, without succeeding in bringing up one, in spite of the utmost attention and indulgence, are very numerous; so heedless and inattentive are the best-intentioned mothers, and so subject in this climate are infants to dangerous complaints. The locked jaw is the common and most fatal one; so fatal, indeed, that the midwife (the graundee is her negro appellation) told me, the other day, “Oh, massa, till nine days over, we no hope of them.” Certainly care and kindness are not adequate to save the children, for the son of a sovereign could not have been more anxiously well treated than was the poor little negro who died this morning.
The negroes are always buried in their own gardens, and many strange and fantastical ceremonies are observed on the occasion. If the corpse be that of a grown person, they consult it as to which way it pleases to be carried; and they make attempts upon various roads without success, before they can hit upon the right one. Till that is accomplished, they stagger under the weight of the coffin, struggle against its force, which draws them in a different direction from that in which they had settled to go; and sometimes in the contest the corpse and the coffin jump off the shoulders of the bearers. But if, as is frequently the case, any person is suspected of having hastened the catastrophe, the corpse will then refuse to go any road but the one which passes by the habitation of the suspected person, and as soon as it approaches his house, no human power is equal to persuading it to pass. As the negroes are extremely superstitious, and very much afraid of ghosts (whom they call the duppy), I rather wonder at their choosing to have their dead buried in their gardens; but I understand their argument to be, that they need only fear the duppies of their enemies, but have nothing to apprehend from those after death, who loved them in their lifetime; but the duppies of their adversaries are very alarming beings, equally powerful by day as by night, and who not only are spiritually terrific, but who can give very hard substantial knocks on the pate, whenever they see fit occasion, and can find a good opportunity.
Last Saturday a negro was brought into the hospital, having fallen into epileptic fits, with which till then he had never been troubled. As the faintings had seized him at the slaughter-house, and the fellow was an African, it was at first supposed by his companions, that the sight and smell of the meat had affected him; for many of the Africans cannot endure animal food of any kind, and most of the Ebres in particular are made ill by eating turtle, even although they can use any other food without injury. However, upon enquiry among his shipmates, it appeared that he had frequently eaten beef without the slightest inconvenience. For my own part, the symptoms of his complaint were such as to make me suspect him of having tasted something poisonous, specially as, just before his first fit, he had been observed in the small grove of mangoes near the house; but I was assured by the negroes, one and all, that nothing could possibly have induced him to eat an herb or fruit from that grove, as it had been used as a burying-ground for “the white people.” But although my idea of the poison was scouted, still the mention of the burying-ground suggested another cause for his illness to the negroes, and they had no sort of doubt, that in passing through the burying-ground he had been struck down by the duppy of a white person not long deceased, whom he had formerly offended, and that these repeated fainting fits were the consequence of that ghostly blow. The negroes have in various publications been accused of a total want of religion, but this appears to me quite incompatible with the ideas of spirits existing after dissolution of the body, which necessarily implies a belief in a future state; and although (as far as I can make out) they have no outward forms of religion, the most devout Christian cannot have “God bless you” oftener on his lips than the negro; nor, on the other hand, appear to feel the wish for their enemy’s damnation more sincerely when he utters it.
The Africans (as is well known) generally believe, that there is a life beyond this world, and that they shall enjoy it by returning to their own country; and this idea used frequently to induce them, soon after their landing in the colonies, to commit suicide; but this was never known to take place except among fresh negroes, and since the execrable slave-trade has been abolished, such an illusion is unheard of. As to those who had once got over the dreadful period of “seasoning,” they were generally soon sensible enough of the amelioration of their condition, to make the idea of returning to Africa the most painful that could be presented to them. But, to be sure, poor creatures! what with the terrors and sufferings of the voyage, and the unavoidable hardships of the seasoning, those advantages were purchased more dearly than any in this life can possibly be worth. God be thanked, all that is now at an end; and certainly, as far as I can as yet judge, if I were now standing on the banks of Virgil’s Lethe, with a goblet of the waters of oblivion in my hand, and asked whether I chose to enter life anew as an English labourer or a Jamaica negro, I should have no hesitation in preferring the latter. For myself, it appears to me almost worth surrendering the luxuries and pleasures of Great Britain, for the single pleasure of being surrounded with beings who are always laughing and singing, and who seem to perform their work with so much nonchalance, taking up their baskets as if it were perfectly optional whether they took them up or left them there; sauntering along with their hands dangling; stopping to chat with every one they meet; or if they meet no one, standing still to look round, and examine whether there is nothing to be seen that can amuse them, so that I can hardly persuade myself that it is really work that they are about. The negro might well say, on his arrival in England—“Massa, in England every thing work!” for here nobody appears to work at all.
I am told that there is one part of their business very laborious, the digging holes for receiving the cane-plants, and which I have not as yet seen; but this does not occupy above a month (I believe) at the utmost, at two periods of the year; and on my estate this service is chiefly performed by extra negroes, hired for the purpose; which, although equally hard on the hired negroes (called a jobbing gang), at least relieves my own, and after all, puts even the former on much the same footing with English day-labourers.
But if I could be contented to live in Jamaica, I am still more certain, that it is the only agreeable place for me to die in; for I have got a family mausoleum, which looks for all the world like the theatrical representation of the “tomb of all the Capulets.” Its outside is most plentifully decorated “with sculptured stones,”—
“Arms, angels, epitaphs, and bones.”
Within is a tomb of the purest white marble, raised on a platform of ebony; the building, which is surmounted by a statue of Time, with his scythe and hour-glass, stands in the very heart of an orange grove, now in full bearing; and the whole scene this morning looked so cool, so tranquil, and so gay, and is so perfectly divested of all vestiges of dissolution, that the sight of it quite gave me an appetite for being buried. It is a matter of perfect indifference to me what becomes of this little ugly husk of mine, when once I shall have “shuffled off this mortal coil;” or else I should certainly follow my grandfather’s example, and, die where I might, order my body to be sent over for burial to Cornwall; for I never yet saw a place where one could lie down more comfortably to listen for the last trumpet.
JANUARY 14. (Sunday.)
I gave a dinner to my “white people,” as the book-keepers, &c. are called here, and who have a separate house and establishment for themselves; and certainly a man must be destitute of every spark of hospitality, and have had “Caucasus horrens” for his great-grandmother, if he can resist giving dinners in a country where Nature seems to have set up a superior kind of “London Tavern” of her own. They who are possessed by the “Ci-borum ambitiosa fames, et lautæ gloria mensæ,” ought to ship themselves off for Jamaica out of hand; and even the lord mayor himself need not blush to give his aldermen such a dinner as is placed on my table, even when I dine alone. Land and sea turtle, quails, snipes, plovers, and pigeons and doves of all descriptions—of which the ring-tail has been allowed to rank with the most exquisite of the winged species, by epicures of such distinction, that their opinion, in matters of this nature, almost carries with it the weight of a law,—excellent pork, barbicued pigs, pepperpots, with numberless other excellent dishes, form the ordinary fare; while the poultry is so large and fine, that if the Dragon of Wantley found “houses and churches to be geese and turkies” in England, he would mistake the geese and turkies for houses and churches here. Then our tarts are made of pineapples, and pine-apples make the best tarts that I ever tasted; there is no end of the variety of fruits, of which the shaddock is “in itself an host;” but the most singular and exquisite flavour, perhaps, is to be found in the granadillo, a fruit which grows upon a species of vine, and, in fact, appears to be a kind of cucumber. It must be suffered to hang till it is dead ripe, when it is scarcely any thing except juice and seeds, which can only be eaten with a spoon. It requires sugar, but the acid is truly delicious, and like no other separate flavour that I ever met with; what it most resembles is a macedoine, as it unites the different tastes of almost all other fruits, and has, at the same time, a very strong flavour of wine.
As to fish, Savannah la Mar is reckoned the best place in the island, both for variety and safety; for, in many parts, the fish feed upon copperas banks, and cannot be used without much precaution: here, none is necessary, and it is only to be wished that their names equalled their flesh in taste; for it must be owned, that nothing can be less tempting than the sounds of Jew-fish, hog-fish, mud-fish, snappers, god-dammies, groupas, and grunts! Of the Sea Fish which I have hitherto met with, the Deep-water Silk appears to me the best; and of rivers, the Mountain-Mullet: but, indeed, the fish is generally so excellent, and in such profusion, that I never sit down to table without wishing for the company of Queen Atygatis of Scythia, who was so particularly fond of fish, that she prohibited all her subjects from eating it on pain of death, through fear that there might not be enough left for her majesty.
This fondness for fish seems to be a sort of royal passion: more than one of our English sovereigns died of eating too many lampreys; though, to own the truth, it was suspected that the monks, in an instance or two, improved the same by the addition of a little ratsbane; and Mirabeau assures us, that Frederick the Second of Prussia might have prolonged his existence, if he could but have resisted the fascination of an eel-pye; but the charm was too strong for him, and, like his great-grandmother of all, he ate and died—“All for eel-pye, or this world well lost!” And now, which had to resist the most difficult temptation, Frederic or Eve? She longed to experience pleasures yet untasted, and which she fancied to be exquisite: he, like Sigismunda, pined after known pleasures, and which he knew to be good; she was the dupe of imagination; he fell a victim to established habit. Which was the most deserving pardon? There is a question for the bishops: those clergymen who reside constantly on their livings (as all clergymen ought to do, or they ought not to be clergymen), I shall, in charity, believe to have something better to do with their time than to solve it.
The provision-grounds of the negroes furnish them with plantains, bananas, cocoa-nuts, and yams: of the latter there is a regular harvest once a year, and they remain in great perfection for many months, provided they are dug up carefully, but the slightest wound with the spade is sufficient to rot them. Catalue (a species of spinach) is a principal article in their pepper-pots; but in this parish their most valuable and regular supply of food arises from the cocoa-finger, or coccos, a species of the yam, but which lasts all the year round. These vegetables form the basis of negro sustenance; but the slaves also receive from their owners a regular weekly allowance of red herrings and salt meat, which serves to relish their vegetable diet; and, indeed, they are so passionately fond of salted provisions, that, instead of giving them fresh beef (as at their festival of Saturday last), I have been advised to provide some hogsheads of salt fish, as likely to afford them more gratification, at such future additional holidays as I may find it possible to allow them in this busy season of crop.
JANUARY 15.
The offspring of a white man and black woman is a mulatto; the mulatto and black produce a sambo; from the mulatto and white comes the quadroon; from the quadroon and white the mustee; the child of a mustee by a white man is called a musteefino; while the children of a musteefino are free by law, and rank as white persons to all intents and purposes. I think it is Long who asserts, that two mulattoes will never have children; but, as far as the most positive assurances can go, since my arrival in Jamaica, I have reason to believe the contrary, and that mulattoes breed together just as well as blacks and whites; but they are almost universally weak and effeminate persons, and thus their children are very difficult to rear. On a sugar estate one black is considered as more than equal to two mulattoes. Beautiful as are their forms in general, and easy and graceful as are their movements (which, indeed, appear to me so striking, that they cannot fail to excite the admiration of any one who has ever looked with delight on statues), still the women of colour are deficient in one of the most requisite points of female beauty. When Oromases was employed in the formation of woman, and said,—“Let her enchanting bosom resemble the celestial spheres,” he must certainly have suffered the negress to slip out of his mind. Young or old, I have not yet seen such a thing as a bosom.
JANUARY 16.
I never witnessed on the stage a scene so picturesque as a negro village. I walked through my own to-day, and visited the houses of the drivers, and other principal persons; and if I were to decide according to my own taste, I should infinitely have preferred their habitations to my own. Each house is surrounded by a separate garden, and the whole village is intersected by lanes, bordered with all kinds of sweet-smelling and flowering plants; but not such gardens as those belonging to our English cottages, where a few cabbages and carrots just peep up and grovel upon the earth between hedges, in square narrow beds, and where the tallest tree is a gooseberry bush: the vegetables of the negroes are all cultivated in their provision-grounds; these form their kitchen-gardens, and these are all for ornament or luxury, and are filled with a profusion of oranges, shaddocks, cocoa-nuts, and peppers of all descriptions: in particular I was shown the abba, or palm-tree, resembling the cocoa-tree, but much more beautiful, as its leaves are larger and more numerous, and, feathering to the ground as they grow old, they form a kind of natural arbour. It bears a large fruit, or rather vegetable, towards the top of the tree, in shape like the cone of the pine, but formed of seeds, some scarlet and bright as coral, others of a brownish-red or purple. The abba requires a length of years to arrive at maturity: a very fine one, which was shown me this morning, was supposed to be upwards of an hundred years old; and one of a very moderate size had been planted at the least twenty years, and had only borne fruit once.
It appears to me a strong proof of the good treatment which the negroes on Cornwall have been accustomed to receive, that there are many very old people upon it; I saw to-day a woman near a hundred years of age; and I am told that there are several of sixty, seventy, and eighty. I was glad, also, to find, that several negroes who have obtained their freedom, and possess little properties of their own in the mountains, and at Savannah la Mar, look upon my estate so little as the scene of their former sufferings while slaves, that they frequently come down to pass a few days in their ancient habitations with their former companions, by way of relaxation. One woman in particular expressed her hopes, that I should not be offended at her still coming to Cornwall now and then, although she belonged to it no longer; and begged me to give directions before my return to England, that her visits should not be hindered on the grounds of her having no business there.
My visit to Jamaica has at least produced one advantage to myself. Several runaways, who had disappeared for some time (some even for several months), have again made their appearance in the field, and I have desired that no questions should be asked. On the other hand, after enjoying herself during the Saturday and Sunday, which were allowed for holidays on my arrival, one of my ladies chose to pull foot, and did not return from her hiding-place in the mountains till this morning. Her name is Marcia; but so unlike is she to Addison’s Marcia, that she is not only as black as Juba, (instead of being “fair, oh! how divinely fair!”) but,—whereas Sempronius complains, that “Marcia, the lovely Marcia, is left behind,” the complaint against my heroine is, that “Marcia, the lovely Marcia,” is always running away. In excuse for her disappearance she alleged, that so far was her husband from thinking that “she towered above her sex,” that he had called her “a very bad woman,” which had provoked her so much, that she could not bear to stay with him; and she assured me, that he was himself “a very bad man;” which, if true, was certainly enough to justify any lady, black or white, in making a little incognito excursion for a week or so; therefore, as it appeared to be nothing more than a conjugal quarrel, and as Marcia engaged never to run away any more (at the same time allowing that she had suffered her resentment to carry her too far, when it had carried her all the way to the mountains), I desired that an act of oblivion might be passed in favour of Cato’s daughter, and away she went, quite happy, to pick hog’s meat.
The negro houses are composed of wattles on the outside, with rafters of sweet-wood, and are well plastered within and whitewashed; they consist of two chambers, one for cooking and the other for sleeping, and are, in general, well furnished with chairs, tables, &c., and I saw none without a four-post bedstead and plenty of bed-clothes; for, in spite of the warmth of the climate, when the sun is not above the horizon the negro always feels very chilly. I am assured that many of my slaves are very rich (and their property is inviolable), and that they are I’ll never without salt provisions, porter, and even wine, to entertain their friends and their visiters from the bay or the mountains. As I passed through their grounds, many little requests were preferred to me: one wanted an additional supply of lime for the whitewashing his house; another was building a new house for a superannuated wife (for they have all so much decency as to call their sexual attachments by a conjugal name), and wanted a little assistance towards the finishing it; a third requested a new axe to work with; and several entreated me to negotiate the purchase of some relation or friend belonging to another estate, and with whom they were anxious to be reunited: but all their requests were for additional indulgences; not one complained of ill-treatment, hunger, or over-work.
Poor Nicholas gave me a fresh instance of his being one of those whom Fortune pitches upon to show her spite: he has had four children, none of whom are alive; and the eldest of them, a fine little girl of four years old, fell into the mill-stream, and was drowned before any one was aware of her danger. His wife told me that she had had fifteen children, had taken the utmost care of them, and yet had now but two alive: she said, indeed, fifteen at the first, but she afterwards corrected herself, and explained that she had had twelve whole children and three half ones by which she meant miscarriages.
Besides the profits arising from their superabundance of provisions, which the better sort of negroes are enabled to sell regularly once a week at Savannah la Mar to a considerable amount, they keep a large stock of poultry, and pigs without number; which latter cost their owners but little, though they cost me a great deal; for they generally make their way into the cane-pieces, and sometimes eat me up an hogshead of sugar in the course of the morning: but the most expensive of the planter’s enemies are the rats, whose numbers are incredible, and are so destructive that a reward is given for killing them. During the last six months my agent has paid for three thousand rats killed upon Cornwall. Nor is the sugar which they consume the worst damage which they commit; the worst mischief is, that if through the carelessness of those whose business it is to supply the mill, one cane which has been gnawed by the rats is allowed admittance, that single damaged piece is sufficient to produce acidity enough to spoil the whole sugar.
JANUARY 17.
In this country there is scarcely any twilight, and all nature seems to wake at the same moment. About six o’clock the darkness disperses, the sun rises, and instantly every thing is in motion: the negroes are going to the field, the cattle are driving to pasture, the pigs and the poultry are pouring out from their hutches, the old women are preparing food on the lawn for the pickaninnies (the very small children), whom they keep feeding at all hours of the day; and all seem to be going to their employments, none to their work, the men and the women just as quietly and leisurely as the pigs and the poultry. The sight is really quite gay and amusing, and I am generally out of bed in time to enjoy it, especially as the continuance of the cool north breezes renders the weather still delicious, though the pleasure is rather an expensive one. Not a drop of rain has fallen since the 16th of November; the young canes are burning; and the drying quality of these norths is still more detrimental than the want of rain, so that these winds may be said to blow my pockets inside out; and as every draught of air, which I inhale with so much pleasure, is estimated to cost me a guinea, I feel, while breathing it, like Miss Burney’s Citizen at Vauxhall, who kept muttering to himself with every bit of ham that he put into his mouth, “There goes sixpence, and there goes a shilling!”
JANUARY 18.
A Galli-wasp, which was killed in the neighbouring morass, has just been brought to me. This is the Alligator in miniature, and is even more dreaded by the negroes than its great relation: it is only to be found in swamps and morasses: that which was brought to me was about eighteen inches in length, and I understand that it is seldom longer, although, as it grows in years, its thickness and the size of its jaws and head become greatly increased. It runs away on being encountered, and conceals itself; and it is only dangerous if trampled upon by accident, or if attacked; but then its bite is a dreadful one, not only from its tongue being armed with a sting (the venom of which is very powerful, although not mortal), but from its teeth being so brittle that they generally break in the wound, and as it is hardly possible to extract the pieces entirely, the wound corrupts, and becomes an incurable sore of the most offensive nature. Luckily, these reptiles are very scarce, but nothing can exceed the terror and aversion in which they are held by the negroes. This dead one had been lying in the room for several hours, yet, on my servant’s accidentally stirring the board on which the galli-wasp was stretched for my inspection, my little negro servant George darted out of the room in terror, and was at the bottom of the staircase in a moment. The skin of this animal appeared to be like shagreen in looks and strength, and was almost entirely composed of layers of very small scales; the colours were brownish-yellow and olive-green, the teeth numerous and piercing, and the claws of the feet very long and sharp: altogether it is a hideous and disgusting creature. As to the alligator of Jamaica, it is a timid animal, which never was known to attack the human species, though it frequently takes the liberty of running away with a dog or two, which appears to be their venison and turtle. There is no river on my estate large enough for their inhabiting; but, in Paradise River, which is not above four miles off, I understand that they are common.
JANUARY 19.
A young mulatto carpenter, belonging to Horace Beckford’s estate of Shrewsbury, came to beg my intercession with his overseer. He had been absent two days without leave, and on these occasions it is customary for the slaves to apply to some neighbouring gentleman for a note in their behalf’ which, as I am told, never fails to obtain the pardon required, as the managers of estates are in general but too happy to find an excuse for passing over without punishment any offences which are not very heinous; indeed, what with the excellent laws already enacted for the protection of the slaves, and which every year are still further ameliorated, and what with the difficulty of procuring more negroes—(which can now only be done by purchasing them from other estates),—which makes it absolutely necessary for the managers to preserve the slaves, if they mean to preserve their own situations,—I am fully persuaded that instances of tyranny to negroes are now very rare, at least in this island. But I must still acknowledge, from my own sad experience, since my arrival, that unless a West-Indian proprietor occasionally visit his estates himself, it is utterly impossible for him to be certain that his deputed authority is not abused, however good may be his intentions, and however vigilant his anxiety.
My father was one of the most humane and generous persons that ever existed; there was no indulgence which he ever denied his negroes, and his letters were filled with the most absolute injunctions for their good treatment. When his estates became mine, the one upon which I am now residing was managed by an attorney, considerably advanced in years, who had been long in our employment, and who bore the highest character for probity and humanity. He was both attorney and overseer; and it was a particular recommendation to me that he lived in my own house, and therefore had my slaves so immediately under his eye, that it was impossible for any subaltern to misuse them without his knowledge. His letters to me expressed the greatest anxiety and attention respecting the welfare and comfort of the slaves;—so much so, indeed, that when I detailed his mode of management to Lord Holland, he observed, “that if he did all that was mentioned in his letters, he did as much as could possibly be expected or wished from an attorney;” and on parting with his own, Lord Holland was induced to take mine to manage his estates, which are in the immediate neighbourhood of Cornwall. This man died about two years ago, and since my arrival, I happened to hear, that during his management a remarkably fine young penn-keeper, named Richard (the brother of my intelligent carpenter, John Fuller), had run away several times to the mountains. I had taken occasion to let the brothers know, between jest and earnest, that I was aware of Richard’s misconduct; and at length, one morning, John, while he blamed his brother’s running away, let fall, that he had some excuse in the extreme ill-usage which he had received from one of the bookkeepers, who “had had a spite against him.” The hint alarmed me; I followed it, and nothing could equal my anger and surprise at learning the whole truth.
It seems, that while I fancied my attorney to be resident on Cornwall, he was, in fact, generally attending to a property of his own, or looking after estates of which also he had the management in distant parts of the island. During his absence, an overseer of his own appointing, without my knowledge, was left in absolute possession of his power, which he abused to such a degree, that almost every slave of respectability on the estate was compelled to become a runaway. The property was nearly ruined, and absolutely in a state of rebellion; and at length he committed an act of such severity, that the negroes, one and all, fled to Savannah la Mar, and threw themselves upon the protection of the magistrates, who immediately came over to Cornwall, investigated the complaint, and now, at length, the attorney, who had known frequent instances of the overseer’s tyranny, had frequently rebuked him for them, and had redressed the sufferers, but who still had dared to abuse my confidence so grossly as to continue him in his situation, upon this public exposure thought proper to dismiss him. Yet, while all this was going on—while my negroes were groaning under the iron rod of this petty tyrant—and while the public magistrature was obliged to interfere to protect them from his cruelty—my attorney had the insolence and falsehood to write me letters, filled with assurances of his perpetual vigilance for their welfare—of their perfect good treatment and satisfaction; nor, if I had not come myself to Jamaica, in all probability should I ever have had the most distant idea how abominably the poor creatures had been misused.
I have made it my business to mix as much as possible among the negroes, and have given them every encouragement to repose confidence in me; and I have uniformly found all those, upon whom any reliance can be placed, unite in praising the humanity of their present superintendant. Instantly on his arrival, he took the whole power of punishment into his own hands: he forbade the slightest interference in this respect of any person whatever on the estate, white or black; nor have I been able to find as yet any one negro who has any charge of harsh treatment to bring against him.
However, having been already so grossly deceived, I will never again place implicit confidence in any person whatever in a matter of such importance. Before my departure, I shall take every possible measure that may prevent any misconduct taking place without my being apprised of it as soon as possible; and I have already exhorted my negroes to apply to the magistrates on the very first instance of ill-usage, should any occur during my absence.
I am indeed assured by every one about me, that to manage a West-Indian estate without the occasional use of the cart-whip, however rarely, is impossible; and they insist upon it, that it is absurd in me to call my slaves ill-treated, because, when they act grossly wrong, they are treated like English soldiers and sailors. All this may be very true; but there is something to me so shocking in the idea of this execrable cart-whip, that I have positively forbidden the use of it on Cornwall; and if the estate must go to rack and ruin without its use, to rack and ruin the estate must go. Probably, I should care less about this punishment, if I had not been living among those on whom it may be inflicted; but now, when I am accustomed to see every face that looks upon me, grinning from ear to ear with pleasure at my notice, and hear every voice cry “God bless you, massa,” as I pass, one must be an absolute brute not to feel unwilling to leave them subject to the lash; besides, they are excellent cajolers, and lay it on with a trowel. Nicholas and John Fuller came to me this morning to beg a favour, “and beg massa hard, quite hard!” It was, that when massa went away, “he would leave his picture for the negroes;” that they might talk to it, “all just as they did to massa.” Shakspeare says—
“A little flattery does well sometimes!”
But, although the mode of expressing it may be artifice, the sentiment of good-will may be shown. A dog grows attached to the person who feeds and makes much of him; and as they have never experienced as yet any but kind treatment from me personally, it would be against common sense and nature to suppose that my negroes do not feel kindly towards me.
JANUARY 20.
THE RUNAWAY.
Peter, Peter was a black boy;
Peter, him pull foot one day:
Buckra girl, him * Peter’s joy;
Lilly white girl entice him away.
Fye, Missy Sally, fye on you!
Poor Blacky Peter why undo?
Oh! Peter, Peter was a bad boy;
Peter was a runaway.
* The negroes never distinguish between “him” and “her” in their conversation.
Peter, him Massa thief—Oh! fye!
Missy Sally, him say him do so.
Him money spent, Sally bid him bye.
And from Peter away him go;
Fye, Missy Sally, fye on you!
Poor Blacky Peter what him do?
Oh! Peter, Peter was a sad boy;
Peter was a runaway!
Peter, him go to him Massa back;
There him humbly own him crime:
“Massa, forgib one poor young Black!
Oh! Massa, good Massa, forgib dis time!”—
Then in come him Missy so fine, so gay,
And to him Peter thus him say:
“Oh! Missy, good Missy, you for me pray!
Beg Massa forgib poor runaway!”
“Missy, you cheeks so red, so white;
Missy, you eyes like diamond shine I
Missy, you Massa’s sole delight,
And Lilly Sally, him was mine!
Him say—6 Come, Peter, mid me go!’—
Could me refuse him? Could me say 6 no?’—»
Poor Peter—‘no’ him could no say!
So Peter, Peter ran away!”—
Him Missy him pray; him Massa so kind
Was moved by him prayer, and to Peter him says
“Well, boy, for this once I forgive you!—but mind!
With the buckra girls you no more go away!
Though fair without, they’re foul within;
Their heart is black, though white their skin.
Then Peter, Peter with me stay;
Peter no more run away!”—
JANUARY 21. (Sunday.)
The hospital has been crowded, since my arrival, with patients who have nothing the matter with them. On Wednesday there were about thirty invalids, of whom only four were cases at all serious; the rest had “a lilly pain here, Massa,” or “a bad pain me know nowhere, Massa,” and evidently only came to the hospital in order to sit idle, and chat away the time with their friends. Four of them the doctor ordered into the field peremptorily; the next day there came into the sick-house six others; upon this I resolved to try my own hand at curing them; and I directed the head-driver to announce, that the presents which I had brought from England should be distributed to-day, that the new-born children should be christened, and that the negroes might take possession of my house, and amuse themselves till twelve at night. The effect of my prescription was magical; two thirds of the sick were hale and hearty, at work in the field on Saturday morning, and to-day not a soul remained in the hospital except the four serious cases.
The christening took place about four o’clock. Sully’s infant, which had been destined to perform a part on this occasion, had died in the hospital; but this morning the father came to complain of his disappointment, and to beg leave to substitute a child by another wife, which had been born about two months before my arrival; and as the father is a very serviceable fellow, and the mother, besides having brought up three children of her own, had the additional merit of having reared an infant whose own mother had died in child-bed, I broke through the rule of only christening those myself who should be born since my coming to Jamaica, and granted his request. By good luck, the first child to be named was the offspring of Minerva and Captain; so I told the parents that as it would be highly proper to call the boy after the greatest Captain that the world could produce, he should be named Wellington; and that I hoped that he would grow up to serve me in Jamaica as well as the Duke of Wellington had served his massa, the King of England, in Europe. The Duke of Sully’s child I wanted to call Navarre; but the father had brought over a free negro from Savannah la Mar to stand godfather, who was his fidus Achates, by the name of John Davies, and I found that he had set his heart upon calling the boy John Lewis, after his friend and myself; so John Lewis he was.
There ought to have been a third child, born at seven months, whom the graundee had reared with great difficulty, and dismissed, quite strong, from the hospital; the mother had taken great care of it till the tenth day, when she was entitled to an allowance of clothes, provisions, &c.; but no sooner had she received her reward, than on that very night she suffered the child to remain so long without food, while she went herself to dance on a neighbouring estate, that it was brought, in an exhausted state, back to the hospital; and, in spite of every care, it expired within four and twenty hours after its return.
The ceremony was performed with perfect gravity and propriety by all parties; I thought it as well to cut the reading part of it very short; but I read a couple of prayers, marked the foreheads of the children with the sign of the cross, and, instead of the concluding prayer, I substituted a wish, “that God would bless the children, and make them live to be as good servants to me, as I prayed him to make me a kind massa to them;” upon which all present very gravely made me their lowest bows and courtesies, and then gave me a loud huzza; so unusual a mode of approbation at a christening that it had nearly overturned my seriousness; and I made haste to serve out Madeira to the parents and assistants, that they might drink the healths of the new Christians and of each other. The mothers and the graindee were then called up to the table, and the ladies in a family way were arranged behind them.
Their title in Jamaica is rather coarse, but very expressive. I asked Cubina one day “who was that woman with a basket on her head?”
“Massa,” he answered, “that one belly-woman going to sell provisions at the Bay.” As she was going to sell provisions, I supposed that belly-woman was the name of her trade; but it afterwards appeared that she was one of those females who had given in their names as being then labouring under
“The pleasing punishment which women bear;”
and who, in consequence, were discharged from all severe labour. I then gave the graundee and the mothers a dollar each, and told them, that for the future they might claim the same sum, in addition to their usual allowance of clothes and provisions, for every infant which should be brought to the overseer alive and well on the fourteenth day; and I also gave each mother a present of a scarlet girdle with a silver medal in the centre, telling her always to wear it on feasts and holidays, when it should entitle her to marks of peculiar respect and attention, such as being one of the first served, and receiving a larger portion than the rest; that the first fault which she might commit, should be forgiven on the production of this girdle; and that when she should have any favour to ask, she should always put it round her waist, and be assured, that on seeing it, the overseer would allow the wearer to be entitled to particular indulgence. On every additional child an additional medal is to be affixed to the belt, and precedence is to follow the greater number of medals. I expected that this notion of an order of honour would have been treated as completely fanciful and romantic; but to my great surprise, my manager told me, that “he never knew a dollar better bestowed than the one which formed the medal of the girdle, and that he thought the institution likely to have a very good effect.”
Immediately after the christening the Eboe drums were produced, and in defiance of Sunday the negroes had the irreverence to be gay and happy, while the presents were getting in order for distribution. All the men got jackets, the women seven yards of stuff each for petticoats, &c., and the children as much printed cotton as would make a couple of frocks. The Creoles were delighted beyond measure when some of the African male negroes exclaimed, “Tank, massa,” and made a low courtesy in the confusion of their gratitude. As they were all called to receive their presents alphabetically in pairs, some of the combinations were very amusing. We had Punch and Plato, Priam and Pam, Hemp and Hercules, and Minerva and Moll come together. By twelve they dispersed, and I went to bed, as usual on these occasions, with a violent headach.