JANUARY 22.
While I was at dinner, a violent uproar was heard below stairs. On enquiry, it proved to be Cubina, quarrelling with his niece Phillis (a goodlooking black girl employed about the house), about a broken pitcher; and as her explanation did not appear satisfactory to him, he had thought proper to give her a few boxes on the ear. Upon hearing this, I read him such a lecture upon the baseness of a man’s striking a woman, and told him with so much severity that his heart must be a bad one to commit such an offence, that poor Cubina, having never heard a harsh word from me before, scarcely knew whether he stood upon his head or his heels. When he afterwards brought my coffee, he expressed his sorrow for having offended me, and begged my pardon in the most humble manner. I told him, that to obtain mine, he must first obtain that of Phillis, and he immediately declared himself ready to make her any apology that I might dictate. So the girl was called in; and her uncle going up to her, “I am very sorry, Phillis,” said he, “that I gave way to high passion, and called you hard names, and struck you: which I ought not to have done while massa was in the house;” (here I was going to interrupt him, but he was too clever not to perceive his blunder, and made haste to add) “nor if he had not been here, nor at all; so I hope you will have the kindness to forgive me this once, and I never will strike you again, and so I beg your pardon.” And he then put out his hand to her in the most frank and hearty manner imaginable; and on her accepting it, made her three or four of his very lowest and most graceful bows. I furnished him with a piece of money to give her as a peace-offering; they left the room thoroughly reconciled, and in five minutes after they and the rest of the servants were all chattering, laughing, and singing together, in the most perfect harmony and good-humour. I suppose, if I had desired an upper servant in England to make the same submission, he would have preferred quitting my service to doing what he would have called “humbling himself to an inferior;” or, if he had found himself compelled to give way, he would have been sulky with the girl, and found fault with every thing that she did in the house for a twelvemonth after.
On the other hand, there are some choice ungrateful scoundrels among the negroes: on the night of their first dance, a couple of sheep disappeared from the pen, although they could not have been taken from want of food, as on that very morning there had been an ample distribution of fresh beef; and last night another sheep and a quantity of poultry followed them. Yesterday, too, a young rascal of a boy called “massa Jackey,” who is in the frequent habit of running away for months at a time, and whom I had distinguished from the cleverness of his countenance and buffoonery of his manners, came to beg my permission to go and purchase food with some money which I had just given him, “because he was almost starving; his parents were dead, he had no provision-grounds, no allowance, and nobody ever gave him anything.” Upon this I sent Cubina with the boy to the storekeeper, when it appeared that he had always received a regular allowance of provisions twice a week, which he generally sold, as well as his clothes, at the Bay, for spirits; had received an additional portion only last Friday; and, into the bargain, during the whole of that week had been fed from the house. What he could propose to himself by telling a lie which must be so soon detected, I cannot conceive; but I am assured, that unless a negro has an interest in telling the truth, he always lies—in order to keep his tongue in practice.
One species of flattery (or of Congo-saw, as we call it here) amused me much this morning: an old woman who is in the hospital wanted to express her gratitude for some stewed fish which I had sent her for supper, and, instead of calling me “massa,” she always said—“Tank him, my husband.”
JANUARY 24.
This was a day of perpetual occupation. I rose at six o’clock, and went down to the Bay to settle some business; on my return I visited the hospital while breakfast was getting ready; and as soon as it was over, I went down to the negro-houses to hear the whole body of Eboes lodge a complaint against one of the book-keepers, and appoint a day for their being heard in his presence. On my return to the house, I found two women belonging to a neighbouring estate, who came to complain of cruel treatment from their overseer, and to request me to inform their trustee how ill they had been used, and see their injuries redressed. They said, that having been ill in the hospital, and ordered to the field while they were still too weak to work, they had been flogged with much severity (though not beyond the limits of the law); and my head driver, who was less scrupulously delicate than myself as to ocular inspection of Juliet’s person (which Juliet, to do her justice, was perfectly ready to submit to in proof of her assertions), told me, that the woman had certainly suffered greatly; the other, whose name was Delia, was but just recovering from a miscarriage, and declared openly that the overseer’s conduct had been such, that nothing should have prevented her running away long ago if she could but have had the heart to abandon a child which she had on the estate. Both were poor feeble-looking creatures, and seemed very unfit subjects for any severe correction. I promised to write to their trustee; and, as they were afraid of being punished on their return home for having thrown themselves on my protection, I wrote a note to the overseer, requesting that the women might remain quite unmolested till the trustee’s arrival, which was daily expected; and, with this note and a present of cocoa-fingers and salt fish, Delia and Juliet departed, apparently much comforted.
They were succeeded by no less a personage than Venus herself—a poor, little, sickly, timid soul, who had purchased her freedom from my father by substituting in her place a fine stout black wench, who, being Venus’s locum tenens, was, by courtesy, called Venus, too, though her right name was “Big Joan;” but, by some neglect of the then attorney, Venus had never received any title, and she now came to beg “massa so good as give paper;” otherwise she was still, to all intents and purposes, my slave, and I might still have compelled her to work, although, at the same time, her substitute was on the estate. Of course, I promised the paper required, and engaged to act the part of a second Vulcan by releasing Venus from my chains: but the paper was not the only thing that Venus wanted; she also wanted a petticoat! She told me, that when the presents were distributed on Sunday, the petticoat, which she would otherwise have had, was, of course, “given to the other Venus;” and though, to be sure, she was free now, yet, “when she belonged to massa, she had always worked for him well,” and “she was quite as glad to see massa as the other Venus,” and, therefore, “ought to have quite as much petticoat.” I tried to convince her, that for Venus to wear a petticoat of blue durant, or, indeed, any petticoat at all, would be quite unclassical: the goddess of beauty stuck to her point, and finally carried off the petticoat.
Venus had scarcely evacuated the premises, when her place was occupied by the minister of Savannah la Mar, with proposals for instructing the negroes in religion; and the minister, in his turn, was replaced by one of the Sunday-night thieves, who had been caught while in the actual possession of one of my sheep and a great turkey-cock; and, to make the matter worse, the depredator’s name was Hercules! Hercules, whom Virgil states to have exercised so much severity on Cacus, when his own oxen were stolen, was taken up himself for stealing my sheep in Jamaica! The demi-god had nothing to say in his excuse: he had just received a large allowance of beef:—therefore, hunger had no share in his transgression; and the committing the offence during the very time that I was giving the negroes a festival, rendered his ingratitude the more flagrant.
I perfectly well understood that the man was sent to me by my agent, in order to show the absolute necessity of sometimes employing the cart-whip, and to see whether I would suffer the fellow to escape unpunished. But, as this was the first offender who had been brought before me, I took that for a pretext to absolve him: so I lectured him for half an hour with great severity, swore that on the very next offence I would order him to be sold; and that if he would not do his fair proportion of work without being lashed, he should be sent to work somewhere else; for I would suffer no such worthless fellows on my estate, and would not be at the expense of a cart-whip to correct him. He promised most earnestly to behave better in future, and Hercules was suffered to depart: but I am told that no good can be expected of him; that he is perpetually running away; and that he had been absent for five weeks together before my arrival, and only returned home upon hearing that there was a distribution of beef, rum, and jackets going forward; in return for all which, he stole my sheep and my poor great turkey-cock.
But now came the most puzzling business of the day. About four years ago, two Eboes, called Pickle and Edward, were rivals, after being intimate friends: Pickle (who is an excellent faithful negro, but not very wise) was the successful candidate; and, of course, the friendship was interrupted, till Edward married the sister of the disputed fair one. From this time the brothers-in-law lived in perfect harmony together; but, during the first festival given on my arrival, Pickle’s house was broken open, and robbed of all his clothes, &c. The thief was sought for, but in vain. On Monday last I found Pickle in the hospital, complaining of a pain in his side; and the blood, which had been taken from him, gave reason to apprehend a pleurisy arising from cold; but, as the disorder had been taken in its earliest stage, nothing dangerous was expected. The fever abated; the medicines performed their offices properly; still the man’s spirits and strength appeared to decline, and he persisted in saying that he was not better, and should never do well. At length, to-day, he got out of his sick bed, came to the house, attended by the whole body of drivers, and accused his brother-in-law of having been the stealer of his goods. I asked, “Had Edward been seen near his house? Had any of his effects been seen in Edward’s possession? Did Edward refuse to suffer his hut to be searched?” No. Edward, who was present, pressed for the most strict scrutiny, and asserted his perfect ignorance; nor could the accuser advance any grounds for the charge, except his belief of Edward’s guilt. “Why did he think so?” After much beating about the bush, at length out came the real causa doloris—“Edward had Obeahed him!” He had accused Edward of breaking open his house, and had begged him to help him to his goods again; and “Edward had gone at midnight into the bush” (i. e. the wood), and “had gathered the plant whangra, which he had boiled in an iron pot, by a fire of leaves, over which he went pufij puffie!” and said the sautee-sautee; and then had cut the whangra root into four pieces, three to bury at the plantation gates, and one to burn; and to each of these three pieces he gave the name of a Christian, one of which was Daniel, and Edward had said, that this would help him to find his goods; but instead of that, he had immediately felt this pain in his side, and therefore he was sure that, instead of using Obeah to find his goods, Edward had used it to kill himself. “And were these all his reasons?” I enquired. “No; when he married, Edward was very angry at the loss of his mistress, and had said that they never would live well and happily together; and they never had lived happily and well together.”
This last argument quite got the better of my gravity. By parity of reasoning, I thought that almost every married couple in Great Britain must be under the influence of Obeah! I endeavoured to convince the fellow of his folly and injustice, especially as the person accused was the identical man who had detected the Obeah priest harboured in one of my negro huts last year, had seized him with his own hands, and delivered him up to my agent, who had prosecuted and transported him. It was, therefore, improbable in the highest degree, that he should be an Obeah man himself; and all the bystanders, black and white, joined me in ridiculing Pickle for complaints so improbable and childish. But anger, argument, and irony were all ineffectual. I offered to christen him, and expel black Obeah by white, but in vain; the fellow persisted in saying, that “he had a pain in his side, and, therefore, Edward must have given it to him;” and he went back to his hospital, shaking his head all the way, sullen and unconvinced. He is a young strong negro, perfectly well disposed, and doing his due portion of work willingly; and it will be truly provoking to lose him by the influence of this foolish prejudice.
JANUARY 25.
I sent for Edward, had him alone with me for above two hours, and pressed him most earnestly to confide in me. I gave him a dollar to convince him of my good-will towards him; assured him that whatever he might tell me should remain a secret between us; said, that I was certain of his not having used any poison, or done any thing really mischievous; but as I suspected him of having played some monkey-tricks or other, which, however harmless in themselves, had evidently operated dangerously upon Pickle’s imagination, I begged him to tell me precisely what had passed, in order that I might counteract its baleful effects. In reply, Edward swore to me most solemnly, “by the great God Almighty, who lives above the clouds,” that he never had used any such practices: that he had never gone into the wood to gather whangra; and that he had considered Pickle, from the moment of his own marriage, as his brother, and had always, till then, loved him as such. His eyes filled with tears while he protested that he should be as sorry for Pickle’s death as if it were himself; and he complained bitterly of having the ill name of an Obeah man given to him, which made him feared and shunned by his companions, and entirely without cause. But he said that he was certain that Pickle would never have suspected him of such a crime, if a third person had not put it into his head. There is a negro on my estate called Adam, who has been long and strongly suspected of having connections with Obeah men. When Edward was quite young, he was under this fellow’s superintendence, and he now assured me, that Adam had not only endeavoured to draw him into similar practices, but had even pressed him very earnestly to lay a magical egg under the door of a book-keeper whose conduct had been obnoxious. Edward had positively refused: from that moment his superintendent, from being his protector, had become his enemy, had shown him spite upon every occasion; and he it was, he had no doubt, who, for the purpose of injuring him, had put this foolish notion into Pickle’s head.
Upon enquiry it appeared, that on the very morning succeeding Pickle’s entering the hospital, this suspected man had gone there also, on pretence of sickness, and had remained there to watch the invalid; although it was so evident that nothing was the matter with him, that the doctor had frequently ordered him to the field, but the man had always found means for evading the order. The first thing that we now did was to turn him out of the sick-house, neck and heels; I then took Edward with me to Pickle’s bedside, where the former told his brother-in-law, that if he had ever done any thing to offend him, he heartily begged his pardon; that he swore by the Almighty God that he had never been in the bush to hurt him, nor any where else; on the contrary, that he had always loved him, and wished him well; and that he now begged him to be friends with him again, to forget and forgive all former quarrels, and to accept the hand which he offered him in all sincerity. The sick man also confessed, that he had always loved Edward as his brother, had “eaten and drunk with him for many years with perfect good-will,” and that it was his ingratitude for such affection which vexed him more than any thing. On this I told him, that I insisted upon their being good friends for the future, and that I should never hear the word Obeah, or any such nonsense, mentioned on my estate, on pain of my extreme displeasure. I promised that, as soon as Pickle should be quite recovered, I would buy for him exactly a set of such things as had been stolen from him; that Edward should bring them to his house, to show that he had rather give him things than take them away; and I then desired to see them shake hands. They did so, with much apparent cordiality; Edward then went back to his work; and this evening, when I sent him a dish from my table, Pickle desired the servant to tell me, that he had hardly any fever, and felt “quite so so,” which, in the negro dialect, means “a great deal better.” I begin, therefore, to hope that we shall save the foolish fellow’s life at last, which, at one time, appeared to be in great jeopardy.
There was a great dinner and ball for the whole county given to-day at Montego Bay, to which I was invited; but I begged leave to decline this and all other invitations, being determined to give up my whole time to my negroes during my stay in Jamaica.
JANUARY 26.
Every morning my agent regales me with some fresh instance of insubordination: he says nothing plainly, but shakes his head, and evidently gives me to understand, that the estate cannot be governed properly without the cart-whip. It seems that this morning, the women, one and all, refused to carry away the trash (which is one of the easiest tasks that can be set), and that without the slightest pretence: in consequence, the mill was obliged to be stopped; and when the driver on that station insisted on their doing their duty, a little fierce young devil of a Miss Whaunica flew at his throat, and endeavoured to strangle him: the agent was obliged to be called in, and, at length, this petticoat rebellion was subdued, and every thing went on as usual. I have, in consequence, assured the women, that since they will not be managed by fair treatment, I must have recourse to other measures; and that, if any similar instance of misconduct should take place, I was determined, on my return from Kingston, to sell the most refractory, ship myself immediately for England, and never return to them and Jamaica more. This threat, at the time, seemed to produce a great effect; all hands were clasped, and all voices were raised, imploring me not to leave them, and assuring me, that in future they would do their work quietly and willingly. But whether the impression will last beyond the immediate moment is a point greatly to be doubted.
JANUARY 27.
Another morning, with the mill stopped, no liquor in the boiling-house, and no work done. The driver brought the most obstinate and insolent of the women to be lectured by me; and I bounced and stormed for half an hour with all my might and main, especially at Whaunica, whose ingratitude was peculiar; as she is the wife of Edward, the Eboe, whom I had been protecting against the charge of theft and Obeahism, and had shown him more than usual kindness. They, at last, appeared to be very penitent and ashamed of themselves, and engaged never to behave ill again, if I would but forgive them this present fault; Whaunica, in particular, assuring me very earnestly, that I never should have cause to accuse her of “bad manners” again; for, in negro dialect, ingratitude is always called “bad manners.” My agent declares, that they never conducted themselves so ill before; that they worked cheerfully and properly till my arrival; but now they think that I shall protect them against all punishment, and have made regularly ten hogsheads of sugar a week less than they did before my coming upon the estate. This is the more provoking, as, by delaying the conclusion of the crop, the latter part of it may be driven into the rainy season, and then the labour is infinitely more severe both for the slaves and the cattle, and more detrimental to their health.
The minister of Savannah la Mar has shown me a plan for the religious instruction of the negroes, which was sent to him by the ecclesiastical commissaries at Kingston. It consisted but of two points: against the first (which recommended the slaves being ordered to go to church on a Sunday) I positively declared myself. Sunday is now the absolute property of the negroes for their relaxation, as Saturday is for the cultivation of their grounds; and I will not suffer a single hour of it to be taken from them for any purpose whatever. If my slaves choose to go to church on Sundays, so much the better; but not one of them shall be ordered to do one earthly thing on Sundays, but that which he chooses himself. The second article recommended occasional pastoral visits of the minister to the different estates; and in this respect I promised to give him every facility—although I greatly doubt any good effect being produced by a few short visits, at considerable intervals, on the minds of ignorant creatures, to whom no palpable and immediate benefit is offered. It appears, indeed, to me, that the only means of giving the negroes morality and religion must be through the medium of education, and their being induced to read such books in the minister’s absence as may recall to their thoughts what they have heard from him; otherwise, he may talk for an hour, and they will have understood but little—and remember nothing. There is not a single negro among my whole three hundred who can read a line; and what I suppose to be wanted on West-Indian estates is not an importation of missionaries, but of schoolmasters on Dr. Bell’s plan, if it could by any means be introduced here with effect. However, in the mean while I told the minister, that I was perfectly well inclined to have every measure tried that might enlighten the minds of the negroes, provided it did not interfere with their own hours of leisure, and were not compulsory. I mentioned to him a plan for commencing his instructions under the most favourable auspices, of which he seemed to approve; and he has promised to make occasional visits on my estate during my absence, which may do good and can do no harm; and, even should it fail to make the negroes religious, will, at least, add another humane inspector to my list. Soon after the minister’s departure, John Fuller came to repair one of the windows. Now John is in great disgrace with me in one respect. Instead of having a wife on the estate, he keeps one at the Bay, so that his children will not belong to me. Phillis, too, who formerly lived with John, says, that she parted with him, because he threw away all his money upon the Bay girls; though John asserts that the cause of separation was his catching the false Phillis coming out of one of the book-keepers’ bedrooms.
However, it is certain, that now his connections are all at the Bay; and I have assured him, that if he does not provide himself with a wife at Cornwall, before my return from Kingston, I will put him up to auction, and call the girls together to bid for him, one offering half a dozen yams, and another a bit of salt fish; and the highest bidder shall carry him off as her property. But to-day, as he came into the room just as the minister left it, I told him that Dr. Pope was coming to give the negroes some instruction; and that he had left part of a catechism for him, which he was to get by heart against his next visit. John promised to study it diligently, and went off to get it read to him by one of the book-keepers. Several of his companions came to hear it from curiosity, and the book-keeper read aloud:—
“John Fuller is gone to the Bay, boys,
On the girls to spend his cash;
And when John Fuller comes home, boys,
John Fuller deserves the lash.”
So John went away shaking his head, and saying, “Massa had told him, that the minister had left that paper to make him a better Christian. But he was certain that the minister had nothing to do with that, and that massa had made it all himself about the Bay girls.”
JANUARY 28. (Sunday.)
I shall have enough to do in Jamaica if I accept all the offices that are pressed upon me. A large body of negroes, from a neighbouring estate, came over to Cornwall this morning, to complain of hard treatment, in various ways, from their overseer and drivers, and requesting me to represent their injuries to their trustee here, and their proprietor in England. The charges were so strong, that I am certain that they must be fictitious; however, I listened to their story with patience; promised that the trustee (whom I was to see in a few days) should know their complaint;—and they went away apparently satisfied. Then came a runaway negro, who wanted to return home, and requested me to write a few lines to his master, to save him from the lash. He was succeeded by a poor creature named Bessie, who, although still a young woman, is dispensed with from labour, on account of her being afflicted with the cocoa-bay, one of the most horrible of negro diseases. It shows itself in large blotches and swellings, and which generally, by degrees, moulder away the joints of the toes and fingers, till they rot and drop off; sometimes as much as half a foot will go at once. As the disease is communicable by contact, the person so afflicted is necessarily shunned by society; and this poor woman, who is married to John Fuller, one of the best young men on the estate, and by whom she has had four children (although they are all dead), has for some time been obliged to live separated from him, lest he should be destroyed by contracting the same complaint. She now came to tell me, that she wanted a blanket, “for that the cold killed her of nights;” cold being that which negroes dislike most, and from which most of their illnesses arise. Of course she got her blanket; then she said, that she wanted medicine for her complaint. “Had not the doctor seen her?”
“Oh, yes! Dr. Goodwin; but the white doctor could do her no good. She wanted to go to a black doctor, named Ormond, who belonged to a neighbouring gentleman.” I told her, that if this black doctor understood her particular disease better than others, certainly she should go to him; but that if he pretended to cure her by charms or spells, or any thing but medicine, I should desire his master to cure the black doctor by giving him the punishment proper for such an impostor. Upon this Bessie burst into tears, and said “that Ormond was not an Obeah man, and that she had suffered too much by Obeah men to wish to have any more to do with them. She had made Adam her enemy by betraying him, when he had attempted to poison the former attorney; he had then cursed her, and wished that she might never be hearty again: and from that very time her complaint had declared itself; and her poor pickaninies had all died away, one after another; and she was sure that it was Adam who had done all this mischief by Obeah.” Upon this, I put myself in a great rage, and asked her “how she could believe that God would suffer a low wicked fellow like Adam to make good people die, merely because he wished them dead?”
“She did not know; she knew nothing about God; had never heard of any such Being, nor of any other world.” I told her, that God was a great personage, “who lived up yonder above the blue, in a place full of pleasures and free from pains, where Adam and wicked people could not come; that her pickaninies were not dead for ever, but were only gone up to live with God, who was good, and would take care of them for her; and that if she were good, when she died, she too would go up to God above the blue, and see all her four pickaninies again.” The idea seemed so new and so agreeable, to the poor creature, that she clapped her hands together, and began laughing for joy; so I said to her every thing that I could imagine likely to remove her prejudice; told her that I should make it a crime even so much as to mention the word Obeah on the estate; and that, if any negro from that time forward should be proved to have accused another of Obeahing him, or of telling another that he had been Obeahed, he should forfeit his share of the next present of salt-fish, which I meant soon to distribute among the slaves, and should never receive any favour from me in future; so I gave Bessie a piece of money, and she seemed to go away in better spirits than she came.
This Adam, of whom she complained, is a most dangerous fellow, and the terror of all his companions, with whom he lives in a constant state of warfare. He is a creole, born on my own property, and has several sisters, who have obtained their freedom, and are in every respect creditable and praiseworthy; and to one of whom I consider myself as particularly indebted, as she was the means of saving poor Richard’s life, when the tyranny of the overseer had brought him almost to the brink of the grave. But this brother is in every thing the very reverse of his sisters: there is no doubt of his having (as Bessie stated) infused poison into the water-jars through spite against the late superintendent. It was this same fellow whom Edward suspected of having put into his brother-in-law’s head the idea of his having been bewitched; and it was also in his hut that the old Obeah man was found concealed, whom my attorney seized and transported last year. He is, unfortunately, clever and plausible; and I am told that the mischief which he has already done, by working upon the folly and superstition of his fellows, is incalculable; yet I cannot get rid of him: the law will not suffer any negro to be shipped off the island, until he shall have been convicted of felony at the sessions; I cannot sell him, for nobody would buy him, nor even accept him, if I would offer them so dangerous a present; if he were to go away, the law would seize him, and bring him back to me, and I should be obliged to pay heavily for his re-taking and his maintenance in the workhouse. In short, I know not what I can do with him, except indeed make a Christian of him! This might induce the negroes to believe, that he had lost his infernal power by the superior virtue of the holy water; but, perhaps he may refuse to be christened. However, I will at least ask him the question; and if he consents, I will send him—and a couple of dollars—to the clergyman—for he shall not have so great a distinction as baptism from massa’s own hand—and see what effect “white Obeah” will have in removing the terrors of this professor of the black.
As to my sick Obeah patient, Pickle, from the moment of his reconciliation with his brother-inlaw he began to mend, and has recovered with wonderful rapidity: the fellow seems really grateful for the pains which I have taken about him; and our difficulty now is to prevent his fancying himself too soon able to quit the hospital, so eager is he to return “to work for massa.”
There are certainly many excellent qualities in the negro character; their worst faults appear to be, this prejudice respecting Obeah, and the facility with which they are frequently induced to poison to the right hand and to the left. A neighbouring gentleman, as I hear, has now three negroes in prison, all domestics, and one of them grown grey in his service, for poisoning him with corrosive sublimate; his brother was actually killed by similar means; yet I am assured that both of them were reckoned men of great humanity. Another agent, who appears to be in high favour with the negroes whom he now governs, was obliged to quit an estate, from the frequent attempts to poison him; and a person against whom there is no sort of charge alleged for tyranny, after being brought to the doors of death by a cup of coffee, only escaped a second time by his civility, in giving the beverage, prepared for himself to two young book-keepers, to both of whom it proved fatal. It, indeed, came out, afterwards, that this crime was also effected by the abominable belief in Obeah: the woman, who mixed the draught, had no idea of its being poison; but she had received the deleterious ingredients from an Obeah man, as “a charm to make her massa good to her;” by which the negroes mean, the compelling a person to give another every thing for which that other may ask him.
Next to this vile trick of poisoning people (arising, doubtless, in a great measure, from their total want of religion, and their ignorance of a future state, which makes them dread no punishment hereafter for themselves, and look with but little respect on human life in others), the greatest drawback upon one’s comfort in a Jamaica existence seems to me to be the being obliged to live perpetually in public. Certainly, if a man was desirous of leading a life of vice here, he must have set himself totally above shame, for he may depend upon every thing done by him being seen and known. The houses are absolutely transparent; the walls are nothing but windows—and all the doors stand wide open. No servants are in waiting to announce arrivals: visiters, negroes, dogs, cats, poultry, all walk in and out, and up and down your living-rooms, without the slightest ceremony.
Even the Temple of Cloacina (which, by the bye, is here very elegantly spoken of generally as “The Temple,”) is as much latticed and as pervious to the eye as any other part of my premises; and many a time has my delicacy been put to the blush by the ill-timed civility of some old woman or other, who, wandering that way, and happening to cast her eye to the left, has stopped her course to curtsy very gravely, and pay me the passing compliment of an “Ah, massa! bless you, massa! how day?”
JANUARY 29.
I find that Bessie’s black doctor is really nothing more than a professor of medicine as to this particular disease; and I have ordered her to be sent to him in the mountains immediately. Several gentlemen of the county dined with me to-day, and when they left me, one of the carriages contrived to get overturned, and the right shoulder of one of the gentlemen was dislocated. Luckily, it happened close to the house; and as the physician who attends my estate had dined with me also, a boy, on a mule, was despatched after him with all haste. He was soon with us, the bone was replaced with perfect ease, and this morning the patient left me with every prospect of finding no bad effects whatever from his accident.
We had at dinner a land tortoise and a barbecued pig, two of the best and richest dishes that I ever tasted;—the latter, in particular—which was dressed in the true maroon fashion, being placed on a barbecue (a frame of wicker-work, through whose interstices the steam can ascend), filled with peppers and spices of the highest flavour, wrapt in plantain leaves, and then buried in a hole filled with hot stones, by whose vapour it is baked, no particle of the juice being thus suffered to evaporate. I have eaten several other good Jamaica dishes, but none so excellent as this, a large portion of which was transferred to the most infirm patients in the hospital. Perhaps an English physician would have felt every hair of his wig bristle upon his head with astonishment, at hearing me ask, this morning, a woman in a fever, how her bark and her barbe cued pig had agreed with her. But, with negroes, I find that feeding the sick upon stewed fish and pork, highly seasoned, produces the very best effects possible.
Some of the fruits here are excellent, such as shaddocks, oranges, granadelloes, forbidden fruit; and one between an orange and a lemon, called “the grape or cluster fruit,” appears to me quite delicious. For the vegetables, I cannot say so much, yams, plantains, cocoa poyers, yam-poys, bananas, &c. look and taste all so much alike, that I scarcely know one from the other: they are all something between bread and potatoes, not so good as either, and I am quite tired of them all. The Lima Bean is said to be more like a pea than a bean, but whatever it be like, it appeared to me very indifferent. As to peas themselves, nothing can be worse. The achie fruit is a kind of vegetable, which generally is fried in butter; many people, I am told, are fond of it, but I could find no merit in it. The palm-tree (or abba, as it is called here) produces a long scarlet or reddish brown cone, which separates into beads, each of which contains a roasting nut surrounded by a kind of stringy husk—which, being boiled in salt and water, upon being chewn has a taste of artichoke, but the consistence is very disagreeable. The only native vegetable, which I like much, is the ochra, which tastes like asparagus, though not with quite so delicate a flavour.
As to fish, the variety is endless; but I think it rather consists in variety of names than of flavour. From this, however, I must except the Silk-Fish and Mud-Fish, and above all, the Mountain-Mullet, which is almost the best fish that I ever tasted. All the shell-fish, that I have met with as yet, have been excellent; the oysters have not come, in my way, but I am told that they are not only poor and insipid, but frequently are so poisonous that I had better not venture upon them; and so ends this chapter of the “Almanach des Gourmands” for Jamaica.
JANUARY 30.
There were above twenty ladies literally at my feet this morning. I went down to the negro-village to speak to Bessie about going to her black doctor; and all the refractory females of last week heard of my being there, and came in a body to promise better conduct for the future, and implore me not to go away. The sight of my carriage getting ready to take me to Kingston, and the arrival of post-horses, had alarmed them with the idea that I was really going to put my threats into execution of leaving them for ever. They had artfully enough prevailed on the wife of Clifford (the driver whom Whannica had collared) to be their spokes-woman; and they begged, and lifted up their folded hands, and cried, and fell on the ground, and kissed my feet—and, in short, acted their part so well, that they almost made me act mine to perfection, and fall to blubbering. I told them, that I certainly should go to Kingston on Thursday; but if I had good accounts of them during my absence, I should return in a few days;—if, on the contrary, the idle negroes continued to refuse to work without compulsion, then, in justice to the good ones (who last week were obliged to do more than their share), those punishments, which I had stopped, must be resumed;—but that, as Cornwall would be unsupportable to me, if I could not live there without hearing the crack of the abominable cart-whip all day long, I would not return to it, but ship myself off for England, and never visit them or Jamaica any more. And then I talked very sternly and positively about “punishments” and “making bad negroes do their work properly,” and every third word was the cart-whip, till I almost fancied myself the princess in the “Fairy Tale,” who never opened her mouth, but out came two toads and three couple of serpents. However, to sweeten my oration a little at the end, I told them, that, “having enquired closely into the characters of the present book-keepers, I had found no charge against any of them except one, who was accused of having occasionally struck a negro, of using bad language to them, and of being a hasty passionate man, though in other respects very serviceable to the estate. But although these faults were but trifling, and some of them not proved, so determined was I to show that I would suffer no white person on the estate who maltreated the negroes, either by word or deed, that I had determined to make an example of him for the warning of the rest; and accordingly had dismissed him this morning.”
The man in question (by his own account) had made himself obnoxious to them; and on hearing of his discharge, they, one and all, sprawled upon the ground in such a rapture of joy and gratitude, that now I may safely say with Sir Andrew Aguecheek, “I was adored once!”
The book-keeper had denied positively the charge of striking the negroes, and ascribed it to the revenge of the Eboe Edward, whom he had detected in cutting out part of a boiling-house window, in order that he might pass out stolen sugar unperceived; for, to do the negroes justice, it is a doubt whether they are the greatest thieves or liars, and the quantity of sugar which they purloin during the crop, and dispose of at the Bay for a mere trifle, is enormous. However, whether the charge of striking were true or not, it was sufficiently proved that this book-keeper was a passionate man, and he said himself, “that the negroes had conceived a spite against him,” which alone were reasons enough for removing him. Indeed, I had the less scruple from the slight nature of his offence making it easy for him to find another situation; and I have besides desired him to stay out his quarter on the estate, and then receive a double salary on going away, which will free him from any charge of having been dismissed disgracefully.
JANUARY 31.
I went to enquire after my petitioners Juliet and Delia, and had the satisfaction to find that the trustee had enquired into their complaint; and, as it appeared not to be entirely unfounded, he had done every thing that was right and necessary. Aberdeen, too, the runaway cooper, who had applied to me to obtain his pardon, had been suffered to return to his work unpunished; and as it had been found that his flight had in a great measure been occasioned by his being in a bad state of health, which rendered him apprehensive of being put to labour beyond his strength, he had been permitted to select his own occupation, which, of course, was the easiest one in his trade. But I found it a more difficult matter to ascertain the truth or falsehood of the charges brought to me on Sunday last: the books positively contradicted them, but the register might have been falsely kept; and as the negroes persisted most positively in their complaint against the overseer (particularly as to his having curtailed them of the legal allowance of time for their meals, and the cultivation of their own grounds) with the concurrence of the trustee, I wrote to the magistrates of the county, desiring that they would summon the negroes in question before a council of protection, and examine into the injuries of which they had complained to me.
FEBRUARY 1. (Thursday.)
I left Cornwall for Spanish Town at six in the morning, accompanied by a young naval officer, the son of my next neighbour, Mr. Hill of Amity, who not only was good enough to lend me a kittereen, with a canopy, to perform my journey, but his son to be my cicerone on my tour. The road wound through mountain passes, or else on a shelf of rock so narrow—though without the slightest danger—that one of the wheels was frequently in the sea, while my other side was fenced by a line of bold broken cliffs, clothed with trees completely from their brows down to the very edge of the water. Between eight and nine we reached a solitary tavern, called Blue-fields, where the horses rested for a couple of hours. It had a very pretty garden on the sea-shore, which contained a picturesque cottage, exactly resembling an ornamental Hermitage; and leaning against one of the pillars of its porch we found a young girl, who exactly answered George Colman’s description of Yarico, “quite brown, but extremely genteel, like a Wedgewood teapot.” She told us that she was a Spanish creole, who had fled with her mother from the disputes between the royalists and independents in the island of Old Providence; and the owner of the tavern being a relation of her mother, he had permitted the fugitives to establish themselves in his garden-cottage, till the troubles of their own country should be over. She talked perfectly good English, for she said that there were many of that nation established in Providence. Her name was Antonietta. Her figure was light and elegant; her black eyes mild and bright; her countenance intelligent and good-humoured; and her teeth beautiful to perfection: altogether, Antonietta was by far the handsomest creole that I have ever seen.
From Blue-fields we proceeded at once to Lakovia (a small village), a stage of thirty miles. Here we found a relay of horses, which conveyed us by seven o’clock to “the Gutturs;” a house belonging to the proprietor of the post-horses, and which is situated at the very foot of the tremendous May-day Mountains. The house is an excellent one, and we found good beds, eatables, and, in short, every thing that travellers could wish. The distance from Lakovia to “the Gutturs” is sixteen miles.
FEBRUARY 2.
Yesterday the only very striking point of view (although the whole of the road was picturesque) was “the Cove,” situated between Blue-fields and Lakovia, and which resembled the most beautiful of the views of coves to be found in “Cook’s Voyages,” but our journey to-day was a succession of beautiful scenes, from beginning to end. Instantly on leaving “the Gutturs,” we began to ascend the May-day Mountains, and it was not till after travelling for five and twenty miles, that we found ourselves at the foot of them on the other side, at a place called Williamsfield, about twelve miles from the toll-house, where we rested for the night. To be sure, the road was so rough, that it was enough to make one envy the Mahometan women, who, having no souls at all, could not possibly have them jolted out of their bodies; but the beauty of the scenery amply rewarded us for our bruised sides and battered backs. The road was, for the most part, bounded by lofty rocks on one side, and a deep precipice on the other, and bordered with a profusion of noble trees and flowering shrubs in great variety. In particular, I was struck with the picturesque appearance of some wild fig-trees of singular size and beauty. Although there were only two of us, besides servants, we found it necessary to employ seven horses and a couple of mules; and, as our cavalcade wound along through the mountains, the Spanish look of our sumpter-mules, and of our kittereens (which are precisely the vehicle in which Gil Bias is always represented when travelling with Scipio towards Lirias) gave us quite the appearance of a caravan; nor should I have been greatly surprised to see a trap-door open in the middle of the road, and Captain Rolando’s whiskers make their appearance. Every one spoke to me with contempt of this south road, in respect of beauty, when compared with the north; however, it certainly seemed to me more beautiful than any road which I have ever travelled as yet.
FEBRUARY 3.
A stage of twenty miles brought us to Old Harbour, and, passing through the Dry River, twelve more landed us at Spanish Town, otherwise called St. Jago de la Vega, and the seat of government in Jamaica, although Kingston is much larger and more populous, and must be considered as the principal town. We found very clean and comfortable lodgings at Miss Cole’s. Spanish Town has no recommendations whatever; the houses are mostly built of wood: the streets are very irregular and narrow; every alternate building is in a ruinous state, and the whole place wears an air of gloom and melancholy. The government house is a large clumsy-looking brick building, with a portico the stucco of which has suffered by the weather, and it can advance no pretensions to architectural beauty. On one side of the square in which it stands there is a small temple protecting a statue of Lord Rodney, executed by Bacon: some of the bas-reliefs on the pedestal appeared to me very good; but the old admiral is most absurdly dressed in the habit of a Roman General, and furnished out with buskins and a truncheon. The temple itself is quite in opposition to good taste, with very low arches, surmounted by heavy bas reliefs out of all proportion.
FEBRUARY 4. (Sunday.)
We breakfasted with the Chief Justice, who is my relation, and of my own name, and then went to the church, which is a very handsome one; the walls lined with fine mahogany, and ornamented with many monuments of white marble, in memory of the former governors and other principal inhabitants. It seems that my ancestors, on both sides, have always had a taste for being well lodged after their decease; for, on admiring one of these tombs, it proved to be that of my maternal grandfather; but still this was not to be compared for a moment with my mausoleum at Cornwall. After church I went home with the Rector, who is one of the ecclesiastical commissaries, and had a long conversation with him respecting a plan which is in agitation for giving the negroes something of a religious education. We afterwards dined with the member for Westmoreland; and as every body in Jamaica is on foot by six in the morning, at ten in the evening we were quite ready to go to bed.
FEBRUARY 5.
The Chief Justice went with me to Kingston, where I had appointed the agent for my other estate in St. Thomas-in-the-East to meet me. The short time allotted for my stay in the island makes it impossible to attend properly both to this estate and to Cornwall at this first visit, and therefore I determined to confine my attention to the negroes on the latter estate till my return to Jamaica. I now contented myself by impressing on the mind of my agent (whom I am certain of being a most humane and intelligent man) my extreme anxiety for the abolition of the cart-whip; and I had the satisfaction of hearing from him, that for a long time it had never been used more than perhaps twice in the year, and then only very slightly, and for some offence so flagrant that it was impossible to pass it over; and he assured me, that whenever I visit Hordley, I may depend upon its not being employed at all. On the other hand, I am told that a gentleman of the parish of Vere, who came over to Jamaica for the sole purpose of ameliorating the condition of his negroes, after abolishing the cart-whip, has at length been constrained to resume the occasional use of it, because he found it utterly impossible to keep them in any sort of subordination without it.
There is not that air of melancholy about Kingston which pervades Spanish Town; but it has no pretensions to beauty; and if any person will imagine a large town entirely composed of booths at a race-course, and the streets merely roads, without any sort of paving, he will have, a perfect idea of Kingston.
FEBRUARY 6.
The Jamaica canoes are hollowed cotton-trees. We embarked in one of them at six in the morning, and visited the ruins of Port Royal, which, last year, was destroyed by fire: some of the houses were rebuilding; but it was a melancholy sight, not only from the look of the half-burnt buildings, but the dejected countenances of the ruined inhabitants. I returned to breakfast at the rectory, with two other ecclesiastical commissaries; had more conversation about their proposed plan; and became still more convinced of the difficulty of doing any thing effectual without danger to the island and to the negroes themselves, and of the extreme delicacy requisite in whatever may be attempted. We afterwards visited the school of the children of the poor, who are educating upon Dr. Bell’s system; and then saw the church, a very large and handsome one on the inside, but mean enough as to its exterior. I was shown the tombstone of Admiral Benbow, who was killed in a naval engagement, and whose ship afterwards
“Bore down to Port Royal, where the people flocked very
much
To see brave Admiral Benbow laid in Kingston Town
Church,”
as the admiral’s Homer informs us.
The church is a large one, but it is going to be still further extended; the negroes in Kingston and its neighbourhood being (as the rector assured me) so anxious to obtain religious instruction, that on Sundays not only the church but the churchyard is so completely thronged with them, as to make it difficult to traverse the crowd; and those who are fortunate enough to obtain seats for the morning service, through fear of being excluded from that of the evening, never stir out of the church during the whole day. They also flock to be baptized in great numbers, and many have lately come to be married; and their burials and christenings are performed with great pomp and solemnity.
One of the most intelligent of the negroes with whom I have yet conversed, was the coxswain of my Port Royal canoe. I asked him whether he had been christened? He answered, no; he did not yet think himself good enough, but he hoped to be so in time. Nor was he married; for he was still young, and afraid that he could not break off his bad habits, and be contented to live with no other woman than his wife; and so he thought it better not to become a Christian till he could feel certain of performing the duties of it. However, he said, he had at least cured himself of one bad custom, and never worked upon Sundays, except on some very urgent necessity. I asked what he did on Sundays instead: did he go to church?—No. Or employ himself in learning to read?—Oh, no; though he thought being able to read was a great virtue; (which was his constant expression for any thing right, pleasant, or profitable;) but he had no leisure to learn, no week days, and as he had heard the parson say that Sunday ought to be a day of rest, he made a point of doing nothing at all on that day. He praised his former master, of whose son he was now the property, and said that neither of them had ever occasion to lay a finger on him. He worked as a waterman, and paid his master ten shillings a week, the rest of his earnings being his own profit; and when he owed wages for three months, if he brought two his master would always give him time for the remainder, and that in so kind a manner, that he always fretted himself to think that so kind a master should wait for his rights, and worked twice as hard till the debt was discharged. He said that kindness was the only way to make good negroes, and that, if that failed, flogging would never succeed; and he advised me, when I found my negro worthless, “to sell him at once, and not stay to flog him, and so, by spoiling his appearance, make him sell for less; for blacks must not be treated now, massa, as they used to be; they can think, and hear, and see, as well as white people: blacks are wiser, massa, than they were, and will soon be still wiser.” I thought the fellow himself was a good proof of his assertion.
I left Kingston at two o’clock, in defiance of a broiling sun; reached Spanish Town in time to dine with the Attorney-General; and went afterwards to the play, where I found my acquaintance Mr. Hill of Covent Garden theatre performing Lord William in “The Haunted Tower,” and Don Juan in the pantomime which followed. The theatre is neat enough, but, I am told, very inferior in splendour to that in Kingston. As to the performance, it was about equal to any provincial theatricals that I ever saw in England; although the pieces represented were by no means well selected, being entirely musical, and the orchestra consisting of nothing more than a couple of fiddles. My stay in Spanish Town has been too short to admit of my inspecting the antiquities of it, which must be reserved for a future visit, although I never intend to make a longer than the present. The difference of climate was very sensible, both at Spanish Town and Kingston; and the suffocating closeness made me long to breathe again in the country.
The governor happened to be absent on a tour in the north; but I had an opportunity of seeing many of the principal persons of the island during my residence here; and the civilities which I received from all of them were not only more than I expected, but such as I should be unreasonable if I had desired more, and very ungrateful if I could ever forget them.
FEBRUARY 7.
We were to return by the North Road, and set out at six in the morning. The first stage was to the West Tavern, nineteen miles; and nothing can be imagined at once more sublime and more beautiful than the scenery. Our road lay along the banks of the Rio Cobre, which runs up to Spanish Town, where its floods frequently commit dreadful ravages. Large masses of rock intercept its current at small intervals, which, as well as its shallowness, render it unnavigable. The cliffs and trees are of the most gigantic size, and the road goes so near the brink of a tremendous precipice, that we were obliged always to send a servant forwards to warn any other carriage of our approach, in order that it might stay in some broader part while we passed it. A bridge had been attempted to be built over the river, but a storm had demolished it before its completion, and nothing was now left standing but a single enormous arch. In like manner, “the Dry River” sets all bridges at defiance: when we crossed it between Old Harbour and Spanish Town, it was nothing but a waste of sand; but its floods frequently pour down with irresistible strength and rapidity, and sometimes render it impassable for weeks together. I was extremely delighted with the first ten miles of this stage: unluckily, a mist then arose, so thick, that it was utterly impossible even to guess at the surrounding scenery; and the morning was so cold, that I was very glad to wrap myself up in my cloak as closely as if I had been travelling in an English December.
By the time of our leaving the West Tavern the mist had dispersed, and I was able to ad mire the extraordinary beauty of Mount Diavolo, which we were then crossing. Though we had left the river, the road was still a narrow shelf of rock running along the edge of ravines of great depth, and filled with broken masses of stone and trees of wonderful magnitude; only that at intervals we emerged for a time into places resembling ornamental parks in England, the lawns being of the liveliest verdure, the ground rising and falling with an endless variety of surface, and enriched with a profusion of trees majestic in stature and picturesque in their shapes, many of them entirely covered with the beautiful flowers of “hogsmeat,” and other creeping plants. The logwood, too, is now perfectly golden with its full bloom, and perfumes all the air; and nothing can be more gay than the quantity of wild flowers which catch the eye on all sides, particularly the wild pine, and the wild ipecacuanha. We travelled for sixteen miles, which brought us to our harbour for the night,—-a solitary tavern called Blackheath, situated in the heart of the mountains of St. Anne.
FEBRUARY 8.
The road soon brought us down to the very brink of the sea, which we continued to skirt during the whole of the stage. It then brought us to St. Anne’s Bay, where we found an excellent breakfast, at an inn quite in the English fashion,—for the landlady had been long resident in Great Britain. Every thing was clean and comfortable, and the windows looked full upon the sea. This stage was sixteen miles: the next was said to be twenty-five; but from the time which we took to travel it, I can scarcely believe it to be so much. Our road still lay by the sea-side, till we began to ascend the mountain of Rio Bueno; from which we at length perceived the river itself running into the sea. It was at Porto Bueno that Columbus is said to have made his first landing on the island. Rio Bueno is a small town with a fort, situated close to the sea. Here also we found a very good inn, kept by a Scotchman.
The present landlady (her father being from home) was a very pretty brown girl, by name Eliza Thompson. She told me that she was only residing with her parents during her husband’s absence; for she was (it seems) the soi-disant wife of an English merchant in Kingston, and had a house on Tachy’s Bridge. This kind of establishment is the highest object of the brown females of Jamaica; they seldom marry men of their own colour, but lay themselves out to captivate some white person, who takes them for mistresses, under the appellation of housekeepers.
Soon after my arrival at Cornwall, I asked my attorney whether a clever-looking brown woman, who seemed to have great authority in the house, belonged to me?—No; she was a free woman.—Was she in my service, then?—No; she was not in my service. I began to grow impatient.—“But what does she do at Cornwall? Of what use is she in the house?”—“Why sir, as to use.... of no great use, sir;” and then, after a pause, he added in a lower voice, “It is the custom, sir, in this country, for unmarried men to have housekeepers, and Nancy is mine.” But he was unjust in saying that Nancy is of no use on the estate; for she is perpetually in the hospital, nurses the children, can bleed, and mix up medicines, and (as I am assured) she is of more service to the sick than all the doctors. These brown housekeepers generally attach themselves so sincerely to the interests of their protectors, and make themselves so useful, that they in common retain their situation; and their children (if slaves) are always honoured by their fellows with the title of Miss. My mulatto housemaid is always called “Miss Polly,” by her fellow-servant Phillis. This kind of connection is considered by a brown girl in the same light as marriage. They will tell you, with an air of vanity, “I am Mr. Such-a-one’s Love!” and always speak of him as being her husband; and I am told, that, except on these terms, it is extremely difficult to obtain the favours of a woman of colour. To gain the situation of housekeeper to a white man, the mulatto girl
“directs her aim;
This makes her happiness, and this her fame.”
FEBRUARY 9.
The sea-view from a bridge near Falmouth was remarkably pleasing; a stage of eighteen miles brought us to the town itself, which I understand to be in size the second in the island.
However various are the characters which actors sustain, I find their own to be the same every where. Although the Jamaica company did not consist of more than twenty persons, their green-room squabbles had divided it, and we found one half performing at Falmouth. We did not wait for the play, but proceeded for twenty-two miles to Montego Bay, where I once more found myself under the protecting roof of Miss Judy James.
On our return from dinner at Mr. Dewer’s, we discovered a ball of brown ladies and gentlemen opposite to the inn. No whites nor blacks were permitted to attend this assembly; but as our landlady had two nieces there, under her auspices we were allowed to be spectators. The females chiefly consisted of the natural daughters of attorneys and overseers, and the young men were mostly clerks and book-keepers. I saw nothing at all to be compared, either for form or feature, to many of the humbler people of colour, much less to the beautiful Spaniard at Blue-fields. Long, or Bryan Edwards, asserts that mulattos never breed except with a separate black or white; but at this ball two girls were pointed out to me, the daughters of mulatto parents; and I have been assured that the assertion was a mistake, arising from such a connection being very rarely formed; the females generally preferring to live with white men, and the brown men having thus no other resource than black women. As to the above girls, the fact is certain; and the different shades of colour are distinguished by too plain a line to allow any suspicion of infidelity on the part of their parents.
FEBRUARY 10.
We passed the day at Mr. Plummer’s estate, Anchovy Bottom.
When Lord Bolingbroke was resident in America, large flocks of turkeys used to ravage his corn-fields; but, from their extreme wildness, he never could make any of them prisoners. He had a barn lighted by a large sash window, and into this he laid a train of corn, hiding some servants with guns behind the large doors, which were folded back. The turkeys picked up the corn, and gradually were enticed to enter the barn. But as soon as a dozen had passed in, the servants clapped the doors to with all possible expedition. Now they reckoned themselves secure of their game; but to their utter consternation, the turkeys in a body darted towards the light, dashed against the glass, forced out the wood-work, and away went turkeys, glass, wood-work, and all.
FEBRUARY 11. (Sunday.)
I reached Cornwall about three o’clock, after an excursion the most amusing and agreeable that I ever made in my life. Almost every step of the road presented some new and striking scene; and although we travelled at all hours, and with as little circumspection as if we had been in England, I never felt a headach except for one half hour. On my arrival, I found the satisfactory intelligence usually communicated to West Indian proprietors. My estate in the west is burnt up for want of moisture; and my estate in the east has been so completely flooded, that I have lost a whole third of my crop. At Cornwall, not a drop of rain has fallen since the 16th of November. Not a vestige of verdure is to be seen; and we begin to apprehend a famine among the negroes in consequence of the drought destroying their provision grounds. This alone is wanting to complete the dangerous state of the island; where the higher classes are all in the utmost alarm at rumours of Wilberforce’s intentions to set the negroes entirely at freedom; the next step to which would be, in all probability, a general massacre of the whites, and a second part of the horrors of St. Domingo: while, on the other hand, the negroes are impatient at the delay; and such disturbances arose in St. Thomas’s in the East, last Christmas, as required the interposition of the magistrates. They say that the negroes of that parish had taken it into their heads that The Regent and Wilherforce had actually determined upon setting them all at liberty at once on the first day of the present year, but that the interference of the island had defeated the plan. Their discontent was most carefully and artfully fomented by some brown Methodists, who held secret and nightly meetings on the different estates, and did their best to mislead and bewilder these poor creatures with their fantastic and absurd preaching. These fellows harp upon sin, and the devil, and hell-fire incessantly, and describe the Almighty and the Saviour as beings so terrible, that many of their proselytes cannot hear the name of Christ without shuddering. One poor negro, on one of my own estates, told the overseer that he knew himself to be so great a sinner that nothing could save him from the devil’s clutches, even for a few hours, except singing hymns; and he kept singing so incessantly day and night, that at length terror and want of sleep turned his brain, and the wretch died raving mad.