LETTER XVIII.
The office of caterer for the mess having fallen to the lot of your friend, I may tell you that I sometimes go to Bridge-town, to buy living meat for dinner. You will, perhaps, be surprised to learn that, here, animals are brought alive into the market, to be killed after the different joints are sold: and, that it often happens, that the meat is slaughtered, consigned to the pot or spit, brought to table, and eaten, without growing cold!
The filthy custom of blowing the meat, is carried to greater excess at Barbadoes, than in England. As soon as the calf is dead, a small opening is cut near to the hock, and the whole surface is inflated like a full-blown bladder. The skin is then taken off, and the meat distributed to the purchasers for immediate use.
Leaving our comrades, Weir, and Master, on board, Cleghorn and myself frequently make excursions on shore, and stroll about the town and the fields, by way of exercise, and of gratifying a strong curiosity to see and know all that appertains to the change we have made. In these rumblings, we often surprise the West Indians, by, what they term, the dangerous extent of our walks; and they assure us that, a few months hence, we shall be little inclined to use such violent exercise. A walk of five or six miles appears to them tremendous: but we suffer no inconvenience from it, and, without being, yet, well able to judge, we fancy that much of the languor and inactivity of the creoles and creolised, might be prevented, and stronger health enjoyed, if they were to accustom themselves, more freely, to habits of activity. Against our theory they urge experience, remarking that all Europeans, however fond of using much exercise, on their first arrival, gradually lapse into the same indolent indulgence as the natives.
After one of these excursions we returned to Bridge-town, by way of Pilgrim, the residence of the governor; a pleasant home, situated upon an elevated spot, about a mile from the town. Near this place our attention was arrested by a party of slaves, or, according to the language of the island, a gang of negroes, who were employed in making a road to the governor’s house. It was the first large body of slaves we had met with, toiling at their regular employment, immediately under the lash of the whip; and we could not but remark that the manner of executing the task afforded a striking example of the effect of climate, and of slavery. Nothing of diligence, or industry appeared among them; and but little of bodily labour was expended. They seemed almost too idle to raise the hammer, which they let fall by its own weight, repeating the blow several times, upon the same stone, until it was broken to pieces. A mulatto overseer attended them, holding a whip at their backs; but he had every appearance of being as much a stranger to industry, as the negroes; who proceeded very indolently, without seeming to be at all apprehensive of the driver or his whip, except when he made it fall across them in stripes.
In proportion to the work done by English labourers, and the price, usually, paid for it, the labour of these slaves could not be calculated at so much as twopence per day; for almost any two men in England would do as much work in a given time, as was performed by a dozen of these wretched, meager-looking blacks.
In our perambulations, we often witness gross and disgusting scenes among the slaves. Lately we saw a naked washing party, whose skins exhibited very indecently the crowded scars of repeated punishment. Women are sometimes seen milking themselves, as they walk along the streets, and both sexes are observed lying about in pairs, picking the vermin from each others heads.
You will be more shocked, perhaps, than surprised that such-like indecencies should be practised among the slaves; but you will join in my regret that they should happen before the eyes of European wives, and spinsters; and will lament the sad effect which the frequent recurrence of such offensive exhibitions must, necessarily, have in destroying that modesty and delicacy of sentiment, which render so truly lovely, while they so much embellish the female mind.
Of this baneful effect, I am sorry to have it in my power to mention a striking example, which lately occurred to my notice. Being in company with a large party of Europeans, and white creoles, friends and strangers, male and female, husbands, wives, widows, and maidens, it happened at the time when the party was assembled, during the short interval before dinner, that a sweet little babe, only a few months old, was brought into the room, by its black nurse, to be presented to the company; when the woman, who, with the exception of one short petticoat, was in perfect nudity, was desired, before all present, to suckle the child; and at the same time the mother and grandmother, two most respectable ladies, in order to divert the infant, amused themselves by slapping, pressing, shaking about, and playing with the flaccid breasts of the slave, with very indelicate familiarity, and without seeming to be at all sensible, that it was, in any degree, indecent or improper!
One day, in passing along the street, we chanced to see a fight between two women of colour, one a negro, the other a mulatto. The crowd, about them, was very great, and European curiosity induced us to wait the result; but we have no desire to witness such another contest. You can have no conception of the ferocious means which were used by these women to injure each other. Not only biting, pinching, slapping, and scratching were employed; but with the more horrid brutality of the American gouchers, and in the most deliberate manner, did each of these females thrust her thumb or fingers into the nose, mouth, or eyes, of the other, striving, in all the bitterness and cruelty of savage nature, to tear to pieces, to blind, or to maim her opponent.