During these last two days nothing very extraordinary, or of sufficient importance to deserve its being handed down to the latest posterity, has occurred; except that this morning a swinging rope knocked my hat into the sea, and away it sailed upon a voyage of discovery, like poor La Perouse, to return no more, I suppose; unless, indeed,—like Polycrates, the fortunate tyrant of Samos, who threw his favourite ring into the ocean, and found it again in the stomach of the first fish that was served up at his table,—I should have the good luck (but I by no means reckon upon it) to catch a dolphin with my hat upon his head: as to a porpoise, he never could squeeze his great numskull into it; but our dolphin of last week was much about my own size, and I dare say such another would find my hat fit him to a miracle, and look very well in it.
The weather is so excessively close and sultry, that it would be allowed to be too hot to be pleasant, even by that perfect model for all future lords of the bedchamber, who was never known to speak a word, except in praise, of any thing living or dead, through the whole course of his life: but, at last, one day he met with an accident—he happened to die; and the next day he met with another accident—he happened to be damned: and immediately upon his arrival in the infernal regions, the Devil (who was determined to be as well bred as the other could be for his ears,) came to pay his compliments to the new-comer, and very obligingly expressed his concern that his lordship was not likely to feel satisfied with his new abode; for that he must certainly find hell very hot and disagreeable. “Oh, dear, no!” exclaimed the Lord of the Bedchamber, “not at all disagreeable, by any manner of means, Mr. Devil, upon my word and honour! Rather warm, to be sure.” In point of heat there is no difference between the days and the nights; or if there is any, it is that the nights are rather the hottest of the two. The lightning is incessant, and it does not show itself forked or in flashes, but in wide sheets of mild blue light, which spread themselves at once over the sky and sea; and, for the moment which they last, make all the objects around as distinct as in daylight. The moon now does not rise till near ten o’clock, and during her absence the size and brilliancy of the stars are admirable. In England they always seemed to me (to borrow a phrase of Shakspeare’s, which, in truth, is not worth borrowing,) to “peep through the blanket of the dark;” but here the heavens appear to be studded with them on the outside, as if they were chased with so many jewels: it is really Milton’s “firmament of living sapphires;” and what with the lightning, the stars, and the quantity of floating lights which just gleamed round the ship every moment, and then were gone again, to-night the sky had an effect so beautiful, that when at length the moon thought proper to show her great red drunken face, I thought that we did much better without her.
The above-mentioned floating lights are a kind of sea-meteors, which, as I am told, are produced by the concussion of the waves, while eddying in whirlpools round the rudder; but still I saw them rise sometimes at so great a distance from the ship, and there appeared to be something so like Will in the direction of their course,—sometimes hurrying on, sometimes gliding along quite slowly; now stopping and remaining motionless for a minute or two, and then hurrying on again,—that I could not be convinced of their not being Medusæ, or some species or other of phosphoric animal: but whatever be the cause of this appearance, the effect is singularly beautiful. As to air, we have not enough to bless ourselves with. I had been led to believe, that when once we should have fallen in with the trade winds, from that moment we should sail into our destined port as rapidly and as directly as Truffaldino travels in Gozzi’s farce; when, having occasion to go from Asia to Europe, and being very much pressed for time, he persuades a conjuror of his acquaintance to lend him a devil, with a great pair of bellows, the nozzle of which being directed right against his stern, away goes the traveller before the stream of wind, with the devil after him, and the infernal bellows never cease from working till they have blown him out of one quarter of the globe into another: but our trade winds must “hide their diminished heads” before Truffaldino’s bellows. It seems that like the Moors, “in Africa the torrid,” they are “of temper somewhat mulish;” for, although, to be sure, when they do blow, they will only blow in one certain direction, yet very often they will not blow at all; which has been our case for the last week: indeed, they seem to be but a queerish kind of a concern at best. About three years ago a fleet of merchantmen was becalmed near St. Vincent’s: in a few days after their arrival, there happened a violent eruption of a volcano in that island, nor was it long before a favourable breeze sprang up. Unluckily, one of the ships had anchored rather nearer to the shore than the others, and was at the distance of about one hundred and fifty yards from the stream of the trade wind; nor could any possible efforts of the crew, by tacking, by towing, or otherwise, ever enable the vessel to conquer that one hundred and fifty yards: there she remained, as completely becalmed as if there were not such a thing as a breath of wind in the universe; and on the one hand she had the mortification to see the rest of the merchantmen, with their convoy (for it was in the very heat of the war), sail away with all their canvass spread and swelling; while, on the other hand, the sailors had the comfortable possibility of being suffocated every moment by the clouds of ashes which continued to fall on their deck every moment, from the burning volcano, although they were not nearer to St. Vincent’s than eight or nine miles; indeed that distance went for nothing, as ashes fell upon vessels that were out at sea at least five hundred miles; and Barbadoes being to windward of the volcano, such immense quantities of its contents were carried to that island as almost covered the fields; and destroying vegetation completely wherever they fell, did inconceivable damage, while that which St. Vincent’s itself experienced was but trifling in proportion.
Our captain is quite out of patience with the tortoise pace of our progress; for my part I care very little about it. Whether we have sailed slowly or rapidly, when a day is once over, I am just as much nearer advanced towards April, the time fixed for my return to England; and, what is of much more consequence, whether we have sailed slowly or rapidly, when a day is once over, I am just as much nearer advanced towards “that bourne,” to reach which, peaceably and harmlessly, is the only business of life, and towards which the whole of our existence forms but one continued journey.
We succeeded in catching another dolphin today; but he had not a hat on; however, I just asked him whether he happened to have seen mine, but to little purpose; for I found that he could tell me nothing at all about it; so, instead of bothering the poor animal with any more questions, we eat him.
About three years ago the Captain had the ill luck to be captured by a French frigate. As she had already made prizes of two other merchantmen, it was determined to sink his ship; which, after removing the crew and every thing in her that was valuable, was effected by firing her own guns down the hatchways. It was near three hours before she filled, then down she went with a single plunge, head foremost, with all her sails set and colours flying. This display of the ship’s magnificence in her last moments reminded me of Mary Queen of Scots, arraying herself in her richest robes that she might go to the scaffold. If Yorick had fallen in with this anecdote in the course of his journey, the situation of the Captain, standing on the enemy’s deck, and seeing his “brave vessel” in full and gallant trim, possessing all the abilities for a long existence, yet abandoned by every one, and sinking from the effect of her own shot, might have furnished him with a companion for his old commercial Marquis, lamenting over the rust of his newly recovered sword.
Does then the insatiate sea relent?
And hath he back those treasures sent,
His stormy rage devoured?
All starred with gems the billows bound,
And emeralds, jacinths, sapphires round
The bark in spray are showered.
No, no! ’t is there the Dolphin plays;
His scales, enriched with sunny rays,
Celestial tints unfold;
And as he darts, the waters blue
Are streaked with gleams of many a hue,
Green, orange, purple, gold!
And brighter still will shine your skin,
Poor fish, more dazzling play each fin,
On deck when dying cast;
Like good men, who, expiring, bless
The Power that calls them, all confess
Your brightest hour your last.
And now the Spearman watchful stands!
The five-pronged grainse, which arms his hands,
Your scales is doomed to gore;
The lead will sink, and soon on high,
Borne from the deep, perforce you’ll fly,
Nor e’er regain it more.
Weep, Beauty, weep! those vivid dyes,
Those splendours, but the harpooner’s eyes
To strike his victim call!
Ambition, mark the Dolphin’s close—
To dangerous heights he only rose
To find the heavier fall!
Mark, too, ye witty, rich, and gay,
How quick those sportive fins could play,
How gay, how rich was he!
He moves no more—he’s cold to touch—
He’s dull—dark—dead! The Dolphin’s such,
And such we all must be!
There is a technical fault in the above lines: the grainse, or dolphin-spear, has five barbs; but the harpooner never uses a lance with more than a single point. However, the word was so agreeable to my ear, that I could not find in my heart to leave it out.
At length we have crawled into the Caribbean Sea. I was told that we were not to expect to see land to-day; but on shipboard our not seeing a thing to-day by no means implies that we shall not see it before to-morrow; for the nautical day is supposed to conclude at noon, when the solar observation is taken; and, therefore, the making land to-day, or not, very often depends upon our making it before twelve o’clock, or after it. This was the case in the present instance; for noon was scarcely passed when we saw Descada (a small island totally unprovided with water, and whose only produce consists in a little cotton), Guadaloupe, and Marie Galante, though the latter was at so great a distance as to be scarcely visible. At sunset Antigua was in sight.
The sun rose upon Montserrat and Nevis, with the Rodondo rock between them, “apricis natio gratissima mergis,—” for it is perpetually covered with innumerable flocks of gulls, boobies, pelicans, and other sea birds. Then came St. Christopher’s and St. Eustatia; and in the course of the afternoon we passed over the Aves bank, a collection of sand, rock, and mud, extending about two hundred miles, and terminated at each end by a small island: one of them inhabited by a few fishermen, the other only by sea birds. Of all the Atlantic isles the soil of St. Christopher’s is by some supposed to be the richest, the land frequently producing three hogsheads an acre. I rather think that this was the first island discovered by Columbus, and that it took its name from his patron-saint. Montserrat is so rocky, and the roads so steep and difficult, that the sugar is obliged to be brought down in bags upon the backs of mules, and not put into casks, till its arrival on the sea shore.
The weather is now quite delicious; there is just wind enough to send us forward and keep the air cool: the sun is brilliant without being overpowering; the swell of the waves is scarcely perceptible; and the ship moves along so steadily, that the deck affords almost as firm footing as if we were walking on land. One would think that Belinda had been smiling on the Caribbean Sea, as she once before did on the Thames, and had “made all the world look gay.” During the night we passed Santa Cruz, an island which, from the perfection to which its cultivation has been carried, is called “the Garden of the West Indies.”
Having left Porto Rico behind us, at noon today we passed the insulated rock of Alcavella, lying about six miles from St. Domingo, which is now in sight. As this part of the Caribbean Sea is much infested by pirates from the Caraccas, all our muskets have been put in repair, and to-day the guns were loaded, of which we mount eight; but as one of them, during the last voyage, went overboard in a gale of wind, its place has been supplied by a Quaker, i. e. a sham gun of wood, so called, I suppose, because it would not fight if it were called upon. These pirate-vessels are small schooners, armed with a single twenty-four pounder, which moves upon a swivel, and their crew is composed of negroes and outlaws of all nations, their numbers generally running from one hundred to one hundred and fifty men. To-day, for the first time, I saw some flying fish: we have also been visited by several men-of-war birds and tropic birds; the latter is a species of gull, perfectly white, and distinguished by a single very long feather in its tail: its nautical name is “the boatswain.”
As we sail along, the air is absolutely loaded with “Sabean odours from the spicy shores” of St. Domingo, which we were still coasting at sunset.
At day-break Jamaica was in sight, or rather it would have been in sight, only that we could not see it. The weather was so gloomy, and the wind and rain were so violent, that we might have said to the Captain, as one of the two Punches who went into the ark is reported to have said to the patriarch, during the deluge, “Hazy weather, Master Noah.”—I remember my good friend, Walter Scott, asserts, that at the death of a poet the groans and tears of his heroes and heroines swell the blast and increase the river; perhaps something of the same kind takes place at the arrival of a West India proprietor from Europe, and all this rain and wind proceed from the eyes and lungs of my agents and overseers, who, for the last twenty years, have been reigning in my dominions with despotic authority; but now
“Whose groans in roaring winds complain,
Whose tears of rage impel the rain;”
because, on the approach of the sovereign himself, they must evacuate the palace, and resign the deputed sceptre. “Hinc illæ lachrymæ!” this is the cause of our being soaked to the skin this morning. However, about noon the weather cleared up, and allowed us to verify, with our own eyes, that we had reached “the Land of Springs,” without having been invited by any Piccaroon vessel to “walk the plank” instead of the deck; which is a compliment very generally paid by those gentry, after they have taken the trouble of laying a plank over the side of a captured ship, in order that the passengers and the crew may walk overboard without any inconvenience.
We arrived at the east end of the island, passed Pedro Point and Starvegut Bay, and arrived before Black River Bay (our destined harbour) soon after two o’clock; but here we were obliged to come to a stand still: the channel is very dangerous, extremely narrow, and full of sunken rocks; so that it can only be entered by a vessel drawing so much water as ours with a particular wind, and when there is not any apprehension of a sudden squall. We were, therefore, obliged to drop anchor, and are now riding within a couple of miles of the shore, but with as utter an incapability of reaching it as if we were still at Gravesend. The north side of the island is said to be extremely beautiful and romantic; but the south, which we coasted to-day, is low, barren, and without any recommendation whatever. As yet I can only look at Jamaica as one does on a man who comes to pay money, and whom we are extremely well pleased to see, however little the fellow’s appearance may be in his favour.
We passed the whole of the day in vain endeavours to work ourselves into the bay. At one time, indeed, we got very near the shore, but the consequence was, that we were within an ace of striking upon a rock, and very much obliged to a sudden gust of wind, which, blowing right off shore, blew us out of the channel, and left us at night in a much more perilous situation than we had occupied the evening before, though even that had been by no means secure. At three o’clock, the other passengers went on shore in the jolly-boat, and proceeded to their destination; but as I was still more than thirty miles distant from my estate, I preferred waiting on board till the Captain should have moored his vessel in safety, and be at liberty to take me in his pinnace to Savannah la Mar, when I should find myself within a few miles of my own house.
In the course of the afternoon, one of the sailors took up a fish of a very singular shape and most brilliant colours, as it floated along upon the water. It seemed to be gasping, and lay with its belly upwards; it was supposed to have eaten something poisonous, as whenever it was touched it appeared to be full of life, and squirted the water in our faces with great spirit and dexterity. But no sooner was he suffered to remain quiet in the tub, than he turned upon his back and again was gasping. He had a large round transparent globule, intersected with red veins, under the belly, which some imagined to proceed from a rupture, and to be the occasion of his disease. But I could not discover any vestige of a wound; and the globule was quite solid to the touch; neither did the fish appear to be sensible when it was pressed upon. No one on board had ever seen this kind of fish till then; its name is the “Doctor Fish.”
A black pilot came on board yesterday, in a canoe hollowed out of the cotton-tree; and when it returned for him this morning, it brought us a water-melon. I never met with a worse article in my life; the pulp is of a faint greenish yellow, stained here and there with spots of moist red, so that it looks exactly as if the servant in slicing it had cut his finger, and suffered it to bleed over the fruit. Then the seeds, being of a dark purple, present the happiest imitation of drops of clotted gore; and altogether (prejudiced as I was by its appearance), when I had put a single bit into my mouth, it had such a kind of Shylocky taste of raw flesh about it (not that I recollect having ever eaten a bit of raw flesh itself), that I sent away my plate, and was perfectly satisfied as to the merits of the fruit.
At length the ship has squeezed herself into this champagne bottle of a bay! Perhaps, the satisfaction attendant upon our having overcome the difficulty, added something to the illusion of its effect; but the beauty of the atmosphere, the dark purple mountains, the shores covered with mangroves of the liveliest green down to the very edge of the water, and the light-coloured houses with their lattices and piazzas completely embowered in trees, altogether made the scenery of the Bay wear a very picturesque appearance. And, to complete the charm, the sudden sounds of the drum and banjee, called our attention to a procession of the John-Canoe, which was proceeding to celebrate the opening of the new year at the town of Black River. The John-Canoe is a Merry-Andrew dressed in a striped doublet, and bearing upon his head a kind of pasteboard house-boat, filled with puppets, representing, some sailors, others soldiers, others again slaves at work on a plantation, &c. The negroes are allowed three days for holidays at Christmas, and also New-year’s day, which being the last is always reckoned by them as the festival of the greatest importance. It is for this day that they reserve their finest dresses, and lay their schemes for displaying their show and expense to the greatest advantage; and it is then that the John-Canoe is considered not merely as a person of material consequence, but one whose presence is absolutely indispensable. Nothing could look more gay than the procession which we now saw with its train of attendants, all dressed in white, and marching two by two (except when the file was broken here and there by a single horseman), and its band of negro music, and its scarlet flags fluttering about in the breeze, now disappearing behind a projecting clump of mangrove trees, and then again emerging into an open part of the road, as it wound along the shore towards the town of Black River.
——“Magno telluris amore
Egressi optatâ Troes potiuntur arena.”
I had determined not to go on shore, till I should land for good and all at Savannah la Mar. But although I could resist the “telluris amor,” there was no resisting John-Canoe; so, in defiance of a broiling afternoon’s sun, about four o’clock we left the vessel for the town.
It was, as I understand, formerly one of some magnitude; but it now consists only of a few houses, owing to a spark from a tobacco-pipe or a candle having lodged upon a mosquito-net during dry weather; and although the conflagration took place at mid-day, the whole town was reduced to ashes. The few streets—(I believe there were not above two, but those were wide and regular, and the houses looked very neat)—were now crowded with people, and it seemed to be allowed, upon all hands, that New-year’s day had never been celebrated there with more expense and festivity.
It seems that, many years ago, an Admiral of the Red was superseded on the Jamaica station by an Admiral of the Blue; and both of them gave balls at Kingston to the “Brown Girls;” for the fair sex elsewhere are called the “Brown Girls” in Jamaica. In consequence of these balls, all Kingston was divided into parties: from thence the division spread into other districts: and ever since, the whole island, at Christmas, is separated into the rival factions of the Blues and the Reds (the Red representing also the English, the Blue the Scotch), who contend for setting forth their processions with the greatest taste and magnificence. This year, several gentlemen in the neighbourhood of Black River had subscribed very largely towards the expenses of the show; and certainly it produced the gayest and most amusing scene that I ever witnessed, to which the mutual jealousy and pique of the two parties against each other contributed in no slight degree. The champions of the rival Roses,—the Guelphs and the Ghibellines,—none of them could exceed the scornful animosity and spirit of depreciation with which the Blues and the Reds of Black River examined the efforts at display of each other. The Blues had the advantage beyond a doubt; this a Red girl told us that she could not deny; but still, “though the Reds were beaten, she would not be a Blue girl for the whole universe!” On the other hand, Miss Edwards (the mistress of the hotel from whose window we saw the show), was rank Blue to the very tips of her fingers, and had, indeed, contributed one of her female slaves to sustain a very important character in the show; for when the Blue procession was ready to set forward, there was evidently a hitch, something was wanting; and there seemed to be no possibility of getting on without it—when suddenly we saw a tall woman dressed in mourning (being Miss Edwards herself) rush out of our hotel, dragging along by the hand a strange uncouth kind of a glittering tawdry figure, all feathers, and pitchfork, and painted pasteboard, who moved most reluctantly, and turned out to be no less a personage than Britannia herself, with a pasteboard shield covered with the arms of Great Britain, a trident in her hand, and a helmet made of pale blue silk and silver. The poor girl, it seems, was bashful at appearing in this conspicuous manner before so many spectators, and hung back when it came to the point. But her mistress had seized hold of her, and placed her by main force in her destined position. The music struck up; Miss Edwards gave the Goddess a great push forwards; the drumsticks and the elbows of the fiddlers attacked her in the rear; and on went Britannia willy-nilly!
The Blue girls called themselves “the Blue girls of Waterloo.” Their motto was the more patriotic; that of the Red was the more gallant:—“Britannia rules the day!” streamed upon the Blue flag; “Red girls for ever!” floated upon the Red. But, in point of taste and invention, the former carried it hollow. First marched Britannia; then came a band of music; then the flag; then the Blue King and Queen—the Queen splendidly dressed in white and silver (in scorn of the opposite party, her train was borne by a little girl in red); his Majesty wore a full British Admiral’s uniform, with a white satin sash, and a huge cocked hat with a gilt paper crown upon the top of it. These were immediately followed by “Nelson’s car,” being a kind of canoe decorated with blue and silver drapery, and with “Trafalgar” written on the front of it; and the procession was closed by a long train of Blue grandees (the women dressed in uniforms of white, with robes of blue muslin), all Princes and Princesses, Dukes and Duchesses, every mother’s child of them.
The Red girls were also dressed very gaily and prettily, but they had nothing in point of invention that could vie with Nelson’s Car and Britannia; and when the Red throne made its appearance, language cannot express the contempt with which our landlady eyed it. “It was neither one thing nor t’other,” Miss Edwards was of opinion. “Merely a few yards of calico stretched over some planks—and look, look, only look at it behind! you may see the bare boards! By way of a throne, indeed! Well, to be sure, Miss Edwards never saw a poorer thing in her life, that she must say!” And then she told me, that somebody had just snatched at a medal which Britannia wore round her neck, and had endeavoured to force it away. I asked her who had done so? “Oh, one of the Red party, of course!” The Red party was evidently Miss Edwards’s Mrs. Grundy. John-Canoe made no part of the procession; but he and his rival, John-Crayfish (a personage of whom I heard, but could not obtain a sight), seemed to act upon quite an independent interest, and go about from house to house, tumbling and playing antics to pick up money for themselves.
A play was now proposed to us, and, of course, accepted. Three men and a girl accordingly made their appearance; the men dressed like the tumblers at Astley’s, the lady very tastefully in white and silver, and all with their faces concealed by masks of thin blue silk; and they proceeded to perform the quarrel between Douglas and Glenalvon, and the fourth act of “The Fair Penitent.” They were all quite perfect, and had no need of a prompter. As to Lothario, he was by far the most comical dog that I ever saw in my life, and his dying scene exceeded all description; Mr. Coates himself might have taken hints from him! As soon as Lothario was fairly dead, and Calista had made her exit in distraction, they all began dancing reels like so many mad people, till they were obliged to make way for the Waterloo procession, who came to collect money for the next year’s festival; one of them singing, another dancing to the tune, while she presented her money-box to the spectators, and the rest of the Blue girls filling up the chorus. I cannot say much in praise of the black Catalani; but nothing could be more light, and playful, and graceful, than the extempore movements of the dancing girl. Indeed, through the whole day, I had been struck with the precision of their march, the ease and grace of their action, the elasticity of their step, and the lofty air with which they carried their heads—all, indeed, except poor Britannia, who hung down hers in the most ungoddess-like manner imaginable. The first song was the old Scotch air of “Logie of Buchan,” of which the girl sang one single stanza forty times over. But the second was in praise of the Hero of Heroes; so I gave the songstress a dollar to teach it to me, and drink the Duke’s health. It was not easy to make out what she said, but as well as I could understand them, the words ran as follows:—
“Come, rise up, our gentry,
And hear about Waterloo;
Ladies, take your spy-glass,
And attend to what we do;
For one and one makes two,
But one alone must be.
Then singee, singee Waterloo,
None so brave as he!”
—and then there came something about green and white flowers, and a Duchess, and a lily-white Pig, and going on board of a dashing man of war; but what they all had to do with the Duke, or with each other, I could not make even a guess. I was going to ask for an explanation, but suddenly half of them gave a shout loud enough “to fright the realms of Chaos and old Night,” and away they flew, singers, dancers, and all. The cause of this was the sudden illumination of the town with quantities of large chandeliers and bushes, the branches of which were stuck all over with great blazing torches: the effect was really beautiful, and the excessive rapture of the black multitude at the spectacle was as well worth the witnessing as the sight itself.
I never saw so many people who appeared to be so unaffectedly happy. In England, at fairs and races, half the visiters at least seem to have been only brought there for the sake of traffic, and to be too busy to be amused; but here nothing was thought of but real pleasure; and that pleasure seemed to consist in singing, dancing, and laughing, in seeing and being seen, in showing their own fine clothes, or in admiring those of others. There were no people selling or buying; no servants and landladies bustling and passing about; and at eight o’clock, as we passed through the market-place, where was the greatest illumination, and which, of course, was most thronged, I did not see a single person drunk, nor had I observed a single quarrel through the course of the day; except, indeed, when some thoughtless fellow crossed the line of the procession, and received by the way a good box of the ear from the Queen or one of her attendant Duchesses. Every body made the same remark to me; “Well, sir, what do you think Mr. Wilberforce would think of the state of the negroes, if he could see this scene?” and certainly, to judge by this one specimen, of all beings that I have yet seen, these were the happiest. As we were passing to our boat, through the market-place, suddenly we saw Miss Edwards dart out of the crowd, and seize the Captain’s arm—“Captain! Captain!” cried she, “for the love of Heaven, only look at the Red lights! Old iron hoops, nothing but old iron hoops, I declare! Well! for my part!” and then, with a contemptuous toss of her head, away frisked Miss Edwards triumphantly.
The St. Elizabeth, which sailed from England at the same time with our vessel, was attacked by a pirate from Carthagena, near the rocks of Alcavella, who attempted three times to board her, though he was at length beaten off so that our Piccaroon preparations were by no means taken without foundation.
At four o’clock this morning I embarked in the cutter for Savannah la Mar, lighted by the most beautiful of all possible morning stars: certainly, if this star be really Lucifer, that “Son of the Morning,” the Devil must be “an extremely pretty fellow.” But in spite of the fineness of the morning, our passage was a most disagreeable concern: there was a violent swell in the sea; and a strong north wind, though it carried us forward with great rapidity, overwhelmed us with whole sheets of foam so incessantly, that I expected, as soon as the sun should have evaporated the moisture, to see the boat’s crew covered with salt, and looking like so many Lot’s wives after her metamorphosis.
The distance was about thirty miles, and soon after nine o’clock we reached Savannah la Mar, where I found my trustee, and a whole cavalcade, waiting to conduct me to my own estate; for he had brought with him a curricle and pair for myself a gig for my servant, two black boys upon mules, and a cart with eight oxen to convey my baggage. The road was excellent, and we had not above five miles to travel; and as soon as the carriage entered my gates, the uproar and confusion which ensued sets all description at defiance. The works were instantly all abandoned; every thing that had life came flocking to the house from all quarters; and not only the men, and the women, and the children, but, “by a bland assimilation,” the hogs, and the dogs, and the geese, and the fowls, and the turkeys, all came hurrying along by instinct, to see what could possibly be the matter, and seemed to be afraid of arriving too late. Whether the pleasure of the negroes was sincere may be doubted; but certainly it was the loudest that I ever witnessed: they all talked together, sang, danced, shouted, and, in the violence of their gesticulations, tumbled over each other, and rolled about upon the ground. Twenty voices at once enquired after uncles, and aunts, and grandfathers, and great-grandmothers of mine, who had been buried long before I was in existence, and whom, I verily believe, most of them only knew by tradition. One woman held up her little naked black child to me, grinning from ear to ear;—“Look, Massa, look here! him nice lilly neger for Massa!” Another complained,—“So long since none come see we, Massa; good Massa, come at last.” As for the old people, they were all in one and the same story: now they had lived once to see Massa, they were ready for dying to-morrow, “them no care.”
The shouts, the gaiety, the wild laughter, their strange and sudden bursts of singing and dancing, and several old women, wrapped up in large cloaks, their heads bound round with different-coloured handkerchiefs, leaning on a staff, and standing motionless in the middle of the hubbub, with their eyes fixed upon the portico which I occupied, formed an exact counterpart of the festivity of the witches in Macbeth. Nothing could be more odd or more novel than the whole scene; and yet there was something in it by which I could not help being affected; perhaps it was the consciousness that all these human beings were my slaves;—to be sure, I never saw people look more happy in my life; and I believe their condition to be much more comfortable than that of the labourers of Great Britain; and, after all, slavery, in their case, is but another name for servitude, now that no more negroes can be forcibly carried away from Africa, and subjected to the horrors of the voyage, and of the seasoning after their arrival: but still I had already experienced, in the morning, that Juliet was wrong in saying “What’s in a name?” For soon after my reaching the lodging-house at Savannah la Mar, a remarkably cleanlooking negro lad presented himself with some water and a towel: I concluded him to belong to the inn; and, on my returning the towel, as he found that I took no notice of him, he at length ventured to introduce himself, by saying,—“Massa not know me; me your slave!”—and really the sound made me feel a pang at the heart. The lad appeared all gaiety and good humour, and his whole countenance expressed anxiety to recommend himself to my notice; but the word “slave” seemed to imply, that, although he did feel pleasure then in serving me, if he had detested me he must have served me still. I really felt quite humiliated at the moment, and was tempted to tell him,—“Do not say that again; say that you are my negro, but do not call yourself my slave.”
Altogether, they shouted and sang me into a violent headach. It is now one in the morning, and I hear them still shouting and singing. I gave them a holiday for Saturday next, and told them that I had brought them all presents from England; and so, I believe, we parted very good friends.
I have reached Jamaica in the best season for seeing my property in a favourable point of view; it is crop time, when all the laborious work is over, and the negroes are the most healthy and merry. This morning I went to visit the hospital, and found there only eight patients out of three hundred negroes, and not one of them a serious case. Yesterday I had observed a remarkably handsome Creole girl, called Psyche, and she really deserved the name. This morning a little brown girl made her appearance at breakfast, with an orange bough, to flap away the flies, and, on enquiry, she proved to be an emanation of the aforesaid Psyche. It is evident, therefore, that Psyche has already visited the palace of Cupid; I heartily hope that she is not now upon her road to the infernal regions: but, as the ancients had two Cupids, one divine and the other sensual, so am I in possession of two Psyches; and on visiting the hospital, there was poor Psyche the second. Probably this was the Psyche of the sensual Cupid.
I passed the morning in driving about the estate: my house is frightful to look at, but very clean and comfortable on the inside; some of the scenery is very picturesque, from the lively green of the trees and shrubs, and the hermitage-like appearance of the negro buildings, all situated in little gardens, and embosomed in sweet-smelling shrubberies. Indeed, every thing appears much better than I expected; the negroes seem healthy and contented, and so perfectly at their ease, that our English squires would be mightily astonished at being accosted so familiarly by their farmers. This delightful north wind keeps the air temperate and agreeable. I live upon shaddocks and pine-apples. The dreaded mosquitoes are not worse than gnats, nor as bad as the Sussex harvest-bugs; and, as yet, I never felt myself in more perfect health. There was a man once, who fell from the top of a steeple; and, perceiving no inconvenience in his passage through the air,—“Come,” said he to himself, while in the act of falling, “really this is well enough yet if it would but last.” Cubina, my young Savannah la Mar acquaintance, is appointed my black attendant; and as I had desired him to bring me any native flowers of Jamaica, this evening he brought me a very pretty one; the negroes, he said, called it “John-to-Heal,” but in white language it was hoccoco-pickang; it proved to be the wild Ipecacuanha.
There were three things against which I was particularly cautioned, and which three things I was determined not to do: to take exercise after ten in the day; to be exposed to the dews after sun-down; and to sleep at a Jamaica lodging-house. So, yesterday, I set off for Montego Bay at eight o’clock in the morning, and travelled till three; walked home from a ball after midnight; and that home was a lodging-house at Montego Bay; but the lodging-house was such a cool clean lodging-house, and the landlady was such an obliging smiling landlady, with the whitest of all possible teeth, and the blackest of all possible eyes, that no harm could happen to me from occupying an apartment which had been prepared by her. She was called out of her bed to make my room ready for me; yet she did every thing with so much good-will and cordiality; no quick answers, no mutterings: inns would be bowers of Paradise, if they were all rented by mulatto landladies, like Judy James.
I was much pleased with the scenery of Montego Bay, and with the neatness and cleanliness of the town; indeed, what with the sea washing it, and the picturesque aspect of the piazzas and verandas, it is impossible for a West Indian town so situated, and in such a climate, not to present an agreeable appearance. But the first part of the road exceeds in beauty all that I have ever seen: it wound through mountain lands of my own, their summits of the boldest, and at the same time of the most beautiful shapes; their sides ornamented with bright green woods of bamboo, logwood, prickly-yellow, broad-leaf, and trumpet trees; and so completely covered with the most lively verdure, that once, when we found a piece of barren rock, Cubina pointed it out to me as a curiosity;—“Look, massa, rock quite naked!” The cotton-tree presented itself on all sides; but as this is the season for its shedding its leaves, its wide-spreading bare white arms contributed nothing to the beauty of the scene, except where the wild fig and various creeping plants had completely mantled the stems and branches; and then its gigantic height, and the fantastic wreathings of its limbs, from which numberless green withes and strings of wild flowers were streaming, rendered it exactly the very tree for which a landscape-painter would have wished. The air, too, was delicious; the fragrance of the Sweet-wood, and of several other scented trees, but above all, of the delicious Logwood (of which most of the fences in Westmoreland are made) composed an atmosphere, such, that if Satan, after promising them “a buxom air, embalmed with odours,” had transported Sin and Death thither, the charming couple must have acknowledged their papa’s promises fulfilled.
We travelled these first ten miles (Montego Bay being about thirty from my estate of Cornwall) without seeing a human creature, nor, indeed, any thing that had life in it, except a black snake basking in the sunshine, and a few John Crows——a species of vulture, whose utility is so great that its destruction is prohibited by law under a heavy penalty. In a country where putrefaction is so rapid, it is of infinite consequence to preserve an animal which, if a bullock or horse falls dead in the field, immediately flies to the carcass before it has time to corrupt, and gobbles it up before you can say “John Crow,” much less Jack Robinson. The bite of the black snake is slightly venomous, but that is all; as to the great yellow one, it is perfectly innoxious, and so timid that it always runs away from you. The only dangerous species of serpent is the Whip-snake, so called from its exactly resembling the lash of a whip, in length, thinness, pliability, and whiteness; but even the bite of this is not mortal, except from very great neglect. The most beautiful tree, or, rather, group of trees, all to nothing, is the Bamboo, both from its verdure and from its elegance of form: as to the Cotton tree, it answers no purpose, either of ornament or utility; or, rather, it is not suffered to answer any, since it is forbidden by law to export its down, lest it should hurt the fur trade in the manufacture of hats: its only present use is to furnish the negroes with canoes, which are hollowed out of its immense trunks. I am as yet so much enchanted with the country, that it would require no very strong additional inducements to make me establish myself here altogether; and in that case my first care would be to build for myself a cottage among these mountains, in which I might pass the sultry months,
“E bruna-si; ma il bruno il bel non toglie.”
As I was returning; this morning; from Montego Bay, about a mile from my own estate, a figure presented itself before me, I really think the most picturesque that I ever beheld: it was a mulatto girl, born upon Cornwall, but whom the overseer of a neighbouring estate had obtained my permission to exchange for another slave, as well as two little children, whom she had borne to him; but, as yet, he has been unable to procure a substitute, owing to the difficulty of purchasing single negroes, and Mary Wiggins is still my slave. However, as she is considered as being manumitted, she had not dared to present herself at Cornwall on my arrival, lest she should have been considered as an intruder; but she now threw herself in my way to tell me how glad she was to see me, for that she had always thought till now (which is the general complaint) that “she had no massa” and also to obtain a regular invitation to my negro festival tomorrow. By this universal complaint, it appears that, while Mr. Wilberforce is lamenting their hard fate in being subject to a master, their greatest fear is the not having a master whom they know; and that to be told by the negroes of another estate that “they belong to no massa,” is one of the most contemptuous reproaches that can be cast upon them. Poor creatures, when they happened to hear on Wednesday evening that my carriage was ordered for Montego Bay the next morning, they fancied that I was going away for good and all, and came up to the house in such a hubbub, that my agent was obliged to speak to them, and pacify them with the assurance that I should come back on Friday without fail.
But to return to Mary Wiggins: she was much too pretty not to obtain her invitation to Cornwall; on the contrary, I insisted upon her coming, and bade her tell her husband that I admired his taste very much for having chosen her. I really think that her form and features were the most statue-like that I ever met with: her complexion had no yellow in it, and yet was not brown enough to be dark—it was more of an ash-dove colour than any thing else; her teeth were admirable, both for colour and shape; her eyes equally mild and bright; and her face merely broad enough to give it all possible softness and grandness of contour: her air and countenance would have suited Yarico; but she reminded me most of Grassini in “La Vergine del Sole,” only that Mary Wiggins was a thousand times more beautiful, and that, instead of a white robe, she wore a mixed dress of brown, white, and dead yellow, which harmonised excellently well with her complexion while one of her beautiful arms was thrown across her brow to shade her eyes, and a profusion of rings on her fingers glittered in the sunbeams. Mary Wiggins and an old Cotton-tree are the most picturesque objects that I have seen for these twenty years.
On my arrival at home, my agent made me a very elegant little present of a scorpion and a couple of centipedes: the first was given to him, but the large centipede he had shaken out of a book last night, and having immediately covered her up in a phial of rum, he found this morning that she had produced a young one, which was lying drowned by her side.
I find that my negroes were called away from their attention to the works yesterday evening (for the crop is now making with the greatest activity), and kept up all night by a fire at a neighbouring estate. On these occasions a fire-shell is blown, and all the negroes of the adjoining plantations hasten to give their assistance. On this occasion the fire was extinguished with the loss of only five negro houses; but this is a heavy concern to the poor negro proprietors, who have lost in it their whole stock of clothes, and furniture, and finery, which they had been accumulating for years, and to which their attachment is excessive.
When first I gain’d the Atlantic shore,
And bade farewell to ocean’s roar,
What gracious power my bosom eased,
My senses soothed, my fancy pleased,
And bade me feel, in whispers bland,
No Stranger in a Stranger-land?
’T was not at length my goal to reach,
And tread Jamaica’s burning beach:
’T was not from Neptune’s chains discharged,
To move, think, feel with powers enlarged:
Nor that no more my bed the wave,
Ere morning dawn’d, might prove my grave:—
A livelier chord was struck: a spell,
While heav’d my heart with gentle swell,
Crept o’er my soul with magic sweet,
And made each pulse responsive beat.
No Sheep-bell e’er to Pilgrim’s ear,
Wandering in woods unknown and drear;
No midnight lay to Spanish maid,
Conscious by whom the lute was played;
Not on the breeze the sounding wings
Of him who nurture homeward brings
To mother-bird, whose callow brood
Pain her fond heart with chirps for food,—
E’er seem’d more charming than to me,
(When two long months had past at sea,
During whose course my thirsty ear
No softer voice, no strain could hear
Nearer allied to love and pity,
Than the strong bass of seaman’s ditty,)
Seem’d by the sea-gale round me flung,
Approaching sounds of female tongue!
No, Venus, no! Small right hast thou
To claim for this my grateful vow;
Nor on thine altar now bestows
My hand the gift of one poor rose!
No eager glance, no heighten’d dye
Blush’d on my cheek, nor fired mine eye;
I heard, nor felt, at each soft note,
Flutter my heart, and swell my throat.
Those sounds but spoke of bosom-balm,
Of pity prompt and kindness calm;
Of tender care, of anxious zeal;
For here were breasts whose hearts could feel!
’T was as to guest in stranger halls
If voice of friend a welcome calls:
Such pleasure soothes the starting maid,
Who finds some jewel long mislaid;
Pleasure, which blessed dew supplies,
To ease the heart, and float the eyes;
As when in pain attentions prove
A mother’s care, a sister’s love.
To Woman, Life its value owes!
Robb’d of her love, its dawn and close
Would find nor aid, nor soothing care;
Its middle course no joys would share.
Childhood in vain would thirst and cry,
And Age, unheeded, moan and die;
And Manhood frown to see the hours
Weave scentless wreaths unblest with flowers.
It beam’d on cheek of sable dye;
No matter, since ’t was woman’s eye!
Each phrase the tortured language broke;
Enough for me—’t was woman spoke!
Once raven locks my temples wore;
Time has pluck’d many, sorrow more:
Through forty springs (thank God they’re run)
These weary eyes have seen the sun;
And in that space full room is found
For flowers to fade, and thorns to wound.
But now, (all fancy’s freaks supprest,
Each thread-bare sneer and wanton jest,)
With hand on heart in serious tone,
With thanks, with truth, I needs must own,
Wide as I’ye roam’d the world around,
Roam where I would, I ever found,
The worst of Women still possest
More virtues than of Men the best.
And, oh! if shipwreck proves my lot,
Guide me, kind Heav’n, to some lone cot
Where woman dwells! Her hand she’ll stretch
In pity to the stranger-wretch;
If virtuous want mine eye surveys,
Nor mine the power his head to raise,
I’ll pour the tale in woman’s ear,
She’ll aid, and, aiding, drop a tear.
And when my life-blood sickness drains,
And racks my nerves, and fires my brains,
What kinder juice, what livelier power,
Than mineral yields, or opiate flower,
Can make me e’en in pain rejoice?—
A few sweet words in that sweet voice!
This was the day given to my negroes as a festival on my arrival. A couple of heifers were slaughtered for them: they were allowed as much rum, and sugar, and noise, and dancing as they chose; and as to the two latter, certainly they profited by the permission. About two o’clock they began to assemble round the house, all drest in their holiday clothes, which, both for men and women, were chiefly white; only that the women were decked out with a profusion of beads and corals, and gold ornaments of all descriptions; and that while the blacks wore jackets, the mulattoes generally wore cloth coats; and inasmuch as they were all plainly clean instead of being shabbily fashionable, and affected to be nothing except that which they really were, they looked twenty times more like gentlemen than nine tenths of the bankers’ clerks who swagger up and down Bond Street. It is a custom as to the mulatto children, that the males born on an estate should never be employed as field negroes, but as tradesmen; the females are brought up as domestics about the house. I had particularly invited “Mr. John-Canoe” (which I found to be the polite manner in which the negroes spoke of him), and there arrived a couple of very gay and gaudy ones. I enquired whether one of them was “John-Crayfish;” but I was told that John-Crayfish was John-Ca-noe’s rival and enemy, and might belong to the factions of “the Blues and the Reds;” but on Cornwall they were all friends, and therefore there were only the father and the son—-Mr. John-Canoe, senior, and Mr. John-Canoe, junior.
The person who gave me this information was a young mulatto carpenter, called Nicholas, whom I had noticed in the crowd, on my first arrival, for his clean appearance and intelligent countenance; and he now begged me to notice the smaller of the two John-Canoe machines. “To be sure,” he said, “it was not so large nor so showy as the other, but then it was much better proportioned (his own word), and altogether much prettier;” and he said so much in praise of it, that I asked him whether he knew the maker? and then out came the motive: “Oh, yes! it was made by John Fuller, who lived in the next house to him, and worked in the same shop, and indeed they were just like brothers.” So I desired to see his fidas Achates, and he brought me as smart and intelligent a little fellow as eye ever beheld, who came grinning from ear to ear to tell me that he had made every bit of the canoe with his own hands, and had set to work upon it the moment that he knew of massa’s coming to Jamaica. And indeed it was as fine as paint, pasteboard, gilt paper, and looking-glass could make it! Unluckily, the breeze being very strong blew off a fine glittering umbrella, surmounted with a plume of John Crow feathers, which crowned the top; and a little wag of a negro boy whipped it up, clapped it upon his head, and performed the part of an impromptu Mr. John-Canoe with so much fun and grotesqueness, that he fairly beat the original performers out of the pit, and carried off all the applause of the spectators, and a couple of my dollars. The John-Canoes are fitted out at the expense of the rich negroes, who afterwards share the money collected from the spectators during their performance, allotting one share to the representator himself; and it is usual for the master of the estate to give them a couple of guineas apiece.
This Nicholas, whom I mentioned, is a very interesting person, both from his good looks and gentle manners, and from his story. He is the son of a white man, who on his death-bed charged his nephew and heir to purchase the freedom of this natural child. The nephew had promised to do so; I had consented; nothing was necessary but to find the substitute (which now is no easy matter); when about six months ago the nephew broke his neck, and the property went to a distant relation. Application in behalf of poor Nicholas has been made to the heir, and I heartily hope that he will enable me to release him. I felt strongly tempted to set him at liberty at once; but if I were to begin in that way, there would be no stopping; and it would be doing a kindness to an individual at the expense of all my other negroes—others would expect the same; and then I must either contrive to cultivate my estate with fewer hands—or must cease to cultivate it altogether—and, from inability to maintain them, send my negroes to seek bread for themselves—which, as two thirds of them have been born upon the estate, and many of them are lame, dropsical, and of a great age, would, of all misfortunes that could happen to them, be the most cruel. Even when Nicholas was speaking to me about his liberty, he said, “It is not that I wish to go away, sir; it is only for the name and honour of being free: but I would always stay here and be your servant; and I had rather be an under-workman on Cornwall, than a head carpenter any where else.” Possibly, this was all palaver (in which the negroes are great dealers), but at least he seemed to be sincere; and I was heartily grieved that I could not allow myself to say more to him than that I sincerely wished him to get his liberty, and would receive the very lowest exchange for him that common prudence would authorize. And even for those few kind words, the poor fellow seemed to think it impossible to find means strong enough to express his gratitude.
Nor is this the only instance in which Nicholas has been unlucky. It seems that he was the first lover of the beautiful Psyche, whom I had noticed on my arrival. This evening, after the performance of the John-Canoes, I desired to see some of the girls dance; and by general acclamation Psyche was brought forward to exhibit, she being avowedly the best dancer on the estate; and certainly nothing could be more light, graceful, easy, and spirited, than her performance. She perfectly answered the description of Sallust’s Sempronia, who was said—“Sal tare elegantius, quam necesse est probæ, et cui cariora semper omnia, quam decus et pudicitia fuit.” When her dance was over, I called her to me, and gave her a handful of silver. “Ah, Psyche,” said Nicholas, who was standing at my elbow, “Massa no give you all that if massa know you so bad girl! she run away from me, massa!” Psyche gave him a kind of pouting look, half kind, and half reproachful, and turned away. And then he told me that Psyche had been his wife (one of his wives he should have said); that he had had a child by her, and then she had left him for one of my “white people” (as they call the book-keepers), because he had a good salary, and could afford to give her more presents than a slave could. “Was there not another reason for your quarrelling?” said my agent. “Was there not a shade of colour too much?”—“Oh, massa!” answered Nicholas, “the child is not my own, that is certain; it is a black man’s child. But still I will always take care of the child because it have no friends, and me wish make it good neger for massa—and she take good care of it too,” he added, throwing his arm round the waist of a sickly-looking woman rather in years; “she my wife, too, massa, long ago; old now and sick, but always good to me, so I still live with her, and will never leave her, never, massa; she Polly’s mother, sir.” Polly is a pretty, delicate-looking girl, nursing a young child; she belongs to the mansion-house, and seems to think it as necessary a part of her duty to nurse me as the child. To be sure she has not as yet insisted upon suckling me; but if I open a jalousie in the evening, Polly walks in and shuts it without saying a word. “Oh, don’t shut the window, Polly.”—“Night-air not good for massa;” and she shuts the casement without mercy. I am drinking orangeade, or some such liquid; Polly walks up to the table, and seizes it; “Leave that jug, Polly, I am dying with thirst.”—“More hurt, massa;” and away go Polly and the orangeade. So that I begin to fancy myself Sancho in Barataria, and that Polly is the Señor Doctor Pedro in petticoats.
The difference of colour, which had offended Nicholas so much in Psyche’s child, is a fault which no mulatto will pardon; nor can the separation of castes in India be more rigidly observed, than that of complexional shades among the Creoles. My black page, Cubina, is married: I told him that I hoped he had married a pretty woman; why had he not married Mary Wiggins? He seemed quite shocked at the very idea. “Oh, massa, me black, Mary Wiggins sambo; that not allowed.”
The dances performed to-night seldom admitted more than three persons at a time: to me they appeared to be movements entirely dictated by the caprice of the moment; but I am told that there is a regular figure, and that the least mistake, or a single false step, is immediately noticed by the rest. I could indeed sometimes fancy, that one story represented an old duenna guarding a girl from a lover; and another, the pursuit of a young woman by two suitors, the one young and the other old; but this might be only fancy. However, I am told, that they have dances which not only represent courtship and marriage, but being brought to bed. Their music consisted of nothing but Gambys (Eboe drums), Shaky-shekies, and Kitty-katties: the latter is nothing but any flat piece of board beat upon with two sticks, and the former is a bladder with a parcel of pebbles in it. But the principal part of the music to which they dance is vocal; one girl generally singing two lines by herself, and being answered by a chorus. To make out either the rhyme of the air, or meaning of the words, was out of the question. But one very long song was about the Duke of Wellington, every stanza being chorussed with,
“Ay! hey-day! Waterloo!
Waterloo! ho! ho! ho!”
I too had a great deal to do in the business, for every third word was “massa;” though how I came there, I have no more idea than the Duke.
The singing began about six o’clock, and lasted without a moment’s pause till two in the morning; and such a noise never did I hear till then. The whole of the floor which was not taken up by the dancers was, through every part of the house except the bed-rooms, occupied by men, women, and children, fast asleep. But although they were allowed rum and sugar by whole pailfuls, and were most of them merry in consequence, there was not one of them drunk; except indeed, one person, and that was an old woman, who sang, and shouted, and tossed herself about in an elbow chair, till she tumbled it over, and rolled about the room in a manner which shocked the delicacy of even the least prudish part of the company. At twelve, my agent wanted to dismiss them; but I would not suffer them to be interrupted on the first holiday that I had given them; so they continued to dance and shout till two; when human nature could bear no more, and they left me to my bed, and a violent headache.