>-^ m "m ,' ^ ^ '^'' AZC ci i > ^ -' ^cJU., yfo^^ni f V\ ► ^ ^ A TOUR THROUGH THE ISLAND OF JAMAICA, FROM THE WESTERN TO THE EASTERN END, IN THE YEAR 1823. BY CYNRIC R. WILLIAMS. LONDON : PRINTED FOR HUNT AND CLARKE, TAVISTOCK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. MDCCCXXVI. *'>^?»^H>*>il»^*' pif:^*ieii- .^mm^. IV PREFACE. habits and manners. The pubhc, or a por- tion of it, will have an opportunity of learn- ing that negro slaves are not worked and flogged alternately, at the option and ca- price of their masters, as many good chris- tians imagine, who have signed petitions for emancipating them ; that they have their pastimes as well as toils, their, pleasures as well as pains ; and that they smile as often, and laugh as heartily, as the labouring people of this or any equally happy country. At the same time it is to be feared that the general reader will be displeased at the too frequent declamations against the Reformers of Transatlantic morals and politics, (the very subversion of slave policy is their avowed object) ; but he will recollect that the wealth of the rich, in the colonies, is slaves, secured to them in the first place by the laws of England ; and that to tamper PREFACE. with the feelings of these slaves must pro- duce alarm, consternation, and hatred in the minds of their owners, mingled with no small portion of indignation at what they consider ignorance and presumption on the part of the Reformers ; whether with or without justice, is not here to be argued. Let him imagine a band of the most con- scientious, religious, church-going people in England exerting their influence, moral, po- litical, and spiritual, to prevail on all that part of the community which has no pro- perty in land, to petition the government to pass an agrarian law for the benefit of the lowest class, and let him see that tliis band have every chance of success ; — he will forgive the irritated feelings of the Jamaica planters. Much has been done to temper or modify their language ; to have suppressed it altogether, would have been an injustice to the colonists. r«|Hp«^j??ji;^ ^^yif^jk'^^yc^ VI PREFACE. Some explanation seems likewise necessary for the coarseness of the negro expressions, and for the nonsense into which they torture texts of scripture, and scraps of the church service. It must, perhaps, suffice to say, that all has been done in this picture from the life ; and that without it the general reader would not have a correct idea of the subject intended to be represented. The author him- self disavows every intention of attempting ridicule on these occasions, and appeals for the fidelity of his picture to the proprietors and dwellers in Jamaica. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Arrival at Falmouth in Jamaica. — Lodging-house of Miss Vidal ; resei-voir of water ; negroes purchasing finery for the Christmas holidays with doubloons. — Orange grove ; sugar grinding, boiling, and still-houses. - CHAPTER n. Description of an old planter and the society at his house ; singing and dancing. _ _ _ _ . CHAPTER HI. North wind ; hills of Cuba visible. — A Jamaica break- fast. — Feld work ; two negroes flogged^ one for steal- ing a lamb to pay for a Bible, the other a woman, for beating a girl ; her speech to the driver or flogger ; naked children in trays under the trees ; the driver's bamboo staff filled with grog ; phalanx of children witli their gouvernantc dine on cow-skin broth - 10 *«-W|»ffEK^E*5i^* Ji-Jk?Si^<^i^ r^j^ vm CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. A great many of the negroes are Christians legally married; customs of those married after their own fashion. — Inheritance and disposal of property. — A negro claims compensation for a tree planted by his grand father. — Their morality not improved by tiieir religion ; Quamina's plea for not paying an old debt. — Puntees of no avail now. — Naked children. 16 CHAPTER V. Christmas day. — Chorus of negroes ; dancing and music ; gombays, bonjaws, drums, &c. — Love dance, Pyrrhic ; costume and ornaments. — Equality among all parties. — Satirical songs of the negroes. — Arrival and surrender of an old runaway. 21 CHAPTER VI. Ceremony of the Jonkanoo ; a memorial of the escape from the deluge. — Libations on the earth. — Mulattos scorn to mingle with the blacks. — The pious slaves will not dance. — Ingenuity of Quashie in getting a horse from the stable to ride on a visit to his favourite ; he is detected and degraded. — Festivities at the great house. --------- 25 CHAPTER VII. I am provided with two negroes and two horses ; one of the former a Methodist, the other a Mussulman : de- scription of them. — Account of my horses, my own costume and travelling equipage. — Bamboos. — Maroon Town; barracks. — Fern tree, the great bombax and bread-nut tree, wild pine, fig tree, and wild vine, called the water-withe. - 30 CONTENTS. IX CHAPTER VIII. Only 70 degrees of heat. — Fine climate. — Humming-birds, robin and ringtail pigeons. — Discontent of the ne- groes. — Insurrections in St. Mary's parish. — Saints, Moravians, Methodist Missionaries ; the mischief pro- duced by these last. — A maniac attempts to poison a preacher ; reasons for his conduct ; flies to the woods ; ' his mode of life and religious deportment. — Love-feasts of an evening. — Power over the minds of the ne- groes moderated by the eflforts ^of an Obeah man, his '■ rival. .--._---- 36 CHAPTER IX. Creole tongue. — Road from Vaughan's field through rocky ravines. — Woods matted and bound together. — Mocking-bird, pigeons, paiTots, and screaming'crick- ets. — ^Arrival at the house of Mr. S . Psalm-singing of the house slaves. — Mirth of the brown girls at an accident that occurs ; tricks played on Ebenezer. — Diana. - - - - 42 CHAPTER X. Description of Diana, a pretty Quadroon; her religion. — Excellent road. — Anival at the Penn of Mr. Mathews. 52 CHAPTER XI. Description of the Penn. — ^Tanks. — New year's day; a ceremony retained by the negroes after the manner of the Adonia mentioned by Plutarch. — A ball in the evenmg at the house of a Mulatto woman ; a supper ; champaign and noyau. - - - - - 60 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER XII. Mr. Mathews's plan for the emancipation of Jamaica ; his remarks on Mr. Wilberforce and the. Sfihits. — Quotations from tlie Bible in defence of slavery as a system. — Comparison of negroes with the labourers of England and Ireland. _..._. (55 CHAPTER XIII. Hauling of the seine. — Breakfast on the sea-shore. — Ab- daUah converses with a native of Houssa, (his country- man) transported thence for stealing horses. — Ebe- neezer moralizes about the quantity of fish caught. — Abdallah tlu-eatens to fling him into the sea. — Take my leave of Mr. Mathews ; ride towards Black River. — Fan-palms ninety and one hundred feet high ; sago ; canary-birds ; John-crows feasting on a mule. — Lace ' made of the bark of a tree. — A Rlulatto girl going to complain of a white gentleman's violence, attended by a negi'o slave of her own ; her remarks about emanci- pating slaves without paying for them. — I lodge at a tavern kept by Miss M'Clean, at Black River. - 79 CHAPTER XIV. Bridge over the river. — Particulars of the complaint pre- ferred by the Mulatto girl. — Pedro Plains ; red dust ; volcanic appearance of the country. — Tanks rendered waterproof by the juice of plantain stalks. — Duppy. — A gentleman and his niece travelling towards Spanish Town for secm'ity, in the expectation of the negroes rising. — Remarks on the interference of Messrs. Wil- berforce and Buxton. ...... 85 CONTENTS. iti CHAPTER XV. A marshalman shot at by a Paratee brown man, who has lost his negroes by desertion ; threatens to take refuge in the woods with tlurty of his fellows, and make war on every preacher and missionary in the Island; he is a Christian ; his rage and passion. — Herenhausen. — A pet ram killed by mistake for a fat lamb. — Mr. Klopstock. 91 CHAPTER XVI. Agreeable climate and society. — Account of a Scotch , cabin and its inhabitants, compared with a negro house and its contents. — Death of a negro who disposes of his property by a verbal will ; his fimeral ; Ebeneezer makes a speech over the grave. _ . _ . 98 CHAPTER XVII. A sermon preached by Ebeneezer to Mr. Klopstock's ne- groes ; indignation and revenge of the black girls. - 107 CHAPTER XVIII. I quit Herenhausen, and embark with Mr. Mathews in a canoe for Milk River ; pass the rocks called the White Horses, and anchor in Calabash Bay. — Strong sea breeze. — Walk over the Devil's Race. — Long Bay. — Cross five rivers ; alligators, musquitos, man- grove tree ; dreadful fatigue ; climb some rocks from the sea-side, and repose in a negro hut, where we buy a yam and borrow a pot to boil it in ; regain the canoe, and arrive at Milk River 114 I have a violent fever, account of herself. CHAPTER XIX. Diana comes to mu-se me ; her 127 Xll CONTENTS. CHAPTER XX. Physicians and their fees. — Sugar-making ; the most fatal business which the Wliites follow. — East India sugar. — Mr. M^the^ys's plan for the improvement of the Island. — My Doctor rejoices that the Americans have fifteen ships of the line. — Negroes to emancipate the Wiites. — Rum enough in the Island to resist an invasion. ._--- _.. 134 CHAPTER XXI. The story of Cato and Plato. 140 CHAPTER XXII. Milk River; why so called. — A salt spring; invalids here. — A Moravian missionary takes a fancy to the soul of Diana ; offers me spiritual consolation. — A Jew and a Spanish CathoUc make proposals to Diana. — Morality of the natives compared with that of the Londoners and Parisians. — Dialogue between the Mo- ravian and the Catholic. — A pirate vessel ; the crew fire at a man who has jumped overboard ; the man escapes and reaches the shore. - - - - 150 CHAPTER XXIII. The story of Edmimd Currie, an Irish sailor and a free- bom Briton. — Difference of the Mosiac and Martial Laws as to flogging ; the first, which is the Jamaica law, allowing only thirty-nine stripes, the latter not confining itself to a thousand. - - . - CHAPTER XXIV. Manumission of slaves ; its difficvilties explained. — Es- prit de corps manifested by negroes. — Cruel treatment 168 CONTENTS. Xlll * ' of them very rare. — A pioxis lady in England directs her attorney to sell the old worn-out slaves and buy young ones ; she makes four of them free ; reasons for not adding to the number of the liberated, who desire to be slaves again. — Arguments for considering as slaves all people of colour, who have no proof of being free. — Condition of the slave compared with that of the militiaman. — Families of slaves sold to- gether, or they will not remain with the new pur- chaser. — Fifty runaways advertised weekly out of a population of three hundred thousand. — Negroes worked in chains, as galley slaves and convicts in England .-...._- 171 CHAPTER XXV. Expense of Milk River tavern. — ^The Catholic and the Jew jeering the Doctor that the Saints in England, who deny the Pope's supremacy, should induce the English government to interfere with the religion of the Jamaica men, a people five thousand miles distant from them; argument against paying any attention to the interference of the Quakers. — Ebeneezer in the stocks at a neighbouring estate ; I get him liberated. - - 186 CHAPTER XXVI. I leave Milk River. — A mock-bird renounces his own song to imitate a black parrot ; the Doctor's remark thereon. Conversation between my two servants about faith ; Ebeneezer kicked into the water by his mule. — Fine Penns on the road to Old Harbour. — Guinea com ; droughts in Vere ; steam-engines ; fine soil ; fine houses inhabited by the attomies. — Old Harbour bay. — Wharfs and stores ; Coratoe hills ; American aloe. — Town ofOld Harbour bay. 192 W^WwMm XIV CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXVII. Names of estates, men, and animals. — Rats eaten. — Con- versation of some American sailors and two negroes re- , specting the episcopal dress and the colour of the arch enemy. — Juan de Esquivel. - ... - 201 CHAPTER XXVIII. Spanish Towti. — Hoax played off upon me by Mr. Ma- thews ; Ebeneezer takes me for a Quaker, while a negro boy ties a IMuscovy drake to the tail of his mule ; he is thrown into a penguin fence and loses his Bible. — No Quakers in Jamaica ; the legislature would compel them to bear arms for the defence of the island ; hence their vindictive interference in colonial affairs, accord- ing to Mr. Mathews. — Rio Cobre. — The king's house; courts of law and House of Assembly ; secretary's office and guard room ; statue of Lord Rodney ; daily mar- ket. — Marks of the whip on Ebeneezer ; he conceals the reason for which he has received them. - - 210 CHAPTER XXIX. Mountains of Liguanea, and Blue Mountains ; cool morn- ings. — Cobbott's letter to Mr. A^'^ilberforce. — The pirate is taken fiom which Edward Cturie had escaped. — I sleep at a lodging house out of town ; dance every night. — Some account of the town of Kingston ; top chaises ; power of the sun ; villas ; harbour. — Port Royal ; Apostle's Battery ; earthquakes ; plantains ; fertility of the soil ; a dinner party. — Mr. Nunnez takes me to a ball of persons of colour; beautiful women ; libertinage equal to that of London. — I settle my affairs with the executors of my deceased relation, and agree to buy two negro children. - . - 218 CONTENTS, XV CHAPTER XXX. Half-way tree. — Burial ground. — JMr. ReiterhofFer preaches in a miU-house ; he is a watchmaker. — I leave King- ston ; breakfast at an inn ; reach Yallah's River in the evening. — A large mansion without an inhabitant; foUow a cow through the river ; and sleep at a tavern kept by Miss ComeUa, a black free woman. — Breakfast next morning at an estate on the west side of Morant River. — Two drivers flog a black man laid on the ground; he receives in all thirty-nine stripes for having attempted to poison his master and his family. — Argvmient for public flogging, and cracking the whip, in preference to using a cat-o'-nine tails or punishing in private. — Morant Bay and shipping. — Church and beautiful estates ; two thousand couples of negroes married here lately according to the English law. — My companion swamped in a quicksand ; his coolness. — Port Morant. — Carrion-crow hiUs. — Wretched de- preciation of rum and sugar. - - - _ _ 235 CHAPTER XXXI. Bath. — I lodge at the house of a white lady ; my dinner ; rain ; botanic garden ; hot spring. — Comparison be- tween the beauties of Jamaica and Great Britain. — Spiritual salutations of Ebeneezer. — Plantain (iarden. — Rivers, floods. — IVIanchioneal harbour; ships tied with ropes to the rocks. ------ 247 CHAPTER XXXH. A dealer in crockery expresses his abhorrence of Metho- dists and Quakers ; proposes to iraiieach of high treason ; his reasons for such a proposition ; his XVI CONTENTS. sentiments of the Brewer ; the colonists, the West India merchants. — Return by Plantain Garden to Port Morant. — Fire-flies. — Parson's Hole. — Blue Mountain valley. — Negroes mending the roads in chains ; their crimes ; they quiz me, and pelt Ebeneezerwith stones. — A yellow snake ; not poisonous ; eats rats. — A gen- tleman restored to health by the climate who had burst a blood-vessel in his Ivmgs. — We set out to travel by night to L estate in St. David's. — Cheeses. — Mount Lebanus ; cedars; lands cleared by fire. — Richmond hill. — Confusion in descending a ravine. 258 CHAPTER XXXni. Jovimey to the Blue Mountain peak. — Telfer's cedar. — Beautiful nights of the tropics. — I stumble over an avalanche of earth ; am saved by my mule ; Mr. Sel- wyn's mare falls down the ravine, and is killed. — Sleep at Francis's plantation. — Accoimt of our barometer. — Wild cane and Morgan's ivers. — Broken ground; precipices; wild hogs; juniper and Santa Maria trees ; grand and extensive view ; no rocks or stones on the surface of the ground. — Sunset from the eastern peak.— Supper and lodging.— Excessive cold ; height of the Blue Mountain.— Trees and "plants. 271 CHAPTER XXXIV. Return by Port Morant to Manchioneal.— Port Antonio ; melancholy instance of hydrophobia.— Description of the parish of Portland.— A Maroon town.— Subter- ranean rivers. — Sea-side jasmin ; lizards ; turtles. — Proserpine's song. — A negro butler, a scholar, and a poet, having been brought up for a Methodist. — Ebe- CONTENTS. XVll PAGE neezer's extasy and confession ; the black njTuphs pelt him with gravel ; his defence of himself. — Coco-nut trees struck by lightning. — Three flags on an iron conductor. 293 CHAPTER XXXV. Titchfield.— Harbours of Port Antonio; healthy bar- racks. — Navy Island. — Blue Mountain. — Fort George. — Diana pays me a visit. — An epitome of the life'of a woman of colour ; prejudice against colmir ; no misery among such women. — I go to the house of her father ; pass a funeral on the road, and meet an old free woman, a negress, stark naked. - . _ 303 CHAPTER XXXVI. Description of a country house. — Pigs. — A planter's mode of passing his time. — Servants ; some particulars re- lating to them. — Accoxmt of a small coffee settlement in the interior. — Rio Grande. — Susanna. — I am taken again for a marshalman. — Battle of the horse and mule. — Description of the coffee planter and his wife ; advice of the latter to Susanna. - - - - 314 CHAPTER XXXVII. A second expedition to the Blue Mountain, which fails. — Golden Vale, an estate belonging to Greenwich Hos- pital. — Fires in the wilderness. — An extraordinary tract of country bare of trees — A cascade falling from the eastern peak. — We ruvsh into a river to cool ourselves. ..-_-.-- 329 XVlll CONTENTS, CHAPTER XXXVIII. Sir John Kean's orders for the care of the soldiery. — A black girl sentenced to receive two dozen lashes for contempt. — The two children arrive from Kingston, and are given to Diana. — Adventure of a lady dis- guising herself as a negress, to try the honesty of her husband's slaves. — An Obeali man ; contents of his cutacoo. — Diana's kindness of heart ; om* farewell. — We meet the old naked negress, who asks for a cala- bash of salt ; her speech to Ebeneezer. We sail for England. - - . , . . 338 JAMAICA. CHAP. I. The island of Jamaica may well be called the Emerald of the Ocean, though in no respect similar to the green or brown island that lies to the West of Great Britain, the subject of so much song and panegyric. Jamaica may be compared to a large forest intersected by glades ; not only the verdure, but the woods extend to the summits of the mountains. I landed at Falmouth, in the county of Cornwall, on the 20th December. The en- trance of the harbour is narrow, and the navigation difficult, the water as clear as the purest crystal. I could see the rocks at its base, though they were between twenty and JAMAICA. CHAP. I. The island of Jamaica may well be called the Emerald of the Ocean, though in no respect similar to the green or brown island that lies to the West of Great Britain, the subject of so much song and panegyric. Jamaica may be compared to a large forest intersected by glades ; not only the verdure, but the woods extend to the summits of the mountains. I landed at Falmouth, in the county of Cornwall, on the 20th December. The en- trance of the harbour is narrow, and the navigation difficult, the water as clear as the purest crystal. I could see the rocks at its base, though they were between twenty and JAMAICA. thirty feet beneath me. The land around the harbour is flat, but rises to the South into beautiful hills, crowned here and there with the huge bombax that rises out of these giant forests like a colossus among pigmies, who would be giants in turn to the pigmy woods of Great Britain. I was conducted to a lodg- ing-house kept by a lady named Polly Vidal, of a mahogany tone of colour, who received me with great courtesy, and welcomed me to the island. I thought her a little inquisitive, as her questions crowded on me rather faster than I could reply to them, although she paid great attention to my answers, which is not always the case of those who think it neces- sary to interrogate. Her curiosity extended chiefly to my own concerns ; who I was, where I came from ; whether I had father, mother, uncles, or aunts in Jamaica. She cautioned me against night air, and scolded some younger damsels for peeping at me through the jealousies which communicated with the bed-chambers on each side of her hall. Some of these tawny fair ones were seated on the floor of the piazza, making shirts, or working muslin dresses, and came in now and then with some silly errand, as I JAMAICA. 3 thought, to get a view of my sweet person, or to exhibit their own. One or two were coquetting at a distance with some of the white natives, and laughing with every air of gentleness and good nature. Their persons struck me as being very elegantly formed, light, graceful and elastic ; but I was not yet reconciled to their dingy hue, and there was something I thought rather too languid in the drawling tone of their speech. They pre- sented me with a shadock scored, and the thick skin doubled in, naseberries and a gre- nadilla, with a copious beaker of wine and water. After partaking of this, I was accommoda- ted with an umbrella to screen me from the meridian sun, and followed a bare-legged Quashie about the town to examine the stores, and a famous reservoir of water, made for the use of the inhabitants and for the supply of the shipping. In the first, I was surprised to see so many negroes purchasing finery for their approaching holidays, and laying down pieces of money that I had never thought to see in the hands of slaves ; for some changed doub- loons, gold pieces, worth here five pounds six shillings and eight pence of the island curren- <4 JAMAICA. cy. There was an appearance of gaiety and cheerfulness in their countenances, combined with a politeness of manner, that I had never seen among the labourers of England, any more than pieces of gold in their hands at Christmas or any other season, for the purpose of buying finery ; for here all clothing seems superfluous, except for decency's sake. I returned to the lodging-house, and found a Kittereen whiskey prepared to convey me to an estate at some distance, about eight miles from the town. Quashie seated himself on the footboard, and resting his legs on the steps, performed the part of Automedon in grand style, and with great apparent seriousness ; while I enjoyed the whole of the interior of the equipage, a system I should have often preferred in England, where I have been many times horrified by the company and contact of a lubberly stinking groom, breathing gin or tobacco, or at least the miasma of the stable. I was driven through two or three estates, where the negroes were all at work cutting canes, which passed me in huge tumbrils for the mills. Quashie acted as my Cicerone, and told me everything connected with putting in canes and making sugar. He would have JAMAICA. told me the names of the different proprietors through whose grounds we passed, but he knew only the mortgagees, the attornies, and overseers. He pretended great affection for his horse, which he called Romblass, (I ima- gine he meant Romulus) but I afterwards learnt it was really pretence, as he was in the habit of riding him furiously by night, as if he were an incubus,, to see his distant sweet- heart. I asked him the name of a great tree not far from the road, which I should have taken for a cotton tree, but for the different leaf it presented. He told me it was before time (according to his phraseology) a cotton tree, but now a fig tree ; for this latter has the property of overgrowing and destroying even this giant of the forest. At first, a small deli- cate vine, it attaches itself to the bark of the cotton tree, creeps up, and gaining strength, at last envelops it with its own bark. Quashie compared it to the mortgagee strangling the proprietor, or the Scotchman hugging the Creole to death. I arrived at length at Orange Grove, where I expected to be received by the old gentle- man to whom I had been recommended. He 6 JAMAICA. was from home, that is, riding about his cane pieces and superintending his negroes at work. The clatter of a water-mill reminded me again of sugar grinding ; the mill-yard was all bustle and merriment, songs and laughter mingled with the shrill braying of mules and bellowing of oxen. I peeped into the mill-house, and saw the cane juice flowing in torrents ; though sweet, it looked dirty, and I preferred to chew the cane to obtain a luxurious draught. The overseer introduced himself to me and took me to the boiling-house, whence the steam from five or six immense boiling coppers soon induced me to retreat. I saw negroes here allowed to take calabashes full of the hot pu- rified cane juice, half a gallon each at least. This, I learnt, is sometimes fermented in bam- boos with the chewstick withe, and makes tolerable beer. The still-house was no more to my taste than the boiling-house ; though not heated, the air had an unpleasant gaseous smell ; it was, however, very clean. As I returned to the house I descried my host, Mr. Graham, dismounting from his horse at the end of the piazza. He came forward and saluted me. JAMAICA. CHAPTER II. A LONG blast from a conch-shell relieved the negroes from their toils. But let me de- scribe the old gentleman, who gave me a vigorous shake by the hand and a cordial welcome to his house. Imagine an old gen- tleman, sixty-five years of age, upwards of six feet high, and weighing probably seventeen stone, with a set of regular and even hand- some features, except one eye missing; an open, generous countenance, whose physiog- nomy indicated the habitude of no violent or fractious feeling. He wore a white hat whose brims were ten inches wide ; had one side been cocked upward, and feathered, it would have done for a Velasquez, or Rubens's Chapeau de Paille ; a blue jacket, too short for elegance, (being curtailed to escape the perspiration of his horse) which in consequence of his height 8 JAMAICA I and bulk gave his appearance an air of cari- cature, especially as its truncated skirts stuck out with the crowding of his pockets ; a white waistcoat and trowsers completed his :;ostume, and gave a tinge of deeper hue to his weather- beaten face. He had passed the last thirty years of his life in the island, although he had been educated in England. I was ushered into the piazza, and presented to a middle-aged lady, his wife, who was still handsome and very agreeable ; and to two pretty girls, his daughters, who wanted only a little more of the rose in their cheeks to make them really beautiful. I enjoyed an hour of cheerful conversation with them on family subjects, mixed up with small talk about Walter Scott's novels, Lallah Rookh, and the Loves of the Angels, which none of us had read or seen. Two gentlemen were playing at billiards in the hail adjoining, through which I passed to my bed-room to take a siesta, for which I had indeed but little occasion, as my mind was too much taken up with the young ladies to allow me to sleep. At five o'clock a bell summoned me to din- ner, where, in addition to the party I had already seen, there were now assembled an JAMAICA. 9 old lady and her two maiden daughters ; I would not say old maids, though they had passed the age of loveliness. Their mother, an ancient dame, was treated with remarkable respect by my host and hostess, which she seemed well to merit by her elegant and un- affected manners, the offspring of an affection- ate and dignified mind. Her features retained the evidences of beauty, and her figure was yet that of a sylph, light and graceful, in spite of her age. Her conversation possessed an extraordinary charm, and was really fitted for the first circles of the most enlightened socie- ty ; but I presume my readers would rather be entertained with the young ladies, whose gaiete cle cceur made the evening pass with the rapidity of joy. They sang, and danced qua- drilles and allemands ; one of them excelled on the piano-forte, and my squeaking voice was put under contribution for the bass of a glee. One gentleman favoured us with a negro dance to a negro tune, both original and diverting, and to myself unintelligible : it is not necessary to know always why we are pleased. He sang as he danced, and the burden of his song was. Hi ! Donald Malcolm ! Ho! m JAMAICA. CHAPTER III. I HEARD the whizzing of the musquitos in the night, though they could not penetrate through my curtains or musquito net, which covers the whole bedstead. The land breeze kept my room cool and comfortable, and I should have slept sounder and later but for the crowing of the cocks, which began scream- ing long before day light, and kept up an incessant cry. I arose before the sun, which is the fashion of the island ; the air was fresh and fragrant, and the atmosphere as clear as the sea was yesterday ; indeed, there was an appearance of a north wind, more dry than salubrious, and in the morning the hills of Cuba were declared to be visible. The land wind died away as the sun rose, and at breakfast I was actually hot and pestered with flies, till one of the young ladies sent me her JAMAICA. 11 female page with a peacock's feather, to faii the flies from John Newcome, Esq. They still however fought with me for my honey and cocos. Our breakfast was a medley of Euro- pean and American tastes ; an assemblage of all sorts of things ; coffee, tea, chocolate, ham, tongue, yams, herrings pickled and dried, hot rolls, biscuits and plantains, potatoes, and cassava, cum multis aliis. Good nature and mirth presided over this, as they had done over the entertainment of yesterday. The sea breeze began to blow and my heat to evapo- rate. The old gentleman mounted me on a good nag, and led the way to the field where the negroes were at work, complaining as we went along of the preachers, who, he said, had completely bewildered the minds of his slaves with abstract fancies about the holy spirit, grace, and faith. One of his drivers, a man hitherto of excellent character, had stolen one of his master's lam-bs, killed it, and now pleaded in excuse for the robbery, that he had given half of the lamb to Massa Sanders Ma- cauly, the methodist missionary. While we were talking on the subject we arrived at the field where the people were working, and the culprit was brought forth in custody of another 12 JAMAICA. driver, by order of the head book-keeper, whose business it was to superintend the field- work to-day. Mr. Graham, with a serious but calm face, demanded of Isaac, the thief, what he could say for himself that he should not be punished, as the fact had been proved on him ; indeed he had been detected selling some of the flesh to another negro. Isaac said he had bought a bible of Mr. Macauly, for which he had paid two dollars and had promised two more ; but in default, or rather in delay of payment, he had taken him this meat, for Mr. Macauly asked for some provisions, pork, or fowls, or mutton. *'He did not know," said the old gentleman, *'that negroes are not allowed to keep sheep, but you knew you had no right to steal my lambs." "Massa," replied the Black, " Mr. Macauly tells me muss hab a bible." '•' Then," rejoined Mr. Graham, **you must be flogged for getting it dishonestly ; those who send you bibles should send them gratis, and not make a trade of their books to get negroes into mischief." The man was laid on the ground and received sixteen smacks of a thong, made of the bark of a tree attached to a stick about eighteen inches long. JAMAICA. 13 He made no complaint, but offered to give up the bible, and never speak to Mr. Macauly again. This his master said he did not desire or care about. A woman was then brought up for a mis- demeanour ; she had beaten a young girl in a fit of jealousy, and the quarrel was near in- volving three or four families in confusion and contention. She was ordered to hold up her coats, which she did, not higher than the middle of her legs, and the driver gave her four cuts that rattled on her clothes, and could not, I think, give her any bodily pain ; when the driver ceased by his master's order, the black lady looked over her shoulder, and said in a suppressed but emphatic tone, "Goto h — 11," and walked off. I think the old gen- tleman heard her as well as myself, but he took no notice, allowing, I suppose, for her irritated feelings, which was no doubt humane and prudent. In the course of the day, the lady herself took an opportunity of telling me that Massa ^vas really a good man, and she knew she had done wrong and deserved to be punished. I was amused at the sight of a score of children lying in trays beneath a sort of arbour 14 JAMAICA. made of boughs ; they were all naked, and looked like so many tadpoles, alternately sleeping and bawling till the mothers went and suckled them. Some of the men had calabashes of sugar-juice to recruit their spirits. I was much diverted with the head driver, who walked about with a whip in one hand and a bamboo staff in the other, in which he carried a yard of rum or grog, and as he quaffed from time to time, he elevated his bamboo towards the heaven as if he were a Sydrophel star-gazing. After we had returned to the overseer's house, an old woman marched up at the head of another detachment, a phalanx of children, all under seven years of age. They were also naked, each carrying its frock on its arm, and came to show that they were washed clean, and were free from all disease. They were full of fun and tricks, and their skin, black as ebony, shone like silk. The old gentleman asked them what they were to have for din- ner; they replied, ''cowskin;" and having put on their Osnaburgh frocks, they were helped in little calabashes, out of a boiler built up against the piazza. Their dinner was cow or ox hide (the hair of which is first JAMAICA, m singed off) boiled to a jelly, with yams, cocos, ochro, and other vegetables ; a famous mess, of which the little negroes made a most hearty meal. I wished my poor neighbours in Hampshire might always be assured of such a meal once a day ; however, I consoled my- self with the reflection, that they are not slaves ; I wish it would console them for their empty bellies. 16 JAMAICA. CHAPTER IV. I PASSED several days with my hospitable friend, and was thus enabled to see into the condition of his negroes, their habits and modes of life. They were orderly, and I was informed had till lately been con- tented ; but the debates in England about making them free have begun to unsettle them, and have given them a tenfold propensity to attend the missionaries. A great many of them have long been Christians, and several are married according to the established church. According to their own customs, they live together as long as they like each other, and part by mutual consent when they please. As to inheritance, they are allowed by courtesy, in all cases, to leave what property they may acquire to their children or friends JAMAICA. l!«S upon the same estate, but not to strangers. Singular enough, that the virtual rights of the slaves in respect to their property, arising from customs and courtesy, which, according to the most profound writer* of his time, are stronger than written statutes, should bear some affinity to the present laws of France on wills, which restrain a testator from bequeathing away his property to the ex- clusion of his relations and children, though illegitimate. A gentleman at Mr. Graham's told me that one of his negroes came to claim compensation for cutting off a branch of a calabash tree in his (the gentleman's) garden. The negro maintain- ed that his own grandfather had planted the tree, and had had a house and garden beside it, and he claimed the land as his inheritance, though he had his own negro-grounds elsewhere as a matter of course. The gentleman was so amused by Quaco's pertinacity and argument, that he bought the land and tree, right and title, of him for a dollar. I am afraid there are many titles in England not better than * Montesquieii. C 18 JAMAICA. Quaco's, though allowed the same authen- ticity. As to their religious progress, it does not seem to improve their morality. Their super- stition is overcome, and the mental restraints against thieving and roguery are overcome with it. An old patriarchal negro, with a white beard and head, came one day to complain of a newly christened neighbour refusing to pay an old debt of a doubloon, which the patriarch had lent him, on promise of repayment, to purchase a share of a cow. But on the pre- sent application, the nominal Christian had affected ignorance of the debt, and surprise at the demand. He said the old man lent the doubloon to Quamina, but he was not Qua- mina now ; he was a new man, born again, and called Timoty, and was not bound to pay the dead man, Quamina's, debt. The cause being brought before the master, was heard, and summed up in the following words : — • "Quamina, otherwise Timothy, this may be very fine logic, and you may think it religion too, but, for the sake of morality, Mr. Rascal, pay the money or make over the cow." Qua- mina finding there was no appeal, began to JAMAICA. 19 grumble and swear, and even to curse the preacher's religion, since it was " no worth." The old patriarch said, that " formerly people minded the puntees, hung up in the trees and grounds as charms to keep off thieves, but since there was so much preachy preachy, the lazy fellows did nothing but tief." The old gentleman sighing, said, *' I wish to see the people about me happy ; I wish them to have a correct sense of an all-wise creator and of futurity, and to be actuated by a mutual wish to aid one another ; there ever have been and there must be gradations in society, and I cannot think that mode of teaching a religion effectual which tends to loosen the moral re- straints, and to destroy the links of society. The motives of the missionaries and of those who send them out may be good ; but their views, at least the views of many of them, are wrong ; and we feel the lamentable effects of their mis-directed zeal." I often used to witness the ceremony of feeding the children at the overseer's ; their happy, joyous manner communicated a joy even to myself. I asked once if the i^eligious would not be scandalized at the exhibition of these naked youngsters ; but I was told that 20 JAMAICA. the instigators of the registry bill wished, nay, had insisted on the right of examining the persons of all the negroes, male and female, of every age, in order to specify stnd enume- rate all marks they may have about them, no matter where. JAMAICA. CHAPTER V. I WAS grumbling in imagination at the incessant clamour of the cocks on the morning of Christmas-day, when my ears were assailed with another sort of music, not much more melodious. This was a chorus of negroes singing **Good morning to your night-cap, and health to master and mistress." They came into the house and began dancing. I slipped on my dressing-gown and mingled in their orgies, much to the diversion of the black damsels, as well as of the inmates of the house, who came into the piazza to witness the cere- monies. We gave the fiddler a dollar, and they departed to their grounds to prepare their provisions for two or three days, and we saw no more of them till the evening, when they again assembled on the lawn before the house with their gombays, bonjaws, and an 22 JAMAICA.. ebo drum, made of a hollow tree, with a piece of sheepskin stretched over it. Some of the women carried small calabashes with pebbles in them, stuck on short sticks, which they rattled in time to the songs, or rather howls of the musicians. They divided themselves into parties to dance, some before the gom- bays, in a ring, to perform a bolero or a sort of love-dance, as it is called, where the gentlemen occasionally wiped the perspiration off the shining faces of their black beauties, who, in turn, performed the same service to the min- strel. Others performed a sort of pyrrhic before the ebo drummer, beginning gently and gradually quickening their motions, until they seemed agitated by the furies. They were all dressed in their best ; some of the men in long-tailed coats, one of the gombayers in old regimentals ; the women in muslins and cam- brics, with coloured handkerchiefs tastefully disposed round their heads, and ear-rings, necklaces, and bracelets of all sorts, in profu- sion. The entertainment was kept up till nine or ten o'clock in the evening, and during the time they were regaled with punch and santa in abundance ; they came occasionally and asked for porter and wine. Indeed a JAMAICA. n perfect equality seemed to reign among all parties ; many came and shook hands with their master and mistress, nor did the young ladies refuse this salutation any more than the gentlemen. The merriment became rather boisterous as the punch operated, and the slaves sang satirical philippics against their master, communicating a little free advice now and then ; but they never lost sight of decorum, and at last retired, apparently quite satisfied with their saturnalia, to dance the rest of the night at their own habitations. I must not omit one circumstance that di- verted us all exceedingly during the festivity, and seemed to justify the title of saturnalia, which I have given to it. An old grey-headed man, who had formerly been appointed a watchman to guard the negro-grounds, had occasionally abused his trust, and robbed the grounds he was bound to protect : considering his age and venerable appearance, Mr. Graham had always endeavoured to pacify those who had been robbed, by compelling the thief to make restitution from his own grounds, rather than flogging him : however, the old rogue, having been detected in the very act of some outrageous robbery, had thought it prudent to 24 JAMAICA. retire, and had absented himself from the estate for two years previous to this festival, in the midst of which he made his unexpected appearance, and came up to his master laugh- ing with perfect nonchalance. He shook hands with him as the others had done, and said f* he was sorry he had been a bad boy, but he never would do so any more." So he re- ceived a free pardon. JAMAICA. CHAPTER Vl. The next morning, a little after breakfast time, the slaves re-appeared, dressed in fresh costume, that of yesterday being, perhaps, a little deranged with their romping. A new ceremony was to be exhibited. First came eight or ten young girls marching before a man dressed up in a mask with a grey beard and long flowing hair, who carried the model of a house on his head. This house is called the J onkanoo, and the bearer of it is generally chosen for his superior activity in dancing. He first saluted his master and mistress, and then capered about with an astonishing agility and violence. The girls also danced without changing their position, moving their elbows and knees, and keeping tune with the cala- bashes filled with small stones. One of the damsels betraying, as it seemed, a little too 26 JAMAICA. much friskiness in her gestures, was reproved by her companions for her imperance ; they called her Miss Brazen, and told her she ought to be ashamed. All this time an in- cessant hammering was kept up on the gombay, and the cotta (a Windsor chair taken from the piazza to serve as a secondary drum) and the Jonkanoo's attendant went about collecting money from the dancers and from the white people. Two or three strange ne- groes were invited to join, as a compliment of respect ; they also contributed to the Jonkanoo man, who, I am told, collects some- times from ten to fifteen pounds on the occasion. All this ceremony is certainly a commemora- tion of the deluge. The custom is African and religious, although the purpose is forgotten. Some writer, whose name I forget, says that the house is an emblem of Noah's ark, and that Jonkanoo means the sacred boat or the sacred dove — caken meaning sacred, and ;o;2« a dove, in Hebrew or Samaritan : but as I have no pretension to etymology, I leave this subject to the literati. The negroes have a custom of performing libations when they drink, a kind of first-fruit offering. When the old runaway thief of a JAMAICA. watchman reconciled himself to his master, he received a glass of grog in token of forgive- ness on the one side, and of repentance on the other; first, that he should not be flogged, and secondly, that he should not run av^^ay any more. On receiving the glass of grog, he poured a few drops on the ground, and drank off the rest to the health of his master and mistress. On all these occasions of festivity the mu- lattos kept aloof, as if they disdained to mingle with the negroes ; and some of the pious, the regenerated slaves, also objected to participate in the heathen practices of their ancestors. Yet they seemed to cast many a wistful look at the dancers, more especially after they had taken their allowance of grog, which it was no part of their new faith to renounce. My friend Quashie had got into disgrace, and came to me to intercede for him. He had lamed the horse Romulus or Romblass, in a nocturnal ride to another estate, where he had a second wife. His mode of getting the horse out of the stable was not a little ingenious : the door is always locked at night and the key brought into the house, but the climate requir- ing security only from rain, two sides of the 28 JAMAICA. stable are not even boarded, being defended only by strong bars of wood or rails ; one of these was taken out by Quashie, who then tied the horse's legs together, and throwing him down, dragged him under the other bars, un- fettered him, made him get up, and rode off to his Dulcinea. He had returned before day- light, and had been detected performing the same ceremony to drag the horse into the stable again, and by some awkwardness he had lamed him. I could not have ventured to in- tercede for him, for there is something so aggravating in a servant's abuse of his master's dumb animals ; however, Mr. Graham only put him in the stocks on Christmas-day, and dismissed him from the house to work in future in the fields ; but Quashie felt it as a heavy punishment, for he begged to be flogged again and again, if his master would let him still be groom ; but he begged in vain. While the negroes were enjoying these festivities, we were not idle or indifferent on our part ; our little dances were kept up every night with a great deal of mirth and good fel- lowship : music and dancing, billiards, cards, and chess, all in turns presented their allure- ments. I was a little quizzed for remarking JAMAICA. W that the planters would be called to account by the reformers in England for letting the negroes dance on Christmas-day, and was called a saint, — Saint Newcome. Mr. Graham told me there would be a rebellion in the island if any attempt was made to curtail the enjoyments of the blacks, even on religious principles : but this must be prejudice, though it might have such an effect on the French, perhaps. ao JAMAICA. CHAPTER VII. As my inclination as well as my business would lead me to visit the capital, my host very kindly procured me two excellent horses, and provided me with two negroes to attend me, who were to be mounted on mules ; one to lead the second horse, and the other to take charge of a sumpter mule loaded with my baggage. Poor Quashie begged again to be my conductor ; but as I learned that he had been convicted of the same offence once be- fore, his request was inadmissible, and a stout little fellow, whom his master called Magnus, was appointed to attend me as my head valet. I think there was a little roguery on the part of the old gentleman, in giving me this genius as my Cicerone ; for though he did not want sahhy, as they call it, he was a regular psalm-singer, a downright saint or methodist. JAMAICA. ai who was always talking of grace, faith, new birth, and hell fire. His real name was Pom- pey, to which his master had added the nick- name of Magnus, on account of his diminutive stature I suppose ; but he (Pompey) told me with great gravity, that he had been christened Abbesneezer, for so he pronounced Ebenezer, and begged that I would call him by this his christian appellation. My other attendant was an African, a Pa- pau, a true believer in the faith of Mahomet, as far as he understood it, which might be to some extent, as he could read and write what might be Arabic for ought I knew. He was a slim, genteel looking man, with a jet black complexion, and teeth as white as ivory. He rode his mule with a superior grace, though they are all good cavaliers, and conducted himself on all occasions with a very dignified air and manner. His name was Abdallah, but according to the phraseology of the negroes, pronounced Dollar; and he had as thorough a contempt for the Christian miracles and mys- teries he had heard preached, and for the foolish " fashions," as he called them, of his friend Sneeza, as any of the muftis of Con- stantinople could have felt or expressed. 32 JAMAICA. Pompey was a Creole, and well acquainted with the country, the roads and the estates, which we were to pass ; a sort of topographical dictionary, from which I could derive all ne- cessary information. Abdallah had been re- commended for his invincible integrity, as a servant on whom I might depend in every emergency on the road, and one who would see the horses fed and rubbed and locked up securely at night,— an indispensable precau- tion, as I afterwards found. I left the old gentleman and his family with great regret, for I had experienced every kind attention at this hospitable mansion, and felt myself as much at home as in the bosom of my own family. I promised to write to the young ladies from time to time, and took their letters of introduction to several young people I was to have the pleasure of visisting in my tour. They cautioned me against too much fatigue, and riding too long in the sun, or trusting myself to the night dews ; in short, they won my heart by the interest they were kind enough to take in my welfare, and I shall never think of them without feelings of gratitude and affection. Behold me then on my white American ♦ JAMAICA. 33 steed, travelling at the rate of six miles an hour, an uneasy pace between a walk and a trot, with my escort'mounted on their mules, and the sumpter-mule with my portmanteaus piled on his back. I had a large white hat and a light grey coat with white trowsers and waistcoat, and was told I might have sat for the picture of Death in the Revelations. I was followed by Ebenezer, leading a handsome Creole horse, and grumbling in a sort of smothered bass, that I sang, or affected to sing, as I rode along, in spite of its being Sun- day. His horse occupied him so much, that I could not converse with him except by turn- ing my head round and bawling, of which I soon became tired, and listened only to his occasional remarks. We crossed a ridge of hills clothed with woods, and descended into a beautiful valley, surrounded on all sides by mountains, and watered by a pretty rivulet, whose banks were shaded by clumps of bam- boos, waving most gracefully. They were from sixty to seventy feet high, with a most delicate foliage, and gave me an idea of gigan- tic plumes of ostrich feathers. From this valley I ascended gradually by successive defiles to the Maroon town, fre- D 34 JAMAICA. quently doubling on my path until I seemed to come within a stone's throw of it. At the top of the ridge stand the barracks, on a series of hillocks, intersected by cock-pits overrun by woods, among which I observed clusters of fern, called the fern-tree or adiantum max- imum, eight or ten feet high. It was from this spot that the Maroons were formerly expelled, or rather transported. The situation is cool and salubrious, abounding in springs, and in every respect adapted for the residence of European troops. As we proceeded through similar defiles, we occasionally arrived at large open pastures, not unlike English parks, where the great bombax and the bread-nut tree were chiefly conspicuous : the first bears the silk-cotton, and has frequently seventy to eighty feet of shaft before it expands into branches, which extend as many feet on every side ; a multi- tude of parasitical plants fix their abode among these, especially the wild pine, so celebrated for furnishing water in droughts ; and the long pendulous shoots of the fig-tree and wild vine, called the water-withe, hang from them down to the very ground, like the foliage of a weep- ing willow, but much more delicate. A yard JAMAICA. 35 of this, when of a good thick growth, will furnish half a pint of water, rather astringent, but yet very palatable. The body of the cotton-tree is made into canoes, often capable of holding eight or nine hogsheads of sugar each : once I saw one fifty feet long, and suffi- ciently large to contain fifty or sixty men. It bears pods at the extremity of the branches as large as a goose's egg, filled with a greyish silky cotton, (enveloping the seeds) fit for many purposes, especially for making hats : but, to favour the fur trade, the importation of it into England is prohibited. The leaves of the bread-nut tree furnish food for the cattle when the grass is burnt up ; and the nuts, as large as small chesnuts, are wholesome and palatable food for man. Traversing these pastures, I rode to a house on an eminence, commanding an extensive view, bounded only by the sea. Here I was met by the hospitable owner, who, according to custom, led me to the sideboard and gave me a welcome draught of sangaree, to allay my thirst after riding. I retired to my chamber, and after a little repose attended the summons of my host to dinner. 36 JAMAICA. CHAPTER VIII. The heat is here at seventy degrees of Fahrenheit's thermometer — -a delicious tem- perature, and there are no musquitos. I found a blanket very comfortable at night, and the morning vv^as infinitely cooler than on the sea side. Port wine does not taste amiss in these regions, though it is generally called physic in other parts of the island. I drank a good libation of it last night, by a fire-side. Here are several sorts of humming-birds, and the doctor-bird, or robin, having a green body with a red throat. As for the ring- tail pigeons, they reminded me of the ring-doves of Eng- land, and seemed to be almost the same spe- cies ; and though they are esteemed as the greatest possible delicacy, I was not epicure enough to find any superiority in them. I find that considerable apprehensions have JAMAICA, 37 been entertained respecting the discontents of the negroes, and a report has arrived here of insurrections in Saint Mary's. Every thing is attributed, right or wrong, to the Saints (as they are called) in England, and their inter- ference with the concerns of the proprietors in Jamaica has certainly excited a feeling of the greatest indignation. My host is a great advocate for the Moravians, but almost enrag- ed against the missionaries of the Methodists, who, he says, in point of practice, act in direct opposition to the others. The first are peace- able, moral, industrious, pains-taking people in their vocations ; the latter, cunning, in- triguing, meddling, fanatical, hypocritical, canting knaves, cajoling the poor negroes (who listen to them in fear and trembling) of all their little savings and every species of pro- perty they can amass, under the pretence of saving them from the Devil and everlasting damnation. Such influence have their pre- posterous doctrines on the minds of some of the poor creatures in the towns, that they have been actually driven into madness by brooding over the terrors with which the preachers have inspired them ; and not a few have destroyed themselves under the appre- as JAMAICA. hension of destruction, like the poor bird that flies into the poisonous mouth of the rattle- snake, under the influence of its fatal fascina- tion. This fanatical phrenzy has, in some cases, taken a turn ludicrously horrible, leading its victims into excesses, which, except on a plea of insanity, might be construed into blasphemy. I should be almost afraid to re- late them, but for a sincere love of truth, and a wish to expose the inefficacy of extravagant doctrines or declamations. A negro-man, named Schweppes or Swipes, to which his comrades have added the appel- lation of Saint, took it into his head to poison a preacher at Montego Bay. He but half killed the poor creature, who discovered the nature of the poison in time to prevent its fatal effects, though it is more than probable he will never recover his former health. The maniac did not attempt to conceal the crime, or to escape, but argued that the spirit moved him to kill Massa Parson. He affirmed that the preacher always said, " he longed to lay down his burden ; to quit this mortal life ; to go to Abraham's bosom, to the bosom of his Saviour, to glory," and so forth, — and he, Swipes (whose brain was turned topsy-turvy) JAMAICA. 39 out of good-will and love, wished to help him to heaven and glory, for which he was so anxious. There was so much method in his madness, that it was resolved he should be put on his trial ; and several persons intimat- ing to him that he would probably be hanged, he had wit enough to make his escape from jail, and run off into the woods, where he con- cealed himself for some time from the obser- vation of the whites, although many of the blacks were well acquainted with the place of his retreat. At last, two gentlemen, in the pursuit of wild hogs, penetrated unconsciously and by mere accident to a little open spot in the midst of the woods, where, beside a small hut, with a fire still smoking in it, they found a cross or a crucifix (as it bore something in- tended for an effigy on it) and caught there a runaway negro. They thought and hoped it was Mr. Swipes ; but here they were deceived ; the prisoner proved to be only a disciple of the saint, and being brought down to the bay or town, related many par- ticulars of his patron's present mode of life. It seems he has often an attendance of negroes to hear him preach, to whom he has the as- surance to communicate the sacrament of the 40 JAMAICA. Lord's Supper ; but as he can get no wine, he distributes rum and sometimes porter, and roasted plantains and cocos for bread. The figure on the crucifix is meant for the wor- shipful Mr. W and is made out of an old black coat, with a calabash tied to the cross for his head, on which a nose and eyes are scratched with charcoal. He would fain call himself Saint John, and eats soldiers* and crawfish, which he calls lobsters, meaning, I suppose, locusts ; and stolen molasses serve him for wild honey ; though he might find an abundance of that in the woods, if he thought fit to search. He and his companions sit round the effigy of Saint Wilforce, as they call it, and smoke their jonkas, or pipes about two inches long, until the evening closes in, when they are greeted with the company of their wives or sweethearts, and a ceremony similar to the American love-feasts is performed in the dark, or by the blinker light of the dying embers. This fanatical rascal has really great power over the minds of the negroes, which is, how- ever, moderated by the efforts of an Obeah * Cancer Diogenes, Hermit Crab. JAMAICA 41 man, his declared rival, or he would urge them into the most abominable excesses. He converts their credulity to his own profit, persuades the women out of their ear-rings and necklaces, and the men out of their fowls and pigs. He has even set them to rob one another, assuring them that whatever they bring to him is a sacrifice to God. His ra- pacity almost equals that of the priesthood of old , but his Obeah rival still retains an in- fluence over even his followers, — an influence under which they were born, — and, by his spells, his charms, and his fetishes, guards the property of his less enterprising and more peaceful neighbours. As the practice of Obeah is illegal, and the persuasion of Saint Swipes in fashion, the latter aflects to defy the wizard, and threatens to give him up to the law, forgetting that he lies at the mercy of his adversary, and may in turn be called to account for poisoning the methodist. 42 JAMAICA. CHAPTER IX. December 30. — Tuesday. The Creole tongue, if I may so call it, is a curious corruption of English, and very difficult to my inexperienced ears; though, like all other mutilated dialects, it is not un- frequently a source of mirth and risibility. I did not want opportunities of acquiring it or of laughing at it, in listening to the frequent dialogues of my two followers. The first, Ebenezer, like a barking spaniel, was always snapping and snarling at his companion, who, like a bull dog, seldom growled but he bit hard and held. I had much trouble to keep them quiet when the spirit moved Mr. Snee- zer, for Dollar seldom began the attack, and would always endeavour to laugh away the insinuations of the Christian; but, when he was completely roused, he was half furious. I left Vaughan's field at seven o'clock in JAMAICA. 43 the morninsf for the residence of Mr. S- - to whom I had a letter of introduction, almost superfluous in a country where hospitality reigns paramount. My course lay again through rocky ravines, embosomed in woods matted together by the vines that overgrow them. From the loftiest trees hung down the pendant streamers of the parasites, taking root again in the earth, or attached to other trees twenty or thirty yards distant. The traveller has always in mind the idea of a ship's rigging, for the whole forest is con- nected by these living ropes, that wave in the wind and give a most romantic grace to the scenery. I saw one mocking bird, who warbled prettily enough ; pigeons and parrots are the chief tenants of the wilderness, and a cricket, whose horrid screams are sufficient to stun one, and chase away every agreeable idea that the sight of these grand and mag- nificent solitudes may inspire. I found Mr. S was a serious Christian, what in England we call a methodist ; but as I make it a rule never to interfere with the feelings of any man on the subject of his faith, I had no difficulty in conforming to the cus- toms of his house, and avoiding the possi- 44 JAMAICA. bility of any argumentation about religious points. Before we retired to bed, the house-people of all colours and ages were called in to pray and sing psalms, while a young lady made a scrambling over the keys of a jingling spinnet, and my host gave out the staves with the true nasal twang. Ebenezer was in raptures while the chorus lasted, and Abdallah, acting the part of an accomplished renegado, behav- ed with every attention to decorum as far as utter indifference could express it. When the musical discords ceased, Mr. S — — opened the Bible, and cocking up his legs in the Creole fashion on the table, to be more at ease, began to read, in a solemn though aifected manner, the second epistle of Paul to Timothy, while a negro-boy, holding a candle with a glass shade over it at his right hand, stood winking and blinking, and from time to time yawning, until at last he actually fell asleep and tumbled with a lee-lurch head- long against his devout and persevering master, whom he almost knocked out of his chair. The glass shade was crushed to atoms, and the Bible flew half across the hall. Mr. S recovering himself, and looking at Samson JAMAICA. 45 with a good-natured air of discomfiture, which was reciprocal, only observed that " this was not the way to be enlightened." My friend Dollar retreated, as if satisfied, and the most serious could not repress a titter ; I would say the most serious of the brown girls, a goodly and a pretty family. The devout S ■ lost none of his gravity, except in reproaching them for making a precipitate retreat ; for they rushed out in a body, whereas their en- trance had been slow and by distant instal- ments, *' like angel's visits — few and far be- tween." I had been in bed and asleep for some hours, as I guessed, when I was awaked by footsteps in the piazza to which my chamber windows opened, and, looking naturally to- wards the light, I thought I perceived a human form standing against the wall and peeping into my room. I could not immedi- ately rouse myself, and by the time I had rubbed my eyes, the figure had disappeared. I thought I must have been mistaken, and would have re-composed myself to sleep, but looking still from time to time towards the window, I not only saw the same form again, but I was convinced it was one of the mu- 46 JAMAICA latto beauties who had attended the psalm- singing. What could she wish? Was she come, like another Diana, to visit a second Endymion, and was I to be that Endymion ? Alas ! alas ! me gelidum nenius Nympharumque leves cum Satyris chori Secernunt popuio. I mean, I leave the young ladies, the fair sex, to the satyrs. I arose from my bed, and would have told her so, but she scampered off on seeing me move, and tumbled in her hurry over Ebenezer, who was snoring at my door, which opened into the hall, through which Diana had to pass. '' Patience guide me," cried the puritan, not brave enough to swear — " da warra dis here, girls run 'bout like ratter." I know not how he could guess her to be a girl ; but, by the struggling I heard, I concluded he held her fast as if for satis- faction, or to discover who she was. This detention was not at all to her taste ; she called him fool and blockhead in a stifled tone, and desired to be set at liberty, still struggling to escape him, and dragging him about the hall, for he would not loose his hold. JAMAICA 47 The boards being polished and slippery, caused him, I suppose, a second fall. I heard them tumble together on the floor, and by the exclamation of Ebenezer I guessed he had fallen undermost, and upon the broken glass, some of which still lay about, for he uttered a piercing cry and let go the pretty Diana, who now would have made her exit by the windows of the piazza. Here un- luckily she encountered me, for I had left my room (as I listened to the scuffle) by the window of my chamber, and coming round the corner of the hall, unhappily intercepted her course. I say unhappily, for she ran against me full tilt, and knocked me and her- self backward, as I have often seen the clown and pantaloon do in a pantomime. At this moment the door of Mr. S — — ^'s apartment opened, and he appeared with a light in one hand and a rattan in the other, with which he was going to inflict summary punishment on the rats, while I crawled into my window, and slipping on my dressing-gown, made my re-appearance at the door of my room. I had then time and opportunity to behold the group, in which I cut no mean figure. Ebe- nezer was limping and holding one hand on 48 JAMAICA. his rear, his shirt torn and rumpled, and his look and figure all confusion and rage mingled with apprehension. Diana, the peerless maid, still seated on the ground, sobbed out " fool and knave," and said she came to bor- row Ebenezer's big book. A woman's tears are always interesting, though she be as ugly as the three Furies ; and Diana, in tears, looked almost beautiful, in spite of her brown face. Her master must have thought so, for he said, in a gentle and placid tone, '' Oh, Diana ! is it you ?" Diana got up, and courtesying, said " Yes, Sir," then, looking at me, her jet black eyes seemed to implore my silence. What account could I give of myself? Fortunately none was asked. Ebenezer was rebuked, he best knew for what ; Diana smiled as she withdrew ; I wished Mr. S — — good night, and peace and quiet reigned again. But although there was an appearance of tranquillity, it endured not till the morning. Meanwhile, I tried in vain to recompose my- self to sleep ; but the absurd figure I must have made was always present to my me- mory, and kept me as wakeful as a torrent. Hour after hour passed away ; Ebenezer snored as usual, and the cocks were begin- JAMAICA, 49 ning their clarions, when I heard a tittering again outside the piazza windows ; this was succeeded by a pit-a-pat across the floor to the hall where my valet slept. I heard a fumbling for about a minute, mingling with the snoring, which convinced me he was not awake to any roguery that was intended; and immediately the pit-a-pat receded to the windows, from which I heard a person jump down to the ground outside. The tittering in- creased, and while I was listening to dis- tinguish, for certain, the voice of Abdallah subdued into a whisper, my ears were saluted with a fresh vociferation from Ebenezer, who, losing his prudence and forbearance, rapped out a score of oaths as he was dragged by the toes across the hall, making ineffectual efforts to get on his legs, which were pulled from under him at every attempt, and he as regularly fell on his crupper to scream and curse afresh. All this while the laughing in- creased; I looked out from the piazza, and by the dawn which began to appear, T dis- tinguished Abdallah with six or seven girls pulling at a rope, by which poor Sneezer had been keel-hauled. They had got him close up to the piazza windows, through which E 50 JAMAICA. they had drawn his legs, and while the weight of his body rested on his shoulders and hands, they made fast the rope to one of the buttresses or pillars which support the house, and ran away just as I discovered them. Ebenezer was left in a situation as ludi- crous as distressing, his legs being allowed just liberty enough to prevent his making any exertion to raise his body off the ground. The noise he made, as may be imagined, alarmed the inmates of the house. Mr. S — re-appeared, half undressed, with the rest of the party, and in spite of his rage at this second disturbance, he could not refrain from laughing; while the brown girls came into the hall at the opposite side of the house, and with affected condolences proceeded to emancipate his legs. Diana assisted, and I saw the sly rogue cast a look of satisfaction at her companions, and even at her master. My valet re-mounted on his feet, began a sermon on the impropriety of his treatment, which was cut short by the chattering of the women, who were now fain to quiz him, and at any rate talked him down. In vain he denounced the vengeance of heaven and hell JAMAICA. .1 upon them, accused them of sedition and blasphemy against him, for praying on a book more than they did themselves; in vain he compared himself to one " Lijah, who let loose tw^o bears, that killed forty-four boys and girls." They laughed the more when he told them, that *' although they digged into a pit, they should tumble in one time." In short, I was obliged to use even my little authority to quell the tumult, and begged him to go out of the house, for I saw no other alternative to procure peace ; and then, as by this time it was broad day-light (the business of the toilet being first completed) we had more legitimate prayers from our religious host. E 2 52 JAMAICA. CHAPTER X. December 31 — Wednesday. After breakfast, I took leave of Mr. S , not without a good laugh at the adventures of the night, which still remained to me in- explicable. I had been obliged to stand the test of a little badinage, and fear my looks betrayed the appearance of guilt in spite of my innocence. I had sent forward Pompeius Magnus with the sumpter-mule, to be out of the way of any more tricks or quarrelling among the girls ; and when I took my de- parture, I was attended solely by the follower of the prophet. Scarcely had I lost sight of the house, Avhen on turning an angle of the wood to cross a small streamlet, I beheld the pretty Diana seated by the water side on a bit of rock, apparently washing her feet. She rose to salute me as I passed, and with a sweet and expressive tone of voice wished B I Ji K' A , Inh'hsh^i tTBuM & Clarke . Tanstock Street . Corenl Gariea . JAMAICA. 53 me good bye. Whether my horse took it into his head to drink, or it occurred to me to offer him that privilege, or whether I stopped him, or he, having penetration enough to di- vine my thought, stopped of himself, I can- not yet determine ; but he made a halt, as if he thought I ought to say something civil to the broM^n maid ; and as that thought occurred to me, I did not urge him to proceed. While he w^as straining out his neck to drink, I had an opportunity of taking a rapid glance of the beautiful form before me. An artist can sketch from imagination alone; an amateur may be allowed to draw from his memory ; I wish mine may serve to present to my readers this pretty creature as she appeared to me. She stood upright in the water, which just covered her ankles, with one hand holding her white drapery a little above them, as I first thought to prevent its being wetted, while the other was engaged in playing or trifling with the beads of a turquoise necklace clasped on her bosom. An Englishman con- siders all people of colour as mulattos, until he has occasion to remark the different shades by which they are distinguished. Diana, however, was a Quadroon, with a complexion 54 JAMAICA. very little darker than the European; nay, much fairer than any of the faces of men long resident in the tropics.. Her skin was clear and glowing with a tint, though a very faint one, of the rose in her cheeks. Her hair was dark brown, by no means black, though there was something in the contour of it that reminded me of her African origin ; still it was not woolly, but rather a mass of small natural curls, such as I have often seen imitated by the ladies in England. Her age might be about sixteen ; a time of life at which, in those countries, the very perfection of nature reigns in females. In height she rather ex- ceeded the middle size, and though, perhaps, taller than the Venus de Medicis, her figure was more slender and not less graceful. There was an air of sweetness and benignity in her countenance, that recalled to my ima- gination the charming expression on the fea- tures of the young Memnon which Belzoni has brought to England, and made me think of the impression which Csesar might have felt at the first sight of the beautiful Cle- opatra when she was introduced into his presence by Apollodorus. She altered her position as I spoke to her, and the breeze JAMAICA 55 blowing her wet garments closer to her as she moved, betrayed the charming symmetry of her figure. Having returned her salutation, I continued to look at her elegant person, from which, indeed, it was impossible to withdraw my eyes ; and while my horse still drank, I asked her, half seriously, for an ex- planation of the adventures of last night. She smiled as she cast a glance at Abdallah, which my vanity interpreted into a desire for a private communication, though I might have been wholly mistaken ; however, I dispatched the Mussulman in advance, and listened not without something of a romantic interest for the intelligence I had requested. When the accident had happened of the boy's falling asleep during the religious reading, and the coloured party had made a precipitate retreat, my illuminated valet Ebenezer assembled them in an outhouse, and began an extempore sermon of his own, about grace and the devil. As his auditors had been long accustomed to hear the ho- milies of Mr. S — — , which at all events were of a superior cast to those of the valet, the brown ladies were scandalized at his as- surance and conceit, and although they put 56 JAMAICA. up for a time with his trumpery, they revolted at his anathemas against loving without the leave of the parson ; in short, without being solemnly married at church. He had told them to marry black men rather than commit adultery with white ones, — a piece of advice no ways to their taste, however scrupulous in their conduct notwithstanding. He had particularly addressed himself to Diana, as if his religious persuasion had inspired him with the vanity (not uncommon to the low- minded) of thinking himself entitled to the particular attentions of the fair sex. He had gone so far as to beg for a little talk with her in private, which was the prima mali lobes, the groundwork of the revenge that had been practised on him. As to her peeping into my window, her object had been to discover whether I was asleep, that I might not have been unnecessarily disturbed, or that an ex- cuse might have been made to me, or my per- mission asked ; but when I got out of bed, Diana ran off alarmed, and in her flight tumbled over Ebenezer, and produced the first catastrophe. The second wanted no ex- planation. The pretty Quadroon delivered this un- JAMAICA. 57 varnished tale, without the least hesitation or difficulty ; and, when she ceased, I asked her if she were a Christian; to which she replied, *' Me afraid not." "And why?" said I in return. *' Because me can't believe what me can't understand." *'Then you have no re- ligion ? Has Mr. S ■ taught you nothing ?" "Yes, massa; he preaches to the ears, but nothing to the heart." "What do you believe? You have some sort of reliijion?" "Yes, massa; I believe I must do good to every body, and love them like my mother." " That is your faith?" said I. She answered, "Yes." "And you do love every body? Have you no ill will to Ebenezer?" " None." " But you played him tricks ?" " Yes, massa, tricks; no more; the girls teased him for being conceited and preaching nonsense." I sat a moment in silence, scarce knowing how to question this pretty simple creature any further. I repeated my good bye, and holding out my hand, bid her give me her's as a farewell salutation. She did so with an air of surprise, mingled with one of timidity and obedience, as if it were an honour to which she was not entitled ; but it was her left hand. m^tm. 58 JAMAICA. her right being engaged in holding her gar- ment upon her bosom. " Good bye, Diana." *' Good bye, massa, good bye." The sound of her sweet voice still vibrated in my ears when I rejoined my servants. Strange! thought I, that the simple and beautiful doctrines of Christ should be made unin- telligible to such a mind as this poor girl's, a mind as pure and unsophisticated as those of the primitive apostles. Can the missi- onaries or the enthusiasts preach the real doctrines, or have I learnt the truth, when I am informed, that their preachings have nothing in common with the divine precepts, any more than bloated ugliness has with the lovely countenance and elegant outline of poor Diana? My sure-footed nag carried me rapidly down a beautiful road worthy of Buonaparte, the great way- warden of the Simplon and Mount Cenis, through a dingle above a mile long, until I reached a more open country. 1 would have fled from my thoughts, if pos- sible, and hurried on to a house whither I had been invited, situated on a rising ground at the head of a bay enlivened with shipping, JAMAICA 59 whose crimson streamers fluttered against the deep blue sky. This place has a very park- like appearance, the grounds being chiefly pasture, intermixed with guinea grass, where herds of cattle and sheep, and numberless horses of a hardy breed, were browsing in pleasant confusion. 60 JAMAICA. CHAPTER XL January 1 — Thursday. The universal welcome awaited me at the house of Mr. Mathews, the proprietor of the pen and its cattle. If I had observed on other estates the bustle of sugar-making, I was no less struck with the tranquillity that prevailed here. The negroes have a compa- ratively idle life, being engaged in cleaning the guinea grass, or repairing the stone walls which divide the pastures. Two sorts of grass were pointed out to me, the pimento and the bahama ; but, in eases of drought, the cattle are fed with the leaves of the bread- nut-tree and the ramoon, as well as with those of the bascedar. If ever Jamaica were to be separated from the mother country, and the rage for sugar were annihilated by any circumstances of necessity, the whole island might form one large pen, of parks and corn JAMAICA. 61 fields, so as to maintain an immense popula- tion. The resources of Jamaica, I am in- clined to think, are very great; but of these hereafter. This pen consists of eighteen hundred acres, five hundred of which are woods; there are one hundred and thirty slaves, and there are five hundred head of cattle on it, including oxen, cows, mules, horses, hogs, and sheep, besides abundance of poultry. The negroes are here allowed to have as many hogs as they please, a privilege they cannot enjoy on sugar estates, where the canes would tempt them into destruction; but they keep them there in styes, and feed them from the produce of their grounds. The negroes are also allowed on the sugar establishments to keep a cow each, if they please, but it more frequently happens they keep one among three or four persons : the offspring is generally sold to their master; when a second calf is dropped, the first is sold at the price of a doubloon ; or they may kill and sell the veal to others if they choose, first asking permission; a very necessary con- dition, or they might kill their master's calves without a possibility of discovery. A 62 JAMAICA. similar system used to prevail in Sydney and Van Dieman's Land, and still prevails in the island of St. Helena, where no one can kill bullocks without permission; but the restric- tion there is to prevent famine. There are tanks here, sixty feet long by twenty wide, with runnins: water. Being the first day of the new year, another holiday is allowed to the negroes. They turned out a little after day-light to show themselves to the overseer, and were again dismissed to prepare for the festivities of the day, which belong to a contest kept up by two parties of the women. I very much sus- pect this is a remnant of the Adonia men- tioned by Plutarch. Each party wears an appropriate colour, one red, the other blue, of the most expensive materials they can afford. They select two queens, the prettiest and best-shaped girls they can find, who are obliged to personate the royal characters, and support them to the best of their power and ideas. These are decorated with the ornaments, necklaces, earrings, bracelets, &c. of their mistresses, so that they often carry much wealth on their persons for the time. Each party has a procession (but not JAMAICA. G3 SO as to encounter each other) with silk flags and streamers, in which the queen is drawn in a phaeton, if such a carriage can be pro- cured, or any four-wheeled vehicle which can pass for a triumphal car, that her person may be seen to the best advantage. Thus they parade the towns, priding themselves on the number of their followers, until the evening, when each party gives a splendid entertain- ment, at which every luxury and delicacy that money can procure are lavished in pro- fusion. The only subject of contest or rival- ship is the beauty of the queen and the finery of all the individuals. Mirth and good humour prevail throughout, and the evening is concluded with a ball. As it was my business to see every thing that could interest me in Jamaica, I accompa- nied Mr. Mathews to the Bay, where one of these entertainments took place in the house of a free mulatto woman. The music consisted of three fiddles, a pipe and tabor, and a triangle. The dancers, male and fe- male, acquitted themselves famously well, and performed country-dances and quadrilles quite as well, if not better, than I had ever seen at a country ball in England. Most of • ej^^te 64 JAMAICA. the ladies wore pink shoes (as it was the red party whom I attended) and all of them silk stockings, set off by feet that Cinderella's could not have surpassed in elegance. The supper consisted of cold roasted peafowls, turkeys, capons, tongues, hams, &c.; fresh and dried fruits, grapes from Kingston, equal to any in the world, and all sorts of wines and liquors, not excepting champaign and noyau. All these things were laid out in an ad- joining room, to which we were particularly invited. The dancing still continued, and small parties, as they pleased, retired from the ball-room to partake of the collation, and then rejoined the dancers. There were many free people of colour. The men were very well dressed, and con- ducted themselves with the greatest propriety. JAMAICA. 65 CHAPTER XII. January 2 — Friday. Mr. Mathews would be called a radical in England. I, who am no politician, was almost staggered by his vehemence against the " aristocracy, who allowed themselves to be led blindfold into every act of folly and injustice, that a set of sneaking fanatical ignoramuses choose to recommend to them; not that they are insensible to ambition or power — power too, over the consciences of their fellow-creatures." According to him, Ja- maica is to be wholly free, to be emancipated from the tyranny of England and the hum- bug of the Saints. He acts up to this doc- trine, by having nothing in his house which is the produce of England, except where he cannot possibly avoid it. His soap, can- dles, oil, and all his provisions, are trans- F ^mm 66 JAMAICA atlantic. He has neither tea, porter, cider, wines, fish sauces, nor hams, from England. His plate is manufactured from dollars, by one of his book-keepers, who has been educated by a goldsmith. His clothes are made in the island, though of British cloth. His furniture has been made by his own carpenters ; his beds stuffed with his own silk cotton. His pen produces a superabun- dance of maize and guinea corn, (the latter yielding the finest flour in the world) rice, if required, and every species of the bread kind in profusion. He has a handsome car- riage made on his own premises, and, with the exception of a few tools, he is as inde- pendent of all the wants which England supplies to others, as if England had ceased to exist. Even the tools might be made of the iron of the country, of which he has had a small field -piece cast. Of gunpowder he wants little, but he says that the caves in- habited by bats will yield abundance of saltpetre. He showed me a machet, or cut- lass, made by one of his own blacksmiths, of a very excellent temper, and bows and arrows of the most diabolical invention that can be conceived. No ship of war, no JAMAICA, 67 fleet could escape destruction, if once within their range. The arrows are made of hollow reeds, filled with some combustibles mixed with nitre and resinous gums, and take fire on striking the object at which they are directed by the percussion of their points. They can be discharged from cross-bows, or even guns. The points resemble the detonating tubes invented by Joseph Manton for his fowling- pieces, with a spike at the end, and a button to prevent them penetrating too far. The button also causes the percussion to take place, which ignites a grain or two of fulminat- ing powder, and the arrow is instantly in a blaze. Let a fleet once come within the reach of a thousand such arrows, and we should soon have a second battle of Lepanto; at least I judge so from the experiments I saw tried with a couple of them. But wherefore all this? I could not agree with this very original gentleman, who, having evidently been brooding over the critical situ- ation of the island, has suflered his fears to overpower his judgment, and has taken it into his head that the government of England are bent on ruining the colonies before they abandon them either to the negroes or to 68 JAMAICA. the Americans ; for their destruction, he says, is inevitable, if the system of tampering or trifling with the feelings of the slaves is per- severed in. Nothing seems to have so much w^eight with him, or so much to inflame his indignation, as the idea of being sacrificed, being delivered over, bound hand and foot, to the tender mercies of the Saints, as he styles them. He says, that he first gave Mr. Wilber- force credit for being sincere in the cause of humanity; but that now he is convinced he was mistaken . ' ' Humanity, " he says, "is not promoted by removing a cruel traffic from one spot, to carry it on to a greater extent at another. Is it not notorious, that slaves are constantly being imported from Africa into Cuba and other foreign colonies; and that, from the half measures adopted, the passage across the Atlantic is rendered infinitely more horrid, and more destructive of human lives, than when it was permitted under judicious regulations? If Mr. Wilberforce were not besotted by fixing his mind continually on a single object, and if he were really sincere in the cause of humanity, he would direct all his energies to the entire destruction of the JAMAICA. 69 slave trade on the African coast ; for whenever that infamous traffic is really and effectually abolished, and all hope of new importations re- moved, as is the case with the British colonies, an amelioration of the condition of the blacks must inevitably follow, though gradually ; and it is desirable that it should be gradual : none but fools or knaves can wish for an immediate emancipation of the slaves. It must be obvious to the most careless observer, however short his residence in the island, that many, very many, of the slaves are totally unfit to have the entire disposal of their own time ; they must be kept in a state of pupilage, under constant, though humane restraint; the ma- jority of them have not even a correct notion of emancipation; the better informed have no wish for it; it is only the unruly, idle, and profligate, and the puritanical hypocrites, that make any clamour about it. **Why," continued Mr. Mathews, "have the Saints so easily procured petitions from thousands and tens of thousands in favour of emancipation? Because they have repre- sented it as a duty imposed by religion, and have asserted that to hold slaves is contrary to the express will of God! and John Bull 70 JAMAICA. has taken their doctrines on trust, without giving himself the trouble to examine them. But the gross ignorance ! or rather the hypo- crisy and temerity of these Saints, to use re- ligion as a cloak, and to make assertions which every one acquainted with the sacred writings must know to be false! Have they never read of the curse pronounced on Ca- naan ?* Do they not know that the Almighty gave, through his servant Moses, on Mount Sinai, very precise laws to the Jews respect- ing slaves, and made a distinction between strangers and their own brethren, the children of Israel, that might become slaves, enjoining a milder treatment of the latter ? The words are remarkable •.■\ ** If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve ; and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons and daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife and my children ; / will not go out free : then his master shall bring him unto the judges; * Genesis, ix . 25. t Exodus, xxi. 2, 4, 5, 6. JAMAICA 7i he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door-post ; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and ht shall serve him for ever.'' And again, " Both thy bond- men, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land; and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession ; they shall be your bondmen for ever.""* And further, in respect of severe punishment: ''And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand, he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.'' ■\ There are many other parts of the Old Testament which show more clearly that slavery was not only suffered but authorised by Divinity, and practised by the Jews. And the New Testament leads to the * Leviticus, xxv. 44, 45, 46. f Exodus, xxi. 20, 21. n JAMAICA same conclusion. *'God is not a man, that he should lie; nor the Son of Man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?" And surely it is not for such men as Wilberforce, Buxton, Stephens, or any other of the puritanical crew, to arraign the judgments of the Almighty. **0 the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his j udgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord! or who hath been his counsellor?"* Really, one would suppose that these Saints had never read the Bible. *' But if these men be really sincere, they are a set of the most ignorant, presumptuous, and credulous blockheads that ever imposed on the British public; they give credit to and act upon every idle tale they hear. I should like to know in what part of Great Britain, or in what part of Europe, the peasantry enjoy so many comforts as our slaves. Those bold Reformers, if they have really no other object in view than that which they profess, are • Romans, xi. 33,''34. JAMAICA. 73 wrangling about a word — a mere name — and are pursuing a shadow at the risk of losing the substance. Let them examine into the real condition of the English peasantry, who, after working ten or twelve hours daily, re- ceive from their employers about half enough wherewith to buy them bread, and must creep, cap in hand, to a petty tyrant of a pa- rish officer for the remaining half — a boon from the cold sparing hand of charity — after having earned it with the sweat of their brow ; let them see the miserable, half-starved, con- sumptive beings, who toil a much longer time for an insufficient pittance in the cotton- factories, exposed to contract all the diseases incident to sudden transition from great heat to piercing cold ; let them look at the squalid misery in Irish cabins, and visit those parts of Ireland where it is so common for female adults to go naked, that the inhabitants seem unconscious of its impropriety ; let them for a while view the filthy garb and haggard looks of the poor wretches doomed to ascend foul chimnies, sometimes forced by an igno- rant master up a flue too narrow for their bodies, and wedged in till they die ; let them consider what must have been the 74 JAMAICA. suffering, the heart-rending distress of the mothers, before they could bring their minds to sell their offspring to such a wretched bondage. If the nerves of these humane gen- tlemen, these pseudo-philanthropists, are so delicate as not to allow them to take a near view of human misery, let them comfortably by their fire sides, with a jug of Buxton's compound at hand, read the Reports of the Committees of the House of Commons on these subjects, and then let them come and examine the condition of our slaves, and say whether the dignified title oi freemen compen- sates for the abject condition in the one case, and the degrading appellation of slave is pay- ing too dear for the enjoyments in the other. Strange infatuation ! that Englishmen should be duped by these pretenders to philanthropy, by men who overlook the wretchedness at their feet, who shut their eyes to the misera- ble victims of avarice, and close their ears to the piercing moans of the oppressed in the country around them, to direct their blurting views five thousand miles across the Atlantic, to loosen the ties of this once happy commu- nity ; because, forsooth, the humbler classes are called " slaves," though in possession of JAMAICA. 75 all the comforts of life ! In different stages of civilization, different manners prevail. Per- sonal service, and subjection for personal subsistence and protection, or that kind of subjection of the lower to the higher ranks, which is called slavery, has existed in all countries ; it existed in some parts of Great Britain a very few years ago, and it exists still in many parts of Europe : its extinction has always been gradual ; it naturally follows the development of the mind, sometimes with a retarded, and sometimes with an accele- rated pace. This may excite surprise in men of a sweet disposition and sanguine imagina- tion, but a dispassionate review of history will teach them, that revolutions in the man- ners and condition of mankind are the result of ages, the mind being gradually and almost imperceptibly prepared for them. For my part, if it were possible to put our slave popu- lation a few stages in advance in civilization, and, with reference to the soil and climate of the Island, imbue them at once with suffici- ently enlarged desires for the comforts and luxuries of life, to induce them to work for wages eight or nine hours, six days out of seven, I would most willingly give my slaves IM^M^ I ?b JAMAICA. that boon, accompanied by their freedom ; but their immediate emancipation, with their pre- sent ignorance and limited desires, would be destruction to us all, masters and slaves. ** No," continued Mr. Mathews, " Mr. Wilberforce is not the amiable character I once considered him ; no. Political influence is his object, slave emancipation his political fulcrum. Has he not himself, in his letter to Talleyrand, ten years ago, explicitly declared * that an attempt had been made, with consi- derable success, to confound the abolition of the Tt^ack in slaves with the Ejnancipation of those already in the colonies ; though the aboli- tionists took all opportunities of proclaiming that it was the Slave Trade and not Slavery, against which they were directing their efforts ?' Mr. Wilberforce has received every assurance of the comparatively happy con- dition of the negroes from those who have been sent out to examine into it, and yet persists in urging falsehoods to the prejudice of better men than himself. He knows, yet shuts his ears to, the change of sentiment that many have acknowledged has been produced by a visit to the Island. No man ever came out with stronger prejudices than Mr. M. JAMAICA, Lewis, having no ideas but of whips and chains, of cruelty and oppression, connected with slavery. He was struck with surprise at the negroes coming up to shake hands with him on his arrival with an air of independence, and he was no less gratified at seeing many of them as well dressed as himself. A short residence convinced him that his former pre- judices were unjust. He returned to England, and gave Mr. Wilberforce an account of his impressions. He might as well have preached to a dead horse, or a deaf mountebank, whose trade is to make faces and grimaces. Mr. Wilberforce treated all he said with contempt or indifference. Do not some of the mission- aries themselves disapprove of the intemperate conduct of their patrons ? Have not your sanctified ******** directed their agents to send them only such accounts as will answer the purposes of those who appointed them ? Was not one of these agents reproved for transmitting correct statements of the negro condition, because they were favourable to the colonists ? Have they not imported here from Liverpool reams of inflammatory tracts, to poison the minds of the negroes and mu- lattoes ; from Liverpool, that town of iniquity. ■^mmm[ 78 JAMAICA. which, though not built with negro sculls, yet owes its existence to that abominable slave-trade, which it carried on with the ra- pacity of furies ; and do its inhabitants now turn round on the planters, on those who bought, who paid them for their * acknow- ledged villany,' and accuse them of injustice and oppression ?" I was much grieved to find that I could not contradict the arguments of my friend the Radical, especially as his sentiments were those of the rest of his guests ; a very nume- rous party, who breathed the greatest hostility to my dear native land. Some even went so far as to threaten the deepest vengeance on the persons of some of the Saints, if the result of their intrigues should end as fatally as they seemed to apprehend ; and all were sensible that what Mr. Mathews could do in the way of defence, might be done equally by every proprietor in the Island. JAMAICA. 79 CHAPTER XIIL Before daylight, my host summoned me to the sea-beach, where ten or twelve negroes, male and female, were preparing to haul the seine. While they were thus employed, I asked the Radical how he could be so anti- liberal or anti-national as to have a fishing- net from England. He owned the net was English ; but pointing to some plantains, and then directing my attention to the rope with which the net was hauled, he observed that the materials were not wanting to have made the net as well as the rope. An immense quantity of fish were caught, sufficient to fill a canoe : goggle-eyed jacks, yellow tails, baracootas, silver oldwives, trunk fish, and others with no less barbarous names. A few of the most delicate were se- lected for breakfast, which was served under «0 JAMAICA. the shade of the sea-side grape tree (cocco- loba uvifera) where we had the company of Mr. Mathews' family. After this, the ne- groes came in a body and took away as much fish as they pleased, not less than a bushel a-piece, and yet left many on the shore. Some were hung up to dry and others were salted. The negroes carry them into the interior, and exchange them for jerked hog, on their own account. I heard Abdallah, who had come to see the net drawn, con- versing in his native tongue, or rather in a tongue I did not understand, with one of the negroes belonging to the Pen. On my in- quiring about the subject of their discourse, which seemed to interest them much, Ab- dallah told me they had been acquaintances in Houssa, where his friend lived by stealing horses, until he happened to be caught him- self, and was transported hither. ; Abbesneezer was so struck with the quan- tity offish caught, that he began to moralize on it, notwithstanding the lesson he had so lately received. He talked about Jonah and the whale, which, he said, he lived upon for three days, till it made him cast him up in Spanish Town. I called to the coxcomb to hold JAMAICA. 11 his peace ; but he replied that I would not believe miracles, and that he was the cause of so much fish being caught ; that he dreamt it the night before : he wanted to convert and baptize Abdallah and his friend, who threatened to fling him into the sea, that he might live on fish for three days. As soon as breakfast was over, I ordered my horses and decamped. Mr. Mathews cautioned me, at parting, against the sanchy, as he called my valet ; adding, that however well he might serve me, a saint was like a mule, and that dead or alive he would play me a trick at last ; however, he said, your Turk there, Abdallah, may perhaps neutra- lize the mischief of the enthusiast. I rode gently on towards Black River, by a sandy road, with the sea on my right hand, having a logwood hedge to pass for three or four miles, which reminded me of the haw- thorn fences in England : on the left was a picturesque chain of mountains. My course lay through pastures adorned with numberless fan palms ; these are eighty, ninety, or a hundred feet high, the whole length being nearly of the same diameter, and the summit consists of a circular cluster of leaves, each JAMAICA. leaf about four feet wide, spread out like a fan. The pith of this, as of most of the palms, is convertible into sago. The shafts are fit for sea piles, and, when split, form excellent gutters. I saw several canary-birds, yellowish, as in England, which sang very sweetly ; but while my ears were charmed, my nose was offended by a mighty odour from the dead carcass of a mule, on which a score of john- crows were holding an inquest ; some were stationed in the trees, others were wheeling about, some tugging at the carcass. Abdal- lah told me they were called john-crows or carrion-crows till lately ; but now, he said, they were called amen-preachers, because they finished everything, and eat it all up. Those in the trees had a very awful appearance, with bare red heads and purple gills, their dirty black plumage increasing the disgust they excited by their greedy and stupid looks, stupid from repletion. I could not help fan- cying them into the fat, rubicund, and vora- cious-looking monks I had often seen in Italy and elsewhere. I overtook a girl on the road with a veil over her face, which I thought at first to be JAMAICA. 83 lace, but found to be made of the bark of a tree ; it is drawn out by the hand while the bark is green, and has a very pretty effect. As this lass was on her road to Black River, I slackened my pace for the pleasure of con- versing with her. She was mounted on an ambling pony, and was attended by a negro boy on foot ; her business, as I afterwards learnt, was to lodge a complaint against a white man for having threatened and even offered violence to her person. She informed me likewise of the attempted rebellion on the other side of the Island, and of seven or eight persons (slaves) being hanged at Port Maria. When I asked her if she knew why they had rebelled, she said distinctly, that it was for the freedom which King George had promised them, and the planters withheld. She was herself free, and the negro boy was her slave. At the same time, she thought it very wicked and very unlike a gentleman, for the King George to take away people's negroes without paying for them. I asked her if she were not aware that the King only wished to please some of his subjects ; those that prayed very much, and were virtuous and holy good men, and were entitled to ask as a favour, or almost 84 JAMAICA. as a right, that they should have the pleasure of making the slaves free ? She replied, the King had no business to do wrong, to rob one man in order to please another ; and she did not believe any of the white men were better for always praying ; she was herself going to complain of one who was always pretending to preach God Almighty, and yet was the wickedest villain in all Jamaica — these were her words. We entered the town together, where she was met by some of her friends, among whom was an old black woman, her mother ; and I took my way to a tavern, kept by a brown woman, Miss Bessy M'Clean. . JAMAICA. 85 CHAPTER XIV. January 5 — Monday. . I STAID all day yesterday at Black River, to repose after my fatigues ; for, having passed two nights v^ith but little sleep, I had fancied myself heated and feverish. The tavern overlooks the sea, which washes the foundations of the house ; and the town is situated on the bank of a large river, over which there is a wooden bridge, one hundred feet long : notwithstanding this abundance of water, I felt the heat more oppressive than I had hitherto done ; and I found also a lack of society, to which I had been unused. I learn, the particulars of the complaint which Miss Flora Ross had made against the white gen- tleman (I speak of the lady I had overtaken on the road) — it was really too shocking to re- late ; suffice it to say, that she had some time ago formed a connexion with a young gentle- 86 JAMAICA. man, the son of the person against whose violence she appealed, to whom this circum- stance was not unknown. He was bound over to keep the peace. I rode along the sea- shore for about tv/o miles, and then began to ascend the Pedro plains, a tract of undulating country, sloping towards the sea, with occasional clumps of rocks, which serve each as a nucleus for trees, and give the whole the air of an English park. A red dust driven up by the sea breeze proved very troublesome ; it mingles with the per- spiration from which one is seldom free, and sticks like paint; otherwise the air is both agreeable and salubrious. This district has a very volcanic appearance ; the earth sounds hollow like the environs of the Puy de Dome, in Auvergne ; and, like that country, has no water on its surface : it corresponds with it in many particulars. The only water on the Pedro plains is obtained from tanks, made to preserve the rain ; and, to render these im- perforable, pieces of plantain-stalk are thrown into the pit as soon as dug, and pounded with rammers, so that the juice mixing with the earth renders it solid and waterproof. The sun's rays are excluded by reeds, laid on a JAMAICA, 87 frame-work, which covers them. The juice of the plantain is very astringent ; and yet, so severe is the drought of this cHmate, that the poultry peck the stalks to quench their thirst. The earth seemed to ring beneath the horse's feet as I cantered over it ; and while I halted to examine it more patiently, Abdallah asked his comrade whether Duppy did not live there underneath ; but Pompeius, with an air of disdain, replied, " that he did not believe Duppy; that Duppy was all lies ; that he was gone to the Dehbil, who had tied a big chain round about him a thousand years long, and cursed him into a pit, and that he must not come out till Jerusalem should tumble down, and be built up again new." He was going on at this rate, like an enraged bottle of spruce beer, which having blown out its cork, seems resolved to discharge every drop of its con- tents in froth, when his fury was arrested by the appearance of a lady and gentleman, mounted on two beautiful steeds, covered with nets to keep off the flies, who rode upon our track at a hand gallop, and soon came up with us. I made way to let the young lady pass JAMAICA, more easily, for she had hardly sufficient command of her spirited horse, which bounded and curvetted as it approached, and had nearly dislodged its fair burden from her seat. My eyes were fixed on her, and I should scarcely have noticed her companion, had he not reined up his steed to give her time to re-adjust herself. Hereupon a mutual recognition took place ; for I had made acquaintance with the cavalier at Mr. Graham's, and now learnt, on comparing notes, that we were bound to the same quarters, the house of a worthy Israelite, a man of very considerable possessions. The young lady, his niece, was going to pay a visit to a female friend in Spanish Town, and preferred this mode of travelling, which in the fine climate of the Pedro plains is not only tolerable but agreeable, even at mid-day. She was dressed in a riding habit, with a large straw bonnet, and a green veil , her companion rode under an umbrella and an umbrella hat. One motive of their journey had been apprehension of disturbances in the Island ; many families having taken refuge in the towns in real dread of being murdered by the negroes. Every individual seems to be confident of JAMAICA. 89 his own slaves; an argument in favour of good treatment, or a good conscience, on the part of the whites ; and the fears of all are lest these should be seduced by the example of others, of runaways, of the maroons, and more than all by the incantations (if I may so call them) of the missionaries. Miss Neville, the female cavalier, told me she had been staying at a house near Savannah la Mar, belonging to some friends who were in England, and that on the report of the in- surrection at Saint Mary's, several of the negroes on their estate had assured her and her sister of their fidelity and attachment, and promised, let what would happen, to de- fend them to the last breath of their existence. They owmed that they expected a rebellion, which they deprecated, and laid all the blame on Mr. Wilforce and the brewer or beerman, as they call Mr. Buxton. As I rode by the side of my fair companion, I could see a tear steal down her cheek, in spite of her veil, while she spoke of the faithful and affectionate attachment of the negroes. " It is really," she said, "a dreadful calamity to be exposed to the fear of every horror that any set of human beings can be led to perpetrate in a state of JAMAICA, phrensy and infatuation ; but the crudest thing of all is, to rend the ties of gratitude and affection that have for ages united the hearts of the blacks and whites. The negroes will be taught, as they already begin to think, that we are their greatest enemies, and that the quakers and the methodists are their best friends. They will never regard us again as they have done, nor shall we for ages be able to divest ourselves of fear and suspicion. Who and what are they who thus intrude on our little share of happiness in this corner of the world ? Are they better, wiser, juster, or more generous than we are?" '* They seem to be," exclaimed the gentleman, "egregious fools, or deliberate villains, either way as mischievous as the arch-enemy of mankind." JAMAICA. 91 CHAPTER XV. January 6 — Tuesday. My two companions left me with the words mentioned in the last chapter, being more impatient than myself to reach Herenhausen, or, I should rather say, that the impatience belonged to the young lady's steed, which was so fretful that his mistress had enough to do to manage him, and the company of my cavalcade rendered him still more trouble- some. I continued my course at a more deli- berate pace, to leave them wholly unmolested, and had begun a little dialogue with Ebenezer on the subject of the rebellion, which he dis- avowed and disbelieved, in spite of all we had heard ; and he was beginning to boil over, when our ears were saluted by the report of a gun, at the same moment that we saw a white man on horseback rush out from one of the clumps of trees at a little distance from 92 JAMAICA. the road, and make towards us with all the speed of which his beast was capable. A second shot whistled over his head as he ap- proached, and induced him to lower it to the level of his saddle's pommel, he still sticking his spurs into the flanks of his weather-beaten hack, and shouting to us as if for succour ; he came on literally at a headlong rate, re- gardless of his course, his horse's ricketty legs, and the rocks, among which, after some floundering and rolling about, he and his beast at last parted company. I rode up hastily to his assistance, and finding him squatted behind a rock for fear of another shot, I would have gone to a house from whence the firing proceeded, but Ebe- nezer told me it was a marshalman (a bailiff) who had been shot at by a Paratee brown man who lived there, and that he would per- haps shoot me, if I troubled him. The own- er of the house could only have intended to frighten the bailifl", or he might certainly have hit him from his intrenchment, but his pur- pose evidently was gained in the flight of the man of the law, for the firing was not re- peated. The poor devil was horribly alarmed, as may be supposed, and warned me to be a JAMAICA, 93 witness of the breach of the peace, and the attack on his life, while Pompey and Abdal- lah got his beast on his legs, which it did not care to do of its own free will or exertion. Having re-mounted him, and recommended him to withdraw, I rode up towards the house with a handkerchief in my hand as a flag of truce, accompanied by Abdallah, for his com- rade was too much alarmed to follow me, and invited a parley. The owner of the mansion appeared at the window, and denied having shot, except to scare the parrots out of his garden. He knew the bailiff* had come to serve a writ on him, and of course (as he said) had shut his doors. He had been mas- ter of a few negroes, most of whom had run away within a fortnight, to be free, as they ex- pected, and he did not hesitate to say that, if he lost them entirely in consequence of the insurrection, he and twenty or thirty more in similar circumstances would take refuge in the woods, and would make war on every preacher and missionary, until not one should remain alive in the Island. He asked me if I was one of that party; to which I made a disqualifying bow with the utmost expedition, expecting a bullet to whiz through my tho- 94 JAMAICA. rax if I used the least delay in disowning any connexion with that pious fraterni- ty. He looked suspiciously on me however and threatened again, that in case of losing his property, the united vengeance of his friends and fellow sufterers should not rest on this side the Atlantic, but that they would have the blood of those who dared to rob them of all their happiness and hopes. I suppose I did not repress an involuntary smile at the vain threat thus instigated by his pas- sion, for his countenance assumed a look of more vehemence and determination, and rais- ing his eyes to heaven, he spread open his arms for an instant, as if in the act of invoca- tion, and then suddenly clenching his fists exclaimed, "Tell this to your country and to those who ruin us — ^I am a Christian, and I swear by your God, we will be revenged." I would have argued with him on the folly and wickedness of such a resolution, and have shown him that he misunderstood the nature of our religion, which ordained above all things the forgiveness of injuries, but he cast at me a look of contempt and defiance, burst into a loud insulting laugh, and shut the jealousies in my face. JAMAICA. 95 Finding it useless to remain before the house, I turned about to retreat, and regained the road to Herenhausen, pondering on the strange resolution of this desperado. There is no use in imagining limits to a maniac's vengeance, and " there is nothing so strong but it is in danger from that which is weak" (to use a phrase of Quintus Curtius.) When once he sheds blood, the heart of man seems revolutionized, and the best natures often be- come the most ferocious. The negroes at Port Maria meant to murder all the whites. I rejoined my fellow travellers at the house of the Hebrew, and related the incident I had witnessed and the conversation I had held with the Paratee. They seemed to think that the " meddlers in their affairs" exposed them- selves to a chance of being treated in a very summary way by the black and coloured proprietors of slaves, in case of disturbance — a chance only, for it was difficult to say what turn the fury of the mob might take ; however, the promoters of re volutions generally fall a sacrifice to the caprice of the revolu- tionized. We dined on tough mutton to-day, for our JAMAICA. host, who does not keep a very grand table, having met my avant couriers on the road, and learning from them my intention of following, had dispatched a negro boy back to his house, to order a fat lamb to be killed. The negro carried the message right, with the exception of saying ram for lamb, and consequently a pet monster, which Mr. Klopstock intended to be the father of future flocks, fell a victim to Bacchus's blunder. The mistake was not dis- covered till we sat down to dinner, and the huge quarter of the veteran was uncovered, although the perfume intimated something not over fragrant. I learnt from my worthy host that he had arrived at a fortune from carrying about tapes and bobbins in his youth, and had sent home, in one year, as much coffee as sold for seventy thousand pounds. He owed still two hundred thousand pounds, which he expected soon to have repaid, but from the unsettled state of the Island all credit in Great Britain is at an end, and he looks forward with a gloomy presentiment. This charming climate seems admirably calculated for the residence of European JAMAICA, 97 troops, on their arrival, or for a permanent town ; but the sea shore of Jamaica, though most convenient for carrying on commercial pursuits, is very fatal to human life. H 98 JAMAICA. CHAPTER XVI . January 11 — Sunday. The climate and the agreeable society of this place induced me to prolong my stay for some days, where I found a vast resource in the conversation of Miss Neville, whose acquaintance with the habits and dispositions of the negroes enabled me to gain more than a superficial knowledge of their comforts and of the share of happiness which fortune has not denied them. I have great doubts whe- ther the labouring people of England enjoy as much, even under the most favourable cir- cumstances : as for those of Ireland, poor souls ! it is almost idle to mention them, ex- cept to contrast their squalid misery with the comparatively epicurean plenty of the negro slave. I have fully in recollection the cabins of Connaught, of which I will not speak ; but I will describe a cottage not far from Fort JAMAICA. 99 Augustus in Scotland, as I saw it in the year 1813. Imprimis, as I entered, I beheld two cows in the hall or vestibule, through which it was necessary to pass to a door on the left hand which opened into the parlour, a room about fifteen feet long and ten wide, with two beds in it, under one of which a pig was routing among a parcel of feathers, which I have no doubt were a hot-bed for fleas, for I was tor- mented with them while I remained under the roof, and for some time after. There was a fire in the middle of the floor, which was the bare earth, and round it sat the family, an elderly man and his wife, and seven or eight dirty children : an iron pot, suspended by a chain from one of the rafters, contained a mess of potatoes, which the mother was taking out with a fork, and disposing in a broken earthen pan ; an old worsted stocking tied to the chain contained salt, which the woman gave from her hand to the children as they asked for it ; the children were covered with a cutaneous eruption, and stopped from time to time to scratch themselves. A brood of chickens were fluttering about the potatoes and almost fighting for their share, and the 100 JAMAICA. pig was no less obstropolous in his demand for provender. The mansion was black with smoke, which found an exit at a hole in the centre of the roof and at three or four broken panes in the solitary window. The only- liquor that the family drank was buttermilk, which they mixed with the potatoes. There were two chairs in the room with broken backs, a stool, and a chest of drawers, worth perhaps five shillings. I know comparisons are invidious, but the generous reader will pardon me for giving an account of a negro house and its contents, as I saw it a day or two ago. The house is about forty feet long and al- most eighteen wide, built of boards and co- vered with fan-palms, divided into five apart- ments, of which the principal is eighteen feet square. This is the hall ; the other apart- ments lead from it ; three serving for sleeping rooms, and the fourth for a sort of pantry. There is a door at each end of this hall through which the smoke escapes when it is necessary to boil the pot ; at no other time is there oc- casion for fire. When I entered, I saw a negro woman squatting on the floor attending the cookery of her husband's dinner, which o JAMAICA. 101 was simmering in an iron pot, and consistep of ochro and cocos, picked crabs, and salt fish, with a bit of salt pork. The lady was peeling a few plantains to roast, and the lord of the mansion was inhaling the fumes of tobacco from a short junko pipe, as he lolled at his ease in his hammock, suspended from one of the rafters to within two feet of the floor. There was a substantial deal table in the hall, with four rush-bottom chairs and a wooden bench, over which hung a bunch of corn and a machet or cutlass ; above these was a shelf with a range of white plates and a few glasses, and above these hung several pieces of salt fish, and a good bunch of plan- tains. There was a basket of yams near the table, as if just brought in, and on it a coco- nut shell with a handle, to ladle water or soup. Several tin pans hung from one of the beams, and among them a large net full of cocos. There was an oil-jar in one corner to hold water, and a hoe and bill-hook in another, be- side a large gourd with a hole in it, which serves as a musical instrument, and is called a drum. There was likewise a gombay, and a bonja, which is much like a guitar, and several calabashes were ranged along the 102 JAMAICA. beams, containing sugar or coffee. I must not forget to mention three young children, fat and sleek as moles, that were playing about the house and garden, which contained plan- tain suckers, an alligator pear tree, mangos, two or three coco-nut trees, orange trees, a few coffee bushes, and many other fruits and vegetables, and a pine-apple fence separated it from the adjoining garden. There was a pigstye in one corner, occupied by a sow and her family. This is a portrait of one of the inferior cottages, some of the best having jealousies and piazzas, with terrass floors. Every garden has a pigstye, and the poultry- roost at a little distance from the house. I was very anxious to witness the ceremony of interring the dead ; but though a funeral took place during my stay at Herenhausen, I was told that the negroes are not fond of ad- mittmg white people to be spectators of their performances on these occasions, and I did not attend. Their chief object is to give the deceased a handsome burial, which means an expensive ; one and a great proportion of their savings is often devoted to this purpose. Mr. Klopstock related to me an account of a negro who begged to be indulged in this way, and JAMAICA. 103 constituted him executor, that he might be consoled in his dying moments with an assur- ance of the honours he should receive after death. This was the person who was buried during my stay at Pedro. The negro finding his end approaching, had sent to beg his master would come to visit him, and at the interview which followed, de- livered to him a long stocking filled with dol- lars and pistoreens. Mr. Klopstock's waiting man had previously taken the old negro's daughter for his wife, and had behaved so well to her, that her father deputed his execu- tor to reward him with five pounds. He then begged that plenty might be laid out to give him a " handsome funeral," that is, to buy him fine clothes and provide abundance for the mourners to eat and drink ; and the re- mainder of his fortune he left to his daughter for herself. No people perhaps quit this mor- tal life with greater fortitude and resignation than the negroes. They will sometimes pro- vide their funeral clothes themselves on the approach of death, and they often keep their own cofiin boards in their houses ready for occasion; yet they are not insensible to the hopes of a future existence, although, except i04 JAMAICA. they be Christians, their last moments are never embittered with the dreadful appre- hensions of hell-fire. I did not attend the funeral of the negro above mentioned, as I thought my presence might be unwelcome, but my two lacqueys were of the party ; and Ebenezer, as I sus- pected, did not lose so excellent an opportunity of endeavouring to edify his brethren, and displaying his progress in religious know- ledge. He objected to the heathen ceremony of throwing a fowl into the grave, and said that the yams which they would have buried with the corpse had no more business there than a hog in the Gubna's* garden. The son, in the law, of the deceased, described the scene to me, or rather the speech made by Ebenezer, on the occasion, which I shall endeavour to relate in his own words. The corpse was buried by moon-light with the help of torches, and after the negro fashion ; but Ebenezer, seeing that the business was to end there, had called out to know if they would not *' read ober him, and if they were not going to sabe his soul?" The negroes. * Governor's. JAMAICA. 105 very accommodating, told him he might read if he would ; on which he took a book from his pocket, and held it the wrong way up- ward (which did not much signify, as he does not know his letters) and began as follows : "Dea belubb'd, we gather together dis face congregation, because it horrible among all men not to take delight in hand for wan- tonness, lust, and appetite, like brute mule, dat hab no understanding. When de man cut down like guinea grass, he worship no more any body, but gib all him world's good to de debbil; and Garamighty tell him soul must come up into heab'n, where netting but glorio. What de use of fighting wid beast at Feesus ? Rise up all and eat and drink, because we die yesterday, no so to- morrow. Who shew you mystery? Who nebba sleep, but twinkle him yeye till de trumpet peak? Who baptize you, and gib you vic- tory ober de debbil's flesh? Old Adam, be- lubb'd ! — he bury when a child, and de new man rise up when he old. Breren, you see dat dam rascal Dollar; — he no Christian; he no Jew, no missionary, no Turk, for true. You see him laugh [Abdallah denied it] — when he go to hell he die, and nebba gnash him teeth. 106 JAMAICA. and worms can't nyam him. Breren, all Christians, white and black man, all one colour — Sambo and mulatto — no man bigger dan another, no massa, and no fum fum — plenty o' grog. — So, breren! Garamighty take de dead man, and good night!" JAMAICA. 107 CHAPTER XVII. January 12 — Monday, My chronicler repeated the sermon as gravely as it could have been delivered, and as well as he could recollect such a farrago. The party had listened to it in profound si- lence, and finished the night in feasting and dancing. I had never thought it important to interfere with Ebenezer's enthusiasm, hav- ing often seen that fanatics, at least immoral fanatics, like vipers and other venomous reptiles, carry with them their antidote as well as poison, and betray in their march and demeanour the cloven foot they would conceal under the sanctified robe they as- sume. " Let him preach," said Mr. Klop- stock, " so he preaches any one virtue, reli- gious or moral — let him preach any nonsense, except treason or sedition; if he talks of making the negroes free, I shall beg leave to 108 JAMAICA. put him in the bilboes, as I have had occasion to serve one of his white predecessors; as I would serve the arch-patriarch W e, or black S , or St. F •, the Apostle of the bunghole, if guilty of the same imper- tinence." As if sensible of this indifference on the part of our host, St. Pompey, as Mr. Klopstock called him, had given out that he would preach to the slaves at the negro houses yesterday morning, and I went in consequence, incognito, and took my post in the house of the servant who had repeated to me the funeral oration, where I copied down as he delivered it the sermon which follows. Most of the negroes (between two and three hundred) assembled to hear him, and arranged themselves on the ground beneath some coco-nut trees, in a ring, leaving a space for him to move about, and for a stool, on v/hich he first mounted, then sat dov/n a little, then mounted again, and began to pray a heap of unintelligible matter ; in the midst of which he rushed into his sermon without text, and exclaimed — ■ "Brar! — You tink say when you die, you dead for true?~No such ting — nebba see de day — dat time no mo you begin for lib — You JAMAICA. 109 tink say — Deady come, trouble come no mo? — Ha! man, tan lilly bit, you no bin dead six minutes before debbil catch you, put you na bilbo, set twenty thousand driba pon you. — Dem no hab cattle whip, but dem poke you wid fire stick, tay you teet grind to de root. Deady no come no mo. — ^You hungry tay you gut twist to pieces, — dem no gib you plantain — no so lead, no mo hot like hell, burn hole in you belly. — You tongue roast wid feeba, — dem no gib you water — no one drop day — no so boiling brimstone, nuttin else for drink, tay de flame come trough you nose. — You tink for run away ! — nebba see de day — you foot roast in red hot bilbo for twenty tousand year. De tear in you yeye boil like a pot, yet deady no come — Sleep no come, nebba for cool you yeye. — Brar, me sorry for you. — De sinful soul go ebery one straight to hell — you all sinful, you born so — you born in sin — You tink dat no you fault? Cha! no you fader do it? Pickninny must pay him fader debt. — You must hab wif no mo — No so, dem roast you pickninny — Brar, me sorry for you. — You tink wha for Garamighty gib you black girl? No more for rat trap for catch you 110 JAMAICA. sinful soul. De bible say dem painted puck- erie — dem cheat you yeyes— dem all rotten." Here a voice cried out, " Sneezer, you lie — you puckerie yourself — ^you good for nutten, wibble wabble loblolly, ." The fair sex were offended at his defama- tion, and a score of sturdy damsels, springing from the ranks, began to execute vengeance upon him for his imperance. They banded him about round the ring like a hunted slipper, while he as vainly attempted to defend him- self with his hands as with his tongue ; the louder he bawled, the louder the girls laughed ; some shouted in his face, others in his ears ; one pinched him, a second pulled the tails into which his woolly hair is plaited ; a third smacked him behind ; a fourth twisted him round by the shoulders, while he was still handed round the ring like a planet revolving on its own axis, as it performs its revolution round the sun; or, to use a more homely simile, like a waltzer executing a solo round a ball room. Their mirth or their wrath in- creased with his distress, and they did not cease tormenting him until the breath seemed almost out of his body, and they had nearly made him as much a Martyr as a Saint. He JAMAICA. Ill would often have fallen to the earth, but that they kept him up by pushing him one to the other, as boys by blows keep tops spinning, which would otherwise lie motionless. It ended by the preacher sprawling at his length on the green grass, puffing and blowing like a stranded porpus, when they set him again on the stool, and the moment he offered to speak, one of the girls flung a calabash full of water in his face. Then they all danced round him, as the Caliph's beauties danced round the wondering Abon Hassan ; and, last of all, they shook hands with him and left him. The negro men affected to console him, and as he recovered his breath, I really think he would have resumed his sermon, but his audience wasted away rapidly, and he was left, as many a great orator has been served in England, in the honourable (or as he would himself pronounce it, the horrible) minority of one. Translation of the Creole Sermon at Herenhausen. " Brothers ! you think when you die, that you will be really dead. — No such thing — never see the day — at that time you only begin to live. You think that when death comes, trouble 112 JAMAICA, comes no more — Ha! man! stand a little bit. — • You will not be dead six minutes before the devil will catch you, put you in the bilboes, and set twenty thousand drivers on you. They have no cattle-whip, but they will poke you with fire stick till your teeth grind to the roots. Death will come no more. — ^You may be hungry till your entrails twist to pieces, they will give you no plantains — nothing but lead, and that only as hot as h — 11, — it will burn a hole in your belly. — Your tongue will roast with fever, — they will give you no water — there is not a drop there — only boil- ing brimstone, nothing else to drink, till the flames come through your nose. You think to run away! — you will never see the day — • your foot will roast in the red hot bilboes for twenty thousand years. The tear in your eye will boil like a pot, yet death will come no more — Sleep will come no more, never to cool your eyes. Brethren, I am sorry for you. The sinful souls go every one straight to hell — you are all sinful — ^you are born in sin. — You think that is not your fault? Pshaw! did not your father do it? Picanini (children) must pay their father's debts. You must have only one wife, or your children JAMAICA. 113 will be roasted. Brethren, I am sorry for you. Do you think for what G — d A\ — y gives you black girls — only for traps* to catch your sinful souls. The Bible says they are painted sepulchres — they cheat your eyes — they are all rotten." * The negroes have no idea of any traps but rat-traps 114 JAMAICA. CHAPTER XVIII . January 15. Befoee I left Mr. Mathew's Pen, he had proposed to me an expedition by water from Pedro, as far as Milk River, or Old Harbour, on my tour to Spanish Town, and had agreed to send his canoe to meet me there, or rather to come with it himself ; but he had been de- layed so long by the sea breezes, which blow always from the east, that I had imagined he repented of the proposal, and had left me to find my way by land, which I was preparing to do, when a black charg6 d'affaires arrived at Herenhausen with a summons for me to repair to the sea- side. I took leave of the kind Israelite, and of the amiable Miss Neville, at the place of embarkation, having sent my domestics with the horses and mules by land to wait for me at Milk River, and went on board the canoe at four o'clock in the ^ JAMAICA. 115 afternoon of the thirteenth with my radical friend, duly equipped for a marine excursion. The sea breeze still blew with violence, and we could make but little way against it, though we had six stout rowers ; but as the sun declined the wind gradually abated, and finally ceased altogether. The swell of the sea abated with it, and before night the ocean became almost as tranquil as the rosy sky above it, where a few flickering clouds of the brightest gold still journeyed onward toward the orb that yet illumined them, as he stooped beneath the wilderness of waters, drawing after him a radiant train of glorious and dazzling light, to be his ministry in the new world to which he was hastening. The canoe was provided with an awning to keep off the night dews, and with mattresses, cooking utensils, and plenty of provisions. As the wind abated, the spirits of our rowers increased, the little bark flew from their strokes, and seemed to bound over the yet lingering billows of the vexed Atlantic that flashed beneath its prow. Every wave we breasted sparkled in the contact, opened to us a furrow of fire as we traversed it, and re- tained a glittering track of light that marked lie JAMAICA. our course long after we had passed it. The evenmgs are really magnificent in the tro- pics, but, like many other beauties, they pass away so quickly, that one can scarce feel the pleasure of beholding them, before they have vanished from our sight. It seemed to me, as I watched the departure of the sun and the rapid decrease of the twi- light, that the stars, instead of making their debut, as in more northerly regions, gradually and in proportion to their magnitude, rushed as it were tn masse into the firmament, and filled the canopy of heaven with a profusion of orbs, which those northerly regions never behold. The land-wind soon began to roll down its perfumes from the hills, no less agreeable than its freshness ; our mariners were relieved from their oars, the sail was hoisted, and we scudded merrily over the yet heaving deep, and passed capes and pro- montories, from which we stood away, until we could at times but just distinguish the mur- muring of the surge on the distant shore, as it was echoed from the impending rocks above. Some of these rocks, several hundred feet high, are called the White Horses ; why, I know not, as the most fanciful imagination JAMAICA 117 could not (at least in their outline) trace any similitude to such animals. As the moon rose, the distant hills seemed to recede before us, in spite of our rapid progress toward them, a phenomenon from which Mr. Mathews and his crew augured an increase of wind from the north, which would be unfavourable to our progress, inasmuch as it would take the direction of the land and blow down from Portland Point, a-head of us, into the bay we were traversing. However, we kept on our course, enjoying the cool breeze and the fra- grance of the land, until we reached the bay at the foot of Plowden hill, called Calabash Bay, where we cast anchor ind went to sleep. The increased swell of the sea awaked me next morning at sunrise, and made me feel so squeamish, that I begged to go ashore on a projecting headland, which formed a lee, that we might breakfast more at our ease. The sea-side grape trees afforded us a shelter from the sun's rays : they were loaded with fruit, white and red, and of a very pleasant flavour. The wind continued to increase, and blew with so much violence, as to prevent the possibility of making way to windward, that # •>* 118 JAMAICA. is, toward Milk River; and Mr. Mathews proposed that we should walk as far as Long Bay, over a rocky part of the coast called the Devil's Race, while the negroes should take advantage of any lull in the wind, and at any rate could bring the canoe round by sunset. We set out with one attendant, all of us armed with machets or cutlasses, which we soon found of essential service to cut our passage through the withes that hasten to occupy neglected paths, and had here bound together the bushes in every direction. The regular footpath was soon lost, and we found ourselves, after much hacking and hewing, entangled amongst liens^ and encompassed with Turk's-heads, a formidable species of cactus, through which it would have been impossible to have proceeded a single foot without the use of our weapons. Mr. Ma- thews and myself were in some measure protected by our shoes, but Blacky's bare feet would have been martyred by the innu- merable thorns with which these plants are defended. To escape the fatigue of chop- ping away through this phalanx, as eternal as the sacred band of the Thebans, we endea- voured to regain the sea-side, where, indeed. JAMAICA. 119 we were relieved from these impediments, though only to encounter others of as serious a nature, for our course now lay over honey- comb rocks, where our progress was as much retarded as among the Turk's-heads, from the sharp points which hurt our feet, and by the fear of breaking our legs, to say nothing of falling down the precipices and breaking our necks : meanwhile, we could discern the canoe far before us, making tolerable way against wind and current, and had the com- fortable assurance of being utterly unable to rejoin it, except at the appointed rendezvous. Thus scrambling and floundering about, the whole day was consumed in this Devil's Race, as it is called, and the sun had set before we arrived at the beach of Long Bay, where the canoe already rode at anchor, outside of the breakers. As she could not pass through these without great danger of being overset, and as we thought there would be less sea and consequently less danger on the wind- ward side of the bay, we made signs to the negroes to row across it to the eastward, and attend us under the lee of the land. We con- tinued our walk, but the bay proved of greater extent than we had reckoned it, and the night 120 JAMAICA. closed in upon us when we had yet nine or ten miles to travel along a ridge of sand, with the sea on our right, and a morass on the left. This sandy ridge is intersected by five rivers, three of which we crossed without much difficulty, not being obliged to wade deeper than two or three feet ; but the re- maining two being too deep to be forded, we were under the necessity of swimming. The first of these was crossed with some difficulty, as we were obliged to carry over our clothes, tied into bundles, on our heads, and our machets in our mouths, wrapped in a hand- ful of grass : but a new and unexpected diffi- culty awaited us at the last, which is called Alligator River, from the monsters that in- habit it. As we sauntered along its banks, feeling for a place to launch ourselves (for it was too dark to see very distinctly, the sky being overcast), vvx heard the alligators, alarmed at our approach, plunging from the bank into the river; one, two, three, flounced into the waves before we adverted to the cause of this plunging. What was then to be done? Whither could we retreat, with four rivers in our rear, and the Devil's Race beyond them and all darkness ? The Devil's 4. '«#' 122 JAMAICA. of sand to traverse before we gained its base, and when we reached it, the path could not be found amid the luxuriant vegetation which had overgrown and effaced it. On the left of the hill was a morass, which Cudjoe re- commended us to try, as it would enable us to make a circuit to the point we desired to reach ; but here again we met with impassa- ble obstacles, and were totally frustrated in our attempt. The morass was full of man- grove trees, whose young branches take root whenever they touch the ground, and form a wilderness of traps, which may be avoided by day-light, but in the dark it is impossible to see or escape. The numberless little arches thus formed flung us down at every other step, sometimes knee-deep in mud, sometimes deeper ; and after we had almost exhausted our little remaining strength, we became convinced we had entirely lost our way, and knew not even how to regain the beach. The only favour with which Fortune indulged us was, that after struggling two hours in this villainous swamp, we suddenly emerged on the sea-shore when we least ex- pected it, begrimed with mud and reeking with perspiration. Another chance yet remained to us, which JAMAICA. 123 was, that having regained the sea, we should now keep it, and wade round the hill, whose perpendicular sides prevented us from climbing it : a little washing would cool and clean us, and though it was still cloudy, yet the moon afforded light enough to direct our way. Indeed, it soon enabled us to see the danger that awaited us here ; for we had not proceeded a hundred yards before we found the surf raging with such violence against the base of the mountain, that further pro- gress was impossible; we should have had our brains dashed out against the rocks, or have been swept away by the waves, that still retained the swell they had acquired from the north-wind, and mounted as they broke some feet above the fragments, that might have been practicable in a calm. We returned drenched, and somewhat bruised, and almost in despair. I sat down below the face of the precipice to repose, and finding that I reclined on some detached pieces which had fallen from above, I thought they might have left in their de- scent an opening or a fissure, up which it might be possible to climb; there were, in fact, several such fissures or furrows, caused 124 JAMAICA. apparently by the rains which occasionally trickled over the surface of the rock, though it was now dry, and after half an hour's respite, Cudjoe led the way by jamming his knees and elbows in a cleft to join the path- way, which, as he said, ought to be about twenty feet above us. He succeeded, and I followed him; but Mr. Mathews, thinking he could attain the same point more easily, had climbed a fallen tree which leaned against the precipice, that he might thence work his way to the summit we had gained. In doing this, he got to a spot whence he could neither proceed nor retreat, and remained clinging to the side of the mountain like a bat extended against a wall. His situation was very awk- ward and perilous. I feared lest he should lose his grasp and fall backwards down the precipice ; but Cudjoe slid down the fissure by which we had ascended, and contrived to jam a broken oar he had picked up on the beach into a hole underneath his master, on which he mounted, and enabled him to descend by resting his feet on the negro's head, who thus lowered himself gradually to his old station, and placed his master at least in safety and himself also. The pre- JAMAICA, 125 cipice was still to be climbed by my friend, and a very arduous task it proved to be to him and poor Cudjoe; though, when once re- mounted, he soon found the important path, along which we travelled with recruited spirits and renovated hope. The maze was yet very difficult to thread, and we only made sure of our route by the sensibility of Cud- joe's naked feet, an advantage we lost by wearing shoes. He was never long at a stand still, and conducted us at last to an open space where there were three negro houses, at one of which we bought a yam, and borrowed a pot to boil it for our dinner and supper, having eaten nothing since seven o'clock in the morning. Mr. Mathews fell asleep while the food was preparing, in spite of a few thousand musquitos, to whose hun- gry attacks he was quite indifferent, as they could now only make war on his bronzed face. They settled by dozens on his lips (as the bees are said to have done on Plato's) not to collect honey I should fear. Cudjoe snored by his master's side (sleep, like death, makes all persons equal, and levels all dis- tinctions) while I sat by the fire, dried my ragged clothes, and brushed the musquitos, 126 JAMAICA. sometimes from my own face, sometimes from my friend's. The night was far spent, and day-light found us as I have described, except that 1 was detected in the act of sketching m.y companion and his valet in this paradise of caricature. Mr. Mathews jumped up and hastened to the sea- side, where we descried the canoe at anchor about sixty yards beyond the breakers, which prevented her nearer approach, and put us to the ne- cessity of tying the bundles once more under our chins, as a preparative to our morning bath. We reached the canoe, wrapped our- selves up in blankets, and fell into a sweet refreshing sleep for a couple of hours, when we dressed and breakfasted ; and then steered for the mouth of Milk River and the caravan- sera on its banks. JAMAICA 127 CHAPTER XIX. ^ January 21. Before the evening of the day on which we arrived at this place (Milk River), I felt my knees ache, and then all my bones; and, yawning and shivering, I prepared for a fit of fever. My friend had calculated rightly, that my constitution, as yet unfit to endure exposure in the tropics, would shrink from such a series of hardships as we had been obliged to undergo in our perilous walk through bogs and swamps. Yet he had meant to relieve me from the fatigue of riding so long a journey; and, but for the foul wind, the marine excursion would have been highly agreeable: however, henceforth, let me fol- low Cato's advice, and stick to terra jirma; though, had we stuck to the ocean, we had done well: our own inconstancy was our bane. 128 JAMAICA. In spite of every precaution, I had a very- violent fever for five days, and am yet unfit to travel. My comrade, however, thinking me now safe and convalescent, has gone on to Kingston with his canoe, intending to meet me at Spanish Town, and he has left me in the care of a pretty girl! Start not, kind, scrupulous reader, my nurse is the beautiful Diana, sixteen years of age — youth, beauty, and all the et caeteras ! and I am (if you wish to know my age) just twenty years older than she is ; so that I have neither youth nor beauty, nor any of the et caeteras that can engage the attention of so young a damsel. To what then do I attribute the services she has rendered me? Patience! and read. Diana is the daughter of a wealthy planter, who resides now near Port Antonio, in this island, to which place he emigrated from the more civilized plains of Westmoreland, at the invitation of Fortune, who was obliging enough to offer him a wife with an estate at her back. This gentleman, not deviating from the practice of his ancestry, became the father of Diana when he was a poor bach- elor at : Her mother was a slave, and the child of course the property of that JAMAICA 129 slave's master, who had brought her up with as much care as is usually bestowed in Ja- maica on such illegitimate children as are treated with the greatest tenderness. She had learned to read and write, to play a little on the piano-forte, and she could speak a few words of French. The Creole women excel in needle-work, and Diana could even em- broider. Till fourteen years of age she had lived in the family of Mr. S — — , where I first saw her, unnoticed by her father, who was too circumspect in his attentions to his wife to bring this spurious infant under his roof, where she might have been a source of dis- comfort; but, at the age of fourteen years, she was invited to pay him a visit in con- sequence of his wife's death ; for the father, desirous of acknowledging, emancipating and providing for his child, had paid Mr. S the price of her freedom, and had sent for her to come and sojourn with him in his widowhood. Diana has in fact spent the last two years with her father, who is so fond of her, that he now wishes she should go to school in England for further education, and as a preparatory measure, to please his young fa- vorite, has offered to purchase the freedom K 130 JAMAICA. of her mother; but to this plan Mr. S is unwilling to accede, and the mother herself declines it. She says, that she has been happy all her life with her present master, and that she wishes for no change ; that he is a good man, and though Diana's father may also be a good man, she has no friend, con- nexions, or even acquaintance in Portland, and she never could be happy there. Mr. S objects to making her free, on a princi- ple of humanity : she was born on the estate, and he regards her as one of his family. She suffers no restraint, is mistress of all her actions, and is sure to be provided for in her old age; nevertheless, he offers to make her free, if she desires it. When I saw Diana, she had returned from Portland to visit her mo- ther, who was not anxious that her daughter should go to England at her time of life : had she been only six instead of sixteen, the poor woman would have been contented to part with her, **but for a woman to turn child again," as she expressed herself, " it was impossible." The plan appears to be given up, and Diana, having passed two or three months with one parent, is on her road back to the other. She is attended by a JAMAICA. 131 black boy and an old woman belonging to her father, and rides as gay a palfrey as any lady of romance. But how came she to be my nurse ? For this I am indebted solely to her kind heart. She has owned to me, that hearing of my sickness from some one of Ebenezer's acquaintance, she had come back from Spanish Town, two days journey, *' be- cause she knew I was a stranger, and that I had nobody to take care of me, and she thought that she might help to make me well and keep up my spirits ;" in which last respect she cannot, she could not fail ; and I am, I believe, in a fair way of recovery. This affair really has so much of romance about it, that I can sometimes hardly con- vince myself of its reality. Such a pilgrim- age on the part of a young maiden, to re- lieve a invalid gentleman of thirty-six, would be treated as madness, or extreme impropriety, among the most Christian circles in London or Edinburgh, and yet it is strictly Christian; nay, when I see this amiable creature en- deavouring to anticipate my least wishes, and devoting herself so gratuitously to my service, I can only look on her as an angel from heaven ; and as such, in many a moment of 132 JAMAICA feverish gratitude, I really believe I could worship her, if I thought my adoration would convey any gratification to her innocent mind. But this I dare say is all vanity, and Diana, I am sure, would have been no less kind to me if I had been sixty-three, instead of thirty- six years old. I have had many opportunities of inquiring into the state of her religious impressions, and, from her answers, I sus- pect her father is one of those called Uni- tarians, or Anti -Trinitarians. She says, he has taught her to believe in one God only, (not in three) to thank that God for the bless- ings she enjoys, and to do good to every body. The sermons of Mr. , she says, are all about faith and salvation, and being damned if she does not believe that the devil has more power over her than God Almighty — or if she expects to go to heaven for doing good. He tells her that it is wrong to do good from the impulses of her heart (I sup- pose he meant, wrong to piide herself on do- ing good), that her heart is all deceit, and all she says, thinks, or does, must be done en- tirely for the love of Christ, without any re- gard to the approbation of her poor heart; and he will not let her reason or argue about JAMAICA. 133 this faith, but tells her, if she doubts, she is damned. All this, she says, has vexed her much, and troubled her mind often ; for Mr. S , in former times, was like other people, and never talked about the devil, except when he was in a passion. However, she says she means to be guided by her father, and do all he desires ; although, when she told this her determination to Mr. S , he assured her, if she persisted in it, she would be damned to all eternity, without hope of redemption. So much for Diana's notions. I have done with the subject, I hope for ever, as far as concerns her. m 134 JAMAICA. CHAPTER XX. January 26 — Monday. This is a superb country for physicians; a customary fee is a doubloon (5/. 6s. 8d. cur- rency), and the inhabitants are all sick in their turn, for there are very few who escape a seasoning; and a great proportion die, or, to use the metaphor of my ^sculapius, " go the grand tour." A physician is certainly interested in saving your life, for there is no trifling here : Nature hurries to a crisis, and many a patient is in a state of dissolution before death. Yet there are many salubrious districts in the island, where the air is cool and dry, at certain elevations above the sea ; but the auri sacra fames keeps the chief part of the population in the swamps or savannahs, close to a barguadier, whence they can ship all that the earth yields them here to gratify the luxurious of the old world. Sugar, in- JAMAICA. 135 deed, has become now almost an article of food, and even if the supply were to fail in the colonies, I imagine the East Indies, after the lapse of a few years, and the outlay of a large capital for works and machinery, could furnish what is requisite, at some price or other: it would, undoubtedly, take some time to extend the culture of the cane suf- ficiently, to furnish an export equal to that from the West Indies, nor could it be possible to attain the object, if the present system of manufacturing the sugar in Bengal should be continued with machinery and utensils of the rudest and most barbarous description. But the sugar that comes from the East In- dies is of a very inferior description : some of it is of a very good colour, and pleasing to the eye, but very weak; and, perhaps, one pound of good Jamaica sugar will go as far as one pound and a half of East India. Many kind-hearted old women in England sweeten their puddings and tea with East India sugar, at any price, in preference to West India, thinking that the former is pro- duced entirely by the labour of freemen: this delusion, and a greater one never existed, has been very widely diffused by the dis- 136 JAMAICA. ingenuous statements of an ambitious faction, aided by a few mistaken zealots. For, from the concurrent testimony of Dow, Buchanan, Mill, and other eminent writers, the tillers of the ground, and indeed the great majority of the labouring classes in Hindostan, are kept not only in a state of slavery, but in slavery of the most abject, the most appalling nature, infinitely worse than the state of our West India slaves. But the cultivation of sugar seems to be the most unhealthy of all the agricultural pursuits in Jamaica, being confined in a great measure to the worst climate. If there were towns in the interior, at an elevation of two to three thousand feet, with some of the elegancies of life to improve so- ciety, and render it agreeable to persons of taste and literature, Jamaica might really be a paradise, and Europeans would have no- thing more to apprehend from sickness than in their native countries, perhaps not so much. As it is, the case is very different, and most of the planters consider the country which gives them, or rather gave them (for they get but little now) their comforts and their con- sequence in Great Britain, as a sort of infernal JAMAICA. 137 region, a purgatory, through which they must occasionally toil to enjoy the Elysian fields of Scotland or Mary-le-bone. Mr. Mathews, who looks with perfect confidence to the separation of the colonies, proposes, and means to propose to the House of Assem- bly, that a high road shall be constructed through the centre of the island, from east to west, and a second through the mountains, from north to south. He is for having a town in the Santa Cruz mountains, and canals, in all directions, through the interior. Seven hundred and fifty men, stationed half a mile from each other, would enable the inhabitants to keep up a most rapid communication in the event of insurrection. The disappearance of a sentry would be a signal of alarm. To these he will add telegraphs. He diverted me much with his tirades on all these subjects, while we were in the canoe, and he was even arguing about the seven hundred and fifty sentries, when we were crossing the rivers, and floundering in the swamps. Alas! my heart beat for this second Alfred, when he clung like a bat to the face of the rock, and dismounted on the thick skull of poor Cudjoe. A false step would have been fatal to the 138 JAMAICA. guardian genius of the island, and conse- quently to the island itself; but fate pre- served him, no doubt, for most important purposes. My doctor, who is a Creole, re- gularly educated in England, is almost as much an enthusiast as Mr. Mathews, but he does not look to independence : his views are terminated by sending members to the con- gress of the United States. "Fifteen sail of the line, sir," he says, *' fifteen line of battle ships have the Americans built. — ^Your holy men mean to emancipate the negroes — but shall not the negroes emancipate the whites ? Are these to be the slaves of Great Britain ? No, sir : if the matter rested with me, I would say to the negroes, * Be free, but you must have laws of some sort. Do not make such a bungling job as your friends in St. Do- mingo. There is land enough for us all — take what you want — we shall be relieved from all debts — you from the consequences of them ; we all work now for the merchants, the aristocrats, for the taxes, and for the fundholders of England; for the Jew stock- jobbers, and for all their pensioners. But you shall make us free, and do away all supremacy ; we shall want neither governors JAMAICA. nor excisemen from England; we shall have a free trade with all the world. If the Ensf- lish invade us, we will invite them to settle among us : if they will not, thank God there is yet in the country rum enough to cure us of invaders. The emancipation pays off all mortgages in the same way as the national debt will eventually be disposed of ; for what is the land without labourers? and I think, my friends, we have made sugar enough for John Bull. You may still accept the bishops, if you like, whom the wise men of the East intend for us : they are to be provided for by the religious and charitable, and of course will cost us nothing, and they will have no- thing to do with our constitution.' " ** Doctor, doctor! this," cried I, *'is all treason and rebellion — cure your patient, and leave the parent country to take care of her child." But the tight little doctor began to dispute about administration, and Quakers to boot. He would not stop his tongue, so I stopped my ears, and fell asleep over the murmur of his anathemas. 140 JAMAICA. CHAPTER XXL Writing fatigues me to death, and I can- not read for more than half an hour together without being exhausted. I have tried the conversation of Ebenezer by w^ay of a diverti- mento. The very idea filled him with so much consequence, and he looked so horridly puritanical, as he began to moralize, that, not to hurt his feelings, I was obliged to invite him to delay. Diana repeats tales like ano- ther Scheherazade, only that (as she main- tains) they arc all true, genuine creolian anecdotes. Here follows one that would serve for the two Percies, with the word '* Su- perstition" to characterize the volume they would dignify. The doctor has transcribed it from the dictation of the Quadroon damsel. JAMAICA. 141 "Cato and Plato. ** Cato was a runaway from the estate of Mr. Brissett, in Hanover, whence he had ab- sented himself for several years beyond the time allowed by law, and had become liable to the penalty of transportation : in addition to this delinquency, he had rendered himself the terror of the country he frequented, by robberies, either secret and desperate, or as violent as daring. Moreover, the negroes imagined he possessed some magic superiority by means of obeah, which protected him from wounds, and so prepared him against surprise, that he could never be taken prisoner, except, indeed, it were by a white man. " This circumstance, in which he believed most religiously himself, operated with his talents and his courage to form his safeguard for a number of years, during which his suc- cess had rendered him so obnoxious, that it was at length found indispensable to rid the country of his exactions and outrages, by some more efficient exertions for his capture than any hitherto employed. *' To seize him by numbers was impossible, on account of the intelligence he was clever enough to obtain from his friends on various 142 JAMAICA. estates ; some few governed by affection for him, the rest by fear of his obeah, or of his vengeance ; and no one for a while could be found hardy enough to attack him singly. The white people disdained to undertake the adventure. ** At length a negro man, a slave, seduced with a promise of liberty, was found willing to make the attempt. His name was Plato. He possessed great strength and courage, and was intimately acquainted with the haunts of the outlaw ; circumstances much in his favour, had they not been neutralized in a manner by the apprehension of his obeah ; to overcome which it was necessary to find some counter charm, or an equivalent obeah. This the ingenuity of his white master easily communi- cated to him by Christian baptism. ** Fortified thus with the hope of freedom and the encouragement of his master, Plato at length sallied forth by moonlight to encounter his enemy, whom he expected to find in his recesses on that account, as wicked deeds shun the light. In spite of his better reason, his apprehensions were sometimes near gain- ing the mastery of his resolution, and as he walked in silence through the woods, casting JAMAICA. 143 a fearful glance at every opening among the trees, and gazing with a fancy of awe, if not of horror, down the deep dingles whose ridges he traversed, he could not repress a sort of foreboding, that, hurled into one of these abysses, he might perhaps pay with his life for his rashness, and become food for the vul- tures before noon. Nay, he thought some- times, that the gift of freedom might become neither more nor less than the sleep of death ; and as he imaged to himself the man he had to contend with, he recalled to mind the days of his youth, when he had formerly measured his strength with the stripling now grown into the bold and powerful ruffian. Full of these reflections, uninterrupted except by the croak- ing of toads, he approached, with stealthy pace, the cave wherein he knew that Cato frequently reposed. The mouth of it was in a great measure concealed by bushes, through which the dull red gleam of some dying em- bers betrayed that the object of his pursuit had been lately its tenant, if he were not now within. He pushed the bushes gently aside, and looking through the gloom as far as his vision could penetrate, called, in a voice of mingled doubt and authority, whose tone was yet softened by the recollection of ancient 144 JAMAICA, friendship — 'Cato!' — The sound had scarce escaped his lips before a voice replied, ' Who asks for Cato?' and at the instant a figure started up from the ground behind the em- bers, which shed their sombre glow on his Herculean frame, and gave him the air and colour of a demon ascending from the fiery gulph. — 'Cato!' said the other, *I come to take you.' **Cato. Are you many? Do you come to catch me in my cave, to take me sleeping, or do you give me loyal battle in the open space ? ** Plato. I come as one to one. Come forth and try your strength. "Cato. Do you swear by your mother that you have no help at hand ? "Plato. Curse on my mother and on me, if I do not tell you true. *' Cato. Plato, I come — where death threat- ens, you dare not lie. "With these words the robber came forth, pushing aside the bushes, as the other retired a little to give him free egress. The moon was at the full, and shed such a flood of light, that day could have added little advantage to it for their purpose ; but before they proceeded to action, Cato, holding up the amulet sus- JAMAICA. 145 pended from his neck (a bag containing among other things bones, teeth, and hair) cried aloud, ' While I wear this, Plato, no one can take me.' 'And I,' returned the other, 'have also an ahpetti, a charm, a better charm — I wear the white man's spell.' *' Plato had unsheathed his cutlass as he approached the cave, and his antagonist, brandishing his naked weapon, put himself in a posture of defence, as he defied (at least in words) the white man's charm. They fought for some time with more caution than fury, the robber intent on disabling his adversary, rather than on his death ; while Plato, fearful of losing any advantage from such a circum- stance, sought only an occasion to inflict one blow, being determined that that one should be decisive. As they fought with matchets, or cutlasses, whose point a negro seldom thinks of employing, their attack and defence formed an interchange of cuts, rather than thrusts, easier to parry and not so fatal in their consequence. Nevertheless, they had not long maintained the contest, before Plato was roused into greater passion by a blow he received on his left side, which clattered on his ribs, and had almost struck him off his 146 JAMAICA balance. He repaid it however on the head of the robber, where, indeed, his efforts were mostly directed, and the pain of the wound, with the stream of blood flowing down his face, together with the maddening apprehen- sion of his being mortally wounded, rendered him furious as the lion of his native soil. He rushed headlong on his opponent, and rained down on him such a shower of blows, without care or discrimination, that his strength be- came exhausted before one of the many wounds he inflicted seemed to make any im- pression on him who wore the white man's spell, //e was indeed roused into the extacy of rage and madness by the manner in which he was handled, yet, confident still in his charm, he watched an opportunity for the death blow with a patience and perseverance at last fatal to his antagonist. Cato, ex- hausted and out of breath, dabbled in blood, and foaming with indignation and revenge, having failed in an effort to close, hacking at random, and staggering on the rock made slippery with his blood, received on his neck a blow designed for his decapitation, which cut in two the thong by which his amulet was suspended, and brought him to the JAMAICA. 147 ground. Still he was not dead. The con- queror, almost as exhausted, threw himself on the bleeding carcass, and had just time to bind the hands of the ruffian behind him with the severed thong of his ahpetti, before he himself fainted from loss of blood, and lay inanimate by his side. It was some time be- fore he recovered from his trance, and the sun had illumined the mountains, and cast the long shadow of the cotton tree over the plains beneath them, before he had regained suffi- cient strength to raise himself from the earth- Still, finding himself too weak to change his resting-place, he leaned against a frag- ment of rock for support, and taking his conch- shell from the cutacoo which lay beside him, blew a faint yet sufficiently audible note, which announced to his friends below the victory he had gained. The sound re-echoed among the rocks and gullies, and soon brought to his assistance some persons of his own family, among them his son and brother, pre- ceded by his dog, the faithful associate of his hunting expeditions. These quickly bound up his wounds, as well as those of Cato, who still lived, and assisted both down to the nearest habitation, where the one was received 148 JAMAICA. with shouts and acclamations, and the other confined in the hospital preparatory to his trial. "This took place a few days afterwards. Cato was condemned to death, and prepara- tion made for putting the sentence immediately into execution. He was carried in a cart to the scaffold, and assisted to mount it ; from whence, looking round with an undaunted countenance, and espying Plato in the crowd, he begged to be permitted to speak to him. This permission being granted, and Plato drawing near to the gallows, the victim thus addressed his conqueror : — ' By my death, Plato, you have gained your freedom : a little while you shall enjoy it. Before the moon which shone on our matchets in that night of our battle shall rise again as big as it then was, and hide the stars, we shall meet where the v/hite man's ahpetti shall be no more worth than mine ; and where the Great Mas- ter shall say who is the better man. Remem- ber!' — So Cato died. "The moon waned and grew again, and as the day approached for the completion of Ca- to's prophecy, so Plato's spirits and confidence declined. Perhaps the prediction itself had JAMAICA. 149 inspired that terror which often seems to be its own agent on similar occasions ; per- haps it was partly owing to the regrets of former intimacy and friendship ; possibly to his wounds ; but Plato felt that he was dying, and said from time to time that he saw Cato beckoning him to follow him he knew not where. He sat upright in his hut on his trash mattrass on the night of the full moon, and watched its rising above the mountains, until its rays streamed through the lattice of his casement. His mind as well as his body were convulsed at the sight; — he fancied himself again struggling with Cato, fighting, bleeding, fainting ; his imagination hurried him to the place of execution ; he heard again the awful prediction, the last word of his victim ; he shrieked in a transport of horror, * Cato, I remember !' — and expired." [:^4i 150 JAMAICA. CHAPTER XXII. Milk River is so called from the colour of its water, which assumes a whitish hue during the floods, from passing through a stra- tum of marl. A salt spring flows into it from the foot of a mountain, which is warm and recommended for rheumatism and cholic. There were three or four invalids here, with whom I became acquainted through the means of my little doctor ; — one of them, a rheumatic Jew named Peter Nunnez, shewed me great attention, either from a natural good disposi- tion, or because I had been the guest of his friend Mr. Klopstock. The second was a Spanish catholic, Guzman Henriquez ; and among the rest was a Moravian missionary, rather a strait-laced gentleman, who resided in the same house with me. I know not if I should have been acquainted with him but for JAM^VICA. 151 his taking a fancy to the soul of the pretty Diana, whom he addressed on religious sub- jects more than once, almost at last to perse- cution ; so that she invited him into my apart- ment, that he might plead his cause at least before a witness. He was first presented to me as I lay on my bed in a very enfeebled state, and offered me any consolation in his power, physical or spiritual. He would fain have prepared me for another world, and I begged him to proceed and say anything that he pleased, or that he thought would please me or my pretty nurse, Diana, who had (I told him) the most Christian heart I had met within Jamaica. He waved a sort of assent, and blushed a little I thought, and, seating himself, began to con- verse about heaven and immortality with great feeling and considerable fervour. It was ra- ther a damper when I told him at every pause, *' that he was right, — that I had long thought so, — that nothing could be more reasonable, — or that I was of his opinion." There was nothing to argue about on religious affairs, and he never mentioned a syllable about hell, which, to do him justice, was very polite to a person under my circumstances, just out of a red hot fever. He was a tall handsome Ger- 152 JAMAICA. man, named ReiterliofFer, and spoke English delightfully. The Jew and the Catholic both fell in love with Diana, and made her very liberal offers of protection ; but she assured them she was as rich as she desired to be, and declined their generous courtesy. I should not mention such particulars, but that they help to shew the state of society in Jamaica, where morality is rather relaxed, though, as the Doctor says, " not so much as in England and France." *' Not so much," says he, "for nothing in genteel life here can compare with the eternal crim. cons., suits for seduction, breaches of marriage or promise of marriage, that every newspaper presents in England ; — nor are there houses of ill fame, as there are there, by dozens, aye hundreds, in London and every considerable town. Walk through Bond street after dark, the Strand, — visit the theatres, — -learn the miisteries of the Opera House and the conventicles; — what scenes of depravity and misery ! Yet theseare Chris- tians ! educated Christians ! persons, as Lord Foppington says, * of a nice morality, — stap my vitals !' Certes, there is nothing like all this in Jamaica, any more than in Turkey, — yet we have no bishops. As for the morality JAMAICA. 153 of Paris, it is much like that of London, with less hypocrisy among certain ranks, and there the police keeps order." If our catholic Henriquez gets into an ar- gument, he is the least tolerant of the party, though he never seeks an occasion for dispu- tation. When the Moravian asked him this morning to give him a sincere answer to this question — " Do you think us all damned, for we all differ from you in our faith ?" he replied by telling Mr. Reiterhoffer that it was a fool- ish question ; but the Moravian persisting, he waxed warm, and said that " such an end was inevitable." The missionary looked blank, and the Jew burst into a fit of laughter ; after which he went to billiards with the catholic in perfect charity, and won two doubloons of him. The Moravian is more liberal ; he al- lows all Christians a share of immortal hap- piness, though I know not how he feels with respect to the Israelite. I sat in the piazza towards evening, watch- ing the white sails of a felucca, that now glowed in the rays of the setting sun, now glanced into the long shadows cast from the clouds that hovered on the horizon ; I saw her mount sometimes on the wandering billows. IS4 JAMAIC. then stoop into the hollows of the waves, to mount again, like the fortune of man, — the poor perishable creature that smiles and weeps, exults in prosperity and rises out of misfortune to plunge again into troubles, crimes, and follies. How gallantly, thought I, she bears her course — but there was no danger — still one cannot look unmoved on the efforts of a little bark like this, which seems at the mercy of the waves and yet rides in triumph over their treacherous surface — nay, makes those very waves her road to wealth if not to honour ; and as for treachery, what have the elements to answer for, compared with the two-legged beings that navigate that bark ? How easily the mind is misled by accident, persuasion, enthusiasm ; by any little occurrence, or any combination of circumstances that awaken the feelings to some unhacknied sensation ! into the piazza. "A pirate!" exclaimed the Jew : — the chess-board was renounced for the spy-glass. The Spaniard flew to the sea- shore. **She is standing to intercept that merchant- ship as she goes to the westward : and see ! she is firing musquetry, but not at JAMAICA. 155 the merchant-vessel ; — no — she fires into the sea. I think I can discern a man's head in the water ; he is swimming towards the beach, and they are humanely trying to sink him. Shot after shot ; — they cannot hit him — clum- sy, merciless rascals ! he must soon be out of reach, for the felucca keeps on her course, and the man nears the land." — Nunnez still looked through the glass as he uttered this monologue. '" Spanish, or perhaps English pirates — thorough-bred Christians no doubt : — the fellow must have jumped overboard, taking advantage of the chase — some poor mortal who had no stomach for being shot or hanged, but he'll be drowned ; — no — he is safe ; there are three negroes swimming through the surf to his assistance — they have him in the nick of time, and here they come ashore with him." The felucca gave the rene- gado and three negroes a farewell volley with- out any effect, for she was out of musquet shot, steering for the merchant-vessel, who, discovering her enemy, had hauled her wind and stood to south-east ; the wind then blowing fresh from the east. Whether she was cap- tured or not, we have not heard. 156 JAMAICA. In a quarter of an hour, Mr. Henriquez (Don Guzman) came up to the house with the poor mortal who had escaped from the pirate. He proved to be an Irishman, about thirty-six years of age, and, as the Jew con- jectured, had jumped overboard to escape from a situation, which, he said, was worse than death. He hoped to have slipped off unobserved in the confusion of the pursuit, but his lynx-eyed Captain missed him in a few minutes, though not soon enough to make sure of him. He had been but two days on board of the felucca, which took him on Mo- rant Keys, out of an open boat in which he with three others had made his escape from an American schooner which foundered at sea. He did not know the name of the pirate or its master ; but he said they were short of hands on board, and had stationed him at a gun, v.^ith an intimation that he must kill or be killed. But Pat had no stomach for fight- ing in such a cause, where a halter might end his career in case of defeat ; and thinking he could reach the land by swimming, he seized the first opportunity to go overboard. He said there were men of all countries in the JAMAICA. 157 vessel, black, brown, and white, — but such a set of villains ! — There was a priest too, who wanted to confess him, but he could not speak a word of " Scotch. '' — Poor Pat had a doleful tale to tell. We gave him dry clothes and a good meal, and sent him to bed. 158 JAMAICA. CHAPTER XXIII . " Edmund Currie is my name (said the Hibernian, on being interrogated this morning) I belong to Ballycastle, in the north of Ire- land, though I was born in St. Giles's parish in London. Thus I am a true-born Briton, a free-born Briton ; not but what the Irish are as true-born Britons as the Scotch, and as- free, — as free as fish in the sea, till the net comes for them. — It is thirteen years ago since I was persuaded by my brother to try my fortune in America. Three or four friends consented to accompany us, and there were between seventy and eighty strangers from vari- ous parts of the north of Ireland, who embarked in the same ship. We sailed from Derry, but had hardly reached the mouth of Loch Foyle before we were all pressed by Lieut. M n, who had us dragged on board his brig, and JAMAICA. 159 carried into Greenock, from whence we were shipped again to Plymouth, and confined on board the St. Salvador. I know this is the common fate of sea-faring men (free-born Britons) who are bound in honour to fight for their King and country ; — but what has a landsman to do in a man-of-war ? I was al- ways sick till we were in harbour, and I can truly say I detested the sea as much as any one of these black rascals would hate to be kidnapped from his own fire side in Africa and brought here against his free will. I was very cruelly used on b^ard the prison-ship, and many tricks were practised on me, as well as on all of us, to ensnare us into the service, — that is, to get us to take the bounty, or to list into the army. I was particularly told that certain proofs were forthcoming of my being a deserter, and I was threatened with the severest punishment if I would not save my- self by entering his Majesty's service." Here the doctor desired Ebenezer, who was listening at the door, to ask Mr. Currie what he meant by the severest punishment. ''What you mean by de 'verest punishment — hey! d'ye heary?" *' I mean," replied the Irishman, *' that if they could have made me out to be a deserter, they 160 JAMAICA. would have given me eight hundred or a thousand lashes with a cat-o'-nine-tails on my bare back and shoulders." Ebenezer instinct- ively put his hand behind him, as he muttered ** Eight hunder tousand lashes wid the nine cat's-tails! — Massa! me toughtyou Moses' law- no gib more nor tirty nine?" — " Listen !" said the doctor, "we will talk of that by-and-bye." "At the intercession of my friends," continued the sailor, " who got wind of my situation, God bless them ! and finding me obstinate, it was thought reasonable that I should be set free : they shipped me for Dublin in an old tub of a fishing boat, with between thirty and forty more of my companions, all of us landsmen, and flung us a-shore without a farthing of money to find our way home. I had one hundred and fifty miles to travel, without a hat to my head or a shoe to my feet, and was obliged to beg for v/crk, to earn a shilling to bring me back to Ballycastle. What became of my partners in misfortune I know not, nor of those who were still detained in the Salva- dor ; with the exception of two who worked their way with me from Dublin, I have never heard a syllable of any one of them ; no, not even of my own brother, who was pressed JAMAICA. 161 with me. On my return I applied to several gentlemen in the north of Ireland to get him liberated, but they never succeeded, or per- haps he chose to remain where I left him. I remained but a few months at home before another opportunity offered of going to Bal- timore, whither I thought, perhaps, my bro- ther had found his way. I was resolved to go there at all risks, and if I could endure the sea, to enter the American navy even, if they would take me, rather than remain in Ireland, or be at the mercy of the proud fellows who pressed my countrymen as if they were wild horses ; and he that caught them was to have the riding of them for his pains. Gentle- men, I am a free-born Briton, and I did not understand being carried any where against my will, and then shot ashore like Connaught cows out of a cattle ship in Port Patrick. I embarked again with a smooth-faced fellow of a captain, one Wallace, a Scotchman, who had me indented to him for seven years, and carried me safe enough to Baltimore, where he sold my indentures to a merchant, who loaded me with a pack, and marched me up the country, a thousand miles for anything I know. As I had never bargained for this sort M im JAMAICA. of life, which I abhorred, for it was downright slavery, I was determined to bolt on the first opportunity, which was not long wanting; and though 1 was yet but a sorry seaman, I was prevailed on to go aboard an Ame- rican trader, bound for Rio Janeiro: out of this ship I had the ill-luck to be pressed by an English lieutenant, who boarded us within a day's sail of the Brazilian coast, and put me into an English man-of-war that was going to the East Indies. It was to no pur- pose I called myself an American; my lingo betrayed that I was yet but newly from Ireland; and I was told to thank my stars that I had not been found in a fighting ship, or I should have been hung up at the yard arm — that I was a British subject. I said, I was so — I was a free-born Briton ; but they silenced my arguments with a rope's end ; and , to make the best of a bad bargain, I resigned myself to my fate, and did my duty with as much cheerfulness as I could assume. " For seven years was I detained in the East Indies in different ships, for I could never so far command myself as to stifle every murmur at my hard lot, and I made no friends among my masters. As often as JAMAICA. 163 my ship was ordered home, myself and a few more grumblers were shifted to another, thumped and knocked about and flogged. I have more marks on my back than England has ships in her navy." — *' D'ye hear that. Sneezer ?" cried the Doctor, interrupting the sailor, — ** d'ye hear, Abdallah? Flogged! Tell us, Currie, were there not many others flogged also?" — *' Aye, aye," replied he, '*some captains were always flogging, but what of that ? Do not they flog soldiers as well as sailors? Why, we were told in America but a few days ago, that a soldier was flogged to death in London for stealing a silver spoon ; and I have seen many a sea captain stand by a poor devil when the blood was streaming down his back, and tell his deputy to hit harder: once I heard a captain tell the ex- ecutmier, for he was almost so, to cut the heart out of the man he was flaying. Be- sides, in England and Ireland they whip the apprentices, though now I hear they are made to dance on the tread-mill with rogues and vagabonds and women of the town — men and women altogether : and used they not to flog the volunteers? no, I mean the Localshire Militia ? Was not Cobbett, the news-writer. mi JAMAICA. put in Newgate for saying it was a shame to bring over foreigners from Hanover, or some outlandish place, to flog true-born, free-born Britons?" — "Well but, Currie," said Nun- nez, in his turn, "what were you flogged for?" " Sometimes for trying to get away, some- times for being sulky; often for no reason, that I could find out, except that the captain had his flogging tacks aboard. Once or twice, because I would not sing psalms. I am a Catholic, and do not choose to pray with people who are of a different religion. I am a free-born Briton : I would not sing psalms to please any devil's son of the whole race of tyrants, against my conscience. Well, gen- tlemen, to continue my story, I reckon that I spent the spring of my life, my best years, in that infernal servitude, for I can call it nothing else. It is no use to tell me, or any poor creature that has brains, that the Eng- lish navy must have men — what is the Eng- lish navy to me ? I could not get my living in my own country — I was poor, hungry, half-starved, and miserable, — what had I to fight for? Besides, I never liked fighting, though an Irishman. If I fought, it was against people I never saw before, who had JAMAICA. 165 never hurt me, and among whom I could have got my living better than in my own country. However, to come to the end of my story, I was brought home at last, and was paid off at Chatham, and sent to the right about, with ten pounds in my pocket. It was all peace in England then, and great ruin and distress among the ship-owners and others ; I tried for a month to get a birth, without success : I would almost have volunteered on board a man-of-war again, rather than rot ashore ; but I had conceived a horror of the navy; and indeed there was no demand for men, and no employment among the mer- chants. The Yankees would not believe I was an American, — ^no more I was; though I often would have wished to be so, if I had not been a free-born Briton. At last, my money being all gone, I went with others to the Lord Mayor of London, who ordered me to the parish of St. Giles, where I could not prove my birth nor baptism, or the overseers would not let me. They offered me sixpence not to trouble them. I was starving — I might have made something by house-breaking, which some, I knew, took to, but I was above that. At last, the parish officers sent me 166 JAMAICA. among a ship load of my countrymen to the south of Ireland) where I received a few shillings to pass myself to Ballycastle. '* Here I found that my mother was dead, and that my brother had never been heard of for certain, although it was suspected he was in America. The only friend I had alive was my mother's eldest brother, who lived near Galway : to him I went, hoping, through his means, to get a birth aboard some ship, or to find a passage again to America. " Never can I forget the misery I found on my arrival at Galway. My uncle, who had rented a bit of ground of a gentleman there, had been ruined by the times and bad crops ; he was at the point of death, and hardly knew me: I had no need to ask his com- plaint, I saw it was poverty and want. Poor old man ! he thought I had come to help him, to bring him something, a morsel of food to save him from death. I had not heart to tell him my own situation. The priest had pre- pared him for another world: he died of starvation in my arms. But he was not the only one : he had been a soldier in his youth, and had bled for his country more than once, and many were those who shared the same JAMAICA. 167 fate. Whole parishes almost died; and yet the corn and meal were sent every day to England from almost all the ports in the island, and, at last, ships came loaded back with potatoes and oats, while others were still taking them away. But they came too late; a putrid fever had got among the poor, and carried them off by dozens, aye, scores. The people in England, good souls, sent the pro- visions : the Irish were too poor to give much, for their produce sold so cheap, they could not pay their rents or debts." — *'Do you think," asked the Doctor, *' that any of those, who, at last, sent you some provisions, gave up a meal for your benefit ? Did they, think you, eat a dinner less, a mouthful less, to save you and your countrymen from death by hunger? What would the gentry and clergy of England have said of lis in Jamaica, Mr. Nunnez, had such a catastrophe occurred beneath our eyes? Had our negroes been pre- pared for death by whole families, if not en masse, whilst we shipped off our corn, and sugar, and yams, to other countries, as remit- tances to absentees? Would our government, the Privy Council — the House of Assembly, have contemplated any thing so brutal and in- 168 JAMAICA, human, as to permit such an export under such circumstances? Or if they had, would our Viceroy, our Duke of Manchester, have looked on, and sent the negroes five pounds among them? Sneezer and Dollar, and you other negroes, look at this man. You have heard his story. What do you think of those Buckras on the other side the water? Would you like to be free Britons, free-bom English- men — to be kept aboard a ship for seven years, and made to fight for them, or to be shot or flogged for being afraid? And when they had no more occasion for your services, or you were worn out, to be flung ashore to starve? What did your friend Mr. Wil- berforce ever do for these poor sailor Buckras? or those poor Irishmen who died of hunger and nakedness? Did he ever tell the government they were cruel and in- different, or bog them not to flog the sailors and soldiers? Did Master Stephen, or Mr. Macauley, or Mr. Buxton, go among the people that were dying, and give them something to eat? or did they send mis- sionaries among them to tell them that the laws which tied their hands from seizing the food, for want of which they were JAMAICA. 169 dying, were not the laws of nature ? Did they commission them to say that the Irish had a right to eat, and be free? or did they ever send people to preach to the sailors in their ships, that they were fools to allow themselves to be kept there against their will, and flogged, and made to fight against their reason, and in utter defiance of the sublime truths of Christianity, and in con- tempt of it's charitable doctrines? — No, no; they sat at home and drank their wine, and planned speeches and books, which set the poor negroes mad, and get some of you hanged — But Mr. Currie has not done." "Yes," replied the Hibernian, "I have nearly done. I was fortunate enough to be received on board an American ship in the harbour of Galway, and have since remained in the service of the same owner, with whom I have been well content. We have lost his schooner, that is, she foundered ; and my messmates are on board that rascally thief of a pirate." The little Doctor instantly made provision for sending Currie to Kingston on his own mule, with a negro boy to shew him the way and bring back the beast. He cannot 170 JAMAICA. fail of finding a passage to America, in some ship of that country, and he will have the best means of gaining information of the pirate and his messmates. Our junta supplied him with a sufficiency of cash, and the Jew gave him a letter to some member of his own family, who will furnish him food and lodging as long as he is in want of them. JAMAICA. 171 CHAPTER XXIV. I COULD never account for the impediments thrown in the way of manumitting slaves, when one would think that freedom was but a just reward for long and faithful services. In Barbadoes, I am told, a fine of two or three hundred pounds must be paid for the manu- mission of a negro ; and, in Jamaica, an annuity of ten pounds at least must be settled and secured on every slave so emancipated. And reasoning from what I had seen of the rich and poor in England and other parts of Europe, I used to think that the West India slaves had but little chance of obtaining re- dress for ill treatment by a master ; I now entertain a very different opinion. The ne- groes generally seem to know their rights well, and to be actuated by a most lively esprit de corps whenever any one is illegally punished 172 JAMAICA. or oppressed. It is not unusual for a slave, who has committed some offence that deserves punishment, to get his sable relations, fellow labourers, or even a neighbouring white, to intercede for him. Upon such occasions their easy address, sometimes almost bordering on impudence, as it appears to strangers, would astonish the country gentlemen in England. — I am convinced that instances of cruel treatment of slaves by their masters are very rare ; — without looking to finer and more honourable feelings, self-interest and the fear of disgrace, indelible disgrace, are alone suffi- cient to ensure humane treatment.* Cases to the contrary have certainly occurred ; but a candid and enlightened mind would no more adduce these as proofs of prevailing cruelty towards the slaves, than judge of the general character of English women from the few cases that have come before the London Police Magistrates, of mothers starving, chaining down, and barbarously beating their children. * In the Surry Assize Court, in January 1818, Joseph Boyden, a white man, was tried under the Slave Act for cruelly ill treating his slave, a Sambo girl, named Amey ; the prosecution was at the instance of the Justices and JAMAICA. 173 I was often shocked too, I must own, to see the accounts in the Jamaica newspapers of black or brown people detained in the work- houses on suspicion of being slaves, and ad- vertised to be sold for payment of their fees or for the public benefit in the event of not being able to prove themselves free. Fees are frequently a source of the most grievous oppression and corruption, and are always objectionable where ample funds are already provided to remunerate the public officer for Vestry of Port Royal. It appeared that Amey had com- mitted some fault which induced her to apply to a neigh- bour to intercede with her master for forgiveness, which he agreed to grant ; but he afterwards marked her, in two places, with the initials of his name. After hearing Coun- sel on both sides, the jury found him guilty. The Chief Justice, in addressing the culprit Boyden, animadverted in strong terms on the lawless and wanton severity he had exercised towards his slave, sentenced him to be imprison- ed in the common gaol for six months, and declared Amey to be free. And very recently a free man of colour named Cardon was prosecuted by the Magistrates of Kingston, for unlawfully branding his female slave: he was con- victed, and sentenced to pay a fine of one hundred pounds to the Common Council of Kingston, out of which they are to allow the slave ten pounds a-year; and the Court declared her to be free. Cardon, not being able to pay the fine, went to jail, and died of a broken heart. 174 JAMAICA. his time aod trouble ; but, in cases that con- cern the common and natural rights of those whose only wealth is in the sinews of their arms, to demand fees is abominably cruel. The Saints are certainly to be commended for noticing and reprobating this enormity of ex- acting fees from any part of the community. But to return to the fees of manumission — ^I must bring my little Doctor on the stage, to account for what the Saints have represented to the British public as infatuated policy on the part of the local authorities. **I remember," says the Doctor, "that when the Abolition was in debate, an old lady in England, celebrated for her piety and her charities, wrote to her agent in Portland to buy some young negroes and sell off the old ones. The old gentleman to whom she had written returned for answer, that she had not perhaps adverted to the circumstance of old negroes being unsaleable (he did not venture 'to touch her on the score of folly or inhuman- ity) and that so far from being useful or mar- ketable, they would henceforth be a tax on her, as she must allow them the same clothing and provisions and comforts which they had always enjoyed. On this the old lady sent out hasty JAMAICA. 175 directions to him to make all the old and good-for-nothing negroes free, as it would save the expense of maintaining them. Her attorney, having a sufficient power, emanci- pated four that he thought most deserving, having complied with the law provided in such cases, and settled on them the necessary an- nuity. He besides allowed them to remain on the estate, and live with their children and grandchildren, but they were to have no more allowance of herrings or clothing. Meanwhile the lady was apprized of what had been done, and charged in her account current vnth *' forty pounds annuities to four negroes manu- mitted." She was requested also to signify her wishes whether any more should be liber- ated, and at the same time was told that they could not be moved off the estate, for the public feeling in Jamaica would not allow it. This intelligence damped the ardour of her ladyship, who did not reckon on the annuities ; and finding no diminution in the amount of supplies sent out as usual, begged her agent to do for her as he thought best, but not to put her to more expense : there the matter ended with her. ''When the time arrived for giving out the 176 JAMAICA clothing, the four freemen made their appear- ance with the others, and hoped they were to have their pennistones and osnaburghs, for they had worked all their lives for mistress, and brought up several children who were now working for her, and they were old and could not work to buy clothes themselves. The attorney told them it was a condition of their emancipation that with their ten pounds they were to provide themselves with every- thing ; — nothing could be more reasonable. —On this a great clamour ensued, the rest of the negroes took the part of the freemen, and asked the attorney what mistress meant by * giving them free when they were old, and worn out, and could not work ; — their children were not free ; who was to work their grounds for them ? Ten pounds would but just pay for their yams and cocos, if Massa Attorney gave them their land for nutting.' Indeed, said the Doctor, this is but true, for they could not have a negro for less than half a dollar a day to work their grounds, and supposing they employed him, each one day in the week, the labour would amount to twenty-six dollars, which make 8/. 13^. id. currency per year, for each of the four men ; — besides their grounds JAMAICA. 177 would be robbed, for they could not always watch them. ** The emancipated negroes said they never had any fish, nor salt, nor corn, nor rice when the others had; — nothing but the ten pounds ; and as they could not have their children to work for them, they would give up the money and their paper : so the attor- ney would let them be slaves again, and live like the rest, he might make them watchmen or what he liked, for they did not prefer to be- long to nobody when they were old and ' ready to dead' " Now," added the little Esculapius, '* you can see the object of this ' infatuated policy', as Wilberforce calls it. Is not the accusation a libel, an infamous calumny, a deliberate, dis- graceful falsehood ? What objection can there be to manumission, if the freemen possess pro- perty, or are able to support themselves ? But if you could emancipate all who are an en- cumbrance to an estate by a word or a scrap of paper, we should be overrun with miserable indigent beggars, or be taxed to maintain in licensed mendicity a ninth or a tenth of our population, by poor laws. Have we not seen the exuviae of the British navy and army N 178 JAMAICA. begging their bread in England after a peace ? Have not groups of miserable sailors, who had fought the battles of their country, been seen seeking a night's shelter in the recesses in London-bridge, with their empty bellies tightly bandaged to allay the pains of hunger ? Where were your overweening philanthropists then? Where were Wilberforce, Buxton, Brougham, Lushington, or black Stephen, with their exuberance of the milk of hu- man nature? Have I not heard a boat's crew, all pilots, declare they would rather serve the French and fight for Buonaparte than be again spurned as they were by their coun- trymen when they were no longer wanted? Grateful and generous, magnanimous peo- ple ! press the brave seamen on their return from a long voyage ; keep them for the prime of their lives in armed ships defending you against your enemies, and v/hcn peace returns and you no longer want them, emancipate them ! Give them their discharge, and liberty — to starve ! ! The laws which the ignorant canters say are made against manumitting slaves, are made for the protection of the old, the infirm, the incapable, and have been dic- tated by prudence and humanity. Unhappily JAMAICA. 179 for the negroes and for us, all the measures proposed by the meddling hypocrites, who are undermining us, seem divested of every notion of either, and are made trebly disgusting by their affected pretensions to both — all ashes and bitterness — dust and rottenness. *' With respect to our gaols, and to our sys- tem of considering all people of colour as slaves, if they have not passports ; this is an indispensible security in a county where the slave population outnumbers the free in the proportion of fifteen or sixteen to one. The facilities of escape are so great, the difficulty of pursuit, through a country nine-tenths of which are forest, so evident, that the legisla- ture has thought it right to demand of every negro wandering about the island, a certificate of his business or of his liberty. If a man has been emancipated, there can be no ob- jection or difficulty to his proving his freedom : his security, his annuity, at once speaks for him ; his friends, his relations, can testify for him : if he has been born free, still his parents, or his children, or some of his family or ac- quaintance will be ready to declare that he has always been a free man. No; many of 180 JAMAICA those detained in gaols are the slaves of de- ceased masters who have left no heirs, cap- tains of merchant ships, clerks in merchant's houses. Do not your laws in England com- pel magistrates and constables to take up gypsies and vagabonds, to whip them and confine them to hard labour in the bridewells and county prisons? and is not this measure of precaution (not the whipping — we stop short of that) as necessary in this island, where we have a legion of spies, if not traitors and fanatics, roaming about to poison the minds of the slaves, and lead them, as you have seen, to the gallows ? The death of a master does not of itself emancipate a slave, and when such a person, unprovided for, is found at large, the state claims him. Besides, we have runaways from other islands, emis- saries from St. Domingo. We should be act- ing against the first laws of nature, we should be blind to our own safety, to allow strange negroes to travel about the country at their pleasure, without any visible means of main- taining themselves : you cannot do so in Europe ; you must have a passport every- where. JAMAICA. 181 " It is a measure of precaution thus to seize all unclaimed vagrant slaves, in no respect so outrageous as pressing men for the army or navy, or taking the poor for the militia — the poor, that is, men who cannot pay for a substitute, and who are, during their service, not only slaves, but liable to be made to run the gauntlet, to be flogged to death, to be killed in battle, or to be shot for disobedience of orders, which is mutiny'^ " My dear doctor," said I, ** the case is hard to the negro." — "Butharder to the white man," rejoined he : " the white man is born free, with all the feelings of liberty, with an idea of in- dependence ; were it not that he finds multi- tudes of his acquaintance to keep him in countenance, he would perhaps die in despair, for he cannot change his master, neither his colonel nor his corporal, however he may abhor both. The negro is consoled in a similar way. Your Saints are always bawling about famiHes being torn from one another's arms, husbands from darling wives, and lovers from each other. There is not a negro but would laugh at this trash. If they must be sold, they are disposed of in families, and al- 182 JAMAICA. ways with at least a tacit consent on their own parts, or woe betide the fool that buys them ! He would be sure to lose them in some way or other. I remember an ignorant fellow in England once holding up a Jamaica Gazette in a public meeting, to prove that in every week's paper there were at least fifty runaway negroes advertized. Fifty ! he did not know that all the runaways are advertized in that one pa- per, and that they are perhaps advertized for three months ; but supposing that there are always fifty runaways, what are they out of a population of more than three hundred thou- sand ? Will the population of England, gen- tle and simple, afford no more than one rascal, thief, housebreaker, highwayman, frau- dulent bankrupt, incendiary, forger, or any other rogue, out of six thousand individuals? — or did the dolt imagine that our fifty runaways were all virtuous sufferers — peripatetics who fled from persecution ? If we have not a twentieth part of the crimes that are commit- ted in England, in proportion to our limited population, does it follow that we are to have no rogues ? — none who fly from justice ? Yes ; we have a few rascals, and many of them are JAMAICA. 183 comprised in the number fifty ; but we bid fair to have more, if left to the Saints; perhaps as many in proportion to our population as Colquhoun in his treatise on the Police states to be in London — pure, immaculate London. ** The same pretender to humanity, who, I remember, boasted of being a free-born Briton, flung into the teeth of the planters, that they worked their negroes in iron collars ; as if any man would humiliate and mortify a negro for fun, or as if there were no humanity in the breast of a negro owner ! But he must have forgotten that culprits work in chains in England, in the hulks at Woolwich and Sheer- ness, — and none others wear collars of iron here. Look at your gaols in England : I know a lady, one brought up with all the comforts of wealth and competence, who was detained in the Fleet prison for seven years ! And was not a report a short time ago pre- sented to the House of Commons of thirty- two persons in that prison for contempt, upon processes issuing out of the Courts of Chancery or Exchequer ? The first on this list was Han- nah Barber, who was committed to prison on the 30th July 1789, upon a writ of rebellion 184 JAMAICA. (as it is technically called) for not paying a sum of 406/. 17^. Id. into the Bank, in pursu- ance of a decree of the Court of Chancery. From the great length of time this unhappy woman suffered imprisonment — more than thirty-one years ! — it may be fairly presumed she was unable to obey the decree. The others on the list had been in custody for various pe- riods ; one for twenty-one years ! another for nineteen years ! and so on. Do you not seize the body of a debtor, before you prove a debt, no matter whether the debt be attributa- ble to misfortune, or folly, or villany ? Can- not your wise men invent any means to protect the unfortunate debtor from the dis- grace and contamination of a gaol? or to enable his creditors to get the real value of his property ? And why must so much of that go in stamps and fees — and fees to whom ? to some lord, the Lord knows who — who has nothing to do with the case in question. What is this but being sold to pay your fees, when you are or may be stripped of all but a mere covering to your body, and sent adrift in the wide world, with a recommendation perhaps to the workhouse, and an order to receive six- JAMAICA. 185 pence from the parish officer in some of the towns through which you tramp to your set- tlement, the constable of every village courte- ously showing you the way out of his domain, and hoping never to meet you again on this side of the grave?" :« 186 JAMAICA. CHAPTER XXV. January 31 — Saturday. My health being nearly re-established, I am preparing to leave Milk River and my little doctor, whose spleen has afforded me matter for so many pages of my journal, that I have hardly had time to advert to my- self and my kind nurse Diana. This poor child thinks me yet too liable to a relapse, and though w^e have parted (that is, she has taken leave of me) I shall rejoin her at Old Harbour; and vv^e are to travel together to Spanish Town. The doctor says it v/ill look extraordinary to travel in company with such a person, and the pretty damsel said as much herself; therefore I am fain to set an ex- ample to the Creoles, which I wish they would copy, for I think that virtue and ge- nerosity and charity are certainly of no par- ticular colour that I know of; besides, to me JAMAICA. 187 it is a matter of indifference what opinion the natives may form of my conduct on this oc- casion, so it does not hurt the feelings of Diana. I should leave iEsculapius Micros with some concern, except that he half pro- mises to give me a meeting on the north side, from whence I shall embark at my departure. I find the tavern here very expensive : my charge amounts to seven or eight dollars a day. My hostess's demands are like those of a lawyer, six shillings and eight-pence, or three shillings and four-pence ; the first is the usual price of a breakfast of coffee and eggs, yams, cocos and plantains, with perhaps a herring or a slice of hung beef; a maccaroni for each of the men, and the grass and corn for the five beasts, come to a dollar and a half daily ; but I have agreed with my valets to give them half a dollar a day each to board themselves. We had a debate to day with Don Guzman about the Pope's supremacy ; he and Nunnez laugh at the Doctor and the inhabitants generally, that the Saints have had influence enough to get him and them the promise of a bishop. The Jew says it is to re-exalt their rank, a blunder having been committed among them in England ; but the 188 JAMAICA. Spaniard is amused at the incongruity and im- pudence of those who denounce and renounce the Pope, and call his doctrines damnable, in- terfering with the religion of a people five thousand miles distant, and sending them a bishop, of all blessings ! *' They have re- formed themselves," he says. " Your King is the head of your church, and you have an established religion, from which most of your very Saints differ. They are of various sects, most of them schismatics — and your Quakers, who are making such a stir here, will not have bishops, nor even priests or deacons, among themselves; they defy the laws of their own country, and yet wish to legislate for you ; they refuse to pay tithes and poor rates, and with an assurance at least equal to their piety, they are going to foist a heretic bishop on you." — " To set you an example of morality and jrood taste:" added the Jew. JO ' "will he wear a wig and a triangle hat, and an apron? or is he to be a Quaker bishop, an Obadiah Broadbrim, with a suit of dittos ! and will you call him My Lord, and make him of the Privy Council on the spot? I am afraid he will hardly be in fashion for a year or two, while the recollection of your Irish Apostle JAMAICA. 189 is so fresh in the minds of our countrymen here." Ebenezer had got himself into a scrape again by his absurd propensity to illuminate all the negroes that he says are in the dark. When I wanted him to pack up clothes, and make preparations for my departure, I learnt, after sending for him in all directions, that he was confined in the stocks of a neighbouring estate, for brawling and fighting with the slaves there. — I mounted my horse, and rode up to the overseer's house, with the doctor and Abdallah, where I found my valet in a room in the hot-house, or hospital, with one leg in the bilboes, and his hands in the air, suiting the action to the word, expostulating with the overseer, and occasionally haranguing the sick negroes. We stopped a few mo- ments to hear his arguments, before we made ourselves known : — " Massa Busha," he exclaimed, "make me take out o' dis bilbo — massa please, for me own massa want me, for true — me no preachy — me nebba preachy — me tell massa Buckra's neegar to look after de sheep in wolf 'kin dat come so wid nine cat's tail, and make de buckra man cry woio — dat gib him eight hunder tousand 190 JAMAICA. lashes. Massa, me tell 'em massa Wilforce fum fum mo no nine and tirty — him no care for Moses' law, him cut de heart out de buckra sailor, and shoot him like carrion-crow in Parker Bay. Massa, me tell 'ern tank Gramighty no hab drummer driba, to flog me — swish — swish — swish ! Ye heary, my Brar (addressing the negroes) swish — swish! and no lock up seben year in a ship, and hab no plantain for nyam." Here the laughter of the overseer disconcerted him a little; he looked round and discovered us. The over- seer, at my request, set him at liberty, but told me he had been detected in a negro house taking improper liberties with a black woman, whose husband had given him a beating, and chopped at him with a machet. He added his advice, that I should give him a good flogging; which I own he deserved, for he had begun by spiritual conversation with the black lady, and professing to take care of her soul. This he denied, and the woman as stoutly maintained. The attack he confessed, only laying the sin on the fair one's disposi- tion. I thanked the overseer, and would have been as well pleased if he had executed justice on the hypocrite, to the extent of a JAMAICA. 191 dozen of his swishes : however, I threatened him very seriously, that if he were guilty of any more such pranks I should hand him over to the first work-house driver I could find; the public executioner, as Mr. Wilberforce poetically terms him ; the finisher of the law, according to Mr. Cheshire. 19^ JAMAICA. CHAPTER XXVI. February 1 — Sunday. Behold me once more on my white charger, with a green umbrella, the Saint and the Mussulman in my rear, my whole cavalcade in pristine elegance. The horses vigorous with rest, and the mules as cantancrous as possible, from the same cause. The Doctor accompanied me for a few miles ; and whether from the thoughts of separation, or the heat of the day, or any other physical or meta- physical cause, we rode along at a foot pace, almost in silence, he being like myself buried in a reverie of his own, as I was absorbed in ruminating on the events that have occurred, that are occurring, and that must occur, I fear, in this island. The warbling of a pretty mock-bird diverted my attention for a moment ; he fluttered along the road before the horses, and stopped to regale us with a song, (until JAMAICA. 193 we again disturbed him,) and then perched on the bough of a tree, and began to imitate the ugly cry of a Jamaica blackbird, a sort of black parrot, whose note appears to articulate only weet — weet ! I could have wished him to confine himself to the music nature had given him, instead of mocking the ugly call of the black animal, and the Doctor was also inclined to scold the pretty songster for degenerating into an imitation of anything so vile. •'Thus," he said, ''it is in human life; the carols of the heart, the song of gratitude to heaven, which heaven seems to inspire, must be exchanged for the repetition of some drawler's or driveller's whining moan, some l)eggar's selfish prayer, or afi^ected raptures about hope, full of immortality , the light of heavenly truth , and all the consolatiom and mpports by which religion cheers the heart, and elevates the principles, and dignifies the conduct of midtitudes of our labouring clas- ses, in this free and enlightened country, &c. &c., ending in a hint at the finale, with the same nasal twang continued, ' that for the aforesaid purposes a collection will be made at the door of this tabernacle or chapel — Hum . '" 194 JAMAICA, The mules, as I observed, were cantancrous. Abdallah had fallen into conversation with Abby Sneezer, about the sable nymph who had enchanted him into the wooden Bastilc at Percival estate : more than once his in- terrogatories had been answered with, '* Cha ! you know nutting," — but as the dialogue was diverting, and as I am rather more conversant with the Creole dialect, though yet but a tyro, I will endeavour to relate it in the form of a dramatic scene. Dollar begins. DoL. Sneezer, what dat sunting you hab day, tick out your breeches behind? Eben. Hi! da for me bible book. DoL. Wha for you carry him day? Eben. Massa Missionary say him good for kill obea. DoL. Him gib you ? Eben. No — yes — him gib him for tree dollar and a pig — no mo. DoL. Tree dollar!— dam him conscience — Massa no tell you him gib to him for nutting — but, Sneezer, you can't read. Eben. No— but me get some somebody dat can read, to preach me de red part. DoL. Red part? wha you mean by red part ? JAMAICA. 195 Eben. Massa Missionary mark de best place for read wid red sunting, and tell me when can 'member dem part good, he will mark mo. DoL. What dem part say? This was drawing the plug of Sneezer's religious lore — a torrent of mutilated quo- tations from the Old Testament came bundled out in confusion, like rocks hurried along by an avalanche, that mingles and mars and overwhelms all into chaos. At last he stopped with the word Faith — "Fait — you know what fait ?" DoL. Please tell me, Abby sneezer. Eben. Fait move mountains. DoL. Hi! move dat hill den — for my mule and de sumpter mule wont go up him. Eben. Cho ! you no hab fait, nor grace, nor light ; you no 'lected, nor baptised — you know nutting 'bout lamb — you b'a'pheme — you wicked somebody. DoL. How me wicked? — me no tief — me no lie — me no kill somebody. Eben. You no wicked ! — you no hab two wife — you never pray for Ponchy Piler — where for you bible ? — wha you day give to de black parson, — de black coat parson, to 196 JAMAICA. sabe for you soul from damnation ? (de debbil in the mule!) Dollar, you wicked for true; but (patience guide me, wha for de mule kick?) but you no bad man — turn to grace, [the mule kicked again at every pause] and — lib — ■ de bible — (cos de mule!) bin promise you dat Garamighty (d — m de mule !) take care of de good (debbil ! — me bet you fippance me make you go) de good man, dat no bird shall fall to de — water ! Here the mule kicks Sneezer over his head into a river, and lies down to roll. Sneezer, being very expert, kept clear of the rocks in his header, and rose out of the river like another Proteus, a little changed in appearance, but the same individual, in- viting Abdallah, who was half choked with laughing, to come into the water and be baptised. The brute mule, as he called him, rolled over my great coat and a spare um- brella, which Sneezer carried for me, and he was obliged to ride for an hour afterwards, with both spread open, the coat mounted on the umbrella to dry. I parted with the Doctor, and proceeded nearly eastward, on the road to Old Harbour, passing at first through some fine pens. JAMAICA. 197 where I was pleased with the appearance of the mules and cattle fattening on the rich pastures, and with the luxuriant crops of Guinea corn, which is cultivated to a great extent in the parish of Vere, as the principal support of the negroes. On enquiry in the course of my ride this day, I found that this district is frequently visited with long and severe droughts, which render the cultivation of the plantain extremely precarious ; and the mountains are too far distant from most of the estates, to afford the usual conve- niences of provision grounds. The planters are therefore obliged to have recourse to the Guinea corn, which is sown, or rather set, in the ground during the October rains, and gathered in February. The produce is gene- rally very abundant, and. when got in, is packed as close as it can be trodden down, in immense barns, or stores, as they are here called, for the future use of the negroes. On well regulated estates, they consider they ought to have as much as two years' con- sumption before hand in these stores ; and that he must be very improvident who has not one. This grain is served out weekly, or oftener if necessary, to the negroes. 198 JAMAICA. in quantities fully sufficient for the mainte- nance of their families. When freed from the husk, and pounded in a wooden mortar, it produces a meal as white as snow, which is formed into a kind of bread, and small de- licious cakes. The abundance of this corn produces also an abundance of fat pork, and excellent poultry of all sorts, which are carried for sale to Spanish Town and King- ston, and form a source of comfortable re- venue to some small settlers, and to the wives of some of the richer planters, who are careful to fill a private purse. As I rode along, I passed through several large estates, the soil of which is the richest I have seen in the island, and, in tolerably good seasons, yields the most valuable crops of sugar, both in quantity and quality. I went sometimes out of my road to look at the mills which were at work, and were moved by steam engines, which, besides saving the planter's oxen and mules, enable him to grind his canes and finish his crop with much greater expedition than with the old and usual me- dium of the cattle mill. The other buildings in this district, such as boiling houses, still houses, and curing houses, are on a much JAMAICA. 199 larger scale than I had hitherto seeH. The dwelling houses of the proprietors are also large and commodious, and generally fitted up with well-polished mahogany floors, wain- scots, doors, &c. But these are now de- serted by their owners, who for the most part are rich absentees. They serve, how- ever, as the temporary or permanent re- sidence of some great attorney, who has charge, perhaps, of many estates in the neighbourhood. How long the attornies may enjoy their comfortable births is a pro- blem not difficult to solve : I apprehend that the general distress, which prevails among all West Indians, will oblige even the Vere pro- prietors to occupy again their family man- sions. — Leaving this rich plain, I reached the western extremity of Old Harbour Bay, where there are some snug coves, on the shores of which are erected large store-houses for the reception of the sugar and rum, sent from the diiFerent estates, to be carried off" by the ships' boats. Commodious wharfs, with cranes, are here established, with whar- fingers appointed to superintend the shipping of the crops and landing of the supplies. The bustle of business on the one side, and 200 JAMAICA. the quiet repose of the trees overhanging the sea on the other, form an agreeable contrast, and the scenery is very picturesque. The road here enters the Coratoe hills, so called from the abundance of that plant, the large American aloe, or agave, which is seen in every direction shooting up its magnificent pyramids of flowers through the surrounding brushwood. Passing this range, I descended into the plain of St. Dorothy, and reached the small town of Old Harbour Bay, situated on the shore, and so distinguished from the town of Old Harbour market, which is two miles north of this, and stands on the great Leeward road. I here put up at an excellent tavern, kept by Mr. , a white man, who finds his account in keeping a clean house, with good beds and good wine, for the accommodation of the captains of merchantmen, and others engaged in the shipping which frequent this port. JAMAICA. 201 CHAPTER XXVII. Time, that softens all the asperities of im- ported nomenclature, and brings the ear at last familiar with the exotic barbarisms of remoter tongues, has so blended the once fiery designations of towns and districts in Eng- land with the dingy mass of modern language, that we mention them with indifference, if not in ignorance of their Teutonic, or Gothic, or Celtic origin and import. Time may do the same for Jamaica : future generations may imagine that the names of estates were all of one language ; but if they take the pains to etymologize them, they will hardly con- ceive that one race of people would use ap- pellations so little related to each other. Here we have Chantilly and Jerusalem — Tobolski and Mesopotamia— Old Shoes and Y. S.— Bull Dead, Far Enough, and Tryall ; 202 JAMAICA. and, as may be supposed, the negroes make a fine hash of some of them. The sable an- tiquaries who are to arise hereafter out of the fermented fragments of slavery and emanci- pation, v/ill have to pick their teeth over many of these knotty compounds. The negro pa- tois is most ludicrously diverting, and never more so than in its version of outlandish and heathen names. Pompey and Caesar are invulnerable ; but we have Beenass for Venus, — Titass and Marcass — Demosthenes is Dam- nastiness. I have heard a black basalt-look- ing Caligula called Killygilly, and a political Mr. Ross described as PoUypetition Ross. For Peacock and Crow, read Pickaxe and Crow ; and by Ticky Ticky, an enquiry was made for Entick's dictionary. Overseer, first corrupted to Oberseer, is now Bersheer or Busha ; and Buckra, I fear, is derived from Buccaneer. Every animal on an estate has its name. Horses, mules, oxen, and asses, all registered with as fine or finer names than the negroes themselves. You may see Sambo Jack on Alexander mule, and the ox Pollybe- mus switching his tail while a two-eyed Han- nibal pokes or flogs him. The dogs have appellations that remind one of Praise-God- JAMAICA. 203 bare-bones, or his brother. I heard a rat- catcher negro yesterday calling his dog Sarbice, and learnt on enquiry that he was christened *' Sunting that nebba do no Sarbice." Another was called, " If you no hold him fast, me no gib you for nyam ;" the nick-name of this one was Nyam, and sometimes Nyamfast, a poetical inversion or license of the man of rats. A-propos of rats : these vermin are in request in some parts of Jamaica, and sold among the negroes for two pence halfpenny a piece. I have seen a gentleman who once passed them off for guinea-pigs in a pie ; and where they live almost exclusively on sugar- canes, perhaps the negroes are right in con- sidering them dainties : Why should they be less so than frogs or the great snails that the Swiss and Savoyards eat ? Negroes are not more squeamish : they are as ready to dine off the cat as the rat ; and " Nebba do no Sarbice" may yet serve for a good roast to the rat- catcher Cupid or his mistress Sappho, as brown and erotic, though not quite so amia- ble perhaps, as her predecessor of Lesbos. The peerless Diana, as Don Quixote would say of his lady of Toboso, had provided me with everything at my inn that a valetudina- 204 JAMAICA. rian could sigh for the want of. I know not how I can ever repay her for her generous attentions. — Monday, 2nd. I walked along the quay this morning, where, some American sailors were heaving out lumber from their schooner. Two negroes who were helping them quizzed me as I passed, at least I thought so. I heard something about my white coat, and white hat, and white face ; and they asked the sailors if that was the bishop's dress. "The bishop's dress!" said one of the tars, " what, all white ? No, you black rascal ; a bishop's dressed in your livery, black and all black — black as the d 1, except his wig." ** De debbil no black," replied the negro; *' he white, he 'tan like one parson (person) one buckra parson." "A buckra parson!" re- joined the sailor; " you must not talk in that fashion, beau — ; his Holiness will tickle you up if you call Old Scratch a white parson." " Ticky me where ?" cried the negro. " Tickle your soul, my boy ; d — n you by bell, book, and candle ; excommunicate you ; put you in the Ecclesiastical Court." " Da wharra de nastical goat?" " Goat! ha! ha! ha! Court — • why you must build him a palace to live in, and a throne to sit on, and he must have a JAMAICA, 205 crook stick to catch you by the leg when you run out of the fold." " Crook stick !" ejacu- lated the heathen — *' he ! he ! the bishop run after me wid de crook stick !- — da for dis Massa Wilforce and King George send we bishop to run after we in a bush ? Him must run fas, till he sweat blue maugre to h — 11." — ^So ! the blacks have as yet a queer notion of the blessings intended for them, thought I. By the way, I would not shock any eyes or ears by repeating expressions intended as oaths. When the negroes use the word above men- tioned, they have no thought of swearing or blaspheming ; it is only a superlative degree of comparison, used as the English gentry use the word ** devilish" — as devilish ugly; devilish fine, pretty, witty ; devilish long way ; a devilish good fellow, &c. &c. The French have ugly words of similar importance and effect. The inhabitants here know as little of the history of their country or their predecessors, the Caribs and Spaniards, as the modern Turks do of ancient Greece. I speak of the Creole mulattoes and negroes : the white in- habitants, being educated in England, are in all respects English, in morals, religion, man- 506 JAMAICA. ners, and habits : in politics they are republi- cans, as free-minded as the Americans, and as Junius said of the latter, *' they concur alike in despising the absurd 'pageantry of a king, and the mpercilious hypocrisy of a bishop." 1 am afraid **my Lord" will not often be honoured with his title here; for though there is an aris- tocratic feeling as amongst all rich republicans, which induces the lords of the soil to pay every becoming respect and honour to their viceroy, whom they both love and esteem, yet many already speak of his Episcopal Highness as of an inteloper ; nor ought it to excite surprise when the great number of different sects here is considered. But to return to antiquities : I could not meet with a creature here who knew that the Spaniards had called this har- bour the port of Esquivel, much less that it was named so after the first Spanish governor of the island, Juan de Esquivel, whom Diego Columbus sent here to secure his claim to the island, after a successful law-suit against his base and ungrateful monarch Ferdinand. It is a pity that the memory of so great and good a man should expire, or rather be disregarded, (for it can never expire,) at the only place, as far as I can learn, which was ever honoured JAMAICA, 207 with his name. He was a gallant soldier, which is no great matter; but, as Mr. Edwards says, "■ he was one of the very few Castilians, who, amidst all the horrors of bloodshed and infectious rapine, were distinguished for gene- rosity and humanity." Ferdinand had be- stowed the government of Jamaica, in spite of the decision given against his Majesty by the Council of the Indies, on Alonzo de Ojeda, who was on his departure for the continent of America, from Hispaniola, when Diego Colum- bus was sending Juan de Esquivel thence to Jamaica. ''Ojeda violently opposed the in- tended expedition of Esquivel, and publicly threatened that if he should find him at Ja- maica on his return from the continent, he would hang him up as a rebel. Ojeda's voy- age was unfortunate : after sustaining a series of unexampled calamities, he was shipwrecked on the coast of Cuba, and was in danger of perishing miserably for want of food. In this distress he called to mind that Esquivel was in Jamaica, and he was now reduced to the sad extremity of imploring succour from the very man whose destruction he had medita- ted : but the magnanimous Esquivel was no sooner made acquainted with the sufferings 208 JA of his enemy, than he forgot his resentment. He immediately sent over to Cuba, Pedro de Narvaez, an officer of rank, to conduct Ojeda to Jamaica. Esquivel received him with the tenderest sympathy, treated him during his stay with every possible mark of distinction and respect, and provided him with the means of a speedy and safe conveyance to Hispa- niola."* " The Spanish historians," he adds, ** bear a most honourable testimony to his virtu- ous and gentle administration. He brought the natives to submission without any effusion of blood." And again : " Esquivel alone seems to have been sensible of the abominable wickedness of visiting distant lands only to desolate them, and of converting the Lidians to Christianity by cutting their throats. How many noble qualities in some of his cotempo- raries were tarnished by cruelty and rapine, or unhappily blended with a misguided and frantic zeal for religio?i, that rendered their possessors still more remorseless and savage /"f So much for Don Juan de Esquivel. The Indians of the present day (the negroes) are * B. Edwards : third edit. vol. i. p. 163. t B. Edwards : third edit. vol. i. JAMAICA. 209 to be converted to Christianity, according to the planters' ideas and expectations, by cut- ting the throats of the whites ; and as for misguided and frantic zeal for religion, which renders reformers remorseless and savage, I fear there is but one opinion on the subject, and that not a pleasant one, certainly not flattering to the Quakers or the schismatics. 10 JAMAICA. CHAPTER XXVIII. Mr. Mathews had met me at Old Harbour, and accompanied me part of my way on the road to St. Jago de la Vega, commonly called Spanish Town. Diana rode with us ; and whether he seriously objected to her company on such an occasion, or whether he thought by retiring to find an opportunity for raising a laugh against me on her account, or what- ever his motive might be, he begged leave to ride on in advance, promising to meet me again in town, and conduct me to the Pen of Mr. F — — •, two or three miles farther on the Rio Cobre. As we approached the town, Diana expressed an inclination also to take her own course, lest her presence in my suite might draw the attention of the inhabitants to both of us. I must own my figure would have made a droll caricature in London, and JAMAICA. 211 it was a little ludicrous here, sufficient per- haps of itself to attract the gaze of the multi- tude ; for, as I described before, I was arrayed, for coolness, in white from head to foot, my coat even being of so light a grey that it might pass for part of the skin of my white charger. My face also, in spite of the heat, was as white as a turnip, from my illness, which had so depilated me, that I had recourse to a close tonsure to prevent my hair falling off; and my great hat becoming thus too capacious for my diminished head, dropped over my eyes and ears, and hung on my cranium like Mambrino's helmet on that of Don Quixote. Scarcely had I come in sight of the houses, before I saw a negro running at some distance before me, frequently looking back and making some remark to every one he met, which in- stantly turned the eyes of every creature towards us. As we passed along, the be- holders stopped to gaze, some seriously, others laughed. I examined myself from head to foot, criticised my own figure, Diana's, Ebenezer's, and Abdallah's, — still I was at a loss. I rode along, however, towards the square where the king's house stands, mean- ing to take a look at it en passant^ as I should 212 JAMAICA. not halt in the town; but when I arrived' there, I not only found that I was still the object of curiosity, but that I had a mob at my heels of some twenty or thirty negroes, besides two or three gentlemen on horseback and as many in covered gigs or top chaises. The watchword flew from mouth to mouth, now loud enough for me to hear ; it was " Bishop," " bishop:" — some said I was the bishop, till a negro, running towards me from another quarter, said it was "Mr. W — f — e come to see the negroes, and choose him Qua- droon wife." One of the gentlemen said if I were Mr. W , that black, meaning Ebenezer, must be black S — n, or else he was the bishop's chaplain that carried his book, for Ebenezer's bible always stuck out of his breeches pocket, now half unbound from the soaking it got in the water the other day. One of the negroes very respectfully asked me if I was the bishop, and I of course told him I was not so good a man. Another as seriously enquired if he, the bishop, would not have a wife when he came ? To which I ventured to say "certainly not a black one." But though I put the best face on the hoax, which I attributed to Mr. Mathews, Ebenezer JAMAICA. 213 had no idea of being laughed at, and began to apostrophise the crowd about their taking me for a bishop, when some one cried out I was a Quaker. Now Ebenezer, never having seen a Quaker, could not deny this ; indeed I suspect he thought it possible ; and his mind being occupied with the new idea, he stared at me, and perused me with his whole vision in profound silence and with his mouth open, as if I had dropped from the clouds to excite his sudden wonder, whilst I was waving an adieu to Diana, who thought it best to retire, and a negro boy was tying a large Muscovy drake to the tail of Ebenezer's mule. The beast, as might be expected, began to blaze away behind, kicking and plunging, running backwards, then rushing forwards, braying and kicking again, while the drake fluttered about his crupper, now on his back, now un- der his belly, Ebenezer bawling all the while, and Abdallah joining in the roar of laughter that issued from the crowd ; nor could I keep my countenance, though I might have ap- propriated the insult to myself. At last the mule in despair set off full gallop, only break- ing out of his speed now and then to kick, and carried Ebenezer through the crowd and out 214 JAMAICA. of my sight. At this moment came up Mr. Mathews, who, seeing me laugh, had the cruelty to laugh more heartily than myself and the mob together. He led me however out of the town to Mr. F — — -'s Pen, where we were soon joined by Ebenezer's mule, with the dead drake still hanging to his tail. It was some time before the rider made his ap- pearance, for he had been launched into a penguin fence, and had pricked his naked feet ; beside which he had lost his book, which must have been kicked out of his pocket. However, Mr. Mathews has promised him a new one. There are no Quakers in Jamaica ; the pub- lic would not conform to their scruples of conscience, and allow them to court the Holy Spirit while the rest of the inhabitants were in arms for the defence of the island, to sup- press rebellion, or to prepare for external foes. Their wealth and industry secure them many indulgences in England, but in this island their claim to inspiration would pass for a joke. Hence the reason, according to Mr. Mathews, for their vindictive interference in colonial affairs, and for the wretchedness of mind, body, and estate, that they have caused JAMAICA. 215 and are causing to the planters. They have well revenged themselves. I find all white men here breathing fury and indignation against Mr. Wilberforce and his party ; and some blame his Majesty's ministers for giving way to the clamour of the Saints. Unhappily, every step taken by the government at home, in the way of interference, excites a feeling in the negroes against their masters, whose condition is rendered doubly wretched by the suspense they are kept in respecting the future measures of the English government. I bathed this morning in the Rio Cobre, which, according to Mr. Mathews, is to have the same effect as a dip in the Shannon, in respect of bronzing the forehead and hard- ening the nerves ; after which we rode to see the king's house in Spanish Town. It forms the west side of a square — the courts of law and house of assembly on the east — built in a very good style of Grecian architecture. The north of the square is occupied by a range of more modern buildings, the wings of which form, on the east, the end of a large structure, used as the secretary's office, or 216 JAMAICA, registry of all deeds, wills, and other titles affecting the real property of the island ; and on the west, next to the king's house, the guard room, with accommodations up stairs for the officers. These wings are connected by a handsome colonnade, in form of a crescent, of beautiful white stone; in the centre of which is a round temple or pavilion covered with a dome, in which stands a statue by Bacon of the late Lord Rodney ; on the pedestal of the statue is represented, in bas relief, the victory of the 12th April 1782, over the French fleet under the command of Count de Grasse. I find there is what may be called a daily market in every town ; the negroes in the vicinity bringing their vegetables even be- tween the hours of twelve and two, during which they leave their work, When I bathed this morning, my two squires, Ebenezer and Abdallah, took the same opportunity of washing themselves at a little distance from me. They swam and dived like coots, and seemed as much in their element as on shore. I observed that the Abb6 had his derriere most wofully wealed. JAMAICA. 217 and I begged to know for what cirme he had been so flogged, but he would not tell me ; he intreated me not to ask, and owned he had deserved it and more : the marks were of great antiquity, there was nothing recent. Abdallah was spotless — or stripeless, if I may use the word. 218 JAMAICA CHAPTER XXIX. February 9 — Monday. I CAME over to Kingston on the 5th, by a very pleasant excellent road, having the moun- , tains of St. Andrew, or Liguanea mountains, on my left, and the blue mountains towering beyond them into the clouds. The mornings are very cool in Kingston to my feeling, and there is a freshness in the air that I have not perceived before, since I have been in the island, probably from the land wind here blowing directly down from the lofties tregion. The first person I met in Kingston was the Israelite, Peter Nunnez, with Cobbett's letter to Mr. Wilberforce in his hand, which he begged me to read. '* There," he said, *' you will see the Saint unsainted, the real naked two-legged animal, that has had influence enough, and venom enough, to poison the minds of all your countrymen, even down to JAMAICA. 219 the very meanest rabble, the gaol birds, the refuse of the hulks, the mutilated beggars in the highway, who hawk about his twopenny trash, and cry, * down with slavery.' You ought to persuade your friends, who are slave- owners, to have this letter read aloud every Sunday morning on their estates, to all the individuals, white, brown, and black, who belong to the establishment; a public crier ought to proclaim it weekly in every market; it ought to be copied in letters of gold, and placarded throughout the island. If I had sugar works, or a coffee plantation, I would teach all my negroes to read, if it were only that they should read this ; and the children should learn it by heart. I would put it in the form of a catechism, and the whole population should repeat it once a month. I would make a game of it, like the royal game of goose or trou-madame, or hopscotch, and designate every department of such game by one of the important circumstances of this man's life, — by one of the miseries among his own countrymen, to which he has contributed, either by his indifference or his perverseness. Here I would have," continued he, '* Habeas Corpus — Bank Stoppage — Imprisonment Bill 220 JAMAICA. — Press Circular — Press-gang — Militia-cat- of- nine-tails — Starved Irishmen — Manchester Massacre — Six Acts, &c. &c. — And why not have an effigy of him shewn about at so much a head? — 'This is your patron, the W — f — e, your doctor, see how much he has done for the souls of the English and the Irish ! He wants to do as much for you all ; — ^take these pills ; they are gratis, and a little griping, but their effect is miraculous. They elevate your ideas to a cross piece of wood, called a gibbet, and they can move the mountains of Jamaica to the middle of St. Domingo, or those of St. Domingo to the middle of Jamaica.' There, sir," he added, "take it, read it; a friend has sent me one hundred copies. I wish he had sent me a thousand, — I could have sold them all in a week." I took the important pamphlet, intending to peruse it at my leisure, and put it into my pocket, while I enquired of him respecting Edward Currie and the pirate, which, he told me, had been taken by an English schooner, and there were great hopes the crew would be hanged. Currie had got a birth in an American ship, with his old messmates, to return to their employers. He might have JAIMAICA 221 had as good a birth in an English merchant- man, but he would venture there no more, as, in case of a war, he would infallibly be pressed again into a King's ship, Nunnez invited me to dinner, and bade me welcome to his house, where he wished me to remove ; but for health's sake I have been advised to sleep out of the town at a lodging house, where they dance every night, and I of course must join in the frolic, so that I get but little advantage from my airy situation. It is so airy, however, that I cannot bear the jealousies open at night. This town is most beautifully situated on the edge of the harbour, from which the land rises to the north, until it terminates at the Blue Mountain Peak. The streets, or rather roads, for there is no pavement, are wide and spacious, and in many places you may walk under piazzas for a length of way, although few white persons walk about the town, except in Port Royal Street, or Har- bour Street, which are the general resort of men of business, being composed of stores and counting houses ; a top chaise is the con- venient vehicle, that is, a gig, with an awning of leather to keep off the sun's rays, which 222 JAMAICA. are really intolerable from mid-day to three o'clock in the afternoon. I have got one side of my face dyed purple, by standing unco- vered in the sun for not more than a minute, and that at seven o'clock in the morning. As the other half is of a dead white, I am lite- rally become a bifrons, and my appearance, already grotesque, is now burlesque. My face does not burn or give me pain, but neither vinegar and water, nor laudanum and water, nor all the drowsy syrups of the east, will medicine the red side back to the paper hue of its better half, and of the rest of my body. There is a very handsome church, and a noble parade, hotter than any other place in the island. The neighbouring coun- try is thronged with pretty villas, which are called penns, the residences of the merchants and shop-keepers, who pass the day in their stores, and resort to them as soon as business is over. The harbour is immense, and entirely land-locked, except at the entrance by Port Royal, where there are two forts to protect it, one on the neck of the sand where Port Royal stands, the other called the Apostle's Battery, on the main land. Port Royal is now but an insignificant place ; earthquakes JAMAICA. 223 and fires and hurricanes have brought it to this pass. It has always been the fashion to say that it was an emporium of wickedness, and that the vengeance of heaven was par- ticularly directed against it ; but I have not been able to discover that the inhabitants were even half so wicked as the Neapolitans, or the Romans of the present day, to say nothing of the Algerines and Tunisians. Nay, I doubt whether Portsmouth, during a war, is at all more righteous than Port Royal was : and London ! the great Babylon ! the woman arrayed in purple and scarlet, having a golden cup in her hand, full of abo- minations! cannot she compare with the Astarte of Port Royal ? Of one great sin the latter was confessedly innocent, that is, of hypocrisy — there was no deception in the Port Royalists ; they were not a jot wickeder than they appeared. The natives here have wherries to cross the harbour to Port Royal ; pretty boats that carry two sails : the harbour itself is notorious for sharks. The view from Port Royal to- wards Kingston is magnificent in the extreme ; one cannot but regret that a country, which 0i JAMAICA. in beauty and luxuriance equals our ideas of Paradise, should have a climate certainly hos- tile to John Bull and his family ; but I forget again that the sea-shore is the only hostile part. That blue mountain before me, soaring into the cloudless heaven, is the abode of health if not of wealth. Some idea of the fertility of the soil and the mass of food it affords may be formed from contemplating a plantain walk. Humboldt (I think) says, " an acre of plantains will support three hun- dred and ninety-nine individuals: supposing an acre of wheat in Europe to maintain three, the produce of the one, compared with the other, is as one hundred and thirty-three to one. When we reflect on this, it becomes a serious matter for the whites to think of emancipating their slaves; — a few hours work daily, for only a few weeks in the year, would enable a negro to bring up a family, though blacky would rather his wife, or wives, should work for him, while he smokes his pipe. Yet the plantain is a precarious sort of food ; for a hurricane destroys all in one night, and it requires four or five months before the suckers JAMAICA. 225 will bear again. The plant is too well known to require any description; it is the miisa paratlisiaca . Nunnez carried me one day to dinner at the house of a barrister, a Mr. — ■ — , where I met an assembly of gentlemen of the robe, solicitors, merchants, and two or three plan- ters. We were regaled in grand style, with turtle and champaign, claret and madeira, and the company drank no less freely than they would have done at a Lord Mayor's feast, although the heat was so suffocating that it turned the wine into perspiration before it could get down our throats. Every gentle- man's cover had been garnished with a fan, as important an article as knife and fork ; but nothing could soothe the fiery dragon that con- sumed me. I left the table therefore and re- tired to a window, where I sat in the little draught of air that was but just perceptible (or it would have been dangerous) and listened unobserved to the conversation of the master and his guests, which became more animated as the wine circulated and the daylight de- clined. The resolutions of the House of As- sembly were regularly criticised : one thought them right, another good, a third strong, a 236 JAMAICA. fourth milk and water, a fifth would have had them " speak daggers" and bite as well as shew their teeth : — ^one person only ventured to say that the English parliament had a right to legislate for the colonies, and he drew a host of foes on himself immediately. He observed, that the emancipators cast in the teeth of the planters and slave-owners that the negroes were governed and tried by laws which they had no voice in enacting. This was an unlucky remark to blunder on, for every one had an answer ; viz. " Do not the Saints wish to impose laws on us ? Is it not their object to make laws for us, in which we are to have no voice whatever ? Are we re- presented in the English parliament by any one of the rotten boroughmongers who would legislate or affect to legislate for us ? I think the English government has had enough of legislating for colonies. The Ameri- cans have hammered a little more sense into Johnny Bull's head, than will suffer him to come to points even with the Creoles. The English aristrocracy laugh at us and our resolutions, no doubt, and think of us as of saucy children ; but it is no proof of wisdom or discretion to despise even a feeble enemy." JAMAICA. 227 Then followed a chorus, I grieve to record it, of execration and disgust against *'the ignorant, infatuated, hypocritical reptiles that were gnawing the vitals of the colonists." The letter to Mr. Wilberforce now came on the tapis, and afforded a fine field for dis- quisition ; but although it met with universal approbation, the author was very roughly handled by some of the company, especially the lawyers. They said he had no principle, that he was a leveller, a radical — •** A radical !" exclaimed a voice at the lower end of the table, "What are the Saints but radicals and levellers? Did any one ever hear of a reform more radical than that at which they are aiming ? A leveller ! what think you of the Quakers, and of Mr. Buxton, the gen- tleman, who, though a great stickler for the rights of nature, and for free trade when his own interest is not concerned, opposes, with might and main, free brewing and the free sale of beer, that the poor creatures in England may buy more of his porter; the gentleman, who most pertinaciously resists any improvements in the present anomalous system of licensing public houses, in order that the value of his own may not be di- 228 JAMAICA. minished, or the monopoly of the sale of por- ter be endangered, and yet very quietly takes upon himself to dispose of our lives and pro- perty, aided by his humane friend Mr. M , of African celebrity; that cruel and rapacious adventurer, who would have fallen an un- pitied victim to the exasperated negroes, if he had not made a precipitate retreat ? The author of the letter has repeatedly declared himself a friend to the English constitution, an advocate for King, Lords, and Commons." — " Well, but," replied the lawyer, ** look at his principles." Planter. "What do you mean by princi- ples ? I understand you just now to say he had none. Pray, by what principles are lawyers guided? Are their professional ex- ertions stimulated only by a love of justice ? or do they not defend either side of a case as they happen to be employed ? Have their con- sciences anything to do in the business? or do they think of aught beyond the fee and the defence of their client, right or wrong ? The rapacity of lawyers, aye, of gentlemen of the bar in the highest practice, is almost pro- verbial in London. Is it not common for barristers to receive large fees to defend two JAMAICA, 229 causes that are called on for trial in different courts at the same time, and of course to sa- crifice one of their clients ? Has not even the Lord Chancellor noticed in terms of reproba- tion the scandalous manner in which gentle- men of the bar and solicitors have neglected the causes of their unhappy clients ? And he is certainly not unfriendly to the members of the profession, nor is he one to speak rashly. Is this principle ? Money-getting principle, I will allow it to be." Lawyer. *' A man may have political prin- ciples, though his professional duty renders it imperative on him to defend his client, even if in the wrong." Planter (with great vehemence). *' Politi- cal principles in a man who thinks himself bound, for a few guineas, to defend a cause he knows to be unjust ! What is that but a vile prostitution of talents to lucre, filthy lucre ? The man who for a fee is daily using quirks and quibbles to screen a scoundrel from justice, and views it as a duty, will not hesitate to sacrifice the best interests of his country for a pension or a title, nay, he will glory in it as a virtue. Accustomed indis- criminately to advocate right or wrong, law- 53vO JAMAICA. yers become casuists to their own consciences ; hence their general ductility of principle ; hence it is, as Montesquieu, I think, says, lawyers are used by free governments as sol- diers are by despots — as tools to tyranny. Their subserviency is a vice of habit, over which their talents, their knowledge, and their wealth, throw a lustre that dazzles the weak and superficial. This will explain the incongruities of black S 's career : what he writes to day he will contradict to-morrow, as a pleader will one hour defend his client by propositions which he will the next hour try to refute. S ■ looks to his brief and writes accordingly ; a man may be startled at first reading the daring assertions in his publications, but no one, accustomed to reflect and compare, can be deceived by them, — so palpable, so glaring are the contra- dictions, and so obviously disingenuous are the inferences he draws from facts. Suppose the writer of the Political Register a barrister, defending the cause of Vulgus versus Bo- roughmonger^ — -has not he done his part well?" Lawyer. ** But he has no consistency." Planter. ** Who has? Which of the po- litical adventurers of the age has been con- JAMAICA. 231 sistent? How many Whigs have turned Tories, out of gratitude? Look at the po- litical writers of the day — are they not all bought and sold ? Do you imagine the press all pure and immaculate, and inaccessible to bribery and corruption ? Why, politics are a trade. Political principles indeed ! When you say a man has no principles, you should shew that he is a bad husband, a bad father, a slanderous neighbour, an adulterer, a cheat, an assassin, a hypocrite, or a wolf in sheep's clothing. Has not the man we are speaking of brought up a family in virtue and honour ? Has he not devoted himself for them ? Has not he endured fine and imprisonment and perils of all kinds for them ? Has not he exposed vice in every class of society, and defended the cause of the weak against op- pressors ? He may have his foibles, who has not ? But if such a man is not a good citizen, tell me who is? IsW— W e? Would you have him a psalm-singer ? Bring him in for a rotten borough ; give him a pension or a place ; you will complain no more of his in- consistency. For my part, I beg leave to drink his health."—*' With all my heart!" " With all my heart!" — "A bumper the table round." 232 JAMAICA " The health of William Cobbett, and thanks to him for his exposition of hypocrisy and knavery." Thus they continued their carouse, as far as I may guess, long after Nunnez had con- ducted me, not to my lodging house, but to a ball of persons of colour, something in the style of that which I had seen in West- moreland. Here I imagine they were all free people, mostly Mulattoes and Quadroons, with several European gentlemen among them, who enjoyed themselves in dancing and phi- landering with their partners, many of whom were really lovely, beautiful creatures. I should have stayed longer among them, but my masquerade face attracted more attention than I was ambitious of. Nunnez tells me that libertinage prevails among this class to as great an extent as among the dress-makers in the metropolis of England, but without any deceit. The people consider such connexions perfectly respecta- ble, and even necessary in a society where men come to make fortunes, not to settle themselves for life. I own I could have fan- cied myself at the court of Calypso, where there were so many lovely creatures, without JAMAICA. 233 vanity or affectation, replete with every attrac- tion of youth, grace, and amiability. They danced delightfully, and some of the women sang and played on the piano-forte, and I wit- nessed no symptom of indelicacy on the part of male or female. I found no great difficulty in arranging my little matters of business with the ex- ecutors of my deceased relation. His negroes had been sold, with the exception of a father- less boy and girl, both of course Creoles, who had not yet found any person to purchase them, to whom they had taken a fancy to be- long. Unfortunately, they conceived a pre- possession in my favour, and came to me with every importunity, beseeching me to buy them, promising they would serve me with all their hearts and souls till death. This prepossession originated, no doubt, in the affection they retained for my departed friend, their late master ; for what could they think of myself to induce a wish that I should become his successor? Of myself, whom they had never seen or heard of before ? They said they had " no fadtr and no mumma ; that massa had lubb'd them, and they lubb'd massa, and wanted to b'long to massa re- 284 JAMAICA, lation." It was in vain I told them I should leave the island in a few weeks, and never re- turn. They would go to England with me, to France, — ebery where ; I should nebba want any other servant if I would but buy them." What was to be done, or rather what could I do, with two ink-black children, (for they were not fourteen years old, either of them) in England, except to instruct the natives there in the condition of the slaves, to let them see the happiness of English peasantry^ and send them back to Jamaica with the account of it ? It would be rather an expensive experiment, as I should have to pay one hundred and fifty pounds for them at starting. However, I promised to con- sult with my Israelite, and take his advice, and to buy them, if I could anyhow dispose of them, so as to make them happy and con- tented. JAMAICA, 235 CHAPTER XXX. I passp:d Sunday at a gentleman's Pen near the half-way tree, as it is called, where is a burial ground, with the tomb of a governor or two ; and in the evening I heard my old ac- quaintance, Mr. Reiterhoffer, preach to an assembly of negroes in a mill-house. The Moravian reminded me of my faithful friend, the pretty Diana, for whom he made many enquiries, with a degree of enthusiasm that convinced me he was a zealous missionary at all events, as he was as anxious as ever about the Quadroon's soul. He was mortified to hear that she was gone into Portland, and that he had no farther chance of seeing her, except he made a pilgrimage thither to enlighten the negroes. He told me he was a watchmaker by trade, and had worked some years in Lon- don. His discourse to the negroes was really 236 JAMAICA. excellent, for it was in fact a paraphrase of Christ's sermon on the mount, enforced in plain language, and in a tone and manner very different from that which in England has often made me think, as I have listened to a digni- tary of the church, that he performed his duty as if he were doing heaven a favour. The negroes were very attentive, and departed literally in peace. February 11 — Wednesday. I left Kingston this morning, to pass a few- days at Port Morant with an old friend, who has just left me at this place (Yallah's) that is, a tavern kept by a black dame on the eastern side of the river of the same name. The whole road is superb. I breakfasted at an inn by the road side, kept by a white man, about eleven miles from Kingston, having passed Rock Fort, and crossed one or two small rivers and a lagoon, near which I saw an alligator cross the road. I should think he was four or five feet long ; but he passed so unexpectedly that I had not time to remark him much ; besides, he was a hundred and fifty yards before me. I rested during the heat of the day, and it was evening when JAMAICA. 237 I feache d Yallah's river, a turbid, dirty, and considerable stream, which appeared swollen with rains, though I had not seen a drop fall in the part of the island where I had been staying. My two squires knew nothing of the ford, for I had left the main road, expect- ing to meet my friend at an estate two or three miles inland. We wandered about till it was nearly dark, looking for a habitation or a human being to direct us, when we ar- rived at a large mansion, situated within a few yards of the river. I rode up to the door, to ask either hospitality or directions ; and after rapping with my umbrella half a dozen times at the jealousies, and parading the piazza, I ventured to walk in, and finding all quiet, opened a door leading from the hall into a suite of rooms on my left, which I traversed until the course of them brought me back to the hall. I then began another hammering, and finding that still in vain, I made the tour of the other side of the house. It was extremely well furnished, with abundance of sofas, and several beds, and handsome chairs and tables, as far as I could judge in the twilight, or rather moonlight ; but not a living soul could I find. I shouted a genuine tallyho, which was an- 238 JAMAICA swered by the neighing of a horse in a stable across the court yard. Had it been in Eng- land, this response would have been in cha- racter, but as I imagine this Pegasus had never before heard such a signal, it must have been the blood of his ancestry that was roused by my halloo. I would have examined the stable, to assure myself that it was a horse and not a fiend, the Robin Goodfellow, the Puck of the Antilles, that was mocking me, but here only I met bars and bolts. The owner of this enchanted mansion must still be a two-legged animal, as Voltaire says, without feathers ; he is more afraid of negroes riding his hunters than robbing his house. I must leave the castle of enchantment or take possession of it, — what shall I do ? Abdallah said he saw a cow at a distance, wading through the river ; — to the river we galloped, and following the cow's tail, crossed in safety, and hastened to a light which glimmered among the trees, where a black lassie directed us to this aforesaid tavern. A part of the country on this side of Rock Fort is of a dry nature, and overrun with the cactus tetragonus, or torch thistle, to which the natives give rather a liberal name. My JAMAICA. 239 hostess has not been over courteous ; if I could have bettered myself, I would have quitted her mansion, for she is the proudest two- legged thing I ever saw in petticoats. February 12 — Thursday. I left Miss Cornelia's tavern this morning at day-break, and rode with my new compa- nion to breakfast at an estate on the western side of Morant River, where we were very hospitably entertained ; but our repose was interrupted by the cracking of a whip, which disconcerted our host as well as ourselves, as it implied that one of the negroes was under- going a severe punishment. I looked through a spy-glass (a very usual piece of furniture in every piazza) towards the quarter whence the noise of the whip appeared to come, and ob- served a black man laid on the ground, and two drivers flogging him. The moment I mentioned two drivers, our host ran out of the house, mounted his horse, and galloped to the scene of action. The cracking of the whip however had soon ceased, and I learned after- wards that the culprit had only received the Mosaic allowance — thirty-nine stripes. Mr. G — — , our host, told us on his return that it was his cook who had been thus flagellated 240 Jamaica, by the overseer's order, who had taken on himself to punish the man, while he (Mr. G.) had been undecided in what way to treat him. The fact was, the cook, a few days be- fore, had endeavoured to poison Mr. G. and his family, by mixing, I think he said, ground glass in some soup, which was however for- tunately detected in time to prevent mischief. The cook had been instigated by revenge, be- cause a young man, his son, born of a free woman, and consequently free, had been ap- prehended for using treasonable or rebellious expressions, and kept in custody, by Mr. G.'s orders, during the Christmas holidays, while so much anxiety prevailed respecting the pro- jected insurrection in St. Mary's. The cook had been degraded from his post, and turned into the field to work, where he had used in- sulting and threatening language to the over- seer, telling him he did not dare to flog him, that it was forbidden by the buckras yander* who had made him as free as his son. This took place in the field, before all the negroes, and the overseer had thought proper to punish him on the spot. Mr. G. was rather dis- pleased at the circumstance, though he owned In England. JAMAICA. 241 that the man deserved certainly tlie severest punishment, but wished the overseer had been less precipitate. Would the man have been hanged or transported in England? And is not this cracking of the w^hip after all prefer- able to private castigation ? The sound be- trays, discloses the fact of punishment, not only to the negroes, but to the master and the whole country ; and must call the attention of all persons within ear-shot. A gentleman in Kingston told me, that two of his negroes had robbed a soldier of a bun- dle he was carrying, not by force, but on pretence of relieving him as he walked in the hot sun. The soldier complained to his offi- cer, who suspected from the situation where the robbery occurred, that the negroes be- longed to the aforesaid gentleman, and begged that the party robbed might be allowed to identify the thieves. All the slaves were im- mediately ordered out, and the soldier without hesitation fixed on both the rogues, whom the gentleman sent forthwith to the com- manding officer, with a request that they might be punished as he thought proper. They were ordered to be flogged with a cat- o'-nine-tails the day following; but they 11 242 JAMAICA. eluded the vigilance of their guards, and came back to their master, begging and intreating to be saved from the sqjer buckj^as ; they were willing to be flogged to pieces by the driver, flogged to h — 11, so massa would not let them be murdered by the white men. Hov/ever, he handed them up again to the offi- cer, with a statement of their apprehensions, and they were still in his custody when I was told of the circumstance. There are many ships which frequent Mo- rant river or rather Morant bay, to receive the produce of Blue Mountain valley, and part of St. David and St. Thomas in the East. There is a church and a great many houses, and many beautiful estates. I was told here that the clergyman, Mr. T , a most ex- emplary minister, has married nearly two thousand couples of negroes and people of colour, according to the rites of the English church. My old friend, almost as great a quiz as myself, led the way through two or three small rivers, which discharge themselves into the sea between Morant bay and Port Mo- rant. He rode a raw-boned chesnut horse with a white head and four white legs, which JAMAICA. 243 seemed always mixed up with his own long spindle shanks, that dangled nearly to the ground ; for though he is more than six feet high, his head is scarce visible above his horse's. He led the way through the rivers, and sank into a quicksand in one of them (not wider than a good ditch) so gently and plea- santly, that I took for granted it was a pre- meditated feat, when I saw him quietly swing his right leg and thigh over the ears of his charger and walk towards me, while the beast bustled out of the sand, shook himself, and seemed to offer the saddle again to his mas- ter. On such occasions, that is, where there is danger of being swamped, it is more pru- dent to take a good offing and keep out to sea ; the bar heaped up at the confluence of the salt and fresh waters is generally firm. The holidays have passed away here with- out any fracas, but the different companies of militia have been by turns on duty during Christmas, and for some time after. We are lodged at the house of a coffee-planter at Port Morant, overlooking the harbour (which is very spacious) and a dull swamp before it, with a range of mountains called the Carrion Crow hills, to the north and north-east, which, 244 JAMAICA. like all the other mountains I have seen in the island, are covered with forest. February 14 — Saturday. I sav/ many wreaths of smoke yesterday, rising among the woods in the mountains at day-break, which were pointed out as evi- dences of runaway negroes, or Maroons in pursuit of them, or perhaps of hog-hunters roasting their plaintains. The owner of this estate sent to England last year twenty pun- cheons of rum as a remittance to his factor, for which he found himself credited in his account current with eighty-six pounds fif- teen shillings, the amount of the net proceeds ; the value of the casks, not less than thirty pounds, was included in this net proceeds, so that the whole return on two thousand four hundred gallons of rum, was about fifty-six pounds, for the cost of materials, labour, fire, stills, clothing and feeding of the negroes, &c. He has a sugar estate, from which he sent, last year, two hundred hogsheads of Musco- vado sugar, which, after paying all contin- gencies, gave him a clear five hundred and fifty pounds. '* See, sir, what it is," said the planter, "to JAMAICA. 245 be hunted down by a pack of fanatics. As a remuneration for my toil and care in superin- tending the labour of two hundred and twenty- five slaves, and for the interest of a capital, that, but for the interference of the Saints and Quakers, was considered at least thirty-five thousand pounds, I have a revenue of five hundred and fifty pounds, to provide for my- self and family, and to insure me against droughts, tempests, hurricanes, and^ insur- rections. With a less capital, less risk, and much less personal toil and anxiety, in Eng- land, in my dear native country, I might hope to derive a much larger revenue, live suitably to my rank in society, and make progressively an ample provision for my daughters ; but, through the intrigues and machinations of a set of blind enthusiasts, whose morbid philanthropy propels them to measures that injure those they mean to be- nefit, I am here in a state of banishment, and gliding fast to ruin ; and whilst thus weighed down by misery, without one ray of hope to illumine the dreary prospect before me, I am, with the rest of the colonists, de- picted by the Saints, the Methodists, the Quakers, the man of beer, and, at their insti- 246 JAMAICA. gation, by three-fourths of the people of Great Britain, as a hard-hearted, inhuman monster, delighting in torturing, branding, and flogging my slaves, taking all the women to my own bed, or offering them to my guests ; working them in iron collars for amusement — (for ne- groes never deserve punishment) — for amuse- ment, and from a principle of enjoying human miseries and mortifications, from an un- avoidable abuse of power ; yet, such is the inconsistency of man, these same calumniators wish for a similar power over us !" — He finished with a deep sigh, which threw a deep melancholy over me for hours. JAMAICA. 247 CHAPTER XXXI. February 14 — Saturday. Being so near Bath, I thought it worth while to visit a place remarkable for its medicinal spring, and I am obliged to pass the night here on account of the rain. The road from Mount Morant is uninteresting for some few miles, although very hilly. The town or vil- lage is embosomed in trees, and surrounded by mountains, which supply it plentifully with water. I was directed to the house of a white lady, who I was told received guests, or pensioners, anxious to drink the waters, and entertained them at so much per diem ; but, as I was uncertain of my way, and my valet did not know the place, I made several en- quiries before I found out the object of my search. A young lady, standing at the door of a rambling old house, seemed to signify by her looks that she guessed I was hunting out 248 JAMAICA. this half-and-half sort of tavern ; and, as her physiognomy invited a nearer approach, I sa- luted her, and asked for Mrs. White. *' She lives here," was the reply : "will you dismount and walk in ?" The offer was not to be refu- sed. *'Can I dine here?" "Yes, certainly," cried the old woman, hurrying to the piazza ; "come in, sir, I pray, out of the rain." The rain came down on the shingles like a shower of marbles or bullets, as I entered this antique and dilapidated mansion, where the first ob- jects that presented themselves to my eyes (after the ladies) were all the crockery of the establishment ranged in rows to catch the water that streamed through the roof. It was a most curious exhibition ; cracked and disjointed fragments of one colour grafted on stocks of another, some tied round with zones of packthread and red tape, that seem.ed to have suffered a degradation from more honourable service. The rain fell so fast into these reservoirs, that it caused a splashing all over the room or hall, and I would fain parry it with my umbrella, which I opened and hoisted for the purpose, much to the amusement of Miss, who had the kindness to give me a wash for the red half of my face, JAMAICA. 249 while the old lady begged to know what I would have for my dinner. I left the office of catering to her, as she told me I might have anything I liked ; only excepting black pud- dings, which I told her I disliked — anything else, no matter what, would content me. ** A fowl, Louisa, I think the gentleman would like — a fowl — oh yes, a fowl and some soup." ''Pepper pot, anything in the world, madam." The old lady went to the opposite side of the hall, where another door opened into a back piazza, and by some enchantment of corn or eloquence, enticed and caught a cock that had taken shelter there from the rain. This she began twirling round and round by the neck, standing all the while with her back towards me, and singing the " Blue bell of Scotland," to drown the cries of the dying chanticleer. Miss had been commissioned, I suppose, to create a diversion of my eyes and ears from the ceremony of this murder, for she placed herself between me and her mother, and offered me an old volume of Roderick Random, in which she called my attention to the plates. The over anxiety of the parties however betrayed them. As an humble musi- cian, I was bound to listen to the lady's solo. 250 JAMAICA to which the raging of the rain contributed a grumbling bass, of something like toy kettle- drums, and the tinkling of the crockery served for cymbals or triangles. The cock now and then was heard, first in recitativo, then as taking part in a mutilated trio, for the old lady got out of breath with singing, with the exer- tion and the struggling of the bird, that she lost the time, and stopped now and then half a bar, to recover her respiration, while the other performers occupied her pauses. The whole effect was happily ludicrous. The Prima Donna had begun adagio with "Oh! where, and oh! where" — the young lady's " Roderick Random" coming in after "Your Highland Laddie," mingled with the scream of Alectryon. From a trio, we got to a finale; thus it ran — f Pr. Don. He's gone to fight the French for on the throne 1 I Miss L Roderick Random ) c Pr. D. And it's oh ! in my heart I wish safe at home (. Alect cock, cock, cock ! . /'Pr.D. His bonnet's of the Saxon . . . waistcoat . . . plaid . . iMissL Strap . .Narcissa. . pretty pictures J Traveller. I think he was a rascal not a prude VAlect cock, cock ! . , acli ! cock, cock ! 1 I JAMAICA. 251 . Here, with a violent struggle, chanticleer stuck one of his spurs in the old woman's left hand, on which she screamed and let him fall, with his neck twisted ; — he fluttered into the room, and began a dismal solo of groans and screams. The Prima Donna grumbled and stormed ; the young lady ran on about Roderick Random's red hair ; the rain rattled ; an old turkey-cock, enraged at the noise, began to gobble ; and I would have laughed, but Miss Louisa would not give me time. How Alec- tryon was dispatched, I know not : a black imp whisked into the hall, popped him under her apron, and flew off* like a harpy ; when she returned, it was to apply a bit of rag to the old lady's bridle arm. After waiting the proper time, the soup entered between the sable paws of little Kitty, oozing through the cracks of a white slop basin, all the rest of the dinner-set being in requisition for the rain. It was as black as ink, as black as Kitty, and tasted of nothing but pepper and water. I was obliged to de- cline it, which I was loth to do, for fear of offending my hostess, and because I expected to see nothing else but poor Alectryon, who I knew must be as tough as a halter from age- 252 JAMAICA. He followed of course, boiled as black as the soup, of which I am afraid he had been the basis, the sole material, and I should have had a banyan day but for half a dozen eggs that Miss Louisa had the humanity to offer me, and a slice of Dutch cheese as hard as Pharoah's heart. After dinner she invited me to take a turn in the botanic garden opposite the house, where, among a vast number of culinary and medicinal plants from all parts of the world, I saw an oak and a walnut tree, neither of which looked the worse for the change of scene. The spring is a mile from this place, gushes out of a rock, and is so hot that I could not bear my hand in the water at first. A negro woman at the bath told me that the heat was one hundred and thirty degrees by the " bermomter." February 1-5 — Sunday. Many persons have a propensity to travel on a Sunday, to see the people of the country in their best clothes. But let me take leave of Mrs. White. A little wine and water completed my sumptuous meal, during which two starved cats stalked about the room. JAMAICA, 253 making a most dismal mewing and caterwaul- ing ; they were lean and lank as lizards, and their voices had acquired a tone perfectly sepulchral from the vacuity in their hollow carcases. What they could be kept for I was at a loss to discover, as there was nothing in the house to tempt a rat, and the cats would never catch one, unless it were as weak and emaciated as themselves. I passed the night in a wretched bed, with a musquito net, that resembled the main sail of a frigate after an action of six or seven hours ; the whizzing of the musquitos was nothing to their bites : they were the largest, blackest, and most venomous I ever saw or felt. The place must be unwholesome, it so very humid ; the showers lull the wind, and during those intervals the heat and steam are enough to choke an Englishman. Mrs. White exacted a considerable fine from me for pre- suming to enter her mansion, where few will trespass a second time, except to say some- thing sweet to Miss Louisa. This damsel gave me a letter to a young lady in Man- chineal, who had been her school fellow at Kensington. Miss Harriot, or, according to her pronunciation, Haiot ; — " Miss Haiot," 254 JAMAICA. she said, " had a piano-forte, which I was to tune for her, if I would be so obliging. A very pretty girl, she has refused seven offers, and her papa has a large fortune to leave her." European beauty cuts but a mean figure in this climate, contrasted with the healthy countenances, and elastic figures of the Mu- latto and Quadroon women ; the features of these latter retain too often the inclination to the African lips, or a cast of countenance that reminds one of their origin, but they have a sweetness and tenderness of expres- sion that are very fascinating, and their forms are worthy of Praxiteles. Such transatlantic beauties, however, do not appear to advantage in England ; first, because they are always dressed as servants, with bundles of clothes to keep them warm, whereas, in Jamaica de- cency alone is consulted, and the air and gait are free and noble : I have rarely seen Eng- lish ladies walk with so much unaffected dignity. In the next place, the brown skin is not to be compared with the rosy conplex- ions of our own country, where the young women derive those charms from health, which they always want, and the others enjoy, in the tropics — (a rosy face is a bad JAMAICA 255 omen in Jamaica, and indicates an inflamma- tory habit;) — and lastly, the European cast of countenance is in our estimation vastly su- perior to the African. In Jamaica, we con- trast the features of the Quadroons with those of the negroes, which we have always in our eyes ; in England, with those of our countrywomen : what the Quadroons gain in the first instance, they pay dearly for in the second. Ebenezer was on the alert, and with much ado I kept him from preaching his nonsense to half a dozen old women assembled to hear Mrs. White read the morning service ; but he would not pass a negro to day without giving him advice or a benediction. Sometimes it was, ** All de Saint salute you, amen." Then, " The grace of our Lord be with you, amen." Sometimes, '* Brar, farewell, amen." At other times, " Seek the Lord," always adding amen, as if it were the perfection of his spell, the cabalistic word of power, the sign manual of the king. We crossed two or three rivers, one of them called the Devil's, in our way to Plantain Garden, a magnificent valley, or rather plain, between two ridges of hills, beautifully watered, so much so that the 25G JAMAICA. roads are frequently impassable on account of the floods. It is of no use to build bridges in this part of the earth ; a few hours rain hurrying from the mountains raises a deluge that sweeps away all such con- veniences, buries them in sand and gravel, or leaving them as monuments of vain in- dustry, finds itself a course towards the ocean, perhaps a mile or two from its ancient bed. The estates in Plaintain Garden appear to be laid out with great taste, and excellently managed, as far as I can judge. The soil con- tains an abundance of fine vegetable earth, and canes are of gigantic growth ; houses and buildings all in good repair, and every animal seems happy, not even ' excepting man. After travelling sixteen or seventeen miles, I reached Manchioneal at five o'clock in the evening ; a beggarly hole of a harbour, scarcely large enough for a barge, environed with ugly and dangerous rocks that have not even a romantic or picturesque feature to re- commend them. I saw a tolerable looking mansion just in front of it, built of stone, with plenty of woods, or as the negroes call them, bush, about it; and from the house I beheld a ship in the harbour, tied by ropes JAMAICA. 257 to the rocks, from which it seemed one might step in on one side to step out on the other. I had a direction to the attorney of an absent planter, but as I approached the Uttle town, if it deserves the name of town, I fell into conversation with an old gentleman on the road, who invited me to his dwelling, and has entertained me with genuine hospitality and kindness. 258 JAMAICA CHAPTER XXXII. February 16 — Monday. I FOUND out and delivered my letter to Miss Haiot C y, whose father keeps a store and deals in crockery. His shelves would furnish a battalion or two of new troops to recruit the battered veterans I left at Bath, with their wounds and decorations, scars and patches, stars and garters. — ^I am almost tired of writing the sentiments of the white population about emancipation, but this man, who seemed as unyielding and unbending as his ware, spoke of the Saints with an inve- teracy beyond all precedent. Mr. Mathews is but a type of him. He began by abusing the Methodists and Quakers ew masse ; then he proceeded to individuals, and finished with a long tirade against the colonists, merchants and all. He was for impeaching — — of high treason, for exciting the slaves to JAMAICA. 259 rebellion and to massacre the whites. He says, " their designs are dark and insidious : the blackest treason lurks behind : they wish to accustom the English people to see the principles by which property, honourably and lawfully acquired, is held sacred, tram- pled under foot. They mean to undermine all the institutions we venerate, by first attacking the outworks of the empire, by ruining the colonists ; next they will set the landholders and public creditors by the ears ; then they will assail the Church property in Ireland, in the hope ultimately of raising themselves on the ruin of the established clergy; and yet the besotted aristocracy cannot see through the machinations of this canting crew." He calls the brewer *' a poor igno- ramus, who allows his paw to be poked into the fire for the chesnuts which the others mean to eat." He says, ** this gentleman's incon- sistency and selfishness make him despicable ; all his acts are the offspring of vanity or avarice, but the latter passion predominates ; when he fancies he can gain a little popularity free of expense to himself, he indulges in the most rapid and lofty flights in the cause of humanity ; but when his own pecuniary in- 260 JAMAICA. terest is concerned, he betrays by his anxiety and cunning all the meanness of the most pitiful huckster ; — witness the beer question, and witness the weaver's price-book bill ; — he opposed the wishes of his poor neighbours, the weavers, who, in consequence, assembled to the number of some thousands, and resolved not to drink any more of his beer. What did the petty spirit then? Why, he explained away his previous declaration, and as a peace offering sent the poor weavers a sum of money towards defraying the expenses of their op- position to the bill." Of other individuals he speaks in such unmeasured language, that I forbear repeating his remarks. He finished a long monologue, for I did not interpose a single word, by exclaiming, ** Your colonists, too, what are they ? A rope of sand ; all falling from one another ; no union ; no bond : Self-interest is their motto. The wealthiest are merchants, or connected with merchants, in England. They sell us who are toiling here. One wants a borough ; another a place ; a third a living, a commission, a con- tract. They all want commission on our pro- perty, and so agree to make us pay the high- est duties to get the highest commission on JAMAICA. 261 our gross produce. What a consummation of ignorance and imbecility on the part of the colonists, to suffer a system so flagitious, so execrably unjust, to endure an hour! But if they endure it, what are they fit for ? Why, to be tied by the neck and heels, and laid down before the Arch-Saint, to kneel on when he prays to be saved from the devil, to whom and they are going headlong; and I think the sooner they reach the bottom of their pit the better." The daughter of this testy gentleman has none of her father's temper. She is a very nice, amiable girl, sensible and accomplished, and has a rooted antipathy to the island of Jamaica and the islanders; though I would not infer this particular to be a proof of her good sense or amiability. An education in England has unfitted her for society here. At Kingston, or Spanish Town, she might be happier; but a society of overseers and book- keepers, uneducated or half-educated, and segar- smokers, has no charm for an accom- plished woman or a person of fine feelings. Miss Louisa, very probably, does not ex- aggerate in saying that her friend has refused seven ofl^ers. I think she would refuse seven 262 JAMAICA. hundred, if they were what she describes. All this, however, seems ridiculous for the daughter of a man of Crocks. — Alas! the man of Crocks is rich! but his property is here ; debts to collect ; debts in Spanish America ; a share in a great estate. He thinks it as well still to turn a penny, and sells crockery, even by retail, to the negroes, with padlocks and rat-traps and other wares. I tuned Miss Harriet's pianoforte, and had the happiness of singing a volume of duets with her. February 17 — Tuesday. Having found a letter at Manchioneal from Mr. Mathews, proposing an expedition to the Blue Mountain Peak, I retraced my steps to Plantain Garden, and crossed all the rivers, old and new, to Port Morant : some of their courses were now dry desarts, others brim full, hurrying down stones and trees in one mingled mass of confusion. I stopped at M 's estate, to rest, and reached Port Morant by the time the fire-flies were on the wing. These insects have been described by every traveller in the tropics. There are se- veral species of them, mostly carrying their JAMAICA. 263 lights in the eyes ; some under the belly ; and, as they flit about in the dark, they give one the idea of bogles and kelpies. I was near being swamped in one horrible river, called the Parson's Hole. February 19 — Thursday. I slept at the residence of my old friend T , at Port Morant, and had the pleasure of his company the next day by Morant Bay to the Blue Mountain valley ; a scene that reminded me frequently of the valley of Domo d' Ossola, on the south side of the Simplon. Morant River flows through it, receiving a number of tributary streams, all of which turn sugar mills, more or less. The country is very beautiful, green and fresh looking, and the people on the estates all merrily at work getting off* their crops. I passed a gang of negroes mending the roads in chains, two and two, linked together, some by the necks, others by the legs. The chains were light, but still chains, although the weight did not aff'ect the spirits of the wearers. They saluted me with a " How d'ye, Massa? Please gib we one tenpence;" a demand I paid for courtesy, and asked the 264 JAMAICA. particulars of their crimes. I once accosted a similar company in the arsenal at Venice, and was soon satisfied with their answers, for the first grinned in reply to my question, and said, " H' ammazzato un uomo," — I have killed a man ; while his companion, without waiting for a similar request, volunteered his story, and cried out, " Una donna, una fanciulla ra- gazzina solamente," and winked his eye most significantly. It was much the same thing here; robbery and violence, determined thieves, one incorrigible runaway, and a practitioner of Obeah. They cut their jokes on me, notwithstanding their situation, and quizzed my harlequin face, one side of which they said blushed to see the other look so fright. Ebenezer hung back to give them a little advice, and was near being treated in the same manner as the knight of La Mancha, for they sent a shower of stones after him, one of which hit his mule on the crupper, and set him kicking; however, he held on by the portmanteau till the paroxysm was passed. As we approached the mansion in which we proposed to invite ourselves to dine and sleep, I saw a large yellow snake, the first I have met with in the island. I JAMAICA. 265 should think it was six feet long, and as thick as my wrist. It crossed the road and twisted itself round a branch of a tree, two feet from the ground, from which it hissed at us as we passed. I have often seen the black snakes, which travel over bushes and along their tops : both the yellow and black are void of any venomous quality. The former ought to be very useful, if, as Sneezer tells me, they " eat ratter." None of the veno- mous snakes are so active as those which want the poisonous fangs. The boa con- strictor is one of the most agile, as well as strongest, and the viper of England is slow, compared with our common green snake. The gentleman with whom I tra- velled had come to Jamaica for his health, having nearly given up the ghost in England, from spitting blood. The climate has quite set him up, and he is going in a few days to return to his native country. February 20 — Friday. I I set out with my long-legged friend last night, or evening, at six o'clock, to avoid the fatigue of too much hurry to-day, and be- 266 JAMAICA. cause it had rained till that time, to ride to L estate in St. David's, where I am waiting for Mr. Mathews. As Mr. T— — is on his way to Kingston, our host in Blue Mountain presented him with two or three articles for sea store, and among them two large Wiltshire or Gloucester cheeses, which were divided between Sneezer and his own man, for Abdallah led the grey pacer, who had lamed himself the other day in Yallah's river, while I now rode the Creole horse. I re- gretted that I had not left the Mussulman at Manchioneal, as I shall most likely have to return that way, nay, I believe I must. We passed Mount Lebanus at sun-set, and traversed the ridge that incloses the valley in which the house stands. There is not much of a mount, the estate being so called from the cedar trees which abound there ; but not cedars of Lebanon : they are the common ce- dars of Jamaica, cedrela odorata, — ^very useful for shingles. Having ascended this ridge, our road led us down into a defile, and then between some cleared lands ; the stumps of the burnt trees still standing to signify how the woods were destroyed. Here the rains JAMAICA. 267 had caused the earth on the slope of the mountain to shift its birth : an acre or more in some places appearing to have slid down lower, without much damaging the trees that are growing. I think we very soon lost our road, for the rest of the night was passed in looking after it, and groping among ravines and along narrow ridges hardly wide enough for one horse. We stopped at a ruined house at or near Richmond Hill, for in the dark I understood but too little of the country ; our halt was chiefly to accommodate the cheeses, which were always breaking loose and rolling down the precipices to entertain Sneezer and Lynch, who had to scramble after them. The house we stopped at had no roof, or it was long since fallen in, and the trumpet trees grew out of it thirty or forty feet high ; but the walls of stone were perfect, and might be in- habited again, with a new roof. Abbeysneezer professed now to know the way, and led us along another most dangerous ridge, which terminated in a flight of steps or foot-holes, scooped out of a bank that seemed to descend for a mile, as well as I could guess by the faint murmurs of a torrent, which I could see 268 JAMAICA. below, bounding from rock to rock, and flash- ing in the starlight as it hurried from the lowest into a lower deep, still threatening to devour us and our cheeses, — for here they took a most romantic flight, as I have done from sympathy. — Sneezer insisted the cattle could and should go down the ladder, which I thought about as practicable as making a dog leap over a ditch with a pole. I was afraid to venture the horses ; and the Abb6 preferred (I think it was spite) to dispatch his cantancrous mule first, but the mule was sul- len; however, Sneezer overmatched him here, for he tripped up his hind legs with the assist- ance of Lynch, and launched him upon the loose and yielding runaway land, which went away with him I could not guess where, for the mule was out of sight in half a minute, and we could only hear a crashing, rumbling, and grunting, mingled with the roar of the torrent, until every other sound seemed buried in the last. The cheeses had been tied afresh with a cord and suspended over the mule's crupper, and when the animal tripped up, the cord burst and the cheeses flew or rolled off, like a couple of cars parting from the pinnacle JAMAICA. 269 of Beaujon, by apparently opposite routes to arrive at the same goal. Lynch ran after one, and his master slid halfway down? the moun- tain in pursuit of the other, dragging after him his horse, whose saddle was torn off by one of the stirrups hanging in the stump of a dead tree. Sneezer was trying his skill with the sumpter mule, which somehow tumbled off his portmanteaus, and ran away back by the path we had come ; and Dollar, groping about, thought he had found a safer path to the right hand, whither he drove the horses, until he got a mile off, on the other side of the torrent. I remained alone amidst this scene of confusion for a few minutes, and then as- sisted my long-legged companion in safety to the bottom of the ravine, where I found Lynch reuniting the cheeses and calling to his mule, who, having no mind to stay behind, was de- scending the hill like a philosopher, at a very steady pace. A good hour elapsed before we were again in marching order, when with little exertion we gained the shore of Yallah's river, and found ourselves opposite the enchanted man- sion which I had penetrated a few nights ago ; 270 JAMAICA. we left it however on our left, crossed the cows' ford as before, and arrived in another half hour at the house we sought, where I am to wait for my radical friend. JAMAICA. 271 CHAPTER XXXIII. February 23. I WAITED some days in St. David's before my radical friend Mr. Mathews made his appearance with a young gentleman, who so- licited to share our toils in the expedition we had planned to the Blue Mountain peak. This youth, whom I shall call Mr. Selwyn, was mounted on a grey mare, and came at- tended by a party of negroes, carrying provi- sions of all kinds ; fresh and salted beef, pork, poultry, yams, and plantains, with a suffi- ciency of wine to make a noble libation to Bacchus, and enough rum to console one or two of the priests of that deity who presides over the manufacture of it. I have heard that the black gentleman, Old Nick, is ycleped the inventor of this fiery potation. He furnished us likewise with blankets and Kilmarnock caps, and dispatched three negroes across the 172 JAMAICA. hills to await our arrival at Blue Mountain estate, situated at the head of the valley of the same name, where one of the deep ravines of the mountain expands into a plain. A Dr. B had furnished my friend with a tem- porary barometer. He cleaned some quick- silver by forcing it through wood with an air pump, and gave it him in a stone jug, with a proper glass tube, a teacup, and a graduated stick. A thermometer was a desideratum we never obtained. Thus provided, we started after breakfast, mounted some on horses, some on mules, each with a personal attendant and a knapsack. I carried likewise a gun and some ammunition. We rode through Lloyd's estate, Paterson's and Telfer's, where I was shewn the spot on which a celebrated cedar tree had been cut down, and riven into boards and shingles, which were sold for more than two thousand pounds. The amount had been ascertained by Dr. Telfer bringing an action against the person who cut down the tree illegally or erroneously, imagining he had a right to the land on which it grew. We halted at Petersfield estate, where we took an early dinner with Mr. , and tried in vain to get a thermometer. JAMAICA. 273 1 ought here to mention a beautiful pros- pect, which had opened on our view as we crossed the steep ridge which forms the boundary line of the parishes of St. David and St. Thomas in the East, between Paterson's estate and Petersfield, but our eyes were diverted to more subhme objects, and we bestowed little time on it, hurrying to reach the coffee plantation of Mr. Francis, situated six miles beyond or above Blue Mountain estate ; this we hoped to gain before dark, and galloped on through several other estates in the valley, crossing the Morant River oc- casionally, or some of its tributary streams, and many beds of others now dry, yet bearing the marks of being outrageous torrents at times. The sun had set before we reached the goal to which we hurried, and we com- menced our ascent from Blue Mountain estate in the dusk, along a zig-zag road through the woods on the side of a precipice, where there was only now and then room for two beasts to pass, and where, as a matter of course, we travelled very slowly. Night soon closed on us, but did not increase our darkness ; it was one of the beautiful nights of the tropics, when the firmament seems to blaze, and the T 274 JAMAICA. planet Venus casts a shadow as perceptible as that caused by the light of the moon. Beneath her guidance we traversed many a green alley and bosky bourn, and blundered through others, where the thick foliage in- tercepted all light; a hazardous march, de- manding the greatest caution ; for we could see in the illuminated places, that the upper bank of the road had occasionally given way, and that the earth, slipping down from above, had completely filled up the track, and formed a continued declivity above and below, which amounted almost to a precipice. Being the greatest stranger, I led the way, now on foot, holding the bridle of my mule with one hand and carrying the fowling-piece in the other, while the straggling train of mounted and dismounted attendants reached some hundred yards in my rear, when I stumbled unexpectedly over one of these avalanches of earth I have described, and found myself sud- denly suspended in the air by my mule's bridle. Invaluable beast! Terror or obsti- nacy kept him planted like a post ; — the bridle was strong, and allowed me time to calculate on my recovery. I cried out to my compa- nions to beware, but I could not regain the JAMAICA. 275 path ; the avalanche was too steep, and the few bushes growing beside it soon yielded to my grasp. Mr. Mathews laid himself on the ground, while Selwyn held him by the feet ; the gun was first secured, and then Mr. Mathews grappled me, but I was still in- debted to the mule for helping to haul me up. My safety was scarcely ascertained, when we were alarmed by a cry from some of the party behind, occasioned by a similar accident to Selwyn's grey mare, which fell unhappily to the very bottom of the gulley ; and, although some of the negroes found a way down to her, where they were assisted by a few bushes, and endeavoured to raise her, yet she had re- ceived too much injury in the fJl, and all their efforts were ineffectual: she rose no more. These delays made it late before we arrived at Francis's plantation, where our appearance in such numbers, and at such an hour, occa- sioned no small consternation among the inhabitants of that retired spot. A watchman, stationed at the provision grounds by the path side, left his half-roasted plantains and rats on his fire, and ran away to give the alarm to 276 JAMAICA. the overseer, who summoned a few trusty ne- groes to the house, armed them, as well as himself, and made a stand to defend his post at the door of it. I approached, and told him the cause of our unseasonable visit, begging the rites of hospitality for the night. *'Mit mine whole hearts," replied the over- seer, extending the hand of welcome with an air of delight, very suddenly changed from one of apprehension, for he and the negroes had conjectured from our untimely visit, that the deputy marshal and his men were come to make a levy of some sort, and were very agreeably undeceived by my explanation. The honest German gave us the best fare he could procure on such an emergency, and the only two beds he had in the house ; and some of his negroes, who had run away into the woods on our approach, now returned, and contrived, in spite of all our precautions, to carry off our fresh beef, which we meant to have roasted on the Blue Mountain Peak. We slept soundly, and rose the next morning re- freshed and in high spirits, to enter on the difficult part of our journey ; but I thought it advisable before we started to make a trial of our barometer, and determined the height of JAMAICA 277 Francis's plantation at two thousand feet above the level of the sea. I afterwards learnt that a party who went up the mountain in 1818, gave the height of Francis's at two thousand eight hundred and seventeen feet. They were better provided with instruments, and their calculation, I have no doubt, is the more correct of the two. It may not be amiss to describe the manner in which our instru- ment was formed and used. The glass tube, being first dried and cleaned with a piece of rag fastened on a small stick, was filled with mercury, and the finger being held firm on the open end, the tube was then reversed two or three times successively, till all the air bubbles disappeared, and, if necessary, was replenished with more of the metal ; the re- mainder of which was then poured into a tea- cup or bowl of sufficient size to admit of the next operation ; namely, to turn into it the open end of the tube with the finger pressed on it as before, which was then carefully re- moved, and (all air being excluded) the mer- cury in the tube fell to the level which corre- sponded with the elevation of the spot where the experiment was tried ; the graduated stick being then applied to the tube, indicated the 278 JAMAICA. level in inches and tenths. Without a ther- mometer, we could not make the necessary corrections for temperature, either here or subsequently at the Peak. We enlisted a fine active negro belonging to this estate, a celebrated hog-hunter, as our guide. He was said to be well acquainted with every track in the woods, and attended our summons with a machet, as well for de- fence, in case of falling in with any runaway negroes, as for cutting his way through any obstructions of brushwood or withes. He carried also a calabash bottle full of water, and a cutacoo (a small basket) which contained his pipe, some tobacco, a flint, steel, and touchwood, not forgetting a bunch of plan- tains. He was tall, and rather slender than otherwise, but his frame was all bone and sinew, without an ounce of superabundant fiesh ; — a fine, picturesque figure, that be- came the grand scenery around us, and would have served as a study for three-fingered Jack. His bold and intrepid countenance contrasted much to his advantage with the demure Ralpho-look of Ebenezer, whose en- thusiasm seems already to have lengthened the lines of his face, and almost to have given JAMAICA, 279 a lankness to his woolly tails. He and Ab- dallah divided between them my great coat and blanket, and the box containing the barometer and some of the provisions. Mr. Mathews's Cudjoe and Selwyn's Adonis car- ried also their master's coats and apparatus, together with a few bills for cutting wood, and a tinder box. The heavy baggage, water, wine, and rum in bottles, and the eatables in iron pots, were the burden of Selwyn's gang. As for ourselves, my companions carried cut- lasses and umbrellas, for attack and defence, as swords and targets ; and I was armed with the double-barrelled Joe Man ton. We were sometimes a-head, in confabulation with our cicerone, sometimes in the rear, animating the stragglers. We marched due north, straight up the mountain, having Wild Cane River to the west, and Morgan's River to the east, far beneath the steep ridge along which we jour- neyed. The trees there grew tall and straight, without underwood, so that our progress was as rapid as the ascent and the heavy loads of the negroes would admit. In half an hour we reached the brink of a tremendous preci- pice, formed by some horrible convulsion of nature. The side of the hill was broken 280 JAMAICA. away, and hurled to the bottom of the ravine, possibly by an earthquake, or perhaps the impatient current of Morgan's River had un- dermined the base of the mountain. The earth above, loaded with rocks and trees, and saturated with the torrents of the tropical rains, would soon gravitate into the gulph, and carry ruin and dismay with it. How- ever, till lately there were no inhabitants, except the wild boars, to be dismayed, and no one remembers the catastrophe, which yet looks recent. This precipice, I find, is a land-mark for sailors,and is denominated the Broken Ground. We crept to the edge, and held by the shrubs growing on it, to look down more securely into the abyss, whose depth made us giddy almost to sickness : I was glad to be re- lieved from the sight. We resumed our march after the respite occasioned by this halt, our difficulties in- creasing as we advanced. Sometimes we had to climb precipices, almost perpendicular, by means of the shrubs and trees which hung in the mid-air above us ; sometimes we passed along ridges so narrow that we could straddle across them at top, where the soil had been JAMAICA. 281 washed away so entirely, as to leave the roots of the trees bare, and allow us to see them twisted together as they had grown, in many fantastic forms ; over these we had to pick our way, while we listened to the roaring of the torrent beneath, which the thick foliage concealed from our eyes. The fatigue was Sfreat to one unused to such exertions in such a climate, but I dared not flag when I saw the loaded negroes tripping merrily along, sinking under the branches of the trees, or twisting themselves round their slanting trunks, and yet balancing their cargoes with ease and gracefulness. We suffered much from thirst, for we had agreed not to touch our stores in the bottles but at appointed periods; and the inclination to drink was incessant. We found no water withes, and though the wild pines contained abundance of the liquid element, it had become as bitter as gall from the dead leaves which had rotted in these natural reservoirs ; far from being fit to drink, we found it too unpleasant even to wash our parched mouths. We saw the tracks of wild hogs in abund- ance, but none of the bristled, curly-tailed gentlemen, and but one ring- tailed pigeon. 282 JAMAICA There were very few birds of any kind, and one we met with was a stranger to us all : it resembled an English blackbird, with a yel- low bill. The trees that flourish on these Alps have been partly enumerated by the botanists who visited them in 1818. We saw plenty of the Bermudian junipers, Santa Marias, and many others hitherto unknown to us, with abundance of the candleberry myrtle. We reached a remarkable knoll, between one and two o'clock, which our guide had fixed upon as a station where we should rest and take refreshment. From hence we had a grand and wonderful prospect, extend- ing along the shores of the island from Port Morant to Portland Point, with all the har- bours, bays, and promontories distinctly visi- ble. The plain of Liguanea lay below us, like an extensive garden ; and the towns of Kingston and Port Royal seemed so irame- diatelv under our feet, that we could almost fancy it possible to throw a stone into them. Here were valleys and hills dwindled into insignificance, covered with the luxuriant vegetation of the sugar-cane, mixed with the paler green of the guinea-grass, and the browner pastures of the Penns. The view was JAMAICA, 283 terminated by the interminable ocean. Those only who have seen in detail the different parts of this rich and beautiful country, may form a just idea of the magnificent prospect produced by their grand combination. Our difficulties rather increased as we pursued our course, for the trees being shorter and more shrubby, required more hacking to afford us a path ; and the withes, grasses, and climbing reeds, were become extremely troublesome, especially a long coarse grass which grew at the base of the cone forming the sugar-loaf peak of the mountain ; this was twisted from tree to tree, and interlaced in such a manner as to form a strong net-work, very laborious to penetrate. The tracks of wild hogs were still visible, and we met with the cinders of a very recent fire, the kitchen, probably, of some runaway slave. I adverted here to a remarkable circumstance, namely, that in the whole line of march from Francis's plantation, we had not seen a single stone on the surface of the ground. There may be rocks at no great depth, but we saw only a rich mould, producing a luxuriant vegeta- tion. We reached the eastern peak at five o'clock. 284 JAMx*ICA. in time to contemplate the view ; to see the sun gradually withdraw his golden rays from the panorama below us, and finally sink into the sea. The east end of the island was clearly distinguishable ; part of Manchioneal and the noble vale of Plantain-garden River. On the north we had a transient glimpse of Port Antonio ; already buried in the twilight, the clouds soon intercepted the view on that side. Milk River Bay was discernible in the west, and the outline of the parish of Vere. The heights of Plowden rose boldly out of the sea, and the shadows of the May-day Mountains crept over the plains, the hills, and at last the Alps on which we stood, until the beautiful vision was blotted from our view, or shrouded in the deep twilight, which delayed but for a few minutes the darkness of night. With the night came tlie thought of supper and lodging, for which we prepared a spot of ground, that had been cleared some years before by other travellers ; it was a little be- low the peak, opened to the south, and con- sequently sheltered from the north wind, which blew very sharply. The stem of a tree, which had fallen in a direction down JAMAICA. 285 the slope, was supported in a horizontal posi- tion by its branches at a few feet from the ground. This had served as a ridge pole for the hut of the former visitors, for there were rafters still leaning against it, and laths tied across it with withes, to which we added others, and thatching the whole with long grass, soon made a comfortable tenement, with only an opening at the south front. We drove some short forked stakes into the ground, and fixed bars on them, as a lattice work for the grass that was strewed over them, to form no uncomfortable resting place. The negroes collected dry wood in sufficient quan- tity ; but when we tried the tinder-box, the tinder, alas ! was wet. There was yet light enough to see the rueful faces peeping into this receptaculum, like so many magpies into a marrow-bone. What varied expressions of horror and despair! The damp of the at- mosphere, the perspiration of Quashie or Cudjoe! What was to be done? Our friend Brutus (by the bye, he was Cicero on this occasion) — thanks to his passion for a pipe, had kept his touchwood dry ; — the fire was soon kindled, the pots hung over it, — plan- tains and cocos pealed, and swimming with 286 JAMAICA. the salt pork. A wooden spit, on which a fat fowl was impaled, revolved upon two forked sticks, set up at convenient distances, by the interposition of Ebenezer's hand ; a business for which he (as well as some other enthu- siasts) was far better calculated, than for en- lightening the gentiles. The supper and the hut were ready together; the repast was served with antediluvian simplicity ; the mas- ters seated on the upper side of the sloping floor, the servants on that opposite. We feasted, for we had abundance ; and we drank the juice sacred to Bacchus, and gave the negroes plenty of Old Nick. A more pic- turesque, or grotesque, group could not be desired ; like gypsies, or banditti, we caroused around the fire, and pledged each other in flowing cups. All of us had mounted the Kilmarnock caps, on which some had put their liats, or drawn over them the blankets and counterpanes, which we found a necessary defence from the cold, even in addition to our great coats ; one or two were engaged in col- lecting more wood and making up the fire ; some gave way to sleep as soon as they had eaten their fill, and others were nodding on the brink of it. Our blazing fire cast a ruddy JAMAICA, 287 glare on the various figures, countenances, and objects, around us, whilst Mr. Mathews would needs tell a story to beguile the time ; but he had hardly opened his mouth before he fell asleep, as if he had taken one of the Caliph Haroun Alraschid's powders. A negro made the same attempt with similar success. Drowsiness possessed us all, and we snored in concert. But our nap was not long. We all awoke shivering with excessive cold, al- though the fire still blazed : we made it blaze more, and heaped fresh fuel on it. The ne- groes complained that their bills were too cold for their hands, and warmed them before they would chop wood for us. Mr. Mathews had a second fire lighted at his head, his feet being scarce a foot from the first. Selwyn and myself, with some of the negroes, re- tired into the hut, which we found more com- fortable than the open air, especially as we could there still derive some advantage from the fire, which was not far from the door. I suffered still from the cold, and warmed my- self with chopping wood ; after which my slumber was less broken. I regret that we had no thermometer, but the gentlemen who travelled here in 1818 had only forty-eight 288 JAMAICA. degrees of heat, according to Fahrenheit. As we had a north wind, I suspect it was still colder, though some allowance must be made for the state of our bodies, relaxed by the heat of the lowlands, and not fitted for so great a change of temperature. At day-break we arose, and would have prosecuted our journey to the highest peak, which appeared only a few miles distant to the north-west, rising in solitary grandeur; but although this was the point we were most anxious to attain, various objections opposed our wishes : our water was expended, though, had we possessed any vessels wherewith to catch it, the clouds, which, from a drizzle began to pour on us, would have furnished an abundant supply; our guide Cicerone Bru- tus threw difficulties in the way, and magni- fied them ; he was more desirous to go back than to proceed ; and, after much consultation; we prepared for our descent. While our breakfast was getting ready, I made another attempt to view the north side of the island, but the clouds were denser than on the preceding evening. I then ad- justed the barometer, and found that the mer- cury stood at 23" 20 ; but not being satisfied JAMAICA, 289 with this indication, I took the tube from the bowl, and reversed it again and again, to be sure of expelling all the air ; but the same re- sult appeared without the least deviation. According to Sir Henry C. Englefield's me- thod and tables, and taking for granted that the thermometer would stand at 85° on the sea shore, and at 48° on the peak, our elevation here was 7182 feet, which corresponds nearly with that determined by Captain Frazer, the island engineer, in 1789, in the course of a laborious trigonometrical survey. He found the western peak, to which we did not go, three hundred feet higher. The three gen- tlemen who preceded us in 1818, give the height of the barometer as 23° 70', and that of the thermometer at 48", whence they con- clude the elevation to be G628 feet. I should distrust our own accuracy, if it were not that Captain Frazer's calculation still exceeds ours. It may naturally be expected that the pro- ductions of this climate are different from those of the lowlands. I shall subjoin a list of the plants enumerated by the three tra- vellers quoted before, to which I have but lit- tle to add, for I regret to say that a very small portion of our time was devoted to botanical 290 JAMAICA. research. As they ascended from Francis's, they met with abundance of Santa Maria wood (calophyllum calaba) a magnificent tree, often 100 feet high; beef- wood; an achras, which they call xylobocion ; rod -wood (loetia guidonia) ; mountain guava (psidium monta- num) ; mamme apple (mammea Americana) ; naseberry bully tree (achras mammosa) ; red bully tree (achras anona) ; and white achras (salicifolia) ; ficus Americana ; pepper (piper longum) ; and gigantic juniper cedars. On the eastern peak the African yew (taxus elongata) ; several species of andromeda ; viz. fasciculata, Jamaicensis, and octandria; six myrtles, viz. hirsuta, saxifolia, nion- ticola, and axillaris, the other two non detectae ; the myrica cerifera, and an un- known shrubby digitalis; some species of the cock-roach tree (melastoma); one, the coccinea, in flower ; a beautiful lysianthus (bicolor) ; — the wild pine (tillandsia lingulata) ; filix arborea, this is the adiantum maximum ; and innumerable mosses ; the great fox-tailed grass (alopecurus Indicus) ; a goose grass (dactylus major); and the arundo scandens, vulgarly called traveller's joy, not because it retards his progress, but because he may JAMAICA. 291 use it for his bed ; innumerable euphorbia on the Peak. We looked in vain for the mangoes, the seeds of which a Mr. Thomson had planted some years ago. The climate must be too cold for them, or they could not fail, for the seed will vegetate on the surface of the land below : indeed I should consider the coldness and humidity of the situation would render these regions, as a residence, very disagreeable even to the Eu- ropeans of the north, for the clouds envelop these peaks during a portion of almost every day, and the thunder-storms must be terrible, as they seem from below to range around the very pinnacle we explored. We wrote our names on a slip of paper, with a short account of our proceedings, and inclosed it in a bottle, placed beneath a yew tree, which contained the journal of other travellers. As the rain became serious, we hastened our departure, and travelling with much expedition, reached Mr. Francis's house in three hours, when we saddled our beasts and bid adieu to our kind host, the German. However, we made a halt to survey the scene of my disaster, which was a very awful gulph ; and farther on we saw Selwyn's 292 JAMAICA. grey mare at the bottom of the dingle, with a score of Abdallah's amen-preachers hard at work on her. We parted at Blue Moun- tain ; Mr. Mathews and Selwyn returned to C , and I jogged on to an estate si- tuated on the banks of Morgan's River. JAMAICA. 293 A '■■ CHAPTER XXXIV. February 25 — Wednesday, I MADE a short halt of one night at Mor- gan's River, and returned by Port Morant tef Manchioneal, where I spent another day with Miss Harriet and her father, and then pro- ceeded towards Port Antonio, the Ultima Thule of my peregrinations, whence I mean to embark for England. I am lodged at the house of a gentleman near Priestman's River, late the occupation of a most able and amiable physician, who died of hydrophobia, or rather the fear of it, a favourite dog having bitten him at a time when he was otherwise un- well in body and mind. The dog ran away into the woods, and no doubt was mad ; the poor gentleman, already ill with a fever, soon pined to death, after a residence of many years in the island, where he was universally loved and respected, though he had run through a 294 JAMAICA, course of misfortunes, which had obliged him to sell all his patrimony and his negroes. No one, from all accounts, ever seems to have been more worthy of the favour of fortune, and FiO one ever was honoured w^ith more of her frowns : — she is a capricious jade. "Vitam regit fortuna non sapientia." Who can say he ever received from her a life of tranquillity and happiness? The sea-shore here is lined with estates, the interior is all mountain and forest. I am told that there is not space to manoeuvre a re- giment of cavalry in the whole parish of Portland. The estates are very productive ; the soil strong clay, and the whole of the coast is a mass of honeycomb rock rising per- pendicularly out of the sea, which is almost unfathomable even from the shore. A few miles inland is a settlement of Maroons at Moore Town, where there is also a portion of a battalion of the 60th regiment; the re- mainder of the battalion resides at Titchlield barracks ; and no troops in the world, I am told, are more healthy. February 26 — Thursday. I continued my route along the sea-coast JAMAICA. 295 this morning at day-break, and saw the sun rise out of the ocean. Near the shore there was comparatively little swell, and every bay was as still as the grave ; so calm, that I could see the fish swimming many fathoms below me as I looked down from the impending rocks. There were three sharks in one of these bays, lying as if they were at anchor, motionless, with only the dorsal fin appearing above water. They were not very overgrown monsters, although powerful enough to have amputated a leg or a head. I heard once of a negro throwing himself, or falling, over- board out of a ship, in one of the harbours here, who was torn to pieces in an instant by the sharks, and buried in their maws, nothing being left of him but a tinge of his blood in the water. In the bay where I saw the sharks, and in two others along the coast, I could distinguish, by the curl of the water, that more than one or two subterranean rivers discharged themselves into the sea beneath the rocks ; one was very considerable, and agitated the sea where it disembogued, like the rush from a mill, for a space fifty or sixty yards wide, at the least. The rocks were lined with curious grotesque-looking trees, 296 JAMAICA. whose branches were uncommonly distorted and crooked, but they bore a large beautiful white flower, which is called here the sea- side jasmine ; it is the plumeria alba. — -The lizards frisked about the roads like rabbits in a warren; they are the only game I ever meet with, and would furnish excellent di- version to the fair sportsman, not to the pot- hunter perhaps. After passing through some grand and most romantic woods, where the withes formed very elegant curves and lines of all denominations, I came to a rivulet, which flows into the bot- tom of the bay, called Turtle Crawl, though now very little frequented by turtle, at least sea turtle. There were turtles in the shape of black girls, at least a score, some washing clothes, some washing themselves, flouncing about like nereids. At my approach, those who were on shore dashed into the water as if they had been wild ducks, and dived away like so many coots. When they were, ac- cording to their own notions, far enough from our masculine gaze, they emerged one by one, popping up their black heads, and shewing their ivory mouths as they laughed and made fun of me. I asked them if they were slaves. JAMAICA. 297 ** Yes, yes," every one a slave. Not a mark, thought I, on these inky damsels— not a scratch : they were as sleek as moles. ** Are you Christians?" "Yes, all Christen, all baptize, all hab new name" — '' My name," cried one of them, '' Alexandrina! my moder call me Wowski." Another had renounced the title of Juno, to take the name of Deborah, and Proserpine had been transubstantiated to Magdalene. This Magdalene entertained me with a song. Hi! de Buckra, hi! You sabby wha for he da cross de sea, Wid him long white face and him twinkling yeye; He lub, make lub, as he preach to we, He fall on his knees, but he pray for me, Hi ! de Buckra, hi ! Hi ! de Buckra, hi ! Massa W — f — e da come ober de sea, Wid him roguish heart and him tender look ; And while he palaver and preach him book. At the negro girl he'll winkie him yeye. Hi ! de Buckra, hi ! There was a great deal more of this to the same tune, and much to the same purpose ; however, I contented myself with taking down 298 JAMAICA, two stanzas of the ci-devant Proserpine's song, which she repeated several times for me, with some occasional diiferences ; and as I was curious to know who had composed so many elegant verses, she had no hesitation in telling me that it was the butler of M ■, on the other side of Port Antonio, who had been six or seven years in England, and was a 'collar (scholar I presume). When he was in Scot- land, continued the ex-queen of Tartarus, an old lady sent for him, and offered to make him educate for a missionary ; to which he readily consented, and his master gave him his freedom on the condition of the old lady's finding him another slave in his place on his return to Jamaica; because the missionary would otherwise still be a slave there. Mun- go was sent to a Methodist school, and for three years cudgelled his brains with the Old and New Testament, besides learning a library of tracts, &c.; but, at the end of the three years, he told the old lady that '' negroes were good and bad, and the bible good and bad ; that the missionaries preach one wife, and David and Solomon had seven hundred. That the negroes know all the good the bible said. ' Indeed !' said the old lady, ' and what JAMAICA. 299 is that?' 'Why, if they do good, they shall go to heaven ; if they do bad, they must go to hell.' So the old lady gave him /red again to lib with him Massa, and he is butler as he was before. But (said Magdalen) he make song and tell stories, and preach like de mis- sionaries, for fun, and tell how dey make love to black and brown girls," &c. &c. The queen of the infernals made a frightful disclosure of the secrets of the prison-house, which most likely was all invention, at least I shall hope and presume so ; but even Ebenezer chuck- led and laughed at the tales which made out that the missionaries had a fellow-feeling with himself. I asked him if he had forgotten the "painted puckerie;" on which he lengthened liis visage three inches, and pulled up his cra- vat, about which he is very particular, being a great beau in his costume. The girls asked what *' painted puckerie" meant, especially one frisky naiad, to whom he had been talking apart ; and before I could explain these mu- tilated words, Abdallah signified that his companion called all black girls rotten, and ashes, dust, and bitterness, and painted sunt- ings for dead men ; that they were rat-traps to catch neegar men for the debbil, &c. He 500 JAMAICA. could not finish his tale for the clamours of the women, who demanded of Sneezer whe- ther it were true ; and, as he hesitated in his answer, they began to splash water at him. He being far from his own country, seemed less anxious to pass now for a Saint, and would have kept up the joke, if the malice of Dollar would have let him. He said he lubbed all black girls, and especially Chris- tians ; that those only were rat-traps who had two husbands, and made love to the buckras. On this they splashed him more, told him he wanted them all for himself one, and asked what the buckra soldier and sailor and p n and book-keeper were to do without a black girl ? ** Dey muss bring white wife from England," cried he. " Hi! no, hab wife enough here — muss hab — — from England — Ah! you black sheep!" Here fol- lowed some dialogue I dare not repeat ; and the girls, suiting the action to the word, took up handfuls of gravel and flung at him ; nay, in spite of their nakedness, I believe, they would have grappled and ducked him, had he not made a precipitate retreat, for I bid him run, and he galloped off with a shower of stones clattering behind him, until an angle JAMAICA. 301 of the rocks afforded him a shelter from the fury of the river nymphs. Poor Sneezer! however, he made the best of the matter, and put a smihng face on his disgraces in my pre- sence ; but he talks very seriously with Dol- lar about *' 'posing him ebery where." He says, '* he tell what him duty to de neegars dat know nutting; he preachy like de missi- onaries, but he Christian, — ^he man himself — he lub all mankind ; de parson lub de women well as him." I rode on along the sea- side, where are the remains of a row of coco-nut trees, every one having had its head knocked off by the lightning : this is a curious fact ; there could not be less than a dozen of them. They stand on a point running northward, the most northerly spot in the neighbourhood, and consequently in the course of the storms, which generally pass off in that direction. There was a windmill hard at work on my left hand, and an iron conductor before it, adorned with three flags, one above the other, the uppermost black, the middle yellow, the undermost white. These, I supposed, were the colours of the island, to correspond with the three colours of the inhabitants ; but why 302 JAMAICA, is the negro uppermost? . He is on his road to preferment, but not on the top of the tree, except it be those who were hanged at Port Maria and Buff" Bay. 1 passed through the bay (the town of Port Antonio) and took up my lodgings with an old white lady, Mrs. D . at Titchfield. JAMAICA. 303 CIIAPTEll XXXV. TiTCHFiELD takes its name from the second title of the Duke of Portland, as the parish enjoys the honour of having his first. The Duke of Manchester has given his name in a similar manner to a nev^^ parish on the other side of the island. The town of Titchfield stands on a peninsula, which divides the east- ern and western harbours of Port Antonio. The barracks are situated at the extreme point, and are remarkably healthy ; a batta- lion of the 60th regiment is always here. On the north and west sides of the peninsula is Navy Island, where there was formerly a dock- yard, long since abandoned as an unhealthy spot, according to Mr. Long. It was here that the soldiers, being employed to clear the island of its wood, actually went raving mad with the fatigue while they were at work, and 304 JAMAICA. one or two died on the spot ; so impossible is it for the inhabitants of the north of Europe to labour under the vertical sun of the tropics, at least in the plains or on the sea-shore ; at an elevation of four or five thousand feet the ardour of the sun is not inimical nor op- pressive. The eastern harbour of Port Antonio is se- cure from all but north winds ; but the land- wind is not requisite to carry vessels out of it, the trade- wind being as fair for their quit- ting as for entering it. The western harbour, almost land-locked, is secure from every wind ; but the land-breeze is indispensible to enable outward-bound ships to clear the east end of Navy Island, as there is no depth of water at the west. The eastern harbour is one of the most beautiful in the world, and sufficient to contain many hundred vessels. tt is nearly round, having a belt of bright sand at its interior, which is lost as you approach the open sea, among piles of honeycombed rocks, that rise out of an almost fathomless abyss ; over these the Atlantic billows seem to rave even in an ordinary sea-breeze, and mount into a cloud of foam and mist when it blows fresher than usual. Within, all is JAMAICA. 305 calm : the water, as transparent as the purest diamond, has an emerald tinge, from the golden sands beneath mingling their hues with the reflected blue of the sky. The land on the east is partly pasture and canes, inter- mixed with woods of mangrove and^anchovy trees, frequented by two or three species of cranes, who feed on the salt-water crabs which abound here. On the west lies the peninsula of Titchfield ; a cheerful scene, covered with coco-nuts, mangoes, and other trees, mingled with houses that peep from among them in all directions. On the south rises the giant of the Jamaica Andes, the Blue Mountain, swelling from the very sea shore, with the town of Port Antonio at its base. The surface of the mountain is broken into numberless hills and ridges, all covered with forest, and shewing but little signs of habita- tions ; here and there a white spot in the landscape indicates some alpine settlement, but the whole scene, divested of the two towns, has the air of a grand and solitary wilderness. 1 think the harbour and the mountains on this side are even more inter- esting and picturesque than the view from Port Royal, and chiefly on account of the X 306 JAMAICA. broken grounds, the minor mountains, ridges, and ravines, behind the town of Port An- tonio. I had taken a lounge to the barracks before breakfast, and was looking at the crazy can- non in Fort George, when Sneezer came run- ning after me, to say that Miss Diana had come down to the bay to see me, from her father's house, a few miles to leeward of the harbour ; that she invited me to the old Massa Buckra's house ; and finally, that she was waiting breakfast for me at my own abode. I hurried back to pay my compliments to this amiable creature, who has laid me under so many obligations, and found her, alas ! more beautiful than ever, and as happy as health, innocence, and absence from all care, can render a pretty girl. I cannot help think- insf of her probable fate, tlie ordinary fate of most persons in her circumstances. Youth and beauty of course attract numerous ad- mirers, and offers of all descriptions, except what in England are called honourable offers. A young woman of colour perhaps attaches herself to a white man for life, perhaps for a few years only. He leaves the island ; the JAMAICA. female associates with a second, a third, who all contribute to her wealth. Having suc- cessively parted with her lovers, as they return to Europe, she at last attaches herself to a man of her own colour, whom she marries, or lives with as strictly as if married, for the remainder of her days. The least tinge of African blood excludes man or woman from the society, not of white men, but of white ladies, — that is, from an equality of society ; otherwise, I am persuaded, the Quadroon girls would all be well educated and well married ; nay, many of the Mulattoes would find European husbands, but the pride of their own sex is the stumbling-block to their ad- vancement; and, indeed, the case is very much the same in England, where young women of colour are not received in society except under some disadvantages, and if they have a darkish hue (Sambo or Mulatto tint) they are almost excluded — from the beau monde, at least. How could a black lady be received at Court, at a rout, at the opera ? How many of those who petition for emanci- pating the negroes would associate with them on any terms ? And yet nothing less can ever put an end to the transitory connexions which 308 JAMAICA their sons, and nephews, and cousin-germans form, have formed, and will form, with the young women of the West India islands ; for it is not expected, I presume, that bishops or missionaries can clip the wings of Cupid, or extinguish his torch. Would Mr. Wilberforce, Mr. Buxton, Mr. Smith, Mr. Stephen, or any others of the higher and zealous advocates of negi^o lights, consent to their sons and daughters, their nephews and neices, intermarrying with blacks ? Would they and would their wives like, in their declining years, to see their do- mestic circles composed chiefly of blacks and Mulattoes ? Let me recommend this to their serious consideration, and in charity to sus- pend their animadversions on the state of West India society, till they prove themselves above all the common prejudices in respect of colour, by admitting to their convivial and domestic parties blacks and browns indiscri- minately with their white friends : by such conduct, at least one advantage would accrue to these gentlemen, the question of their sin- cerity would be set at rest. As a mean of confirming his conquest and consolidating his power, Alexander of Mace- JAMAICA. 309 don married a daughter of Darius, and per- suaded one hundred of his principal officers to marry Persian ladies. The common soldiers followed the example, and thus the manners of the Greek settlers were more quickly as- simmilated to the Persians. This was a political stroke, and I wonder it has not been more frequently followed in modern times. Mr. Buxton may proceed on the same princi- ple. Let him procure a number of the free black females to come over from Sierra Leone or from the West India islands, and in future admit into his brewhouse none but single men who will consent to marry one of these sable damsels. Mr. Smith may do the same in his distilleries and other great establishments, and all the members of the African Institution to the extent of their influence. This might tend to remove the prejudices among the la- bouring classes against the complexion of their African brethren : the effect would of course be very gradual ; but London was not built in a day, and it is to the higher classes that we must look for the greatest effect. Whether such condescension on the part of the petitioning ladies and gentlemen would produce this desired effect, is still a question ; "^iv^-wijl 310 JAMAICA. or whether it would render the objects of it happier; for there is no misery here among that class of females who become the companions of European gentlemen. The reader must not imagine that any town, sea-port, or village in Jamaica presents the afflicting spectacle of young women in the prime of life soliciting the caresses of every casual passer-by ; of young women decently educated and honestly brought up, with religious notions and moral feelings (not extinguished even by their pre- sent wretchedness) endeavouring to inflame by words or actions the basest passion in the most profligate of the other sex, and prosti- tuting themselves to gratify that passion, against their religion, their morality, their consciences, their hearts, their reason, and with feelings of horror, to earn a bit of money wherewith to purchase food to save their bodies from death, — to escape starvation, to cure diseases that are gnawing their vitals. — No ; there is nothing of this sort in Jamaica; — no women, intoxicated with spirits or opium, plying in the highways, destroying their ille- gitimate children, or throwing themselves, I may say, headlong to the D 1, because they have been betrayed and deserted by JAMAICA. 311 some villain of quality, or some one who has acted that character. The young women here may be allowed a more exalted rank in society, but they have no addition of happi- ness to expect by following the steps of the fair sex on the other side of the water. As to the tales which I have read in England, of women being offered here to the guests in a house on their going to bed, I have never met with an instance of such want of decency, and never could ascertain that such a practice prevails. Among the dregs of the white so- ciety here, no doubt the most profligate man- ners may exist, as in other countries. — But to return to Diana ; she brought me a letter from her father, saying that he would come to meet me if I would return with him to his house, and begging me to make it my home until I embarked for England : an offer I was but too happy to accept, for my wooden lodging in Titchfield was as hot as the crater of a vol- cano in an eruption. I had closed a shutter to exclude the sun-beams from the eastern side of my room, and the bolt literally be- came too hot to be handled with the naked hand. The sea-breeze at last cooled me, but this blew with such violence, that it kept the ^ 312 JAMAICA. house in a continual tremor, and blew all my papers through the windows and jealousies, half across the peninsula, before I could re- cover them. 1 declined waiting for the old gentleman's visit, but set off with Diana as soon as the heat of the day was a little moderated, and reached his mansion about half an hour before sunset. I passed a funeral in my road, the corpse of a sailor, who was buried in a field by the way side, one of his comrades (the mate per- haps) reading the service over him; and I encountered also one of the most hideous sights I ever beheld in my life, in the person of an old negress, stark naked, with the exception of a piece of cloth about four inches square, tied by a piece of coco-nut bark round her waist, which was all the sacrifice she could afford to decency. Her head was as white as snow, and though she v/as still erect, and not deficient in health or strength, her whole skin was a mass of wrinkles, from her shoulders to her knees, and seemed to hang almost loose about her, as if she had shrunk within it. This person, I found on enquiry, was a free woman, free from her birth, who had been in better circumstances fifty or sixty years ago. JAMAICA 313 but having made no provision for her old age, she really has not w^herewithal now to pur- chase clothes. Her little garden affords her yams and plantains sufficient for herself, but having nothing to sell, she is obliged to beg even the little salt which her food requires. She is supposed to be above a hundred years old. 314 JAMx\lCA. CHAPTER XXXVl As I shall stay here until the ship in which I am to embark shall have finished her lading, I may as well give some little account of my quarters. The house of the old gentleman stands on an elevation, perhaps a hundred and fifty feet above the sea, backed by everlasting woods and wildernesses, commanding a most enchanting view of the two harbours of Port Antonio, part of the town, Titchfield, and a grand expanse of ocean to the north. The mansion consists of an entrance-hall, with sleeping chambers on each side ; and this hall leads to a piazza about fifty or sixty feet long, which forms the northern faifade of the house. At one end of the piazza is likewise a cham- ber, and at the other end a dining apartment or hall, where we are accustomed to take JAMAICA. 3L our meals. The piazza is about fifteen feet wide, furnished with a few chairs made of cherry-tree wood, a spy-glass, a backgammon board, and chessmen. The furniture of the dining-room is much of the same character, except a set of tables, a sideboard, and a dozen of chairs, all of mahogany, and the en- trance-hall contains a couple of sofas. The sleeping-rooms are furnished in the same sim- ple manner ; a bedstead, with a mattrass and a pair of sheets, covered solely with a lawn net to keep off the musquitos, a chest of drawers, and two or three chairs, form the contents of each apartment. There is a nar- row piazza on the south side of the house, too hot to inhabit an hour after sun-rise, and the offices are all detached. Nature here requires but shelter from the sun and rain. In many houses the rooms are not ceiled, and all is on the ground floor, which is generally built, as in this case, on stone buttresses ; so that if the piazza happens to have chinks, you see the pigs that you hear grunt in their peram- bulations beneath, when they break parole. An Englishman has no idea of the figure these beasts wear in the tropics. Except when fatted or fattening, they wander about with CD 316 JAMAICA. straight lank tails (which have given a title to one sort of tobacco) and their gaunt ribs are as visible as those of an unplanked ship. Their miserable and mangy looks, like those of an emaciated greyhound, enable one to ac- count for the aversion which some of the eastern nations have conceived to swine ; and, without seeing them, it is not easy to imagine an animal fit to eat, so squalid and disgust- ing. When fattened on Indian corn or sugar- canes, their appearance is the same as in Europe, and the inhabitants boast of their ex- cellent flavour. After a breakfast of strong coffee, having a rank taste of oil from being too new, roasted plantains, and excellent cocos, lubricated with salt butter, my old friend takes a ride to in- spect his negroes at work, or to hear the news at the Bay, as the town is called. He indul- ges in a nap (a siesta) sometimes from, one to two, and promenades or plays a game of chess in the piazza till three, when dinner is announced ; and then another promenade or ride till dusk fills up our day. He goes to bed at eight o'clock, and rises at five. One day is much like another, except varied by the appearance of an occasional visiter, who JAMAICA, 317 generally stays the night. In bad weather, we read plays, novels, and newspapers, play at piquet or backgammon, ogle every sail through the telescope, and the old gentleman smokes a segar at dusk, as he says, to drive away the musquitos. We are waited on by a black butler and two footmen, who wear each a shirt and white trowsers, with a short blue jacket. The sable females, who make the beds and polish the floors, are often clad in gayer and more expensive apparel, very neat and clean, but none of the servants, male or female, know the pleasures of shoes or stockings. At night the females retire to their own houses or to those of their parents, no accommodations being thought of for ser- vants ; the men seek the abode of their wives, and the waiting-boys lie on the floor in the hall, or at their master's doors. I went one morning, at the request of Diana, to the settlement of a white man several miles in the interior, a small coffee plantation in the mountains, to hire or purchase for her a Mu- latto girl, for whom she had conceived a great friendship or aflection. This girl, whose name was Susanna, had complained bitterly to Diana of her mistress's cruelty and her 318 JAMAICA. master's attentions, amorous attentions, or intentions. As her mistress was a white woman and the wife of her master, Susanna had spirit enough to resist the gentleman's importunities, though she was his slave ; but the mistress, instigated by jealousy, gave the poor girl no credit for her forbearance, and used her very shamefully indeed. I went to the coffee settlement by a narrow horse-track, similar to those by which I had ascended the base of Blue Mountain, where the traveller seems always doubling on that part of the road which he has passed, until I arrived at a fissure in some rocks, through which T saw a sort of promised land before me, with the Rio Grande flowing majestically through it. This is one of the Blue Mountain streams, and is often impassable for many days together. On this occasion the water came over the skirts of my saddle, on which I was at last obliged to kneel, to avoid a wet- ting ; a feat in horsemanship I performed with more success than grace. Sneezer and his mule had a swim, which he seemed to enjoy as a piece of fun. Having passed the river, I again entered the defiles of the mountains, and wound for some miles along the precipi- JAMAICA. 319 tous sides of some rocky ravines, where the eternal vegetation left me but just room for my horse amidst the trees and withes, that bind them, as it were, in chains. I saw, oc- casionally, negroes on the opposite sides of the ravines, with bags of ginger on their heads, coming down to the barguadier. Their burdens perfumed the air ; one loaded mule had nearly dislodged me from the path into a rocky torrent that brawled below ; for he and his bags occupied all the road, and we could not pass without unloading him, and then with great difficulty, for he was obstinate and cow- ardly, and my grey palfrey was much too frisky to put up with the mule's ill-tempered fancies and airs. At last I arrived at a sort of small plain, surrounded by an amphitheatre of wood, where the lizards scampered about, and the crickets did not scream loud enough to stun me. Here I saw first the whitened barbicue, for drying the coffee-berries, and then the abode of the mountaineer, peeping from a clump of mango trees. A negro boy ran off at my approach, and, as I rode up to the house, I saw a rusty old firelock elongate itself from a broken pane of glass (for there were or had been glazed windows here) and a 320 JAMAICA, v^ Spyglass by its side, much of the same colour as the musket, and about as long, was thrust out from a similiar port-hole. ** Halt !" The word rang in my ears and in my horse's — we stopped by instinct. Sneezer called out that the Paratee was going to shoot, and slipped over the tail of his mule in a twinkling, who ran up to me, and began kicking at my horse, or at me, or both of us : a piece of fun that my Bucephalus entered into with equal spirit, and a battle commenced, which only ended in the mule's being kicked off its legs and fairly ^oorcfif, to use a Fancy term. The com- bat must have been most ridiculous to behold, for it continued two or three minutes, in spite of my efforts and those of Sneezer to end it, the animals squeeling and snorting, and my horse plunging so, that I was in the air at every kick, exerting my utmost horsemanship to regain my seat, from which I expected to reach the earth at every capriole, by the op- posite extremity to that which the Abb6 had chosen for his road to terra firma. The artil- lery was still pointed at me, though I could hear the engineer behind his fortress laughing ready to kill himself, and the voice of the white lady, scolding like Xantippe, at its JAMAICA. 32L highest note : — to mend the matter, a tame parrot mingled in the uproar, and flew about my ears and the horse's, increasing both his rage and terror with the fluttering of its wings and its execrable screams. The downfal of the mule was the signal of victory and peace, and while I was recomposing myself, the artil- leryman demanded my business a second time, and hearing my asseverations that I was not the Deputy Marshal nor his deputy, he withdrew his weapons and came out of his castle to greet me. I was so out of breath, and the mountaineer was so choked with laughing, that it was some time before we could hold anything like a connected dialogue, and between every question my host gave way to fresh peals, begging pardon all the while with every appearance of sincerity, and then cutting short or rather strangling every courteous word he could articulate with another clatter of mirth. *'You area new comer, Sir, I presume ? ha ! ha ! ha ! I ask a thousand pardons — really I am ashamed — will you walk in, and take a glass of punch?" — Here he crammed his pocket-handkerchief into his mouth to stop his risible paroxysm, and threatened with his doubled fist the )22 JAIVIAICA. parrot who still chuckled and screamed, as if he understood the joke. The mule's pugnacity was quieted ; he had got up with some little ditficulty, and Ebenezer was feeling if he had any broken ribs, while the beast stood like a statue, bleeding at the mouth, where he had received a kick which had knocked out or rather broken two of his front teeth. I fol- lowed Mr. M* y into his piazza, which I shall describe as well as I can ; but first let me describe the mountaineer. He was a stout squat Scotchman, with red hair and whiskers ; his beard, which seemed a week old, was a trifle darker. He had a queer cast in one eye, with a scar on the eye- brow as if from a sabre cut, and he had lost the thumb and fore-finger from his left hand. His dress consisted of a huge pair of canvass trowsers and ragged boots, with a no less ragged shirt, and an old buff waistcoat. He wore no coat or neckcloth. His wife was in as elegant a dishabille as himself, with her long locks straggling down her back, half sandy, half grey ; she was at least as old as her husband, a circumstance of which he was fully sensible. The piazza, about five or six feet wide, and about five-and -twenty long, JAMAICA. 323 contained three broken chairs and a bench, a round table of some white wood, an old chest of rusty tools, and a fiddle with two strings. There were three white children running about, all rather sluttish and dirty, eating unripe maize, and teasing the parrot, who had taken his station on a perch. Mr. M' y poured me a glass of punch from an old broken tea-pot, which politeness induced me to put to my lips, though I would rather have been thirsty for three hours, and after the libation we proceeded to business. The Scotchman immediately suspected I had some design on his young slave myself, but I had brought a letter from Diana's father, which set his mind at ease, though without giving him any additional pleasure, as he, perhaps, thought I should have been the more liberal customer. Mrs. M*. was very anxious that the girl should go at all events ; she had no desire to sell her, but she thought it would be better for Susanna ; *' she would be happier in every point of view ; Miss Diana was very fond of her, and would be very kind to her." It was stipulated by the gentleman that he should receive twenty-five pounds a year for her, independent of all expenses of food and LJi£i^2 324 JAMAICA. clothing and taxes, and that she should come and see him once in two months — (the wife said once a year would do, or once in six months.) If Miss Diana was to buy her, she was to pay tv/o hundred pounds currency, but this should be left to Susanna, who had not expressed any desire to be sold. In the midst of the debate the mulatto girl arrived, a pretty comely person, with a very sweet expression of face. She could not be above fifteen years old, but she was tall, and, apparently, full grown ; — it was from the youthfulness of her features that I con- jectured her age. She was arrayed in a sort of short waistcoat, with large sleeves that nearly reached her elbows ; this was unbuttoned in front, and did not interfere with a double fold of Scotch cambric, or some such material, laid flat over her bosom, and attached to the shoulder-straps of her petticoat. It was de- tached below for coolness or from habit, and though liable to be blown aside by any casual blast, yet, as it hung even below her girdle, the most fastidious would have called it per- fectly modest and decent, except during such an accident. But modesty and decency be- long to no accident, they are attributes of the JAMAICA. 325 heart and soul, and it is to fashion and pre- judice that we are indebted for our refined ideas about what is correct and what is inde- licate in dress. The most virtuous young women in England make exhibitions of their persons that a Swiss courtesan thinks of with horror; and I have heard of a Foreign Ambas- sador remarking upon the indecency of our countrymen in wearing tight leather breeches : but this by the bye. — Susanna wore a rea- sonably thick petticoat of white calico, and a blue apron over part of it, of muslin or baft, or some gauzy material which I understood not, and a white handkerchief bound like a turban round her head. Shoes and stock- ings could have added nothing to the symme- try of her extremities, and would have been as much out of character (so I fancied) as on the feet of an antique statue. Mr. M* — — y explained my errand, and the damsel's face brightened with joy — tears of joy — *' Oh! yes, she would go and live with Miss Diana di- rectly — she would go back with me." — '* On foot?" **0h! yes, on foot." — Her sister, the mother of two or three children, was to bring her clothes on the next Sunday morning; she made a little packet for the present, took 326 JAMAICA leave of her master and mistress, and started before me, while the latter kept calling after her, *' Susanna, don't throw yourself away on any of the soldier buckras, nor tag-rag book-keepers." Susanna turned round now and then, to articulate, ** Berry well, mistress ; good bye, mistress ; God bless, mistress." — " Susanna, be on your guard with those preaching fellows at the Bay." — Susanna was too far to hear or to heed this. She dived into the woods, and vanished like a sylph from the jealous eyes of her mistress and the more ardent gaze of her master, who cast many a droll and lingering look after the ob- ject of his love. I bid them farewell, and left them, by Diana's desire, a doubloon as earnest of the girl's wages, and a package of muslin, which had been sent as a present to the lady. It was wringing wet with its jour- ney through the Rio Grande, but that, she said, was nothing, and we parted very amica- bly ; but the Scotchman began to laugh as I withdrew. I suppose his thoughts reverted to the battle of the Centaurs. Susanna was at the river before me, waiting on its brink to shew me the best ford ; she herself skipped over a row of stepping-stones JAMAICA. 327 with the agility of a rope-dancer, but nothing would induce her to ride. I slackened my pace, and for the rest of the journey we were always in company. She told me her mistress sometimes beat her with a horsewhip, on which her master would in turn threaten his wife : her only occupation was needle-work and looking after the children, and feeding the poultry. Her master's house was a very sad place ; nobody came there ; it was so far out of the world, and there was no road past it within sight ; but a great many negroes had been wandering about the grounds before Christmas (some of them from the estate of , near Port Antonio) who, it was sup- posed, were waiting a signal from the insur- gents at Port Maria, to join them, or to com- mence similar operations in this part of the island. Diana's father made rather a joke of my equipage as I returned. There was a party of gentlemen and a lady who came to dinner, and of course Diana was invisible. I say of course, for she never makes her appearance at table, even with her father. There occurred, as usual, a long debate upon Saints and Metho- dists, but with little argument, as the parties 328 JAMAICA, were all agreed, and declared they would obey no laws made by the English House of Boroughmongei^s that concerned the internal affairs of the island, let the consequences be what they might. Indeed, with the sentiments they entertain towards the British Parliament en masse, I am afraid that nothing but force would make any impression on these republi- can-minded Jamaicamen : — not that they are hostile to the institutions of the mother coun- try, or at all dissatisfied with their own ; but that interference would be doubly, trebly odious, which emanates from a Society whom they regard as a mass of corruption and hy- pocrisy, and despise ex imo corde. "They consider the English people the dupe of the Canters. The people petition the Parliament to emancipate the slaves, * poor things,' — but the * poor things are the people of Eng- land.' " JAMAICA. 329 CHAPTER XXXVII. I WENT the day before yesterday on a se- cond expedition to the Blue Mountain, with a Mr. M'Whinney, and a sun-burnt planter, who lives a few miles in the interior, and of- fered to be our guide. We had originally proposed to advance up BufF Bay River, to leeward, and to engage some of the Maroons of that district as guides up one of the ridges, which rise above that river. But the sun- burnt gentleman, a Mr. Millar, persuaded us that the easier ascent was from his quarters, and was so positive in his assertions of what he had heard on this subject, so earnest in his recommendation and desire of accom- panying us, and so profuse in his promises of assisting us with guides, provisions, and every thing we might require in our expedition, that we could not resist his invitation to go 330 JAMAfCA. to his house, and proceed from that point. I soon found that we had gone too far to the eastward for the object we had in view, before we reached his domain, and suspected that we could never gain the western peak, to which we aspired, by any attempt from this quar- ter; and so it proved. We went first to Golden Vale estate (the property of Green- wich Hospital, with slaves on it). It well deserves its name ; for it is a rich valley in- closed by mountains on all sides, so that the entrance and exit of the Rio Grande, which runs through it, can scarcely be distinguished. In short, when you have entered it, you can hardly imagine that it has any communication with the rest of the world, such is its per- fect seclusion. Here the afternoon was passed in making preparations for our ascent. Mr. Miller, with the greatest alacrity, did all that he had prom-ised. Our provisions of all kinds were packed up in abundance, and ne- groes appointed to carry them, one of whom undertook to be our guide. After an early breakfast, we started on foot, and, leaving Rio Grande on our left, proceeded up a smaller stream in a direction south-west. But it was necessary to quit the stream, which we JAMAICA 331 crossed, and, taking to a ridge, we advanced at a good pace and with a good resolution. Sometimes we had to descend into deep ra- vines, scramble among rocks, and wade through the mountain streams which tum- bled over them. The transparent whiteness of these waters formed a beautiful contrast with the dark black marble of the rocks. We delighted in these opportunities of slaking our thirst, and, imprudently, too frequently indulged in the delicious draughts, for they but ill qualified us to encounter the difficulties which arose before us. We journeyed for- ward, and about mid-day arrived at a district which was entirely clear of wood. We could observe that the country, for miles to the eastward and westward of our position, and for a considerable breadth up the mountain, was in the same condition. There was thick wood above and below, but along this belt not a tree was to be seen, and it might have been called barren from its appearance, had not the luxuriant vegetation of a long coarse grass convinced us of the contrary. Here began the severity of our labours. There was a track into this region of grass which our guide pursued, but after a short 332 JAMAICA.* progress it ceased to be visible. He was at a loss, but pointed out a knoll which we were to reach. There was no choice left, but to return or cut our way straight for- ward to the object marked out. We de- cided on the latter, and worked away with spirit ; two of the party cutting in front, and the rest relieving them in turns. Such, how- ever, was the nature of this impediment, which in many places grew higher than our heads, that our progress was exceedingly slow. The vertical sun poured all his heat upon us, unmitigated by the intervention of the smallest cloud, and not a breath of air could reach us through the grass. We were almost suffocated. At times we felt some- thing like dismay, when we viewed the smoke that issued from this wilderness in every direction around us, and in some places at no great distance. The dry parts of the grass about the roots were as combustible as tinder, and though we could not feel any wind, we could perceive its effects, in driving the fires in other quarters. The conflagra- tion might reach us, and we were so en- tangled that we had no chance of escape. Such were our reflections. However, we * JAMAICA. 333 laboured on till sunset, by which time we had reached the spot pointed out by our guide. It was nearly at the upper edge of the belt of grass, and had on it a few trees. Being a small ridge a little advanced from the general slope of the mountain, we had the advantage of a fine view of the country. The prospect towards the sea was, as might be supposed, a very rich one, comprehending the estates situated in the well cultivated valleys, or hanging on the sides of the hills, which are the distinguishing features of that district. The sea-coast was visible westward to an extent we could not ascertain, but con- jectured to be the high land of Albion, imme- diately west of Port Maria. Port Antonio, with its two harbours, lay immediately be- fore us. The distance to the east was soon bounded by the sea. But what chiefly en- gaged our attention was the immense extent of that region of grass through which we had toiled for so many hours. We could not ac- count for so large a district being reduced to such a state of desolation, or for its continuing devoid of trees of any kind, while those above and below were loaded with the usual lux- uriant growth of the country. The entire de- 334 JAMAICA. struction of the trees could hardly have been occasioned by the appropriation of the land to provision grounds for the estates in the low lands. Those estates were, compared with most of the rest of the island, modern settlements ; they had not yet exhausted, by successive crops, the rich grounds in their neighbourhood, and it seemed improbable that the negroes, or their masters, would go so far from home in quest of provision grounds, while they had abundance as good close at hand. Besides, there were not the usual signs of ruinate provision grounds, no cocos, no yams, no plantains. Had this country been under tillage by the Spaniards? or was it one of those spots from which the abo- riginal inhabitants drew the plentiful supplies with which they relieved Columbus? The absence of any remains of buildings, which, if they existed, we must have seen from our elevated position, and which the Spaniards would have left, inclined me to the last sup- position. There was another object which we could not cease to admire, that was, a most beau- tiful cascade, which issued from the eastern peak, and fell in one continued stream to a JAMAICA 335 depth that we could not calculate. To me it appeared to spout out of the cone imme- diately below, on the north side of the spot where I had spent the night in my former ex- pedition ; and I could not help regretting that its existence was at that time unknown to me or my companions. The distance from our present position may be presumed from the circumstance, that the noise of so large a cas- cade, as it appeared, did not reach our ears. On this occasion I was furnished with an ex- cellent barometer, with thermometer attached, made by Troughton, and formerly used by Count Bruhl in measuring some of the Alps. The result of our observations on this in- strument was so discouraging, that it gave additional weight to several other objections against our further progress. Questioning our guide, during our evening repast, on the route we were to pursue on the morrow, we found that he either was, or pretended to be, ignorant ; and we did not relish the idea of wandering about in those wilds till our pro- visions failed, and till it might be too late to return. The elevation to which we had as- cended was below two thousand feet. I think the barometer stood above 28°, and the ther- 336 JAMAICA. mometer at 70". Calculating the distance we had advanced, the length of way before us, the uncertainty of our guide, the difficulties we had to encounter, the remaining stock of provisions, and the want of subordination in the strange negroes who were to attend us, we deemed it most prudent to retrace our steps. I was exceedingly disappointed ; but there was scarcely an alternative ; therefore, after passing a tolerably comfortable night under cover of the long grass, and taking an early breakfast, we cast another longing look at the cascade above us, and then turned our backs upon it. Our descent was not delayed by any impe- diment ; but as our s.tock of water was ex- hausted, and we found neither withes nor wild pines, we suffered much from thirst, and longed exceedingly for our arrival at one of those beautiful streams which we liad crossed in our ascent. At length we approached one. I think I see now the eagerness with which the whole party scrambled down a precipice into a gully, at the bottom of which one of these streams was dashing over the rocks in its current. There was a small pool formed in a space rather more open than the rest; JAMAICA, 337 Into this the first negro that arrived in the race flung himself headlong. We all followed his example, and lay there wallowing and floundering about till we were completely drenched and felt our thirst allayed. We found, by experience, that this immersion had a better eflect than large draughts of water, and repeated it frequently during the latter part of our walk. At length we arrived at the level plain of Golden Vale, and, sending our servants to the house for a change of clothes, we dashed into the stream of the Rio Grande, and continued to swim there till they arrived. This unsuccessful attempt to arrive at the peak from the neighbourhood of Port Antonio, may serve as a warning to others to take a diflerent route, or at least a better guide. 338 JAMAICA, CHAPTER XXXIX, I WAS entertained this morning by a letter from my radical friend Mr. Mathews, in which, among other subjects of mirth, he calls my attention to Sir John Kean's provi- sion for accommodating his European troops in case of their being called out. A com- pany were to be sent from Stoney Hill bar- racks to Fort Haldane, at Port Maria, pro- vided they were fetched in covered waggons, and hot coffee sent to meet them for break- fast ; they were likewise to have a hot dinner got ready for them at the Court house. No one can blame these precautions for the safety of the troops ; but, as my letter says, ** would an invading army of any European nation wait for hot coffee, or die for want of it? If the island be once revolutionized or disorganized, will Johnny Bull invade it afresh JAMAICA. 139 in covered waggons, sipping hot coffee as they move slowly along ?" A party of negroes went lately to present a complaint to the magistrates of their being harshly used, or rather the negroes were brought before the magistrates, and used the plea of ill-treatment as their defence; one damsel, in particular, declaring that she had received two hundred and thirty lashes at one flogging, and that but a few days before. The magistrates doubting this fact, the sable nymph without hesitation exposed her behind, whereon there was no mark whatever ; and it appearing that she had so done in derision and contempt, they ordered her a couple of dozen. I had sent for the two black children who had prevailed on me to purchase them at Kingston, and, as they are arrived, I have en- trusted them to Diana ; while she is Diana they will be at least well used, and whatever may become of her they will always have an appeal to me, for which purpose I have taken care that they shall learn to write as well as read. It was to my friend Nunnez that I was obliged for their having been provided with a 340 JAMAICA, proper guide to escort them here in safety, — a sensible, clear-headed Creole black, from whom I asked the news among the negroes at Kingston. " The news," he replied, " is, that some buckra is making bargain v/ith the King of England to free us : but who for gib we fish and clothes ? Who for hire we ? If neegar no hab him own massa, it better for him he dead one time (at once). Black man do nutting, no so fight, and quarrel, and kill, without buckra — and muss hab buckra par- son or missionary for his massa, if he free; — it better him tand so, and Massa Wilforce preach to him own parliament, and tell buckra Lords who dam for 'dultry." I saw a lady to day, whose curiosity has lately betrayed her into an unlucky scrape. Imagining that her husband's negroes stole too much sugar from the boiling and curing- houses, she disguised herself as a black wo- man, by painting her face, and tying up her hair in a white handkerchief: thus drest like a slave, with a basket of fish on her head, she knocked at the house of the head-driver on her estate in the dusk of the evening. As soon as she was admitted, she closed the door after her, and taking the fish from her head. JAMAICA. 341 she displayed them before the eyes of the driver, and proposed to exchange them with him for sugar. The driver vv^ould have been staggered at her proposal, but that he sus- pected she was joking, though he had no idea of her disguise, for the lady speaks Cre- ole to perfection, and though naturally as white as a lily, her face was so well blacked that she might have defied a stricter scrutiny than his. Besides, her features happen to have a very African cast, at least in respect of her nose and mouth, and her blue eyes could not betray her in the twilight. The negro, finding her serious in her proposals, told her first to go about her business, — that he was no " tief to rob his massa," — a reply that, instead of satisfying her, awakened her jealousy the more, for she seemed vexed to find her slave an honest man ; and, to justify her former suspicions, tried to bribe him with money to become the thief she wished to prove him. He threatened her with the stocks, and turned her out of the house ; but as she still continued her importunities, and as other slaves began to assemble about the door, he treated her at last as a thief, and vowed he would flog her if she did not de- J42 JAMAICA, part. Thinking he would not proceed to such an extremity as this, or being carried away by rage to find herself thus foiled, she began to abuse him, threatening to have him flogged ; on which he rather expeditiously pulled up her clothes to chastise her, in the presence of a score of her own subjects, who started at the sight of her white skin as if they had seen a devil. I can hardly imagine the feelinsfs with which she walked back to the great house, though one might think she felt nothing, for she laughs at the story in all companies. My venerable host detailed to me this ad- venture of his white neighbour as we were taking our morning ride, and I was still ru- minating on it, when we overtook a tall, strap- ping negro, so like in figure to one of my friend's slaves, that he saluted him with "how d' ye, Cudjoe ? Which vv'ay are you going?" But before he could get an answer, looking in the man's face, he perceived his mistake, and asked again, ''What's your name? Whom do you belong to ? Where are you going ? This is no pass." — The man replied, "Me be- long to massa ; me watchman ; me going to mountain. " My friend inquired again sharply, JAMAICA, 343 *'What massa? What mountain?" "You massa ; for you mountain, me no your neegar Cuffie?" "Well," says my friend, " this is a curious piece of effrontery; I think I ought to know all my own negroes. You must be a runaway, my man, and about no good here ; so turn about, and walk with me to the works." The negro found himself in a scrape, and looked about to see how he could escape ; but we headed him, and manoeuvred with our horses to keep him in the road till he came to the negro houses, where he jumped over a penguin fence that protected the gardens from the road, hoping, no doubt, to hide himself among them before we could get round by the gate. But my friend was too active for him, and, giving his horse rein and spur, cleared the fence like an old hunter. It was negro dinner-time, and the driver and his gang were at home. Of course Cuffie was instantly secured, and led to the overseer's house, where an examination immediately took place. Partly by his own confession, and partly by the recollection of a white man present, we discovered that he belonged to a neighbouring estate, and my friend was going to send him there in custody, with a note to 344 JAMAICA. his overseer, according to the usual practice in such cases among neighbours, when a sharp lad, a book-keeper, said to my friend, " I wish, sir, you would let me search his cutacoo ; I have a strange fancy he has some- thing there he ought not to have." It is im- possible to convey to the reader, by descrip- tion, an idea of the look which the culprit gave the young man, when he observed, in answer to his suggestion, " Warra debbil cun poor negar hab in him cutacoo, but lilly bit nyamnyam?" However, permission was given to search. The young man, in an in- stant, leaped down off the steps, grappled with Cuffie, who made stout resistance, and at last succeeded in wresting the cutacoo from his grasp. The contents were imme- diately displayed on the steps of the over- seer's house. There was an old snuff-box, severnl phials, some filled with liquids and some with powders, one with pounded glass ; some dried herbs, teeth, beads, hair, and other trash ; in short, the whole farrago of an Obeah man. The old Scotch carpenter's attention was attracted by the snuff-box, and he had taken out of it a pinch of the contents, which he was conveying to his nose, when the JAMAICA, 345 young lad jumped up in great agitation, with, *'What are you doing? don't you know it's poison ?" and with a smart rap on the knuckles kindly baulked the carpenter's gratification. We were all easily convinced of the uses to which these articles were intended to be ap- plied, and the confusion of the man himself, at this discovery, confirmed our opinion of his guilt. My friend, on further inquiry, found that this fellow had been for some time frequenting his negro houses, and therefore in some degree accounted for sundry abortions among his women, and some other fatal oc- currences among his negroes, which had pre- viously much distressed him. He could not, however, by any direct proof, bring home to this man any interference in the calamities which he deplored, and therefore pursued his former resolution of sending him to the estate to which he said he belonged. The messenger and the culprit soon returned with a note from the overseer, stating that it was true Cuffie had formerly belonged to that estate, but having been convicted of Obeah, he had been sentenced to transportation. He was consequently sent to gaol, where the keeper instantly recognized him, and wrote to tell 346 JAMAICA. my friend, that in pursuance of his sentence he had been sold to a Mr. H for transport- ation. It appeared, however, that the de- linquent had found means to pay Mr. H — — - a few more pounds than he had given for him, and Mr. H , thinking it a good opportunity of turning an honest penny, had pocketed the fellow's money, and turned him loose again on the public. My ship having completed her cargo, I had expected for some days to see at daybreak my signal displayed for sailing. My own baggage had been some days aboard, with my sea stock of sheep, pigs, and poultry, with two waggon load of plantain suckers to feed the first, and I know not how many bushels of maize to fatten the last. Though accus- tomed to rise before the sun in this blazing climate, I was yet in bed, for the twilight had scarcely dawned, when Diana tapped at my door, and said the ship had hoisted the blue Peter, and her fore top sail was sheeted home. All ranks of people here speak as well as understand nautical phrases : to my less experienced readers it may be necessary to explain, that these are the signals of de- parture. I arose in a perturbation of mind. JAMAICA. 347 excited perhaps by a natural anxiety attend- ant on occasions of undertaking a voyage, or even a journey ; increased by the ideas which crowded on my fancy at parting with the pretty and affectionate Diana, whom I can hardly expect to behold again on this side of the grave. I dressed myself in haste, and sallied from my chamber ; found Susanna and my black slave preparing the coffee, and the old gen- tleman, in his dressing gown, chiding Diana for taking my departure to heart. I beg the reader will not imagine I had the vanity to attribute the grief of this kind creature to any feelings but those which spring from genuine goodness of disposition. Her attentions had, perhaps, saved my life ; they had at least re- lieved me in my sickness ; her encouragement sustained me. The very circumstance of having rendered me essential service had, perhaps, created in her mind all the interest to which I was now indebted for this tribute of grief. If I had given way to some too natural suggestions of vanity, I should not have discarded, or endeavoured to discard, the idea as often as it recurred, that I could distinguish in the glances of her eyes a glim- 348 JAMAICA mering of resentment, mingled with ex- pressions of affectionate regret — and where- fore ? That I had never paid any compliment of gallantry to the charms of her person ; that I had in fact never said one tender thing to her in the whole course of our acquaintance; I had treated her as I would have treated a sister ; — in short, I thought I could never treat her with sufficient consideration ; and if the gentlemen in Jamaica could be prevailed on by the religious of England to entertain similar notions with regard to the Creole beauties, they would, perhaps, have less to reproach them with on the score of immora- lity ; but unless they can effect such a change in the minds of the rich buckras, they will never improve the moral part of the negro's phrenology, though missionaries be multiplied upon them ad injinitum. It is like decrying the use of spirits in England, while the dis- tillers pour out alcohol upon the multitude in torrents, and the more virtuous ale and porter are taxed into a sort of abstinence (or made, through chemistry, anything but what they should be by a few monopolists.) Men will use gallantry as well as spirits ; custom and education make the difference in using them JAMAICA. 349 .wisely or with improvidence ; for a child may be taught anything, and may as easily be trained up with one set of ideas as another, pro- vided he has corresponding examples before his eyes. But I must not moralize — I hope the reader will forgive me. I was very much flattered at any rate by the grief which Diana in vain would have concealed ; her efforts indeed were not of very long duration, for she soon gave up all restraint, and wept without attempting to controul her tears. I could have been as much concerned, but I was afraid the old gentleman would laugh at me. — ^He told me I must leave the girl my blessing, and a kiss for remembrance. The first, the last — but let me finish the scene. Diana took from her bosom a coral necklace, and begged me to keep it for her sake, and if ever I married to give it to my wife, that when I saw it on the neck of her I loved best in the world, I might think of her who gave it to me. *' We parted (to use the words of a very agreeable traveller) with great regret, but certainly without reproach." — I shook hands with Susanna, and recommending my black children to love one another, and be faithful to the mistress I had given them, .?■*' * 350 JAMAICA. I mounted the white palfrey for the last time, and rode down to the bay in company with my host, and attended as formerly by Ebenczer and the Mussulman. We jogged along in silence, till we arrived at the spot where I had formerly encountered the hideous old woman, who was now collecting sticks by the road side to boil her pot, in the same costume as before, that is to say, stark naked. Had I been superstitious, I should have con- sidered this rencontre as a bad omen. I could not refrain from asking her if she had no clothes ; to which she replied, that she was born naked, and should go to heaven naked ; that Adam and Eve were naked while they were innocent, and she was ashamed of nothing. My old friend said he would send her a petticoat ; but she said she would thank him for a calabash full of salt instead, and that she vv'ould wear no clothes till she put on her shroud, which she had had ready for twenty years, as well as the planks for her coffin. I gave her a tenpenny for her bless- ing, while Ebenezer argued with her respect- ing the indecency of going naked ; but she cut him short by demanding of him if his master knew where he was, and what he was doing JAMAICA, 351 last night at eleven o'clock. I certainly did not know, but I fear it was no good. Eben- ezer looked with horror on the old woman, as if she were a magician, and, pulling up his neckcloth with the air of a dandy, rode on in our rear. I resigned to him and Abdallah the white horse as soon as we reached the sea shore, having already given him his pass- port to return with the whole equipage to Mr. Graham's. We parted very good friends, and I have not yet found out that the Saint has played me any foul trick, notwithstanding Mr. Mathews's prophecy. The old gentleman went out of the harbour with me, and returned in the pilot's boat. I would fain have asked him a thousand ques- tions about his daughter ; what would become of her, and whether he would let her marry a man of her own colour? but I thought delicacy forbade it, and my mind was too full of her to talk about anything else. We had already cleared the harbour before we found the wind at N. N. E. and the cur- rent setting fast to the westward ; by four in the afternoon we were nearly off Port Maria, so much had we fallen to leeward, though we were intent on taking the windward passage. 352 JAMAICA. We made up some of this in the night, and at daybreak next day we were again off Titchfield, about four miles out at sea. I thought I could still discern Diana, by means of a telescope, at the end of her Father's piazza, waving with her handkerchief a last farewell. I tied mine to the starboard shrouds, where it remained till the winds and waves had borne my companions and their vessel beyond the gaze of every eye that weeps in Jamaica. THE END. LONDON : PRINTED BY C. 11. REYNELL, BROAD STREET, GOLDEN SQUARE. I '%tB fl J3'B\ 3SC WEfiEny CENTER 1^- w ^^^:^ TOUR . HROUG pAMAIC^ 1^ ^ W: '^^^^^-^ ^ WILLIAMJ ■M