Journal of a Residence among the Negroes in the West Indies
JOURNAL Of A RESIDENCE AMONG THE NEGROES IN THE WEST INDIES.
BY THE LATE
MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS. ESQ., MP., AUTHOR OF "THE MONK," "THE
CASTLE SPECTER," "TALES OF WONDER," &c.
I would give many a sugar cane, Mat. Lewis were alive again.."
BYRON.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1845.
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ADVERTISEMENT.
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THE following Journals of two residences in Jamaica, in 1815-16, and in 1817,
were printed from the MS. of Mr. Lewis, who died at sea, on the voyage homewards
from the West Indies, in the year 1818.
London: Printed by William Clowes and Sons, Stanford Street.
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CONTENTS.
Table of Contents, p. vii.
Table of Contents, p. viii.
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JOURNAL Of A RESIDENCE AMONG THE NEGROES IN THE WEST INDIES.
"Nunc alio patriam quaero sub sole jacentem." -- Virgil.
JOURNAL OF A RESIDENCE AMONG THE NEGROES IN THE WEST INDIES
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1815. NOVEMBER 8. (Wednesday.)
I LEFT London, and reached Gravesend at nine in the morning, having been taught
to expect our sailing in a few hours. But although the vessel left the Docks
on Saturday, she did not reach this place till three o'clock on Thursday the
9th. The Captain now-tells me, that we may expect to sail certainly in the afternoon
of to-morrow the 10th. I expect the ship's cabin to gain greatly by my two days'
residence at the "***** ****," which nothing can exceed for noise,
dirt, and dulness. Eloisa would never have established "black melancholy,"-at
the Paraclete as its favourite residence, if she had happened to pass three
days at an inn at Gravesend: nowhere else did I ever see the Sky look so dingy,
and the river so dirty: to be sure, the place has all the advantages of an English
November to assist it in those particulars. Just now, too, a carriage passed
my windows, conveying on board a cargo of passengers, who seemed sincerely afflicted
at the thoughts of leaving their dear native land! The pigs squeaked, the ducks
quacked, and the fowls screamed; and all so dolefully, as clearly to prove,
that theirs was no dissembled sorrow! And after them (more affecting than all)
came a
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wheelbarrow, with a solitary porker tied in a basket, with his head hanging
over on one side, and his legs sticking out on the other, who neither grunted
nor moved, nor gave any signs of life, but seemed to be of quite the same opinion
with Hannah More's heroine,
"Grief is for little wrongs; despair for mine!"
As Miss O'Neil is to play "Elwina" for the first time to- morrow,
it is a thousand pities that she had not the previous advantage of seeing the
speechless despondency of this poor pig; it might have furnished her with some
valuable hints, and enabled her to convey more perfectly to the audience the
"expressive silence" of irremediable distress.
NOVEMBER 10.
At four o'clock in the afternoon, I embarked on board the "Sir Godfrey
Webster," Captain Boyes. On approaching the vessel, we heard the loudest
of all possible shrieks proceeding from a boat lying near her: and who should
prove to be the complainant, but my former acquaintance, the despairing pig.
He had recovered his voice to protest against entering the ship: I had already
declared against climbing up the accommodation ladder; the pig had precisely
the very same objection. So a soi-disant chair, being a broken bucket, was let
down for us, and the pig and myself entered the vessel by the same conveyance;
only pig had the precedence, and was hoisted up first. The ship proceeded three
miles, and then the darkness obliged us to come to an anchor. There are only
two other cabin passengers, a Mr. J -- -- -A and a Mr. S -- -- -; the latter
is a planter in the "May-Day Mountains," Jamaica: he wonders, considering
how much benefit Great Britain derives from the West Indies, that government
is not careful to build more churches in them, and is of opinion, that "hedicating
the negroes is the only way to make them appy; indeed, in his umble hopinion,
hedication his hall in hall!"
NOVEMBER 11.
We sailed at six o'clock, passed through "Nob's Hole," the "Girdler's
Hole," and "the Pan" (all very dangerous sands,
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and particularly the last, where at times we had only one foot water below us), by half-past four, and at five came to an anchor in the Queen's Channel. Never having seen any thing of the kind before, I was wonderfully pleased with the manoeuvring of several large ships, which passed through the sands at the same time with us: their motions seemed to be effected with as much ease and dexterity as if they had been crane-necked, carriages; and the effect as they pursued each other's track and windings was perfectly beautiful.
NOVEMBER 12. (Sunday.)
The wind was contrary, and we had to beat up the whole way. We did not reach
the Downs till past four o'clock, and, as there were above sixty vessels arrived
before us, we had some difficulty in finding a safe berth. At length we anchored
in the Lower Roads, about four miles off Deal. We can see very clearly the double
lights in the vessel moored off the Goodwin sands: it is constantly inhabited
by two families, who reside there alternately every fortnight, except when the
weather delays the exchange. The "Sir Godfrey Webster" is a vessel
of 600 tons, and was formerly in the East India service. I have a very clean
cabin, a place for my books, and every thing is much more comfortable than I
expected; the wind, however, is completely west, the worst that we could have,
and we must not even expect a change till the full moon. The captain pointed
out a man to me today, who had been with him in a violent storm off the Bermudas.
For six hours together, the flashes of lightning were so unintermitting that
the eye could not sustain them: at one time, the ship seemed to be completely
in a blaze; and the man in question (who was then standing at the wheel, near
the captain) suddenly cried out, "I don't know what has happened to me,
but I can neither see nor stand ;" and he fell down upon the deck. He was
taken up and carried below; and it appeared that the lightning had affected
his eyes and legs, in a degree to make him both blind and lame, though the captain,
who was standing by his side had received no injury: in three or four days the
man was quite well again.
In this storm no less than thirteen vessels were dismasted, or otherwise shattered by the lightning.
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NOVEMBER 13.
At six this morning came on a tremendous gale of wind; the captain says, that
he never experienced a heavier. However, we rode it out with great success,
although, at one time, it was bawled out that we were driving; and, at another,
a brig which lay near us broke from her moorings, and came bearing down close
upon us. The danger, indeed, from the difference of size, was all upon the side
of the brig; but, luckily, the vessels cleared each other. This evening she
has thought it as well to remove further from so dangerous a neighbourhood.
There is a little cabin-boy on board, and Mr. J -- -- -has brought with him
a black terrier; and these two at first sight swore to each other an eternal
friendship, in the true German style. It is the boy's first voyage, and he is
excessively sea-sick; so he has been obliged to creep into his hammock, and
his friend, the little black terrier, has crept into the hammock with him. A
boat came from the shore this evening, and reported that several vessels have
been dismasted, lost their anchors, and injured in various ways. A brig, which
was obliged to make for Ramsgate, missed the pier, and was dashed to pieces
completely; the crew, however, were saved, all except the pilot; who, although
he was brought on shore alive, what between bruises, drowning, and fright, had
suffered so much that he died two hours afterwards. The weather has now again
become calm; but the wind is still full west.
NOVEMBER 15.
The wind altered sufficiently to allow us to escape from the Downs; and at dusk
we were off Beachy Head. This morning the steward left the trap-door of the
store-hole open; of course, I immediately contrived to step into it, and was
on the point of being precipitated to the bottom, among innumerable boxes of
grocery, bags of biscuit, and porter barrels;-where a broken limb was the least
that I could expect. Luckily I fell across the corner of the trap, and managed
to support myself, till I could effect my escape with a bruised knee, and the
loss of a few inches of skin from my left arm.
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NOVEMBER 19. (Sunday.)
At one this morning a violent gust of wind came on; and, at the rate of ten
miles an hour, carried us through the Chops of the Channel, formed by the Scilly
Rocks and the Isle of Ushant. But I thought that the advance was dearly purchased
by the terrible night which the storm made us pass. The wind roaring, the waves
dashing against the stern, till at last they beat in the quarter gallery; the
ship, too, rolling from side to side, as if every moment she were going to roll
over and over! Mr. J -- -- -- was heaved off one of the sofas, and rolled along,
till he was stopped by the table. He then took his seat upon the floor, as the
more secure position; and, half an hour afterwards, another heave chucked him
back again upon the sofa. The captain snuffed out one of the candles, and both
being tied to the table, could not relight it with the other: so the steward
came to do it; when a sudden heel of the ship made him extinguish the second
candle, tumbled him upon the sofa on which I was lying, and made the candle
which he had brought with him fly out of the candlestick, through a cabin window
at his elbow; and thus we were all left in the dark. Then the intolerable noise!
The cracking of bulk-heads! the sawing of ropes! the screeching of the tiller!
the trampling of the sailors! the clattering of the crockery! Every thing above
deck, and below deck all in motion at once! Chairs, writing-desks, books, boxes,
bundles, fire-irons and fenders, flying to one end of the room; and the next
moment (as if they had made a mistake) flying back again to the other with the
same hurry and confusion! "Confusion worse confounded!" Of all the
inconveniences attached to a vessel, the incessant noise appears to me the most
insupportable! As to our live stock, they seem to have made up their minds on
the subject, and say with one of Ariosto's knights (when he was cloven from
the head to the chine)," "or convien morire." Our fowls and ducks
are screaming and quacking their last by dozens; and by Tuesday morning it is
supposed that we shall not have an animal alive in the ship, except the black
terrier-and my friend the squeaking pig, whose vocal powers are still audible,
maugre the storm and the sailors, and who (I believe) only continues to survive
out of spite, because he
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can join in the general chorus, and help to increase the number of abominable sounds. We are now tossing about in the Bay of Biscay: I shall remember it as long as I live.
NOVEMBER 20.
Our live stock has received an increase; our fowls and ducks are dead to be
sure, but a lark flew on board this morning, blown (as is supposed) from the
coast of France. In five minutes it appeared to be quite at home, ate very readily
whatever was given it, and hopped about the deck without fear of the sailors,
or the more formidable black terrier, with all the ease and assurance imaginable.
NOVEMBER 21.
The weather continues intolerable. Boisterous waves running mountains high,
with no wind, or a foul one. Dead calms by day, which prevent our making any
progress; and violent storms by night, which prevent our getting any sleep.
Everything is in a state of perpetual motion. We drink our tea exactly as Tantalus did in the infernal regions; we keep bobbing at the basin for half an hour together without being able to get a drop; and certainly nobody on ship-board can doubt the truth of the proverb, "Many things fall out between the cup and the lip."
NOVEMBER 23.
PANDORA'S BOX. (Iliad A.)
Prometheus once (in Tooke the tale you'll see)
In one vast box enclosed all human evils;
But curious Woman needs the inside would see,
And out came twenty thousand million devils.
The story's spoil'd, and Tooke should well be chid:
The fact, sir, happen'd thus, and I've no doubt of it;
'T was not that Woman raised the coffer's lid,
But when the lid was raised, Woman popp'd out of it.
"But Hope remain'd"-true, sir, she did; but still
All saw of what Miss Hope gave intimation;
Her right hand grasp'd an undertaker's bill,
Her left conceal'd a deed of separation.
N.B. I was most horribly sea-sick when I took this view of the subject.
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NOVEMBER 24.
"Manibus date lilia plenis;
Purpureos spargam flores!"
The squeaking pig was killed this morning.
NOVEMBER 26.
A complete and most violent storm, from twelve at night till seven the next
morning. The fore-top-sail, though only put up for the first time yesterday,
was rent from top to bottom; and several of the other sails are torn to pieces.
The perpetual tempestuous weather which we have experienced has so shaken the,
planks of the vessel, that the sea enters at all quarters. About one o'clock
in the morning I was saluted by a stream of water, which poured down exactly
upon my face, and obliged me to shift my lodgings. The carpenter had been made
aware that there was a leak in my cabin, and ordered to caulk the seam; but,
I suppose, he thought that during only a two months' voyage, the rain might
very possibly never find out the hole, and that it would be quite time enough
to apply the remedy when I should have felt the inconvenience. The best is,
that the carpenter happening to be at work in the next cabin when the water
came down upon me, I desired him to call my servant, in order that I might get
up on account of the leak; on which he told me "that the leak could not
be helped;" grumbled a good deal at calling up the servant; and seemed
to think me not a little unreasonable for not lying quietly, and suffering my
self to be pumped upon by this shower-bath of his own providing.
But if the water gets into the ship, on the other hand, last night the poor old steward was very near getting out of it. In the thick of the storm he was carrying some grog to the mate, when a gun, which drove against him, threw him off his balance, and he was just passing through one of the port-holes, when, luckily, he caught hold of a rope, and saved himself. A screech-owl flew on board this morning: I am sure we have no need of birds of ill omen; I could supply the place of a whole aviary of them myself.
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NOVEMBER 29.
The wind continues contrary, and the weather is as disagreeable and perverse
as it can well be; indeed, I understand that in these latitudes nothing can
be expected but heavy gales or dead calms, which makes them particularly pleasant
for sailing, especially as the calms are by far the most disagreeable of the
two: the wind steadies the ship; but when she creeps as slowly as she does at
present (scarcely going a mile in four hours), she feels the whole effect of
the sea breaking against her, and rolls backwards and forwards with every billow
as it rises and falls. In the meanwhile, everything seems to be in a state of
the most active motion, except the ship; while we are carrying a spoonful of
soup to our mouths, the remainder takes the "glorious golden opportunity"
to empty itself into our laps, and the glasses and salt-cellars carry on a perpetual
domestic warfare during the whole time of dinner, like the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.
Nothing is so common as to see a roast goose suddenly jump out of its dish in
the middle of dinner, and make a frisk from one end of the table to the other;
and we are quite in the habit of laying wagers which of the two boiled fowls
will arrive at the bottom first.
N.B. To-day the fowl without the liver wing was the favourite, but the knowing ones were taken in; the uncarved one carried it hollow.
DECEMBER 1.(Friday.)
The captain to-day pointed out to me a sailor-boy, who, about three years ago,
was shaken from the mast-head, and fell through the scuttle into the hold: the
distance was above eighty feet, yet the boy was taken up with only a few bruises.
DECEMBER 3. (Sunday.)
The wind during the last two days has been more favourable and at nine this
morning we were in the latitude of Madeira.
DECEMBER 6.
I had no idea of the expense of building and preserving a ship. That in which
I am at present cost 30,000l. at its outset. Last year the repairs amounted
to 14,0001.; and in a voyage to
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the East Indies they were more than 20,0001. In its return last year from Jamaica
it was on the very brink of shipwreck. A storm had driven it into Bantry Bay,
and there was no other refuge from the winds than Bear Haven, whose entrance
was narrow and difficult; however, a gentleman from Castletown came on board,
and very obligingly offered to pilot the ship. He was one of the first people
in the place, had been the owner of a vessel himself, was most thoroughly acquainted
with every of the haven, &e. &c., and so on they went. There was one
sunken rock, and that about ten feet in diameter; the knew it, and warned his
gentleman-pilot to keep a little to the eastward. " My dear friend,"
answered the Irish "now do just make yourself asy; I know well enough what
we are about; we are as clear of the rock as if we were in Sea, by Jasus;"-upon
which the vessel struck upon and there she struck. The captain fell to swearing
and is hair. " G-d-you, sir! didn't I tell you to keep Dam'me , she's on
the rock!"" Oh! well, my Dear, she now on the rock, and, in a few
minutes, you know, why she'll be off the rock: to be sure, I'd have taken my
oath that the rock was two hundred and fifty feet on the other side of her,
but -- "-"Two hundred and fifty feet! why, the channel is not two
hundred and fifty feet wide itself! and as to getting her off, bumping up against
this rock, it can only be with a great hole in her side."-" Poh !
now, bother, my dear! why sure-"-" Leave the ship, sir; dam'me, sir,
get out of my ship this moment! " Instead of which, with the most smiling
and obliging air in the world, the Irishman turned to console the female passengers.
" Make yourselves asy , ladies, pray make yourself perfectly asy ; but,
upon my soul, I believe your captain's mad ; no danger in life! only make yourselves
asy , I say ; for the ship lies on the rock as safe and as quiet, by Jasus,
as if she were lying on a mud bank! " Luckily the weather was so perfectly
calm, that the ship having once touched the rock with her keel bumped. no more.
It was low water; she wanted but five inches to float her, and when the tide
rose she drifted off', and with but little harm done. The gentleman-pilot then
thought proper to return on shore, took a very polite leave of the lady passengers,
and departed with all the urbanity possible;
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only thinking the captain the strangest person that he had ever met with ; and wondering that any man of common sense could be put out of temper by such a trifle.
DECEMBER 7.
Yesterday we had the satisfaction of falling in with the trade wind, and now
we are proceeding both rapidly and steadily., The change of climate is very
perceptible ; and the deep and beautiful blue which colours the sea is a certain
intimation of our approach to the tropic. A few flying-fish have made their
appearance; and the. spears are being put in order for the reception of their
constant attendant, the dolphin. These spears have ropes affixed to them,. and
at one end of the pole are five barbs, at the other a heavy ball of lead: then,
when the fish is speared, the striker lets the staff fall, on which down goes
the lead into the sea, and up goes the dolphin into the air, who is in the utmost
astonishment to find itself all of a sudden turned into a flying-fish ; so determines
to cultivate the art of flying for the future, and promises itself a great many
pleasant airings. The dolphin and the flying-fish are beautifully colored, and
both are very good food, particularly the latter, which move in shoals like
the herring, and are about the size of that fish. They are supposed to feed
on spawn and sea animalcul2e, and will not take the bait; but on the shores
of Barbadoes, which they frequent in great multitudes, they are caught in wide
nets, spread upon the surface of the sea; then, upon beating the waters around,
the fish rise in clouds, and fly till, their fins getting dry, they fall down
into the nets which have been spread to receive them. The dolphin is seldom
above three feet long; the immense strength which he exerts in his struggles
for liberty occasions the necessity of catching him with the spear in the way
before described.
DECEMBER 8.
At three o'clock this afternoon we entered the tropic of Cancer ; and if the
wind continues tolerably favourable, , we expect to see Antigua on Sunday se'nnight.
On crossing line, it was formerly usual for ships to receive a visit from an
old gentleman and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Cancer: the husband was, by profession,
a barber; and, probably, the scullion, who
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insisted. so peremptorily on shaving Sancho, at the duke's castle, had served an apprenticeship to Mr. Cancer, for their mode of proceeding was, much alike, and, indeed, very peculiar : the old gentleman always made a point of using a rusty iron hoop instead of a razor, tar for soap, and an empty beef-barrel was, in his opinion, the very best possible substitute for a basin; in consequence of which, instead of paying him for shaving them, people of taste were disposed to pay for not being shaved , and as Mrs. Cancer happened to be particularly partial to gin, the gift of a few bottles was generally successful in rescuing the donor's chin from the hands of her husband ; however, to-day this venerable pair "perdventure were sleeping or on a journey," for we neither saw nor heard anything about them.
DECEMBER 11.
A dead centipes was found on the deck, supposed to have mad its way on board
during the last voyage, among the logwood. This is not the only species of disagreeable
passengers who are in the habit of introducing themselves into homeward-bound
vessels without leave. While sleeping on deck last year the captain felt something
run across his face, and supposing it to be a cockroach, he brushed off a scorpion;
but not without its firs biting him upon the cheek: the pain for about four
hours was excessive; but although he did no more than wash the wound with spirits,
he was perfectly well again in a couple of days.
DECEMBER 12.
Since we entered the tropic the rains have been incessant and most violent;
but the wind was brisk and favourable, and w, rapidly. Now we have lost the
trade-wind, and move that it might almost be called standing still. On the other
hand, the weather is now perfectly delicious; the ship makes, but little way,
but she moves steadily; the sun is brilliant, the sky cloudless, the sea calm,
and so smooth, that it looks like one extended sheet of blue glass; an awning
is stretched over the deck ; although there is not wind enough to fill the there
is sufficient to keep the air cool, and thus, even during the day, the weather
is very pleasant: but the nights are quite heavenly, and so bright, that at
ten o'clock yesterday evening
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little Jem. Parsons (the cabin-boy), and his friend the black terrier, came on deck, and sat themselves down on a gun-carriage, to read by the light of the moon. I looked at the boy's book (the terrier, I suppose, read over the other's shoulder), and found that it was 'The Sorrows of Werter.' I asked who had lent him such a book, and whether it amused him? He said that it had been made a present to him, and so he had read it almost through,, for he had got to Werter's dying; though to be sure he did not understand it all, nor like very much what he under stood ; for he thought the man a great fool for killing himself for love. I told him I thought every man a great fool who killed himself for love or for anything else : but had lie no b9oks but 'The Sorrows of Werter?'-Oh, dear, yes, he said, he had a great many more; he had got I The Adventures of a Louse,' which was a very curious book, indeed ; and he bad got besides, 'The Recess,' and 'Valentine and Orson,' and 'Roslin Castle,' and a book of Prayers, just like the Bible; but he could Dot but that he liked I The Adventures of a Louse' the best of any of them.
DECEMBER 13.
We caught a dolphin, but not with the spear: he gorged a line which was fastened
to the stern and baited with salt pork; but being a very large and strong fish,
his efforts to escape were so powerful, that it was feared he would break the
line, and a grainse (as the dolphin-spear is technically termed) was thrown
at him : he was struck, and three of the prongs were buried in his side ; yet
with a violent effort be forced them out again, and threw the lance up into
the air. I am not much used to take pleasure in the sight of animal suffering,
but if Pythagoras him self bad been present, and "of opinion that the soul
of his. grandam might haply inhabit" this dolphin, I think he must still
have admired the force and agility displayed in his endeavours to escape. Imagination
can picture nothing more beautiful than the colours of this fish: while covered
by the waves be was entirely green ; and as the water gave him a case of transparent
crystal, he really looked like one solid piece of living emerald; when he sprang
into the air or swam fatigued upon the surface, his fins alone preserved their
green, and the rest of his body appeared to be of the brightest yellow, his
scales shining like
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gold wherever they caught the sun; while the blood which, as long as he remained in the sea, continued to spout in great quantities forces its way upwards through the water like a wreath of smoke, and then dispersed itself in separate globules among the spray. From the great loss of' blood his colours soon became paler; but when he was at length safely landed on deck, and beating himself to death against the flooring, agony renewed all the lustre of his tints: his fins were still green and his body golden, except his back, which was olive, shot with bright deep blue; his head and belly became silvery, and the spots with which the latter was mottled, changed with incessant rapidity, from deep olive to the most beautiful azure. Gradually his brilliant tints disappeared; they were succeeded by one uniform shade of slate colour, and when he was quite dead he exhibited nothing but dirty brown and dull dead white. As soon as all was over with him, the first thing done was to convert one of his fins into the resemblance of a flying-fish, for the purpose of decoying other dolphins ; and the second, to order some of the present gentleman to be got ready for dinner. He measured above four feet and a half.
DECEMBER 14.
At noon to-day we found ourselves in the latitude of Jamaica. We were promised
the sight of Antigua on Sunday next, but that is now quite out of the question.
We made but eight miles in the whole of yesterday ; and as Jamaica is still
at the distance of eighteen hundred miles, at this rate of proceeding we may
expect to reach it about eight months hence. The sky this evening presented
us with quite a new phenomenon, a rose colored moon : she is to be at her full
to-morrow; and this afternoon, about half-past four, she rose like a disk of
silver, perfectly white and colourless ; but as she was exactly opposite sun
at the time of his setting, the reflection of his rays a kind of pale blush
over her orb, which produced an t as beautiful as singular. Indeed, the size
and inconceivable brilliance of the sun, the clearness of the atmosphere, which
assumed a faint greenish line, and was entirely without a cloud, the smoothness
of the ocean, and the aforesaid rose-coloured moon altogether rendered this
sunset the most magical in effect that I ever beheld ; and it was with great
reluctance
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that I was called away from admiring it to ascertain whether the merits of our new acquaintance, the dolphin, extended any further than his skin. Part of him, which was boiled for yesterday's dinner, was rather coarse and dry, and might have been mistaken for indifferent haddock. But his having been steeped in brine, and then broiled with a good deal of pepper and salt , had improved him wonderfully, and to-day I thought him as good as any other fish.
DECEMBER 15.
The wind has dwindled away to nothing. We are now so absolutely becalmed that I begin to suspect Neptune is amusing himself by making the ship take root in the ocean. I have got some locust plants on board in pots: if we get on as slowly as we have done for the last week, before we reach Jamaica my plants will be forest trees, little Jem, the cabin-boy, will have been obliged to shave, and the , black terrier will have died of old age. Great numbers of porpoises were playing about to day, and tumbling under the ship's very nose. When in their 9xambols they allow themselves to be seen above the surface, they are of a dirty blackish brown, and as ugly as heart can wish ; but in the waves they acquire a fine sea-green cast, and their spouting up water in the sunbeams is extremely ornamental.
DECEMBER 16.
What little wind there is blows so perversely, that we have been obliged to
alter our course; and instead of Antigua, we are now told that the Summer Islands
(Shakespeare's "still vexed. Bermoothes") are the first land that
we must expect to see. I am greatly disappointed at finding such a scarcity
of monsters ; I had flattered myself that as soon as we should enter the Atlantic
ocean, or at least the tropic, we should have seen whole shoals of sharks, whales,
and dolphins, wandering about as plenty as sheep upon the South Downs; instead
of which, a brace of dolphins, and a f6w flying-fish and porpoises, are the
only inhabitants of the ocean who have as yet taken the trouble of paying us
the common civility of a visit. However, I am promised that as soon as we approach
the islands I shall have as many sharks as heart can wish. As I am particularly
fond of proofs of conjugal attachment
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between animals (in the human species they are so universal that I set no store by them), an instance of that kind which the captain related to me this morning gave me great pleasure. While lying in Black River harbour, Jamaica, two sharks were frequently seen playing about the ship; at length the female was killed, and the desolation of the male was excessive:- "Che, faro senz' Eurydice? " What be did without her remains a secret, but what be did with her was clear enough; for scarce was the breath out of his Eurydice's body, when be stuck his teeth in her, and began to eat her up with all possible expedition. Even the sailors felt their sensibility excited by so peculiar a mark of posthumous attachment and to enable him to perform this melancholy duty the more easily, they offered to be his carvers, lowered their boat, and proceeded to chop his better half in pieces with their hatchets ; while the widower opened-his jaws as wide as possible, and gulped down pounds upon pounds of the dear departed as fast as they were thrown to him, with the greatest delight and all the avidity imaginable. I make no doubt that all the while be was eating he was thoroughly persuaded that every morsel which went into his stomach would make its way to his heart directly! " She was perfectly consistent," he said to himself; "she was excellent through life, and really she's extremely good now she's dead ! " I doubt whether the annals of Hymen can produce a similar instance of post-obitual affection. Certainly Calderon's " Amor despues de la Muerte" has nothing that is worthy to be compared to it ; nor do I recollect in history any fact at all resembling it, except perhaps a circumstance which is recorded respecting Cambletes, king of Lydia, a monarch equally remark .able for his voracity and uxoriousness, and who, being one night completely overpowered by sleep, and at the same time violently tormented by hunger, eat up his queen without being conscious of it, and was mightily astonished the next morning, to wake with her hand in his mouth, the only bit that was le ft of her. But then Cambletes was quite unconscious what he was doing whereas the shark's mark of attachment was evidently intentional.
DECEMBER 17. (Sunday.)
On this day, from a sense of propriety no doubt, as well as
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from having, nothing else to do, all the crew in the morning betook themselves to their studies. The carpenter was very seriously spelling a comedy; Edward was engaged with " The Six Princesses 5 Babylon ;' a third was amusing himself with a tract I On the Management of Bees;' another had borrowed the cabin-boy's "Sorrows of Werter,' and was reading it aloud to a, large circle-some whistling-and others yawning; and Werter's abrupt transitions, and exclamations, and raptures, and refinements , read in the same loud monotonous tone, and without the slightest respect paid to stops, had the oddest effect possible. I was surprised to find that (except Edward's Fairy Tale) none of them were reading works that were at all likely to amuse them (Smollett or Fielding, for instance), or any which might interest them as relating to their profession, such as voyages and travels; much less any which had the slightest reference to the particular day. However, as most of them were reading what they could not possibly understand, they might mistake them for books of devotion, for anything they knew to the contrary ; or, perhaps, they might have so much reverence for all books ill print, as to think that, provided they did but read something, it was doing a good work, and it did not much matter what. So one of Congreve's fine ladies swears Mrs. Mincing, the waiting- maid, to secrecy, " upon an odd volume of Messalina's Poems." Sir Dudley North, too, informs us (or is it his brother Roger? but I mean the Turkey merchant)-that at Constantinople the respect for printed books is so great, that when people are sick, they fancy that they can be read into health again; and if the Koran should not be in the way, they will make a shift with a few verses of the Bible, or a chapter or two of the Talmud, or of any other book that comes first to hand, rather than not read something. I think Sir Dudley says, that he himself cured an old Turk of the toothache by administering a few pages of ' Ovid's Metamorphoses;' and in an old receipt-book, we are directed for the cure of a double tertian fever, "to drink plentifully of cock-broth, and sleep with the Second Book of the, Iliad under the pillow." If, instead of sleeping with it under the pillow, the doctor had desired us to read the Second Book of tile Iliad in order that we might sleep, I should have had some faith in his prescription myself.
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December 19.
During these last two days nothing very extraordinary, or of sufficient importance
to deserve being handed down to the latest posterity, has occurred ; except
that this morning a swinging rope knocked my hat into the sea, and away it sailed
upon a voyage of discovery, like poor La Perouse, to return no more, I suppose;
unless, indeed, like Polycrates, the fortunate tyrant of Samos, who threw his
favourite ring into the ocean, and found it again in the stomach of the first
fish that was served up at his table,-I should have the good luck (but I by
no means reckon upon it) to catch a dolphin with my bat upon his bead: as to
a porpoise, he never could squeeze his great numskull into it ; but our dolphin
of last week was much about my own size, and I daresay such another would find
my bat fit him to a miracle, and look very well in it.
December 20.
The weather is excessively close and sultry; and in point of heat there is no
difference between the days and the nights; or if it is that the nights are
rather the hottest of the two. The lightning is incessant, and it does not show
itself forked or in flashes, but in wide sheets of mild mild blue light which
spread themselves at once over the sky and sea; and, for the moment during which
they last, make all the objects around as distinct as in daylight. The moon
now does not rise till late, and during her absence the size and brilliancy
the of the stars are admirable. In England they always seemed to me to peep
through the blanket of the dark;" but here the heaven,; appear to be studded
with them on the outside, if they were chased with so many jewels: it is really
Milton's "firmament of living sapphires;" and what with the lightning
and the stars, and quantity of floating lights which just gleamed round the
ship every moment, and then were gone again, to-night the sky had an effect
so beautiful, that when at length the moon thought proper to show her great
red drunken face, I thought that we did much better without her. The above-mentioned
floating light' are a kind of sea-meteors, which, as I am told, are produced
by the concussion of the waves, while eddying in whirlpools round the rudder
; but still
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I saw them rise sometimes at so great a distance from the ship, and there appeared
to be something so like will in the direction of their course-sometimes hurrying
on, sometimes gliding along quite slowly; now stopping and remaining motionless
for a minute or two, and then hurrying on again,-that I could not be convinced
of their not being Medusae, or some species or other of phosphoric animal: but
whatever be the cause of this appearance, the effect is singularly beautiful.
As to air, we have not enough to bless ourselves with. I had been led to believe,
that when once we should have fallen in with the trade-winds, from that moment
we should sail into our destined port as rapidly and as directly as Truffaldino
travels in Gozzi's farce ; when, having occasion to go from Asia to Europe,
and being very much pressed for time, he persuades a conjuror of his acquaintance
to lend him a devil, with a great pair of bellows, the nozzle of which being
directed right against his stern, away goes the traveller before the stream
of wind, with the devil after him, and the infernal' bellows never cease from
working till they have blown him out of one quarter of the globe into another:
but our trade-winds must "hide their diminished heads" before Truffaldino's
bellows. It seems that like the Moors, "in Africa the torrid," they
are of temper somewhat mulish;" for although, to be sure, when they do
blow, they will only blow in one certain direction, yet very often they will
not blow at all; which has been the case for the last week: indeed, they seem
to be but a queerish kind of a concern at best. About three years ago a fleet
of merchantmen was becalmed near St. Vincent's: in a few days after their arrival,
there happened a violent eruption of a volcano in that island, nor was it long
before a favourable breeze sprang up. Unluckily, one of the ships had anchored
rather nearer to the shore than the ethers, and was at the distance of about
one hundred and fifty yards from the stream of the trade-wind ; nor could any
possible efforts of the crew, by tacking, by towing, or otherwise, ever enable
the vessel to conquer that one hundred and fifty yards : there she remained,
as completely becalmed , as if there were not such a thing as a breath of wind
in the universe; and on the one band she had the mortification to see the rest
of the merchantmen, with their convoy (for it was in the very beat of the war),
sail away with all their canvass spread and swelling; while, on the
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other hand, the sailors had the comfortable possibility of being suffocated every moment by the clouds of ashes which continued to fall on their deck every moment from the burning volcano, although they were not nearer to St. Vincent's than eight or nine miles; indeed that distance went for nothing, as ashes fell upon vessels that were out at sea at least five hundred miles and Barbadoes being to windward of the volcano, such immense quantities of its contents were carried to that island as almost covered the fields; and destroying vegetation completely wherever they fell, did inconceivable damage, while that which St. Vincent's itself experienced was but trifling in proportion.
Our captain is quite out of patience with the tortoise-Pace of our progress; for my part I care very little about it. Whether we have sailed slowly or rapidly, when a day is once over, I am just as much nearer advanced towards April, the time fixed for my return to England; and, what is of much more consequence, whether we have sailed slowly or rapidly, when a day is once over, I am just as much nearer advanced towards "that bourne," to reach which, peaceably and harmlessly, is the only business of life, and towards which the whole of our existence forms but one continued journey.
DECEMBER 21.
We succeeded in catching another dolphin to-day; but he had not a hat on ; however,
I just asked him whether he happened to have seen mine, but to little purpose
; for I found that he could tell me nothing at all about it; so, instead of
bothering the poor animal with any more questions, we ate him.
DECEMBER 22.
The Captain told me that about three years ago lie had the ill luck to be captured
by a French frigate. As she had already made prizes of two other merchantmen,
it was determined to sink his ship; which, after removing the crew and everything
in her that was valuable, was effected by firing her own guns down the hatchways.
It was near three hours before she filled, then down she went with a single
plunge, head foremost, with all her sails set and colours flying.
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DECEMBER 24. (Sunday.)
At length we have crawled into the Caribbean Sea, I was told that we were not
to expect to see land to-day ; but on ship- board our not seeing a thing to-day
by no means implies that we shall not see it before to-morrow; for the nautical
day is supposed to conclude at noon, when the solar observation is taken; and,
therefore, the making land to-day, or not, very often depends upon our making
it before twelve o'clock, or after it. This was the case in the present instance
; for noon was scarcely passed when we saw Descada (a small island totally unprovided
with water, and whose only produce consists in a little cotton), Guadaloupe,
and Marie Galante, though the latter was at so great a distance as to be scarcely
visible. At sunset Antigua was in sight.
December 25.
The sun rose upon Montserrat and Nevis, with the Rodondo rock between them,
"apricis natio gratissima mergis,"-for it is perpetually covered with
innumerable flocks of gulls, boobies, pelicans, and other sea-birds. Then came
St. Christopher's and St. Eustatia; and in the course of the afternoon we passed
over the Aves bank, a collection of sand, rock, and mud, extending about two
hundred miles, and terminated at each end by a small island: one of them inhabited
by a few fishermen, the other only by sea-birds. Of all the Atlantic isles the
soil of St. Christopher's is by some supposed to be the richest, the land frequently
producing three hogsheads an acre. I rather think that this was the first island
discovered by Columbus, and that it took its name from his patron-saint. Montserrat
is so rocky, and the roads so steep and difficult, that the sugar is obliged
to be brought down in bags upon the backs of mules, and not put into tasks till
its arrival on the sea-shore.
The weather is now quite delicious; there is just wind enough to send us forward and keep the air cool : the sun is brilliant, without being overpowering: the swell of the waves is scarcely perceptible, and the ship moves along so steadily that the deck affords almost as firm footing as if we were walking on land. During the night we passed Santa Cruz,, an island which, from the perfection to which its cultivation has been carried, is called the Garden of the West Indies."
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DECEMBER 28.
Having left Porto Rico behind us, at noon to-day we passed the insulated rock
of Alcavella, lying about six miles from St. Domingo, which is now in sight,
As this part of the Caribbean Sea is much infested by pirates from the Caraccas,
all our muskets have been put in repair, and to-day the guns were loaded, of
which we mount eight; but as one of them, during the last voyage, went overboard
in a gale of wind, its place has been supplied by a Quaker, i. e. a sham gun
of wood-so called, I suppose, because it would not fight if it were called upon.
These pirate vessels are small schooners, armed with a single twenty- four pounder,
which moves upon a swivel; and their crews are composed of negroes and outlaws
of all nations, their numbers varying from one hundred to one hundred and fifty
men. To- day we have been visited by several men-of-war birds and tropic birds;
one is a species of gull, perfectly white, and distinguished by a single very
long feather in its tail; its nautical name is the boatswain." As we sail
along, the air is absolutely loaded with "Sabean odours from the spicy
shores" of St. Domingo, which we were still coasting at sunset.
DECEMBER 30.
At day-break Jamaica was in sight, or rather it would have been in sight, only
that we could not see it. The weather was gloomy, with much wind and rain. I
remember my good friend, Walter Scott, asserts, that at the death of a poet
the groans and tears of his heroes and heroines swell the blast and increase
the river: perhaps something of the same kind takes. place at the arrival of
a West India proprietor from Europe; and all this rain and wind proceed from
the eyes and lungs of my agents and overseers, who, for the last twenty years,
have been reigning in my dominions with despotic authority; but now
"Whose groans in roaring winds complain,
Whose tears of rage impel the rain;"
because, on the approach of the sovereign himself, they must evacuate the place
and resign the deputed sceptre. "Hinc illae
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lachrymae!" this is the cause of-,our being soaked to the skin this morning. However, about noon the weather cleared up, and allowed us to verify, with our own eyes, that we had reached the " Land of Springs," without having been invited by any Piccaroon vessel to "walk the plank" instead of the deck; which is a compliment very generally paid by those gentry, after they have taken the trouble of laying a plank over the side of a captured ship, in order that the passengers and the crew may walk overboard without any inconvenience.
We arrived at the east end of the island, passed Pedro Point and Starvegut Bay, and arrived before Black River Bay (our destined harbour) soon after two o'clock ; but here we were obliged to come to a standstill: the channel is very dangerous, extremely narrow, and full of sunken rocks; so that it can only be entered by a vessel drawing so much water as ours with particular wind, and when there is not any apprehension of a sudden squall. We were, therefore, obliged to drop anchor, and are now riding within a couple of miles of the shore, but with as utter an incapability of reaching it as if we were still at Gravesend. The north side of the island is said to be extremely beautiful and romantic; but the south, which we coasted to-day, is low, barren, and without any recommendation whatever. As yet I can only look at Jamaica as one does on a man who comes to pay money, and whom we are extremely well pleased to see, however little the fellow's appearance may be in his favour.
December 31.(Sunday.)
We passed the whole of the day in vain endeavours to work ourselves into the
bay. At one time, indeed, we got very near the shore, but the consequence was,
that we were within an ace of striking upon a rock, and very much obliged to
a sudden gust of wind, which, blowing right off shore, blew us out of the channel,
and left us at night in a much more perilous situation than we had occupied
the evening before, though even that had been by Do means secure. At three o'clock,
the other passengers went on shore in the jolly-boat, and proceeded to their
destination ; but as I was still more than thirty miles distant from my estate,
I preferred waiting on board till the Captain should have moored his vessel
in safety, and be at liberty to take me in his
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pinnace to Savannah la Mar, when I should find myself within a few miles of my own house.
In the course of the afternoon, one of the sailors took up a fish of a very singular shape and most brilliant colours, as it -floated along upon the water. It seemed to be gasping, and lay with its belly upwards ; it was supposed to have eaten something poisonous, as whenever it was touched it appeared to be full of life, and squirted the water in our faces with great spirit and dexterity. But no sooner was he suffered to remain quiet in the tub , than be turned upon his back and again was gasping. He had a large round transparent globule, intersected with red veins, under the belly, which some imagined to proceed from a rupture, and to be the occasion of his disease. But I could not discover any vestige of a wound ; and the globule was quite solid to the touch ; neither did the fish appear to be sensible when it was pressed upon. No one on board had ever seen this kind of fish till then ; its name is the "Doctor Fish."
A black pilot came on board yesterday, in a canoe hollowed out of the cotton-tree ; and when it returned for him this morning it brought us a water-melon. I never met with a worse article in my life; the pulp is of a faint greenish yellow, stained here and there with spots of moist red, so that it looks exactly as if the servant in slicing it had cut his finger, and suffered it to bleed over the fruit. Then the seeds being of a dark purple, present the happiest imitation of drops of clotted gore; and altogether (prejudiced as I was by its appearance), when I had put a single bit into my mouth, it ho such a kind of Shylocky taste of raw flesh about it (not that I recollect having ever eaten a bit of raw flesh itself), that I sent away my plate, and was perfectly satisfied as to the merits of the fruit.
1816. -- JANUARY 1.
At length the ship has squeezed herself into this champagne bottle of a bay!
Perhaps, the satisfaction attendant upon our having overcome the difficulty,
added something to the illusion of its effect; but the beauty of the atmosphere,
the dark purple mountains, the shores covered with mangroves of the liveliest
green down to the very edge of the water, and the light-coloured houses with
their lattices and piazzas completely embowered in
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trees, altogether made the scenery of the Bay wear a very picturesque appearance. And, to complete the charm, the sudden sounds of the drum and banjee called our attention to a procession of the John-Canoe, which was proceeding to celebrate the opening of the new year at the town of Black River. The John-Canoe is a Merry-Andrew dressed in a striped doublet, and bearing upon his head a kind of pasteboard house-boat filled with puppets, representing, some sailor-, others soldiers, others again slaves at work on a plantation, &-c. The negroes are allowed three days for holidays at Christmas, and also New-year's day, which being the last is always reckoned by them as the festival of the greatest importance. It is for this day that they reserve their finest dresses, and Jay their schemes for displaying their show and expense to the greatest advantage; and it is then that the John-Canoe is considered not merely as a person of material consequence, but one whose presence is absolutely indispensable. -Nothing could look more gay than the procession which we now saw with its train of attendants, all dressed in white, and marching two by two (except when the file was broken here and there by a single horseman), and its band of negro music, and its. scarlet flags fluttering about in the breeze, now disappearing be hind a projecting clump of mangrove-trees, and then again emerging into an open part of the road, as it wound along the shore towards the town of Black River. I had determined not to go on shore, till I should land for good and all at Savannah la Mar. But although I could resist the " magnus telluris amor," there was no resisting John-Canoe; so, in defiance of a broiling afternoon's sun, about four o'clock we left the vessel for the town.
It was, as I understand, formerly one of some magnitude; but it now consists only of a few houses, owing to a spark from a tobacco-pipe or a candle having lodged upon a mosquito-net during dry weather; and although the conflagration took place at mid-day, the whole town was reduced to ashes The few streets (I believe there were not above two, but those were wide and regular, and the houses looked very neat) were now crowded with people, and it seemed to be allowed, upon all hands, that New-year's day had never been celebrated there with more expense and festivity.
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It seems that, many years ago, an Admiral of the Red was superseded on the Jamaica
station by an Admiral of the Blue ad both of them gave balls at Kingston to
the " Brown Girls;" for the fair sex elsewhere are called the "Brown
Girls" in Jamaica. In-consequence of these balls, all Kingston was divided
into parties: from thence the division spread into other districts; and-ever
since, the whole island, at Christmas, is sepa- rated into the rival factions
of the Blues and the Reds (the Red representing also the English, the Blue the
Scotch), who contend for setting, forth their processions with the greatest
taste and magnificence. This year, several gentlemen in the neigbbourhood of
Black River had subscribed very largely towards the expenses of the show; and
certainly it produced the gayest and most amusing scene that I ever witnessed,
to which the mutual jealousy and pique of the two parties against each other
contributed in no slight degree. The champions of the rival Roses, of the Guelphs
and the Ghibellines, none of them could exceed the scornful animosity and spirit
of depreciation with which the Blues and the Reds of Black River examined the
efforts at display of each other. The Blues had the advantage beyond a doubt
; this a Red girl told us that she could Dot deny ; but still, " though
the Reds were beaten, she would not be a Blue girl for the whole universe!"
On the other hand , Miss Edwards.(the mistress of the hotel from whose window
we saw the show) was rank Blue to the very tips of her fingers, and bad, indeed,
contributed one of her female slaves to sustain a very important character in
the show; for when the Blue procession was ready to set forward, there was evidently
a hitch, something was wanting; and there seemed to be no possibility of getting
on without it-when suddenly we saw a tall woman dressed in mourning (being Miss
Edwards herself) rush out of our hotel, dragging along by the hand a strange
uncouth kind of a glittering tawdry figure, all feathers, and pitchfork, and
painted pasteboard, who moved most reluctantly, and turned out to be no less
a personage than Britannia herself, with a pasteboard shield covered with the
arms of Great-Britain, a trident in her hand, and a helmet made of pale-blue
silk and silver. The poor girl, it seems, was bashful at appearing in this conspicuous
manner before so many spectators, and hung back when it came to the point. But
her mistress
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had seized hold of her, and placed her by main force in her destined position. The music struck up; Miss Edwards gave the Goddess a great push forwards; the drumsticks and the elbows of the fiddlers attacked her in the rear; and on went Britannia willy-nilly!
The Blue girls call themselves the Blue girls of Waterloo." Their motto was the more patriotic that of the Red was the more gallant:-" Britannia rules the day! " streamed upon the Blue flag, ; " Red girls forever! " floated upon the Red. But, in point of taste and invention, the former carried it hollow. First marched Britannia; then came a band of music; then the flag; then the Blue King and Queen-the Queen splendidly dressed in white and silver (in scorn of the opposite party, her train was borne by a little girl in red) ; his Majesty wore a full British Admiral's uniform, with a-white satin sash, and a huge cocked hat with a gilt paper crown upon the top of it. These were immediately followed by " Nelson's car," being a kind of canoe decorated with blue and silver drapery, and with " Trafalgar " written on the front of it; and the procession was closed by a Ion., train of Blue grandees (the women dressed in uniforms of white, with robes of blue muslin), all Princes and Princesses, Dukes and Duchesses, every mother's child of them.
The Red girls were also dressed very gaily and prettily, but they had nothing in point of invention that could vie with Nelson's Car and Britannia; and when the Red throne made its appearance, language cannot express the contempt with which our landlady eyed it. " It was neither one thing nor t'other, " Miss Edwards was of opinion. "Nothing but a few yards, of calico stretched over planks-and look, look, only look at it behind ! you may see the bare boards! By way of a throne, indeed! Well, to be sure, Miss Edwards never saw a poorer thing in her life, that she must say! " And then she told me, that somebody had just snatched at a medal which Britannia wore round her neck, and had endeavoured to force it away. I asked her who had done so? " Oh, one of the Red party, of course ! " The Red party was evidently Miss Edwards's Mrs. Grundy. John-Canoe made no part of the procession; but he and his rival, John-Crayfish (a personage of whom I heard, but could not obtain a sight), seemed to apt upon quite an
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independent interest; and go about from house to house, tumbling and playing antics to pick up money for themselves.-
A play was now proposed to us, and, o , f course, accepted. Three men and a girl accordingly made their appearance; the men dressed like the tumblers at Astley's, the lady very tastefully in white and silver, and all with their faces concealed by masks of thin blue silk; and they proceeded to perform the quarrel between Douglas and Glenalvon, and the fourth act of I The Fair Penitent.' They were all quite perfect, and bad no need of a prompter. As to Lothario, he was by far the most comical dog that I ever saw in my life, and his dying scene exceeded all description; Mr. Coates himself might have taken hints from him! As-soon as Lothario was fairly dead, and Calista bad made her exit in distraction, they all began dancing reels like so Many mad people, till they Were obliged to make way for the Waterloo procession, who came to collect money for the next year's festival ; one of them singing, another dancing to the tune, while she presented her money-box to the spectators, and the rest of the Blue girls filling up the chorus. I cannot say much in praise of the black Catalani ; but nothing could be more light, and playful, and graceful, than the extempore movements of the dancing-girl. Indeed, through the whole day I had been struck with the precision of their march, the ease and grace of their action, the elasticity of their step, and the lofty air with which they carried their heads-all, indeed, except poor Britannia, who hung down hers in the Most "goddess-dike manner imaginable The first song was the old Scotch air of-Logie of Buchan,' o which the 'girl sang one single stanza forty times over. Bu the second was in praise of the Hero of Heroes; so I gave the songstress a dollar to teach it to me, and drink the Duke's health It was not easy to make out what she said, but as well as I could understand them, the words ran as follows:-
"Come, rise up, our gentry,
And hear about Waterloo;
Ladies, take your spy-glass,
And attend to what we do;
For one and one makes two,
But one alone must be,
Then singee, singee Waterloo,
None so brave as he ! "
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-and then there came something about green and white flowers, and a Duchess, and a lily-white Pig, and going on board of a (lashing man-of-war; but what they all had to do with the Duke, or with each other, I could not make even a guess. I was going to ask for an explanation, but suddenly half of them gave a shout loud enough "to fright the realms of Chaos and old Night," and away they flew, singers, dancers, and all. The cause of this was the sudden illumination of the town with quantities of large chandeliers and bushes, the branches of which were stuck all over with great blazing torches: the effect was really beautiful, and the excessive rapture of the black multitude at the spectacle was as well worth the witnessing as the sight itself.
I never saw so many people who appeared to be so unaffectedly .happy. In England, at fairs and races, half the visitors at least seem to have been only brought there for the sake of traffic, and to be too busy to be amused ; but here nothing was thought of but real pleasure ; and that pleasure seemed to consist in singing, dancing, and laughing, in seeing and being Seen, in showing their own fine clothes, or in admiring those of others. There were no people selling or buying; no servants and landladies bustling and passing about; and at eight o'clock, as we passed through the market-place, where was the greatest illumination, and which, of course, was most thronged, I did not see a single person drunk, nor had I observed a single quarrel through the course of the day;, except, indeed, when some thoughtless fellow crossed the line of the procession, and received by the way a good box of the ear from the Queen or one of her attendant Duchesses. Everybody made the same remark to me; " Well, si r, what do you think Mr. Wilberforce would think of the state of the negroes, if he could see this scene? " and certainly, to judge by this one specimen, of all beings that I have yet seen, these were the happiest. As we were passing to our boat, through the market-place,-suddenly we saw Miss Edwards dart out of the crowd, and seize the Captain's arm-" Captain! Captain ! " cried she, " for the love of Heaven, only look at the Red lights ! Old iron hoops, nothing but old iron hoops, I declare ! Well! for my part 1 " and then, with a contemptuous toss of her head, away frisked Miss Edwards triumphantly.
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January 2.
The St. Elizabeth, which sailed from England at the same time with our vessel,
was attacked by a pirate from Carthagena, near the rocks of Alcavella, who attempted
three times to board her, though he was at length beaten off; so that our Piccaroon
preparations were by no means taken without good reason.
At four o'clock this morning I embarked in the cutter for Savannah la Mar, lighted by the most beautiful of morning stars: certainly, if this star be really Lucifer, that " Son of the Morning," the Devil must be "an extremely pretty fellow." But, in spite of the fineness of the morning, our passage was a most disagreeable concern: there was a violent swell in the sea; and a strong north wind, though it carried us forward with great rapidity, overwhelmed us with whole sheets of foam so incessantly that I expected, as soon as the sun should have evaporated the moisture, to see the boat's crew covered with salt, and looking like so many Lot's wives after her metamorphosis.
The distance was about thirty miles, and soon after nine o'clock we reached Savannah la Mar, where I found my trustee and a whole cavalcade waiting to conduct me to my estate. He had brought-with him a curricle and pair for myself, a gig for my servant, two black boys upon mules, and a cart with eight oxen to convey my baggage. The road was excellent, and we bad no above five miles to travel; and as soon as the carriage entered, my gates, the uproar and confusion which ensued sets all description at defiance. 'The works were instantly all abandoned everything that bad life came flocking to the house from a quarters: and not only the men, and the women, and the children, but, " by a bland assimilation," the hogs, and the dogs, and the geese, and the fowls, and the turkeys, all came hurrying along by instinct, to see what could possibly be the matter, and seemed to be afraid of arriving too late. Whether the pleasure of the negroes was sincere may be doubted; but certainly it was the loudest that I ever witnessed : they all talked together, sat danced, shouted, and, in the violence of their gesticulations tumbled over each other, and rolled about upon the ground. Twenty voices at once inquired after uncles, and aunts, and grandfathers, and great-grandmothers of mine, who had been
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buried long before I was in existence, and whom, I verily believe, most of them only knew by tradition. One woman held up her little naked black child to me, grinning from car to ear" Look, massa, look here!-him nice lilly neger for massa! Another complained,-" So long since none come see we, massa good massa come at last." As for the old people, they were all in one and the same story,-now they had lived once to see massa, they were ready for dying to-morrow, " them no care."
The shouts, the gaiety, the wild laughter, the strange and sudden bursts of singing and dancing, and several old women, wrapped up in large cloaks, their heads bound round with different-coloured handkerchiefs, leaning on a staff, and standing motionless in the middle of the hubbub, with their eyes fixed upon the portico which I occupied, formed an exact counterpart of the festivity of the witches in Macbeth. Nothing could be more odd or more novel than the whole scene; and yet there was something in it by which I could not help being affected perhaps it was the consciousness that all these human beings were my slaves; to be sure, I never saw people look more happy in my life, and I believe their condition to be much more comfortable than that of the labourers of Great Britain; and after all, slavery, in their case, is but another name for servitude, now that no more negroes can be forcibly carried away from Africa, and subjected to the horrors of the voyage, and the seasoning after their arrival: but still I had already experienced that Juliet was wrong in saying, "What's in a name?" for soon after my reaching the lodging-house at Savannah la Mar, a remarkably clean-looking negro lad presented himself with some water and a towel: I concluded him to belong to the inn; and, on my returning the towel, as he found that I took no notice of him, he at length ventured to introduce himself by saying, " Massa not know me; me your slave! "-and really the sound made me feel a pang at the heart. The lad appeared all gaiety and good humour, and his whole countenance expressed anxiety to recommend himself to my notice; but the word "slave " seemed to imply that, although he did feel pleasure then in serving me, if he had detested me he must have served me still. I really felt quite humiliated at the moment, and was tempted to tell him,
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" Do not say that again ; say that you are my negro, but do not call yourself my slave."
Altogether, they shouted and sang me into a violent headache. It is now one in the morning, and I bear them still shouting and Singing. I gave them a holiday for Saturday next, and told them that I had brought them all presents from England; and so, I believe, we parted very good friends.
JANUARY 3.
I have reached Jamaica in the best season for seeing my property in a favourable
point of view ; it is crop time, when all the laborious work is over, and the
negroes are the most healthy and merry. This morning I went to visit the hospital,
and found there only eight patients out of three hundred negroes, and not one
of them a serious case. Yesterday I had observed a remarkably handsome Creole
girl, called Psyche, and she really deserved the name. This morning a little
brown girl made her appearance at breakfast, with an orange bough, to flap away
the flies, and, on inquiry, she proved to be an emanation of the aforesaid Psyche.
It is evident, therefore, that Psyche has already visited the palace of Cupid;
I heartily hope that she is not now upon her road to the infernal regions.
I passed the morning in driving about the estate: my house is frightful to look at, but very clean and comfortable in the in side; some of the scenery is very picturesque, from the lively green of the trees and shrubs, and the. hermitage-like appearance of the negro buildings, all situated in little gardens and embosomed in sweet-smelling shrubberies. Indeed, everything appears much better than I expected; the negroes seem healthy and contented, and so perfectly at their ease that our English squires would be mightily astonished at being accosted so familiarly by their farmers. This delightful north wind keeps the air temperate and agreeable. I live upon shaddocks and pine apples. The dreaded mosquitoes are not worse than gnats, nor as bad as the Sussex harvest-bugs; and, as yet, I never felt my self in more perfect health. There was a man once who fell from the top of a steeple, and perceiving no inconvenience in his passage through the air, " Come," said be to himself, while in the act of falling, " really this is well enough yet, if it would but
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last." Cubina, my young Savannah la Mar acquaintance is appointed my black attendant; and as I had desired him to bring me any native flowers of Jamaica, this evening he brought me a very pretty one; the negroes, he said, called it " John-to-Heal," but in white language it was hoccoco-pickang; it proved to be the wild ipecacuanha.
January 4.
There were three things against which I was particularly cautioned, and which
three things I was determined not to do,- to take exercise after ten in the
day ; to be exposed to the dews after sun-down; and to sleep at a Jamaica lodging-house.
So, yesterday, I set off for Montego Bay at eight o'clock in the morning, and
travelled till three; walked home from a ball after midnight; and that home
was a lodging-house at Montego Bay; but the lodging-house was such a cool, clean
lodging-house, and the landlady was such an obliging, smiling landlady, with
the whitest of all possible teeth, and the blackest of all possible eyes, that
no harm. could happen to me from occupying, an apartment -which been prepared
by her. She was called out of her bed to make my room read for me; Yet she did
everything with so much good will and cordiality-no quick answers, no mutterings
: inns would be bowers of Paradise if they were all rented by mulatto landladies
like Judy James.
I was much pleased with the scenery of Montego Bay, and with the neatness and cleanliness of the town; indeed, what with the sea washing it, and the picturesque aspect of the piazzas and verandas, it is impossible for a West Indian town so situated, and in such a climate, not to present an agreeable appearance. But the first. part of the road exceeds in beauty all that I have ever seen; it wound through mountain-lands of my own, their summits of the boldest, and at the same time of the most beautiful shapes; their sides ornamented with bright green woods of bamboo, logwood, prickly-yellow, broad-leaf, and trumpet trees; and so completely covered with the most lively verdure, that once, when we found a piece of barren rock, Cubina pointed it out to me as a curiosity,-" Look, Massa, rock", quite naked!" The cotton-tree presented itself on all-sides; but as this is the season for its shedding its leaves, its wide-
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spreading bare white arms contributed nothing to the beauty of the scene, except where the wild-fig and various creeping plants had completely mantled the stems and branches; and then its gigantic height, and the fantastic wreathings of its limbs, from which numberless green withes and strings of wild flowers were streaming, rendered it exactly the very tree for which a landscape-painter would have wished. The air, too, was delicious; the flagrance of the sweet-wood, and of several other scented trees, but, above all, of the delicious logwood (of which most of the fences in Westmoreland are made), composed an atmosphere such, that if Satan, after promising them "a buxom air, embalmed with odours," had transported Sin and' Death thither, the charming couple must have acknowledged their papa's promises fulfilled.
We travelled the first ten miles (Montego Bay being about thirty from my estate of Cornwall) without seeing a human creature; nor, indeed, anything that had life in it, except a black snake basking in the sunshine, and a few John-Crows-a species of vulture, whose utility is so great that its destruction is prohibited by law, under a heavy penalty. In a country where putrefaction is so rapid, it is of infinite consequence to preserve an animal which, if a bullock or horse falls dead in the held, immediately flies to the carcass before it has time to corrupt, and gobbles it up before you can say " John Crow," much less " Jack Robinson.". The bite of the black snake is slightly venomous, but that is all-, as to the great yellow one, it-is perfectly innoxious, and so timid that it always runs away from you. The only dangerous species of serpent is the whip-snake, so called from its exactly resembling the lash of a whip, in length, thinness, pliability, and whiteness; but even the bite of this is not mortal) except from very great neglect, The most beautiful tree, c rather group of trees, all to nothing, is the bamboo, both from its Verdure and from its elegance of form : as to the-cotton-tree it answers no purpose, either of ornament or utility; or, rather it is not suffered to answer any, since it is forbidden by law to export its down, lest it should hurt the fur trade in the manufacture of hats: its only present use is to furnish the negroes, with canoes, which are hollowed out of its immense trunks. I am yet so much enchanted with the country, that it would require
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no very strong additional inducements to make me establish myself here altogether
; and, in that case, my first care would be to build for myself a cottage among
these mountains, in which I might pass the sultry months,-
" E bruna-si; ma il bruno il bel non toglie."
JANUARY 5.
As I was returning this morning from Montego Bay, about a mile from my own estate,
a figure presented itself before me, I really think the most picturesque that
I ever beheld-it was a mulatto girl, born upon Cornwall, but whom the overseer
of a neighbouring estate bad obtained my permission to exchange for another
slave, as well as two little children, whom she had borne to him ; but, as yet,
lie has been unable to procure a substitute, owing to the difficulty of purchasing
single negroes, and Mary Wiggins is still my slave. However, as she is considered
as being manumitted, she had not dared to present herself at Cornwall on my
arrival, lest she should have been considered as an intruder; but she now threw
herself in my way to tell me how glad she was to see me, for that she ; had
always thought till now (which is the general complaint) that " she had
no massa ;" and also to obtain a regular invitation to my negro festival
tomorrow. By this universal complaint, it appears that, while Mr. Wilberforce
is lamenting their hard fate in being subject to a master, their greatest fear
is the not having a master whom they know ; and that to be told by the negroes
of another estate that 41 they belong to no massa," is one of the most
contemptuous reproaches that can be cast upon them. Poor creatures, when they
happened to hear on Wednesday evening that my carriage was ordered for Montego
Bay the next morning they fancied that I was going away for good and all, and
came up to the house in such a hubbub, that my agent was obliged to speak to
them, and pacify them with the assurance that I should come back on Friday without
fail.
But to return to Mary Wiggins: she was much too pretty not to obtain her invitation to Cornwall; on the contrary, I insisted upon her coming, and bade her tell her husband that I admired his taste very much for having chosen her. I really think that her form and features were the most statue-like that I
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ever met with: her complexion had no yellow in it, and yet was bot brown enough to be dark-it was more of an ash-dove colour than anything, else; her teeth were admirable, both for colour and shape; her eyes equally mild and bright; and her face merely broad enough to give it all possible softness and grandness of contour : her air and countenance would have suitedYarico; but she reminded me most of Grassini in " La Verginedel Sole," only that Mary Wiggins was a thousand times more beautiful, and that, instead of' a white robe, she wore a mixed dress of brown, white, and dead yellow, which harmonized ex-cellently with her complexion; while one of her beautiful arms was thrown across her brow to shade her eyes, and a profusion of rings on her fingers glittered in the sunbeams. Mary Wiggins and an old cotton-tree are the most picturesque objects that I have seen for these twenty years.
On my arrival at home, my agent made me a very elegant little present of a scorpion and a couple of centipedes : the first was given to him, but the large centipede he had shaken out of a book last night, and having immediately covered her up in a phial of rum, he found this morning that she had produced a young one, which was lying drowned by her side.
I find that my negroe were called away from their attention to the works yesterday evening (for the crop is now making with the greatest activity), and kept us up all night by a fire at a neighbouring estate. On these occasions a fire-shell is blown, and all the negroes of the adjoining plantations hasten to give their assistance. On this occasion the fire was extinguished with the loss of only five negroe houses ; -but this is a heavy concern to the poor negro proprietors, who have lost in it their whole stock of clothes, and furniture, and finery, which they had been accumulating for years, and to which their attachment is excessive.
JANUARY 6.
This was the day given to my negroes as a festival on my arrival. A couple of
heifers were slaughtered for them : they were allowed as much rum and sugar,
and noise, and dancing as they chose; and as to the two latter, certainly they
profited by the permission. About two o'clock they began to assemble round the
house, all dressed in their holiday clothes, which, both
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for men and women, were chiefly white; only that the women', were decked out with a profusion of be-ads and corals, and gold ornaments of all descriptions; and that while the blacks wore jackets, the mulattoes generally wore cloth coats; and inasmuch as they were all plainly clean instead of being shabbily fashion able, and affected to be nothing except that which they really were, they looked twenty times more like gentlemen than nine tenths of the bankers' clerks who swagger up and down Bond Street. It is a custom as to the mulatto children, that the males born on an estate should never be employed as field negroes, but as tradesmen ; the females are brought up as domestics about the house. I had particularly invited " Mr. John-Canoe " (which I found to be the polite manner in which the negroes spoke of him), and there arrived a couple of very gay and gaudy ones. I inquired whether one of them was " John-Crayfish ;" but I was told that John-Crayfish was John-Canoe's rival and enemy, and might belong to the factions of " the Blues and the Reds;" but on Cornwall they were all friends, and therefore there were only the father and the son-Mr. John-Canoe, senior, and Mr. John-Canoe, junior.
The person who gave me this information was a young mulatto carpenter, called Nicholas, whom I had noticed in the crowd, on my first arrival, for his clean appearance and intelligent countenance; and he now begged me to notice the smaller of the two John-Canoe machines. " To be sure," be said, " it was not so large nor so showy as the other, but then it was much better proportioned (his own word), and altogether much prettier;" and lie said so much in praise of it, that I asked him whether lie knew the maker? and then out came the motive: " 0h, yes ! it was made by John Fuller, who lived in the next house to him, and worked in the same shop, and indeed they were just like brothers." So I desired to see his fidus Achates, and he brought me as smart and intelligent a little fellow as eye ever beheld, who came grinning from ear to par to tell me that lie had made every bit of the canoe with his own hands, and had set to work upon it the moment that he knew of massa's coming to Jamaica. And indeed it was as fine as paint, pasteboard, gilt paper, and looking-glass could make it ! Unluckily, the breeze being very strong blew off a fine glittering umbrella, surmounted
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with a plume of John-Crow feathers, which crowned the top; and a little wag of a negro boy whipped it up, clapped it upon his head, and performed the part of an impromptu Mr. John-Canoe with so much fun and grotesqueness, that he fairly beat the original performers out of the pit, and carried off all the applause of the spectators; and a couple of my dollars. The John-Canoes are fitted out at the expense of the rich negroes, who afterwards 00 69 money collected from the spectators during their performance, allotting one share to the representator himself and it is usual for the master of the estate to give them a couple of guineas apiece.
This Nicholas, whom I mentioned, is a very interesting person, both from his good looks and gentle manners, and from his story. He is the son of a white man, who on his death-bed charged his nephew and heir to purchase the freedom of this natural child. The nephew had promised to do so; I had consented; nothing was necessary but to find the substitute (which is no easy matter) ; when about six months ago the nephew broke his neck, and the property went to a distant relation. application on behalf of poor Nicholas has been made to the heir, and I heartily hope that he will enable me to release him . I felt strongly tempted to set him at liberty at once; but if I were to begin in that way, there would be no stopping; and it would be doing a kindness to an individual at the expense of all negroes-others would expect the same; and then I must either contrive to cultivate my estate with fewer hands, or must cease to cultivate it altogether-and, from inability to maintain them, send my negroes to seek bread for themselves -- which, as two-thirds of them have been born upon the estate, and many of them are lame, dropsical, and of great age, would, of all misfortunes that could happen to them, be the most cruel. even when Nicholas was speaking to me about his liberty, he said, "It is not that I wish to go away, sir; it is only for the name and honour of being free: but I would always stay here and be your servant; and I had rather be an under-workman on Cornwall, than a head carpenter anywhere else." Possibly this Was all palaver(in which the negroes are great dealers), but at least he seemed to be sincere ; and I was heartily grieved that I could not allow myself to say more to him than that I sincerely
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wished him to get his liberty, and would receive the very lowest exchange for him that common prudence would authorize. And even for those few kind words, the poor fellow seemed to think it impossible to find means strong enough to express his gratitude.
Nor is this the only instance in which Nicholas has been unlucky. It seems that he was the first lover of the beautiful Psyche, whom I bad noticed on my arrival. This evening, after the performance of the John-Canoes, I desired to see some of the girls dance; and by general acclamation Psyche was brought forward to exhibit, she being avowedly the best dancer on the estate ; and certainly nothing could be more light, graceful, my, and spirited, than her performance. She perfectly answered the description of Sallust's Sempronia, who was said -" Saltare elegantius, quam necesse est probae, et cui cariora semper omnia, quam decus et pudicitia fuit." When her dance was over, I called her to me, and gave her a handful of silver. " Ah, Psyche," said Nicholas, who was standing at my elbow, 41 Massa no give you all that if massa know you so bad girl! she run away from me, massa 1 " Psyche gave him a kind of pouting look, half kind, and half reproachful, and turned away. And then he told me that Psyche had been his wife (one of his wives he should have said); that he had had a child by her, and , then she had left him for one of my " white people " (as they call the book-keepers), because he had a good salary, and could afford to give her more presents than a slave could. " Was there not another reason for your quarrelling? " said my agent. " Was there not a shade of colour too much ? "-" Oh, massa!" answered Nicholas, " the child is not my own, that is certain , it is a black man's child. But still I will always take care of the child. because it have no friends, and me wish make it good neger for massa-and she take good care of it too," he added, throwing his arm round the waist of a sickly-looking woman rather in years; " she my wife, too, massa, long ago ; old now and sick, but always good to me, so I still live with her, and will never leave her, never massa ; she Polly's mother, sir." Polly is a pretty, delicate looking girl, nursing a young child; she belongs to the mansion- house, and seems to think it as necessary a part of her duty to nurse me as the child. To be sure she has not as vet insisted
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upon suckling me; but if I open a jalousie in the evening, Polly walks in and shuts it without saying a word. " Oh, don't shut the window, Polly."-" Night-air not good for massa;" and she shuts the casement without mercy. I am drinking orangeade, or some such liquid; Polly walks up to the table, and seizes it " Leave that jug, Polly; I am dying with thirst."-" More hurt massa;" and away go Polly and the orangeade. So that I begin to fancy myself Sancho in Barataria, and that Polly is the senor Doctor Pedro in petticoats.
The difference of colour, which had offended Nicholas so much in Psyche's child, is a fault which no mulatto will pardon; nor can the separation of castes in India be more rigidly observed, than that of complexional shades among the Creoles. My black page, Cubina, is married: I told him that I hoped he had married a pretty woman ; why had he not married Mary Wiggins ? he seemed quite shocked at the very idea. " Oh, massa, me black, Mary Wiggins sambo; that not allowed."
The dances performed to-night seldom admitted more than three persons at a time : to me they appeared to be movements entirely dictated by the caprice of the moment ; but I am told that there is a regular figure, and that the, least mistake, or a single false step, is immediately noticed by the rest. I could indeed sometimes fancy that one story represented an old duenna guarding a girl from a lover; and another, the pursuit of a young woman by two suiters, the one young and the other old ; but this might be only fancy. However, I am told that they have dances which not only represent courtship and marriage, brought to bed. Their music consisted of nothing but Gambys (Eboe drums), Shaky-shekies, and Kitty-katties: the latter is nothing but any flat piece of board beat upon with two sticks, and the former is a bladder with a parcel of pebbles in it. But the principal part of the music to which they dance is vocal; one girl generally singing two lines by herself, and being answered by a chorus. To make out either the rhyme of the air, or meaning of the words, was out of the question. But one very long song was about the Duke of Wellington, every stanza being chorused with,
"Ay! hey-day! Waterloo!
Waterloo ! ho ! ho! ho !"
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I too had a great deal to do in the business, for every third word was " massa."
The singing began about six o'clock, and lasted, without a moment's pause, till two in the morning; and such a noise never did I hear till then. The whole of the floor which was not taken up by the dancers was, through every part of the house except the bed-rooms, occupied by men, women, and children, fast asleep. But although they were allowed rum and sugar by whole pailfuls, and were most of them merry in consequence, there was not one of them drunk; except, indeed, one person, and that was an old woman, who sang, and shouted, and tossed herself about in an elbow chair, till she tumbled it over, and rolled about the room in a manner which shocked the delicacy of even the least prudish part of the company. At twelve my agent wanted to dismiss them; but I would not suffer them to be interrupted on the first holiday that I had given them ; so they continued to dance and shout till two, when human nature could bear no more, and they left me to my bed, and a violent headache.
JANUARY 7. (Sunday.)
In spite of their exertions of last night, the negroes were again with me by
two o'clock in the day, with their drums and their choruses. However, they found
themselves unable to keep it up as they had done on the former night, and were
content to withdraw to their own houses by ten in the evening. But first they
requested to have to-morrow to themselves, in order that they might go to the
mountains for provisions. For although ,, their cottages are always surrounded
with trees and shrubs, their provision-grounds are kept quite distinct, and
are at a distance among the mountains. Of course, I made no difficulty of acceding
to their request, but upon condition that they should ask for no more holidays
till the crop should be completed. For the purpose of cultivating their provision-grounds,
they are allowed every Saturday ; but on' the occasion of my arrival, they obtained
permission to have the Saturday to themselves, and to fetch their week's provisions
from the mountains on the following Monday, All the slaves maintain themselves
in this manner by their own labour; even the domestic attendants are not
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exempted, but are expected to feed themselves, except stated allowances of salt-fish, salt-pork, &c.
JANUARY 8.
I really believe that the negresses can produce children at pleasure; and where
they are barren, it is just as hens will frequently not lay eggs on ship-board,
because they do Dot like their situation. Cubina's wife is in the family way,
and I told him that if the child should live I would christen it for him, if
he wished it. " Tank you, kind massa, me like it very much: much oblige
if massa do that for me too." So I promised to baptize the father and the
baby on the same day, and said that I would be godfather to any children that
might be born on the estate during my residence in Jamaica. This was soon spread
about, and although I have not yet been here a week, two women we in the straw
already, Jug Betty and Minerva: the first is wife to my bead driver, the Duke
of Stilly; but my sense of propriety was much gratified at finding that Minerva's
husband was called Captain.
In my evening' s drive I met the negroes returning from the mountains, with baskets of provisions sufficient to last them for the week. By law they are only allowed every other Saturday or the purpose of cultivating their own grounds, which, indeed, is sufficient ; but by giving them every alternate Saturday into the bargain, it enables them to perform their task with so much 61W as almost converts it into an amusement; and the frequent visiting their grounds makes them grow habitually as much attached to them as they are to their houses and gardens. It is also adviseable for them to bring home only a week's provisions at-is time, rather than a fortnight's ; for they are so thoughtless and improvident, that, when they find themselves in possession of a larger supply than is requisite for their immediate occasions, they will sell half to the wandering higglers, or at Savannah la Mar, in exchange for spirits ; and then, at the end of the week, they find themselves entirely unprovided with food, and come to beg a supply from the master's storehouse.
The sensitive plant is a great nuisance in Jamaica: it overruns, and, being armed with very strong sharp prickels it wounds the mouths of the cattle, and, in some places,
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makes it quite impossible for them to feed. Various endeavours have been made to eradicate this inconvenient weed, but none, as yet have proved effectual.
JANUARY 10.
The houses here are generally built and arranged according to one and the same
model. My own is of wood, partly raised upon pillars; it consists of a single
floor: a long gallery, called a piazza, terminated at each end by a square room,
runs the whole length of the house. Oil each side of the piazza is a range of
bed-rooms, and the porticoes of the two fronts form two more rooms, with balustrades,
and flights of steps descending to the lawn. The whole house is virandoed with
shifting Venetian blinds to admit air ; except that one of the end rooms has
sash-windows on account of the rains, which, when they arrive, are so heavy,
and shift with the wind so suddenly from the one side to tile. other, that all
the blinds are obliged to be kept closed ; consequently the whole house is in
total darkness during their continuance, except the single sash-windowed room.
There is nothing underneath except a few store-rooms and a kind of waiting-hall;
but none of the domestic negroes sleep in tile house, all going home at night
to their respective cottages and families.
Cornwall House stands on a dead flat, and the works are built in its immediate neighbourhood, for the convenience of their being the more under the agent's personal inspection (a point of material consequence with them all, but more particularly for the hospital).
This dead flat is only ornamented with a few scattered bread-fruit and cotton trees, a grove of mangoes, and the branch of a small river, which turns the mill. Several of these buildings are ugly enough; but the shops of the cooper, carpenter, and blacksmith, some of the trees in their vicinity,, and the negro-huts, embowered in shrubberies, and groves of oranges, plantains, cocoas, and pepper-trees, would be reek, picturesque in tile most ornamented grounds. A large spreading tamarind fronts me at this moment, and overshadows the stables, which are formed of open wickerwork; and an orangetree, loaded with fruit, grows against the window at which I am writing.
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On three sides of the landscape the prospect is bounded by lofty purple mountains;
and the variety of occupations going on all around me, and at the same time,
give an inconceivable air of life and animation to the whole scene, especially
as all those occupations look clean,-even those which in England look dirty.
All the tradespeople are dressed in jackets and trousers, either white or of
red and sky-blue stripe. One band of negroes an carrying the ripe canes on their
heads to the mill; another set are conveying away the trash , after the juice
has been extracted ; flocks of turkeys axe sheltering from the heat under the
trees; the river is filled with ducks and geese; the coopers and carpenters
are employed about the puncheons ; carts drawn some by six others by eight,
oxen, are bringing loads of Indian corn from the fields; the black children
are employed in gathering it into the granary, and in quarrelling with pigs
as black as themselves, who are equally busy in stealing the corn whenever the
children are looking another way: in short, a plantation possesses all the movement
and interest of a farm, without its dung, and its stench, its dirty accompaniments.
JANUARY 11.
I saw the whole process of sugar-making this morning. The ripe canes are brought
in bundles to the mill, where the cleanest of the women are appointed, one to
put them into tile machine for crushing them, and another to draw them out after
the juice has been extracted, when she throws then into an opening in the floor
close to her; another band of negroes collects them below, when, under the name
of trash , they an carried away to serve for fuel. The juice, which is itself
at first of a pale ash-colour, gushes out in great streams, quite white with
foam, and passes through a wooden gutter into the boiling-house, where it is
received into the siphon, or " cock-copper," where fire is applied
to it, and it is slaked with lime, in order to make it granulate. The feculent
parts of it rise to the top, while the purer and more fluid flow through another
gutter into the second copper. When little but the impure scum on the surface
remains to be drawn off, the first gutter communicating with the copper is stopped,
and the grosser parts are obliged to find a new course through another gutter,
which conveys them to the distillery, where,
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being mixed with the molasses, or treacle, they are manufactured into rum. From the second copper they are transmitted into the first, and thence into two others, and in these four latter basins the scum is removed with skimmers pierced with holes, till it becomes sufficiently free from impurities to be skipped off, that is, to be again ladled out of the coppers and spread into the coolers, where it is left to granulate. The sugar is then formed, and is removed into the curing-house, where it is put into hogs heads, and left to settle for a certain time, during which those parts which are too poor and too liquid to granulate, drip from the casks into vessels placed beneath them: these drippings are the molasses, which, being carried into the distillery, and mixed with the coarser scum formerly mentioned, form that mixture from which the spirituous liquor of sugar is afterwards produced by fermentation: when but once distilled it is called "low wine;" and it is not till after it has gone through a second distillation, that it acquires the name of rum. The " trash " used for fuel consists of the empty canes: that which is employed for fodder and for thatching is furnished by the superabundant cane tops ; after so many have been set apart as are required for planting. After these original plants have been cut, their roots throw up suckers, which, in time, become canes, and are called ratoons : they are far inferior in juice to the planted caries ; but then, on the other band, they require much less weeding, and spare the negroes the only laborious part of the business of sugar-making, the digging holes for the plants; therefore, although an acre of ratoons will produce but one hogshead of sugar, while an acre of plants will produce two, the superiority of the ratooned piece is very great, inasmuch as the saving of time and labour will enable the proprietor to cultivate five acres of ratoons in the same time with one of plants. Unluckily, after three crops, or five at the utmost, in general the ratoons are totally exhausted, and you are obliged to have recourse to fresh plants.
Last night a poor man named Charles, who bad been coachman to my uncle ages ago, was brought into the hospital, having missed a step in the boiling-house, and plunged his foot into the siphon : fortunately, the fire had not long been kindled, and though the liquor was hot enough to scald him, it was not sufficiently
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so to do him any material injury. The old man had presented to me on Saturday's holiday (or play-day , in the negro dialect), and had shown me, with great exultation, the coat and waistcoat which had been the last present of his old massa. Charles is now my chief mason, and, as one of the principal persons on the estate, was entitled, by old custom, to the compliment of a distinguishing dollar on my arrival; but at the some time that I gave him the dollar to which his situation entitled him, I gave him another for himself, as a keepsake: he put it into the pocket of " his old massa's" waistcoat, and assured me that they should never again be separated. On hearing of his accident I went over to the hospital to see that he was well taken care of; and immediately the poor fellow began talking to me about my grandfather and his young massa, and the young missies, his sisters, and while I suffered him to chatter away for an hour, he totally forgot the pain of his burnt leg.
It was particularly agreeable to me to observe on Saturday, as a proof of the good treatment which they had experienced, so many old servants of the family, many of whom bad been born on the estate, and who, though turned of sixty and seventy, were still strong, healthy, and cheerful. Many manumitted negroes came from other parts of the country to this festival on hearing of my arrival, because, as they said-" if they did not come to see massa, they were afraid that it would look ungrateful, and as if they cared no longer about him and Cornwall now that they were free." So they stayed two or three days on the estate, coming up to the house for their dinners, and going to sleep at night among their friends in their own former habitations, the negro huts ; and when they went away they assured me that nothing should prevent their coming back to bid me farewell before I left the island.
All this may be palaver; but certainly they at least play their parts with such an air of truth, and warmth, and enthusiasm, that after the cold hearts and repulsive manners of England, the contrast is infinitely agreeable.
"Je ne vois que des yeux toujours pret a sourire."
I find it quite impossible to resist the fascination of the conscious pleasure of pleasing; and my heart, which I have so long been obliged to keep closed, seems to expand itself again in the
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sunshine of the kind looks and words which meet me, at every turn, and seem to wait for mine as anxiously as if they were so, many diamonds.
JANUARY 12.
In the year '80, this parish of Westmoreland was kept in a perpetual state of
alarm by a runaway negro called Plato, who had established himself among the
Moreland mountains, and collected a troop of banditti, of which he was himself
the chief. He robbed very often, and murdered occasionally; but gallantry was
his every day occupation. Indeed, being a remarkably tall athletic young fellow,
among the beauties of his own complexion he found but few Lucretias ; and his
retreat in the mountains was as well furnished as the harem of Constantinople.
Every handsome negress who had the slightest cause of complaint against her
master, took the first opportunity of eloping to join Plato, where she found
freedom, protection, and unbounded generosity ; for he spared no pains to secure
their affections by gratifying their vanity. Indeed, no Creole lady could venture
out on a visit without running the risk of having her bandbox run away with
by Plato for the decoration of his sultanas; and if the maid who carried the
bandbox happened to be well-looking, he ran away with the maid as well as the
bandbox. Every endeavour to seize this desperado was long in vain : a large
reward was, put upon his head, but no negro dared to approach him; for, besides
his acknowledged courage, he was a professor of Obi, and had threatened that
whoever dared to lay a finger upon him should suffer spiritual torments, as
well as be physically shot through the head.
Unluckily for Plato, rum was an article with him of the first necessity; the look-out which was kept for him was too vigilant to admit of his purchasing spirituous liquors for himself; and once, when for that purpose he had ventured into the neighbourhood of Montego Bay, he was recognised by a slave, who immediately gave the alarm. Unfortunately for this poor fellow, whose name was Taffy, at that moment all his companions happened to be out of bearing; and, after the first moment's alarm, finding that no one approached the exasperated robber rushed upon him, and lifted the bill-hook with which he was armed,
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for the purpose of cleaving his skull. Taffy fled for it; but Plato was the younger, the stronger, and the swifter of the two, and gained upon him every moment. Taffy, however on the, other hand, possessed that one quality by which, according to fable, the cat was enabled to save herself from the hounds, when the fox, with his thousand tricks, was caught by them. He was an admirable climber, an art in which Plato possessed no skill ; and a bread-nut tree, which is remarkably difficult of ascent, presenting itself before him, in a few moments Taffy was bawling for help from the very top of it. To reach him was impossible for his enemy; but still his destruction was hard at hand, for Plato began to hack the tree with his bill; and it was evident that a very short space of time would be sufficient to level it with the ground. In this dilemma Taffy had nothing for it but to break off the branches near him, and he contrived to pelt these so dexterously at the head of his assailant, that he fairly kept him at bay till his cries at length reached the ears of his companions, and their approach compelled the banditti-captain once more to seek safety among the mountains.
After this Plato no longer dared to approach Montego town ; but still spirits must be had-how was he to obtain them ? There was an old watchman on the outskirts of the estate of Canaan, with whom he had contracted an acquaintance, and frequently had passed the night in his hut; the old man having been equally induced by his presents and by dread of his corporeal strength and supposed supernatural power, to profess the warmest attachment to the interests of his terrible friend To this man Plato at length resolved to entrust himself. He gave him money to purchase spirits, and appointed a particular day when he would come to receive them. The reward placed upon the robber'shead was more than either gratitude or terror could counterbalance; and on the same day when the watchman set out to purchase the rum, he apprised two of his friends at Canaan for whose use it was intended, and advised them to take the opportunity of obtaining the reward.
The two negroes posted themselves in proper time near the watchman's hut. Most unwisely, instead of sending down some of his gang, Plato, in his full confidence in the friendship of his confidant, himself entered the cabin. but so great was their
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alarm at seeing this dreadful parsonage, that they remained in their concealment, nor dared to make an attempt at seizing him. The spirits were delivered to the robber: he might have retired with them unmolested, but in his rashness and his eager Wt taste the liquor, of which he had so long been deprived, he opened the flagon, and swallowed draught after draught, till he sank upon the ground in a state of complete insensibility. The watchman then summoned the two negroes from their concealment, who bound his arms, and conveyed him to Montego Bay, where he was immediately sentenced to execution. He died most heroically; kept up the terrors of his imposture to his last moment; told the magistrates who "condemned him that his death should be revenged by a storm which would lay waste the whole island that year; and when his negro jailer was binding him to the stake at which he was destined to suffer, he assured him that he should not live long to triumph in his death, for. that he had taken good care to Obeah him before his quitting the prison. It certainly did happen, strangely enough, that before the year was over, the most violent storm took place ever known in Jamaica; and as to the jailer, his imagination was so forcibly struck by the threats of the dying man, that although every care was taken of him, the power of medicine exhausted, and even a voyage to America undertaken, in hopes that a change of scene might change the course of his ideas, still, from the moment of Plato's death, he gradually pined 'and withered and finally expired before the completion of the twelvemonth.
The belief in Obeah is now greatly weakened, but still exists in some degree. Not above ten months ago my agent was in- formed that a negro of very suspicious manners and appearance was harboured by some of my people on the mountain an ( He found means to have him surprised, and on examination there was found upon him a bag containing a great variety of strange materials for incantations ; such as thunder-stones, cat's ears, the feet of various animals, human hair, fish bones, the teeth of alligators, &c. He was conveyed to Montego Bay, and no sooner was it understood that this old African was in prison, than depositions were poured in from all quarters from n who testified to having seen him exercise his magical arts, and in particular, to his having sold such and such slaves medicines
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and charms to deliver them from their enemies ; being, in plain English, nothing less than rank poisons. He was convicted of Obeah upon the most indubitable evidence. The good old practice of burning has fallen into disrepute, so he was sentenced to be transported, and was shipped off the island, to the great satisfaction of persons of all colours-white, black, and yellow.
JANUARY13.
Throughout the island many estates, formerly very flourishing and productive,
have been thrown up for want of hands to cultivate them, and are now suffered
to lie waste: four in my own immediate neighbourbood are in this situation.
Finding their complement of negroes decrease, and having no means of recruiting
them, proprietors of two estates have in numerous instances found themselves
obliged to give up one of them, and draw off the negroes for the purpose of
properly cultivating the other.
I have just had an instance strikingly convincing of the extreme care required in rearing negro children. Two have-been born since my arrival. Ally housekeeper was hardly ever out of the lying-in apartment; I always visited it myself once a day, and sometimes twice, in order that I might be certain of the women being well taken care of. Not a day passed without the inspection of a physician ; nothing of indulgence that was proper for them was denied ; and besides their ordinary food, the mothers received every day the most nourishing and palatable dish that was brought to my own table. Add to this, that the women themselves were kind-hearted creatures, and particularly anxious :to rear these children, because I had promised to be their god- father myself. Yet in spite of all this attention and indulgence, one of the mothers, during the nurse's absence for ten minutes, grew alarmed at her infant's apparent sleepiness.
To rouse it she began dancing and shaking it till it was in a strong perspiration, and then she stood with it for some minutes at an open window while a strong north wind was blowing. In consequence, it caught cold, and the next morning symptoms of a locked jaw showed themselves. The poor woman was the image grief itself: she sat on her bed, looking at the child which lay by h side with its little hands clasped, its teeth set, and its eyes writhing in the agony of the spasm, while she was herself
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quite motionless and speechless, although the tears trickled down her cheeks incessantly. All assistance was fruitless ; her thoughtlessness for five minutes had killed the infant, and at noon to-day it expired.
This woman was a tender mother, had borne ten children, and yet has now but one alive : another, at p. vent in the hospital, has-borne seven, and but one has lived to puberty ; and the instances of those who have had four, five, six children, without succeeding in bringing up one, in spite of the utmost attention and indulgence, are very numerous; so heedless and inattentive are the best intentioned mothers, and so subject in this climate are infants to dangerous complaints. The locked jaw is the common and most fatal one; so fatal, indeed, that the midwife (the graundee is her negro appellation) told me, the other day, " 0h, massa, till nine days over, we no hope of them." Certainly care and kindness, on the part of the planters, are not' adequate to save the children ; for the son of a sovereign could not have been more anxiously well treated than was the poor little negro who died this morning.
The negroes are always buried in their own gardens, and many' strange and fantastical ceremonies are observed on the occasion. If the corpse be that of a grown-tip person, they consult it as to which way it pleases to be-carried,; and they make attempts upon various roads without success, before they can bit upon the right one. Till that is accomplished, they stagger under the weight of the coffin, struggle against its force, which draws them in a different direction from that in which they bad settled to go; and sometimes in the contest the corpse and the coffin jump off the shoulders of the bearers. No if, as is frequently the case, any person is suspected of having hastened the catastrophe, the corpse will then refuse to go any road but the one which passes by the habitation of the suspected person, and as soon as it approaches his house, Do human power is equal to persuading it to pass. As the negroes are extremely superstitious, and very much afraid of ghosts (whom they call the duppy), I rather wonder at their choosing-to have their dead buried in their gardens; but I understand their argument to be, that they need only fear the duppies of their enemies, but have nothing to apprehend from those after death who loved them in their lifetime; but
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the duppies of their adversaries are very alarming beings, equally powerful by day as by night, and are not only spiritually terrific, but can give very hard substantial knocks on the pate, whenever they see fit occasion, and can find a good opportunity.
Last Saturday a negro was brought into the hospital, having fallen into epileptic fits, with which till then he had never been troubled. As the faintings seized him at the slaughterhouse, and the fellow was an African, it was at first supposed by his companions, that the sight and smell of the meat had affected him; for many of the Africans cannot endure animal food of any kind, and most of the Ebres in particularcare are made ill by eating turtle, even although they can use any other food without injurt. However, upon inquiry among his shipmates, it ap- peared that he had frequently eaten beef without the slightest inconvenience. For my own part, the symptoms of his complaint were such as to make me suspect him of having tasted something poisonous, especially as, just before his first fit, he had been observed in the small grove of mangoes near the house; but I was assured by the negroes, one and all, that nothing could possibly have induced him to eat
an herb or fruit from that grove, as it had been used as a buryig-ground for " the white people." But although my idea of the poison was scouted, still the mention of the burying-ground suggested another cause for his illness to the negroes, and they had no sort of doubt, that in passing through the burying-ground he had been struck down by the duppy of a white person not long deceased, whom he had formerly offended, and that these repeated fainting-fits were the consequence of that ghostly blow. The negroes have in various publications been accused of a total want of religion, but this appears to me quite incompatible with the ideas of spirits existing after dissolution of the body, which necessarily implies a belief in a future state ; and although (as far as I can make out) they have no outward forms of religion, the most devout Christian cannot have " God bless you " oftener on his lips than the negro.
The Africans generally believe that there is a life beyond the present, and that they shall enjoy it by returning to their own country ; and this idea used frequently to induce them, soon after
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their landing in the colonies, to commit suicide; but this was never known to take place except among fresh negroes, and since the execrable slave-trade has been abolished, such an illusion is unheard of. As to those who had once got over de dreadful period of " seasoning," they were generally soon sensible enough of the amelioration of their condition to make the idea of returning to Africa the most painful that could be presented to them. But, to be sure, poor creatures! what with the terrors and sufferings of the voyage, and the unavoidable hardships of the seasoning, those advantages were purchased more dearly than any in this life can possibly be worth. God be thanked, all that is now at an end; and certainly, as far as I can as yet judge, if I were now standing on the banks of Lethe, with a goblet of the waters of oblivion in my hand, and asked whether I chose to enter life anew as an English labourer or a Jamaica negro, I should have no hesitation in preferring the latter. For myself, it appears to me almost worth surrendering the luxuries and pleasures of Great Britain, for the single pleasure of being surrounded with beings who are always laughing and singing, and who seem to perform their work with so much nonchalance, taking up their baskets as if it were perfectly optional whether they took them up or left them there; sauntering along with their hands dangling; stopping to-chat with every one they meet; or if they meet no one, standing still to look round, and examine whether there is nothing to be seen that can, amuse them ; so that I can hardly persuade myself that it is really work that they are about.
I am told that there is one part of their business very laborious, digging holes for the receiving of cane-plants, which I have not as yet seen ; but this does not occupy above a month at the utmost, at two periods of the year ; and on my estate this service is chiefly performed by extra negroes, hired for the purpose ; which, although equally hard in the hired negroes(called a jobbing gang), at least relieves my own, and after all puts even the former on much the same footing w