They turned into a long and wide street, in which not a single
living figure appeared to break the perspective. Solitude is never
so overpowering as when it exists among the works of man. In old
woods, or on the tops of mountains, it is graceful and benignant,
for it is at home; but where thick dwellings are, it wears a
ghost-like aspect.--INESILLA.
We were ordered to look out for the American squadron that had done so
much mischief to our trade; and directed our course, for this purpose,
to the coast of Africa. We had been out about ten days, when a vessel
was seen from the mast-head. We were at that time within about one
hundred and eighty leagues of the Cape de Verd Islands. We set all
sail in chase, and soon made her out to be a large frigate, who seemed
to have no objection to the meeting, but evidently tried her rate of
sailing with us occasionally: her behaviour left us no doubt that she
was an American frigate, and we cleared for action.
The captain, I believe, had never been in a sea fight, or if he had,
he had entirely forgotten all he had learned; for which reason, in
order to refresh his memory, he laid upon the capstan-head, the famous
epitome of John Hamilton Moore, now obsolete, but held at that time to
be one of the most luminous authors who had ever treated on maritime
affairs. John, who certainly gives a great deal of advice on every
subject, has, amongst other valuable directions, told us how to bring
a ship into action, according to the best and most approved methods,
and how to take your enemy afterwards, if you can. But the said John
must have thought red hot shot could be heated by a process somewhat
similar to that by which he heated his own nose, or he must entirely
have forgotten "the manners and customs in such cases used at sea,"
for he recommends, as a prelude or first course to the entertainment,
a good dose of red hot shot, served up the moment the guests are
assembled; but does not tell us where the said dishes are to
be cooked. No doubt whatever that a broadside composed of such
ingredients, would be a great desideratum in favour of a victory,
especially if the enemy should happen to have none of his own to give
in return.
So thought his lordship, who walking up to the first lieutenant, said,
"Mr Thingamay, don't you think red hot what-do-ye-call-ums should be
given in the first broadside to that thingumbob?"
"Red hot shot, do you mean, my lord?"
"Yes," said his lordship; "don't you think they would settle his
hash?"
"Where the devil are we to get them, my lord?" said the first
lieutenant, who was not the same that wanted to fight me for saying he
was as clever a fellow as the captain: that man had been unshipped by
the machinations of Toady.
"Very true," said his lordship.
We now approached the stranger very fast, when, to our great
mortification, she proved to be an English frigate; she made the
private signal, it was answered; showed her number, we showed ours,
and her captain being junior officer came on board, to pay his
respects and show his order. He was three weeks from England, brought
news of a peace with France, and, among other treats, a navy list,
which, next to a bottle of London porter, is the greatest luxury to a
sea officer in a foreign climate.
Greedily did we all run over this interesting little book, and among
the names of the new made commanders, I was overjoyed to find my own;
the last on the list to be sure, but that I cared not for. I received
the congratulations of my messmates; we parted company with the
stranger, and steered for the island of St Jago, our captain intending
to complete his water in Port Praya Bay, previous to a long cruise
after the American squadron.
We found here a slave vessel in charge of a naval officer, bound to
England; and I thought this a good opportunity to quit, not being over
anxious to serve as a lieutenant when I knew I was a commander. I was
also particularly anxious to return to England for many reasons,
the hand of my dear Emily standing at the head of them. I therefore
requested the captain's permission to quit the ship; and as he wished
to give an acting order to one of his own followers, he consented. I
took my leave of all my messmates, and of my captain, who, though an
unfeeling coxcomb and no sailor, certainly had some good points about
him: in fact, his lordship was a gentleman; and had his ship fallen
in with an enemy, she would have been well fought, as he had good
officers, was sufficiently aware of his own incapability, would take
advice, and as a man of undaunted bravery, was not to be surpassed in
the service.
On the third day after our arrival, the frigate sailed. I went on
board the slaver, which had no slaves on board except four to assist
in working the vessel; she was in a filthy state, and there was no
inn on shore, and of course no remedy. Port Praya is the only good
anchorage in the island; the old town of St Jago was deserted, in
consequence of there being only an open roadstead before it, very
unsafe for vessels to lie in. The town of Port Praya is a miserable
assemblage of mud huts; the governor's house, and one more, are better
built, but they are not so comfortable as a cottage in England. There
were not ten Portuguese on the island, and above ten thousand blacks,
all originally slaves; and yet every thing was peaceable, although
fresh arrivals of slaves came every day.
It was easy to distinguish the different races: the Yatoffes are tall
men, not very stoutly built; most of them are soldiers. I have seen
ten of them standing together, the lowest not less than six feet two
or three inches. The Foulahs, from the Ashantee country, are another
race, they are powerful and muscular, ill-featured, badly disposed,
and treacherous. The Mandingoes are a smaller race than the others,
but they are well disposed and tractable.
The island of slaves is kept in subjection by slaves only, who are
enrolled as soldiers, miserably equipped; a cap and a jacket was all
they owed to art, nature provided the rest of their uniform. The
governor's orderly alone sported a pair of trousers, and these were on
permanent duty, being transferred from one to the other as their turn
for that service came on.
I paid my respects to the governor, who, although a Portuguese, chose
to follow the fashion of the island, and was as black as most of his
subjects. After a few French compliments, I took my leave. I was
curious to see the old town of St Jago, which had been abandoned; and
after a hot walk of two hours over uncultivated ground, covered with
fine goats, which are the staple of the island, I reached the desolate
spot.
It was melancholy to behold: it seemed as if the human race were
extinct. The town was built on a wide ravine running down to the sea;
the houses were of stone, and handsome; the streets regular and paved,
which proves that it had formerly been a place of some importance; but
it is surprising that a spot so barren as this island generally is
should ever have had any mercantile prosperity. Whatever it did enjoy,
I should conceive must have been anterior to the Portuguese having
sailed round the Cape of Good Hope; and the solidity and even elegance
of construction among the buildings justifies the supposition.
The walls were massive, and remained entire; the churches were
numerous, but the roofs of them and the dwelling-houses had mostly
fallen in. Trees had grown to a considerable height in the midst of
the streets, piercing through the pavements and raising the stones
on each side; and the convent gardens were a mere wilderness. The
cocoa-nut tree had thrust its head through many a roof, and its long
stems through the tops of the houses; the banana luxuriated out of
the windows. The only inhabitants of a town capable of containing ten
thousand inhabitants, were a few friars who resided in a miserable
ruin which had once been a beautiful convent. They were the first
negro friars I had ever seen; their cowls were as black as their
faces, and their hair grey and woolly. I concluded they had adopted
this mode of life as being the laziest; but I could not discover by
what means they could gain a livelihood, for there were none to give
them anything in charity.
The appearance of these poor men added infinitely to the necromantic
character of the whole melancholy scene. There was a beauty, a
loveliness, in these venerable ruins, which delighted me. There was a
solemn silence in the town; but there was a small, still voice, that
said to me: "London may one day be the same--and Paris; and you and
your children's children will all have lived and had their loves and
adventures; but who will the wretched man be, that shall sit on the
summit of Primrose Hill, and look down upon the desolation of the
mighty city, as I, from this little eminence, behold the once
flourishing town of St Jago?"
The goats were browsing on the side of the hill, and the little kids
frisking by their dams. "These," thought I, "perhaps are the only food
and nourishment of these poor friars." I walked to Port Praya, and
returned to my floating prison, the slave ship. The officer who was
conducting her home, as a prize, was not a pleasant man; I did not
like him: and nothing passed between us but common civility. He was an
old master's mate, who had probably served his time thrice over; but
having no merit of his own, and no friends to cause that defect to be
overlooked, he had never obtained promotion: he therefore naturally
looked on a young commander with envy. He had only given me a passage
home, from motives which he could not resist; first, because he was
forced to obey the orders of my late captain; and, secondly,
because my purse would supply the cabin with the necessary stock of
refreshments, in the shape of fruit, poultry, and vegetables, which
are to be procured at Port Praya; he was therefore under the necessity
of enduring my company.
The vessel, I found, was not to sail on the following day, as he
intended. I therefore took my gun, at daybreak, and wandered with a
guide up the valleys, in search of the pintados, or Guinea fowl, with
which the island abounds; but they were so shy that I never could get
a shot at them; and I returned over the hills, which my guide assured
me was the shortest way. Tired with my walk, I was not sorry to arrive
at a sheltered valley, where the palmetto and the plantain offer
a friendly shade from the burning sun. The guide, with wonderful
agility, mounted the cocoa-nut tree, and threw down half a dozen nuts.
They were green, and their milk I thought the most refreshing and
delicious draught I had ever taken.
The vesper bells at Port Praya were now summoning the poor black
friars to their devotion; and a stir and bustle appeared among the
little black boys and girls, of whose presence I was till then
ignorant. They ran from the coverts, and assembled near the front of
the only cottage visible to my eye. A tall elderly negro man came out,
and took his seat on a mound of turf a few feet from the cottage; he
was followed by a lad, about twenty years of age, who bore in his
hand a formidable cowskin. For the information of my readers, I must
observe that a cowskin is a large whip, made like a riding whip, out
of the hide of the hippopotamus, or sea-cow, and is proverbial for
the severity of punishment it is capable of inflicting. After the
executioner came, with slow and measured steps, the poor little
culprits, five boys and three girls, who, with most rueful faces,
ranged themselves, rank and file, before the old man.
I soon perceived that the hands were turned up for punishment; but the
nature of the offence I had yet to learn: nor did I know whether any
order had been given to strip. With the boys this would have been
supererogatory, as they were quite naked. The female children had on
cotton chemises, which they slowly and reluctantly rolled up, until
they had gathered them close under their armpits.
The old man then ordered the eldest boy to begin his Pater Noster;
and simultaneously the whipper-in elevated his cowskin by way of
encouragement. The poor boy watched it, out of the corner of his eye,
and then began "Pattery nobstur, qui, qui, qui--(here he received a
most severe lash from the cowskin bearer)--is in silly," roared the
boy, as if the continuation had been expelled from his mouth by the
application of external force in an opposite direction--"sancty
fisheter nom tum, adveny regnum tum, fi notun tas, ta, ti, tu,
terror," roared the poor fellow, as he saw the lash descending on his
defenceless back--
"Terror indeed," thought I.
"Pannum nossum quotditty hamminum da nobs holyday, e missy nobs
debitty nossa si cut nos demittimissibus debetenibas nossimus e,
ne, nos hem-duckam in, in, in temptationemum, sed lillibery nos a
ma--ma--" Here a heavy lash brought the very Oh! that was "caret" to
complete the sentence.
My readers are not to suppose that the rest of the class acquitted
themselves with as much ability as their leader, who, compared to
them, was perfectly erudite; the others received a lash for every
word, or nearly so. The boys were first disposed of, in order, I
suppose, that they might have the full benefit of the applicant's
muscles; while the poor girls had the additional pleasure of
witnessing the castigation until their turn came; and that they
were aware of what awaited them was evident, from their previous
arrangement and disposition of dress, at the commencement of the
entertainment. The girls accordingly came up one after another to say
their Ave Maria, as more consonant to their sex; but I could scarcely
contain my rage when the rascally cowskin was applied to them, or my
laughter when, smarting under its lash, they exclaimed, "Benedicta
Mulieribus," applying their little hands with immoderate pressure to
the afflicted part.
I could have found in my heart to have wrested the whip out of the
hands of the young negro, and applied it with all my might to him, and
his old villain of a master, and father of these poor children, as I
soon found he was. My patience was almost gone when the second girl
received a lash for her "Plena Gratia." She screamed, and danced, and
lifted up her poor legs in agony, rubbing herself on her "_west_"
side, as the Philadelphia ladies call it, with as much assiduity as if
it had been one of those cases in which friction is prescribed by the
faculty.
But the climax was yet to come. A grand stage effect was to be
produced before the falling of the curtain. The youngest girl was so
defective in her lesson, that not one word of it could be extracted
from her, even by the cowskin; nothing but piercing shrieks, enough
to make my heart bleed, could the poor victim utter. Irritated at
the child's want of capacity to repeat by rote what she could not
understand, the old man darted from his seat, and struck her senseless
to the ground.
I could bear no more. My first impulse was to wrest the cowskin from
the negro's hand, and revenge the poor bleeding child as she lay
motionless on the ground; but a moment's reflection convinced me that
such a step would only have brought down a double weight of punishment
on the victims when I was gone; so, catching up my hat, I turned away
with disgust, and walked slowly towards the town and bay of Port
Praya, reflecting as I went along what pleasant ideas the poor
creatures must entertain of religion, when the name of God and of the
cowskin were invariably associated in their minds. I began to parody
one of Watts's hymns--
"Lord! how delightful 'tis to see
A whole assembly worship thee."
The indignation I felt against this barbarous and ignorant negro was
not unmingled with some painful recollections of my own younger days,
when, in a Christian and protestant country, the bible and prayer-book
had been made objects of terror to my mind; tasks, greater than
my capacity could compass, and floggings in proportion were not
calculated to forward the cause of religious instruction in the mind
of an obstinate boy.
Reaching the water-side, I embarked on board of my slaver; and the
next day sailed for England. We had a favourable passage until we
reached the chops of the channel, when a gale of wind from the
north-east caught us, and drove us down so far to the southward that
the prize master found himself under the necessity of putting into
Bordeaux to refit, and to replenish his water.
I was not sorry for this, as I was tired of the company of this
officer, who was both illiterate and ill-natured, neither a sailor nor
a gentleman. Like many others in the service, who are most loud in
their complaints for want of promotion, I considered that even in his
present rank he was what we called a _king's hard bargain_--that is,
not worth his salt; and promoting men of his stamp would only have
been picking the pocket of the country. As soon, therefore, as we
had anchored in the Gironde, off the city of Bordeaux, and had been
visited by the proper authorities, I quitted the vessel and her
captain, and went on shore.
Taking up my abode at the Hôtel d'Angleterre, my first care was to
order a good dinner; and having despatched that, and a bottle of Vin
de Beaune (which, by the by, I strongly recommend to all travellers,
if they can get it, for I am no bad judge), I asked my _valet de
place_ how I was to dispose of myself for the remainder of the
evening?
"_Mais, monsieur_," said he, "_il faut aller au spectacle_?"
"_Allons_," said I, and in a few minutes I was seated in the stage-box
of the handsomest theatre in the world.
What strange events--what unexpected meetings and sudden separations
are sailors liable to--what sudden transitions from grief to joy, from
joy to grief, from want to affluence, from affluence to want! All
this the history of my life, for the last six months, will fully
illustrate.