They turned into a long and wide street, into 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 a
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 Thingamy, don't you think red-hot what-do-ye-call-ums should be
given in the first broadside to that thingamybob?"
"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; 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 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 mess-mates. 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 mess-mates, 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
their being only an open roadstead before it, very unsafe for vessels to
lie it. 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 everything 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.
This island of slaves is kept in subjection by slaves only who are
enrolled as soldiers, miserably equipped; a cap and a jacket were 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 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 you, 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 could never 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
cow-skin. For the information of my readers, I must observe that a
cow-skin 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 cow-skin 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 cow-skin 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 demitti missibus debetenibas nossimus e, ne, nos
hem-duckam in, in, in, temptationemum, sed lilibery 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 the 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 cow-skin 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 could be extracted from her, even by the
cow-skin; nothing but piercing shrieks, enough to make my heart bleed,
could the poor victim utter. Irritated by 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 cow-skin 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 cow-skin 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 duly 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 the 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 Hotel 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.