INDIAN CATTLE AT MONTPELIER—PALMER MONUMENT IN MONTEGO BAY PARISH
CHURCH—AMERICANS
After winding through the mountainous regions of the Cockpit Country, the
train traverses a part known as Surinam Quarters. When the Dutch settled
here in 1672 they intermarried with the negroes, and the whole of this
section is peopled by their descendants. The next place of importance on
the line is Montpelier, where there is a capital hotel. Here many people
stay and drive the 10 miles, or so, down to Montego Bay. I had friends to
meet at the last-named place, where I had heard of comfortable quarters,
which, however, could not compare with the accommodation provided at
Montpelier Hotel. In the vicinity there are two large estates owned by
a wealthy Englishman, the Hon. Evelyn Ellis, who imported from India at
great cost the famous Zebu and Mysore cattle; one can see in rambling
over this neighbourhood their silver-gray hides and curious shapes. They
were imported for labour and breeding purposes. The offspring of these
Indian cattle when crossed with the native animal make the most useful
stock for draft on sugar estates. These grazing pens are far-famed, and
cover thousands of acres; enormous herds of cattle roam over them. I did
not visit the tobacco fields and cigar factory here, though I believe
they are most interesting. Neither did I take the coach, which runs
between Montpelier and Savanna-la-Mar, 24 miles away on the south coast
of the island, which is a most interesting and prosperous little seaport.
Its one street, they say, is made from ships’ ballast dumped down there
by vessels loading with sugar. This road passes another famous pen, that
of Knockalava, the property of Lord Malcolm, who has imported specimens
of the celebrated Hereford breed of cattle at great expense. Besides
these breeds the Ayrshire, Devon, Shorthorn, and East Indian are all
represented in the island breeds.
The demand for cattle for working in the cane-fields has been the reason
of grazing farms having reached their importance in the commercial and
agricultural development of Jamaica, the result being that the selection
of cows for milking purposes has been little considered. For those
interested in farming I note that four-year-old steers, broken to the
yoke, vary from £20 to £30 per pair, costing about £7 a head to raise.
Hindu cattle fetch the highest prices, on account of their quickness and
powers of endurance, added to which they stand the heat better than other
breeds. I was told that sheep do not compare favourably with other live
stock, although I never tasted better mutton than I did at Mandeville.
As the train emerges from a tunnel high above sea-level the most
beautiful view is obtained of Montego Bay, which derives its name from
_manteca_, the Spanish for “hog lard,” and carries one back to the days
of the occupation of the Spaniard when lard was shipped from this port in
large quantities. During the two last centuries, the place was the centre
of the sugar industry; since its failure it has resurrected itself again
in the fruit trade.
No more lovely panoramic view of bay, islands, town, and green
cane-fields could be found than the one I looked down upon, as descending
a fairly steep but circuitous gradient, we approached the plain beneath.
The little coral atolls, known as the Bogue Islands, are extremely
interesting, and their shape and circular formation can nowhere better be
seen than before the station is reached.
The little town presents nothing of any importance to describe. Like
all West Indian urban resorts, the dust is ever with you. I drove to
my destination, “Miss Harrison, on the Hill.” A very loquacious driver
whirled me through the long street, then round a sharp corner, another to
the left, and then, lashing his emaciated-looking horses, he drove them
up a steep ascent over stones, projecting rocks, anything and everything,
at the top of which, on a sloping declivity, he skilfully turned the
conveyance round so that I should step out at the entrance. I am not
naturally nervous, having been used to horses in an old country home, and
I suppose driven them since I was big enough to be trusted with reins;
but Heaven is my witness that nothing but a philosophical mental review
of the chances against my being the first one of “Miss Harrison on the
Hill’s” guests to come to grief kept me spell-bound on the back part of
the shandry-dan belonging to her establishment. I went up a stone flight
of steps leading to the living apartments of what seemed to me a very
curiously Continental-looking house, built on the side of the hill, but
from the windows of which, with their little quaint balconies in front,
a magnificent view of the setting sun showed crimson and gold between
palm-leaves and bougainvillia, the latter adorning the front of the
house. Miss Harrison, an ancient coloured lady, introduced herself to me.
She told me she owned the house, and that her father was Scotch; she also
showed me, with some pride, her grandchildren. I did not press her to
tell me any more of her family history, but, asking for some hot water,
was shown by “Vaseline” to my room.
It is curious to hear some of the names bestowed in baptism upon the
children by their parents, whose right to so name them is unquestionable.
A clergyman once was requested to christen twins by the names of Wray and
Nephew.
He hesitated. “Where did you hear of these names?” he asked, for, being a
total abstainer, he was unacquainted with them.
“On de rum bottle, massa,” was the black’s reply.
The most pretentious names I heard of were some registered at St Peter’s
on Ginger Piece Mountain, such as Jetorah Alvira Industry, and Almahene
Leminia Delight. In another church register are to be found the
following curious combination of names: Caroline Celeste Celestina and
Minimima Constantina Kelly.
Those who have read “Tom Cringle’s Log” will perhaps remember him sitting
at dinner in the home of a prosperous West Indian, and, as one could well
believe, ejaculating “By Jupiter!” after some good story.
“You want any tink, sah,” came a voice behind his chair; “me tink you
call for Jupiter.”
Tom’s astonishment at “the black baboon” being named after the god of a
classic age is still greater when he finds out that a she-baboon of the
most unprepossessing type, even in the way of negresses, was familiarly
called in the household “Mammy Wenus,” and another African slave waiting
upon them was known as “Daddy Cupid.” “Mammy Wenus and Daddy Cupid!
Shades of Homer!” cries the laughter-loving, incorrigible middy.
I found several Americans at dinner, who rather liked this old West
Indian home, notwithstanding the fact that one meets with better
appointed tables elsewhere. The house was nearly one hundred and fifty
years old. The spacious sitting-room was cruciform; the floor, and doors,
and staircase were all of polished mahogany. Upstairs a long central
corridor ran the length of the house from back to front; into this all
the bedrooms on either side led out. There are nice drives amongst the
old sugar estates, which, in this part of the island, abound; these
form, I suppose, the attraction for the small American colony. One
lady informed me she was searching for curious old mahogany furniture,
especially old cabinets and cupboards of native work, for mahogany, in
the days of Jamaican prosperity, was like gold in the reign of Solomon,
and was lavishly employed in the inside decoration of houses; now there
is scarcely a mahogany tree on the island.
My experience of our Yankee cousins who flock to these shores to recruit
their forces, or, like myself, to avoid the reign of the Ice King, has
been varied. No pleasanter companion than a well-bred, well-travelled
American would I wish to come across; but there is a class which
corresponds to that which we know in England as “bounders,” which one
“strikes” in Jamaica occasionally. This kind of person knows everything.
If _he_ bossed the island, instead of the man who has the “misfortune to
be the official representative of an effete monarchy,” things would be
very different. This description of the gubernatorial office I quote from
an American magazine article, not long since put into my hands; but as I
think it is impossible for a mind trained to respect the traditions of
a glorious past, and the events of a not inglorious present, to follow
the warped course of democratic opinion, I will charitably overlook the
above, which no doubt was penned in a spirit of extravagant patriotism,
and quote what this writer says further on concerning the inhabitants,
whom he describes as “cheerful and thoroughly courteous, neither
slavishly servile, but smiling and civil, gentle and reasonable.”
There is one thing, however, which rouses my ire. It is to be seriously
taken to task over my pronunciation of my own language by a man, who,
with every turn of his tongue, distorts and twists it out of all
recognisable kinship to any English known or spoken in Great Britain. A
good story was told me of a suggestion made by some original American
at a time when John Bull and his Yankee cousins were hardly on speaking
terms.
Upholders of the Republic declared it to be a shame that they should
even speak the same language as perfidious Albion, and insisted that the
English tongue henceforth should cease to exist as the national language
of America.
“Say! let them darned Britishers get ’nother lingo kinder like for
theirselves!” exclaimed one of these gentry.
Surely Shakespeare and Tennyson would turn in their graves could they
hear their immortal lines quoted in the high, shrill voices, too
well-known to describe further, of American travellers. English, as
spoken at the University of Cambridge, is good enough for me, I tell them.
Notwithstanding, I quite enjoyed meeting many very charming visitors from
the States. We laughed together over some of the funny stories one hears
of the negroes in Jamaica. One of the most amusing is that told by a
clergyman who was new to their customs and manners.
Soon after landing in Jamaica he was called upon to bury an old negro
at a settlement called Springfield. The son, a “boy” of about forty
years of age, had charge of the funeral arrangements. This son had not
been kind to his poor old parents; though they were living in the next
yard and sorely in need, the son would not give them a bite of yam to
eat. The funeral took place on the spot; first of all, in the house a
few sentences from the Bible, then a Psalm, then a short passage of
Scripture, and then to the grave near the coffee bushes in the yard.
He proceeded with the service amid strange scenery, the only white man
within miles of the place. The service having been read to the end, to
the clergyman’s surprise the son burst out with—
“Now, boys, in wid de dutty!”
They then asked if they might sing a hymn. They were permitted to do so,
and as the parson was ignorant as to the kind of hymns they knew, he told
them to start one. The son at once led off with—
“Come let us join our cheerful songs
Wid angels round de trone.”
The clergyman says he made tracks for his horse, musing over the strange
nature of these people. He soon found that the local grave nomenclature
is as follows: A coffin is called a “box,” the grave a “hole,” and the
earth “dutty” (dirt).
The proverbs, too, are most amusing.
“Breeze no blow, tree no shake.” This is equivalent to ours, “You never
see smoke without fire.”
“Hab money, hab friends.”
“If you lie down wid puppy you get up wid flea.”
“Sickness ride horse come; him take foot go away.”
“Cunning better dan ’trong.”
“Cotton tree ebba so big, little axe cut him.”
“Cuss, cuss, no bore hole in me ’kin” (hard words break no bones).
According to their publications, Americans consider Jamaica an ideal
place for building up the system after over-exertion. In four days from
New York they find themselves in a set of conditions totally different
from their daily environment in the States.
“Among the many other advantages possessed by Jamaica,” says an American,
“as a winter resort, not the least is that the tourist, whose presence
and spoor are as the brand of Cain on so many of the natural beauties of
the world, is almost unknown.”
That it is beneficial to nerves as well as interesting to the visitor he
further testifies. Men who have gone there physical wrecks in January
have returned gay, jaunty, and full of vigour in February. Nerves
soon learn to resume their normal functions and cease to torture;
sleeplessness is something to laugh at.
I do not know anything more instructive or offering greater inducement
to indulge in reveries of bygone times than some of the parish churches
of this island. Notably so does the handsome, spacious edifice built of
stone in Queen Anne style, at Montego Bay, produce that effect upon the
thoughtful observer. Two crimson-blossomed, lofty, flamboyant trees stand
like guarding sentries over the pathway leading up to the church. As
you pass along, handsome tombs, some with railings round, others being
heavy grave-stones with which one is familiar at home, but all bearing
traces of the usage of time, lie scattered on either side. Once inside
the church and your eye lights on name after name on the mural tablets on
the walls which strikes you as familiar. These are generally monuments
to the memory of wealthy landowners in times past who possessed the
much-coveted sugar estates in the surrounding district, and where indeed
their direct or collateral descendants are at the present day it would
probably be painful to discover; but before a perfect masterpiece of the
sculptor’s art I stood literally spell-bound. This is one of Bacon’s
monuments, bearing the date 1794, and is the far-famed one dedicated to
the memory of Rose Palmer. There are two stories connected with this;
a local legend, which on the face of it is incorrect, declared that it
was erected to a Rose Palmer, a virago famous for her misdeeds, having
during her lifetime disposed of four husbands. She was finally murdered
by her slaves, whom she had treated with savage cruelty. There is a
discoloration around the neck of the figure, and some fancy a mark on
the pedestal faintly resembling a blood-stain; these are believed by
local superstition to have appeared shortly after the monument was placed
_in situ_, manifesting unquestionably her guilt. The rector of Montego
Bay, however, told me the correct version. The sculpture represents a
most beautifully-moulded female figure gracefully draped, and drooping
pathetically over a funereal urn; she is presumably the embodiment of
human grief; upon the face of the urn a medallion portraying the features
of Rose, the first wife of John Palmer, is seen. The wretch to whose
memory this monument has been wrongly ascribed by those who like a good
story was an Irish girl, who acted as maid to the first wife, and after
her decease became the second Mrs Palmer.
A quaint inscription records the sorrows of the husband who had this
beautiful work of art executed in England, to be erected to the memory of
a much-beloved wife:
“Her manners were open, cheerful, and agreeable,
And being blessed with a plentiful fortune
Hospitality dwelt with her as long as health permitted her
to enjoy society.
Educated by the anxious care of a Reverend Divine, her father,
Her charities were not ostentatious, but of a nobler kind.
She was warm in her attachment to her friends,
And gave the most signal proof of it
In the last moments of her life.”
“This tribute of affection and respect
Is erected by her husband the Honourable JOHN PALMER
as a monument of her worth and of his gratitude.”
The history of the handsome, but cruel and wanton successor of this
gentle lady is significant of the times in which she lived, when
the plantation owners had the power of life and death and of bodily
mutilation in their hands. In addition to her depraved morals, it is
recorded of her that she tortured her girl-slaves by making them wear
shoes having wooden soles, which were charged with blunted pegs, and
which must have hurt them cruelly when they had to stand upon them.
She also beat them with a perforated platter that drew blood. This
fiend, presumably from a fit of intense jealousy, caused the death of a
beautiful coloured girl, who was the mistress of her stepson. It is said
she had her victim led out to be strangled in the presence of all the
slaves on the plantation. Afterwards, her head was severed from her body,
and Mrs Palmer had it preserved in spirits!