‘Excellent--why this is the best fooling when all is done.’
Twelfth Night, II. iii. 29--30.
I confess that I did not promise myself much pleasure from my cruise
ashore; somehow or other I had made up my mind to believe, that in
Jamaica, putting aside the magnificence and natural beauty of the face of
he country, there was little to interest me. I had pictured to myself the
slaves--a miserable, squalid, half fed, ill-clothed, over-worked
race--and their masters, and the white inhabitants generally, as an
unwholesome-looking crew of saffron faced tyrants, who wore straw hats
with umbrella brims, wide trowsers, and calico jackets, living on pepper
pot and land crabs, and drinking sangaree and smoking cigars the whole
day; in a word, that all that Bryan Edwards and others had written
regarding the civilisation of the West Indies was a fable. But I was
agreeably undeceived; for although I did meet with some extraordinary
characters, and witnessed not a few rum scenes, yet, on the whole, I
gratefully bear witness to the great hospitality of the inhabitants, both
in the towns and in the country. In Kingston the society was exceedingly
good, as good, I can freely affirm, as I ever met with in any provincial
town anywhere; and there prevailed a warmth of heart, and a kindliness
both in the males and females of those families to which I had the good
fortune to be introduced, that I never experienced out of Jamaica.
At the period I am describing, the island was in the hey-day of its
prosperity, and the harbour of Kingston was full of shipping. I had never
before seen so superb a mercantile haven; it is completely landlocked, and
the whole navy of England might ride in it commodiously.
On the sea face it is almost impregnable, for it would be little short of
a miracle for an invading squadron to wind its way through the labyrinth
of shoals and reefs lying off the mouth of it, amongst which the channels
are so narrow and intricate, that at three or four points the sinking of a
sand barge would effectually block up all ingress; but, independently of
this, the entrance at Port Royal is defended by very strong works, the
guns ranging the whole way across, while, a little farther on, the
attacking ships would be exposed to a cross fire from the heavy metal of
the Apostles’ Battery; and even assuming all these obstacles to be
overcome, and the passage into the harbour forced, before they could pass
the narrows to get up to the anchorage at Kingston, they would be blown
out of the water by a raking fire from sixty pieces of large cannon on
Fort Augusta, which is so situated that they would have to turn to
windward for at least half an hour, in a strait which, at the widest,
would not allow them to reach beyond musket-shot of the walls.
Fortunately, as yet Mr Canning had not called his New World into
existence, and the whole of the trade of Terra Firma, from Porto Cavello
down to Chagres, the greater part of the trade of the islands of Cuba and
San Domingo, and even that of Lima and San Blas, and the other ports of
the Pacific, carried on across the Isthmus of Darien, centred in Kingston,
the usual supplies through Cadiz being stopped by the advance of the
French in the Peninsula. The result of this princely traffic, more
magnificent than that of Tyre, was a stream of gold and silver flowing
into the Bank of England, to the extent of three millions of pounds
sterling annually, in return for British manufactures; thus supplying the
sinews of war to the government at home, and, besides the advantage of so
large a mart, employing an immense amount of British tonnage, and many
thousand seamen; and in numberless ways opening up new outlets to British
enterprise and capital. Alas! alas! where is all this now? The echo of
the empty stores might answer “where!”
On arriving at Kingston, my first object was to seek out Mr the admiral’s
agent, and one of the most extensive merchants in the place, in order to
deliver some letters to him, and get his advice as to my future
proceedings. Mr Callaloo undertook to be my pilot, striding along a-beam
of me, and leaving in his wake two serpentine dottings on the pavement
from the droppings of water from his voluminous coat-skirts, which had
been thoroughly soaked by his recent ducking.
Every thing appeared to be thriving, and as we passed along, the hot sandy
streets were crowded with drays conveying goods from the wharfs to the
stores, and from the stores to the Spanish Posadas. The merchants of the
place, active, sharp-looking men, were seen grouped under the piazzas in
earnest conversation with their Spanish customers, or perched on the top
of the bales and boxes just landed, waiting to hook the gingham-coated,
Moorish-looking Dons, as they came along with cigars in their mouths, and
a train of negro servants following them with fire buckets on their heads,
filled with pesos fuertes. The appearance of the town itself was novel
and pleasing; the houses, chiefly of two stories, looked as if they had
been built of cards, most of them being surrounded with piazzas from ten
to fourteen feet wide, gaily painted green and white, and formed by the
roofs projecting beyond the brick walls or shells of the houses. On the
ground-floor these piazzas are open, and in the lower part of the town,
where the houses are built contiguous to each other, they form a covered
way, affording a most grateful shelter from the sun, on each side of the
streets, which last are unpaved, and more like dry river courses, than
thoroughfares in a Christian town. On the floor above, the balconies are
shut in with a sort of movable blinds, called “jealousies,’ like large
bladed Venetian blinds, fixed in frames, with here and there a glazed sash
to admit light in bad weather when the blinds are closed. In the upper
part of the town the effect is very beautiful, every house standing
detached from its neighbour, in its little garden filled with vines,
fruittrees, stately palms, and cocoa-nut trees, with a court of negro
houses and offices behind, and a patriarchal-looking draw-well in the
centre, generally overshadowed by a magnificent wild tamarind. When I
arrived at the great merchant’s place of business, I was shown into a
lofty cool room, with a range of desks along the walls, where a dozen
clerks were quill-driving. In the centre sat my man, a small sallow, yet
perfectly gentlemanlike personage.
“Dat is massa” quoth my black usher.
I accordingly walked up to him, and presented my letter. He never lifted
his head from his paper, which I had half a mind to resent; but at the
moment there was a bustle in the piazza, and a group of naval officers,
amongst whom was the admiral, came in. My silent friend was now alert
enough, and profuse of his bows and smiles.
“Who have we here? Who is that boy, L----?” said the admiral to his
secretary.
“Young Cringle, sir; the only one except Mr Splinter saved from the Torch;
he was first on the Admiralty list t’other day.”
“What, the lad Willoughby spoke so well of?”
“The same, sir; he got his promotion by last packet.”
“I know, I know. I say, Mr Cringle, you are appointed to the Firebrand, do
you know that?”--I did not know it, and began to fear my cruise on shore
was all up.--“But I don’t look for her from Havanna for a month; so leave
your address with L----, that you may get the order to join when she does
come.”
It appeared that I had seen the worst of the agent, for he gave me a very
kind invitation to stay some days with him, and drove me home in his
ketureen, a sort of sedan chair with the front and sides knocked out, and
mounted on a gig body.
Before dinner we were lounging about the piazza, and looking down into the
street, when a negro funeral came past, preceded by a squad of drunken
black vagabonds, singing and playing on gumbies, or African drums, made
out of pieces of hollow trees, about six feet long, with skins braced
over them, each carried by one man, while another beats it with his open
hands. The coffin was borne along on the heads of two negroes--a negro
carries every thing on his head, from a bale of goods to a wine-glass or
tea-cup. It is a practice for the bearers, when they come near the house
of any one against whom the deceased was supposed to have had a grudge, to
pretend that the coffin will not pass by, and in the present case, when
they came opposite to where we stood, they began to wheel round and round,
and to stagger under their load, while the choristers shouted at the top
of their lungs.
“We beg you, shipmate, for come along--do, broder, come away;” then
another reel. “What, you no wantee go in a hole, eh? You hab grudge
against somebody lif here, eh?”--Another devil of a lurch “Massa----‘s
housekeeper, eh? Ah, it must be!”--A tremendous stagger--“Oh, Massa----,
dollar for drink; someting to hold play [negro wake] in Spring-path,
[the negro burying-ground;] Bediacko say him won’t pass ‘less you give
it.” And here they began to spin round more violently than before; but at
the instant a drove of bullocks coming along, they got entangled amongst
them, and down went body and bearers and all, the coffin bursting in the
fall, and the dead corpse, with its white grave-clothes and black face,
rolling over and over in the sand amongst the feet of the cattle. It was
immediately caught up, however, bundled into the coffin again, and away
they staggered, drumming and singing as loudly as before.
The party at dinner was a large one; every thing in good style, wines
superb, turtle, &c., magnificent, and the company exceedingly
companionable. A Mr Francis Fyall, (a great planting attorney, that is,
an agent for a number of proprietors of estates, who preferred living in
England, and paying a commission to him for managing in Jamaica, to facing
the climate themselves,) to whom I had an introduction, rather posed me,
by asking me during dinner, if I would take any thing in the long way with
him, which he explained by saying he would be glad to take a glass of
small beer with me. This, after a deluge of Madeira, Champagne, and all
manner of light wines, was rather trying; but I kept my countenance as
well I could. One thing I remember struck me as remarkable; just as we
were rising to go to the drawing-room, a cloud of winged ants burst in
upon us through the open windows, and had it not been for the glass-shades
would have extinguished the candles; but when they had once settled on the
table, they deliberately wriggled themselves free of their wings, as one
would cast off a great-coat, and crept away in their simple and more
humble capacity of creeping things.
Next day I went to wait on my relation, Mrs Palma. I had had a
confoundedly hot walk through the burning sand streets, and was nearly
blinded by the reflection from them, as I ascended the front stairs.
There are no carpets in the houses in Jamaica; but the floors, which are
often mahogany, are beautifully polished, and shine like a well-kept
dinner table. They are, of course, very slippery, and require wary
walking till one gets accustomed to them. The rooms are made exceedingly
dark during the heat of the day, according to the prevailing practice in
all ardent climates. A black footman, very handsomely dressed, all to his
bare legs, (I thought at first he had black silk stocking on,) preceded
me, and when he reached the drawing-room door, asked my name. I told him,
“Mr Cringle,”--whereupon he sung out, to my dismay--“Massa Captain
Ringtail to wait pan Misses.”
This put me out a little--especially as I heard some one say “Captain
who--what a very odd name?”
But I had no time for reflection, as I had not blundered three steps out
of the glare of the piazza, into the palpable obscure of the darkened
drawing-room, black as night from the contrast, when I capsized headlong
over an ottoman in the middle of the apartment, and floundered right into
the centre of a group of young ladies, and one or two lapdogs, by whom it
was conjointly occupied. Trying to recover myself, I slipped on the
glasslike floor, and came down stern foremost; and being now regularly at
the slack end, for I could not well get lower, I sat still, scratching my
caput in the midst of a gay company of morning visitors, enjoying the
gratifying consciousness that I was distinctly visible to them, although
my dazzled optics could as yet distinguish nothing. To add to my
pleasurable sensations, I now perceived, from the coldness of the floor,
that in MY downfall the catastrophe of my unmentionables had been
grievously rent, but I had nothing for it but sitting patiently still
amidst the suppressed laughter of the company, until I became accustomed
to the twilight, and they, like bright stars, began to dawn on my
bewildered senses in all their loveliness, and prodigiously handsome women
some of’ them were, for the Creoles, so far as figure is concerned, are
generally perfect, while beautiful features are not wanting, and my travel
had reconciled me to the absence of the rose from their cheeks. My eldest
cousin Mary (where is there a name like Mary?) now approached; she and I
were old friends, and many a junketing we used to have in my father’s
house during the holydays, when she was a boarding-school girl in
England. My hardihood and self-possession returned, under the double
gratification of seeing her, and the certainty that my blushes (for my
cheeks were glowing like hot iron) could not have been observed in the
subdued green light that pervaded the room.--“Well, Tom, since you are no
longer dazzled, and see us all now, you had better get up, hadn’t you--you
see mamma is waiting there to embrace you?”
“Why, I think myself I had better;--but when I broached--to so suddenly,
I split my lower canvass, Mary, and I cannot budge until your mother lends
me a petticoat.”
“A what? you are crazy, Tom”
“Not a whit, not a whit, why I have split my--ahem. This is speaking
plain, an’t it?”
Away tripped the sylph-like girl, and in a twinkling reappeared with the
desired garment, which in a convulsion of laughter she slipped over my
head as I sat on the floor; and having fastened it properly round my
waist, I rose and paid my respects to my warm hearted relations. But that
petticoat--it could not have been the old woman’s, there could have been
no such virtue in an old woman’s petticoat; no, no, it must either have
been a charmed garment, or--Mary’s own; for from that hour I was a lost
man, and the devoted slave of her large black eyes, and high pale
forehead. “Oh, murder you speak of the sun dazzling; what is it to the
lustre of that same eye of yours, Mary!”
In the evening I escorted the ladies to a ball, (by the way, a West India
ball-room being a perfect lantern, open to the four winds of heaven, is
cooler, notwithstanding the climate, than a ball-room anywhere else,)
and a very gay affair it turned out to be, although I had more trouble in
getting admittance than I bargained for, and was witness to as comical a
row (considering the very frivolous origin of it, and the quality of the
parties engaged in it) as ever took place even in that peppery country,
where, I verily believe, the temper of the people, generous though it be
in the main, is hotter than the climate, and that, God knows! is
soporiferous enough. I was walking through the entrance saloon with my
fair cousin on my arm, stepping out like a hero to the opening crash of a
fine military band, towards the entrance of the splendid ball-room filled
with elegant company, brilliantly lighted up and ornamented with the most
rare and beautiful shrubs and flowers, which no European conservatory
could have furnished forth, and arched overhead with palm branches and a
profusion of evergreens, while the polished floor, like one vast mirror,
reflected the fine forms of the pale but lovely black-eyed and black
haired West Indian dames, glancing amidst the more sombre dressed of their
partners, while the whole group was relieved by being here and there
spangled with a rich naval or military uniform. As we approached, a
constable put his staff across the doorway.
“Beg pardon, sir, but you are not in full dress.”
Now this was the first night whereon I had sported my lieutenant’s
uniform, and with my gold swab on my shoulder, the sparkling bullion
glancing in the corner of my eye at the very moment, my dress-sword by my
side, gold buckles in my shoes, and spotless white trowsers, I had, in my
innocence, considered myself a deuced killing fellow, and felt proportion
ably mortified at this address.
“No one can be admitted in trowsers, sir,” said the man.
“Shiver my timbers!” I could not help the exclamation, the transactions of
the morning crowding on my recollection; “shiver my timbers! is my fate in
this strange country to be for ever irrevocably bound up in a pair of
breeches?”
My cousin pinched my arm.--“Hush, Tom; go home and get mamma’s petticoat.”
The man was peremptory; and as there was no use in getting into a squabble
about such a trifle, I handed my partner over to the care of a gentleman
of the party, who was fortunately accoutred according to rule, and,
stepping to my quarters, I equipped myself in a pair of tight nether
integuments, and returned to the ball-room. By this time there was the
devil to pay; the entrance saloon was crowded with military and naval men,
high in oath, and headed by no less a person than a general officer, and a
one-armed man, one of the chief civil officers in the place, and who had
been a sailor in his youth. I was just in time to see the advance of the
combined column to the door of the ball-room, through which they drove
the picket of constables like chaff, and then halted. The one-armed
functionary, a most powerful and very handsome man, now detached himself
from the phalanx, and strode up to the advanced guard of stewards
clustered in front of the ladies, who had shrunk together into a corner of
the room, like so many frightened hares.
The place being now patent to me, I walked up to comfort my party, and
could see all that passed. The champion of the Excluded had taken the
precaution to roll up the legs of his trowsers, and to tie them tightly at
the knee with his garters, which gave him the appearance of a Dutch
skipper; and in all the consciousness of being now properly arrayed, he
walked up to one of the men in authority--a small pot bellied gentleman,
and set himself to intercede for the attacking column, the head of which
was still lowering at the door. But the little steward speedily
interrupted him.
“Why, Mr Singlefist, rules must be maintained, and let me see,” here he
peered through his glass at the substantial supporters of our friend,--“as
I live, you yourself are inadmissible.”
The giant laughed.
“Damn the body, he must have been a tailor!--Charge, my fine fellows, and
throw the constables out of the window, and the stewards after them.
Every man his bird; and here goes for my Cock Robin.” With that he made a
grab at his Lilliputian antagonist, but missed him, as he slid away
amongst the women like an eel, while his pursuer, brandishing his wooden
arm on high, to which I now perceived, for the first time, that there was
a large steel hook appended, exclaimed in a broad Scotch accent, “Ah, if I
had but caught the creature, I would have clapt this in his mouth, and
played him like a salmon.”
At this signal, in poured the mass of soldiers and sailors; the constables
vanished in an instant; the stewards were driven back upon the ladies; and
such fainting and screaming, and swearing and threatening, and shying of
cards, and fixing of time and place for a cool turn in the morning, it had
never been my good fortune to witness before or since. My wig! thought I,
a precious country, where a man’s life may be periled by the fashion of
the covering to his nakedness!
Next day, Mr Fyall, who, I afterwards learned, was a most estimable man
in substantials, although somewhat eccentric in small matters, called and
invited me to accompany him on a cruise amongst some of the estates under
his management. This was the very thing I desired, and three days
afterwards I left my kind friends in Kingston, and set forth on my visit
to Mr Fyall, who lived about seven miles from town..
The morning was fine as usual, although about noon the clouds, thin and
fleecy and transparent at first, but gradually settling down more dense
and heavy, began to congregate on the summit of the Liguanea Mountains,
which rise about four miles distant, to a height of near 5000 feet, in
rear of the town. It thundered too a little now and then in the same
direction, but this was an every-day occurrence in Jamaica at this
season, and as I had only seven miles to go, off I started in a gig of
mine host’s, with my portmanteau well secured under a tarpawlin, in
defiance of all threatening appearances, crowding sail, and urging the
noble roan that had me in tow close upon thirteen knots. I had not gone
above three miles, however, when the sky in a moment changed from the
intense glare of a tropical noontide to the deepest gloom, as if a bad
angel had suddenly overshadowed us, and interposed his dark wings between
us and the blessed sun; indeed, so instantaneous was the effect, that it
reminded me of the withdrawing of the foot-lights in a theatre. The road
now wound round the base of a precipitous spur from the Liguanea
Mountains, which, instead of melting onto the level country by gradual
decreasing undulations, shot boldly out nearly a mile from the main range,
and so abruptly, that it seemed mortised into the plain, like a rugged
promontory running into a frozen lake. On looking up along the ridge of
this prong, I saw the lowering mass of black clouds gradually spread out,
and detach themselves from the summits of the loftier mountains, to which
they had clung the whole morning, and begin to roll slowly down the hill,
seeming to touch the tree tops, while along their lower edges hung a
fringe of dark vapour, or rather shreds of cloud in rapid motion, that
shifted about, and shot out and shortened like streamers.
As yet there was no lightning nor rain, and in the expectation of escaping
the shower, as the wind was with me, I made more sail, pushing the horse
into a gallop, to the great discomposure of the negro who sat beside me.
“Massa, you can’t escape it, you are galloping into it; don’t massa hear
de sound of de rain coming along against de wind, and smell de earthy
smell of him like one new-made grave?”
“The sound of the rain.” In another clime, long, long ago, I had often
read at my old mother’s knee, “And Elijah said unto Ahab, there is a sound
of abundance of rain, prepare thy chariot, and get thee down, that the
rain stop thee not; and it came to pass, in the meanwhile, that the heaven
was dark with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain.”
I looked, and so it was, for in an instant a white sheet of the heaviest
rain I had ever seen (if rain it might be called, for it was more like a
water-spout) fell from the lower edge of the black cloud, with a strong
rushing noise, that increased as it approached to a loud roar like that of
a waterfall. As it came along, it seemed to devour the rocks and trees,
for they disappeared behind the watery screen the instant it reached them.
We saw it a-head of us for more than a mile coming along the road,
preceded by a black line from the moistening of the white dust, right in
the wind’s eye, and with such an even front, that I verily believe it was
descending in bucketsful on my horse’s head, while as yet not one drop had
reached me. At this moment the adjutant-general of the forces, Colonel
F----, of the Coldstream Guards, in his tandem, drawn by two sprightly
blood bays, with his servant, a light boy, mounted Creole fashion on the
leader, was coming up in my wake at a spot where the road sank into a
hollow, and was traversed by a watercourse already running knee deep,
although dry as a bone but the minute before.
I was now drenched to the skin, the water pouring out in cascades from
both sides of the vehicle, when just as I reached the top of the opposite
bank, there was a flash of lightning so vivid, accompanied by an explosion
so loud and tremendous, that my horse, trembling from stem to stem, stood
dead still; the dusky youth by my side jumped out, and buried his snout in
the mud, like a porker in Spain nuzzling for acorns, and I felt more
queerish than I would willingly have confessed to. I could have knelt and
prayed. The noise of the thunder was a sharp ear-piercing crash, as if
the whole vault of heaven had been made of glass, and had been shivered at
a blow by the hand of the Almighty.
It was, I am sure, twenty seconds before the usual roar and rumbling
reverberation of the report from the hills, and among the clouds, was
heard.
I drove on, and arrived just in time to dress for dinner, but I did not
learn till next day, that the flash which paralysed me, had struck dead
the Colonel’s servant and leading horse, as he ascended the bank of the
ravine, by this time so much swollen, that the body of the lad was washed
off the road into the neighbouring gully, where it was found, when the
waters subsided, entirely covered with sand.
I found the party congregated in the piazza around Mr Fyall, who was
passing his jokes, without much regard to the feelings of his guests, and
exhibiting as great a disregard of the common civilities and courtesies of
life as can well be imagined. One of the party was a little red-faced
gentleman, Peregrine Whiffle, Esquire, by name who, in Jamaica parlance,
was designated an extraordinary master in Chancery; the overseer of the
pen, or breeding farm, in the great house as it is called, or mansionhouse
of which Mr Fyall resided, and a merry, laughing, intelligent, round,
red-faced man, with a sort of Duncan Knockdunder nose, through the wide
nostrils of which you could see a cable’s length into his head; he was
either Fyall’s head clerk, or a sort of first lieutenant; these personages
and myself composed the party. The dinner itself was excellent, although
rather of the rough and round order; the wines and food intrinsically
good; but my appetite was not increased by the exhibition of a deformed,
bloated negro child, about ten years old, which Mr Fyall planted at his
elbow, and, by way of practical joke, stuffed to repletion with all kinds
of food and strong drink, until the little dingy brute was carried out
drunk.
The wine circulated freely, and by and by Fyall indulged in some
remarkable stories of his youth, for he was the only speaker, which I
found some difficulty in swallowing, until at length, on one thumper being
tabled, involving an impossibility, and utterly indigestible, I
involuntarily exclaimed, “by Jupiter!”
“You want any ting, massa?” promptly chimed in the black servant at my
elbow, a diminutive kiln-dried old negro.
“No,” said I, rather caught.
“Oh, me tink you call for Jupiter.”
I looked in the baboon’s face--“Why, if I did; what then?”
“Only me Jupiter, at massa service, dat all.”
“You are, eh, no great shakes of a Thunderer; and who is that tall square
man standing behind your master’s chair?”
“Daddy Cupid, massa.”
“And the old woman who is carrying away the dishes in the piazza?”
“Mammy Weenus.”
“Daddy Cupid, and Mammy Weenus--Shade of Homer!”
Jupiter, to my surprise, shrunk from my side, as if he had received a
blow, and the next moment I could hear him communing with Venus in the
piazza.
“For true, dat leetle man-of-war buccra must be Obeah man: how de debil
him come to sabe dat it was stable-boy Homer who broke de candle shade on
massa right hand, dat one wid de piece broken out of de edge?” and here he
pointed towards it with his chin--a negro always points with his chin.
I had never slept on shore out of Kingston before; the night season in the
country in dear old England, we all know, is usually one of the deepest
stillness--here it was any thing but still;--as the evening closed in,
there arose a loud humming noise, a compound of the buzzing, and chirping,
and whistling, and croaking of numberless reptiles and insects, on the
earth, in the air, and in the water. I was awakened out of my first sleep
by it, not that the sound was disagreeable, but it was unusual; and every
now and then a beetle, the size of your thumb, would bang in through the
open window, cruise round the room with a noise like a humming-top, and
then dance a quadrille with half-a-dozen bats; while the fire-flies
glanced like sparks, spangling the folds of the muslin curtains of the
bed. The croak of the tree-toad, too, a genteel reptile, with all the
usual loveable properties of his species, about the size of the crown of
your hat, sounded from the neighbouring swamp, like some one snoring in
the piazza, blending harmoniously with the nasal concert got up by
Jupiter, and some other heathen deities, who were sleeping there almost
naked, excepting the head, which every negro swathes during the night with
as much flannel and as many handkerchiefs as he can command. By the way,
they all slept on their faces--I wonder if this will account for their
flat noses.
Next morning we started at daylight, cracking along at the rate of twelve
knots an hour in a sort of gig, with one horse in the shafts, and another
hooked on a-breast of him to a sort of studdingsail-boom, or outrigger,
and followed by three mounted servants, each with a led horse and two
sumpter mules.
In the evening we arrived at an estate under Mr Fyall’s management, having
passed a party of maroons immediately before. I never saw finer men tall,
strapping fellows, dressed exactly as they should be and the climate
requires; wide duck trowsers, over these a loose shirt, of duck also,
gathered at the waist by a broad leathern belt, through which, on one
side, their short cutlass is stuck, while on the other hangs a leathern
pouch for ball, and a loose thong across one shoulder, supports, on the
opposite hip, a large powder-horn and haversack. This, with a straw hat,
and a short gun in their hand, with a sling to be used on a march,
completes their equipment--in better keeping with the climate, than the
padded coats, heavy caps, tight cross-belts, and ponderous muskets of our
regulars. As we drove up to the door, the overseer began to bawl, “Boys,
boys!” and kept blowing a dog-call. All servants in the country in the
West Indies, be they as old as Methuselah, are called boys. In the
present instance, half-a-dozen black fellows forthwith appeared, to take
our luggage, and attend on massa in other respects. The great man was
as austere to the poor overseer, as if he had been guilty of some
misdemeanour, and after a few short, crabbed words, desired him to get
supper, “do you hear?”
The meat consisted of plantation fare-salted fish, plantains and yams,
and a piece of goat mutton. Another “observe,”--a South Down mutton,
after sojourning a year or two here, does not become a goat exactly, but
he changes his heavy warm fleece, and wears long hair; and his progeny
after him, if bred on the hot plains, never assume the wool again. Mr
Fyall and I sat down, and then in walked four mutes, stout young fellows,
not over-well dressed, and with faces burnt to the colour of brick-dust.
They were the bookkeepers, so called because they never see a book, their
province being to attend the negroes in the field, and to superintend the
manufacture of sugar and rum in the boiling and distilling-houses.
One of them, the head bookkeeper, as he was called, appeared literally
roasted by the intensity of the sun’s rays.
“How is Baldy Steer?” said the overseer to this person.
“Better to-day, sir--I drenched him with train--oil and sulphur.”
“The devil you did,” thought I--“alas! for Baldy.” “And Mary, and
Caroline, and the rest of that lot?” “Are sent to Perkin’s Red Rover, sir;
but I believe some of them are in calf already by Bullfinch--and I have
cut Peter for the lampas.” The knife and fork dropped from my hands.
“What can all this mean? is this their boasted kindness to their slaves?
One of a family drenched with train-oil and brimstone, another cut for
some horrible complaint never heard of before, called lampas, and the
females sent to the Red Rover, some being in calf already!” But I soon
perceived that the baked man was the cowboy or shepherd of the estate,
making his report of the casualties amongst his bullocks, mules, and
heifers.
“Juliet Ridge will not yield, sir,” quoth another.
“Who is this next? a stubborn concern she must be.”
“The liquor is very poor.” Here he helped himself to rum and water, the
rum coming up about an inch in the glass, regular half and half, fit to
float a marlinspike.
“It is more than yours is,” thought I; and I again stared in wonderment,
until I perceived he spoke of the juice of a cane patch.
At this time a tall, lathy gentleman came in, wearing a most original cut
coatee. He was a most extraordinary built man; he had absolutely no body,
his bottom being placed between his shoulders, but what was wanted in
corpus was made up in legs, indeed he looked like a pair of compasses,
buttoned together at the shoulders, and supporting a yellow phiz half a
yard long, thatched with a fell of sandy hair, falling down lank and
greasy on each side of his face. Fyall called him Buckskin, which, with
some other circumstances, made me guess that he was neither more nor less
than an American smuggler.
After supper, a glass of punch was filled for each person, the overseer
gave a rap on the table with his knuckles, and off started the
bookkeepers, like shots out of shovels, leaving the Yankee, Mr Fyall, the
overseer, and myself, at table.
I was very tired, and reckoned on going to bed now--but no such thing.
Fyall ordered Jupiter to bring a case from his gig-box, containing some
capital brandy. A new brewage of punch took place, and I found about the
small hours that we were all verging fast towards drunkenness, or
something very like that same. The Yankee was specially plied by Fyall,
evidently with an object, and he soon succeeded in making him helplessly
drunk.
The fun now “grew fast and furious,”--a large wash-tub was ordered in,
placed under a beam at the corner of the room, and filled with water; a
sack and a three-inch rope were then called for, and promptly produced by
the blackies, who, apparently accustomed to Fyall’s pranks, grinned with
delight.--Buckskin was thrust into the sack, feet foremost; the mouth of
it was then gathered round his throat with a string, and I was set to
splice a bight in the rope, so as to fit under his arms without running,
which might have choked him. All things being prepared, the slack end was
thrown over the beam. He was soused in the tub, the word was given to
hoist away, and we ran him up to the roof, and then belayed the rope round
the body of the overseer, who was able to sit on his chair, and that was
all. The cold bath, and the being hung up to dry, speedily sobered the
American, but his arms being within the sack, he could do nothing for his
own emancipation; he kept swearing, however, and entreating, and dancing
with rage, every jerk drawing the cord tighter round the waist of the
overseer, who, unaware of his situation, thought himself bewitched as he
was drawn with violence by starts along the floor, with the chair as it
were glued to him. At length the patient extricated one of his arms, and
laying hold of the beam above him, drew himself up, and then letting go
his hold suddenly, fairly lifted the drunken overseer, chair and all,
several feet from the ground, so as to bring him on a level with himself,
and then, in mid air, began to pummel his counterpoise with right
goodwill. At length, fearful of the consequences from the fury into which
the man had worked himself, Fyall and I dashed out the candles, and fled
to our rooms, where, after barricading the doors, we shouted to the
servants to let the gentlemen down.
The next morning had been fixed for duck-shooting, and the overseer and I
were creeping along amongst the mangrove bushes on the shore, to get a
shot at some teal, when we saw our friend the pair of compasses crossing
the small bay in his boat, towards his little pilotboat-built schooner,
which was moored in a small creek opposite, the brushwood concealing every
thing but her masts. My companion, as wild an Irishman as I ever knew,
hailed him,--
“Hillo, Obadiah--Buckskin--you Yankee rascal, heave-to. Come ashore
here--come ashore.”
Obed, smoking his pipe, deliberately uncoiled himself--I thou as he rose,
there was to be no end of him--and stood upright in the boat, like an
ill-rigged jurymast.
“I say, Master Tummas, you ben’t no friend of mine, I guess, a’ter last
night’s work; you hears how I coughs?”--and he began to wheezle and crow
in a most remarkable fashion.
“Never mind,” rejoined the overseer; “if you go round that point, and put
up the ducks--by the piper, but I’ll fire at you!”
Obed neighed like a horse expecting his oats, which was meant as a laugh
of derision. “Do you think your birding-piece can touch me here away,
Master Tummas?” And again he nichered more loudly than before.
“Don’t provoke me to try, you yellow snake, you!”
“Try, and be d----d, and there’s a mark for thee,” unveiling a certain part
of his body, not his face.
The overseer, or bushes, to give him his Jamaica name, looked at me and
smiled, then coolly lifted his long Spanish barrel, and fired. Down
dropped the smuggler, and ashore came the boat.
“I am mortally wounded, Master Tummas,” quoth Obed; and I was
confoundedly frightened at first, from the unusual proximity of the
injured part to his head; but the overseer, as soon as he could get off
the ground, where he had thrown himself in an uncontrollable fit of
laughter, had the man stripped and laid across a log, where he set his
servant to pick out the pellets with a penknife.
Next night I was awakened out of my first sleep by a peculiar sort of
tap, tap, on the floor, as if a cat with walnut shells had been moving
about the room. The feline race, in all its varieties, is my detestation,
so I slipped out of bed to expel the intruder; but the instant my toe
touched the ground, it was seized as if by a smith’s forceps. I drew it
into bed, but the annoyance followed it; and in an agony of alarm and
pain, I thrust my hand down, when my thumb was instantly manacled to the
other suffering member. I now lost my wits altogether, and roared murder,
which brought a servant in with a light, and there I was, thumb and toe,
in the clinch of a land-crab.
I had been exceedingly struck with the beauty of the negro villages on the
old settled estates, which are usually situated in the most picturesque
spots, and I determined to visit the one which lay on a sunny bank full in
view from my window, divided on two sides from the cane pieces by a
precipitous ravine, and on the other two by a high logwood hedge, so like
hawthorn, that I could scarcely tell the difference, even when close to it.
At a distance it had the appearance of one entire orchard of fruit trees,
where were mingled together the pyramidal orange, in fruit and in flower,
the former in all its stages from green to dropping ripe,--the citron,
lemon, and lime-trees, the stately, glossy-leaved star-apple, the
golden shaddock and grape-fruit, with their slender branches bending
under their ponderous yellow fruit,--the cashew, with its apple like
those of the cities of the plain, fair to look at, but acrid to the taste,
to which the far-famed nut is appended like a bud,--the avocada, with its
brobdignag pear, as large as a purser’s lantern,--the bread-fruit, with a
leaf, one of which would have covered Adam like a bishop’s apron, and a
fruit for all the world in size and shape like a blackamoor’s head; while
for underwood you had the green, fresh, dew-spangled plantain, round
which in the hottest day there is always a halo of coolness,--the coco
root, the yam and granadillo, with their long vines twining up the
neighbouring trees and shrubs like hop tendrils,--and peas and beans, in
all their endless variety of blossom and of odour, from the Lima bean,
with a stalk as thick as my arm, to the mouse pea, three inches high,--the
pineapple, literally growing in, and constituting, with its prickly
leaves, part of the hedgerows,--the custard-apple, like russet bags of
cold pudding,--the cocoa and coffee bushes, and the devil knows what all,
that is delightful in nature besides; while aloft, the tall graceful
cocoa-nut, the majestic palm, and the gigantic wild cotton-tree, shot up
here and there like minarets far above the rest, high into the blue
heavens.
I entered one of the narrow winding footpaths, where an immense variety of
convolvuli crept along the penguin fences, disclosing their delicate
flowers in the morning freshness, (all that class here shut shop at noon,)
and passion flowers of all sizes, from a soup plate to a thumb ring.
The huts were substantially thatched with palm leaves, and the walls woven
with a basket-work of twigs, plastered over with clay, and whitewashed;
the floors were of baked clay, dry and comfortable. They all consisted of
a hall and a sleeping-room off each side of it: in many of the former I
noticed mahogany sideboards and chairs, and glass decanters, while a whole
lot of African drums and flutes, and sometimes a good gun, hung from the
rafters; and it would have gladdened an Irishman’s heart to have seen the
adjoining piggeries. Before one of the houses an old woman was taking
care of a dozen black infants, little naked, glossy, black guinea pigs,
with party coloured beads tied round their loins, each squatted like a
little Indian pagod in the middle of a large wooden bowl, to keep it off
the damp ground.
While I was pursuing my ramble, a large conch-shell was blown at the
overseer’s house, and the different gangs turned in to dinner; they came
along, dancing and shouting, and playing tricks on each other in the
little paths, in all the happy anticipation of a good dinner, and an hour
and a half to eat it in, the men well clad in Osnaburg frocks and
trowsers, and the women in baize petticoats and Osnaburg shifts, with a
neat printed calico short gown over all.
“And these are slaves,” thought I, “and this is West Indian bondage! Oh
that some of my well-meaning anti-slavery friends were here, to judge
from the evidence of their own senses!”
The following night there was to be a grand play or wake in the negro
houses, over the head cooper, who had died in the morning, and I
determined to be present at it, although the overseer tried to dissuade
me, saying that no white person ever broke in on these orgies, that the
negroes were very averse to their doing so, and that neither he, nor any
of the white people on the estate, had ever been present on such an
occasion. This very interdict excited my curiosity still more; so I rose
about midnight, and let myself gently down through the window, and shaped
my course in the direction of the negro houses, guided by a loud drumming,
which, as I came nearer, every now and then sunk into a low murmuring
roll, when a strong bass voice would burst forth into a wild recitative;
to which succeeded a loud piercing chorus of female voices, during which
the drums were beaten with great vehemence; this was succeeded by another
solo, and so on. There was no moon, and I had to thread my way along one
of the winding footpaths by starlight. When I arrived within a
stone-cast of the hut before which the play was being held, I left the
beaten track, and crept onwards, until I gained the shelter of the stem of
a wild cotton-tree, behind which I skulked unseen.
The scene was wild enough. Before the door a circle was formed by about
twenty women, all in their best clothes, sitting on the ground, and
swaying their bodies to and fro, while they sung in chorus the wild dirge
already mentioned, the words of which I could not make out; in the centre
of the circle sat four men playing on gumbies, or the long drum formerly
described, while a fifth stood behind them, with a conch-shell, which he
kept sounding at intervals. Other three negroes kept circling round the
outer verge of the circle of women, naked all to their waist cloths,
spinning about and about with their hands above their heads, like so many
dancing dervishes. It was one of these three that from time to time took
up the recitative, the female chorus breaking in after each line. Close
to the drummers lay the body in an open coffin, supported on two low
stools or trestles; a piece of flaming resinous wood was stuck in the
ground at the head, and another at the feet; and a lump of kneaded clay,
in which another torchlike splinter was fixed, rested on the breast. An
old man, naked like the solo singer, was digging a grave close to where
the body lay. The following was the chant:--
“I say, broder, you can’t go yet.”
THEN THE CHORUS OF FEMALE VOICES
“When de morning star rise, den we put you in a hole.”
CHORUS AGAIN
“Den you go in a Africa, you see Fetish dere.”
CHORUS
“You shall nyam goat dere, wid all your family.”
CHORUS
“Buccra can’t come dere; say, dam rascal, why you no work?”
CHORUS
“Buccra can’t catch Duppy, no, no.”
CHORUS
Three calabashes, or gourds, with pork, yams, and rum, were placed on a
small bench that stood close to the head of the bier, and at right angles
to it.
In a little while, the women, singing-men, and drummers, suddenly gave a
loud shout, or rather yell, clapped their hands three times, and then
rushed into the surrounding cottages, leaving the old grave-digger alone
with the body.
He had completed the grave, and had squatted himself on his hams beside
the coffin, swinging his body as the women had done, and uttering a low
moaning sound, frequently ending in a loud pech, like that of a paviour
when he brings down his rammer.
I noticed he kept looking towards the east, watching, as I conjectured,
the first appearance of the morning star, but it was yet too early.
He lifted the gourd with the pork, and took a large mouthful.
“How is dis? I can’t put dis meat in Quacco’s coffin, dere is salt in de
pork; Duppy can’t bear salt,” another large mouthful--“Duppy hate salt too
much,”--here he ate it all up, and placed the empty gourd in the coffin.
He then took up the one with boiled yam in it, and tasted it also.
“Salt here too--who de debil do such a ting?--must not let Duppy taste
dat.” He discussed this also, placing the empty vessel in the coffin as he
had done with the other. He then came to the calabash with the rum.
There is no salt there, thought I.
“Rum! ah, Duppy love rum--if it be well strong, let me see Massa Niger,
who put water in a dis rum, eh? Duppy will never touch dat”--a long
pull--“no, no, never touch dat.” Here he finished the whole, and placed
the empty vessel beside the others; then gradually sunk back on his hams
with his mouth open, and his eyes starting from the sockets, as he peered
up into the tree, apparently at some terrible object. I looked up also,
and saw a large yellow snake, nearly ten feet long, let itself gradually
down directly over the coffin, between me and the bright glare, (the
outline of its glossy mottled skin glancing in the strong light, which
gave its dark opaque body the appearance of being edged with flame, and
its glittering tongue, that of a red hot wire,) with its tail round a limb
of the cottontree, until its head reached within an inch of the dead man’s
face, which it licked with its long forked tongue, uttering a loud hissing
noise.
I was fascinated with terror, and could not move a muscle; at length the
creature slowly swung itself up again, and disappeared amongst the
branches.
Quashie gained courage, as the rum began to operate, and the snake to
disappear. “Come to catch Quaccols Duppy, before him get to Africa, sure
as can be. De metody parson say de debil old sarpant--dat must be old
sarpant, for I never see so big one, so it must be debil.”
He caught a glimpse of my face at this moment; it seemed that I had no
powers of fascination like the snake, for he roared out, “Murder, murder,
de debil, de debil, first like a sarpent, den like himself; see him white
face behind de tree; see him white face behind de tree;” and then, in the
extremity of his fear, he popt, head foremost, into the grave, leaving his
quivering legs and feet sticking upwards, as if he had been planted by the
head, like a forked parsnip reversed.
At this uproar, a number of negroes ran out of the nearest houses, and, to
my surprise, four white seamen appeared suddenly amongst them, who, the
moment they got sight of my uniform, as I ran away, gave chase, and having
overtaken me, as I stumbled in the dark path, immediately pinioned me.
They were all armed, and I had no doubt were part of the crew of the
smuggling schooner, and that they had a depot amongst the negro houses.
“Yo ho, my hearty, heave-to, or here goes with a brace of bullets.”
I told them who I was, and that curiosity alone brought me there.
“Gammon, tell that to the marines; you’re a spy, messmate, and on board
you go with us, so sure as I be Paul Brandywine.”
Here was a change with a vengeance. An hour before I was surrounded by
friends, and resting comfortably, in my ward bed, and now I was a prisoner
to a set of brigands, who were smugglers at the best, and what might they
not be at the worst? I had no chance of escape by any sudden effort of
strength or activity, for a piece of a handspike had been thrust across my
back, passing under both of my arms, which were tightly lashed to it, as
if I had been trussed for roasting, so that I could no more run, with a
chance of escape, than a goose without her pinions. After we left the
negro houses, I perceived, with some surprise, that my captors kept the
beaten tract, leading directly to, and past the overseer’s dwelling.
“Come, here is a chance, at all events,” argued I to myself. “If I get
within hail, I will alarm the lieges, if a deuced good pipe don’t fail
me.”
This determination had scarcely been framed in my mind, when, as if my
very thoughts had been audible, the smuggler next me on the right hand
drew a pistol, and held it close to my starboard ear.
“Friend, if you tries to raise the house, or speaks to any Niger, or other
person we meets, I’ll walk through your skull with two ounces of lead.”
“You are particularly obliging,” said I; “but what do you promise
yourselves by carrying me off? Were you to murder me, you would be none
the richer; for I have no valuables about me, as you may easily ascertain
by searching me.”
“And do you think that freeborn Americans like we have kidnapped you for
your dirty rings, and watch, and mayhap a few dollars, which I takes you
to mean by your waluboles, as you calls them?”
“Why, then, what, in the devil’s name, have you kidnapped me for?” And I
began to feel my choler overpowering my discretion, when Mr Paul
Brandywine, who I now suspected to be the mate of the smuggler, took the
small liberty of jerking the landyard, that had been made fast to the
middle of the handspike, so violently, that I thought both my shoulders w
ere dislocated; for I was fairly checked down on my back, just as you may
have seen a pig-merchant on the Fermoy road bring an uproarious boar to
his marrowbones; while the man who had previously threatened to blow my
brains out, knelt beside me, and civilly insinuated, that “if I was tired
of my life, he calculated I had better speak as loud again.”
There was no jest in all this; so I had nothing for it but to walk
silently along with my escort, after having gathered myself up as well as
I could. We crept so close under the windows of the overseer’s house,
where we picked up a lot of empty ankers, slung on a long pole, that I
fancied I heard, or really did hear, some one snore--oh how I envied the
sleeper! At length we reached the beach, where we found two men lying on
their oars, in what, so far as I could distinguish, appeared to be a sharp
swift-looking whale boat, which they kept close to, with her head
seaward, however, to be ready for a start should any thing suspicious
appear near to them.
The boat-keeper hailed promptly, “Who goes there?” as they feathered
their oars.
“The tidy little Wave,” was the answer.
No more words passed, and the men who had, in the first instance, pulled a
stroke or two to give the boat way, now backed water, and tailed her on to
the beach, when we all stepped on board.
Two of my captors now took each an oar; we shoved off, and glanced away
through the darkness, along the smooth surface of the sparkling sea, until
we reached the schooner, by this time hauled out into the fairway at the
mouth of the cove, where she lay hove short, with her mainsail hoisted
up, riding to the land-wind, and apparently all ready to cants and be off
the moment the boat returned.
As we came alongside, the captain of her, my friend Obediah, as I had no
difficulty in guessing, from his very out of the way configuration, dark
as it was, called out, “I says, Paul, who have you got in the
starn-sheets there?”
“A bloody spy, captain; he who was with the overseer when he peppered your
sheathing t’other morning.”
“Oho, bring him on board--bring him on board. I knows there be a
man-of-war schooner close aboard of the island somewheres hereabouts. I
sees through it all, smash my eyes!--I sees through it. But what kept
you, Paul? Don’t you see the morning star has risen?”
By this time I stood on the deck of the little vessel, which was no above
a foot out of the water; and Obediah, as he spoke, pointed to the small
dark pit of a companion, for there was no light below, nor indeed anywhere
on board, except in the binnacle, and that carefully masked, indicating by
his threatening manner, that I was to get below as speedily as possible.
“Don’t you see the morning star, sir? Why, the sun will be up in an hour,
I calculate, and then the sea-breeze will be down on us before we get any
thing of an offing.”
The mention of the morning star recalled vividly to my recollection the
scene I had so recently witnessed at the negro wake; it seemed there was
another person beside poor Quacco, likely to be crammed into a hole before
the day broke, and to be carried to Africa too, for what I knew; but one
must needs go when the devil drives, so I slipped down into the cabin, and
the schooner having weighed, made sail to the northward.