frequent in that part of the island. [That part of Lower St. Andrew,
bordered by the Long Mountain, the St. Andrew Mountains and the Red
Hills.]
_Moneque or Monesca Savannah._ Savannah of monkeys. [Now confined to
the village of Moneague.]
_Mari bona._ Maria-buena, Mary the Good. [Maria Buena Bay is in
Trelawny.]
_Multi-bezon Rio._ Multi, many; buzon, conduit.
_Macari Bahia._ Macari, a tile, such as is made for floors, which the
Spaniards universally used here and probably manufactured them near
this bay, the soil being proper for that purpose.
[Long adds as a footnote to Macari: “Or perhaps it may derive more
properly from the Indian word Macarij (which signifies bitter), and
allude to the tree commonly called the Majoe, or Macary-bitter which
grows in great abundance along this part of the coast, and with
whose leaves, bark and root, which are all of them extremely bitter,
some very notable cures in cases of inveterate ulcers, the yaws, and
venereal distempers, were some years ago performed by an old negress
named Majoe, in commemoration of whom it took its name.” Macary Bay
is in Vere. Majoe Bitter, or Macary Bitter (_Picramnia Antidesnia
Sus._) is a shrub about 8 feet high, with small whitish green
flowers, and berries first scarlet, then black.]
_Mantica Bahia._ Butter (now Montego Bay). This part abounding
formerly with wild hogs, the Spaniards probably made here what they
called hog’s butter (lard) for exportation. [In a very old deed of
conveyance of land in St. James a road is marked as leading to Lard
Bay.]
_Ocho Rios_ said to mean eight rivers. [In St. Ann. It was more
commonly called Chareiras in Long’s time; and indeed as late as
1841, William Rob wrote “Ocho Rios, called to this day by the old
inhabitants ‘Cheireras,’ its early and appropriate name ‘the Bay of
the Water-Falls,’ but has now gone back to Ocho Rios.” It is not
unlikely that the present form Ocho Rios and the derivation from
eight rivers is wrong, and that the real name is Chorréra, a spout.
There is a Chorréra River in Cuba, near Havannah.]
_Perexil Insula._ Samphire Island.
_Sombrio Rio._ Shady river. [Now called the Sambre.]
_Yalos._ Frosts (whence, perhaps corruptly, Yallahs), the high white
cliffs having the appearance of a frosty covering. [Now called
Yallahs. Long was probably wrong in connecting Yallahs with Yalos.
The Hatô de Ayala extended from Bull Bay nearly to Morant Bay, and
the name is probably a personal one. Pedro Lopez de Ayala was a
celebrated poet and politician in the fourteenth century; Pedro de
Ayala was Spanish envoy to the Court of St. James in 1498; and,
curiously, a recent Spanish representative at Havana bore the name
de Ayala. There was a Captain Yhallahs, a privateer who flourished
in Jamaica in and about 1671, and the locality may have been named
after him.]
_Luidas._ Perhaps from Luzida; gay, fine. [Lluidas Vale is in St.
Catherine.]
_Martha Brea._ Martha, a woman’s name; Brea, tar; perhaps a nickname
of some Spanish sailor’s Dulcinea like the English vulgar
appellation _Jack Tar_. [Martha Brea village and river are in
Trelawny. The name is a corruption of Rio Matibereon.]
No traces are to be found to-day of the following: Alta Mela, Rio de
Camarones, Caborida, Carvil Bahia, Guada Bocca, Jarisse Punta, Javareen,
Multi Bezon Rio, Perexil Insula.
Of corruptions of Spanish names the best known are: Agualta (Agua Alta,
the deep river); Bog Walk (Boca d’Agua, water’s mouth); and Mount
Diablo. Cagua became with the English Caguay, then Cagway when it was
renamed Port Royal.
Those who see in Porus a survival of the name of Columbus’s companion,
Porras, are probably drawing on a fertile imagination. Columbus and his
companions saw little of the interior of the island. It is more probably
called after some well sunk there, or from the porous nature of the
soil, “pitted with holes.” In the English edition of Ferdinand
Columbus’s “Historie,” we read that the Morant Cays were called by
Columbus _Los Poros_ because “not finding water in them they dug pits in
the sand”; but in the Italian edition (Venice, 1571) they are called “le
pozzi” (the pits), and in the Spanish edition of 1749 they are called
“Las Poças” (the pits). It is possible that in the case of Porus, as in
that of the Morant Cays, there has been a confusion between _Poros_ and
_Pocas_; and that the town in Manchester should be called Poças. The
Spaniards called the Black River, el Caovana (the Mahogany River).
In the English section of Jamaica history for the two centuries from
1655 to 1855, there is a wide field of exploration.
What with earthquakes, hurricanes and floods, the march of time, and
rebuilding, the typical old-time planter’s houses are getting scarcer.
Then, again, there are the monuments and gravestones which contribute to
our knowledge of Jamaica genealogy and history. Captain Lawrence-Archer,
in the middle of the last century, did much in his “Monumental
Inscriptions of the British West Indies,” to put this information in a
handy form, but his work, which is often inaccurate, by no means covers
the whole field. Something of late years has been done in that direction
by Mr. Oliver in “Caribbeana.”
Although Jamaica is probably no worse than other countries in its
disregard for ancient monuments, that there is need for improvement
cannot be denied by those who have looked into the matter. The Spanish
invaders burned the Arawâk huts; the old-time English planters despoiled
Spanish buildings to find material for their sugar works; and in our own
day a ruined seventeenth-century building which withstood the recent
earthquake was later pulled down by peasants for the sake of its stones.
When Lawrence-Archer wrote less than fifty years ago, he recorded a
statue by Bacon to Richard Batty in the cathedral. Only a fragment of it
remains to-day. The author of his epitaph little thought that the
literal truth of part of it would be so early established when he wrote
in 1796:
“Yet vain the Record, which sculptured stone
Would raise to those pre-eminently known.”
The most strongly constructed building will wear out with time and, in
the tropics especially, vegetation is apt to interfere with monuments
and gravestones; but a little care without much expense should be all
that is needed to render unnecessary an expensive restoration, which
many individuals and bodies find themselves unprepared to meet and
which, after all, can never take the place of preservation.
In 1672 Port Royal contained 800 well-built houses, “as dear rented,”
Blome tells us, “as if they stood in well-traded streets in London.”
Twenty years later, when it was at its zenith, the number was 2000, “the
greatest number of which were of brick, several storeys in height.” In
1692, as is well known, a large part of the town perished by an
earthquake, and from that event Kingston dates its origin, Port Royal
being partially destroyed again, by fire, in 1703 and by hurricane in
1722.
Charles Leslie, writing in 1739, says of Jamaica: “One is not to look
for the beauties of architecture here; the public buildings are neat but
not fine. The churches in the town are generally in form of a cross,
with a small cupola a-top, built high in the walls, paved within, and
adorned with no manner of finery.” The churches, he says, except those
at Spanish Town and Halfway-Tree, are “decent small houses, scarce to be
known for such,” and he adds, “the clergy trouble them little, and their
doors are seldom open,” in marked contrast to the present state of
affairs. “The gentlemen’s houses,” he says, “are generally built low, of
one storey, consisting of five or six handsome apartments, beautifully
lined and floored with mahogany.... In the towns there are several
houses which are two storeys, but that way of building is disapproved of
because they seldom are known to stand the shock of an earthquake or the
fury of a storm.”
On Craskell and Simpson’s large map of Surrey, of the year 1763, is
shown a view of a presumably typical Jamaica house, two storeys high,
with an open veranda in front only. It is evident from what Long says
that, at all events for the first century of the island’s occupation by
the British, not much attention was paid to domestic architecture by the
planters of the island. “It is,” he says, “but of late that the planters
have paid much attention to elegance in their habitations; their general
rule was to build what they called a makeshift; so that it was not
unusual to see a plantation adorned with a very expensive set of works,
of brick or stone, well executed, and the owner residing in a miserable
thatched hovel, hastily put together with wattles and plaster, damp,
unwholesome, and infested with every species of vermin. But the houses
in general, as well in the country parts as in the towns, have been
greatly improved within these last twenty years.”
In this connection mention may be made of the aqueducts on some of the
sugar estates, which are amongst the best pieces of architectural work
in the island. They and some of the old stone bridges compare more than
favourably with the modern bridges, many of which—excellent monuments of
engineering skill as they may be—their best friends would never venture
to call works of art. Moreover the stone bridges will probably be
standing when the iron ones have perished by decay.
Peter Marsden, writing a little later (1788), says: “Except a few
excellent houses which have lately been built of brick and two or three
of stone, after the English fashion, by rich merchants, the houses are
in general of wood, very often mahogany, which is plentiful in this
island. They consist but of a room or two below stairs, with piazzas all
round and a storey above.” Stewart, whose account of the island was
published in 1808, gives much the same account of the domestic houses,
but goes on to say: “As for bridges and other public structures of the
kind, in this part of the world there are few that deserve mention,
except a neat cast-iron bridge imported from Great Britain and some
years ago thrown across the Rio Cobra. There is, indeed, often a marked
deficiency here of public spirit in undertakings of this sort.”
Many of the houses on the sea-coast were, in the eighteenth century,
made defensible with loopholes and fortified by guns, so as to guard
against the attacks in war time of the enemy’s privateers. In other
cases a like precaution was taken against the risings of slaves; houses
in some instances being supplied with towers at the corners, each of
which commanded two sides of the building.
Of direct records of slavery days there are not many prominent relics.
Here and there a punishment cell is found, with indications of the
fixing of shackles; but of stocks and such-like implements no traces
remain. A few examples of branding-irons exist. In this connection it
may be of interest to quote Bryan Edwards’s account of the method
adopted in branding slaves:
“A gentleman of my acquaintance, who had purchased at the same time ten
Koromantyn boys and the like number of Eboes (the eldest of the whole
apparently not more than thirteen years of age) caused them all to be
collected and brought before him in my presence, to be marked on the
breast. This operation is performed by heating a small silver brand
composed of one or two letters, in the flame of spirits of wine, and
applying it to the skin, which is previously anointed with sweet oil.
The application is instantaneous and the pain momentary. Nevertheless,
it may be easily supposed that the apparatus must have a frightful
appearance to a child. Accordingly when the first boy, who happened to
be one of the Eboes, and the stoutest of the whole, was led forward to
receive the mark, he screamed dreadfully, while his companions of the
same nation manifested strong emotions of sympathetic terror. The
gentleman stopt his hand, but the Koromantyn boys, laughing aloud, and,
immediately coming forward of their own accord, offered their bosoms
undauntedly to the brand, and receiving its impression without flinching
in the least, snapt their fingers in exultation over the poor Eboes.”
A branding-iron such as that mentioned above, in the Institute of
Jamaica, is shown in the accompanying illustration. It is 6⅞ inches in
length.
[Illustration:
BRANDING-IRON
]
Doyley’s Council had been elected by the people, and so, in a sense, was
a forerunner of the Assembly. But the first regular Assembly was
summoned by Lyttelton and met at Spanish Town on January 20, 1664, and
from that day until the Assembly of the time resigned its powers to the
Crown on December 21, 1865, the political destiny of the colony is to be
read in the pages of its Journal and its Votes.
The first Assembly chose as its speaker Robert Freeman, who represented
Morant, one of the then twelve districts that returned members.
The troubles which Doyley, the first governor, had had in inducing
adventure-loving soldiers to become planters had given place to a more
settled state of affairs, and when the House rose on February 12, 1664,
it “parted with all kindness and feastings, having passed as good a body
of laws as could be expected from such young statesmen.” But this
peaceful condition was not destined to last. Familiarity with
legislative functions bred contempt for the opinions of others, and
unreasonable demands on the part of these young statesmen were met by
high-handed actions on the part of the Crown.
In his opening speech to the Assembly Carlisle said that the King looked
on Jamaica as “his darling plantation, and has taken more pains to make
this island happy than any other of his colonies.” These kind words
were, however, nullified by the fact that the new governor had brought
with him forty acts which Charles had had drawn up (and to which he had
affixed the great seal of England) in lieu of the acts which the
Assembly had passed under Vaughan, and that he was instructed to get the
House to pass them. This plan had been suggested in a letter written in
England by a Mr. Nevil (who was evidently acquainted with Jamaica) to
Carlisle just before he started to take up his appointment, and had been
adopted because—to quote the words of the Lords of Trade and Plantations
to the King in Council—“of the irregular, violent and unwarrantable
proceedings of the Assembly.”
The virtual point of difference was this, that under the original
constitution the island (through the Governor, Council and Assembly)
made its own laws in accordance with what it conceived to be its needs
and sent them home for approval, they remaining in force for two years
till the royal pleasure was known, while under the new arrangement
(based on Poynings’s Law, or the Statutes of Drogheda, in use in
Ireland), the laws were to be made in England (on the advice of the
Governor and Council), and remitted for the approval of the Assembly.
The style of enactment was altered from the “Governor, Council and
Assembly, etc.” to the “King, by and with the advice, etc. of the
Assembly.”
This proposed change, which had been decided on by the Lords of Trade
and Plantations, in opposition to the advice of Lynch, who knew Jamaica
well—the Assembly resisted with might and main, but though they were in
a very great measure successful, it was not until 1728 that the complete
legislative power for which Jamaica contended was granted.
Lynch, when he returned as governor, was able to tell the people of
Jamaica, “His Majesty, upon the Assembly’s humble address, was pleased
to restore us to our beloved form of making laws, wherein we enjoy
beyond dispute all the deliberative powers in our Assembly that the
House of Commons enjoy in their House.”
In return for the constitution now conceded the Assembly pledged itself
to grant to the King a fixed revenue, which if not perpetual should at
least last for seven years. The quarrel, however, with regard to the
revenue bills lasted up till 1728; the Crown desiring a perpetual
revenue, the Assembly persistently declining to do more than grant bills
for a few years’ duration. The Crown on the other hand declined to
approve many of their laws. In 1728 the Assembly gave way and settled a
permanent revenue in return for the royal confirmation of various acts
of importance to the island and a concession as to their past laws which
they regarded as “the grand charter of their liberties.”
To return for a moment to the early struggles, we find that under the
Duke of Albemarle, a very unwise governor, matters were far from
satisfactory. He dissolved the House suddenly because one of the
members, John Towers, in a debate repeated the old adage _salus populi
suprema lex_, in protesting against the Speaker’s refusal to grant him
permission to attend a race meeting. Albemarle had the offender taken in
custody and fined £600. In his dispatch on the subject he wrote: “The
Assembly have done very little, the major part having made it their
business to wrangle and oppose all things that are for the King’s
service and the good of the country.” The freedom of election was
grossly violated by the duke, who admitted hosts of servants and
discharged seamen to the poll at the election, and actually imprisoned
many legal voters of wealth and consideration. He imposed fines on the
latter to a large amount, and threatened to whip two gentlemen for
requesting a habeas corpus for their friends. In spite of this he had
the effrontery to write home to the Board of Trade and Plantations:
“While the elections were going forward there were unwarrantable
oppositions made in most parishes as well as malicious practices to
prevent fair election!”
His successor, Inchiquin, met with considerable opposition from a
section of the Assembly whose temper had been ruffled by Albemarle’s
arbitrary government, and whom he treated in a somewhat tactless manner.
That they would not do what he wanted he considered “an indignity and
affront to himself and the board.” He finally rejected their address of
congratulation, and “then it was thrown to them with some contempt.”
The franchise established by the law of 1681 for appointing the members
of the Assembly was still in force in 1812: “Freeholders in the same
parish where the election is to be made.” At a by-election in 1804, in
St. Andrew, seventy-nine freeholders voted, forty-six for the successful
candidate.
The House met usually from October to Christmas, the time of the year
when the planters could be absent from their estates with least
inconvenience.
The closing scene in the life of the Assembly was acted on December 21,
1865, around amendments to the “Act to alter and amend the Political
Constitution of the Island,” and especially to that to the second
clause, which ran:
“It shall be lawful for Her Majesty’s Imperial Government to assume
the entire management and control of the affairs of this island, and
by orders in Council or otherwise, as Her Majesty may be advised, to
conduct the affairs of this island as Her Majesty may think fit: and
such orders shall have the effect and force of law.”
The Council’s amendment was as follows:
“It shall be lawful for Her Majesty the Queen to create and constitute
a Government in this island, in such form and with such power as to
Her Majesty shall seem fit, and from time to time to alter and amend
such Government.”
The Legislative Council had adjourned while their amendments to the
Constitution Bill were being discussed by the Assembly, and some of them
were in the House during the discussion. So soon as they saw that the
amendments had passed, they retired and formed a board, which passed the
bill in almost ten minutes after it left the Assembly.
In proroguing the assembly on the following day Governor Eyre said:
“In releasing you from further attendance upon your legislative
duties, I cannot lose sight of the probability that you may never be
called upon to exercise these duties again, under the existing form of
constitution, and that this general sacrifice has been consummated by
yourselves from an earnest and sincere desire, regardless of all
personal considerations, to benefit the colony.
“On behalf of the colony and of the many interests associated with it,
I return you the thanks which are so justly your due. History will
record the heroic act, and I trust that history will show from the
ameliorated state of the country, and a renewed prosperity, that your
noble self devotion has not been in vain.”
In concluding, he said, with reference to the Morant Bay outbreak:
“The session which is now about to terminate has been the most
important that has ever taken place since Jamaica became a dependency
of the British Crown.
“It is impossible to help regretting the necessity which has enforced
the abandonment of institutions so deservedly dear to every British
heart, and which, even in this colony, have remained unchanged for a
period of 200 years; but it is wiser and better, circumstanced as we
are, to give up institutions which are valued rather for the
associations which are connected with them, than for any advantages
which have resulted to the colony from their existence in Jamaica, and
to substitute in their place a perhaps less showy and less
time-honoured form of Government, but which is certainly more
practicable and better suited to the altered circumstances of our
position.
“Well, I think, it is that we have taken warning by the terrible
circumstances which have forced upon us the conviction that a
Government, to be effective, in times of difficulty and danger, must
be a strong and united one; and well will it be if by a voluntary
reconstruction, the community may receive some compensation in future
good government, for the dreadful calamity with which it has just been
afflicted.”
The House took a deep interest from time to time in the barracks for
which they voted funds. In 1702 orders were received from home to build
barracks to receive 3000 men. Handasyd, the Lieutenant-governor, said
that it would cost more than £40,000 “where such buildings are
unreasonably dear” to build such as were built in Ireland, but that
suitable barracks could be built of wood for £3000.
The following account of the state of the forts and barracks in the
island in May 1745, taken from the “Journals of the House of Assembly,”
may be fittingly quoted here.
“Then the House resolved itself into a Committee of the whole House,
upon the report made on Friday last, of the number and condition of
the barracks already built, and of such others as were necessary to be
provided; and the plans laid before the House, and the said report,
being read, is in the words following:
MR. SPEAKER,—Your Committee, appointed to make enquiry into the number
and condition of the barracks already built, and what more shall be
necessary to be provided, have accordingly done the same; and, by the
best information they have been able to get, find to be as follows:
_Port-Morant._ A complete barrack, newly built by the Parish of
St.-Thomas-in-the-East, framed, boarded, and shingled, in good order,
which will contain about sixty men.
_Manchioneal._ A barrack, formerly built by the said parish of
St.-Thomas-in-the-East, which will contain thirty men; the body built
with stone, a framed roof, wants new shingling, and already ordered to
be forthwith done, and to be put in good repair.
_Morant-Bay._ A new barrack now building at the expense of the
aforesaid parish of St.-Thomas-in-the-East for twenty-five men.
_Yallahs Bay._ A large house with proper conveniencies belonging to
Mr. Donaldson, already hired for a barrack, to receive twenty-five
men.
_Cow-Bay._ A barrack for twenty men going to be built, by Mr. Vallete,
in the room of the former barrack destroyed by the hurricane.
_Westmoreland._ A barrack already built, capable of receiving a whole
company, situate at Savanna-la-Mar, as informed by Mr. Hall.
_St. Ann’s._ A barrack now building at St. Ann’s Bay, and is
calculated to be a crutched house, wattled and plastered, and capable
to receive fifty men, as informed by Mr. Whitehorne.