October 30, 1789, was the son of Allan Scott, a Glasgow merchant and
owner of a small estate at Cowlairs. After being educated at the high
school and the university of Glasgow, he came in 1806 to Jamaica to
manage several estates. Four years later he entered in Kingston a
business the nature of which compelled him to travel frequently both by
sea and road. He visited the neighbouring islands, especially Cuba and
the Spanish Main, and the experiences of tropical scenery and nautical
life thus gained formed the basis of his “Log.” In 1817 he returned to
Scotland, and in the following year he married Margaret, daughter of
Robert Bogle, of Gilmore Hill, a merchant in Glasgow. He returned to
Jamaica immediately afterwards, but left the island finally in 1822,
and, settling in Glasgow, became a partner in his father-in-law’s firm,
Bogle, Harris and Co., of Glasgow, and Bogle, Douglas and Co., of
Maracaybo. He died in Glasgow on November 7, 1835. It was in 1829, we
learn from Mowbray Morris’s introduction to the edition of 1895, that
the “Log” began to make its appearance in “Blackwood’s Magazine” as a
disconnected series of sketches, published intermittently as the author
supplied them, or as the editor found it convenient to print them.
Blackwood, while keenly alive to their value, was urgent, we are told,
with the author to give these sketches some connecting link, which,
without binding him to the strict rules of narrative composition, would
add a strain of personal and continuous interest to the movement of the
story. The young midshipman accordingly began to cut a more conspicuous
figure; and in July 1832 the title of “Tom Cringle’s Log” was prefixed
to what is now the eighth but was then called the eleventh chapter.
Henceforward the “Log” proceeded regularly each month, with but one
intermission, to its conclusion in August 1833; and in that year it
appeared in volume form in Philadelphia, in what was probably an
unauthorised edition. Mowbray Morris gives 1834 as the year of its first
appearance as a book; the “Dictionary of National Biography” says 1836;
Allibone gives 1833. Both the “Log” and its successor, “The Cruise of
the Midge,” were highly praised at the time, and Coleridge, in his
“Table Talk,” called them “most excellent.” Scott so successfully
concealed his identity that he was dead before his authorship of “Tom
Cringle” was known. It was attributed to Captain Chamier, to Captain
Marryat, and to Professor Wilson, to whom it was ascribed in a German
edition published at Brunswick in 1839. From internal evidence it is
clear that the events in this story synchronise, if they are not
identical, with Scott’s own travels.
Anthony Trollope, who visited Jamaica in 1859, tells us, in his “West
Indies and the Spanish Main,” that “Nothing can be grander, either in
colour or grouping, than the ravines of the Blue Mountain ranges of
hills. Perhaps the finest view in the island is from Raymond Lodge
[_sic_], a house high up among the mountains, in which, so local rumour
says, ‘Tom Cringle’s Log’ was written.” Trollope misrepresented the case
and misled later writers when he used the expression “so local rumour
says,” for he heard the story from the then owner of Raymond Hall,
Captain Hinton East, as Captain East’s daughter, the late Mrs.
Marescaux, one of the two ladies whom Trollope mentions as accompanying
him on his ride to Newcastle, well remembered, and told the present
writer.
Mowbray Morris says that “the tradition seems to have died away before
Froude’s visit,” but the reason why the historian did not mention it is
probably because he never heard it. =Raymond Hall= is the great house on
Maryland coffee estate. Situated in the Blue Mountains at an altitude of
about 3000 feet, some eleven miles from Kingston, it has been in the
possession of the East family for upwards of 200 years. When Scott was
here it was in the possession of Sir Edward Hyde East. In the returns of
properties given in the “Jamaica Almanac” for 1840, Maryland is recorded
as being 1265 acres in extent. In 1845 it had increased to 1700.
Mr. Hamilton, the original Aaron Bang in the “Log,” was, at the time
when Michael Scott was in Jamaica, planting-attorney to Sir Edward Hyde
East for Maryland; he resided at times at Kingston, at Raymond Hall, and
in St. Thomas-in-the-Vale. At all three places his friend Scott was wont
to stay with him. Hamilton was known among his friends as (Aaron) Bang
from his fondness for practising with firearms, and until the hurricane
of 1886 there stood in front of Raymond Hall a cabbage palm, the stem of
which was riddled with shot, it is said, from Hamilton’s gun. Under this
tree Scott wrote his studies of Jamaica life and scenery. So Captain
East, who came out in 1836, only fourteen years after Scott had left,
was informed.
An orange tree under which Scott, as he relates in his “Log,” made love
to his cousin Maria, stood till quite recently at the back of the house.
Mrs. Marescaux remembered the old estate carpenter, Stackpole by name,
who was wont to show where Scott wrote, and where Hamilton fired at the
cabbage palm from an old sofa which the writer saw resting in the same
corner at Raymond Hall. The house was much shaken by the earthquake of
1907.
The following is Scott’s description of the house and its view:
“The beautiful cottage where we were sojourning was situated about
3000 feet above the level of the sea, and half-way up the great prong
of the Blue Mountains, known by the name of the Liguanea range, which
rises behind and overhangs the city of Kingston.... Immediately under
foot rose several lower ranges of mountains—those nearest us, covered
with laurel-looking coffee-bushes, interspersed with negro villages
hanging among the fruit trees like clusters of birds’ nests on the
hill-side, with a bright green patch of plantain suckers here and
there, and a white-painted overseer’s house peeping from out the wood,
and herds of cattle in the guinea-grass pieces. Beyond these stretched
out the lovely plain of Liguanea covered with luxuriant cane-pieces,
and groups of negro houses, and guinea-grass pastures of even a deeper
green than that of the canes; and smaller towns of sugar works rose
every here and there, with their threads of white smoke floating up
into the clear sky, while, as the plain receded the cultivation
disappeared, and it gradually became sterile, hot and sandy, until the
Long Mountain hove its back like a whale from out the sealike level of
the plain; while to the right of it appeared the city of Kingston,
like a model, with its parade, or _place d’armes_, in the centre, from
which its long lines of hot, sandy streets stretched out at right
angles, with the military post of Up-Park Camp, situated about a mile
and a half to the northward and eastward of the town. Through a
tolerably good glass the church spire looked like a needle, the trees
about the houses like bushes, the tall cocoanut trees like harebells;
a slow crawling black speck here and there denoted a carriage moving
along, while waggons with their teams of eighteen and twenty oxen
looked like so many centipedes. At the camp, the two regiments drawn
out on parade, with two nine-pounders on each flank, and their
attendant gunners, looked like a red sparkling line, with two black
spots at each end, surrounded by small black dots.”
Michael Scott is now chiefly remembered in connection with a cotton tree
at Camp by the barracks, and one on the Spanish Town road, half-way from
Kingston.
The following is the passage from “Tom Cringle’s Log” which has made the
cotton tree at =Up-Park Camp= famous:
“I had occasion at this time to visit Up-Park Camp, a military post
about a mile and a half from Kingston, where two regiments of infantry
and a detachment of artillery were stationed.
“In the forenoon I walked out in company with an officer, a relation
of my own, whom I had gone to visit; enjoying the fresh sea-breeze
that whistled past us in half a gale of wind, although the sun was
vertical, and shining into the bottom of a pint-pot, as the sailors
have it.
“The barracks were built on what appeared to me a very dry situation
(although I have since heard it alleged that there was a swamp to
windward of it, over which the sea-breeze blew, but this I did not
see), considerably elevated above the hot, sandy plain on which
Kingston stands, and sloping gently towards the sea. They were
splendid, large, airy, two-storey buildings, well raised off the
ground on brick pillars, so that there was a perfectly free
ventilation of air between the surface of the earth and the floor of
the first storey, as well as through the whole of the upper rooms....
“This superb establishment stood in an extensive lawn, not surpassed
in beauty by any nobleman’s park that I had ever seen. It was
immediately after the rains when I visited it; the grass was luxuriant
and newly cut, and the trees, which grew in detached clumps, were most
magnificent. We clambered up into one of them, a large umbrageous wild
cotton tree, which cast a shadow on the ground—the sun being, as
already mentioned, right overhead—of thirty paces in diameter; but
still it was but a dwarfish plant of its kind, for I have measured
others whose gigantic shadows, at the same hour, were upwards of one
hundred and fifty feet in diameter, and their trunks, one in
particular that overhangs the Spanish Town Road, twenty feet through
of _solid_ timber; that is not including the enormous spurs that shoot
out like buttresses, and end in strong twisted roots that strike deep
into the earth and form stays, as it were, to the tree in all
directions.
Our object, however—publish it not in Askalon—was not so much to
admire the charms of Nature as to enjoy the luxury of a real Havannah
cigar in solitary comfort; and a glorious perch we had selected. The
shade was grateful beyond measure. The fresh breeze was rushing,
almost roaring, through the leaves and groaning branches, and
everything around was green, and fragrant, and cool, and delicious—by
comparison, that is, for the thermometer would, I daresay, have still
vouched for eighty degrees. The branches overhead were alive with a
variety of beautiful lizards and birds of the gayest plumage; amongst
others, a score of small chattering green paroquets were hopping close
to us, and playing at bo-peep from the lower surfaces of the leaves of
the wild pine (a sort of Brobdignag parasite that grows like the
mistletoe in the clefts of the large trees), to which they clung, as
green and shining as the leaves themselves, and ever and anon popping
their little heads over to peer at us; while the red-breasted
woodpecker kept drumming on every hollow part of the bark for all the
world like old Kelson, the carpenter of the _Torch_, tapping along the
top-sides for the dry rot. All around us the men were lounging about
in the shade and sprawling on the grass in their foraging caps and
light jackets, with an officer here and there lying reading, or
sauntering. about, bearding Phœbus himself, to watch for a shot at a
swallow as it skimmed past; while goats and horses, sheep and cattle
were browsing the fresh grass, or sheltering themselves from the heat
beneath the trees....
“At length the forenoon wore away, and the bugles sounded for dinner,
when we adjourned to the mess-room.”
Up-Park Pen, on which Up-Park Camp now stands, was conveyed to King by
the trustees of Sir Alexander Grant in 1784. In 1793 the Assembly
deducted lodging allowance previously made to the army because of the
new barracks at Up-Park. In 1819 the Assembly in response to a request
for a water-supply resolved that it “does not feel justified in making
an extraordinary grant for the troops at Up-Park, a post entirely under
the control of the British Government.” In the following year Wolmer’s
Pen adjoining was purchased by the Treasury as it had a well. In that
year the officer commanding asked for six mules to carry water; but the
House was obdurate, “the barracks at Up-Park not being under the control
of the House.” For a similar reason Up-Park was not included in the
official list of “Forts, Fortifications and Public Buildings” for many
years. The history of the West India regiment, closely associated with
Up-Park Camp, is extremely interesting. It dates back to the American
War of Independence when a British expedition from New York captured the
State of Georgia. As a result, black and white loyalists flocked to the
British camp where they were formed into corps of which the South
Carolina was one. This regiment took an active part in the war, and in
1780 was converted into a cavalry regiment which at the close of the war
was stationed in Jamaica under the command of Lord Charles Montagu.
The regiment at this period consisted of both black and white soldiers,
and on the general disbandment of provincial corps in 1783, the white
members were compensated with grants of land, and the black formed into
a foot regiment in combination with black mechanics, under the name of
the “Black Carolina Corps.” War broke out with France in 1793 and at
that time various black corps were formed in the West Indies, all of
which took an active part in the fierce fighting that took place during
the succeeding years in those islands. With one of these corps, the
Royal Rangers, the South Carolina Regiment was amalgamated in 1795 under
the title of “Whyte’s Regiment of Foot.” In the West Indies, however,
these regiments were called the West India Regiments, “Whyte’s Regiment
of Foot” receiving the title of “The First West India Regiment.”
This regiment, which is now the only British black regiment surviving,
has a magnificent record. It took part in the Ashantee wars of 1864 and
1873–74 and was especially complimented by Sir Garnet Wolseley on its
behaviour; and in all punitive and other expeditions associated with
African colonisation, its members have maintained its reputation for
soldierly qualities of the highest order. It is interesting to note that
in 1815 the regiment was strengthened by the Bourbon regiment of French
_emigrés_ which had been disbanded at the outbreak of the French
Revolution. The present Zouave uniform of the corps was adopted in 1858
at the suggestion of Queen Victoria.
The first reference to a West India regiment in the Jamaica Almanacs is
in 1802, when the second is recorded, and so continues to 1809; then
till 1813 the fifth is recorded: in that and the following years the
second and seventh were also at Up-Park. Then the second occurs down to
1842, being accompanied by the third in 1841 and 1842. A new chapel
erected to replace the one destroyed by the earthquake was consecrated
in May 1912, and in 1915 four windows were put in to replace those (lost
with the old chapel) which had been erected to the memory of officers
and men of the 2nd W.I.R. who fell in the Ashantee war of 1873–74.
=Plum-Tree Tavern=, which stands on the junction road between Kingston
and Annotto Bay, and seven miles distant from the former, is of interest
as having been the scene of one of the last duels fought in Jamaica.
The late Dr. Cargill, in his article entitled “A few Words about ‘The
Captain’s Story’” in “The Journal of the Institute of Jamaica” for July
1896, says: “A very amusing duel (almost the last fought in Jamaica)
took place near ‘Running Water’ [Constant Spring Estate], and was
omitted from the ‘Captain’s Story’ by request of the parties concerned.
As they are all dead and gone there is no reason why it should not now
be related. My uncle, Dr. John Marston and a Captain Peel, R.N., went to
a party and were requested to sing. Captain Peel sang _first_, and then
Dr. Marston was asked to sing the same song that Captain Peel sang, but
got more applause. Peel conceived himself insulted and called out
Marston. They fought at ‘Plum Tree.’ I have the pistols, Wagdon and
Barton’s hair-triggers. They fired and missed, but Marston’s shot hit a
tree and glanced off on to the forehead of a Mr. Berry (a book-keeper)
who had hidden in the bush to see the fight. Dr. Marston had to leave
the battlefield to attend to Berry, who was supposed to be killed. In
the meantime ‘Mrs. Jasper’ (my mother) heard of the duel and came down
to Plum Tree and prevented further hostility. Mr. Berry only died a few
years ago. He had the mark of Dr. Marston’s bullet in the space between
the eyes. I have often seen the wound, which had broken the outer table
of the bone there.”
Unfortunately old Plum-Tree Tavern was wrecked by the hurricane of 1903,
and little more than the lower walls now remain to bear witness to
old-time life in Jamaica.
A fort on Bridge Pen (formerly Berthaville) and, at the foot of the Long
Mountain, now a ruin, was probably erected as a protection against
rebellious slaves marching on Kingston.
At =Garden House=, Gordon Town, Hinton East (receiver-general of the
Island, 1779) gathered together a collection of rare and valuable plants
which were purchased by the Government in 1792–3, as is mentioned in the
Introduction. The house of =Hope Tavern= was destroyed by the earthquake
of 1907; the foundations still stand above the Hope river just beyond
Papine on the way towards Gordon Town. In the old days it was the place
where travellers to the Port Royal Mountains and the Blue Mountains
exchanged buggies for saddles. =Cherry Garden= was once the residence of
George William Gordon, who will be found mentioned elsewhere.
The estate at =Hope=, now a botanical garden, formerly belonged to the
Duke of Buckingham. In “Notes in Defence of the Colonies,” by a West
Indian, 1826, we read:
A decrease is not from premature mortality arising from slavery, for
slaves live to great ages in Jamaica: eighty and one hundred years old
are as common on estates as in any country of the same latitude, or
more so; and I saw a few years ago a negro from the Hope Estate in St.
Andrew’s, belonging to the Marquis of Buckingham, one hundred and
forty-five years old. He had walked seven miles that morning, and his
faculties were perfect, except his sight. Admiral Douglas had a
painting taken of him, by Field[8] of the Royal Academy, who was out
here, which I saw.
Footnote 8:
There was never a member of the Royal Academy of this name. The
painter referred to was probably R. Field of Halifax, Nova Scotia, who
exhibited a portrait in 1810.
The =Jamaica College= at Hope, which was established under law 34 of
1879 as the Jamaica High School, became the inheritor of the Walton
foundation in St. Ann of the year 1802, which may therefore be taken as
the date of its foundation. A college, called University College, was
opened in connection with the school in 1890, but by law 26 of 1902 the
college and school were amalgamated. During its existence thirty
students passed through the college, and four students took the London
B.A. degree, and one the M.A., without leaving the island. Amongst its
alumni are several well-known teachers now working in Jamaica.
At Matilda Corner, near Hope, is a Drinking Trough, erected in 1914 by
his widow to the memory of Sir Charles Frederick Lumb, puisne judge of
the colony from 1892 to 1909, showed a keen interest in the welfare of
animals.
The =Mico College= was erected in 1896 on land in St. Andrew to the
north of the racecourse. This building was wrecked by the earthquake,
rebuilt in 1909, and again destroyed by fire in 1910: it was rebuilt as
it now stands in 1911. The origin of the charity is of some historic
interest.
Jane Robinson, widow of Sir Samuel Mico, an alderman of the city of
London, of the family of Micault of the Isle de France, amongst numerous
other bequests in her will, dated July 1, 1670, made the following:
“And whereas I haveing a great kindness for Samuel Mico, my deere
husbande kinsman son of John Mico of Croscombe in the county of
Somersett and well knoweing that my deere husband with myself had
thought of marrying him to one of my neeces and when and as sune as he
shall marrey such nece of mine viz: one of the daughters of my
brother-in-law Andrew Barker or my brother William Robinson
aforemencioned then and not before or otherwise, I give and bequeath
to him two thousand pounds lawful money of England, and on the
forementioned condition I give and bequeath to him a farm called the
Littell Parke which I bought or purchashed in the names of my brother
Andrew Barker and my brother William Robinson of the Right Honourable
the Marquis of Worcester in the manner (_sic_) of Crookham scituate
lyeing and being in the severall parishes of Chatcham in the countey
of Barke and Kingscleare in the countey of Southampton now in the
tenor or occupation of Thomas Browne and when the aforesaid Samuel
Mico shall have given a full discharge according to law when he comes
to one and twenty years of age to the executors of my deere husband
for his estate in thare hands then I give him one thousand pounds of
lawful money of England and if hee doe not to thare satisfaction I
then give it to redeeme poor slaves in what manner my Executors shall
think most convenient and I give to Samuel Mico aforesaid my deere
husband’s picter set with diamonds and I give him my crimson damaske
bedd with all that belongs to that sute and my great Lucking Glace and
my marbell tabell when he comes to the age of one and twenty yeares he
dying before that age I give them to my two Executors.
“But if the above Samuel Mico do not marry one of my neces aforesaid
my will is if he be a civel man and doe marrey into a good family and
has a porchone with her answereable to his estate and has a sonne that
lives to the age of a man I then give him the Littell Parke in the
manner of Crookham in the parish Chactham in the County of Barkes and
Kingscleare in the county of Southampton. But if he have no sonne I
give it to his brother Richard Mico sonne if hee have any if he have
no sonne then to my two executors I give it.”
After further bequests she turns to her nephew.
“And furthermore I doe hereby declare that whereas I gave Samuel Mico
aforesaid two thousand pounds when he had married one of my neeces he
not performing it I give one of the saide thousand pounds to redeem
poore slaves which I would have put out as my Executors thinke the
best for a yeerely revenue to redeem some yeerely, and if the
aforesaide Samuel Mico marry one of my neeces I then give him my best
Pearl Necklace and all my plate that I doe not give away by this my
will.”
Samuel Mico was by the terms of his aunt’s will given the option of
marrying any one of the six nieces of Lady Mico-Jane, Mary and Elizabeth
Robinson, and Jane, Mary and Elizabeth Barker; the Jane in each case
being apparently the most desirable bride from a monetary point of view
as being god-daughter of his rich aunt: and of these Jane Barker was the
favourite, unless Lady Mico in her bequest took into account the
respective wealth of the two families, for there is evidence in Lady
Mico’s will that Jane Barker’s father was not opulent. Apparently not
one of the six pleased him; nor could he be induced to change his mind
by the promise of his aunt’s best pearl necklace and the unbequeathed
portion of her plate. Thus the £1000 went to the redemption of “poore
slaves,” _i.e._ Christians held in captivity by the Moors of Algiers, in
aid of whose release benevolent persons were at that time wont to make
bequests.
In the seventeenth century pirates, mostly from Algiers, swarmed along
the coasts of the Mediterranean sea, and numberless captives were taken
as slaves and detained as such in Algiers and Barbary.
During the latter part of the eighteenth and the earlier part of the
nineteenth century both France and England had done much to put a stop
to piracy in the Mediterranean, and when in 1816 Algiers was taken by
Pellew and the slaves, some three thousand in number, mostly Spanish and
Italian, were liberated, there no longer existed an outlet for the
special benevolence on their behalf of Lady Mico and other
philanthropists.
In the year 1827 the Court of Chancery referred the matter of the Mico
bequest for the redemption of poor slaves to Lord Henley, Master in
Chancery, to devise a scheme for the application of the money according
to the will of the foundress; and if the Master should find that the
same could not be executed according to her will, then “as near its
intent as possible,” regard being had to existing circumstances.
In the meantime Lady Mico’s £1000 had increased—partly by the
re-investment of the unused income, partly by the realisation of a
material profit on an investment in London property—to upwards of
£120,000, giving a yearly income of £3625, and nobody knew what to do
with it; but a matter very “near its intent” was already before the
public.
While the name of William Wilberforce in England will ever be honoured
as the prime mover in the abolition of the curse of the Slave Trade, the
completion of his life’s work by the abolition of slavery in the British
colonies proved too heavy for his age-enfeebled shoulders. This great
undertaking he consigned in 1821 to the care of an earnest colleague,
Thomas Fowell Buxton; and it was under this younger champion’s
leadership of the forces of Emancipation and through his indefatigable
efforts that the inevitable day was hastened, when, in Jamaica, the flag
of Great Britain floated—as in every portion of the far-extended British
dominions—over none but freemen.
The Emancipation Act came into force on August 1, 1834, and on July 29
of the following year the Master of the Rolls made an order confirming
the scheme prepared by Buxton and Stephen Lushington, by which the Lady
Mico Charity was founded, for giving Christian education to the coloured
population of the British colonies. It was eminently fitting that to
Buxton and Lushington, with others of kindred spirit, should be trusted
the administration of the fund to confer the blessings of education upon
the freed people of the British West Indies.
The institution in Jamaica, where the trustees have finally concentrated
their efforts, was at first locally looked after by a board of visitors.
This in 1882 was replaced by a board of directors. Each year some
twenty-four students leave its walls to take up the work of education.