instruction of the negroes, which was sent to him by the ecclesiastical
commissaries at Kingston. It consisted but of two points: against the
first (which recommended the slaves being _ordered_ to go to church on
a Sunday) I positively declared myself. Sunday is now the absolute
property of the negroes for their relaxation, as Saturday is for the
cultivation of their grounds; and I will not suffer a single hour of it
to be taken from them for any purpose whatever. If my slaves choose to
go to church on Sundays, so much the better; but not one of them shall
be _ordered_ to do one earthly thing on Sundays, but that which he
chooses himself. The second article recommended occasional pastoral
visits of the minister to the different estates; and in this respect I
promised to give him every facility--although I greatly doubt any good
effect being produced by a few short visits, at considerable intervals,
on the minds of ignorant creatures, to whom no palpable and immediate
benefit is offered. It appears, indeed, to me, that the only means of
giving the negroes morality and religion must be through the medium of
education, and their being induced to read such books in the minister’s
absence as may recall to their thoughts what they have heard from him;
otherwise, he may talk for an hour, and they will have understood but
little--and remember nothing. There is not a single negro among my whole
three hundred who can read a line; and what I suppose to be wanted
on West-Indian estates is not an importation of missionaries, but of
schoolmasters on Dr. Bell’s plan, if it could by any means be introduced
here with effect. However, in the mean while I told the minister, that
I was perfectly well inclined to have every measure tried that might
enlighten the minds of the negroes, provided it did not interfere with
their own hours of leisure, and were not compulsory. I mentioned to
him a plan for commencing his instructions under the most favourable
auspices, of which he seemed to approve; and he has promised to make
occasional visits on my estate during my absence, which may do good and
can do no harm; and, even should it fail to make the negroes religious,
will, at least, add another humane inspector to my list. Soon after the
minister’s departure, John Fuller came to repair one of the windows. Now
John is in great disgrace with me in one respect. Instead of having a
wife on the estate, he keeps one at the Bay, so that his children will
not belong to me. Phillis, too, who formerly lived with John, says, that
she parted with him, because he threw away all his money upon the Bay
girls; though John asserts that the cause of separation was his catching
the false Phillis coming out of one of the book-keepers’ bedrooms.
However, it is certain, that now his connections are all at the Bay; and
I have assured him, that if he does not provide himself with a wife at
Cornwall, before my return from Kingston, I will put him up to auction,
and call the girls together to bid for him, one offering half a dozen
yams, and another a bit of salt fish; and the highest bidder shall carry
him off as her property. But to-day, as he came into the room just as
the minister left it, I told him that Dr. Pope was coming to give the
negroes some instruction; and that he had left part of a catechism for
him, which he was to get by heart against his next visit. John promised
to study it diligently, and went off to get it read to him by one of the
book-keepers. Several of his companions came to hear it from curiosity,
and the book-keeper read aloud:--
“John Fuller is gone to the Bay, boys,
On the girls to spend his cash;
And when John Fuller comes home, boys,
John Fuller deserves the lash.”
So John went away shaking his head, and saying, “Massa had told him,
that the minister had left that paper to make him a better Christian.
But he was certain that the minister had nothing to do with that, and
that massa had made it all himself about the Bay girls.”
JANUARY 28. (Sunday.)
I shall have enough to do in Jamaica if I accept all the offices that
are pressed upon me. A large body of negroes, from a neighbouring
estate, came over to Cornwall this morning, to complain of hard
treatment, in various ways, from their overseer and drivers, and
requesting me to represent their injuries to their trustee here, and
their proprietor in England. The charges were so strong, that I am
certain that they must be fictitious; however, I listened to their story
with patience; promised that the trustee (whom I was to see in a few
days) should know their complaint;--and they went away apparently
satisfied. Then came a runaway negro, who wanted to return home, and
requested me to write a few lines to his master, to save him from the
lash. He was succeeded by a poor creature named Bessie, who, although
still a young woman, is dispensed with from labour, on account of her
being afflicted with the _cocoa-bay_, one of the most horrible of negro
diseases. It shows itself in large blotches and swellings, and which
generally, by degrees, moulder away the joints of the toes and fingers,
till they rot and drop off; sometimes as much as half a foot will go at
once. As the disease is communicable by contact, the person so afflicted
is necessarily shunned by society; and this poor woman, who is married
to John Fuller, one of the best young men on the estate, and by whom she
has had four children (although they are all dead), has for some time
been obliged to live separated from him, lest he should be destroyed by
contracting the same complaint. She now came to tell me, that she wanted
a blanket, “for that the cold killed her of nights;” cold being that
which negroes dislike most, and from which most of their illnesses
arise. Of course she got her blanket; then she said, that she wanted
medicine for her complaint. “Had not the doctor seen her?”
“Oh, yes! Dr. Goodwin; but the white doctor could do her no good.
She wanted to go to a black doctor, named Ormond, who belonged to
a neighbouring gentleman.” I told her, that if this black doctor
understood her particular disease better than others, certainly she
should go to him; but that if he pretended to cure her by charms or
spells, or any thing but medicine, I should desire his master to
cure the black doctor by giving him the punishment proper for such an
impostor. Upon this Bessie burst into tears, and said “that Ormond was
not an Obeah man, and that she had suffered too much by Obeah men to
wish to have any more to do with them. She had made Adam her enemy by
betraying him, when he had attempted to poison the former attorney; he
had then cursed her, and wished that she might never be hearty again:
and from that very time her complaint had declared itself; and her poor
pickaninies had all died away, one after another; and she was sure that
it was Adam who had done all this mischief by Obeah.” Upon this, I put
myself in a great rage, and asked her “how she could believe that God
would suffer a low wicked fellow like Adam to make good people die,
merely because he wished them dead?”
“She did not know; she knew nothing about God; had never heard of any
such Being, nor of any other world.” I told her, that God was a great
personage, “who lived up yonder above the blue, in a place full of
pleasures and free from pains, where Adam and wicked people could not
come; that her pickaninies were not dead for ever, but were only gone up
to live with God, who was good, and would take care of them for her; and
that if she were good, when she died, she too would go up to God above
the blue, and see all her four pickaninies again.” The idea seemed so
new and so agreeable, to the poor creature, that she clapped her hands
together, and began laughing for joy; so I said to her every thing that
I could imagine likely to remove her prejudice; told her that I should
make it a crime even so much as to mention the word Obeah on the estate;
and that, if any negro from that time forward should be proved to have
accused another of Obeahing him, or of telling another that he had been
Obeahed, he should forfeit his share of the next present of salt-fish,
which I meant soon to distribute among the slaves, and should never
receive any favour from me in future; so I gave Bessie a piece of money,
and she seemed to go away in better spirits than she came.
This Adam, of whom she complained, is a most dangerous fellow, and the
terror of all his companions, with whom he lives in a constant state
of warfare. He is a creole, born on my own property, and has several
sisters, who have obtained their freedom, and are in every respect
creditable and praiseworthy; and to one of whom I consider myself as
particularly indebted, as she was the means of saving poor Richard’s
life, when the tyranny of the overseer had brought him almost to the
brink of the grave. But this brother is in every thing the very reverse
of his sisters: there is no doubt of his having (as Bessie stated)
infused poison into the water-jars through spite against the late
superintendent. It was this same fellow whom Edward suspected of
having put into his brother-in-law’s head the idea of his having been
bewitched; and it was also in his hut that the old Obeah man was found
concealed, whom my attorney seized and transported last year. He is,
unfortunately, clever and plausible; and I am told that the mischief
which he has already done, by working upon the folly and superstition of
his fellows, is incalculable; yet I cannot get rid of him: the law will
not suffer any negro to be shipped off the island, until he shall have
been convicted of felony at the sessions; I cannot sell him, for nobody
would buy him, nor even accept him, if I would offer them so dangerous
a present; if he were to go away, the law would seize him, and bring him
back to me, and I should be obliged to pay heavily for his re-taking
and his maintenance in the workhouse. In short, I know not what I can do
with him, except indeed make a Christian of him! This might induce the
negroes to believe, that he had lost his infernal power by the superior
virtue of the holy water; but, perhaps he may refuse to be christened.
However, I will at least ask him the question; and if he consents, I
will send him--and a couple of dollars--to the clergyman--for he shall
not have so great a distinction as baptism from massa’s own hand--and
see what effect “white Obeah” will have in removing the terrors of this
professor of the black.
As to my sick Obeah patient, Pickle, from the moment of his
reconciliation with his brother-inlaw he began to mend, and has
recovered with wonderful rapidity: the fellow seems _really_ grateful
for the pains which I have taken about him; and our difficulty now is
to prevent his fancying himself too soon able to quit the hospital, so
eager is he to return “to work for massa.”
There are certainly many excellent qualities in the negro character;
their worst faults appear to be, this prejudice respecting Obeah, and
the facility with which they are frequently induced to poison to the
right hand and to the left. A neighbouring gentleman, as I hear, has now
three negroes in prison, all domestics, and one of them grown grey in
his service, for poisoning him with corrosive sublimate; his brother
was actually killed by similar means; yet I am assured that both of them
were reckoned men of great humanity. Another agent, who appears to be in
high favour with the negroes whom he now governs, was obliged to quit an
estate, from the frequent attempts to poison him; and a person against
whom there is no sort of charge alleged for tyranny, after being brought
to the doors of death by a cup of coffee, only escaped a second time by
his civility, in giving the beverage, prepared for himself to two young
book-keepers, to both of whom it proved fatal. It, indeed, came out,
afterwards, that this crime was also effected by the abominable belief
in Obeah: the woman, who mixed the draught, had no idea of its being
poison; but she had received the deleterious ingredients from an Obeah
man, as “a charm to make her massa good to her;” by which the negroes
mean, the compelling a person to give another every thing for which that
other may ask him.
Next to this vile trick of poisoning people (arising, doubtless, in a
great measure, from their total want of religion, and their ignorance
of a future state, which makes them dread no punishment hereafter for
themselves, and look with but little respect on human life in others),
the greatest drawback upon one’s comfort in a Jamaica existence seems to
me to be the being obliged to live perpetually in public. Certainly, if
a man was desirous of leading a life of vice _here_, he must have set
himself totally above shame, for he may depend upon every thing done
by him being seen and known. The houses are absolutely transparent; the
walls are nothing but windows--and all the doors stand wide open. No
servants are in waiting to announce arrivals: visiters, negroes, dogs,
cats, poultry, all walk in and out, and up and down your living-rooms,
without the slightest ceremony.
Even the Temple of Cloacina (which, by the bye, is here very elegantly
spoken of generally as “_The_ Temple,”) is as much latticed and as
pervious to the eye as any other part of my premises; and many a time
has my delicacy been put to the blush by the ill-timed civility of some
old woman or other, who, wandering that way, and happening to cast her
eye to the left, has stopped her course to curtsy very gravely, and pay
me the passing compliment of an “Ah, massa! bless you, massa! how day?”
JANUARY 29.
I find that Bessie’s black doctor is really nothing more than a
professor of medicine as to this particular disease; and I have ordered
her to be sent to him in the mountains immediately. Several gentlemen
of the county dined with me to-day, and when they left me, one of the
carriages contrived to get overturned, and the right shoulder of one of
the gentlemen was dislocated. Luckily, it happened close to the house;
and as the physician who attends my estate had dined with me also, a
boy, on a mule, was despatched after him with all haste. He was soon
with us, the bone was replaced with perfect ease, and this morning the
patient left me with every prospect of finding no bad effects whatever
from his accident.
We had at dinner a land tortoise and a barbecued pig, two of the best
and richest dishes that I ever tasted;--the latter, in particular--which
was dressed in the true maroon fashion, being placed on a barbecue (a
frame of wicker-work, through whose interstices the steam can ascend),
filled with peppers and spices of the highest flavour, wrapt in plantain
leaves, and then buried in a hole filled with hot stones, by whose
vapour it is baked, no particle of the juice being thus suffered to
evaporate. I have eaten several other good Jamaica dishes, but none so
excellent as this, a large portion of which was transferred to the most
infirm patients in the hospital. Perhaps an English physician would have
felt every hair of his wig bristle upon his head with astonishment, at
hearing me ask, this morning, a woman in a fever, how her bark and
her barbe cued pig had agreed with her. But, with negroes, I find that
feeding the sick upon stewed fish and pork, highly seasoned, produces
the very best effects possible.
Some of the fruits here are excellent, such as shaddocks, oranges,
granadelloes, forbidden fruit; and one between an orange and a lemon,
called “the grape or cluster fruit,” appears to me quite delicious. For
the vegetables, I cannot say so much, yams, plantains, cocoa poyers,
yam-poys, bananas, &c. look and taste all so much alike, that I scarcely
know one from the other: they are all something between bread and
potatoes, not so good as either, and I am quite tired of them all. The
Lima Bean is said to be more like a pea than a bean, but whatever it be
like, it appeared to me very indifferent. As to peas themselves, nothing
can be worse. The achie fruit is a kind of vegetable, which generally
is fried in butter; many people, I am told, are fond of it, but I could
find no merit in it. The palm-tree (or abba, as it is called here)
produces a long scarlet or reddish brown cone, which separates into
beads, each of which contains a roasting nut surrounded by a kind of
stringy husk--which, being boiled in salt and water, upon being chewn
has a taste of artichoke, but the consistence is very disagreeable. The
only native vegetable, which I like much, is the ochra, which tastes
like asparagus, though not with quite so delicate a flavour.
As to fish, the variety is endless; but I think it rather consists in
variety of names than of flavour. From this, however, I must except the
Silk-Fish and Mud-Fish, and above all, the Mountain-Mullet, which is
almost the best fish that I ever tasted. All the shell-fish, that I have
met with as yet, have been excellent; the oysters have not come, in
my way, but I am told that they are not only poor and insipid, but
frequently are so poisonous that I had better not venture upon them; and
so ends this chapter of the “Almanach des Gourmands” for Jamaica.
JANUARY 30.
There were above twenty ladies literally at my feet this morning. I went
down to the negro-village to speak to Bessie about going to her black
doctor; and all the refractory females of last week heard of my being
there, and came in a body to promise better conduct for the future, and
implore me not to go away. The sight of my carriage getting ready to
take me to Kingston, and the arrival of post-horses, had alarmed them
with the idea that I was really going to put my threats into execution
of leaving them for ever. They had artfully enough prevailed on the
wife of Clifford (the driver whom Whannica had collared) to be their
spokes-woman; and they begged, and lifted up their folded hands, and
cried, and fell on the ground, and kissed my feet--and, in short, acted
their part so well, that they almost made me act mine to perfection, and
fall to blubbering. I told them, that I certainly should go to Kingston
on Thursday; but if I had good accounts of them during my absence, I
should return in a few days;--if, on the contrary, the idle negroes
continued to refuse to work without compulsion, then, in justice to
the good ones (who last week were obliged to do more than their share),
those punishments, which I had stopped, must be resumed;--but that, as
Cornwall would be unsupportable to me, if I could not live there without
hearing the crack of the abominable cart-whip all day long, I would not
return to it, but ship myself off for England, and never visit them or
Jamaica any more. And then I talked very sternly and positively about
“punishments” and “making bad negroes do their work properly,” and every
third word was the cart-whip, till I almost fancied myself the princess
in the “Fairy Tale,” who never opened her mouth, but out came two toads
and three couple of serpents. However, to sweeten my oration a little at
the end, I told them, that, “having enquired closely into the characters
of the present book-keepers, I had found no charge against any of them
except one, who was accused of having occasionally struck a negro, of
using bad language to them, and of being a hasty passionate man, though
in other respects very serviceable to the estate. But although these
faults were but trifling, and some of them not proved, so determined
was I to show that I would suffer no white person on the estate who
maltreated the negroes, either by word or deed, that I had determined to
make an example of him for the warning of the rest; and accordingly had
dismissed him this morning.”
The man in question (by his own account) had made himself obnoxious to
them; and on hearing of his discharge, they, one and all, sprawled upon
the ground in such a rapture of joy and gratitude, that now I may safely
say with Sir Andrew Aguecheek, “I was adored once!”
The book-keeper had denied positively the charge of striking the
negroes, and ascribed it to the revenge of the Eboe Edward, whom he had
detected in cutting out part of a boiling-house window, in order that he
might pass out stolen sugar unperceived; for, to do the negroes justice,
it is a doubt whether they are the greatest thieves or liars, and the
quantity of sugar which they purloin during the crop, and dispose of at
the Bay for a mere trifle, is enormous. However, whether the charge
of striking were true or not, it was sufficiently proved that this
book-keeper was a passionate man, and he said himself, “that the negroes
had conceived a spite against him,” which alone were reasons enough for
removing him. Indeed, I had the less scruple from the slight nature of
his offence making it easy for him to find another situation; and I
have besides desired him to stay out his quarter on the estate, and
then receive a double salary on going away, which will free him from any
charge of having been dismissed disgracefully.
JANUARY 31.
I went to enquire after my petitioners Juliet and Delia, and had the
satisfaction to find that the trustee had enquired into their complaint;
and, as it appeared not to be entirely unfounded, he had done every
thing that was right and necessary. Aberdeen, too, the runaway cooper,
who had applied to me to obtain his pardon, had been suffered to return
to his work unpunished; and as it had been found that his flight had in
a great measure been occasioned by his being in a bad state of health,
which rendered him apprehensive of being put to labour beyond his
strength, he had been permitted to select his own occupation, which,
of course, was the easiest one in his trade. But I found it a more
difficult matter to ascertain the truth or falsehood of the charges
brought to me on Sunday last: the books positively contradicted them,
but the register might have been falsely kept; and as the negroes
persisted most positively in their complaint against the overseer
(particularly as to his having curtailed them of the legal allowance of
time for their meals, and the cultivation of their own grounds) with the
concurrence of the trustee, I wrote to the magistrates of the county,
desiring that they would summon the negroes in question before a
council of protection, and examine into the injuries of which they had
complained to me.
FEBRUARY 1. (Thursday.)
I left Cornwall for Spanish Town at six in the morning, accompanied by
a young naval officer, the son of my next neighbour, Mr. Hill of Amity,
who not only was good enough to lend me a kittereen, with a canopy, to
perform my journey, but his son to be my _cicerone_ on my tour. The
road wound through mountain passes, or else on a shelf of rock so
narrow--though without the slightest danger--that one of the wheels was
frequently in the sea, while my other side was fenced by a line of bold
broken cliffs, clothed with trees completely from their brows down to
the very edge of the water. Between eight and nine we reached a solitary
tavern, called Blue-fields, where the horses rested for a couple of
hours. It had a very pretty garden on the sea-shore, which contained
a picturesque cottage, exactly resembling an ornamental Hermitage; and
leaning against one of the pillars of its porch we found a young girl,
who exactly answered George Colman’s description of Yarico, “quite
brown, but extremely genteel, like a Wedgewood teapot.” She told us that
she was a Spanish creole, who had fled with her mother from the disputes
between the royalists and independents in the island of Old Providence;
and the owner of the tavern being a relation of her mother, he had
permitted the fugitives to establish themselves in his garden-cottage,
till the troubles of their own country should be over. She talked
perfectly good English, for she said that there were many of that nation
established in Providence. Her name was Antonietta. Her figure was light
and elegant; her black eyes mild and bright; her countenance intelligent
and good-humoured; and her teeth beautiful to perfection: altogether,
Antonietta was by far the handsomest creole that I have ever seen.
From Blue-fields we proceeded at once to Lakovia (a small village), a
stage of thirty miles. Here we found a relay of horses, which conveyed
us by seven o’clock to “the Gutturs;” a house belonging to the
proprietor of the post-horses, and which is situated at the very foot of
the tremendous May-day Mountains. The house is an excellent one, and we
found good beds, eatables, and, in short, every thing that travellers
could wish. The distance from Lakovia to “the Gutturs” is sixteen miles.
FEBRUARY 2.
Yesterday the only very striking point of view (although the whole of
the road was picturesque) was “the Cove,” situated between Blue-fields
and Lakovia, and which resembled the most beautiful of the views of
coves to be found in “Cook’s Voyages,” but our journey to-day was a
succession of beautiful scenes, from beginning to end. Instantly on
leaving “the Gutturs,” we began to ascend the May-day Mountains, and it
was not till after travelling for five and twenty miles, that we found
ourselves at the foot of them on the other side, at a place called
Williamsfield, about twelve miles from the toll-house, where we rested
for the night. To be sure, the road was so rough, that it was enough to
make one envy the Mahometan women, who, having no souls at all, could
not possibly have them jolted out of their bodies; but the beauty of the
scenery amply rewarded us for our bruised sides and battered backs. The
road was, for the most part, bounded by lofty rocks on one side, and
a deep precipice on the other, and bordered with a profusion of noble
trees and flowering shrubs in great variety. In particular, I was struck
with the picturesque appearance of some wild fig-trees of singular size
and beauty. Although there were only two of us, besides servants, we
found it necessary to employ seven horses and a couple of mules; and, as
our cavalcade wound along through the mountains, the Spanish look of our
sumpter-mules, and of our kittereens (which are precisely the vehicle in
which Gil Bias is always represented when travelling with Scipio towards
Lirias) gave us quite the appearance of a caravan; nor should I have
been greatly surprised to see a trap-door open in the middle of the
road, and Captain Rolando’s whiskers make their appearance. Every one
spoke to me with contempt of this south road, in respect of beauty,
when compared with the north; however, it certainly seemed to me more
beautiful than any road which I have ever travelled as yet.
FEBRUARY 3.