the Dry River, twelve more landed us at Spanish Town, otherwise called
St. Jago de la Vega, and the seat of government in Jamaica, although
Kingston is much larger and more populous, and must be considered as
the principal town. We found very clean and comfortable lodgings at Miss
Cole’s. Spanish Town has no recommendations whatever; the houses are
mostly built of wood: the streets are very irregular and narrow; every
alternate building is in a ruinous state, and the whole place wears
an air of gloom and melancholy. The government house is a large
clumsy-looking brick building, with a portico the stucco of which
has suffered by the weather, and it can advance no pretensions to
architectural beauty. On one side of the square in which it stands there
is a small temple protecting a statue of Lord Rodney, executed by Bacon:
some of the bas-reliefs on the pedestal appeared to me very good;
but the old admiral is most absurdly dressed in the habit of a Roman
General, and furnished out with buskins and a truncheon. The temple
itself is quite in opposition to good taste, with very low arches,
surmounted by heavy bas reliefs out of all proportion.
FEBRUARY 4. (Sunday.)
We breakfasted with the Chief Justice, who is my relation, and of my
own name, and then went to the church, which is a very handsome one; the
walls lined with fine mahogany, and ornamented with many monuments of
white marble, in memory of the former governors and other principal
inhabitants. It seems that my ancestors, on both sides, have always had
a taste for being well lodged after their decease; for, on admiring one
of these tombs, it proved to be that of my maternal grandfather; but
still this was not to be compared for a moment with my mausoleum at
Cornwall. After church I went home with the Rector, who is one of
the ecclesiastical commissaries, and had a long conversation with him
respecting a plan which is in agitation for giving the negroes something
of a religious education. We afterwards dined with the member for
Westmoreland; and as every body in Jamaica is on foot by six in the
morning, at ten in the evening we were quite ready to go to bed.
FEBRUARY 5.
The Chief Justice went with me to Kingston, where I had appointed the
agent for my other estate in St. Thomas-in-the-East to meet me. The
short time allotted for my stay in the island makes it impossible to
attend properly both to this estate and to Cornwall at this first visit,
and therefore I determined to confine my attention to the negroes on
the latter estate till my return to Jamaica. I now contented myself by
impressing on the mind of my agent (whom I am certain of being a most
humane and intelligent man) my extreme anxiety for the abolition of the
cart-whip; and I had the satisfaction of hearing from him, that for a
long time it had never been used more than perhaps twice in the year,
and then only very slightly, and for some offence so flagrant that it
was impossible to pass it over; and he assured me, that whenever I visit
Hordley, I may depend upon its not being employed at all. On the other
hand, I am told that a gentleman of the parish of Vere, who came over
to Jamaica for the sole purpose of ameliorating the condition of his
negroes, after abolishing the cart-whip, has at length been constrained
to resume the occasional use of it, because he found it utterly
impossible to keep them in any sort of subordination without it.
There is not that air of melancholy about Kingston which pervades
Spanish Town; but it has no pretensions to beauty; and if any person
will imagine a large town entirely composed of booths at a race-course,
and the streets merely roads, without any sort of paving, he will have,
a perfect idea of Kingston.
FEBRUARY 6.
The Jamaica canoes are hollowed cotton-trees. We embarked in one of them
at six in the morning, and visited the ruins of Port Royal, which, last
year, was destroyed by fire: some of the houses were rebuilding; but
it was a melancholy sight, not only from the look of the half-burnt
buildings, but the dejected countenances of the ruined inhabitants.
I returned to breakfast at the rectory, with two other ecclesiastical
commissaries; had more conversation about their proposed plan; and
became still more convinced of the difficulty of doing any thing
effectual without danger to the island and to the negroes themselves,
and of the extreme delicacy requisite in whatever may be attempted.
We afterwards visited the school of the children of the poor, who are
educating upon Dr. Bell’s system; and then saw the church, a very large
and handsome one on the inside, but mean enough as to its exterior. I
was shown the tombstone of Admiral Benbow, who was killed in a naval
engagement, and whose ship afterwards
“Bore down to Port Royal, where the people flocked very
much
To see brave Admiral Benbow laid in Kingston Town
Church,”
as the admiral’s Homer informs us.
The church is a large one, but it is going to be still further extended;
the negroes in Kingston and its neighbourhood being (as the rector
assured me) so anxious to obtain religious instruction, that on Sundays
not only the church but the churchyard is so completely thronged with
them, as to make it difficult to traverse the crowd; and those who are
fortunate enough to obtain seats for the morning service, through fear
of being excluded from that of the evening, never stir out of the church
during the whole day. They also flock to be baptized in great numbers,
and many have lately come to be married; and their burials and
christenings are performed with great pomp and solemnity.
One of the most intelligent of the negroes with whom I have yet
conversed, was the coxswain of my Port Royal canoe. I asked him whether
he had been christened? He answered, no; he did not yet think himself
good enough, but he hoped to be so in time. Nor was he married; for he
was still young, and afraid that he could not break off his bad habits,
and be contented to live with no other woman than his wife; and so he
thought it better not to become a Christian till he could feel certain
of performing the duties of it. However, he said, he had at least cured
himself of one bad custom, and never worked upon Sundays, except on some
very urgent necessity. I asked what he did on Sundays instead: did he go
to church?--No. Or employ himself in learning to read?--Oh, no; though
he thought being able to read _was a great virtue_; (which was his
constant expression for any thing right, pleasant, or profitable;) but
he had no leisure to learn, no week days, and as he had heard the parson
say that Sunday ought to be a day of rest, he made a point of doing
nothing at all on that day. He praised his former master, of whose son
he was now the property, and said that neither of them had ever occasion
to lay a finger on him. He worked as a waterman, and paid his master ten
shillings a week, the rest of his earnings being his own profit; and
when he owed wages for three months, if he brought two his master would
always give him time for the remainder, and that in so kind a manner,
that he always fretted himself to think that so kind a master should
wait for his rights, and worked twice as hard till the debt was
discharged. He said that kindness was the only way to make good negroes,
and that, if _that_ failed, flogging would never succeed; and he advised
me, when I found my negro worthless, “to sell him at once, and not stay
to flog him, and so, by spoiling his appearance, make him sell for less;
for blacks must not be treated now, massa, as they used to be; they can
think, and hear, and see, as well as white people: blacks are wiser,
massa, than they were, and will soon be still wiser.” I thought the
fellow himself was a good proof of his assertion.
I left Kingston at two o’clock, in defiance of a broiling sun; reached
Spanish Town in time to dine with the Attorney-General; and went
afterwards to the play, where I found my acquaintance Mr. Hill of Covent
Garden theatre performing Lord William in “The Haunted Tower,” and Don
Juan in the pantomime which followed. The theatre is neat enough, but, I
am told, very inferior in splendour to that in Kingston. As to the
performance, it was about equal to any provincial theatricals that I
ever saw in England; although the pieces represented were by no means
well selected, being entirely musical, and the orchestra consisting of
nothing more than a couple of fiddles. My stay in Spanish Town has been
too short to admit of my inspecting the antiquities of it, which must be
reserved for a future visit, although I never intend to make a longer
than the present. The difference of climate was very sensible, both at
Spanish Town and Kingston; and the suffocating closeness made me long to
breathe again in the country.
The governor happened to be absent on a tour in the north; but I had an
opportunity of seeing many of the principal persons of the island during
my residence here; and the civilities which I received from all of them
were not only more than I expected, but such as I should be unreasonable
if I had desired more, and very ungrateful if I could ever forget them.
FEBRUARY 7.
We were to return by the North Road, and set out at six in the morning.
The first stage was to the West Tavern, nineteen miles; and nothing can
be imagined at once more sublime and more beautiful than the scenery.
Our road lay along the banks of the Rio Cobre, which runs up to Spanish
Town, where its floods frequently commit dreadful ravages. Large masses
of rock intercept its current at small intervals, which, as well as its
shallowness, render it unnavigable. The cliffs and trees are of the
most gigantic size, and the road goes so near the brink of a tremendous
precipice, that we were obliged always to send a servant forwards to
warn any other carriage of our approach, in order that it might stay in
some broader part while we passed it. A bridge had been attempted to
be built over the river, but a storm had demolished it before its
completion, and nothing was now left standing but a single enormous
arch. In like manner, “the Dry River” sets all bridges at defiance: when
we crossed it between Old Harbour and Spanish Town, it was nothing but
a waste of sand; but its floods frequently pour down with irresistible
strength and rapidity, and sometimes render it impassable for weeks
together. I was extremely delighted with the first ten miles of this
stage: unluckily, a mist then arose, so thick, that it was utterly
impossible even to guess at the surrounding scenery; and the morning was
so cold, that I was very glad to wrap myself up in my cloak as closely
as if I had been travelling in an English December.
By the time of our leaving the West Tavern the mist had dispersed, and I
was able to ad mire the extraordinary beauty of Mount Diavolo, which we
were then crossing. Though we had left the river, the road was still a
narrow shelf of rock running along the edge of ravines of great depth,
and filled with broken masses of stone and trees of wonderful magnitude;
only that at intervals we emerged for a time into places resembling
ornamental parks in England, the lawns being of the liveliest verdure,
the ground rising and falling with an endless variety of surface, and
enriched with a profusion of trees majestic in stature and picturesque
in their shapes, many of them entirely covered with the beautiful
flowers of “hogsmeat,” and other creeping plants. The logwood, too, is
now perfectly golden with its full bloom, and perfumes all the air; and
nothing can be more gay than the quantity of wild flowers which
catch the eye on all sides, particularly the wild pine, and the wild
ipecacuanha. We travelled for sixteen miles, which brought us to our
harbour for the night,---a solitary tavern called Blackheath, situated
in the heart of the mountains of St. Anne.
FEBRUARY 8.
The road soon brought us down to the very brink of the sea, which we
continued to skirt during the whole of the stage. It then brought us to
St. Anne’s Bay, where we found an excellent breakfast, at an inn quite
in the English fashion,--for the landlady had been long resident in
Great Britain. Every thing was clean and comfortable, and the windows
looked full upon the sea. This stage was sixteen miles: the next was
said to be twenty-five; but from the time which we took to travel it, I
can scarcely believe it to be so much. Our road still lay by the
sea-side, till we began to ascend the mountain of Rio Bueno; from which
we at length perceived the river itself running into the sea. It was at
Porto Bueno that Columbus is said to have made his first landing on the
island. Rio Bueno is a small town with a fort, situated close to the
sea. Here also we found a very good inn, kept by a Scotchman.
The present landlady (her father being from home) was a very pretty
brown girl, by name Eliza Thompson. She told me that she was only
residing with her parents during her _husband’s_ absence; for she was
(it seems) the _soi-disant_ wife of an English merchant in Kingston, and
had a house on Tachy’s Bridge. This kind of establishment is the highest
object of the _brown_ females of Jamaica; they seldom marry men of their
own colour, but lay themselves out to captivate some white person, who
takes them for mistresses, under the appellation of housekeepers.
Soon after my arrival at Cornwall, I asked my attorney whether a
clever-looking brown woman, who seemed to have great authority in
the house, belonged to me?--No; she was a free woman.--Was she in
my service, then?--No; she was not in my service. I began to grow
impatient.--“But what _does_ she do at Cornwall? Of what use is she in
the house?”--“Why sir, as to use.... of no great use, sir;” and then,
after a pause, he added in a lower voice, “It is the custom, sir, in
this country, for unmarried men to have housekeepers, and Nancy is
mine.” But he was unjust in saying that Nancy is of no use on the
estate; for she is perpetually in the hospital, nurses the children,
can bleed, and mix up medicines, and (as I am assured) she is of more
service to the sick than all the doctors. These brown housekeepers
generally attach themselves so sincerely to the interests of their
protectors, and make themselves so useful, that they in common retain
their situation; and their children (if slaves) are always honoured by
their fellows with the title of Miss. My mulatto housemaid is always
called “Miss Polly,” by her fellow-servant Phillis. This kind of
connection is considered by a brown girl in the same light as marriage.
They will tell you, with an air of vanity, “I am Mr. Such-a-one’s
_Love!_” and always speak of him as being her _husband_; and I am told,
that, except on these terms, it is extremely difficult to obtain the
favours of a woman of colour. To gain the situation of housekeeper to a
white man, the mulatto girl
“directs her aim;
This makes her happiness, and this her fame.”
FEBRUARY 9.
The sea-view from a bridge near Falmouth was remarkably pleasing;
a stage of eighteen miles brought us to the town itself, which I
understand to be in size the second in the island.
However various are the characters which actors sustain, I find their
own to be the same every where. Although the Jamaica company did not
consist of more than twenty persons, their green-room squabbles had
divided it, and we found one half performing at Falmouth. We did not
wait for the play, but proceeded for twenty-two miles to Montego Bay,
where I once more found myself under the protecting roof of Miss Judy
James.
On our return from dinner at Mr. Dewer’s, we discovered a ball of brown
ladies and gentlemen opposite to the inn. No whites nor blacks were
permitted to attend this assembly; but as our landlady had two nieces
there, under her auspices we were allowed to be spectators. The females
chiefly consisted of the natural daughters of attorneys and overseers,
and the young men were mostly clerks and book-keepers. I saw nothing at
all to be compared, either for form or feature, to many of the humbler
people of colour, much less to the beautiful Spaniard at Blue-fields.
Long, or Bryan Edwards, asserts that mulattos never breed except with a
separate black or white; but at this ball two girls were pointed out to
me, the daughters of mulatto parents; and I have been assured that
the assertion was a mistake, arising from such a connection being very
rarely formed; the females generally preferring to live with white men,
and the brown men having thus no other resource than black women. As to
the above girls, the fact is certain; and the different shades of
colour are distinguished by too plain a line to allow any suspicion of
infidelity on the part of their parents.
FEBRUARY 10.
We passed the day at Mr. Plummer’s estate, Anchovy Bottom.
When Lord Bolingbroke was resident in America, large flocks of turkeys
used to ravage his corn-fields; but, from their extreme wildness, he
never could make any of them prisoners. He had a barn lighted by a large
sash window, and into this he laid a train of corn, hiding some servants
with guns behind the large doors, which were folded back. The turkeys
picked up the corn, and gradually were enticed to enter the barn. But
as soon as a dozen had passed in, the servants clapped the doors to with
all possible expedition. Now they reckoned themselves secure of their
game; but to their utter consternation, the turkeys in a body darted
towards the light, dashed against the glass, forced out the wood-work,
and away went turkeys, glass, wood-work, and all.
FEBRUARY 11. (Sunday.)
I reached Cornwall about three o’clock, after an excursion the most
amusing and agreeable that I ever made in my life. Almost every step
of the road presented some new and striking scene; and although we
travelled at all hours, and with as little circumspection as if we had
been in England, I never felt a headach except for one half hour. On my
arrival, I found the satisfactory intelligence usually communicated to
West Indian proprietors. My estate in the west is burnt up for want of
moisture; and my estate in the east has been so completely flooded, that
I have lost a whole third of my crop. At Cornwall, not a drop of rain
has fallen since the 16th of November. Not a vestige of verdure is to
be seen; and we begin to apprehend a famine among the negroes in
consequence of the drought destroying their provision grounds. This
alone is wanting to complete the dangerous state of the island;
where the higher classes are all in the utmost alarm at rumours of
Wilberforce’s intentions to set the negroes entirely at freedom; the
next step to which would be, in all probability, a general massacre of
the whites, and a second part of the horrors of St. Domingo: while,
on the other hand, the negroes are impatient at the delay; and such
disturbances arose in St. Thomas’s in the East, last Christmas, as
required the interposition of the magistrates. They say that the negroes
of that parish had taken it into their heads that _The Regent and
Wilherforce_ had actually determined upon setting them all at liberty at
once on the first day of the present year, but that the interference of
the island had defeated the plan. Their discontent was most carefully
and artfully fomented by some brown Methodists, who held secret and
nightly meetings on the different estates, and did their best to mislead
and bewilder these poor creatures with their fantastic and absurd
preaching. These fellows harp upon sin, and the devil, and hell-fire
incessantly, and describe the Almighty and the Saviour as beings so
terrible, that many of their proselytes cannot hear the name of Christ
without shuddering. One poor negro, on one of my own estates, told the
overseer that he knew himself to be so great a sinner that nothing could
save him from the devil’s clutches, even for a few hours, except singing
hymns; and he kept singing so incessantly day and night, that at length
terror and want of sleep turned his brain, and the wretch died raving
mad.
FEBRUARY 12.
A Sir Charles Price, who had an estate in this island infested by rats,
imported, with much trouble, a very large and strong species for the
purpose of extirpating the others. The new-comers answered his purpose
to a miracle; they attacked the native rats with such spirit, that in a
short time they had the whole property to themselves; but no sooner had
they done their duty upon the rats, than they extended their exertions
to the cats, of whom their strength and size at length enabled them
completely to get the better; and since that last victory, Sir Charles
Price’s rats, as they are called, have increased so prodigiously, that
(like the man in Scripture, who got rid of one devil, and was taken
possession of by seven others) this single species is now a greater
nuisance to the island than all the others before them were together.
The best, mode of destroying rats here is with terriers; but those
imported from England soon grow useless, being blinded by the sun, while
their puppies, born in Jamaica, are provided by nature with a protecting
film over their eyes, which effectually secures them against incurring
that calamity.
FEBRUARY 12.
Poor Philippa, the woman who used always to call me her “husband,” and
whom I left sick in the hospital, during my absence has gone out of
her senses; and there cannot well happen any thing more distressing, as
there is no separate place for her confinement, and her ravings disturb
the other invalids. There is, indeed, no kind of bedlam in the whole
island of Jamaica: whether this proceeds from people being so very
sedate and sensible, that they never go mad, or from their all being so
mad, that no one person has a right to shut up another for being out
of his senses, is a point which I will not pretend to decide. One of my
domestic negroes, a boy of sixteen, named Prince, was abandoned by his
worthless mother in infancy, and reared by this Philippa; and since her
illness he passes every moment of his leisure in her sick-room. On the
other hand, there is a woman named Christian, attending two fevered
children in the hospital; one her own, and the other an adopted infant,
whom she reared upon the death of its mother in child-birth; and there
she sits, throwing her eyes from one to the other with such unceasing
solicitude, that no one could discover which was her own child and which
the orphan.
FEBRUARY 13.
Two Jamaica nightingales have established themselves on the orange tree
which grows against my window, and their song is most beautiful. This
bird is also called “the mocking-bird,” from its facility of imitating,
not only the notes of every other animal, but--I am told--of catching
every tune that may be played or sung two or three times in the house
near which it resides, after which it will go through the air with the
greatest taste and precision, throwing in cadences and ornaments that
Catalani herself might envy.
But by far the most curious animal that I have yet seen in Jamaica is
“the soldier,” a species of crab, which inhabits a shell like a snail’s,
so small in proportion to its limbs, that nothing can be more curious
or admirable than the machinery by which it is enabled to fold them
up instantly on the slightest alarm. They inhabit the mountains, but
regularly once a year travel in large troops down to the seaside to
spawn and change their shells. If I recollect right, Goldsmith gives a
very full and entertaining account of this animal, by the name of “the
soldier crab.” They are seldom used in Jamaica except for soups, which
are reckoned delicious: that which was brought to me was a very small
one, the shell being no bigger than a large snail’s, although the animal
itself, when marching with his house on his back, appears to be above
thrice the size; but I am told that they are frequently as large as a
man’s fist. Mine was found alone in the public road: how it came to be
in so solitary a state, I know not, for in general they move in armies,
and march towards the sea in a straight line; I am afraid, by his being
found alone, that my soldier must have been a deserter.
FEBRUARY 14.
To-day there was a shower of rain for the first time since my arrival;
indeed, not a drop has fallen since the 16th of November; and in
consequence my present crop has suffered terribly, and our expectations
for next season are still worse.
FEBRUARY 18. (Sunday.)