BRITISH GUIANA.
When I settle out of England, and take to the colonies for good
and all, British Guiana shall be the land of my adoption. If I
call it Demerara perhaps I shall be better understood. At home
there are prejudices against it I know. They say that it is a low,
swampy, muddy strip of alluvial soil, infested with rattlesnakes,
gallinippers, and musquitoes as big as turkey-cocks; that yellow
fever rages there perennially; that the heat is unendurable; that
society there is as stagnant as its waters; that men always die as
soon as they reach it; and when they live are such wretched creatures
that life is a misfortune. Calumny reports it to have been ruined
by the abolition of slavery; milk of human kindness would forbid
the further exportation of Europeans to this white man's grave; and
philanthropy, for the good of mankind, would wish to have it drowned
beneath its own rivers. There never was a land so ill spoken of--and
never one that deserved it so little. All the above calumnies I
contradict; and as I lived there for a fortnight--would it could have
been a month!--I expect to be believed.
If there were but a snug secretaryship vacant there--and these
things in Demerara are very snug--how I would invoke the goddess of
patronage; how I would nibble round the officials of the Colonial
Office; how I would stir up my friends' friends to write little notes
to their friends! For Demerara is the Elysium of the tropics--the
West Indian happy valley of Rasselas--the one true and actual Utopia
of the Caribbean Seas--the Transatlantic Eden.
The men in Demerara are never angry, and the women are never cross.
Life flows along on a perpetual stream of love, smiles, champagne,
and small-talk. Everybody has enough of everything. The only persons
who do not thrive are the doctors; and for them, as the country
affords them so little to do, the local government no doubt provides
liberal pensions.
The form of government is a mild despotism, tempered by sugar. The
Governor is the father of his people, and the Governor's wife the
mother. The colony forms itself into a large family, which gathers
itself together peaceably under parental wings. They have no noisy
sessions of Parliament as in Jamaica, no money squabbles as in
Barbados. A clean bill of health, a surplus in the colonial treasury,
a rich soil, a thriving trade, and a happy people--these are the
blessings which attend the fortunate man who has cast his lot on
this prosperous shore. Such is Demerara as it is made to appear to
a stranger.
That custom which prevails there, of sending to all new comers a
deputation with invitations to dinner for the period of his sojourn,
is an excellent institution. It saves a deal of trouble in letters
of introduction, economizes one's time, and puts one at once on the
most-favoured-nation footing. Some may fancy that they could do
better as to the bestowal of their evenings by individual diplomacy;
but the matter is so well arranged in Demerara that such people would
certainly find themselves in the wrong.
If there be a deficiency in Georgetown--it is hardly necessary to
explain that Georgetown is the capital of the province of Demerara,
and that Demerara is the centre province in the colony of British
Guiana; or that there are three provinces, Berbice, Demerara, and
Essequibo, so called from the names of the three great rivers of the
country--But if there be a deficiency in Georgetown, it is in respect
to cabs. The town is extensive, as will by-and-by be explained; and
though I would not so far militate against the feelings of the people
as to say that the weather is ever hot--I should be ungrateful as
well as incredulous were I to do so--nevertheless, about noonday
one's inclination for walking becomes subdued. Cabs would certainly
be an addition to the luxuries of the place. But even these are not
so essential as might at the first sight appear, for an invitation
to dinner always includes an offer of the host's carriage. Without
a carriage no one dreams of dragging on existence in British Guiana.
In England one would as soon think of living in a house without a
fireplace, or sleeping in a bed without a blanket.
For those who wander abroad in quest of mountain scenery it must
be admitted that this colony has not much attraction. The country
certainly is flat. By this I mean to intimate, that go where you
will, travel thereabouts as far as you may, the eye meets no rising
ground. Everything stands on the same level. But then, what is the
use of mountains? You can grow no sugar on them, even with ever so
many Coolies. They are big, brown, valueless things, cumbering the
face of the creation; very well for autumn idlers when they get to
Switzerland, but utterly useless in a colony which has to count its
prosperity by the number of its hogsheads. Jamaica has mountains,
and look at Jamaica!
Yes; Demerara is flat; and Berbice is flat; and so is Essequibo.
The whole of this land is formed by the mud which has been brought
down by these great rivers and by others. The Corentyne is the most
easterly, separating our colony from Dutch Guiana, or Surinam. Then
comes the Berbice. The next, counting only the larger rivers, is the
Demerara. Then, more to the west, the Essequibo, and running into
that the Mazarony and the Cuyuni; and then, north-west along the
coast, the Pomeroon; and lastly of our own rivers, the Guiana, though
I doubt whether for absolute purposes of colonization we have ever
gone so far as this. And beyond that are rolled in slow but turbid
volume the huge waters of the Orinoco. On its shores we make no
claim. Though the delta of the Orinoco is still called Guiana, it
belongs to the republic of Venezuela.
These are our boundaries along the South American shore, which
hereabouts, as all men know, looks northward, with an easterly slant
towards the Atlantic. Between us and our Dutch friends on the right
hand the limits are clear enough. On the left hand, matters are not
quite so clear with the Venezuelians. But to the rear! To the rear
there is an eternity of sugar capability in mud running back to
unknown mountains, the wildernesses of Brazil, the river Negro, and
the tributaries of the Amazon--an eternity of sugar capability, to
which England's colony can lay claim if only she could manage so
much as the surveying of it. "Sugar!" said an enterprising Demerara
planter to me. "Are you talking of sugar? Give me my heart's desire
in Coolies, and I will make you a million of hogsheads of sugar
without stirring from the colony!" Now, the world's supply, some
twelve years ago, was about a million hogsheads. It has since
increased maybe by a tenth. What a land, then, is this of British
Guiana, flowing with milk and honey--with sugar and rum! A million
hogsheads can be made there, if we only had the Coolies. I state
this on the credit of my excellent enterprising friend. But then the
Coolies!
Guiana is an enormous extent of flat mud, the alluvial deposit of
those mighty rivers which for so many years have been scraping
together earth in those wild unknown upland countries, and bringing
it down conveniently to the sea-board, so that the world might have
sugar to its tea. I really think my friend was right. There is no
limit to the fertility and extent of this region. The only limit is
in labour. The present culture only skirts the sea-board and the
riversides. You will hardly find an estate--I do not think that you
can find one--that has not a water frontage. This land formerly
belonged to the Dutch, and by them was divided out into portions
which on a map have about them a Euclidical appearance. Let A B C D
be a right-angled parallelogram, of which the sides A B and C D are
three times the length of the other sides A C and B D. 'Tis thus
you would describe a Demerara property, and the Q. E. D. would have
reference to the relative quantities of sugar, molasses, and rum
producible therefrom.
But these strips of land, though they are thus marked out on the maps
with four exact lines, are presumed to run back to any extent that
the owner may choose to occupy. He starts from the water, and is
bounded on each side; but backwards! Backwards he may cultivate
canes up to the very Andes, if only he could get Coolies. Oh, ye
soft-hearted, philanthropic gentry of the Anti-Slavery Society, only
think of that; a million hogsheads of sugar--and you like cheap sugar
yourselves--if you will only be quiet, or talk on subjects that you
understand!
The whole of this extent of mud, beyond the present very limited
sugar-growing limits, is covered by timber. One is apt to think of an
American forest as being as magnificent in its individual trees as it
is huge in its extent of surface. But I doubt much whether this is
generally the case. There are forest giants no doubt; but indigenous
primeval wood is, I take it, for the most part a disagreeable,
scrubby, bushy, sloppy, unequal, inconvenient sort of affair, to walk
through which a man should be either an alligator or a monkey, and
to make much way he should have a touch of both. There be no forest
glades there in which uncivilized Indian lovers walk at ease, with
their arms round each other's naked waists; no soft grass beneath
the well-trimmed trunk on which to lie and meditate poetical. But
musquitoes abound there; and grass flies, which locate themselves
beneath the toe-nails; and marabunters, a villanous species of wasp;
and gallinippers, the grandfathers of musquitoes; and from thence up
to the xagua and the boa constrictor all nature is against a cool
comfortable ramble in the woods.
But I must say a word about Georgetown, and a word also about New
Amsterdam, before I describe the peculiarities of a sugar estate in
Guiana. A traveller's first thought is about his hotel; and I must
confess, much as I love Georgetown--and I do love Georgetown--that
I ought to have coupled the hotel with the cabs, and complained of a
joint deficiency. The Clarendon--the name at any rate is good--is a
poor affair; but poor as it is, it is the best.
It is a ricket, ruined, tumble-down, wooden house, into which at
first one absolutely dreads to enter, lest the steps should fail
and let one through into unutterable abysses below. All the houses
in Georgetown are made of wood, and therefore require a good deal
of repair and paint. And all the houses seem to receive this care
except the hotel. Ah, Mrs. Lenny, Mrs. Lenny! before long you and
your guests will fall prostrate, and be found buried beneath a pile
of dust and a colony of cockroaches!
And yet it goes against my heart to abuse the inn, for the people
were so very civil. I shall never forget that big black chambermaid;
how she used to curtsy to me when she came into my room in the
morning with a huge tub of water on her head! That such a weight
should be put on her poor black skull--a weight which I could not
lift--used to rend my heart with anguish. But that, so weighted,
she should think that manners demanded a curtsy! Poor, courteous,
overburdened maiden!
"Don't, Sally; don't. Don't curtsy," I would cry. "Yes, massa," she
would reply, and curtsy again, oh, so painfully! The tub of water was
of such vast proportions! It was big enough--big enough for me to
wash in!
This house, as I have said, was all in ruins, and among other ruined
things was my bedroom-door lock. The door could not be closed within,
except by the use of a bolt; and without the bolt would swing wide
open to the winds, exposing my arrangements to the public, and
disturbing the neighbourhood by its jarring. In spite of the
inconvenient difficulty of ingress I was forced to bolt it.
At six every morning came Sally with the tub, knocking gently at the
door--knocking gently at the door with that ponderous tub upon her
skull! What could a man do when so appealed to but rush quickly from
beneath his musquito curtains to her rescue? So it was always with
me. But having loosed the bolt, time did not suffice to enable me
to take my position again beneath the curtain. A jump into bed
I might have managed--but then, the musquito curtain! So, under
those circumstances, finding myself at the door in my deshabille,
I could only open it, and then stand sheltered behind it, as behind
a bulwark, while Sally deposited her burden.
But, no. She curtsied, first at the bed; and seeing that I was not
there, turned her head and tub slowly round the room, till she
perceived my whereabouts. Then gently, but firmly, drawing away the
door till I stood before her plainly discovered in my night-dress,
she curtsied again. She knew better than to enter a room without due
salutation to the guest--even with a tub of water on her head. Poor
Sally! Was I not dressed from my chin downwards, and was not that
enough for her? "Honi soit qui mal y pense."
After that, how can I say ought against the hotel? And when I
complained loudly of the holes in the curtain, the musquitoes having
driven me to very madness, did not they set to work, Sunday as it
was, and make me a new curtain? Certainly without avail--for they
so hung it that the musquitoes entered worse than ever. But the
intention was no less good.
And that waiter, David; was he not for good-nature the pink of
waiters? "David, this house will tumble down! I know it will--before
I leave it. The stairs shook terribly as I came up." "Oh no, massa,"
and David laughed benignly. "It no tumble down last week, and
derefore it no tumble down next." It did last my time, and therefore
I will say no more.
Georgetown to my eyes is a prepossessing city, flat as the country
round it is, and deficient as it is--as are all the West Indies--in
anything like architectural pretension. The streets are wide and
airy. The houses, all built of wood, stand separately, each a little
off the road; and though much has not been done in the way of their
gardens--for till the great coming influx of Coolies all labour is
engaged in making sugar--yet there is generally something green
attached to each of them. Down the centre of every street runs a
wide dyke. Of these dykes I must say something further when I come
to speak again of the sugar doings; for their importance in these
provinces cannot well be overrated.
The houses themselves are generally without a hall. By that I mean
that you walk directly into some sitting-room. This, indeed, is
general through the West Indies; and now that I bethink me of the
fact, I may mention that a friend of mine in Jamaica has no door
whatsoever to his house. All ingress and egress is by the windows.
My bedroom had no door, only a window that opened. The sitting-rooms
in Georgetown open through to each other, so that the wind, let
it come which way it will, may blow through the whole house. For
though it is never absolutely hot in Guiana--as I have before
mentioned--nevertheless, a current of air is comfortable. One soon
learns to know the difference of windward and leeward when living in
British Guiana.
The houses are generally of three stories; but the two upper only are
used by the family. Outer steps lead up from the little front garden,
generally into a verandah, and in this verandah a great portion of
their life is led. It is cooler than the inner rooms. Not that I mean
to say that any rooms in Demerara are ever hot. We all know the fine
burst with which Scott opens a certain canto in one of his poems:--
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land?
* * *
If such there breathe, go, mark him well.
At any rate, there breathes no such man in this pleasant colony.
A people so happily satisfied with their own position I never
saw elsewhere, except at Barbados. And how could they fail to be
satisfied, looking at their advantages? A million hogsheads of sugar
to be made when the Coolies come!
They do not, the most of them, appeal to the land as being that of
their nativity, but they love it no less as that of their adoption.
"Look at me," says one; "I have been thirty years without leaving it,
and have never had a headache." I look and see a remarkably hale man,
of forty I should say, but he says fifty. "That's nothing," says
another, who certainly may be somewhat stricken in years: "I have
been here five-and-fifty years, and was never ill but once, when I
was foolish enough to go to England. Ugh! I shall never forget it.
Why, sir, there was frost in October!" "Yes," I said, "and snow in
May sometimes. It is not all sunshine with us, whatever it may be
with you."
"Not that we have too much sunshine," interposed a lady. "You don't
think we have, do you?"
"Not in the least. Who could ask more, madam, than to bask in such
sunshine as yours from year's end to year's end?"
"And is commerce tolerably flourishing?" I asked of a gentleman in
trade.
"Flourishing, sir! If you want to make money, here's your ground.
Why, sir, here, in this wretched little street, there has been
more money turned in the last ten years than--than--than--" And he
rummaged among the half-crowns in his breeches-pocket for a simile,
as though not a few of the profits spoken of had found their way
thither.
"Do you ever find it dull here?" I asked of a lady--perhaps not with
very good taste--for we Englishmen have sometimes an idea that there
is perhaps a little sameness about life in a small colony.
"Dull! no. What should make us dull? We have a great deal more to
amuse us than most of you have at home." This perhaps might be true
of many of us. "We have dances, and dinner-parties, and private
theatricals. And then Mrs. ----!" Now Mrs. ---- was the Governor'
wife, and all eulogiums on society in Georgetown always ended with
a eulogium upon her.
I went over the hospital with the doctor there; for even in Demerara
they require a hospital for the negroes. "And what is the prevailing
disease of the colony?" I asked him. "Dropsy with the black men," he
answered; "and brandy with the white."
"You don't think much of yellow fever?" I asked him.
"No; very little. It comes once in six or seven years; and like
influenza or cholera at home, it requires its victims. What is that
to consumption, whose visits with you are constant, who daily demands
its hecatombs? We don't like yellow fever, certainly; but yellow
fever is not half so bad a fellow as the brandy bottle."
Should this meet the eye of any reader in this colony who needs
medical advice, he may thus get it, of a very good quality, and
without fee. On the subject of brandy I say nothing myself, seeing
how wrong it is to kiss and tell.
Excepting as regards yellow fever, I do not imagine that Demerara is
peculiarly unhealthy. And as regards yellow fever, I am inclined to
think that his Satanic majesty has in this instance been painted too
black. There are many at home--in England--who believe that yellow
fever rages every year in some of these colonies, and that half the
white population of the towns is swept off by it every August. As far
as I can learn it is hardly more fatal at one time of the year than
at another. It returns at intervals, but by no means regularly or
annually. Sometimes it will hang on for sixteen or eighteen months at
a time, and then it will disappear for five or six years. Those seem
to be most subject to it who have been out in the West Indies for
a year or so: after that, persons are not so liable to it. Sailors,
and men whose work keeps them about the sea-board and wharves, seem
to be in the greatest danger. White soldiers also, when quartered
in unhealthy places, have suffered greatly. They who are thoroughly
acclimatized are seldom attacked; and there seems to be an idea that
the white Creoles are nearly safe. I believe that there are instances
in which coloured people and even negroes have been attacked by
yellow fever. But such cases are very rare. Cholera is the negroes'
scourge.
Nor do I think that this fever rages more furiously in Demerara than
among the islands. It has been very bad in its bad times at Kingston,
Jamaica, at Trinidad, at Barbados, among the shipping at St. Thomas,
and nowhere worse than at the Havana. The true secret of its fatality
I take to be this:--that the medical world has not yet settled what
is the proper mode of medical treatment. There are, I believe, still
two systems, each directly opposite to the other; but in the West
Indies they call them the French system and the English. In a few
years, no doubt, the matter will be better understood.
From Georgetown, Demerara, to New Amsterdam, Berbice, men travel
either by steamer along the coast, or by a mail phaeton. The former
goes once a week to Berbice and back, and the latter three times.
I went by the mail phaeton and returned by the steamer. And here,
considering the prosperity of the colony, the well-being and comfort
of all men and women in it, the go-ahead principles of the place,
and the coming million hogsheads of sugar--the millennium of a West
Indian colony--considering all these great existing characteristics
of Guiana, I must say that I think the Governor ought to look to the
mail phaeton. It was a woful affair, crumbling to pieces along the
road in the saddest manner; very heart-rending to the poor fellow who
had to drive it, and body-rending to some of the five passengers who
were tossed to and fro as every fresh fragment deserted the parent
vehicle with a jerk. And then, when we had to send the axle to be
mended, that staying in the road for two hours and a half among the
musquitoes! Ohe! ohe! Ugh! ugh!
It grieves me to mention this, seeing that rose colour was so clearly
the prevailing tint in all matters belonging to Guiana. And I would
have forgiven it had the phaeton simply broken down on the road. All
sublunar phaetons are subject to such accidents. Why else should they
have been named after him of the heavens who first suffered from such
mishaps? But this phaeton had broken down before it commenced its
journey. It started on a system of ropes, bandages, and patches which
were disgraceful to such a colony and such a Governor; and I should
intromit a clear duty, were I to allow it to escape the gibbet.
But we did reach New Amsterdam not more than five hours after time.
I have but very little to say of the road, except this: that there
is ample scope for sugar and ample room for Coolies.
Every now and then we came upon negro villages. All villages in this
country must be negro villages, one would say, except the few poor
remaining huts of the Indians, which are not encountered on the white
man's path. True; but by a negro village I mean a site which is now
the freehold possession of negroes, having been purchased by them
since the days of emancipation, with their own money, and for their
own purposes; so that they might be in all respects free; free to
live in idleness, or to do such work as an estated man may choose to
do for himself, his wife, his children, and his property.
There are many such villages in Guiana, and I was told that when the
arrangements for the purchases were made the dollars were subscribed
by the negroes so quickly and in such quantities that they were taken
to the banks in wheelbarrows. At any rate, the result has been that
tracts of ground have been bought by these people and are now owned
by them in fee simple.
It is grievous to me to find myself driven to differ on such points
as these from men with whose views I have up to this period generally
agreed. But I feel myself bound to say that the freeholding negroes
in Guiana do not appear to me to answer. In the first place it
seems that they have found great difficulty in dividing the land
among themselves. In all such combined actions some persons must be
selected as trustworthy; and those who have been so selected have not
been worthy of the trust. And then the combined action has ceased
with the purchase of the land, whereas, to have produced good it
should have gone much further. Combined draining would have been
essential; combined working has been all but necessary; combined
building should have been adopted. But the negroes, the purchase once
made, would combine no further. They could not understand that unless
they worked together at draining, each man's own spot of ground would
be a swamp. Each would work a little for himself; but none would work
for the community. A negro village therefore is not a picturesque
object.
They are very easily known. The cottages, or houses--for some of them
have aspired to strong, stable, two-storied slated houses--stand in
extreme disorder, one here and another there, just as individual
caprice may have placed them. There seems to have been no attempt
at streets or lines of buildings, and certainly not at regularity
in building. Then there are no roads, and hardly a path to each
habitation. As the ground is not drained, in wet weather the whole
place is half drowned. Most of the inhabitants will probably have
made some sort of dyke for the immediate preservation of their own
dwellings; but as those dykes are not cut with any common purpose,
they become little more than overflowing ponds, among which the negro
children crawl and scrape in the mud; and are either drowned, or
escape drowning, as Providence may direct. The spaces between the
buildings are covered with no verdure; they are mere mud patches, and
are cracked in dry weather, wet, slippery, and filthy in the rainy
seasons.
The plantation grounds of these people are outside the village, and
afford, I am told, cause for constant quarrelling. They do, however,
also afford means of support for the greater part of the year, so
that the negroes can live, some without work and some by working one
or two days in the week.
It may perhaps be difficult to explain why a man should be expected
to work if he can live on his own property without working, and
enjoy such comforts as he desires. And it may be equally difficult
to explain why complaint should be made as to the wretchedness of
any men who do not themselves feel that their own state is wretched.
But, nevertheless, on seeing what there is here to be seen, it is
impossible to withstand the instinctive conviction that a village of
freeholding negroes is a failure; and that the community has not been
served by the process, either as regards themselves or as regards the
country.
Late at night we did reach New Amsterdam, and crossed the broad
Berbice after dark in a little ferryboat which seemed to be
perilously near the water. At ten o'clock I found myself at the
hotel, and pronounce it to be, without hesitation, the best inn, not
only in that colony, but in any of these Western colonies belonging
to Great Britain. It is kept by a negro, one Mr. Paris Brittain, of
whom I was informed that he was once a slave. "O, si sic omnes!" But
as regards my experience, he is merely the exception which proves the
rule. I am glad, however, to say a good word for the energies and
ambition of one of the race, and shall be glad if I can obtain for
Mr. Paris Brittain an innkeeper's immortality.
His deserts are so much the greater in that his scope for displaying
them is so very limited. No man can walk along the broad strand
street of New Amsterdam, and then up into its parallel street, so
back towards the starting-point, and down again to the sea, without
thinking of Knickerbocker and Rip van Winkle. The Dutchman who
built New Amsterdam and made it once a thriving town must be still
sleeping, as the New York Dutchman once slept, waiting the time when
an irruption from Paramaribo and Surinam shall again restore the
place to its old possessors.
At present life certainly stagnates at New Amsterdam. Three persons
in the street constitute a crowd, and five collected for any purpose
would form a goodly club. But the place is clean and orderly, and the
houses are good and in good repair. They stand, as do the houses in
Georgetown, separately, each surrounded by its own garden or yard,
and are built with reference to the wished-for breeze from the
windows.
The estates up the Berbice river, and the Canje creek which runs into
it, are, I believe, as productive as those on the coast, or on the
Demerara or Essequibo rivers, and are as well cultivated; but their
owners no longer ship their sugars from New Amsterdam. The bar across
the Berbice river is objectionable, and the trade of Georgetown has
absorbed the business of the colony. In olden times Berbice and
Demerara were blessed each with its own Governor, and the two towns
stood each on its own bottom as two capitals. But those halcyon
days--halcyon for Berbice--are gone; and Rip van Winkle, with all his
brethren, is asleep.
I should have said, in speaking of my journey from Demerara to
Berbice, that the first fifteen miles were performed by railway. The
colony would have fair ground of complaint against me were I to omit
to notice that it has so far progressed in civilization as to own a
railway. As far as I could learn, the shares do not at present stand
at a high premium. From Berbice I returned in a coasting steamer. It
was a sleepy, dull, hot journey, without subject of deep interest. I
can only remember of it that they gave us an excellent luncheon on
board, and luncheons at such times are very valuable in breaking the
tedium of the day.
And now a word as to the million hogsheads of sugar and as to the
necessary Coolies. Guiana has some reason to be proud, seeing that
at present it beats all the neighbouring British colonies in the
quantity of sugar produced. I believe that it also beats them all
as to the quantity of rum, though Jamaica still stands first as to
the quality. In round numbers the sugar exported from Guiana may be
stated at seventy thousand hogsheads.
Barbados exports about fifty thousand, Trinidad and Jamaica under
forty thousand. No other British West Indian colony gives fifteen
thousand; but Guadaloupe and Martinique, two French islands, produce,
one over fifty thousand and the other nearly seventy thousand
hogsheads. In order to make this measurement intelligible, I may
explain that a hogshead is generally said to contain a ton weight of
sugar, but that, when reaching the market, it very rarely does come
up to that weight. I do not give this information as statistically
correct, but as being sufficiently so to guide the ideas of a man
only ordinarily anxious to be acquainted in an ordinary manner
with what is going on in the West Indies. I would not, therefore,
recommend any Member of Parliament to quote the above figures in the
House.
Some twelve years ago the whole produce of sugar in the West Indies,
including Guiana and excluding the Spanish islands, was 275,000
hogsheads. The amount which I have above recapitulated, in which the
smaller islands have been altogether omitted, exceeds 310,000. It may
therefore be taken as a fact that, on the whole, the evil days have
come to their worst, and that the tables are turned. It must however
be admitted that the above figures tell more for French than for
English prosperity.
In these countries sugar and labour are almost synonymous; at any
rate, they are convertible substances. In none of the colonies named,
except Barbados, is the amount of sugar produced limited by any other
law than the amount of labour to be obtained, and in none of them,
with that one exception, can any prosperity be hoped for, excepting
by means of immigrating labour. What I mean to state is this: that
the extent of native work which can be obtained by the planters and
land-owners at terms which would enable them to grow their produce
and bring it to the market does not in any of these colonies suffice
for success. It can be worth no man's while to lay out his capital
in Jamaica, in Trinidad, or in Guiana, unless he has reasonable hope
that labouring men will be brought into those countries. The great
West Indian question is now this: Is there reasonable ground for such
hope?
The Anti-Slavery Society tells us that we ought to have no such
hope--that it is simply hoping for a return of slavery; that black or
coloured labourers brought from other lands to the West Indies cannot
be regarded as free men; that labourers so brought will surely be
ill-used; and that the native negro labourer requires protection. As
to that question of the return to slavery I have already said what
few words I have to offer. In one sense, no dependent man working
for wages can be free. He must abide by the terms of his contract.
But in the usually accepted sense of the word freedom, the Coolie or
Chinaman immigrating to the West Indies is free.
As to the charge of ill usage, it appears to me that these men could
not be treated with more tenderness, unless they were put separately,
each under his own glass case, with a piece of velvet on which to
lie. In England we know of no such treatment for field labourers. On
their arrival in Demerara they are distributed among the planters by
the Governor, to each planter according to his application, his means
of providing for them, and his willingness and ability to pay the
cost of the immigration by yearly instalments. They are sent to no
estate till a government officer shall have reported that there are
houses for them to occupy. There must be a hospital for them on the
estate, and a regular doctor with a sufficient salary. The rate of
their wages is stipulated, and their hours of work. Though the
contract is for five years, they can leave the estate at the end of
the first three, transferring their services to any other master, and
at the end of the five years they are entitled to a free passage
home.
If there be no hardship in all this to the immigrating Coolie, it
may, perhaps, be thought that there is hardship to the planter who
receives him. He is placed very much at the mercy of the Governor,
who, having the power of giving or refusing Coolies, becomes
despotic. And then, when this stranger from Hindostan has been taught
something of his work, he can himself select another master, so that
one planter may bribe away the labourers of another. This, however,
is checked to a certain degree by a regulation which requires the
bribing interloper to pay a portion of the expense of immigration.
As to the native negro requiring protection--protection, that is,
against competitive labour--the idea is too absurd to require any
argument to refute it. As it at present is, the competition having
been established, and being now in existence to a certain small
extent, these happy negro gentlemen will not work on an average more
than three days a week, nor for above six hours a day. I saw a gang
of ten or twelve negro girls in a cane-piece, lying idle on the
ground, waiting to commence their week's labour. It was Tuesday
morning. On the Monday they had of course not come near the field.
On the morning of my visit they were lying with their hoes beside
them, meditating whether or no they would measure out their work. The
planter was with me, and they instantly attacked him. "No, massa; we
no workey; money no nuff," said one. "Four bits no pay! no pay at
all!" said another. "Five bits, massa, and we gin morrow 'arly." It
is hardly necessary to say that the gentleman refused to bargain with
them. "They'll measure their work to-morrow," said he; "on Thursday
they will begin, and on Friday they will finish for the week." "But
will they not look elsewhere for other work?" I asked. "Of course
they will," he said; "occupy a whole day in looking for it; but
others cannot pay better than I do, and the end will be as I tell
you." Poor young ladies! It will certainly be cruel to subject them
to the evil of competition in their labour.
In Guiana the bull has been taken by the horns, as in Jamaica it
unfortunately has not; and the first main difficulties of immigration
have, I think, been overcome. For some years past, both from India
and from China, labourers have been brought in freely, and during the
last twelve months the number has been very considerable. The women
also are coming now as well as the men, and they have learned to
husband their means and put money together.
Such an affair as this--the regular exodus, that is, of a people to
another land--has always progressed with great rapidity when it has
been once established. The difficulty is to make a beginning. It is
natural enough that men should hesitate to trust themselves to a
future of which they know nothing; and as natural that they should
hasten to do so when they have heard of the good things which
Providence has in store for them. It required that some few should
come out and prosper, and return with signs of prosperity. This has
now been done, and as regards Guiana it will not, I imagine, be
long before negro labour is, if not displaced, made, at any rate,
of secondary consequence in the colony. As far as the workmen are
concerned, the million hogsheads will, I think, become a possibility,
though not perhaps in the days of my energetic hopeful friend.
Both the Coolies and the Chinamen have aptitude in putting money
together; and when a man has this aptitude he will work as long as
good wages are to be earned. "Crescit amor nummi quantum ipsa, &c."
We teach our children this lesson, intending them to understand that
it is pretty nearly the worst of all "amors," and we go on with the
"irritamenta malorum" till we come to the "Spernere fortior." It is
all, however, of no use. "Naturam expellas furcâ;" but the result is
still the same. Nature knows what she is about. The love of money is
a good and useful love. What would the world now be without it? Or
is it even possible to conceive of a world progressing without such
a love? Show me ten men without it, and I will show you nine who
lack zeal for improvement. Money, like other loved objects--women,
for instance--should be sought for with honour, won with a clean
conscience, and used with a free hand. Provided it be so guided, the
love of money is no ignoble passion.
The negroes, as a class, have not this aptitude, consequently they
lie in the sun and eat yams, and give no profitable assistance
towards that saccharine millennium. "Spernere fortior!" That big
black woman would so say, she who is not contented with four bits,
if her education had progressed so far. And as she said it, how she
would turn up her African nose, and what contempt she would express
with her broad eyes! Doubtless she does so express herself among her
negro friends in some nigger patois--"Pernere forshaw." If so, her
philosophy does but little to assist the world, or herself.
There is another race of men, and of women too, who have been and
now are of the greatest benefit to this colony, and with them the
"Spernere fortior" is by no means a favourite doctrine. There are the
Portuguese who have come to Demerara from Madeira. I believe that
they are not to be found in any of the islands; but here, in Guiana,
they are in great numbers, and thrive wonderfully. At almost every
corner of two streets in Georgetown is to be seen a small shop; and
those shops are, I think without exception, kept by Portuguese.
Nevertheless they all reached the Demerara river in absolute poverty,
intending to live on the wages of field labour, and certainly
prepared to do their work like men. As a rule, they are a steady,
industrious class, and have proved themselves to be good citizens.
In the future amalgamation of races, which will take place here as
elsewhere in the tropics, the Portugee-Madeira element will not be
the least efficient.
I saw the works on three or four sugar estates in Demerara, and
though I am neither a sugar grower nor a mechanic, I am able to say
that the machinery and material of this colony much exceed anything I
have seen in any of our own West Indian islands; and in the point of
machinery, equals what I saw in Cuba. Everything is done on a much
larger scale, and in a more proficient manner than at--Barbados,
we will say. I instance Barbados because the planters there play
so excellent a melody on their own trumpets. In that island not
one planter in five, not one I believe in fifteen, has any steam
appliance on his estate. They trust to the wind for their motive
power, as did their great-great-grandfather. But there is steam on
every estate in Guiana. The vacuum pan and the centrifugal machine
for extracting the molasses are known only by name in Barbados,
whereas they are common appliances in Demerara. There two hundred
hogsheads is a considerable produce for one planter. Here they make
eight hundred hogsheads, a thousand, and twelve hundred. A Barbados
man will reply to this that the thing to be looked to is the
profit, or what he will call the clearance. The sugar-consuming
world, however, will know nothing about this, will hear nothing of
individual profits. But it will recognize the fact that the Demerara
sugar is of a better quality than that which comes from Barbados, and
will believe that the merchant or planter who does not use the latest
appliances of science, whether it be in manufacture or agriculture,
will before long go to the wall. Looking over a sugar estate and
sugar works is an exciting amusement certainly, but nevertheless it
palls upon one at last. I got quite into the way of doing it; and
used to taste the sugars and examine the crystals; make comparisons
and pronounce, I must confess as regards Barbados, a good deal of
adverse criticism. But this was merely to elicit the true tone of
Barbadian eloquence, the long-drawn nasal fecundity of speech which
comes forth so fluently when their old windmills are attacked.
But the amusement, as I have said, does pall upon one. In spite of
the difference of the machinery, the filtering-bags and centrifugals
in one, the Gadsden pans in another, and the simple oscillators in a
third--(the Barbados estate stands for the third)--one does get weary
of walking up to a sugar battery, and looking at the various heated
caldrons, watching till even the inexperienced eye perceives that the
dirty liquor has become brown sugar, as it runs down from a dipper
into a cooling vat.
I wonder whether I could make the process in any simple way
intelligible; or whether in doing so I should afford gratification to
a single individual? Were I myself reading such a book of travels, I
should certainly skip such description. Reader, do thou do likewise.
Nevertheless, it shall not exceed three or four pages.
The cane must first be cut. As regards a planted cane, that is the
first crop from the plant--(for there are such things as ratoons, of
which a word or two will be found elsewhere)--as regards the planted
cane, the cutting, I believe, takes place after about fourteen
months' growth. The next process is that of the mill; the juice, that
is, has to be squeezed out of it. The cane should not lie above two
days before it is squeezed. It is better to send it to the mill the
day after it is cut, or the hour after; in fact, as soon indeed as
may be. In Demerara they are brought to the mill by water always; in
Barbados, by carts and mules; in Jamaica, by waggons and oxen; so
also in Cuba. The mill consists of three rollers, which act upon each
other like cogwheels. The canes are passed between two, an outside
one, say, and a centre one; and the refuse stalk, or trash (so called
in Jamaica), or magass (so called in Barbados and Demerara), comes
out between the same centre one and the other outside roller. The
juice meanwhile is strained down to a cistern or receptacle below.
These rollers are quite close, so that it would seem to be impossible
that the cane should go through; but it does go through with great
ease, if the mill be good and powerful; but frequently with great
difficulty, if the mill be bad and not powerful; for which latter
alternative vide Barbados. The canes give from sixty to seventy per
cent. of juice. Sometimes less than sixty, not often over seventy.
The juice, which is then of a dirty-yellow colour, and apparently
about the substance of milk, is brought from the mill through a pipe
into the first vat, in which it is tempered. This is done with lime,
and the object is to remedy the natural acidity of the juice. In this
first vat it is warmed, but not more than warmed. It then runs from
these vats into boilers, or at any rate into receptacles in which it
is boiled. These in Barbados are called taches. At each of these a
man stands with a long skimmer, skimmering the juice as it were, and
scraping off certain skum which comes to the top. There are from
three to seven of these taches, and below them, last of all, is the
boiler, the veritable receptacle in which the juice becomes sugar.
In the taches, especially the first of them, the liquor becomes dark
green in colour. As it gets nearer the boiler it is thicker and more
clouded, and begins to assume its well-known tawny hue.
Over the last boiler stands the man who makes the sugar. It is for
him to know what heat to apply and how long to apply it. The liquor
now ceases to be juice and becomes sugar. This is evident to the
eye and nose, for though the stuff in the boiler is of course still
liquid, it looks like boiled melted sugar, and the savour is the
savour of sugar. When the time has come, and the boiling is boiled, a
machine suspended from on high, and called a dipper, is let down into
the caldron. It nearly fits the caldron, being, as it were, in itself
a smaller caldron going into the other. The sugar naturally runs over
the side of this and fills it, some little ingenuity being exercised
in the arrangement. The dipper, full of sugar, is then drawn up on
high. At the bottom of it is a valve, so that on the pulling of a
rope, the hot liquid runs out. This dipper is worked like a crane,
and is made to swing itself from over the boiler to a position in
which the sugar runs from it through a wooden trough to the flat
open vats in which it is cooled.
But at this part of the manufacture there are various different
methods. According to that which is least advanced the sugar is
simply cooled in the vat, then put into buckets in a half-solid
state, and thrown out of the buckets into the hogsheads.
According to the more advanced method it runs from the dipper down
through filtering bags, is then pumped into a huge vacuum pan, a
utensil like a kettle-drum turned topsy-turvy, a kettle-drum that is
large enough to hold six tons of sugar. Then it is reheated, and then
put into open round boxes called centrifugals, the sides of which
are made of metal pierced like gauze. These are whisked round and
round by steam-power at an enormous rate, and the molasses flies out
through the gauze, leaving the sugar dry and nearly white. It is then
fit to go into the hogshead, and fit also to be shipped away.
But in the simpler process, the molasses drains from the sugar in
the hogshead. To facilitate this, as the sugar is put into the cask,
reeds are stuck through it, which communicate with holes at the
bottom, so that there may be channels through which the molasses may
run. The hogsheads stand upon beams lying a foot apart from each
other, and below is a dark abyss into which the molasses falls.
I never could divest myself of the idea that the negro children
occasionally fall through also, and are then smothered and so
distilled into rum.
There are various other processes, intermediate between the
highly-civilized vacuum pan and the simple cooling, with which I will
not trouble my reader. Nor will I go into the further mystery of
rum-making. That the rum is made from the molasses every one knows;
and from the negro children, as I suspect.
The process of sugar-making is very rapid if the appliances be good.
A planter in Demerara assured me that he had cut his canes in the
morning, and had the sugar in Georgetown in the afternoon. Fudge!
however, was the remark made by another planter to whom I repeated
this. Whether it was fudge or not I do not know; but it was clearly
possible that such should be the case. The manufacture is one which
does not require any delay.
In Demerara an acre of canes will on an average give over a ton and
a half of sugar. But an acre of cane ground will not give a crop
once in twelve months. Two crops in three years may perhaps be the
average. So much for the manufacture of sugar. I hope my account may
not be criticised by those who are learned in the art, as it is only
intended for those who are utterly unlearned.
But if looking over sugar-works be at last fatiguing, what shall I
say to that labour of "going aback," which Guiana planters exact from
their visitors. Going aback in Guiana means walking from the house
and manufactory back to the fields where the canes grow. I have
described the shape of a Demerara estate. The house generally stands
not far from the water frontage, so that the main growth of the sugar
is behind. This going aback generally takes place before breakfast.
But the breakfast is taken at eleven; and a Demerara sun is in all
its glory for three hours before that. Remember, also, that there are
no trees in these fields, no grass, no wild flowers, no meandering
paths. Everything is straight, and open, and ugly; and everything has
a tendency to sugar, and no other tendency whatever, unless it be to
rum. Sugar-canes is the only growth. So that a walk aback, except
to a very close inquirer, is not delightful. It must however be
confessed that the subsequent breakfast makes up for a deal of
misery. There is no such breakfast going as that of a Guiana planter.
Talk of Scotland! Pooh! But one has to think of that doctor's
dictum--"The prevalent disease, sir? Brandy!" It seems, however, to
me to show itself more generally in the shape of champagne.
There is one other peculiar characteristic of landed property in this
colony which I must mention. All the carriage is by water, not only
from the works to the town, but from the fields to the works, and
even from field to field. The whole country is intersected by drains,
which are necessary to carry off the surface waters; there is no
natural fall of water, or next to none, and but for its drains and
sluices the land would be flooded in wet weather. Parallel to these
drains are canals; there being, as nearly as I could learn, one canal
between each two drains. These different dykes are to a stranger
similar in appearance, but their uses are always kept distinct.
Nor do these canals run only between wide fields, or at a
considerable distance from each other. They pierce every portion of
land, so that the canes when cut have never to be carried above a few
yards. The expense of keeping them in order is very great, but the
labour of making them must have been immense. It was done by the
Dutch. One may almost question whether any other race would have had
the patience necessary for such a work.
I was told on one estate that there were no less than sixty-three
miles of these cuttings to be kept in order. But the gentleman who
told me was he to whom the other gentleman alluded, when he used our
old friend, Mr. Burchell's exclamation. There can be no doubt but
that these Guiana planters know each other.
On the whole, I must express my conviction that this is a fine
colony, and will become of very great importance.
Our great Thunderer the other day spoke of the governance of a sugar
island as a duty below a man's notice; as being almost worthy of
contempt. We cannot all be gods and forge thunderbolts. But we all
wish to consume sugar; and if we can do in one of our colonies
without slaves what Cuba is doing with slaves, the work I think will
not be contemptible, nor the land contemptible in which it is done.
I do look to see our free Cuba in Guiana, and even have my hopes as
to that million of hogsheads.
I have said, in speaking of Jamaica, that I thought the negro had
hardly yet shown himself capable of understanding the teaching of the
Christian religion. As regards Guiana, what I heard on this matter
I heard chiefly from clergymen of the Church of England; and though
they would of course not agree with me--for it is not natural that a
man should doubt the efficacy of his own teaching--nevertheless, what
I gathered from them strengthens my former opinions.
I do think that the Guiana negro is in this respect somewhat superior
to his brother in Jamaica. He is more intelligent, and comes nearer
to our idea of a thoughtful being. But still even here it seems to
me that he never connects his religion with his life; never reflects
that his religion should bear upon his conduct.
Here, as in the islands, the negroes much prefer to belong to
a Baptist congregation, or to a so-called Wesleyan body. That
excitement is there allowed to them which is denied in our Church.
They sing and halloa and scream, and have revivals. They talk of
their "dear brothers" and "dear sisters," and in their ecstatic
howlings get some fun for their money. I doubt also whether those
disagreeable questions as to conduct are put by the Baptists
which they usually have to undergo from our clergymen. "So-called
Wesleyans," I say, because the practice of their worship here is
widely removed from the sober gravity of the Wesleyan churches in
England.
I have said that the form of government in Guiana was a mild
despotism, tempered by sugar. The Governor, it must be understood,
has not absolute authority. There is a combined house, with a power
of voting, by whom he is controlled--at any rate in financial
matters. But of those votes he commands many as Governor, and as long
as he will supply Coolies quick enough--and Coolies mean sugar--he
may command them all.
"We are not particular to a shade," the planters wisely say to him,
"in what way we are governed. If you have any fads of your own about
this or about that, by all means indulge them. Even if you want a
little more money, in God's name take it. But the business of a man's
life is sugar: there's the land; the capital shall be forthcoming,
whether begged, borrowed, or stolen;--do you supply the labour. Give
us Coolies enough, and we will stick at nothing. We are an ambitious
colony. There looms before us a great future--a million hogsheads of
sugar!"
The form of government here is somewhat singular. There are two
Houses--Lords and Commons--but not acting separately as ours do. The
upper House is the Court of Policy. This consists of five official
members, whose votes may therefore be presumed to be at the service
of the Governor, and of five elected members. The Governor himself,
sitting in this court, has the casting vote. But he also has
something to say to the election of the other five. They are chosen
by a body of men called Kiezers--probably Dutch for choosers. There
is a college of Kiezers, elected for life by the tax-payers, whose
main privilege appears to be that of electing these members of the
Court of Policy. But on every occasion they send up two names, and
the Governor selects one; so that he can always keep out any one man
who may be peculiarly disagreeable to him. This Court of Policy
acts, I think, when acting by itself, more as a privy council to the
Governor than as a legislative body.
Then there are six Financial Representatives; two from Berbice, one
from town and one from country; two from Demerara, one from town
and one from country; and two from Essequibo, both from the country,
there being no town. These are elected by the tax-payers. They are
assembled for purposes of taxation only, as far as I understood; and
even as regards this they are joined with the Court of Policy, and
thus form what is called the Combined Court. The Crown, therefore,
has very little to tie its hands; and I think that I am justified in
describing the government as a mild despotism, tempered by sugar.
So much for British Guiana. I cannot end this crude epitome of
crude views respecting the colony without saying that I never met a
pleasanter set of people than I found there, or ever passed my hours
much more joyously.