IV.
The isle is past. And still in tranquil pride
Bears the rich bark its treasures o’er the tide.
And now the sun, ere yet his lamp he shrouds,
Stains the pure western sky with crimson clouds:
Now from the sea’s last verge he sheds his rays,
And sinks triumphant in a golden blaze.
Still o’er the heavens reflected splendours flow,
Which make the world of waters gleam and glow:
Wide and more wide each billow shines more bright,
Till all the empurpled ocean floats in light.
Soon as fair Irza marked the evening’s close,
Grave from her seat the young enthusiast rose,
Told o’er her beads, and when the string was said,
“Ave Maria!” sang the enraptured maid;
Her look so humble, so devout her air,
Each worldly wish appeared so lost in prayer,
All felt, no thought could to her mind be near,
That man her form could see, her voice could hear:
Hushed all the ship!--Each sailor checked his glee,
Clasped his hard hands, and bent his trembling knee;
And each (as rose that soft mysterious strain,
Best help in trouble, and sweet balm in pain)
Gazed on the maid with mingled awe and fear,
Damp on his cheek perceived the unwonted tear,
Then raised to Heaven his eyes in earnest prayer,
And half believed himself already there.
Low too Rosalvo knelt, nor knew, if now
For Mary’s grace, or Irza’s, rose his vow.
Scarce e’en the monk forbore to kneel; his child
Fondly he viewed, and sweetly, gravely smiled,
And blessed that God, as swelled each melting note,
Who gave such heavenly powers to human throat!
Melodious strains, oh! speed your flight above
On Neptune’s wings, and reach the ear of Love!
Oh! spread thy starry robe, celestial queen,
(For much thine aid she needs!) from ills to screen
Thy virgin-votaress!--Silence holds the deep,
And e’en the helmsman’s eyes are sealed by sleep:
Yet mark yon gathering clouds!--the moon is fled!--
Mark too that deathlike stillness, deep and dread!
And hark!--from yon black cloud an awful voice
Pours the wild chaunt, and bids the winds rejoice!
SONG OF THE TEMPEST-FIEND.
I marked her!--the pennants, how gaily they streamed!--
How well was she armed for resistance!
The waves that sustained her, how brightly they beamed
In the sun’s setting rays, and the sailors all seemed
To forget the storm-spirit’s existence.
But I marked her!--and now from the clouds I descend!
My spells to the billows I mutter!
I clap my black pinions! my wand I extend,
In darkness the sky and the ocean to blend,
And the winds mark the charms which I utter.
Now more and more rapid in eddies I whirl,
In my voice while the thunder-clap rumbles:
And now the white mountainous waves, as they curl,
I joy o’er the deck of the vessel to hurl,
And laugh, as she tosses and tumbles.
The crew is alarmed; but the tempest prevails,
No care from my fury delivers!
Ere there’s time for their furling the canvass, the sails
From the top to the bottom I split with my nails,
And they stream in the blast, rent in shivers!
The sky and the ocean, fierce battle they wage;
The elements all are in action!
No sailor the storm longer hopes to assuage:
What clamours, what hurry, what oaths, and what rage!
Oh, brave! what despair, what distraction!
Their heart-strings, they ache, while my ravage they view;
Each knee ’gainst its fellow is knocking!
My eyes, darting lightnings to dazzle the crew,
Burn and blaze; and those lightnings so forked and so blue
Make the darkness of midnight more shocking.
The morn to that vessel no succour shall bring!
Now high o’er the main-mast I hover;
Now I plunge from the sky to the deck with a spring,
And I shatter the mast with one flap of my wing;
It cracks! and it breaks! and goes over!
Hew away, gallant seamen! fatigue never dread;
You shall all rest to-night from your labours!
The ocean’s wide mantle shall o’er you be spread,
The white bones of mariners pillow your head,
And the whale and the shark be your neighbours.
For I swoop from aloft, and I blaze, and I burn,
While my spouts the salt billows are drinking:
And I drive ’gainst the vessel, and beat down the stern,
And pour in a flood, which shall never return,
And all cry--66 She’s sinking! she’s sinking!”--
The barge?--well remembered!--’tis strong, and ’tis large,
And will live in the billows’ commotion;
But now all my spouts from the clouds I discharge,
And down goes the vessel, and down goes the barge!
Hurrah! I reign lord of the ocean!
How their shrieks rose in chorus! Now all is at rest;
The tempest no longer is brewing!
My dreams by the harm newly done will be blest,
So I’ll sleep for a while on a thunder-cloud’s breast,
Then rouze to hurl round me fresh ruin.
Hushed is the storm: the heavens no longer frown;
And o’er that spot, where late the bark went down,
All bright and smiling flows the treacherous wave,
Like sunshine playing on a new-made grave.
Full rose the watery moon: it showed a plank,
To which, all deadly pale, with tresses dank,
And robes of white, on which the sea had flung
Loose wreaths of ocean-flowers, unconscious clung
A fair frail form:--‘twas Irza!--to the shore
Each following wave the virgin nearer bore;
And now the mountain surge overwhelmed the land,
Then flying left her on the wished-for strand.
Soon hope and love of life her powers renew;
Swift towards a cliff she speeds, which towers in view,
Nor waits the wave’s return’; and now again
Safe on the shore, and rescued from the main,
Prostrate she falls, and thanks the Sire of life,
Whose arm hath snatched her from the billowy strife.
That duty done, she rose, and gazed around:
Mossed are the rocks, and flowers bestrew the ground.
Not distant far, a group of fragrant trees
Bend with their golden fruit. The ocean-breeze
Shakes a gigantic palm, which o’er a cave
Its dark green foliage spreads, and wildly wave
Their blooming wreaths, all starred with midnight dews,
A thousand creeping plants of thousand hues.
Then flashed the dreadful truth on Irza’s view!
That cave--those trees--that giant palm she knew!
Then from her lips for ever fled the smile:
--“Mother of God!” she shrieked, “the Demon-Isle!”--
Long on a broken crag she knelt, and prayed,
And wearied every saint for strength and aid;
Then speechless, heedless, senseless lay; when, lo!
Strange mutterings near her roused from torpid woe
Her soul to fresh alarms. Her head she reared,
And near her face an hideous face appeared;
But straight ’twas gone!--In trembling haste she rose,
And saw a ring of monstrous dwarfs inclose
Her rugged couch. Not Teniers’ hand could paint
Forms more grotesque to scare the tempted saint,
Than here, as on they pressed in circling throng,
With gnashing teeth seemed for her blood to long,
And grinned, and glared, and gloated! Quicker grew
Her breath! Death hemmed her round! As yet, ‘tis true,
Far off they kept; but soon, more daring grown,
More near they crept, oft sharpening on some stone
Their long crookt claws; and still, as on they came,
They screeched and chattered; and their eyes of flame,
Twinkling and goggling, told, what pleasure grim
‘Twould give to rack and rend her limb from limb:
--“Heaven take my soul!” she cried,--when, hark! a
moan,
So full, so sad, so strange--not shriek--not groan--
Something scarce earthly--breathed above her head--
‘Twas heard, and instant every imp was fled.
What was that sound? What pitying saint from high
Had stooped to save her? Now to heaven her eye
Grateful she raised. Almighty powers!--a form,
Gigantic as the palm, black as the storm,
All shagged with hair, wild, strange in shape and show,
Towered on the loftiest cliff, and gazed below.
On her he gazed, and gazed so fixed, so hard,
Like knights of bronze some hero’s tomb who guard.
Bright wreaths of scarlet plumes his temples crowned,
And round his ankles, arms, and wrists were wound
Unnumbered glassy strings of crystals bright,
Corals, and shells, and berries red and white.
On her he gazed, and floods of sable fires
Rolled his huge eyes, and spoke his fierce desires,
As on his club, a torn-up lime, he leaned.--
“Help, Heaven!” thought Irza, “‘tis the master-fiend!”
Not long he paused: he now with one quick bound
Sprang from the cliff, and lighted on the ground.
Back fled the maid in terror; but her fear
Was needless. Humbly, slowly crept he near,
Then kissed the earth, his club before her laid,
And of his neck her footstool would have made:
But from his touch she shrank. He raised his head,
And saw her limbs convulsed, her face all dread,
And felt the cause his presence! Sad and slow
He rose, resumed his club, and turn’d to go.
Reproachful was his look, but still ’twas kind;
He climb’d the rock, but oft he gazed behind;
He reach’d the cave; one look below he threw;
Plaintive again he moan’d, and with slow steps withdrew.
She is alone; she breathes again!--Fly, fly!--
Ah! wretched girl, too late! with frenzied eye,
(Scarce gone the master-fiend) his imps she sees,
Pour from the rocks, and drop from all the trees
With yell, and squeak, and many a horrid sound,
And form a living fence to hedge her round:
--“Now then,” she cried, 4 c all’s over!--oh! farewell,
Farewell, Rosalvo!” On her knee she fell,
And told her beads with trembling hands. Yet still
On came the throng; and soon, with wanton skill
(Lured by its coral glow and cross of gold),
One snatch’d her chaplet, nor forsook his hold,
Though hard she struggled: while more bold, more fierce
Another seized her arm, and dared to pierce
With his sharp teeth its snow. The pure blood stream’d
Fast from the wound, and loud the virgin scream’d;
And strait again was heard that sad strange moan,
And instant all the dwarfs again were flown.
Scarce conscious that she lived, scarce knowing why,
Half grieved, half grateful, Irza raised her eye:
Still on the rock (not dared he down to spring)
Dark and majestic stood the demon-king;
Then lowly knelt, and raised his arm to wave
An orange bough, and court her to his cave.
Lost are her friends; no help, no hope is nigh;
What can she do, and whither can she fly?
To him already twice her life she owes,
And but his presence now restrains her foes.
On wings of flame the sun had left the main;
And peeping from the trees, the imps too plain
Shot darts of rage from their green orbs of sight:
She heard their gibberings, and she mark’d their spite;
And, while they eyed her form, their care she saw
To grind their teeth, and whet each cruel claw.
Demons alike, the monarch-demon’s breast
Appear’d least fierce; of ills she chose the best,
Sought, where profaned her coral rosary lay,
Then slowly mounted where he show’d the way.
Cautious he led her tow’rds his lone abode,
And clear’d each stone that might impede her road.
With pain she trod: she reach’d the cave; but there
No more their weight her wearied limbs could bear.
Exhausted, fainting, anguish, terror, thirst,
Fatigue o’erpower’d her frame: her heart must burst,
Her eyes grow dim! Sunk on the rock she lies,
And sinking, prays she never more may rise.
Long in this deathlike swoon she lay: at length
Exhausted nature show’d forth all its strength,
And call’d her back to life. Her opening eyes
Beheld a grotto vast in depth and size,
Whose high straight sides forbade all hopes of flight:
The fractured roof gave ample space for light,
Through which in gorgeous guise the day-star shone
On many a lucid shell and brilliant stone.
Through pendent spars and crystals as it falls,
Each beam with rainbow hues adorns the walls,
Gilds all the roof, emblazes all the ground,
And scatters light, and warmth, and splendour round.
Gently on pillowing furs reposed her head;
With many a verdant rush her couch was spread;
A gourd with blushing fruits was near her placed,
Whose scent and colour woo’d alike her taste;
And round her strewn there bloom’d unnumber’d flowers
Charming her sense with aromatic powers.
One only object chill’d her blood with ear:
Far off removed (but still, alas! too near),
Scarce breathing, lest a breath her sleep might break,
There stood the fiend, and watch’d to see her wake.
In sooth, if credit outward show might crave,
Than Irza, ne’er had nymph an humbler slave.
He watched her every glance; her frown he fear’d;
And if his pains to meet her wish appear’d,
All pains seem’d far o’er-paid, all cares appeased,
And so she found but pleasure, he was pleased.
One power he claim’d, but claim’d that power alone:
Still, when he left her side, a mass of stone
Barr’d up the grotto, nor allow’d her feet
To pass the limits of her bright retreat.
But when in quest of food not forced to stray,
In Irza’s sight he wore the livelong day,
And show’d her living springs and noontide shades,
Spice-breathing groves, and flower-enamell’d glades.
For her he still selects the sweetest roots,
The coolest waters, and the loveliest fruits;
To deck her charms the softest furs he brings,
And plucks their plumage from flamingo wings;
Bids blooming shrubs, to shade her, bend in bowers,
And strews her couch with fragrant herbs and flowers
While many an ivy-twisted grate restrains
The splendid tenants of the etherial plains.
Then, when she sought her lonesome grot at eve,
And waved her hand, and warn’d him take his leave,
Her will was his: he breathed his plaintive moan,
Gazed one last look, then gently roll’d the stone.
Perhaps, such constant care and worship paid,
More fit for angel than for mortal maid,
At length had won her, with more grateful mind
To view his gifts, and pay respect so kind;
But, as her giant-gaoler she esteem’d
Some prince of subterraneous fire, she deem’d
His favours snares, his presents only given
To shake her faith, and steal her soul from heaven.
Still then her loathing heart remain’d the same,
Joy’d when he went, and shudder’d when he came;
And when to share his fruits by hunger press’d,
Ever she bless’d them first, and cross’d her breast.
Days creep--months roll--no change! no hope! and oh!
Rosalvo lost, what hope can life bestow?
Death, only death, she feels, can end her woes;
Nor doubts death soon will bring that wish’d-for close;
For now her frame, her mind, confess disease;
Painful and faint she moves; her tottering knees
Scarce bear her weight; and oft, by humour moved,
Her sickening soul now loathes what late it loved.
It comes! the moment comes! Her frame is rent
By sharper pangs; her nerves, too strongly bent,
Seem on the point to break; her forehead burns;
Her curdling blood is fire, is ice by turns;
Her heart-strings crack!--“This hour is sure her last!’
Fainting she sinks, and hopes “that hour is pass’d!”
Wake, Irza, wake to grief most strange and deep!
Still must thou live, and only live to weep!
Oh, lift thine aching head, thy languid eyes,
And mark what hideous stranger near thee lies.
“Guard me, all blessed saints!”--A monster child
Press’d her green couch; and, as it grimly smiled,
Its shaggy limbs, and eyes of sable fire,
Betray’d the crime, and claim’d its hellish sire!
“Lost! lost! My soul is lost!” the affrighted maid,
(Ah, now a maid no more!) distracted, said,
And wrung her hands. Those words she scarce could say;
Yet would have pray’d, but fear’d’t was sin to pray!
That only veil which ne’er admits a stain,
The veil of ignorance, was rent in twain:
In spite of virtue, cloisters, horror, youth,
She knows, and feels, and shudders at the truth.
That night accursed!--In death-like swoon she slept--
Then near her couch if that dark demon crept--
Oh! where was then her guardian angel’s aid?
And would not heavenly Mary save her maid?
Deprived of sense--betray’d by place and time--
Then was she doom’d to share the unconscious crime?
Debased, deflower’d, and stamp’d a wretch for life,
A monster’s mother, and a demon’s wife?
Oh! at that thought her soul what passions tear!
How then she beats her breast, how rends her hair,
And bids, with golden ringlets scatter’d round,
Stream all the air, and glitter all the ground!
Sighs, sobs, and shrieks the place of words supply;
And still she mourns to live, and prays to die,
Till heart denies to groan, and eyes to flow;
Then, on her couch of rushes sinking low,
Languid and lost she lies, in silent, senseless woe.
What lifts her burning head? why opes her eye?
What makes her blood run back? A faint shrill cry!
Too well, alas! that cry was understood:
The monster pined for want, and claim’d its food.
Then in her heart what rival passions strove!
How shrinks disgust, how yearns maternal love!
Now to its life her feelings she prefers;
Now Nature wakes, and makes her own--“’Tis hers!”
Loathing its sight, she melts to hear its cries,
And, while she yields the breast, averts her eyes.
Not so the demon-sire: the child he raised,
He kiss’d it--danced it--nursed it--knelt, and gazed,
Till joyful tears gush’d forth, and dimm’d his sight:
Scarce Irza’s self was view’d with more delight.
He held it tow’rds her--horror seem’d to thrill
Her frame. He sigh’d, and clasp’d it closer still.
Once, and but once, his features wrath express’d:
He saw her shudder, as it drain’d her breast;
And, while reproach half mingled with his moan,
Snatch’d it from her’s, and press’d it to his own.
Three months had pass’d; still lived the monster-brat:
Its sire had sought the wood; alone she sat:
She sheds no tears--no tears are left to shed;
Unmoisten’d burn her eyes--her heart seems dead--
Her form seems marble. Lo! from far the sound
Of music steals, and fills the caves around.
She starts!--scarce breathing--trembling;--“Oh! for
wings!”--
But hark! for nearer now the minstrel sings. .
SONG.
1.
When summer smiled on Goa’s bowers
They seem’d so fair;
All light the skies, all bloom the flowers,
All balm the air!
The mock-bird swell’d his amorous lay,
Soft, sweet, and clear; .
And all was beauteous, all was gay,
For she was near.
2.
But now the skies in vain are bright
With Summer’s glow;
The pea-dove’s call to Love’s delight
Augments my woé;
And blushing roses vainly bloom;
Their charms are fled,
And all is sadness, all is gloom,
For she is dead!
3.
Now o’er thy head, my virgin love,
Rolls Ocean’s wave;
But fond regret, in myrtle grove,
Hath dug thy grave.
Sweet flowers, around her vacant urn
Your wreaths I’ll twine,
And pray such flowers, ere Spring’s return,
May garland mine!
“He! he!”--That love-lorn dirge--that heavenly
tongue--
That air, she taught him‘t was Rosalvo sung!
Rosalvo, whom the waves, which wreck’d their bark,
Had borne, like her, for purpose sad and dark,
To that strange isle; though far remote the beach
From Irza’s grot, which Fate ordain’d him reach;
But now at length his curious search explores
These rude and slippery crags and distant shores;
And while he treads his dangerous path, the strains
Which Irza taught him soothe her lover’s pains.
She hears his steps, and hears them soon more near;
And loud she cries--“Rosalvo! Hear! oh, hear!
‘Tis Irza calls!” and now more quick, more nigh,
Down the steep rock she hears those footsteps fly.
Again she calls. He comes! He searches round;
He seeks the gate, and soon the gate is found.
Alas! ‘t is found in vain! the marble guard
Seem’d rooted as the rock, whose mouth it barr’d.
Yet still, with labouring nerves, to move the stone
He struggles. Now he stops; and, hark! A groan!
But one; then all was hush’d! A sickening chill
Seized Irza’s heart, and seem’d her veins to thrill.
Fain had she call’d her youthful bridegroom’s name;
Her tongue Fear’s numbing fingers seem’d to lame.
Footsteps!--more near they drew:--slow rolled the
stone--
The infernal gaoler came, but came alone.
With anxious glance his eye explored the cell;
But when it fix’d on her’s, abash’d it fell.
He knelt, and seem’d to fear her frown. He bore
His club.’T was splash’d with brains! ‘twas wet with
gore!
She fear’d--she guess’d--she rush’d--she ran--she
flew,--
Nor dared the fiend her frantic course pursue.
“Rosalvo! speak! Rosalvo!” Shrill, yet sweet,
She wakes the echoes. What obstructs her feet?
‘T is he, the young, the good, the kind, the fair!
As some frail lily, which the passing share *
Or wanton boy hath wounded, droops its head,
Its whiteness wither’d, and its fragrance fled,
Low lay the youth, and from his temple’s wound
With precious streams bedew’d the ensanguin’d ground.
Then reason fled its seat! She shrieks! she raves!
And fills with hideous yells the ocean caves;
Rends her bright locks, and laughs to see them fly,
And bids them seek Rosalvo in the sky.
To dig his grave she fiercely ploughs the ground,
Loud shrieks his name, nor feels the flints that wound
Her bosom’s globes, and stain their snow with gore,
As wild she dashes down, and beats in rage the floor.
Now fail her strength, her spirits; mute she sits,
Silent and sad; then laughs and sings by fits.
A statue now she seems, or one just dead,
Her looks all gloom, her eyes two balls of lead:
Then simply smiles, and chaunts, with idiot glee,
“Ave Maria! Benedicite!”
Till, Nature’s powers revived by rest, again
The fury passions riot in her brain,
And all is rage, revenge, and helpless, hopeless pain.
Days, weeks, months pass. Time came with slow relief;
But still at length it came. No more her grief
Disturbs her brain: she knows “that groan was his!”
And fully feels herself the wretch she is.
She rises: towards the grotto’s mouth she goes,
Nor dares the fiend her wandering steps oppose.
She seeks the spot on which Rosalvo fell,
On which he died! She knows that spot too well!
But, lo! no corse was there! All smooth and green
A velvet turf o’erstrewn with flowers was seen,
And fenced with roses. “Oh! whose pious care
Hath deck’d this grave? Hear, gracious Heaven, his
prayer,
When most he needs!” While thus in doubt she stands,
She marks the fiend’s approach. His ebon hands
Sustain’d a gourd of flowers of various hue;
He pour’d them, kiss’d the turf, and straight withdrew
Hither each morn his blooming gifts he bore,
Smooth’d the green sod, and strew’d it o’er and o’er.
Hither, each morn, came Irza; on those flowers
She wept, she pray’d, she sang away her hours.
So mourns the nightingale on poplar spray *,
Her callow brood by shepherds borne away,
Weeps all the night, and from her green retreat
Fills the wide groves with warblings sad as sweet.
And still fresh woes succeed. She feels again
Mysterious pangs, nor doubts her cause of pain.
Too sure, while lost in maniac state she lay,
Her sense, her wits, her feeling all away,
The fiend once more had seized the unguarded hour
To force her weakness, and abuse his ower.
“Qualis populeâ,” &c.--Virgil.
Again Lucina came. That new-born cry,
Shuddering, again she heard; her fearful eye
Wander’d around awhile, nor dared to stay.
“There, there he lies! my child!” With fresh essay
Once more she turn’d. But when at length her sight
Dwelt on its face, her wonder--her delight--
Can ne’er by tongue be told, by fancy guess’d!
Frantic she caught, she kiss’d, and lull’d him on her breast.
Oh! who can paint how Irza loved that child!
Grieved when he moan’d, and smiled whene’er he smiled!
His dimpled arm soft on the rushes lay;
Through his fine skin the blood was seen to play;
That skin than down of swans more smooth and white;
Nor e’er shone summer sky so blue and bright,
As shone the eyes of that same cherub elf;
In small the model of her beauteous self.
The scant gold locks which gilt his ivory brow,
Were sun-beams gleaming on a globe of snow;
And on his coral lips the red which stood,
Shamed the first rose, whose milk was Paphia’s blood.
By fairy-thefts since nurses were beguiled,
Never stole fairy yet a lovelier child!
In Nature’s costlier charms no babe array’d,
At length a mother’s fears and throes repaid:
Not when Lucina first in myrtle grove,
To Beauty’s kiss presented new-born Love;
And while, with wond’ring eyes, the immortal boy
Imbibed new light, and pour’d ecstatic joy:
He kiss’d and drain’d by turns her fragrant breast,
Till amorous ring-doves coo’d the god to rest.
Mothers may love as much, but never more,
Nor e’er did mother love so well before,
As Irza loved that child! Her sable lord
Mark’d well that love; and now, to health restored,
He felt her child to home would chain her feet,
Nor roll’d the stone to close her lone retreat.
Still, when he went, he with him bore away
That fav’rite babe, nor fear’d she far would stray.
Arm’d with his club, she now might safely rove
Through verdant vale, or weep in shadowy grove;
For soon the dwarfs were used to bear her sight,
Knew that dread club, nor dared indulge their spite.
Still from afar off looks of rage they cast,
And shrilly squeal’d and clamour’d as she pass’d;
But by their flight when near she came, ‘twas seen,
They own’d allegiance, and confess’d their queen.
One morn her savage lord, in quest of food,
Forsook tho cave, and sought th’ adjacent wood;
And as her darling boy he with him bore,
Irza, unwatch’d, might pace the sounding shore.
Listless and slow she moved, and climb’d with pain
A tow’ring cliff, which beetled o’er the main.
Now three full years had flown, since Irza’s eye
Had dwelt on human form, and since reply
From human tongue had blest her ear.’Tis true,
Throned on a rock, which spread before her view
The sea’s wide-stretching plains, she once descried
A gallant vessel plough the neighbouring tide.
By cries to draw it near she long essay’d,
And oft a palm-bough waved in sign for aid:
But all her cries and all her signs were vain;
On sail’d the bark, nor e’er return’d again!
On that same rock she sat, and eyed the wave,
And wish’d she there had found her wat’ry grave!
Fain had she sought one then, plunged from the steep.
And buried all her sufferings in the deep;
But faith alike and reason bade her shun
That wish, nor break a thread which God had spun.
Hark!--was it fancy?--hark again!--the shores
Echo the sound of fast approaching oars.
Oh! how she gazed!--a barge (by friars ’twas mann’d)
Cut the smooth waves, and sought the rocky strand.
Soon (while his wither’d hands a crosier hold,
All rich with gems, and rough with sculptured gold),
Landing alone, a reverend monk appear’d:--
His jewell’d cross--his flowing silver beard--
“‘Tis he!--‘tis he!”--swift down the steep she flies,
Falls at the stranger’s feet, and frantic cries,
Down her pale cheek while tears imploring roll,
“Help, father abbot! save me! save my soul!”
‘Twas he indeed! that bark which ne’er return’d,
Well on the cliff* her fair wild form discern’d,
But deem’d some island-fiend had spread a snare
To lure them with a form so wild and fair.
Yet oft in Lisbon would those seamen tell,
How angled for their souls the prince of hell;
And warmly paint, their leisure to beguile,
The fallen angel of th’ enchanted isle.
At length this wonder reach’d the abbot’s ear,
And prompt affection made the wonder clear:--
“’Twas Irza! shipwreck’d Irza! none but she
So heav’nly fair, so lonely lost could be!”
Straight he prepares anew that sea to brave,
Which once already seem’d to yawn his grave;
Nor ask, how chanced it that he reach’d the shore:
It was through a miracle and nothing more.
Whether on monkish frock as safe rode he,
As night-hags skim in sieves o’er Norway’s sea;
Or like Arion plough’d the wat’ry plain,
Horsed on some monster of the astonish’d main,
Some shark, some whale, some kraken, some sea-cow--
St. Francis saved him, and it boots not how.
And now again the saint his priest survey’d,
From waves and winds imploring heavenly aid;
Resolved for Irza’s sake to brave the worst
Which fate could offer on that isle accurst.
Far off his ship was anchor’d; on that strand
Not India’s wealth could make a layman land!
Therefore with none but monks he mann’d his barge,
Which bore of beads and bells a sacred charge;
Whole heaps of relics lent by Cintra’s nuns,
And holy water (blest at Rome) by tons!
His toils were all o’erpaid! he saw again
His fav’rite child, and kindly soothed her pain;
And while her tale he heard, oft dropp’d a tear,
And sign’d his beard-swept breast in awe and fear:
Then bade her speed the friendly bark to gain,
And fly the infernal monarch’s green domain;
Nor yield her tyrant time to cast a spell,
And rouse to cross her flight the powers of hell.
Then first from Irza’s cheek the glow of red,
By hope of rescue raised, grew faint, and fled;
Trembling she nam’d her cherub-boy, confess’d
A mother’s fondness fill’d his mother’s breast;
Described how fair he look’d, how sweet he smiled,
And fear’d her flight might quite destroy her child.
Then rose the abbot’s ire--ee Oh, guilty care!”
Frowning, he cried, and shook his hoary hair:
“Fair is the imp? and shall he therefore breathe
To win new subjects for the realms beneath?
The fiends most dangerous are those spirits bright,
Who toil for hell, and show like sons of light;
And still when Satan spreads his subtlest snares,
The baits are azure eyes, the lines are golden hairs.
Name thou the brat no more! To Cintra’s walls
Fly, where thy footsteps mild repentance calls.
I’ll hear no plaint! kneel not! I’m deaf to prayer!
Swift, brethren, to the barge this maniac bear;
Speed! speed!--no tears!--no struggling!--no delay
Row, brethren, row, and waft us swift away!”
The monks obeyed. Then, then in Irza’s soul
What various passions raged, and mock’d control!
Now how she mourn’d, now how she wept for joy,
How loathed the sire, and how adored the boy!
The barge is gain’d; they row. When, lo! from high
Her ear again receives that well-known cry,
That sad, strange moan! she starts, and lifts her eye.
There, on a rock which fenced the strand, once more
She saw her demon-husband stand: he bore
Her beauteous babe; and, while he view’d the barge,
Keen anguish seem’d each feature to enlarge,
And shake each giant limb. With piteous air
His arms he spread, his hands he clasp’d in prayer;
Knelt, wept, and while his eye-balls seem’d to burn,
Oft show’d the child, and woo’d her to return.
His suit the monks disdain; the barge recedes;
More humbly now he kneels, more earnest pleads.
But when he found no tears their course delay,
And still the boat pursued its watery way;
Then, ‘gainst his grief and rage no longer proof,
He gnash’d his teeth, he stamp’d his iron hoof,
Whirl’d the boy wildly round and round his head,
Hash’d it against the rocks, and howling fled.
Loud shrieks the mother! changed to stone she stands,
And silent lifts to heav’n her clay-cold hands:
Then, sinking down, stretch’d on the deck she lies,
Hid her pale face, and closed her aching eyes.
But hark! why shout the monks?--C£ Again,” they said,
“Again the demon comes!” with desperate dread
Starts the poor wretch, and lifts her anguish’d head.
Yes! there the infant-murderer stood once more,
But now far different were the looks he wore.
No bending knee, no suppliant glance was seen,
Proud was his port, and stern and fierce his mien.
His blood-stain’d eye-balls glared with vengeful ire;
His spreading nostrils seem’d to snort out fire.
Swiftly from crag to crag he following sprung,
While round his neck his shaggy offspring clung;
And now, like some dark tow’r, erect he stood,
Where the last rock hung frowning o’er the flood:--
“Look! look!” he seem’d to say, with action wild,
“Look, mother, look! this babe is still your child!
With him as me all social bonds you break,
Scorn’d and detested for his father’s sake:
My love, my service only wrought disdain,
And nature fed his heart from yours in vain!
Then go, Ingrate, far o’er the ocean go,
Consign your friend, your child to endless woe!
Renounce us! hate us! pleased, your course pursue,
And break their hearts who lived alone for you!”
His eyes, which flash’d red fire--his arms spread wide,
Her child raised high to heaven--too plain implied,
Such were his thoughts, though nature speech denied.
And now with eager glance the deep he view’d,
And now the barge with savage howl pursued;
Then to his lips his infant wildly press’d,
And fondly, fiercely, clasp’d it to his breast:
Three piteous moans, three hideous yells he gave,
Plunged headlong from the rock, and made the sea his
grave.
Where, screen’d by orange groves and myrtle bowers,
Saint-favour’d Cintra rears her gothic towers;
A nun there dwells, most holy, sad, and fair,
Her only business penance, fasts, and prayer;
Her only joy with flowers the shrines to dress,
Weep with the suff’ring, and relieve distress.
A poor lay-sister she; yet golden rain
Showers from her hand to glad each barren plain:
In other eyes she lights up joy, but ne’er
Those eyes of hers were seen a smile to wear:
From other breasts she plucks the thorn of grief,
But feels, her own admits of no relief.
Where age and sickness count the hours by groans,
Uncalled, she comes to hear and hush their moans.
There, ever humble, watchful, patient, kind,
No nauseous task, no servile care declined,
O’er the sick couch, all day, all night she hangs,
Till health or death relieves the sufferer’s pangs.
No thanks she takes, no praise from man receives,
Her duty done, the rest to God she leaves;
But only when her care redeems a life,
## Parting she says--“Pray for a demon’s wife!”
With blessings still, whene’er that nun they view,
The young, the aged her sainted steps pursue,
And cry, with bended knee and suppliant air,
ee Sister of mercy, name us in thy prayer!”
With beads the night, in gracious acts the day,
So wore her youth, so wears her age away.
Now cease, my lay! thy mournful task is o’er;
Irza, farewell! I wake thy lute no more.
“Was such her fate? and did her days thus creep
So sad, so slow, till came the long last sleep?
And did for this her hands with roses twine
The Saviour’s altars and the Virgin’s shrine?
Pure, beauteous, rich, did all these blessings tend,
But from the world in prime of life to send
This gifted maid, in prayer to waste her hours,
And weep a fancied crime in cloister’d bowers?”
Oh, blind to fate! perhaps that fancied crime
Which bade her quit the world in youthful prime,
Snatch’d her from paths, where beauty, wealth, and fame
Had proved but snares to load her soul with shame,
And spared her pangs from wilful guilt which flow,
The only serious ills that man can know!
Ah! what avails it, since they ne’er can last,
If gay or sad our span of days be past?
Pray, mortals, pray, in sickness or in pain,
Not long nor blest to live, but pure from stain.
A life of pleasure, and a life of woe,
When both are past, the difference who can show?
But all can tell, how wide apart in price
A life of virtue, and a life of vice.
Then still, sad Irza, tread your thorny way,
Since life must end, and merits ne’er decay.
Wounded past hope, still prize the pleasure pure,
To heal those hearts which yet can hope a cure;
Nor doubt, the soul which joys in noble deeds
Shall reap a rich reward when most it needs.
When comes that day to conscious guilt so dread,
Angels unseen shall bathe your burning head:
The prayers of orphans fan with balmy breath,
And widow’s blessings drown the threats of death;
Each sigh your pity hush’d shall swelling rise
In loud hosannas when you mount the skies;
And every tear on earth to sorrow given,
Be precious pearls to wreathe your brows in heaven!
APRIL 17.
Piansi i riposi di quest’ umil vita,
E sospirai la mia perduta pace!”
I regret the loss of our dead calm and our crawling pace of a knot and a half an hour; for during the last four days we have had nothing but gales and squalls, mountainous waves, the vessel rolling and pitching incessantly, and the sea perpetually pouring in at the windows and down through the hatchway. Into the bargain, we are now sufficiently towards the north to find the weather perishingly cold, and we have neither wood nor coals enough on board to allow a fire for the cabin.
But, among all our inconveniences, that which is the most intolerable undoubtedly arises from the sick apothecary. It seems that his complaint is the consequence of dram-drinking, which has affected his liver. Since his coming on board, he has continued to indulge his taste; and growing worse (as might be expected), he has now thought proper to put himself in a state of salivation: the consequence is, that what with the mercury and what with the man, aided by the concomitant effluvia of our cargo of sugar, rum, and coffee, for a combination of villanous smells, Falstaff’s buck-basket was nothing to the cabin of the Sir Godfrey Webster. I could almost fancy myself Slawken-bergius’s Don Diego just returned from the Promontory of Noses, and that I had exchanged my snub for a proboscis; so much do all my other senses appear to be absorbed in that of smelling, and so completely do I seem to myself to be nose all over. As to the poor apothecary, his mercury annoys us without any signs as yet of its benefiting himself. He grows worse daily, and I greatly doubt his ever reaching England.
APRIL 19. (Sunday.)
I have not been able to ascertain exactly the negro notions concerning the _Duppy_; indeed, I believe that his character and qualities vary in different parts of the country. At first, I thought that the term Duppy meant neither more nor less than a ghost; but sometimes he is spoken of as “the Duppy,” as if there were but one, and then he seems to answer to the devil. Sometimes he is a kind of malicious spirit, who haunts burying-grounds (like the Arabian gouls), and delights in playing tricks to those who may pass that way. On other occasions, he seems to be a supernatural attendant on the practitioners of Obeah, in the shape of some animal, as familiar imps are supposed to belong to our English witches; and this latter is the part assigned to him in the following “Nancy-story:”--
“Sarah Winyan was scarcely ten years old, when her mother died, and bequeathed to her considerable property. Her father was already dead; and the guardianship of the child devolved upon his sister, who had always resided in the same house, and who was her only surviving relation. Her mother, indeed, had left two sons by a former husband, but they lived at some distance in the wood, and seldom came to see their mother; chiefly from a rooted aversion to this aunt; who, although from interested motives she stooped to flatter her sister-in-law, was haughty, ill-natured, and even suspected of Obeahism, from the occasional visits of an enormous black dog, whom she called Tiger, and whom she never failed to feed and caress with marked distinction. In case of Sarah’s death, the aunt, in right of her brother, was the heiress of his property. She was determined to remove this obstacle to her wishes; and after treating her for some time with harshness and even cruelty, she one night took occasion to quarrel with her for some trifling fault, and fairly turned her out of doors. The poor girl seated herself on a stone near the house, and endeavoured to beguile the time by singing--
‘Ho-day, poor me, O!
Poor me, Sarah Winyan, O!
They call me neger, neger!
They call me Sarah Winyan, O!’
“But her song was soon interrupted by a loud rushing among the bushes; and the growling which accompanied it announced the approach of the dreaded Tiger. She endeavoured to secure herself against his attacks by climbing a tree: but it seems that Tiger had not been suspected of Obeahism without reason; for he immediately growled out an assurance to the girl, that come down she must and should! Her aunt, he said, had made her over to him by contract, and had turned her out of doors that night for the express purpose of giving him an opportunity of carrying her away. If she would descend from the tree, and follow him willingly to his own den to wait upon him, he engaged to do her no harm; but if she refused to do this, he threatened to gnaw down the tree without loss of time, and tear her into a thousand pieces. His long sharp teeth, which he gnashed occasionally during the above speech, appeared perfectly adequate to the execution of his menaces, and Sarah judged it most prudent to obey his commands. But as she followed Tiger into the wood, she took care to resume her song of
‘Ho-day, poor me, O!’
in hopes that some one passing near them might hear her name, and come to her rescue. Tiger, however, was aware of this, and positively forbad her singing. However, she contrived every now and then to loiter behind; and when she thought him out of hearing, her
‘Ho-day! poor me, O!’
began again; although she was compelled to sing in so low a voice, through fear of her four-footed master, that she had but faint hopes of its reaching any ear but her own. Such was, indeed, the event, and Tiger conveyed her to his den without molestation. In the meanwhile, her two half-brothers had heard of their mother’s death, and soon arrived at the house to enquire what was become of Sarah. The aunt received them with every appearance of welcome; told them that grief for the loss of her only surviving parent had already carried her niece to the grave, which she showed them in her garden; and acted her part so well, that the youths departed perfectly satisfied of the decease of their sister. But while passing through the wood on their return, they heard some one singing, but in so low a tone that it was impossible to distinguish the words. As this part of the wood was the most unfrequented, they were surprised to find any one concealed there. Curiosity induced them to draw nearer, and they soon could make out the
‘Ho-day! poor me, O!
Poor me, Sarah Winyan, O!’
“There needed no more to induce them to hasten onwards; and upon advancing deeper into the thicket, they found themselves at the mouth of a large cavern in a rock. A fire was burning within it; and by its light they perceived their sister seated on a heap of stones, and weeping, while she chanted her melancholy ditty in a low voice, and supported on her lap the head of the formidable Tiger. This was a precaution which he always took when inclined to sleep, lest she should escape; and she had taken advantage of his slumbers to resume her song in as low a tone as her fears of waking him would allow. She saw her brothers at the mouth of the cave: the youngest fortunately had a gun with him, and he made signs that Sarah should disengage herself from Tiger if possible. It was long before she could summon up courage enough to make the attempt; but at length, with fear and trembling, and moving with the utmost caution, she managed to slip a log of wood between her knees and the frightful head, and at length drew herself away without waking him. She then crept softly out of the cavern, while the youngest brother crept as softly into it: the monster’s head still reposed upon the block of wood; in a moment it was blown into a thousand pieces; and the brothers, afterwards cutting the body into four parts, laid one in each quarter of the wood.”
From that time only were dogs brought into subjection to men; and the inhabitants of Jamaica would never have been able to subdue those ferocious animals, if Tiger had not been killed and quartered by Sarah Winyan’s brothers. As to the aunt, she received the punishment which she merited, but I cannot remember what it was exactly. Probably, the brothers killed and quartered _her_ as well as her four-footed ally; or, perhaps, she was turned into a wild beast, and supplied the vacancy left by Tiger, as was the case with the celebrated Zingha, queen of Angola; who, although she embraced Christianity on her death-bed, and died according to the most orthodox forms of the Romish religion, still had conducted herself in such a manner while alive, that shortly after her decease, the kingdom being ravaged by a hyena, her subjects could not be persuaded but that the soul of this most Christian queen had transmigrated into the body of the hyena. Yet this was surely doing the hyena great injustice; for she, at least, had never been in the habit of composing ointments by pounding little children in a mortar with her own hands; an amusement which Zingha had introduced at the court of Angola. It took surprisingly; shortly, no woman thought her toilette completed, unless she had used some of this ointment. Pounding children became all the rage; and ladies who aspired to be the leaders of fashion, pounded their own.
APRIL 20.
EPIGRAM.--(From the French.)
“Whose can that little monster be?
Its parents really claim one’s pity!”
“Madam, that child belongs to me.”--
“Well, I protest, she’s vastly pretty!”
APRIL 21.
The weather gets no better, the apothecary gets no worse, and both are as foul and as disagreeable as they can well be. As to the man, it is wonderful that he is still alive, for he has swallowed nothing for the last three weeks except drams and laudanum. He drinks, and he stinks, and he does nothing else earthly or celestial. The quantity of spirits which he pours down his throat incessantly should, of itself, be sufficient to finish him; but he seems to have accustomed himself to drams, as Mithridates used himself to poisons, till his stomach is completely proof against them; or like the Scythian princess, who was fed upon ratsbane pap from her infancy, for the express purpose of one day or other poisoning Alexander in her embraces; and who arrived at such perfection, that although the venom did no harm to her own constitution, she killed a condemned criminal with a single kiss. The consequence was, that hemp fell fifty per cent, and Jack Ketch’s nose was put out of joint completely; for the devil a culprit of any pretensions to taste could be found in all Scythia, who could be prevailed upon to be executed except by her royal highness’s own lips. I am afraid this story is not strictly historical, and that we should look for it in vain in Quintus Curtius.
APRIL 23.
A gale of wind began to show itself on Monday night; it has continued to blow ever since with increasing violence, and is now become very serious. The captain says that he never experienced weather so severe at this season: this is only my usual luck. Certainly nothing can be more disagreeable than a ship on these occasions. The sea breaks over the vessel every minute, and it is really something awful to see the waves raised into the air by the force of the gale, hovering for a while over the ship, and then coming down upon us swop, to inundate every thing below deck as well as upon it. The wind is piercingly cold; the floors and walls are perpetually streaming. But a fire is quite out of the question; and, indeed, at one time to-day, our eating appeared to be out of the question too; for at four o’clock the cook sent us word, that the sea put the kitchen-fire out as fast as he could light it; that he was almost frozen, having been for the last eight hours up to his waist in water; and that we must make up our minds to get no dinner to-day. However, the steward coaxed him, and encouraged him, and poured spirits down his throat, and at last a dinner of some kind was put upon the table; but it had not been there ten minutes, before a tremendous sea poured itself down the companion stairs and through the hatchway, set every thing on the table afloat, deluged the cabin, ducked most of the company, and drove us all into the other room. I was lucky enough to escape with only a sprinkling; but Mrs. Walker was soaked through from head to foot. We can only cross the cabin by creeping along by the sides as if we were so many cats. Walking the deck, even for the sailors, is absolutely out of the question; and the little cabin-boy has so fairly given up the attempt, that he goes crawling about upon all fours. Even our Spanish mastiff, Flora, finds it impossible to keep her four legs upon deck. Every five minutes up they all go, away rolls the dog over and over; and when she gets up again, shakes her ears, and howls in a tone of the most piteous astonishment.
APRIL 24.
Though the gale was itself sufficiently serious, its effects at first were ludicrous enough; but yesterday it produced a consequence truly shocking and alarming. Edward Sadler, the second mate, was at breakfast in the steerage: the boatswain had been cutting some beef with a large case-knife, which he had afterwards put down upon the chest on which they were sitting: a sudden heel of the ship threw them all to the other side of the cabin: the knife fell with its haft against the ladder; and poor Edward falling against it, at least three inches of the blade were forced into his right side. The wound was dressed without the loss of a moment; but, from its depth, the jaggedness of the weapon with which it was made, and from a pain which immediately afterwards seized the poor fellow in his chest, the apothecary thinks that his recovery is very improbable: he says that the liver is certainly perforated, and so probably are the lungs. If the latter have escaped, it must have been only by the breadth of a hair. Every one in the ship is distressed beyond measure at this accident, for the young man is a universal favourite. He is but just one and twenty, good-looking, with manners much superior to his station; and so unusually steady, as well as
## active, that if Providence grants him life, he cannot fail to raise
himself in his profession.
APRIL 25.
Edward complains no longer of the pain in his chest; he sleeps well, eats enough, has no fever, and every symptom is so favourable, that Dr. Ashman encourages us to hope that he has received no material injury. Our ship-carpenter has always appeared to be the sulkiest and surliest of sea-bears: yet, on the day of Edward’s accident, he passed every minute that he could command by the side of his sofa, kneeling, and praying, and watching him as if he had been his son; and every now and then wiping away his “own tears” with the dirtiest of all possible pocket-handkerchiefs. So that what Goldsmith said of Dr. Johnson may be applied to this old man: “He has nothing of a bear but his skin.” After tearing every sail in the ship into shivers, and being as disagreeable as ever it could be, the gale has at length abated. Yesterday it was a storm, and we were going to Ireland, Lisbon, Brest--in short, every where except to England; to-day, it is a dead calm, and we are going nowhere at all.
APRIL 26. (Sunday.)
The gale has returned with increased violence, and we are once more at our old trade of dead lights; however, for this time, the wind, at least, is in our favour.
APRIL 28.
The wounded mate is so much recovered as to come upon deck for a few hours to-day, and may now be considered as completely out of danger; although Dr. Ashman is positive (from his difficulty of breathing at first, and the subsequent pain in his chest) that his lungs must actually have been wounded, however slightly. We are now nearly abreast of Scilly; we fell in with several Scilly boats to-day, from whom we obtained a very acceptable supply of fish, vegetables, and newspapers.
APRIL 29.
_An African Nancy-Story_.--The headman (i. e. the king) of a large district in Africa, in one of his tours, visited a young nobleman, to whom he lost a considerable sum at play. On his departure he loaded his host with caresses, and insisted on his coming in person to receive payment at court; but his pretended kindness had not deceived the nurse of the young man. She told him, that the headman was certainly incensed against him for having conquered him at play, and meant to do him some injury; that having been so positively ordered to come to court, he could not avoid obeying; but she advised him to take the river-road, where, at a particular hour, he would find the king’s youngest and favourite daughter bathing; and she instructed him how to behave. The youth reached the river, and concealed himself, till he saw the princess enter the stream alone; but when she thought fit to regain the bank, she found herself extremely embarrassed.--‘Ho-day! what is become of my clothes? ho-day! who has stolen my clothes? ho-day! if any one will bring me back my clothes, I promise that no harm shall happen to him this day--O!’--This was the cue for which the youth had been instructed to wait. ‘Here are your clothes, missy!’ said he, stepping from his concealment: ‘a rogue had stolen them, while you were bathing; but I took them from him, and have brought them back.’--‘Well, young man, I will keep my promise to you. You are going to court, I know; and I know also, that the headman will chop off your head, unless at first sight you can tell him which of his three daughters is the youngest. Now I am she; and in order that you may not mistake, I will take care to make a sign; and then do not you fail to pitch upon me.’ The young man assured her, that, having once seen her, he never could possibly mistake her for any other, and then set forwards with a lightened heart. The headman received him very graciously, feasted him with magnificence, and told him that he would present him to his three daughters, only that there was a slight rule respecting them to which he must conform. Whoever could not point out which was the youngest, must immediately lose his head. The young man kissed the ground in obedience, the door opened, and in walked three little black dogs. Now, then, the necessity of the precaution taken by the princess was evident; the youth looked at the dogs earnestly; something induced the headman to turn away his eyes for a moment, and in that moment one of the dogs lifted up its fore paw.
‘This,’ cried the youth--‘this is your youngest daughter;’--and instantly the dogs vanished, and three young women appeared in their stead. The headman was equally surprised and incensed; but concealing his rage, he professed the more pleasure at that discovery; because, in consequence, the law of that country obliged him to give his youngest daughter in marriage to the person who should recognise her; and he charged his future son-in-law to return in a week, when he should receive his bride. But his feigned caresses could no longer deceive the young man: as it was evident that the headman practised Obeah, he did not dare to disobey him; and knew that to escape by flight would be unavailing. It was, therefore, with melancholy forebodings that he set out for court on the appointed day; and (according to the advice of his old nurse) he failed not to take the road which led by the river. The princess came again to bathe; her clothes again vanished; she had again recourse to her ‘Ho-day! what is become of my clothes?’ and on hearing the same promise of protection, the youth again made his appearance. ‘Here are your clothes, missy,’ said he; ‘the wind had blown them away to a great distance; I found them hanging upon the bushes, and have brought them back to you.’ Probably the princess thought it rather singular, that whenever her petticoats were missing, the same person should always happen to be in the way to find them: however, as she was remarkably handsome, she kept her thoughts to herself, swallowed the story like so much butter, and assured him of her protection. ‘My father,’ said she, ‘will again ask you which is the youngest daughter; and as he suspects me of having assisted you before, he threatens to chop off _my_ head instead of yours, should I disobey him a second time. He will, therefore, watch me too closely to allow of my making any sign to you; but still I will contrive something to distinguish me from my sisters; and do you examine us narrowly till you find it.’ As she had foretold, the headman no sooner saw his destined son-in-law enter, than he told him that he should immediately receive his bride; but that if he did not immediately point her out, the laws of the kingdom sentenced him to lose his head. Upon which the door opened, and in walked three large black cats, so exactly similar in every respect, that it was utterly impossible to distinguish one from the other. The youth was at length on the point of giving up the attempt in despair, when it struck him, that each of the cats had a slight thread passed round its neck; and that while the threads of two were scarlet, that of the third was blue. ‘_This_ is your youngest daughter;’ cried he, snatching up the cat with the blue thread. The headman was utterly at a loss to conceive by what means he had made the discovery; but could not deny the fact, for there stood the princesses in their own shape. He therefore affected to be greatly pleased, gave him his bride, and made a great feast, which was followed by a ball; but in the midst of it the princess whispered her lover to follow her silently into the garden. Here she told him, that an old Obeah woman, who had been her father’s nurse, had warned him, that if his youngest daughter should live to see the day after her wedding, he would lose his power and his life together; that she, therefore, was sure of his intending to destroy both herself and her bridegroom that night in their sleep; but that, being aware of all these circumstances, she had watched him so narrowly as to get possession of some of his magical secrets, which might possibly enable her to counteract his cruel designs. She then gathered a rose, picked up a pebble, filled a small phial with water from a rivulet; and thus provided, she and her lover betook themselves to flight upon a couple of the swiftest steeds in her father’s stables. It was midnight before the headman missed them: his rage was excessive; and immediately mounting his great horse, Dandy, he set forwards in pursuit of the lovers. Now Dandy galloped at the rate of ten miles a minute. The princess was soon aware of her pursuer: without loss of time she pulled the rose to pieces, scattered the leaves behind her, and had the satisfaction of seeing them instantly grow up into a wood of briars, so strong and so thickly planted, that Dandy vainly attempted to force his way through them. But, alas! this fence was but of a very perishable nature. In the time that it would have taken to wither its parent rose-leaves, the briars withered away; and Dandy was soon able to trample them down, while he continued his pursuit. Now, then, the pebble was thrown in his passage; it burst into forty pieces, and every piece in a minute became a rock as lofty as the Andes. But the Andes themselves would have offered no insurmountable obstacles to Dandy, who bounded from precipice to precipice; and the lovers and the headman could once more clearly distinguish each other by the first beams of the rising sun. The headman roared, and threatened, and brandished a monstrous sabre; Dandy tore up the ground as he ran, neighed louder than thunder, and gained upon the fugitives every moment. Despair left the princess no choice, and she violently dashed her phial upon the ground. Instantly the water which it contained swelled itself into a tremendous torrent, which carried away every thing before it,--rocks, trees, and houses; and ‘the horse and his rider’ were carried away among the rest.--‘Hic finis Priami fatorum!’ There was an end of the headman and Dandy! The princess then returned to court, where she raised a strong party for herself; seized her two sisters, who were no better than their father, and had assisted him in his witchcraft; and having put them and all their partisans to death by a summary mode of proceeding, she established herself and her husband on the throne as headman and head-woman. It was from this time that _all_ the kings of Africa have been uniformly mild and benevolent sovereigns. Till then they were all tyrants, and tyrants they would all still have continued, if this virtuous princess had not changed the face of things by drowning her father, strangling her two sisters, and chopping off the heads of two or three dozen of her nearest and dearest relations.
It seems to be an indispensable requisite for a Nancy-story, that it should contain a witch, or a duppy, or, in short, some marvellous personage or other. It is a kind of “pièce à machines” But the creole slaves are very fond of another species of tale, which they call “Neger-tricks,” and which bear the same relation to a Nancy-story which a farce does to a tragedy. The following is a specimen:--_A Neger-trick_.--“A man who had two wives divided his provision-grounds into two parts, and proposed that each of the women should cultivate one half. They were ready to do their proper share, but insisted that the husband should at least take his third of the work. However, when they were to set out, the man was taken so ill, that he found it impossible to move; he quite roared with pain, and complained bitterly of a large lump which had formed itself on his cheek during the night. The wives did what they could to relieve him, but in vain they boiled a negro-pot for him, but he was too ill to swallow a morsel: and at length they were obliged to leave him, and go to take care of the provision-grounds. As soon as they were gone, the husband became perfectly well, emptied the contents of the pot with great appetite, and enjoyed himself in ease and indolence till evening, when he saw his wives returning; and immediately he became worse than ever. One of the women was quite shocked to see the size to which the lump had increased during her absence: she begged to examine it; but although she barely touched it with the tip of her finger as gingerly as possible, it was so tender that the fellow screamed with agony. Unluckily, the other woman’s manners were by no means so delicate; and seizing him forcibly by the head to examine it, she undesignedly happened to hit him a great knock on the jaw, and, lo and behold! out flew a large lime, which he had crammed into it. Upon which both his wives fell upon him like two furies; beat him out of the house; and whenever afterwards he begged them to go to the provision-grounds, they told him that he had got no lime in his mouth _then_, and obliged him from that time forwards to do the whole work himself.”
A negro was brought to England; and the first point shown him being the chalky cliffs of Dover, “O ki!” he said; “me know now what makes the buckras all so white!”
MAY 29.
We once more saw the “Lizard,” the first point of England; and, indeed, it was full time that we should. Besides that our provisions were nearly exhausted by the length of the voyage, our crew was in a great measure composed of fellows of the most worthless description; and the captain lately discovered that some of them had contrived to break a secret passage into the hold, where they had broached the rum-casks, and had already passed several nights in drinking, with lighted candles: a single spark would have been sufficient to blow us all up to the moon!
June 1. (Saturday.)
We took our river pilot on board; and on Wednesday, the 5th, we reached Gravesend. I went on shore at nine in the morning; and here I conclude my _Jamaica Journal_.
1817.
November 5. (Wednesday.)
I left London, and embarked for Jamaica on board the same vessel, commanded by the same captain, which conveyed me thither in 1815. We did not reach the Downs till Sunday, the 9th, after experiencing in our passage a severe gale of wind, which broke the bowsprit of a vessel in our sight, but did no mischief to ourselves. On arriving in the Downs, we found all the flags lowered half way down the masts, which is a signal of mourning; and we now learnt, that, in a few hours after giving birth to a still-born son, the Princess Charlotte of Wales had expired at half-past two on Thursday morning.
November 16. (Sunday.)
“Peaceful slumbering on the ocean.” Here we are still in the Downs, and no symptoms of a probable removal. Indeed, when we weighed our anchor at Gravesend, it gave us a broad hint that there was no occasion as yet for giving ourselves the trouble; for, before it could be got on board, the cable was suffered to slip, and down again went the anchor, carrying along with it one of the men who happened to be standing upon it at the moment, and who in consequence went plump to the bottom. Luckily, the fellow could swim; so in a few minutes he was on board again, and no harm done.
November 19.
We resumed our voyage with fine weather, but wind so perverse, that we did not arrive in sight of Portsmouth till the evening of the 21st. A pilot came on board, and conveyed us into Spithead.
November 22.
This morning we quitted Portsmouth, and this evening we returned to it. The Needle rocks were already in sight, when the wind failed completely. There was no getting through the passage, and the dread of a gale would not admit of our remaining in so dangerous a roadstead. So we had nothing for it but to follow Mad Bess’s example, and “return to the place whence we came.” We are now anchored upon the Motherbank, about two miles from Ryde in the Isle of Wight.
November 30. (Sunday.)
Edward, the young man who was so dangerously wounded on our return from my former voyage to Jamaica, is now chief mate of the vessel, and feels no other inconvenience from his accident, except a slight difficulty in raising his left arm above his head.
DECEMBER 1. (Monday.)
Here we are, still riding at anchor, with no better consolation than that of Klopstock’s halfdevil Abadonna; the consciousness that others are deeper damned than ourselves. Another ship belonging to the same proprietor left the West India Docks three weeks before us, and here she is still rocking cheek by jowl alongside of us,
“One writ with us in sour misfortune’s book.”
DECEMBER 3.
A tolerably fair breeze at length enabled us to set sail once more.
DECEMBER 24. (Wednesday.)
I had often heard talk of “a hell upon earth,” and now I have a perfect idea of “a hell upon water.” It must be precisely our vessel during the last three weeks. At twelve at noon upon the 4th, we passed Plymouth, and were actually in sight of the Lizard point, when the wind suddenly became completely foul, and drove us back into the Channel. It continued to strengthen gradually but rapidly; and by the time that night arrived, we had a violent gale, which blew incessantly till the middle of Sunday, the 7th, when we were glad to find ourselves once more in sight of Plymouth, and took advantage of a temporary abatement of the wind to seek refuge in the Sound. Here, however, we soon found that we had but little reason to rejoice at the change of our situation. The Sound was already crowded with vessels of all descriptions; and as we arrived so late, the only mooring still unoccupied, placed us so near the rocks on one side, and another vessel astern, that the captain confessed that he should feel considerable anxiety if the gale should return with its former violence. So, of course, about eleven at night, the gale _did_ return; not, indeed, with its former violence, but with its violence increased tenfold; and once we were in very imminent danger from our ship’s swinging round by a sudden squall, and narrowly escaping coming in contact with the ship astern, which had not, it seems, allowed itself sufficient cable. Luckily, we just missed her; and our cables (for both our anchors were down) being new and good, we rode out the storm without driving, or meeting with any accident whatever. The next day was squally; and in spite of the Breakwater, the rocking of the ship from the violent agitation of the waves by the late stormy weather was almost insupportable. However, on the 9th, the wind took a more favourable turn, though in so slight a degree, that the pilot expressed great doubts whether it would last long to do us any service. But the captain felt his situation in Plymouth Sound so uneasy, that he resolved at least to make the attempt; and so we crept once more into the Channel. In a few hours the breeze strengthened; about midnight we passed the lights upon the Lizard, and the next morning England was at length out of sight. This cessation of ill luck soon proved to be only “_reculer ‘pour mieux sauter_” The gale, it seems, had only stopped to take breath: about four in the afternoon of Wednesday, the wind began to rise again; and from that time till the middle of the 23d it blew a complete storm day and night, with only an occasional intermission of two or three hours at a time. Every one in the ship declared that they had never before experienced so obstinate a persecution of severe weather: every rag of sail was obliged to be taken down; the sea was blown up into mountains, and poured itself over the deck repeatedly. The noise was dreadful; and as it lasted incessantly, to sleep was impossible; and I passed ten nights, one after another, without closing my eyes; so that the pain in the nerves of them at length became almost intolerable, and I began to be seriously afraid of going blind. In truth, the captain could not well have pitched upon a set of passengers worse calculated to undergo the trial of a passage so rough. As for myself, my brain is so weak, that the continuation of any violent noise makes me absolutely light-headed; and a pop-gun going off suddenly is quite sufficient at any time to set every nerve shaking, from the crown of my head to the sole of my foot. Then we had a young lady who was ready to die of seasickness, and an old one who was little better through fright; and I had an Italian servant into the bargain, who was as sick as the young lady, and as frightened as the old one. The poor fellow had never been on board a ship before; and with every crack which the vessel gave, he thought that to be sure, she was splitting right in half. The sailors, too, appeared to be quite knocked up from the unremitting fatigue to which they were subjected by the perseverance of this dreadful weather. Several of them were ill; and one poor fellow actually died, and was committed to the ocean. To make matters still worse, during the first week the wind was as foul as it could blow; and we passed it in running backwards and forwards, without advancing a step towards our object; till at length every drop of my very small stock of patience was exhausted, and I could no longer resist suggesting our returning to port, rather than continue buffeting about in the chops of the Channel, so much to the damage of the ship, and all contained in her. A change of wind, however, gave a complete answer to this proposal. On Thursday it became favourable as to the prosecution of our voyage, but its fury continued unabated till the evening of the 23d. It then gradually died away, and left us becalmed before the island of Madeira; where we are now rolling backwards and forwards, in sight of its capital, Funchal, on the 24th of December, being seven immortal weeks since my departure from Gravesend. The evening sun is now very brilliant, and shines full upon the island, the rocks of which are finely broken; the height of the mountains cause their tops to be lost in the clouds; the sides are covered with plantations of vines and forests of cedars; and the white edifices of Funchal, built upon the very edge of the shore, have a truly picturesque appearance. We are now riding between the island and an isolated group of inaccessible rocks called “the Deserters;” * and the effect of the scene altogether is beautiful in the extreme.
* The Dezertas.
DECEMBER 25. (Christmas-day.)
A light breeze sprang up in the night, and this morning Madeira was no longer visible.
DECEMBER 31. (Wednesday.)
We are now in the latitudes commonly known by the name of “the Horse Latitudes.” During the union of America and Great Britain, great numbers of horses used to be exported from the latter; and the winds in these latitudes are so capricious, squally, and troublesome in every respect,--now a gale, and then a dead calm--now a fair wind, and the next moment a foul one,--that more horses used to die in this portion of the passage than during all the remainder of it. These latitudes from thence obtained their present appellation, and extend from 29° to 25° or 24 1/2°.
1818.--JANUARY 1.
(Thursday.)
On this day, on my former voyage, I landed at Black River. Now we are still at some distance from the line, and are told that we cannot expect to reach Jamaica in less than three weeks, even with favourable breezes; and our breezes at present are _not_ favourable. Nothing but light winds, or else dead calms; two knots an hour, and obliged to be thankful even for that! A-weel! this is weary work!
JANUARY 17. (Saturday.)
On Saturday, the 3d, we managed to crawl over the line, and had no sooner got to the other side of it, than we were completely becalmed; and even when we resumed our progress, it was at such a pace that a careless observer might have been pardoned for mistaking our manner of moving for a downright standing still. Day after day produced nothing better for us than baffling winds, so light that we scarcely made two miles an hour, and so variable that the sails could be scarcely set in one direction before it became necessary to shift them to another; while the monotony of our voyage was only broken by an occasional thunderstorm, the catching a stray dolphin now and then, watching a shoal of flying fish, or guessing at the complexion of the corsairs on board some vessel in the offing: for the Caribbean Sea is now dabbed all over like a painter’s pallette with corsairs of all colours,--black from St. Domingo, brown from Carthagena, white from North America, and pea-green from the Cape de Verd Islands. On the afternoon of the 4th, one of them was at no very great distance from us; she hoisted English colours on seeing ours; but there was little doubt, from her peculiar construction and general appearance, that she was a privateer from Carthagena. She set her head towards us, and seemed to be doing her best to come to a nearer acquaintance; but the same calm which hindered us from bravely running away from her, hindered her also from reaching us, although at nightfall she seemed to have gained upon us. In the night we had a violent thunder-storm, and the next morning she was not to be seen. Still we continued to creep and to crawl, grumbling and growling, till on Sunday, the 11th, the long-looked-for wind came at last. The trade wind began to blow with all its might and main right in the vessel’s poop, and sent us forward at the rate of 200 miles a day. We passed between Deseada and Antigua in the night of the 15th; and, on the 16th, the rising sun showed us the island mountain of Montserrat; the sight of which was scarcely less agreeable to our eyes from its romantic beauty, than welcome from its giving us the assurance that our long-winded voyage is at length drawing towards its termination.
JANUARY 19.
Yesterday morning a miniature shark chose to swallow the bait laid for dolphins, and in consequence soon made his appearance upon deck. It was a very young one, not above three feet long. I ordered a slice of him to be broiled at dinner, but he was by no means so good as a dolphin; but still there was nothing in the taste so unpalatable as to prevent the flesh from being very acceptable in the absence of more delicate food. In the evening, a bird, about the size of a large pigeon, flew on board, and was knocked down by the mate with his hat. It was sulky, and would not be persuaded to eat any thing that was offered, so he was suffered to escape this morning. It was beautifully shaped, with a swallow-tail, wings of an extraordinary spread in comparison with the smallness of the body, a long sharp bill, black and polished like a piece of jet, and eyes remarkably large and brilliant. The head, back, and outside of the wings were of a brownish slate colour, and the rest of his feathers of the most dazzling whiteness. It is called a crab-catcher.
JANUARY 24. (Saturday.)
Our favourable breeze lasted till Tuesday, the 20th; when, having brought us half way between St. Domingo and Jamaica, it died away, and we dragged on at the rate of two or three miles an hour till Thursday afternoon, which placed us at the mouth of Black River. If we had arrived one hour earlier, we could have immediately entered the harbour; but, with our usual good fortune, we were just too late for the daylight. We therefore did not drop anchor till two o’clock on Friday, before the town of Black River; and on Saturday morning, at four o’clock, I embarked in the ship’s cutter for Savannah la Mar. Every one assured us that we could not fail to have a favourable seabreeze the whole way, and that we should be on land by eight: instead of which, what little wind there was veered round from one point of the compass to the other with the most indefatigable caprice; and we were not on shore till eleven. Here I found Mr. T. Hill, who luckily had his phaëton ready, in which he immediately conveyed me once more to my own estate. The accounts of the general behaviour of my negroes is reasonably good, and they all express themselves satisfied with their situation and their superintendents. Yet, among upwards of three hundred and thirty negroes, and with a greater number of females than men, in spite of all indulgences and inducements, not more than twelve or thirteen children have been added annually to the list of the births. On the other hand, this last season has been generally unhealthy all over the island, and more particularly so in my parish; so that I have lost several negroes, some of them young, strong, and valuable labourers in every respect; and in consequence, my sum total is rather diminished than increased since my last visit. I had been so positively assured that the custom of plunging negro infants, immediately upon their being born, into a tub of cold water, infallibly preserved them from the danger of tetanus, that, on leaving Jamaica, I had ordered this practice to be adopted uniformly. The negro mothers, however, took a prejudice against it into their heads, and have been so obstinate in their opposition, that it was thought unadvisable to attempt the enforcing this regulation. From this and other causes I have lost several infants; but I am told, that on other estates in the neighbourhood they have been still more unfortunate in regard to their children; and one was named to me, on which sixteen were carried off in the course of three days.
JANUARY 26. (Monday.)
The joy of the negroes on my return was quite sufficiently vociferous, and they were allowed today for a holiday. They set themselves to singing and dancing yesterday, in order to lose no time; and to show their gratitude for the indulgence, not one of the five pen-keepers chose to go to their watch last night; the consequence was that the cattle made their escape, and got into one of my very best cane-pieces. The alarm was given; my own servants and some of the head people had grace enough to run down to the scene of action; but the greatest part remained quietly in the negro-houses, beating the gumby-drum, and singing their joy for my arrival with the whole strength of their lungs, but without thinking it in the least necessary to move so much as a finger-joint in my service. The cattle were at length replaced in their pen, but not till the cane-piece had been ruined irretrievably. Such is negro gratitude, and such my reward for all that I have suffered on ship-board. To be sure, as yet there could not be a more ill-starred expedition than my present one.
I only learned, yesterday, that before making the island of Madeira an Algerine corsair was actually in sight, and near enough to discern the turbans of the crew; but we lost each other through the violence of the gale.
JANUARY 29.
There is a popular negro song, the burden of which is,--
Take him to the Gulley! Take him to the Gulley!
But bringee back the frock and board.”--
“Oh! massa, massa! me no deadee yet!”--
“Take him to the Gulley! Take him to the Gulley!”
“Carry him along!”
This alludes to a transaction which took place some thirty years ago, on an estate in this neighbourhood, called Spring-Garden; the owner of which (I think the name was Bedward) is quoted as the cruellest proprietor that ever disgraced Jamaica. It was his constant practice, whenever a sick negro was pronounced incurable, to order the poor wretch to be carried to a solitary vale upon his estate, called the Gulley, where he was thrown down, and abandoned to his fate; which fate was generally to be half devoured by the john-crows, before death had put an end to his sufferings. By this proceeding the avaricious owner avoided the expence of maintaining the slave during his last illness; and in order that he might be as little a loser as possible, he always enjoined the negro bearers of the dying man to strip him naked before leaving the Gulley, and not to forget to bring back his frock and the board on which he had been carried down. One poor creature, while in the act of being removed, screamed out most piteously “that he was not dead yet;” and implored not to be left to perish in the Gulley in a manner so horrible. His cries had no effect upon his master, but operated so forcibly on the less marble hearts of his fellow-slaves, that in the night some of them removed him back to the negro village privately, and nursed him there with so much care, that he recovered, and left the estate unquestioned and undiscovered. Unluckily, one day the master was passing through Kingston, when, on turning the corner of a street suddenly, he found himself face to face with the negro, whom he had supposed long ago to have been picked to the bones in the Gulley of Spring-Garden. He immediately seized him, claimed him as his slave, and ordered his attendants to convey him to his house; but the fellow’s cries attracted a crowd round them, before he could be dragged away. He related his melancholy story, and the singular manner in which he had recovered his life and liberty; and the public indignation was so forcibly excited by the shocking tale, that Mr. Bedward was glad to save himself from being torn to pieces by a precipitate retreat from Kingston, and never ventured to advance his claim to the negro a second time.
JANUARY 30.
A man has been tried, at Kingston, for cruel treatment of a Sambo female slave, called Amey. She had no friends to support her cause, nor any other evidence to prove her assertions, than the apparent truth of her statement, and the marks of having been branded in five different places. The result was, that the master received a most severe reprimand for his inhuman conduct, and was sentenced to close confinement for six months, while the slave, in consequence of her sufferings, was restored to the full enjoyment of her freedom.
It appears to me that nothing could afford so much relief to the negroes, under the existing system of Jamaica, as the substituting the labour of animals for that of slaves in agriculture, whereever such a measure is practicable. On leaving the island, I impressed this wish of mine upon the minds of my agents with all my power; but the only result has been the creating a very considerable additional expense in the purchase of ploughs, oxen, and farming implements; the awkwardness, and still more the obstinacy, of the few negroes, whose services were indispensable, was not to be overcome: they broke plough after plough, and ruined beast after beast, till the attempt was abandoned in despair. However, it was made without the most essential ingredient for success, the superintendence of an English ploughman; and such of the ploughs as were of cast-iron could not be repaired when once broken, and therefore ought not to have been adopted; but I am told, that in several other parts of the island the plough has been introduced, and completely successful. Another of my farming speculations answered no better: this was to improve the breed of cattle in the county, for which purpose Lord Holland and myself sent over four of the finest bulls that could be procured in England. One of them got a trifling hurt in its passage from the vessel to land; but the remaining three were deposited in their respective pens without the least apparent damage. They were taken all possible care of, houses appropriated to shelter them from the sun and rain, and, in short, no means of preserving their health was neglected. Yet, shortly after their arrival in Jamaica, they evidently began to decline; their blood was converted into urine; they paid no sort of attention to the cows, who were confined in the same paddock; and at the end of a fortnight not one was in existence, two having died upon the same day. The injured one, having been bled the most copiously in consequence of its hurt, was that which survived the longest.
JANUARY 31.
Some days ago, a negro woman, who has lost four children, and has always been a most affectionate mother, brought the fifth, a remarkably fine infant, into the hospital. She complained of its having caught cold, a fever, and so on; but nothing administered was of use, and its manner of breathing made the doctor enquire, whether the child had not had a fall? The mother denied this most positively, and her fondness for the infant admitted no doubt of her veracity. Still the child grew worse and worse; still the question about the fall was repeated, and as constantly denied; until luckily being made in the presence of a new-comer, the latter immediately exclaimed, “that to her certain knowledge the infant had really had a fall, for that the mother having fastened it behind her back, the knot of the handkerchief had slipped, and the baby had fallen upon the floor.”--“It is false,” answered the mother: “the child did not fall; for when the knot slipped, I had time to catch it by the foot, and so I saved it from falling, just as its head struck against the ground.” Fear of being blamed as having occasioned the baby’s illness through her own carelessness had induced her to adopt this equivocation, and its life had nearly been the sacrifice of her duplicity. A proper mode of treatment was now adopted without loss of time; their beneficial effect was immediately visible, and the poor little negro is now recovering rapidly. But certainly there is no folly and imprudence like unto negro folly and imprudence. One of my best disposed and most sensible Eboes has had a violent fever lately, but was so nearly well as to be put upon a course of bark. On Wednesday morning a son of his died of dirt-eating,--a practice which neither severity nor indulgence could induce him to discontinue. The boy was buried that night according to African customs, accompanied with dancing, singing, drinking, eating, and riot of all kinds; and the father, although the kindest-hearted negro on my estate, and remarkably fond of his children, danced and drank to such an excess, that I found him on the following morning in a raging fever, and worse than he was when he first entered the hospital. I had warned him against the consequences of the funeral, reminded him of the dangerous malady from which he was but just recovering, and he had promised solemnly to be upon his guard; and such was the manner in which he performed his promise.
FEBRUARY 1. (Sunday.)
During my former visit to Jamaica I had interceded in behalf of a negro belonging to Greenwich estate, named Aberdeen, who had run away repeatedly, but who attributed his misconduct to the decay of his health, which rendered him unable to work as well as formerly, and to the fear of consequent punishment for not having performed the tasks assigned to him. The fellow while he spoke to me had tears running down his cheeks, looked feeble and ill, and indeed seemed to be quite heart-broken. On my speaking to the attorney, he readily promised to enquire into the truth of the man’s statement, and to take care that he should be only allotted such labour as his strength might be fully equal to. This morning he came over to see me, and so altered, that I could scarcely believe him to be the same man. He was cleanly dressed, walked with his head erect, and his eyes sparkled, and his mouth grinned from ear to ear, while he told me, that during my absence every thing had gone well with him, nobody had “put upon him;” he had been tasked no more than suited his strength; as much as he was able to do, he had done willingly, and had never run away. Even his asthma was better in consequence of the depression being removed from his spirits. So, he said, as soon as he heard of my return, he thought it his duty to come over and show himself to me, and tell me that he was well, and contented, and behaving properly; for that “to be sure, if massa no speak that good word for me to trustee, me no livee now; me good, massa!” Gratitude made him absolutely eloquent: his whole manner, and the strong expression of his countenance, put his sincerity out of all doubt, and I never saw a man seem to feel more truly thankful. All negroes, therefore, are not absolutely without some remembrance of kindness shown them; and indeed I ought not in justice to my own people to allow myself to forget, that when I sent a reward to those who had roused themselves to drive the cattle out of my canes the other night, there was considerable difficulty in persuading them to accept the money: they sent me word, “that as they were all well treated on the estate, it was their business to take care that no mischief was done to it, and that they did not deserve to be rewarded for having merely done their duty by me.” Nor was it till after they had received repeated orders from me, that their delicacy could be overcome, and themselves persuaded to pocket the affront and the _maccaroni_.
FEBRUARY 2.
One of the deadliest poisons used by the negroes (and a great variety is perfectly well known to most of them) is prepared from the root of the cassava.
Its juice being expressed and allowed to ferment, a small worm is generated, the substance of which being received into the stomach is of a nature the most pernicious. A small portion of this worm is concealed under one of the thumb-nails, which are suffered to grow long for this purpose; then when the negro has contrived to persuade his intended victim to eat or drink with him, he takes an opportunity, while handing to him a dish or cup, to let the worm fall, which never fails to destroy the person who swallows it. Another means of destruction is to be found (as I am assured) in almost every negro garden throughout the island: it is the arsenic bean, neither useful for food nor ornamental in its appearance; nor can the negroes, when questioned, give any reason for affording it a place in their gardens; yet there it is always to be seen. The alligator’s liver also possesses deleterious properties; and the gall is said to be still more dangerous.
FEBRUARY 3.
On Friday I was made to observe, in the hospital, a remarkably fine young negro, about twenty-two years of age, stout and strong, and whom every one praised for his numerous good qualities, and particularly for his affection for his mother, and the services which he rendered her. He complained of a little fever, and a slight pain in his side. On Saturday he left the hospital, and intended to go to his provision grounds, among the mountains, on Sunday morning; but, as he complained of a pain in his head, his mother prevented his going, and obliged him to return to the hospital in the evening. On Monday he was seized with fainting fits, lost his speech and power of motion, and this morning I was awaked by the shrieks and lamentations of the poor mother, who, on coming to the hospital to enquire for her son, found, that in spite of all possible care and exertions on the part of his medical attendants, he had just expired. Whether it be the climate not agreeing with their African blood (genuine or inherited), or whether it be from some defect in their general formation, certainly negroes seem to hold their lives upon a very precarious tenure. Nicholas, John Fuller, and others of my best and most favoured workmen, the very servants, too, in my own house, are perpetually falling ill with little fevers, or colds, or pains in the head or limbs. However, the season is universally allowed to have been peculiarly unhealthy for negroes; and, indeed, even for white people, the deaths on board the shipping having been unusually numerous this year. As to the barracks, which are scarcely a couple of miles distant from my estate, there the yellow fever has established itself, and, as I hear, is committing terrible ravages, particularly among the wives of the soldiers.--This morning several negro-mothers, belonging to Friendship and Greenwich, came to complain to their attorney (who happened to be at my house) that the overseer obliged them to wean their children too soon. Some of these children were above twenty-two months old, and none under eighteen; but, in order to retain the leisure and other indulgences annexed to the condition of nursing-mothers, the female negroes, by their own good-will, would never wean their offspring at all. Of course their demands were rejected, and they went home in high discontent; one of them, indeed, not scrupling to declare aloud, and with a peculiar emphasis and manner, that if the child should be put into the weaning-house against her will, the attorney would see it dead in less than a week.
FEBRUARY 4.
The violent gale of wind which persecuted us with so much pertinacity on our leaving the English Channel is supposed to have been the tail of a tremendous hurricane, which has utterly laid waste Barbados and several other islands. No less than sixteen of the ships which sailed at the same time with us are reported to have perished upon the passage; so that I ought to consider it at least as a negative piece of good luck to have reached Jamaica myself, no bones broke, though sore peppered but I am still trembling in uncertainty for the fate of the vessel which is bringing out all my Irish supplies, and the non-arrival of which would be a misfortune to me of serious magnitude.
The negroes are so obstinate and so wilful in their general character, that if they do not receive the precise articles to which they have been accustomed, and which they expect as their right, no compensation, however ample, can satisfy them. Thus, at every Christmas it would go near to create a rebellion if they did not receive a certain proportion of salt fish; but if, in the intervening months, accident should prevent their receiving their usual allowance of herrings, the giving them salt fish to the amount of double the value would be considered by them as an act of the grossest injustice.
FEBRUARY 5.
On Saturday, about eight in the evening, a large centipede dropped from the ceiling upon my dinner-table, and was immediately cut in two exact halves by one of the guests. As it is reported in Jamaica that these reptiles, when thus divided, will re-unite again, or if separated will reproduce their missing members, and continue to live as stoutly as ever, I put both parts into a plate, under a glass cover. On Sunday they continued to move about their prison with considerable agility, although the tail was evidently much more lively and full of motion than the head: perhaps the centipede was a female. On Monday the head was dead, but the tail continued to run about, and evidently endeavoured to to make its escape, although it appeared not to know very well how to set about it, nor to be perfectly determined as to which way it wanted to go: it only seemed to have Cymon’s reason for wishing to take a walk, and “would rather go any where, than stay with any body.” On Wednesday, at twelve o’clock, its vivacity was a little abated, but only a little; the wound was skinned over, and I was waiting anxiously to know whether it would subsist without its numskull till a good old age, or would put forth an entirely spick and span new head and shoulders; when, on going to look at the plate on Thursday morning, lo and behold! the dead head and the living tail had disappeared together. I suppose some of the negro servants had thrown them away through ignorance, but they deny, one and all, having so much as touched the plate, most stoutly; and as a paper case, pierced in several places, had been substituted for the glass cover, some persons are of opinion that the tail made its escape through one of these air-holes, and carried its head away with it in its forceps. Be this as it may, gone they both are, and I am disappointed beyond measure at being deprived of this opportunity of reading the last volume of “The Life and Adventures of a Centipede’s Tail.” I have proclaimed a reward for the bringing me another, but I am told that these reptiles are only found by accident; and that, very possibly, one may not be procured previous to my leaving the island.
FEBRUARY 6.
Mr. Lutford, the proprietor of a considerable estate in the parish of Clarendon, had frequently accused a particular negro of purloining coffee. About six months ago the slave was sent for, and charged with a fresh offence of the same nature, when he confessed the having taken a small quantity; upon which his master ordered him to fix his eyes on a
## particular cotton tree, and then, without any further ceremony, shot him
through the head. His mistress was the coroner’s natural daughter, and the coroner himself was similarly connected with the custos of Clarendon. In consequence of this family compact, no inquest was held, no enquiry was made; the whole business was allowed to be slurred over, and the murder would have remained unpunished if accident had not brought some rumours respecting it to the governor’s ear. An investigation was ordered to take place without delay; but Mr. Lutford received sufficient warning to get on shipboard, and escape to America; and the displacing of the custos of Clarendon, for neglecting his official duty, was the only means by which the governor could express his abhorrence of the act.
FEBRUARY 8. (Sunday.)
My estate is greatly plagued by a negress named Catalina; she is either mad, or has long pretended to be so, never works, and always steals. About a week before my arrival she was found in the trash-house, which she had pitched upon as the very fittest place possible for her kitchen; and there she was sitting, very quietly and comfortably, boiling her pot over an immense fire, and surrounded on all sides by dry canes, inflammable as tinder. This vagary was of too dangerous a nature to allow of her being longer left at liberty, and she was put into the hospital. But her husband was by no means pleased with her detention, as he never failed to appropriate to himself a share of her plunder, and when discovered, the blame of the robbery was laid upon his wife, in a fit of insanity. So, while the general joy at my first arrival drew the hospital attendants from their post, he took the opportunity to carry off his wife, and conceal her. The consequence was, that this morning complaints poured upon me of gardens robbed by Catalina, who had carried off as much as she could, dug up and destroyed the rest, and had shown as little conscience in providing herself with poultry as in helping herself to vegetables. I immediately despatched one of the negro-governors with a party in pursuit of her, who succeeded in lodging her once more in the hospital; where she must remain till I can get her sent to the asylum at Kingston, the only hospital for lunatics in the whole island.
FEBRUARY 12. (Thursday.)
On my former visit to Jamaica, I found on my estate a poor woman nearly one hundred years old, and stone blind. She was too infirm to walk; but two young negroes brought her on their backs to the steps of my house, in order, as she said, that she might at least touch massa, although she could not see him. When she had kissed my hand, “that was enough,” she said; “now me hab once kiss a massa’s hand, me willing to die to-morrow, me no care.” She had a woman appropriated to her service, and was shown the greatest care and attention; however, she did not live many months after my departure. There was also a mulatto, about thirty years of age, named Bob, who had been almost deprived of the use of his limbs by the horrible cocoa-bay, and had never done the least work since he was fifteen. He was so gentle and humble, and so fearful, from the consciousness of his total inability of soliciting my notice, that I could not help pitying the poor fellow; and whenever he came in my way I always sought to encourage him by little presents, and other trifling marks of favour. His thus unexpectedly meeting with distinguishing kindness, where he expected to be treated as a worthless incumbrance, made a strong impression on his mind. Soon after my departure his malady assumed a more active appearance but during the last stages of its progress the only fear which he expressed was, that he should not live till last Christmas, when my return was expected to a certainty. In the mean while he endeavoured to find out a means of being of some little use to me, although his weak constitution would not allow of his being of much. Some of his relations being in opulent circumstances, they furnished him with a horse, for he was too weak to walk for more than a few minutes at a time; and, mounted upon this, he passed all his time in traversing the estate, watching the corn that it might not be stolen, warning the pen-keepers if any of the cattle had found their way into the cane-pieces, and doing many other such little pieces of service to the property; so that, as the negroes said, “if he had been a white man he might have been taken for an overseer.” At length Christmas arrived; it was known that I was on the sea; Bob, too, was still alive; but still there was nothing to be heard of me. His perpetual question to all who came to visit him was, How was the wind? and he was constantly praying to the wind and the ocean to bring massa’s vessel soon to Savanna la Mar, that he might but see him once more, and thank him, before he died. At length I landed; and when, on the day of my arrival on my estate, I expressed my surprise at the nonappearance of several of the negroes, who had appeared to be most attached to me, and I had expected to find most forward in greeting me, I was told that a messenger had been sent to call them, and that their absence was occasioned by their attendance at poor Bob’s funeral. Several of his relations, who nursed him on his death-bed, have assured me, that the last audible words which he uttered were--“Are there still no news of massa?”
FEBRUARY 13.
Talk of Lucretia! commend me to a she-turkey! The hawk of Jamaica is an absolute Don Giovanni; and he never loses an opportunity of being extremely rude indeed to these feathered fair ones; not even scrupling to use the last violence, and that without the least ceremony, not so much as saying, “With your leave,” or “By your leave,” or using any of the forms which common civility expects upon such occasions. The poor timid things are too much frightened by the sudden attack of this Tarquin with a beak and claws, to make any resistance; but they no sooner recover from their flutter sufficiently to be aware of what has happened, than they feel so extremely shocked, that they always make a point of dying; nor was a female turkey ever known to survive the loss of her honour above three days.
FEBRUARY 14.
I think that I really may now venture to hope that my plans for the management of my estate have succeeded beyond even my most sanguine expectations. I have now passed three weeks with my negroes, the doors of my house open all day long, and full liberty allowed to every person to come and speak to me without witnesses or restraint; yet not one man or woman has come to me with a single complaint. On the contrary, all my enquiries have been answered by an assurance, that during the two years of my absence my regulations were adhered to most implicitly, and that, “except for the pleasure of seeing massa,” there was no more difference in treatment than if I had remained upon the estate. Many of them have come to tell me instances of kindness which they have received from one or other of their superintendents; others, to describe some severe fit of illness, in which they must have died but for the care taken of them in the hospital; some, who were weakly and low-spirited on my former visit, to show me how much they are improved in health, and tell me “how they keep up heart now, because since massa come upon the property nobody put upon them, and all go well;” and some, who had formerly complained of one trifle or other, to take back their complaints, and say, that they wanted no change, and were willing to be employed in any way that might be thought most for the good of the estate; but although I have now at least _seen_ every one of them, and have conversed with numbers, I have not yet been able to find one person who had so much as even an imaginary grievance to lay before me. Yet I find, that it has been found necessary to punish with the lash, although only in a very few instances; but then this only took place on the commission of absolute _crimes_, and in cases where its necessity and justice were so universally felt, not only by others, but by the sufferers themselves, that instead of complaining, they seem only to be afraid of their offence coming to my knowledge; to prevent which, they affect to be more satisfied and happy than all the rest, and now when I see a mouth grinning from ear to ear with a more than ordinary expansion of jaw, I never fail to find, on enquiry, that its proprietor is one of those who have been punished during my absence. I then take care to give them an opportunity of making a complaint, if they should have any to make; but no, not a word comes; “every thing has gone on perfectly well, and just as it ought to have done.” Upon this, I drop a slight hint of the offence in question; and instantly away goes the grin, and down falls the negro to kiss my feet, confess his fault, and “beg massa forgib, and them never do so bad thing more to fret massa, and them beg massa pardon, hard, quite hard!” But not one of them has denied the justice of his punishment, or complained of undue severity on the part of his superintendents. On the other hand, although the lash has thus been in a manner utterly abolished, except in cases where a much severer punishment would have been inflicted by the police, and although they are aware of this unwillingness to chastise, my trustee acknowledges that during my absence the negroes have been quiet and tractable, and have not only laboured as well as they used to do, but have done much more work than the negroes on an adjoining property, where there are forty more negroes, and where, moreover, a considerable sum is paid for hired assistance. Having now waited three weeks to see how they would conduct themselves, and found no cause of dissatisfaction since the neglect of the watchman to guard the cattle (and which they one and all attributed to their joy at seeing me again), I thought it time to distribute the presents which I had brought with me for them from England. During my absence I had ordered a new and additional hospital to be built, intended entirely for the use of lying-in women, nursing mothers, and cases of a serious nature, for which purpose it is to be provided with every possible comfort; while the old hospital is to be reserved for those who have little or nothing the matter with them, but who obstinately insist upon their being too ill to work, in defiance of the opinion of all their medical attendants. The new hospital is not quite finished; but wishing to connect it as much as possible with pleasurable associations, I took occasion of the distribution of presents to open it for the first time. Accordingly, the negroes were summoned to the new hospital this morning; the rooms were sprinkled with Madeira for good luck; and the toast of “Health to the new hospital, and shame to the old lazy house!” was drunk by the trustee, the doctoresses, the governors, &c., and received by the whole congregation of negroes with loud cheering; after which, every man received a blue jacket lined with flannel, every woman a flaming red stuff petticoat, and every child a frock of white cotton. They then fell to dancing and singing, and drinking rum and sugar, which they kept up till a much later hour than would be at all approved of by the bench of bishops; for it is now Sunday morning, and they are still dancing and singing louder than ever.
FEBRUARY 15. (Sunday.)
To-day divine service was performed at Savanna la Mar for the first time these five weeks. The rector has been indisposed lately with the lumbago: he has no curate; and thus during five whole weeks there was a total cessation of public worship. I had told several of my female acquaintance that it was long since they had been to church; that I was afraid of their forgetting “all about and about it,” and that if there should be no service for a week longer I should think it my duty to come and hear them say their Catechism myself. Luckily the rector recovered, and saved me the trouble of hearing them; but the long privation of public prayer did not seem to have created any very great demand for the article, as I have seldom witnessed a more meagre congregation. It was literally “two or three gathered together,” and it seemed as if five or six would be too many, and forfeit the promise. I cannot discover that the negroes have any external forms of worship, nor any priests in Jamaica, unless their Obeah men should be considered as such; but still I cannot think that they ought to be considered as totally devoid of all natural religion. There is no phrase so common on their lips as “God bless you!” and “God preserve you!” and “God will bless you wherever you go!” Phrases which they pronounce with every-appearance of sincerity, and as if they came from the very bottom of their hearts. “God-A’mity! God-A’mity!” is their constant exclamation in pain and in sorrow; and with this perpetual recurrence to the Supreme Being, it must be difficult to insist upon their being atheists. But they have even got a step further than the belief in a God; they also allow the existence of an evil principle. One of them complained to me the other day, that when he went to the field his companions had told him “that he might go to hell, for he was not worthy to work with them;” and one of his adversaries in return accused him of being so lazy, “that instead of being a slave upon Cornwall estate, he was only fit to be the slave of the devil.” Then surely they could not be afraid of duppies (or ghosts) without some idea of a future state; and indeed nothing is more firmly impressed upon the mind of the Africans, than that after death they shall go back to Africa, and pass an eternity in revelling and feasting with their ancestors. The proprietor of a neighbouring estate lately used all his influence to persuade his foster-sister to be christened; but it was all in vain: she had imbibed strong African prejudices from her mother, and frankly declared that she found nothing in the Christian system so alluring to her taste as the post-obit balls and banquets promised by the religion of Africa. I confess, that this prejudice appears to me to be so strongly rooted, that in spite of the curates expected from the hands of the bishop of London, I am sadly afraid, that “the pulpit drum ecclesiastic” will find it a hard matter to overpower the gumby; and that the joys of the Christian paradise will be seen to kick the beam, when they are weighed against the pleasures of eating fat hog, drinking raw rum, and dancing for centuries to the jam-jam and kitty-katty. In the negro festivals in this life, the chief point lies in making as much noise as possible, and the Africans and Creoles dispute it with the greatest pertinacity. I am just informed that at the dance last night the Eboes obtained a decided triumph, for they roared and screamed and shouted and thumped their drums with so much effect, that the Creoles were fairly rendered deaf with the noise of their rivals, and dumb with their own, and obliged to leave off singing altogether.
FEBRUARY 16.
On my arrival I found that idle rogue Nato, as usual, an inmate of the hospital, where he regularly passes at least nine months out of the twelve. He was with infinite difficulty persuaded, at the end of a fortnight, to employ himself about the carriage-horses for a couple of days; but on the third he returned to the hospital, although the medical attendants, one and all, declared nothing to be the matter with him, and the doctors even refused to insert his name in the sick list. Still he persisted in declaring himself to be too ill to do a single stroke of work: so on Thursday I put him into one of the sick rooms by himself, and desired him to get well with the doors locked, which he would find to the full as easy as with the doors open; at the same time assuring him, that he should never come out, till he should be sufficiently recovered to cut canes in the field. He held good all Friday; but Saturday being a holy-day, he declared himself to be in a perfect state of health, and desired to be released. However, I was determined to make him suffer a little for his lying and obstinacy, and would not suffer the doors to be opened for him till this morning, when he quitted the hospital, saluted on all sides by loud huzzas in congratulation of his amended health, and which followed him during his whole progress to the cane-piece. I was informed that a lad, named Epsom, who used to be perpetually running away, had been stationary for the last two years. So on Wednesday last, as he happened to come in my way, I gave him all proper commendation for having got rid of his bad habits; and to make the praise better worth his having, I added a maccarony: he was gratified in the extreme, thanked me a thousand times, promised most solemnly never to behave ill again, and ran away that very night. However, he returned on Saturday morning, and was brought to me all rags, tears, and penitence, wondering “how he could have had such _bad manners_ as to make massa fret.”
FEBRUARY 17.
Some of the free people of colour possess slaves, cattle, and other property left them by their fathers, and are in good circumstances; but few of them are industrious enough to increase their possessions by any honest exertions of their own. As to the free blacks, they are almost uniformly lazy and improvident, most of them half-starved, and only anxious to live from hand to mouth. Some lounge about the highways with pedlar-boxes, stocked with various worthless baubles; others keep miserable stalls provided with rancid butter, damaged salt-pork, and other such articles: and these they are always willing to exchange for stolen rum and sugar, which they secretly tempt the negroes to pilfer from their proprietors; but few of them ever make the exertion of earning their livelihood creditably. Even those who profess to be tailors, carpenters, or coopers, are for the most part careless, drunken, and dissipated, and never take pains sufficient to attain any dexterity in their trade. As to a free negro hiring himself out for plantation labour, no instance of such a thing was ever known in Jamaica, and probably no price, however great, would be considered by them as a sufficient temptation.
FEBRUARY 18.
The Africans and Creoles certainly do hate each other with a cordiality which would have appeared highly gratifying to Dr. Johnson in his “Love of Good Haters.” Yesterday, in the field, a girl who had taken some slight offence at something said to her by a young boy, immediately struck him with the bill, with which she was cutting canes. Luckily, his loose wrapper saved him from the blow; and, on his running away, she threw the bill after him in his flight with all the fury and malice of a fiend. This same vixen, during my former visit, had been punished for fixing her teeth in the hand of one of the other girls, and nearly biting her thumb off; and on hearing of this fresh instance of devilism, I asked her mother, “how she came to have so bad a daughter, when all her sons were so mild and good?”--“Oh, massa,” answered she, “the girl’s father was a Guineaman.”
FEBRUARY 19.
Neptune came this morning to request that the name of his son, Oscar, might be changed for that of Julius, which (it seems) had been that of his own father. The child, he said, had always been weakly, and he was persuaded, that its ill-health proceeded from his deceased grandfather’s being displeased, because it had not been called after him. The other day, too, a woman, who had a child sick in the hospital, begged me to change its name for any other which might please me best: she cared not what; but she was sure that it would never do well, so long as it should be called Lucia. Perhaps this prejudice respecting the power of names produces in some measure their unwillingness to be christened. They find no change produced in them, except the alteration of their name, and hence they conclude that this name contains in it some secret power; while, on the other hand, they conceive that the ghosts of their ancestors cannot fail to be offended at their abandoning an appellation, either hereditary in the family, or given by themselves. It is another negro-prejudice that the eructation of the breath of a sucking child has something in it venomous; and frequently nursing mothers, on showing the doctor a swelled breast, will very gravely and positively attribute it to the infant’s having broken wind while hanging at the nipple.
FEBRUARY 20.
I asked one of my negro servants this morning whether old Luke was a relation of his. “Yes,” he said.--“Is he your uncle, or your cousin?”--“No, massa.”--“What then?”--“He and my father were shipmates, massa.”
FEBRUARY 23.
The law-charges in Jamaica have lately been regulated by the House of Assembly; and by all accounts (except that of the lawyers) it was full time that something should be done on the subject. A case was mentioned to me this morning of an estate litigated between several parties. At length a decision was given: the estate was sold for £16,000; but the lawyer’s claim must always be the first discharged, and as this amounted to more than £16,000 the lawyer found himself in possession of the estate. This was the fable of Æsop’s oyster put in action with a vengeance.
FEBRUARY 25.
A negro, named Adam, has long been the terror of my whole estate. He was accused of being an Obeah-man, and persons notorious for the practice of Obeah had been found concealed from justice in his house, who were afterwards convicted and transported. He was strongly suspected of having poisoned more than twelve negroes, men and women; and having been displaced by my former trustee from being principal governor, in revenge he put poison into his water jar. Luckily he was observed by one of the house servants, who impeached him, and prevented the intended mischief. For this offence he ought to have been given up to justice; but being brother of the trustee’s mistress she found means to get him off, after undergoing a long confinement in the stocks. I found him, on my arrival, living in a state of utter excommunication; I tried what reasoning with him could effect, reconciled him to his companions, treated him with marked kindness, and he promised solemnly to behave well during my absence. However, instead of attributing my lenity to a wish to reform him, his pride and confidence in his own talents and powers of deception made him attribute the indulgence shown him to his having obtained an influence over my mind. This he determined to employ to his own purposes upon my return; so he set about forming a conspiracy against Sully, the present chief governor, and boasted on various estates in the neighbourhood that on my arrival he would take care to get Sully broke, and himself substituted in his place. In the meanwhile he quarrelled and fought to the right and to the left; and on my arrival I found the whole estate in an uproar about Adam. No less than three charges of assault, with intent to kill, were preferred against him. In a fit of jealousy he had endeavoured to strangle Marlborough with the thong of a whip, and had nearly effected his purpose before he could be dragged away: he had knocked Nato down in some trifling dispute, and while the man was senseless had thrown him into the river to drown him; and having taken offence at a poor weak creature called Old Rachael, on meeting her by accident he struck her to the ground, beat her with a supplejack, stamped upon her belly, and begged her to be assured of his intention (as he eloquently worded it) “to kick her guts out.” The breeding mothers also accused him of having been the cause of the poisoning a
## particular spring, from which they were in the habit of fetching water
for their children, as Adam on that morning had been seen near the spring without having any business there, and he had been heard to caution his little daughter against drinking water from it that day, although he stoutly denied both circumstances. Into the bargain, my head blacksmith being perfectly well at five o’clock, was found by his son dead in his bed at eight; and it was known that he had lately had a dispute with Adam, who on that day had made it up with him, and had invited him to drink, although it was not certain that his offer had been accepted. He had, moreover, threatened the lives of many of the best negroes. Two of the cooks declared, that he had severally directed them to dress Sully’s food apart, and had given them powders to mix with it. The first to whom he applied refused positively; the second he treated with liquor, and when she had drunk, he gave her the poison, with instructions how to use it. Being a timid creature, she did not dare to object, so threw away the powder privately, and pretended that it had been administered; but finding no effect produced by it, Adam gave her a second powder, at the same time bidding her remember the liquor which she had swallowed, and which he assured her would effect her own destruction through the force of Obeah, unless she prevented it by sacrificing his enemy in her stead. The poor creature still threw away the powder, but the strength of imagination brought upon her a serious malady, and it was not till after several weeks that she recovered from the effects of her fears. The terror thus produced was universal throughout the estate, and Sully and several other principal negroes requested me to remove them to my property in St. Thomas’s, as their lives were not safe while breathing the same air with Adam. However, it appeared a more salutary measure to remove Adam himself; but all the poisoning charges either went no further than strong suspicion, or (any more than the assaults) were not liable by the laws of Jamaica to be punished, except by flogging or temporary imprisonment, which would only have returned him to the estate with increased resentment against those to whom he should ascribe his sufferings, however deserved.
However, on searching his house, a musket with a plentiful accompaniment of powder and ball was found concealed, as also a considerable quantity of materials for the practice of Obeah: the possession of either of the above articles (if the musket is without the consent of the proprietor) authorises the magistrates to pronounce a sentence of transportation. In consequence of this discovery, Adam was immediately committed to gaol; a slave court was summoned, and to-day a sentence of transportation from the island was pronounced, after a trial of three hours. As to the man’s guilt, of that the jury entertained no doubt after the first half hour’s evidence; and the only difficulty was to restrain the verdict to transportation. We produced nothing which could possibly affect the man’s life; for although perhaps no offender ever better de served hanging; yet I confess my being weak-minded enough to entertain doubts whether hanging or other capital punishment ought to be inflicted for any offence whatever: I am at least certain, that if offenders waited till they were hanged by me, they would remain unhanged till they were all so many old Parrs. However, although I did my best to prevent Adam from being hanged, it was no easy matter to prevent his hanging himself. The Obeah ceremonies always commence with what is called, by the negroes, “the Myal dance.” This is intended to remove any doubt of the chief Obeah-man’s supernatural powers; and in the course of it, he undertakes to show his art by killing one of the persons present, whom he pitches upon for that purpose. He sprinkles various powders over the devoted victim, blows upon him, and dances round him, obliges him to drink a liquor prepared for the occasion, and finally the sorcerer and his assistants seize him and whirl him rapidly round and round till the man loses his senses, and falls on the ground to all appearance and the belief of the spectators a perfect corpse. The chief Myal-man then utters loud shrieks, rushes out of the house with wild and frantic gestures, and conceals himself in some neighbouring wood. At the end of two or three hours he returns with a large bundle of herbs, from some of which he squeezes the juice into the mouth of the dead person; with others he anoints his eyes and stains the tips of his fingers, accompanying the ceremony with a great variety of grotesque actions, and chanting all the while something between a song and a howl, while the assistants hand in hand dance slowly round them in a circle, stamping the ground loudly with their feet to keep time with his chant. A considerable time elapses before the desired effect is produced, but at length the corpse gradually recovers animation, rises from the ground perfectly recovered, and the Myal dance concludes. After this proof of his power, those who wish to be revenged upon their enemies apply to the sorcerer for some of the same powder, which produced apparent death upon their companion, and as they never employ the means used for his recovery, of course the powder once administered never fails to be lastingly fatal. It must be superfluous to mention that the Myal-man on this second occasion substitutes a poison for a narcotic. Now, among other suspicious articles found in Adam’s hut, there was a string of beads of various sizes, shapes, and colours, arranged in a form peculiar to the performance of the Obeah-man in the Myal dance. Their use was so well known, that Adam on his trial did not even attempt to deny that they could serve for no purpose but the practice of Obeah; but he endeavoured to refute their being his own property, and with this view he began to narrate the means by which he had become possessed of them. He said that they belonged to Fox (a negro who was lately transported), from whom he had taken them at a Myal dance held on the estate of Dean’s Valley; but as the assistants at one of these dances are by law condemned to death equally with the principal performer, the court had the humanity to interrupt his confession of having been present on such an occasion, and thus saved him from criminating himself so deeply as to render a capital punishment inevitable. I understand that he was quite unabashed and at his ease the whole time; upon hearing his sentence, he only said very coolly, “Well! I ca’n’t help it!” turned himself round, and walked out of court. That nothing might be wanting, this fellow had even a decided talent for hypocrisy. When on my arrival he gave me a letter filled with the grossest lies respecting the trustee, and every creditable negro on the estate, he took care to sign it by the name which he had lately received in baptism; and in his defence at the bar to prove his probity of character and purity of manners, he informed the court that for some time past he had been learning to read, for the sole purpose of learning the Lord’s Prayer. The nick-name by which he was generally known among the negroes in this part of the country, was Buonaparte, and he always appeared to exult in the appellation. Once condemned, the marshal is bound under a heavy penalty to see him shipped from off the island before the expiration of six weeks, and probably he will be sent to Cuba. He is a fine-looking man between thirty and forty, square built, and of great bodily strength, and his countenance equally expresses intelligence and malignity. The sum allowed me for him is one hundred pounds currency, which is scarcely a third of his worth as a labourer, but which is the highest value which a jury is permitted to mention.
MARCH 1. (Sunday.)
Last night the negroes of Friendship took it into their ingenious heads to pay me a compliment of an extremely inconvenient nature. They thought, that it would be highly proper to treat me with a nightly serenade just by way of showing their _enjoyment_ on my return; and accordingly a large body of them arrived at my doors about midnight, dressed out in their best clothes, and accompanied with drums, rattles, and their whole orchestra of abominable instruments, determined to pass the whole night in singing and dancing under my windows. Luckily, my negro-governors heard what was going forwards, and knowing my taste a little better than my visiters, they hastened to assure them of my being in bed and asleep, and with much difficulty persuaded them to remove into my village. Here they contented themselves with making a noise for the greatest part of the night; and the next morning, after coming up to see me at breakfast, they went away quietly. One of them only remained to enquire particularly after Lady H-------, as her mother had been her nurse, and she was very particular in her enquiries as to her health, her children, their ages and names. When she went away, I gave her a plentiful provision of bread, butter, plantains, and cold ham from the breakfast table; part of which she sat down to eat, intending, as she said, to carry the rest to her piccaninny at home. But in half an hour after she made her appearance again, saying she was come to take leave of me, and hoped I would give her a _bit_ to buy tobacco. I gave her a maccaroni, which occasioned a great squall of delight. Oh! since I had given her so much, she would not buy tobacco but a fowl; and then, when I returned, she would bring me a chicken from it for my dinner; that is, if she could keep the other negroes from stealing it from her, a piece of extraordinary good luck of which she seemed to entertain but slender hopes. At length off she set; but she had scarcely gone above ten yards from the house, when she turned back, and was soon at my writing-table once more, with a “Well! here me come to massa again!” So then she said, that she had meant to eat part of the provisions which I had given her, and carry home the rest to her boy; but that really it was so good, she could not help going on eating and eating, till she had eaten the whole, and now she wanted another bit of cold ham to carry home to her child, and then she should go away perfectly contented. I ordered Cubina to give her a great hunch of it, and Mrs. Phillis at length took her departure for good and all.
MARCH 4. (Wednesday.)
I set out to visit my estate in St. Thomas’s in the East, called Hordley. It is at the very furthest extremity of the island, and never was there a journey like unto my journey. Something disagreeable happened at every step; my accidents commenced before I had accomplished ten miles from my own house; for in passing along a narrow shelf of rock, which overhangs the sea near Bluefields, a pair of young blood-horses in my carriage took fright at the roaring of the waves which dashed violently against them, and twice nearly overturned me. On the second occasion one of them actually fell down into the water, while the off-wheel of the curricle flew up into the air, and thus it remained suspended, balancing backwards and forwards, like Mahomet’s coffin. Luckily, time was allowed the horse to recover his legs, down came the wheel once more on terra firma, and on we went again. We slept at Cashew (an estate near Lacovia), and the next morning at daylight proceeded to climb the Bogr, a mountain so difficult, that every one had pronounced the attempt to be hopeless with horses so young as mine; but those horses were my only ones, and therefore I was obliged to make the trial. The road is bordered by tremendous precipices for about twelve miles; the path is so narrow, that a servant must always be sent on before to make any carts which may be descending stop in recesses hollowed out for this express purpose; and the cartmen are obliged to sound their shells repeatedly, in order to give each other timely warning. The chief danger, however, proceeds from the steepness of the road, which in some places will not permit the waggons to stop, however well their conductors may be inclined; then down they come drawn by twelve or fourteen, or sometimes sixteen oxen, sweeping every thing before them, and any carriage unlucky enough to find itself in their course must infallibly be dashed over the precipice. To-day, it really appeared as if all the estates in the island had agreed to send their produce by this particular road; the shells formed a complete chorus, and sounded incessantly during our whole passage of the mountain; and at one time there was a very numerous accumulation of carts and oxen in consequence of my carriage coming to a complete stop. As we were ascending,--“It is very well,” said a gentleman who was travelling with me, (Mr. Hill) “that we did not come by this road three months sooner. I remember about that time travelling it on horseback, and an enormous tree had fallen over the path, which made me say to myself as I passed under it, ‘Now, how would a chaise with a canopy get along here? The tree hangs so low that the carriage never could pass, and it would certainly have to go all the way home again.’ Of course, the obstacle must now be removed; but if I remember right, this must have been the very spot.... and as I hope to live, yonder is the very tree still!”--And so it proved; although three months had elapsed, the impediment had been suffered to remain in unmolested possession of the road, and to pass my carriage under it proved an absolute impossibility. After much discussion, and many fruitless attempts, we at length succeeded in unscrewing the wheels, lifting off the body, which we carried along, and then built the curricle up again on the opposite side of the tree. However, by one means or other (after leaving a knocked-up saddle-horse at a coffee plantation, to the owner of which I was a perfect stranger, but who very obligingly offered to take charge of the animal) we found ourselves at the bottom of the mountain; but the fatal tree, and the delay occasioned by taking unavoidable shelter from tremendous storms of rain, had lost us so much time, that night surprised us when we were still eight miles distant from our destined inn. The night was dark as night could be; no moon, no stars, nor any light except the flashing of myriads of fire-flies, which, flapping in the faces of the young horses, frightened them, and made them rear. The road, too, was full of water-trenches, precipices, and deep and dangerous holes. As to the ground, it was quite invisible, and we had no means of proceeding with any chance of safety except by making some of the servants lead the horses, while others went before us to explore the way, while they cried out at every moment,--“Take care; a little to the left, or you will slip into that water-trench--a little to the right, or you will tumble over that precipice.”--Into the bargain there was neither inn nor gentleman’s house within reach; and thus we proceeded crawling along at a foot’s pace for five eternal miles, when we at length stopped to beg a shelter for the night at a small estate called Porous. By this time it was midnight; all the family was gone to bed; the gates were all locked; and before we could obtain admittance a full hour elapsed, during which I sat in an open carriage, perspiration streaming down from my head to my feet through vexation, impatience and fatigue, while the night-dew fell heavy and the night-breeze blew keen; which (as I had frequently been assured) was the very best recipe possible for getting a Jamaica fever. On such I counted both for myself and my white servant, when I at length laid myself down in a bed at Porous; but to my equal surprise and satisfaction we both rose the next morning without feeling the slightest inconvenience from our risks of the preceding day, and in the evening of Friday, the 5th, I reached Miss Cole’s hotel at the Spanish Town. One of my young horses, however, was so completely knocked up by the fatigue of crossing the mountain, that I could get no further than Kingston (only fourteen miles) this next day. In consequence of the delay, I was enabled to visit the Kingston theatre; the exterior is rather picturesque; within it has no particular recommendations; the scenery and dresses were shabby, the actors wretched, and the stage ill lighted; the performance was for the benefit of the chief actress, who had but little reason to be satisfied with the number of her audience; and I may reckon it among my other misfortunes on this ill-starred expedition, that it was my destiny to sit out the tragedy of “Adelgitha,” whom the author meant only to be killed in the last act, but whom the actors murdered in all five. The heroine was the only one who spoke tolerably, but she was old enough and fat enough for the Widow Cheshire; Guiscard did not know ten words of his part; the tyrant was really comical enough; and Lothair was played by a young Jamaica Jew about fifteen years of age, and who is dignified here with the name of “the Creole Roscius.” His voice was just breaking, which made him “pipe and whistle in the sound,” his action was awkward, and altogether he was but a sorry specimen of theatrical talent: however, his _forte_ is said to lie in broad farce, which perhaps may account for his being no better in tragedy. On Sunday, the 8th, I resumed my journey, but my horses were so completely knocked up, that I was obliged to hire an additional pair to convey me to Miss Hetley’s inn on the other side of the Yallacks River, which is nineteen miles from Kingston. This river, as well as that of Morant (which I passed about ten miles further) both in breadth and strength sets all bridges at defiance, and in the rainy season it is sometimes impassable for several weeks. On this occasion there was but little water in either, and I arrived without difficulty at Port Morant, where I found horses sent by my trustee to convey me to Hordley. The road led up to the mountains, and was one of the steepest, roughest, and most fatiguing that I ever travelled, in spite of its picturesque beauties. At length I reached my estate, jaded and wearied to death; here I expected to find a perfect paradise, and I found a perfect hell. Report had assured me, that Hordley was the best managed estate in the island, and as far as the soil was concerned, report appeared to have said true; but my trustee had also assured me, that my negroes were the most contented and best disposed, and here there was a lamentable incorrectness in the account. I found them in a perfect uproar; complaints of all kinds stunned me from all quarters: all the blacks accused all the whites, and all the whites accused all the blacks, and as far as I could make out, both parties were extremely in the right. There was no attachment to the soil to be found _here_; the negroes declared, one and all, that if I went away and left them to groan under the same system of oppression without appeal or hope of redress, they would follow my carriage and establish themselves at Cornwall. I had soon discovered enough to be certain, that although they told me plenty of falsehoods, many of their complaints were but too well founded; and yet how to protect them for the future or satisfy them for the present was no easy matter to decide. Trusting to these fallacious reports of the Arcadian state of happiness upon Hordley, I supposed, that I should have nothing to do there but grant a few indulgences, and establish the regulations already adopted with success on Cornwall; distribute a little money, and allow a couple of play-days for dancing; and under this persuasion I had made it quite impossible for me to remain above a week at Hordley, which I conceived to be fully sufficient for the above purpose. As to grievances to be redressed, I was totally unprepared for any such necessity; yet now they poured in upon me incessantly, each more serious than the former; and before twenty-four hours were elapsed I had been assured, that in order to produce any sort of tranquillity upon the estate, I must begin by displacing the trustee, the physician, the four white book-keepers, and the four black governors, all of whom I was modestly required to remove and provide better substitutes in the space of five days and a morning. What with the general clamour, the assertions and denials, the tears and the passion, the odious falsehoods, and the still more odious truths, and (worst of all to me) my own vexation and disappointment at finding things so different from my expectations, at first nearly turned my brain; and I felt strongly tempted to set off as fast as I could, and leave all these black devils and white ones to tear one another to pieces, an amusement in which they appeared to be perfectly ready to indulge themselves. It was, however, considerable relief to me to find, upon examination, that no act of personal ill-treatment was alleged against the trustee himself, who was allowed to be sufficiently humane in his own nature, and was only complained of for allowing the negroes to be maltreated by the book-keepers, and other inferior agents, with absolute impunity. Being an excellent planter, he confined his attention entirely to the cultivation of the soil, and when the negroes came to complain of some act of cruelty or oppression committed by the book-keepers or the black governors, he refused to listen to them, and left their complaints unenquired into, and consequently unredressed. The result was, that the negroes were worse off, than if he had been a cruel man himself; for his cruelty would have given them only one tyrant, whereas his indolence left them at the mercy of eight. Still they said, that they would be well contented to have him continue their trustee, provided that I would appoint some protector, to whom they might appeal in cases of injustice and ill-usage. The trustee declaring himself well satisfied that some such appointment should take place, a neighbouring gentleman (whose humanity to his own negroes had established him in high favour with mine) was selected for this purpose. I next ordered one of the book-keepers (of the atrocious brutality of whose conduct the trustee himself upon examination allowed that there could be no doubt) to quit the estate in two hours under pain of prosecution; away went the man, and when I arose the next morning, another book-keeper had taken himself off of his own accord, and that in so much haste that he left all his clothes behind him. My next step was to displace the chief black governor, a man deservedly odious to the negroes, and whom a gross and insolent lie told to myself enabled me to punish without seeming to displace him in compliance with their complaints against him; and these sources of discontent being removed, I read to them my regulations for allowing them new holidays, additional allowances of salt-fish, rum, and sugar, with a variety of other indulgences and measures taken for protection, &c. All which, assisted by a couple of dances and distribution of money on the day of my departure had so good an effect upon their tempers, that I left them in as good humour apparently, as I found them in bad. But to leave them was no such easy matter; the weather had been bad from the moment of my commencing my journey, but from the moment of my reaching Hordley, it became abominable. The rain poured down in cataracts incessantly; the old crazy house stands on the top of a hill, and the north wind howled round it night and day, shaking it from top to bottom, and threatening to become a hurricane. The storm was provided with a very suitable accompaniment of thunder and lightning; and to complete the business, down came the mountain torrents, and swelled Plantain Garden River to such a degree, that it broke down the dam-head, stopped the mill, and all work was at a stand-still for two days and nights. But the worst of all was that this same river lay between me and Kingston; bridge there was none, and it soon became utterly impassable. Thus it continued for four days; on the fifth (the day which I had appointed for my departure, and on which I gave the negroes a parting holiday) the water appeared to be somewhat abated at a ford about four miles distant; for as to crossing at my own, that was quite out of the question for a week at least. A negro was despatched on horseback to ascertain the height of the water; his report was very unfavourable. However, as at worst I could but return, and had no better means of employing my time, I resolved to make the experiment. About forty of the youngest and strongest negroes left their dancing and drinking, and ran on foot to see me safe over the water. The few hours which had elapsed since my messenger’s examination, had operated very favourably towards the reduction of the water, although it was still very high. But a servant going before to ascertain the least dangerous passage, and the negroes rushing all into the river to break the force of the stream, and support the carriage on both sides, we were enabled to struggle to the opposite bank, and were landed in safety with loud cheering from my sable attendants, who then left me, many with tears running down their cheeks, and all with thanks for the protection which I had shown them, and earnest entreaties that I would come to visit them another time. Whether my visit will have been productive of essential service to them must remain a doubt; the trustee at least promised me most solemnly that my regulations for their happiness and security should be obeyed, and that the slave-laws (of which I had detected beyond a doubt some very flagrant violations) should be carried into effect for the future with the most scrupulous exactness. If he breaks his promise, and I discover it, I have pledged myself most solemnly to remove him, however great may be his merits as a planter; if he contrives to keep me in ignorance of his proceedings (which, however, from the precautions which I have now taken, I trust, will be no easy matter), and the state of the negroes should continue after my departure to be what it was before my arrival, then I can only console myself with thinking, that the guilt is his, not mine; and that it is on _his_ head that the curse of the sufferers and the vengeance of heaven will fall, not on my own. I have been told that this estate of mine is one of the most beautiful in the island. It may be so for anything that I can tell of the matter. The badness of the weather and the disquietude of my mind during the whole of my short stay, made every thing look gloomy and hideous; and when I once found myself again beyond my own limits, I felt my spirits lighter by a hundred weight. Of all the points which had displeased me at Hordley, none had made me more angry for the time, than the lie told me by the chief governor, which occasioned my displacing him. This fellow, who for the credit of our family (no doubt) had got himself christened by the name of John Lewis, had the impudence to walk into my parlour just as I was preparing to go to bed, and inform me, that he could not get the business of the estate done. Why not? He could get nobody to come to the night-work at the mill, which he supposed was the consequence of my indulging the negroes so much. Indeed! and where were the people who ought to come to their night-work? in the negro village? No; they were in the hospital, and refused to come out to work. Upon which I blazed up like a barrel of gunpowder, and volleying out in a breath all the curses that I ever heard in my life, I asked him, whether any person really had been insolent enough to select a whole night party from the sick people in the hospital, not one of whom ought to stir out of it till well? There stood the fellow, trembling and stammering, and unable to get out an answer, while I stamped up and down the piazza, storming and swearing, banging all the doors till the house seemed ready to tumble about our ears, and doing my best to out-herod Herod, till at last I ordered the man to begone that instant, and get the work done properly. He did not wait to be told twice, and was off in a twinkling. In a quarter of an hour I sent for him again, and enquired whether he had succeeded in getting the proper people to work at the mill? Upon which he had the assurance to answer, that all the people were there, and that it was not of their not being at the mill that he had meant to complain. Of what was it then? “Of their not being in the field.” When? “Yesterday. He could not get the negroes to come to work, and so there had been none done all day.” And who refused to come? “All the people.” But who? “All.” But who, who, who?--their names, their names, their names? “He could not remember them all.” Name one--well?--speak then, speak! “There was Beck.” And who else? “There was Sally, who used to be called Whan-ica.” And who else? “There was.... there was Beck.” But who else? “Beck... and Sally”... But who else? who else? “Little Edward had gone out of the hospital, and had not come to work.” Well! Beck and Sally, and little Edward; who else? “Beck, and little Edward, and Sally.”
But who else: I say, who else? “He could not remember any body else.” Then to be sure I was in such an imperial passion, as would have done honour to “her majesty the queen Dolallolla.”
Why, you most impudent of all impudent fellows that ever told a lie, have you really presumed to disturb me at this time of night, prevent my going to bed, tell me that you can’t get the business done, and that none of the people would come to work, and make such a disturbance, and all because two old women and a little boy missed coming into the field yesterday! Down dropped the fellow in a moment upon his marrow bones: “Oh, me good massa,” cried he (and out came the truth, which I knew well enough before he told me), “me no come of my own head; me _ordered_ to come; but me never tell massa lie more, so me pray him forgib me!” But his obeying any person on my own estate in preference to me, and suffering himself to be converted into an instrument of my annoyance, was not to be easily overlooked; so I turned him out of the house with a flea in his ear as big as a camel; and the next morning degraded him to the rank of a common field negro. The trustee pleaded hard for his being permitted to return to the waggons, from whence he had been taken, and where he would be useful. But I was obdurate. Then came his wife to beg for him, and then his mother, and then his cousin, and then his cousin’s cousin: still I was firm; till on the day of my departure, the new chief governor came to me in the name of the whole estate, and bested me to allow John Lewis to return to the command of the waggons, “for that all the negroes said, that it would be _too sad a thing_ for them to see a man who had held the highest place among them, degraded quite to be a common field negro.” There was something in this appeal which argued so good a feeling, that I did not think it right to resist any longer; so I hinted that if the trustee should ask it again as a favour to himself, I might perhaps relent; and the proper application being thus made, John Lewis was allowed to quit the field, but with a positive injunction against his ever being employed again in any office of authority over the negroes. I found baptism in high vogue upon Hordley, but I am sorry to say, that I could not discover much effect produced upon their minds by having been made Christians, except in one particular: whenever one of them told me a monstrous lie (and they told me whole dozens), he never failed to conclude his story by saying--“And now, massa, you know, I’ve been christened; and if you do not believe what I say, I’m ready to buss the booh to the truth of it.” The whole advantages to be derived by negroes from becoming Christians, seemed to consist with them in two points; being a superior species of magic itself, it preserved them from black Obeah; and by enabling them to take an oath upon the ‘Bible to the truth of any lie which it might suit them to tell, they believed that it would give them the power of humbugging the white people with perfect ease and convenience. They had observed the importance attached by the whites to such an attestation, and the conviction which it always appeared to carry with it; as to the crime or penalty of perjury, of that they were totally ignorant, or at least indifferent; therefore they were perfectly ready to “buss the book,” which they considered as a piece of buckra superstition, mighty useful to the negroes, and valued taking their oath upon the Bible to a lie, no more than Mrs. Mincing did the oath which she took in the Blue Garret “upon an odd volume of Messalina’s Poems.” Although I set out from Hordley at two o’clock, it was past seven before I reached an estate called “The Retreat,” which was only twelve miles off, so abominable was the road. Here I stopped for the night, which I passed at supper with the musquitoes,--“not where I ate, but where I was eaten.” Morant River had been swelled by the late heavy rains to a tremendous height, and its numerous quicksands render the passage in such a state extremely dangerous, However, a negro having been sent early to explore it, and having returned with a favourable report, we proceeded to encounter it. A Hordley negro, well acquainted with these perilous rivers, had accompanied me for the express purpose of pointing out the most practicable fords; but for some time his efforts to find a safe one were unavailing, his horse at the end of a minute or two plunging into a quicksand or some deep hole, among the waters thrown up from which he totally disappeared for a moment, and then was seen to struggle out again with such an effort and leap, as were quite beyond the capability of any carriage’s attempting. However, at the end of half an hour he was fortunate to find a place, where he could cross (up to his horse’s belly in the water, to be sure), but at least without tumbling into holes and quicksands; and here we set out, conscious that our whole chance of reaching the opposite shore consisted in keeping precisely the path which he had gone already, and determined to stick as close as possible to his horse’s tail. But no sooner were we fairly in the water, than my young horses found themselves unable to resist the strength and rapidity of the torrent, which was rolling down huge stones as big as rocks from the mountain; and to my utter consternation, I perceived the curricle carried down the stream, and the distance from my guide (who, by swimming his horse, had reached the destined landing-place in safety) growing wider and wider with every moment. We were now driving at all hazards; every moment I expected to see a horse or a wheel sink down into some deep hole, the chaise overturned, and ourselves either swallowed up in a quicksand, or dashed to pieces against the stones, which were rolling around us. I never remember to have felt myself so completely convinced of approaching destruction, and I roared out with all my might and main:--“We are carried away! all is over!” although, to be sure, I might as well have held my tongue, seeing that all my roaring could not do the least possible good. However, my horses, although too weak to resist the current, were fortunately strong enough to keep their legs; while they drifted down the stream, they struggled along in an oblique direction, which gradually (though but slowly) brought us nearer to the opposite shore; and after several minutes passed in most painful anxiety, a desperate plunge out of the water enabled them to _jump_ the carriage upon terra firma on the same side with my guide, although at a considerable distance from the spot where he had landed. The Yallack’s River was less dangerous; but even this too had been sufficiently swelled to make the crossing it no easy matter; so that what with one obstacle and another, when I reached Kingston at six o’clock with my bones and my vehicle unbroken, I was almost as much surprised as satisfied. I dined with the curate of Kingston (Rev. G. Hill), where I met the admiral upon this station, Sir Home Popham, and a large party. At Kingston I was obliged to send back a horse, which had been lent me in aid of my own; another had been dropped at “the Retreat a third could get no farther than the mountains; and my companion’s three horses had found themselves unable even to reach Spanish Town, and I had thus been obliged to leave them and theirs behind upon the road. On the morning of our departure from Cornwall, when my Italian servant saw the quantity of horses, mules, servants, and carriages collected for the journey, he clapped his hands together in exultation, and exclaimed,--“They will certainly take us for the king of England!” But now when after leaving one horse in one place and another horse in another, on the morning of Monday the 16th, he beheld my whole caravan reduced to one pair of chaise horses and a couple of miserable mules, he cast a rueful look upon my diminished cavalry and sighed to himself,--“I verily believe, we shall return home on foot after all!” I reached Spanish Town in time to dine with the chief justice (Mr. Jackson), and intended to remain two or three days longer; but the fatality, which had persecuted me from the very commencement of this abominable journey, was not exhausted yet. On Tuesday morning, my landlady just hinted, that “she thought it right to let me know, that to be sure there _was_ a gentleman unwell in the house; but she supposed, that I should not care about it: however, if I particularly disliked the neighbourhood of a sick person, she would procure me lodgings.” I asked, “What was the complaint?”
“Oh! he was a little sick, that was all.” To which I only could answer, that, “in that case I hoped he would get better,” and thought no more about it. However, when I went to visit the governor, I found, that this “little sickness” of my landlady’s was neither more nor less than the yellow fever; of which the gentleman in question was now dying, of which a lady had died only two days before, and of which another European, newly arrived, had fallen ill in this very same hotel only a fortnight before, and had died, after throwing himself out of an upper window in a fit of delirium. Under all these circumstances, I thought it to the full as prudent not to prolong my residence in Spanish Town; and accordingly, on Wednesday the 18th, I resumed my journey homewards. I travelled the north side of the island, which was the road used by me on my return two years ago. I have nothing to add to my former account of it, except that there need not be better inns anywhere than the Wellington hotel at Rio Bueno, and Judy James’s at Montego Bay, which latter is now, in my opinion, by far the prettiest town in Jamaica. Indeed, all the inns upon this road are excellent, with the solitary exception of the Black-heath Tavern, which I stopped at by a mistake instead of that of Montague. At this most miserable of all inns that ever entrapped an unwary traveller, there was literally nothing to be procured for love or money: no corn for the horses; no wine without sending six miles for a bottle; no food but a miserable starved fowl, so tough that the very negroes could not eat it; and a couple of eggs, one of which was addled: there was but one pair of sheets in the whole house, and neither candles, nor oranges, nor pepper, nor vinegar, nor bread, nor even so much as sugar, white or brown. Yams there were, which prevented my servants from going to bed quite empty, and I contented myself with the far-fetched bottle of wine and the solitary egg, which I eat by the light of a lamp filled with stinking oil. The one pair of sheets I seized upon to my own share, and my servants made themselves as good beds as they could upon the floor with great coats and travelling mantles. It was on Wednesday night, that after the fatigue of crossing Mount Diablo, “myself I unfatigued” in this delectable retreat, which seemed to have been established upon principles diametrically opposite to those of Shenstone’s. On Thursday I slept at Rio Bueno, on Friday at Montego Bay, passed Saturday at Anchovy estate (Mr. Plummer’s), and was very glad, on Sunday the 22d, to find myself once more quietly established at Cornwall, fully determined to leave it no more, till I leave it on my return to England. The lady, who had died so lately at Kingston, had arrived not long before in a vessel, both the crew and passengers of which landed (to all appearance) in perfect health after a favourable passage from England. Of course, they soon dispersed in different directions; yet almost all of them were attacked nearly at the same period by the fever, which seemed to have a
## particular commission to search out such persons as had arrived by that
## particular ship, at however remote a distance they might be from each
other.
MARCH 29. (Sunday.)
This morning (without either fault or accident) a young, strong, healthy woman miscarried of an eight months’ child; and this is the third time that she has met with a similar misfortune. No other symptom of child-bearing has been given in the course of this year, nor are there above eight women upon the breeding list out of more than one hundred and fifty females. Yet they are all well clothed and well fed, contented in mind, even by their own account, over-worked at no time, and when upon the breeding list are exempted from labour of every kind. In spite of all this, and their being treated with all possible care and indulgence, rewarded for bringing children, and therefore anxious themselves to have them, how they manage it so ill I know not, but somehow or other certainly the children do not come.
MARCH 31.
During the whole three weeks of my absence, only two negroes have been complained of for committing fault. The first was a domestic quarrel between two Africans; Hazard stole Frank’s calabash of sugar, which Frank had previously stolen out of my boiling-house. So Frank broke Hazard’s head, which in my opinion settled the matter so properly, that I declined spoiling it by any interference of my own. The other complaint was more serious. Toby, being ordered to load the cart with canes, answered “I wo’nt”--and Toby was as good as his word; in consequence of which the mill stopped for want of canes, and the boilinghouse stopped for want of liquor. I found on my return that for this offence Toby had received six lashes, which Toby did not mind three straws. But as his fault amounted to an act of downright rebellion, I thought that it ought not by any means to be passed over so lightly, and that Toby ought to be _made_ to mind. I took no notice for some days; but the Easter holidays had been deferred till my return, and only began here on Friday last. On that day, as soon as the head governor had blown the shell, and dismissed the negroes till Monday morning, he requested the pleasure of Mr. Toby’s company to the hospital, where he locked him up in a room by himself. All Saturday and Sunday the estate rang with laughing, dancing, singing, and huzzaing. Salt-fish was given away in the morning; the children played at ninepins for jackets and petticoats in the evening; rum and sugar was denied to no one. The gumbys thundered; the kitty-katties clattered; all was noise and festivity; and all this while, “_qualis morens Philomela_,” sat solitary Toby gazing at his four white walls! Toby had not minded the lashes; but the loss of his amusement, and the disgrace of his exclusion from the fête operated on his mind so forcibly, that when on the Monday morning his door was unlocked, and the chief governor called him to his work, not a word would he deign to utter; let who would speak, there he sat motionless, silent, and sulky. However, upon my going down to him myself, his voice thought proper to return, and he began at once to complain of his seclusion and justify his conduct. But he no sooner opened his lips than the whole hospital opened theirs to censure his folly, asking him how he could presume to justify himself when he knew that he had done wrong? and advising him to humble himself and beg my pardon; and their clamours were so loud and so general (Mrs. Sappho, his wife, being one of the loudest, who not only “gave it him on both sides of his ears,” but enforced her arguments by a knock on the pate now and then), that they fairly drove the evil spirit out of him; he confessed his fault with great penitence, engaged solemnly never to commit such another, and set off to his work full of gratitude for my granting him forgiveness. I am more and more convinced every day, that the best and easiest mode of governing negroes (and governed by some mode or other they must be) is not by the detestable lash, but by confinement, solitary or otherwise; they cannot bear it, and the memory of it seems to make a lasting impression upon their minds; while the lash makes none but upon their skins, and lasts no longer than the mark. The order at my hospital is, that no negro should be denied admittance; even if no symptoms of illness appear, he is allowed one day to rest, and take physic, if he choose it. On the second morning, if the physician declares the man to be shamming, and the plea of illness is still alleged against going to work, then the negro is locked up in a room with others similarly circumstanced, where care is taken to supply him with food, water, physic, &c., and no restraint is imposed except that of not going out. Here he is suffered to remain unmolested as long as he pleases, and he is only allowed to leave the hospital upon his own declaration that he is well enough to go to work; when the door is opened, and he walks away unreproached and unpunished, however evident his deception may have been. Before I adopted this regulation, the number of patients used to vary from thirty to forty-five, not more than a dozen of whom perhaps had anything the matter with them: the number at this moment is but fourteen, and all are sores, burns, or complaints the reality of which speaks for itself. Some few persevering tricksters will still submit to be locked up for a day or two; but their patience never fails to be wearied out by the fourth morning, and I have not yet met with an instance of a patient who had once been locked up with a fictitious illness, returning to the hospital except with a real one. In general, they offer to take a day’s rest and physic, promising to go out to work the next day, and on these occasions they have uniformly kept their word. Indeed, my hospital is now in such good order, that the physician told the trustee the other day that “mine gave him less trouble than any hospital in the parish.”
My boilers, too, who used to make sugar the colour of mahogany, are now making excellent; and certainly, if appearances may be trusted, and things will but last, I may flatter myself with the complete success of my system of management, as far as the time elapsed is sufficient to warrant an opinion. I only wish from my soul that I were but half as certain of the good treatment and good behaviour of the negroes at Hordley.
APRIL 1. (Wednesday.)
Jug-Betty having had two leathern purses full of silver coin stolen out of her trunk, her cousin Punch told her to have patience till Sunday, and he thought that by that time he should be able to find it for her. Upon which she very naturally suspected her cousin Punch of having stolen the money himself, and brought him to day to make her charge against him. However, he stuck firmly to a denial, and as several days had been suffered to elapse since the theft, there could be no doubt of his having concealed the money, and therefore no utility in searching his person or his house. I found great fault with the persons in authority for not having taken such a measure without a moment’s delay; but the trustee informed me that it frequently produced very serious consequences, many instances having occurred of the disgrace of their house being searched having offended negroes so much to the heart, as to occasion their committing suicide: so that it was a proceeding which was seldom ventured upon without urgent necessity. It was now too late to take it, at all events; the man confessed, indeed, that he had quitted his work, and gone down to the negro-village on the day of the robbery, which rendered his guilt highly probable, but he could be brought to confess no more; and as to his saying that he thought he could find the money by Sunday, he explained _that_ into an intention of “going to consult a brown woman at the bay, who was a fortune-teller, and who when any thing was stolen, could always point out the thief by _cutting the cards_.” This was all that we could extract from him, and we were obliged to dismiss him. However, the fright of his examination was not without good consequences: one of the stolen purses had belonged to a sister of Jug-Betty’s, not long deceased; and on her return home, _this_ purse (with its contents untouched) was found lying on the sister’s grave in her garden. Perhaps, the thief had taken it without knowing the owner; and on finding that it had belonged to a dead person, he had surrendered it through apprehension of being haunted by her _duppy_.
APRIL 5. (Sunday.)
Clearing their grounds by fire is a very expeditious proceeding, consequently in much practice among the negroes; but in this tindery country it is extremely dangerous, and forbidden by the law. As I returned home to-day from church, I observed a large smoke at no great distance, and Cubina told me, he supposed that the negroes of the neighbouring estate of Amity were clearing their grounds. “Then they are doing a very wrong thing,” said I; “I hope they will fire nothing else but their grounds, for with so strong a breeze a great deal of mischief might be done.” However, in half an hour it proved that the smoke in question arose from my own negro-grounds, that the fire had spread itself, and I could see from my window the flames and smoke pouring themselves upwards in large volumes, while the crackling of the dry bushes and brush-wood was something perfectly terrific. The alarm was instantly given, and whites and blacks all hurried to the scene of
## action. Luckily, the breeze set the contrary way from the plantations;
a morass interposed itself between the blazing ground and one of my best cane-pieces: the flames were suffered to burn till they reached the brink of the water, and then the negroes managed to extinguish them without much difficulty. Thus we escaped without injury, but I own I was heartily frightened.
APRIL 8.
This morning I was awaked by a violent coughing in the hospital; and as soon as I heard any of the servants moving, I despatched a negro to ask, “whether any body was bad in the hospital?” He returned and told me, “No, massa; nobody bad there; for Alick is better, and Nelson is dead.” Nelson was one of my best labourers, and had come into the hospital for a glandular swelling. Early this morning he was seized with a violent fit of coughing, burst a large artery, and was immediately suffocated in his blood! This is the sixth death in the course of the first three months of the year, and we have not as yet a single birth for a set-off. Say what one will to the negroes, and treat them as well as one can, obstinate devils, they will die!
APRIL 9.
I had mentioned to Mr. Shand my having found a woman at Hordley, who had been crippled for life, in consequence of her having been kicked in the womb by one of the book-keepers. He writes to me on this subject:--“I trust that conduct so savage occurs rarely in _any_ country. I can only say, that in my long experience nothing of the kind has ever fallen under my observation.” Mr. S. then ought to consider _me_ as having been in high luck. I have not passed six months in Jamaica, and I have already found on one of my estates a woman who had been kicked in the womb by a white book-keeper, by which she was crippled herself, and on another of my estates another woman who had been kicked in the womb by another white book-keeper, by which he had crippled the child. The name of the first man and woman were Lory and Jeannette; those of the second were Full-wood and Martia: and thus, as my two estates are at the two extremities of the island, I am entitled to say, from my own knowledge (i.e, speaking _lite-rally_, observe), that “white book-keepers kick black women in the belly _from one end of Jamaica to the other_.”
APRIL 15. (Wednesday.)
About noon to-day a well-disposed healthy lad of seventeen years of age was employed in unhaltering the first pair of oxen of one of the waggons, in doing which he entangled his right leg in the rope. At that moment the oxen set off full gallop, and dragged the boy along with them round the whole inclosure, before the other negroes could succeed in stopping them. However, when the prisoner was extricated, although his flesh appeared to have been terribly lacerated, no bones were broken, and he was even able to walk to the hospital without support. He was blooded instantly, and two physicians were sent for by express. At two o’clock he was still in perfect possession of his senses, and only complained of the soreness of his wounds: but in half an hour after he became apoplectic; sank into a state of utter insensibility, during which a dreadful rattling in his throat was the only sign of still existing life, and before six in the evening all was over with him!
APRIL 17.
Pickle had accused his brother-in-law, Edward the Eboe, of having given him a pleurisy by the practice of Obeah. During my last visit I had convinced him that the charge was unjust (or at least he had declared himself to be convinced), and about six weeks ago they came together to assure me, that ever since they had lived upon the best terms possible. Unluckily, Pickle’s wife miscarried lately, and for the third time; previously to which Edward had said, that his wife would remain sole heiress of the father’s property. This was enough to set the suspicious brains of these foolish people at work; and to-day Pickle and his father-in-law, old Damon, came to assure me, that in order to prevent a child coming to claim its share of the grandfather’s property, Edward had practised Obeah to make his sister-in-law miscarry; the only proof of which adduced was the above expression, and the woman’s having miscarried “just according to Edward’s very words!” To reason with such very absurd persons was out of the case. I found too, that the two sisters were quarrelling perpetually, and always on the point of tearing each other’s eyes out. Therefore, as domestic peace “in a house so disunited” was out of the question, I ordered the two families to separate instantly, and to live at the two extremities of the negro village; at the same time forbidding all intercourse between them whatsoever: a plan, which was received with approbation by all parties; and Edward moved his property out of the old man’s house into another without loss of time. Among other charges of Obeah, Pickle declared, that his house having been robbed, Edward had told him that Nato was the offender; and in order to prove it beyond the power of doubt, he had made him look at something round, “just like massa’s watch,” out of which he had taken a sentee (a something) which looked like an egg; this he gave to Pickle, at the same time instructing him to throw it at night against the door of Nato’s house; which he had no sooner done and broken the egg, than the very next day Nato’s wife Philippa “began to bawl, and halloo, and went mad.” Now that Philippa had bawled and hallooed enough was certainly true; but it was also true that she had confessed her madness to have been a trick for the purpose of exciting my compassion, and inducing me to feed her from my own table. Yet was this simple fellow persuaded that he had made her go mad by the help of his broken egg, and his old fool of a father-in-law was goose enough to encourage him in the persuasion.
APRIL 19. (Sunday.)
“And massa,” said Bridget, the doctoress, this morning, “my old mother a lilly so-so to-day; and him tank massa much for the good supper massa send last night; and him like it so well.--Laud! massa, the old lady was just thinking what him could yam (eat) and him no fancy nothing; and him could no yam salt, and him just wishing for something fresh, when at that very moment Cu-bina come to him from massa with a stewed pig’s head so fresh: it seemed just as if massa had got it from the Almighty’s hands himself.”
APRIL 22.
Naturalists and physicians, philosophers and philanthropists, may argue and decide as they please; but certainly, as far as mere observation admits of my judging, there does seem to be a very great difference between the brain of a black person and a white one. I should think that Voltaire would call a negro’s reason “_une raison très particulière_.” Somehow or other, they never can manage to do anything _quite_ as it should be done. If they correct themselves in one respect to-day they are sure of making a blunder in some other manner to-morrow. Cubina is now twenty-five, and has all his life been employed about the stable; he goes out with my carriage twice every day; yet he has never yet been able to succeed in putting on the harness properly. Before we get to one of the plantation gates we are certain of being obliged to stop, and put something or other to rights: and I once remember having laboured for more than half an hour to make him understand that the Christmas holidays came at Christmas; when asked the question, he always hesitated, and answered, at hap-hazard, “July” or “October.” Yet, Cubina is far superior in intellect to most of the negroes who have fallen under my observation. The girl too, whose business it is to open the house each morning, has in vain been desired to unclose all the jalousies: she never fails to leave three or four closed, and when she is scolded for doing so, she takes care to open those three the next morning, and leaves three shut on the opposite side. Indeed, the attempt to make them correct a fault is quite fruitless: they never can do the same thing a second time in the same manner; and if the cook having succeeded in dressing a dish well is desired to dress just such another, she is certain of doing something which makes it quite different. One day I desired, that there might be always a piece of salt meat at dinner, in order that I might be certain of always having enough to send to the sick in the hospital. In consequence, there was nothing at dinner but salt meat. I complained that there was not a single fresh dish, and the next day, there was nothing but fresh. Sometimes there is scarcely anything served up, and the cook seems to have forgotten the dinner altogether: she is told of it; and the next day she slaughters without mercy pigs, sheep, fowls, ducks, turkeys, and everything that she can lay her murderous hands upon, till the table absolutely groans under the load of her labours. For above a month Cubina and I had perpetual quarrels about the cats being shut into the gallery at nights, where they threw down plates, glasses, and crockery of all kinds, and made such a clatter that to get a wink of sleep was quite out of the question. Cubina, before he went to rest, hunted under all the beds and sofas, and laid about him with a long whip for half an hour together; but in half an hour after his departure the cats were at work again. He was then told, that although he had turned them out, he must certainly have left some window open: he promised to pay particular attention to this point, but that night the uproar was worse than ever; yet he protested that he had carefully turned out all the cats, locked all the doors, and shut all the windows. He was told, that if he had really turned out all the cats, the cats must have got in again, and therefore that he must have left some one window open at least. “No,” he said, “he had not left one; but a pane in one of the windows had been broken two months before, and it was there that the cats got in whenever they pleased.” Yet he had continued to turn the cats out of the door with the greatest care, although he was perfectly conscious that they could always walk in again at the window in five minutes after. But the most curious of Cubina’s modes of proceeding is, when it is necessary for him to attack the pigeon-house. He steals up the ladder as slily and as softly as foot can fall; he opens the door, and steals in his head with the utmost caution; on which, to his never-failing surprise and disappointment, all the pigeons make their escape through the open holes; he has now no resource but entering the dove-cot, and remaining there with unwearied patience for the accidental return of the birds, which nine times out of ten does not take place till too late for dinner, and Cubina returns empty-handed. Having observed this proceeding constantly repeated during a fortnight, I took pity upon his embarrassment, and ordered two wooden sliders to be fitted to the holes. Cubina was delighted with this exquisite invention, and failed not the next morning to close all the holes on the right with one of the sliders; he then stepped boldly into the dove-cot, when to his utter confusion the pigeons flew away through the holes on the left. Here then he discovered where the fault lay, so he lost no time in closing the remaining aperture with the second slider, and the pigeons were thus prevented from returning at all. Cubina waited long with exemplary patience, but without success, so he abandoned the new invention in despair, made no farther use of the sliders, and continues to steal up the ladder as he did before. A few days ago, Nicholas, a mulatto carpenter, was ordered to make a box for the conveyance of four jars of sweetmeats, of which he took previous measure; yet first he made a box so small that it would scarcely hold a single jar, and then another so large that it would have held twenty; and when at length he produced one of a proper size, he brought it nailed up for travelling (although it was completely empty), and nailed up so effectually too, that on being directed to open it that the jars might be packed, he split the cover to pieces in the attempt to take it off. Yet, among all my negroes, Nicholas and Cubina are not equalled for adroitness and intelligence by more than twenty. Judge then what must be the remaining three hundred!
APRIL 23.
In my medical capacity, like a true quack I sometimes perform cures so unexpected, that I stand like Katterfelto, “with my hair standing on end at my own wonders.” Last night, Alexander, the second governor, who has been seriously ill for some days, sent me word, that he was suffering cruelly from a pain in his head, and could get no sleep. I knew not how to relieve him; but having frequently observed a violent passion for perfumes in the house negroes, for want of something else I gave the doctoress some oil of lavender, and told her to rub two or three drops upon his nostrils. This morning, he told me that “to be sure what I had sent him was a grand medicine indeed,” for it had no sooner touched his nose than he felt some-thing cold run up to his forehead, over his head, and all the way down his neck to the back-bone; instantly, the headach left him, he fell fast asleep, nor had the pain returned in the morning. But I am afraid, that even this wonderful oil would fail of curing a complaint which was made to me a few days ago. A poor old creature, named Quasheba, made her appearance at my breakfast table, and told me, “that she was almost eighty, had been rather weakly for some time past, and somehow she did not feel as she was by any means right.”
“Had she seen the doctor? Did she want physic?”
“No, she had taken too much physic already, and the doctor would do her no good; she did not want to see the doctor.”
“But what then was her complaint?”
“Oh! she had no particular complaint; only she was old and weakly, and did not find herself by any means so well as she used to be, and so she came just to tell massa, and see what he could do to make her quite right again, that was all.” In short, she _only_ wanted me to make her young again!
APRIL 24.
Mr. Forbes is dead. When I was last in Jamaica, he had just been poisoned with corrosive sublimate by a female slave, who was executed in consequence. He never was well afterwards; but as he lived intemperately, the whole blame of his death must not be laid upon the poison.
APRIL 30.
A free mulatto of the name of Rolph had frequently been mentioned to me by different magistrates, as remarkable for the numerous complaints brought against him for cruel treatment of his negroes. He was described to me as the son of a white ploughman, who at his death left his son six or seven slaves, with whom he resides in the heart of the mountains, where the remoteness of the situation secures him from observation or control. His slaves, indeed, every now and then contrive to escape, and come down to Savannah la Mar to lodge their complaints; but the magistrates, hitherto, had never been able to get a legal hold upon him. However, a few days ago, he entered the house of a Mrs. Edgins, when she was from home, and behaving in an outrageous manner to her slaves, he was desired by the head-man to go away. Highly incensed, he answered, “that if the fellow dared to speak another word, it should be the last that he should ever utter.” The negro dared to make a rejoinder; upon which Rolph aimed a blow at him with a stick, which missed his intended victim, but struck another slave who was interposing to prevent a scuffle, and killed him upon the spot. The murder was committed in the presence of several negroes; but negroes are not allowed to give evidence, and as no free person was present, there are not only doubts whether the murderer will be punished, but whether he can even be put upon his trial.
MAY 1. (Friday.)
This morning I signed the manumission of Nicholas Cameron, the best of my mulatto carpenters. He had been so often on the very point of getting his liberty, and still the cup was dashed from his lips, that I had promised to set him free, whenever he could procure an able negro as his substitute; although being a good workman, a single negro was by no means an adequate price in exchange. On my arrival this year I found that he had agreed to pay £150 for a female negro, and the woman was approved of by my trustee. But on enquiry it appeared that she had a child, from which she was unwilling to separate, and that her owner refused to sell the child, except at a most unreasonable price. Here then was an insurmountable objection to my accepting her, and Nicholas was told to his great mortification, that he must look out for another substitute. The woman, on her part, was determined to belong to Cornwall estate and no other: so she told her owner, that if he attempted to sell her elsewhere she would make away with herself, and on his ordering her to prepare for a removal to a neighbouring proprietor’s, she disappeared, and concealed herself so well, that for some time she was believed to have put her threats of suicide into execution. The idea of losing his £150 frightened her master so completely, that he declared himself ready to let me have the child at a fair price, as well as the mother, if she ever should be found; and her friends having conveyed this assurance to her, she thought proper to emerge from her hiding-place, and the bargain was arranged finally. The titles, however, were not yet made out, and as the time of my departure for Hordley was arrived, these were ordered to be got ready against my return, when the negroes were to be delivered over to me, and Nicholas was to be set free. In the meanwhile, the child was sent by her mistress (a free mulatto) to hide some stolen ducks upon a distant property, and on her return blabbed out the errand: in consequence the mistress was committed to prison for theft; and no sooner was she released, than she revenged herself upon the poor girl by giving her thirty lashes with the cattle-whip, inflicted with all the severity of vindictive malice. This treatment of a child of such tender years reduced her to such a state, as made the magistrates think it right to send her for protection to the workhouse, until the conduct of the mistress should have been enquired into. In the meanwhile, as the result of the enquiry might be the setting the girl at liberty, the joint title for her and her mother could not be made out, and thus poor Nicholas’s manumission was at a stand-still again. The magistrates at length decided, that although the chastisement had been severe, yet (according to the medical report) it was not such as to authorise the sending the mistress to be tried at the assizes. She was accordingly dismissed from farther investigation, and the girl was once more considered as belonging to me, as soon as the title could be made out. But the fatality which had so often prevented Nicholas from obtaining his freedom, was not weary yet. On the very morning, when he was to sign the title, a person whose signature was indispensable, was thrown out of his chaise, the wheel of which passed over his head, and he was rendered incapable of transacting business for several weeks. Yesterday, the titles were at length brought to me complete, and this morning put Nicholas in possession of the object, in the pursuit of which he has experienced such repeated disappointments. The conduct of the poor child’s mulatto mistress in this case was most unpardonable, and is only one of numerous instances of a similar description, which have been mentioned to me. Indeed, I have every reason to believe, that nothing can be uniformly more wretched, than the life of the slaves of free people of colour in Jamaica; nor would any thing contribute more to the relief of the black population, than the prohibiting by law any mulatto to become the owner of a slave for the future. Why should not rich people of colour be served by poor people of colour, hiring them as domestics? It seldom happens that mulattoes are in possession of plantations; but when a white man dies, who happens to possess twenty negroes, he will divide them among his brown family, leaving (we may say) five to each of his four children. These are too few to be employed in plantation work; they are, therefore, ordered to maintain their owner by some means or other, and which means are frequently not the most honest, the most frequent being the travelling about as higglers, and exchanging the trumpery contents of their packs and boxes with plantation negroes for stolen rum and sugar. I confess I cannot see why, on such bequest being made, the law should not order the negroes to be sold, and the produce of the sale paid to the mulatto heirs, but absolutely prohibiting the mulattoes from becoming proprietors of the negroes themselves. Every man of humanity must wish that slavery, even in its best and most mitigated form, had never found a legal sanction, and must regret that its system is now so incorporated with the welfare of Great Britain as well as of Jamaica, as to make its extirpation an absolute impossibility, without the certainty of producing worse mischiefs than the one which we annihilate. But certainly there can be no sort of occasion for continuing in the colonies the existence of _do-mestic slavery_, which neither contributes to the security of the colonies themselves, nor to the opulence of the mother-country, the revenue of which derived from colonial duties would suffer no defalcation whatever, even if neither whites nor blacks in the West Indies were suffered to employ slaves, except in plantation labour.
MAY 2.
I gave my negroes a farewell holiday, on which occasion each grown person received a present of half-a-dollar, and every child a maccaroni. In return, they endeavoured to express their sorrow for my departure, by eating and drinking, dancing and singing, with more vehemence and perseverance than on any former occasion. As in all probability many years will elapse without my making them another visit, if indeed I should ever return at all, I have at least exerted myself while here to do everything which appeared likely to contribute to their welfare and security during my absence. In particular, my attorney has made out a list of all such offences as are most usually committed on plantations, to which proportionate punishments have been affixed by myself. From this code of internal regulations the overseer is not to be allowed to deviate, and the attorney has pledged himself in the most solemn manner to adhere strictly to the system laid down for him. By this scheme, the negroes will no longer be punished according to the momentary caprice of their superintendent, but by known and fixed laws, the one no more than the other, and without respect to partiality or prejudice. Hitherto, in everything which had not been previously deter mined by the public law, with a penalty attached to the breach of it, the negro has been left entirely at the mercy of the overseer, who if he was a humane man punished him slightly, and if a tyrant, heavily; nay, very often the quantity of punishment depended upon the time of day when the offence was made known. If accused in the morning, when the overseer was in cold blood and in good humour, a night’s confinement in the stocks might be deemed sufficient; whereas if the charge was brought when the superior had taken his full proportion of grog or sangaree, the very same offence would be visited with thirty-nine lashes. I have, moreover, taken care to settle all disputes respecting property, having caused all negroes having claims upon others to bring them before my tribunal previous to my departure, and determined that from that time forth no such claims should be enquired into, but considered as definitively settled by my authority. It would have done the Lord Chancellor’s heart good to see how many suits I determined in the course of a week, and with what expedition I made a clear court of chancery. But perhaps the most astonishing part of the whole business was, that after judgment was pronounced, the losers as well as the gainers declared themselves perfectly satisfied with the justice of the sentence. I must acknowledge, however, that the negro principle that “massa can do no wrong,” was of some little assistance to me on this occasion. “Oh! quite just, me good, massa! what massa say, quite just! me no say nothing more; me good, massa!” Then they thanked me “for massa’s goodness in giving them so long talk!” and went away to tell all the others “how just massa had been in taking away what they wanted to keep, or not giving them what they asked for.” It must be owned that this is not the usual mode of proceeding after the loss of a chancery suit in England. But to do the negroes mere justice, I must say, that I could not have wished to find a more tractable set of people on almost every occasion. Some lazy and obstinate persons, of course, there must inevitably be in so great a number; but in general I found them excellently disposed, and being once thoroughly convinced of my real good-will towards them, they were willing to take it for granted, that my regulations must be right and beneficial, even in cases where they were in opposition to individual interests and popular prejudices. My attorney had mentioned to me several points, which he thought it advisable to have altered, but which he had vainly endeavoured to accomplish. Thus the negroes were in the practice of bequeathing their houses and grounds, by which means some of them were become owners of several houses and numerous gardens in the village, while others with large families were either inadequately provided for, or not provided for at all. I made it public, that from henceforth no negro should possess more than one house, with a sufficient portion of ground for his family, and on the following Sunday the overseer by my order looked over the village, took from those who had too much to give to those who had too little, and made an entire new distribution according to the most strict Agrarian law. Those who lost by this measure, came the next day to complain to me; when I avowed its having been done by my order, and explained the propriety of the proceeding; after which they declared themselves contented, and I never heard another murmur on the subject. Again, mothers being allowed certain indulgences while suckling, persist in it for two years and upwards, to the great detriment both of themselves and their children: complaint of this being made to me, I sent for the mothers, and told them that every child must be sent to the weaning-house on the first day of the fifteenth month, but that their indulgences should be continued to the mothers for two months longer, although the children would be no longer with them. All who had children of that age immediately gave them up; the rest promised to do so, when they should be old enough $ and they all thanked me for the continuance of their indulgences, which they considered as a boon newly granted them. On my return from Hordley, I was told that the negroes suffered their pigs to infest the works and grounds in the immediate vicinity of the house in such numbers, that they were become a perfect nuisance; nor could any remonstrance prevail on them to confine the animals within the village. An order was in consequence issued on a Saturday, that the first four pigs found rambling at large after two days should be put to death without mercy; and accordingly on Monday morning, at the negro breakfast hour, the head governor made his appearance before the house, armed cap-a-pee, with a lance in his hand, and an enormous cutlass by his side. The news of this tremendous apparition spread through the estate like wildfire. Instantly all was in an uproar; the negroes came pouring down from all quarters; in an instant the whole air was rent with noises of all kinds and creatures; men, women, and children shouting and bellowing, geese cackling, dogs barking, turkeys gobbling; and, look where you would, there was a negro running along as fast as he could, and dragging a pig along with him by one of the hind legs, while the pigs were all astonishment at this sudden attack, and called upon heaven and earth for commiseration and protection,--
“With many a doleful grunt and piteous squeak,
Poor pigs! as if their pretty hearts would break!”
From thenceforth not a pig except my own was to be seen about the place; yet instead of complaining of this restraint, several of the negroes came to assure me, that I might depend on the animals not being suffered to stray beyond the village for the future, and to thank me for having given them the warning two days before. What other negroes may be, I will not pretend to guess; but I am certain that there cannot be more tractable or better disposed persons (take them for all in all) than my negroes of Cornwall. I only wish, that in my future dealings with white persons, whether _in_ Jamaica or out of it, I could but meet with half so much gratitude, affection, and good-will.
THE END.