Part 10

As to fish, the variety is endless; but I think it rather consists in variety of names than of flavour. From this, however, I must except the Silk-Fish and Mud-Fish, and above all, the Mountain-Mullet, which is almost the best fish that I ever tasted. All the shell-fish, that I have met with as yet, have been excellent; the oysters have not come, in my way, but I am told that they are not only poor and insipid, but frequently are so poisonous that I had better not venture upon them; and so ends this chapter of the “Almanach des Gourmands” for Jamaica.

JANUARY 30.

There were above twenty ladies literally at my feet this morning. I went down to the negro-village to speak to Bessie about going to her black doctor; and all the refractory females of last week heard of my being there, and came in a body to promise better conduct for the future, and implore me not to go away. The sight of my carriage getting ready to take me to Kingston, and the arrival of post-horses, had alarmed them with the idea that I was really going to put my threats into execution of leaving them for ever. They had artfully enough prevailed on the wife of Clifford (the driver whom Whannica had collared) to be their spokes-woman; and they begged, and lifted up their folded hands, and cried, and fell on the ground, and kissed my feet--and, in short, acted their part so well, that they almost made me act mine to perfection, and fall to blubbering. I told them, that I certainly should go to Kingston on Thursday; but if I had good accounts of them during my absence, I should return in a few days;--if, on the contrary, the idle negroes continued to refuse to work without compulsion, then, in justice to the good ones (who last week were obliged to do more than their share), those punishments, which I had stopped, must be resumed;--but that, as Cornwall would be unsupportable to me, if I could not live there without hearing the crack of the abominable cart-whip all day long, I would not return to it, but ship myself off for England, and never visit them or Jamaica any more. And then I talked very sternly and positively about “punishments” and “making bad negroes do their work properly,” and every third word was the cart-whip, till I almost fancied myself the princess in the “Fairy Tale,” who never opened her mouth, but out came two toads and three couple of serpents. However, to sweeten my oration a little at the end, I told them, that, “having enquired closely into the characters of the present book-keepers, I had found no charge against any of them except one, who was accused of having occasionally struck a negro, of using bad language to them, and of being a hasty passionate man, though in other respects very serviceable to the estate. But although these faults were but trifling, and some of them not proved, so determined was I to show that I would suffer no white person on the estate who maltreated the negroes, either by word or deed, that I had determined to make an example of him for the warning of the rest; and accordingly had dismissed him this morning.”

The man in question (by his own account) had made himself obnoxious to them; and on hearing of his discharge, they, one and all, sprawled upon the ground in such a rapture of joy and gratitude, that now I may safely say with Sir Andrew Aguecheek, “I was adored once!”

The book-keeper had denied positively the charge of striking the negroes, and ascribed it to the revenge of the Eboe Edward, whom he had detected in cutting out part of a boiling-house window, in order that he might pass out stolen sugar unperceived; for, to do the negroes justice, it is a doubt whether they are the greatest thieves or liars, and the quantity of sugar which they purloin during the crop, and dispose of at the Bay for a mere trifle, is enormous. However, whether the charge of striking were true or not, it was sufficiently proved that this book-keeper was a passionate man, and he said himself, “that the negroes had conceived a spite against him,” which alone were reasons enough for removing him. Indeed, I had the less scruple from the slight nature of his offence making it easy for him to find another situation; and I have besides desired him to stay out his quarter on the estate, and then receive a double salary on going away, which will free him from any charge of having been dismissed disgracefully.

JANUARY 31.

I went to enquire after my petitioners Juliet and Delia, and had the satisfaction to find that the trustee had enquired into their complaint; and, as it appeared not to be entirely unfounded, he had done every thing that was right and necessary. Aberdeen, too, the runaway cooper, who had applied to me to obtain his pardon, had been suffered to return to his work unpunished; and as it had been found that his flight had in a great measure been occasioned by his being in a bad state of health, which rendered him apprehensive of being put to labour beyond his strength, he had been permitted to select his own occupation, which, of course, was the easiest one in his trade. But I found it a more difficult matter to ascertain the truth or falsehood of the charges brought to me on Sunday last: the books positively contradicted them, but the register might have been falsely kept; and as the negroes persisted most positively in their complaint against the overseer (particularly as to his having curtailed them of the legal allowance of time for their meals, and the cultivation of their own grounds) with the concurrence of the trustee, I wrote to the magistrates of the county, desiring that they would summon the negroes in question before a council of protection, and examine into the injuries of which they had complained to me.

FEBRUARY 1. (Thursday.)

I left Cornwall for Spanish Town at six in the morning, accompanied by a young naval officer, the son of my next neighbour, Mr. Hill of Amity, who not only was good enough to lend me a kittereen, with a canopy, to perform my journey, but his son to be my _cicerone_ on my tour. The road wound through mountain passes, or else on a shelf of rock so narrow--though without the slightest danger--that one of the wheels was frequently in the sea, while my other side was fenced by a line of bold broken cliffs, clothed with trees completely from their brows down to the very edge of the water. Between eight and nine we reached a solitary tavern, called Blue-fields, where the horses rested for a couple of hours. It had a very pretty garden on the sea-shore, which contained a picturesque cottage, exactly resembling an ornamental Hermitage; and leaning against one of the pillars of its porch we found a young girl, who exactly answered George Colman’s description of Yarico, “quite brown, but extremely genteel, like a Wedgewood teapot.” She told us that she was a Spanish creole, who had fled with her mother from the disputes between the royalists and independents in the island of Old Providence; and the owner of the tavern being a relation of her mother, he had permitted the fugitives to establish themselves in his garden-cottage, till the troubles of their own country should be over. She talked perfectly good English, for she said that there were many of that nation established in Providence. Her name was Antonietta. Her figure was light and elegant; her black eyes mild and bright; her countenance intelligent and good-humoured; and her teeth beautiful to perfection: altogether, Antonietta was by far the handsomest creole that I have ever seen.

From Blue-fields we proceeded at once to Lakovia (a small village), a stage of thirty miles. Here we found a relay of horses, which conveyed us by seven o’clock to “the Gutturs;” a house belonging to the proprietor of the post-horses, and which is situated at the very foot of the tremendous May-day Mountains. The house is an excellent one, and we found good beds, eatables, and, in short, every thing that travellers could wish. The distance from Lakovia to “the Gutturs” is sixteen miles.

FEBRUARY 2.

Yesterday the only very striking point of view (although the whole of the road was picturesque) was “the Cove,” situated between Blue-fields and Lakovia, and which resembled the most beautiful of the views of coves to be found in “Cook’s Voyages,” but our journey to-day was a succession of beautiful scenes, from beginning to end. Instantly on leaving “the Gutturs,” we began to ascend the May-day Mountains, and it was not till after travelling for five and twenty miles, that we found ourselves at the foot of them on the other side, at a place called Williamsfield, about twelve miles from the toll-house, where we rested for the night. To be sure, the road was so rough, that it was enough to make one envy the Mahometan women, who, having no souls at all, could not possibly have them jolted out of their bodies; but the beauty of the scenery amply rewarded us for our bruised sides and battered backs. The road was, for the most part, bounded by lofty rocks on one side, and a deep precipice on the other, and bordered with a profusion of noble trees and flowering shrubs in great variety. In particular, I was struck with the picturesque appearance of some wild fig-trees of singular size and beauty. Although there were only two of us, besides servants, we found it necessary to employ seven horses and a couple of mules; and, as our cavalcade wound along through the mountains, the Spanish look of our sumpter-mules, and of our kittereens (which are precisely the vehicle in which Gil Bias is always represented when travelling with Scipio towards Lirias) gave us quite the appearance of a caravan; nor should I have been greatly surprised to see a trap-door open in the middle of the road, and Captain Rolando’s whiskers make their appearance. Every one spoke to me with contempt of this south road, in respect of beauty, when compared with the north; however, it certainly seemed to me more beautiful than any road which I have ever travelled as yet.

FEBRUARY 3.

A stage of twenty miles brought us to Old Harbour, and, passing through the Dry River, twelve more landed us at Spanish Town, otherwise called St. Jago de la Vega, and the seat of government in Jamaica, although Kingston is much larger and more populous, and must be considered as the principal town. We found very clean and comfortable lodgings at Miss Cole’s. Spanish Town has no recommendations whatever; the houses are mostly built of wood: the streets are very irregular and narrow; every alternate building is in a ruinous state, and the whole place wears an air of gloom and melancholy. The government house is a large clumsy-looking brick building, with a portico the stucco of which has suffered by the weather, and it can advance no pretensions to architectural beauty. On one side of the square in which it stands there is a small temple protecting a statue of Lord Rodney, executed by Bacon: some of the bas-reliefs on the pedestal appeared to me very good; but the old admiral is most absurdly dressed in the habit of a Roman General, and furnished out with buskins and a truncheon. The temple itself is quite in opposition to good taste, with very low arches, surmounted by heavy bas reliefs out of all proportion.

FEBRUARY 4. (Sunday.)

We breakfasted with the Chief Justice, who is my relation, and of my own name, and then went to the church, which is a very handsome one; the walls lined with fine mahogany, and ornamented with many monuments of white marble, in memory of the former governors and other principal inhabitants. It seems that my ancestors, on both sides, have always had a taste for being well lodged after their decease; for, on admiring one of these tombs, it proved to be that of my maternal grandfather; but still this was not to be compared for a moment with my mausoleum at Cornwall. After church I went home with the Rector, who is one of the ecclesiastical commissaries, and had a long conversation with him respecting a plan which is in agitation for giving the negroes something of a religious education. We afterwards dined with the member for Westmoreland; and as every body in Jamaica is on foot by six in the morning, at ten in the evening we were quite ready to go to bed.

FEBRUARY 5.

The Chief Justice went with me to Kingston, where I had appointed the agent for my other estate in St. Thomas-in-the-East to meet me. The short time allotted for my stay in the island makes it impossible to attend properly both to this estate and to Cornwall at this first visit, and therefore I determined to confine my attention to the negroes on the latter estate till my return to Jamaica. I now contented myself by impressing on the mind of my agent (whom I am certain of being a most humane and intelligent man) my extreme anxiety for the abolition of the cart-whip; and I had the satisfaction of hearing from him, that for a long time it had never been used more than perhaps twice in the year, and then only very slightly, and for some offence so flagrant that it was impossible to pass it over; and he assured me, that whenever I visit Hordley, I may depend upon its not being employed at all. On the other hand, I am told that a gentleman of the parish of Vere, who came over to Jamaica for the sole purpose of ameliorating the condition of his negroes, after abolishing the cart-whip, has at length been constrained to resume the occasional use of it, because he found it utterly impossible to keep them in any sort of subordination without it.

There is not that air of melancholy about Kingston which pervades Spanish Town; but it has no pretensions to beauty; and if any person will imagine a large town entirely composed of booths at a race-course, and the streets merely roads, without any sort of paving, he will have, a perfect idea of Kingston.

FEBRUARY 6.

The Jamaica canoes are hollowed cotton-trees. We embarked in one of them at six in the morning, and visited the ruins of Port Royal, which, last year, was destroyed by fire: some of the houses were rebuilding; but it was a melancholy sight, not only from the look of the half-burnt buildings, but the dejected countenances of the ruined inhabitants. I returned to breakfast at the rectory, with two other ecclesiastical commissaries; had more conversation about their proposed plan; and became still more convinced of the difficulty of doing any thing effectual without danger to the island and to the negroes themselves, and of the extreme delicacy requisite in whatever may be attempted. We afterwards visited the school of the children of the poor, who are educating upon Dr. Bell’s system; and then saw the church, a very large and handsome one on the inside, but mean enough as to its exterior. I was shown the tombstone of Admiral Benbow, who was killed in a naval engagement, and whose ship afterwards

“Bore down to Port Royal, where the people flocked very

much

To see brave Admiral Benbow laid in Kingston Town

Church,”

as the admiral’s Homer informs us.

The church is a large one, but it is going to be still further extended; the negroes in Kingston and its neighbourhood being (as the rector assured me) so anxious to obtain religious instruction, that on Sundays not only the church but the churchyard is so completely thronged with them, as to make it difficult to traverse the crowd; and those who are fortunate enough to obtain seats for the morning service, through fear of being excluded from that of the evening, never stir out of the church during the whole day. They also flock to be baptized in great numbers, and many have lately come to be married; and their burials and christenings are performed with great pomp and solemnity.

One of the most intelligent of the negroes with whom I have yet conversed, was the coxswain of my Port Royal canoe. I asked him whether he had been christened? He answered, no; he did not yet think himself good enough, but he hoped to be so in time. Nor was he married; for he was still young, and afraid that he could not break off his bad habits, and be contented to live with no other woman than his wife; and so he thought it better not to become a Christian till he could feel certain of performing the duties of it. However, he said, he had at least cured himself of one bad custom, and never worked upon Sundays, except on some very urgent necessity. I asked what he did on Sundays instead: did he go to church?--No. Or employ himself in learning to read?--Oh, no; though he thought being able to read _was a great virtue_; (which was his constant expression for any thing right, pleasant, or profitable;) but he had no leisure to learn, no week days, and as he had heard the parson say that Sunday ought to be a day of rest, he made a point of doing nothing at all on that day. He praised his former master, of whose son he was now the property, and said that neither of them had ever occasion to lay a finger on him. He worked as a waterman, and paid his master ten shillings a week, the rest of his earnings being his own profit; and when he owed wages for three months, if he brought two his master would always give him time for the remainder, and that in so kind a manner, that he always fretted himself to think that so kind a master should wait for his rights, and worked twice as hard till the debt was discharged. He said that kindness was the only way to make good negroes, and that, if _that_ failed, flogging would never succeed; and he advised me, when I found my negro worthless, “to sell him at once, and not stay to flog him, and so, by spoiling his appearance, make him sell for less; for blacks must not be treated now, massa, as they used to be; they can think, and hear, and see, as well as white people: blacks are wiser, massa, than they were, and will soon be still wiser.” I thought the fellow himself was a good proof of his assertion.

I left Kingston at two o’clock, in defiance of a broiling sun; reached Spanish Town in time to dine with the Attorney-General; and went afterwards to the play, where I found my acquaintance Mr. Hill of Covent Garden theatre performing Lord William in “The Haunted Tower,” and Don Juan in the pantomime which followed. The theatre is neat enough, but, I am told, very inferior in splendour to that in Kingston. As to the performance, it was about equal to any provincial theatricals that I ever saw in England; although the pieces represented were by no means well selected, being entirely musical, and the orchestra consisting of nothing more than a couple of fiddles. My stay in Spanish Town has been too short to admit of my inspecting the antiquities of it, which must be reserved for a future visit, although I never intend to make a longer than the present. The difference of climate was very sensible, both at Spanish Town and Kingston; and the suffocating closeness made me long to breathe again in the country.

The governor happened to be absent on a tour in the north; but I had an opportunity of seeing many of the principal persons of the island during my residence here; and the civilities which I received from all of them were not only more than I expected, but such as I should be unreasonable if I had desired more, and very ungrateful if I could ever forget them.

FEBRUARY 7.

We were to return by the North Road, and set out at six in the morning. The first stage was to the West Tavern, nineteen miles; and nothing can be imagined at once more sublime and more beautiful than the scenery. Our road lay along the banks of the Rio Cobre, which runs up to Spanish Town, where its floods frequently commit dreadful ravages. Large masses of rock intercept its current at small intervals, which, as well as its shallowness, render it unnavigable. The cliffs and trees are of the most gigantic size, and the road goes so near the brink of a tremendous precipice, that we were obliged always to send a servant forwards to warn any other carriage of our approach, in order that it might stay in some broader part while we passed it. A bridge had been attempted to be built over the river, but a storm had demolished it before its completion, and nothing was now left standing but a single enormous arch. In like manner, “the Dry River” sets all bridges at defiance: when we crossed it between Old Harbour and Spanish Town, it was nothing but a waste of sand; but its floods frequently pour down with irresistible strength and rapidity, and sometimes render it impassable for weeks together. I was extremely delighted with the first ten miles of this stage: unluckily, a mist then arose, so thick, that it was utterly impossible even to guess at the surrounding scenery; and the morning was so cold, that I was very glad to wrap myself up in my cloak as closely as if I had been travelling in an English December.

By the time of our leaving the West Tavern the mist had dispersed, and I was able to ad mire the extraordinary beauty of Mount Diavolo, which we were then crossing. Though we had left the river, the road was still a narrow shelf of rock running along the edge of ravines of great depth, and filled with broken masses of stone and trees of wonderful magnitude; only that at intervals we emerged for a time into places resembling ornamental parks in England, the lawns being of the liveliest verdure, the ground rising and falling with an endless variety of surface, and enriched with a profusion of trees majestic in stature and picturesque in their shapes, many of them entirely covered with the beautiful flowers of “hogsmeat,” and other creeping plants. The logwood, too, is now perfectly golden with its full bloom, and perfumes all the air; and nothing can be more gay than the quantity of wild flowers which catch the eye on all sides, particularly the wild pine, and the wild ipecacuanha. We travelled for sixteen miles, which brought us to our harbour for the night,---a solitary tavern called Blackheath, situated in the heart of the mountains of St. Anne.

FEBRUARY 8.

The road soon brought us down to the very brink of the sea, which we continued to skirt during the whole of the stage. It then brought us to St. Anne’s Bay, where we found an excellent breakfast, at an inn quite in the English fashion,--for the landlady had been long resident in Great Britain. Every thing was clean and comfortable, and the windows looked full upon the sea. This stage was sixteen miles: the next was said to be twenty-five; but from the time which we took to travel it, I can scarcely believe it to be so much. Our road still lay by the sea-side, till we began to ascend the mountain of Rio Bueno; from which we at length perceived the river itself running into the sea. It was at Porto Bueno that Columbus is said to have made his first landing on the island. Rio Bueno is a small town with a fort, situated close to the sea. Here also we found a very good inn, kept by a Scotchman.

The present landlady (her father being from home) was a very pretty brown girl, by name Eliza Thompson. She told me that she was only residing with her parents during her _husband’s_ absence; for she was (it seems) the _soi-disant_ wife of an English merchant in Kingston, and had a house on Tachy’s Bridge. This kind of establishment is the highest object of the _brown_ females of Jamaica; they seldom marry men of their own colour, but lay themselves out to captivate some white person, who takes them for mistresses, under the appellation of housekeepers.