Journal of a Residence among the Negroes in the West Indies

by Matthew Gregory Lewis

  I am told that there is one part of their business very laborious, digging holes for the receiving of cane-plants, which I have not as yet seen ; but this does not occupy above a month at the utmost, at two periods of the year ; and on my estate this service is chiefly performed by extra negroes, hired for the purpose ; which, although equally hard in the hired negroes(called a jobbing gang), at least relieves my own, and after all puts even the former on much the same footing with English day-labourers.

  But if I could contend to live in Jamica, I am still more certain that it is the only agreeable place for me to die in ; for I have got a family mausoleum, which looks for all the world like the theatrical representation of the "tomb of all Capulets." Its outside is most plentifully decorated " with sculptured stones,"-" arms, angels, epitaphs, and bones. Within is a tomb of the purest white marble, raised on a platform of ebony ; the building, which is surmounted by a statue of Time, with his scythe and hour-glass, stands in the very heart of an orange- grove, now in full bearing ; and the whole scene this morning looked so cool, so tranquil, and so gay, and is so perfectly divested of all vestiges of dissolution, that the sight of it quite gave me an appetite for being buried. It is a matter of perfect indifference to me what becomes of this little ugly husk of mine, when once I have " shuffled off this mortal coil ;" or else I should follow my grandfather's example, and, die where I might, order my body to be sent over for burial to Cornwall ; for I never yet saw a place where one could lie down more comfortably to listen for the last trumpet.

  JANUARY 14. (Sunday.)

  I gave a dinner to my " white people," as the book-keepers, &c., are called here, and who have a separate houses and establishment for themselves ; and certainly a man must be destitute of every spark of hospitality, and have had " Caucasus horrens" for his great-grandmother, if he can resist giving dinners in a country where Nature seems to have set up a superior kind of " London Tavern " of her own. They who are possessed by the "Ciborum ambitiosa fames, et lautaegloria mensae," ought to ship themselves off Jamaica out of hand ; and even the lord mayor himself need not blush to give his alderman such a dinner as is placed on my table, even when I dine alone. Land and sea turtle, quails, snipes, plovers, and pigeons and doves of all descriptions - of which the ring-tale has been allowed rank with the most exquisite of the winged species, by epicures of such distinction, that their opinion, in matters of this nature, almost carries with it the weight of a law,-excellent pork, barbecued pigs, pepper-pots, with numberless other excellent dishes, from the ordinary fare ; the poultry also is miraculously large and fine. Then our tarts are made of pine-apples, and pine-apples make the best tarts that I ever tasted ; there is no end to the variety of fruits, of which the shaddock is "in itself a host;" but the most singular and exquisite flavor, perhaps, is to be found in the granadillo, a fruit which grows upon a species of vine, and, in fact, appears to be a kind of cucumber. It must be suffered to hang till it is dead ripe, when it is scarcely anything except juice and seeds, which can only be eaten with a spoon. It requires sugar, but the acid is truly delicious, and like up other separate flavour that I ever met with; what it most resembles is a macedoine, as it unites the different tastes of almost all other fruits, and has, at the same time, a very strong flavour of wine.

  As to fish, Savannah la Mar is reckoned , the best place in the island, both for variety and safety; for, in many parts, the fish feed upon copperas-banks, and cannot be used without much precaution ; here, none is necessary: and it is only to be wished that their names were somewhat more attractive ; for it must be owned, that nothing can be less tempting than the sound of Jew- fish, hog-fish, mud-fish, snappers, god-dammies, groupas, and grunts ! Of the sea-fish which I have hitherto met with, the Deepwater Silk appears to me the best ; and of river-fish, the mountain- mullet: but, indeed, the fish is generally so excellent, and in such profusion, that I never sit down to table without wishing for the company of Queen Atygatis of Scythia, who was so particularly fond of fish, that she prohibited all her subjects from eating it on pain of death, through fear that there might not be enough left for her majesty.

  This fondness for fish seems to be a sort of royal passion : more than one of our English sovereigns died of eating too many lampreys ; though, to own the truth, it was suspected that the monks, in one or two instances, improved the same by the addition of a little ratsbane ; and Mirabeau assures us, that Frederick the Second of Prussia might have prolonged his existence, if he could but have resisted the fascination of an eel-pie ; but the charm was too strong for him, and, like the great-grandmother of us all, he ate and died-" All for eel-pye, or this world well lost!"

  The provision-grounds of the negroes furnish them with plantains, bananas, cocoa-nuts, and yams : of the latter there is a regular harvest once a-year, and they remain in great perfection for many months, provided they are dug up carefully, but the slightest wound with the spade is sufficient to rot them. Catalue (a species of spinach) is a principal article in their pepper-pots; but in this parish their most valuable and regular supply of food arises from the cocoa-finger, or coccos, a species of -the yam, which lasts all the year round. These vegetables form the basis of negro sustenance ; but the slaves also receive from their owners a regular weekly allowance of red herrings and salt meat, which serve to give a relish to their vegetable diet; and, indeed, they are passionately fond of salted provisions, that, instead of giving them fresh beef (as at their festival of Saturday last), I have been obliged to provide some hogsheads of salt fish, as likely to afford them more gratification.

  JANUARY 15.

  The offspring of a white man and black woman is a mulatto; the mulatto, and black produce a sambo; from the mulatto and white comes the quadroon; from the quadroon and white the mustee ; the child of a mustee by a white man is called a mustee - fino ; and the children of a musteefinio are free by law, and rank as white persons to all intents and purposes. I think it is Long who asserts, that two mulattoes will never have children ; but, as far as the most positive assurances can go, since my arrival in Jamaica, I have reason to believe the contrary, and that mulattoes breed together just as well as blacks and whites; but they are almost universally weak and effeminate persons, and thus their children are very difficult to rear. On a sugar-estate one black is considered as more than equal to two mulattoes. Beautiful as are their forms in general, and easy and graceful as are their movements (which, indeed, appear to me so striking that they cannot fail to excite the admiration of any one who has ever looked with delight on statues), still the women of colour are deficient in one of the most requisite points of female beauty. Young or old, I have not yet seen such a thing as a bosom.

  JANUARY 16.

  I never witnessed on the stage a scene so picturesque as a negro village. I walked through my own to-day, and visited the houses of the drivers, and other principal persons ; and if I were to decide according to my own taste, I should infinitely have preferred their habitations to my own. Each house is surrounded by a separate garden, and the whole village is intersected by lanes, bordered with all kinds of sweet-smelling and flowering plants; but not such gardens as those belonging to our English cottagers, where a few cabbages and carrots-just peep up and grovel upon the earth between hedges, in square narrow beds, and where the tallest tree is a gooseberry bush: the vegetables of the negroes are all -cultivated in their provision-grounds, which form their kitchen-gardens ; but these are all for ornament -or luxury, and are filled with a profusion of oranges, shaddocks, cocoa-nuts, and peppers of all descriptions: in particular I was shown the abba, or palm-tree, resembling the cocoa-tree, but much more beautiful, as its leaves are larger and more numerous, land, feathering to the ground as they grow old, they form a kind of natural arbour. It bears a large fruit, or rather vegetable, towards the top of the tree, in shape like the cone of the pine, but formed of seeds, some scarlet and bright as coral, others of a brownish-red or purple. The abba requites a length of years to arrive at maturity : a very fine one, which was, sho
wn me this morning, was supposed to be upwards of a hundred years old; and one of a very moderate size had been planted at the least twenty years, and bad only borne fruit once.

  It appears to me a strong proof of the good treatment which the negroes on Cornwall have been accustomed to receive, that there are many very old people upon it; I saw to-day a woman near a hundred years of age; and I am told that there are several of sixty, seventy, and eighty. I was glad also to find, that several negroes who have obtained their freedom, and possess little properties of their own in the mountains and at Savannah la Mar, look upon my estate so little as the scene of their former sufferings while slaves, that they frequently come down to pass a few days in their ancient habitations with their former companions, by way of relaxation. One woman in particular ex pressed her hopes that I should not be offended at her still coming to Cornwall now and then, although she belonged to it no longer; and begged me to give directions before my return to England, that her visits should not be hindered on the grounds of her having no business there.

  My visit. to Jamaica has at least produced one advantage to myself. Several runaways, who had disappeared for some time (some even for several months), have again made their appearance in the field, and I have desired that no questions should be asked. On the other band, one of my ladies, after enjoying her self during the Saturday and Sunday, which were allowed for holidays on my arrival, chose to pull foot , and did not return from her hiding-place in the mountains till this morning. In excuse for her disappearance she alleged that her husband had called her " a very bad woman," which had provoked her so much, that she could not bear to stay with him ; and she assured me, that he was himself "a very bad man;" which, if true, was certainly enough to justify any lady, black or white, in making a little incognito excursion for a week or so ; therefore, as it appeared to be nothing more than a conjugal quarrel, and as she engaged never to run away any more (at the same time allowing that she had suffered her resentment to carry her too far, when it had carried her all the way to the mountains), I desired that an act of oblivion might be passed in her favour, and away she went, quite happy, to pick hogs' meat.

  The negro houses are composed of wattles on the outside, with rafters of sweet-wood, and are plastered within and whitewashed ; they consist of two chambers, one for cooking and the other for sleeping, and are, in general, well furnished with chairs; tables, &c., and I saw none without a four-post bedstead and plenty of bed-clothes ; for, in spite of the warmth of the climate, when the sun is not above the horizon the negro always feels very chilly. I am assured that many of my slaves are very rich, and that they are never without salt provisions, porter, and even wine, to entertain their friends and their visiters from the bay or the mountains. As I passed though the grounds, many little requests were preferred to me : one wanted an additional supply of lime for the whitewashing of his house ; another was building a new house for a superannuated wife(or they have all so much decency as to call their tender attachments by a conjugal name), and wanted a little assistance towards the finishing it ; a third requested a new axe to work with ; and several entreated me to negotiate the purchase of some relation or friend belonging to another estate, and with whom they were anxious to be reunited : but all their requests were for additional indulgences ; not one complained of ill-treatment, or over-work.

  Poor Nicholas gave me a fresh instance of his being one of those whom Fortune pitches upon to show her spite: he has had four children, none of whom are alive; the eldest of them, a fine little girl of four years old, fell into the mill-stream, and was drowned before any one was aware of her danger. His wife told me that she had had fifteen children, had taken the utmost care of them, and yet had now but two alive: she said, indeed, fifteen at first, but she afterwards corrected herself, and explained that she had " twelve whole children and three half ones;" by which she meant miscarriages.

  Besides the profits arising from their superabundance of pro- visions, which the better sort of negroes are enabled to sell regularly once a week at Savannah la Afar to a considerable amount, they keep a large stock of poultry, and pigs without number ; which latter cost their owners but little, though they cost me a great, deal; for they generally make their way into the cane-pieces, and sometimes eat me up a hogshead of sugar in the course of the morning: but the most expensive of the planter's enemies are the rats, whose numbers are incredible ; they are so destructive that a reward is given for killing them.

  During the last six months my agent has paid for three thousand rats killed upon Cornwall. Nor is the loss of the sugar they consume the greatest evil ; the worst mischief is, that if, through the carelessness of those whose business it is to supply the mill, one cane which has been gnawed by the rats is allowed admittance, that single damaged piece will produce acidity enough to spoil the whole sugar.

  January 17

  In this country there is scarcely any twilight, and all nature seems to wake at the same moment. About six o'clock the darkness disperses, the sun rises, and instantly everything is in motion : the negroes are going to the field, the cattle are driving to pasture, the pigs and the poultry are pouring out from their hutches, the old women are preparing food on the lawn for the pickaninnies , whom they keep feeding at all hours of the day ; and all seem to be going to their employments, none to their work, the men and the women just as quietly and leisurely as the pigs and the poultry. The sight is really quite gay and amusing, and I am generally out of bed in time to enjoy it, especially as the continuance of the cool north breezes renders the weather still delicious, though the pleasure is rather expensive one Not a drop of rain has fallen since the 16th of November; the young canes are burning ; and the drying quality of these "norths" is still more detrimental than the want of rain, so that winds may be said to blow my pockets inside out ; and as every draught of air, which I inhale with so much pleasure, is estimated to cost me a guinea, I feel, while breething it, like Miss Barney's Citizen at Vauxhall, who kept muttering to himself, with every bit of ham that he put into his mouth, "There Goes sixpence , and there goes a shilling.

  JANUARY 18.

  A Galli-wasp, which is killed in the neighbouring morass, has just been brought to me. This is the alligator in miniature, and is even more dreaded by the negroes than its great elation : it is only to be found in swamps and morasses : that which was brought to me was about eighteen inches in length, and I understand that it is seldom longer, although it grows in years, its thickness and the size of its jaws and head become greatly increased. It runs away on being encountered, and conceals itself; and it is only dangerous if trampled upon by accident, or if attacked ; but then its bite is dreadful, not only from its tongue being armed with a sting (the venom of which is very powerful, although not mortal), but from its teeth being so brittle that they generally break in the wound, and as it is hardly possible to extract the pieces entirely, the wound corrupts, and becomes an incurable sore of the most offensive nature. Luckily these reptiles are very scarce ; but nothing can exceed the terror and aversion in which they are held by the negroes. This one had been lying dead in the room for several hours, yet, on my servants accidently stirring the board on which it was stretched for my inspection, my little negro servant George darted out of the room in terror, and was at the bottom of the staircase in a moment. the skin of this animal was like shagreen in appearance and strength, and was almost entirely composed of layers if very small scales ; the colours were brownish-yellow and olive-green, the teeth and piercing and the claws of the feet very long and sharp: altogether it is a hideous and disgusting creature. As to the alligator of Jamaica, it is a timid anima, which never was known to attack the human species, though it frequently takes the liberty of running away with a dog or two, which appear to be their venison and turtle. There is no river on my estate large enough for them to inhabit ; but, in Paradise River, which is not above four miles off, I understand that they are numerous.

  JANUARY 19.

  A young mulatto carpenter, belonging t
o Horace Beckford's estate of Shrewsbury, came to beg my intercession with his overseer. le had been absent two days without leave, and on these occasions if is customary for the slaves to apply to some neighbouring gentleman. for a note in their behalf, which, as I Am told, never fails to obtain the pardon required, as the managers of estates are in general but too happy to find an excuse for passing over without punishment any offenses which are not very heinous. Indeed, what with the excellent laws already enacted for the protection a the slaves, and which are every year still further ameliorated, and what with the difficulty of procuring more negroes-which can now only be done by purchasing them from other estates, -making it absolutely necessary' for the managers to preserve the slaves, if, they mean to preserve their own situations, -1 am fully persuaded that instances of tyranny to negroes are now very rare, at least in this island. But I must still acknowledge, from my own sad experience, since my arrival, that unless a West Indian proprietor occasionally visits his estates himself, it is utterly impossible for him to be certain that his deputed authority is not abused, however good may be his intentions, and however vigilant his anxiety.