Journal of a Residence among the Negroes in the West Indies

by Matthew Gregory Lewis

  Last night a poor man named Charles, who bad been coachman to my uncle ages ago, was brought into the hospital, having missed a step in the boiling-house, and plunged his foot into the siphon : fortunately, the fire had not long been kindled, and though the liquor was hot enough to scald him, it was not sufficiently so to do him any material injury. The old man had presented to me on Saturday's holiday (or play-day , in the negro dialect), and had shown me, with great exultation, the coat and waistcoat which had been the last present of his old massa. Charles is now my chief mason, and, as one of the principal persons on the estate, was entitled, by old custom, to the compliment of a distinguishing dollar on my arrival; but at the some time that I gave him the dollar to which his situation entitled him, I gave him another for himself, as a keepsake: he put it into the pocket of " his old massa's" waistcoat, and assured me that they should never again be separated. On hearing of his accident I went over to the hospital to see that he was well taken care of; and immediately the poor fellow began talking to me about my grandfather and his young massa, and the young missies, his sisters, and while I suffered him to chatter away for an hour, he totally forgot the pain of his burnt leg.

  It was particularly agreeable to me to observe on Saturday, as a proof of the good treatment which they had experienced, so many old servants of the family, many of whom bad been born on the estate, and who, though turned of sixty and seventy, were still strong, healthy, and cheerful. Many manumitted negroes came from other parts of the country to this festival on hearing of my arrival, because, as they said-" if they did not come to see massa, they were afraid that it would look ungrateful, and as if they cared no longer about him and Cornwall now that they were free." So they stayed two or three days on the estate, coming up to the house for their dinners, and going to sleep at night among their friends in their own former habitations, the negro huts ; and when they went away they assured me that nothing should prevent their coming back to bid me farewell before I left the island.

  All this may be palaver; but certainly they at least play their parts with such an air of truth, and warmth, and enthusiasm, that after the cold hearts and repulsive manners of England, the contrast is infinitely agreeable.

  "Je ne vois que des yeux toujours pret a sourire."

  I find it quite impossible to resist the fascination of the conscious pleasure of pleasing; and my heart, which I have so long been obliged to keep closed, seems to expand itself again in the sunshine of the kind looks and words which meet me, at every turn, and seem to wait for mine as anxiously as if they were so, many diamonds.

  JANUARY 12.

  In the year '80, this parish of Westmoreland was kept in a perpetual state of alarm by a runaway negro called Plato, who had established himself among the Moreland mountains, and collected a troop of banditti, of which he was himself the chief. He robbed very often, and murdered occasionally; but gallantry was his every day occupation. Indeed, being a remarkably tall athletic young fellow, among the beauties of his own complexion he found but few Lucretias ; and his retreat in the mountains was as well furnished as the harem of Constantinople. Every handsome negress who had the slightest cause of complaint against her master, took the first opportunity of eloping to join Plato, where she found freedom, protection, and unbounded generosity ; for he spared no pains to secure their affections by gratifying their vanity. Indeed, no Creole lady could venture out on a visit without running the risk of having her bandbox run away with by Plato for the decoration of his sultanas; and if the maid who carried the bandbox happened to be well-looking, he ran away with the maid as well as the bandbox. Every endeavour to seize this desperado was long in vain : a large reward was, put upon his head, but no negro dared to approach him; for, besides his acknowledged courage, he was a professor of Obi, and had threatened that whoever dared to lay a finger upon him should suffer spiritual torments, as well as be physically shot through the head.

  Unluckily for Plato, rum was an article with him of the first necessity; the look-out which was kept for him was too vigilant to admit of his purchasing spirituous liquors for himself; and once, when for that purpose he had ventured into the neighbourhood of Montego Bay, he was recognised by a slave, who immediately gave the alarm. Unfortunately for this poor fellow, whose name was Taffy, at that moment all his companions happened to be out of bearing; and, after the first moment's alarm, finding that no one approached the exasperated robber rushed upon him, and lifted the bill-hook with which he was armed, for the purpose of cleaving his skull. Taffy fled for it; but Plato was the younger, the stronger, and the swifter of the two, and gained upon him every moment. Taffy, however on the, other hand, possessed that one quality by which, according to fable, the cat was enabled to save herself from the hounds, when the fox, with his thousand tricks, was caught by them. He was an admirable climber, an art in which Plato possessed no skill ; and a bread-nut tree, which is remarkably difficult of ascent, presenting itself before him, in a few moments Taffy was bawling for help from the very top of it. To reach him was impossible for his enemy; but still his destruction was hard at hand, for Plato began to hack the tree with his bill; and it was evident that a very short space of time would be sufficient to level it with the ground. In this dilemma Taffy had nothing for it but to break off the branches near him, and he contrived to pelt these so dexterously at the head of his assailant, that he fairly kept him at bay till his cries at length reached the ears of his companions, and their approach compelled the banditti-captain once more to seek safety among the mountains.

  After this Plato no longer dared to approach Montego town ; but still spirits must be had-how was he to obtain them ? There was an old watchman on the outskirts of the estate of Canaan, with whom he had contracted an acquaintance, and frequently had passed the night in his hut; the old man having been equally induced by his presents and by dread of his corporeal strength and supposed supernatural power, to profess the warmest attachment to the interests of his terrible friend To this man Plato at length resolved to entrust himself. He gave him money to purchase spirits, and appointed a particular day when he would come to receive them. The reward placed upon the robber'shead was more than either gratitude or terror could counterbalance; and on the same day when the watchman set out to purchase the rum, he apprised two of his friends at Canaan for whose use it was intended, and advised them to take the opportunity of obtaining the reward.

  The two negroes posted themselves in proper time near the watchman's hut. Most unwisely, instead of sending down some of his gang, Plato, in his full confidence in the friendship of his confidant, himself entered the cabin. but so great was their alarm at seeing this dreadful parsonage, that they remained in their concealment, nor dared to make an attempt at seizing him. The spirits were delivered to the robber: he might have retired with them unmolested, but in his rashness and his eager Wt taste the liquor, of which he had so long been deprived, he opened the flagon, and swallowed draught after draught, till he sank upon the ground in a state of complete insensibility. The watchman then summoned the two negroes from their concealment, who bound his arms, and conveyed him to Montego Bay, where he was immediately sentenced to execution. He died most heroically; kept up the terrors of his imposture to his last moment; told the magistrates who "condemned him that his death should be revenged by a storm which would lay waste the whole island that year; and when his negro jailer was binding him to the stake at which he was destined to suffer, he assured him that he should not live long to triumph in his death, for. that he had taken good care to Obeah him before his quitting the prison. It certainly did happen, strangely enough, that before the year was over, the most violent storm took place ever known in Jamaica; and as to the jailer, his imagination was so forcibly struck by the threats of the dying man, that although every care was taken of him, the power of medicine exhausted, and even a voyage to America undertaken, in hopes that a change of scene might change the course of his ideas, still, from the moment of Plato's death, he gradually pined 'and withered and
finally expired before the completion of the twelvemonth.

  The belief in Obeah is now greatly weakened, but still exists in some degree. Not above ten months ago my agent was in- formed that a negro of very suspicious manners and appearance was harboured by some of my people on the mountain an ( He found means to have him surprised, and on examination there was found upon him a bag containing a great variety of strange materials for incantations ; such as thunder-stones, cat's ears, the feet of various animals, human hair, fish bones, the teeth of alligators, &c. He was conveyed to Montego Bay, and no sooner was it understood that this old African was in prison, than depositions were poured in from all quarters from n who testified to having seen him exercise his magical arts, and in particular, to his having sold such and such slaves medicines and charms to deliver them from their enemies ; being, in plain English, nothing less than rank poisons. He was convicted of Obeah upon the most indubitable evidence. The good old practice of burning has fallen into disrepute, so he was sentenced to be transported, and was shipped off the island, to the great satisfaction of persons of all colours-white, black, and yellow.

  JANUARY13.

  Throughout the island many estates, formerly very flourishing and productive, have been thrown up for want of hands to cultivate them, and are now suffered to lie waste: four in my own immediate neighbourbood are in this situation. Finding their complement of negroes decrease, and having no means of recruiting them, proprietors of two estates have in numerous instances found themselves obliged to give up one of them, and draw off the negroes for the purpose of properly cultivating the other.

  I have just had an instance strikingly convincing of the extreme care required in rearing negro children. Two have -been born since my arrival. Ally housekeeper was hardly ever out of the lying-in apartment; I always visited it myself once a day, and sometimes twice, in order that I might be certain of the women being well taken care of. Not a day passed without the inspection of a physician ; nothing of indulgence that was proper for them was denied ; and besides their ordinary food, the mothers received every day the most nourishing and palatable dish that was brought to my own table. Add to this, that the women themselves were kind-hearted creatures, and particularly anxious :to rear these children, because I had promised to be their god- father myself. Yet in spite of all this attention and indulgence, one of the mothers, during the nurse's absence for ten minutes, grew alarmed at her infant's apparent sleepiness.

  To rouse it she began dancing and shaking it till it was in a strong perspiration, and then she stood with it for some minutes at an open window while a strong north wind was blowing. In consequence, it caught cold, and the next morning symptoms of a locked jaw showed themselves. The poor woman was the image grief itself: she sat on her bed, looking at the child which lay by h side with its little hands clasped, its teeth set, and its eyes writhing in the agony of the spasm, while she was herself quite motionless and speechless, although the tears trickled down her cheeks incessantly. All assistance was fruitless ; her thoughtlessness for five minutes had killed the infant, and at noon to-day it expired.

  This woman was a tender mother, had borne ten children, and yet has now but one alive : another, at p. vent in the hospital, has- borne seven, and but one has lived to puberty ; and the instances of those who have had four, five, six children, without succeeding in bringing up one, in spite of the utmost attention and indulgence, are very numerous; so heedless and inattentive are the best intentioned mothers, and so subject in this climate are infants to dangerous complaints. The locked jaw is the common and most fatal one; so fatal, indeed, that the midwife (the graundee is her negro appellation) told me, the other day, " 0h, massa, till nine days over, we no hope of them." Certainly care and kindness, on the part of the planters, are not' adequate to save the children ; for the son of a sovereign could not have been more anxiously well treated than was the poor little negro who died this morning.

  The negroes are always buried in their own gardens, and many' strange and fantastical ceremonies are observed on the occasion. If the corpse be that of a grown-tip person, they consult it as to which way it pleases to be -carried,; and they make attempts upon various roads without success, before they can bit upon the right one. Till that is accomplished, they stagger under the weight of the coffin, struggle against its force, which draws them in a different direction from that in which they bad settled to go; and sometimes in the contest the corpse and the coffin jump off the shoulders of the bearers. No if, as is frequently the case, any person is suspected of having hastened the catastrophe, the corpse will then refuse to go any road but the one which passes by the habitation of the suspected person, and as soon as it approaches his house, Do human power is equal to persuading it to pass. As the negroes are extremely superstitious, and very much afraid of ghosts (whom they call the duppy), I rather wonder at their choosing- to have their dead buried in their gardens; but I understand their argument to be, that they need only fear the duppies of their enemies, but have nothing to apprehend from those after death who loved them in their lifetime; but the duppies of their adversaries are very alarming beings, equally powerful by day as by night, and are not only spiritually terrific, but can give very hard substantial knocks on the pate, whenever they see fit occasion, and can find a good opportunity.

  Last Saturday a negro was brought into the hospital, having fallen into epileptic fits, with which till then he had never been troubled. As the faintings seized him at the slaughterhouse, and the fellow was an African, it was at first supposed by his companions, that the sight and smell of the meat had affected him; for many of the Africans cannot endure animal food of any kind, and most of the Ebres in particularcare are made ill by eating turtle, even although they can use any other food without injurt. However, upon inquiry among his shipmates, it ap- peared that he had frequently eaten beef without the slightest inconvenience. For my own part, the symptoms of his complaint were such as to make me suspect him of having tasted something poisonous, especially as, just before his first fit, he had been observed in the small grove of mangoes near the house; but I was assured by the negroes, one and all, that nothing could possibly have induced him to eat

  an herb or fruit from that grove, as it had been used as a buryig-ground for " the white people." But although my idea of the poison was scouted, still the mention of the burying-ground suggested another cause for his illness to the negroes, and they had no sort of doubt, that in passing through the burying-ground he had been struck down by the duppy of a white person not long deceased, whom he had formerly offended, and that these repeated fainting-fits were the consequence of that ghostly blow. The negroes have in various publications been accused of a total want of religion, but this appears to me quite incompatible with the ideas of spirits existing after dissolution of the body, which necessarily implies a belief in a future state ; and although (as far as I can make out) they have no outward forms of religion, the most devout Christian cannot have " God bless you " oftener on his lips than the negro.

  The Africans generally believe that there is a life beyond the present, and that they shall enjoy it by returning to their own country ; and this idea used frequently to induce them, soon after their landing in the colonies, to commit suicide; but this was never known to take place except among fresh negroes, and since the execrable slave-trade has been abolished, such an illusion is unheard of. As to those who had once got over de dreadful period of " seasoning," they were generally soon sensible enough of the amelioration of their condition to make the idea of returning to Africa the most painful that could be presented to them. But, to be sure, poor creatures! what with the terrors and sufferings of the voyage, and the unavoidable hardships of the seasoning, those advantages were purchased more dearly than any in this life can possibly be worth. God be thanked, all that is now at an end; and certainly, as far as I can as yet judge, if I were now standing on the banks of Lethe, with a goblet of the waters of oblivion in my hand, and asked whether I chose to enter life anew as a
n English labourer or a Jamaica negro, I should have no hesitation in preferring the latter. For myself, it appears to me almost worth surrendering the luxuries and pleasures of Great Britain, for the single pleasure of being surrounded with beings who are always laughing and singing, and who seem to perform their work with so much nonchalance, taking up their baskets as if it were perfectly optional whether they took them up or left them there; sauntering along with their hands dangling; stopping to -chat with every one they meet; or if they meet no one, standing still to look round, and examine whether there is nothing to be seen that can, amuse them ; so that I can hardly persuade myself that it is really work that they are about.