Journal of a Residence among the Negroes in the West Indies

by Matthew Gregory Lewis

  By the time of our leaving the West Tavern the mist had dispersed, and I was able to admire 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. 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 in an endless variety, 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; and then 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. Everything was clean and comfortable, and the windows looked full upon the sea. 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 landlady was a 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 soidisant 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 in 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.

  Soon afterwards after my arrival at Cornwall, I asked my attorney whether a clever-looking brown woman, who seemed to have great authority in the house, belonged to me? -- No ; she was a free woman. Was she in my service, then?--No ; she was not in my service. I began to grow impatient.--" But what does she do at Cornwall? of what use is she in the house?"--"Why, sir, as to use..... of no great use , sir:" and then after a pause, he added in a lower voice, "It is custom, sir, in this country for unmarried men to have housekeepers, and Nancy is mine." But he was unjust in saying that Nancy is of no use on the estate ; for she is perpetually in the hospital, nurses the children, can bleed and mix medicines, and (as I am assured) is of more service to the sick than all the doctors. These brown housekeepers generally attach themselves sincerely to the interests of their protectors, and make themselves so useful, that they commonly retain their situation ; and their children (if slaves) are always honoured by their fellows with the title Miss. My mulatto housemaid is always called "Miss Polly" by her fellow-servant Phillis. This kind of connexion os considered by a brown girl in the same light as marriage. She will tell you, with an air of vanity, "I am Mr. Such-a-one's Love !" and always speaks of him as being her husband : and I am told that, except on these terms, it is extremely difficult to obtain the favours of a woman of colour.

  FEBRUARY 9.

  A stage of eighteen miles brought us to the town of Falmouth, which I understand to be in size the second of the island.

  We proceeded, for twenty-two miles, to Montego Bay, where I once more found myself under the protecting roof of Miss Judy James.

  On our return from dinner at Mr. Dewer's we discovered a ball of brown ladies and gentlemen opposite them. No whites nor blacks were permitted to attend this assembly ; but, as out landlady had two nieces there, under her auspices we were allowed to be spectators. The females chiefly consisted of the natural daughters of attorneys and overseers, and the young men were mostly clerks and book-keepers. I saw nothing at all to be compared, either for form or feature, to many of the humbler people of colour, much less to the beautiful Spaniard at Blue-fields. Long, or Bryan Edwards, asserts that mulattoes never breed except with a black or white; but at this ball two girls were pointed out to me, the daughters of mulatto parents; and I have been assured that the assertion was a mistake, arising from such a connexion being very rarely formed; the females generally prefer ring to live with white men, and the brown men having thus no other resource than black women. As to the above girls, the fact is certain ; and the different shades of colour are distinguished by too plain a line to allow any suspicion of infidelity on the part of their parents.

  FEBRUARY 11. (Sunday.)

  I reached Cornwall about three o'clock, after an excursion the most amusing and agreeable that I ever made in my life. Almost every step of the road presented some new and striking scene; and although we travelled at all hours, and with as little circumspection as if we bad been in England, I never felt a headache except for one half-hour. On my arrival, I found the satisfactory intelligence usually communicated to West Indian proprietors. My estate in the west is burnt up for want of moisture ; and my estate in the east has been so completely flooded, that I have lost a third of my crop. At Cornwall not a drop of rain has fallen since the l6th of November. Not a vestige of verdure is to be seen; and we begin to apprehend a famine among the negroes in consequence of the drought destroying their provision-grounds. This alone is wanting to complete the dangerous state of the island; where the higher classes are all in the utmost alarm at rumours of Wilberforce's intentions, to set the negroes entirely free; the next step to which would be, in all probability, a general massacre of the whites, and a, second edition of the bor rs of St Domingo : while, on the other hand, the negroes are impatient at the delay ; and such disturbances arose in St. Thomas's-in the-East, last Christmas, as required the interposition of the magistrates. They say that the negroes of that parish had taken it into their heads that the regent and Wilberforce had actually determined upon setting them all at liberty at once on the first day of the present year, but that the interference of the island had defeated the plan. Their discontent was most carefully and artfully fomented by some brown Methodists, who held secret and nightly meetings on the different estates, and did their best to mislead and bewilder these poor creatures with their fantastic and absurd preaching. These fellows harp upon sin, and the devil, and hellfire incessantly, and describe the Almighty ans the Saviour as being so terrible, that many of their proselytes cannot hear the name of Christ without shuddering. ne poor negro, on one of my own estates, told the overseer that he knew himself to be so great a sinner that nothing could save him from the Devil's clutches, even for a few hours, except singing hymns ; and he kept singing so incessantly day and night, that at length terror and want of sleep turned his brain, and the poor wretch dies raving mad.

  FEBRUARY 12.

  A Sir Charles price, who had an estate in this island infested by rats, imported, with much trouble, a very large and strong species for the purpose of extirpating the others. the newcomers answered his purpose to a miracle ; they attacked the native rats with such spirit, that in a short time they had the whole property to themselves ; but no sooner had they done their duty upon the rats, than they extended their exertions to the cats, of whom their strength and size at length enabled them completely to get the better ; and since that last victory, Sir Charles Price's rats, as they are called, have since increased so prodigiously, that this single species is now a greater nuisance to the island than all the others before them were together. The best mode of destroying rats here is with terrier. Those imported from England soon grow useless, being blinded by the sun ; but their puppoes, born in Jamaica, are provided by nature with a protecting film over their eyes, which effectually sec
ures them against that calamity.

  FEBRUARY 12.

  Poor Philippa, the woman who used to always to call me her "husband," and whom I left sick in the hospital, during my absences has gone out of her senses ; and there cannot well happen anything more distressing, as there is no separate place for

  her confinement, and her ravings disturb the other invalids. There is, indeed, no kind of bedlam in the whole island of Jamaica: whether this proceeds from people being so very sedate and sensible, that they never go mad, or from their all being so mad, that no one person has a right to shut up another for being out of his senses, is a point which I will not pretend to decide. One of my domestic negroes, a boy of sixteen, named Prince was abandoned by his worthless mother in infancy, and reared by this Philippa; and since her illness he passes every moment of his leisure in her sick-room. On the other hand, there is a woman named Christian, attending two fevered children in the hospital; one her own, and the other an adopted infant, whom she reared upon the death of its mother in child-birth ; and there she sits, throwing her eyes from one to the other with such unceasing solicitude, that no one could discover which was her own child and which the orphan.

  FEBRUARY 13.

  Two Jamaica nightingales have established themselves on the orange-tree which grows against my window, and their song is most beautiful. This bird is also called ' the mocking-bird," from its facility of imitating, not only the notes of every other animal, but--I am told--of catching every tune that may be played or sung two or three times in the house near which it resides, after which it will go through the air with the greatest taste and precision, throwing in cadences and ornaments that Catalani herself might envy.

  But by far the most curious animal that I have yet seen in Jamaica is " the soldier," a species of crab, which inhabits a shell like a snail's, so small in proportion to its limbs, that nothing can be more curious or admirable than the machinery by which it is enabled to fold them up instantly on the slightest alarm. They inhabit the mountains, but regularly once a-year travel in large troops down to the sea-side to spawn and change their shells. They are seldom used in Jamaica except for soups, which are reckoned delicious : that which was brought to me was a very small ope, the shell being no bigger than a large snail's. although the animal itself , when marching with his house on his back, appears to be above thrice the size ; but I am told that they are frequently as large as a man's fist. It was found alone in the public road : ow it came to be in so solitary a state I know not, for in general they move in a armies, and march towards the sea in a straight line ; I am afraid by his being found alone, that my soldier must have been a deserter.

  FEBRUARY 14.

  To-day there was a shower of rain for the first time since my arrival ; indeed, not a drop has fallen since the 16th of November ; and in consequence my present crop has suffered terribly, our expectations for next season are still worse.

  FEBRUARY 18. (Sunday.)

  The rain has brought forth the fire-flies, and in the evening the hedges are all brilliant with them. In the day they seem to be torpid beetles of a dull reddish colour, but at night they become of a shining purple. The fire proceeds from two small spots in the back part of the head. It is yellow in the light, and requires motion to throw out its radiance in perfection ; but as soon as it is touched, the fly struggles violently, and bends itself together with a clicking noise like the snap of a spring ; and I understand that this effort is necessary to set it in motion. It is sufficiently strong to turn itself upwards with a single movement, if lying on its back. When confined in a glass, the light seems almost extinguished ; nothing can be discerned but two pale yellow spots; but on being pressed by the hand it becomes more brilliant than any emerald, and when on the wing it seems composed of the most beautifully coloured fire.

  FEBRUARY 20.

  I attended the Slave Court, where a negro was tried for sheep stealing, and a black servant-girl for attempting to poison her master. The former was sentenced to be transported. The latter was a girl of fifteen, called Minetta : she acknowledged the having infused corrosive sublimate in some brandy-and-water; but asserted that she had taken it from the medicine-chest with- out knowing it to he poison, and had given it to her master at her grandmother's desire. This account was evidently a fabrication : there was no doubt of the grandmother's innocence,

  although some suspicion attached to the mother's influence; but as to the girl herself, nothing could be more hardened than her conduct through the whole transaction. She stood by the bed to see her master drink the poison; witnessed his agonies without one expression of surprise or pity; and when she was ordered to leave the room, she pretended to be fast asleep, and not to hear what was said to her. Even since her imprisonment, she could never be prevailed upon to say that she was sorry for her master's having been poisoned ; and she told the people in the jail, that " they could do nothing to her, for she had turned king's evidence against her grandmother." She was condemned to die on Thursday next, the day after to-morrow: she heard the sentence pronounced without the least emotion; and I am told that, when she went down the steps of the court-house, she was seen to laugh.

  The trial appeared to be conducted with all possible justice and propriety ; the jury consisted of nine respectable persons ; the bench of three magistrates, and a senior one to preside. There were no lawyers employed on either side ; consequently no appeals to passions, no false lights thrown out, no traps, no flaws, no quibbles, no artful cross-examinings, and no browbeatings of witnesses ; and I cannot say that the trial appeared to me to go at all the worse. Nobody appeared to be either for or against the prisoner ; the only object of all present was evidently to come at the truth, and I sincerely believe that they obtained their object. The only part of the trial of which I disapproved was the ordering the culprit to such immediate execution, that sufficient time was not allowed for the exercise of the royal prerogative, should the governor have been disposed to commute the punishment for that of transportation.

  FEBRUARY 21.

  There are many pleasing and amusing parts of the character of negroes, that it seems to me scarcely possible not to like them. But when they are once disposed to evil, they seem tp set no bounds to the indulgence of their bad passions. a poor girl came into the hospital to-day, who had had some trifling dispute with two of her companions ; on which the two friends seized her together, and each fixing her teeth on one of the girl's hands, bit her so severely, that we greatly fear her losing the use of both of them. I happened also to ask, this morning, to whom a skull had belonged, which I had observed fixed on a pole by the road-side, when returning last from Montego Bay. I was told, that about five years ago a Mr. Dunbar had given some discontent to his negroes in the article of clothing them, although, in, other respects, he was by no means a severe master. However, this was sufficient to induce his head driver, who had been brought up in his own house from infancy, to form a plot among his slaves to assassinate him; and lie was assisted in this laudable design by two young men from a neighbouring property, who barely knew Mr. Dunbar by sight, had no enmity against him whatever, and only joined in the conspiracy in compliment to their worthy friend the driver. During several months a variety of attempts were made for effecting their purpose ; but accident defeated them ; till at length they were made certain of his intention to dine out at some distance, and of his being absolutely obliged to return in the evening. An ambuscade was therefore laid to intercept him ; and on his passing a clump of trees, the assassins sprang upon him, the driver knocked him from his horse, and in a few moments their clubs despatched him. No one suspected the driver; but in the course of inquiry, his house as well as the other was searched, and not only Mr. Dunbar's watch was found concealed there, but with it one of his ears, which the villain had carried away, from a negro belief that, as long as the murderer possesses one of the ears of his victim, he will never be haunted by his specter. The stranger-youths, two of Dunbar's negroes, and the driver were tried, confessed the crime, and w
ere all executed; the head of the latter being fixed upon a pole in terrorem. But while the offenders were still in prison, the overseer upon a neighbouring property had occasion to find fault in the field with a woman belonging to a gang hired to perform some particular work ; upon which she flew upon him with the greatest fury, grasped him by the throat, cried to her fellows--"Come here! come here! Let us Dunbar him!" and through her strength and the suddenness of her attack had nearly accomplished her purpose, before his own slaves could come to his assistance. this woman was also executed.

  This happened about five years ago, when the mountains were in, a very rebellious state. Everything there is at present quiet. But only last year a book-keeper belonging to the next estate to me was found with his skull fractured in one of my own canepieces; nor have any inquiries been able to discover the murderer.

  FEBRUARY 22.

  During many years the Moravians have been established upon the neighbouring estate of Mesopotamia. As the ecclesiastical commissaries had said so much to me respecting the great appetite of the negroes for religious instruction, I was desirous of learning what progress had been made in this quarter, and this morning I went over to see one of the teachers. He told me, that he and his wife had jointly used their best efforts to produce a sense of religion in the minds of the slaves ; that they were all permitted to attend his morning and evening lectures, if they chose it; but that he could not say that they showed any great avidity on the subject. It seems that there are at least three hundred negroes on the estate ; the number of believers has rather increased than diminished, to be sure, but still in a very small proportion. When this gentleman arrived there were not more than forty baptized persons; he has been here upwards of five years, and still the number of persons " belonging to his church " (as he expressed it) does not exceed fifty. Of these seldom more than ten or a dozen attend his lectures at a time. As to the remaining two hundred and fifty, they take no notice whatever of his lectures or his exhortations : they are very civil to him when they see him, but go on in their own old way, without suffering him to interfere in any shape. By the overseer of Greenwich's express desire, the Moravian has, however, agreed to give up an hour every day for the religious instruction of the negro children on that property: and I should certainly request him to extend his 1abours to Cornwall, if I did not think it right to give the Church of England clergymen full room for a trial of their intended periodical visitations ; which would not be the case if the negroes were to be interfered wit by the professors of any other communion : otherwise I am myself ready to give free inpress and egress upon my several estates to the teachers of any Christian sect whatever, the Methodists always excepted; but I confess I have no hope of any material benefit arising from these religious visitations made at quarterly intervals.