by Edmund Burke
This small island, peopled by upwards of one hundred thousand souls, was not yet above half of it cultivated, nor was the industry of the inhabitants at a stand. A little before the period I have mentioned, they learned the method of making sugar; and this enlarging the sphere of their trade, they grew prodigiously rich and numerous.
About this time the government in England, which was then in the hands of Cromwell, confined the trade of Barbadoes to the mother country, that before was managed altogether by the Dutch; at the same time that by the rigour which was exercised towards the royal party, a great many gentlemen of very good families settled in this island, which was far from being peopled like some other colonies, by fugitives and men desperate at home. After the restoration it continued still to advance by very hasty strides. At that time king Charles created thirteen baronets from the gentlemen of this island, some of whom were worth ten thousand pounds a year, and none so little as one thousand.
In 1676, which was the meridian of this settlement, their whites were computed to be still much about fifty thousand, but their negroe slaves were increased so as to be upwards of one hundred thousand of all kinds. They employed four hundred sail of ships, one with another of an hundred and fifty tuns, in their trade, and their annual exported produce in sugar, indigo, ginger, cotton, &c. amounted to upwards of three hundred and fifty thousand pounds, and their circulating cash at home was two hundred thousand pounds It is probable that Holland itself, or perhaps even the best inhabited parts of China were never peopled to the same proportion, nor have they land of the same dimensions, which produces any thing like the same profits, excepting the land upon which great cities are built. But since that time the island has been much upon the decline. The growth of the French sugar islands, and the settlement of Antegua, St. Christopher’s, Nevis, and Montserrat, as well as the greater establishment in Jamaica, have drawn away from time to time a vast number of their people. A terrible contagion, said to be brought over by the troops from England, but more probably derived from the coast of Africa, attacked the island in the year 1692; it raged like a pestilence; twenty have died in a day in their principal town; and all parts of the island suffered in proportion. This sickness continued, with some abatements, for several years, and left an ill disposition in the climate ever afterwards. War raged at the same time with this distemper; and the Barbadians who raised a good number of men, lost many of them in fruitless expeditions against the French islands. The land too began not to yield quite so kindly as it formerly had done, and in some places they were obliged to manure it. All these causes contributed to reduce the numbers and opulence of this celebrated island. But it is only in comparison of itself, that it may be considered in any other than the most flourishing condition even at this day; for at this day it contains twenty-five thousand whites, very near eighty thousand negroes, and it ships above twenty-five thousand hogsheads of sugar, to the value of three hundred thousand pounds, besides rum, molasses, cotton, ginger, and aloes; an immense peopling and produce for a country not containing more than one hundred acres thousand of land; so that by the rise of sugars, the returns of this island are little less than they were in it’s most flourishing times.
This island can raise near five thousand men of it’s own militia, and it has generally a regiment of regular troops, though not very compleat. It is fortified by nature all along the windward shore by the rocks and shoals, so as to be near two thirds utterly inaccessible. On the leeward side it has good harbours; but the whole coast is protected by a good line of several miles in length, and several forts to defend it at the most material places.
They support their own establishment, which is very considerable, with great credit. The governor’s place is worth at least five thousand pounds a year, and the rest of their officers have very valuable places. They provide very handsomely for their clergy, who are of the church of England, which is the religion established here, as it is in the other islands. But here are very few dissenters. There is in general an appearance of something more of order and decency, and of a settled people, than in any other colony in the West-Indies. They have here a college, founded and well endowed by the virtue and liberality of that great man colonel Christopher Codrington, who was a native of this island, and who for a great number of amiable and useful qualities both in public and private life, for his courage, and his zeal for the good of his country, his humanity, his knowledge and love of literature, was far the richest production and most shining ornament this island ever had.
This college does not so fully answer the intentions of the excellent founder, as it might do. If the fund was applied to the education of a number of catechists for the instruction of the negroes, some of them of their own colour, it would be a vast public advantage, besides the charity, or perhaps the indispensible duty of some such work.
This college is in Bridge-town, the capital of the island, which before the late fire contained about twelve hundred houses, very handsomely built, and inhabited by a numerous and wealthy people. The country of Barbadoes has a most beautiful appearance, swelling here and there into gentle hills; shinning by the cultivation of every part, by the verdure of the sugar canes, the bloom and fragrance of the number of orange, lemon, lime, and citron trees, the guavas, papas, aloes, and a vast multitude of other elegant and useful plants, which rise intermix’d with the houses of the planters which are sown thickly on every part of the island. Even the negroe huts, though mean, contribute to the beauty of the country, for they shade them with plantain trees, which give their villages the appearance of so many beautiful groves. In short, there is no place in the West-Indies comparable to Barbadoes, in point of numbers of people, cultivation of the soil, and those elegancies and conveniencies which result from both.
CHAP. VI.
THE island of St. Christopher’s is the chief of those which we possess amongst the Leeward islands. It was first settled by the French and English in the year 1626, but after various fortunes it was entirely ceded to us by the treaty of Utrecht. This island is about seventy-five miles in compass. The circuit of Antegua is but little inferior. Nevis and Montserrat are the smallest of the four, not exceeding for either of them, about eighteen or twenty miles in circumference. The soil in all these islands is pretty much alike; light and sandy, but notwithstanding fertile in an high degree. Antegua has no rivulets of fresh water, and but very few springs; this made it be deemed uninhabitable for a long time; but now they save the rains in ponds and cisterns with great care, and they are rarely in great distress for water. The island of St. Christopher’s makes the best and most sugars of any; but neither that, nor any of the Leeward islands, yields any other commodity of consequence but what is derived from the cane, except Montserrat, which exports some indigo, but of a very inferior kind. It is judged that the island of St. Christopher’s contains about nine thousand whites, and twenty-five thousand negroes; that Antegua has about seven thousand of the former colour, and twenty thousand blacks; and that Nevis and Montserrat may have each about five thousand Europeans, who are the masters of ten or twelve thousand African slaves. So that the whole of the Leeward islands may be reckoned without exaggeration to maintain about twenty-six thousand English, of whom every single man gives bread to several in England, which is effected by the labour of near seventy thousand negroes. Their sugar is proportionable, certainly not less than twenty-five thousand hogsheads annually. Of the island of Barbuda, I say little, because it has no direct trade with England. It is employed in husbandry, and raising fresh provisions for the use of the neighbouring colonies. It is the property of the Codrington family.
These islands are under the management of one governor, who has the title of captain general and governor in chief of all the Caribbee islands from Guardaloupe to Porto Rico. His post is worth about three thousand five hundred pounds a year. Under him each island has it’s particular deputy governor at a salary of two hundred pounds a year, and it’s separate, independent legislative of a council, and an assembly of the r
epresentatives.
CHAP. VII.
THE climate in all our West-India islands is nearly the same, allowing for those accidental differences, which the several situations, and qualities of the lands themselves produce. As they lie within the tropic, and that the sun goes quite over their heads, and passes beyond them to the North, and never retires further from any of them than about 30 degrees to the South, they are continually subjected to the extreme of an heat, which would be intolerable, if the trade wind rising gradually as the sun gathers strength, did not blow in upon them from the sea, and refresh the air in such a manner as to enable them to attend their concerns even under the meridian sun. On the other hand, as the night advances, a breeze begins to be perceived, which blows smartly from the land, as if it were from it’s center, towards the sea, to all points of the compass at once.
By the same remarkable providence in the disposing of things it is, that when the sun has made a great progress towards the tropic of Cancer, and becomes in a manner vertical, he draws after him such a vast body of clouds, as shield them from his direct beams, and dissolving into rain cool the air, and refresh the country, thirsty with the long drought, which commonly reigns from the beginning of January to the latter end of May.
The rains in the West-Indies are by no means the things they are with us. Our heaviest rains are but dews comparatively. They are rather floods of water poured from the clouds, with a prodigious impetuosity; the rivers rise in a moment; new rivers and lakes are formed, and in a short time all the low country is under water. Hence it is, that the rivers which have their sources within the tropics, swell and overflow their banks at a certain season; and so mistaken were the ancients in their idea of the torrid zone, which they imagined to be dried and scorched up with a continual and fervent heat, and for that reason uninhabitable, when in reality some of the largest rivers in the world have their course within it’s limits, and the moisture is one of the greatest inconveniences of the climate in several places.
The rains make the only distinction of seasons in the West-Indies; the trees are green the whole year round; they have no cold, no frosts, no snows, and but rarely some hail; the storms of which are however very violent when they happen, and the hailstones very great and heavy. Whether it be owing to this moisture alone, which alone does not seem to be a sufficient cause, or to a greater quantity of a sulphurous acid, which predominates in the air in this country, metals of all kinds that are subject to the action of such causes, rust and canker in a very short time; and this cause, perhaps, as much as the heat itself, contributes to make the climate of the West-Indies unfriendly and unpleasant to an European constitution.
It is in the rainy season (principally in the month of August, more rarely in July and September,) that they are assaulted by hurricanes; the most terrible calamity to which they are subject from the climate; this destroys at a stroke the labours of many years, and prostrates the most exalted hopes of the planter, and often just at the moment when he thinks himself out of the reach of fortune. It is a sudden and violent storm of wind, rain, thunder and lightning, attended with a furious swelling of the seas, and sometimes with an earthquake; in short, with every circumstance which the elements can assemble, that is terrible and destructive. First, they see, as the prelude to the ensuing havock, whole fields of sugar canes whirled into the air, and scattered over the face of the country. The strongest trees of the forest are torn up by the roots, and driven about like stubble; their windmills are swept away in a moment; their works, the fixtures, the ponderous copper boilers, and stills of several hundred weight, are wrenched from the ground, and battered to pieces: their houses are no protection, the roofs are torn off at one blast; whilst the rain, which in an hour rises five feet, rushes in upon them with an irresistible violence.
There are signs, which the Indians of these islands taught our planters, by which they can prognosticate the approach of an hurricane. The hurricane comes on either in the quarters, or at the full change of the moon. If it comes at the full moon, when you are at the change observe these signs. That day you will see the sky very turbulent; you will observe the sun more red than at other times; you will perceive a dead calm, and the hills clear of all those clouds and mists which usually hover about them. In the clefts of the earth, and in the wells, you hear a hollow rumbling sound like the rushing of a great wind. At night the stars seem much larger than usual, and surrounded with a sort of burs; the North-West sky has a black and menacing look; the sea emits a strong smell, and rises into vast waves, often without any wind; the wind itself now forsakes it’s usual steady Easterly stream, and shifts about to the West; from whence it sometimes blows with intermissions violently and irregularly for about two hours at a time. You have the same signs at the full of the moon; the moon herself is surrounded with a great bur, and sometimes the sun has the same appearance. These prognostics were taught by the Indians; and in general one may observe, that ignorant country people and barbarous nations, are better observers of times and seasons, and draw better rules from them, than more civilized and reasoning people, for they rely more upon experience than theories, they are more careful of traditionary observations, and living more in the open air at all times, and not so occupied but they have leisure to observe every change, though minute, in that element, they come to have great treasures of useful matter, though, as it might be expected, mixed with many superstitious and idle notions as to the causes. These make their observations to be rejected as chimerical in the gross by many literati, who are not near so nice and circumspect as they ought to be in distinguishing what this sort of people may be very competent judges of, and what not.
The grand staple commodity of the West-Indies is sugar; this commodity was not at all known to the Greeks and Romans, though it was made in China in very early times, from whence we had the first knowledge of it; but the Portuguese were the first who cultivated it in America, and brought it into request as one of the materials of a very universal luxury in Europe. It is not settled whether the cane from which this substance is extracted, be a native of America or brought thither by the Portuguese from India, and the coast of Africa; but however the matter may be, in the beginning they made the most as they still do the best sugars, which come to market in this part of the world. The sugar cane grows to the height of between six and eight feet, full of joints, about four or five inches asunder; the colour of the body of the cane is yellowish, and the top, where it shoots into leaves of a vivid green; the coat is pretty hard, and within contains a spungy substance full of a juice, the most lively, elegant, and least cloying sweet in nature; and which sucked raw, has proved extremely nutritive and wholsome.
They are cultivated in this manner. In the month of August, that is, in the rainy part of the year, after the ground is cleared and well hoed, they lay a piece of six or seven joints of the cane, flat in a channel made for it, above half a foot deep; this they cover with the earth, and so plant the whole field in lines regularly disposed and at proper distances. In a short time a young cane shoots out from every joint of the stock which was interred, and grows in ten or twelve days to be a pretty tall and vigorous plant; but it is not until after sixteen months, or thereabouts, that the canes are fit to answer the purposes of the planter, though they may remain a few months after without any considerable prejudice to him. The longer they remain in the the ground after they are come to maturity, the less juice they afford; but this is somewhat compensated by the superior richness of the juice. That no time may be lost, they generally divide their cane grounds into three parts. One is of standing canes, and to be cut that season; the second is of new planted canes; and the third is fallow, ready to receive a fresh supply. In some places they make second and third cuttings from the same root. The tops of the canes, and the leaves, which grow upon the joints, make very good provender for their cattle, and the refuse of the cane after grinding, serves for fire; so that no part of this excellent plant is without it’s use.
The canes are cut with a billet,
and carried in bundles to the mill, which is now generally a windmill; it turns three great cylinders or rollers plated with iron, set perpendicularly and cogged so as to be all moved by the middle roller. Between these, the canes are bruised to pieces, and the juice runs through an hole into a vat which is placed under the rollers to receive it; from hence it is carried through a pipe into a great reservoir, in which however, for fear of turning sour, it is not suffered to rest long, but is conveyed out of that by other pipes into the boiling house, where it is received by a large cauldron: here it remains, until the scum, which constantly arises during the boiling, is all taken off; from this, it is passed successively into five or six more boilers, gradually diminishing in their size, and treated in the same manner. In the last of these it becomes of a very thick clammy consistence; but mere boiling is incapable of carrying it farther: to advance the operation, they pour in a small quantity of lime-water; the immediate effect of this alien mixture, is to raise up the liquor in a very vehement fermentation; but to prevent it from running over, a bit of butter no larger than a nut is thrown in, upon which the fury of the fermentation immediately subsides; a vessel of two or three hundred gallons requires no greater force to quiet it. It is now taken out and placed in a cooler, where it dries, granulates, and becomes fit to be put into the pots, which is the last part of the operation.