DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 with funding from Duke University Libraries https://archive.org/details/sixmonthsinwesti1826cole SIX MONTHS 11 IN THE WEST INDIES, 1825 . LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. MDCCCXXVf. i> R I N T E 1) LONDON: jy C. IlOUORTH, BELL YARD, TEMPLE BAR. ? 72 ,? CONTENTS. Page REASONS FOR GOING ABROAD 1 MADEIRA 10 CROSSING THE TROPIC 38 BARBADOS 44 TRINIDAD 63 GRENADA 104 st. Vincent’s 112 ST. LUCIA 122 BARBADOS 134 MARTINIQUE 139 DOMINICA 150 MONTSERRAT 169 NEVIS 192 st. Christopher’s 209 ANGUILLA 225 ANTIGUA . 242 BARBUDA 273 BARBADOS 286 PLANTERS AND SLAVES 308 the end 329 SIX MONTHS IN THE WEST INDIES. REASONS FOR GOING ABROAD. The doctors disagreed. According to four first- rate opinions, I groaned at one and the same time under rheumatism proper, rheumatic gout, gout proper, and an affection in the spinous process. The serious signs of one were the favorable symptoms of another, and the prescriptions of the first in direct oppugnancy to the principles of the last. To-day I was to drink water at Buxton, the morrow to drink water at Bath, on Wednesday I was to go to Italy, and on Thursday I had better stay at home. The fact was, the doctors could not make out my case. Reader, if by mischance thou art one of those B 2 REASONS FOR GOING ABROAD. unhappy persons whom the climate of our famous mother England, in punishment of thy many sins in chattering French instead of thy kindly verna- cular, in giving half-a-guinea to Italians instead of three shillings and sixpence to Britons, in cleaving to wine and eschewing beer, hath touched with her insular cramp in shoulders, elbows, wrists, fingers, back, loins, knees, ancles or toes... if such be the case, go not, I entreat thee for thy good, to any of the faculty, whether physician, surgeon, apothecary or druggist, licensed or unlicensed ; save thy good coin, gentle rheumatic, in thy purse for better merchandize and laissez aller les chosesj torment not the creature with drenches and bandages, and peradventure it will ache thee some months the less for being entertained civilly ; at all events thou wilt have economized so much money, escaped so much physic, and it will go harder with thee than with any body else, if thou get not well again every whit as soon. True it is, though I speak it to my shame, that I did, in the impatience of my heart, betake myself to medicine for relief. It was promised to me abun- dantly. I am ready to communicate to any earnest inquirer, twenty and five infallible prescriptions, every one of which has effected so many cures, REASONS FOR GOING ABROAD. 3 that it is somewhat surprizing that the combined action of all of them together has not, a long time ago, driven rheumatism clean out of the United Kingdom. I never met with any of these redeemed ones, but, as Sanclio says, he, who told me the story, said that it was so certain and true, that I might well, whenever I told it to another, affirm and swear that I had seen them all myself. There was, indeed, no resisting the kindness of my friends ; I was all things to all men and to all women; i ate this to please my cousin Lucy, and drank that to oblige my cousin Margaret; I was steamed by one, showered by another, just escaped needling by a third, and was nearly boiled to the consistency of a pudding for the love of an oblong- gentleman of Ireland, who had cured so many of his tenants on a bog in Tipperary by that process, that he offered to stake his salvation upon the success of the experiment. It failed, and, the article not being transferable, I forgave him the debt. I mentioned my two cousins above ; I wish you knew them, reader ; your state would be the more gracious, but I will introduce them to you in five minutes. They are sisters, well stricken in years, and for more than half their lives have lived within is 2 4 REASONS FOR GOING ABROAD. hail of each other. Kinder souls, I dare say, never humanized the rugged humours of a market town by their guardian residence ; doing good really seems the business of their existence. Ge- nuine old school are they to the heels of their shoes; notable housewives in keeping the outside and the inside of tfi£ platter clean; so keen in cheapening a dinner, that our itinerant fishmonger must have abandoned his calling with loss, had he not with great skill and secrecy opened a coun- termine ; for perceiving that no emergency of fast, no necessity of feast, could ever induce my cou- sins to give more than a half of what he demanded for his commodities, his pregnant invention led him to ask just tw'ice as much at first as he in- tended to take at last ; the ladies, not knowing either the real or the market price of the exotics, are perfectly satisfied in their consciences when they have openly reduced the enemy to a moiety, and thus by this simple and ingenious scheme of commerce, the interests of all parties are recon- ciled, the fishmonger thrives, my cousinhood is content, and I get as much fish as a somewhat robust appetite can manage to entertain. But with all the manifold virtues which adorn the characters of my dear cousins, a scrupulous REASONS EOR GOING ABROAD. 5 adherence to truth forces me to say, (and I know them too well to fear their taking the remark ill,) that they cherish one presumptuous sin, one stain of the Fall, . . .which seems to be as much the darling passion of autumnal womanhood, as per- sonal distinction is of girls, and charitable conver- sation of elderly young females in general. I would say that my two relations have more than their just share of that strange humour which craves the infliction of physic on the human race, of that lust for rhubarb and magnesia, which nei- ther ridicule, remonstrance, or casual homicide can utterly abolish or destroy from the anile bosom. The boldness of their practice is un- equal. Lucy, who upon these occasions never forgets that she is the widow of a medical man, confesses a hankering after calomel; Margaret is also willing, but a softer temper and the recollec- tion of two strengthening plasters, as she called them, which she administered to herself with the best intentions at the commencement of a fever, have much abated her courage. She is a very serious woman, and, in my opinion, has never wholly lost the impression made upon her mind on the first morning of her recovery from the kisses of the cantharides, when going, like Don Quixote 6 REASONS FOR GOING ABROAD. to his book-room, to visit her beloved medicine chest, she found, indeed, that precious receptacle safe, but with this appalling superscription im- printed on it, “ The Cave of Death.” A relation of mine, a notable wag, was the author of this piece of wit; and to this day my good cousin can- not hear it mentioned with perfect equanimity. The poor of the parish, twenty or thirty of whom are in constant patience upon one or other of these ladies, have their praises ever on their lips; not altogether, I imagine, on account of the medical advice which they receive, but partly per- haps in grateful acknowledgment of certain ac- companiments of broth, beef, mutton, wine, cider, &c. which they rarely fail to obtain at the same time from the same hands ; the wise pauper ba- lances the evil with the good, and learns to set a good dinner against a black dose. Formerly indeed it is believed that some ungracious spirits took the meat but did not take the physic ; to prevent which practice for the future my cousins insisted that the drugs should be drunken in their presence, just as man-of-war’s men must swallow six-water grog on deck before the officer on watch. Now, whether it be the medicine or the dinners I know- not, but certain it is that my REASONS FOR GOING ABROAD. cousins’ patients are blessed with uncommon lon- gevity ; some of the old women in particular are so immortal that a very respectable overseer could not forbear saying, that though he approved of charity and almsgiving sub modo, yet this was really carrying the matter a little too far; it was making the present generation sustain not the in- digent and old of their own times only, but those of past ages also. Be that as it may — Pious and humble women! your errors are for- given on earth, your silent virtues recorded in Heaven by Him who sees in secret. Long, long- may you live to mitigate the distresses of suffering humanity around you, and may you have no heavier charge to answer hereafter than that of having kept a score or two of old souls a burthen on the parish-rate a few years longer than hun- ger and sorrow would otherwise have ordered it! If this little book had been one of the thousand and one journals of tours in France or Italy or Switzerland ; or if it had been a true and authen- tic history of Loo-Choo, of the Ashantees, or of a Polar expedition, I should not have taken the trouble of writing this preliminary chapter. But the West Indies are quite another thing. I have s REASONS FOR GOING ABROAD. seen men set down as fanatics or tyrants before their speech has been listened to, and as I have a creditable anxiety for the sale of my work, it im- ports me much that I should make myself well understood on this head. I do not wish any one to entertain a good opinion of me, but I shall feel deeply indebted to any person who will be kind enough to have no opinion whatever of me or about me. I am in perfect charity with all man- kind, that is to say, I care infinitely nothing about any of them, except some dozen and a half good folks of my own sort. I bow to the African In- stitution, ...they do their work, as is fitting, in a truly African manner; I bend as low to the Planters, . . . they are a trifle choleric or so, but I remember that the nerves become excessively irritable under the rays of a vertical sun. I protest in print that I had not the honor to travel as an agent of either of these amicable societies. I i regular visitations of magistrates should be estab- lished, and above all a capacious tread-wlieel should be forthwith erected. The money laid out on this sovereign machine would be saved in the first year by the reduction of the usual jail expenses. Herbert or White would make the article of pitch pine, and it is almost impossible to set bounds to the improvement, which might be expected to take place in the public character under the mild influence of this blessed invention. The fact is, the thing is found to answer exceed- ingly well in Trinidad, and Barbados would be the better for following the example. There are three other towns in the island. Hole town is a collection of five or six houses on the sea shore about seven miles from the capital, and is remarkable only for having been the first settlement of the English, who landed in the neigh- bourhood, and called their hamlet James Town, in honor of the first Stuart. Speight’s town or Spikes, as it is commonly pronounced, is a pretty large place, seven miles farther on the coast ; it has a roadstead and wharf, and formerly exported a great deal of sugar directly to England, but the usual practice now is to send it by droghers or small cutters to Carlisle bay. There is a daily communication by e 2 BARBADOS. water between Speights and Bridge Town; it is a very beautiful excursion, and the wind rarely fails either way. The population of the place is colored in a very large proportion, and you may walk some time in the street before you will meet a white or black man or woman. The church is very neat, but the pulpit is a fathom too high, a common fault in the West Indies, where they fancy, the higher the preacher is placed, the more sublime will the sermon be. To be sure, by this arrangement every class of persons must of necessity understand the clergyman, which is something at all events. The view from Dover Hill, a fortress and signal station, half a mile from the town, is very interesting. The houses are nearly lost in the foliage of gardens, and the almost painted sea shines in still sky-blue between the slender stems of the thousands of cocoa nut trees, which form a green fence upon the shore. One great inconvenience in travelling along the leeward side of the island is the sand, which especially in Speights is so deep, that a heavy carriage is sure to stick fast in it. What with the whiteness of this sand, and the shelving- tables of land to the east which keep off every breath of wind, it is one of the most oppressive BARBADOS. 53 rides in Barbados. I thought it would have given me the ophthalmia. As you pass along, you see the remnants of old forts at very short intervals, with a great number of guns, most of them honeycombed, dismounted, or even half buried in the earth. The other town is called Oistin’s, or Austin’s, not from St. Augustin, but from a certain lewd fellow of the name who lived here and loved rum and a main of cocks dearly. It is a few miles to windward of Bridge Town, and of that magnitude that my Lord Seaforlh, upon first visiting it, turned round to his aides-de- camp, and said — “ Gentlemen, keep close! or I shall be out of the town before you are in it.” The central school is a large and convenient building nearly opposite the king’s house, and within two minutes walk of the cathedral. It is impossible to speak in too high terms of this ex- cellent institution, which reflects upon Lord Com- bermere who promoted, and the legislature which liberally seconded the undertaking, the utmost credit. At pi'esent about 160 white children are educated here, precisely upon the plan of the na- tional schools in England; all of them are fed during the day, and the major part are well lodged. The beneficial effects of this charity are 54 BARBADOS. already confessed on all hands; principles of so- briety and devotion are instilled into their minds, and habits of regularity and peaceful subordination are enforced. From this class of boys, the master tradesmen, mechanics, overseers and even ma- nagers will hereafter be supplied; and when it is considered how much the comforts and improve- ment of the slaves must depend upon the charac- ters of these persons, their education will be found to be, as it really is, a direct measure of general amelioration. The foundation of another school in the neighbourhood has also been laid by the bishop, which is to be devoted entirely to girls, who are to be thus separated from the boys, and boarded and lodged by themselves. It is but common justice to say that these are favorite in- stitutions, and that the chief people of the colony, male and female, spare neither pains or expense in maintaining and strengthening them, There is a large school of colored children, chiefly free, in the town, which w T as formerly sup- ported by the Church Missionary Society, but has since been put by the colored managers of it en- tirely under the bishop’s superintendence. The children are very well behaved, very docile, very sensible of the advantages which they acquire by a BARBADOS. system of methodical instruction ; and the actual difference between them and their untaught bre- thren of the same color and sometimes same con- dition would convince any unprejudiced witness, that it is not to emancipation but to education that the sincere philanthropist ought to direct his pre- sent labors. Four more schools have been opened by the indefatigable bishop for boys and girls respectively ; they are maintained at the expense of government; any color is admitted upon the simple condition of cleanliness and constant attend- ance, and the instruction is gratuitous. These schools are scattered about in the parts of the town principally inhabited by the colored people, who are by these means more readily induced to send their children. These children are chiefly of the lowest order of the free colored and of the domestic and mechanic slaves in Bridge Town and the immediate vicinity. They are not at pre- sent taught to write, a point certainly not of any vital importance, and wisely conceded to preju- dices which will in due time melt away under a conviction of the propriety of the knowledge and the futility of the prohibition. Codrington College is romantically situated on the borders of the Barbadian Scotland; a steep 56 BARBADOS. cliff rises on one side of it, from the foot of which an avenue of magnificent cabbage trees leads up to the lawn in front of the building, and on the other side the ground gradually slopes away to some small rocks over the sea. No position could have been more convenient in every respect; it is retired, possesses a running stream of water, and is ever refreshed by the virgin breezes of the Atlantic. The original plan of the edifice was quadrangular or perhaps oblong; it actually con- sists of nothing but one of the long sides and slight projections of two others. It is an exceed- ingly massive affair, and seems hurricane and earthquake proof. An open archway, as at King’s College, Cambridge, corresponds, in the centre of the building, with the head of the avenue. It contains a large school-room with a niche, where the statue of Codrington ought certainly to be placed, a chapel very much out of order, a library with a few good books and plenty of rubbish, and spacious accommodations for sleeping up stairs. The Principal’s lodge is on the same line, but detached from the college, and is with- out doubt one of the most delectable houses in the Antilles. This institution, though at present all but use- BARBADOS. 57 less, may be made the foundation and instrument of a great and lasting change in the entire West Indies. That it was originally intended as an university for youths and not a mere school for boys is evident, from the terms of the founder’s will, and it is in this light alone, and with a view of commencing and ultimately perfecting this character of it, that it deserves the most serious attention of the trustees, the insular legislatures, and even the government at home. It is quite monstrous that the object of so magnificent a charity, and such large actual funds, should be the support and instruction of fourteen or fifteen boys, who might be educated much better else- where in the island. If the colony were wanting in schools, which it is not, still the college would be a very objectionable school from various causes connected with the mode of maintenance, and the contact with slaves ; which it is not necessary to specify here ; but in reality, as a school, the college is lost for all great purposes of improve- ment ; it may or may not exist without affecting the state of society in the smallest degree; what is done there is not done well, and yet done at an enormous expense. As good colonial Latin and Greek, as far as Virgil and the Analecta Minora, and 58 BARBADOS. much better manners may be more cheaply taught in other parts of the island; and the support of the boys from the funds of the foundation is an unnecessary and therefore improper act of charity. A great desideratum in the West Indies is a place of study and retirement for young men. As it is, those, who cannot afford the heavy ex- pense of going to Oxford or Cambridge, are obliged to break off the unfinished work of in- struction, to set up at seventeen or eighteen for men, and undertake the charge of duties for which they are utterly unqualified. They come away from school half educated in heart and in- tellect, and are then for the most part placed in situations, where every temptation to licentious- ness besets their path, and many dangerous pri- vileges are of necessity committed to their dis- cretionary exercise. With regard to the wants of the church, the deficiency is still more severely felt; the present plan of general improvement demands such a number of well informed youths as catechists or clergymen, as the islands under the actual system of things cannot supply ; hence the necessity of bringing men from England, who are of course wholly unacquainted with the peculiar condition of the society in the midst of BARBADOS. 59 which they are to labor, or of employing in very difficult enterprizes persons who at the best per- haps have nothing but their good intentions to recommend them. If the interval between seven- teen -and twenty three is hazardous in this coun- try, what must it be in the West Indies, where there exists no retreat from the seductions of awakening passion, no scope or aid for the de- velopment of the higher and more latent powers of the human mind. A college upon the plan of an university, that is to say, where a reasonable approach to univer- sality of instruction is proposed, would supply this deficiency, remedy the consequent evils, and be a blessing and a source of blessings to the colonies. Its hall and lectures should be thrown open to every white resident in the British West Indies; for their rooms and commons the students should of course pay, and the surplus funds of the charity should be laid out in the erection of fellowships, in salaries to professors, and prizes for youthful talent. Tutors of real zeal and un- doubted ability should be provided at all events, and the Principal should be a man of that nerve and judgment which will be requisite in governing and defending a great and novel institution. The domestic economy of the college would be on a 60 BARBADOS. much simpler and less expensive plan than in our universities ; less than half of what is now spent by the Creoles in travelling or idleness would de- cently maintain them, and I am convinced that want of money would never be any impediment to the full consummation of the project. The bishop, as visitor, should be made available in the way of superintendence, and perhaps order be taken in the proper quarters for license and au- thority to confer the usual academical degrees. The trustees of Codi’ington College comprize a large portion of the learning and virtue of Eng- land ; their disinterestedness is perfect ; their intentions excellent, their care commendable. Their disposable funds are ample, and the trust estates remarkably flourishing. They deserve this prosperity ; their zeal for the welfare of their slaves is most exemplary, and they have gone to the utmost bounds of prudence in advancing the condition of those negros whose happiness and salvation have been committed to them. A chapel and a school have been erected almost exclusively for their use, and a ^'clergyman fixed amongst them whose talents, kindness and simplicity of manners are not more remarkable than his judgment and * The Rev. John II. Finder, BARBADOS. G1 his piety. The attorney and manager are both of established character, the buildings, especially the hospital, in good order, and the negro huts comfortable. Under these circumstances, and with these means in their possession, the trustees incur a heavy responsibility : they have indeed a perfect right to assume the power of providing in a Christian manner for slaves in a Christian land, and they should treat all malignant insinuations of breach of trust, with a righteous scorn; but they must at the same time remember that the object of the charity is to educate the whites, and let not them or the public think this object exclusive of the other; so far from it, I anr convinced that one of the most effectual measures for bet- tering the slaves would a thorough and liu- manizing education of the masters themselves. Towards the attainment of this most desirable end, not only in Barbados, but ultimately through- out the whole British West Indies, no man, or society of men, possesses so great means as the trustees of this institution, not merely from large and unfettered funds, but also, from superior knowledge and freedom from prejudice. In all the widely extended operations of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts, there is no instrument so ready, so safe, so prolific 62 BARBADOS. of future good as this college is, or may be made to be ; and without pretending to dictate to, or even admonish, the members of that venerable body, I cannot refrain from exhorting them most earnestly to draw this object closer to them than hereto- fore, and examine with hope and faith into its capabilities of perfection. There are eleven churches in Barbados, one large chapel, called All Saints, the chapel in the College, and the above mentioned chapel on the Society’s estate ; a new church is now building in Bridge Town, and all these are in very respectable preservation. Another place of worship is still much wanted in the southern quarter of the town called the Bay, and one even more so in the seaside parts of St. Philip’s parish. That there should be no church for the garrison, with an establishment of not less than two thousand persons of one sort or another, is a disgraceful circumstance, which it is to be hoped the proper department at home will not suffer to remain much longer. As it is, I trust it is no calumny, or even a great reflection, to say, that the military, ladies and all are forced to live without any observance of any religious worship whatever. The reading of a few prayers in the open parade ground by the chaplain is really a complete farce, and so understood to be. TRINIDAD. After about seven weeks residence in Barbados, I had the pleasure of accompanying the new bishop in his first visitation of his diocese. We were accommodated in the most comfortable manner by Captain Lawrence of H. M. S. Eden, sloop of war, and set sail for the south on Tues- day evening the 22d of March. We sighted Tobago on the larboard beam on the 24th, and were so baffled by light heading winds that we did not make the land of Trinidad till the after- noon of the 25th. The full moon was shooting a wild and lustrous glare through the crevices of a black mass of clouds, which hung half way down the mountains of the Main, when we sailed with a fresh breeze through the Boca Grande into the beautiful gulf of Paria. This passage is about four or five miles wide, and as I gazed with in- tense interest for the first time upon the shores of South America, I could not help thinking that the fitful glare and the dark atmosphere formed 64 TRINIDAD. together an impressive emblem of the present state of that mighty continent. “ May thy dark- ness,” I murmured, “ thy moral and religious darkness pass away from thee, and light, and truth, and freedom, shine around thee hereafter in pure and unbroken splendor.” The Sensual and die Dark rebel in vain, Slaves by their own compulsion. We anchored that night at a little distance from the mouth of Chaguaramus Bay, memorable as the scene of the capture of the island by Sir Ralph Abercrombie. Hereupon they tell the following story in Port of Spain. Admiral Apo- daca, having with great gallantry burnt all his own ships except one 74, rode off to the town as fast as his horse would carry him, and himself announced the event to the astonished governor Chacon. “ Only one ship has fallen into the enemy’s hands! I have burnt the rest,” said the admiral: “ Burnt! burnt!” replied the governor; “ but have you saved nothing?” “ Si, Senor,” ex- claimed Apodaca with Castilian enthusiasm, “ I have saved Santiago de Compostella!” et ostendit signum fatale Jacobi. TRINIDAD. 65 It is a fact that the excellent Chacon was dis- graced, and the scoundrel Admiral, whom the Spanish government ought to have requested the English to shoot on the quarter deck of the only ship which he could not destroy, was eventually promoted. We weighed anchor with the morning breeze, and stood down gently before its refreshing breath to the modern capital of the colony. I shall not be weak enough to attempt a detailed descrip- tion of the enchanting scenery which presented itself to us ; nothing but painting could hope even faintly to convey an image of it to the inhabitants of the Temperate Zone. Its parts may be just mentioned, and the imaginations of my readers may combine and color them as they please, sure that, let them conceive as deeply and as richly as they may, they will never attain to an adequate notion of the unspeakable loveliness of the ori- ginal. The Gulf of the purest ultramarine, just wreathed into a smile and no more; on the right hand the mountains of Cumana with their sum- mits lost in the clouds ; on the left the immense precipices of Trinidad covered to the extremest height with gigantic trees which seemed to swim in the middle ether ; the margin fringed with the 66 TRINIDAD. evergreen mangroves, which were here hanging with their branches bathed in the water, and there themselves rising out of the midst of the soft waves; behind us the four mouths of the Dragon of Columbus with the verdant craggy isles between them: before us Port of Spain with its beautiful churches, the great Savana, and the closing hills of Montserrat. Meanwhile the Eden gracefully bent beneath the freshening wind, (no other ship should ever sail on this lake of Paradise ;) the long dark canoes glanced by us with their white sails almost kissing the sea, and enormous whales ever and anon lifted their monstrous bodies quite out of the water in strange gambols, and falling down created a tempest around them, and shot up columns of silver foam. We came to anchor two miles from shore, and had a boat race in the evening. Port of Spain is by far the finest town I saw in the West Indies. The streets are wide, long, and laid out at right angles; no house is now allowed to be built of wood, and no erection of any sort can be made except in a prescribed line. There is a public walk embowered in trees and similar in all respects to the Terreiro in Funchal, and a spacious market place with a market house TRINIDAD. 67 or shambles in excellent order and cleanliness. The Spanish and French females, their gay cos- tume, their foreign language, and their unusual vivacity give this market the appearance of a merry fair in France. The Protestant church is beautifully situated, with a large inclosed lawn in front of it, which is surrounded on two sides by the best houses in the town. The church itself is one of the most elegant and splendid things in the empire ; it is wainscotted with the various rich woods of the island, and the pews are arranged with not more regularity than with a liberal con- sideration of the feelings of the colored people. These last sit in the area towards the western end, and the difference of their accommodation from that of the whites is scarcely perceptible. This circumstance is creditable to the colony, and might well be imitated in some other of the islands. There are no aisles, the roof sweeping in an ellip- tical arch from side to side ; the altar, the western door, the organ and staircase, are all in a corre- sponding style of richness and propriety. It is more than worthy of the town, as it now is; it will be fit for it when it has become a city. When viewed from without it seems to want height, and though they say it cannot be better than it is, I F o 68 TRINIDAD. must own I think thecoup d’oeil of the building and Port of Spain it'self would be much inproved by a greater elevation of the tower. There would be no impiety in such a thing here as in Barbados, for the hurricanes have never ventured so low as Trinidad.* In another part of the town is an unfinished church for the Romanists; there is no roof as yet, but what is perfected is of even a still more costly and exquisite character than our own. The lateral walls certainly appear too thin to be able to support any weight laid upon them, but Abbe LegofiPe has no fears on that head, and the facetious Abbe is a competent judge. At present the Romish service is enacted in a very rude chapel of wood, from which they are obliged during Lent to extend awnings into the street to afford a temporary receptacle for the worshippers who crowd in from the country. St. Anne’s, the residence of Sir Ralph Wood- ford, stands on a very gentle slope about half a mile from the town; the mountain forests rise almost immediately behind it, w hilst the lawn and shrubbery give much of an English air to the whole * I regret exceedingly to hear that earthquakes have visited this island, and that serious injury has been done to this church and the government house. TRINIDAD. G9 place. There are some rare and valuable plants here, introduced by the governor, such as the nutmeg, which was flourishing in great vigour, the cinnamon and the clove. The nutmeg is a tree, and uncommonly beautiful ; the others were bushes. The house, though plain, is beyond measure comfortable, and it will be some time before I forget the luxury of its matchless bath. The town, the church and the gulf lie in sight, and within a mile is the entrance of the famous valley of Maraval, and still farther on the coast the less celebrated but beautiful vale of Diego Martin with its single silk-cotton tree* prevailing over it in desolate majesty. I hope that noble ornament of the place will never be cut down; it is but one, and let it remain amidst the softer cultivation around it, to shew hereafter what har- vests the earth once bore upon its bosom there. At about twenty feet from the ground the trunk of the silk-cotton tree diverges into buttresses of great prominence and size, so that if a covering were thrown over them, a very tolerable set of barracks might be organized for one man each round the enormous stem. I love to recollect the days which I spent in * Bombax Ceiba. 70 TRINIDAD. Trinidad, and would fain record some of their events whilst the impressions which they made are still fresh upon my mind. Gentle reader, whilst thou pokest thy coal fire, and clearest to the grate as if Satan were at thy back, think, O! think of the mercury at 94° of Fahrenheit. On a morning of such a temper, the elixir cup of coffee being first duly quaffed, we, that is to say, the governor, the bishop, his lordship’s two chap- lains, your poor bookmaker and an honest man, Sainthill by name, started in landau and four, and in gig and one for La Pastora the residence of Antonio Gomez. And first we stopped at the governor’s grog shop, the trivial name of a crystal spring which has been taught to gush forth from a rock on the way-side into a neat stone bason, whereat under the shade of a spread- ing evergreen the dark ladies of the country rejoice to lave their dusty feet, and indue the snowy stocking and the colored shoe or ever they enter the gallant streets of Puerto de Espaha. Then we rambled on between hedges and trees, now in lanes and now in roads, leaving the little village of San Juan on the right, and crossing many a clear and brawling brook till we arrived, well toasted, at the sweet spot where we were to breakfast. TRINIDAD. 71 Antonio Gomez’ plantation of cacao is one of the finest in the island. It lies on a very slight declivity at the bottom of a romantic amphitheatre of woody mountains. His house, together with the works of the estate, is situated at the edge of the trees, and a quieter or more lovely spot no hermit ever chose to count his beads in for eter- nity! The cacao, which grows from ten to fif- teen feet in height, is a delicate plant, and like a lady, cannot bear exposure to the direct rays of the sun ; for this reason a certain portion of the wood is thinned and appropriated, the tall and um- brageous trees are left, and these form with their interwoven branches and evergreen leaves a sun- proof skreen, under cover of which the cacao flou- rishes in luxuriance and preserves her complexion. At a distance the plantation has the appearance of a forest advantageously distinguished by the long bare stems of tropic growth being shrouded with the rich green of the cacaos below, and here and there burning and flashing with the flame-colored foliage of the glorious Bois Immortel. One main road led through the plantation, and numberless avenues diverged from it to every other part. These alleys, as well as the whole plantation itself, were fringed with coffee bushes, which with 72 TRINIDAD. their dark Portugal laurel leaves, jasmine blossoms and most subtle and exquisite perfume refreshed the senses and delighted the imagination. Water flowed in abundance through the wood, and gentle breezes fanned us as we sauntered along. If ever I turn planter, as I have often had thoughts of doing, I shall buy a cacao plantation in Trinidad. The cane is, no doubt, a noble plant, and perhaps crop time presents a more lively and interesting scene than harvest in England; but there is so much trash, so many ill-odored negros, so much scum and sling and molasses that my nerves have sometimes sunken under it. “ The sweat nego- ciation of sugar,” as old Ligon calls it, is indeed a sweaty affair; and methinks it were not good for that most ancient and most loyal colony, Bar- bados, that her sons should often visit the sylvan glades, the deep retreats, the quiet and the cool- ness of the cacao plantations in Ti'inidad. But planters are not poetical. Sugar can surely never be cultivated in the West Indies except by the labor of negros, but I should think white men, creoles or not, might do all the work of a cacao plantation. The trouble of preparing this article for exportation is actually nothing when compared with the process of making sugar. But the main TRINIDAD. and essential difference is, that the whole cultiva- tion and manufacture of chcao is carried on in the shade. People must come between Cancer and Capricorn to understand this. I was well tired when we got back to Antonio’s house. What a pleasant breakfast we had, and what a cup of chocolate they gave me by way of a beginning! So pure, so genuine, with such a divine aroma exhaling from it! Mercy on me! what a soul-stifling compost of brown sugar, pow- dered brick and rhubarb have I not swallowed in England instead of the light and exquisite cacao ! N)/7TlO£' a\\’ OVK avOlQ I love the Spanish ladies to my heart; after my own dear and beautiful countrywomen I think a senorita would be my choice. Their dress is so gay yet so modest, their walk so noble, their manners so quiet, so gentle and so collected. They have none of that undue vivacity, that much ado about nothing, that animal conceit which disgusts me in the Gauls. A Spanish wo- man, whether her education have been as finished or not, is in her nature a superior being. Her majestic forehead, her dark and thoughtful eye assure you that she hath communed with herself. 74 TRINIDAD. She can bear to be left in solitude; yet what a look is hers, if she is animated by mirth or love! Then, like a goddess, she launches forth that subtle light from within, Ce trait de feu qui des yeux passe a l’ame, De fame aux sens. She is poetical if not a poet, her imagination is high and chivalrous, and she speaks the language in which romance was born. It is a favorite sub- ject of exultation with me that twenty* two mil- lions of people speak English or Spanish in the New World. Their grammar and accent are perfectly pure in Trinidad, but, like all the South Americans, they have deflected from the standard of Castilian pronunciation.^ Soledad! thou wilt never read this book; few' of those who will can ever know thee, and I shall never see thee again on this side of the grave. Therefore I write thy name whilst I yet remember thy face and hear thy voice, thou sweet and in- genious girl ! And so having shaken hands with * So says the all accomplished Humboldt, and it cannot be much less. f They sound c as s, and z as in English, thus approaching towards the dialect of Portugal. By dialect I mean language, for Portugueze is as ancient and independent a derivative of Latin as Castilian itself. TRINIDAD. 75 kind Antonio and liis lady, with Patrica, and Do- lores, and Lorenza, and all of them, we mounted our horses and took our leave. We returned by another route through the woods, ascended a narrow pass called the Saddle, if I recollect right, and came in at the head of Maraval. We rode quite through this most lovely valley, and got back to St. Anne’s tired, delighted and burnt to brick dust. The heat in the valleys is generally intense, as the great height of the mountains on either side excludes the wind and the rays of the vertical sun are collected almost into a focus. After resting and eating sufficiently, we went on board the Eden for an excursion to San Fernandez or Petit Bourg, a village of some importance about twenty miles or more on the coast to the south. However the wind failed and we all left His Majesty’s ship, like uncourteous knaves as we were, and got into the steam-boat which attended upon us. Sir Ralph Woodford told us that when this steamer was first started, he and a large party, as a mode of patronizing the undertaking, took a trip of pleasure in her through some of the Bocas into the main ocean. Almost every one got sick outside, and as they returned through the Boca 76 TRINIDAD. Grande, there was no one on deck but the man at the helm and himself. When they were in the middle of the passage, a small privateer, such as commonly infested the gulf during the troubles in Colombia, was seen making all sail for the shore of Trinidad. Her course seemed unaccountable, but what was their surprize, when they observed that on nearing the coast the privateer never tacked, and finally that she ran herself directly on shore, her crew at the same time leaping out over the bows and sides of the vessel, and scam- pering off, as if they were mad, some up the mountains and others into the thickets. This was so strange a sight, that Sir Ralph Woodford ordered the helmsman to steer for the privateer, that he might discover the cause of it. When they came close, the vessel appeared deserted; Sir Ralph went on board of her, and after searching various parts without finding any one, he at length opened a little side cabin and saw a man lying on a mat evidently with some broken limb. The man made an effort to put himself in a posture of sup- plication ; he was pale as ashes, his teeth chat- tered and his hair stood on end. “ Misericordia ! misericordia! Ave Maria!” faltered forth the Colombian. Sir Ralph asked the man what was TRINIDAD. 77 the cause of the strange conduct of the crew ; “ Misericordia !” was the only reply. i Sabeis quien soy? # said the governor. “El...el...O Senor! Misericordia! Ave Maria !” answered the smuggler. It was a considerable time before the fellow could be brought back to his senses, when he gave this account of the matter ;.. .that they saw a vessel apparently following them, with only two persons on board, and steering, without a single sail, directly in the teeth of the wind, current and tide ; Against the breeze, against the tide She steadied with upright keel. That they knew no ship could move in such a course by human means ; that they heard a deep roaring noise and saw an unusual agitation of the water, which their fears magnified; finally that they concluded it to be a supernatural appearance, accordingly drove their own vessel ashore in an agony of terror and escaped as they could; that he himself was not able to move, and that, when he heard Sir Ralph’s footsteps, he verily and indeed believed that he was fallen into the hands of the Evil Spirit. * “ Do you know who I am.” 78 TRINIDAD. We arrived late at San Fernandez and had then to ride seven or eight miles into the interior to Mr. Mitchell’s residence in the district of Napa- rima. The commandant’s house, like most of those in the heart of the island, was of a different cha- racter from any that I had seen before. It was not so much an English planter’s mansion as the spacious shed of an Indian chief. Its appear- ance, both outside and within, was nearly that of a substantial barn, except indeed that the roof was thatched in a very neat manner with branches of the caratt palm, the pigeons perched on the cross beams, and the winds from half the points of the compass blew in through the open galleries. Our dinner, which was my third one on that day, was in excellent keeping. Mrs. M. an agreeable Scotch lady, had despatched her matador to the Bush, as the native forest is called, for delicacies, and he had been tolerably fortunate. Ah me ! how we revelled on His Majesty’s wild hogs, smacked our lips over an agouti, and chuckled over a tender lapp. A stately palmeto had been decapitated to afford us a dish of cabbage, a thing by the by which the veracious Dr. Pinckard implies of Barbados, where such atrocities are never dreamt of. True it is that Mrs. M. lamented TRINIDAD. 79 with many apologies that she had not been able b to give us a monkey or a guana, and the great drought made the best snakes shy and difficult to be caught. However we roughed it on porter and madeira, and were glad to retire to rest early. I slept on a sofa in the parlour. How often did I start up in the night at the rustling of the wind in the palm leaves, and see with momentary alarm the sparkles of fire which were ever and anon bursting forth from the roof! Sometimes one whole side of the room was distinctly illuminated by a congregation of the flies ; at others the single lamp just shot out its flame and then retired into gloom, as if the darkness had its pulsations of light. The dawn was ushered in by a serenade from my neighbours the monkeys in the wood, who set up with one consent the most inhuman yell that ever was heard in this world. It was something between distant thunder, loose iron bars in a cart in Fleet Street, bagpipes, and drunken men laughing. After breakfast we rode through the yet half- cultivated country in our way to the Indian Mis- sion at Savana Grande. Nothing can be more wretched than the appearance of the land in the first process of clearing; fire is the principal 80 TRINIDAD. agent, and the surface of the earth is obstructed with trunks and branches of trees black and ghastly with the conflagration. I am told that these trees are usually left to rot away, as the expense of drawing them off would be too heavy, besides that the soil is much enriched by the immense deposition of vegetable matter. But the still standing woods are magnificent. The most stinking feature in their vegetation is the parasite race of plants.. .their variety, magnitude and colors are astonishing. It is often difficult to distinguish the standard tree from the luxuriant weeds which interlace and enmesh its branches with their tendrils in an indissoluble union. Many of these bear the most gorgeous flowers upon their bosoms of unfading green ; the wild pine burns in the sun like a topaz rising out of a calix of emerald. From the topmost limbs of the giant fathers of the forest such as the silk-cotton tree, bois Le Seur,* and various kinds of friguera, you see the creeper, like a cord, hanging down 150 feet, another grows down parallel with the first, the wind twists them together into bell-ropes, * I do not pretend to spell this word correctly. I only caught it in conversation, and believe it is some man’s name. TRINIDAD. 81 as Ligon well puts it ; others are successively united in this way, till at length the creeper, now a stout sapling, fixes itself in the ground, takes root, and like a graceful pillar supports the mighty architrave above. Fresh creepers again form a tracery round these and around the parent tree, and swell by accretion to such an enormous size, that they put me in mind of the huge and end- less folds of the strangling serpents of the Laocoon. But nothing pleased me so much as the corn- bird’s nest. # This bird, in order to lay her eggs in safety and defeat those ingenious hidalgos the monkeys, weaves a kind of purse net, such as we see used in petty shops to contain balls of twine and other light articles. This she suspends by a twisted cord of creepers from the outermost limb of many of the great trees ; at the bottom of the purse, which is the broadest part, lies the nest, and there she swings away backwards and for- wards before the breeze in the prettiest manner imaginable. I believe she gets in at the bottom, but the extreme height prevented me from seeing the aperture. If a man were disposed to be fan- ciful, he would say that the Indians borrowed * The oriole or sylvia pensilis of Button, I believe. 82 TRINIDAD. tlieir chinchorro or hammock from the corn-bird’s nest, though the bird has the advantage a thou- sand times over in airiness and motion. I took some credit to myself, when looking at these nests, for the following quotation : Hush a bye ! corn-bird ; on the tree top When the wind blows thy cradle will rock ; If the bough breaks, thy cradle will fall, Then down will come cradle and corn-bird and all. Every one, who goes to Trinidad, should make a point of visiting the Indian missions of Arima and Savana Grande. They are wholly unlike any thing which I had ever seen before, and differ as much from the negro yard on the one hand as they do from an European-built town on the other. The village of Savana Grande consisted chiefly of two rows of houses in parallel lines with a spacious street or promenade between them, over which there was so little travelling that the green grass Avas growing luxuriantly upon it. Each house is insulated by an interval of ten or fifteen feet on either side ; they are large and lofty, and being beautifully constructed of spars of bamboo, and thatched with palm branches, they are always ventilated in the most agreeable TRINIDAD. S3 manner. A projection of the roof in front is sup- ported by posts, and forms a shady gallery, under which the Indians will sit for hours together in motionless silence. They seem to be the identical race of people whose forefathers Columbus dis- covered, and the Spaniards worked to death in Hispaniola. They are short in stature, (none that I saw exceeding five feet and six inches,) yellow in complexion, their eyes dark, their hair long, lank and glossy as a raven’s wing ; they have a remarkable space between the nostrils and the upper lip, and a breadth and massiveness between the shoulders that would do credit to the Farnese Hercules. Their hands and feet are small-boned and delicately shaped. Nothing seems to affect them like other men; neither joy nor sorrow, anger, or curiosity, take any hold of them. Both mind and body are drenched in the deepest apathy; the children lie quietly on their mothers’ bosoms; silence is in their dwellings and idlesse in all their ways. Our party was sufficient of itself to have attracted some attention, even if the Padre had not welcomed us with a furious salute . from his two tin-kettle bells. The Indians were all summoned forth, and the alcalde and the regidores stood in front with their wands of g2 84 TRINIDAD. office. These were nearly the only signs of life which they displayed ; they neither smiled or spoke or moved, but stood like mortals in a deep trance having their eyes open. The governor gave a piece of money to each of the children, which was received with scarcely the smallest indication of pleasure or gratitude by them or their parents.* They were much more completely clothed than the negros; the decency of the fe- male dress was conspicuous, and both the maiden’s and the mother’s bosom were modestly shrouded from the gaze of man. The bestial exposure of this sacred part of a woman’s form is the most disgusting thing in the manners of the West In- dian slaves. The planters might and ought to correct this. The amazing contrast between these Indians and the negros powerfully arrested my attention. Their complexions do not differ so much as their minds and dispositions. In the first, life stagnates ; in the last, it is tremulous with irritability. The negros cannot be silent; they talk in spite of themselves. Every passion acts upon them with * They hardly justify the first part of the remark of Ta- citus: Gaudent muneribus, sed nec data imputant, nec ac- ceptis obligantur. TRINIDAD. 85 strange intensity ; their anger is sudden and fu- rious, their mirth clamorous and excessive, their curiosity audacious, and their love the sheer de- mand for gratification of an ardent animal desire. Yet by their nature they are good-humored in the highest degree, and I know nothing more de- lightful than to be met by a group of negro girls, and be saluted with their kind “ How d’ye, massa? how d’ye, massa ?” their sparkling eyes and bunches of white teeth. It is said that even the slaves despise the Indians, and I think it very probable; they are decidedly inferior as intelligent beings. Indeed their history and existence form a deep subject for speculation. The flexibility of temper of the rest of mankind has been for the most part denied to them; they wither under transportation, they die under labor; they will never willingly or generally amalgamate with the races of Europe or Africa; if left to themselves with ample means of subsistence, they decrease in numbers every year; if compelled to any kind of improvement, they reluctantly acquiesce, and relapse with certainty the moment the external compulsion ceases. They shrink before the ap- proach of other nations as it were by instinct ; they are now not known in vast countries of 86 TRINIDAD. which they were once the only inhabitants; and it should almost seem that they have been des- tined by a mysterious Providence to people a third part of the globe, till in the appointed time the New World should be laid open to the Old, and the ceaseless and irresistible stream of popu- lation from the East should reach them and in- sensibly sweep them from off the face of the earth.* In this place were assembled by the governor’s * The number of Indians at Savana Grande, is: Men 43 Women 56 Boys 64 Girls 66 at Arima .... Men 60 Women 77 Boys 81 Girls 60 Total 507 The Trinidad Almanac for 1824 states the total amount of Indians in the island thus — Men 218 Women 234 Boys 222 Girls 219 Total 893 giving an excess of only 1 3 females over the males, which I believe is not according to the due proportion in countries where population is on the increase. TRINIDAD. 87 order a division of free negro settlers, a part of that body of slaves who were excited to insurrec- tion in some of the southern states of the North American Union by a British proclamation during the last war, and upon the ill-success of the ex- pedition against New Orleans, were received on board the squadron commanded by Sir Alexander Cochrane, and finally dispersed about the West Indies, but chiefly, I believe, established in Trini- dad. It was a deed mali exempli, and one which may be very easily played oflf hereafter against ourselves. This settlement comprizes about three hundred persons, and a very fine and jovial set of Yankees they are. It happened to rain hard at the time, and the padre of the mission was courteous enough to proffer the use of the chapel, into which accordingly we all entered with one consent. The Americans being after some time tolerably composed, their men on one side and their women and children on the other; the bishop standing before the altar, (the pyx being first duly removed,) the padre on the right hand, the chaplains on the left, myself in a corner, los senores regidores, the alcaldes and cacique, of the Indians bearing their wands of office, and las seiioras their wives with their patient babies, both 88 TRINIDAD. awaiting in deep resignation the explanation of this mystery, Sir Ralph Woodford, in Windsor uniform, took his Leghorn hat from off his head, vibrated his silver-studded Crowther with the grace of a Cicero, and, as the Spaniards say, con gentil donayre y continente, in hunc modum lo- cutus est. “ Silence there!... What for you make all dat dere noise? Me no tand dat, me can tell you. I' hear that there have been great disturbances amongst you, that you have been quarrelling and fighting, and that in one case there has been a loss of life. Now, me tell you all flat... me no allow dat sort of ting... me take away your cut- lashes, you savey dat? What for you fight? Because you nasty drunk with rum. You ought to be ashamed; you no longer now slave... King George have tak you from America, (you know dis much better place dan America,) he make you free. . .What den ? Me tell you all dis. . .(what for you no make quiet your piccaninny,* you great tall ting dei’e?. . .) me tell you dis. . .if you free, you no idle; you savey dat? You worky, but you worky for yourselve, and make grow noice yams * Piccaninny . . . quasi pequeno nine. TRINIDAD. S9 and plantains. ..den your wives all fat, and your piccaninny tall and smooth. You try to make your picnies better and more savey dan yourselve. You all stupid. . .what den! no your fault dat. . .you no help it. Now but you free, act for yourselve like buckra, and you love your picnies? yes. . .well den, you be glad to send dem to school, make dem read, write, savey counting, and able pray God Almighty in good words, when you no savey do so yourselve. “ Now de bishop is come to do all this; His Majesty King George have sent him from Eng- land to take care of you and all of us ; he is very much gentleman and he king, you savey, of all de parson. He savey every ting about you, he love you dearly, he come from England across the sea to see your face ... no you den very bad people, if you no obey him? Yes, you very bad, much wicked people if you don’t.” Finierat Woodford; his harangue, of which the above is an imperfect sketch, produced a great effect, and a murmur of applause arose from the assembled Yankees ; then the bishop addressed them, and as the governor had laid down the law civiliter, so he spoke to them spiritualiter, his manner was affectionate and impressive, his matter 90 TRINIDAD. simple and cogent, and he concluded by solemnly- blessing in the name of God the whole congrega- tion. The padre was very complimentary in An- dalusian, the negros elated in negro tongue, and the poor dear Indians quiet, staring, and as cogni- zant of the nature of what was going on as of the proceedings of the House of Commons. It was altogether a strange contrast of different natures and a theme for passing smiles and lasting thoughts. According to appointment at nine the next morning, Mr. Mitchell’s house was surrounded by a noisy multitude of men, women and children. Some came to be baptized, some to gossip, and some to be married. Many of the latter brought in their arms smiling arguments that the prayers of the church for fecundity would be superfluous. They all entered the house with perfect noncha- lance, roamed about in every part of it, and laughed and gabbled in as unrestrained a manner as they would have done in their own huts. Mrs. Mit- chell’s parlour, where I had slept, was constituted baptistery and altar. A white cloth was spread on the table, and a large glass vase, filled with pure water, was placed in the middle. After about a quarter of an hour’s arduous exertions on the part of the governor and commandant, these TRINIDAD. 91 light-hearted creatures were reduced to as low a degree of noise, as their natures would admit. The bishop then read the first part of the service, the whole party kneeling on the floor; but when the rite of aspersion came to be performed, there had like to have been a riot from the mo- thers jockeying for the honor of first baptism at the bishop’s hand. The two chaplains minis- tered till they streamed, and never did I hear such incessant squalling and screaming as arose from the regenerated piccaninnies. I think se- venty were baptized and registered, which was the most laborious part of all. We had some difficulty in collecting them for the conclusion of the service, but upon the whole the adult negros behaved exceedingly well, and displayed every appearance of unfeigned devotion. And then came Hymen ! Bless thine eyes, sweet divinity, how I love thee! Thou that earnest so easily to those poor votaries, when wilt thou come to me ? When wilt thou with a spark from thy golden torch set fire to political eco- nomy, and reduce to ashes the relation which sexagenarians have created between population and the means of subsistence ? About a dozen couples were agreed, but seven 92 TRINIDAD. or eight more were influenced by the sweet con- tagion, and struck up a marriage on the spot, as we see done at the ends of the old comedies. One woman, I remember, turned sulky and would not come to the scratch, hut Chesapeak her lover was net to be so done; “ Now you savey, Mol,” said he, “ me no tand your shim shams ; me come to be married, and me will be married ; you come beg me when I got another still Mol coquetted it ; Chesapeak went out, staid five minutes, and, as I am a Christian man, brought in a much prettier girl under his arm, and was married to her forthwith. I suppose Chesapeak had his reputation. I have known cases in England, where something of this sort of manly conduct would have had a very salutary effect. Now a grand difficulty arose from there being no rings ; those in the women’s ears being too large by half. Hereupon I took. ..not thy hair, my Eugenia! oh no. ..but a gold hoop which my good father bought for me from a wandering Jew ; this I proffered for the service of the sable bridegrooms, and I now wear it as a sort of charm as close as possible to Eugenia’s hair. It noosed thirteen couples. I gave away most of the brides ; one of them, a pretty French girl of the Romish faith, behaved TRINIDAD. 93 very ill; she giggled so much that the clergyman threatened to desist from the ceremony, and her mate, a quiet and devout Protestant, was very angry with her. When she was kneeling after the blessing, I heard her say to her husband,... “ dit-on, Jean ! hooka drole maniere de se ma- rier! he! he! he!” I'll warrant she leads her spouse a decent life of it. The Pitch Lake is in this neighbourhood, but I was unable to visit it. The roads are made in a great measure of the bitumen, and there is a hot calcined smell always issuing from it during the action of the sun which is very disagreeable. Re- peated experiments have been tried upon it, but it is found to be unfit, except at an enoi’mous cost of preparation, for the use of ship-builders. St. Joseph’s, the old capital of the island, is dis- tant about ten miles from Port of Spain, and a little removed from the banks of the river Caroni. It has a fine parish church, with a spire, barracks for a detachment of soldiers which is usually kept here, and a few good houses besides. Here it was that Sir Walter Raleigh committed certain gentlemanly piracies, when he was on his first voyage to discover El Dorado. The Spanish governor, it appears, did not know his right hand 94 TRINIDAD. from his left, a thing evidently as heinous as true, and which no doubt deserved to be severely pu- nished by every Englishman. The commanding officer here, Major Taylor, had the finest collec- tion of humming birds I ever saw. He had shot and stuffed them all himself with the assistance of a small negro gamekeeper. Arima is eight or nine miles farther on and is the principal mission of the Indians. They have one large square and a street or two, and the buildings are more substantial than at Savana Grande. The community is opulent in planta- tions of cacao, and is obliged to keep up a Casa Real, a prison, a large church, two schools and maintain their padre. Indians and free negros are admitted into these schools, but the master of the boys told me there were no slaves. They were all taught to read and write, in the last of which the Indians seemed to excel. Some of their copies were beautiful specimens of penman- ship. The room was divided into Troja, Car- tago and Roma, and the chief book of instruction was the old Caton Cliristiano, which with all its Romish garblings and foppery is a very good text book for the young savages. The horrible absurdity of the paintings in the church exceeded TRINIDAD. 95 any tiling in my experience of Romish licence. I am sure the bishop of Gevren can never ap- prove of such gross blasphemy, and it might be- come him to exert his authority in putting an end to its existence. The mummeries of this sect of Christians are very comical in Trinidad. During Passion-week the congregation regularly hiss Judas out of church, and on the Saturday before Easter day he is always hung by the neck from a very lofty gibbet, and assailed with stones and execrations by all the devout part of the mob of the town. Three English sailors acquired considerable po- pularity and the reputation of being good Ca- tholics by hurling some brickbats at the traitor with such success as to knock his head clean off from his wicked shoulders. When I was in this island, there was a good deal of vexatious confusion about the intermarriages of Protestants and Romanists. Benedict XIV. issued a bull in 1741, in which “ dolens imprimis quanl maxime Sanctitas sua, eos esse inter Ca- tholicos qui, insano amore turpiter dementati, ah hisce detestabilibus connubiis, quae sancta Mater Ecclesia perpetuo damnavit atque interdixit, ex animo non abhorrent, et prorsus sibi abstinendum TRINIDAD. 96 non ducunt, laudansque magnopere zelum illorum Antistitum, qui severioribus propositis, spiritua- libus poenis Catbolicos coercere student, ne sa- crilego hoc vinculo sese Haereticis conjungant, Episcopos omnes, Vicarios Apostolicos, Parochos, Missionaries, et alios quoscunque Dei et Ecclesiae fideles ministros in iis partibus degentes serio graviterque hortatur et monet, ut Catholicos utriusque sexus ab hujusmodi nuptiis in propvi- arum animarum perniciem ineundis, quantum possint, abstineant. # * # # “ At si forte” (there’s a peacemaker for your money after all those hard words !) “ at si forte,’ but if by chance, says the Pope, there should be a few graceless rogues who will fall in love with a beautiful Protestant, why then in such a case, much indeed against the poor gentleman’s inclination, but still under the pressure of circum- stances, His Holiness allows the marriage, and at the same time orders the sinner, as soon as the wedding is over, “ ut pro gravisshno scelere, quod admisit,* pcenitentiam agat, et veniam a Deo precetur.” So here we have the Pope first * I doubt if the Provost of Eton would forgive the Pope himself his bad Latin. TRINIDAD. 97 denouncing a thing as a mortal sin, then permit- ting the sin to be committed, then sanctioning the sin by what he calls a sacrament, and then decla- ring that this sacramentary rite was all the while a most flagitious crime, and enjoining penitence and petition to God for a pardon of the same ! Comfortable pastime for a honeymoon, by my faith ! However this license for committing an atrocious sin, gravissimum scelus, was only sold to the Dutch and some few others; and the difficulty has been to get it extended to our colonies where there is a Romish population. The good and sensible Bishop of Gerren has exerted himself very much in this behalf, and has at length succeeded in eli- citing from Leo. XII. a permit to Catholics to lead about a heretic wife with them. It was a pity to be obliged to excommunicate so many respectable young gentlemen who could not resist the assault of an English eye or the provocation of an English complexion. The poor Bishop could not make up his mind to it. Indeed he hardly hates here- tics with any decent malignity. There is a school in Port of Spain very liberally maintained, in which English, Spaniards, and French are taught indifferently upon the plan of H 98 TRINIDAD. tlie national instruction in England. The boys read and repeat English so well that it is difficult to detect the foreign accent ; they all use the authorized version of the New Testament, and say the church catechism. This school however was not in good order ; and the master, though an able man, had the reputation of being an irregular character and very neglectful of his duty. The jail is the best in the Antilles, and really is respectable. An honest tread-wheel has been wisely provided, and this grand invention has been found to produce the same salutary effects in Trinidad, which it has done wherever it has re- volved its portly body. Labatur in omne volubilis serum. It must accompany every step in the process of Emancipation. As far as I could see or hear, the execution of he Orders in Council had created no permanent disturbance, and the planters themselves were willing to confess that a great deal of causeless violence had been displayed upon the occasion. The market on Sunday morning is allowed till half-past nine or ten, at which time the place is cleared. This measure at first excited great op- position, but it is now not thought of, or only TRINIDAD. 99 remembered to be applauded. The institution of Banks for Petty Savings does not seem to be a wise plan of going to work in a society like this; the object should rather be to induce an appetite for comforts of dress and food which can only be purchased by the product of some labour. I would rather that a negro spent a dollar in buying a new hat than that he should lay it up in the bank. With the new hat he will purchase or acquire a perception of and craving for new com- forts and new conveniences ; he will be more and more loth to part with what has either gratified his vanity or contributed to his ease, and the pain of losing will be in just proportion to the pleasure of possessing the article. When this pain begins to be felt constantly, the great difficulty will be surmounted ; a stimulus to industry, a spur to improvement will have been introduced into the mind, and from that time forward the negro may be safely left to the impulsion of those external and internal agents which are commonly found to be effectual in the more civilized regions of the globe. The unequivocal existence of this stimulus in steady operation seems to me to be the true and unerring sign of the arrival of that sera when emancipation will be a blessing to the slave, the 2 u 100 TP.INIDAD. master and the community. If, before this point he attained, complete freedom be given to all the bondmen in the British colonies, it is as demon- strable morally as any proposition in Euclid is mathematically, first that the property in the soil must change hands; secondly that the commerce of the islands must languish or die altogether: and thirdly that the progress of civilization in the negros themselves must be indefinitely retarded, and the quality of their future condition incalcu- lably debased. A Bank for Savings is the peculiar product of an age and nation of high refinement, dense population and laborious subsistence. It is that aid which should alone be given to the indus- trious poor. It should follow at some distance the birth and active operation of those physical and moral agents by which man is impelled onwards in the road of general improvement; if it precedes, it may prevent their existence at all, or at best, it will infallibly protract the period of their birth. Now the negros in the West Indies are not an industrious poor; they are indolent by nature, as their brethren in Africa are at this moment in whatever part of that continent they may have been examined, and this natural indo- TRINIDAD. 101 lence is justified in their eyes and rendered inve- terate by a climate and a soil which not only in- dispose to labor, but almost make it unnecessary. You exhort a man to work, to till the fertile ground and to aspire after the possession of the obvious comforts of opulence; he answers that he does not want them, thanks God that the yams and plantains will grow abundantly for his eating, and that new rum is very cheap at the grog-shops; any thing beyond this cannot be worth the trouble to be undergone for it. What has the philanthropist to do? Not to set up a bank for his savings certainly, or at least not to rely upon it ; he has no savings; he may indeed very likely plunder his master or his neighbour, and you will not be improving him by giving him four per cent, upon such a deposit. Suppose he were to accumulate in this manner a sum large enough to purchase his freedom, which some have done, have you really benefited that man? Not in the least. All that you have done is this, that whereas the slave was compelled to labor and was thereby kept within certain bounds of sobriety, the freedman becomes the first week a vagabond, (he second a robber, and the third a grinder of corn by the sweat of his legs in the jail of Port of Spain. 102 TRINIDAD. The philanthropist has one object to effect and only one; he must civilize the negros. He can- not do this by force, for the sources of barbarism are in the mind, and the mind even of a negro is intangible by violence. He cannot take the Castle of Indolence by storm, for it will vanish before his face to re-appear behind his back. He must make his approaches in form and carry a charm in his hand ; he must hold steadily before him the mirror shield of knowledge and cause the brutified captives to see themselves therein. He cannot disenchant them, until he has first in- spired into their hearts a wish to be disenchanted, and they shall no sooner have formed that wish than the spell which hath bound them shall be broken for ever. Although the bank is nearly nugatory at pre- sent, I am not sorry upon consideration that it exists. There maybe some slaves so far advanced beyond their fellows as to become legitimate and beneficial depositors, and as freedom may be pur- chased in Trinidad, it may in such cases prove a valuable assistance to a regular and voluntary in- dustry. At all events the institution is ready to act whenever civilization shall render it advanta- geous. TRINIDAD. 103 Many of the other orders are so important that they cannot be discussed in a line, and I reserve them for a future opportunity. On Easter Monday, the 4th of April, after a delightful visit, we re-embarked in the Eden and bade farewell to our kind and hospitable host and the many friends whom we had found in Trinidad. “ Adios, Adios! Viva listed muchos anos!” — and then hoist the jib, brace up the main and fore yards, and haul down the pendant. GRENADA. List to a landsman, ye Captains, and let nothing tempt you to steer outwards through the Boca de Huevos, which you rejoice to call the Umbrella Passage. It had like to have been the shadow of death to me. The cut seems short and easy, the water smooth, you have a fresh breeze on the quarter, and you fancy it will carry the ship through. But I say unto you again, go not within the Boca de Huevos, for you will have no better luck than Columbus or myself. We got within a hundred yards of the line of the open sea, when the wind died. The passage is much longer than it appears from the Gulf, and very high precipices on either side will cause a dead calm at thirty points of the compass. As the wind fell we began to feel and to see the fierce cur- rent which set inwards, like a river, from the N.W. It came in diagonally, and the ship made stern way before it till the end of the spanker boom GRENADA. 105 was within thirty feet of the rock. There we lay for a season in dead water or nearly so, the sails hung motionless, every boat was lowered, and the men pulled for their lives against the backward impulse of the mighty vessel. We then cast anchor in fifty fathoms. After ten minutes pause a propitious flaw from the clefts of the precipice filled the top-gallants and royals, the cable was slipped, the -ship made a little head way, the boats aided and then cast off, and at length we got again into the middle of the stream. We left the best bower behind us at the bottom, and were not sorry to take our position once more within the Gulf. The rocks are steep as a wall, and entirely bare of vegetation for twenty yards above the level of the water, and if the wind had been with the current, we must have been infallibly wrecked. The next day we tried our luck through the Boca de Navios or Ship Passage, and got out into the sea, but before we were a quarter of a mile from the outlet, the wind fell again and the current began to drive us backwards as before. We therefore anchored once more in very deep water and did not sail till the evening, when a light breeze oft’ shore carried the ship fairly away. 10G GRENADA. Early the next clay we made Grenada, and came into the bay by twelve o’clock. If Trinidad is sublime, Grenada is lovely. I do not know why it should have put me in mind of Madeira, but it did so continually. The har- bour is one of the finest in the West Indies, and the hurricanes have not ranged so far to the south yet. The town covers a peninsula which projects into the bay ; Fort George stands on the point, the spired church on the isthmus; within is the Carenage full of ships and the wharfs of the merchants surrounding it; beyond it lie three or four beautiful creeks indenting the cane fields, an aqueduct at which the boats water, the man- groves growing out of the sea, the great Lagoon, and Point Salines shooting out a long and broken horn to the south west. Over all, and com- manding every thing in the vicinity, tower the Richmond Heights, which are crested with forti- fications of prodigious extent, from which the Bocas of Trinidad have been seen on a clear af- ternoon. The rest of the prospect is delightful; in every direction the eye wanders over richly cultivated valleys with streams of water running through them, orchards of shaddocks and oranges, houses with gardens, negro huts embowered in GRENADA. 107 plantain leaves, mountains and little hills roman- tically mixed and variegated with verdant coppices of shrubs and trees. The view from Government House, which is situated on a ridge at the end of Hospital Hill, is the Bay of Naples on one side, and a poet’s Arcadia on the other. The planters seem to have had some such notion themselves, though, Heaven knows, being chiefly Scotchmen, they are not overburthened with Greek; the vale below they call Tempe, the river, I suppose, Pe- neus, and a cloven eminence near to it Mount Parnassus, where sugars of the finest quality in the colony are produced. My stay in this island was short, but I was much delighted with all that I saw. Grenada is perhaps the most beautiful of the Antilles, mean- ing by this that her features are soft and noble without being great and awful. There is an Ita- lian look in the country which is very distinct from the usual character of theintertropical regions, and is peculiar to this colony. I rode a considerable way into the interior, and found every part green and broken and romantic. I had not time to reach the Grand Etang, which, I am told, is a great curiosity. But after all, I believe nothing in the island surpasses the prospect from Govern- 108 GRENADA. ment House or the Richmond Heights; it almost deserves that Westall should make a voyage from England to see it and paint it. St. George’s is a large town and picturesquely placed on a peninsula and the sides of a hill, but the consequence of this situation is that the streets are all so steep that the inhabitants consider it unsafe to use any sort of carriages on them. However they certainly make more of this than is necessary. I would engage to drive a tandem with perfect security from the landing place in the Carenage to Government House. The church had no roof when I was there, but the plan of a new building w'as already prepared which was to retain the old spire and its present excellent situa- tion. The clock here, given by Governor Mat- thews, is much celebrated. There are two other churches in the island, and two, or at least one more, are to be built as soon as it is practicable. Mr. Macmalion, the rector of St. George’s, is a good and interesting old man. In the insurrec- tion of 1795 he with many others was placed in a room previously to being summoned to execu- tion by the slaves. He saw all his companions taken out and shot one by one, but having had the luck of Ulysses to stand last, he determined GRENADA. 109 to make a bold push for his life. Macmahon is a tall and was then an uncommonly strong man, and the moment he walked out he leaped upon the slave general and clung round his neck so tightly that they could not force him away for a long time. The struggle produced a pause and an inquiry who he was, and when he was known to be the parson there was a common cry for saving his life, as he had always been a kind and cha- ritable man to every one connected with his cure. The worthy rector tells the story with a deserved satisfaction. Grenada is honorably distinguished amongst the British Antilles for its internal unanimity and its liberal treatment of the colored classes of the inhabitants. In this last point the planters of this island go beyond all their brethren ; the free colored man has every privilege of the white, although there never has been, and at present it is not to be wished that there should be, an in- stance of any of that rank sitting in the Assembly. In the actual state of their average improvement it is quite sufficient that they are esteemed free in every sense and are treated with justice and respect. I cannot speak of the management of the slaves from any very accurate examination, 110 GRENADA. but they seemed to be all as good humored, viva- cious and impudent as the rest of their fellows wherever I have seen them, and I am acquainted with many anecdotes which would lead me to believe that they are humanely governed and comfortably maintained. Indeed the prejudice of color is fainter in this colony than in almost any other, and I have no doubt that every mea- sure of regular civilization of the negros will be received and enforced by the legislature with the utmost cheerfulness. The act for investing the bishop with episcopal powers was passed by ac- clamation; an excellent and able clergyman, who was sent by the bishop, has been kindly received, a house built for him, and a church in a remote part of the island put into proper order for divine service. I know enough of Mr. Barker and his amiable wife to feel convinced that their residence alone will be a general benefit. There are still a few French proprietors and a Romish priest administers to them, but they gra- dually decrease and the face of society may be said to be English. I like the Grenadans much; they have a pic- ture of an island, they give turtle, porter and champagne in abundance and perfection, they GRENADA. Ill lend horses, and send pines and pomegranates on board your ship, in short they are right pleasant Christians; ...one thing only I find fault with, but that one thing is, I am sorry to say, a moun- tain. Gentlemen of Grenada and the Grenadines as far as Cariacou, where are your wives? where are your heirs? you will say the fashion is Per- sian and that they are within the veils ; you will say that there are just forty ladies in the island! it may be so, but show them, gentlemen, to the world and put to silence the moralities of English- men and Barbadians. Of Grenada alone can I say that I never saw a single lady all the while I was in it. ST. VINCENT S. We left Grenada after dinner on the evening of Friday the 8th of April, passed at some dis- tance to leeward of the long line of islands and islets called Grenadines, which are equally dis- tributed between the two governments of St. Vincent’s and Grenada, and after beating up for nearly twenty four hours in sight of land, came to anchor in Kingstown Bay at five in the morning of Sunday the 10th. The view of the town and surrounding country is thought by many to be the most beautiful thing in the Antilles ; it is indeed a delightful prospect, but, according to my taste, not within ken of the surpassing loveliness of the approach to Grenada. Trinidad is South American, but St. George’s, the Lagoon, and Point Salines are perfect Italy. Kingstown lies in a long and narrow line upon the edge of the water; on the eastern end is a substantial and somewhat handsome edifice con- ST. VINCENT S. 113 taining two spacious apartments, wherein the council and Assembly debate in the morning, and the ladies and gentlemen dance in the evening ; towards the western extremity is also a substantial and ugly building, something between a hospital and a bai’rack, which has the honor of being a church; hard by, yet opposite to it, is an airy and comfortable tabernacle for the methodists, and between both, but rather closer to the latter, stands or perhaps lies the humble mansion of the hero of Curazoa. In the back ground a grand amphitheatre of mountains embraces the town, and there was a verdancy and freshness in the general aspect of the country which certainly ex- ceeded any thing I saw in the West Indies. But this greenness was as the appearance of water in the wilderness. I always was, it is true, in a thaw within the Tropics, being naturally, as Heaven made me, of a melting mood in heart and body; but in St. Vincent’s, and therein more es- pecially in the aforesaid substantial and ugly chui’ch in St. Vincent’s, I verily streamed from my hair, eye-brows, nose, lips and chin con- tinuously; the big round drops coursed one ano- ther adown my innocent cheeks, and projected themselves upon my gloves or trowsers in graceful, i 114 st. vinctnt’s. I had almost said greaseful, precipitation. Tlje compages of my corporeal system seemed about to dissolve. Hamlet would not have found his mass too solid here. Botanicus verus, says Lin- naeus, desudabit in augendo amabilem scientiam ; ... Mercy on me! it might be a criterion of zeal in Sweden, but in Kingstown a very bad and slothful botanist nearly exsucled his life in walking half way to the Garden. I know nothing inter minora incommoda vita? so annoying to the feelings of a young man as to perspire invincibly under the eyes of an interesting girl. In the same pew with me and right op- posite was seated one of the prettiest girls in the West Indies. Though a creole, Clarissa had as dazzling a carmine on her cheeks as an English beauty; her features, though perhaps approach- ing to what the French call minces, were sharp and delicate; her forehead rather too low, and her chin a little too pointed ; but then her figure was rich in all the fascinations of tropical girlish- ness. As to the story about rouge, I do not believe one word of it. No woman would ven- ture such a thing in a crowded church in these countries; the best China leaf would not stand. This is amply proved by observation ; for with the exception of Clarissa and one or two more in st. Vincent’s. 115 Barbados, (but they bad both lived a long time in England,) I never saw a lady’s cheek which had one jot of rose. A Briton may M’ell say, Ld sont les lis, les roses sont ici. The best were certainly pure lily; the next like thin vellum or Bath outsides; the worst as the parchment of a deed on which the statute of limitations may have run. For all this, I like the creole ladies, especially the dear Barbadians ; they are all so kind and modest and unaffected ; though few of them are well-informed, yet they are simple-hearted and docile, and a sensible man might make any thing of them; they are eminently domestic and affectionate. But for the Aurora blush upon Eugenia’s cheek. . .indeed, fair Creoles, you have no idea of it ! An Englishman must visit foreign lands before he can conceive how prodigal nature has been in showering down beauty and heavenliness upon his own countrywomen. There are so many cox- combs, poets and others, who affect to talk about the cold beauties of the north, and of course the warm, perhaps the hot, beauties of the south,, that many foolish people, who have never crossed the Channel, really think they are paying a high i 2 116 st. Vincent’s. compliment when they say that such an one is quite French, or another a perfect Italian. As if a name made any difference in the thing ! We all remember that great Dutch Circassian, the Persian’s woman, and Her eyes’ blue languish anil her golden hair! Ah ! Master Collins ! People do cant so about the French. La belle Frangaise and so on. Why, is there no shame in man? Let the whole feminine gender of Gaul be divided into three classes, of which the last is incalculably smaller than the other two. The first is downright ugly; creatures of this class are more like Macbeth’s witches than women of other countries, brown as walnuts from constant and unbonnetted exposure to the sun, rough-fea- tured and hoarse-voiced. The second class is simply plain ; these are tanned to about new ma- hogany, have gross figures, no features, and a want of remarkableness all over them ; this is the most numerous division, and includes the bulk of the sex. The third sort are certainly pretty, taking that word in its most restricted sense. These have sparkling black or hazel eyes, olive or perhaps five per cent, of fair faces, neat shapes, st. Vincent’s. 117 inexpressive feet and legs, soft voices and agree- able manners. Of course there are the usual ex- ceptions, the raras nantes, but upon an average the scale of beauty in France does not ascend higher than this.* Now, reader, if you are an Englishman, (for I know nothing about the Scotch and Irish,) think over your own family, your sisters, or perhaps you have a cousin or so,-— — • — . I love a cousin; she is such an exquisite relation, just standing between me and the stranger to my name, drawing upon so many sources of love and tieing them all up with every cord of human affection almost my sister ere my wife ! And what has all this to do with St. Vincent’s? Nothing, absolutely nothing; but surely it is as well as a modern Thebaid or even a North Georgia Gazette. One thing disgusted me much ; I allude to the practice of working runaway, riotous or convict slaves in chains in the public street of Kingstown. I do not mean that any bodily pain was occasioned by the fetters; they were too light for that; but * I do not include the Genevese in this account. Some of them are beautiful indeed. J 18 st. Vincent’s. I have all reason to condemn a custom which must wantonly wound the feelings of every Eng- lishman at least, which must be utterly useless to the public, and unspeakably injurious to the moral system of the wretched individual. What hope could an Apostle conceive of that being, who has laughed in an open street with an iron bolt upon his leg? We chain free-born men in Eng- land, but we put them first within four walls. Once in the time of Edward VI. an act of Par- liament was passed to manacle vagabonds and force them to labor on the roads, but the thing would not do; it was repealed in the course of two years afterwards. Blackstone, or some lawyer, has a good remark upon it, but I forget the words. The legislature of St. ^ incent’s have much to their honbr built an excellent jail; — why, instead of lavishing T42,000 currency upon the very dismallest and most inconvenient church in Christendom, did they not deduct T500 for a tread-wheel? The chained slave does not per- form one hour’s work of a British rustic in the whole day; but will he, nill he, he would effect something more on the steps of the Brixton stair- case. It answers well, as I have said before, in ST. VINCENT' S. 119 Port of Spain ; let Mr. Shephard mention the thin" in Kingstown, he is a man of sense and an Etonian, and will agree with me upon the subject. The jail here is a very creditable building, and indeed this and the one in Trinidad are the only two that would be suffered to exist through a quarter sessions in England . All the others which I saw in the West Indies are disgraceful to their respective communities. The botanical garden is much fallen off from the state in which it once was, but there are still some very fine spe- cimens of the valuable exotics of the East, such as nutmegs, cinnamon and cloves. The great work that remains to be achieved for West Indian botany is the introduction of the true oriental mangosteen ; to which perhaps I should add a wish for the chirimoya of Peru. These two with the common pines might form a passable dessert. It is hardly necessary to remark that what is called mangosteen in some of the Antilles, is merely a variety of the mango. It is a great pity that any establishment of this sort should be allowed to decay ; for trees and fruits and flowers are huma- nizing things, soothing the passions, calling forth only the peaceful energies of the intellect, and at- 120 ST. VINCENT S. tacliing mankind to the soil on which they have both grown together: a virtue much wanted in the colonies of America. The church establishment is very defective, there being, I believe, only two churches in St. Vincent’s, and one built by a meritorious individual of the name of Nash in Cariacou.* There are some Papists also, with a South American Priest of no very good character to wait upon them. Hence the Methodists flourish like a palm branch, and live and sing away in complete clover. Here it was that Moses Rayner dwelt; from this place it was that he sailed in the schooner to strike terror and dismay into the stoutest heart in Bar- bados. The legislature was convoked by an ex- traordinary summons ; the Attorney General’s opinion taken; the magistrates interrogated; the King’s house garrisoned ; ' Sir Henry Warde’s dinner almost spoiled. Meantime Moses sits very quietly in his tight little schooner, et fruitur Diis Iratis ; he writes and receives despatches with the air of an ambassador ; takes time to consider like a * Cariacou however is in the government of Grenada. st. Vincent’s. 1^1 Chancellor; deliberates with his friends, and walks the deck like Hamlet; — To land, or not to land, that is the question. Whether ’tis Methodisticallest to suffer The groans and cane-tops of Barbadian blackguards ; Or to weigh anchor and set sail to leeward, And, by absconding, end them? — Moses a meek man, though a methodist, know- ing that discretion is the better part of valor, and tender of the peace of the ancient and loyal colony, at length paid for his passage down as he had paid for his passage up, ordered the captain to put the schooner before the wind and bade adieu to the unkindly shores of Carlisle Bay. The legislature have passed an act for building a church in Becquia and two more in St. Vincent’s, and I trust that this act will not be allowed to fall asleep as some others of the sort have done. Some reformations of importance are wanted in this island, and those planters, who are wise to their own interests, will see that they are executed. They must not legislate any more for England ; for England has a long glass now and can make out objects by night or by day. By themselves will they and all the planters stand, and by them- selves will they fall, if to fall be their lot. ST. LUCIA. All Monday night and Tuesday morning of the 12th of April, we were becalmed under the mighty shadow of the Soufriere, 'which is the north-western extremity of St. Vincent’s. It is a magnificent mountain with deep clefts and gullies in its sides, and the summit is only seen at inter- vals, between the rolling clouds. How still and motionless it seemed, and what a contrast it pre- sented to itself on the awful night of the first of May 1812, a night much to be remembered in the West Indies, and the tale whereof will remain as a nursery treasure to generations that are to be born hereafter! The wind freshened as soon as we had slowly escaped the lee of the land, and carried us gaily along till we made the mountains of St. Lucia. The first approach to this island from the south offers the most striking combination of various kinds of scenery that I have ever seen. Two ST. LUCIA. 123 rocks, which the Gods call P ilou s and men Sugar- loaves, rise perpendicularly out of the sea and shoot to a great height in parallel cones, which taper away towards the summit like the famous spires of Coventry. These rocks, which are feathered from the clouds to the waves with ever- green foliage, stand like pillars of Hercules on either side of the entrance into a small hut deep and beautiful bay. A pretty little village or plan- tation appears at the bottom of the cove ; the sandy beach stretches like a line of silver round the blue water, and the cane fields form a broad belt of vivid green in the back ground. Behind this the mountains, which run north and south throughout the island, rise in the most fantastic shapes, here cloven into steep-down chasms, there darting into arrowy points, and every where shrouded or swathed, as it were, in wood, which the hand of man will probably never lay low. The clouds, which within the tropics are infallibly attracted by any woody eminences, contribute greatly to the wildness of the scene; sometimes they are so dense as to bury the mountains in darkness ; at other times they float transparently like a silken veil ; frequently the flaws from the gulleys perfo- rate the vapours and make windows in the smoky 1 24 ST. LUCIA. mass, and then again the wind and the sun will cause the whole to be drawn upwards majestically like the curtain of a gorgeous theatre. But beautiful as these sierras look, it is woe to the man who ventures on foot to penetrate their recesses. Even on horseback it is sometimes peri- lous to traverse the forest by the alleys that have been opened: for there and in old and ill-kept rooms snakes and wood-slaves love to dwell, and the natives tell direful stories about the poison of the first and the tenacity of the second. However I never met with any person who had known an instance of the wood-slave fixing itself upon a human being, though every body seemed to believe the story. The animal is a broad and flat-headed lizard, and of a dull grey color. The negros have a particular aversion to them from a notion that contact with them will produce leprosy. It is said that three English sailors, having heard that the western Piton was inaccessible, determined on that account to climb to the top of it. Two of them were never seen again; the third reached the summit, planted an old Union Jack in the ground, and instantly fell in mortal convulsions by its side. There was no doubt that they perished by the bites of snakes. ST. LUCIA. 125 A steady breeze from S.S.E. wafted us along within a mile’s distance from the shore till we passed the point of the Vigie, when we made a short tack and cast anchor at the mouth of the Carenage about six in the evening. Nothing could be more delightful than this run. As we stood on the deck of the moving ship, the objects on the coast changed before us like the scenery in a diorama, and their variety and quick transition were particularly grateful to the eye, fatigued with the monotony of the ocean. The back ground continued woody and mountainous, as I have described it before, but every three or four miles we opened the most lovely little coves and bays I ever saw in my life. At the bottom of two of the largest of these were considerable villages with five or six large merchantmen lying at anchor, and the smallest of them were fringed with fields of green canes, and enlivened with the decent mansion of the proprietor, the cottages for the negros, and one or two droghers taking in their cargo from the plantation for some larger vessel at Castries or elsewhere. I was much amused too with a flotilla of fishing or passage boats, which, as we were going rapidly in a contrary di- rection, shot by us like lightning. These boats 126 ST. LUCIA. are very long, narrow and light, having two and even sometimes three masts upon which they carry so much sail that the men are obliged to sit on the weather bulwarks to keep them from oversetting. No regatta in England ever witnessed such des- perate sailing, and when it is recollected that, in the event of capsizing, swimming will not save a man from the sharks, there is sufficient danger to make the thing interesting to young ladies. By the by we caught one of these said sharks soon after we got from under the Soufriere. The moment he was seen under the stern, a hook with a peace of bacon on it was thrown out to him, and we anchored him directly. His struggles were really tremendous, and his jaw must have been tougher than leather not to have given way before the furious jerks and flings which he made to free himself. Two sucking fishes, which were cling- ing to his side, never loosed their hold during the tempest which the dying agonies of their master created. At length a strong running knot was tightened round his body, and he was drawn up to the mizen chains. Even here the hampered animal was terrible, and it was not without slow and watchful caution that a sailor came within reach of it, and with a long and sharp knife stabbed it in the neck. He then cut off the head and one ST. LUCIA. 127 of the fore-fins, and, slipping the knot, dropped the bloody and yet writhing mass to the bottom of the Atlantic. The men now looked out for some good luck, and lo ! the wind which had been light and baffling because three clergymen, or reckoning a bishop at two, four clergymen were on board, came round steady and fresh on the star- board quarter because they had killed a shark. We landed at the wharf at the bottom of the Carenage, and, mounting as many of Major Shaw’s horses as we wanted, set off upon our journey to Government House. He who has ridden to and from the Corral ought not to fear riding any where or in any manner, yet I own that I expected to break my bones that evening in ascending or de- scending the awsome causeway which leads from the town up to the mountain station of Colonel Blakewell’s residence. This perilous road lies in a zigzag of acute angles, connne ca — Zenith. Government House. Castries. Nadir. 128 ST. LUCIA. and, as it rains nine months out of the twelve in St. Lucia, there are deep bricked trenches or chan- nels traversing the path at each turn for the double purpose of carrying off the water and of checking a redundant population. But when I got to the top — oh never will that moment be forgotten by me ! I remember staring without breath or motion as if I had been really enchanted. I never saw heaven so close before. The sky did not seem that solid cieling with gold nails stuck in it which it does in England, but a soft transpa- rency of showery azure, far within which, but un- obscured by its intervention, the great Stars were swimming and breathing and looking down like gods of Assyria. Not only Venus and Sirius and the glorious Cross of our Faith in the south, and Charlemaine amongst the starris seaven low in the north, shone like segments of the Moon ; but hosts of other luminaries of lesser magnitude flung each its particular shaft of splendor on the tranquil and shadowy sea. As I gazed, the air burst into atoms of green fire before my face, and in an ST. LUCIA. 129 instant they were gone ; I turned round, and saw all the woods upon the mountains illuminated with ten thousands of flaming torches moving in every direction, now rising, now falling, vanishing here, re-appearing there, converging to a globe, and dispersing in spangles. No man can conceive from dry description alone the magical beauty of these glorious creatures ; so far from their effects having been exaggerated by travellers, I can say that I never read an account in prose or verse which in the least prepared me for the reality. There are two sorts, the small fly which flits in and out in the air, the body of which I have never examined ; and a kind of beetle, which keeps more to the woods, and is somewhat more stationary, like our glow-worm. This last has two broad eyes on the back of its head which, when the phosphores- cent energy is not exerted, are of a dull parch- ment hue, but, upon the animal’s being touched, shoot forth two streams of green light as intense as the purest gas. But the chief source of splen- dor is a cleft in the belly, through which the whole interior of the beetle appears like a red hot furnace. I put one of these natural lamps under a wine glass in my bedroom in Trinidad, and, in order to verify some accounts, which I have heard K 130 ST. LUCIA. doubted, I ascertained the hour on my watch by its light alone with the utmost facility.* We drank tea at the Pavilion, one of the best houses in the West Indies. It is situated on a terrace almost at the edge of the cliff, and the prospect from it by the light of an interlunar sky was most beautiful ; the long and deep bay, the broken peninsula of the Vigie, the sea beyond with the Pigeon Rock, the town glimmering with lights, and the dark woods and mountains behind. If the blood of those thrice gallant men which has been shed like water on the Vigie and Morne Fortune was not to be shed in vain, much must be done to render St. Lucia a valuable acquisition to England. At present it is a British colony in little more than the name. The religion is Romish, and the spirit of its ministers bigotted and intractable. The people are French in language, manners and feelings. No progress has been made in amalgamating the two nations ; nay, every attempt at it has been openly thwarted * In Port of Spain they tell a story of a lady appearing at a ball in a black silk gown with a splendid trimming of fireflies. I forget whether the poor tilings were strung through, like cockchafers, to keep them in spirits. ST. LUCIA. 131 by the Romish clergy. They have no schools themselves, and they forbid any of their flocks to attend one in company with Protestants. Those who can afford it send their children to Martinique, the United States, or France ; these return with French politics and French predilec- tions ; they submit sullenly to the English domi- nion, and look forward to a change. It is painful, yet it may be profitable, to con- template the different conditions of Trinidad and St. Lucia. We have conquered both from nations of another language and of another faith. No local legislatures stand in the w r ay of improve- ment ; each colony may be governed equally at our discretion. In Trinidad there is no religious animosity of any kind whatever ; the Romish clergy are enlightened and liberal ; the same school contains English, Spaniards, and French, those who believe in and those who laugh at Transubstantiation. The three languages are spoken almost interchangeably, although, as is most proper and necessary, the English is predo- minant and advancing. In Trinidad a spirit of loyalty to the British crown has commenced and will increase ; a permanency has been im- pressed on the society, and the aspect of the K 2 1 32 ST. LUCIA. colony, if I may so express myself, is towards England. The reverse of all this is the case at St. Lucia. The difference is not entirely owing to the Governors. It is true that Sir Ralph Woodford is a man of great abilities, and has dis- played for many years, in a critical situation, a largeness of conception, and a practical vigor of execution, which ought to insure for him the favor of the crown, as it certainly will procure for him the respect of his observant countrymen. Colonel Blakewell is also an excellent man, se- rious, firm and conciliating, and if good can be done in St. Lucia, it will be done under his admi- nistration of the government. Much is in agita- tion; a church is already commenced in Castries and a school opened. The Bishop has sent a clergyman to reside there, and I have no doubt, when these two fountains of effectual reformation come into regular action, that both the religion and the language of Englishmen will advance towards an ascendancy as they are actually doing in Trinidad. The chief thing that I would aim at, if I were governor, would be the encourage- ment of the knowledge of the English tongue; for no society will ever be one and entire in its affections so long as nine tenths of the population ST. LUCIA. 133 speak a different language from the remaining handful of their masters. The changes either in religion or language that may be wrought in adults are trifling and imperceptible ; the only effectual mode of operating on the mass of a society is by teaching the children. In the school in Port of Spain boys of various nations read the authorized version of the New Testament, and repeat the catechism of the Church of England, and none but a practised ear could have detected the ver- nacular tongue of the speaker. Let there be an adequate school in Castries, with a zealous and able master, and I am much mistaken if the French will not by degrees, even in spite of their priests, place their children in it rather than leave them uneducated, or be at the expense of sending them for instruction to any foreign country. BARBADOS. A gallant breeze at S. E. cai’ried us through the Martinique channel with unusual facility, for it is commonly a dead beat to windward. We passed at some five miles from the Diamond Rock, and had a full view of the southern shores of this beautiful colony of the French. After making a long stretch to the E. N. E., we put about for Barbados, and had to contend the whole way with baffling winds from the S. We returned by the leeward side of the island into Carlisle Bay on Friday, the 15th of April. The characteristic beauty of Barbados is its finished cultivation and the air of life and domestic comfort which the entire face of the country pre- sents. For this particular it is, without competi- tion, the most delightful island of the Antilles ; and though we had all been deeply impressed with the magnificence of natural scenery so con- spicuous in Trinidad, Grenada, St. Vincent's and BARBADOS. 135 St. Lucia, yet there was no one on board who did not confess a secret satisfaction at getting back once more to the palms and the white houses of the ancient colony. The old motto of neither Carib nor Creole, is not true, for a Barbadian is probably the most genuine Creole of the West Indies ; yet in spite of that, there are many pecu- liarities in this island which go a great way in justifying the appellation of Little England. People will differ in their estimates of the de- gree of comfort enjoyed by the adult slaves, but Mr. Buxton himself could not doubt the happi- ness of the children. In the changeable climate of Britain, where infants must be wrapped up in frocks and mantles and caps and shoes, we have no notion of the vigorous precocity of life which is so common in the West Indies; there the punchy little Indian Bacchus stands up like a man in twelvemonths, and, instead of the unmindful vacancy of our babies, stares at you with the good impudent assurance which Raffael puts into the eyes of his Child. They dance together in rings amidst their fathers and mothers who may be working in the farm court, and throw trash at each other, as Eton boys do chestnuts or snow- balls. One naked urchin ran full butt behind me, 13G BARBADOS. thrust, his curly pate through my legs, and looked up in my face with irresistible impertinence. I believe I should have licked the scoundrel if he had pushed me into the pond, which he was near doing. Jerryjorimbo, a particular ally of mine, must needs climb up my back in order to pat my cheeks, and as to not shaking hands with every soul of them all, it would have been such a piece of tyranny as would have destroyed my sleep. Accordingly there was a satisfactory communica- tion of sweat between me and some dozens of His Majesty’s subjects and Mr. Jordan’s slaves. The nursery is a capital sight. It is a large open room with the floor covered with wooden trays, and in each tray a naked niggerling. There they are, from the atom born to-day, up to eight or nine months of age, from the small black pudding up to a respectable sucking pig. Such screaming, mewling, and grinning ! The venerable nurse sits placidly in the middle, and administers pap to the young gentlemen when they seem to squall from hunger. They stuff children and turkies in the same way by placing the victim on its back in their lap, inserting a lump of the food in the mouth, and then seeing it well down with the thumb and fore finger. The negro women will BARBADOS. 137 do this to excess, and there is no convincing them of the evil consequences, though, it is notorious, that this inordinate repletion is a common cause of death amongst the young in the colonies. In Barbados the slaves have no provision grounds properly so called ; these form a part of the estate, and they labour upon them as on the rest of the plantation. But they have all gar- dens of their own which they may cultivate as they please, and a dressed meal is always provided for them in the middle of the day, which is exclu- sive of their daily allowance from the store of the master. That they have time to cultivate their patches of land is clear from the fact that they always are cultivated ; either yams, Indian corn, plantains, or even canes, are to be seen growing round every hut. The hut is a cottage thatched with palm-branches and divided into two rooms ; one is the chamber of the parents, the other the common hall, with a table, chairs, and a broad bench with back to it for the children to sleep on at night. Some huts are larger and smarter than this. Jack something or other, the driver on the Society’s estate, has two large four post beds, looking glasses and framed pictures. Jack is a good-natured fellow', offered me some wine, and hath begotten twelve children or more. 138 BARBADOS. I resided a month or five weeks in Barbados in great comfort, except that I caught a fever, and was laid up in ordinary for a fortnight thereupon, but bleeding, castor oil and spunging, put off the evil day, and I was well enough to go to Lady W arde’s last ball ; an instance of prudence which I do not recommend for general imitation. The Bishop was kind enough to take me with him on his visitation of the northern part of his diocese, and we set sail in the Eden again on Tuesday evening the 17th of May. MARTINIQUE. At noon of the 19th we made the Diamond Rock again, and sailed close under it about four in the afternoon as we were drinking our wine and eating pineapples. This memorable crag is shaped like a ninepin with the point a little broken at the summit. There is a good passage of a furlong in length between it and the shore, and anchorage within five yards of its sides. All the world knows, or ought to know, that surprizing feat of hoisting up a thirty-two pounder from the top-sail yard-arm of a man of war in the last war, and of mounting it on this perilous fortress ; and how Captain Morris drove the French mad by his indefatigable attentions to their trading craft. They swore by the gods of Martinique to carbo- nado the sacre Anglais with his popgun, but the bete held his own like a good fellow and true as he was, and the whole fleet fired at him as they might have done at the mound at Woolwich. In MO MARTINIQUE. fact it was impossible to storm the apex of a fir- cone with twenty bold men upon it, and so they turned the siege into a blockade, and proceeded to starve the sacre Anglais. Now the Captain, like the rest of his countrymen, could bear any thing better than short commons ; indeed, with corn beef and a glass of grog, I should like to know what he would not bear? He held out as long as the beef and the rum lived, no relief ap- peared, a man must eat, and certainly one gallant English sailor, not to say a dozen of them, is worth all the fortresses and rocks and diamonds in the world. So Captain Morris surrendered His Ma- jesty’s thirty-two pounder to a fifty gun frigate, and lived to drive the Danes more mad from An- holt than he had done the French from the Dia- mond. A hole is still visible where they used to sleep, and a stump of the flag-staff still stands to remind an Englishman of his duty, and the Gaul of his confusion. We passed slowly by the mouth of Fort Royal Harbour, as the sun was setting in gold and lilac, and the creeping wind just swelled the sky-sails and royals into a graceful curve. This seemed, and I believe is, one of the safest and most spacious harbours in the West Indies or the world. 1 saw MARTINIQUE. 141 the famous Pigeon Rock, La Ramire, which can- not be taken, except by Britons, and even John will have to sweat for it, I apprehend, in the next war. There tvas lying at anchor a line of battle ship carrying the admiral’s flag, two frigates, and five other smaller men of war, which with the Venus, a very fine fifty gun frigate, and a brig in the Bay of St. Pierre, constitute a force that would give the French for a time the undoubted mastery of the Windward Sea, however in- ferior they might be after a month’s notice at Jamaica. We stole along the coast quietly during the night and anchored before St. Pierre at six in the morning. The face of the country round the town is beautiful, smoothly rising in a green up- land of canes, intersected with winding roads and dotted with white houses, whilst a deep ravine on one side, and precipitous mountains on the other, inclose the picture as in a frame. We landed after breakfast and went to Betsy Parker’s, one of that numerous tribe of good-natured, laughing, peculiar hostesses, whom West Indians rejoice in; women who are as cunning and as obsequious to whites as if they were negros, and as proud and despotic to negros as if they were whites. Not 142 MARTINIQUE. that I mean to abuse their mulatto or mestize ladyships; far be that from me! — Hannah Lewis (every one knows Hannah Lewis) is very fat, and, I believe, tolerably respectable. A young gentle- man may, as I know, sleep in her house salvo pudore, and she deserves commendation for the same. I shall not criticize the morals of slatternly Betsy or tight bosky Charlotte ; — things will be — and the latitude and the sun — and the sailors are so forward and impudent, — and besides Betsy and Charlotte were born and bred under the ancien regime, Consule Planco ; — mais on va changer tout cela, are we not Mr. ? Sabina Braids is as round as a hogshead of sugar, and sits all day by her kitchen door, as Milton said of her, like a lady in the centre of her fat. Her house is hot. Fanny Collier is a good soul and fat enough, but she has lost custom lately to Hannah. Quae cum ita sint, I recommend Miss Lewis’s Hotel to the stranger in Barbados, but Betsy and Charlotte, you know, are no concern of mine. After having paid my respects to good Baron, or Comte Donzelot, (these titles are equally trum- pery like Esquire or Gentleman in Ireland,) a polite old soldier, who is as kind to the English MARTINIQUE. 143 as Jacob of Guadaloupe is uncivil and Gaulish, I rambled about the town to buy gloves, coral, and other vanities. It is a pretty place, certainly, with high houses, the streets generally in right angles, and -water running on either side of them. Before M. Donzelot’s house is a terrace, shaded with an avenue of trees, and pleasantly looking on the sea. The houses have more of an European air than in our English colonies, and I must notice with praise the existence of four book- seller’s shops, as large and well furnished as any second rate ones in Pai'is. The sight of books to sell in the West Indies is like water in the de- sert, for books are not yet included in plantation stores for our islands. The cause is this. The French colonists, whether Creoles or Europeans, consider the West Indies as their country ; they cast no wistful looks towards France ; they have not even a pacquet of their own ; they marry, educate, and build in and for the West Indies and the West Indies alone. In our colonies it is quite different ; except a few regular Creoles, to whom gratis rum and gratis colored mothers for their children have become quite indispensable, every one regards the colony as a temporary lodging place, where they must sojourn in sugar and molasses 144 MARTINIQUE. till their mortgages will let them live elsewhere. They call England their home, though many of them have never been there ; they talk of writing home and going home, and pique themselves more on knowing the probable result of a con- tested election in England, than on mending their roads, establishing a police, or purifying a prison. The French colonist deliberately expatriates him- self ; the Englishman never. If our colonies were to throw themselves into the hands of the North Americans, as their enemies say that some of them wish to do, the planters would make their little triennial trips to New York as they now do to London. The consequence of this feeling is that every one, that can do so, maintains some corre- spondence with England, and when any article is wanted, he sends to England for it. Hence, ex- cept in the case of chemical drugs, there is an in- considerable market for an imported store of mis- cellaneous goods, much less for an assortment of articles of the same kind. A different feeling in Martinique produces an opposite effect ; in that island very little individual correspondence exists with France, and consequently there is that effec- tual demand for books, wines, jewellery, haber- dashery, &c. in the colony itself, which enables MARTINIQUE. 14.5 labor to be divided almost as far as in the mother- country. In St. Pierre there are many shops which contain nothing but bonnets, ribbons and silks, othei’s nothing but trinkets and toys, others hats only, and so on, and there are rich tradesmen in St. Pierre on this account. Bridge Town would rapidly become a wealthy place, if another system were adopted : for not only would the public convenience be much promoted by a steady, safe and abundant importation, and se- parate preservation of each article in common re- quest, but the demand for those articles would be one hundred fold greater in Bridge Town itself than it now is on the same account in London, Liverpool, or Bristol, when impeded and divided and frittered away by a system of parcel-sending across the Atlantic. Supply will, under particu- lar circumstances, create demand. If a post were established in Barbados, or a steam-boat started between the islands, a thousand letters would be written where there are one hundred now, and a hundred persons would interchange visits where ten hardly do at present. I want a book and cannot borrow it ; I would purchase it instantly from a bookseller in my neighbourhood, but I may not think it worth my while to send far it over the L MG MARTINIQUE. ocean, when, with every risk, I must wait at the least three months for it. The moral conse- quences of this system are even more to be lamented than the economical, but I will say more about that at some other time. There are two very good churches in St. Pierre, and both of them furnished with that mitigated idolatry which so advantageously distinguishes the French segment of the Papistical Heresy. T have great hopes that the Bishop of Gerren will succeed in getting rid of some of the absurdities in the Romish worship in Trinidad. I know he disapproves them, and the example of the sober splendor of the Protestant Church in their neigh- bourhood will much facilitate his endeavours. It v'as too hot to walk to the theatre or the botanical garden, but I am told that they are both very respectable. The colored women here, as in St. Lucia and Trinidad, are a much finer race that their fellows in the old English islands. The French and Spanish blood seems to unite more kindly and perfectly with the negro than does our British stuff. We eat too much beef and absorb too much porter for a thorough amalgamation with the tropical lymph in the veins of a black ; hence MARTINIQUE. 147 our mulatto females have more of the look, of very dirty white women than that rich oriental olive which distinguishes the haughty offspring of the half blood of French or Spaniards. I think for gait, gesture, shape and air, the finest women in the world may be seen on a Sunday in Port of Spain. The rich and gay costume of these nations sets off the dark countenances of their mulattos infinitely better than the plain dress of the English. A crimson, green, or saffron shawl cocked ( NEVIS. supposed that they had escaped to a French colony. The fact was this. These two men used to persuade a slave, whom they supposed to pos- sess some stock in money or otherwise, to run away with them from his master, assuring him that they would take him off the island to a ship, where he might assert his freedom. When they had gotten their victim some way from land in a boat, they used to throw him over- hoard. It is frightful to think how many poor creatures they hurled in an instant from life in this manner; at length one man, whom they had disposed of in this way, was by some act of Providence saved from drowning, and by his means in the end the murderers were apprehended. It seems, however, that there is no law to punish them for the felonies committed on the sea, and the evidence was imperfect ; and I understood that after being kept ad libitum Nevisiensium in the custody of our Lord the King in his aforesaid jail, these villains must be let loose again. It is said by speculatists, that perpetual imprisonment is a severer punishment than loss of life: if so, it may be a reasonable question, whether one year's putrefying in the prison of Charlestown be not equivalent to captivity for life in any of the Bride- wells of the great Grand Duke. NF.V1S. 207 The mean temperature of Nevis and Mont- serrat is certainly lower than in any other of the Antilles. If a man would bring his resources with him, especially a wife, he might live in a delightful retirement in many of the sweet hill recesses of either of these islands. I should prefer Madeira indeed for a residence on account of its vicinity to England, and also because I have partly engaged to marry a lady there when we are both come to years of discretion ; but I should often run down the trades, and spend the winter within the tropics. Not, however, that I would prejudice the twice venerable Temples twain by any outlandish comparisons ; no ! Fortunati nimium, sua si bona norint Causidici! and yet the law is a bore to a man of poetical imagination, which is odd enough, considering how it dealeth in the most novel and surprizing fictions in the world. Mathematics are a bore of course, because Fancy starves at the surfeit of Reason ; but why she should starve in law, where Heaven truly knows that Reason, poor soul, is often fain to look big upon a mighty scurvy dinner, is past my comprehension. But, no doubt, I have much to learn, and so we will say no more about 208 NEVIS. the matter. For it is wisely remarked by the profound Lazarillo, “ that to understand to perfec- tion the meanest art or science requires the greatest capacity and skill. If you bid a shoemaker, who has been thirty years in the trade, make a pair of shoes with broad toes, high in the instep and tight about the heels, he must pare your feet be- fore he fits you; or ask a philosopher why flies’ dung is black upon a white place and white upon a black one, he will blush you like a maiden on her wedding night, and answer nothing to the purpose !” And I defy the Royal Society to give a decent explanation of that mystery at the present day. ST. CHRISTOPHERS. We set sail from Nevis at three p. m. of the 2Sth, and ran down to our anchoring place before Basseterre at eleven knots under a heavy squall. We did not land till the next morning, and I spent the hour before sunset in looking from the ship upon the beautiful island before us. The vale of Basseterre in softness, richness and perfection of cultivation surpasses any thing 1 have ever seen in my life. Green velvet is an inadequate image of the exquisite verdancy of the cane fields which lie along this lovely valley and cover the smooth acclivities of Monkey Hill. This hill is the south- ern termination of a range of great mountains which increase in height towards the north, and thicken together in enormous masses in the centre of the island. The apex of this rude pyramid is the awful crag of Mount Misery, which shoots slantingly forwards over the mouth of a volcanic chasm like a huge peninsula in the air. It is hare p 210 st. Christopher’s. and black and generally visible, whilst the under parts of the mountain are enveloped in clouds, ddie height is more than 3,700 feet, and is the most tremendous precipice I ever beheld. But the ruggedness of this central cluster only renders the contrast of the cultivated lands below more striking, and the entire prospect is so charming, that I could not help agreeing with the captain’s clerk who said he wondered that Colon, who was so delighted with this island as to give to it his own name, should not have made a full stop upon its shores. I do not uphold the pun, but upon the whole it was well enough for a hot climate and a captain’s clerk. Basseterre is a large town, with many good houses in it, and one spacious square, which, with some labor and taste expended upon it, might be made a very fine thing. Trees -should be planted regularly on every side, an esplanade railed off, and a handsome stone fountain built in the centre. It would be worthy of Colonel Maxwell to look to this, and to exert his influence in effecting an im- provement not less important for its utility than its beauty. It is quite extraordinary that the West Indians do not pay more attention to their comforts. The women, and the men too for the st. Christopher’s. 211 most part, never stir out while the sun shines, and thus become much more enervated than the heat of the climate would necessarily make them. Why is there not a sun-proof avenue in every town, where people might breathe fresh air and walk in the shade? Such a place of common resort would infinitely enliven the dulness of their society, invigorate their spirits, and adorn their towns. Vegetation is so very rapid within the tropics that a noble arcade of trees may be raised in a few years; an alley of the graceful bamboo might be created in one year, which might serve for a temporary awning till the larger trees were grown. The French manage all these things much better; they come to live in their islands, and exert all their ingenuity and knackery in making them comfortable homes. In Basseterre in Guadaloupe there is such a walk, and they have a small one in St. Pierre. In Port of Spain they have their Terreiro, which is the original or copy of the one in Funchal. I think I have heard that the Madeirans are indebted for that agreeable promenade to the taste and generosity of Sir Ralph Woodford. The town church is very irregularly built, and cannot contain one third of the inhabitants. True p 2 st. Christopher’s. /V 1 /V it is that the Methodists have kindly stepped in and offered their assistance, and, in order to de- monstrate their affection to the church, have erected their conventicle so close to it, that the voice of the clergyman is often drowned in the hearty chorus which proceeds from the open doors and windows of the great house over the way. This is something inconvenient, and I would humbly suggest that it might be avoided, or turned to a good account by a previous agreement be- tween the two parties to sing in concert; and it might be stipulated, that in consideration of the acknowledged precedence of the establishment, and also of the hot weather, the Methodists should only sing six several times to be returned on the other side by a like number of verses discharged at the same time in the same order. The effect of this harmonious compact would be very great, and might possibly be the means of softening the asperities and levelling the angles of sectarian melody. However it is not meant hereby to in- terfere with the notturnos, a species of music which the good people might be left to execute in their own peculiar way. The present rector of Basseterre, Mr. Davis, a native of the island, is one of the most powerful ST. CHRISTOPHER S. 213 preachers in the West Indies. If the fervent boldness of this excellent minister were more common amongst the colonial clergy, a greater reformation of the public mind would be effected than it will be easy to bring about by other means, lie is but newly instituted to this living, and the Bishop has appointed him one of his chaplains. I anticipate with reason the most beneficial con- sequences from his zealous ministry, his enlight- ened superintendance, and his very general influ- ence. At yap Tolovtoi ctka jxoi cntg^pctfytoj'ec e'iev — T&> k'E 7"«)£ l/flVCTElE ~u\ic — Xeptrly vj to T/awv utt ifxev ya.p. He might have settled all the schools in Athens or Basseterre either by a kick of his foot. I believe I have reason to say that there is no colony, with perhaps the exception of Grenada, where the free-colored people are treated with so much justice as in St. Kitt's. There are instances here of respectable white and colored persons intermarrying, which is a conquest over the last and most natural of all prejudices. The only newspaper in the island is conducted by a colored man, and what is more, as well conducted as any other in the West Indies. Their oaths as witnesses they have long possessed. I believe, but I am not certain, that they vote indiscrimi- nately with the whites in the election of members ST. CHRISTOPHER S. 219 for the General Assembly. I received the Sacra- ment myself after a black woman, and the odious custom of bui'ying them and the slaves in a de- tached piece of ground is not common, and where it did exist a little while ago I believe it has been since abolished at the earnest instances of the worthy Bishop. The Moravians are numerous and have many establishments in the island. They labor in still- ness, as they say of themselves, and are, I really believe, a good and innoxious class of people; at the same time the United Brethren near St. Mary Cayonne ought to look more sharply after the manners of their females. There were ten or a dozen mulatto women entirely undressed and wash- ing their clothes in a brook of water not twenty yards from the high road in this parish. Whether from innocence or impudence I cannot say, but certainly they paid no more attention to our party than if we had been so many posts. However this is a solitary instance in my experience of the West Indies. The same practice of paying the clergymen in sugar has hitherto prevailed here as in Nevis, but I hope it is now or will shortly be abandoned for a more decent and effectual stipend. The 220 st. Christopher’s. sincere and active minister of the Gospel in the West Indies is a most meritorious man; he is the living source of intelligence and good order to every class of people in his neighbourhood, and to him, animated and strengthened, as he now is, by the exhortations, example and protection of the Bishop of the diocese, do I principally look for a substantial advancement in the morals, knowledge, and relative behaviour of white and colored, of bond and free. The planter is as much interested in the abilities and virtues of the minister of his parish as his own slaves can possibly be ; and it does really become him now to give up that petty tyranny, which has been hitherto exercised over the colonial clergymen, and to rescue them from that dependence on vestries, churchwardens and others, which is destructive of the utility of one party and degrading to the characters of both. The money that is spent in the liberal maintenance of a competent number of well-educated ministers on each island is money laid out to great advan- tage ; the security is good, and the returns will be a hundredfold. The first night of being in St. Kitt’s I lodged at a place called the Camp, and slept for half an hour in a bed without a curtain. In this space st. Christopher’s. 221 of time I was bitten almost into a fever by mosquitos of prodigious size and famished fero* city. The air was impregnated with these in* fernal animals, and a white servant, who slept on the stairs outside my room, awoke in the morning with both his eyes almost sewed up. Colonel Maxwell was merciful enough to give me a bed in his house for the rest of my stay, but I did not recover from the effects of this unparalleled attack of Beelzebub for a week. There is a spot on the side of a hill, the name of which I forget, in returning from St. Mary Cayonne, from which the vale of Basseterre may be viewed with the greatest advantage. I think there is no place on earth which can surpass the richness and cultivated beauty of this lovely scene. Nothing can be better disposed for completing the effect than the plantations are ; the tall and moving windmills, the houses of the proprietors, the works and palm-thatched cottages of the negros embosomed in plantains, present the ap- pearance, as indeed they are the substance, of so many country villages in England. On one side is Basseterre with the ships, on the other the ocean to windward, the mountains behind, in front the broken and peninsular termination of the 222 st. Christopher’s. island to the south, the salt lakes gleaming be- tween the openings of the rocks, and Nevis tower- ing majestically over all. I agree with Don Christoval; this island does deserve to bear the name of as great a man as ever the old world had reason to he proud of. If he considered it so beautiful ere the hand of human industry had levelled the thickets and cast seed into the soil, what would the Admiral say of his namesake now, when with all its natural charms undiminished, it is breathing, as I verily believe, with a contented and even happy popula- tion, and smiling throughout its valleys with the green harvests of the torrid zone? That there are divers particulars which an European philan- thropist would wish to see reformed or removed altogether, is certainly true ; but it is also true that a majority of the planters are gentlemen of understanding and humanity, and prove by their acts, private and public, and their conversation, that they are sincerely willing to promote the true welfare of every class in their community by all the means within their power. The governor, I know, and the legislature, I think, are both actuated by principles of real liberality towards the colored part of the population ; an act has st. Christopher’s. 223 been promptly and unanimously passed to invest the Bishop with full powers, and I am convinced that there is no amendment, no change, no prac- tical measure of any sort which could be suggested by him, which would not be carried into imme- diate effect to the utmost of their political or private power. I exceedingly regret that I had not time to visit a very remarkable level in the midst of the moun- tains, which appears to be similar in its character to the plains between the Cordilleras of upper Peru. Most of the common vegetables of Eu- rope will grow there, and the face of the country, I am told, is totally different from what it is in the lowland valleys. Under this government are comprised Nevis, Anguilla and the British Virgin Islafids. The first is naturally attached to St. Christopher’s, but the two latter are at a very inconvenient dis- tance from it and from each other. After Trini- dad, I should prefer this government to any other in the Antilles ; but a man ought to have a good independent fortune to live comfortably in these places. I would no more submit to be kept on board wages by any of their Assemblies than I would to stand court candidate for Westminster. 224 st. Christopher’s. In Tobago they have the unexampled effrontery to deduct so much per diem from their governor’s salary for his occasional absence from the island on military duty : for which no doubt, among other causes, they are pre-eminently blessed with yellow fevers and dry belly-aches. Tobago is a fine island ; but really the planters ought to be- have with more liberality ; and let them remember this... the worse they pay, the worse they will have. . .and there is an end of the matter. ANGUILLA, On Wednesday afternoon we re-embarked and steered for Anguilla. It was the glorious first of June, and we all drank to the memory of Lord Howe, as in naval duty bound. We passed between St. Eustatius and Saba, both of them Dutch islands. They rise out of the sea in ma- jestic cones, but, like Nevis, fall away on their north sides into a broken level. We were within a mile of the town in St. Eustatius, which seemed large and divided into an upper and lower range of houses;.. .few ships were within the bay which is a commodious one, and the colony is said never to have recovered from the effects of the cap- ture by Lord Rodney in 1781. I am afraid that the scandalous manner in which this island was lost a short time afterwards to a handfull of French soldiers was only a just punishment for the un- worthy severities before exercised by the captors. Plunder generally burns the fingers of those who Q 22G ANGUILLA. are concerned in it. We sailed the whole length of St. Bartholomew’s or St. Bart’s, as it is com- monly called, and just looked into the harbour of Gustavia, which is difficult of access, but other- wise a very fine one. This belongs to the Swedes and is, I believe, the only colony they possess. It is a long uneven island without that central rising which is almost universal in the other islands, and which seems to indicate volcanic action. Barbados indeed is an exception. After St. Bartholomew’s, we coasted along St. Martin’s, which is divided between the Dutch and the French, and on the afternoon of the 2d of June we came abreast of the low and level shores of Anguilla. Shorten sail, sound starboard and larboard, and be very careful in going into the road of this island. The Dutch chart is imperfect. We anchored a little way from a sand bank not five feet under water, where the chart gave five fa- thoms. You might run upon Sandy island itself by night without seeing it three minutes before. I must say it seems to me that it would be more creditable to the greatest maritime power on earth to ascertain something certain of the navigation of its own Caribbean sea by a scientific survey ANGUILLA. 227 than to reprint the old Spanish maps, and when they fail, to send its officers to pick up informa- tion, as they may, from an unintelligible chart of Samuel Fahlberg. The French manage these things better, much better.* Anguilla presents a very singular appearance for a West Indian island. A little wall of cliff of some forty feet in height generally rises from the beach, and when you have mounted this, the whole country lies before you gently sloping in- wards in a concave form, and sliding away, as it were, to the south where the land is only just above the level of the sea. The Flat island and St. Martin’s terminate the view in this direction. Seven tenths of the country are entirely unculti- vated ; in some parts a few coppices, but more commonly a pretty species of myrtle called by the negros maiden berry, seem to cover the whole soil ; the roads are level grassy tracks over which it is most delightful to ride, and the houses and huts * In one of the charts of the Gulf of Paria you see “ breakers’’ here, “ breakers” there, “ breakers” everywhere, the water being always as smooth as a mill pond. Their history is this. In the Spanish chart the soundings are marked by bra$as, fathoms; hence our aforesaid “ breakers,” for which at least the translator’s head ought to have been broken. Q 2 ANGUILLA. 228 of the inhabitants are scattered about in so pic- turesque a manner that I was put in mind of many similar scenes in Kent and Devonshire. Indeed there were scarcely any of the usual features of West Indian scenery visible ; neither of those prominent ones, the lively windmill or the columnar palm, was to be seen, and there was a rusticity, a pastoral character on the face of the land, its roads and its vegetation, which is the exact anti- pode of large plantations of sugar. I believe I did see one dwarf cocoanut tree, but it looked miserable and unhappy, and was evidently out of its element. I had great fun with a parcel of laughing, lazy, good for nothing women who were assembled in the evening on a grassy space where four tracks met, for the purposes of talking at all events as much as possible, and then of drawing water at the public well. This well had no wheel attached to it for facilitating the drawing up of the water ; the women let down a bucket, then began to laugh, then dragged away at their bucket by main force, then showed their teeth again, then dragged away again, and after five or six alternations of laughing and quarrelling, dragging and screaming, they secured about one bucket full of water; the ANGUILLA. 229 rest of course being spilt by the vessel striking against the sides of the well. Their ropes too were quickly frayed by the friction against the edge, and, I should think, could never last more than a fortnight in constant use. We offered to send a carpenter and some men from the ship to construct a windlass for them, if any timber could be found, for all which about three hundred teeth grinned upon us very graciously. However our benevolent intention had no effect, for although, upon application to the lieutenant governor, his Honor was pleased to promise sufficient wood for the purpose, yet, upon the most diligent search being made throughout the vicinage, the returning officer certified that there was no such timber to be found ; and so the Anguillan damsels must be fain to draw their water as aforetime, unless and until His Majesty, in conformity with his other wholesome provisions for the reformation of the interior economy of this unconquered and, as the Honorable Benjamin Gumbs added, unconquer- able colony, shall order the collector of his customs at Old Road to import one tree, pitch pine or other as shall seem expedient, to be devoted to the single object of constituting a wheel or wind- lass for the said well, and for no other use or 230 ANGUILLA. purpose whatsoever. It may he as well to men- tion too that the colonial flag has been long since worn out; the staff remains before the govern- ment house, but Union, Standard or St. George is there none. To be sure, as the Honorable Benjamin Gumbs remarked, it matters little; “ for no enemy, sir, will ever penetrate into this country to see whether we have a flag or not:” which is probably true. The lieutenant governor received us with marked distinction on the steps of his house. He is an old man venerable for his white hairs, sore eyes and lack of teeth ; affluent in the un- doubted possession of two coats and one dimity waistcoat with regimental buttons attached to them. His hospitality was as sincere as his enter- tainment was spare ; wine, poor soul! he had none, and rum we could not drink, but there was water, and as much as we liked of it from the aforesaid well. But the frost of age melted away when the glorious deeds of Anguilla were mentioned ; how the old warrior reared himself up on his chair! how he girded his loins and took up his parable ! “ I told the men, I’ll tell ye what, I know nothing about marching and countermarching, but my ANGUILLA. 231 advice to you is to wait till the enemy comes close, and then fire and load and fire again like the devil.” Whereat we all looked grave as was proper ; but his Honor was sublimed beyond all consideration of infernal similes. Victor Hugues himself would have trembled to beard such a soldier in his den, if he had known of his ex- istence. That murderous ruffian never did any thing more wantonly atrocious than ordering the attack of Anguilla in 1796. It could serve no warlike or colonial purpose, especially as, it is said, his instructions to the officers were to exterminate the inhabitants. The French burnt the little town, pulled down the church, stabbed men in their houses, and stripped women of their clothes. In such a case it is a real satisfaction to know that punishment followed hard upon the crime. Every man in the expedition was afterwards killed or taken prisoner by the Lapwing, and the two French ships were destroyed. The council presented an address to the bishop, which was very creditable to the good taste anti feeling of the principal people of this unjustly forgotten colony. Indeed they seem a good sort of folks, though they have been living for a long ANGUILLA. 232 time in a curious state of suspended civilization. They acknowledge the English laws, but the cli- mate is said to induce fits of drowsiness on them, during which Justice sleepeth and Execution tarrieth. These periods of dormancy are occa- sional and arise from no very definite cause. In the book of the deputy provost marshal, after recording that a writ received at the office in 1809 was executed in 1818, it is thus written — “ The reason the above execution was not pre- viously levied is, that there was no place of con- finement, and that the laws of this island were lying dormant from the period of granting the writ until instructions were received by the lieu- tenant governor from the captain general to pro- ceed in execution of the laws and customs of the island, which occurrence took place in 1818, when the marshal was ordered to do his duty, and made this attachment accordingly.” The laws having awaked, they were troubled with such an immense number of writs again, that the poor creatures had no time to eat or to drink ; whereupon after a few months wakefulness, they became dormant again, and so have continued for the last six years. In 1822 indeed the board of council formally declared, “ that it was useless to ANGUILLA. 233 erect themselves into a court of judicature for want of a jail.” nullo contentam careere Romam ! One small methodist chapel is the only place of religious worship in Anguilla. The minister is a colored man with a stipend of T200 per annum from the Society in England, and is con- sequently the richest man in the island. He has 250 admitted members, and his congregation rarely exceeds 400 souls. There remain there- fore about 2,600 human beings without, or only with the name of Christians. This gentleman has been eleven years in his situation, and in all that time has never dreamed of establishing a school for the young. The serenity of the neighbour- hood was disturbed in the evening when I was there, by the worse than Popish mummery of class meetings ; the young women and children were screaming out by rote some hymns and songs with an asperity and discordance of tone which seemed to make nature angry, and exhibit- ing a scene of such mechanical superstition and senseless perversion of Christian worship as might well have caused a wiser man than me to weep for the possible absurdities of mankind. 2S4 ANGUILLA. But brighter prospects are opening in Anguilla. Its state has been thoroughly examined by com- mission from the governor of St. Kitt’s, and a system of reformation in consequence undertaken. The Anguillans now send a representative to the assembly of St. Kitt’s and the island is to be bound by all laws enacted in his presence. These laws are not to be allowed to go to sleep upon any pretence whatever. A court is to be erected and juries impanelled. A church will be built partly by government and partly by themselves, and a clergyman and catechist will reside on the island; one or two schools are to be opened forth- with under proper masters, and the colony will be periodically visited by the Archdeacon of An- tigua and the Bishop himself. The great curiosity of Anguilla is the salt pond. This is a shallow lake surrounded by little hills, except where it is divided from the sea by the beach alone. The salt forms a crust on the clay under water, whence it is scraped off and laid up in stacks on the shore, which being thatched with branches of the tier palm present at first sight the appearance of an Indian village. The salt which I saw dug- out for use was very white, strong, and beautifully crystallized. This pond is common property, ANGUILLA. 235 and every one may take as much of it as he can get. The natives talk of their crop of salt, as planters do of their canes, or as we should do of our corn. In favorable years 300,000 bushels of this article have been exported. If the poor folks had a free port, they might get on tolerably well. Unrestricted commerce, which is munificence and stimulus to London and Liverpool, would be charity to Anguilla. By the by they make very good hats here from the leaves of the tier palm, the smallest and most delicate species of that great family of trees which I have seen. There are 365 whites, 327 free-colored, and 2,388 slaves in Anguilla. The colony is very poor ; an inconsiderable portion of it is cultivated, and that with so little capital that much improvement in the present state of things seems improbable. I fear the slaves suffer a good deal from want of certain and adequate provision, and the mode of meeting the scarcity by giving them one, two or three days liberty to seek it any where is decidedly an aggravation of the evil. This time, which is almost always devoted by them to idleness or stealing, should be employed even compulsorily, if ANGUILLA. 236 necessary, in the planting of provision grounds of which any quantity may be taken in, and of any quality. As it is, the yams of Anguilla are well known for their excellence. That a popula- tion of three thousand persons in a level and fer- tile island of greater extent than Nevis within the tropics should suffer from a deficiency of the means of subsistence, is a case of such very gross mismanagement as seems to deserve the punish- ment which it certainly induces. The white in- habitants are much in debt to their neighbours of St. Martin’s and St. Bartholomew’s ; and though their distress has not destroyed their good feelings and wishes for improvement, yet it has necessarily rendered them more neglectful of the welfare of their dependents than their brethren under happier circumstances are usually found to be. I am told indeed that Mr. Buxton, a good man but, unfortunately for his own true fame and the interests of all parties concerned, very imperfectly informed of the actual state of things in the West Indies, has said in substance, that he wished the affairs of the planters were even more embarrassed than they are, because, if sugar or other staple were not worth the growing, the slaves would ANGUILLA. necessarily have less work, and so live a trifle more comfortably. Now this seems to me a simple speech ; a very small quantity of political or even domestic economy might have taught a man of so much sense better. 'Without crossing the At- lantic Ocean, in Freemason’s Hall itself, (and it is not easy to remove oneself farther from light of every description,) a person might have rea- soned, that if the planters, being, as they are written down in the Reports of the African In- stitution, a cruel and selfish race of men, could no longer feed themselves, their wives and their children in the manner they were wont, they would be little likely to take much trouble about feeding their despised slaves at all. If the slaves were rendered useless, they would not and could not be maintained at the expense of their masters ; and if they were not so maintained, the slaves would of course maintain themselves by open violence. Now if any one wishes this last to be the case, I will be bold enough to say that he wishes in reality not only the entire destruction of the colonies as sources of commerce, but also the demolition of every imaginable chance of ultimately converting the slaves into good citizens and enlightened men. £38 ANGUILLA. But if Mr. Buxton, as a great and heroic act of devotion to the cause of humanity, would go across this ocean stream and see what he is so often talking about, (and upon my word I believe the planters would receive him with civility,) he would then know, as a fact about which there could be no dispute, that the condition of a slave in the West Indies hears in its comparative com- forts or sufferings a pretty exact relation to the independence or indigence of his master. This in its appropriate degree is certainly the case in England, and really I cannot understand why any body should suppose it to he different in the colonies. It is not my humor to fill this page with a detailed account of the management of slaves on an estate; it may all be found in Mac- donnell or Macqueen, and it is just as much a matter of course as poor rates and a parish doctor in England. If any one can deny this to be the general and accustomed practice, let him do so, and distinctly prove his assertion; if he can do this, he will effectually put the West Indians to silence; if he cannot make it good, then, as an honest man, he will never repeat such assertion, never argue upon such assertion, nay, will gain- say those who continue to do either. This is a ANGUILLA. 2m point unconnected with the grand question of slavery in the abstract ; there are many evils in that state more pernicious than short commons, but this is a topic which is infinitely harangued upon and usually makes the deepest impression. That there are degrees in slavery is true; the different education and more different tempers of the masters will operate in various ways upon the condition of the slaves, and between the highest and the lowest stage there will be often a greater space than between freedom and some states of slavery itself. The well dressed lady’s maid or gentleman’s butler and groom seem scarcely beneath the same classes of people in England ; they receive no wages indeed, and cannot leave their service; but it must be recollected that they enjoy under their master’s protection almost every thing which they could bu.y with money, and that their country is so small, and society so uniform in it, that the wish to see the unknown world and to try other services, which would render such a restriction tormenting in England or France, can affect their contentment in a very slight degree. The other extreme of servitude comprises the slaves belonging to the petty land-proprietors. 240 ANGUILLA. and the white and colored tradesmen, mechanics and keepers of hotels in the towns. The servi servorum, the slaves of slaves occur so rarely as not to be worth taking into the account, except for the purpose of instancing a curious right of slavery, and of reprobating its allowance. I am far from meaning to condemn all these classes of masters by wholesale ; it often happens, I am told, that they are even too indulgent, and admit their slaves to a familiarity which can do no good to either party ; but I am bound to say that the only cases of cruelty, which I either met with or heard of in the West Indies, were one and all perpetrated by persons of this description. As the owners live worse, the slaves must of necessity live worse also ; as their owners are less en- lightened, less affected by public opinion, nay, oftentimes as barbarous or even more so than themselves, they the slaves must of course profit less under the instruction, and be more com- pletely at the mercy of the passions of such their masters. These are the two extremes; the average con- dition is that of the laborers in the field upon respectable estates. These constitute seven or ANGUILLA. 241 eight tenths of the whole slave population. In point of ease and shade their life is much inferior to that of the planter’s domestic; in food, care in sickness, instruction and regular protection, they are incomparably better off than the wretched thralls of the low inhabitants of the towns. The positive amount of their rights and privileges is, as I have occasionally remarked, various in various islands ; in none is it greater, in few so great as in Barbados. There are many things in the slave management of that colony, which might be ad- vantageously imitated by the planters of other islands, but at the same time this is a matter which depends so much upon local circumstances that it would be presumptuous in any one to condemn, upon general principles alone, those who do not avail themselves of the example. R ANTIGUA. The Eden was under weigh at two p. m., on the Sd of June. We ran back the same course to leeward of St. Martin’s and St. Bartholomew’s, and beat out to windward of St. Eustatius with the wind E. S. E. It was hard work the whole way to English Harbour, where we arrived on Monday evening the 6th a little before sunset. We should not have managed the matter as it was, if we had not carried on in spite of a succession of sharp squalls which made our royal masts bend like weeping willows. The entrance is exceed- ingly narrow, and every preparation was made to moor the ship in the event of the wind baffling her. An attempt to tack would infallibly run a vessel ashore. However we glided in gently to our birth between the two quays of the dockyard, and fastened the ship by hawsers to rings on the shore on either side. This is without exception the prettiest little ANTIGUA. 245 harbour I ever saw; the extreme neatness of the docks, the busy village which has grown up in their vicinity, the range of hills of various shapes and colors which encircles the inland sides, and the rocky Ridge which frowns over the mouth with its Union and cannons and ramparts, present such a combination of tropical beauty and English style and spirit as I never saw elsewhere in the West Indies. The harbour is said to be un- healthy, and from its inclosed situation such a circumstance seems probable ; at the same time I have not heard of any instance in which the crews of ships have materially suffered during their stay there. Indeed it is a season of great merriment with them ; they live on shore, and after their regular dock labor, dance and sing all the even- ing to their own abundant content. The officers have a large and commodious barrack to them- selves, and in most cases find it a very agreeable place of relaxation from the wretched confinement on board ship in this perspiring climate. St. John’s, the capital of Antigua, lies on the opposite side of the island, and this distance, which is per- haps a little annoying to the more urban part of the lieutenants and midshipmen, is an excellent quality in the harbour with regard to the common r 2 244 ANTIGUA. sailors. There is a devil in the West Indies called New Rum, which has killed almost as many stout tars as the French have, and he looks so like an angel of light in Jack’s eyes, that it is not in the poor fellow’s heart to refuse him anything. I was very pleasantly surprised with the look of the country. Antigua is so generally spoken of as a dry and adust place where the earth refuses to yield water for the use of man, that I received more than ordinary pleasure in gazing on the gentle wooded hills and green meadow vales which decorate the interior of the island. An- tigua on a larger scale is formed like Anguilla, that is, without any central eminences, but for the most part ramparted around by very magnifi- cent cliffs, which slope inwards in gradual decli- vities. From some of these rocks, especially near the parsonage of St. Philip’s parish, one of the finest panoramic views in the world may be ob- tained. The whole island, which is of a rough circular figure, lies in sight; the grand fortifica- tions on the Ridge and Monk’s Hill silently menace the subject fields; St. John’s rises distinctly with its church on the north-western horizon, whilst the woods which cover the sides and crest the summit of Figtree Hill just break the continuity ANTIGUA. 245 of sea in the south-west. The heart of the island is verdant with an abundant pasturage or grassy down, and the numerous houses of the planters, embosomed in trees, have more of the appearance of country mansions in England than almost any others in the West Indies. The shores are in- dented in every direction with creeks and bays and coves, some of them running into the centre of the plantations like canals, some swelling into estuaries, and others forming spacious harbours. Beyond these, an infinite variety of islands and islets stud the bosom of the blue sea, and stand out like so many advanced posts of defence against the invading waves. They are of all shapes and sizes, and are given up to the rearing of provisions and the maintenance of a great number of cattle. From the same hill when the western sky is clear, Guadaloupe, Montserrat, Nevis and St. Kitt’s may all be distinguished by the naked eye. The tortuous descent of Figtree Hill, though not so rich and imposing as the mountains and valleys of Trinidad, is yet a patch of scenery so exquisitely beautiful that no painter or poet, who had once seen it, could ever forget the sight. A prodigious number of forest trees grow on the 246 ANTIGUA. tops and declivities of the cliffs, and luxuriant festoons and knots and nets of evergreen creepers 'connect them all together in one great tracery of leaves and branches. The wild pine sparkled on the large limbs of the wayside trees; the dagger-like # Spanish needle, the quilled hpim- ploe and the jmaypole aloe shooting upwards to twenty feet with its yellow flowering crown on high formed an impenetrable mass of vegetation around the road, and seemed fixed on purpose there to defend the matchless purple-wreaths or lilac jes- samines, which softened the dark foliage amongst which they hung, from being plucked by the hand of the admiring traveller. Meanwhile a vigorous song of birds arose, and made the silent defile ring with the clear morning sound of European warblers, in the midst of which and ever and anon some unseen single creature uttered a long-drawn quivering note, which struck upon my ear with the richness and the melancholy of a human voice. Many persons have remarked the extraordinary tones of this bird, but I could not learn any name for it. It is the lovelorn nightingale of a silent tropic noon. * Bidens pilosa. + Cactus tuna. } Agave Americana. ANTIGUA. 247 Antigua depends generally for its water upon the rain collected in tanks, and those who have been long accustomed to the insipidity of this be- verage can with great difficulty reconcile themselves to the rough vivacity produced by the earthy par- ticles in common pump water. It is however a mis- take of Bryan Edwards to say that there are no springs in this island ; a remarkably sweet and transparent one is to be found on the left hand side of the road at some little distance before the descent of Figtree Hill. If you are nice, you should take a glass tumbler to see the precious liquor sparkle ; otherwise there is an antique negro always croning hard by who will lend yon a clean calabash. There are great numbers of ponds in the low parts of the estates which are filled by the rain and serve for the cattle and domestic water fowls ; in wet weather these guts, as they are called, overflow their banks and often interrupt all communication by carriages on the roads. It is curious to see how arbitrary the unfashionable- ness of words is ; if you commend the wing of a duck here, it is a chance your hostess, a pleasing and lady-like woman, will express to you the place of the animal’s birth in terms which might make a gentleman of weak nerves leap out of his chair. 248 ANTIGUA. It sounds odd, but really it is high time to get rid of these boarding school prejudices, which would deprive an Englishman of his Saxon name for the intestines of humanity. The planters’ houses were, I think, the best appointed of any that I saw in the West Indies. Many of them are very old mansions, and con- structed upon a more spacious and substantial plan than is generally deemed expedient in these days of mortgages. A small park or lawn is com- monly enclosed round the house, and the sugar works, which, however picturesque at a distance, are a very disagreeable appendage at hand, are so well concealed by trees and bushes that in many cases their existence would not be suspected by a person within the principal building. I saw with great pleasure also the formation of some pretty flower gardens, for which there are such manifold facilities and delightful rewards, that it is surprising their existence should be so rare. The coloring of floral vegetation within the tro- pics is certainly not so diversified and finely gra- duated as in England, but it is infinitely more gorgeous and majestic. The scarlet cordia, the crimson hibiscus, the pink and saffron flower- fence,* the plumeria, the white datura, and whiter * Pointziana pulcherrima or Barbados pride. ANTIGUA. 249 amaryllis seem to be the oil-painting of nature ; the colors are all massy, deep and golden, and the dark radiancy of the foliage is beyond all imita- tion or description. In northern climates the flower has less body and shade and regality about it; its lucid freshness, its fallings off’ and vanish- ings of commingled hues, its complex designs and multiform figuring are lovely and domestic and no more. A cool English garden is the water- coloring of the earth. Cedar Hill, the seat of Martin Byam, with its long avenues of white cedars struck me as being a very delectable place ; Byam was an Eton boy, and having fought through the Penin- sula hung up his sword non sine gloria, retired to his patrimony and determined to live like a gentleman. I ate a particular breakfast at Betty’s Hope, which is a comfortable old rustic mansion with pillared gateway, fantastic trees and wild birds and beasts swarming about it. The house of Mr. Warner, the President of the Council, is a very finished affair ; he is a descendant of the person of the same name, who was the chief colo- nizer of this and some of the neighbouring islands ; the original grant by Charles I. is framed and set up over the door of his dining room. From the 250 ANTIGUA. ceiling of the portico which was covered with foliage of one sort or another, a spiral tendril hung down, and within one of its limber coils, I remember a tiny humming-bird had built his cotton-woven nest, and was fearlessly swinging to and fro over our heads with hishreast and body sunk inside, and the tail and crested head alone peeping out on either side. Here also I became acquainted with a new dish of very attractive qualities in genere bellariorum ; it is called Float- ing Island by the natives, because a certain dense and vinous mass of guava jelly is made to swim in guise of an islet upon a stagnant lake of cream and wine and sugar and citron. It is the correlative of Trifle, as Mr. Coleridge would say ; but tipsy cake, although a satisfactory thing per se, is not equal to this jelly. I confess I do not see any just cause or impediment why these two articles should not be joined together in one dish. I am convinced upon mature digestion of the matter, that a simultaneous absorption of both dainties would be highly agreeable to the well- informed appetencies of the man of taste. Dr. Nugent the geologist gave us an excellent dinner at Merrywing Hall, properly so named from a certain daylight modification of mosquito which ANTIGUA. 251 rejoiceth therein. The ctvvsto) wore boots and the ladies covered their ancles and feet with shawls ; I being ignarus mali was horribly punish- ed ; nevertheless we enacted a quadrille in the evening for the amusement of the negros of the establishment. Every Creole female loves dancing as she loves herself. From the quadrille of the lady down to the John- John of the negro, to dance is to be happy. The intense delight they take in it is the natural consequence of that suppression of animal vivacity which the climate and habits of the West Indies never fail to produce. The day is passed within doors in languor and silence; there are no public amusements or public occupations to engage their attention, and their domestic cares are few. A ball is therefore to them more than a ball; it is an awakener from insensibility, a summoner to society, a liberator of locked up affections, an in- spirer of motion and thought. Accordingly there is more artlessness, more passion than is usual with us in England ; the soft dark eyes of a Creole girl seem to speak such devotion and earnestness of spirit that you cannot choose but make your partner your sweetheart of an hour; there is an attachment between you which is delightful, and 252 ANTIGUA. you cannot resign it without regret. She is pale, it is true, but there is a beauty, as South said, in this very paleness, and her full yet delicate shape is at once the shrine and censer of Love, whence breathe die melting thought, The kiss ambrosial, and the yielding smile. Their dancing is an andante movement, but they never tire. Upborne with indefatigable toes, they will hold you seven or eight hours right on end, and think the minutes all too short. At four in the morning my last partner went; she had started at half-past seven ; she could no longer resist the cavernous yawns of her papa and mamma, but it was reluctantly that she went ; necdum satiata recessit. I like a ball in the West Indies better than in England. True it is that you perspire, but then you have not to undergo the triumph of superior frigidity in your partner; she perspires in precise analogy with yourself, lifts and relifts the cambric toties quoties, as the Papists say, whiles ever doth the orient humor burst forth at intervals upon her ivory cheek, and gravitate in emulous contra- fluence with your own. Windows, doors and jalousies are all thrown open to the breezes of ANTIGUA. 253 night ; flowers and evergreens give life and ver- dancy to the walls, and the golden moon or dia- mond stars gleam through the many openings with that rich and sleepy splendor which good men will see hereafter in Paradise. It is my advice not to drink much; restrain yourself till twelve o’clock or so, and then eat some cold meat and absorb a pint of porter cup, which is per- fectly innoxious to the system, and more restora- tive to the animal spirits than punch, wine or sangaree. Above all do not be persuaded to swallow any washy tea ; it gives neither strength or vivacity, but rather impairs both, and makes you excessively uncomfortable. It is important to remark that your shirt collars should be loose round the neck, and the gills low; a mere white stock of thick holland well starched with arrow- root is the best cravate; otherwise with the ordi- nary apparatus your cloth in an hour becomes a rope, and the entire focale sinks into a state of utter dissolution. La philosophic est quelque chose, mais la Danse! — said the French lady. Dear maids of the Antilles, windward and leeward, it is even so with you ! Sweet are ye at your breakfast of yams and plantains, sweet at your dinner of squash 254 ANTIGUA. and guinea fowls, sweet when ye perpetrate poli- tical economy, and urge humanity towards the slaves, but sweeter than your father’s sugars are ye, dear heirs of the Caribbs, when ye come brilliant and happy to shine, like Houris, in the dance. Beasts should do Homage to man, but man shall wait on you. You are of comelier sight, of daintier touch, A tender flesh, and color bright and such As Parians see in marble ; skin more fair, More glorious head, and far more glorious hair ; Eyes full of grace and quickness A milder white composes Your stately fronts; your breath more sweetthanhis Breathes spice, and nectar drops at every kiss. St. John’s is prettily situated on the top and declivities of a moderate eminence on the west side of the island. The streets are wide and laid out at right angles, and are generally clean. They are however for the most part stuck full of such purgatorial stones that I doubt if a saint could walk to Paradise, if the road thither were paved with the like of them. The Antigonians delight in a vehicle called a John Bott, which, with the single exception of the patache from Fontaine- bleau to Orleans, is the most inhuman carriage ANTIGUA. 255 that ever was invented at the instigation of the Devil for the use of rheumatic man. It is in fact the upper moiety of a sentry box clapped bodily upon two gig wheels ; up and down, down and up, this way and that way are you banged about, till your head aches, your teeth get on edge, and your stomach is sea-sick ; and pending all this, you and yours are obnoxious to every species of caballine ejaculation. Fifty-one thousand black angels, as said the choleric Manchegan, seize the guilty idolon of John Bott, and trot him into madness in one of his own creations on the stoniest roads of Tartarus ! neque enim lex asquior ulla est, Quam necis artifices arte perire sua. The church is beautifully situated on a point where the descent towards the sea commences, and commands a noble prospect of the town, the har- bour, Fort James, the romantic hills of the Five Islands, and the ocean in the distance. It is the finest church, after that unrivalled one in Port of Spain, of any that I saw in the West Indies ; it is not indeed quite so large as the cathedral in Bridge Town, but in architecture, arrangement, decoration and site it is much superior. There 256 ANTIGUA. is a large sloping burying ground attached to the church, and neatly inclosed with a wall. The pillars of the principal gate on the south side are surmounted by two good statues of saints which were primarily intended for the idolatry of Gua- daloupe or Martinique, but were fortunately in- tercepted by a Protestant man of war before they could arrive at the place of their destination. I am sorry to say that the unchristian practice of excluding the corpses of slaves and colored people from the ordinary burying grounds, and of shovelling them into unconsecrated earth in any out of the way place, was to be found in Antigua during my stay there. Conceive the feelings of a respectable free-colored man, who is forced by this detestable prejudice to deposit the body of his wife or daughter in a place and man- ner which he well knows every white Christian would consider to the last degree ignominious ; where he himself has seen the gibbet erected and the murderer hanging! This was actually the case in St. John’s. The Bishop, as I have said before, expressed his disgust at this usage, and I hope for the common credit of the colonies that we shall soon hear that it is universally abolished. The very least that can be done is to inclose the ANTIGUA. 257 ground, and to take good order that it be as much respected as the solemnity of its character de- mands. The jail is like most others in the West Indies, that is to say, as bad in every -way as possible. The windows of some of the rooms look into the street, and through those on the ground floor any communication, either of rum or talk, may go on at all times. The court is a mere swamp of mud and water with pigs wallowing about in it, and the whole scene is wretched beyond descrip- tion. They adopt here also the practice of turn- ing out gangs of prisoners to work in the streets with a chain about their legs. It is really amazing that in a colony so enlightened as Antigua, where their other public institutions are conducted in a very exemplary manner, such a gross nuisance should be permitted to remain under the eyes of the Legislature. I am sure there are men in this island who have sense enough to see the absurdity as well as the iniquity of such a prison and such a prison discipline. Mr. Buxton might do good, if he would turn his thoughts to this part of the West Indian system. The African Institution itself could find no words too strong wherewith to condemn it. s 258 ANTIGUA. The Court House is a neat and spacious build- ing, and contains the chambers for the Council and Assembly, and a hall for the administration of justice. The advocates wear gowns and bands, but no wigs, and I am not certain that they keep worse order amongst themselves, or behave less respectfully to the bench than may be justified by the occasional style of the bar at most of the quarter sessions in England. There is the same abstinence from irregular interruption, the same urbanity towards each other, and the same cheerful submission to that decision which the constitution of their country makes binding on them, which severe critics have predicated of the junior barristers of the mother land. Whether the colonial bar might not still improve upon their English model, whether a superior degree of decorum, regularity and legal gravity might not be introduced, the counsel be less personal and more argumentative, the bench less easy and more profound, may deserve the consideration of all the members of the learned profession in the West Indies, ... they ever bearing in mind that the bench and the bar are things mutuo dantia et recipientia lionorem, and that ANTIGUA. 259 where the first is not respected, the second is usually despised. I was particularly struck with the extreme neat- ness of the dresses, and the devout behaviour of the colored classes who attended divine service at St. John’s church. It would have been im- possible to have added any thing to the elegance and fine style of many of the women. They sat in great numbers round the rails of the altar, and it was intended to inclose pews towards the western end for the express purpose of their being appropriated to separate families. As it is, the leading persons among the colored inhabitants often give it as a reason for not attending the established service, that they cannot be sure of finding room for their wives and children with themselves, and are always liable to the intrusion of other people who may easily happen to be such both in demeanour and apparel, as to render contact with them a serious inconvenience. It is common justice to concede these points, and common policy to encourage the feelings which are connected with them. The free mulattos in the West Indies would naturally incline rather to the side which elevates than to that which de- grades them in society; they are an obvious bul- s 2 260 ANTIGUA. wark of defence to the whites against the blacks ; and it should seem that nothing but the most vexatious persecution and injurious antipathies could convert them into antagonists. In Antigua they are upon the whole fairly treated, though there are still many things which should be granted to them, if not for conscience sake, yet because it is useless to withhold them. There is considerable personal property possessed by this class, and the only or the principal newspaper of the island is conducted by a colored man ; a cir- cumstance which a Barbadian would think im- ported a tolerable share of liberality in the white community. There are several schools in the town under the respective care of Moravians, Methodists and the missionary of the Society for the Conversion of Negros. There is also one small school for the education of white children of both sexes, which, as far as it went, was in good order, and the scholars taught to read and speak with a pure accent. But this last institution must be consi- derably enlarged, and the boys and girls separated ; at present it is wholly inadequate to the wants of the colony or even of the parish. There is no reason why Antigua, according to its more limited ANTIGUA. 261 population, should not furnish instruction to its native young on the same excellent plan which is so creditable to Barbados. I cannot but think it a reproach to the inhabitants of the other islands that the Central School in Bridge Town should remain an unique in this part of the West Indies. I went to see the African Free Apprentices, who were all drawn up in line in the yard of the Custom house. They amount to upwards of two hundred, and consist of natives of the various coasts of Africa, who have been captured by our cruisers on board unlawful bottoms and landed at St. John’s. It has been the intention of govern- ment to bind out these persons as apprentices for seven years under the ordinary incidents of that species of service, and to declare them absolutely free at the expiration of the term. This plan does not at present succeed. As there is no law to compel the planter to accept the labor of these apprentices, he naturally consults his own interest alone in hiring them. Unfortunately these wretched creatures are for the most part so bar- barous that it has been found almost impossible to induce them to engage in any regular work, and so profligate that they universally import dis- order and vice into every plantation where they 262 ANTIGUA. may be. About thirty only were of such a cha- racter that they could be safely employed. The rest remain in idleness or in very useless occupa- tions, and are maintained entirely at the expense of government. This is becoming a very serious burthen, and still increases from quarter to quarter without the accomplishment, or a hope of the ac- complishment, of any permanent good. It is in vain to represent to them the superior advantages of independence and the possession of enjoyments which are only to be obtained by industry ; it is equally in vain to tell them of the fertility of Trinidad, where they may have land given to them on condition of cultivating it, and where their labor would be highly valuable ; . . . nothing moves them, nothing seems to make them think for a moment of family or fortune, besides that there is always at bottom a suspicion lurking in their minds that you are going to entrap them in some snare of which they are ignorant, and from which they shall not afterwards be able to escape. One short Guinea man, an uncommon rogue, with lines and slashes tatooed on his forehead, cheeks and chin, in token, as he told me, of his being “ a jantleman at home,” replied to a very energetic discourse of mine in the following words : . . . ANTIGUA. 263 “ Massa, me tank you for your tongue, but me like stay here; me like Antigger very well; tie king he do give me two bitt a day, and me no for go to Tinidad, no not at all.” “ Who is your king?” I asked. “ Ki !” retorted my Guinea bird, “ my king! De sam as you, Sare, king George !” ...and grinned like one of the last-scene devils in Don Giovanni in the spirit of his conquest.* What is further intended, with regard to these Africans, I know not, but certainly much temper and deliberation are requisite to deal with them beneficially. They present within a comparatively small compass all the difficulties which would ne- cessarily attend the immediate enfranchisement of the entire slave population in the colonies ; and they, who affect to hold those difficulties cheap, only discover their own consummate ignorance of * These Africans are very much disliked by the Creole slaves. It is common to hear two of them quarrel bitterly with each other, when all the curses of England and Africa are mutually bought and sold ; but your right Creole gene- rally reserves his heaviest shot for the end. After pausing a moment and retiring a few steps, he saith...“ You! you!” with the emphasis of a cannon ball ; “ who are you , you Willyforce nigger?” Whereat Congo or Guinea foameth at the mouth, Creole evades rejoicing in the last blow. 264 ANTIGUA. a subject, upon which they have nevertheless the assurance to set themselves up as oracles. If there were any present or future chance of con- verting these barbarians into useful citizens by a lavish expenditure of money upon the actual system, the tax might be cheerfully borne by the generous philanthropy of the British people ; but in reality this expense is incurred for the pur- pose of maintaining them in a situation in which they are so far from advancing in civilization, that they become more vicious and lazy every day that they live. Labor of every kind they dislike, agricultural labor they detest. As long as the Crown continues to support them by a daily pen- sion, they will not generally work at all ; if they were left to themselves, they would probably labor or steal as it might happen, to the extent of procuring subsistence, which would be about a month or so in the course of the year. To the moral stimulus of bettering their condition, of acquiring importance and commanding comforts, they are utterly insensible ; they care for none of those things; they have no sort of apprehension of them. Indeed they seem to be practical philosophers, although no great political econo- ANTIGUA. 265 mists ; and I have no doubt, if they reason at all, that they conclude the planters to be egregious fools for toiling so heavily, instead of sitting down in the shade and drinking new rum all the day long. If the disposition of these negros lay with me, I would immediately transport them all to Trini- dad, separate them into small troops of fifty each according to their own selection, and give each village a portion of land to clear and cultivate. The clearing of the soil should be effected by task work under the superintendence of a com- mandant, and the laborers should receive rations for themselves and families in the nature of wages for the work done. When the ground was pro- perly prepared, a reasonable quantity of it should be apportioned to individuals or heads of families, the rations should cease, and they should hold their land upon this condition that their share should be kept in a state of cultivation throughout the year. If this condition were broken, and the negro were thereby to become burthensome to the community, the commandant should be di- rected to confiscate the land to general purposes, unless any other person would undertake to keep it in cultivation. The refractory colonist himself 266 ANTIGUA. should be dealt with no worse or better than a vagrant is treated in England, that is to say, he should be committed to the wholesome correction of the tread wheel in Port of Spain. This mode of managing them might succeed ; in Antigua, or any of the old colonies, where all the soil is appropriated, these free savages can never be any thing else but a source of un- mingled evil to the whole society. In Trinidad they may at least be kept from doing harm, and in whatever degree they might be induced to labor, the effect of their industry would be di- rectly beneficial to the island. The plan is sum- mary and the requisitions peremptory; but so it must of necessity be with subjects who (with all due reverence to the human face divine be it spoken!) are not more docile or reflecting than some of the beasts that perish. To talk of deal- ing with these men in all the circuitous processes of mature civilization, is foolishness beyond all other foolishness ; it would not be in the least more absurd to commence a child’s arithmetic by attempting to teach him circulating decimals before he could repeat the multiplication table. I am in my conscience firmly persuaded that the most exact justice and the greatest mercy we can show towards ANTIGUA. 267 these benighted beings, will consist in chalking out for them a path in which they are to walk, and uniformly to restrain them from wandering out of it. I am speaking now of the adults only, for although I set no bounds to the possible im- provement in the characters of grown persons of this stamp, yet it must be obvious that no general and effectual change will take place in the bulk of the society, except by laboring in the soft and unprejudiced soil of childhood. It cannot be urged too often or too strongly that the instruc- tion of the young is the great object which should engage the attention of all well-wishers to the negro population ; towards this deep and prolific centre all the forces of philanthropy ought to converge ; for here that may be done safely and certainly which at another time and under other circumstances will be always attended with some danger and most commonly with no success. Schools for the children of the slaves are THE FIRST AND CHIEF STEP TOWARDS AMELIORA- TION OF CONDITION AND MORALS IN EVERY CLASS OF PEOPLE IN THE WEST INDIES. The fossils and petrified woods of this island are pre-eminently beautiful ; they are found on various parts of the coast by the curious, but the 268 ANTIGUA. finest specimens are to be seen in a shop in St. John’s. Professor Buckland, I think, possesses the petrified root of a cocoa nut tree in great per- fection, and I remember seeing the top of a cab- bage tree entirely converted into or enshrined in bluish white chalcedony, so pure that the most delicate folds of the core or young leaves within were visible as through a piece of plate glass. Brooches and other trinkets are made of various stones commonly met with here, but they demand such a very disproportionate sum for the smallest of them, that a man must have more money or less wit than he wants if he purchases any. At Green Castle, an estate of Sir Henry Mar- tin’s, there was a simple and ingenious plan for diminishing the labor of the negros in carrying the bundles of canes up the acclivity on which the mill is built. Two light revolving cylinders were mounted, one at the foot of the ascent, the other at the top; canvass was tightly stretched over both and from one to the other, and ledges of wood fastened across this bridge of communi- cation, against which the iunks of canes rested. The axle of the upper cylinder was connected with the moving power, and thereby, as it went round, brought up the canes in constant succession ANTIGUA. 269 to the hands of the boatswain or feeder of the mill. A better plan for the future would be to have no ascent at all, which is now generally re- cognized as the best mode in Barbados. In An- tigua the rollers or cylinders for expressing the cane juice are usually placed in a horizontal posi- tion, which arrangement admits of the junks being spread more equally over the grinder, and con- sequently of more work being done in the same time than where the vertical elevation is adopted. There was also in the farm yard a very clever model of a vertical windmill, which regulated itself to all winds, could be furled, reefed or put aback in five seconds, and was found by experi- ment to possess more than double the power of the usual machine. Hereupon I have imagined a device for sailing ships in the eye of the wind, which I mean to sell to the Admiralty for a patent and a few thousand pounds. There are seven parish churches in the island, one public chapel, and another private one neatly fitted up by Mr. Gilbert for the use of his own slaves. There are many establishments of Mora- vians who live in a quiet and inobtrusive way, and have done much good in educating the young 270 ANTIGUA. negros on the plantations to the extent that was permitted to them. They are chiefly Germans, and seem a remarkably kind and worthy sort of people. Antigua is the head quarters of the Methodists, and they swarm in every direction. With that sense of propriety, that modest with- drawing of themselves which characterizes this sect, they have built their meeting house in St. John’s, as in Basseterre, close to the church, and really make such a disagreeable noise with their incessant attempts to sing, that I am per- suaded an indictment would lie in England against them for causing a public nuisance. Surely these good folks might be a little sotto voce in their canticles ; the introduction of a minor key would be a grateful relief to every ear. They shun tin •ee flats as they would so many surplices. What would Charles Wesley have said at their outraging the spheres after such a sort? In one of the churches, St. Mary’s I think, there is a gravestone with an inscription recording the sepulture of the first white Creole who was horn in the island after its colonization. His name was Rowland Williams and he seems to have lived to a great age. The Latin would not have ANTIGUA. 271 escaped tlie critic thumbnail at Eton in my time, but that is a trifle. The President, Mr. Athill, entertained us with great hospitality in the government house during our stay in the island. Moreover he gave us a very smart ball, whereat I surveyed at leisure the beauty and fashion of the colony. And, if I were put upon my oath, I believe I should say that the maidens of Antigua dress better than the maidens of Barbados ; peradventure also they dance with superior style. Yet I only speak of the average ; for I know one Fanny and one Eliza to wind- ward who would beat them all, especially in a reel. Every evening we used to be serenaded by a regular band of frogs, lizards and crickets who performed exceedingly well. The first intoned the base, the second rung out a fine metallic tenor, and the last added a brilliant treble. Sometimes the concert w’as considerably improved by a stray snake joining in an occasional overture ; few monkeys from Trinidad would have made the music complete. Montserrat and Barbuda are comprized within this government which I should think a pleasant one. The roads are passable for man and beast, and it is not often that the natives are obliged to 272 ANTIGUA. drink down to the worms in the tanks. Once, I believe, many years ago, it was necessary to im- port water from Montserrat, which, being dead to leeward, was rather a precarious source of supply. N. B “ Antigonian” is not the proper forma- tion of the adjective ; it should be “ Antiguan,” for which there is a conclusive authority in a MS. poem penes me, the work of a distinguished poet of the colony : — All hail, thou prodigy, ne’er seen before Or on Barbadian, or Antiguan shore ! BARBUDA. The Collector of the Customs at St. John's George Wyke, a very civil gentleman and ingenious withal, who builds coaches with no insides and sees land before it comes in sight, (a remarkably useful talent at sea,) offered to convey us in his fine topsail schooner to this island. I dare engage the Poetess never carried so worshipful a crew before; indeed how government went on in An- tigua during our absence, I know not; for the President left the Council, the Speaker the As- sembly, Captain Lyons his estates, Mr. Turner his mortgages, the Aide-de-camp his attendance and carving knife, and the Collector the receipt of Custom: add to these the Bishop, excellent and indefatigable, the only one upon his vocation, the Regent of Barbuda, a Kittiphonian parson and the poor soul who made this book. Blessedly sick fell this honorable company as soon as the Poetess began to sing Dutch between the Sisters. Every prophylactic was at hand, but what avail cider cup or soda water against a T 274 BARBUDA. close haul within four points and a half of the wind upon a heavy swell? The mighty fell, as Ossian says, like pie crust around me; the Aide- de-camp decamped in ignota loca, the parson poured forth, like St. Anthony, to the fishes, the Lyons got into a den, the mortgagee was himself foreclosed, and the excellent Nugent lay like a piece of stratified conglomerate with his nose bobbing into the saline draught which the Poetess shipped to leeward. What did it profit him then to know that clay lies above sand or sand above clay, or even that the world was made before the creation? Barbuda bears due north from St. John’s, and is about thirty miles distant. It is so low and level that I at least could not distinctly make it out, till we were within four miles from it. The coast is beset with shoals and reefs under water, and it was a matter of some anxiety to see how the vessel insinuated itself, as it were, between these rocks, a man standing on the bowsprit and giving his directions every minute to the helm. We got to land in about six hours from our set- ting out. Here some of the party mercilessly oppressed the sides of certain macilent and cat-ham’d crea- BARBUDA. tures which the natives from ignorance suppose to be horses ; they are ten hands in height and their necks and heads fall from the shoulder in an angle of forty five degrees below the horizon. Four of us invaded the state carriage which came down from the castle for the express purpose of importing us. It had been, in times whereunto the memory of no man or woman could run, a gentleman’s coach in England, then stood hackney on a stand, then had been done up and sold to a West Indian; the West Indian sold it to a man who cut it down, twisted the seats about and started it as a public conveyance between St. John’s and English Harbour. In this period of its exist- ence, when Longacre was long since dead within it, the Regent of Barbuda saw it and admired, looked and sighed, sighed and looked ; its honest unsophisticated springs, its veteran color won his approbation, and ‘Had I such an one in mine isle,’ he cried, “ My wife and children two Should ride, and I would too, Down the mead and the lane leading from my castle gate ; A nigger fore and aft, A nigger on the shaft, And a pair of island Arabs to draw us on in state.” X 2 276 BARBUDA. In this vehicle we sat an hour under one of the most undeniable tempests of rain I ever was caught in, whilst we painfully moved on at a foot’s pace over the grassy track which led from the shore to the castle. The vegetation on either side was something of the character of that in Anguilla, but much larger in its dimensions; it appeared here more like a young forest, the trees and bushes being so high as to preclude the possibility of see- ing twenty yards to the right hand or left of the road. The surface of the country is at the same time such a dead level, except an inconsiderable hillock at the other end of the island, that none but the veteran woodsmen can traverse it with certainty. This forest is w r ell stocked with un- commonly fine deer, and a certain number of the slaves are the recognized gamekeepers of the island. These men are called the Huntsmen ; they wear a leathern cap, a belt round their shoulders with a long clasp knife stuck in it, and a rude kind of half-boots. They generally possess a horse each, a duck gun and dogs, and, I believe, have little else to do except to maintain themselves and procure venison whenever it is wanted. The worst is, the fellows always fire with slugs; so that usually the haunch is lacerated in sundry places BARBUDA. 277 in a manner vexatious to the cook, and incon- venient to the consumer. Some of us were up to a regular chase, but upon an inspection of the universal stud of the colony, we found there was no horse of more than two miles-an-liour power, and besides, the thickets were so close that riding after a stag would have been impracticable. There was one most beautiful tree which had more of the appearance of a young flowering arbutus than any thing else that I remember, some called it the clam cherry, which is a species of mal- pighia common in Antigua and Barbados, but I did not think it the same. I am sure its extreme elegance and singularity would attract the atten- tion of any one who went to Barbuda. W e arrived at the castle as wet as water can make the outside lendings of man. Our bags and portmanteaus were nearly in the same condition; but with the Regent's wardrobe of shirts, stockings, sailors’ trowsers and jackets, we contrived to array ourselves de novo, and were then in high spirits for turtle soup and venison. We were all in glorious masquerade ; the aide-de-camp multa minans against the bucks with his new rifle, Turner not only jocose in himself, but a cause of jocose- 278 BARBUDA. ness in others, the Collector starboard and Lyons larboard, and Nugent, who had by this time erected himself into a perpendicular, cutting and butting as whilome when he tipped the arrows of the young Edinburgh Review with good nature. I am bound in justice to say that I ate a good dinner. If a man, who can discern between the evil and the good, will consider how few good dinners he meets with in this state of existence, how chequered and uneven is his lot upon this great point, he will do well to note and remember and be grateful for a satisfactory entertainment. Here we had land crabs, which they keep and fatten in crabberies under lock and key; they are the best in the Windward Islands, and are a most savoury and delicate morsel to be sure. Squeeze a little limejuice over the crab, and the meat will be more lively and have a sort of tang, as Isaac Barrow said on a somewhat similar occa- sion. The mosquitos are so terrible in this place that there was no sitting in peace, till some oakum was lighted and green leaves thrown upon it, which produced a great smoke and effectually banished them. It would require some familiar BARBUDA. 279 acquaintance with these gents the mosquitos to believe that this lacrymose smoke* was an ex- change for the better. But he who once has heard that shrill hostile clang about his nose or cheeks, and knows that the winged wretch only waits till he has found out the softest and most delicate cranny of your face, in which to fix his cursed proboscis, and thereout suck your Christian blood, leaving behind him redness and swelling and itching and pustule ; . . . this man would rather sit in the smoke of a brewery than be at the tender mercy of these unwearied plagues of fallen man. I slept on a sofa, and the Aide-de-camp on the floor by my side, and we defeated the mosquitos by throwing a curtain over two chairs and fastening it to the two window-shutters, under cover of which w r e both snoozed aw r ay like watchmen. The next morning before breakfast I bathed in the Lagoon, which lies immediately before the castle, where no sharks need be apprehended, but a stray baracouta or so may occasionally take his pastime therein. These fish have the most abominable propensities in the world, and really all men (for it does not concern women) should * * lacrimoso non sine fumo Udos cum foliis ramos, &c. 280 BARBUDA. make a point of murdering and exterminating these barbarous brutes by all the means in their power. The negros repeated to me many instances of the inhuman appetite of these monsters, and they all seemed to prefer the honest highway robbery of a shark to the cowardly cutpurse at- tack of the baracouta. After firing away a pound of gunpowder after whole flocks of snipes and gulls and curlieus, I went home to breakfast, where the flies swarmed in such a manner as I had never seen before in the West Indies. A boy stood by the table all the meal, and waved a branch of some bush over the dishes and cups, but this only just disturbed the hungry creatures, and irritated me beyond measure. Two parties were now formed, one to ride into the interior of the island, the other to sail over the Lagoon and see the seine drawn. I chose the latter, and it was one of the memorable days vvhich I passed in the West Indies. T he Lagoon is a magnificent piece of brackish water seven miles square and communicating on the north west by a long flash, as they call it, or river with a large bay, which again is separated from the outer sea by a black reef of rocks, over the top of which the breakers rush and dash in a tempest of BARBUDA. 281 foam. It was upon this reef that H. M. S. Wool- wich was wrecked, and is now commonly called Sir Bethel Codrington’s copper mine. We set sail from the quay in two schooners with about thirty negros. These last are, like the Huntsmen, a regular class amongst the slaves, called the Fishermen, and attend almost exclu- sively to piscatorial pursuits. They supply a certain quantity of the provisions destined for the consumption of the island. Away we went before the wind in fine style and raced our companions for two miles, when the wind getting round more ahead, and they not bracing up their yards sharp enough, we shot by them so far that they never fetched us again. We had guns on board to shoot the flamingos which usually harbour on a sandy shoal at the mouth of the flash, but we saw none, and it was said to be too early in the year for them. This flash, which connects the Lagoon with the bay, winds in a clear river stream through a low forest of mangroves. No natural object pleases me more than green trees growing out, or on the margin, of the sea or the lake, and in no part of the world is this more beautifully seen than in the West Indies. What European has 282 BARBUDA. not been penetrated with wonder and delight on first entering Carlisle Bay, and gazing on the long avenues of cocoa nut trees which fringe the border of the sky-blue waters ! How has he looked with a traveller’s curiosity at their bare and ring-striped stems, their hanging clusters of blessed fruit, and the strange tufts of brancli-like leaves which fall irregularly over them ! And then the dark and stately and awful manchineel, the beautiful and noxious — which, by a mystery of kindness, grows on the brink of the salt wave that the best and cheapest remedy for its corrosive juice may ever be at hand, * — the white-wood, another lenitive, and the bushy sea-side grape with its broad leaves and bunches of pleasant berries forming a verdant matting or table, — these or some or one of these meet the delighted * The common stories about the fatal shade of this tree are as fabulous as the changing colors of the dying dolphin. The shade is as harmless as any other shade. The fact is, the juice of the manchineel is highly corrosive and easily extracted ; so that rain water or a heavy dew will contract upon the leaves or branches so much of the poison as would certainly blister any flesh it fell upon. The manchineel is very fine timber, and the negros usually smear themselves over with grease, when they are about to fell it. It is also a common trick with them to blister their backs with the juice in order to excite the compassion of those who mistake it for the effects of beating. BARBUDA. 28 3 eye of the mariner, as he approaches the lowlands of almost all the intertropical islands. After the negros had carried us ashore on their shoulders, they anchored the schooners, and all leaped stark naked into the water and let down the net. It was a scene of the Sandwich islands. The two rough fishing vessels, the desert strand, the wild birds, and noisy black men rolling and tumbling about in the sea made me almost doubt my locality. When the net became contracted, and the extremities of it almost dragged onshore, the negros outside laughing and splashing and bullying the prisoners, the fishes with one consent became desperate and made a grand sortie by leaping with prodigious force and agility five or six feet out of the water, and fairly clearing the heads of the fishermen. About a hundred escaped in this manner; we secured more than that number of all sorts, but chiefly baracoutas. There were gold and silver fish, snappers, Spanish mackarel, kingfish, two adolescent sharks who would have amputated a baby’s arm as soon as looked at it, and three or four bloody, glutinous, cylindrical beasts without head, fins or tail, for which I know not the Latin appellation, and the trivial name is so peculiar that I cannot find in 284 BAKBUDA. my heart to write it. I urged another haul of the net, when we caught about a hundred and twenty more fine fellows about a foot and a half in length on an average. The domestics soon set up some bricks, lighted a fire, and broiled us afresh baracouta, which with our spices and other additaments was really excellent. A tumbler of beer and two glasses of wine made me feel com- fortable again, for there was no shade, and the sun had almost sucked all the liquid out of my system. When we had embarked our prey, we weighed anchor, and bore away down the flash amongst the green trees, and got back to the quay by six in the evening. Barbuda is holden under a long lease from the crown by Sir Bethel Codrington upon the service of presenting a fatsheep to the commander-in-chief of Antigua, whenever he visits the island. This is generally commuted for a turtle or a buck. The inhabitants are two white overseers, one of them a German, and about four hundred slaves. Mr. James, the attorney of the estate, visits them occasionally and at those times resides in the old castle with his family. No sugar is grown in the island, and the labor consists in raising provisions and building droghers. The slaves speak very BARBUDA. 285 good English and in reality have little more of servitude in their condition than the name. At the instance of the Bishop it has been agreed to build a church sufficient to contain the popula- tion, and a school will of course be an accompani- ment to it. I think, if this island were carefully managed, it might be made very flourishing, and the negros be easily civilized. We were nearly capsized by a very severe squall in sight of St. John’s on our return, and there are such nests of reefs and shoals in every direction that it is particularly dangerous to scud. The Poetess behaved like a man, and came up two or three times with her gib only, the main sheet fly- ing in the wind. We left English Harbour on the 20th of June and, after weathering Deseada with great difficulty, got back to Carlisle Bay once more on the evening of the 24th. BARBADOS. Every one knows that the commissioned offi- cers of His Majesty’s army stand a far better chance with the fair sex than any other class of His Majesty’s subjects. Whether they wear scarlet, light blue, or green, whether they ride on horses or walk on foot, whether they carry mus- tacliios or not— c’est egal; they attract women with a charm, infect at sight, and fascinate by a turn of the heel. But no where are they so kill- ing as in the colonies ; there they are undisputed masters of white and black, fair and foul ; they revel in conceded preference, and give no quarter to Creolian susceptibility. A blue or a black coat is always in the awkward squad of a ball- room, and even first lieutenants of the navy are generally sent into the after-guard. But though the garrison loves, the garrison does not marry ; they are better accommodated, as the man says in the play, and many, many a pale and dark-eyed girl, who has pinned her heart on the merry cheek BARBADOS. 287 of England or the blue glances of the Highlands, has only awakened from her dream when the top- sails of the homeward transport have sunk under the ocean. I dislike the man, swordsman or not, who deliberately trifles with the affections of a woman. I would rather shake hands with a high- wayman than with a gentleman who has sacrificed to his own vanity the life-long happiness of an inexperienced girl. I fear this sort of conduct has never yet been sufficiently reprobated, and females too often betray the cause of their sex by accepting with pride the homage of a man, who has become notorious for the conquest and desertion of their sisters ; — as if his mercy and love could be depended upon, who has once been cruel to an affectionate woman! The world laughs, and store of lying proverbs and stupid jests on the briefness of woman’s love are administered; but you will find, if your heart be not hardened by selfishness, that this will be in vain. Perhaps you had no intention of being serious, you only flirted, tried to be agreeable, and to please for the moment; you had no conception that your beha- viour could be misconstrued, and you shudder at the bare thought of earning the icy damnation of §88 BARBADOS. a seducer. It may be so, for there is a descent to the hell of seduction, though that descent is perniciously easy, and Nemo repente fuit turpissimus ; but what if, while you were meaning nothing, your trifling created anguish, your sport became death to the poor object of it ? When by ex- clusive attentions you have excited regard, by the development of talent or by the display and de- votion of personal graces you have fascinated the mind and the heart, when by the meeting and the sinking eye, the faltering voice, the fervid tone, the retained hand, you have awakened the passion which you cannot lay; when you have wilfully done this in the cold blood of vanity, and it suits your convenience or your sated coxcombry to finish the scene by an altered mien, a distant courtesy, or an expression of surprize at the un- expected effects of your civility — will you be able to quiet your conscience with a jest? Will you sleep on an adage of fools and a lie of your own ? What if the poor being, whose hopes you have changed into despair, whose garden you have blasted with mildew and rust, whose heaven you have darkened for evermore, shall suffer in silence, BARBADOS. 289 striving to bear her sorrow, praying for cheerful- ness, pardoning without forgetting you, till the worm has eaten through to the life, and the body is emaciate which you have led in the dance, the voice broken on which you have hung, the face wan which you flattered, and the eyes frightfully bright with a funereal lustre which used to laugh radiancy and hope and love when they gazed upon you? What if a prouder temper, a more ardent imagination, and a stronger constitution, should lead to spite and impatience and reckless- ness of good and ill; if the experience of your falsehood should induce a general scepticism of any truth in any man; if a hasty and a loveless marriage should be the rack of her soul, or the provocative of her sin ? Is there mandragora could drug you to sleep while this was on your memory, or does there really live a man who could triumph in such bitter woe ? But varium et mutabile semper Foemina. O, believe it not ! For the dear sake of our household gods, call it and cause it to be a lie? Be ye sure that coquettes are the refuse of their u 290 BARBADOS. sex, and were only ordained to correspond with the coxcombs of ours. Women have their weak- nesses and plenty of them, but they are seldom vicious like ours, and as to their levity of heart, who shall compare the worldly skin-deep fondness of a man with the one rich idolatry of a virtuous girl ? A thousand thoughts distract, a thousand passions are a substitute for, the devotion of a man ; but to love is the purpose, to be loved the consummation, to be faithful the religion of a woman ; it is her all in all, and when she gives her heart away, she gives a jewel which, if it does not make the wearer richer than Croesus, will leave the giver poor indeed. Eugenia, with every faculty do I love thee ; thine am I, in union or separation, to my life’s end; yet I wish to throw up my sweet service, for I cannot love as I ought ; I am muddy, sulky, selfish, vain and stupid. In visions by night, in musings by day, in noise and in silence, in crowds and in the wilderness, I have thought I saw- thee, alone or not, the glossy tangles sleeping coiled on snow, the lips of rose half open, the old romance, the lake, the mountain, the cousin star of beauty — twin divinities of Vallombrosa. O could I really BARBADOS. 291 see, could I really hear, really hold that white and soft and faithful hand; So white, so soft, so delicate, so sleek, As she had worn a lily for her glove ! Behold the force of imagination; for I write this in Barbados on the shores of the Atlantic with the trade wind blowing in my face ! Intervalla vides humane commoda. It is all one for that; I swear from Cantoens, Antes sem vos meus olhos se entristeyao, Que com qualquer cousa outra se contentem, Antes os esquefais que vos esquepao ; Antes nesta lembranfa se atormentem, Que com esquefimento desmerqyao A gloria, que em sofrer tal pena sentern. of which I can give but one translation in the world — - Ah ! quanto minus est cum reliquis versari, Quam tn i meminisse.* At the bottom of a little glen in Turner’s Hall Wood, one of the two remnants of the virgin * I cannot pass by the name of Camoens, Magna sacri Camoentis umbra, as my friend Lonsdale called it, without saying that a poet u 2 BARBADOS. 292 forest of the island, is a small pool or spring of water. It is perfectly cold, though by its constant bubbling it appears to be in a state of ebullition. If you pass an ignited match or candle over its surface, the air bursts into flame and shoots up- wards in a 'long quivering column of light. A poor white woman shows the burning spring, and what with her dishevelled hair and young black Flibbertigibbet by her side, she looked as like a real witch and an imp of Satanas attending on her as any thing I ever saw. The cabbage palm, the locust, the bully, the cedar and the mahogany grow around the spot, and the woman complained should almost, if not altogether, as soon learn Portugueze to read his sonnets as Italian to read Petrarch. Lord Strangford gives as just a notion of Camoens as Pope does of Homer. No poetry on earth exceeds in magical sweetness some of his verses, and there is a reality and a human tenderness in his thoughts and wishes and prayers that seem to come from the heart of the maimed and persecuted sailor. It is remarkable that of all the numerous versions and paraphrases of the theme of the 137th psalm, that of the Portugueze seems un- questionably the sweetest and most original. De Babel sobre os rios nos sentamos, De nossa doce Patria desterrados, As maos na face, os olhos derribados, Com saudades de ti, Siao, choramos, &c. The Exile was sitting on the shore at Macao, his guitar bv his side, his eye on the ocean and his heart on the Tagus. BARBADOS. 293 of the mischievous tricks of certain boys who would set fire to the spring and endanger the existence of the whole wood. The phenomenon is caused by a constant escape of sulphuretted hydrogen gas. The place belongs to Sir Henry Fitzherbert. In the pleasant garden or wilderness attached to Mr. Forster Clarke’s house in Bridge Town, is one, and I believe the last, specimen of that singular tree which is said to have induced the Portugueze to call the island Barbados. It is usually taken to be a banyan, but if the tree which I saw in Nevis was the true banyan, this certainly is not one. This tree shot out no suckers from its own branches, but was covered in an extraordinary manner with a net of weeds and creepers, and had great mats of twisted tendrils hanging down from the top and waving in the wind. Some of these were so like the long beard of an old goat or Jew, that I have no doubt of the truth of this derivation of the name. Near it is a curious palm, which has grown in a serpentine form on the surface of the earth, and by its prickly bark, its sinuous folds and elevated crest of branches represents most forcibly to the imagination some huge dragon or serpent of knightly romance. BARBADOS. 29 4 In consequence of the large white population in Barbados there exists a class of people which I did not meet with in any other of the islands. By the laws of the colony every estate is obliged to maintain a certain number of whites in propor- tion to its extent. These men are called the Tenantry, and have an indefeasible interest for their lives in a house and garden upon the re- spective plantations. They owe no fealty to the landlord, make him no acknowledgment, and en- tertain no kind of gratitude towards him. The militia is principally composed of these persons, and with the exception of that service, the greatest part of them live in a state of complete idleness, and are usually ignorant and debauched to the last degree. They will often walk half over the island to demand alms, and if you ques- tion them about their mode of life and habits of daily labor, they stare in your face as if they were actually unable to comprehend the meaning of your dicourse. The women who will work at all, find employment in washing and mending the clothes of the negros, and it is notorious that in many cases whole families of these free whites depend for their subsistence on the charity of the slaves. Yet they are as proud as Lucifer him- BARBADOS. 295 self, and in virtue of their freckled ditchwater faces consider themselves on a level with every gentleman in the island.* No English resident in the West Indies, how- ever little conversant with the administration of justice in his native country, can fail to be struck with the system prevalent in the colonies. It is not easy to overrate the importance of an en- lightened and impartial judicature in any place or at any time, but the peculiar circumstances of society in these islands render its existence absolutely indispensable. In all communities where slavery is established, there ought to be good laws to protect the slaves, and independent judges to enforce their provisions ; if there be neither one nor the other, or if there be one without the other, in either case one great cor- rective of the excesses of the free, one great guarantee of the safety of the bond, one great fountain of civilization throughout the whole * A woman of this class, in extreme distress, asked for a quarter dollar, for less than that they will not take. Upon her complaining of the expense of candles, and a friend of mine asking her why she did not bum oil, as he himself did, she answered with a turn of her nose; “ I hope I am scornful to burn oil.” 296 BARBADOS; state, will be lost. As long as the slave confides in the protection of a power superior to his master, he will probably labor in tranquillity ; but if he finds that there is no such power, or that such power is prejudiced against him, it is nothing but an ordinary impulse of human nature that in case of oppression he should strive to obtain that by his violence which has been, or which he suspects will be, denied to his petition. In Barbados the laws are administered by some twenty seven or twenty eight judges. They are all planters or merchants and are appointed by the Governor. Not one of them has ever been educated for the bar, nor is any previous know- ledge of the law a necessary or an usual qualifica- tion for the office. They neither comprehend the extent, nor are agreed upon the validity of the laws which they are called upon to interpret ; they can none of them settle the limits of British and colonial enactments ; they adhere to no fixed principles; they are bound by no precedents. The powers of a Chancellor are exercised by the Governor and the Council which consists of thirteen members, and it is next to impossible in so small a community that any cause should come into court in which some of these judges will not be BARBADOS. 297 directly or indirectly interested. I make no charge nor intend any insinuation whatever of corrupt practices; but giving them full credit for integrity of purpose, I must say that they stand in a situation which, according to the spirit of the British Constitution, incapacitates them from ex- ercising any judicial authority. Their ignorance of, or shallow acquaintance with, the duties of their office must either subject their decisions to the influence of the Attorney General, or it may cause them in moments of wrongheadedness or passion to violate evei’y form of law and trample upon every principle of justice. The evil is not so great in the other colonies, because in them a single judge presides in court and preserves a certain uniformity of practice and interpretation. But few, if any, of these have been educated to the profession and though the talents of one or two of them are very distinguished and their characters unimpeachable, yet their legal knowledge of course is not of that admitted weight which can alone render the administration of criminal and civil justice satisfactory to the community or even equitable in itself. It would probably be difficult to change this system en- tirely, as many colonial interests are connected 298 BARBADOS. with it, but if the held were free and the whole matter res integra, it would be easy to demonstrate the general and lasting advantages deducible from the adoption of the Ionian or East Indian plan. An English barrister of a reasonable standing, with a competent salary, and a strict disability of holding any property or filling any other office within his jurisdiction, would be a powerful engine of reformation in a West Indian colony. The Crown appoints to these places at present, and therefore no objection could be raised upon the score of unjust interference. Indeed the wise and benevolent among the colonists them- selves would soon perceive and appreciate the benefits of the change. In Barbados the qualifications of an elector and a representative are the same, namely, the nominal possession of ten acres of land, whether worth ten pounds or ten pence. The Assemblies are chosen annually and consist of two deputies from every parish. The Council is appointed by the Crown, and the members usually hold their seats for life. With such a qualification as I have mentioned before, it is obvious that the As- sembly will not necessarily represent, or be guided by, the property and knowledge of the community ; BARBADOS. 299 and hence it has occasionally happened that this body, in order to add a cubit to its natural sta- ture and gather a few annual roses of distinction and popularity, has commenced squabbles and perpetrated flatteries too diminutive for the am- bition of a Cornish borough. The fault indeed is in the constitution rather than in the men. Barbados and most of the other West Indian colonies appear externally to be governed on the model of England, but in reality they participate in a small degree in the genuine spirit of the mother country. They are practical republics, and present as faithful a picture of the petty states of old Greece as the change of manners and religion will allov\ There is the same equality amongst the free, the same undue conception of their own importance, the same restlessness of spirit, the same irritability of temper which has ever been the characteristic curse of all little commonwealths. The old re- mark that the masters of slaves, if free themselves, are always the freest of the free, is as eminently true of them as it was of the citizens of Athens or Sparta; submission from those below them is so natural to them that submission to any one above them seems unnatural, and that which 300 BARBADOS. would be considered as advice or remonstrance in England is resented in the West Indies as inter- ference or tyranny. To suppose that a Major- General or a Rear-Admiral, who depends for the best part of his pay upon the generosity of the colonists themselves, can effectually represent the office of the king in the British constitution, is quite idle; he is the governor and nothing more than the governor, and the principle of honor, which Montesquieu with some reason asserts to be at least a great spring of action in all constitutional monarchies, does not exist in the colonies. I use the term honor in the sense of Montesquieu, and mean nothing with regard to the conduct of indi- viduals. The forms of the English Parliament are too gigantic for the capacities of little islands; the colonists are not elevated by the size, but lost in the folds of the mighty robe which was never destined for their use. The colonies of a free state are more embarrass- ing problems of government than those of a coun- try where the monarch is absolute. The Spanish possessions in America were twenty times as big as Old Spain; yet were they for three centuries regulated by an European Council, which, with the exception of its errors in commerce and prejudices BARBADOS. 30 1 concerning race and rank, governed them well, and ultimately effected the reception of those human- izing decrees which have justly raised the name of the Spanish Colonists over those of any other nation. Nothing lay between the king of Spain and the Mexican or Peruvian creole except the Atlantic, and although the space of separation was great, the arm of power steadily raised was at most times able to reach across it. A different relation arises between a free nation and its distant colonies- They carry their freedom with them, and claim a right to the same or similar privileges wherever they exist within the pale of their own empire. A thousand Englishmen leave England and settle an island in another hemisphere. How shall they be governed? Not by the king alone; for the king of England is no despot; — not by Par- liament, — for they are not represented in Parlia- ment ; therefore the spirit of the Constitution is obliged to grant to them and their heirs the forms of the Constitution, and they must govern themselves like the rest of their fellow-subjects with the consent of the common Executive. If then they have a charter, or a right w ithout a charter, to be governed in this manner, where is there room for the parliament of another part of 302 BARBADOS. the empire, in which their property does not lie, where they themselves do not reside, wherein they are neither actually or virtually represented, to legislate absolutely for them? If the case of the United States is to be holden to be good law, it is a conclusive authority that such interference would be unconstitutional. You have no right to tax the people of Massa- chusetts, said Lord Chatham to the British Par- liament. Good. The people of Massachusetts were taxed to the amount of a penny or two per cent, on their incomes for stamped paper. They refused to pay this tax and were accounted in the House of Lords good Whigs for so doing. You have a right to take one or two or three or six days labor of their slaves from the people of Jamaica, Barbados or Antigua, say a large party in this country ; that is, the British Parlia- ment has a right to tax the 'West Indians to the amount of 10 or 20 or 30 or cent, per cent, on their property without their consent. If they grumble at this, they are not Whigs or Tories or even Radicals, but the language of England is exhausted in inflicting terms of abuse. Between the refusal of the New Englanders to pay a tax imposed by the British Parliament and BARBADOS. 303 the refusal of the West Indians to legislate for their slaves in the terms of the British Parliament, I can perceive one collateral ingredient of difference, and one only — — Relative Force. The recusants in both cases claim the same British privileges, show the same original foundation, and plead the same express charters ; they both insist that they have a right to be governed by those only who, according to the provisions of the Constitution, represent them ; that they are not represented actually in the British Parliament, because they depute no member to that assembly ; and that they are not represented virtually in the British Parliament, for the best of all reasons that they are actually represented elsewhere. The North Americans indeed were too much for us ; the West Indians may be crushed by a wave of Mr. Canning’s hand. If the people of Boston had a right to resist, and the people of Jamaica have not a right to resist, then Might makes Right, and a Right without Might is no Right at all. That there is a distinction in the morality of the cases I admit, but that affects not the question. Every power which the Constitution possesses, statutes, orders in council, proclamations, in every age of its existence from Elizabeth to George III., 804 BARBADOS. has authorized, encouraged and confirmed the right of the colonists to the services of their slaves ; and to say now, because the spirit of the times is unfavorable to the tenure, that the existence of slavery in the colonies is unconstitutional is either paying the Constitution a compliment which it does not deserve, or is the same humane equivo- cation with the assertion that slavery is inconsistent with the precepts of the Christian religion. That the spirit of that religion tends to abolish servi- tude is clear ; that it admits of servitude is even still clearer.* Lord Chatham, Mr. Burke and the old Whigs before the French cross, when they disclaimed the municipal power of the British Parliament to affect the property of the colonists, asserted at the same time its imperial right to control the measures of the colonies in extreme cases. “ As to the metaphysical refinements, ” said Lord Chatham, “ attempting to show that the Americans * The authorized translation very pardonably misrepresents St. Paul. The “ servants,” whom the Apostle enjoins to he subject to their masters, were literally bond slaves. »i hv\ot vnaxoviTt to~( nvgloic . . . and the fact is unquestionable from w T hat follows ; eI^ots^ on o la.v n txacTOs Ttoina’y] dyaSov, tovto X 0 f M