In this respect, as in so many others, an Englishman differs greatly from a Frenchman. Though our English, as a rule, are much more given to colonize than they are; though we spread ourselves over the face of the globe, while they have established comparatively but few settlements in the outer world; nevertheless, when we leave our country, we almost always do so with some idea, be it ever so vague, that we shall return to it again, and again make it our home. But the Frenchman divests himself of any such idea. He also loves France, or at any rate loves Paris; but his object is to carry his Paris with him; to make a Paris for himself, whether it be in a sugar island among the Antilles, or in a trading town upon the Levant.
And in some respects the Frenchman is the wiser man. He never looks behind him with regret. He does his best to make his new house comfortable. The spot on which he fixes is his home, and so he calls it, and so regards it. But with an Englishman in the West Indies—even with an English Creole—England is always his home.
If the people in Jamaica have any prejudice, it is on the subject of heat. I suppose they have a general idea that their island is hotter than England; but they never reduce this to an individual idea respecting their own habitation.
"Come and dine with me," a man says to you; "I can give you a cool bed." The invitation at first sounded strange to me, but I soon got used to it; I soon even liked it, though I found too often that the promise was not kept. How could it be kept while the quicksilver was standing at eighty-five in the shade?
And each man boasts that his house is ten degrees cooler than that of his neighbours; and each man, if you contest the point, has a reason to prove why it must be so.
But a stranger, at any rate round Kingston, is apt to put the matter in a different light. One place may be hotter than another, but cool is a word which he never uses. On the whole, I think that the heat of Kingston, Jamaica, is more oppressive than that of any other place among the British West Indies. When one gets down to the Spanish coast, then, indeed, one can look back even to Kingston with regret.
CHAPTER VII.
JAMAICA—SUGAR.
That Jamaica was a land of wealth, rivalling the East in its means of riches, nay, excelling it as a market for capital, as a place in which money might be turned; and that it now is a spot on the earth almost more poverty-stricken than any other—so much is known almost to all men. That this change was brought about by the manumission of the slaves, which was completed in 1838, of that also the English world is generally aware. And there probably the usual knowledge about Jamaica ends. And we may also say that the solicitude of Englishmen at large goes no further. The families who are connected with Jamaica by ties of interest are becoming fewer and fewer. Property has been abandoned as good for nothing, and nearly forgotten; or has been sold for what wretched trifle it would fetch; or left to an overseer, who is hardly expected to send home proceeds—is merely ordered imperatively to apply for no subsidies. Fathers no longer send their younger sons to make their fortunes there. Young English girls no longer come out as brides. Dukes and earls do not now govern the rich gem of the west, spending their tens of thousands in royal magnificence, and laying by other tens of thousands for home consumption. In lieu of this, some governor by profession, unfortunate for the moment, takes Jamaica with a groan, as a stepping-stone to some better Barataria—New Zealand perhaps, or Frazer River; and by strict economy tries to save the price of his silver forks. Equerries, aides-de-camp, and private secretaries no longer flaunt it about Spanish Town. The flaunting about Spanish Town is now of a dull sort. Ichabod! The glory of that house is gone. The palmy days of that island are over.