The West Indies and the Spanish Main

by Anthony Trollope

I went over the hospital with the doctor there; for even in Demerara they require a hospital for the negroes. "And what is the prevailing disease of the colony?" I asked him. "Dropsy with the black men," he answered; "and brandy with the white."

"You don't think much of yellow fever?" I asked him.

"No; very little. It comes once in six or seven years; and like influenza or cholera at home, it requires its victims. What is that to consumption, whose visits with you are constant, who daily demands its hecatombs? We don't like yellow fever, certainly; but yellow fever is not half so bad a fellow as the brandy bottle."

Should this meet the eye of any reader in this colony who needs medical advice, he may thus get it, of a very good quality, and without fee. On the subject of brandy I say nothing myself, seeing how wrong it is to kiss and tell.

Excepting as regards yellow fever, I do not imagine that Demerara is peculiarly unhealthy. And as regards yellow fever, I am inclined to think that his Satanic majesty has in this instance been painted too black. There are many at home—in England—who believe that yellow fever rages every year in some of these colonies, and that half the white population of the towns is swept off by it every August. As far as I can learn it is hardly more fatal at one time of the year than at another. It returns at intervals, but by no means regularly or annually. Sometimes it will hang on for sixteen or eighteen months at a time, and then it will disappear for five or six years. Those seem to be most subject to it who have been out in the West Indies for a year or so: after that, persons are not so liable to it. Sailors, and men whose work keeps them about the sea-board and wharves, seem to be in the greatest danger. White soldiers also, when quartered in unhealthy places, have suffered greatly. They who are thoroughly acclimatized are seldom attacked; and there seems to be an idea that the white Creoles are nearly safe. I believe that there are instances in which coloured people and even negroes have been attacked by yellow fever. But such cases are very rare. Cholera is the negroes' scourge.

Nor do I think that this fever rages more furiously in Demerara than among the islands. It has been very bad in its bad times at Kingston, Jamaica, at Trinidad, at Barbados, among the shipping at St. Thomas, and nowhere worse than at the Havana. The true secret of its fatality I take to be this:—that the medical world has not yet settled what is the proper mode of medical treatment. There are, I believe, still two systems, each directly opposite to the other; but in the West Indies they call them the French system and the English. In a few years, no doubt, the matter will be better understood.

From Georgetown, Demerara, to New Amsterdam, Berbice, men travel either by steamer along the coast, or by a mail phaeton. The former goes once a week to Berbice and back, and the latter three times. I went by the mail phaeton and returned by the steamer. And here, considering the prosperity of the colony, the well-being and comfort of all men and women in it, the go-ahead principles of the place, and the coming million hogsheads of sugar—the millennium of a West Indian colony—considering all these great existing characteristics of Guiana, I must say that I think the Governor ought to look to the mail phaeton. It was a woful affair, crumbling to pieces along the road in the saddest manner; very heart-rending to the poor fellow who had to drive it, and body-rending to some of the five passengers who were tossed to and fro as every fresh fragment deserted the parent vehicle with a jerk. And then, when we had to send the axle to be mended, that staying in the road for two hours and a half among the musquitoes! Ohe! ohe! Ugh! ugh!

It grieves me to mention this, seeing that rose colour was so clearly the prevailing tint in all matters belonging to Guiana. And I would have forgiven it had the phaeton simply broken down on the road. All sublunar phaetons are subject to such accidents. Why else should they have been named after him of the heavens who first suffered from such mishaps? But this phaeton had broken down before it commenced its journey. It started on a system of ropes, bandages, and patches which were disgraceful to such a colony and such a Governor; and I should intromit a clear duty, were I to allow it to escape the gibbet.

But we did reach New Amsterdam not more than five hours after time. I have but very little to say of the road, except this: that there is ample scope for sugar and ample room for Coolies.

Every now and then we came upon negro villages. All villages in this country must be negro villages, one would say, except the few poor remaining huts of the Indians, which are not encountered on the white man's path. True; but by a negro village I mean a site which is now the freehold possession of negroes, having been purchased by them since the days of emancipation, with their own money, and for their own purposes; so that they might be in all respects free; free to live in idleness, or to do such work as an estated man may choose to do for himself, his wife, his children, and his property.