Not long since an aged labourer on a neighbouring plantation was attacked with disease. The proprietor ordered special food to be cooked for him, and a servant was told off to look after him. The latter never went near the old black, so the result was that the master, who was a good-hearted man, took personal charge of him, whilst his wife brought food to him, even cooking it herself. The old negro, however, died, and then the friends, who had not been near him for days, crowded to the little hut, and not only had the corpse laid out in a fine new suit of white duck, but held a wake for three nights, when they disposed of enough rum and tea, in celebrating his decease, to have kept the old fellow going months during his lifetime.
A very usual complaint amongst the black women in Jamaica is the information that they have a pain. “Missus, I’se got a pain!” has been said to me in my walks in the country, the tone of voice being sepulchrally solemn.
They have a patent treatment for fever, called the “bush bath.” This consists of equal proportions of the leaves of the following plants: akee, sour sop, jointwood, pimento, cowfoot, elder, lime-leaf and liquorice. The patient is plunged into the bath when it is very hot, and is covered with a sheet. When the steam has penetrated the skin, the patient is removed from the bath, and covered with warm blankets, leaving the skin undried. A refreshing sleep is invariably the consequence, and a very perceptible fall in temperature.
There is a native disease called “yaws,” which the natives treat in their own fashion. The patient’s feet are held in boiling water; this, however, is not so successful a treatment as the former, for I was told it generally results in sending the chill inward, and often pneumonia is the result.
I had mentioned to my kind host and hostess that a visit to their coffee-works would be of great interest to me, so one day I was shown over the building by the overseer. I have since been on other plantations, and I find the proprietors of these estates all agree in saying that unless a man has capital, it is no good coming out to Jamaica for a living, and then he should live at least one or two years on a coffee estate before he purchases land and sets up for himself. The authorities at Hope Gardens, the Government botanical gardens at Kingston, told me it was precisely the same thing with bananas. Many men have lost money through not knowing the soils suitable for planting coffee. In starting a plantation, or patch—which latter means a clearing on a hill, or, in the case of bananas, a bit of fertile valley near a stream—the young trees are usually planted 8 feet apart; some even prefer to give them more distance. At the end of the third year a small crop is generally gathered, sufficient to pay expense of cultivation. The fourth year should yield a good crop; the trees, according to the soil, will bear from thirty to forty years. The coffee berries when ripe are bright purple-red, looking much like cherries. The coffee kernels, like cherry-stones, are encased in the flesh of the fruit.
The berries are, first of all, run through a “pulper”; this machine tears off the pulp from the kernel. The next part of the process is to run them into tanks filled with water, where they are occasionally shaken, to wash off any remaining pulp left on them. Then they are removed from the tanks and spread out in the sun on great platforms made of cement, and left exposed till quite dry. These platforms are called “patios” or “barbecues”; the former is the Spanish for courtyard, the latter word was used by the aborigines to designate the smooth places on which they dried their fish and fruit. At one side of each barbecue a shed is always constructed into which the coffee is swept in case of rain. The coffee, when thoroughly dried, is removed from the patio. As far as this point the two kernels which form the stone, so to speak, of the berry, and which lie with their flat surfaces face to face, are surrounded by a horny covering, sometimes called the parchment skin, or silver skin. To remove this the coffee is run through a mill properly constructed for the purpose. It is then ready to be shipped, but in the coffee mill I visited, the coffee was sorted according to size. This “grading the kernels” was done by a very simple machine similar to one used by wholesale dealers in England. Coffee used to fetch 80s. and 90s. for 100 lbs.—now the planter rarely gets more than 25s. for the same quantity. Estates in the Blue Mountains, which at one time yielded a return to their owner of £5000 a year, at present scarcely bring in as many hundreds. The labour question has, of course, something to do with the difference in returns. In times of slavery an estate such as I have mentioned was worked by perhaps two hundred slaves. At the present day the black will not go so far in the mountains if he can get labour nearer home, and to expect him to work more than three days a week is to expect that the heavens will rain gold for the asking. The hillside coffee-pickers are said to be the least intelligent of the negroes; they live far from towns, where their brethren absorb a smattering of education without effort. These coffee-pickers, who speak an almost unintelligible jargon of their own, in which Spanish words, African, and even Indian expressions are often intermingled, are paid by the bushel and earn more than in the sugar-fields; the majority get as much as 2s. a day. On arriving from the plantations the hands pour their gathering into the measures of the overseers, whence it goes straight to the pulping machines.
It is very clean work, and the women who set the fashion to their fellows repair to coffee-picking and sorting in their best clothes. A favourite drink with them is called matrimony, and is made of equal parts of the pulp and juice of the orange and the star-apple mixed with sugar and a dash of rum. Another confection to which the black palate is partial is a paste made of brown sugar and grated cocoa-nut. In a list supplied by the Merchants’ Exchange, I read that 69,128 cwt. of coffee was exported from Jamaica between April 1902 and January 1903, against 49,811 cwt. between April 1901 and January 1902, which shows the industry is prospering. The Colonial Secretary, Mr Ollivier, attributes the low prices prevailing to the enormous crops produced in the Brazils of late. Referring to the lack of water for the proper washing of coffee, which is the case in some parts of the island, where the natives are even too lazy to build tanks for their domestic supply, he urges combination for central plant, and says: “Despite the low prices, if in those districts where the coffee is not pulped and washed the settlers who grow the bulk of our ordinary coffee were to combine, as they have done in some instances, to obtain pulping machines and hulling mills and to cure their coffee properly, there can be no doubt that the export value of our coffee would be increased by about 25 per cent. During the fluctuations of the last two years the prices of these better cured coffees have kept comparatively steady, although at lower prices than formerly.” In a local newspaper of the 2nd of March the leading article is devoted to the increased prosperity and more promising outlook for the coming year. It is quite refreshing to think there may be a good time in store for this pearl of the Caribbean Sea, after the dismal prophecies and pessimistic whinings of the inert and apathetic who abound in Jamaica.
A cablegram, according to this organ of the press, had just been received from the Daily Mail, giving the information that a group of English, Italian, and Brazilian capitalists are forming a trust to monopolise the coffee trade of Brazil. It says that the syndicate is being supported by the Brazilian government, and goes on to state that “it is expected that prices will be raised 30 per cent.” This is a piece of welcome news and of most noteworthy importance to all the growers of coffee from one end of Jamaica to the other, since the price of that article, with the exception of the coffee grown amongst the Blue Mountains, is fixed by the price that is paid for Brazilian coffee. And if such a remarkable rise in that article should take place, “as is foreshadowed in the cable despatch,” it will result in a period of prosperity for the planters of Jamaica such as possibly they have dreamt of, but never expected to experience.