Jamaica as it is, 1903

by B. Pullen-Burry

I had myself a curious experience in the old West Indian-built house of Miss Harrison, which I give for as much as it is worth; the psychologist might be able to interpret it with satisfaction to himself. I was going up to bed on Sunday evening, and I have mentioned before how handsomely the house was internally fitted up with mahogany stairs, flooring and doors, when I distinctly heard the sound of a crack of a whip immediately in my vicinity. I instinctively turned round to see who was coming up behind me, expecting to see a man with a riding-whip in his hand. Needless to say, there was nobody; it was a moonlight night, and the dim glimmer of a paraffin lamp shone across the landing from some half-open door. I had not been thinking or talking of the history of Jamaican families in years past. Instead, I remember feeling irritated at the fulsome boasting of some of the Americans I had just left.

My hostess was anxious that I should drive out to Rose Hall, the home of the Palmers, whose monument I have described. I think a visit to this house, notwithstanding its dilapidated and ruinous state, is useful, in that one can gain an idea of the wealth and luxuriant mode of living of the estate owners in times when sugar fetched any price between £50 and £70 a ton, instead of its present price, which is about £5. These were the days when fine roads were built, handsome houses such as Rose Hall were erected, and lands brought into cultivation. An almost unbroken girdle of sugar-fields encircled the island. When, however, philanthropic effort, headed by Wilberforce, successfully passed the Emancipation Act, which provided that from and after the 1st of August 1834, all slaves in the colonial possessions of Great Britain should be for ever free, with an intermediate state of four and six years, the condition of the sugar-planters was lamentable. They were left with old machinery, scarcity of labour, and poor markets. Indignation was rife, and they threatened to transfer their allegiance to the United States of America. The immediate results of emancipating negroes from slavery has been practically the same everywhere. After the adoption of free trade many of the estates were simply abandoned, or sold for next to nothing. Probably those who could have foreseen how the fruit trade would eventually supersede sugar, would have clung to their lands at all costs.

To give my readers some idea of the interior of a planter’s house in the eighteenth century, I quote from a journal of the Institute of Jamaica a description of the Palmer mansion built for £30,000 in 1760, and richly furnished: “A gap through the boundary wall leads to an avenue of trees, selected for their beauty and fragrance from the endless variety which luxuriates in a southern clime. There may still be seen the cocoa, with its fringy leaves always graceful and always beautiful; the quaint cotton, the king of the forest, from whose huge limbs countless streamers of parasitical plants hang pendent exposed to the breeze; the palm, with its slender speckle of most delicate green; the spreading mahogany, with its small leaves of the deepest dye; and there may be found the ever-bearing orange, with its golden fruit and flowers of rich perfume. Neglect, too, has been here, and the avenue once so trim and neat is now overgrown with weeds and bushes, so much so that the remainder of the ancient wall can scarce now be seen.

“Passing about a half mile through the grove you come suddenly in front of a stately large stone mansion, prettily situated on the top of a gentle slope. The first thing that strikes you is its size and magnitude, the next, the imposing appearance of the flight of steps leading to the main entrance of the mansion. These are 14 feet high, built of large square stone (hewn), and so arranged that the landing-place serves as a portico 20 feet square. A few brass stanchions, curiously wrought and twisted, serve to show what the railing had been, but the few remaining are tarnished with verdigris and broken, bruised and turned in every direction. Magnificent, massive folding-doors of solid mahogany, 4 inches thick, with panels formed by the carver’s chisel in many a scroll and many a device, are upheld by brazen hinges which, fashioned like sea-monsters, seem to bite the posts on which they hang. These doors are in front of the main hall, a room of lofty dimensions and magnificent proportions, 40 feet long, 30 wide, 18 feet high, formed of the same costly materials as the doors, carved in the same manner out of solid planks and fashioned in curious and antique forms, while the top is ornamented with a very deep cornice formed after the arabesque pattern. The floor is of the same highly polished wood. Three portraits in richly carved frames and painted by a master-hand immediately attract attention. One of these portraits represents a hard and stern-featured man clothed in the scarlet and ermine robes of a judge. Another is of a mild, benevolent-looking, gentlemanly person, dressed in the fashion of the olden times with powdered hair, lace cravat, ruffles and silk stockings, buckles, brocaded vest and velvet coat. The third is a female of about six-and-twenty, and, if the painter has not flattered her, she must have been of exquisite beauty.”

Sugar is talked, and has been talked ad nauseam in Jamaica. In one of the leading organs of the Jamaican press I read, in this first week of March 1903, that according to the latest reports from New York the sugar industry is looking up, an appreciable rise in the price of crystals is announced, and this, it is believed, will cause a certain increase in the price of the lower grades of sugar as well. One rejoices to hear that the refiners of sugar in America are beginning to be nervous, lest, in consequence of the coming abolition of the Continental bounty-fed system, the British West Indian sugar should find its way to the markets of the mother-country. There is a special cane called the Muscovados which to the American refineries is indispensable, and which apparently comes in greater bulk from our colonies. In addition, the Brazil crops are not so plentiful as they have been. This being so, there seem to be ample grounds for the hope entertained that the prospects of the sugar industry of this part of the Empire are heightening considerably. Alluding to their hope that in the future there is promise of higher prices generally for cane-sugars, and also to the development and increased outputs of the fruit trade, the writer concludes a most encouraging article with the belief that, all things taken into consideration, Jamaica may be said to be on the eve of a great agricultural and industrial boom.

Now the cultivation of sugar on a large scale implies the circulation of huge sums of money. But those who confidently talk about its revival, and who think that as soon as the bounties are abolished the country will leap back into its former prosperity, forget a very important item on the programme. Certain soils only produce sugar profitably. The area most suitable for the cultivation of cane as a staple article of commerce is a limited one. Westmoreland, Trelawny, and St Thomas, are the parishes where sugar pays for growing because of their proximity to ports. In these days of keen competition, every mile of carriage means so much out of the profits.

I find from a statement supplied by the Merchants’ Exchange that the total export of sugar from 1st April 1902 to 10th January 1903 was 13,468 tons, against 11,523 exported during the same period in the preceding year.

The beautiful and verdant green of the waving cane-fields is one of the most beautiful and characteristic sights of the island; the cane grows from 4 to 7 feet high, occasionally it attains a height of 12 feet. The old mills were worked either by water, wind, or cattle. The machinery used for squeezing the juice out of the sugar-cane consisted of three upright iron-plated rollers, or cylinders, 30 to 40 feet in height. The middle one, to which the moving power was applied, turned the other two by means of cogs. Between these rollers the canes previously cut short were twice compressed. Having passed through the first and second rollers they were turned round the middle one by a circular piece of framework, or screen, called the dumb returner, forced back through the second and third, which squeezed them perfectly dry. The cane-juice was received into a leaden bed, and then conveyed into a vessel called the receiver; the refuse cane-trash was used for fuel to boil the liquor. The juice ordinarily contains eight pints of water, one pint of sugar, one pint of oil and mucilaginous gum, with a portion of essential oil.

OLD-FASHIONED SUGAR MILL.