Jamaica as it is, 1903

by B. Pullen-Burry

It was raining as I said good-bye to my friends on the Port Antonio, a steamer of about four thousand tons. In fact, for some three days previously a depression had been announced, and everybody prophesied we should come in for stormy weather. We could not have had worse. It was under lowering skies and heavy rain we steamed down the Bristol Channel. The next day, Sunday, scarcely a lady moved from her berth, and most of the men appeared only to show themselves, returning again to seek the privacy of their cabins. We rolled and pitched for seven consecutive days; it was not until we had been more than a week at sea that everybody sat down to meals. Fortunately I am a good sailor, but I never boast of my prowess in that respect, knowing, to my cost, that pride goes before a fall! Some years ago I went to New Zealand by the Cape of Good Hope, and returned by the Horn, thus circumnavigating the globe. I learnt to drink cocktails off Tierra del Fuego, came in for fever and fighting at Rio, and enlarged my stock of unparliamentary language at the Canaries, where we were not allowed to land, and, instead, had to endure the slow tortures of coaling. During the whole of that voyage I suffered the discomforts of sea-sickness exactly twenty minutes, the scene of my unhappy, though transitory illness being off Plymouth, as we steamed down channel. In a moment of unguarded weakness, some months after, I boasted of this to a desponding group of fellow-passengers. We were leaving Algiers, and the sea was as smooth as it could be, but it was in the days of my innocence. I know now what is to be expected of the Mediterranean, and by a cruel experience I also know what a gale in the Gulf of Lions means. On my arrival at Marseilles, I had broken all previous records, and for hours had endured the pains of the condemnable. My appearance was such that my fellow-passengers forbore to taunt me with my vain boasting of the day previous. How were the mighty fallen! “All the world wondered,” though they preserved a discreet and kindly silence.

Notwithstanding the rough weather we experienced in the “roaring forties,” I managed to obtain a good deal of amusement and some useful information during those days of discomfort. No less famous a writer than Plato says that to travel profitably one should be between fifty and sixty. I can scarcely lay claim to as many years, still, if the chief object in going abroad be, as Plato thinks, to converse with inspired men whom Providence scatters about the globe, and from whom alone wisdom can be learnt, I hope I have succeeded in gleaning some of that golden harvest which falls before the sickle of curious enquiry. We had several interesting people on board, and whiled away otherwise tedious hours by exchanging and comparing notes of lands we had or had not travelled in.

A retired colonel, whose chief aim in life was to return to Jamaica where he had seen twenty years of service, and grow pines for the English market, assured me quite gravely he had taken up the calling of a greengrocer. On further enquiry I learnt that he was enthusiastic about the future possibilities of fruit culture, and, said he, “when we get the steamers promised us by Elder, Dempster, which are to take only ten days between Kingston and Bristol, what a chance it will be for us pine-growers!” I met this gentleman five days after landing at Kingston, at a garden-party at King’s House. I thought he looked tired, and he explained that he had been working hard himself ever since he landed, planting his precious pines. I asked if he could not trust them to his gardener. “No,” said he; “the blacks are very good fellows, but if you tell them to put first a layer of sand and then manure, they are bound to do the opposite. It is easier to plant them yourself.” In saying this he just touched upon the sore spot in Jamaica, as I afterwards learnt. The labour question may be bad in England, but it is a very different thing in this island. Captain C——, of the Royal Mail Service, said to me one day, “We never overlook a fault amongst our black firemen; with a white man we can do so, for he will thank his stars the omission was not noticed, and will be careful not to repeat his fault, but the blacks have not sense enough for that, and we fine them one or two days’ pay, as the case may be.” An English lady, who had seen better days at home and has opened a boarding-house at Mandeville, said to me: “In England I used to say that I worked like a nigger. Now I say I work like an Englishwoman.” The laziness of the negro is proverbial in the West Indies, yet occasionally he makes a good servant. On another occasion I was told by an old gentleman that he had often watched hard-working coolies cultivating their little patch of garden. From a window looking out in an opposite direction he had seen lazy niggers asleep all day under trees. At night, when the coolies had departed, he had watched woolly heads creep along the low fence, and steal yams and anything they could lay their hands upon, which the industrious Hindoo had planted. At the same time, I am told on unquestionable authority that when sure of good treatment, the negroes on some estates are hard-working and reliable.

In most cases the West Indian black finds the labour of three days sufficient to keep him for a week, thus the property owners soon after the days of emancipation suffered greatly from the lack of labour. To supply this want the Government imported coolies from India, and it is interesting to compare the lithe, sinewy Hindoos with their intelligent dark eyes and black straight hair with the ofttimes lumbering gait of the woolly-haired, thick-lipped sons of Ham.

One of our most popular passengers was an American lady who had seen many lands, and last, but not least, had travelled from Japan viâ Vladivostock and the Russian Railway down to Pekin. She had been a guest at the headquarters of each of the allied forces, and it was interesting to hear her recount her adventures. She had, she said, met with unfailing courtesy from the Russian officials, and was loud in her praises of that nation. She declared that our Indian troops had been generally admitted to be the finest body of men in Pekin. “You English,” she said, “think a deal of your alliance with the Japs, but I guess that if it was to their advantage they would leave you in the lurch any day.” This enterprising lady had visited the royal palace, and had photographed her Imperial Majesty of China’s bed, together with other celestial furniture never before exposed to the impious gaze of foreign devils! Indeed she was a most entertaining person, and apparently had done everything there was to be done, as known to this generation.

One of our officers had been in Constantinople at the time of the Armenian atrocities. He had his tale to tell, and after one had heard from an eye-witness of the unspeakable cruelty of the Turk, but also of the utter unworthiness of the Armenian—who seems to have been as much of a mauvais sujet of the Porte as the Fenian was to us in years gone past—one felt glad that British blood had not been spilt in defence of so miserable a people as the Armenians. There were several persons who came out to Jamaica returning by the same steamer, and spending the four or five days in a hasty survey of the island. One couple were going on to Mexico and California. A Russian journalist, commissioned to send home articles upon Jamaica, and a majestic and venerable dame, known as the fair Delicia, were also fellow-passengers. The last-named lady is well known in fashionable circles of Kingston society. She is not far removed from that limit which is supposed to represent the average lease of life. Her amiability is not excessive, but her skittishness is phenomenal. She dances on all possible occasions, and waltzes generally with the youngest men present. She has a playful way of boasting that she cannot remember the persons with whom she has quarrelled, and reputations are at a discount when the fair Delicia engages in conversation.

CHAPTER III

THE KESWICK DELEGATES—MISS SARAH WALKER—HAYTIAN CANNIBALISM

There were two persons, however, whose arrival by the Port Antonio was looked for with feelings of great expectation by a certain class of people living in this island, and whose ministrations, I fancy, have since resulted in airing certain questions which perhaps required to see daylight. These were two delegates from the Keswick Conference. The latter, I believe, is a yearly gathering of Evangelicals at home, and is attended by nonconformists and a certain section of Low Churchmen. Possibly the preaching which one identifies with this particular school of thought, though it is not one which appeals to me, may be adapted to the black and coloured people who attend the numerous dissenting chapels which are to be found all over the West Indies. Indeed the negro is naturally pious, or, to put it in plain English, superstitious. I believe Professor Huxley has shown that this is invariably the case with savage or undeveloped races. Be it as it may, I am quite willing to concede that whatever agency has been at work to influence these people, who two or three centuries ago were offering up human sacrifices and practising the most hideous and revolting rites in the backwoods of West Africa, to say nothing of their semi-savagery when emancipated in 1834, has been a powerful influence for good. The negro is stupid, but his evolution is going on apace compared with the slow development of many races.