Meanwhile Barbados had been the chief scene of English enterprise, from a date (1624-26) almost the same as that of the joint occupation of St Christopher by French and English. Its earliest annals contain little else than the accounts of rivalries under Lord Carlisle’s patent and other patents. So far as regards sickness, the annals were probably uneventful. In 1643 the island had plantations stocked with no fewer than 6400 negro slaves, and its prosperity advanced so steadily, that by the year 1666, the slaves in the island numbered some 50,000: “The buildings in 1643 were mean; but in 1666 [when Bridgetown was burned], plate, jewels and household stuff were estimated at £500,000[1170].” It is a date intermediate between those two that directly concerns us—the year 1647. In that year, Ligon, the historian of the colony, arrived out from England about the beginning of September[1171]. The ship in which he came to Barbados was consigned thence to Cutchew, on the African coast, to trade for negroes. On their arrival they found twenty-two good ships at anchor in Carlisle Bay (Bridgetown), a brisk trade going on, and plantations visible all along the shore. A plantation of 500 acres had 96 negroes and 28 Christians; some plantations contained 10,000 acres. The population was difficult to estimate, so many ships were arriving with passengers daily; and Ligon’s estimate of 50,000, “besides negroes,” is doubtless too much. About one hundred sail visit the island every year; they bring “servants” and negro slaves, both men and women. The servants are bound for five years, and are worse treated than the negroes. The negroes are more than double the number of the Christians; they come from different parts of Africa—Bonny, Cutchew, Angola and Gambia—and do not understand each other’s language. They are bought out of the ship naked, being chosen as horses are in a market, the strongest, youthfullest and most beautiful yielding the highest price (man £30, woman £25 to £27, children at easier rates).
We have to note, also, Ligon’s account of the colony’s chief harbour—Bridgetown. The whole of Carlisle Bay is environed by high ground. Bridgetown is so-called “for that a long bridge was made at first over a little nook of the sea, which was rather a bog than sea.” The stream which discharges there into the bay is like a lake for want of outfall. The spring tides fill it, but during the neap tides the salt water is kept stagnant behind the sea-banks, making a small lagoon. The spring tides seldom rise above four or five feet, but high enough to flow over the low ground in front of the houses, making the flat a kind of bog, which vents out a loathsome savour.
Ligon landed at Bridgetown about the beginning of September, 1647, in time to witness the ravages of a deadly epidemic:
“Yet, notwithstanding all this appearance of trade, the inhabitants of the island, and shipping too, were so grievously visited with the plague (or as killing a disease) that before a month was expired after our arrival, the living were hardly able to bury the dead. Whether it was brought thither by shipping, (for in long voyages diseases grow at sea and take away many passengers, and these diseases prove contagious), or by the distemper of the people of the island”—he leaves uncertain. For one woman that died, there were ten men. The ships at anchor in Carlisle Bay were, for the most part, infected with this disease.
What was the disease? How came it there? What sort of origin did its characters, symptoms, or type suggest? On these questions we have some light thrown by other writings besides Ligon’s, relating to the same epidemic.
John Winthrop, the Governor of Massachusetts, writes in his journal, under the year 1647[1172]:
“It pleased the Lord to open to us a trade with Barbados and other islands in the West Indies, which as it proved gainful, so the commodities we had in exchange there for our cattle and provisions, as sugar, cotton, tobacco and indigo, were a good help to discharge our engagements in England. And this summer there was so great a drouth as their potatoes and corn, etc. were burnt up; and divers London ships which rode there were so short of provisions as, if our vessels had not supplied them, they could not have returned home.... After the great dearth of victuals in these islands followed presently a great mortality (whether it were the plague, or pestilent fever, it killed in three days), that in Barbados there died six thousand, and in Christophers, of English and French, near as many, and in other islands proportionable.”
The mention of the French on St Christopher brings us to the third source of information, the Jesuit father Dutertre, who was an eye-witness[1173]:
“During this same year, 1648, the plague (la peste), hitherto unknown in the islands since they were inhabited by the French, was brought thither by certain ships. It began in St Christopher, and in the eighteen months that it lasted, it carried off nearly one-third of the inhabitants.” This plague, or peste, was marked by violent pain in the head, general debility of all the muscles, and continual vomiting. It was contagious. A ship, the ‘Bœuf’ of Rochelle, carried it to Guadeloupe, the sailors and passengers dying on board of her. A priest went on board to administer the sacraments, and caught the infection; he recovered, but [had a relapse and] died on August 4. It was contagious at Guadeloupe also, and lasted twenty months.
This testimony of Dutertre is important for several things. He had arrived at Guadeloupe in 1640 in a small vessel of 100 to 120 tons, crowded with stores and carrying besides, 200 souls of both sexes and all ages. Much distress and sickness followed their arrival; he mentions nearly 100 sick in the quarters of M. de la Vernade, with only the ground to sleep on; more than three-fourths of the help for the struggling colony that arrived from St Christopher died, perhaps by infectious disease bred by the others. Now, with that personal experience in his mind, and with personal experience also of the epidemic of 1647-8, he describes the latter as a pestilence “hitherto unknown in the islands since they were inhabited by the French.” Like Ligon and Winthrop, he is led to think of plague itself by the rapidity and fatality of the infection; but he mentions no signs of plague proper, and at the same time mentions continual vomiting. The disease was, in short, the Yellow Fever; and the epidemic in the end of 1647 at Bridgetown, and shortly after at St Christopher and Guadeloupe, was the first of it, so far as is known, in the West Indies.