All this with a satisfied grin except when he describes the weakness of his health; then his eyes roll and his face clouds in a manner almost convincing to new arrivals.
With the women it is different. They have no time for conversation with idle strangers; they work with unceasing energy. If they pause, it is only to stare with an air of half-timid wonder, or to break into long peals of boisterous laughter. If it were not for the women folk, Jamaica would indeed be hard put to it for workers.
In character the Jamaican negroes are a mixture of good and bad; of Africa and Europe, with the vices of both the blacks and the whites, and only some of the virtues of the people of Europe. They are civilised with a sort of quasi-civilisation, which somehow suggests an indifferently humorous burlesque performed by irresponsible amateurs. It takes many months to educate a new-comer into treating the black Jamaicans with becoming seriousness. As a rule they are well-meaning people, full of curious mannerisms, with which
it is difficult for the white man to be in entire sympathy. The ideas of a black man are different from those of white. He sees things from a different point of view, and cannot really be happy with a white, who, legally his equal, is actually in many ways infinitely his superior. In many ways the Jamaican native resembles his coloured brother of the American States; he is just as arrogant—even more so—but he is not quite so really independent, and by no means so energetic. It is certainly a fact that the Jamaican negroes are the happiest, relatively the richest, and quite the most comfortable inhabitants of the globe. Though there may be poverty among them, there is no unsatisfied hunger. The fields and the hedges, as well as the market-places, afford food and comfort for the dweller in this land of perpetual sun. Clothes they have in too great an abundance. It is only for the purposes of pride and vainglory that clothes are worn at all. The climate is warm enough to justify nudity, and although this happy condition of freedom is not compatible with the canons of modern society, it is easily possible for a native to be clad and outwardly furnished for a very few shillings per annum. Overcoats are unknown. Coals are only associated with the steamships in Kingston Harbour, and the railway. Meat is an unnecessary luxury—almost an unhealthy one. The people live on fruit and vegetables, with an occasional dish of salt fish caught in the rivers or from the waters of the Caribbean Sea, and cured with a total disregard for delicate sweetness. At the first and the twenty-first glance, the European would pronounce the dried fish of the Jamaican nigger bad, if not entirely putrid. The popularity of this form of diet among the people is evidence of the over-sensitiveness of the civilised nose. The West Indian soldier of the line receives full rations as well as his shilling a day. The meat he receives from a beneficent Government is the same as that served out to his English brother-in-arms, and it is from this source that the old English settler draws the supply of fresh meat for his own table. It is better to go among the West Indian messrooms and buy the soldiers’ meat rations than it is to chance the tenderness of the joints on the market butcher’s slabs. By a little enterprise and a good deal of bargaining with a coal-black mess sergeant, you are certain of obtaining the juiciest steak to be found on the island; and in doing so you materially add to the popularity of the army among possible recruits by enlarging the pocket-money of the black soldiers of the line. Our West Indian Tommies prefer the saltest of stale salt-fish to the juiciest of fresh juicy-steaks, and as a rule the officer of the day is quite prepared to wink at a little irregularity which makes for the happiness of his men and the comfort of the island. Besides, it is probable that the same officer of the day is occasionally invited to dine out in the bungalows of older inhabitants. The readiness with which the soldier is prepared to part with meat rations is proof that flesh foods are an unnecessary luxury for the West Indian native.
The negroes of the island are sharply divided into
