Our intention is to stay at St. Jago till St. Louis joins us. God knows whether we shall ever see him again. With what joy I shall leave this land of oppression! how much that joy would be increased if I was going to the continent; but in all places, and in all countries I shall be affectionately yours,
LETTER XV.
Barracoa.
You will no doubt be surprised at receiving a letter from hence, but here we are my dear friend, deprived of every thing we possessed, in a strange country, of whose language we are ignorant, and where, even with money, it would be impossible to procure what we have been accustomed to consider as the necessaries of life. Yet here we have found an asylum, and met with sympathy; not that of words, but active and effectual sympathy, from strangers, which, perhaps, we should have sought in vain in our own country, and among our own people.
We embarked at the Cape, Clara, myself and six servants, in a small schooner, which was full of women, and bound to St. Jago. As soon as we were out of the harbour a boat from a British frigate boarded us, condemned the vessel as French property, and, without further ceremony, sent the passengers on board another vessel which was lying near us, and was going to Barracoa, where we arrived in three days, after having suffered much from want of provisions and water. Every thing belonging to us had been left in the schooner the English made a prize of. St. Louis, having forseen the probability of this event, had made Clara conceal fifty doubloons in her corset.
On our arrival at Barracoa, a Frenchman we had known at the Cape came on board. He conducted us ashore, and procured us a room in a miserable hut, where we passed the night on a board laid on the ground, it being impossible to procure a mattrass. The next morning the first consideration was clothes. There was not a pair of shoes to be found in the place, nor any thing which we would have thought of employing for our use if we had not been obliged by the pressure of necessity. Clara had given a corner of our hut to a lady who, with two children, was without a shilling.
While we were at breakfast, which we made of chocolate, served in little calabashes, lent us by the people of the house, a priest of most benign aspect entered, and addressing Clara in French, which he speaks fluently, told her that having heard of our arrival and misfortunes, he had come to offer his services, and enquired how we had passed the night? Clara shewed him the boards on which we had slept. He rose instantly, and calling the mistress of the house, spoke to her angrily. I afterwards learned that he reproached her for not having informed him of our distress as soon as we arrived. He took his leave and returned in half an hour with three or four negroes who brought mattrasses, and baskets filled with fowls, and every kind of fruit the island produces. Then, telling Clara that his sister would call on her in the evening, and begging her to consider him as her servant, and every thing he possessed at her disposal, he went away. In the afternoon he returned with his sister. She is a widow. Her manners are interesting, but she speaks no language except her own, of which not one of us understood a word.