FEBRUARY 3.
A stage of twenty miles brought us to Old Harbour, and, passing through the Dry River, twelve more landed us at Spanish Town, otherwise called St. Jago de la Vega, and the seat of government in Jamaica, although Kingston is much larger and more populous, and must be considered as the principal town. We found very clean and comfortable lodgings at Miss Cole’s. Spanish Town has no recommendations whatever; the houses are mostly built of wood: the streets are very irregular and narrow; every alternate building is in a ruinous state, and the whole place wears an air of gloom and melancholy. The government house is a large clumsy-looking brick building, with a portico the stucco of which has suffered by the weather, and it can advance no pretensions to architectural beauty. On one side of the square in which it stands there is a small temple protecting a statue of Lord Rodney, executed by Bacon: some of the bas-reliefs on the pedestal appeared to me very good; but the old admiral is most absurdly dressed in the habit of a Roman General, and furnished out with buskins and a truncheon. The temple itself is quite in opposition to good taste, with very low arches, surmounted by heavy bas reliefs out of all proportion.
FEBRUARY 4. (Sunday.)
We breakfasted with the Chief Justice, who is my relation, and of my own name, and then went to the church, which is a very handsome one; the walls lined with fine mahogany, and ornamented with many monuments of white marble, in memory of the former governors and other principal inhabitants. It seems that my ancestors, on both sides, have always had a taste for being well lodged after their decease; for, on admiring one of these tombs, it proved to be that of my maternal grandfather; but still this was not to be compared for a moment with my mausoleum at Cornwall. After church I went home with the Rector, who is one of the ecclesiastical commissaries, and had a long conversation with him respecting a plan which is in agitation for giving the negroes something of a religious education. We afterwards dined with the member for Westmoreland; and as every body in Jamaica is on foot by six in the morning, at ten in the evening we were quite ready to go to bed.
FEBRUARY 5.
The Chief Justice went with me to Kingston, where I had appointed the agent for my other estate in St. Thomas-in-the-East to meet me. The short time allotted for my stay in the island makes it impossible to attend properly both to this estate and to Cornwall at this first visit, and therefore I determined to confine my attention to the negroes on the latter estate till my return to Jamaica. I now contented myself by impressing on the mind of my agent (whom I am certain of being a most humane and intelligent man) my extreme anxiety for the abolition of the cart-whip; and I had the satisfaction of hearing from him, that for a long time it had never been used more than perhaps twice in the year, and then only very slightly, and for some offence so flagrant that it was impossible to pass it over; and he assured me, that whenever I visit Hordley, I may depend upon its not being employed at all. On the other hand, I am told that a gentleman of the parish of Vere, who came over to Jamaica for the sole purpose of ameliorating the condition of his negroes, after abolishing the cart-whip, has at length been constrained to resume the occasional use of it, because he found it utterly impossible to keep them in any sort of subordination without it.
There is not that air of melancholy about Kingston which pervades Spanish Town; but it has no pretensions to beauty; and if any person will imagine a large town entirely composed of booths at a race-course, and the streets merely roads, without any sort of paving, he will have, a perfect idea of Kingston.
FEBRUARY 6.
The Jamaica canoes are hollowed cotton-trees. We embarked in one of them at six in the morning, and visited the ruins of Port Royal, which, last year, was destroyed by fire: some of the houses were rebuilding; but it was a melancholy sight, not only from the look of the half-burnt buildings, but the dejected countenances of the ruined inhabitants. I returned to breakfast at the rectory, with two other ecclesiastical commissaries; had more conversation about their proposed plan; and became still more convinced of the difficulty of doing any thing effectual without danger to the island and to the negroes themselves, and of the extreme delicacy requisite in whatever may be attempted. We afterwards visited the school of the children of the poor, who are educating upon Dr. Bell’s system; and then saw the church, a very large and handsome one on the inside, but mean enough as to its exterior. I was shown the tombstone of Admiral Benbow, who was killed in a naval engagement, and whose ship afterwards
“Bore down to Port Royal, where the people flocked very