MARCH 10. (Sunday.)
I find that I have not done justice to the cotton tree, and, on the other hand, have given too much praise to the Jamaica kitchen. The first cotton trees which I saw, were either withered by age, or struck by lightning, or happened to be ill-shaped of their kind; but I have since met with others, than which nothing could be more noble or picturesque, from their gigantic height, the immense spread of their arms, the colour of their stems and leaves, and the wild fantastic wreathings of their roots and branches. As to the kitchen, nothing can be larger and finer in appearance than the poultry of all kinds, but nothing can be uniformly more tough and tasteless; and the same is the case with all butcher’s meat, pork excepted, which is much better here than in Europe. The fault is in the climate, which prevents any animal food from being kept sufficiently long to become tender; so that when a man sits down to a Jamaica dinner, he might almost fancy himself a guest at Macbeth’s Covent-Garden banquet, where the fowls, hams, and legs of mutton are all made of deal boards. I ordered a duck to be kept for two days; but it was so completely spoiled, that there was no bearing it upon the table. Then I tried the expedient of boiling a fowl till it absolutely fell to pieces; but even this violent process had not the power of rendering it tender. The only effect produced by it was, that instead of being helped to a wing of solid wood, I got a plateful of splinters. Perhaps, my having totally lost my appetite (probably from my not being able to take, in this climate, sufficient of my usual exercise) makes the meat appear to me less palatable than it may to others; but I have observed, that most people here prefer living upon soups, stews, and salted provisions. For my own part, I have for the last few weeks eaten nothing except black crabs, than which I never met with a more delicious article for the table. I have also tried the soldier soup, which is in great estimation in this island; but although it greatly resembled the very richest cray-fish soup, it seemed to be composed of cray-fish which had been kept too long. The soldiers themselves were perfectly fresh, for they were brought to the kitchen quite alive and merry; but I was told that this taste of staleness is their peculiar flavour, as well as their peculiar scent even when alive, and is precisely the quality which forms their recommendation. It was quite enough to fix my opinion of the soup: I ate two spoonfuls, and never mean to venture on a third.
MARCH 12.
The most general of negro infirmities appears to be that of lameness. It is chiefly occasioned by the chiga, a diminutive fly which works itself into the feet to lay its eggs, and, if it be not carefully extracted in time, the flesh around it corrupts, and a sore ensues not easily to be cured. No vigilance can prevent the attacks of the chiga; and not only soldiers, but the very cleanest persons of the highest rank in society, are obliged to have their feet examined regularly. The negroes are all provided with small knives for the purpose of extracting them: but as no pain is felt till the sore is produced, their extreme laziness frequently makes them neglect that precaution, till all kinds of dirt getting into the wound, increases the difficulty of a cure; and sometimes the consequence is lameness for life.
There is another disease which commits great ravages among them; for although in this climate its quality is far from virulent, and it is easy to be cured in its beginning, the negro will most carefully conceal his having such a complaint, till it has made so great a progress that its effects are perceived by others. Even then, they will never acknowledge the way in which they have contracted it; but men and women, whose noses almost shake while speaking to you, will still insist upon it that their illness arises from catching cold, or from a strain in lifting a weight, or, in short, from any cause except the true one. Yet why they act thus it is difficult to imagine; for certainly it does not arise from shame.
Indeed, it is one of their singular obstinacies, that, however ill they may be, they scarcely ever will confess to the physician what is really the matter with them on their first coming into the hospital, but will rather assign some other cause for their being unwell than the true one; and it is only by cross-questioning, that their superintendents are able to understand the true nature of their case. Perhaps this duplicity is occasioned by fear; for in any bodily pain it is not possible to be more cowardly than the negro; and I have heard strong young men, while the tears were running down their cheeks, scream and roar as if a limb was amputating, although the doctoress was only applying a poultice to a whitlow on the finger. I suppose, therefore, that dread of the pain of some unknown mode of treatment makes them conceal their real disease, and name some other, of which they know the cure to be unattended with bodily suffering or long restraint. In the disease I allude to, such a motive would operate with peculiar force, as one of their chief aversions is the necessarily being long confined to one certainly not fragrant room.
MARCH 13.
The Reporter of the African Institution asserts, in a late pamphlet, that in the West Indies the breeding system is to this day discouraged, and that the planters are still indifferent to the preservation of their present stock of negroes, from their confidence of getting fresh supplies from Africa. Certainly the negroes in Jamaica are by no means of this Reporter’s opinion, but are thoroughly sensible of their intrinsic value in the eyes of the proprietor. On my arrival, every woman who had a child held it up to show to me, exclaiming,—“See massa, see! here nice new neger me bring for work for massa;” and those who had more than one did not fail to boast of the number, and make it a claim to the greater merit with me. Last week, an old watchman was brought home from the mountains almost dead with fever; he would neither move, nor speak, nor notice any one, for several days. For two nights I sent him soup from my own table; but he could not even taste it, and always gave it to his daughter. On the third evening, there happened to be no soup at dinner, and I sent other food instead; but old Cudjoe had been accustomed to see the soup arrive, and the disappointment made him fancy himself hungry, and that he could have eaten the soup if it had been brought as usual: accordingly, when I visited him the next morning, he bade the doctoress tell me that massa had send him no soup the night before. This was the first notice that he had ever taken of me. I promised that some soup should be ordered for him on purpose that evening. Could he fancy any thing to eat then?—“Milk! milk!” So milk was sent to him, and he drank two full calabashes of it. I then tried him with an egg, which he also got down; and at night, by spoonfuls at a time, he finished the whole bason of soup; but when I next came to see him, and he wished to thank me, the words in which he thought he could comprise most gratitude were bidding the doctoress tell me he would do his best not to die yet; he promised to fight hard for it. He is now quite out of danger, and seems really to be grateful. When he was sometimes too weak to speak, on my leaving the room he would drag his hand to his mouth with difficulty, and kiss it three or four times to bid me farewell; and once, when the doctoress mentioned his having charged her to tell me that he owed his recovery to the good food that I had sent him, he added, “And him kind words too, massa; kind words do neger much good, much as good food.” In my visits to the old man, I observed a young woman nursing him with an infant in her arms, which (as they told me) was her own, by Cudjoe. I therefore supposed her to be his wife: but I found that she belonged to a brown man in the mountains; and that Cudjoe hired her from her master, at the rate of thirty pounds a year!
I hope this fact will convince the African Reporter, that it is possible for some of this “oppressed race of human beings”—“of these our most unfortunate fellow-creatures,”—to enjoy at least some of the luxuries of civilised society; and I doubt, whether even Mr. Wilberforce himself, with all his benevolence, would not allow a negro to be quite rich enough, who can afford to pay thirty pounds a year for the hire of a kept mistress.