The Eboe Captain has effected his escape by burning down the prison door. It is supposed that he has fled towards the fastnesses in the interior of the mountains, where I am assured that many settlements of run-away slaves have been formed, and with which the inhabited part of the island has no communication. However, the chief of the Accompong Maroons, Captain Roe, is gone in pursuit of him, and has promised to bring him in, alive or dead. The latter is the only reasonable expectation, as the fugitive is represented as a complete desperado.
The negroes have at least given me one proof of their not being entirely selfish. When they heard that the boat was come to convey my baggage to the ship at Black River, they collected all their poultry, and brought it to my agent, desiring him to add it to my sea-stores. Of course I refused to let them be received, and they were evidently much disappointed, till I consented to accept the fowls and ducks, and then gave them back to them again, telling them to consider them as a present from my own hen-house, and to distinguish them by the name of “massa’s poultry.”
MARCH 28.
I have been positively assured, that an attempt was made to persuade the grand jury at Montego Bay, to present me for over-indulgence to my own negroes! It is a great pity that so reasonable an attempt should not have succeeded.—The rebel captain who broke out of prison, has been found concealed in the hut of a notorious Obeah-man, and has been lodged a second time in the gaol of Savannah la Mar.
MARCH 29.
About two months ago, a runaway cooper, belonging to Shrewsbury estate, by name Edward, applied to me to intercede for his not being punished on his return home. As soon as he got the paper requested, he gave up all idea of returning to the estate, and instead of it went about the country stealing every thing upon which he could lay his hands; and whenever his proceedings were enquired into by the magistrates, he stated himself to be on the road to his trustee, and produced my letter as a proof of it. At length some one had the curiosity to open the letter, and found that it had been written two months before.
MARCH 30.
This was the day appointed for the first “Royal play-day,” when I bade farewell to my negroes. I expected to be besieged with petitions and complaints, as they must either make them on this occasion or not at all. I was, therefore, most agreeably surprised to find, that although they had opportunities of addressing me from nine in the morning till twelve at night, the only favours asked me were by a poor old man, who wanted an iron cooking pot, and by Adam, who begged me to order a little daughter of his to be instructed in needle-work: and as to complaints, not a murmur of such a thing was heard; they all expressed themselves to be quite satisfied, and seemed to think that they could never say enough to mark their gratitude for my kindness, and their anxiety for my getting safe to England. We began our festival by the head driver’s drinking the health of H. R. H. the Duchess of York, whom the negroes cheered with such a shout as might have “rent hell’s concave.”
Then we had a christening of such persons as had been absent on the former occasion, one of whom was Adam, the reputed Obeah-man. In the number was a new-born child, whom we called Shakspeare, and whom Afra, the Eboe mother, had very earnestly begged me to make a Christian, as well as a daughter of hers, about four or five years old; at the same time that she declined being christened herself! In the same manner Cubina’s wife, although her father and husband were both baptised on the former occasion, objected to going through the ceremony herself; and the reason which she gave was, that “she did not like being christened while she was with child, as she did not know what change it might not produce upon herself and the infant.”