But that lucky man was only one out of hundreds.
Many and many an unhappy being, I am afraid, crawled away from a servitude grown too hard, and died beneath the tangle of palms and tropical greenery among the mountains of Jamaica.
For they died prematurely—we know they died. Even the ruling class died like flies often before they had reached their prime, and each and all set down the abnormal death rate to the pestilential climate. Really Jamaica has a beautiful climate, but they did not understand in those days the danger of the mosquito, and they thought the night air was deadly. All classes drank, the masters “Madera” and rum, and the servants rum that was doubtless not of the best. It is easy to sneer, but human nature needs some relaxation, and living on beef that was like brine, sleeping all night in a room from which the night air was carefully excluded, the gorgeous divine night of Jamaica, and overworked in the burning sun, we can hardly blame these bondsmen for drinking. They watered the cane pieces with their sweat and blood, and they died—died—died! They were not even pioneers. They were simply bond-servants on whom no one wasted pity.
It seems to me that pity, that true pity which is not half-sister to contempt, but has eyes for suffering humanity, and the will to better things was hardly born among the majority till after the Great War. Now at last is the worker coming into his own, and if he wax fat and kick like the gentleman in Holy Writ, I think we must forgive him, for long has he served.
CHAPTER III—JAMAICA'S FIRST HISTORIAN
It is fascinating to read up the old books that have been written about Jamaica. Wearisome sometimes naturally, because for one illuminating remark you must wade through a mass of turgid stuff.
I confess even to having skipped occasionally Hans Sloane, and I read Hans Sloane—in the original edition with the long “s's”—sitting on the verandah of my house looking over the Caribbean Sea, and when I had finished I felt I had known him, so charming is he. I was sorry I could not write and thank him for his book. It is a very strange thing how personality creeps out in writing. No one surely ever talked less of himself than Hans Sloane, but we somehow get a picture of a kindly, interesting man, patient and tactful, whom it must have been a privilege to know, and he manages to give us a very clear picture of life in Jamaica little more than thirty years after the first landing of the English. He was Physician to the Duke of Albemarle and lived in Jamaica for a year, 1687-88, and he looked at the country he had come to with seeing eyes, and described thoughtfully what he saw.
“The Swine come home every night in several hundreds from feeding on the wild Fruit in the neighbouring Woods, on the third sound of a Conch Shell, when they are fed with some few ears of Indian corn thrown in amongst them, and let out the next morning not to return till night, or that they heard the sound of the Shell. These sort of remote Plantations are very profitable to their Masters, not only in feeding their own Families, but in affording them many Swine to sell for the Market. It was not a small Diversion to me, to see the Swine in the Woods, on the first sound of the Shell, which is like that of a Trumpet, to lift up their Heads from the ground where they were feeding and prick up their Ears to hearken for the second which so soon as ever they heard, they would begin to make some movements homewards, but on the third Sound they would run with all their Speed to the Place where the Overseer us'd to throw them Corn. They are called home so every night, and also when such of them as are fit for Market are wanted; and seem to be as much, if not more, under Command and Discipline, than any Troops I ever saw.