“A Palenque is here a place for bringing up of Poultry, as Turkeys, which here much exceed the European and are very good and well tasted, Hens, Ducks, Muscovy Ducks and some very few Geese.... These Poultry are all fed on Indian, or Guinea Corn and Ants nests brought from the Woods which these Fowls pick up and destroy mightily.”
This was written of 1687, but it is true now in this twentieth century. I have seen oranges and naseberries lying rotting under the trees in heaps and I know there is much waste land in Jamaica where it should be well worth someone's while to raise hogs and chickens and turkeys. Just behind where I am sitting writing, a bare two miles from the town of Montego Bay, there is a swamp which at present breeds nothing but large and fierce mosquitoes, but where hogs might live to their advantage and the swamp's, and in these days of cold storage and world shortage I wonder why that swamp is not turned to good account. As for fowls and turkeys and ducks, they grow fat and heavy, they lay wonderfully, and if anyone gave a little attention to the poultry industry they should coin money. Guinea-fowl will feed themselves, and so will the pea-fowl, the bird that used to be considered—rightly—a dish for a royal banquet. And nowadays, instead of being taken to market on mule-back or on the heads of slaves, they would quite well pay for motor cartage.
I am sorry to say it seems to me this industry has rather retrograded since Sloane's day.
“The Cattle,” he says, “are penn'd every night or else they in a short time run wild. These Pens are made of Palisadoes and are look'd after very carefully by the Planters. The Oxen who have been drawing in their Mills and are well fed on Sugar Cane tops are reckoned the best meat, if not too much wrought. They are likewise fatted by Scotch Grass.”
They did escape many a time from these “Palisadoes” and so the woods of Jamaica proved very attractive hunting-grounds for the buccaneers. It is evident that pork and beef might be got here quite as easily as in the days of the Spaniards, and perhaps it was in return for this unwilling hospitality that these gentlemen brought much of their plunder to Port Royal, for Jamaica, in those first years, even before Sir Hans Sloane wandered about it, made money out of the corsairs. They were a difficult problem. Other days, other manners. They ravaged the coasts yet they brought wealth to the capital, and while some of them got themselves hanged for the blackguards they undoubtedly were, Sir Henry Morgan, the successful English leader of the lot, was at one time Lieutenant-Governor of the island.
It was no wonder Jamaica attracted all sorts and conditions of adventurers, for the climate, if one remembers it lies within the tropics, is lovely. It is hot in the middle of the day and the sun has naturally great power, but there is from ten in the morning till four in the afternoon a cooling breeze off the sea, and at night it is reversed, the cool breeze comes from the land. Hans Sloane notices this, he also mentions what of course is of no consequence in these days of steamers, that no ship can come into harbour save in the middle of the day, and none can go out save in the early morning or at night. He kept a record of the weather all the time he was in the island, and that record for 1687-88 might have done almost word for word for 1919-20, so little does the climate vary. His memorandum for the 25th October 1688 might have stood for the 25th October 1920, when I read it, “Fair weather with a small sea breeze.” And when the sea breeze has failed he has a note which I feelingly record is perfectly true, “Extream hot.” Luckily the sea breeze seldom fails, and I suppose there is no place in the world where the climate suits everyone always. Sloane remarks that most people considered the land breeze at night unwholesome, “which,” he says, with a wisdom beyond his time, “I do not believe,” and even to-day I have met people who warned me gravely against the danger of sleeping outside. “The damp night wind is so dangerous!” and like Sloane I did not believe and I went on sleeping in the open and daily growing better and better.
As a physician, he had a great deal to say about the health of the people of the new Colony. Indeed, reading him has made me understand how slowly and imperceptibly we throw off the old and take up the new. He dilates on the immorality of the people. Not that he worried about their souls as did later writers; he takes things as he finds them and does not expect men to be impossible—and dull—angels, but he writes wisely on the effect such conduct must have on the individual.
“The Passions of the Mind have very great power on Mankind here, especially Hysterical Women and Hypochondriacal Men. These cannot but have a great share in the cause of several Diseases, some of the People living here being in such Circumstances, as not to be able to live easily elsewhere: add to this that there are not wanting some, as everywhere else, who have been of bad Lives, whereby their minds are disturbed, and their Diseases, if not rendered Mortal, yet much worse to cure than those who have sedate Minds, and Clear Consciences. On the same account it is that those who have not their Wills, Minds, and Affairs settled, in Distempers are much worse to be cur'd than other Men.” And he goes on to say that he considers many of the ailments of the people may be set down to “Debauchery” and their love of drinking. The Europeans, he says, are foolish to dress in the tropics as they would at home, and he tells how, going for a ride in the early morning, his periwig and “Cloths” were wet with dew.
This shrewd observer prescribes the most drastic remedies.
One good lady, who was going blind, he ordered to take “Millepedes alive, to one hundred in a morning, rising to that number by degrees, on the days when she took nothing else. By these means persisted in she first felt some relief, by degrees recovered the sight of one Eye and then of the other, so that she could at last read Bibles of the smallest print, and was entirely cured.” I am glad of that, for she had been bled by cupping, by scarification in the shoulders, blistered in the neck, and had had various other extremely disagreeable things done to her. But I hardly give the “Millepedes” credit, perhaps it was the abstinence from the many good things that came her way.