He certainly makes diverting reading on the people who came to him with various ailments, though I doubt whether his patients found anything particularly amusing in his treatment of them. He carefully sorts them all out according to their rank, for people were much more punctilious then than now. He mentions “Loveney, a negro woman of Colonel Ballard's,” “one Barret,” “a lusty woman,” “one Cornwall's daughter,” “a Gentleman aged about 40 years,” “a young Gentlewoman aged about twelve years.” And he is extremely frank as to their ailments and their causes. Of a “Gentlewoman aged about fifty years,” he writes, “I attribute this disease to Wine Punch and Vinous Liquors, but she would not abstain, alledging that her Stomach was cold and needed something to warm it.” We sometimes hear that statement in these days!
Again he tells us of a gentleman who in drinking “Madera Wine and Water, he made use of it too often, whereby he became usually, the more he drank, the more dry, so that after a small time he was necessitated to drink again.” I think we also meet cases like that not infrequently. Sloane himself considers that water is the best drink, though he did not always practise what he preached, but his really lightning cure was that of that “lusty negro Footman Emanuel. Emanuel was ordered over-night to get himself ready against next morning to be a guide on foot for about an hundred miles through the Woods to a place of the island to seize Pirates who, as the Duke of Albemarle was informed, had there unladed great quantities of Silver to Careen their Ship.” Now Emanuel had evidently heard all about the pirates, and did not desire a closer acquaintance, and I have the sincerest sympathy with Emanuel. “About twelve a'Clock in the night he pretended himself to be extraordinary sick, he lay straight along, would not speak, and dissembled himself in great Agony by groaning, etc.” But, alas, he had the cleverest doctor in the island to deal with. “His pulse beat well, neither had he any foaming at the mouth or difficulty in breathing. The Europeans who stood by thought him dead, Blacks thought him bewitched, and others were of opinion that he was poyson'd. I examined matters as nicely as I could, concluded that this was a new strange Disease such as I had never seen, or was not mention'd by any Authority I had read, or that he counterfeited it.”
Poor Emanuel!
“Being confirmed that it was this latter, and that he could speak very well if he pleas'd, to frighten him out of it, I told the Standers by, that in such a desperate condition as this, 'twas usual to apply a Frying pan with burning Coals to the Head, in order to awake them thoroughly, and to draw from the Head, and that it was likewise an ordinary method to put Candles lighted to their Hands and Feet, that when the flame came to burn them they might be awaked. I sent two several People in all haste to get ready these things, in the meantime leaving him, that he might have time to consider and recover out of this fit of Dissumlation, which in a quarter of an hour he did, so that he came to speak. I question'd him about his pain, he told me it was very great in his Back. I told him in short that he was a dissembler, bid him go and do his business without any more ado, or else he should have due Correction, which was the best Remedy I knew for him, he went about his Errand immediately and perform'd it well, though he came too late for the Pirats.” I expect Emanuel knew a thing or two, and since the leading of the expedition was in his hands, very naturally saw to it that they did not come upon them too soon.
Sloane was not content to stay in Port Royal or at Spanish Town, which was the seat of the Government, but wandered about the island. At St Ann's, on Captain Hemmings' plantation, he found the ruins of Sevilla, the town the Spaniards built as their first capital. Whether he looked at those ruins with the eyes of a romance writer, I do not know. Certainly he seems to have found them much more magnificent than any other Spanish remains found warrant us in thinking them. He found a fort, a monastery, sugar works, and Captain Hemmings told him he often found pavements 3 feet deep under big canes. There were the ruins of several buildings not yet finished, and tradition said that the Europeans had been cut off by the Indians. The town had been overgrown for a long time, and he says most of the timber felled off this place, within the walls of the tower, was 60 feet long. “The West Gate of the Church was very fine Work and stands very entire, it was seven Foot wide, and as high before the Arch began. Over the door in the middle was our Saviour's head with a Crown of Thorns, between two Angels, on the right side a small round figure of some Saint with a Knife stuck into his Head, on the left a Virgin Mary or Madonna, her Arm tied in three places Spanish Fashion.”
That pathetic, uncompleted old church at Sevilla, with the arched stones that lay about among the canes but had never been put up, tells a story of terror of the old days. But the English soldiery, contemptuous of all things Spanish, swept everything away, and I do not suppose that one of those stones he saw in Captain Hemmings' fields yet remains. All went long years ago.
Colonel Ballard told him that when the Spaniards left the island they abandoned not only their slaves but their dogs, great beasts as big as Irish greyhounds. These went wild and hunted of themselves the cattle that were in the savannahs and woods. Apparently these capable dogs had been used by their masters to hunt the Indians, for there was always a certain share of the booty on these occasions due to the master of the dogs. There were wild horses too in the woods, and the English settlers took the best and destroyed them, using them ruthlessly in the mills. Man has ever been cruel to the luckless beasts that fell into his hands. And Sloane remarks how smooth were the skins of these horses in comparison with the rough coated little horses introduced by the conquerors from New England. There were cattle too and the settlers as well as the buccaneers hunted these, killing them apparently rather wantonly, but probably there was not much else for the soldiers to feed on. “This way of taking the wild black Cattle,” says Sloane, “cutting their tendons or Lancing is what is used by the Spaniards in their islands and Continents, and by Privateers and Bucaniers; but in Jamaica there remain very few wild Cattle to be taken and those are in the Northside of the Island in the less frequented parts. The manner in which the Spaniards and English killed these Cattle, besides the wild Dogs who used of themselves to hunt and kill them, was with a Lance or Halberd, on the end of which was an Iron sharpened and made in the shape of a Crescent or Half Moon. These wild Cattle are said much to exceed the others in taste.”
He tells too of the slaves, for negro slaves they had in those days as well as Indians and indentured white servants. “The Indians are not the natives of the island, they being destroyed by the Spaniards, but are usually brought by surprise from the Mosquitoes or Florida” (what blackguards were these old colonists) “or such as were slaves to the Spaniards and taken from them by the English.... They are of an olive colour, have long black lank hair, and are very good Hunters, Fishers, or Fowlers, but are naught at working in the Fields or Slavish Work, and if checkt or drub'd are good for nothing, therefore are very gently treated and well fed.”... “Of the Negros... those who are Creolians, born in the island, or taken from the Spaniards, are reckoned worth more than the others in that they are seasoned to the Island.”
Seasoned to the Island, indeed! He means their troubles there were the devil, they knew. And then he goes on to show us what these troubles might be. “The punishments for Crimes of Slaves are usually for rebellion by burning them, by nailing them down to the ground with crooked Sticks on every Limb and then applying the Fire by degrees from the Feet and Hands, burning them gradually up to the head whereby their Pains are extravagant. For Crimes of a lesser nature, Gelding, or chopping off Half the Foot with an Ax. Their Punishments are suffered by them with great Constancy.
“For running away they put Iron Rings of great weight on their Ankles, or Pottocks about their necks, which are Iron Rings with two long Spikes rivetted to them or a Spur in the Mouth.