CHAPTER VI—THE PLANTATION
I can hardly say it too often—in reading about the slaves and their sufferings we must remember that past ages had different standards, and that, although undoubtedly the slaves suffered horribly it was the custom of the times, and other people suffered as well. Even at the beginning of this century, coming to England from a land where the working man could always make enough to keep himself in decency and comfort, I was shocked and horrified at the condition of the poorer classes in the great cities of England. In London, in Liverpool, in the Five Towns, and more particularly in Sheffield, was I dismayed at the low standard of the working man or woman. It seemed to me they were slaves in a bitter cold and cheerless country, and as far as I could see, for I had my living to earn and no time to investigate, they had no hope of bettering their condition.
And my Australian eyes were not the only ones that saw the people so. E. Nesbit, who writes so charmingly, once wrote a story in which the children, either by means of a magic carpet or a reanimated phoenix, brought back Queen Semiramis to visit the earth and took her for a ride on top of an omnibus through the London streets.
“How badly you keep your slaves?” said the Queen.
“Oh, there are no slaves in England,” said the children. I quote from memory but this is the gist of the story.
“Stuff and nonsense, children!” said the Queen. “Don't tell me! Think I don't know a slave when I see him!”
E. Nesbit is quite right. We cannot see fairly and in their true colours the things to which use has deadened our sensibilities. It must have seemed quite natural for the planters of Jamaica to be pleased when a slave ship arrived. The news would go round at once, and as the ships were not very big they came to ports that only a coaster visits nowadays. To Kingston, of course, to Montego Bay, but they also went to Savanna la Mar and to Black River and other places that dream idly in the sunshine now and get their stores by motor boats and schooners.
Probably the planter grumbled and growled and said the stench of such a ship was enough to knock you down, and that he hated the job, but he had to have hands, and in a way he enjoyed the outing and the gathering together of his own kind. No one, I think, for one moment thought of the sufferings of the slaves; they grumbled, as men do nowadays because a pig-stye smells. Occasionally a farmer, wiser than the rest, declares the swine should be kept clean, but one and all, grumblers and wise men, are sure they need bacon. And so it was with the sale of the black cattle.
They were savages. Occasionally, perhaps, a highly bred and educated man from the north might be mixed up with them, but as a rule the slaves imported were the merest barbarians. It is no good thinking they were anything else. It is true enough what the advocates of slavery always maintained, that through their enslaving they did get a glimpse of better things. An Ashanti woman with her shaven head and a cloth wrapped round her middle, beating fu-fu, is certainly not as far advanced in the social scale as the milkmaid clambering down the steep hillside to Montego Bay and saving her pennies to buy herself smart clothes in which to go to church. But it is also certain that the men who imported her forbears were thinking only of their own convenience.
There was a tremendous cleaning up on board on arrival; salt water was aplenty, and the slaves were doctored, their sores were attended to, and they were given palm oil and coconut oil with which to anoint themselves. They must have been thankful to come out of their cramped quarters and bask on deck in the sunshine, but they must have feared. One historian has left it on record that the planters who came down to buy had often celebrated the arrival and were so gloriously drunk that the scramble for the goods was disgraceful and the unfortunate Helots must have thought they had fallen into the hands of cannibals and were to be despatched forthwith.