CHAPTER IX.
OCCIDENTAL VAGARIES.
Early on the Monday, we accordingly started on our journey, and that evening arrived at very comfortable quarters in St Ann's bay.
We did not get under weigh next morning until the sun was high—it was nearly ten in the forenoon, as we had only to go the length of Prickly Pear cottage that day, a property belonging to a crony of mine uncle's, at which we had promised to dine and spend the night on our way to St Thomas in the Vale, where we were to call a halt, to attend some military dinner or another at Bogwalk tavern.
The beauty of St Ann's, the principal grazing parish of Jamaica, surpassed any notion I had previously formed of it;—the whole district being a sea of gently undulating hill and valley, covered with the most luxuriant waving Guinea grass—across which the racking cloudlets, borne on the wings of the fresh and invigorating breeze, chased each other cheerily as if it had been one vast hay field, ready for the scythe—thickly interspersed with groves of pimento and fruit-trees, whose picturesque situations no capability man could possibly improve. The herds of cattle that browsed all round us, whether as to breed or condition, would have done credit to the first grazing county in England. Lord Althorp should go and take a squint at St Ann's—I daresay the worthies there might make him custos.
At length, as it drew on to three in the afternoon, we saw the cottage glittering in all the West India glory of green blinds and white paint, through the grove of fruit-trees in the centre of which it was placed. It was a long low one-story house, raised about ten feet off the ground on brick pillars, under which gamboled half-a-dozen goats, and surrounded by a cool and airy piazza, while the neighbouring thickets were peppered with a whole cluster of small white-washed buildings, comprising kitchen, gard-du-mange, houses for the domestics, pigsties, and poultry-yard.
We dismounted at one end of the piazza, where a door, kept gaping ajar by a large stone on the floor, to which access was had by a flight of steps, seemed to invite us to walk in. We ascended the stair and entered. The dark mirrorlike floors, the fragrant odour of the fresh gathered bitter oranges which had been just used in polishing them, the green shade of the trees that overshadowed the building, tossing their branches, and rushing and twittering in the sea breeze—the beautiful flowers that crept in at every open blind and crevice—(a knot in the weather boarding could not drop out but in would pop a rose, or a bud of double jessamine, as if trying to escape the ardent gaze of the sun)—the twilight of the rooms, and the glorious view of the everlasting ocean in the distance (with a tiny white winglet of a sail sliding along here and there), crisped with blue waves, as if the water had reflected the mackerel sky that glowed over all, until both were blended out at sea beneath a silvery haze—were indescribably luxurious and refreshing—their sweet and cooling influences more strongly felt, from the contrast they afforded to the heat and dust of the lowland road we had just left. Oh! I could—curse it—there's a mackaw—there is a mackaw—a bird I detest and abominate—so my poetry is all blown to the moon in a jiffy. I would rather sit and listen to the music of the setting of a saw, while enjoying the luxury of a sick headach.—But let me whistle back my fancy again, and get on with my story.
Several ladies' work-tables, with the work lying on them, tumbled as it were in haste, and chairs disarranged, showed that our approach had not been observed until we were close aboard, and that the fair members of the family had that moment fled, in order to make themselves presentable; indeed this was vouched for by the laughing, and fistling, and keckling we heard in a room, whose window opened into the piazza.
Presently a tidily-dressed brown waiting-maiden, with flowers on her gown the size of the crown of my hat, and of the gaudiest colours, popped her head in at the door, and after showing her white teeth, disappeared. She had very evidently been sent to reconnoitre, and I could not avoid overhearing her say in the inner room aforesaid, close to the open window of which our party were clustered, "Oh, nyung missis—dere are old massa Frenche—one tall town-looking buccra, wid big hook nose like one parrot bill—one leetler fat one, hab red face, and one fonny coat, all tick over wid small silk barrel, and broider wid black silk lace—And—oh, I forgot—one small slip of a boy, dat roll side to side so"—here she seemed to be suiting the action to the word—"like de sailor negro."
Now this was me, your honour.