We landed at Kingston, where Sir J. Keane’s house was prepared for us. The Governor was at Spanish Town, but came in with his generous warmth of heart next day to entertain us. Our worthy friend, Admiral Fleming, of Cumbernauld House,[91] was in naval command. Mrs. Fleming was with him, so that, although in a new world, we were among faithful old friends.
As Quartermaster-General, my first attention was directed to the barrack accommodation, furniture, utensils, etc. The barracks at Upper Park was a Royal Establishment in every respect; the buildings were most beautifully provided, capacious, and built on arches with a current of air passing beneath; they had a bath-room, etc. The barracks in every other quarter of the island were Colonial Establishments, the buildings at many execrable, and the barrack furniture, bedding, etc., horrible. The soldier’s bed was a blanket, though the very touch of a blanket in a tropical climate is disagreeable; and this, laid on the floor, was his all: a wooden floor certainly, but full of bugs, fleas, etc., to an incredible extent. So soon as I laid my report before Sir John Keane, he was most desirous to effect an improvement. We turned to and framed a statement to the Horse Guards (the Duke was then Commander-in-Chief), and in a few months every soldier had a bed, sheets, iron bedstead, etc., and every other requisite.
Still the troops did not escape the yellow fever, of which the seeds, as usual in its visitations, had first germinated among the shipping (where the mortality was fearful). The disease spread to our troops—first to the Artillery at Port Royal, then to the 84th at Fort Augustus, next to the 22nd Regiment at Stony Hill (in both cases to an appalling extent), then partially to the 33rd Regiment at Upper Park Camp, the Royal Barracks. In about six weeks we buried 22 officers and 668 soldiers, out of the 22nd and 84th Regiments principally. Sir John (now Lord) Keane was up the country, and I had a carte blanche to do what I thought best. I therefore, in conjunction with the Acting Inspector-General of Hospitals, resolved to move the 84th from Fort Augustus to a bivouac at Stony Hill. Tents were sent up and huts were in progress. So soon as they were ready I marched the corps, and from that day the yellow fever ceased; there was only one admission afterwards. The day previously to the march of the poor 84th, I went down to Fort Augustus and paraded the Regiment. Only two subalterns were fit for duty, and although only sixty men were in hospital, seventeen died that day. The admissions into hospital were not so great in proportion as the mortality, one in four being the average of deaths. The Regiment was in a perfect state of despondency (it consisted like the 22nd Regiment, of young fresh soldiers recently arrived from England); but I cheered them up. I wheeled them into line a time or two, formed close column, and told them, whether a soldier died by yellow fever or on the battle-field, it was all in the service of his country; that I should move them to a healthy spot the next day where they would leave the yellow fever behind, and now three cheers for his Majesty! The poor fellows were all alive again in no time. When we consider that every officer but two was sick, that already upwards of two hundred out of six hundred of their comrades had been buried, when death in this passive shape lay hold of them, it is not to be wondered at that a young (or any) Regiment should be appalled.
In Jamaica, while this yellow fever was raging, I have ridden thirty-five miles in the sun and gone sixteen miles in an open boat in one day, and been for a long time in the wards of different hospitals, where sickness and death in every stage was progressing around me. It is an awful sight to the afflicted patients in the large wards of a hospital, reduced by sickness to the excess of debility, to see the men on either side probably dead or dying, and there is no remedy and very little power of at all alleviating such a calamity. Many a man who would live if in a solitary room, dies from the power of imagination on the debilitated frame. Then, again, when a man has lost the fever, the surgeon is obliged to discharge him, because he requires the accommodation for recent admissions. He goes to his Company, his appetite has somewhat recovered, he eats heartily, a relapse ensues, he goes to hospital and dies to a certainty. It is rarely indeed that a case of relapse recovers. To obviate this, I established convalescent hospitals. I had various difficulties to contend with, but the success of the institution was an ample reward for labour, and established a precedent since equally advantageously acted on.
Nothing can be more capricious than these epidemics in tropical climates. On the very day twelvemonth that I paraded the 84th and seventeen men died, Sir John Keane made his half-yearly inspection of the corps at the same place, Fort Augustus. There was not a man in hospital and only one man out of the ranks; he paraded in the rear of his Company, being lame from a fractured leg.
The poor 22nd Regiment at Stony Hill suffered equally with the 84th; the Colonel, the Major, the Paymaster, and five officers died in a few days. The Adjutant’s room, next the Orderly room, possessed the mortal seeds of the yellow fever. Every one who sat to write in the room was knocked down and died in a few days; in consequence I prohibited the use of it. Major Stewart, a most excellent officer, though not obedient in this instance, treated the prohibition slightingly, wrote there two days, on the fifth he was buried.
In a short time this fearful epidemic disappeared, and the troops, five regiments in all on the island, were healthy. Sir John Keane proposed a tour of inspection throughout the island. He was to sail in his yacht, landing every night. I, having a terrestrial turn, drove my wife four-in-hand. The daughter of the Receiver-General, Miss Stevenson, accompanied us, the beauty of the island.
A very curious appearance presents itself nearly all round Jamaica. The coast is very bold, and ships to load sugar are navigated through sunken rocks within a few yards of the very shore. At a distance the ships look as if on shore, but they ride in perfect safety, the sunken rocks forming the protection of the harbour. To all these spots a road is made from the adjacent sugar estates, called a barcadero, from the Spanish embarcaro, “to embark.”
The hospitality of the superb mansions we stopped at, the fortunate union with Sir John every night—for the sea-breeze blows so regularly he could calculate his arrival as by land—made this one of the most pleasant tours I ever made. Nothing can be more picturesque than the whole island, and its fertility exceeds anything I have ever seen; while its population (slaves) were more happy, better fed, less worked, and better provided for in sickness than any peasants throughout the many parts of the world in which I have been. Slavery there was merely nominal; the young were educated to a necessary extent, the able-bodied lightly worked, the sick comforted, the aged provided for. All had little huts, some very comfortable, according to the turn and industry of the occupants. All had a nice garden, and all were well fed.