5th Figure.
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Isaac Park gone a Colon, Isaac Park gone a Colon, Isaac Park gone a Colon, Colon boat a go kill them boy. Colon bolow[57] gone a Colon, Colon bolow gone a Colon, Colon bolow gone a Colon, Colon boat a go kill them boy. |
It was not the boat from Kingston to Colon that killed the boys; the deaths took place on the other side. Many were due to fever, but more, if the stories current here are true, to organised assassination. The wages were very large, and when a Jamaica boy has money in his pocket he gets "boastify." This annoyed the low-class mongrels. A Coolie who was there described to me the proceedings of one night, when the 'panish (by which is meant any straight-haired people) went out in a band and murdered every woolly-haired man they met. They began at one end of the camp, a straight line of barrack huts. Some of the victims were shot through the windows, others slashed with cutlasses. Where there were no lights the assassins passed their hands over the strangers' heads, and if they felt wool, revolver or cutlass did its work. Straight-haired Coolies, that is to say, East Indians, were allowed to go unharmed.
CLII.
5th Figure.
