“Shure it’s a beautiful place this, Misther Terence,” said Larry to me, as, the anchor being dropped, and the sails furled, we lay floating calmly on the placid waters. “There’s only one place to my mind that beats this, and that’s Cork harbour, though, to be sure, the mountains there are not so high, or the sky so blue as out here.”
“Or the sun so hot, Larry,” I remarked, “or the people so black. Did you ever see Irishmen like that?” and I pointed to a boat manned by negroes just coming alongside. Larry had never before seen a blackamoor, for, as may be supposed, Africans seldom found their way into Tipperary.
“Shure, your honour, is them Irishmen?” he asked.
“Speak to them, and you’ll soon find out, and they’ll tell you how long it has taken the sun to blacken their faces.”
“Then, Misther Terence, shall we be after getting our faces painted of that colour if we stay out here?” he inquired with some trouble in the tone of his voice.
“Depend upon it, Larry, we shall if we stay long enough,” I answered. I left Larry to reflect on the matter. I remembered a story I had heard of an Irishman who had gone out intending to settle in Demerara, where a large proportion of the white population have come from the Emerald Isle. As soon as the ship had dropped her anchor a number of blacks came off to her. The first he spoke to answered in a rich Irish brogue. The new-comer looked at the negro with astonishment.
“What’s your name, my man?” he asked. “Pat Casey,” was the answer.
“And, Pat, say as you love me, how long have you been out here?”
“Little better than six years, your honour,” was the reply, such being the time that had elapsed since the negro had been imported, having in the meantime had an Irish name given him, and learned to speak Irish.
“Six years, and you have turned from a white-skinned Irishman into a blackamoor!” exclaimed the new-comer; and not waiting for an answer, he rushed down into the cabin, which he could not be induced to quit until the ship sailed again, and he returned home, satisfied that the West Indies was not a country in which he could wish to take up his abode.