And yet it goes against my heart to abuse the inn, for the people were so very civil. I shall never forget that big black chambermaid; how she used to curtsy to me when she came into my room in the morning with a huge tub of water on her head! That such a weight should be put on her poor black skull—a weight which I could not lift—used to rend my heart with anguish. But that, so weighted, she should think that manners demanded a curtsy! Poor, courteous, overburdened maiden!
"Don't, Sally; don't. Don't curtsy," I would cry. "Yes, massa," she would reply, and curtsy again, oh, so painfully! The tub of water was of such vast proportions! It was big enough—big enough for me to wash in!
This house, as I have said, was all in ruins, and among other ruined things was my bedroom-door lock. The door could not be closed within, except by the use of a bolt; and without the bolt would swing wide open to the winds, exposing my arrangements to the public, and disturbing the neighbourhood by its jarring. In spite of the inconvenient difficulty of ingress I was forced to bolt it.
At six every morning came Sally with the tub, knocking gently at the door—knocking gently at the door with that ponderous tub upon her skull! What could a man do when so appealed to but rush quickly from beneath his musquito curtains to her rescue? So it was always with me. But having loosed the bolt, time did not suffice to enable me to take my position again beneath the curtain. A jump into bed I might have managed—but then, the musquito curtain! So, under those circumstances, finding myself at the door in my deshabille, I could only open it, and then stand sheltered behind it, as behind a bulwark, while Sally deposited her burden.
But, no. She curtsied, first at the bed; and seeing that I was not there, turned her head and tub slowly round the room, till she perceived my whereabouts. Then gently, but firmly, drawing away the door till I stood before her plainly discovered in my night-dress, she curtsied again. She knew better than to enter a room without due salutation to the guest—even with a tub of water on her head. Poor Sally! Was I not dressed from my chin downwards, and was not that enough for her? "Honi soit qui mal y pense."
After that, how can I say ought against the hotel? And when I complained loudly of the holes in the curtain, the musquitoes having driven me to very madness, did not they set to work, Sunday as it was, and make me a new curtain? Certainly without avail—for they so hung it that the musquitoes entered worse than ever. But the intention was no less good.
And that waiter, David; was he not for good-nature the pink of waiters? "David, this house will tumble down! I know it will—before I leave it. The stairs shook terribly as I came up." "Oh no, massa," and David laughed benignly. "It no tumble down last week, and derefore it no tumble down next." It did last my time, and therefore I will say no more.
Georgetown to my eyes is a prepossessing city, flat as the country round it is, and deficient as it is—as are all the West Indies—in anything like architectural pretension. The streets are wide and airy. The houses, all built of wood, stand separately, each a little off the road; and though much has not been done in the way of their gardens—for till the great coming influx of Coolies all labour is engaged in making sugar—yet there is generally something green attached to each of them. Down the centre of every street runs a wide dyke. Of these dykes I must say something further when I come to speak again of the sugar doings; for their importance in these provinces cannot well be overrated.
The houses themselves are generally without a hall. By that I mean that you walk directly into some sitting-room. This, indeed, is general through the West Indies; and now that I bethink me of the fact, I may mention that a friend of mine in Jamaica has no door whatsoever to his house. All ingress and egress is by the windows. My bedroom had no door, only a window that opened. The sitting-rooms in Georgetown open through to each other, so that the wind, let it come which way it will, may blow through the whole house. For though it is never absolutely hot in Guiana—as I have before mentioned—nevertheless, a current of air is comfortable. One soon learns to know the difference of windward and leeward when living in British Guiana.
The houses are generally of three stories; but the two upper only are used by the family. Outer steps lead up from the little front garden, generally into a verandah, and in this verandah a great portion of their life is led. It is cooler than the inner rooms. Not that I mean to say that any rooms in Demerara are ever hot. We all know the fine burst with which Scott opens a certain canto in one of hispoems:—
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,Who never to himself hath said,This is my own, my native land?* * *If such there breathe, go, mark him well.
At any rate, there breathes no such man in this pleasant colony. A people so happily satisfied with their own position I never saw elsewhere, except at Barbados. And how could they fail to be satisfied, looking at their advantages? A million hogsheads of sugar to be made when the Coolies come!
They do not, the most of them, appeal to the land as being that of their nativity, but they love it no less as that of their adoption. "Look at me," says one; "I have been thirty years without leaving it, and have never had a headache." I look and see a remarkably hale man, of forty I should say, but he says fifty. "That's nothing," says another, who certainly may be somewhat stricken in years: "I have been here five-and-fifty years, and was never ill but once, when I was foolish enough to go to England. Ugh! I shall never forget it. Why, sir, there was frost in October!" "Yes," I said, "and snow in May sometimes. It is not all sunshine with us, whatever it may be with you."
"Not that we have too much sunshine," interposed a lady. "You don't think we have, do you?"
"Not in the least. Who could ask more, madam, than to bask in such sunshine as yours from year's end to year's end?"
"And is commerce tolerably flourishing?" I asked of a gentleman in trade.
"Flourishing, sir! If you want to make money, here's your ground. Why, sir, here, in this wretched little street, there has been more money turned in the last ten years than—than—than—"And he rummaged among the half-crowns in his breeches-pocket for a simile, as though not a few of the profits spoken of had found their way thither.
"Do you ever find it dull here?" I asked of a lady—perhaps not with very good taste—for we Englishmen have sometimes an idea that there is perhaps a little sameness about life in a small colony.
"Dull! no. What should make us dull? We have a great deal more to amuse us than most of you have at home." This perhaps might be true of many of us. "We have dances, and dinner-parties, and private theatricals. And thenMrs. ——!"NowMrs. ——was the Governor's wife, and all eulogiums on society in Georgetown always ended with a eulogium upon her.
I went over the hospital with the doctor there; for even in Demerara they require a hospital for the negroes. "And what is the prevailing disease of the colony?" I asked him. "Dropsy with the black men," he answered; "and brandy with the white."
"You don't think much of yellow fever?" I asked him.
"No; very little. It comes once in six or seven years; and like influenza or cholera at home, it requires its victims. What is that to consumption, whose visits with you are constant, who daily demands its hecatombs? We don't like yellow fever, certainly; but yellow fever is not half so bad a fellow as the brandy bottle."
Should this meet the eye of any reader in this colony who needs medical advice, he may thus get it, of a very good quality, and without fee. On the subject of brandy I say nothing myself, seeing how wrong it is to kiss and tell.
Excepting as regards yellow fever, I do not imagine that Demerara is peculiarly unhealthy. And as regards yellow fever, I am inclined to think that his Satanic majesty has in this instance been painted too black. There are many at home—in England—who believe that yellow fever rages every year in some of these colonies, and that half the white population of the towns is swept off by it every August. As far as I can learn it is hardly more fatal at one time of the year than at another. It returns at intervals, but by no means regularly or annually. Sometimes it will hang on for sixteen or eighteen months at a time, and then it will disappear for five or six years. Those seem to be most subject to it who have been out in the West Indies for a year or so: after that, persons are not so liable to it. Sailors, and men whose work keeps them about the sea-board and wharves, seem to be in the greatest danger. White soldiers also, when quartered in unhealthy places, have suffered greatly. They who are thoroughly acclimatized are seldom attacked; and there seems to be an idea that the white Creoles are nearly safe. I believe that there are instances in which coloured people and even negroes have been attacked by yellow fever. But such cases are very rare. Cholera is the negroes' scourge.
Nor do I think that this fever rages more furiously in Demerara than among the islands. It has been very bad in its bad times at Kingston, Jamaica, at Trinidad, at Barbados, among the shipping at St. Thomas, and nowhere worse than at the Havana. The true secret of its fatality I take to be this:—that the medical world has not yet settled what is the proper mode of medical treatment. There are, I believe, still two systems, each directly opposite to the other; but in the West Indies they call them the French system and the English. In a few years, no doubt, the matter will be better understood.
From Georgetown, Demerara, to New Amsterdam, Berbice, men travel either by steamer along the coast, or by a mail phaeton. The former goes once a week to Berbice and back, and the latter three times. I went by the mail phaeton and returned by the steamer. And here, considering the prosperity of the colony, the well-being and comfort of all men and women in it, the go-ahead principles of the place, and the coming million hogsheads of sugar—the millennium of a West Indian colony—considering all these great existing characteristics of Guiana, I must say that I think the Governor ought to look to the mail phaeton. It was a woful affair, crumbling to pieces along the road in the saddest manner; very heart-rending to the poor fellow who had to drive it, and body-rending to some of the five passengers who were tossed to and fro as every fresh fragment deserted the parent vehicle with a jerk. And then, when we had to send the axle to be mended, that staying in the road for two hours and a half among the musquitoes! Ohe! ohe! Ugh! ugh!
It grieves me to mention this, seeing that rose colour was so clearly the prevailing tint in all matters belonging to Guiana. And I would have forgiven it had the phaeton simply broken down on the road. All sublunar phaetons are subject to such accidents. Why else should they have been named after him of the heavens who first suffered from such mishaps? But this phaeton had broken down before it commenced its journey. It started on a system of ropes, bandages, and patches which were disgraceful to such a colony and such a Governor; and I should intromit a clear duty, were I to allow it to escape the gibbet.
But we did reach New Amsterdam not more than five hours after time. I have but very little to say of the road, except this: that there is ample scope for sugar and ample room for Coolies.
Every now and then we came upon negro villages. All villages in this country must be negro villages, one would say, except the few poor remaining huts of the Indians, which are not encountered on the white man's path. True; but by a negro village I mean a site which is now the freehold possession of negroes, having been purchased by them since the days of emancipation, with their own money, and for their own purposes; so that they might be in all respects free; free to live in idleness, or to do such work as an estated man may choose to do for himself, his wife, his children, and his property.
There are many such villages in Guiana, and I was told that when the arrangements for the purchases were made the dollars were subscribed by the negroes so quickly and in such quantities that they were taken to the banks in wheelbarrows. At any rate, the result has been that tracts of ground have been bought by these people and are now owned by them in fee simple.
It is grievous to me to find myself driven to differ on such points as these from men with whose views I have up to this period generally agreed. But I feel myself bound to say that the freeholding negroes in Guiana do not appear to me to answer. In the first place it seems that they have found great difficulty in dividing the land among themselves. In all such combined actions some persons must be selected as trustworthy; and those who have been so selected have not been worthy of the trust. And then the combined action has ceased with the purchase of the land, whereas, to have produced good it should have gone much further. Combined draining would have been essential; combined working has been all but necessary; combined building should have been adopted. But the negroes, the purchase once made, would combine no further. They could not understand that unless they worked together at draining, each man's own spot of ground would be a swamp. Each would work a little for himself; but none would work for the community. A negro village therefore is not a picturesque object.
They are very easily known. The cottages, or houses—for some of them have aspired to strong, stable, two-storied slated houses—stand in extreme disorder, one here and another there, just as individual caprice may have placed them. There seems to have been no attempt at streets or lines of buildings, and certainly not at regularity in building. Then there are no roads, and hardly a path to each habitation. As the ground is not drained, in wet weather the whole place is half drowned. Most of the inhabitants will probably have made some sort of dyke for the immediate preservation of their own dwellings; but as those dykes are not cut with any common purpose, they become little more than overflowing ponds, among which the negro children crawl and scrape in the mud; and are either drowned, or escape drowning, as Providence may direct. The spaces between the buildings are covered with no verdure; they are mere mud patches, and are cracked in dry weather, wet, slippery, and filthy in the rainy seasons.
The plantation grounds of these people are outside the village, and afford, I am told, cause for constant quarrelling. They do, however, also afford means of support for the greater part of the year, so that the negroes can live, some without work and some by working one or two days in the week.
It may perhaps be difficult to explain why a man should be expected to work if he can live on his own property without working, and enjoy such comforts as he desires. And it may be equally difficult to explain why complaint should be made as to the wretchedness of any men who do not themselves feel that their own state is wretched. But, nevertheless, on seeing what there is here to be seen, it is impossible to withstand the instinctive conviction that a village of freeholding negroes is a failure; and that the community has not been served by the process, either as regards themselves or as regards the country.
Late at night we did reach New Amsterdam, and crossed the broad Berbice after dark in a little ferryboat which seemed to be perilously near the water. At ten o'clock I found myself at the hotel, and pronounce it to be, without hesitation, the best inn, not only in that colony, but in any of these Western colonies belonging to Great Britain. It is kept by a negro, one Mr. Paris Brittain, of whom I was informed that he was once a slave. "O, si sic omnes!" But as regards my experience, he is merely the exception which proves the rule. I am glad, however, to say a good word for the energies and ambition of one of the race, and shall be glad if I can obtain for Mr. Paris Brittain an innkeeper's immortality.
His deserts are so much the greater in that his scope for displaying them is so very limited. No man can walk along the broad strand street of New Amsterdam, and then up into its parallel street, so back towards the starting-point, and down again to the sea, without thinking of Knickerbocker and Rip van Winkle. The Dutchman who built New Amsterdam and made it once a thriving town must be still sleeping, as the New York Dutchman once slept, waiting the time when an irruption from Paramaribo and Surinam shall again restore the place to its old possessors.
At present life certainly stagnates at New Amsterdam. Three persons in the street constitute a crowd, and five collected for any purpose would form a goodly club. But the place is clean and orderly, and the houses are good and in good repair. They stand, as do the houses in Georgetown, separately, each surrounded by its own garden or yard, and are built with reference to the wished-for breeze from the windows.
The estates up the Berbice river, and the Canje creek which runs into it, are, I believe, as productive as those on the coast, or on the Demerara or Essequibo rivers, and are as well cultivated; but their owners no longer ship their sugars from New Amsterdam. The bar across the Berbice river is objectionable, and the trade of Georgetown has absorbed the business of the colony. In olden times Berbice and Demerara were blessed each with its own Governor, and the two towns stood each on its own bottom as two capitals. But those halcyon days—halcyon for Berbice—are gone; and Rip van Winkle, with all his brethren, is asleep.
I should have said, in speaking of my journey from Demerara to Berbice, that the first fifteen miles were performed by railway. The colony would have fair ground of complaint against me were I to omit to notice that it has so far progressed in civilization as to own a railway. As far as I could learn, the shares do not at present stand at a high premium. From Berbice I returned in a coasting steamer. It was a sleepy, dull, hot journey, without subject of deep interest. I can only remember of it that they gave us an excellent luncheon on board, and luncheons at such times are very valuable in breaking the tedium of the day.
And now a word as to the million hogsheads of sugar and as to the necessary Coolies. Guiana has some reason to be proud, seeing that at present it beats all the neighbouring British colonies in the quantity of sugar produced. I believe that it also beats them all as to the quantity of rum, though Jamaica still stands first as to the quality. In round numbers the sugar exported from Guiana may be stated at seventy thousand hogsheads.
Barbados exports about fifty thousand, Trinidad and Jamaica under forty thousand. No other British West Indian colony gives fifteen thousand; but Guadaloupe and Martinique, two French islands, produce, one over fifty thousand and the other nearly seventy thousand hogsheads. In order to make this measurement intelligible, I may explain that a hogshead is generally said to contain a ton weight of sugar, but that, when reaching the market, it very rarely does come up to that weight. I do not give this information as statistically correct, but as being sufficiently so to guide the ideas of a man only ordinarily anxious to be acquainted in an ordinary manner with what is going on in the West Indies. I would not, therefore, recommend any Member of Parliament to quote the above figures in the House.
Some twelve years ago the whole produce of sugar in the West Indies, including Guiana and excluding the Spanish islands, was 275,000 hogsheads. The amount which I have above recapitulated, in which the smaller islands have been altogether omitted, exceeds 310,000. It may therefore be taken as a fact that, on the whole, the evil days have come to their worst, and that the tables are turned. It must however be admitted that the above figures tell more for French than for English prosperity.
In these countries sugar and labour are almost synonymous; at any rate, they are convertible substances. In none of the colonies named, except Barbados, is the amount of sugar produced limited by any other law than the amount of labour to be obtained, and in none of them, with that one exception, can any prosperity be hoped for, excepting by means of immigrating labour. What I mean to state is this: that the extent of native work which can be obtained by the planters and land-owners at terms which would enable them to grow their produce and bring it to the market does not in any of these colonies suffice for success. It can be worth no man's while to lay out his capital in Jamaica, in Trinidad, or in Guiana, unless he has reasonable hope that labouring men will be brought into those countries. The great West Indian question is now this: Is there reasonable ground for such hope?
The Anti-Slavery Society tells us that we ought to have no such hope—that it is simply hoping for a return of slavery; that black or coloured labourers brought from other lands to the West Indies cannot be regarded as free men; that labourers so brought will surely be ill-used; and that the native negro labourer requires protection. As to that question of the return to slavery I have already said what few words I have to offer. In one sense, no dependent man working for wages can be free. He must abide by the terms of his contract. But in the usually accepted sense of the word freedom, the Coolie or Chinaman immigrating to the West Indies is free.
As to the charge of ill usage, it appears to me that these men could not be treated with more tenderness, unless they were put separately, each under his own glass case, with a piece of velvet on which to lie. In England we know of no such treatment for field labourers. On their arrival in Demerara they are distributed among the planters by the Governor, to each planter according to his application, his means of providing for them, and his willingness and ability to pay the cost of the immigration by yearly instalments. They are sent to no estate till a government officer shall have reported that there are houses for them to occupy. There must be a hospital for them on the estate, and a regular doctor with a sufficient salary. The rate of their wages is stipulated, and their hours of work. Though the contract is for five years, they can leave the estate at the end of the first three, transferring their services to any other master, and at the end of the five years they are entitled to a free passage home.
If there be no hardship in all this to the immigrating Coolie, it may, perhaps, be thought that there is hardship to the planter who receives him. He is placed very much at the mercy of the Governor, who, having the power of giving or refusing Coolies, becomes despotic. And then, when this stranger from Hindostan has been taught something of his work, he can himself select another master, so that one planter may bribe away the labourers of another. This, however, is checked to a certain degree by a regulation which requires the bribing interloper to pay a portion of the expense of immigration.
As to the native negro requiring protection—protection, that is, against competitive labour—the idea is too absurd to require any argument to refute it. As it at present is, the competition having been established, and being now in existence to a certain small extent, these happy negro gentlemen will not work on an average more than three days a week, nor for above six hours a day. I saw a gang of ten or twelve negro girls in a cane-piece, lying idle on the ground, waiting to commence their week's labour. It was Tuesday morning. On the Monday they had of course not come near the field. On the morning of my visit they were lying with their hoes beside them, meditating whether or no they would measure out their work. The planter was with me, and they instantly attacked him. "No, massa; we no workey; money no nuff," said one. "Four bits no pay! no pay at all!" said another. "Five bits, massa, and we gin morrow 'arly." It is hardly necessary to say that the gentleman refused to bargain with them. "They'll measure their work to-morrow," said he; "on Thursday they will begin, and on Friday they will finish for the week." "But will they not look elsewhere for other work?" I asked. "Of course they will," he said; "occupy a whole day in looking for it; but others cannot pay better than I do, and the end will be as I tell you." Poor young ladies! It will certainly be cruel to subject them to the evil of competition in their labour.
In Guiana the bull has been taken by the horns, as in Jamaica it unfortunately has not; and the first main difficulties of immigration have, I think, been overcome. For some years past, both from India and from China, labourers have been brought in freely, and during the last twelve months the number has been very considerable. The women also are coming now as well as the men, and they have learned to husband their means and put money together.
Such an affair as this—the regular exodus, that is, of a people to another land—has always progressed with great rapidity when it has been once established. The difficulty is to make a beginning. It is natural enough that men should hesitate to trust themselves to a future of which they know nothing; and as natural that they should hasten to do so when they have heard of the good things which Providence has in store for them. It required that some few should come out and prosper, and return with signs of prosperity. This has now been done, and as regards Guiana it will not, I imagine, be long before negro labour is, if not displaced, made, at any rate, of secondary consequence in the colony. As far as the workmen are concerned, the million hogsheads will, I think, become a possibility, though not perhaps in the days of my energetic hopeful friend.
Both the Coolies and the Chinamen have aptitude in putting money together; and when a man has this aptitude he will work as long as good wages are to be earned. "Crescit amor nummi quantum ipsa, &c." We teach our children this lesson, intending them to understand that it is pretty nearly the worst of all "amors," and we go on with the "irritamenta malorum" till we come to the "Spernere fortior." It is all, however, of no use. "Naturam expellas furcâ;" but the result is still the same. Nature knows what she is about. The love of money is a good and useful love. What would the world now be without it? Or is it even possible to conceive of a world progressing without such a love? Show me ten men without it, and I will show you nine who lack zeal for improvement. Money, like other loved objects—women, for instance—should be sought for with honour, won with a clean conscience, and used with a free hand. Provided it be so guided, the love of money is no ignoble passion.
The negroes, as a class, have not this aptitude, consequently they lie in the sun and eat yams, and give no profitable assistance towards that saccharine millennium. "Spernere fortior!" That big black woman would so say, she who is not contented with four bits, if her education had progressed so far. And as she said it, how she would turn up her African nose, and what contempt she would express with her broad eyes! Doubtless she does so express herself among her negro friends in some nigger patois—"Pernere forshaw." If so, her philosophy does but little to assist the world, or herself.
There is another race of men, and of women too, who have been and now are of the greatest benefit to this colony, and with them the "Spernere fortior" is by no means a favourite doctrine. There are the Portuguese who have come to Demerara from Madeira. I believe that they are not to be found in any of the islands; but here, in Guiana, they are in great numbers, and thrive wonderfully. At almost every corner of two streets in Georgetown is to be seen a small shop; and those shops are, I think without exception, kept by Portuguese. Nevertheless they all reached the Demerara river in absolute poverty, intending to live on the wages of field labour, and certainly prepared to do their work like men. As a rule, they are a steady, industrious class, and have proved themselves to be good citizens. In the future amalgamation of races, which will take place here as elsewhere in the tropics, the Portugee-Madeira element will not be the least efficient.
I saw the works on three or four sugar estates in Demerara, and though I am neither a sugar grower nor a mechanic, I am able to say that the machinery and material of this colony much exceed anything I have seen in any of our own West Indian islands; and in the point of machinery, equals what I saw in Cuba. Everything is done on a much larger scale, and in a more proficient manner than at—Barbados, we will say. I instance Barbados because the planters there play so excellent a melody on their own trumpets. In that island not one planter in five, not one I believe in fifteen, has any steam appliance on his estate. They trust to the wind for their motive power, as did their great-great-grandfather. But there is steam on every estate in Guiana. The vacuum pan and the centrifugal machine for extracting the molasses are known only by name in Barbados, whereas they are common appliances in Demerara. There two hundred hogsheads is a considerable produce for one planter. Here they make eight hundred hogsheads, a thousand, and twelve hundred. A Barbados man will reply to this that the thing to be looked to is the profit, or what he will call the clearance. The sugar-consuming world, however, will know nothing about this, will hear nothing of individual profits. But it will recognize the fact that the Demerara sugar is of a better quality than that which comes from Barbados, and will believe that the merchant or planter who does not use the latest appliances of science, whether it be in manufacture or agriculture, will before long go to the wall. Looking over a sugar estate and sugar works is an exciting amusement certainly, but nevertheless it palls upon one at last. I got quite into the way of doing it; and used to taste the sugars and examine the crystals; make comparisons and pronounce, I must confess as regards Barbados, a good deal of adverse criticism. But this was merely to elicit the true tone of Barbadian eloquence, the long-drawn nasal fecundity of speech which comes forth so fluently when their old windmills are attacked.
But the amusement, as I have said, does pall upon one. In spite of the difference of the machinery, the filtering-bags and centrifugals in one, the Gadsden pans in another, and the simple oscillators in a third—(the Barbados estate stands for the third)—one does get weary of walking up to a sugar battery, and looking at the various heated caldrons, watching till even the inexperienced eye perceives that the dirty liquor has become brown sugar, as it runs down from a dipper into a cooling vat.
I wonder whether I could make the process in any simple way intelligible; or whether in doing so I should afford gratification to a single individual? Were I myself reading such a book of travels, I should certainly skip such description. Reader, do thou do likewise. Nevertheless, it shall not exceed three or four pages.
The cane must first be cut. As regards a planted cane, that is the first crop from the plant—(for there are such things as ratoons, of which a word or two will be found elsewhere)—as regards the planted cane, the cutting, I believe, takes place after about fourteen months' growth. The next process is that of the mill; the juice, that is, has to be squeezed out of it. The cane should not lie above two days before it is squeezed. It is better to send it to the mill the day after it is cut, or the hour after; in fact, as soon indeed as may be. In Demerara they are brought to the mill by water always; in Barbados, by carts and mules; in Jamaica, by waggons and oxen; so also in Cuba. The mill consists of three rollers, which act upon each other like cogwheels. The canes are passed between two, an outside one, say, and a centre one; and the refuse stalk, or trash (so called in Jamaica), or magass (so called in Barbados and Demerara), comes out between the same centre one and the other outside roller. The juice meanwhile is strained down to a cistern or receptacle below. These rollers are quite close, so that it would seem to be impossible that the cane should go through; but it does go through with great ease, if the mill be good and powerful; but frequently with great difficulty, if the mill be bad and not powerful; for which latter alternative vide Barbados. The canes give from sixty to seventy per cent. of juice. Sometimes less than sixty, not often over seventy.
The juice, which is then of a dirty-yellow colour, and apparently about the substance of milk, is brought from the mill through a pipe into the first vat, in which it is tempered. This is done with lime, and the object is to remedy the natural acidity of the juice. In this first vat it is warmed, but not more than warmed. It then runs from these vats into boilers, or at any rate into receptacles in which it is boiled. These in Barbados are called taches. At each of these a man stands with a long skimmer, skimmering the juice as it were, and scraping off certain skum which comes to the top. There are from three to seven of these taches, and below them, last of all, is the boiler, the veritable receptacle in which the juice becomes sugar. In the taches, especially the first of them, the liquor becomes dark green in colour. As it gets nearer the boiler it is thicker and more clouded, and begins to assume its well-known tawny hue.
Over the last boiler stands the man who makes the sugar. It is for him to know what heat to apply and how long to apply it. The liquor now ceases to be juice and becomes sugar. This is evident to the eye and nose, for though the stuff in the boiler is of course still liquid, it looks like boiled melted sugar, and the savour is the savour of sugar. When the time has come, and the boiling is boiled, a machine suspended from on high, and called a dipper, is let down into the caldron. It nearly fits the caldron, being, as it were, in itself a smaller caldron going into the other. The sugar naturally runs over the side of this and fills it, some little ingenuity being exercised in the arrangement. The dipper, full of sugar, is then drawn up on high. At the bottom of it is a valve, so that on the pulling of a rope, the hot liquid runs out. This dipper is worked like a crane, and is made to swing itself from over the boiler to a position in which the sugar runs from it through a wooden trough to the flat open vats in which it is cooled.
But at this part of the manufacture there are various different methods. According to that which is least advanced the sugar is simply cooled in the vat, then put into buckets in a half-solid state, and thrown out of the buckets into the hogsheads.
According to the more advanced method it runs from the dipper down through filtering bags, is then pumped into a huge vacuum pan, a utensil like a kettle-drum turned topsy-turvy, a kettle-drum that is large enough to hold six tons of sugar. Then it is reheated, and then put into open round boxes called centrifugals, the sides of which are made of metal pierced like gauze. These are whisked round and round by steam-power at an enormous rate, and the molasses flies out through the gauze, leaving the sugar dry and nearly white. It is then fit to go into the hogshead, and fit also to be shipped away.
But in the simpler process, the molasses drains from the sugar in the hogshead. To facilitate this, as the sugar is put into the cask, reeds are stuck through it, which communicate with holes at the bottom, so that there may be channels through which the molasses may run. The hogsheads stand upon beams lying a foot apart from each other, and below is a dark abyss into which the molasses falls. I never could divest myself of the idea that the negro children occasionally fall through also, and are then smothered and so distilled into rum.
There are various other processes, intermediate between the highly-civilized vacuum pan and the simple cooling, with which I will not trouble my reader. Nor will I go into the further mystery of rum-making. That the rum is made from the molasses every one knows; and from the negro children, as I suspect.
The process of sugar-making is very rapid if the appliances be good. A planter in Demerara assured me that he had cut his canes in the morning, and had the sugar in Georgetown in the afternoon. Fudge! however, was the remark made by another planter to whom I repeated this. Whether it was fudge or not I do not know; but it was clearly possible that such should be the case. The manufacture is one which does not require any delay.
In Demerara an acre of canes will on an average give over a ton and a half of sugar. But an acre of cane ground will not give a crop once in twelve months. Two crops in three years may perhaps be the average. So much for the manufacture of sugar. I hope my account may not be criticised by those who are learned in the art, as it is only intended for those who are utterly unlearned.
But if looking over sugar-works be at last fatiguing, what shall I say to that labour of "going aback," which Guiana planters exact from their visitors. Going aback in Guiana means walking from the house and manufactory back to the fields where the canes grow. I have described the shape of a Demerara estate. The house generally stands not far from the water frontage, so that the main growth of the sugar is behind. This going aback generally takes place before breakfast. But the breakfast is taken at eleven; and a Demerara sun is in all its glory for three hours before that. Remember, also, that there are no trees in these fields, no grass, no wild flowers, no meandering paths. Everything is straight, and open, and ugly; and everything has a tendency to sugar, and no other tendency whatever, unless it be to rum. Sugar-canes is the only growth. So that a walk aback, except to a very close inquirer, is not delightful. It must however be confessed that the subsequent breakfast makes up for a deal of misery. There is no such breakfast going as that of a Guiana planter. Talk of Scotland! Pooh! But one has to think of that doctor's dictum—"The prevalent disease, sir? Brandy!" It seems, however, to me to show itself more generally in the shape of champagne.
There is one other peculiar characteristic of landed property in this colony which I must mention. All the carriage is by water, not only from the works to the town, but from the fields to the works, and even from field to field. The whole country is intersected by drains, which are necessary to carry off the surface waters; there is no natural fall of water, or next to none, and but for its drains and sluices the land would be flooded in wet weather. Parallel to these drains are canals; there being, as nearly as I could learn, one canal between each two drains. These different dykes are to a stranger similar in appearance, but their uses are always kept distinct.
Nor do these canals run only between wide fields, or at a considerable distance from each other. They pierce every portion of land, so that the canes when cut have never to be carried above a few yards. The expense of keeping them in order is very great, but the labour of making them must have been immense. It was done by the Dutch. One may almost question whether any other race would have had the patience necessary for such a work.
I was told on one estate that there were no less than sixty-three miles of these cuttings to be kept in order. But the gentleman who told me was he to whom the other gentleman alluded, when he used our old friend, Mr. Burchell's exclamation. There can be no doubt but that these Guiana planters know each other.
On the whole, I must express my conviction that this is a fine colony, and will become of very great importance.
Our great Thunderer the other day spoke of the governance of a sugar island as a duty below a man's notice; as being almost worthy of contempt. We cannot all be gods and forge thunderbolts. But we all wish to consume sugar; and if we can do in one of our colonies without slaves what Cuba is doing with slaves, the work I think will not be contemptible, nor the land contemptible in which it is done. I do look to see our free Cuba in Guiana, and even have my hopes as to that million of hogsheads.
I have said, in speaking of Jamaica, that I thought the negro had hardly yet shown himself capable of understanding the teaching of the Christian religion. As regards Guiana, what I heard on this matter I heard chiefly from clergymen of the Church of England; and though they would of course not agree with me—for it is not natural that a man should doubt the efficacy of his own teaching—nevertheless, what I gathered from them strengthens my former opinions.
I do think that the Guiana negro is in this respect somewhat superior to his brother in Jamaica. He is more intelligent, and comes nearer to our idea of a thoughtful being. But still even here it seems to me that he never connects his religion with his life; never reflects that his religion should bear upon his conduct.
Here, as in the islands, the negroes much prefer to belong to a Baptist congregation, or to a so-called Wesleyan body. That excitement is there allowed to them which is denied in our Church. They sing and halloa and scream, and have revivals. They talk of their "dear brothers" and "dear sisters," and in their ecstatic howlings get some fun for their money. I doubt also whether those disagreeable questions as to conduct are put by the Baptists which they usually have to undergo from our clergymen. "So-called Wesleyans," I say, because the practice of their worship here is widely removed from the sober gravity of the Wesleyan churches in England.
I have said that the form of government in Guiana was a mild despotism, tempered by sugar. The Governor, it must be understood, has not absolute authority. There is a combined house, with a power of voting, by whom he is controlled—at any rate in financial matters. But of those votes he commands many as Governor, and as long as he will supply Coolies quick enough—and Coolies mean sugar—he may command them all.
"We are not particular to a shade," the planters wisely say to him, "in what way we are governed. If you have any fads of your own about this or about that, by all means indulge them. Even if you want a little more money, in God's name take it. But the business of a man's life is sugar: there's the land; the capital shall be forthcoming, whether begged, borrowed, or stolen;—do you supply the labour. Give us Coolies enough, and we will stick at nothing. We are an ambitious colony. There looms before us a great future—a million hogsheads of sugar!"
The form of government here is somewhat singular. There are two Houses—Lords and Commons—but not acting separately as ours do. The upper House is the Court of Policy. This consists of five official members, whose votes may therefore be presumed to be at the service of the Governor, and of five elected members. The Governor himself, sitting in this court, has the casting vote. But he also has something to say to the election of the other five. They are chosen by a body of men called Kiezers—probably Dutch for choosers. There is a college of Kiezers, elected for life by the tax-payers, whose main privilege appears to be that of electing these members of the Court of Policy. But on every occasion they send up two names, and the Governor selects one; so that he can always keep out any one man who may be peculiarly disagreeable to him. This Court of Policy acts, I think, when acting by itself, more as a privy council to the Governor than as a legislative body.
Then there are six Financial Representatives; two from Berbice, one from town and one from country; two from Demerara, one from town and one from country; and two from Essequibo, both from the country, there being no town. These are elected by the tax-payers. They are assembled for purposes of taxation only, as far as I understood; and even as regards this they are joined with the Court of Policy, and thus form what is called the Combined Court. The Crown, therefore, has very little to tie its hands; and I think that I am justified in describing the government as a mild despotism, tempered by sugar.
So much for British Guiana. I cannot end this crude epitome of crude views respecting the colony without saying that I never met a pleasanter set of people than I found there, or ever passed my hours much more joyously.
Barbados is a very respectable little island, and it makes a great deal of sugar. It is not picturesquely beautiful, as are almost all the other Antilles, and therefore has but few attractions for strangers.
But this very absence of scenic beauty has saved it from the fate of its neighbours. A country that is broken into landscapes, that boasts of its mountains, woods, and waterfalls, that is regarded for its wild loveliness, is seldom propitious to agriculture. A portion of the surface in all such regions defies the improving farmer. But, beyond this, such ground under the tropics offers every inducement to the negro squatter. In Jamaica, Dominica, St. Lucia, and Grenada, the negro, when emancipated, could squat and make himself happy; but in Barbados there was not an inch for him.
When emancipation came there was no squatting ground for the poor Barbadian. He had still to work and make sugar—work quite as hard as he had done while yet a slave. He had to do that or to starve. Consequently, labour has been abundant in this island, and in this island only; and in all the West Indian troubles it has kept its head above water, and made sugar respectably—not, indeed, showing much sugar genius, or going ahead in the way of improvements, but paying twenty shillings in the pound, supporting itself, and earning its bread decently by the sweat of its brow. The pity is that the Barbadians themselves should think so much of their own achievements.
The story runs, that when Europe was convulsed by revolutions and wars—when continental sovereigns were flying hither and thither, and there was so strong a rumour that Napoleon was going to eat us—the great Napoleon I mean—that then, I say, the Barbadians sent word over to poor King George the Third, bidding him fear nothing. If England could not protect him, Barbados would. Let him come to them, if things looked really blue on his side of the channel It was a fine, spirited message, but perhaps a little self glorious. That, I should say, is the character of the island in general.
As to its appearance, it is, as I have said, totally different from any of the other islands, and to an English eye much less attractive in its character. But for the heat its appearance would not strike with any surprise an Englishman accustomed to an ordinary but ugly agricultural country. It has not the thick tropical foliage which is so abundant in the other islands, nor the wild, grassy dells. Happily for the Barbadians every inch of it will produce canes; and, to the credit of the Barbadians, every inch of it does so. A Barbadian has a right to be proud of this, but it does not make the island interesting. It is the waste land of the world that makes it picturesque. But there is not a rood of waste land in Barbados. It certainly is not the country for a gipsy immigration. Indeed, I doubt whether there is even room for a picnic.
The island is something over twenty miles long, and something over twelve broad. The roads are excellent, but so white that they sadly hurt the eye of a stranger. The authorities have been very particular about their milestones, and the inhabitants talk much about their journeys. I found myself constantly being impressed with ideas of distance, till I was impelled to suggest a rather extended system of railroads—a proposition which was taken in very good part. I was informed that the population was larger than that of China, but my informant of course meant by the square foot. He could hardly have counted by the square mile in Barbados.
And thus I was irresistibly made to think of the frog that would blow itself out and look as large as an ox.
Bridgetown, the metropolis of the island, is much like a second or third rate English town. It has none of the general peculiarities of the West Indies, except the heat. The streets are narrow, irregular, and crooked, so that at first a stranger is apt to miss his way. They all, however, converge at Trafalgar Square, a spot which, in Barbados, is presumed to compete with the open space at Charing Cross bearing the same name. They have this resemblance, that each contains a statue of Nelson. The Barbadian Trafalgar Square contains also a tree, which is more than can be said for its namesake. It can make also this boast, that no attempt has been made within it which has failed so grievously as our picture gallery. In saying this, however, I speak of the building only—by no means of the pictures.
There are good shops in Bridgetown—good, respectable, well-to-do shops, that sell everything, from a candle down to a coffin, including wedding-rings, corals, and widows' caps. But they are hot, fusty, crowded places, as are such places in third-rate English towns. But then the question of heat here is of such vital moment! A purchase of a pair of gloves in Barbados drives one at once into the ice-house.
And here it may be well to explain this very peculiar, delightful, but too dangerous West Indian institution. By-the-by, I do not know that there was any ice-house in Kingston, Jamaica. If there be one there, my friends were peculiarly backward, for I certainly was not made acquainted with it. But everywhere else—at Demerara, Trinidad, Barbados, and St. Thomas—I was duly introduced to the ice-house.
There is something cool and mild in the name, which makes one fancy that ladies would delight to frequent it. But, alas! a West Indian ice house is but a drinking-shop—a place where one goes to liquor, as the Americans call it, without the knowledge of the feminine creation. It is a drinking-shop, at which the draughts are all cool, are all iced, but at which, alas! they are also all strong. The brandy, I fear, is as essential as the ice. A man may, it is true, drink iced soda-water without any concomitant, or he may simply have a few drops of raspberry vinegar to flavour it. No doubt many an easy-tempered wife so imagines. But if so, I fear that they are deceived. Now the ice-house in Bridgetown seemed to me to be peculiarly well attended. I look upon this as the effect of the white streets and the fusty shops.
Barbados claims, I believe—but then it claims everything—to have a lower thermometer than any other West Indian island—to be, in fact, cooler than any of her sisters. As far as the thermometer goes, it may be possible; but as regards the human body, it is not the fact. Let any man walk from his hotel to morning church and back, and then judge.
There is a mystery about hotels in the British West Indies. They are always kept by fat, middle-aged coloured ladies, who have no husbands. I never found an exception except at Berbice, where my friend Paris Brittain keeps open doors in the city of the sleepers. These ladies are generally called Miss So-and-So; Miss Jenny This, or Miss Jessy That; but they invariably seemed to have a knowledge of the world, especially of the male hotel-frequenting world, hardly compatible with a retiring maiden state of life. I only mention this. I cannot solve the riddle. "Davus sum, non Œdipus." But it did strike me as singular that the profession should always be in the hands of these ladies, and that they should never get husbands.
As a rule, there is not much to be said against these hotels, though they will not come up to the ideas of a traveller who has been used to the inns of Switzerland. The table is always plentifully supplied, and the viands generally good. Of that at Barbados I can make no complaint, except this; that the people over the way kept a gray parrot which never ceased screaming day or night. I was deep in my Jamaica theory of races, and this wretched bird nearly drove me wild.
"Can anything be done to stop it, James?"
"No, massa."
"Nothing? Wouldn't they hang a cloth over it for a shilling?"
"No, massa; him only make him scream de more to speak to him."
I took this as final, though whether the "him" was the man or the parrot, I did not know. But such a bird I never heard before, and the street was no more than twelve feet broad. He was, in fact, just under my window. Thrice had I to put aside my theory of races. Otherwise than on this score, Miss Caroline Lee's hotel at Barbados is very fair. And as for hot pickles—she is the very queen of them.
Whether or no my informant was right in saying that the population of Barbados is more dense than that of China, I cannot say; but undoubtedly it is very great; and hence, as the negroes cannot get their living without working, has come the prosperity of the island. The inhabitants are, I believe, very nearly 150,000 in number. This is a greater population than that of the whole of Guiana. The consequence is, that the cane-pieces are cultivated very closely, and that all is done that manual labour can do.
The negroes here differ much, I think, from those in the other islands, not only in manner, but even in form and physiognomy. They are of heavier build, broader in the face, and higher in the forehead. They are also certainly less good-humoured, and more inclined to insolence; so that if anything be gained in intelligence it is lost in conduct. On the whole, I do think that the Barbados negroes are more intelligent than others that I have met. It is probable that this may come from more continual occupation.
But if the black people differ from their brethren of the other islands, so certainly do the white people. One soon learns to know a—Bim. That is the name in which they themselves delight, and therefore, though there is a sound of slang about it, I give it here. One certainly soon learns to know a Bim. The most peculiar distinction is in his voice. There is always a nasal twang about it, but quite distinct from the nasality of a Yankee. The Yankee's word rings sharp through his nose; not so that of the first-class Bim. There is a soft drawl about it, and the sound is seldom completely formed. The effect on the ear is the same as that on the hand when a man gives you his to shake, and instead of shaking yours, holds his own still. When a man does so to me I always wish to kick him.
I had never any wish to kick the Barbadian, more especially as they are all stout men; but I cannot but think that if he were well shaken a more perfect ring would come out of him.
The Bims, as I have said, are generally stout fellows. As a rule they are larger and fairer than other West Indian Creoles, less delicate in their limbs, and more clumsy in their gait. The male graces are not much studied in Barbados. But it is not only by their form or voice that you may know them—not only by the voice, but by the words. No people ever praised themselves so constantly; no set of men were ever so assured that they and their occupations are the main pegs on which the world hangs. Their general law to men would be this: "Thou shalt make sugar in the sweat of thy brow, and make it as it is made in Barbados." Any deviation from that law would be a deviation from the highest duty of man.
Of many of his sister colonies a Barbadian can speak with temper. When Jamaica is mentioned philanthropic compassion lights up his face, and he tells you how much he feels for the poor wretches there who call themselves planters. St. Lucia also he pities, and Grenada; and of St. Vincent he has some hope. Their little efforts he says are praiseworthy; only, alas! they are so little! He does not think much of Antigua; and turns up his nose at Nevis and St. Kitts, which in a small way are doing a fair stroke of business. The French islands he does not love, but that is probably patriotism: as the French islands are successful sugar growers such patriotism is natural. But do not speak to him of Trinadad; that subject is very sore. And as forGuiana—!One knows what to expect if one holds a red rag up to a bull. Praise Guiana sugar-making in Bridgetown, and you will be holding up a red rag to a dozen bulls, no one of which will refuse the challenge. And thus you may always know a Bim.
When I have met four or five together, I have not dared to try this experiment, for they are wrathy men, and have rough sides to their tongues; but I have so encountered two at a time.
"Yes," I have said; "the superiority of Barbados cannot be doubted. We all grant that. But which colony is second in the race?"
"It is impossible to say," said A. "They are none of them well circumstanced."
"None of them have got any labour," said B.
"They can't make returns," said A.
"Just look at their clearances," said B; "and then look at ours."
"Jamaica sugar is paying now," I remarked.
"Jamaica, sir, has been destroyed root and branch," said A, well pleased; for they delight to talk of Jamaica. "And no one can lament it more than I do," said B. "Jamaica is a fine island, only utterly ruined."
"Magnificent! such scenery!" I replied.
"But it can't make sugar," said B.
"What of Trinidad?" I asked.
"Trinidad, sir, is a fine wild island; and perhaps some day we may get our coal there."
"But Demerara makes a little sugar," I ventured to remark.
"It makes deuced little money, I know," said A.
"Every inch of it is mortgaged," said B.
"But their steam-engines," said I.
"Look at their clearances," said A.
"They have none," said B.
"At any rate, they have got beyond windmills," I remarked, with considerable courage.
"Because they have got no wind," said A.
"A low bank of mud below the sea-level," said B.
"But a fine country for sugar," said I.
"They don't know what sugar is," said A.
"Look at their vacuum pans," said I.
"All my eye," said B.
"And their filtering-bags," said I.
"Filtering-bags bed——,"said A.
"Centrifugal machines," said I, now nearly exhausted.
"We've tried them, and abandoned them long ago," said B, only now coming well on to the fight.
"Their sugar is nearly white," said I; "and yours is a dirty brown."
"Their sugar don't pay," said A, "and ours does."
"Look at the price of our land," said B.
"Yes, and the extent of it," said I.
"Our clearances, sir! The clearances, sir, are the thing," said A.
"The year's income," said B.
"A hogshead to the acre," said I; "and that only got from guano."
This was my last shot at them. They both came at me open-mouthed together, and I confess that I retired, vanquished, from the field.
It is certainly the fact that they do make their sugar in a very old-fashioned way in Barbados, using wind-mills instead of steam, and that you see less here of the improved machinery for the manufacture than in Demerara, or Cuba, or Trinidad, or even in Jamaica. The great answer given to objections is that the old system pays best. It may perhaps do so for the present moment, though I should doubt even that. But I am certain that it cannot continue to do so. No trade, and no agriculture can afford to dispense with the improvements of science.
I found some here who acknowledged that the mere produce of the cane from the land had been pressed too far by means of guano. A great crop is thus procured, but it appears that the soil is injured, and that the sugar is injured also. The canes, moreover, will not ratoon as they used to do, and as they still do in other parts of the West Indies. The cane is planted, and when ripe is cut. If allowed, another cane will grow from the same plant, and that is a ratoon; and again a third will grow, giving a third crop from the same plant; and in many soils a fourth; and in some few many more; and one hears of canes ratooning for twenty years.
If the same amount and quality of sugar be produced, of course the system of ratooning must be by far the cheapest and most profitable. In I believe most of our colonies the second crop is as good as the first, and I understand that it used to be so in Barbados. But it is not so now. The ratoon almost always looks poor, and the second ratoons appear to be hardly worth cutting. I believe that this is so much the case that many Barbados planters now look to get but one crop only from each planting. This falling off in the real fertility of the soil is I think owing to the use of artificial manure, such as guano.
There is a system all through these sugar-growing countries of burning the magass, or trash; this is the stalk of the cane, or remnant of the stalk after it comes through the mill. What would be said of an English agriculturist who burnt his straw? It is I believe one of the soundest laws of agriculture that the refuse of the crop should return to the ground which gave it.
To this it will be answered that the English agriculturist is not called on by the necessity of his position to burn his straw. He has not to boil his wheat, nor yet his beef and mutton; whereas the Barbados farmer is obliged to boil his crop. At the present moment the Barbados farmer is under this obligation; but he is not obliged to do it with the refuse produce of his fields. He cannot perhaps use coals immediately under his boilers, but he can heat them with steam which comes pretty much to the same thing.
All this applies not to Barbados only, but to Guiana, Jamaica, and the other islands also. At all of them the magass or trash is burnt. But at none of them is manure so much needed as at Barbados. They cannot there take into cultivation new fresh virgin soil when they wish it, as they can in Guiana.
And then one is tempted to ask the question, whether every owner of land is obliged to undertake all the complete duties which now are joined together at a sugar estate? It certainly is the case, that no single individual could successfully set himself against the system. But I do not see why a collection of individuals should not do so.
A farmer in England does not grow the wheat, then grind it, and then make the bread. The growing is enough for him. Then comes the miller, and the baker. But on a sugar estate, one and the same man grows the cane, makes the sugar, and distils the rum; thus altogether opposing the salutary principle of the division of labour. I cannot see why the grower should not sell his canes to a sugar manufacturer. There can, I believe, be no doubt of this, that sugar can be made better and cheaper in large quantities than in small.
But the clearance, sir; that is the question. How would this affect the clearance? The sugar manufacturer would want his profit. Of course he would, as do the miller and the baker.
They complain greatly at Barbados, as they do indeed elsewhere, that they are compelled to make bad sugar by the differential duty. The duty on good sugar is so much higher than that on bad sugar, that the bad or coarse sugar pays them best. This is the excuse they give for not making a finer article, and I believe that the excuse is true.
I made one or two excursions in the island, and was allowed the privilege of attending an agricultural breakfast, at which there were some twenty or thirty planters. It seems that a certain number of gentlemen living in the same locality had formed themselves into a society, with the object of inspecting each other's estates. A committee of three was named in each case by the president; and this committee, after surveying the estate in question, and looking at the works and stock, drew up a paper, either laudatory or the reverse, which paper was afterwards read to the society. These readings took place after the breakfast, and the breakfast was held monthly. To the planter probably the reading of the documents was the main object. It may not be surprising that I gave the preference to the breakfast, which of its kind was good.
But this was not the only breakfast of the sort at which I was allowed to be a guest. The society has always its one great monthly breakfast; but the absolute inspection gives occasions for further breakfasts. I was also at one of these, and assisted in inspecting the estate. There were, however, too many Barbadians present to permit of my producing my individual views respecting the Guiana improvements.
The report is made at the time of the inspection, but it is read in public at the monthly meeting. The effect no doubt is good, and the publicity of the approval or disapproval stimulates the planter. But I was amused with the true Barbadian firmness with which the gentlemen criticised declared that they would not the less take their own way, and declined to follow the advice offered to them in the report. I heard two such reports read, and in both cases this occurred.
All this took place at Hookleton cliff, which the Barbadians regard as the finest point for scenery in the island. The breakfast I own was good, and the discourse useful and argumentative. But as regards the scenery, there is little to be said for it, considering that I had seen Jamaica, and was going to see Trinidad.
Even in Barbados, numerous as are the negroes, they certainly live an easier life than that of an English labourer, earn their money with more facility, and are more independent of their masters. A gentleman having one hundred and fifty families living on his property would not expect to obtain from them the labour of above ninety men at the usual rate of pay, and that for not more than five days a week. They live in great comfort, and in some things are beyond measure extravagant.
"Do you observe," said a lady to me, "that the women when they walk never hold up their dresses?"
"I certainly have," I answered. "Probably they are but ill shod, and do not care to show their feet."
"Not at all. Their feet have nothing to do with it. But they think it economical to hold up their petticoats. It betokens a stingy, saving disposition, and they prefer to show that they do not regard a few yards of muslin more or less."
This is perfectly true of them. As the shopman in Jamaica said to me—In this part of the world we must never think of little economies. The very negroes are ashamed to do so.
Of the coloured people I saw nothing, except that the shops are generally attended by them. They seemed not to be so numerous as they are elsewhere, and are, I think, never met with in the society of white people. In no instance did I meet one, and I am told that in Barbados there is a very rigid adherence to this rule. Indeed, one never seems to have the alternative of seeing them; whereas in Jamaica one has not the alternative of avoiding them. As regards myself, I would much rather have been thrown among them.
I think that in all probability the white settlers in Barbados have kept themselves more distinct from the negro race, and have not at any time been themselves so burdened with coloured children as is the case elsewhere. If this be so, they certainly deserve credit for their prudence.
Here also there is a King, Lords, and Commons, or a governor, a council, and an assembly. The council consists of twelve, and are either chosen by the Crown, or enjoy their seat by virtue of office held by appointment from the Crown. The Governor in person sits in the council. The assembly consists of twenty-two, who are annually elected by the parishes. None but white men do vote at these elections, though no doubt a black man could vote, if a black man were allowed to obtain a freehold. Of course, therefore, none but white men can be elected. How it is decided whether a man be white or not, that I did not hear. The greater part of the legislative business of the island is done by committees, who are chosen from these bodies.
Here, as elsewhere through the West Indies, one meets with unbounded hospitality. A man who dines out on Monday will receive probably three invitations for Tuesday, and six for Wednesday. And they entertain very well. That haunch of mutton and turkey which are now the bugbear of the English dinner-giver do not seem to trouble the minds or haunt the tables of West Indian hosts.
And after all, Barbados—little England as it delights to call itself—is and should be respected among islands. It owes no man anything, pays its own way, and never makes a poor mouth. Let us say what we will, self-respect is a fine quality, and the Barbadians certainly enjoy that. It is a very fine quality, and generally leads to respect from others. They who have nothing to say for themselves will seldom find others to say much for them. I therefore repeat what I said at first. Barbados is a very respectable little island, and considering the limited extent of its acreage, it does make a great deal of sugar.