Journal of a Residence among the Negroes in the West Indies | ||
JANUARY 28. (Sunday.)
I shall have enough to do in Jamiaca if I accepted all the offices that are pressed upon me. A large body of negroes from a neighbouring estate came over to Cornwall this morning to complain of hard treatment, various ways, from the overseer and drivers, and to request me to represent their injuries to their trustee here, and their proprietor in England. the charges were so strong, that I am certain that they must be fictious ; however, I listened to their story with patience ; promised that the trustee(whom I was to see in a few days) should know their complaint, and they went away apparently satisfied. then came a runaway negro who wanted to return home, and requested me to write a few lines to his master, to save him from the lash. He was succeeded by a poor creature named Bessie, who, although still a young woman, is exempt from labour, on account of her being afflicted with the cocoa-bay , one of the most horrible of negro diseases. it shows itself in large blotches and swellings, which generally moulder away, by degrees, the joints of the toes and fingers, till they rot and drop off ; sometimes as much as half a foot will go at once. As the disease is communicable by contact, the person so afflicted is necessarily shunned by society ; and this poor woman, who is married to John Fuller, one of the best young men on the estate, and by
She did not know ; she knew nothing about God ; had never heard of any such
.
Being, nor of any other world." I told her that God was a
great personage, " who lived up yonder above the blue, in a place full of pleasures and free from pains, where Adam and wicked people could not come; that her pickaninies were not dead for ever, but were only gone up to live with God, who was good, and would take care of them for her; and that if she were good, when she died she too would go up to God above the blue, and see all her four pickaninies again." The idea seemed so new and so agreeable to the poor creature, that she clapped her hands together and began laughing for joy; so I said to her
This Adam of whom she complained is a most dangerous fellow; he has been long suspected of being connected with Obeah men , and is the terror of all his companions with whom he lives in a constant state of warfare. He is a creole, born on my own property and has several sisters, who have obtained their freedom, and are in every respect creditable and praiseworthy ; and to one of them I consider myself particularly indebted, as she was the means of saving poor Richard's life when the tyranny of the overseer had brought him almost to the brink of the grave. But this brother is in everything the very reverse of his sisters. There is no doubt of his having (as Bessie stated) infused poison into the water-jars through spite against the late superintendent. I t was in this fellow's hut that the old Obeah man was found concealed, whom my attorney seized and transported last year. he is, unfortunately, clever and plausible ; and I am told that the mischief which he has already done, by working upon the folly and superstition of his fellows, is incalculable ; yet I cannot get rid of him; the law will not suffer any negro to be shipped off the island until he shall have been convicted of felony at the sessions. I cannot sell him, for nobody would buy him, nor except hi, if I would offer them so dangerous a present. If he were to go away the law would seize him and bring him back to me, and I should be obliged to pay heavily for his re-taking and his maintenance in the workhouse. In short, I know not what I can do with him.
There are certainly many excellent qualities in the negro character ; their worst faults appear to be this prejudice respecting obeah, and the facility with which they are frequently induced to poison to the right hand and to the left. A neighbouring
Next to this vile trick of poisoning people (arising, doubtless, in a great measure from their total want of religion and their ignorance of a future state, which makes them dread no punishment hereafter for themselves, and look with but little respect on human life in others), the greatest drawback upon one's comfort in a Jamaica existence seems to me to be the being obliged to live perpetually in public. Certainly, if a man was desirous of leading a life of vice here, be must have set himself totally above shame, for be may depend upon everything done by him being seen and known. The houses are absolutely transparent -the walls are nothing but windows, and all the doors stand wide, open. No servants are in waiting to announce arrivals: visitors, negroes, dogs, cats, poultry, all walk in and out, and up and down your rooms, without the slightest ceremony.
Journal of a Residence among the Negroes in the West Indies | ||