Journal of a West-India Proprietor: Kept During a Residence in the Island of Jamaica |
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allowed appeared APRIL 23 arrival assured beautiful begged Black River blue book-keepers brought called captain child colour complaint Cornwall Creoles Cubina curricle dancing dead deck dinner Eboe Edward England eyes favourable FEBRUARY FEBRUARY 12 fellow fish flying fish gave girl ground hand head hear heart Hordley hospital hour Irza Irza's island Jamaica JANUARY 19 John Fuller kind Kingston length live look massa miles Montego Bay morning mother mountains mulatto neger negroes never night o'clock o'er Obeah obliged occasion once overseer pain passed perfectly person Plato poison poor punishment River rock Rosalvo sail Savannah la Mar scarcely seemed sent ship singing Sir Godfrey Webster slaves soon Spanish Town suffered sugar Sunday tears thing thought to-day told trees trustee vessel whole wind woman young
Popular passages
Page 107 - I never witnessed on the stage a scene so picturesque as a negro village. I walked through my own to-day, and visited the houses of the drivers, and other principal persons ; and if I were to decide according to my own taste, I should infinitely have preferred their habitations to my own. Each house is surrounded by a separate garden, and the whole village is intersected by lanes, bordered with all kinds of sweet-smelling and flowering plants...
Page 408 - What other negroes may be, I will not pretend to guess ; but I am certain that there cannot be more tractable or better disposed persons, take them for all in all, than my negroes of Cornwall.
Page 323 - Bedward) is quoted as the cruellest proprietor that ever disgraced Jamaica. It was his constant practice, whenever a sick negro was pronounced incurable, to order the poor wretch to be carried to a solitary vale upon his estate, called the Gulley...
Page 323 - Gulley, where he was thrown down, and abandoned to his fate ; which fate was generally to be half-devoured by the john-crows, before death had put an end to his sufferings. By this proceeding the avaricious owner avoided the expense of maintaining the slave during his last illness ; and in order that he might be as little a loser as possible, he always enjoined the negro bearers of the dying man to strip him naked before leaving the Gulley, and not to forget to bring back his frock and the board...
Page 61 - As for the old people, they were all in one and the same story : now they had lived once to see Massa, they were ready for dying to-morrow,
Page 94 - ... upon the ground in a state of complete insensibility. The watchman then summoned the two negroes from their concealment, who bound his arms, and conveyed him to Montego Bay, where he was immediately sentenced to execution. He died most heroically ; kept up the terrors of his imposture to his last moment ; told the magistrates who condemned him that his death should be revenged by a storm which would lay waste the whole island that year...
Page 111 - ... never without salt provisions, porter, and even wine, to entertain their friends and their visiters from the bay or the mountains. As I passed through their grounds, many little requests were preferred to me : one wanted an additional supply of lime for the whitewashing his house; another was building a...
Page 62 - ... seemed to imply that, although he did feel pleasure then in serving me, if he had detested me he must have served me still. I really felt quite humiliated at the moment, and was tempted to tell him, " Do not say that again ; say that you are my negro, but do not call yourself my slave.
Page 32 - ... more easily, they offered to be his carvers, lowered their boat, and proceeded to chop his better half in pieces with their hatchets; while the widower opened his jaws as wide as possible, and gulped down pounds upon pounds of the dear departed as fast as they were thrown to him, with the greatest delight and all the avidity imaginable.
Page 15 - ... calms are by far the most disagreeable of the two : the wind steadies the ship ; but when she creeps as slowly as she does at present (scarcely going a mile in four hours), she feels the whole effect of the sea breaking against her, and rolls backwards and forwards with every billow as it rises and falls. In the meanwhile...