SIR ROBERT SCHOMBURGK'S HISTORY OF BARBADOS. In the course of
his surveys and explorations in the West Indies and the mainland of America, Sir Robert Schomburgk resided some considerable time at Barbados. His sojourn inspired him with a deep interest in the island; and hence arose the idea of writing its history ; which, being encouraged by the inhabitants, gave rise to the elaborate and massy volume before us.
There are certain points connected with Barbados that give it a marked character among the surrounding islets. It is almost the only settlement in America that was founded without bloodshed—to be sure, the Spaniards had destroyed the Aborigines before we came. Of genuine Anglican de- - scent, the inhabitants are loyal and lofty-minded ; they call themselves the sheet-anchor of Britain and think that the empire is safe as long as Barbados holds. The island is the healthiest place in the West Indies ; and, like Ireland, is without serpents—at least the only snake found there is so scarce that Sir Robert has never seen it, and it is perfectly harm- less. These, however, are mere points of curiosity, evaporating almost as soon as touched : the social and economical condition of Barbados is a subject of more difficulty. Its mere natural fertility has long been ex- hausted, and its population is very dense : it would therefore seem to be a fitting place to trace the workings of emancipation and to ascertain the experiment of free labour applied to the cultivation of a well-cropped soil. Unluckily, Sir Robert Schomburgk has not applied his attention fully to these topics; but what he says upon the subject is not very encouraging.
" It was not to be expected that the free labourer would devote himself with the same ardour to cultivation as when he was under the compulsory treatment of slavery. The deficiency of the years 1840 and 1841 were, however, very strik- ing when contrasted with the average crops of the three preceding years; which amounted to 30,079 hogsheads and 1,814 tierces, while in 1840 there were only exported 13,319 hogsheads and 793 tiercese and in 1841 16,714 hogsheads and 1,461 tierces. It cannot be doubted that unfavourable weather contributed greatly to this fearful decrease; but the chief cause of the deficiency was the relaxed la- bour of the peasantry, and the great injury which the cultivation and the manu- facture of sugar suffers by a want of continuous and regular labour. In the Bri- tish West Indies, Barbados is the only colony which is thickly peopled, and the population is in such a proportion that the relation between the employer and the labourer is put upon a natural level. Nevertheless, we find in 1840 a deficit of 16,760 hogsheads and 1,021 tierces, and in the following year another of 12,865 hogsheads and 853 tierces."
Although the most important living topic is not treated with a fulness and an acumen proportioned to its importance, the history of Barbados is exhibited with great elaboration. In a critical point of view, the subject is fully evolved. The historian divides his work into three great sections ; the first of which embraces the geography and statistics of the island in their largest sense, including the phrenomena of climate and the civil and social state of the people. The second part contains the history proper, or narrative of events, from the first settlement of Barba- dos to the close of Sir Charles Grey's governorship, in 1846. The third section is devoted to the geology of the island and its natural productions. An appendix contains a variety of statistical facts and original documents illustrative of topics in the text.
Completeness of facts and fulness of information is the character of the work ; but in compiling it, Sir Robert has rather had an eye to his friends in Barbados than to the general reader. For a Creole we can conceive the volume to be as interesting as a description of an estate to its owner, or a pedigree to an enthusiastic partaker of the family honours. The minute detail, which rather wearies the distant reader, has an attraction for him who knows the ground ; the elaborate history of the island, of the nature of annals, will interest the person whose ancestors mayhap took a share in the events or bore a part in the colonial squabbles : but the reader in England can only be attracted when he detects some principle of colonial government, (which our author does not display for him,) or is struck by some strongly marked trait of despotic tyranny or self-will in the older Governors, or is interested by the-terrible hurricanes that have devastated Barbados at various times. Such things, however, are rather the exception to the narrative than its staple. The original authorities seem to have been rather abridged than reproduced. A deficiency of grasp and imagination is felt throughout the volume. Such as the original authorities are, we have them : but it is the business of the historian to do more than this. Like an artist with a face or a landscape before him, he must see the distinguishing characteristics, and select them from the common or the trivial, so as to present the idiosyncracy of his subject. It is well, too, if he can set it off by effects, and animate it by a vivacity of his own ; for without these arts we may have the utile but not the duke.
This criticism refers to the general character of the volume ; there are frequent exceptions in the course of the six or seven hundred pages of which it consists, especially upon subjects of natural history or natural science. This is Sir Robert Schombnrgk's own ground ; and he exhibits a largeness of view, a perception of principles, and a force of description, which are not displayed in his history or economics. The following is a clear exposition of the influence of plants on moisture, and a pregnant hint to the agriculturist.
"There are various circumstances which may contribute towards the formation of rain, and to which I have alluded in the preceding remarks. Temperature, pressure of the atmosphere, and its electrical state, are chief agents; mountain- chains and forests form local causes. The effect which forests exercise upon the condensation of vapours has been ably treated by Daniell, in his Meteorological Essays.' (1827, pp. 230, 232, 278.) Humboldt considers that forests exercise a triple influence upon climate : first, they protect the soil against the rays of the aim ; secondly, they produce by the vital activity of their leaves a constant evapora- tion of aqueous vapours; thirdly, these leaves increase the radiation. These three simultaneous causes, as affording shade, evaporation, and radiation, are so influ- ential, that the knowledge of the extent of forests, compared with the naked sa- vannahs, steppes, and champaign ground, forms one of the most important ele- ments in the climatology, of a country. The active vitality of plants consists chiefly in the leaves; they are the organs of respiration, digestion, and nutrition. The great quantity of water which they perspire may be easily proved by placing a glass next the under-surface of a young vine-leaf in a hot day; and it will be found to perspire so copiously, that the glass will be in a short time covered with dew, which runs down in streams in half an hour. Hales computed the perspira- tion of plants to be seventeen times more than the human body; he calculated that the leaves of a single helianthue three feet and a half in height covered forty square feet; and, comparing his former observation of the perspiration of leaves with this circumstance, Humboldt observes properly, if a plant of such small size exercises influence upon evaporation, how much greater must be the perspiration of the forests of the Upper Orinoco, which cover 260,000 nautical square miles! The cloudy and misty sky of those regions, and of the province of Las E'smeraldas, to the West of the volcano of Pichinche, the decrease of the temperature in the missions on the Rio Negro, and the streams of vapour which become visible on fixing the eyes on the tops of the trees in the Equatorial forest, must be alike ascribed to the aqueous exhalation of the leaves and to their radiation towards
the space of the atmosphere. •
" It is asserted that there is at present much less rain in Barbados than there was formerly, and many of the inhabitants ascribe it to the unlimited clearance of forest and brushwood: and although we have no direct reasons to prove why such clearances lessen the annual quantity of rain, we have abundant proof that it is so. In every instance, and in every.part of the globe where forests have been cleared, a diminution of aqueous precipitations has been noted; and as it is a fact which remains uncontested, that Barbados within the last fifty years was much more wooded than it is now, the diminution of rain must likewise be expected as the natural effect. The evidence of Humboldt, Leopold de Bach, Daniell, Dove, and others, is so powerful on this subject, that I should wish to press particularly upon the attention of the reader how important the existence of wooded spots be- come to the agriculturist. I cannot do better than quote the words of Humboldt to enforce my own view—' By felling the trees that corer the tops and the sides of mountains, men in every climate prepare at once two calamities for future ge- nerations—the want of fuel and a scarcity of water. Trees, by the nature of their perspiration, and the radiation from their leaves in a sky without clouds, surround themselves with an atmosphere constantly cool and misty.'"
Although Barbados is free from snakes, it is not without various ve- nomous insects and reptiles. The mosquito torments the newly arrived; the scorpion is there to sting,—though our author speaks lightly of it in comparison with the centipede ; and there are venomous ants and spiders. Vegetation has suffered at different times from insects, which have pro- duced results analogous to that of the potato blight in this country, sometimes upon the cane, sometime upon the cocoa. A tornado has destroyed these pests when all artificial attempts have failed, as regards the sugar-cane: a late visitation to the cocoa seems still going on.
" Previous to the awful hurricane of 1831, the coast regions were studded with cocoa-nut-trees; the greater part of which were destroyed during that calamity. The plantations, however, were newly planted; and in some places, as at Maxwell and Fontabelle, the proprietors reaped annually from 3001. to 4001. from the sale of young cocoa-nuts. About three or four years ago, an insect suddenly made its appearance, which lodged itself on the lower part of the leaf, where it found shel- ter against the inclemency of the weather, and increased most rapidly. It appears that no notice was taken of it in the commencement, when most likely its ravages might have been stayed. To the great astonishment of persons unacquainted with the cause, the lower leaves or fronds of single trees began to turn yellow and wither, and ultimately to fall off; frond after frond followed, until the pyramidical spire only was left; but this likewise began to droop; ultimately the crown fell off and the withered trunk alone remained standing. The disease spread, and began now to attract attention: but it was too late. In the above-mentioned plantations every tree was attacked; neither young nor old were sparqd4 and those plantations
which five years before possessed thousands of trees, had at the time when the author quitted Barbados not a single healthy tree left. The injury, however, did not rest here: it gradually spread towards the East, attacking tree after tree. All the remedies used against such ravages of insects proved vain; and it is con- sidered that the only means left to get rid of this plague is to extirpate all the cocoa-nut trees in the island, and by a legislative act to prevent any being planted for several years, until the insect has disappeared. It is distressing to see those majestic trees, at present crownless trunks, offensive to the eye: nor has the in- sect restricted, its ravages to Barbados, but is extending them to Antigua, Nevis, St. Christopher's, and other islands."
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