TEOLLOPE'S WEST INDIES AND TUE SPANISH 3IALN. 1 THE name of
Mr. Anthony Trollope on the title-page of a book of travels is a pretty sure token of good entertainment within for all sorts of readers whose appetites are healthy. Those who take up the present volume in hope of being amused will not be dis- appointed, and those whose taste inclines to matter of serious thought may fancy that for once they have lighted upon an im- portant blue-book in the agreeable disguise of a popular work from Mudie's. From the " Atrato," in which Mr. Trollope sailed from Southampton, he landed on the 2d of last December, at the Danish island of St. Thomas, which now is, but in his opinion ought not to be, the meeting-place and central depot of the West Indian steam-packets. He describes it as " a Niggery-Hispano- Dano-Yankee-Doodle place," the element of strongest flavour de- claring itself in that nasal twang which " will sound as the Bocce Romana in coming fashionable western circles," and those sherry-cobblers which " will be the Falernian drink of a people masters of half the world." Here, he says,— " As I put my foot on the tropical soil for the first time, a lady handed me a rose, saying, That's for love, dear.' I took it, and said that it should be for love. She was beautifully, nay, elegantly dressed. Her broad- brimmed hat was as graceful es are those of Ryde or Brighton. The well- starched skirts of her muslin dress gave to her upright figure that look of easily compressible bulk, which, let Punch' do what it will, has become so sightly to our eyes. Pink gloves were on her hands. That's for love, dear.' Yes, it shall be for love ; for thee and thine, if I can find that thou deservest it. What was it to me that she was as black as my boot, or that she had come to look after the ship's washing ? "
Having transshipped himself at St. Thomas, our traveller ar- rived at Kingston, and saw in its miserable, neglected, and bankrupt aspect, its unpaved and unlighted streets, and its tumbling houses, a first proof of the ruin which has befallen the beautiful and once wealthy island of Jamaica. This com- mercial metropolis of the island is with good reason hated and shunned by the white inhabitants ; and to make its condition more hopeless, the seat of governmenent is established not there, but in dismal Spanish Town, a place which is like a city of the
• The West Indies and the Spanish Main. By Anthony Trollope, Author of " Barehester Towers." &c. Published by Chapman and Hall.
dead, for a hideous race of pigs, all bone and bristles, are almost the only living things to be seen in its deserted streets. When our traveller explored the interior of the country, his eye was pleased everywhere. .He sass in some *ices scenery which almost equals that of Switzerland and the Tyrol, and found a healthy and agreeable elistate in the mountain regions ; yet the prospect is everywhere saddening, for it tells of broken fortunes, and of na- tures bounties made useless by the faults and follies of man. The wealth of Jamaica consisted, as every one knows, in its sugar and *vibe plantations, but of these there remains only a poor and languishing remnant. One may travel for days in the island and see only a cane-piece here and there ; half the sugar estates, and more than half the coffee plantations, have gone back into a state of bush. The fault is neither in the soil nor in its owners that one of the most bountiful lands ever mastered by civilization has again become a wilder- ness, and that too beneath the British Government. The soil of " the Land of Streams" (for that is what the name Xayrilaca meant in the language of the aborigines) is as fruitful as ever, and the planters have continued to this day to struggle with only too much courage and obstinacy against their fatal difficulties ; but they cannot prosper without labourers,—money will not tempt the negroes to work, since they can enjoy life in their own way without it,—and the British Government, swayed by the Anti- Slavery Society, has hitherto prevented the planters from import- ing the necessary labour from abroad. This is the true cause of Jamaica's distress, as Mr. Trollope shows by comparing its his- tory since the Act of Emancipation with that of other West Indian colonies. Barbados alone among them all sustained no injury from the cessation of slavery, for this simple reason, that the sur- face of the island being nearly uniform, the whole Of it had been taken into cultivation by the planters, and not an acre was left for the negroes to squat on, so that when they °eased to be slaves they were forced to work as free labourers for their subsistence. Whilst Barbados holds her own and pays her way, and whilst the exportation from Jamaica is almost as nothing, Guiana and Trini- dad now export more sugar than they did before the emancipa- tion of their slaves, because they have begun to enjoy, by per- mission of the Home Government, the benefit of Coolie immigra- tion; but that privilege is still denied to Jamaica, because the Anti-Slavery Society tells us that black or coloured labourers im- ported into the West Indies will be slaves in reality though not in name, and will surely be misused ; and that the native negro labourer requires protection. "As to the charge of ill-usage," says Mr. Trollope, "it appears to me that these men could not be treated with more tenderness, unless they were put up separately, each under his own glass case, with a piece of velvet on which to lie. . . . I think I may venture to say that no -labourers in any country are so cared for, so closely protected, so certainly saved from the usual wants and sorrows incident to the labouring classes. And this is equally so in Jamaica as far as the system has gone. What would be the usage of the African introduced by voluntary contribution may be seen in the usage of him who has been brought into the country from captured slave-ships. Their clothing, their food, their house accommodation, their hospital treatment, their amount of work and obligatory period of work- ing with one master—all these matters are under government surveillance ; and the planter who has allotted to him the privilege of employing such labour becomes almost as much subject to government inspection as though his estate were government property. "It is said that an obligatory period of labour amounts to slavery, even though the contract shall have been entered into by the labourer of his own free will. I will not take on myself to deny this, as I might find it diffi- cult to define the term slavery ; but if this be so, English apprentices are slaves, and so are indentured clerks ; so are hired agricultural servants in many parts of England and Wales; and so, certainly, are all our soldiers and sailors. But in the ordinary acceptation of the word slavery, that ac- ceptation which comes home to us all, whether we can define it or no, men subject to such contracts are not slaves."
Instead of protection, what is wanted for the three hundred thousand black sybarites of Jamaica is the sharp sting of compe- tition, to make them amenable to the great social law, that if a man will not labour neither shall he eat.
"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. 1 saw [in Guiana] a gang of ten or twelve negro girls in a cane-piece, lying idle on the ground, waitino.' 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 at- tacked 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
i morrow 'arly.' It is hardly necessary to say that the gentleman refused to bargain with them. They'll measure their work tomorrow,' 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 can- not 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."
It strikes us as being strangely impolitic on the part of the Anti- Slavery Society to throw impediments in the way of West Indian prosperity. The Society ought rather to aid the efforts which the colonies are making to retrieve their position, for as long as they remain depressed they supply the maintainers of slavery with a ready and plausible argument against emancipation. As a pendent to the sketch of the negro ladies in the field we subjoin this picture of the sisterhood in gala costume :—
" Nothing about them is more astonishing than the dress of the women. It is impossible to deny to them• considerable taste and great power of adapta- tion. In England, among our housemaids and even haymakers, crinoline, flake flowers, long waists, and flowing sleeves have become common ; but they do not wear their finery as though they were at home in it. There is generally with them, when in their Sunday best, something of the hog in armour. With the negro woman there is nothing of this. In the first place she is never shame-faced. Then she has very frequently a good figurer and having it, she knows how to make the best of it. She bas a natural skill in dress, and will be seen with a boddice fitted to her as though it had been made and laced in Paris. Their costumes on fete days and Sundays are per- fectly marvellous. They are by no means contented with coloured calicoes ; but shine in muslin and light silks at heaven only knows how much a yard. They wear their dresses of an enormous fulness. One may see of a Sunday evening three ladies occupying a whole street by the breadth of their gar- ments, who on the preceding day were scrubbing pots and carrying weights about the town on their heads. And they will walk in full-dress too as though they had been used to go in such attire from their youth up. They rejoice most in white—in white muslin with coloured sashes ; in light- brown boots, pink gloves, parasols, and broad-brimmed straw hats with deep veils and glittering bugles. The hat and the veil, however, are mistakes. If the negro woman thoroughly understood effect, she would wear no head- dress but the coloured handkerchief, which is hers by right of national cus- tom. Some of their efforts after dignity of costume are ineffably ludicrous. One Stmday evening, far away in the country, as I was riding with a gen- tleman, the proprietor of the estate around us, I saw a young girl walking home from church. She was arrayed from head to foot in virgin white. Her gloves were on, and her parasol was up. Her hat else was white, and so was the lace, and so were the bugles which adorned it. She walked with a stately dignity that was worthy of such a costume, and worthy also of higher grandeur ; for behind her walked an attendant nymph, carrying the beauty's prayer-book—on her head. A negro woman tames every burden on her head, from a tub of water weighing a hundredweight down to a bottle of physic. When we came up to her, she turned towards us and curtsied. She curtsied, for she recognized her masse' ; but she curtsied with great dignity, for she recognized also her own finery. The girl behind with the prayer-book made the ordinary obeisance, crooking her leg up at the knee, and then standing upright quicker than thought.
" Who on earth is that princess ? ' said I. " They are two sisters who both work at my mill,' said my friend. Next Sunday they will change places. Polly will have the parasol and the hat, and Jenny will carry the prayer-book on her head behind her.' "
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