Spain first set foot in the Western World, and if the discovery brought great wealth it brought also much individual suffering and bitter hardship. In Jamaica, she found no people living in barbaric splendour, no stores of gold and silver and precious stones, only a lovely land, fruitful and fertile, valuable only to her because she did not dare let another nation settle so close to the rich possessions of which she was mistress. But the other nations of Europe were naturally anxious to share in the rich spoil of the West, and if Britain took Jamaica and held her, it was only I think because she could not take Cuba and Hispaniola. The Spaniards fought for every inch of the island before they lost it, and now for remembrance of them there remains but a few place names and legends of the treasure they left stored there.
If colonisation was difficult for the Spaniards it was still more difficult for the British, coming from the cold North. No one was eager to brave the dangers of the tropics, and like the king in the parable, desiring to fill his tables for the feast, Government sought in the highways and byways for a population, and they imported white bondsmen and women, virtually a slave population, the first shadow that was to impede the progress of the land. Labour was branded. The men worked—and died—in the fields, and the women became the mistresses of the young planters, so that marriage went out of fashion, and the free women were neglected and forlorn.
And when they ceased to send the white bondsmen, they sought a substitute in the black man from Africa.
The man who comes out to a new land is apt always to see the land he leaves behind through a softening veil that enhances its desirability. He sees only its good points. And naturally this emphasises the drawbacks of the new land. He speaks disparagingly of it, he writes home disparagingly, dwelling on his many hardships. Jamaica was no exception to the almost universal rule. Most men went there to make their fortunes, with every intention of returning to spend them. Only Hans Sloane, a wise and far-seeing man, saw the glory of the land, and left behind him a record of its wealth and its beauty and fertility. Lady Nugent, writing more than one hundred years later, was much more swayed by public opinion, and saw what she was told she would see, a deadly climate where men died like flies, though even she does arrive at the poignant fact that the women who lived with less licence, bore this climate far better than their mates.
From her pen, too, we first have some pity for the unfortunates the British imported from the Guinea Coast to work in their plantations. Terrible are the stories told of the sufferings of this alien people from the moment they fell into the hands of the slavers till they stood in the slave markets at Kingston or Montego Bay, told calmly, told coldly, told simply as facts by men who saw only the difficulties of the trade, and of dealing with men and women who “wilfully” drowned themselves to escape their fate. On arrival, the stronger like cattle were sold in the open market, but only here and there do we get awful glimpses of the fate that befell the weaker.
Life was no bed of roses for the planter and his white assistants, working to provide funds to be spent in the old country, but it was simply a hell at first for the savages they worked.
On the plantations no white woman was welcome. As the masters had taken the white bondswoman for their temporary companions, so now they took the black while they were young and comely. At first it was savages and white masters, and the little coloured children who were but their fathers’ chattels.
So slowly the people progressed, we hardly realise there was any progress, till we see the men and women of dark complexion clothed and ardent church members, even though they are slaves, and we remember how short a while before they started here as naked savages. Two generations were worlds apart. Cruel rebellion there was, crueller retaliation, but still white and black advanced to better things in the land that was becoming the loved home.
The years rolled on. First the trade was forbidden, then the slave was freed, then the black man was given equal rights with the white, and now—— Now there are still difficulties, difficulties born of ignorance, of poverty, but so there are in the upward march of every people under the sun. Sometimes they make great strides onwards, sometimes they seem to pause and fall back, but really always the march is upwards, though we can only see the progress by looking back.
An enchanting tale, a tale of rare adventure and romance is the past of Jamaica, and before her lies a glorious future, for the Empire is slowly awakening to the value of the tropical possessions that are within the borders, and this fruitful island of wood and mountain and water, set in a summer sea, must surely play a great part in the future development of one of the great nations of the earth.