When I settle out of England, and take to the colonies for good and all, British Guiana shall be the land of my adoption. If I call it Demerara perhaps I shall be better understood. At home there are prejudices against it I know. They say that it is a low, swampy, muddy strip of alluvial soil, infested with rattlesnakes, gallinippers, and musquitoes as big as turkey-cocks; that yellow fever rages there perennially; that the heat is unendurable; that society there is as stagnant as its waters; that men always die as soon as they reach it; and when they live are such wretched creatures that life is a misfortune. Calumny reports it to have been ruined by the abolition of slavery; milk of human kindness would forbid the further exportation of Europeans to this white man\'s grave; and philanthropy, for the good of mankind, would wish to have it drowned beneath its own rivers. There never was a land so ill spoken of—and never one that deserved it so little. All the above calumnies I contradict; and as I lived there for a fortnight—would it could have been a month!—I expect to be believed.
If there were but a snug secretaryship vacant there—and these things in Demerara are very snug—how I would invoke the goddess of patronage; how I would nibble round the officials of the Colonial Office; how I would stir up my friends\' friends to write little notes to their friends! For Demerara is the Elysium of the tropics—the West Indian happy valley of Rasselas—the one true and actual Utopia of the Caribbean Seas—the Transatlantic Eden.
The men in Demerara are never angry, and the women are never cross. Life flows along on a perpetual stream of love, smiles, champagne, and small-talk. Everybody has enough of everything. The only persons who do not thrive are the doctors; and for them, as the country affords them so little to do, the local government no doubt provides liberal pensions.
The form of government is a mild despotism, tempered by sugar. The Governor is the father of his people, and the Governor\'s wife the mother. The colony forms itself into a large family, which gathers itself together peaceably under parental wings. They have no noisy sessions of Parliament as in Jamaica, no money squabbles as in Barbados. A clean bill of health, a surplus in the colonial treasury, a rich soil, a thriving trade, and a happy people—these are the blessings which attend the fortunate man who has cast his lot on this prosperous shore. Such is Demerara as it is made to appear to a stranger.
That custom which prevails there, of sending to all new comers a deputation with invitations to dinner for the period of his sojourn, is an excellent institution. It saves a deal of trouble in letters of introduction, economizes one\'s time, and puts one at once on the most-favoured-nation footing. Some may fancy that they could do better as to the bestowal of their evenings by individual diplomacy; but the matter is so well arranged in Demerara that such people would certainly find themselves in the wrong.
If there be a deficiency in Georgetown—it is hardly necessary to explain that Georgetown is the capital of the province of Demerara, and that Demerara is the centre province in the colony of British Guiana; or that there are three provinces, Berbice, Demerara, and Essequibo, so called from the names of the three great rivers of the country—But if there be a deficiency in Georgetown, it is in respect to cabs. The town is extensive, as will by-and-by be explained; and though I would not so far militate against the feelings of the people as to say that the weather is ever hot—I should be ungrateful as well as incredulous were I to do so—nevertheless, about noonday one\'s inclination for walking becomes subdued. Cabs would certainly be an addition to the luxuries of the place. But even these are not so essential as might at the first sight appear, for an invitation to dinner always includes an offer of the host\'s carriage. Without a carriage no one dreams of dragging on existence in British Guiana. In England one would as soon think of living in a house without a fireplace, or sleeping in a bed without a blanket.
For those who wander abroad in quest of mountain scenery it must be admitted that this colony has not much attraction. The country certainly is flat. By this I mean to intimate, that go where you will, travel thereabouts as far as you may, the eye meets no rising ground. Everything stands on the same level. But then, what is the use of mountains? You can grow no sugar on them, even with ever so many Coolies. They are big, brown, valueless things, cumbering the face of the creation; very well for autumn idlers when they get to Switzerland, but utterly useless in a colony which has to count its prosperity by the number of its hogsheads. Jamaica has mountains, and look at Jamaica!
Yes; Demerara is flat; and Berbice is flat; and so is Essequibo. The whole of this land is formed by the mud which has been brought down by these great rivers and by others. The Corentyne is the most easterly, separating our colony from Dutch Guiana, or Surinam. Then comes the Berbice. The next, counting only the larger rivers, is the Demerara. Then, more to the west, the Essequibo, and running into that the Mazarony and the Cuyuni; and then, north-west along the coast, the Pomeroon; and lastly of our own rivers, the Guiana, though I doubt whether for absolute purposes of colonization we have ever gone so far as this. And beyond that are rolled in slow but turbid volume the huge waters of the Orinoco. On its shores we make no claim. Though the delta of the Orinoco is still called Guiana, it belongs to the republic of Venezuela.
These are our boundaries along the South American shore, which hereabouts, as all men know, looks northward, with an easterly slant towards the Atlantic. Between us and our Dutch friends on the right hand the limits are clear enough. On the left hand, matters are not quite so clear with the Venezuelians. But to the rear! To the rear there is an eternity of sugar capability in mud running back to unknown mountains, the wildernesses of Brazil, the river Negro, and the tributaries of the Amazon—an eternity of sugar capability, to which England\'s colony can lay claim if only she could manage so much as the surveying of it. "Sugar!" said an enterprising Demerara planter to me. "Are you talking of sugar? Give me my heart\'s desire in Coolies, and I will make you a million of hogsheads of sugar without stirring from the colony!" Now, the world\'s supply, some twelve years ago, was about a million hogsheads. It has since increased maybe by a tenth. What a land, then, is this of British Guiana, flowing with milk and honey—with sugar and rum! A million hogsheads can be made there, if we only had the Coolies. I state this on the credit of my excellent enterprising friend. But then the Coolies!
Guiana is an enormous extent of flat mud, the alluvial deposit of those mighty rivers which for so many years have been scraping together earth in those wild unknown upland countries, and bringing it down conveniently to the sea-board, so that the world might have sugar to its tea. I really think my friend was right. There is no limit to the fertility and extent of this region. The only limit is in labour. The present culture only skirts the sea-board and the riversides. You will hardly find an estate—I do not think that you can find one—that has not a water frontage. This land formerly belonged to the Dutch, and by them was divided out into portions which on a map have about them a Euclidical appearance. Let A B C D be a right-angled parallelogram, of which the sides A B and C D are three times the length of the other sides A C and B D. \'Tis thus you would describe a Demerara property, and the Q. E. D. would have reference to the relative quantities of sugar, molasses, and rum producible therefrom.
But these strips of land, though they are thus marked out on the maps with four exact lines, are presumed to run back to any extent that the owner may choose to occupy. He starts from the water, and is bounded on each side; but backwards! Backwards he may cultivate canes up to the very Andes, if only he could get Coolies. Oh, ye soft-hearted, philanthropic gentry of the Anti-Slavery Society, only think of that; a million hogsheads of sugar—and you like cheap sugar yourselves—if you will only be quiet, or talk on subjects that you understand!
The whole of this extent of mud, beyond the present very limited sugar-growing limits, is covered by timber. One is apt to think of an American forest as being as magnificent in its individual trees as it is huge in its extent of surface. But I doubt much whether this is generally the case. There are forest giants no doubt; but indigenous primeval wood is, I take it, for the most part a disagreeable, scrubby, bushy, sloppy, unequal, inconvenient sort of affair, to walk through which a man should be either an alligator or a monkey, and to make much way he should have a touch of both. There be no forest glades there in which uncivilized Indian lovers walk at ease, with their arms round each other\'s naked waists; no soft grass beneath the well-trimmed trunk on which to lie and meditate poetical. But musquitoes abound there; and grass flies, which locate themselves beneath the toe-nails; and marabunters, a villanous species of wasp; and gallinippers, the grandfathers of musquitoes; and from thence up to the xagua and the boa constrictor all nature is against a cool comfortable ramble in the woods.
But I must say a word about Georgetown, and a word also about New Amsterdam, before I describe the peculiarities of a sugar estate in Guiana. A traveller\'s first thought is about his hotel; and I must confess, much as I love Georgetown—and I do love Georgetown—that I ought to have coupled the hotel with the cabs, and complained of a joint deficiency. The Clarendon—the name at any rate is good—is a poor affair; but poor as it is, it is the best.
It is a ricket, ruined, tumble-down, wooden house, into which at first one absolutely dreads to enter, lest the steps should fail and let one through into unutterable abysses below. All the houses in Georgetown are made of wood, and therefore require a good deal of repair and paint. And all the houses seem to receive this care except the hotel. Ah, Mrs. Lenny, Mrs. Lenny! before long you and your guests will fall prostrate, and be found buried beneath a pile of dust and a colony of cockroaches!
And yet it goes against my heart to abuse the inn, for the people were so very civil. I shall never forget that big black chambermaid; how she used to curtsy to me when she came into my room in the morning with a huge tub of water on her head! That such a weight should be put on her poor black skull—a weight which I could not lift—used to rend my heart with anguish. But that, so weighted, she should think that manners demanded a curtsy! Poor, courteous, overburdened maiden!
"Don\'t, Sally; don\'t. Don\'t curtsy," I would cry. "Yes, massa," she would reply, and curtsy again, oh, so painfully! The tub of water was of such vast proportions! It was big enough—big enough for me to wash in!
This house, as I have said, was all in ruins, and among other ruined things was my bedroom-door lock. The door could not be closed within, except by the use of a bolt; and without the bolt would swing wide open to the winds, exposing my arrangements to the public, and disturbing the neighbourhood by its jarring. In spite of the inconvenient difficulty of ingress I was forced to bolt it.
At six every morning came Sally with the tub, knocking gently at the door—knocking gently at the door with that ponderous tub upon her skull! What could a man do when so appealed to but rush quickly from beneath his musquito curtains to her rescue? So it was always with me. But having loosed the bolt, time did not suffice to enable me to take my position again beneath the curtain. A jump into bed I might have managed—but then, the musquito curtain! So, under those circumstances, finding myself at the door in my deshabille, I could only open it, and then stand sheltered behind it, as behind a bulwark, while Sally deposited her burden.
But, no. She curtsied, first at the bed; and seeing that I was not there, turned her head and tub slowly round the room, till she perceived my whereabouts. Then gently, but firmly, drawing away the door till I stood before her plainly discovered in my night-dress, she curtsied again. She knew better than to enter a room without due salutation to the guest—even with a tub of water on her head. Poor Sally! Was I not dressed from my chin downwards, and was not that enough for her? "Honi soit qui mal y pense."
After that, how can I say ought against the hotel? And when I complained loudly of the holes in the curtain, the musquitoes having driven me to very madness, did not they set to work, Sunday as it was, and make me a new curtain? Certainly without avail—for they so hung it that the musquitoes entered worse than ever. But the intention was no less good.
And that waiter, David; was he not for good-nature the pink of waiters? "David, this house will tumble down! I know it will—before I leave it. The stairs shook terribly as I came up." "Oh no, massa," and David laughed benignly. "It no tumble down last week, and derefore it no tumble down next." It did last my time, and therefore I will say no more.
Georgetown to my eyes is a prepossessing city, flat as the country round it is, and deficient as it is—as are all the West Indies—in anything like architectural pretension. The streets are wide and airy. The houses, all built of wood, stand separately, each a little off the road; and though much has not been done in the way of their gardens—for till the great coming influx of Coolies all labour is engaged in making sugar—yet there is generally something green attached to each of them. Down the centre of every street runs a wide dyke. Of these dykes I must say something further when I come to speak again of the sugar doings; for their importance in these provinces cannot well be overrated.
The houses themselves are generally without a hall. By that I mean that you walk directly into some sitting-room. This, indeed, is general through the West Indies; and now that I bethink me of the fact, I may mention that a friend of mine in Jamaica has no door whatsoever to his house. All ingress and egress is by the windows. My bedroom had no door, only a window that opened. The sitting-rooms in Georgetown open through to each other, so that the wind, let it come which way it will, may blow through the whole house. For though it is never absolutely hot in Guiana—as I have before mentioned—nevertheless, a current of air is comfortable. One soon learns to know the difference of windward and leeward when living in British Guiana.
The houses are generally of three stories; but the two upper only are used by the family. Outer steps lead up from the little front garden, generally into a verandah, and in this verandah a great portion of their life is led. It is cooler than the inner rooms. Not that I mean to say that any rooms in Demerara are ever hot. We all know the fine burst with which Scott opens a certain canto in one of his poems:—
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land?
* * *
If such there breathe, go, mark him well.
At any rate, there breathes no such man in this pleasant colony. A people so happily satisfied with their own position I never saw elsewhere, except at Barbados. And how could they fail to be satisfied, looking at their advantages? A million hogsheads of sugar to be made when the Coolies come!
They do not, the most of them, appeal to the land as being that of their nativity, but they love it no less as that of their adoption. "Look at me," says one; "I have been thirty years without leaving it, and have never had a headache." I look and see a remarkably hale man, of forty I should say, but he says fifty. "That\'s nothing," says another, who certainly may be somewhat stricken in years: "I have been here five-and-fifty years, and was never ill but once, when I was foolish enough to go to England. Ugh! I shall never forget it. Why, sir, there was frost in October!" "Yes," I said, "and snow in May sometimes. It is not all sunshine with us, whatever it may be with you."
"Not that we have too much sunshine," interposed a lady. "You don\'t think we have, do you?"
"Not in the least. Who could ask more, madam, than to bask in such sunshine as yours from year\'s end to year\'s end?"
"And is commerce tolerably flourishing?" I asked of a gentleman in trade.
"Flourishing, sir! If you want to make money, here\'s your ground. Why, sir, here, in this wretched little street, there has been more money turned in the last ten years than—than—than—" And he rummaged among the half-crowns in his breeches-pocket for a simile, as though not a few of the profits spoken of had found their way thither.
"Do you ever find it dull here?" I asked of a lady—perhaps not with very good taste—for we Englishmen have sometimes an idea that there is perhaps a little sameness about life in a small colony.
"Dull! no. What should make us dull? We have a great deal more to amuse us than most of you have at home." This perhaps might be true of many of us. "We have dances, and dinner-parties, and private theatricals. And then Mrs. ——!" Now Mrs. —— was the Governor\'s wife, and all eulogiums on society in Georgetown always ended with a eulogium upon her.
I went over the hospital with the doctor there; for even in Demerara they require a hospital for the negroes. "And what is the prevailing disease of the colony?" I asked him. "Dropsy with the black men," he answered; "and brandy with the white."
"You don\'t think much of yellow fever?" I asked him.
"No; very little. It comes once in six or seven years; and like influenza or cholera at home, it requires its victims. What is that to consumption, whose visits with you are constant, who daily demands its hecatombs? We don\'t like yellow fever, certainly; but yellow fever is not half so bad a fellow as the brandy bottle."
Should this meet the eye of any reader in this colony who needs medical advice, he may thus get it, of a very good quality, and without fee. On the subject of brandy I say nothing myself, seeing how wrong it is to kiss and tell.
Excepting as regards yellow fever, I do not imagine that Demerara is peculiarly unhealthy. And as regards yellow fever, I am inclined to think that his Satanic majesty has in this instance been painted too black. There are many at home—in England—who believe that yellow fever rages every year in some of these colonies, and that half the white population of the towns is swept off by it every August. As far as I can learn it is hardly more fatal at one time of the year than at another. It returns at intervals, but by no means regularly or annually. Sometimes it will hang on for sixteen or eighteen months at a time, and then it will disappear for five or six years. Those seem to be most subject to it who have been out in the West Indies for a year or so: after that, persons are not so liable to it. Sailors, and men whose work keeps them about the sea-board and wharves, seem to be in the greatest danger. White soldiers also, when quartered in unhealthy places, have suffered greatly. They who are thoroughly acclimatized are seldom attacked; and there seems to be an idea that the white Creoles are nearly safe. I believe that there are instances in which coloured people and even negroes have been attacked by yellow fever. But such cases are very rare. Cholera is the negroes\' scourge.
Nor do I think that this fever rages more furiously in Demerara than among the islands. It has been very bad in its bad times at Kingston, Jamaica, at Trinidad, at Barbados, among the shipping at St. Thomas, and nowhere worse than at the Havana. The true secret of its fatality I take to be this:—that the medical world has not yet settled what is the proper mode of medical treatment. There are, I believe, still two systems, each directly opposite to the other; but in the West Indies they call them the French system and the English. In a few years, no doubt, the matter will be better understood.
From Georgetown, Demerara, to New Amsterdam, Berbice, men travel either by steamer along the coast, or by a mail phaeton. The former goes once a week to Berbice and back, and the latter three times. I went by the mail phaeton and returned by the steamer. And here, considering the prosperity of the colony, the well-being and comfort of all men and women in it, the go-ahead principles of the place, and the coming million hogsheads of sugar—the millennium of a West Indian colony—considering all these great existing characteristics of Guiana, I must say that I think the Governor ought to look to the mail phaeton. It was a woful affair, crumbling to pieces along the road in the saddest manner; very heart-rending to the poor fellow who had to drive it, and body-rending to some of the five passengers who were tossed to and fro as every fresh fragment deserted the parent vehicle with a jerk. And then, when we had to send the axle to be mended, that staying in the road for two hours and a half among the musquitoes! Ohe! ohe! Ugh! ugh!
It grieves me to mention this, seeing that rose colour was so clearly the prevailing tint in all matters belonging to Guiana. And I would have forgiven it had the phaeton simply broken down on the road. All sublunar phaetons are subject to such accidents. Why else should they have been named after him of the heavens who first suffered from such mishaps? But this phaeton had broken down before it commenced its journey. It started on a system of ropes, bandages, and patches which were disgraceful to such a colony and such a Governor; and I should intromit a clear duty, were I to allow it to escape the gibbet.
But we did reach New Amsterdam not more than five hours after time. I have but very little to say of the road, except this: that there is ample scope for sugar and ample room for Coolies.
Every now and then we came upon negro villages. All villages in this country must be negro villages, one would say, except the few poor remaining huts of the Indians, which are not encountered on the white man\'s path. True; but by a negro village I mean a site which is now the freehold possession of negroes, having been purchased by them since the days of emancipation, with their own money, and for their own purposes; so that they might be in all respects free; free to live in idleness, or to do such work as an estated man may choose to do for himself, his wife, his children, and his property.
There are many such villages in Guiana, and I was told that when the arrangements for the purchases were made the dollars were subscribed by the negroes so quickly and in such quantities that they were taken to the banks in wheelbarrows. At any rate, the result has been that tracts of ground have been bought by these people and are now owned by them in fee simple.
It is grievous to me to find myself driven to differ on such points as these from men with whose views I have up to this period generally agreed. But I feel myself bound to say that the freeholding negroes in Guiana do not appear to me to answer. In the first place it seems that they have found great difficulty in dividing the land among themselves. In all such combined actions some persons must be selected as trustworthy; and those who have been so selected have not been worthy of the trust. And then the combined action has ceased with the purchase of the land, whereas, to have produced good it should have gone much further. Combined draining would have been essential; combined working has been all but necessary; combined building should have been adopted. But the negroes, the purchase once made, would combine no further. They could not understand that unless they worked together at draining, each man\'s own spot of ground would be a swamp. Each would work a little for himself; but none would work for the community. A negro village therefore is not a picturesque object.
They are very easily known. The cottages, or houses—for some of them have aspired to strong, stable, two-storied slated houses—stand in extreme disorder, one here and another there, just as individual caprice may have placed them. There seems to have been no attempt at streets or lines of buildings, and certainly not at regularity in building. Then there are no roads, and hardly a path to each habitation. As the ground is not drained, in wet weather the whole place is half drowned. Most of the inhabitants will probably have made some sort of dyke for the immediate preservation of their own dwellings; but as those dykes are not cut with any common purpose, they become little more than overflowing ponds, among which the negro children crawl and scrape in the mud; and are either drowned, or escape drowning, as Providence may direct. The spaces between the buildings are covered with no verdure; they are mere mud patches, and are cracked in dry weather, wet, slippery, and filthy in the rainy seasons.
The plantation grounds of these people are outside the village, and afford, I am told, cause for constant quarrelling. They do, however, also afford means of support for the greater part of the year, so that the negroes can live, some without work and some by working one or two days in the week.
It may perhaps be difficult to explain why a man should be expected to work if he can live on his own property without working, and enjoy such comforts as he desires. And it may be equally difficult to explain why complaint should be made as to the wretchedness of any men who do not themselves feel that their own state is wretched. But, nevertheless, on seeing what there is here to be seen, it is impossible to withstand the instinctive conviction that a village of freeholding negroes is a failure; and that the community has not been served by the process, either as regards themselves or as regards the country.
Late at night we did reach New Amsterdam, and crossed the broad Berbice after dark in a little ferryboat which seemed to be perilously near the water. At ten o\'clock I found myself at the hotel, and pronounce it to be, without hesitation, the best inn, not only in that colony, but in any of these Western colonies belonging to Great Britain. It is kept by a negro, one Mr. Paris Brittain, of whom I was informed that he was once a slave. "O, si sic omnes!" But as regards my experience, he is merely the exception which proves the rule. I am glad, however, to say a good word for the energies and ambition of one of the race, and shall be glad if I can obtain for Mr. Paris Brittain an innkeeper\'s immortality.
His deserts are so much the greater in that his scope for displaying them is so very limited. No man can walk along the broad strand street of New Amsterdam, and then up into its parallel street, so back towards the starting-point, and down again to the sea, without thinking of Knickerbocker and Rip van Winkle. The Dutchman who built New Amsterdam and made it once a thriving town must be still sleeping, as the New York Dutchman once slept, waiting the time when an irruption from Paramaribo and Surinam shall again restore the place to its old possessors.
At present life certainly stagnates at New Amsterdam. Three persons in the street constitute a crowd, and five collected for any purpose would form a goodly club. But the place is clean and orderly, and............