Where The Twain Meet

rprising that the white man ever brought out his wife and children to share his home. And yet he did sometimes. Of course, nothing is more certain than that we gro

y were very sure they could not work the plantations without it, and tha

l of the fittest. A certain number of newly arrived slaves were sure to die. It was not the climate that killed them, but the breaking in of a free savage unaccustomed to work, at least not to work with the regularity, and at the times the white man ex

afraid long after, the sl

1

because of the regard he had for their masters. And then he goes on to do so. He says that the most trivial error was punished with a terrible whipping, "I have seen some of them treated in that cruel manner for no other reason but to satisfy the brutish pleasure of an overseer.... I have seen their bodies in a Gore of Blood, the Skin torn off their backs with

s was by no means safeguarded, for if a man killed by night a slave found out "of his owner's grounds, road, or common path, such person was not to be subject to any damage or action for the same." That is to say, the wandering slave was a danger to the community, and might be killed on suspicion as might some beast of prey. There was a law, too, that all slaves' houses should be searched once a fortnight for "Clubs, Wooden Swords, and mischievious Weapons." Any found were to be burnt. Stolen goods were also to be sought, and "Flesh not honestly come by"; for sl

fear. No negro or mulatto was permitted to row in any wherry or canoe without at least one white man, and all boats of every description had to be chained up and their oars and sails safely disposed, and so important was this rule considered that any

offence to be severely whipt, for the second to be severely whipt, have his or her nose slit and face burnt in some place, and

en it was beginning to dawn on the ruling race that the black man had some rights, it was still difficult to punish a crue

e exposed to the hot sun until it was rotten and then cooked and offered to him in the usual way. The young man protested, and the overseer declared he had fish out of the same barrel and found nothing wrong with it. Finally t

y were all punished, black and white, in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and the first part of the n

good health and contented, but what none of them understood was that no man should be subject to the whim of another. The wrong was in enslaving a man. How should they understand it? Slavery had been a custom from time immemorial. Even in this twentieth century I have heard one of the best and kindest women I know mourning, "But if the poor are all so well off what shall we do for servants?

indeed surprising to see with what courage and intrepidity some

s of the island were abandoned because of these runaway negroes, who banded themselves together and were a constant danger to the isolated settler. And a place in fertile Jamaica abandoned soon becomes densest jungle, affording a still more useful shelter to people accustomed to such surroundin

anger, free as they were among a black population that outnumbered th

the whites have failed to overcome the Maroo

s was likely to be turned against their owners. Did one of those overseers at Worthy Park ever toss restlessly on his feather bed and wonder what

ud. But those that had a measure of success were numerous enough. There were no less than four between 1678 and 1691, in the

tions. And here at the end of the seventeenth century, 400 slaves, stark naked savages with hoes and machetes in their hands, stormed the house, and by sheer weight of numbers bore all before them. They murdered their master and every white man there, and seized all the arms kept to

ed the cane pieces. Then a party of whites came up behind and completely routed them. Many were killed, some escaped to the hills, but 200 laid down their arms an

the thirty-two years of the nineteenth century that elapsed before the apprenticeship system that heralded the freeing of the slave was introduced, there were

was ￡161,596, without taking into account the damage sustained by property and the loss to the community of

ntier Plantation belonging to a man named Ballard Beckford. The adjoining estate was Trinity, belonging to Zachary Bayley, the mat

nd armlets of the same metal. On his fingers and bare black toes had been rings of rough nuggets. He had been wont to ride in a hammock, as King George rides in his State coach, and with an umbrella carried by slaves high over his head; to the great discomfort of the slaves, but it had marked his high estate. He would move to the accompaniment of barbaric music and on great feast days, such as

the great chief, "it

doctor who was with m

as clear he was thinking regretfully of the days when ther

uld be seated a large number of his harem who would accompany their lord and master as attendants to the shad

ghter, an euphemism for a household slave, had disappeared. And the District Commissioner said he was certain, though he could not prove it, that the girl had been stolen and

as an institution, he only objected to it as appl

nt from the time of their arrival there. Like Tacky, he was not so far advanced as to realise that the holding of a man in slavery was in itself gross ill-treatment. We

h the stalwart crew and gave out to them with his own hands not only clothing

, the house that could be most easily defended in the neighbourhood was selected, and Mr Bayley mounted his horse and accompanied by a servant rode out to warn every place he could reach. But first, being very sure the revolted slaves-his slaves at any rate-had nothing to complain of, he rode out to meet them. I can imagine that gentleman of the eighteenth century in shirt and drawers, in

trength, are not to be lightly faced. Had they all come on he could not possibly have escaped, but the negroes were always keen on plunder, and apparently only a few turned aside from their main objective, the overseer's house, and met him with a discharge of muskets. His servant's horse was shot under him-shocking bad shots they must have been to do so little damage-and the chronicler declares they both narrowly escaped with their lives. I'd have liked him better had he told me how. I expect the overseer's house was more interesting than a man who, if put to it, would certainly show fight. At least he found discretion the better part of valour, and the rest of the Koromantyns went on to the overseer's house. At Trinity the overs

achary Bayley time to ride round to al

se dashing up the hills to the Great Houses, his breathless arr

might begin. But the othe

d book-keepers at Cruikshank's have been murdered!

blackg

r child! I saw the place burning! I heard the poor beggars' frantic shrieks and I

he gir

Is that the nearest road to Brimmer Hall?" He stretches out his whip. "Tell the others you saw me, and I'll be back as soon as I can. But-my God,

the interior, the other slaves joining them as they went, and they spread death and destruction, murdering the people and firing the canes. The galloping horse on an errand of mercy did not reach Esher and other estates, they were rou

verybody knew exactly what happened. In the heat of the day the whites would be lolling idly in the great hall,

un! Dem Koromantyn

ork swelled in the sea breeze, and there was a commotion, naked figures rushing here and there an

. This possibly saved many lives, for while the enemy were thus engaged the fugitives made the best of their way to some place of safety. They did not always succeed in reaching it, for the slaves knew the woods far better than their masters, a thousand times better than their mistresses, and they hunted them, beat the bush for them, as bea

r and good to his slaves was treated by them when they rose, and he adds the ghastly details of what happened to his wife, who was expecting almost immediately the birth of her baby. They are

n the night led by a runaway he had rescued from starving in the woods. They gagged him and then proceeded to torture him, "by turns wounded his most tend

gorgeous tropical moonlight, what the master of the house feared when he stirred in his sleep, uneasily, roused because the dogs were barking, what the mother feared as she hushed her baby's crying t

ty blacks," but we do know that the white men were all imbued with the same awful fear, the fear lest all the Koroma

ave held the whole colony up to ransom, but instead they were actually found at

so large a party all at once, and they were obliged to act wholly on the defensive. The ruling class when they were thoroughly aroused had this in their favour, they had some sort of discipline, the blacks had none. Sullenly enough they had retired

d the revolt had spread acros

thousand effective men, and after a tedious struggle they could be subdued only by the exertions of a regiment of regulars, the militia of the neighbouring parish and the Maroons of the interior. The most cruel excesses that ever s

ht be hoped from it. It was better to die than be taken, for there was little to choose bet

who were clearly proved to have been concerned in the murders at Ballard's Valley, one was condemned to

s used for such a sentence. When found, they had the

d saw his legs and feet reduced to ashes with the "utmost firmness and composure. Then getting one of his hands loose he seized a

e town of Kingston. Edwards declares that from the time they were hung up till the moment they died they never uttered a complaint. A week later they were still alive and as the authorities thought that one of them had something to tell his late master, Zachary Bayley, who was on his plantation, Edwa

brutal insensibility that even pity was silenced." What did he expect them to do? They

the tide of Christianity, which in the wilds of Africa never could have reached them, was here flowing w

of the proposed rising, and when one did there was generally strong reason for it. Once a girl begged that the life of her nursling might be saved. The man of whom she begged the baby's life refused-all the whites must d

h at first the negroes did not understand English, the house servants soon learned it, and we may be very sure that the doings and sayings of the people up

at the talk of emancipation grew. But it did grow and the rebellion of 1882, a very devastating one, which ran like wildfire through Westmoreland, Hanover, and St James', was caused mainly because at the Great

uch money has been spent, and beneath the trees on the green grass rest white Indian cattle bred for draught purposes. Mr Edwards, the owner, told me that he used to hear stories in his youth of how the slaves burned the houses,

ite on which to build an observatory, choose a hill on Kempshot Pen just above the place where the old house had stood. Where the country was not dense jungle it was occupied by negro cultivators, the most destructive cultivators perhaps in the world, of the old house there was not one stone left upon another, nothing r

ging the relations of the white man and the black, in weighing the causes of discord between them, in considering the shortcomings of both, we must always remember that past when th