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 the houses are good and in good repair. They stand, as do the houses in Georgetown, separately, each surrounded by its own garden or yard, and are built with reference to the wished-for breeze from the windows.
The estates up the Berbice river, and the Canje creek which runs into it, are, I believe, as productive as those on the coast, or on the Demerara or Essequibo rivers, and are as well cultivated; but their owners no longer ship their sugars from New Amsterdam. The bar across the Berbice river is objectionable, and the trade of Georgetown has absorbed the business of the colony. In olden times Berbice and Demerara were blessed each with its own Governor, and the two towns stood each on its own bottom as two capitals. But those halcyon days—halcyon for Berbice—are gone; and Rip van Winkle, with all his brethren, is asleep.
I should have said, in speaking of my journey from Demerara to Berbice, that the first fifteen miles were performed by railway. The colony would have fair ground of complaint against me were I to omit to notice that it has so far progressed in civilization as to own a railway. As far as I could learn, the shares do not at present stand at a high premium. From Berbice I returned in a coasting steamer. It was a sleepy, dull, hot journey, without subject of deep interest. I can only remember of it that they gave us an excellent luncheon on board, and luncheons at such times are very valuable in breaking the tedium of the day.
And now a word as to the million hogsheads of sugar and as to the necessary Coolies. Guiana has some reason to be proud, seeing that at present it beats all the neighbouring British colonies in the quantity of sugar produced. I believe that it also beats them all as to the quantity of rum, though Jamaica still stands first as to the quality. In round numbers the sugar exported from Guiana may be stated at seventy thousand hogsheads.
Barbados exports about fifty thousand, Trinidad and Jamaica under forty thousand. No other British West Indian colony gives fifteen thousand; but Guadaloupe and Martinique, two French islands, produce, one over fifty thousand and the other nearly seventy thousand hogsheads. In order to make this measurement intelligible, I may explain that a hogshead is generally said to contain a ton weight of sugar, but that, when reaching the market, it very rarely does come up to that weight. I do not give this information as statistically correct, but as being sufficiently so to guide the ideas of a man only ordinarily anxious to be acquainted in an ordinary manner with what is going on in the West Indies. I would not, therefore, recommend any Member of Parliament to quote the above figures in the House.
Some twelve years ago the whole produce of sugar in the West Indies, including Guiana and excluding the Spanish islands, was 275,000 hogsheads. The amount which I have above recapitulated, in which the smaller islands have been altogether omitted, exceeds 310,000. It may therefore be taken as a fact that, on the whole, the evil days have come to their worst, and that the tables are turned. It must however be admitted that the above figures tell more for French than for English prosperity.
In these countries sugar and labour are almost synonymous; at any rate, they are convertible substances. In none of the colonies named, except Barbados, is the amount of sugar produced limited by any other law than the amount of labour to be obtained, and in none of them, with that one exception, can any prosperity be hoped for, excepting by means of immigrating labour. What I mean to state is this: that the extent of native work which can be obtained by the planters and land-owners at terms which would enable them to grow their produce and bring it to the market does not in any of these colonies suffice for success. It can be worth no man's while to lay out his capital in Jamaica, in Trinidad, or in Guiana, unless he has reasonable hope that labouring men will be brought into those countries. The great West Indian question is now this: Is there reasonable ground for such hope?
The Anti-Slavery Society tells us that we ought to have no such hope—that it is simply hoping for a return of slavery; that black or coloured labourers brought from other lands to the West Indies cannot be regarded as free men; that labourers so brought will surely be ill-used; and that the native negro labourer requires protection. As to that question of the return to slavery I have already said what few words I have to offer. In one sense, no dependent man working for wages can be free. He must abide by the terms of his contract. But in the usually accepted sense of the word freedom, the Coolie or Chinaman immigrating to the West Indies is free.
As to the charge of ill usage, it appears to me that these men could not be treated with more tenderness, unless they were put separately, each under his own glass case, with a piece of velvet on which to lie. In England we know of no such treatment for field labourers. On their arrival in Demerara they are distributed among the planters by the Governor, to each planter according to his application, his means of providing for them, and his willingness and ability to pay the cost of the immigration by yearly instalments. They are sent to no estate till a government officer shall have reported that there are houses for them to occupy. There must be a hospital for them on the estate, and a regular doctor with a sufficient salary. The rate of their wages is stipulated, and their hours of work. Though the contract is for five years, they can leave the estate at the end of the first three, transferring their services to any other master, and at the end of the five years they are entitled to a free passage home.
If there be no hardship in all this to the immigrating Coolie, it may, perhaps, be thought that there is hardship to the planter who receives him. He is placed very much at the mercy of the Governor, who, having the power of giving or refusing Coolies, becomes despotic. And then, when this stranger from Hindostan has been taught something of his work, he can himself select another master, so that one planter may bribe away the labourers of another. This, however, is checked to a certain degree by a regulation which requires the bribing interloper to pay a portion of the expense of immigration.
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. I saw a gang of ten or twelve negro girls in a cane-piece, lying idle on the ground, waiting 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 attacked 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 morrow 'arly." It is hardly necessary to say that the gentleman refused to bargain with them. "They'll measure their work to-morrow," 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 cannot 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.
In Guiana the bull has been taken by the horns, as in Jamaica it unfortunately has not; and the first main difficulties of immigration have, I think, been overcome. For some years past, both from India and from China, labourers have been brought in freely, and during the last twelve months the number has been very considerable. The women also are coming now as well as the men, and they have learned to husband their means and put money together.
Such an affair as this—the regular exodus, that is, of a people to another land—has always progressed with great rapidity when it has been once established. The difficulty is to make a beginning. It is natural enough that men should hesitate to trust themselves to a future of which they know nothing; and as natural that they should hasten to do so when they have heard of the good things which Providence has in store for them. It required that some few should come out and prosper, and return with signs of prosperity. This has now been done, and as regards Guiana it will not, I imagine, be long before negro labour is, if not displaced, made, at any rate, of secondary consequence in the colony. As far as the workmen are concerned, the million hogsheads will, I think, become a possibility, though not perhaps in the days of my energetic hopeful friend.
Both the Coolies and the Chinamen have aptitude in putting money together; and when a man has this aptitude he will work as long as good wages are to be earned. "Crescit amor nummi quantum ipsa, &c." We teach our children this lesson, intending them to understand that it is pretty nearly the worst of all "amors," and we go on with the "irritamenta malorum" till we come to the "Spernere fortior." It is all, however, of no use. "Naturam expellas furca;" but the result is still the same. Nature knows what she is about. The love of money is a good and useful love. What would the world now be without it? Or is it even possible to conceive of a world progressing without such a love? Show me ten men without it, and I will show you nine who lack zeal for improvement. Money, like other loved objects—women, for instance—should be sought for with honour, won with a clean conscience, and used with a free hand. Provided it be so guided, the love of money is no ignoble passion.
The negroes, as a class, have not this aptitude, consequently they lie in the sun and eat yams, and give no profitable assistance towards that saccharine millennium. "Spernere fortior!" That big black woman would so say, she who is not contented with four bits, if her education had progressed so far. And as she said it, how she would turn up her African nose, and what contempt she would express with her broad eyes! Doubtless she does so express herself among her negro friends in some nigger patois—"Pernere forshaw." If so, her philosophy does but little to assist the world, or herself.
There is another race of men, and of women too, who have been and now are of the greatest benefit to this colony, and with them the "Spernere fortior" is by no means a favourite doctrine. There are the Portuguese who have come to Demerara from Madeira. I believe that they are not to be found in any of the islands; but here, in Guiana, they are in great numbers, and thrive wonderfully. At almost every corner of two streets in Georgetown is to be seen a small shop; and those shops are, I think without exception, kept by Portuguese. Nevertheless they all reached the Demerara river in absolute poverty, intending to live on the wages of field labour, and certainly prepared to do their work like men. As a rule, they are a steady, industrious class, and have proved themselves to be good citizens. In the future amalgamation of races, which will take place here as elsewhere in the tropics, the Portugee-Madeira element will not be the least efficient.
I saw the works on three or four sugar estates in Demerara, and though I am neither a sugar grower nor a mechanic, I am able to say that the machinery and material of this colony much exceed anything I have seen in any of our own West Indian islands; and in the point of machinery, equals what I saw in Cuba. Everything is done on a much larger scale, and in a more proficient manner than at—Barbados, we will say. I instance Barbados because the planters there play so excellent a melody on their own trumpets. In that island not one planter in five, not one I believe in fifteen, has any steam appliance on his estate. They trust to the wind for their motive power, as did their great-great-grandfather. But there is steam on every estate in Guiana. The vacuum pan and the centrifugal machine for extracting the molasses are known only by name in Barbados, whereas they are common appliances in Demerara. There two hundred hogsheads is a considerable produce for one planter. Here they make eight hundred hogsheads, a thousand, and twelve hundred. A Barbados man will reply to this that the thing to be looked to is the profit, or what he will call the clearance. The sugar-consuming world, however, will know nothing about this, will hear nothing of individual profits. But it will recognize the fact that the Demerara sugar is of a better quality than that which comes from Barbados, and will believe that the merchant or planter who does not use the latest appliances of science, whether it be in manufacture or agriculture, will before long go to the wall. Looking over a sugar estate and sugar works is an exciting amusement certainly, but nevertheless it palls upon one at last. I got quite into the way of doing it; and used to taste the sugars and examine the crystals; make comparisons and pronounce, I must confess as regards Barbados, a good deal of adverse criticism. But this was merely to elicit the true tone of Barbadian eloquence, the long-drawn nasal fecundity of speech which comes forth so fluently when their old windmills are attacked.
But the amusement, as I have said, does pall upon one. In spite of the difference of the machinery, the filtering-bags and centrifugals in one, the Gadsden pans in another, and the simple oscillators in a third—(the Barbados estate stands for the third)—one does get weary of walking up to a sugar battery, and looking at the various heated caldrons, watching till even the inexperienced eye perceives that the dirty liquor has become brown sugar, as it runs down from a dipper into a cooling vat.
I wonder whether I could make the process in any simple way intelligible; or whether in doing so I should afford gratification to a single individual? Were I myself reading such a book of travels, I should certainly skip such description. Reader, do thou do likewise. Nevertheless, it shall not exceed three or four pages.
The cane must first be cut. As regards a planted cane, that is the first crop from the plant—(for there are such things as ratoons, of which a word or two will be found elsewhere)—as regards the planted cane, the cutting, I believe, takes place after about fourteen months' growth. The next process is that of the mill; the juice, that is, has to be squeezed out of it. The cane should not lie above two days before it is squeezed. It is better to send it to the mill the day after it is cut, or the hour after; in fact, as soon indeed as may be. In Demerara they are brought to the mill by water always; in Barbados, by carts and mules; in Jamaica, by waggons and oxen; so also in Cuba. The mill consists of three rollers, which act upon each other like cogwheels. The canes are passed between two, an outside one, say, and a centre one; and the refuse stalk, or trash (so called in Jamaica), or magass (so called in Barbados and Demerara), comes out between the same centre one and the other outside roller. The juice meanwhile is strained down to a cistern or receptacle below. These rollers are quite close, so that it would seem to be impossible that the cane should go through; but it does go through with great ease, if the mill be good and powerful; but frequently with great difficulty, if the mill be bad and not powerful; for which latter alternative vide Barbados. The canes give from sixty to seventy per cent. of juice. Sometimes less than sixty, not often over seventy.
The juice, which is then of a dirty-yellow colour, and apparently about the substance of milk, is brought from the mill through a pipe into the first vat, in which it is tempered. This is done with lime, and the object is to remedy the natural acidity of the juice. In this first vat it is warmed, but not more than warmed. It then runs from these vats into boilers, or at any rate into receptacles in which it is boiled. These in Barbados are called taches. At each of these a man stands with a long skimmer, skimmering the juice as it were, and scraping off certain skum which comes to the top. There are from three to seven of these taches, and below them, last of all, is the boiler, the veritable receptacle in which the juice becomes sugar. In the taches, especially the first of them, the liquor becomes dark green in colour. As it gets nearer the boiler it is thicker and more clouded, and begins to assume its well-known tawny hue.
Over the last boiler stands the man who makes the sugar. It is for him to know what heat to apply and how long to apply it. The liquor now ceases to be juice and becomes sugar. This is evident to the eye and nose, for though the stuff in the boiler is of course still liquid, it looks like boiled melted sugar, and the savour is the savour of sugar. When the time has come, and the boiling is boiled, a machine suspended from on high, and called a dipper, is let down into the caldron. It nearly fits the caldron, being, as it were, in itself a smaller caldron going into the other. The sugar naturally runs over the side of this and fills it, some little ingenuity being exercised in the arrangement. The dipper, full of sugar, is then drawn up on high. At the bottom of it is a valve, so that on the pulling of a rope, the hot liquid runs out. This dipper is worked like a crane, and is made to swing itself from over the boiler to a position in which the sugar runs from it through a wooden trough to the flat open vats in which it is cooled.
But at this part of the manufacture there are various different methods. According to that which is least advanced the sugar is simply cooled in the vat, then put into buckets in a half-solid state, and thrown out of the buckets into the hogsheads.
According to the more advanced method it runs from the dipper down through filtering bags, is then pumped into a huge vacuum pan, a utensil like a kettle-drum turned topsy-turvy, a kettle-drum that is large enough to hold six tons of sugar. Then it is reheated, and then put into open round boxes called centrifugals, the sides of which are made of metal pierced like gauze. These are whisked round and round by steam-power at an enormous rate, and the molasses flies out through the gauze, leaving the sugar dry and nearly white. It is then fit to go into the hogshead, and fit also to be shipped away.
But in the simpler process, the molasses drains from the sugar in the hogshead. To facilitate this, as the sugar is put into the cask, reeds are stuck through it, which communicate with holes at the bottom, so that there may be channels through which the molasses may run. The hogsheads stand upon beams lying a foot apart from each other, and below is a dark abyss into which the molasses falls. I never could divest myself of the idea that the negro children occasionally fall through also, and are then smothered and so distilled into rum.
There are various other processes, intermediate between the highly-civilized vacuum pan and the simple cooling, with which I will not trouble my reader. Nor will I go into the further mystery of rum-making. That the rum is made from the molasses every one knows; and from the negro children, as I suspect.
The process of sugar-making is very rapid if the appliances be good. A planter in Demerara assured me that he had cut his canes in the morning, and had the sugar in Georgetown in the afternoon. Fudge! however, was the remark made by another planter to whom I repeated this. Whether it was fudge or not I do not know; but it was clearly possible that such should be the case. The manufacture is one which does not require any delay.
In Demerara an acre of canes will on an average give over a ton and a half of sugar. But an acre of cane ground will not give a crop once in twelve months. Two crops in three years may perhaps be the average. So much for the manufacture of sugar. I hope my account may not be criticised by those who are learned in the art, as it is only intended for those who are utterly unlearned.
But if looking over sugar-works be at last fatiguing, what shall I say to that labour of "going aback," which Guiana planters exact from their visitors. Going aback in Guiana means walking from the house and manufactory back to the fields where the canes grow. I have described the shape of a Demerara estate. The house generally stands not far from the water frontage, so that the main growth of the sugar is behind. This going aback generally takes place before breakfast. But the breakfast is taken at eleven; and a Demerara sun is in all its glory for three hours before that. Remember, also, that there are no trees in these fields, no grass, no wild flowers, no meandering paths. Everything is straight, and open, and ugly; and everything has a tendency to sugar, and no other tendency whatever, unless it be to rum. Sugar-canes is the only growth. So that a walk aback, except to a very close inquirer, is not delightful. It must however be confessed that the subsequent breakfast makes up for a deal of misery. There is no such breakfast going as that of a Guiana planter. Talk of Scotland! Pooh! But one has to think of that doctor's dictum—"The prevalent disease, sir? Brandy!" It seems, however, to me to show itself more generally in the shape of champagne.
There is one other peculiar characteristic of landed property in this colony which I must mention. All the carriage is by water, not only from the works to the town, but from the fields to the works, and even from field to field. The whole country is intersected by drains, which are necessary to carry off the surface waters; there is no natural fall of water, or next to none, and but for its drains and sluices the land would be flooded in wet weather. Parallel to these drains are canals; there being, as nearly as I could learn, one canal between each two drains. These different dykes are to a stranger similar in appearance, but their uses are always kept distinct.
Nor do these canals run only between wide fields, or at a considerable distance from each other. They pierce every portion of land, so that the canes when cut have never to be carried above a few yards. The expense of keeping them in order is very great, but the labour of making them must have been immense. It was done by the Dutch. One may almost question whether any other race would have had the patience necessary for such a work.
I was told on one estate that there were no less than sixty-three miles of these cuttings to be kept in order. But the gentleman who told me was he to whom the other gentleman alluded, when he used our old friend, Mr. Burchell's exclamation. There can be no doubt but that these Guiana planters know each other.
On the whole, I must express my conviction that this is a fine colony, and will become of very great importance.
Our great Thunderer the other day spoke of the governance of a sugar island as a duty below a man's notice; as being almost worthy of contempt. We cannot all be gods and forge thunderbolts. But we all wish to consume sugar; and if we can do in one of our colonies without slaves what Cuba is doing with slaves, the work I think will not be contemptible, nor the land contemptible in which it is done. I do look to see our free Cuba in Guiana, and even have my hopes as to that million of hogsheads.
I have said, in speaking of Jamaica, that I thought the negro had hardly yet shown himself capable of understanding the teaching of the Christian religion. As regards Guiana, what I heard on this matter I heard chiefly from clergymen of the Church of England; and though they would of course not agree with me—for it is not natural that a man should doubt the efficacy of his own teaching—nevertheless, what I gathered from them strengthens my former opinions.
I do think that the Guiana negro is in this respect somewhat superior to his brother in Jamaica. He is more intelligent, and comes nearer to our idea of a thoughtful being. But still even here it seems to me that he never connects his religion with his life; never reflects that his religion should bear upon his conduct.
Here, as in the islands, the negroes much prefer to belong to a Baptist congregation, or to a so-called Wesleyan body. That excitement is there allowed to them which is denied in our Church. They sing and halloa and scream, and have revivals. They talk of their "dear brothers" and "dear sisters," and in their ecstatic howlings get some fun for their money. I doubt also whether those disagreeable questions as to conduct are put by the Baptists which they usually have to undergo from our clergymen. "So-called Wesleyans," I say, because the practice of their worship here is widely removed from the sober gravity of the Wesleyan churches in England.
I have said that the form of government in Guiana was a mild despotism, tempered by sugar. The Governor, it must be understood, has not absolute authority. There is a combined house, with a power of voting, by whom he is controlled—at any rate in financial matters. But of those votes he commands many as Governor, and as long as he will supply Coolies quick enough—and Coolies mean sugar—he may command them all.
"We are not particular to a shade," the planters wisely say to him, "in what way we are governed. If you have any fads of your own about this or about that, by all means indulge them. Even if you want a little more money, in God's name take it. But the business of a man's life is sugar: there's the land; the capital shall be forthcoming, whether begged, borrowed, or stolen;—do you supply the labour. Give us Coolies enough, and we will stick at nothing. We are an ambitious colony. There looms before us a great future—a million hogsheads of sugar!"
The form of government here is somewhat singular. There are two Houses—Lords and Commons—but not acting separately as ours do. The upper House is the Court of Policy. This consists of five official members, whose votes may therefore be presumed to be at the service of the Governor, and of five elected members. The Governor himself, sitting in this court, has the casting vote. But he also has something to say to the election of the other five. They are chosen by a body of men called Kiezers—probably Dutch for choosers. There is a college of Kiezers, elected for life by the tax-payers, whose main privilege appears to be that of electing these members of the Court of Policy. But on every occasion they send up two names, and the Governor selects one; so that he can always keep out any one man who may be peculiarly disagreeable to him. This Court of Policy acts, I think, when acting by itself, more as a privy council to the Governor than as a legislative body.
Then there are six Financial Representatives; two from Berbice, one from town and one from country; two from Demerara, one from town and one from country; and two from Essequibo, both from the country, there being no town. These are elected by the tax-payers. They are assembled for purposes of taxation only, as far as I understood; and even as regards this they are joined with the Court of Policy, and thus form what is called the Combined Court. The Crown, therefore, has very little to tie its hands; and I think that I am justified in describing the government as a mild despotism, tempered by sugar.
So much for British Guiana. I cannot end this crude epitome of crude views respecting the colony without saying that I never met a pleasanter set of people than I found there, or ever passed my hours much more joyously.