Anthony Trollope

“ She walked with a stately dignity that was worthy of such a costume, and worthy also of higher grandeur; for behind her walked an attendant nymph, carrying the beauty's prayer-book—on her head. A negro woman carries every burden on her head, from a tub of water weighing a hundredweight down to a bottle of physic.
When we came up to her, she turned towards us and curtsied. She curtsied, for she recognized her 'massa;' but she curtsied with great dignity, for she recognized also her own finery. ”

“ Are Englishmen in general aware that half the sugar estates in Jamaica, and I believe more than half the coffee plantations, have gone back into a state of bush?—that all this land, rich with the richest produce only some thirty years since, has now fallen back into wilderness?—that the world has hereabouts so retrograded?—that chaos and darkness have reswallowed so vast an extent of the most bountiful land that civilization had ever mastered, and that too beneath the British government? ”

“ They look on themselves as the ascendant race. I look upon those of colour as being so, or at any rate as about to become so.
In speaking of my friends in Jamaica, it is not unnatural that I should allude to the pure-blooded Europeans, or European Creoles—to those in whose veins there is no admixture of African blood. "Similia similibus." A man from choice will live with those who are of his own habits and his own way of thinking. But as regards Jamaica, I believe that the light of their star is waning, that their ascendency is over—in short, that their work, if not done, is on the decline. ”

“ It seems to be the fact that in all countries in which slavery has existed and has been abolished, this subject of labour offers the great difficulty in the way of improvement. Labour becomes unpopular, and is regarded as being in some sort degrading. Men will not reconcile it with their idea of freedom. They wish to work on their own land, if they work at all; and to be their own masters; to grow their own crops, be they ever so small; and to sit beneath their own vine, be the shade ever so limited. There are those who will delight to think that such has been the effect of emancipation ”

“ 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. ”

“ No Englishman, no Anglo-Saxon, could be what he now is but for that portion of wild and savage energy which has come to him from his Vandal forefathers. May it not then be fair to suppose that a time shall come when a race will inhabit those lovely islands, fitted by nature for their burning sun, in whose blood shall be mixed some portion of northern energy, and which shall owe its physical powers to African progenitors,—a race that shall be no more ashamed of the name of negro than we are of the name of Saxon? ”

“ From time to time we hear that properties which used to bring five thousand pounds a year are not now worth five hundred pounds in fee simple. We hear it, thank our stars that we have not been brought up in the Jamaica line, and there's an end of it. If we have young friends whom we wish to send forth into the world, we search the maps with them at our elbows; but we put our hands over the West Indies—over the first fruits of the courage and skill of Columbus—as a spot tabooed by Providence. ”

“ With all the love that an Englishman should have for a popular parliamentary representation, I cannot think it adapted to a small colony, even were that colony not from circumstances so peculiarly ill fitted for it as is Jamaica. In Canada and Australia it is no doubt very well; the spirit of a fresh and energetic people struggling on into the world's eminence will produce men fit for debating, men who can stand on their legs without making a house of legislature ridiculous. But what could Lords and Commons do in Malta, or in Jersey? ”

“ Let any stranger go through the shops and stores of Kingston, and see how many of them are either owned or worked by men of colour; let him go into the House of Assembly, and see how large a proportion of their debates is carried on by men of colour. I don't think much of the parliamentary excellence of these debates, as I shall have to explain by-and-by; but the coloured men at any rate hold their own against their white colleagues. How large a portion of the public service is carried on by them; how well they thrive, though the prejudices of both white and black are so strong against them! ”

“ If the honour, glory, and well-being of the child be dear to the parents, Great Britain should surely be more proud of the United States than of any of her colonies. We Britishers have a noble mission. The word I know is unpopular, for it has been foully misused; but it is in itself a good word, and none other will supply its place. We have a noble mission, but we are never content with it. It is not enough for us to beget nations, civilize countries, and instruct in truth and knowledge the dominant races of the coming ages. ”

“ But how strange is the race of Creole negroes—of negroes, that is, born out of Africa! They have no country of their own, yet have they not hitherto any country of their adoption; for, whether as slaves in Cuba, or as free labourers in the British isles, they are in each case a servile people in a foreign land. They have no language of their own, nor have they as yet any language of their adoption; for they speak their broken English as uneducated foreigners always speak a foreign language. They have no idea of country, and no pride of race ”

“ Nevertheless, I prefer the views from Raymond Lodge to any that Newcastle can afford.
And now I have a mournful story to tell. Did any man ever know of any good befalling him from going up a mountain; always excepting Albert Smith, who, we are told, has realized half a million by going up Mont Blanc? If a man can go up his mountains in Piccadilly, it may be all very well; in so doing he perhaps may see the sun rise, and be able to watch nature in her wildest vagaries. But as for the true ascent—the nasty, damp, dirty, slippery, boot-destroying, shin-breaking, veritable mountain! ”

“ In lieu of this, some governor by profession, unfortunate for the moment, takes Jamaica with a groan, as a stepping-stone to some better Barataria—New Zealand perhaps, or Frazer River; and by strict economy tries to save the price of his silver forks. Equerries, aides-de-camp, and private secretaries no longer flaunt it about Spanish Town. The flaunting about Spanish Town is now of a dull sort. Ichabod! The glory of that house is gone. The palmy days of that island are over.
Those who are failing and falling in the world excite but little interest; and so it is at present with Jamaica. ”

“ Here, as elsewhere through the West Indies, one meets with unbounded hospitality. A man who dines out on Monday will receive probably three invitations for Tuesday, and six for Wednesday. And they entertain very well. That haunch of mutton and turkey which are now the bugbear of the English dinner-giver do not seem to trouble the minds or haunt the tables of West Indian hosts.
And after all, Barbados—little England as it delights to call itself—is and should be respected among islands. It owes no man anything, pays its own way, and never makes a poor mouth. ”

“ 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! ”

“ We cannot cross from Dover to Ostend without finding at once that we are among a set of people foreign to ourselves. The first glance of the eye shows this in the architecture of the houses, and the costume of the people. We find the same cause for excitement in France, Switzerland, and Italy; and when we get as far as the Tyrol, we come upon a genus of mankind so essentially differing from our own as to make us feel that we have travelled indeed.
But there is little more interest to be found in entering San José than in driving through the little Wiltshire town above alluded to. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is not my purpose to give an Englishman's ideas of the United States, or even of New York, at the fag end of a volume treating about the West Indies. On the United States I should like to write a volume, seeing that the government and social life of the people there—of that people who are our children—afford the most interesting phenomena which we find as to the new world;—the best means of prophesying, if I may say so, what the world will next be, and what men will next do. ”

“ 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! ”

“ There are good shops in Bridgetown—good, respectable, well-to-do shops, that sell everything, from a candle down to a coffin, including wedding-rings, corals, and widows' caps. But they are hot, fusty, crowded places, as are such places in third-rate English towns. But then the question of heat here is of such vital moment! A purchase of a pair of gloves in Barbados drives one at once into the ice-house. ”

“ There are spots in the West Indies where men take third bitters, and long bitters, in which the bitter time begins when the soda water and brandy time ends—in which the latter commences when the breakfast beer-bottles disappear. There are such places, but they must not be named by me in characters plainly legible. To kiss and tell is very criminal, as the whole world knows. But while on the subject of bitters, I must say this: Let no man ever allow himself to take a long bitter such as men make at ——. It is beyond the power of man to stop at one. ”

“ I have in another chapter said a few words about the negroes as at present existing in Jamaica, I also shall say a few words as to slavery elsewhere; and I will endeavour not to repeat myself. This much, however, is at least clear to all men, that you cannot eat your cake and have it. You cannot abolish slavery to the infinite good of your souls, your minds, and intellects, and yet retain it for the good of your pockets. Seeing that these men are free, it is worse than useless to begrudge them the use of their freedom. ”

“ 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 ”

“ He does draw conclusions, but he carries them only a short way. I think that he seldom understands the purpose of industry, the object of truth, or the results of honesty. He is not always idle, perhaps not always false, certainly not always a thief; but his motives are the fear of immediate punishment, or hopes of immediate reward. He fears that and hopes that only. Certain virtues he copies, because they are the virtues of a white man. The white man is the god present to his eye, and he believes in him—believes in him with a qualified faith, and imitates him with a qualified constancy. ”

“ Ugh!
"We are very poor," said the blue-nosed skipper when he got me on board. "Well; poverty is no disgrace," said I, as one does when cheering a poor man. "We are very poor indeed; I cannot even offer you a cigar." My cigar-case was immediately out of my pocket. After all, cigars are but as coals going to Newcastle when one intends to be in Cuba in four days.
"We are very poor indeed, sir," said the blue-nosed skipper again when I brought out my solitary bottle of brandy—for I must acknowledge to a bottle of brandy as well as to the small ham. ”

“ One is driven, therefore, into the middle of the street. But the street is neither paved nor macadamized, nor prepared for traffic in any way. In dry weather it is a bed of sand, and in wet weather it is a watercourse. Down the middle of this the unfortunate pedestrian has to wade, with a tropical sun on his head; and this he must do in a town which, from its position, is hotter than almost any other in the West Indies. It is no wonder that there should be but little walking. ”

“ 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. ”