The first difficulty after the buying of the slaves was what they called the “seasoning.” The earlier settlers first used the word, but it came to be applied3 specially4 to the settling down of the slaves, though it seems to me simply to mean the survival 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 savage5 unaccustomed to work, at least not to work with the regularity6, and at the times the white man expected of him. He was an exile, he was lonely, he was driven to this hated work with the whip, he could not understand what was said to him, he could not make his wants known, and soon realised it would avail him little if he did, and he pined and died.
In Lesley’s time, and I am afraid long after, the slaves were grossly underfed.
0178
“‘Tis sad,” he writes, “to see the mean shifts to which these poor creatures are reduced. You’ll see them daily about twelve o’clock when they turn in from work scraping the dunghills at every gentleman’s door” (I do like that touch) “for bones which they break extremely small, boil and eat the broth7.” He adds that he hardly cares to speak of their sufferings 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 Gore8 of Blood, the Skin torn off their backs with the cruel Whip, beaten, Pepper and Salt rubbed on the Wounds and a large stick of Sealing Wax dropped leisurely9 upon them. It is no wonder if the horrid10 pain of such inhuman11 tortures incline them to rebel; at the same time it must be confessed they are very perverse12, which is owing to the many disadvantages they lie under, and the bad example they daily see.”
A man had a right to kill his slave or mutilate him if he ran away, but a man who killed a slave out of “Wilfulness, Wantonness, or Bloody13 mindedness,” was to suffer three months’ imprisonment14 and pay ￡50 to the owner of the slave. It was merely a question of value, the slave was not considered. If a servant killed a slave he was to get thirty-nine lashes15 on the bare back, and serve the owner of the slave after his time with his master had expired four years. That is to say, he had to pay for the loss of the slave’s services. Indeed the negro’s life in those days 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 prey16. 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 slaves were forbidden to have meat in their possession. The punishment was death, and in the slave book of Rose Hall after this law had fallen into desuetude17 there is an entry under Monday, 28th September 1824: “Killed a steer18 named ‘Porter’ in consequence of his leg being broken, sunk him in the sea to prevent the negroes from eating it, and having the like accidents occur.” It does seem hard so to waste the good meat that the negroes craved19, poor things, as children nowadays crave20 sugar. For a negro does not regard meat as food even now. It is a treat, a luxury.
In Kingston and other towns the notice ran, “No person whatever shall fire any small arms after eight at night unless upon alarm of insurrection which is to be by the Discharge of Four Muskets21 or small arms distinctly.” The whole atmosphere was one of 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 oars22 and sails safely disposed, and so important was this rule considered that any master of a craft who broke it was fined ￡10. There was a punishment of four years’ imprisonment for stealing or taking away any craft, and it is clear this had reference not to its value but to the assistance such craft might be to the common enemy.
A negro slave striking any person except in defence of his master’s property—observe he had none of his own—was for the first offence to be severely23 whipt, for the second to be severely whipt, have his or her nose slit24 and face burnt in some place, and for the third it was left to two Justices or three freeholders to inflict25 “Death or whatever punishment they shall think fit.”
When slaves were first introduced the master seems to have had absolute power of life and death, and indeed long after, when it was beginning to dawn on the ruling race that the black man had some rights, it was still difficult to punish a cruel master, because no black man’s evidence could be received against a white man. This rule, too, sometimes worked both ways.
There was once an overseer who was cruelly unjust to the book-keeper under him. As we have seen, the underlings subsisted26 very largely on salt food. This overseer, disliking his book-keeper, decreed that his salt fish should be 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 the exasperated27 book-keeper came up to the house and in desperation shot his tormentor28. But he was never brought to justice, because there were only slaves present and no white man could be convicted on the testimony29 of a slave.
When we read the slave code we do well to remember not how men are punished nowadays, but how they were all punished, black and white, in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and the first part of the nineteenth centuries. Laws were made for the rich, and the poor man without influence must go under.
And having said all this, it perhaps seems curious to add that we ought always to remember that the average planter treated his slaves as well as he knew how. Even now we are always advancing. The housemistress of 1921 has to give her maids of right what the housemistress of 1900 would have thought ridiculous, even as a privilege. It was to the planter’s interest that his slaves should be in good health and contented30, but what none of them understood was that no man should be subject to the whim31 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?” She found it difficult to believe that Providence32 would not arrange for someone to serve her. So the planters, I am sure, believed that Providence had placed the black man in Africa specially for their use. Why he was not contented with his lot, and a “good” slave, they could never understand. And yet the black people didn’t even mind dying, to such sore straits were the poor things reduced.
“They look upon death,” declares Lesley, “as a blessing33.... ‘Tis indeed surprising to see with what courage and intrepidity34 some of them will meet their fate and be merry in their last moments.”
He had seen more deaths than we of the twentieth century can contemplate35 with equanimity36, and many runaways37 trying to better their lot. It was probably easier for the first slaves to run away than at the time we come across them in the slave books of Worthy39 Park and Rose Hall. The lonelier parts of the island were abandoned because of these runaway38 negroes, who banded themselves together and were a constant danger to the isolated40 settler. And a place in fertile Jamaica abandoned soon becomes densest42 jungle, affording a still more useful shelter to people accustomed to such surroundings. Even though the life of a savage in the woods was a hard one, it was better than the almost certain fate that awaited them if they came in and gave themselves up. I conclude it was only when a slave found himself alone that he returned of his own free will. If he found companions he stayed.
This of course it was that made of the Maroons43 such an ever present danger, free as they were among a black population that outnumbered the white ten to one. The settler had always an enemy within the gates.
“This bad success,” mourns the historian when the whites have failed to overcome the Maroons, “encouraged Gentlemen’s slaves to rebel.”
The trouble was that to keep the slaves under, a great quantity of arms and ammunition44 had to be stored on the plantations, and when they rose this 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 would be his fate if some of those slaves, the “ill-disposed” or “skulkers,” rushed his hot room and possessed45 themselves of that store of powder?
It is only natural that history should mention the rebellions that made their mark, and never those that were nipped in the bud. But those that had a measure of success were numerous enough. There were no less than four between 1678 and 1691, in the three last of which many white people were murdered. One of these was at Sutton’s, a plantation2 near the centre of the island.
I have been to Sutton’s. A long low house it is, not the first house, the slaves burned that, behind it are the green hills and in front red lilies grow beneath the bananas after the rain. The women who were born there say it is the loveliest plantation in an island of lovely plantations. And here at the end of the seventeenth century, 400 slaves, stark46 naked savages47 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 be used against them. Fifty muskets and blunderbusses and other arms they took, great quantities of shot and four small field pieces—(in such fear they had been held)—and then they marched on, raiding other plantations and killing48 every white person they could lay their hands upon.
Why they did not keep their freedom I do not know, but once the whites were roused they had no chance. They fled back to Sutton’s, and driven out of that they fired the cane49 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 and surrendered. Very unwisely. For though some were pardoned our chronicler declares that most of those who submitted “met with that fate which they well deserved.”
In the eighteenth century there were at least nineteen terrible disturbances50, sometimes called rebellions, sometimes conspiracies51, to murder the whites, and in the thirty-two years of the nineteenth century that elapsed before the apprenticeship52 system that heralded53 the freeing of the slave was introduced, there were no less than six rebellions, conspiracies and mutinies, to say nothing of the isolated murders that must have been done and were not worth recording54 as history.
Not only were these rebellions sanguinary but they were expensive. The cost of putting down the last in 1832 was ￡161,596, without taking into account the damage sustained by property and the loss to the community of the lives sacrificed. If the black man suffered, white Jamaica too paid very heavily indeed for her slaves.
The Great Rebellion that was long remembered in Jamaica was the rebellion of 1760, and it broke out in St Mary’s Parish on the Frontier Plantation belonging to a man named Ballard Beckford. The adjoining estate was Trinity, belonging to Zachary Bayley, the maternal56 uncle of Bryan Edwards the historian, but in his book we only get a tantalising account that sets us longing55 for more details.
Of the leaders, “their barbarous names,” says Bridges, forgetting that the white man had probably supplied those names, “were Tacky and Jamaica,” and Tacky was a man who had been a chief in “Guiney.” That, though Edwards did not know it, meant that he had been accustomed to a certain amount of savage grandeur57; had been dressed in silk of bright colours, and wore a necklace of gold and anklets and armlets of the same metal. On his fingers and bare black toes had been rings of rough nuggets. He had been wont58 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 discomfort59 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 that of his accession, his “stool,” the symbol of his power, really a carved wooden seat, was literally60 drenched61 in the blood of many unfortunate men and women. I remember passing through an Ashanti town on the day of the Coronation of our present King. There was a great feast and all the minor62 chiefs for miles round had come in to celebrate and all the stools were soaked in blood—sheep’s blood.
“Not long ago,” said the great chief, “it would have been men’s.”
“Oh!” said the young doctor who was with me, “sheep’s is better.”
“Perhaps,” said the African potentate63 doubtfully, and it was clear he was thinking regretfully of the days when there really would have been something like a decent sacrifice.
In Tacky’s days, too, when the chief died, a great pit would be dug, his bier lowered into it and round it would be seated a large number of his harem who would accompany their lord and master as attendants to the shades, and lucky indeed might they count themselves if they had their throats cut first and were not buried alive.
Even so late as 1908 in Tarkwa I remember a chief—not a great one—dying, and at the same time there came to the District Commissioner64 a woman complaining that her adopted daughter, an euphemism65 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 sacrificed that the soul of the chief might not go unaccompanied on his last journey, as that troublesome British Government had set its face against the sacrifice of wives.
Clearly Tacky could not have objected to slavery as an institution, he only objected to it as applied to himself. And he was accustomed to bloodshed.
On those two plantations where the rebellion started were over 100 Gold Coast negroes, and the historian declares they had never received the least shadow of ill-treatment 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 can hardly blame him if he did not think ahead of his times, though we more enlightened may hold a brief for Tacky and those Guinea men, brutal66 as they undoubtedly67 were.
Mr Bayley, it appears, inspected his newly purchased Africans, was pleased with the stalwart crew and gave out to them with his own hands not only clothing but knives. Then he rode off to Ballard’s Valley, an estate a few miles distant.
The Guinea men lost no time in making a bid for freedom. At daybreak, in the morning, Mr Bayley was wakened by a servant with the information that his Trinity negroes had revolted; and the people who brought the information shouted that the insurgents68 were close upon their heels. Mr Bayley seems to have been a man of action and equal to the occasion. A council was held at Ballard’s Valley, 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 the dewy tropical morning, his broad straw hat over a handkerchief on his head, a knife at his belt and pistols at his holsters, mounting his horse in hot haste at the verandah steps and riding straight down the hill with his bond-servant behind him shouting to those who watched his departure, perhaps protesting at his rashness, that he would bring the ungodly villains69 to their bearings.
But he had barely started before he heard the wild ear-piercing Koromantyn yell of war, and saw below him on the hillside a body of stark-naked negroes marching in rude order for the overseer’s house not half a mile away. He looked back. The other gentlemen were mounting in hot haste, making for the rendezvous70, rousing the country as they went and then—a brave man was Zachary Bayley—he rode towards the body of negroes. They did not notice him at first, and with the confidence of the white man he went towards them waving his hat and shouting. Truly a brave man, for 100 Ashantis armed with muskets and knives, yelling, shouting, foaming71 at the mouth, with fierce eyes and white teeth gleaming, men young and strong, chosen for their strength, are not to be lightly faced. Had they all come on he could not possibly have escaped, but the negroes were always keen on plunder72, and apparently73 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 discretion74 the better part of valour, and the rest of the Koromantyns went on to the overseer’s house. At Trinity the overseer was a man named Abraham Fletcher, who had earned the respect and love of the negroes, and he had been allowed to pass through the ranks of the revolting slaves and escape scot-free. I don’t know whether he was the man who brought the news to Ballard’s Valley. But they showed no such mercy here. All the white men in that overseer’s house they butchered before they were fairly awake, and then passed on towards Port Maria. There were some among them evidently who knew the ropes. The fort at Port Maria must have been guarded with singular carelessness, for they slew75 the sentry76, and seem easily to have possessed themselves of all the arms and ammunition they could manage, and then they went through the country slaying77 and burning.
Luckily they stayed to burn. It gave Zachary Bayley time to ride round to all the plantations in the neighbourhood.
We can imagine the excited, determined78 man on the galloping79 horse dashing up the hills to the Great Houses, his breathless arrival and the warning given, the name of the place of rendezvous.
“But we can’t”—the protest might begin. But the other knew they must get there.
“I tell you the slaves have risen. The overseer and book-keepers at Cruikshank’s have been murdered! Get your horses. There’s not a minute to be lost!”
“But my blackguards———”
“Damnation! The Koromantyns I tell you, man! Hurry along that girl of yours and her child! I saw the place burning! I heard the poor beggars’ frantic80 shrieks81 and I couldn’t help them, Cruikshank has cleared out. For the love of God, stir yourself!”
“But the girl is———”
“I tell you they killed Nancy and a child at her breast, and she a mulatto, and dark at that! Not a drop of white blood! Hurry! Waste not a second! 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, man, if you want to save your bacon, hurry!” and his horse turned with a clatter82 and he was away again, leaving dismay and consternation83 behind him.
And well they might fear. From the butchery at Ballard’s Valley, where they had drunk rum mixed with the blood of their victims in true barbaric triumph, the revolting slaves marched to Port Maria, and thence along the high road into the interior, the other slaves joining them as they went, and they spread death and destruction, murdering the people and firing the canes84. The galloping horse on an errand of mercy did not reach Esher and other estates, they were roused too late by the Koromantyn yell, and the Ashantis behaved like the bloodthirsty savages they were. In that one morning they butchered between thirty and forty whites and mulattoes, sparing not even the babies in their mother’s arms.
Gladly would I know something more about it, but the historian was not an artist, and doubtless in those days everybody knew exactly what happened. In the heat of the day the whites would be lolling idly in the great hall, second breakfast just finished, and there would come the pad, pad of bare feet on the polished mahogany floor.
“Missus! Missus! Run! Dem Koromantyns! Dem bad slaves!”
Some one would look from the window. The noise that had been as the other noises of a morning’s work swelled85 in the sea breeze, and there was a commotion86, naked figures rushing here and there and—What was that? That white man running with his face all bloody. Could it be the new bookkeeper?
Even at this day there are people who will tell you what tradition has told them that the negroes would come on in a body, fling themselves like an avalanche87 on the Great House and cut down ruthlessly all before them. Or if they found the white people fled, they satisfied their desires by broaching88 the rum casks and breaking open the stores. This possibly saved many lives, for while the enemy were thus engaged the fugitives89 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 beaters beat for pheasants, cut down the men with the machetes they themselves had supplied or beat them with conch shells—and the women, nothing could be more terrible than the fate of the poor girl cowering90 on the hillside among the dense41 jungle, its very denseness91 betraying her presence to eyes keen as those of these savages trained to hunt.
Edwards gives no details of what happened to the women slain92 in this rebellion, but a little later on he speaks of the rebellion in Hayti and he tells how a superintendent93 who had been popular 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 too terrible to give here, though I do not count myself over-squeamish, but it made me understand why Zachary Bayley fled at full speed along those rough hillside tracks to warn the planters.
There is another horrible story told of a Jamaican planter whose slaves rose against him, slaves whom he trusted and to whom he had been kind. They rose in 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 tender and sensitive parts till his soul took flight.” They violated his wife and killed her with the rest of the family and every white man on the plantation.
This is what the white people feared subconsciously94 all the time. What the girls feared when they let down their hair and undressed for the night, when they drew together the shutters95 and shut out the 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 to listen, and wonder if that were the tramp of unshod feet over in the direction of the breeze mill. It is what Zachary Bayley feared when he tore across the country in the dawn of the tropical morning.
By noon he had collected 130 men, “white men and trusty blacks.” We do not know the proportion of white men to “trusty blacks,” but we do know that the white men were all imbued96 with the same awful fear, the fear lest all the Koromantyns in the island, and there were thousands of them, should revolt. These men Bayley led in pursuit of the rebels.
The wasteful97 savages had dissipated the advantage they had gained. They might have held the whole colony up to ransom98, but instead they were actually found at Haywood Hall roasting an ox by the flames of the buildings they had set on fire.
I should like to know more precise details, but Edwards only says the whites attacked them with great fury, killed eight or nine on the spot, took several prisoners and drove the rest into the woods. Here, of course, sustenance99 could not be found for so large a party all at once, and they were obliged to act wholly on the defensive100. The ruling class when they were thoroughly101 aroused had this in their favour, they had some sort of discipline, the blacks had none. Sullenly102 enough they had retired103 to the woods, and there Tacky the chief who had instituted the revolt was killed by one of the parties which constantly harried104 the wretched fugitives, and before long some died, some made good in the recesses105 of the mountains and the rest were taken.
But before they were conquered the revolt had spread across the island to Westmoreland.
“In St Mary,” writes Bridges, “they were repulsed106, broken and disheartened. In Westmoreland they were flushed with early victory; murderous success crowned their first efforts; they beat off the militia107, increased their ranks to a thousand effective men, and after a tedious struggle they could be subdued108 only by the exertions109 of a regiment110 of regulars, the militia of the neighbouring parish and the Maroons of the interior. The most cruel excesses that ever stained the pages of history, marked the progress of these rebels; and the details which would elucidate111 barbarity scarcely human, almost chills the warm hope of civilisation112 ever reaching the bosoms113 in which ferocity is so innate114.”
Edwards takes some trouble to show us what the civilisation of the times meant and what might be hoped from it. It was better to die than be taken, for there was little to choose between black and white in fiendish cruelty. The white gentleman ran the ignorant savage close.
“It was thought necessary,” says Edwards, “to make a few examples of some of the most guilty. Of three who were clearly proved to have been concerned in the murders at Ballard’s Valley, one was condemned115 to be burnt and the other two to be hung up alive in irons and left to perish in that dreadful situation.”
There is in the Jamaican Institute a set of the irons used for such a sentence. When found, they had the bones of a skeleton in them, the skeleton of a woman!
They burnt the man after the fashion that Hans Sloane described. He uttered not a groan117 when they applied the fire to his feet, and saw his legs and feet reduced to ashes with the “utmost firmness and composure. Then getting one of his hands loose he seized a burning brand and flung it in the face of his executioner.” Truly a man it seems to me who might have been worth something better.
In the case of the other two, Fortune and Kingston, the whole proceeding118 was gone through with a ghastly deliberation that makes us shiver now although it happened a hundred and sixty years ago. They were given a hearty119 meal and then they were hung up on a gibbet which was erected120 on the parade of the 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, Edwards was sent for, but though he had an interpreter he could not understand what the man wanted and he only remembers that one of them laughed immoderately at something, he did not know what. They must have had water, for one lived for eight days and the other one died on the morning of the ninth day.
“Throughout their torture,” remarks Bridges, “they evinced such hardened insolence121 and brutal insensibility that even pity was silenced.” What did he expect them to do? They could not expect any mercy, so why should they express regret except for having failed?
But did Bridges really believe, “that their condition was gradually rising in the scale of humanity and the tide of Christianity, which in the wilds of Africa never could have reached them, was here flowing with a gentle but accelerated motion.” God save us from the Christianity preached by some of its advocates.
Here I may put it on record that the slaves, no matter to what torture they were subjected, never betrayed each other. In all the tale of conspiracies and rebellion seldom are we told of a slave having betrayed the secret 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 die. So she saved the baby she loved and its mother and father by betraying the rebellion. Then again, sometimes I think a girl might tell to save the life of her white lover, the book-keeper or the overseer of the estate.
One would think that living amidst a hostile people every white man would be most careful in his comings and goings, careful even of what he said, for though 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 Great House were reported daily in the slave village and listened to with as great avidity as to-day we read the news of the world in the daily papers.
Besides, all the slaves were not hostile. The Creoles, born to the conditions in which they found themselves, were more contented. They regarded slavery as their natural lot, and it was only by slow degrees that the talk of emancipation122 grew. But it did grow and the rebellion of 1882, a very devastating123 one, which ran like wildfire through Westmoreland, Hanover, and St James’, was caused mainly because at the Great Houses and the “Buckras’” tables the white people talking carelessly before the black servants, to whom they never gave a thought, declared emphatically that all this talk of emancipation was so much rubbish.
And at Christmas time, the angry, disappointed, misguided slaves rose. I have always taken particular interest in this rebellion, because I once enjoyed the hospitality of Montpelier, one of the loveliest pens in Jamaica, where much money has been spent, and beneath the trees on the green grass rest white Indian cattle bred for draught124 purposes. Mr Edwards, the owner, told me that he used to hear stories in his youth of how the slaves burned the houses, and mills, and cane pieces, and the night was alight with blazing fires. Major Hall and his wife, high in the hills at Kempshot, received warning just in time, and through the darkness made their way to Worcester, lying far below.
It must have been terrible, stumbling down that stony125 mountain path through the darkness, with the dread116 fear that the enemy might reach Worcester before them. Neither husband nor wife returned, nor was the house rebuilt, and not till nearly fifty years afterwards did Mr Maxwell Hall, seeking through the country for a site on which to build an observatory126, 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 remained but the Mango Walk. It stands there still, the only monument to the white people who once lived on that spot. The trees have long given over bearing, but the avenue is a thing of beauty, and to the very tops has grown a lovely creeper which strews127 the ground beneath with heavily scented128 white bellshaped flowers.
It has nothing to do with them, of course, but in my mind that beautiful Walk stands for the slave rebellions, the terrible times that are past and gone but hardly forgotten. In judging the relations of the white man and the black, in weighing the causes of discord129 between them, in considering the shortcomings of both, we must always remember that past when they lived together bound by a tie galling130 to both which has left behind it a legacy131 of bitterness that only time and success on the part of the black man can sweeten.
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plantations
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| n.种植园，大农场( plantation的名词复数 ) | |
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plantation
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| n.种植园，大农场 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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regularity
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| n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐 | |
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broth
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| n.原(汁)汤(鱼汤、肉汤、菜汤等) | |
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gore
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| n.凝血，血污；v.（动物）用角撞伤，用牙刺破；缝以补裆；顶 | |
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leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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11
inhuman
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| adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的 | |
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12
perverse
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| adj.刚愎的；坚持错误的，行为反常的 | |
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13
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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14
imprisonment
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| n.关押，监禁，坐牢 | |
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15
lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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16
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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17
desuetude
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| n.废止，不用 | |
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18
steer
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| vt.驾驶，为…操舵；引导；vi.驾驶 | |
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19
craved
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| 渴望，热望( crave的过去式 )； 恳求，请求 | |
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20
crave
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| vt.渴望得到，迫切需要，恳求，请求 | |
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21
muskets
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| n.火枪，（尤指）滑膛枪( musket的名词复数 ) | |
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22
oars
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| n.桨，橹( oar的名词复数 )；划手v.划（行）( oar的第三人称单数 ) | |
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23
severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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24
slit
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| n.狭长的切口；裂缝；vt.切开，撕裂 | |
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25
inflict
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| vt.(on)把…强加给，使遭受，使承担 | |
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26
subsisted
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| v.（靠很少的钱或食物）维持生活，生存下去( subsist的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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27
exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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28
tormentor
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| n. 使苦痛之人, 使苦恼之物, 侧幕 =tormenter | |
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29
testimony
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| n.证词；见证，证明 | |
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30
contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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31
whim
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| n.一时的兴致，突然的念头；奇想，幻想 | |
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32
providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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33
blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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34
intrepidity
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| n.大胆，刚勇；大胆的行为 | |
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35
contemplate
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| vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视 | |
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36
equanimity
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| n.沉着，镇定 | |
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37
runaways
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| （轻而易举的）胜利( runaway的名词复数 ) | |
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38
runaway
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| n.逃走的人，逃亡，亡命者；adj.逃亡的，逃走的 | |
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39
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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40
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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41
dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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42
densest
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| 密集的( dense的最高级 )； 密度大的； 愚笨的； （信息量大得）难理解的 | |
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43
maroons
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| n.逃亡黑奴（maroon的复数形式）vt.把…放逐到孤岛（maroon的第三人称单数形式） | |
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44
ammunition
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| n.军火，弹药 | |
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45
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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46
stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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47
savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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48
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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49
cane
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| n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的 | |
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50
disturbances
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| n.骚乱( disturbance的名词复数 )；打扰；困扰；障碍 | |
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51
conspiracies
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| n.阴谋，密谋( conspiracy的名词复数 ) | |
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52
apprenticeship
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| n.学徒身份；学徒期 | |
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53
heralded
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| v.预示( herald的过去式和过去分词 )；宣布（好或重要） | |
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54
recording
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| n.录音，记录 | |
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55
longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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56
maternal
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| adj.母亲的，母亲般的，母系的，母方的 | |
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57
grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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58
wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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59
discomfort
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| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
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60
literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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61
drenched
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| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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62
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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63
potentate
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| n.统治者；君主 | |
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64
commissioner
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| n.（政府厅、局、处等部门）专员，长官，委员 | |
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65
euphemism
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| n.婉言，委婉的说法 | |
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66
brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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67
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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68
insurgents
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| n.起义，暴动，造反( insurgent的名词复数 ) | |
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69
villains
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| n.恶棍( villain的名词复数 )；罪犯；（小说、戏剧等中的）反面人物；淘气鬼 | |
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70
rendezvous
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| n.约会，约会地点，汇合点；vi.汇合，集合；vt.使汇合，使在汇合地点相遇 | |
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71
foaming
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| adj.布满泡沫的；发泡 | |
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72
plunder
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| vt.劫掠财物，掠夺；n.劫掠物，赃物；劫掠 | |
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73
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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74
discretion
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| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
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75
slew
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| v.（使）旋转；n.大量，许多 | |
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76
sentry
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| n.哨兵，警卫 | |
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77
slaying
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| 杀戮。 | |
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78
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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79
galloping
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| adj. 飞驰的, 急性的 动词gallop的现在分词形式 | |
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80
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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81
shrieks
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| n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
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82
clatter
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| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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83
consternation
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| n.大为吃惊，惊骇 | |
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84
canes
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| n.（某些植物，如竹或甘蔗的）茎( cane的名词复数 )；（用于制作家具等的）竹竿；竹杖 | |
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85
swelled
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| 增强( swell的过去式和过去分词 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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86
commotion
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| n.骚动，动乱 | |
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87
avalanche
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| n.雪崩，大量涌来 | |
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88
broaching
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| n.拉削；推削；铰孔；扩孔v.谈起( broach的现在分词 )；打开并开始用；用凿子扩大（或修光）；（在桶上）钻孔取液体 | |
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89
fugitives
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| n.亡命者，逃命者( fugitive的名词复数 ) | |
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90
cowering
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| v.畏缩，抖缩( cower的现在分词 ) | |
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91
denseness
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| 稠密，密集，浓厚； 稠度 | |
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92
slain
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| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
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93
superintendent
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| n.监督人，主管，总监；(英国)警务长 | |
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94
subconsciously
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| ad.下意识地，潜意识地 | |
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95
shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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96
imbued
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| v.使（某人/某事）充满或激起（感情等）( imbue的过去式和过去分词 )；使充满；灌输；激发（强烈感情或品质等） | |
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97
wasteful
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| adj.（造成）浪费的，挥霍的 | |
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98
ransom
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| n.赎金，赎身；v.赎回，解救 | |
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99
sustenance
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| n.食物，粮食；生活资料；生计 | |
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100
defensive
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| adj.防御的；防卫的；防守的 | |
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101
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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102
sullenly
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| 不高兴地，绷着脸，忧郁地 | |
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103
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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104
harried
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| v.使苦恼( harry的过去式和过去分词 )；不断烦扰；一再袭击；侵扰 | |
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105
recesses
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| n.壁凹( recess的名词复数 )；（工作或业务活动的）中止或暂停期间；学校的课间休息；某物内部的凹形空间v.把某物放在墙壁的凹处( recess的第三人称单数 )；将（墙）做成凹形，在（墙）上做壁龛；休息，休会，休庭 | |
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106
repulsed
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| v.击退( repulse的过去式和过去分词 )；驳斥；拒绝 | |
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107
militia
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| n.民兵，民兵组织 | |
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108
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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109
exertions
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| n.努力( exertion的名词复数 )；费力；（能力、权力等的）运用；行使 | |
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110
regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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111
elucidate
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| v.阐明，说明 | |
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112
civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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113
bosoms
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| 胸部( bosom的名词复数 )； 胸怀； 女衣胸部（或胸襟）； 和爱护自己的人在一起的情形 | |
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114
innate
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| adj.天生的，固有的，天赋的 | |
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115
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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116
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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117
groan
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| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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118
proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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119
hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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120
ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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121
insolence
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| n.傲慢；无礼；厚颜；傲慢的态度 | |
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122
emancipation
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| n.（从束缚、支配下）解放 | |
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123
devastating
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| adj.毁灭性的，令人震惊的，强有力的 | |
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124
draught
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| n.拉，牵引，拖；一网（饮，吸，阵)；顿服药量，通风；v.起草，设计 | |
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125
stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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126
observatory
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| n.天文台，气象台，瞭望台，观测台 | |
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127
strews
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| v.撒在…上( strew的第三人称单数 )；散落于；点缀；撒满 | |
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128
scented
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| adj.有香味的；洒香水的；有气味的v.嗅到(scent的过去分词) | |
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129
discord
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| n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐 | |
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130
galling
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| adj.难堪的,使烦恼的,使焦躁的 | |
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131
legacy
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| n.遗产，遗赠；先人(或过去)留下的东西 | |
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