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(

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

List of Previous Works by the Same Author dealing with

THE Negro and with African Questions

■

the river CONGO, FROM ITS MOUTH TO BOLOBO

THE KILIMANJARO EXPEDITION

THE LIFE OF A SLAVE

THE LIFE OF LIVINGSTONE

BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA

THE HISTORY OF THE COLONIZATION OF AFRICA
BY ALIEN RACES

THE UGANDA PROTECTORATE

THE NILE QUEST

LIBERIA

GEORGE GRENFELL AND THE CONGO

A HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION OF THE BRITISH
EMPIRE IN AFRICA

THE NEr.RO IN \V7.KT AFRICA : I.EBERIAN HINTERLATID

THE NEGRO
s IHE NEW WORLD

SIR HARRY H. JOHNSTON

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SI' *,uO in \. K \M \. ''I I r .1 . I <. : K ^ :> » i »"■* A' M >*■• A.N:» ')< U. h'.

NEW VOHK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

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II

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THE NEGRO
IN THE NEW WORLD

SIR HARRY H. JOHNSTON

G.C.M.G., K.C.B., D.ScCambs.

Gold Medallist Royal Geographical and Royal Scottish Geographical Societies

Corresponding Member of the Geographical Society op Philadelphia, U.S.A.

AND of the Italian Geographical Society, etc.

WITH ONE ILLUSTRATION IN COLOUR BY THE AUTHOR

AND 390 BLACK AND WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR AND OTHERS

MAPS BY MR. J. W. ADDISON (ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY)

NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1910

• 'p

I'-rUiv^ a'.'': 'V/.'

PREFACE

BOOKS are often synonymous with boredom nowadays. We have so
much more to read through than our parents read before us [if we are to
keep abreast of the ever- widening scope of world-interests] that the sight of
the printed page is to many people almost a provocation to anger, suggesting
a further strain on the already over-taxed eyes and over-stuffed brain. The
literature of the almost immediate future may quite possibly be reduced to the
pictographs from which writing began. A novelist, a traveller, an anthro-
pologist, or an historian will be required to say what he has to say in a series of
pictures — photographs and diagrams — and the letterpress will be confined to
little more than descriptive titles and occasional verbal explanations.

In the year 1910, however, I have tried to tell in words as well as pictures
the story of the NEGRO IN THE New World, as much for my own education
as for that of others. For those who are too busy to do more than glance at
the pictures, and perhaps read through this preface (which is as much as fifty
per cent of modern reviewers are able to accomplish, amid the rain of books in
the English language), I will here summarise the conclusions to be deduced
from my opinions and (I think) from my array of evidence.

In chapter I. I have set forth the theory that the Negro should be regarded
as a sub-species of the perfect human type — Homo sapiens; that his sub-specific
differences from the Caucasian or White man, the Yellow or Mongolian, are
largely, but not entirely, in the direction of his being slightly more akin to the
lowlier human stock which preceded in time and development the existing Homo
sapiens. He is consequently in some features a little more primitive than are the
non-Negro peoples of Europe, Asia, and America ; and in others less so ; or
more highly specialised, more divergent from Homo primigenius than is the
Mongol or the Caucasian. In any case he is distinctly superior in human
evolution to the Australoid, the lowest in development of all existing divisions
of Homo sapiens.

But although the Negro still possesses pithecoid characteristics long since
lost by the Caucasian and the Mongol, although he comes of a stock which has
stagnated in the African and Asiatic tropics for uncounted, unprogressive
millenniums, he has retained dormant the full attributes of sapient humanity.
He has remarkable and ungaugeable capabilities. It has been possible, over and

vi THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

over again, for individual Negroes to leap from a position of mental inferiority,
such as the Caucasian's ancestors may have occupied fifty or even a hundred
thousand years ago, to an equality in brain-power with some of the cleverest
and ablest White men living at the present day. And it is always to be borne
in mind (if we are not overrating the importance of the discovery of fossil
negroids in Southern and Western France) that several branches of the Negro race
may have known better days ten to forty thousand years ago, that the ancestors
of the modern Negro in Africa may have pursued a downward course for many
thousand years before their descendant was turned right-about-face by his
Caucasian brother and compelled to take the ascending path which may lead
him at some future period to a position of all-round equality with the white
man.

At the present day the generality of negroes (leaving out of account excep-
tional individuals) are inferior in mental development and capacity to the peoples
of Europe and their descendants in America, to the Eskimo, the Red Indian, the
Japanese, the Chinese, the natives of India and of Tartary. The best types of
Negro in bodily structure are almost as beautiful as the best types of European
with (at present) the striking exception of the face. Morally, the Negro is
nearly on an equality with the White race, and perhaps slightly superior to the
Yellow. He is, however, more subject to disease, and is himself a hive of
dangerous germs ; perhaps has been the great disease-spreader among the other
sub-species of Homo sapiens.

As regards chapters II. and ill. I have arrived at the conclusion that the
Spaniards did not exterminate the Amerindian peoples of tropical America with
quite the degree of senseless ferocity attributed to them by historians, and
that they were scarcely worse in this respect than the Anglo-Saxons of North
America, or the French and British in regard to the Caribs of the West India
Islands. Both the Spaniards and the Portuguese were to a great extent
checked in their intention to destroy and dispossess many Amerindian peoples
by the work of the Society of Jesus, of the Dominicans, and of one or two
other orders of missionaries emanating from the Roman Catholic Church. In
regard to the Spanish treatment of the Negro it was far less cruel than was that
of the Anglo-Saxon or the Dutchman.

In chapter v. it is set forth that the Portuguese attitude towards the
Amerindians (at any rate of Eastern Brazil) was better than that of the Spaniards
towards the indigenes of Central and South America; the Portuguese treatment
of the Negro in Brazil was a little less kindly than that of the Spaniards in
Santo Domingo, Porto Rico, and eighteenth-century Cuba ; but on the whole
the Negro had, even in slavery, a less unhappy life and far greater opportunities
for bettering his position and attaining his freedom in Portuguese Brazil than
he had in North America before the year 1863, or in the British and French
West Indies before 1834. The Dutch treatment (chapter VI.) of the Negro
before the commencement of the nineteenth century was mainly atrocious. It

PREFACE

Vll

is now as good as it is in the British and French West Indies. The Jews who
settled and prospered so much under Dutch protection in Tropical America
behaved no better to the negro than did the Christian. The Bush negroes
who grew up as a powerful people during the eighteenth century in the forests
of Guiana obtained and conserved their freedom and independence, not only as
the result of gallant fighting against the Dutch forces, but equally because of the
loyal way in which both parties respected the terms of peace which were em-
bodied in the treaties that terminated this warfare.

In chapter vii. I have dealt with slavery under the French. I have
attempted to show that in calling into existence a considerable number of
half-breeds who were allowed to receive a good education in France, and yet in
denying the ordinary rights of citizens to this educated class of mulattoes, the
French had only themselves to thank (or their rancorous white planters of
St. Domingue) for the insurrection that commenced with the mulattoes and
was continued so tremendously by the negro slaves under Toussaint Louver-
ture and other black generals. On the other hand, the Negro and the Negroid
lost a great opportunity (owing to the class jealousy between the half-white
and the wholly black) when all the leading insurgents of Hispaniola failed to
support Toussaint Louverture — one of the greatest Negroes known to history —
or, succeeding him, the intelligent mulatto politicians who ruled over the Republic
of Haiti in its early days. Although the independence of Haiti was achieved
mainly by the negroes, it is the negro majority that through several decades of
misrule has well-nigh ruined Haiti, and has lost for ever the chances of bringing
the whole island of Hispaniola under one Negroid Government.

On the other hand, though I maintain that the French planters and some of
the French officials (and the Government of Louis Seize and his Ministers was
no wiser) behaved so badly to the black man and the half-caste in St. Domingue
as to merit the censure of history ; elsewhere in tropical America France has
treated the negro fairly well as slave and freeman, best of all, perhaps, as a free
citizen, between whom and the white Frenchman there is little or no ill-feeling
such as arises so often between the Anglo-Saxon and the Negro or Negroid. The
impress of France on the negroes of Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Grenada,
and Trinidad has been so deeply implanted, has been so profound, that even after
a hundred or a hundred and fifty years of British rule it still remains, moulding
thought, language, religion, and social customs. Still more marked, of course,
is the Frenchification of those islands of the Antilles that have remained under
the French flag, or of the negroes of Cayenne. But this does 'not limit the
influence of France over the Negro in the New World, or, still more, the Negroid.
The patron country of Brazil is not Portugal, the United States, or Germany,
but France. Because there is a very large negro or negroid element —
perhaps over eight millions — in Brazil ; and a large proportion of these dark-
coloured Brazilians are educated, art-and-music-loving people, to whom France,
and Paris above all, is a veritable Mecca. All the rastaquouires of South

viii THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

America look to France for the finishing education of their children, for their
own enjoyment, when they wish to touch the highest phase of our present
civilisation, or to deal with the greatest developnients of science, literature, and
art. The Negroids of Central America and the West Indies are turning their
steps more towards New York, Boston, Washington, and Chicago. But Paris
is still the magnetic pole for the rest of the twenty-two millions of dark-skinned
people in the New World,

An increasing number are going to Germany for education. Very few come
to England, and the reason given recently in print is a simple one. If the
man of colour goes to France or Germany, nowhere in these countries is he
insulted or treated as an inferior being. No notice at all is taken of the differ-
ence between the colour of his skin and that of his hosts for the time being.
Whereas if the negroid comes to England, or goes to any part of the South-
Eastern United States, he is apt to be rudely treated. If he be a full-blooded
negro, he will receive in England a kindly, half-contemptuous treatment, but he
will be made to feel more at his ease about the docks of Liverpool and London
than at university towns or in Bloomsbury. But the pure-blooded negro is a
jolly person, not as a rule given to seeking or finding offence ; whereas the
negroid is a thousand times more touchy, more acutely self-conscious than
either black man or white man. And this increasing type of American
humanity finds in France a patroness which its sensitive nature warmly
appreciates.

In chapters IX., X., and XI., dealing with Slavery under the British, I felt
obliged to show with what terrible cruelties this institution was connected in
the greater part of the British West Indies, and possibly also in British Guiana,
before 1834. • Nor did these cruelties cease entirely with the Abolition of the
Slave-trade and of Slavery. They were continued under various disguises until
they culminated in the Jamaica Revolt of Morant Bay in 1865. Since 1868 the
history of the British West Indies, so far as the treatment of the negro and
the coloured man is concerned, has been wholly satisfactory, taking into con-
sideration all the difficulties of the case. Much of the temporary ruin of the
West India Islands during the middle of the nineteenth century was not directly
caused by giving freedom to the slaves, but by a blunder perpetrated in 1849 in
connection with the otherwise beneficent institution of Free Trade. After that
year the sugar (and cotton) of the British West Indies raised by the paid labour
oi free negroes was obliged to compete in the British markets with the slave-
grown sugar of the Southern States of the Union, of Spanish Cuba and Porto
Rico, Dutch Guiana, and Brazil. If without interfering with the indisputable
need of Free Trade in the United Kingdom a very legitimate differential duty
had been placed on all slave-grown sugar, cotton, and tobacco, not only would
the British West Indies have suffered little, if any, eclipse in their prosperity,
but an end would have been put much sooner to the existence of Slavery in the
Southern States of the Union, in Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese America.

PREFACE ix

In chapters XIV. and XV. is traced the history of Slavery in the United
States. It was here that the battle for human freedom was fought on the
grandest scale and with the most tremendous results, and consequently the
history of the Negro in this part of the world is so important that it requires
a more ample treatment than is necessary for similar problems in Brazil or
Spanish America. I have felt it advisable, as the result of reading a great
many books (some of them little known), to give an explicit account of the
exceptional cruelties attending Slavery in the United States. These cruelties,
perhaps, were not greater than what went on in British Barbados or in the
Bahama Islands, and certainly not more outrageous than the treatment of the
negroes in Dutch Guiana; but the wickedness was on a far greater scale
geographically and affected the welfare of a much larger number of human
beings.

Even this may seem a thrice-told tale and an unnecessary raking-up of
embers that have ceased to glow. I do not think so. I still believe that the
bulk of my fellow-countrymen and the mass of my possible readers in North
America have not realised [with our super-sensitive, twentieth-century con-
sciousness] how bad was the treatment of the Negro in the South-Eastern States
of the Union between, let us say, 1790 and i860. This story should be re-
written ever and again " lest we forget." Given the same temptations and the
same opportunities, there is sufficient of the devil still left in the white man for
the 300 years' cruelties of negro (or other) slavery to be repeated, if it were
worth the white man's while, and public opinion could be drugged or purchased.
Perhaps some day the white man's conscience may be universally educated
up to the level of Christ's teaching and of the gospel according to Exeter
Hall, and the subject of Slavery and the Slave Trade can be tacitly
dropped.

So much for the past : the present is treated of in a series of chapters
which to a great extent represent my own personal observations on the exist-
ing condition of the Negro in the New World. A visit to the United States in
1908 revealed to me the wonderful educational work which is being carried
on at the Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes, and at the now-innumerable
daughter-schools or sister-colleges ; work which is (I believe) raising up the
Negro and Negroid to play a great part in North America, the West Indies,
Central and South America. If any efforts can bring the Negro mentally and
physically to the best standard of the White man, it will be the work which
was, for all practical purposes, initiated by General S. C. Armstrong, though
foreshadowed by the prior enterprises of the Jesuits, the Moravian Brethren,
the Society of Friends, the Baptists, and the Presbyteriaais. This work has
since been continued in the States by such men and women as Dr. Frissell,
Miss Laura W. Towne, Miss Ellen Murray, Dr. Booker Washington, Professor
W. E. B. DuBois, Miss Rossa Cooley, Mr. Holtzclaw, and many other negro,
negroid, and white Americans.

X THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

It IS only right to remember, however, that the work of these prophets and
teachers would have been a vain calling in the wilderness had it not been for
the immense sums of money contributed (for the most part) by white millionaires
of the Northern States, by one or two rich negroes or negresses who had gained
their wealth in the North, and by a few white Southerners, the avant-garde of a
great movement of reparation towards the Negro. One should also notice with
gratification the increasing prosperity of those Southern States like Alabama,
which are forgetting race prejudice in assisting the Negro to occupy a responsible
position as a free and an educated citizen. Nowhere is the power of Money
for good more strikingly shown than at Tuskegee. Andrew Carnegie, for
example, by assisting to endow this Institute with a splendid income, has probably
effected more change in the world's future than many a vaunted conqueror of
the past, by land or sea.

Haiti, I have tried to show, is not quite so black as she has been painted.
She has it in her to become a happy, wealthy, and respected negro community,
if she will cut herself off from the preposterous traditions of her ridiculous past,
cease to dress up in grotesque military uniforms, to be for ever marching to and
fro to military music, and wasting her substance on warlike stores. For very
shame she should cease to make the negro race a laughing-stock. She has no
enemies, because the United States is her all-powerful friend.

In the British West Indies a much higher level of education should be aimed
at by the people of colour. And just as the British Government has in a very
munificent way taken in hand the agriculture of the West Indies, and grouped
its teaching round a Central Institute, and thereby contributed greatly to the
revival of prosperity, so in like manner some system of universal, British- West-
Indian, /ra^//V^/, collegiate education should be brought into being. Otherwise,
all intelligent negroes in these islands, and in British Honduras and Guiana,
will look to receive their twentieth-century education at the hands of the United
States. A great deal more should be done in the future to unify the British
administration of these remarkable West Indian Islands, not merely in the
interest of the Black and of the Yellow, but also of the White. So far as
natural conditions are concerned, there is a considerable total area under the
British flag in tropical America which might be colonised by White people
without injustice to, or displacement of, the coloured race.

I do not think that there is any more reason for resigning the smaller West
Indian Islands to the negroes than there is for excluding the negro from access
to all parts of temperate America. The white people of the United States
will have to get used to the presence of the negro in their midst as a brother,
but not a brother-in-law. If the Imperial destiny of the English-speaking
peoples of North America is to be achieved, they must expect to see their flag
or flags covering nationally many peoples of non-Caucasian race, wearing the
shadowed livery of the burnished sun. Already the Stars and Stripes float over
the Isthmus of Panama. The influence of this same great nation keeps the peace

PREFACE xi

and controls the destinies of all Central America and the northern half of South
America, to say nothing of Cuba, Hispaniola, and Porto Rico, of Hawaii and
the Philippines. Unless this Imperial progress is to be truncated and beaten
back, the white citizens of this Republic must accustom themselves to accord
rights of citizenship and of entrance into civilised society to men of all colours
in all parts of their dominion. They — and we — may limit the franchise as we
like, by conditions of education, physical fitness, property, or service to the
State. But whatever may be the conditions restricting a franchise, they must
be made to apply to all members of the human species without distinction of
sex, race, or colour.

My book ends with a tabulation of the numerical importance of the Negro
in the New World at the present day. As to the future of the black man in
America or in Africa, it depends largely on himself For many thousand
years he has been a relatively idle creature as compared to the industrious
European or Asiatic ; who when not in slavery to each other were the slaves of
ambition, of art and science, of gluttony, of lust, and of religion. In other
words, they worked. The negro became constitutionally so lazy that he
thought out very few problems for himself, but every now and again bor-
rowed ideas from the Caucasian, who impinged on his territories in Northern
Africa,

The rending of the veil which had shrouded him from the full gaze of the
white man for thousands of years ; the discovery of Negro Africa by the Arab,
Portuguese, Hollander, British, and French forced the palaeolithic or neolithic
negro to gaze upon the full effulgence of the white man's civilisation — the
civilisation of guns and gunpowder; of the Cross, the Mass, the translated Bible
and hymnal ; of schools and colleges, ships and wagons, distilled alcohol, rail-
ways and telegraphs, economic botany, modern rifles and artillery, canned food
and corrugated iron. Probably for ten thousand years the negro of one type
or another has been a slave or a servant to some kind of white man. Is that
servitude at an end ? Or will it be resumed in Africa under pleasanter terms
more agreeable to the ingrained hypocrisy of the Christian European? Will
the negro always occupy a lower social level in Brazil, in the West Indies, in
North America?

If he is not content with a position against which the Jew has chafed and
struggled from 300 B.C. to the Russian Pogroms of 1905 A.D. he will determine
to do as the Jew has done : make plenty of money. Money solves all human
difficulties. It will buy you love and respect, power and social standing. With
money you can create armies and build navies, you can control the votes of
your fellow-citizens, found and shape their educational institutes, conduct a
Press, overcome disease, make actual the charity of early Christianity, achieve
all purposes that are noble, and check the Devil at every turn ; whether he crop
up in the forms of alcoholism, disease, intestinal worms, religious intolerance,
political oppression, waste of the earth's natural resources, or the misuse of

xii THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

corrugated iron. If you are rich you can roof your dwellings with tiles of the
most beautiful, or stone slabs, or wooden shingles, marble terraces or leaden
sheets ; if you are poor you must content yourself with corrugated iron and
know that your dwelling is a blot on the landscape.

The one undoubted solution of the Negro's difficulties throughout the world
is for him to turn his strong arms and sturdy legs, his fine sight, subtle hearing,
deft fingers, and rapidly-developed brain to the making of Money, money being
indeed but transmuted intellect and work, accumulated energy and courage.
And his leaders, his pastors and teachers, should direct his and their attention
to the questions that are really vital : to theories and practices of disease-
prevention and cure ; to the correlation of intestinal worms and sanitary
reform ; to the inculcation of the chemistry of nature, of practical agriculture,
beautiful horticulture, sound building, modern history, modern science, modern
languages, modern religion, and modern temperance in eating, <lrinking, love-
making, and public oratory.

Before proceeding to set forth the details in history and actuality on which these
general conclusions are founded, I should like to express my acknowledgments to the
many persons who have helped me in this task, either by facilitating my journeys or by
supplying information or photographs. [Some names appear in the list of illustrations
and the text of the book in relation to the source of illustration or notes, or services
rendered. Those to whom I am more generally or signally indebted are enumerated
here.]

The inception of the book was due to the invitation of Colonel Theodore Roosevelt,
who was President of the United States when I made my journeys through different parts
of the New World. Mr. Roosevelt indicated to me many lines of research which I have
tried to follow up, and gave me considerable assistance by letters of introduction to
persons in the United States, in Cuba, Haiti, and elsewhere. The Editor of the Times
invited me to contribute a series of letters to that paper on the present condition of
the Negro in America; and Messrs. McClure, of McClur^s Magazine^ secured the
American rights in these letters, the composition of which was the starting-point of this
book.

From the Right Honble. James Bryce and Mrs. Bryce I received the kindest hos-
pitality at Washington and introductions to leading Americans which were of much
value to me. Dr. Leander Chamberlain (brother of that Governor Chamberlain who
worked at the reconstruction of the South after the War) was my principal guide and
host in and through the wonders of New York — in some respects the most wonderful,
most advanced, educative, interesting, and beautiful city in the world — certainly the one
I should most like to live in, if residence in a town were obligatory. Dr. Chamberlain
caused me to know many of the leading men in New York who are concerning themselves
with the education of the Negro, amongst them Dr. Wallace Buttrick, who from the
twenty-second storey of one of New York's Brobdingnagian palaces directs the affairs of
that mighty institution the General Education Board.

Mr. Robert Ogden, a member of this Board and a Trustee of Hampton and Tuskegee,
conveyed me to the last-named Institute and introduced me to Dr. Booker Washington.

PREFACE xiii

(I had previously been the guest of Dr. H. B. Frissell, at Hampton.) What I have
leamt from and through the Principal of Tuskegee and his staff (especially from Dr.
Robert E. Park) is set forth in the chapters dealing with the Education of the Negro, as
is also my indebtedness to Mr. J. O. Thompson and Mr. W. Thompson, well-known
landowners in Alabama, whose acquaintance I made at Tuskegee, and who showed me
so much of industrial and agricultural Alabama.

All Louisiana — the most interesting of the Southern States, as Alabama is the most
beautiful — was thrown open to my inquiring gaze by the introductions of the Honble.
Pearl White ; and I shall long remember the hospitality of Mr. McCall on his estate by
the banks of the Mississippi. Whatever it may have lacked in the " ante-bellum " days,
the hospitality of the " South " is now a very delightful reality.

My sincere thanks are also due to Mrs. J. Perrin (to whom I was introduced by Mr.
McClure), who resides for a part of the year on the Mississippi Delta, and w;ho with one
of her friends acted as my cicerone in visiting negro settlements in that region. Mr.
Pearl White's introductions carried me through Florida to Cuba, where the Honble.
R. Hawley [who supervises most of the great sugar estates of that island], together
with the British Minister (Mr. A. C. Grant Duff) and the managers of the English
railways, enabled me to see a good deal of Cuba at a minimum of time and ex-
pense. To Mr. Theodore Brooks, British Vice-Consul at Guantanamo, I feel excep-
tionally indebted.

In Haiti, thanks especially to the American Minister, Dr. H. W. Furniss, I was
enabled to see more of the country and people in a relatively short space of time than
any preceding traveller (I should think). I am also indebted to Captain Alexander
Murray, the British Consul-General in that Republic, and to the courtesy and kindness
of the Haitian officials ; to Mr. C. Lyon Hall, a well-known British resident and banker
at Port-au-Prince, and to Mrs. Lyon Hall ; to the Messrs. Peters, British concessionnaires
in Haiti ; to the German Consul-General and the German residents at Port-au-Prince ;
and last, but not least, to the French priests and seminarists of the Haitian Church
and Educational department.

[As showing the wide scope of the Roman propaganda, it was interesting to me to
renew acquaintance in Haiti with Catholic missionaries whom I had last seen in East
Africa and Uganda.]

In Jamaica Sir Sydney Olivier obtained for me every facility for sight-seeing and
study which could save time and expense and procure for me the information I wanted.
The kindly help of other Jamaican officials is acknowledged in loco ; but I should like
specially to thank Mr. W. Harris, Mr. H. H. Cousins, and Miss H. A. Wood for their
initiation into the wonders and beauties of the Jamaican flora. Unfortunately I have
only been able to use in the present work a fiftieth part of their information and
pictures.

President Taft allowed me to accompany his tour of inspection over the Panama
Canal zone in February, 1909. The facilities most kindly offered me by the Royal Mail
Steamship Company enabled me to avail myself of this invitation and to visit the Spanish
Main and the islands of Trinidad and Barbados. Other journeys to and through the
New World were carried out under the aegis of ^lessrs. Thomas Cook and Son, to whose
agent in New York I tender my sincere thanks.

xiv THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Since my return to England in 1909 the further prosecution of my studies of the past
and present of the Negro in the New World and his environment has been materially
helped by Mr. Algernon E. Aspinall, Secretary to the West India Committee, to whom I
have referred repeatedly in the body of the work; by Mr. Travers Buxton and the
Library of the Anti-Slavery Society ; by Dr. Robert E. Park, of the Tuskegee Institute ;
and by Professor W. E. Burghardt DuBois, of Atlanta University; by the Librarian
of the Colonial Office, Mr. C. Atchley, i.s.o. (Colonial Laws on Slavery, etc.), and the
Director of Military Operations (History of West India Regiments); Mr. Edward
Heawood, Librarian of the Royal Geographical Society ; Dr. J. Scott Keltic, ll.d. ;
Mr. Edgar Gardner Murphy (the well-known American writer on the United States
Negro) ; Dr. R. T. Leiper, of the London School of Tropical Medicine ; Dr. A. Keith,
of the Royal College of Surgeons ; H.S.H. the Prince of Monaco (illustrations of the
skulls of negroid types found in the Grimaldi Caverns); E. H. Man, Esq. (late of
the Andaman Islands) Mr. Roger Casement, c.m.g. (H.B.M. Consul-General, Rio de
Janeiro); Mr. J. R. W. Pigott, H.B.M. Consul for Dutch and French Guiana; Dr. H.
van Cappelle, an explorer of Dutch Guiana; Mr. D. O'Sullivan-Beare, H.B.M. Consul
at Santos; Herr Walter Garbe and Dr. Max Schmidt (German travellers in Central
Brazil); Mr. J. E. Devaux, Vice-Consul at Guadeloupe; The Right Rev. Wilfrid
Hornby, Bishop of Nassau (Bahamas), and Dr. A. W. Holly, of the same place;
T.E. The Governors of British Honduras (Col. E. J. E. Swayne, c.b.) and the Leeward
Islands (Sir Bickham Sweet- Escott, k.cm.g.) ; the Administrator of Dominica (Honble.
Douglas Young, c.m.g.); H.E. Sir Everard Im Thurn, Governor of Fiji; Major
Herbert Bryan, c.m.g., Colonial Secretary, Gold Coast Colony; the Commissioner of
the Cayman Islands, G. S. S. Hirst, Esq., m.b. ; H. E. Constantin Brun, Danish Envoy
at the Court of St. James ; H.E. J. P. Crommelin, Liberian Minister Plenipotentiary
to Great Britain and France; Dr. Bumpus, of the American Museum of Natural
History; Mr. Madison Grant, of the New York Zoological Society; Capt. T. C.
Hincks (of the Royal Berkshire Regt., and formerly A.D.C. to the Governor of the Gold
Coast); Capt. W. B. Stanley, a Travelling Commissioner of the Gambia Colony;
Messrs. Hutchinson and Co., of 34 Paternoster Row; Mr. J. R. Henderson, of the
Madras Government Museum; Mr. Francis Harrison, of the Natal Government
Agency in London ; Miss Alice Werner, of the African Society ; Mr. H. S. Kingsford,
of the Royal Anthropological Institute ; the Royal Society of Arts (Brazilian photo-
graphs); the Religious Tract Society; Mr. C. W. Furlong, of Connecticut (an
American explorer of South America and North Africa) ; Mr. William Aery, of the
Southern Workman^ Hampton, U.S.A.; Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones, a Professor at
Hampton Institute; Messrs. James Rodway and J. van Sertima, of British Guiana;
and Mr. R. Harold Paget, the representative in America of my literary agents, Messrs.
A. P. Watt.

This long recital of names of so many eminent persons and authorities may
arouse in the uninterested reader the feeling that their assistance and encourage-
ment should have provoked a much better book. He will probably be right ;
but I have been actually embarrassed by the wealth of material in pictures and
statistics collected personally or placed at my disposal by others. The attempt

PREFACE XV

to present in one volume the past and present of the Negro in the New World
may produce for those of encyclopaedic instincts a disappointing result. One
thing, however, I wish to make abundantly clear. The views and conclusions
deduced from all the evidence which has passed under my eyes are my own
and not necessarily those of my friends and helpers, several of whom have,
after seeing the proofs, been inclined to dissent in some degree from my
opinions.

H. H. JOHNSTON
Poling, May^ 19 lo

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter I.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

»>

XI.

XII.

)«

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

••

XVI.

XVII.

„ XVIII.

XX.
XXI.

XXII.
, XXIII.
XXIV.

THE NEGRO SUB-SPECIES ....

AMERICA BEFORE THE NEGRO CAME .
SLAVERY UNDER THE SPANIARD

SLAVERY UNDER THE PORTUGUESE: BRAZIL

SLAVERY UNDER THE DUTCH ....

SLAVERY UNDER THE FRENCH

HAITI .......

SLAVERY UNDER THE BRITISH : BERMUDAS, BARBADOS
LEEWARD ISLANDS, ETC. ....

JAMAICA .......

BAHAMAS, WINDWARD ISLANDS, TRINIDAD, BRITISH
HONDURAS, AND BRITISH GUIANA .

THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND

SLAVERY UNDER THE DANES: THE MORAVIAN MISSION

SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES: I .

SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES: II.

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO IN THE UNITED
STATES: HAMPTON INSTITUTE

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO : TUSKEGEE

THE NEGRO IN ALABAMA ....

THE INDUSTRIAL SOUTH ....

THE MISSISSIPPI SETTLEMENTS

LOUISIANA ......

THE NEGRO AND CRIME ....

THE NEGRO AS CITIZEN ....

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

INDEX

PACK
I

31
36

•77
no

130
173

206
239

294

338
344
352
368

386

398
421

432
440
448
456
469
483

485

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

NO. TITLE SOURCE PAGE

The Negro in West Africa . . Painting by the Author Frontispiece

1 The Australoid type . ... Photo by Messrs. Kerry and Co.,

Sydney . . . . i

2 The typical Negro . ... Photo by the late Samuel Hall . 3

3 The Caucasian type (an Anglo-Saxon American) . . ... 4

4 The Caucasian type (an Englishman, early

twentieth century) . ... Photo by Messrs. Elliott and Fry . 6

5 The Mongolian type (a Chinaman from Eastern

China) . . ... Per Mr. Leo Weinthal . . . 7

6 Drawing showing the foot of a European as com-

pared with that of a Forest Negro and an

Australasian Negro . . . By the Author . ... 8

7 Skull of male Bushman . ... Royal College of Surgeons . 11

8 Skull of male Oceanic Negro . . Photo by Mr. Henry George, Royal

College of Surgeons . . .12

9 Skull of male United States Negro . . . Photo by National Museum, Wash-

ington . . . . 12

10 Skull of Ashanti Negro, W.C. A. . . . Photo by Mr. Henry George, Royal

College of Surgeons . . . ' 3

n Skull of Mafibettu Negro, North Central Africa. Photo by Mr. Henry George, Royal

College of Surgeons . . .13

12 Skull of male Mulatto, U.S.A. . . . Photo by National Museum, Wash-

ington . . . . 14

13 Skull of female Negro, U.S.A. . . Photo by National Museum, Wash-

ington . . . . 14

14 Skull of Englishman . ... Photo by Royal College of Surgeons 15

15 Skull of female Mulatto, U.S.A. . . . Photo by National Museum, Wash-

ington . . . . 15

16 An Australasian Negro from New Ireland . . Per Royal Anthropological Institute. 17

17 Oceanic Negro (male) from the Solomon Islands Photo lent by R. Anthropolog. Inst. 18

18 Oceanic Negro (female) from Solomon Islands . Royal Anthropological Institute . 18

19 Asiatic Negroes : Andamanese from near Port

Blair, South Andaman Island . . . Photo by Mr. E. H. Man . . 19

20 The wife of a Hottentot chief (actually an example

of the Strandlooper, pre-Bushman type of

South Africa . . ... Photo by late W. C. Palgrave . . 20

21 A Bushman of the "Strandlooper" type . . Per Messrs. Hutchinson and Co.,

Paternoster Row .. . .20

n A Bushman of Cape Colony . . . Photo lent by Royal Anthropological

Institute . • . . 21

23 A Xamakwa Hottentot hybrid , . . Per Royal Geographical Society . 22

24 A Berg- Damara (Haukwoin) negro, S.W. Africa Per Royal Geographical Society . 23

25 The typical Bantu ^egro (a Muh^rero : S.W.

Africa) . . ... Photo by late W. C. Palgrave . . 24

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

NO. TITLE

26 A Zulu negro, Natal

27 Skull of young male negroid found in the Grimaldi

Caves, French Riviera .

28 Kader youth (negroid of Southern India) .

29 Paniyan woman (Southern India) .

30 A Puliyar boy (negrito of Southern India) .

31 A Congo Pygmy (Bambute)

32 The typical Ethiopian (Hadendowa)

$^ A Siou Amerindian

34 An Arawak Amerindian .

35 Carib Amerindians

36 An Amerindian of South Central Brazil

37 A wild Ona Indian of Tierra del Fuego

38 A Canary Islander

39 Captain Sir John Hawkins .

40 A Fula from the West African hinterland .

41 The entrance to the cathedral at Panami. .

42 Negro gangs of labourers constructing the

drainage of Colon

43 Negro quarters at Rio Grande, Panami, Canal

44 Dominican types : Amerindian-Spanish

45 An American customs officer, Santo Domingo

46 A fort and customs-house on the Dominican

Haitian frontier

47 A view in the mountains of Santo Domingo

48 In Santo Domingo

49 Cereus triangularis: a tree cactus of Santo

Domingo . . . .

50 A negro of Santo Domingo

51 A group of *' Indios," Cuba

52 The *' bohio" or hut of an " Indio "

53 A Spanish Cuban . . . .

54 A Spanish Cuban with two Cuban ladies .

55 A Cuban lady of Spanish-French parentage

56 A Cuban mulatto

57 A negro overseer, Cuba .

58 Negro teamsters, Cuba

59 A Cuban negro . . .

60 Negroes at work in a Cuban sugar plantation
6t Cuban negroes during their midday rest

62 The house of a Spanish settler in Cuba

63 A typical American in Cuba

64 The entrance to the harbour of Havana

65 An avenue of royal palms

66 Cereiis cacti in the Cuban lowlands .

67 A river in Eastern Cuba .

68 The pavement of Cuban streets before the

United States came on the scene .

69 ''Since the Americans came'': a street in

Cuban town . . . .

SOURCE PAGE

Photo by Mr. S. S. Watkinson . 25

By permission of H.S.H. the Prince

of Monaco . . . 26

Per Mr. J. R. Henderson, Govern

ment Museum, Madras
Per J. R. Henderson, Government

Museum, Madras
Photo by J. R. Henderson, Govern

ment Museum, Madras
Photo by the Author
Per Messrs. Erdmann and Schanz

Balham
Per Southern Workman .
Photo by Sir Everard Im Thurn

»i

»f

Photo by Herr Walter Garbe
Photo by C. W. Furlong
Photo by the Author

Photo bv the late Arthur
Photo by the Author

>*
If

If
If
II
II

11 f f
II f I
II II

ft
ft
ft

II
II
II

II
It

Photo lent by Vice-Consul Theodore

Brooks
Photo by the Author

Photo by the Author

II
It
It
II
If
It
It
II
II
It

II
11
II
II
II
II
II
11
II
II

ft
ft
If

It
It
It
i«
ft
It
II

Ffoulkes

27
27

28
29

3»
32
33
34
35
37
39
4'
43

49
50
51

5»
52
53

54
55

57
58
59
60

61
61
62

65
6b

67
68

71
73
74

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

XXI

NO. TITLE

70 A portion of Ihe great esplanade of Western

Havana . . ...

71 The coast of Brazil . ...

72 Sketch map of Brazil . ...

73 The Angolan element in the Brazilian negro

population . . ...

74 Brazilian negro workers in diamond-mining ex-

cavations . . ...

75 N'egro type from the Upper Congo (Bangala)

76 A Bahian negro . . ...

77 An old Brazilian ex-slave, Bahia

78 A negress of Angola origin, Eastern Brazil

79 A Brazilian landscape in the vicinity of Rio de

Janeiro . . ...

80 A Fula of the type trading between West Africa

and Brazil . ...

81 Bahia, East Brazil . ...

82 A negress of Bahia . ...

83 \nsconde do Rio Branco, Prime Minister in

Brazil and Slavery reformer in 187 1

84 A ** Mameluco," or hybrid between Amerindian

and European . ...

85 In the forests of South Central Brazil

86 Tree ferns in a Brazilian forest

87 A school teacher and pupils : Minas Geraes

88 Brazilian negroes engaged in washing river-sand

for diamonds . . ...

89 Brazilian negroes starting on assailing voyage .

90 H. E. Senhor Nilo Pe9anha, President of Brazil

91 A ** Cafuzo," hybrid between Negro and Amer-

indian . . ...

92 A Botocudo Amerindian of Eastern Brazil .

93 On the banks of the Amazons River

94 Elmina Castle : Gold Coast

95 A Koromanti free negro (eighteenth century)

96 On the Coppename, in the land of many rivers,

Dutch Guiana . . ...

97 Breaking the joints and mutilating negro slaves :

Dutch Guiana (eighteenth century)

98 A mulatto woman of Dutch Guiana

99 An octoroon girl, Dutch Guiana (eighteenth

century) . . ...

100 One of the atrocious methods of killing slaves

(eighteenth century) . ...

loi Atypical Dutch Guiana planter of the eighteenth

century . . ...

102 A Bush negro of the Saramaka tribe, Dutch

Guiana . . . . .

103 Bush negroes of the Aukan tribe, Dutch Guiana

104 A European volunteer in the ser\'ice of the Dutch

West India Company (eighteenth century)

105 An important street in Paramaribo .

SOURCE

PAGE

Photo by the Author
Photo lent by Royal Geographical
Society

Photo by the late George Grenfell

Photo by Mr. Hugh Pearson
Photo by the late George Grenfell
Photo lent by D. O'SuUivan-Beare

»»

})

f I

Photo by Messrs. Spiller

Photo by Capt. W. Stanley
Photo lent by Royal Mail S.N. Co.
Photo lent by D. O'SuUivan-Beare

From a print by W. Welstead .

Photo by Sir Everard Im Thum
Photo by Mr. W. S. Barclay per

Royal Geographical Society
Photo by Mr. A. Landstrom per Royal

Geographical Society .
Photo by Mr. Hugh Pearson

Photo lent by Mr. R. Casement
Photo by Herr Walter Garbe
Photo by Sir Benjamin Stone

Royal Geographical Society
Photo by Capt. T. C. Hincks
After Stedman, 1798

Photo by Dr. H. van Cappelle

After Stedman, 1798

Photo by Dr. H. van Cappelle

After Stedman, 1798

f»

Photo by Dr. H. van Cappelle
>i ») ft

After Stedman, 1798

Photo by Dr. H. van Cappelle

per

77
79

83
84

8S
86

94
95
96

lOI

102
103

104

106

107

108

no
III

112

114

"5
116

117

118
119

120
121

xxu

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

NO. TITLE

06 Nickerie, an important town in Western Surinam

07 The workaday costume of the coloured women

of Dutch Guiana . ...

08 Neg"ro rowers, Dutch Guiana

09 Neg'ro women, Dutch Guiana

10 A Chinaman of Dutch Guiana married to a

neg-ress . . ...

1 1 The " Granman " or chief of the Aukan tribe of

Bush negroes . ...

12 A Ceiba tree {Bombax) . ...

13 The latest fashions in Surinam

14 The town of Castries, St. Lucia

15 A mulatto woman, Martinique

16 Cattle of Northern Haiti . ...

1 7 French neg-roes dancing on a fdte day (eighteenth

century) , . ...

18 Quiet industry : a French-speaking negress

seamstress in Louisiana

19 A French-speaking- Louisiana negro and his

grandchild . . . .

20 An earthly paradise : Haiti at its best

21 A waterfall in the grounds of an old French

plantation in Haiti

22 A typical half-breed of distinction : General

Alexandre Petion (afterwards President)

23 In the back yard of an old French country house

Diquiny , . . .

24 The quiet garden of an old French town house

Haiti . . . .

25 Toussaint Louverture, about 1795 .

26 Port-au-Prince from the shore .

27 Toussaint Louverture, about 1799 .

28 In the splendid mountains of Haiti

29 Toussaint Louverture, about 1802 .

30 The handwriting and signature of Toussaint

Louverture . . . .

31 Jean-Jacques Dessalines .

32 The national emblems of Haiti

33 General Henri Christophe (afterwards Henri I)

34 Jean-Pierre Boyer, President of Haiti

35 General- Pierrot, President of Haiti

36 General Soulouque (afterguards Faustin I)

37 Fabre Geffrard, President of Haiti .

38 Sylvain Salnave, President of Haiti

39 Michel Domingue, President of Haiti

40 General Boisrond-Canal, President of Haiti

41 General Salomon, President of Haiti

42 General F. D. Legitime, President of Haiti

43 General Hyppolite, President of Haiti

44 General Tir^sias Sam, President of Haiti .

45 General Nord Alexis, President of Haiti .

46 H. E. Antoine Simon, President of the Haitian

Republic . . . . .

SOURCE

Photo by Dr. H, van Cappelle .

Photo by Mr. J. R. W. Pigott .
Photo by Dr. H. van Cappelle .

»i

f I

»»

Photo by the Author

Photo by Mr. J. R. W. Pigott .

Photo by Mr. A. E. Aspinall

. • • •

Photo by the Author

PAGE

122

123

124
124

'25

126
127

128

13'
>32

'35

From an old French picture in Bryan
Edwards' History of the West Indies 1 36

Photo by the Author

ft
»»

Photo by H. E. Dr. H. W. Furniss

Photo by the Author

f f

From an old engraving

Photo by the Author

From Capt. Marcus Rainford's

tory of St, Domingo
Photo by the Author
From an old engraving

His

Photo by Duperty and Co., Jamaica

137

138
'39

140

141

>44

M5
149

»53

158

159
160

160

161

162

163

164

■6s
•65

Photo by H.E. Dr. H. W. Furniss,
U.S.A. Minister . . . 166

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

XX a 1

Ma TITLE

147 A French neg^ro (Martinique)

148 Lyc^e Carnot, Guadeloupe

149 A Martinique neg^ress

150 A Guiana ne§^ress

151 A West Indian sunset

152 The new cathedral, Port-au-Prince, Haiti .

153 In the streets of Port-au-Prince

154 The President's palace, Port-au-Prince

155 The statue to Dessalines .

156 Inside the cemetery, Port-au-Prince

157 The principal market, Port-au-Prince

158 An open-air market, Haiti

159 A church and seminary, Port-au-Prince

160 A restaurant by the seashore near Port-au-Prince

161 The mountains and pine woods of Haiti

162 A Nopalea tree cactus : Haiti

163 A Pachyceretis cactus : Haitian lowlands .

164 The Santo Doming^o end of Lake Azuey .

165 A wild boar : Lake Azuey

166 Pinus bahamensis

167 A Haitian peasant on his way to market .

168 •* Joseph," maStre d'hStel .

169 A Haitian peasant woman and h^ children

170 A well- to-do farmer, Haiti

171 A Haitian country house of the middle-class type

172 A " Vudu " house, Haiti .

173 ** V^udu " drums, Haiti

174 The base of a fetish tree, on which votive offer

ing^s are placed

175 The real article I A priestess of the Obia (Lagos

hinterland) . . . .

176 Haitian cattle . . . . *

177 The way the Haitians restrain their domestic

pig-s from wandering

178 A fife-and-drum band, Haiti

179 A Haitian policeman

180 A ramshackle Haitian dwelling defended by

cacti

181 Peasants' huts, Haiti . ...

182 A Haitian mason . ...

183 The Government secretariats and offices, Port-

au-Prince . . ...

i&t Outside the cemetery, Port-au-Prince (graves of
political martyrs) . ...

185 A portion of the town of Port-au-Prince burnt

down by incendiary fires

186 Cape Coast Castle, Gold Coast

187 Negroes from northern territories of Gold Coast

188 A negro homestead in the Bermuda Islands

189 Bridgetown and the bridge, Barbados

190 A Kanjaga negro, from the Gold Coast hinter-

land . . . ...

191 An old-time English planter's mansion in Bar-

bados . . ...

SOURCE

Photo by Mr. J. R. W. Pigott
Photo by the Bishop of Nassau
Photo by the Author

t»

»»

Photo by Mr. S. Owen .
Photo by the Author

»» 11 11 •

»» 11 »»

»» ti II

II II II •

Photo by Dr. H. W. Fumiss, U

Minister
Photo by the Author

Photo by J. Roland, per Royal Geo-
graphical Society
Photo by Capt. T. C. Hincks

■ • •

Photo by the Author

Photo by Sergeant A. Stiles, R.A.

Photo by the Author

S.A.

PAGE
168
169

170
171

'73

174

175
176

177
178
179
180
181
182

'83
184

185
186

187

188

189

190

191

193

>93
194

'95
196

196
'97

»97
198
199

200

201
202

203

204

205

206
207
209
212

213

214

xxiv THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

NO. TITLE SOURCE PAGE

192 A windmill and sug-ar factory, Barbados . . Photo by the Author . .215

193 The white roads of busy Barbados . . ,, >, »» . .216

194 A seventeenth-century church in Bridgetown,

Barbados . . •••)»»»*> ... 217

195 ** Busy Barbados ": going to market . . ,, ,, ,, . . . 217

196 Freedom and industry : a woman worker in the

fields, Barbados . . ■ • m ^ m . . 2t8

197 A Barbadian private of the West India Regi-

ment . . ... Photo lent by Sir Sydney Olivier . 218

198 A bandsman, West India Regiment . . Photo by Mr. A. E. Aspinall . .219

199 ** A stake in the country" . . . Photo by the Author . .219

200 ** Busy Barbados " : going to market with

poultry . . •••»)!*)) ... 220

201 The House of Assembly in Bridgetown, Bar-

bados • . • • • »i II If ... 221

202 Codrington College, Barbados . . . Photo by Mr. A. E. Aspinall . 222

203 ** Busy Barbados'*: selling island pottery . Photo by the Author . . . 223

204 ** Breezy Barbados" . . • • i* n n • • •. 224

205 '* Breezy Barbados." (The person despoiled of his

hat by Barbadian zephyrs is Mr. A. Greaves,
the author's photographic and general assist-
ant throughout his American journeys) . . ,, ,, ,, . . . 225

206 Bust of Sir Conrad Reeves, formerly Chief

Justice . . • • • II 11 II ... 226

207 President Arthur Barclay, of Liberia . . Photo by Mr. Raphael, African World 227

208 " Busy Barbados " — the harbour of Bridgetown. Photo by the Author . . . 227

209 A sugar mill and ox-team with sugar cane : St.

Christopher . . ... Photo by Mr. A. E. Aspinall . 229

210 A negro sailor of St. Kitts . . Photo per Bishop of Nassau . . 230

211 In lovely Dominica . ... Photo by Mr. A. E. Aspinall .231

212 The principal land-crab of the West Indies . By the British Museum, Natural

• History . ... 232

213 Two women and a child of Dominica, showing

various degrees of intermixture between Carib,

Frenchman, and negro . ... Photo by Mr. W. H. Fenton, per

Douglas Young, Esq., CM. G. 233

214 A Carib- neg'roid woman of Dominica . . Photo lent by Douglas Young, Esq. ,

234

235

237
240

241

C.M.G.

215 A lane in Dominica . ... Photo by Mr. A. E. Aspinall

216 Market square, Roseau . ... Photo by Mr. W. H. Fenton

217 The district of Moneague . . . . Photo by the Author

218 A typical landscape in beautiful Jamaica . . ,, ,, ,,

219 The Treaty of Peace between the British and

the Maroons, 1738 . ... From an engraving by Brunyas in

Bryan Edwards's History of the
West Indies ^ 1798 . . 243

220 The Maroon settlement of Trelawney Town, in

North-West Jamaica . ... After Bryan Edwards's History of the

West Indies ... . . 244

221 In a Maroon town, Jim Crow country. East

Jamaica . . ... Photo by the Author . . . 245

222 Maroons of Eastern Jamaica . . . ,, ,, ,, . . . 247

223 Stately Georgian buildings of Spanish Town . ,, ,, ,, . . . 248

224 The Government buildings in Spanish Town,

and Rodney's guns . . ..nun . . . 249

225 The Pimento tree of Jamaica . . . Photo by Mr. W. Harris, F.L.S. 250

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

XXV

NO. TITLE

226 An old mansion of slavery days, Northern

Jamaica . ...

227 Negro peasant women, Jamaica

228 The ruins of Jamaica . ...

229 A ne^^ro peasant returning from market, Jamaica

230 The back yards of negro houses in a small

northern town of Jamaica

231 Sunday in a small Jamaican country town .

232 A Jamaica constable of the rural constabulary .
2^3 The new wealth of Jamaica : a banana planta-
tion . . . ...

234 The home of a prosperous negro planter,

Jamaica . . ...

235 A' Jamaican negro farmer and bee-keeper .

236 A street in Kingston, Jamaica

237 A country school : Central Jamaica

238 In the Blue Mountains of Jamaica .

239 A Teshi woman : Eastern Gold Coast

240 A Moshi woman : Northern Gold Coast

241 The Omanhin of Insuain, a neg'ro chieftain of

the borders of Togoland, descended from
typical slave-dealing potentates .

242 A Jamaican neg'ro artisan

243 A negro homestead in North Jamaica

244 One of the five hundred waterfalls of Jamaica

245 Ferns in Jamaica

246 A Jamaican peasant woman offering author a

large bunch of orchids .

247 Crinoids fished up on north coast of Jamaica

248 A wild banana . . . .

249 Logwood trees in the Jamaica spring*

250 The lovely Gliricidia tree .

251 A "poor relations" tree

252 A Bromeliaceous epiphyte growing on tree trunk

Jamaica . . .

253 A road in Western Jamaica

254 A tiny harbour on the north coast of Jamaica

255 Cayman Islanders : Grand Cayman

256 An old fort, dating from the early eighteenth

century, New Providence Island, Bahamas

257 A street in Nassau, showing Christchurch

Cathedral . . .

258 The Governor of the Bahama Islands on his way

to open House of Assembly
^59 ^ good type of negro seaman : Bahama Islands

260 A group of negiD peasant women and children,

Bahama Islands

261 A neg'ro dwelling on a country road. New

Providence Island

262 A comer of the exterior of the coloured people'

church of St. Agnes, Nassau

263 Interior of St. Agnes' Church, Nassau

264 A sponge-drying yard, Nassau

265 A sponge cart in the streets of Nassau

266 A Sisal fibre plantation, Bahama Islands .

267 The ** grape-fruit " , . .

SOURCE

Photo by the Author
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Photo by Capt. T. C. Hincks
Photo by the Author

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Photo by Mr. Isaac N. Carvalho
Photo by His Honour G. S. S. Hirst

Photo lent by the Bishop of Nassau
Photo by the Bishop of Nassau .

Photo by Dr. Holly, Nassau
Photo by the Bishop of Nassau

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Photo by Sir Gilbert Carter, K.C.M.G
Photo by the Bishop of Nassau
Photo by Sir Gilbert Carter, K.C.M.G

PAGE

252

255
256

259
261

263^
265

267
269
270
271
273

275
275

276

277
280

281

282

283
284

285
286

287

288

289
290
291
292

294

29s

296
297

298

299

300

300
301
302

303
304

XXVI

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

NO. TITLE

268 An incipient hurricane . ...

269 The little ** Piton," St. Lucia Island

270 Kingston, St. Vincent, Windward Islands .

271 The Carenage, Grenada, Windward Islands

272 By the Grand £tang, interior of Grenada Island

273 The negro soldier: a corporal of the British

West India Regiment ,

274 Off the north-west coast of Trinidad

275 A fruit-seller, Port of Spain, Trinidad

276 A negro hut, Trinidad

277 A negro coconut-seller in Trinidad .

278 Indian kulis, Trinidad

279 A cacao tree bearing pods of cocoa beans .

280 The shallow coasts of Western Trinidad .

281 Trees in Trinidad festooned with the Rhipsalis

** Mistletoe " cactus

282 The Belize River, British Honduras

283 A mahogany tree

284 A hybrid between Negro and Amerindian, re

sembling the Black Caribs

285 A typical Boviander, British Guiana

286 A Boviander, same as No. 285

287 A Boviander of British Guiana

288 East Indian kuli women .

289 East Indian kulis, British Guiana .

290 A young woman of British Guiana, three-quarter

Negro, one-quarter Chinese
A hybrid between Negro and East Indian

Guiana . . . .

Granville Sharp . . . .

Thomas Clarkson
William Wilberforce
Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Bart. .

296 Christiansborg Castle, Gold Coast .

297 Dr. Edward Wilmot Blyden

298 Charlotte-Amalia, capital of St. Thomas .

299 Leonard Dober, one of the two first Moravian

missionaries to settle in the West Indies

300 Friedrich Martin, first Moravian missionary to

explore Dutch Guiana .

301 Cotton . . . .

302 Isaac T. Hopper : a typical early nineteenth

century Quaker and anti-slavery reformer

303 William Lloyd Garrison .

304 John P. Hale : one of the anti-slavery Kansas

agitators . . . .

305 Harriet Beecher-Stowe (about 1852)

306 Charles Sumner . . . .

307 John Brown*s portrait and autograph

308 Abraham Lincoln

309 President Lincoln's signature to the Proclama

tion of Emancipation

310 A graveyard of Federal and Confederate soldiers

at Hampton . . . .

311 The unregenerate type of slavery days (

Virginian negro)

291

292

293
294

295

SOURCE

Photo by the Author
Photo by Mr. A. E. Aspinall
Photo lent by Mr. A. £. Aspinall
Photo by Mr. A. E. Aspinall

Photo lent by Mr. A. E. Aspinall
Photo by the Author

Photo lent by the Colonial Office
Photo by Messrs. Duperty
Photo by the Author

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Per Mr. A. E. Aspinall .
Photo by the Author

Photo by Sir Everard Im Thurn
Photo by Mr. James Rod way .

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Photo lent by the Colonial Office
Photo by Mr. James Rod way .

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Print lent by Religious Tract Society

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Photo by Capt. T. C. Hincks .
Photo by the African World
Photo by Mr. A. E. Aspinall

Photo by the Author

Photo lent by Southern Workman

PAGE

306

307

308

309

310
312

3^3
3»4
3»5
3»7
3'8
3»9

320

322
324

325
328

329

33^

3Z3

334

3^
339

340
341
342

345
347
348

350

35 »

353

355
359

360
361

363
364
365

366

369

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

XXVll

3^7

329
330

331

1^2

m
334
335
336

337
3^
339
340

Mi
342

343

345

346

347
348

349

350
35t
352
353

354

NO. TITLE

312 The Persimmon tree {Diospyros virginiana)

313 The typical Bayou of the Southern States .

314 A " Great House " of former days and its setting*

of live oaks . . . .

315 Cotton bales grown by free negroes, collected

for transport . . . .

316 General Samuel Chapman Armstrong •
3(7 Colonel Robert Gould Shaw

318 Dr. Hollis Burke Frissell .

319 "Late for lunch": Hampton Institute, i p.m.

320 The Principars house, Hampton
331 A real neg'ro minstrel

322 A neg'ro student of Hampton

323 Hampton students at their meals .

324 A neg'ro student in his room at Hampton .

325 A Hampton woman-student in her room

326 An Amerindian woman-student, Hampton In-

stitute . . . .

In St. Helena Island, South Carolina
Types of negro students : Atlanta University,

Georg'ia . ...

Professor W. £. Burghardt DuBois
One of the few surviving* Maskogi Amerindians

of westernmost Alabama
Mr. Lewis Adams, the negro tinsmith who helped

to found Tuskegee Institute
The "frame houses and ruined chapel" which

formed the commencement of the Tuskegee

Institute . . ...

Booker Taliaferro Washington, LL.D., Harvard
A Tuskegee student . ...

The Carnegie Library : Tuskegee Institute
The Librarian at Tuskegee and his assistant
A practical field lesson in agriculture
The creamery and milk -testing school at Tuskegee
An octoroon parlourmaid trained at Tuskegee
An octoroon student at Tuskegee .
Dr. Robert E. Park
Professor G. W. Carver .
Major J. B. Ramsay, Tuskegee
A prosperous negro farmer of Alabama
A negro farmer of Alabama exhibiting at a

county fair . . . .

The dreadful roads of Alabama
Mr. T. M. Campbell, agricultural instructor
In lovely Alabama : " the roads are often shallow

watercourses"
Mr. T. M. Campbell giving advice to a negro

farmer on maize-growing
A negro's log cabin, Alabama
A negro wagg^oner, Alabama
A negro's cow, Alabama .

A negro school and church, backwoods of Alabama
A small country school for negro children,

.-\labama . . ...

355 A negro minister at a camp meeting

SOURCE

Photo bv the Author

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Per Miss Grace Bigelow- House

Per W. E. B. DuBois

Per Southern Workman .

Per Dr. Booker Washington

Photo by the Author
Per Tuskegee Institute .
Photo by the Author
Per Tuskegee Institute .

Photo by the Author

Per Tuskegee Institute .

Photo by the Author

Per Tuskegee Institute .

II II II

Photo by the Author

II II II
II 11 II
II II II

II II

Per Tuskegee Institute

PAGE

377
378

381

384

387
388

389
390
391
392
393
394
395
395

396
398

400
401

404
405

406
407

408
409
410
411
412
414

415
416

417
418

419

420
421
422

423

425
426

427
428

428

429
429

xxviii THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

HO. TITLE

356 The former residence of a governor of Alabama,

now owned and inhabited by a coloured mer-
chant, born the gfovernor's slave .

357 In the pine- woods of Alabama

358 ** Spanish Moss" in the mystic dream-woods of

the Southern States . ...

359 ** L'Homme k tout faire" : a negfro bootmaker,

trained at Tuskegfee . ...

360 *' L'Homme k tout faire": a coloured store-

keeper, Alabama . ...

361 A poster advertisement of a travelling' negro

theatrical company . ...

362 " L'Homme k tout faire " : a negro electrical

engineer, trained at Tuskegee

363 Untidy America : towns along the Mississippi

railroads . . ...

364 Isaiah Montgomery . ...

365 The church and part of the township : Mound

Bayou, Miss. . . ...

366 Loading waggons with cotton grown by negro

farmers at Mound Bayou

367 A negro homestead. Mound Bayou .

368 "Palaces and mud" (Greenville, Miss.)

369 Cotton bales awaiting shipment — banks of the

Mississippi . . ...

370 Three generations of Louisiana negroes .

371 A negro centenarian : Louisiana

372 The ** Great House " of a Louisiana sugar-plan-

tation . . . . «

373 The negro and his mules — carting the sugar-

cane . . ...

374 A negro plantation foreman

375 Outside a sugar manufactory : Louisiana .

376 The Pliocene, evergreen dream-woods of Loui-

siana . . ...

377 The Author on the Mississippi

378 The hideous head-dress of the Louisiana ne-

gresses . . ...

379 Louisiana negroes . ...

380 New Orleans . . ...

381 '* Uneducated semi-savages"

382 Tired wayfarers: negro labourers tramping in

search of employment • ...

383 ** Possible petty larceny'* .

384 " L'Homme k tout faire " : negroes laying down

a tramway in Florida . ...

385 Once a slave : Virginia . ...

386 A dear old negro nurse or "mammy" of the

ideal type : Virginia ...

387 *' L'Homme k tout faire": a negro mason,

Virginia . . ...

388 " L'Homme k tout faire " : a negro coachman in

Washington . . ...

389 "L'Homme k tout faire": a negro street

attendant, Washington . ...

390 Brobdingnagian New York

SOURCE

Photo by the Author
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Photo by the Author

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Photo by the Author

Photo per Sou/hem Workman

Photo by the Author

Photo per Southern Workman

Photo by Mr. A. Greaves

Photo by the Author

PAGE

433
434
436

437
438

439

440

441

442

443

444
445

446

449
450

45 »

45^
45^
453

454
456

457
458
459
463

464
467

469
470

47 «
472

473

474
475

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

XXIX

MO. TITLE

391 Awatting^ the suffrage, which if hard work counts

for anything the negress richly deserves .

392 A typical mulatto farmer of the Southern

United States . . . . '.

393 A sketch-map showing approximate distribution

of negroes, etc., in the United States
3^ The negro and the Stars and Stripes

SOURCE

Per Tuskegee Institute

)}

Lent by U.S.A. Government
Per Southern Workman .

PAGE

• 477
. 478

. 479
. 481

LIST OF MAPS

(IN ADDITION TO THE SKETCH-MAPS IN THE TEXT)

I. A Map of the Greater Antilles and Bahamas

. Opposite page 46

2. ,, „ Lesser Antilles ; of Trinidad, Barbados, the Guianas, and
of British Honduras . . . . . . .

i»

228

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

CHAPTER I
THE NEGRO SUB-SPECIES

THE genus Homo has but one existing species: Homo sapiens. And this
species (which according to the latest hypotheses of palxontologists may
tw two or three hundred thousand years old) is fairly divisible into four sub-
species, all of which are so fertile
in their cross-breeding with one
another that they have in the
course of time given rise to many
transitional races and interme-
diary types : so much so that only
about two-thirds of the living
peoples of to-day can be de-
cisively allotted to one or other
of the definite sub-species. The
remaining third comprises the
long-establishedmongrel,hybrid
races formed by the mixture of
some or even of all of these
four divisions of the existing
human species. These distin-
guishable sub-species are —

(1) The AUSTRALOID. near-
est of all living men to the an-
cestral Human,to the palaeolithic
man of Europe and North
Africa ; and to the possible
parent thereof — Homo primi-
genius. the man of Neanderthal
and Heidelberg, of the Correze,

f ,. T^ ." J ^., ,. I. THB AUSTRALOID TYPE

ol bpy, Krapma, and Gibraltar. \i.ati«of GiibertRi«r Nonhun Au.ir«tia

(2) The Negro.

(3) The Caucasian or European, possibly descended in a direct line from
the Australold or basal stock, with which in any case it is closely allied.

(4) The MONGOLic or Asiamerican

2 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

An ancient mingling of (i), (2), (3), and (4) has produced the Polynesian
type of (2), (3), and (4) — (4) predominating — the Japanese, The Amerindian
peoples are mainly descended from an early branch of Mongolic mixed with
Proto-Caucasian ; there are many tribes in the Malay Archipelago that are half
Mongol, half Negrito (Asiatic Negro) ; the natives of Madagascar are a mixture
of Mongolic-Polynesian and Negro. Negrito and Australoid in varying degrees
•of intermixture have produced the Tasmanian negroids and the Papuans. The
aborigines of Ceylon (Veddahs) and India (Dravidians/Todas, etc.) are on the
borderland between Australoid and Caucasian with (here and there) a touch
of Negrito or Mongol. Some of the Central Asians or North Europeans are
Caucasians crossed with Mongols, the two strains being either evenly balanced
or one of them predominating. The proud peoples of Western and Southern
Europe and of North Africa, of Syria, Arabia, and Persia are principally com-
posed of Caucasian tinged very slightly or considerably with ancient or modern
Negro, or Australoid (Dravidian) blood; the warlike tribes of North-East Africa
are half Caucasian, half Negro. The very negro himself is scarcely of unmixed
sub-specific rank, except in his extreme Bushman-Hottentot, Pygmy, and West
African Forest types. Elsewhere a meandering rill of Caucasian — perhaps even
of Australoid — blood permeates Negro Africa and Negrito Asia.

The Australoid is characterised by a dark skin, a hairy body, black,
wavy head-hair, full beard, large teeth, a broad, curved nose, very projecting
brow-ridges, prognathous jaws, and a hypsiloid^ rather than a semicircular
palate. In the configuration and development of the brain, the heavy brow-
ridges, the proportions of the leg-bones, the spines of the neck-vertebrae, the
lumbar curve of the vertebral column, and the shape and proportions of the
foot,* the Australoid is slightly more ape-like than the other divisions of
Homo sapiens.

The Negro probably sprang from the basal Australoid stock and thus
inherited a dark-coloured skin, which in some developments of his sub-species
— Asiatic and African — becomes almost brownish or greyish black. But in
the very divergent Bushman branch of the Negro sub-species the skin colour is
a brownish yellow — almost a light olive-yellow among the Cape Colony Bush-
men— through which the mantling of the blood can be seen in the cheeks. It
is possible that the lighter pigmentation of the skin in the Bushmen is a feature
due to distinctive variation, and does not represent the original tint of the
primal negro. But that this tint was not the sooty black^ so characteristic of
the modern negroes in Africa and Asia is probable from the fact that most
negro babies are born with reddish-brown skins, and that this shade is the
commonest skin-colour among the Congo pygmies. In the pale-skinned negroes

^ i.e. shaped like a croquet hoop.

' The pithecoid foot is seen perhaps (so far as our very imperfect records go) in its most marked form
amongst the Australoid-Negroid natives of the Solomon Islands, and occasionally among the Australian
blacks ; while in a less extreme degree it is characteristic of the African pygmies and Forest negroes. In
this pithecoid form of foot the greatest breadth is not from the second joint of the big toe to the second
joint of the little toe, but across the tips of the toes. There is a distinct space between the big toe and
the next, and instead of the big toe making a marked angle at the inner edge of its second joint and
turning outwards towards the other toes, it is smaller in proportion (than the big toe of the European),
and is placed either in a straight line with the inner side of the heel or even turns markedly inwards.
The other toes are larger, longer, more separated, divergent, and projecting than with Europeans, and
the instep is Ites arched.

' Elsewhere I have written on this subject : " The skin colour of the Nilotic negro is dark almost
to blackness. That of the Forest negro tends rather towards chocolate-brown, while the skin colour of
the Pygmies is more usually * red ' (in the estimation of their darker neighbours) : in reality a warm
yellow-brown."

THE NEGRO SUB-SPECIES 3

there is often a dark streak down the centre of the abdomen. The skin of the
innersideofhand and foot is always paler — a pinkish yellow. Albinism is common
among negroes, producing a pinkish-white skin, red iris to the eyes, and yellow-
white hair. Another phase equally common is Xanthism, in which hair and skin
are tinged with yellow, and the iris of the eye is a pale yellow like that of a lion.
The Negro, however, is most marked out from the other sub-species of Homo

A Kiu niin rram Ihe Kru Csul, Lil»Hi

sapiens by his hair. On head and body alike the adult hair is coarse, and
tightly curled or kinky in spiral growths. It is without natural gloss or lustre,
and is of a dull black colour. Occasionally in the Pygmy or Forest races the
head-hair is brownish or greenish grey, or may even have a tinge of red.^ In

' It is «ilr>ordinary how in Noclh America and in the West Indies the cio&singof the N^io with
the " Nordic" (fair-haired) Caucasian brings out a tendency — deep-sealed in the Human species — to red
*«'. Innumerable negtoids in Anglo-Saxon America ha»e bright ted hair.

4 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

the Negro foetus the hair-follicle is only slightly curved. The hair of the negro
baby at birth grows almost straight and its transverse section is nearly round
throughout the length of the hair ; whereas after the child is a year old the
hairs, curled in several spirals, emerge at an oblique angle from the plane of
the skin surface, the hair-follicle in the epidermis is strongly curved, and a
transverse section of the hair near its emergence from the skin would be in the
form of a flattened ellipse. But the transverse section of the hair near its outer

extremity is almost circular. In the negro moustache the hairs are nearly if not
quite straight, and the yellowish, fleecy lanugo-like body-pile present in so
many adult male pygmies (and even in pygmy women and children) is either
straight or only slightly crimped. There is a further peculiarity of hair-growth
in the African negroes^ and more especially in the Bushmen : both on the head
and body the hair appears to grow in segregated groups, bands, or patches,

' This

THE NEGRO SUB-SPECIES 5

separated by bald areas or zigzag streaks. I write " appears/' because the hair-
follicles are in actuality evenly distributed ; but the hairs if short and very
tightly curled converge to one another in little islets or tufts. This is most
marked near the temples, and in the whiskers and abdominal hair of men. The
Southern Bushmen possess to an exaggerated degree this feature of the tightly
crimped, short head-hair growing in isolated tufts or rows ; but their more
northern examples scarcely differ in this respect from the normal negro type.
The segregation of the hair-tufts is a fairly constant feature throughout East
Africa, but is less observable (except on the body) among the Pygmies and
West African negroes.

Body-hair is present among all types of Negro at the armpits and pubes,
and is fairly abundant among the males of the West African and Pygmy
groups on the chest, abdomen, and front side of thighs and legs. No example
has been recorded among negroes of hair on the 6ack^ a simian feature confined
to sub-species (i) and (3).^ Amongst the Bushmen-Hottentots hair on the
body is entirely absent (except armpits and pubes), but beard and moustache
grow in all men over thirty years of age. The East African and Nilotic
Negroes are also rather hairless about the body.

The typical Negro skull is /ong^ and very prognathous — only less so than
in the Australoids. But with rare exceptions in the African negro and the
Asiatic negritos there is no prominence of the brow-ridges. These are un-
usually suppressed in the Bushman. In this point the Negro sub-species is
less pithecoid than the Australoid or the European. The forehead bulges
more than in other types of man. The nasal aperture is wide ; the nasal
bones are flatter and shorter than in Europeans.^ The nasal spine which sup-
ports the septum between the nostrils is poorly developed or even absent. The
nose itself is (in the pure negro) very flattened and depressed in the bridge, and
the a/a or nostrils are thick and almost raised to the level of the nose-tip in
extreme types. In this respect the Bushman is as primitive as other African
negroes, but in some examples the nose is proportionately smaller, though even
flatter than in the black negro ; this peculiarly flattened aspect of the Bushman
face is caused by the excessive prominence of the cheek-bones. In the Asiatic
negroes, the nose is flat and " African " among the Aeta of the Philippines and
the Samang of the Malay Peninsula ; but has a better-developed bridge among
the Andamanese and (extinct) Tasmanians, and also (but with many exceptions)
among the Solomon Islandens. In respect of nose development and shape it may
be said that the Negro is more pithecoid than any existing human race, except
the lowest types of Australoids.

In typical negro skulls the width across the brows (through the temples) is
markedly less — especially in women and children — than across the cheek-bones,
while at the same time the under-jaw is retreating and the chin small. This
configuration is (to our ideas of comely form) singularly unpleasing and gives
the negro face an almost hexagonal or pentagon shape instead of the European
oval. But it is a shape of face not at all uncommon in the inferior types of all
the other sub-species, though particularly marked in the African Negro and the
Bushman.

* Some Kafir men, however, are said to develop hair on the back. The western section of the
Kafir-Zulu group is very hairy for negroes.

^ The ordinary Bushman skull is less prognathous and is rounder (especially in the female) than that
of the long-headed black negro. Yet there are types of Bushmen and even Hottentots which exhibit an
Mlreme degree of prognathism. These may be survivals of the older " Strandlooper " race. See pp. 20-27.

'In several skulls from the Congo basin the nasal bones are fused into a single bone.

6 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

The upper lip in some Asiatic negroes, in the Congo pygmy and the West
African groups (especial)y the people of the Niger delta. Abeokuta, and Benin )
is long and even arched in outline, like the upper lip in the African anthropoid

apes. In such cases (where it is long and curved) its inner mucous surface is
but little exposed ; but in all African negroes and Bushmen the lower lip is
much everted, and in the great majority of the sub-species, in Asia as in Africa,
both lips are turned outward (exposing the mucous surface very considerably) in
marked contrast to the thin-lipped, close-mouthed Mongol or North European.

THE NEGRO SUB-SPECIES 7

Dark skin, squash nose, woolly hair, "blubber" lips, and "lark heel" — these are
the principal taunts flung at the Negro. The dark skin affects not the sculptor's
eye, but the other four points are the Negro's handicap in the competition for
the Beauty Prize at some future Interracial Olympiad. Greater refinement of
life will no doubt tend — is slowly tending — to modify or eliminate the elements
of facial ugliness; but the most effective method of doing so is crossing with
the Caucasian or even the Amerindian. Not, however, with the "Nordic"
Caucasian, but with the already slightly negrified races of the Mediterranean
countries, notably the Arab, Egyptian, and Berber.

The molar teeth of the Negroes are large, but the incisors and canines less
io than in the Australoids and some Europeans. The white, even, uninterrupted
teeth of the Negro races are one of their
beauties. Only in certain types of Nilotic
negro or negroid, like the Masai, Shiluk,
and Dinka, is this rule broken by a tendency
of the incisors to grow long and horse-like
or with spaces between them.

The palate of the Negro is rather more
hypsiloid than semicircular (as with the
European and Mongol), but this simian
feature is more marked in the Australoids.

In average height the African Negro
I'but not the Asiatic) is a taller type of man
than any other sub-species except the Cau-
casian and its Polynesian hybrid. The
tallest races (for tribal average) in the world
are of the negro stock (Eastern and Equa-
torial Africa) ; but at the same time the
Negro has produced (no doubt by partial
d^cneration) the smallest known human
types — the Congo pygmies, southern Bush-
men, and Asiatic negritos.

The Negro is proportionately broader
across the chest than the other human races
except the Caucasian and its hybrids, but
decidedly narrower across the pelvis, though frZ'^^ ^^^''VT i^'""

... -;, , , ,. . 1 , I A ChimiDiiui from Emun ChiM

this condition is sometimes disguised by the

excessive development of fat on the upper part of the thighs. The lumbar curve
of the vertebral column is less marked than in the European and Mongol, but
more so than in the more simian Australoid. The sacrum (coalesced, post-pelvic
vertebrse) is slightly narrower in the Negro than in the European, but is not
so narrow and pithecoid as is the sacrum of the Australoid. Negroes
(Asiatic as well as African, also Bushmen) commonly possess the "sacral
notch" — a simian feature very rare in Australoids and Europeans. (This
is a space or notch opposite the second vertebra of the sacrum, due to
its attenuation, which is particularly marked in the skeletons of apes and
monkeys.) The curvature of the sacrum in Asiatic and African Negroes
and in Bushmen is very slight, much less so, even, than in the Austra-
loids. In this point and in the broad shoulder-blade the Negroes are
more pithecoid than any other existing race, or even than the remains
of Homo primigenius : for the Australoids have a narrow scapula like

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

("I. FOOT OF EUROPEAS-

II CONGO PYGMY (I

that of Europeans or Mongols. The proportions of the pelvis and the
OS innominatum are very simian in the Bushmen ; less so in Asiatic
and African negroes and in Australoids. In the proportions of the broetd
shoulder-blade the Congo pygmy is the most ape-like of existing humans. In

THE NEGRO SUB-SPECIES 9

the angle of humeral torsion (motility of upper arm) the negro races are inferior
to the European but superior to the Australoids. The proportions of the leg-bones
in the African negro are slightly simian and in the Asiatic negroes those
of the arm-bones also. (Namely, the lower leg is proportionately longer in
comparison to the thigh and the upper arm shorter in relation to the lower
arm.)

The negro hands are small and the fingers short. Both hands and feet in
the Bushman are very small. Polydactylism (six fingers and six toes) is
perhaps commoner among negroes (especially in West and South Africa and in
the West Indies) than among the white or yellow peoples. In many cases the
extra toe or finger is so well formed and complete that at first sight there
is nothing abnormal in the appearance of the member; and the extra "seventh"
digit (at the outer edge of the hand or foot : not the real " first finger," the
" pre-poUex " or " pre-hallux ") usually occurs on both hands and both feet in
the same individual. [This feature is well illustrated in the Report on the
Bahama Islands by the Geographical Society of Baltimore.] In the West African
negro (and ancient European negroes) there is a considerable development of
heeP (backward prolongation of the os calcaneum). This is not a simian feature
but one that is ultra human. It does not seem to occur in the Asiatic negroes,
Bushmen, or Congo pygmies, but is observable in the plain-dwelling natives of
India. In the eastern Asiatic negroes the foot in the position and relative length
of the toes is as pithecoid as in some Australoids {vide pp. 8 and 2). The same
features occur among Congo pygmies and East and West Africans. Among the
Bushmen, Hottentots, and less frequently the north-east African negroids a
most distinctive and peculiar feature has been developed : steatopygia, or the
accumulation of gluteal fat to a degree (more especially in the women) which
makes the posterior jut out almost horizontally from the body. This develop-
ment, so far, is seldom recorded among Asiatic negroes^ or negritos (it is
essentially ««-simian) or among the typical negroes of Africa. There is a com-
mencement of it among the Congo pygmies, in men and women of the Nilotic
negroes or even the negroid Ba-hima, Somalis or Egyptians. It is occasionally
observed in American negroes. Bushman or Hottentot children are born
without any trace of it (ordinary negro children have an even slighter gluteal
development than occurs in Europeans of the same age), and in adult Bushman
or Hottentot males the development may be absent or in any case is far less
pronounced than in the women, with whom it amounts to a positive monstrosity.

In the external male and female genitalia the Negro sub-species has developed
peculiarities which are divergencies from the common human type but are not
simian features. It is not necessary to redescribe them here* in detail, but it
might be mentioned that the hypertrophy of the intromittent organ which is
characteristic of male negroes (perhaps not male Bushmen) — with a correspond-
ing exaggeration of the clitoris in the negress — is also met with in the Asiatic

^ The '* lark heel " is probably brought about by much walking on flat ground and is more observable
in Degrees living on the plains than in those inhabiting mountains.

' According to Carl Ribe {Zwei jahre unter den Kannibalen der Saiomo-Inseln)^ steatopygia occurs
among the Asiatic negroes of the northern Solomon Islands and in some examples is '* hottentotenartig."
E. H. Man records it among the female Andamanese, but leads one to infer that the deposit of fat is rather
on the lateral side of the thighs and hips and not on the buttocks. This lateral accumulation of fat is
characteristic of West African negresses.

* Vide for a sufficient summary of these points Morphology and Anthropology: a handbook for
students J by W. L. H. Duckworth, m.a. My statements are also based on information available in the
c Elections of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

lo THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

negro (Andamanese and North Solomon Islanders) and is in contrast to the very
moderate development of the same parts in the adjoining Australoids. Essen-
tially characteristic of the women among the Bushman- Hottentots, and (sporadi-
cally) of certain tribes in the South Central Congo, in portions of the Nile
Valley and East Africa is the " tablier Egyptien," a hypertrophy of the labia
minora of the vulva.

The cranial capacity of the average negro is distinctly higher than in
the Australoid (lowest of existing humans in that respect). The average is
about 1260 cubic centimetres in the Asiatic male negro, ijji ex. in the Bush-
man, and ij88 in the African male negro} In the male Australoid it is 12^^
C.C. In the Caucasian races the cranial capacity ranges in males from 1500
c.c. to 1600 C.C. ; in the Mongolic group from 1500 to 1580 c.c.

The average Negro brain is larger than the Australoid but smaller than that
of normal Europeans. The average weight of negro brains is about 1200
grammes. But the range of weights is extreme, from a recorded 974 gr. to
1445 gr- The American (U.S.A.) average would seem to be distinctly higher:
about 1300 gr. (stated at 133 1 by Parker in reference to Negro soldiers in the
War of Secession.* The " sulcus lunatus," a fissure in each lobe of the hinder
part of the brain (a feature very marked in apes and monkeys) is normally
present in Negro (and Australoid) brains, but is very rare in the pure Caucasian
race.

The iris of the Negro eye is dark brown, and the" white" or sclerotic is often
(as in apes) pigmented — a dull reddish yellow. But this is rather a character-
istic of the male, and of the lower types of negroes and Bushmen ; it is rarely
seen in women and never in children. Negro infants at birth and for a short
time afterwards have not infrequently a dark, greyish-blue iris. The plica

^ There is a considerable difference — from one to two hundred cubic centimetres — between the male
and female skull capacities in all races, not excepting the Negro. The cranial capacity of the female
Asiatic Negro falls as low as x 130 c.c. In a female Akka dwarf (Congo pygmy of Upper Welle River,
Equatorial Africa), it was only 1070 c.c. In female Bushmen, however, it is usually about 1260 c.c.
The lowest record among existing humans is a capacity of about 910 c.c for a female Veddah. The
skull capacity of Fithtcantkropos erectus is estimated (now) at over 900 c.c. ; of an adult male Gorilla
(highest record among the anthropoid apes) at 573 c.c.

Among the American and Sudanian negroes (males) the record rises as high as 1450 cc. But this
is markedly exceeded in two Negroid skulls found in the Grottos of Grimaldi (Maritime Alps : see p. 26)
and dating back to perhaps thirty thousand years ago, in which the skull capacity for the female was
1375 cc, and for the male 1580 cc.

Curiously enough, the cranial capacity of the Neanderthal Skull {Homo primigenius : presumably
a male) was as high as 1500 cc. (Dr. A. Keith, of the Royal College of Surgeons Museum, thinks it was
even higher), very much above the Australian male average; and the "La Chapelle" Neanderthaloid
skull, with an ape-like face, was 1626 cc in its cranial capacity. The lowest *' prehistoric" record is
the female Gibraltar skull, which was only 1080 cc (Dr. A. Keith.) But the Hominida required a rapid
and enormous brain development in their evolution to compete with other large mammals in the struggle
for existence and for world-wide distribution. Once the victory was won and Humanity acquired there
could be here and there stagnation or even very slight retrogression in brain development, while the rest
of the body was nevertheless being brought up to and maintained within the scope of the species Homo
sapiens,

^ The average weight of Australoid brains is guessed at 1185 grammes (Davis, quoted by Duckworth,
p. 433, Morphology and Anthropology), The average among the European races (with a very large
range) is probably I4CX> gr. The extremes recorded are 964 gr. and 1842 gr. It is thought that
Bismarck's brain would have weighed even more. His skull capacity was over 1900 cc ! The average
weight of the Asiatic and Eskimo- Mongol brain is probably very close to the Caucasian average, but
that of Amerindians is said to be a little lower. Duckworth considers the Eskimo average superior to
the Caucasian. The normal European range is between 1304 gr. and 1502 gr. Professor Waldeyer, of
Berlin, gave in 1894 an average weight of only 11 48 gr. for East African Negro brains. The Bushman
brain would appear to weigh scarcely more than 1260 gr. In all races there is a marked difference
in weight between male and female brains, that of the male being nearly 160 grammes heavier than the
female. This difference — not quite so great— would appear to exist between male and female negroes.

THE NEGRO SUB-SPECIES ii

semilunaris, a vertical fold of membrane immediately next to the lachrymal
caruncle at the inner corner of the eye, is more developed in Negroes (especially
Bushmen) and in Australoids than it is in the white races. It is the vestige of
the third eyelid (nictitating membrane) and is often considerably developed in
monkeys and other mammals, and is functional in birds and reptiles. In the
negro this plica semilunaris is usually a reddish brown and lends a rather reddish
tinge to the half-opened eye. The retractor oculis present in most monkeys and
other mammals also occurs occasionally in negroes, and never in the white race.
A striking peculiarity in the African Negro is the musky or goat-like smell
exhaled from the sweat, more especially from the axillary and inguinal glands.
The odour is markedly characteristic of the African (it has not hitherto been
recorded of the Asiatic negro); but also occurs to a much slighter degree in
Europeans and East Indians as an exhalation from the armpits (more especially).
Yet I would make bold to say that this skin odour is not as disgusting as that
which proceeds from heated, unwashed
Europeans and Asiatics. It is practi-
cally absent from many Africans who
keep their bodies constantly washed, I
mixed with many negro crowds and
assemblies in the United States and
scarcely once noticed any disagreeable
smell, for the negroes, like the indigenous
whites of the great American republic,
seem to be an inherently cleanly people.
I only detected disagreeable body odours
proceeding from the offensively dirty
Chinese travelling in the public cars, or
from newly landed immigrants in New
York.

From this review of the physical
features or peculiarities of the Negro
sub-species it will be gathered inferen-

lialty that he is a distinct improvement ' capeCoiony

on the Australoid in cranial development

and is less simian in all other classificatory points, except in the shape of the
shoulder-blade (which is very broad) and in the outline of the sacrum, which
in all negroes is very much less curved than in Australoids, Caucasians, and
.Mongols,

In the retention of the brow-ridges and the tendency to the development
of hair on the body (mostly in males) the Caucasian has remained more
generalised than the other sub-species, except the basal Australoid stock ; and
in the evolving of varieties (chiefly Nordic) with yellow, red, or brown
hair, and blue or grey eyes, the Caucasian is most aberrant, stands alone :
for all the other divisions of Homo sapiens have black or blackish-
brown' hair and a brown iris to the eye. The Caucasian also is the only
human race which in itself or in its hybrids with the other groups can
produce perfect beauty of facial outline according to the a:sthetic canons of
ihe Negro, Mongol, and Caucasian. Facially, the unmixed Mongol (a term

' Id some of the South American Amerindians, there is 'an underlying clement of red in the
haii-tint which produces sn elfect of colour like the pigmenl known as '' warm sepia." Reddish hair
occuiaaally appears in the Congo pj^mies, to say nothing of Negio hybrids.

12 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

which includes the Eskimo but not the Amerindian) is as ugly as the
Negro: uglier, indeed, to the eye of a European; for he has not the full,
melting, long-lashed eye of the African, the rich bronze skin, the splendid
physical proportions, and the frank, jolly look.' The Mongol has the hexagonal
face, the exaggerated cheek-bone and low-bridged nose of the lower types of

negroes, he has in some
of the south-east Asia-
tics a prehensile great
toe; and his want of
brow-ridges deprives his
moon-face of relief, ex-
pression,and the god-like
majesty of the handsome
European, Arab, or Pan-
jabi, or the virile deter-
mination of the negro
warrior. But the China-
man, Tibetan, Japanese,
Tartar, Samoyede, Ame-
rindian,and Eskimo have
the brains of a white man.
Intellectually they are —
let us say — twenty thou-

' " As to faces. Ihe peculiati-

ties ai the negro counlenance
are well known in caricalure ;
but > truer pattern may be seen
by those who wish to study it
■ny day among the statues of
the Egyptian rooms in ihe British
Museum : the lai^ gentle eye,
the full liut not over -protruding
lips, the rounded contour, and
the good-natured, easy, sensuous
expression. This is (he genuine
African model: one not nflen
to be met with in European or
American ihoroughfures, where
Ihe plastic African loo readily
■cquirei the careful look and even
the irregularity of (he features
(hat surround him ; bul which is
common enough in (he villages
and fields where he dwells after
his own fashion among his own
people: most common of all in
the tranquil seclusion and cun-
genial climate of a Surinam
plantation. There you tntiy
find, also, a type neither Asiatic
nor European, but distinctly
African ; wilh much of inde-
pendence and vigour in the male
physiognomy and something (hat
approaches, if it does not quite
reach, 1>eauly in (he female.
Ramescs and his queen were cast
in no other mould." (W. G. Hal-
9. SKULL OF MALB NBCRO, U.S.A. grave, Dutch Guitaia, 1876.)

THE NEGRO SUB-SPECIES

sand years ahead of the average negro in cranial capacity, and in volume,
weight, and convolutions of the brain. Physically (except for the aberrant
Eskimo) they are classed by some anatomists with the White sub-species,
from which they only differ in some slight facial deformity, in their relative
hairlessness of body, and lank, round-sectioned head-hair.

But evolution docs not always proceed slowly or at a uniform pace. Already
individual Africans or Aframeri-
cans of unmixed negro blood ;
or Negroid hybrids with the
Mediterranean White man or the
Nordic rulers of the world, have
shot far ahead of their grand-
father the paleolithic savage,
and {if they could be placed on
the dissect! ng-table) would re-
veal an extreme of brain de-
velopmen t which would ran k
them with the average European
or Asiatic.

The author of this book in
his work on British Central
Africa, written some years ago,
ventured to make these remarks
on the Negro sub-species:—" He
is a line animal, but in his wild
stale exhibits a stunted mind
and a dull content with his sur-
roundings which induces mental
stagnation, cessation of all up-
ward progress, and even a retro-
gression towards the brute. In
some respects the tendency of
the negro for several centuries
past has been an actually retro-
grade one. As we come to read
ihe unwritten history of Africa
by researches into languages,
manners, customs, traditions, we
seem to see a backward rather
than a forward movement going
on for some thousand years past,
a return towards the savage and
even the brute. I can believe it
possible that had Tropical Africa
been more isolated from contact
with the rest of the world and
cut off from the immigration of
ihe Arab and the European,
the purely negro races, left to
themselves, so far from advanc-
ing towards a higher type of

WcuCouiorAMca

H THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

humanity, might have actually reverted by degrees to a type no longer human,
just as those great apes' lingering in the dense forests of Western Africa have

become in many
respects degraded
types that have
known better days
of larger brains,
smaller tusks, and
stouter legs."

There is exag-
geration in this view-,
no doubt, and suffi-
cient emphasis is not
laid on the much
earlier regeneration
of the black races
of Africa by the
influence spreading
southwards of the
prehistoric Cauca-
sians of the Mediter-
ranean and the his-
toric Egyptian, the
last-named being the
foremost redeemer
ij. SKOLL OF MALE MULATTO U.S.A. of thc Africau. Yet

it is significant that
the ancient negroid
remains of Southern
France exhibit a
cranial capacity
much superior to
that of the average
wild African of to-
day.*

Africa is the chief
stronghold of the
real Devil — the re-
actionary forces of
Nature hostile to the
uprise of Humanity.
Here Beelzebub,
King of the Flies,
marshals his vermi-

' The allusion is to Ihe

' So do pygmy skulls
oblained from olii graves
on the Middle Sanga River
in the heart of French
Cingo, with a cranial ca-
13. SKULL OF FBMALI NSGRO, t'.s.A. pacity of I44OC.C.

THE NEGRO SUB-SPECIES 15

form and arthropod hosts — insects, ticks, and nematode worms — which more
than in any other continent (excepting negroid Asia) convey to the skin,
veins, intestines, or spinal marrow of men and other vertebrates the micro-
organisms which cause
deadly, disfiguring, or I
debilitating diseases, or
themselves create the !
morbid condition of the
persecuted human being,
beast, bird, reptile, frog,
or fish.

Africa and negroid
.Asia — India to the
Philippines — seem to
have been the great
centres for originating
and maturing the worst
maladies which have
afflicted, arrested, or
exterminated mankind
and his domestic ani-
mals. From India came
dengue fever, small -pox,
bubonic plague, cholera,
.Asiatic relapsing fever,
beri-beri, dysentery, ty-
phus, syphilis, the '*' * "'*'
"surra" cattle-sickness,
and some other zymotic
diseases.

Africa on her part
has originated " Sleep-
ing Sickness" {Trypano-
somiasis), which, though
it has long existed in
the Dark Continent,
seems lately to have
acquired fresh vigour,
and to be about to de-
populate much of West
and West Central Africa.

In Africa has arisen
the Xagana or " Tsetse "
sickness among cattle
and at least two other
epidem I c d iseases among
the beasts of the field,
which, like Sleeping
Sickness and Nagana,
are caused by Trypano-
some flagellates intro- 15. skull of fbualb

1 6 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

duced into the blood through the probosces of Glossina flies.^ Malarial
fevers caused by Sporozoa may be common to both Africa and Asia in their
origin, but Africa alone seems to have generated the greatly dreaded Haemoglo-
binuria (blackwater fever), which the Negro has recently conveyed to Central
America. Among other African maladies are Zambezian "relapsing" fever,
(carried by a poisonous tick), the "yaws" (Frambcesia^ a terrible skin disease,
akin to syphilis, and like it produced by a Treponema flagellate), and a number
of dangerous illnesses due to the attacks of parasitic worms.

These are derived from the classes of Flat-worms, Tape-worms, and
Thread-worms. A noteworthy Flat-worm of the Trematode order is the
Bilharzia hcematobia, which multiplies in the urinary bladder and causes a
terrible form of hematuria among the negroes and negroids of tropical Africa
and America. Elephantiasis is an African disease transported to America, and
caused by the Nematode Thread-worm, Filaria bancrofti. Another Nematode
parasite is the well-known Draamculus medinensis, or Guinea-worm, from which
James Bruce, the eighteenth-century explorer of the Blue Nile, suffered so
severely after his return to Europe This also has been carried to tropical
America (Brazil) by Negro slaves.

But the worst Nematodes of all are the " Hook-worms " of the allied
genera^ Ancylostomum and Necator^ now found to be cosmopolitan in their

' Treponemes and Trypanosomes are Flagellate Protozoa — excessively minute organisms of the basic
sub-kingdom, the Protista, which includes \\it Protozoa and iht Protophyta — whose protoplasm develops
a long whip-like process {fiagella) which is used for moving and even for feeding the organism. The
Flagellates resemble to a remarkable degree the male cells (Sperfttatozoa) of the Protozoa and of the Higher
animals (the Metazoa) ; just as the Amoeba, an even simpler form of Protist, resembles the female cells of
animal organisms. The animalcule which causes Malarial fever is an Amoeboid Sporozoon called
hamamaba malaridPt conveyed to the human blood by Anopheline mosquitoes. An African form of
dysentery is also due to a similar sporozoon, and so (it is thought) is blackwater fever. Zambezian
relapsing fever is due to a Trepofuma. On the other hand, yellow fever (?), the bubonic plague,
typhoid, dysentery (?), cholera, gonorrhoea, and tuberculosis (besides many other maladies) are due to
v^etable micro-organisms — Bacteria^ bacilli — introduced into the human system by various agencies,
prominent among which are gnats (mosquitoes), flies, fleas, lice, bugs, and ticks. (The tick belongs to the
Spider Class. )

''The common house fly, mosquito, and bed bug in all probability also transmit leprosy" (Extract
from the Report on the Bahama Islands by the Geographical Society of Baltimore). Leprosy seems to
he connected in some way with the eating of decayed flsh. According to Mr. £. E. Austen, of the British
Museum, the Stegomyia genus of mosquitoes conveys yellow fever in Africa and America, Mansonia
transmits the filarial worms which produce fllariasis and elephantiasis, Culex fatigans (a large gnat) is
the carrier of dengue fever and fllariasis. There are numerous species of Atwpheles in America, Asia, and
Europe ready to act as the transmitting agency for malarial (and blackwater) fevers ; in Africa this purpose
is eflected by the allied Myzomyia and jyretophorus. We therefore now know our enemies and should
arrange to destroy them. Among other methods might be cited the recent recommendation by Captain
J. A. M. Vipan, that the little fresh- water fish Gtrardinns paciloides^ of Barbados and northern South
America (known by the negroes of Barbados as *' Millions," from its numbers), should be distributed as
widely as possible throughout the ponds and shallow streams of tropical America, because it lives on the
larvae of mosquitoes. One reason why there is so little malarial fever in Barbados is that Girardinus is
almost the only fresh-water fish on the island, and therefore has no rivals. It is able consequently to
devote itself to the destruction of the larvae of gnats which pass the pupal stage in still, shallow water.
Girardinus and other fish of similar tastes spread all over the world might in time rid humanity of the
intolerable nuisance of gnats and midges.

^ The Thread-worm class is styled scientifically Nemathelminthes, These almost exclusively parasitic
worms are subdivided into three orders or sub-orders, of which one — the Nematoda — includes those forms
more especially known as Thread-worms. This order is again subdivided into seven families, of which
six contain some of the deadliest enemies of man and other mammals, of birds, reptiles, fish, insects, and
plants, especially the plants useful to Man. When our Litany is brought up to date and Church services
are made to appeal to intelligent people, there will be a clause : " From all Nematode worms. Good Lord
deliver us ! " One of these six families is the Strotisylida, and in this group are placed the intestinal worms
specially attacking Man : Ancylostomum dttodenaU and Necator americanus. Ancylostomum (under the
name of Agchylostoma — a different rendering of the Greek words "Hook Mouth") was first described
and named by an Italian investigator, Dubini, in 1843. ^^ found it to be the cause of serious anaemia

THE NEGRO SUB-SPECIES 17

range through the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world (extending
even into the temperate regions).

Both of these parasites, in a minute larval form, enter the human system
directly through the skin by way of the
pores or hair- follicles, and generally in the
spaces tietween the fingers or toes, or on
the wrists ; perhaps also in drinking-water
or dirty food, which carries them to the
throat They pass through the blood into
the lungs and thence to the intestines, more
especially that portion of the small intestine
(below the stomach) called the duodenum.
Here these dangerous Thread-worms burrow
into and nip the capillary blood-vessels.
Not only do they sever them, but they
inject some poisonous saliva of their own
which prevents the blood from coagulating,
and so for hours the tiny veins go on
bleeding internally. At last the human
patient suffers from anxmia, takes to eating
clay, dirt, filth, or incongruous food, becomes
perpetually tired or insane, and unless cured
by the expulsion of the worms dies of some
disease induced by anaemia.

Whilst the worms are feasting on the
blood or tissue (it is not certain which) '6- ockanic nkgro type

the females lay innumerable eggs, and these ""b'" "■"•'' '{}Se*M«WentiT *'" '"'""'
pass out of the human body in the fteces.

The minute larx'a; are soon hatched out, and infest the ground round the
place where the exuviae have been deposited. The larval worms must have
moisture for further existence, and can live in water. But if after a certain
stage in their growth they do not enter the human system, they die.

Seemingly the Negro race, in Asia as in Africa, — and in this connection it
is interestirig to note that the most infested parts of tropical Asia are those

^mong Ihe poorer people of Milan and North Italy. The litsl discoveiei of " Hook-worms," however,
in 1 j^neml sense, was Goexe, a German clergyman and blologisl, who in 17SZ found what he called
' Hair '' worms in Ihe intestines of a badger. A. later German investigator, Froetich, obtained similar
worms from the viscera of a fox, and in [7S9 named this parasite " Haaken-wurm," from the hook-like
iDm of its head-end. Scienlilically he called il Umittaria vulfis. Dr. Looss, whose inves igalions into
Ibew inlestinal worma in Negroes and Egyplians succeeded those of Dr. F. Sandwith, refused to adopt
Uncinaria as a generic name, as there was such uncertainty about the pirticuiar type of Hook-worm
■UDied hy Kroelich. Doihmitis, applied to the Hook-worms by Dujardin in 1845, though long in use,
hu been dropped in favour of the revied Ancylestomum of Dubini. who first of all put his Uneer on the
mijchief this parasite was working on human beings (olher species of Ancyhstomum afflict other

Ntcaier amirkaitus was really discovered and named (in conjunction with Dr. Loosst by the great
Anwacan pathologist Dr. Charles Wardell SlileJ (now of the U.S.A. Marine Hospital Service), assisted
iij the investigations of Dr. Allen J, Smith, of Teitas. Netatar was originally thought to lie a species of
Amfloslo'iium, but, although nearly allied, Ihe generic difference (according to Dr. R. T. Leiper, who
hi5 kindly supplied me with these notes} can be detected at once under the microscope by even an un-
Inrned observer. Though styled " amiriianus," it is found all over the tropical world, even in Australia,
ami may have been brought from the Old World to the New by the Negro slaves. The most recent
research into these intestinal parasitic worms has been carried out in Africa (North, Soulh, East. West, and
Cenlnl;, and by deputy in tropical Asia and Australia by Dr. R. T. Leiper, of the London School of
Tropical Medicine.

i8 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

(India, Burma, Malay Peninsula, and Philippines) in which the Negroid element
of the population is most apparent to an anthropologist — has in the course of ages
habituated itself to the attacks of the Hook-
worm, through an intense desire, almost a racial
obsession, to purge the system with native or
European drugs or by clysters. This practice
may have partly helped the Negro in the struggle.
Yet he suffers — racially — from Anaemia and
Laziness. May not the Hook-worms have been
the cause of both, have fettered the progress of
the Negro for many thousand years ?

He suffers, in Africa, Asia, and America,
because he is, as a race, reckless about " sanita-
tion." With some exceptions like the Baganda,
the Ibo of the Niger Delta, and a few other
peoples, the Negro and even Negroid in Africa
and America (perhaps also in Asia) is heedless
about the consequences of indiscriminate defeca-
tion : the men more than the women. It is rare
in any uncivilised African centre of population
to find places (as in Buganda) deliberately set
apart for the deposit of exuvijc. Consequently
■"* the outskirts of African towns are noisome to

TOMipotiion g d^ree. In those unforested regions where
there are many vultures, or in the rare districts
in which pigs are kept (or in the desert where the sun dries up everything) there is
not so much hook-worm and there is less laziness. But the Congo pygmies have it
in their systems, and all Negro tribes in tropical Africa suffer from it more or less.
They imported this parasite into America^ (no doubt) two or three hundred
years ago, but it was not discovered nor did
it attract attention until the beginning of the
twentieth century. The Negro also (we may
assume) conveyed the Hook-worm to Egypt*
From Egypt it travelled to Italy and Central —
and no doubt other parts of — Europe. In fact
it may be accountable now for some of the pre-
vailing "laziness" and anaemia. But of course
this Nematode worm affects far less the civilised
populations of the world than it does the semi-
civilised or savage, those who go about with bare
feet, live filthily, ignore sanitation, and are care-
less about drinking-water.

Hook-worms first attracted the concentrated
attention of scientific men about 18S2, in con-
nection with the terrible outbreak of "tunnel

' An interesling ailicle on
Necalnr amiricatius, by Miss Mat
iD McClir^s AfagaiiM for Octo
with the ravages of this paiuite
whiles in North and South Caroli

* Dr. L«iper has derived speci

the Hook-worms - especially

on Hamilton Carter, appeared
ber, 1909. It dealt specially

tnong thetwQ million "poor'' L

a, Georgia, and Vi^inia.
nens of both AncyhslBmum and ^Vo

18. OCEANIC
man of BuV. t.l.n

•r from Ihe blood of Nyasaland and Mofamtnque negroi

THE NEGRO SUB-SPECIES 19

disease" among the Italian workmen excavating the St. Gotthard tunnel. After
careful experiments (only possible by making use of dc^s as subjects) Dr.
Bozzolo of Turin, discovered — surely he deserves a Nobel prize? — that an
unfailing cure — a certain means of expelling the worms — was the drug thymol
(essence of thyme) followed by Epsom salts. So there is the remedy. It

remains now only to diagnose the precise cause of anxmia, laziness, dirt-
eating,' many cases of tuberculosis and diarrhcea, emaciation, and on finding
it to be hook-worms to dose the patient (prudently) with thymol. Saul and
David have slain their thousands and tens of thousands, and David has been
beatified. What is to be done for Dr. Bozzolo, who has saved millions?

Negro tiibea in the basin of the Congo have a craving Tor

20 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

As before stated, the Negro is accused of having brought Necator ameri-
canus (perhaps also Ancylostomum ditodenale) to America, thereby infecting
millions of white Americans with the " Lazy
disease." The charge is probably true. But,
for the plagues which followed the whites
are mainly to blame. They permitted or did
I not deter the Negro, under slavery or post-
I slavery conditions, from being as filthy in
his sanitation as (according to the American
doctors) are two millions of Southern whites
at the present day (and I might add, at
least ten millions of British landlords and
peasantry who disdain to supply or to use
earth closets). But the medical investiga-
tors of the United States, once they had
tracked down the fell work of the "Ameri-
can Murderer," the Necator worm, rose to
the same heights of heroism as were
achieved by this noblest of professions in
the suppression of Yellow Fever in Cuba
and of Malaria in Italy. They — Drs. C. VV.
I- Stiles and A. J. Smith — made experiments
' on themselves, suffered from the blood-letting
II and aniemia, cured themselves, and then pro-
' ceeded to restore to life, health, and civic
" validity two millions of sick and useless
Southern whites.

And the effects of their epoch-making work will be felt in tropical America
and the West Indies. Here the well-to-do
whites live too carefully and cleanly to be
easily infected by these parasitic worms.
But the extraordinary ansemia and apathy
among the "poor" whites of the Bahamas,
Barbados, St. Kitts, Cuba, Porto Rico, Trini-
dad, and Central and South America is now
probably accounted for by their being the
prey of these blood-letting thread-worms
derived mainly from their own carelessness,
but also from the filthy surroundings still
characterising centres of negro population.
In Jamaica i noticed especially the insani-
tary condition of the soil around certain
large negro schools, reformatories, and
orphanages, or about the villages distant
from large towns. Here there were rotting
accumulations of human ordure sufficient to
infect all bare-footed Jamaica with Hook-
worm disease. ■

Why is not practical Biology taught *"■* "usmman of capb colony

m alt elementary and secondary schools ioih«woni>D shown .i^. Thw moipici'
attended by all children of all colours "™„?'iTk.',r "" """' "'"<"""'" ■""•"

THE NEGRO SUB-SPECIES

and races ? Mens sana in corpore sano. Teach them to be healthy and they
will be good.

Amongst maladies caused by the more " vegetable " section of the Protista
sub-kingdom, which have seemingly originated with the Negro sub-species and
to which this type of man is peculiarly subject, are Leprosy, Tuberculosis, Craw-
craw (a vile form of itch), and Ainhum (a disease of the toes leading to their
amputation, which is very prevalent in West Africa, and has been carried thence
to the West Indies). leprosy may have originated with the Asiatic Negro — it
is not a very obvious disease in untouched, interior Africa — but it has plagued
Southern and Eastern Asia (and
perhaps Polynesia) for thousands
of years, and was carried by the
Crusaders to all parts of Europe
in the Middle Ages, while the
.African Negro conveyed it to
America, where in the West Indies
especially it is one of his worst
afflictions.

It is a disease so closely allied to
Tuberculosis that the bacilli causing
both are hardly separable. Tuber-
culosis may have originated in Africa.
Distinct traces of this disease have
been found in Nubian negro and
negroid skeletons buried at a period
of at least four thousand years ago
in the Northern Sudan ; and at the
present day Tuberculosis (with Pneu-
monia) is one of the chief causes of
death in the Negroes and coloured
peoples of America. Nearly five
coloured people out of every thou-
sand in the United States die of
Tuberculosis in one or other of its
manifestations, a rate about four
limes as high as it is for pure-
blooded whites, but less high than
for Amerindians in the same country.
In the same region the death-rate
for Pneumonia among the Coloured
Race is about 35 per thousand, and among the Whites r8 per thousand.

Yellow Fever, said by the American doctors to be due to a vegetable micro-
organism, was brought from West Africa to America in slave-ships at the end
of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries (see note on p. 211).
It may be that to resist these fell agencies — these parasites which always
attack a successful and pushing new species of plant or animal — the Negro's
ancestors had to direct so much of their wilt-power to strengthening the
body that they neglected the mind. Moreover, the Other Factor in the
seeming duality of this world's government gave to the African negro (if not
to the Asiatic) a vigour of genesic instinct which has been — in his struggle with
sn adverse environment and an appalling death-rate in young and old — a

22 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

valuable counter-a^ent, a resource without which his attempts to people Africa
would have been futile. But this virility, this lust for child-begetting and
child-bearing, has left its mark on the negro's body and mentality, just as the
primal dangers of starvation made him a born glutton. He has been so busy
eating, drinking, marrying and begetting, that He has devoted little attention to
the arts and industries, the astronomical and metaphysical speculations which
have engrossed so much of the time and the vital force of the Eurasiatic
peoples. The average individual of the uneducated, and, most of all, the savage
negro type, is essentially unmoral. Men and women of this race are probably
more inherently lustful, more eagerly addicted to sexual pleasures, than are the
mass of Asiatics, Europeans, white Americans, and black Australians.

Transported to easier conditions of life, wherein the battle over nature has
been at least half won, the Negro race finds itself burdened and held back
by these tendencies and endowments. The
Negro has no doubt a harder battle to fight
against sexual lust than the Caucasian or
the Mongolian. Education and refinement
unquestionably help him in this struggle,
as does hard work. White rail way -labour-
organisers in the United States and other
contractors of labour at Panama have told
me that in order to keep the men of their
negro gangs from deserting, to retain them
contented during their long months of work
away from towns, they were obliged to
engage in some way or another companies
of negro prostitutes, who dwelt in camps or
hastily constructed villages to which the
men had easy access. In my visit to
Panama nothing of the kind was apparent
to me, I saw a great many Negro homes
which seemed to be quite decently con-
2j. A NAMAKWA HOTTBSTOT HVHRiD ducted, and In which the men and women
Duich-BMrandHoiiemoi had the dcmeanour of married couples ; nor

did I in my journeys to and fro about the
States actually light on any of these camps of negro prostitutes. If they existed
they were hidden away : and so far as outward decorum is concerned, there is
no more to shock the observant traveller in the outside moral aspect of the
negro's life in the United States than there is in that of the white man. In
Africa one is well aware that if the Negro be incontinent in his own home, or
in any temporary sojourn in an adopted home, he is fully as capable of chastity
and abstinence as any particular lot of white men and Asiatics. His legends,
his folk-lore, his social customs, inculcate a sort of elementary morality by
teaching ihe unwisdom of sexual incontinence when men are engaged in great
undertakings involving all their energies of mind and body — hunting, warfare,
long journeys, agricultural operations, or religious exercises. Yet, when all is
said on the Negro's behalf, he is still, racially, at a stage when he devotes too
much of his attention to the procreative function.

An amative disposition possibly gives to the Negro that expansiveness of
character, that emotional unreserve which lead him to laugh or cry with equal
readiness, to shout and declaim ; and yet make him from the white man's

THE NEGRO SUB-SPECIES

point of view more easily managed, more sympathetic and likeable than many
an Asiatic or Amerindian race. He is vain rather than proud, good-natured to
a rare degree if his sensibility (always on the surface) is toucheid. He can be
cruel ; but his hate is short-lived, his gratitude vivid and sometimes the most
lasting feeling in his mind. He has a keen sense of humour and is a natural
wiL Singularly observant, yet too slothful to collate his facts and draw from
them the deductions which have given the White man and the Yellow supreme
power over men and nature; neat-fingered, deft, able to learn and to do almost
anything that can be taught him by the White man, the Negro nevertheless has
seemed up to the present time unable to originate. But that may come.

For three hundred years or so — especially during the nineteenth century —
the White man has accused the whole Negro race of laziness. Of course the
<lave, the domestic servant, the factory child
can never work too hard for the contentment
of the slave-driver or the average employer.
Down to ten or twenty years ago in many a
household of the upper, middle, and " lower
middle " class in our own country it was thought
almost an infraction of some natural law for
domestic drudges to want rest, relaxation, litera-
ture, lovers, and exercise in the open air. So
if the negro got bored with monotonous and
unending work for somebody else's main ad-
vantage he was stigmatised as so viciously lazy
that it was really a moral obligation to flog,
slarve, or fine him into a Sisyphean routine.

Against the Negro man the charge, however,
is partly true. He does not love work for the
stimulus it gives to mental energy, for the joy of
striving, of conquering obstacles. He has not

the eager desire of the European and the Asiatic ^^ ^ ^^^^ oahara (HAiiicwniNi
0 conquer Nature and subdue the Devil of her

reaction and recalcitrance. He is too easily Tbc Hiukwoin are ■ ikIx or mir* moaa
satisfied with his surroundings. ^^^Tp^w^H^^moi'dui^w ^^

In all the history of Africa and of the phyiiqm »« of ihe Fo™i wm Arricu
people of African race settled in the New °"'° "*
Wodd, the negrcss has probably never been idle. She is as unremittingly in-
dustrious as the average woman of the labouring and lower middle class in the
L'nited Kingdom. It is the negro man on whom the reproach lies — and justly
lies — of being racially more lazy than perhaps any other human type. In the
savage life of Africa if nothing more is aimed at than an existence of successful
animalism, the male negro probably strikes an even balance with the female in
ihe support of the community. On him falls the task of defending the family,
the village, or the tribe against the attacks of wild beasts or of human enemies ;
he can be a strenuous hunter, a patient and arduous fisherman, he will also by
fits and starts do all the rough work of felling timber and constructing the
framework of houses. He is also the herdsman, the blacksmith, and the tailor,
and by his successful forays in war or in the chase provides quite half the food
supply of the community.

In return for these great dangers and excessive fatigues he expects to be
allowed to.spend the balance of his time in slothfulness. The women run far

2+ THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

less danger than the men and are not required to undergo heart-breaking
agonies of fatigue ; on the other hand, they are expected to work steadily and
monotonously; they are the great agriculturists, the cooks, the preparers of
medicine, the producers of children, and the household servants.

But Asia and Europe with their greater infusion of divine energy, their
loftier aspirations, have long left this state of existence behind from the close
of the paleolithic period ; and whereas this negro idea of life may have been
good enough for the condition of Africa two thousand years ago, it is utterly
out of keeping with the modern world.

Since I came to know something of the Negro it has occurred to me that
there is more likelihood of an affinity of mind growing up between his race and
the world of the Caucasian than between either of these divergent human types
and the inscrutable Mongolian. {The very
receptivity of the Japanese and the Poly-
nesians may be due to the decided element
of Asiatic negro which we know is infused
through both these composite racial groups.)
The negro mind compared to the Mongolian
has very few unexplored recesses. It is
lai^ely an open book in which the white
man, unless he wilfully spurns his oppor-
tunities, may write pretty well what he
chooses at the present day. As yet the
Negro is unhampered by racial or socio-
logical prejudice, and still possesses an
inherent admiration for his white cousin
who has emerged within the last century
from the long martyrdom of man ; the heir
of all the ages, the exponent of the most
practical knowledge achieved by the human
species through ages of experiment in
Europe, North America, and Western Asia.
Against this the Negro has no crooked
science of his own to set up, such as still
as. TKB TYPICAL "bantu" kbt.io keeps China, Tibet, Hindu-India, Muham-
AMuMntrofroin&w^AfricnMr^into madau Asia ccnturies behind the soaring

Caucasian.
In the past, with rapidity, the Negro has adopted the religions of the Cauca-
sian ; sacred animals and tribal totems, demigods and nature-spirits, the phallism,
fetishism, and magic of the earlier Mediterranean faiths, conveyed to Negro
Africa by the Libyan, Hamite, and Hima;' then, later, Muhammadanism ;
Christianity ; freemasonry ; faith -healing. Probably in the future we may
induct him into a loftier faith and wiser practice, a Christian religion at one with
science in a church which shall discard empiricism, useless metaphysics, and
speculations starting from no material basis.

Where did the Negro sub-species arise ? In what part of the Old World did

' The ancienL Egyptians a.Dd iheir wild Gala relalions carried their enterprise, iheir domeslic animals
and musical instrumenit, iheir religious ideas, folk-lore, and Iheir neolithic and early metal-age civilisation
almost to the sources of the Nile ; and were received by the hopelessly savage, brutish negroes whom they
found there as demigods. Their descendants (the Ba-hima) reign to this day as aristocracies or rulers in
ICquatorial Africa.

THE NEGRO SUB-SPECIES 25

he specialise from the basal type of Homo sapiens, from the Australoid group, the
outcome of early Homo primigenius ? Possibly in Southern Europe, more prob-
ably in India. In the researches promoted by the Prince of Monaco, there were
discovered in the caves of Grimaldi (Baousse-rouss^), near Mentone (French
Riviera) two human skeletons, interred in a shallow grave ("une sorte de petit
caisson en pierres ") at a depth of about 27 feet from the present surface of the
cavern floor ; which, except in skull capacity, were obviously those of negroes.
These remains were in all probability of great age, and underlay skeletons and
other relics of the Cro-Magnon race, which last is regarded as an essentially
"European" (Caucasian) type of man, and is
associated in France with the later age of the
mammoth, cave-lion, cave-bear, hyena, and
reindeer, and a fauna and flora of a cold
Glacial or post-Glacial age.

The negroid skeletons of the Grimaldi
yrottos indicate a race of an average stature
—men about 5 ft. 6 in., women about 5 ft. i in.
—with poorly developed chins, a narrow pelvis,
the fore-arm (humerus to elbow) very long in
proportion to the lower arm, the thigh very
short in comparison with the leg (simian and
Australoid characteristics which are present —
but not so markedly — in modern negroes) ;
and generally with lower limbs much longer
proportionately than the arms. This last is a
feature that is very prominent in the Nilotic
Negroes and sometimes in Hottentots, but
not in the majority of modern negroes or in
Australoids. The heel-bone (calcaneum) was
even larger proportionately and more salient
than in the modern negro (an ultra-human
feature). These French negroes were very
prognathous, had large teeth, and their palates
were very hypsiloid. But the skull cases had
a remarkable brain capacity: 1375 cubic centi-
metres for an old woman; 1580 for a male
youth. The former figure is actually slightly
hi^htr than the average cranial capacity of '

modern French women, and the latter Z! c.c, ' * * nhgro

above the average of modern French men. Both alike, as already stated,
are far higher than the modern Negro average (say 1200 c.c. for women
and 1388 for men). The age at which these Grimaldi negroes lived cannot
be much less removed from the present day than thirty thousand years ago;
it may have even been more remote, for they were contemporaneous in
France with the Man of Correze (a lingering example of Homo primigenius,
nith a remarkable cranial capacity), with the mammoth, lion, African elephant,
and hippopotamus. This negroid type would seem (judging from skulls and
.'fceletal remains) to have penetrated north-westwards as far as Brittany, and
quite possibly to Britain and Ireland. Eastwards it is traceable to Switzerland
and Italy, coming down through the neolithic to the historical period and
fusing with the northern races. In modern times and at the present day it is

26 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

obvious that there is an old Nigritic element in the population of North Africa,
Spain, France, Ireland and West Britain, Italy, Sardinia, Sicily, and the countries
bordering the Eastern Mediterranean, not entirely to be accounted for by the
historical slave trade.

Yet the ancient negroid elements in these European populations seem to
possess slightly more affinity with the Asiatic negroes or with those of North-
Eastern Africa than with the typical African negroes or Bushmen of to-day.

In spite of these very interesting discoveries in the Grimaldi caverns, the

deductions to be drawn from the rest of our limited knowledge point rather to

fndia^ as the original birthplace of the Negro sub-species; just as India or

Central Asia may have been the evolutionary centre of the entire Human genus

and of the sapiens species ; and have witnessed the branching-off of the

straight -haired, hairless -bodied, yellow-skinned Mongolian (who emigrated

northwards through Central to Eastern and Hyperborean Asia, and to America ;

and southwards to Malaysia and the Pacific; and perhaps again to America,

via the Pacific archipelagos). The only

difficulty in adopting the theory that

the Negro originated in India is the

presumed absence at the present day of

any pure negro type in Continental

India; though there can be little

doubt that the " pre-Dravidian" tribes

of the Nilgiri Hills (the Kota,Kurumba,

Irula, and Badaga) and of the forests

south-west of Madras and of Maisur,

Cochin, and Travancore(theKader,Pani-

yan, Pulaya, Puliyar, and Kaniyan) have

a preponderating element of negro blood.

Many of these people are dark-coloured,

with kinky or curly hair, are prognathous

and flat-nosed, with thick, everted lips.

The Andamanese are negroes.

There is no indication as yet that
27. SKULL OF YOUNG MALE NEGROID any primitive negro type entered Cey-

of pttiupuhifiv i|.ou«nd y""««o. '"'"»' '" "« lon. The Veddahs still lingering in that
island are not negroid but either Proto-
Caucasians or modified Australoids, But the negroid element permeates the
low-caste or outcast " pariah " tribes of Western and Eastern India, and pene-
trates through the coast tribes of Southern Persia to Eastern Arabia,

Assuming, then, that the Negro sub-species was originated in the Indian
Peninsula, we can in imagination see this type of dark-skinned, spiral-haired,
flat-nosed man turning eastwards as well as westwards, invading Burma and
the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago on the heels of the retreating Australoids,
and securing as their exclusive home the Andaman Islands (they were probably
exterminated in the Nicobars by the Mongolians that followed them). To
this day dwarf negro people survive in the Far East — the Samang in the
forests of the Malay Peninsula and the Acta in the Philippine Islands. There

' Unless we revive Di. Sdaler's theory of a vanished conlinent in the Indian Ocean, ■ " Lemuria''
which united Eastern Africa with the Malay Archipelago. It is, however, doubtful whether such a
continent enisled in any period of the Tertiary epoch ; ind highly improbable thai it was still above
water al the beginning of the human period.

THE NEGRO SUB-SPECIES 27

are traces of the passage of a negroid people through Sumatra and Borneo, in

the island of Timor, and markedly so in New Guinea, though here they have

mingled with the Australoid and have produced the well-marked Papuan race.

The existing populations of the Solomon Islands, of New Ireland, and of the

New Hebrides are much more negro-like in physical characteristics ; in fact,

perhaps the people of New Ireland are the

most nearly akin to the African negro of

all the Asiatic or Australasian peoples.

Asiatic negroes also seem to have entered

Australia from New Guinea and to Have

passed down the eastern part of that conti-
nent till they reached the then peninsula of

Tasmania, not, of course, without mingling

with the Australoids. There is a negroid

(Melanesian) element in Fiji, and as far west

as the Hawaii Archipelago and among the

Maoris of New Zealand ; in a much less de-

greealso,inBurma,Annam, Hainan, Formosa,

the Riu-Kiu Islands, and Southern Japan.
The Elamites of Mesopotamia appear to

have been a negroid people with kinky hair,

and to have transmitted this racial type to

the Jews and Syrians.^ There is a curliness ^ kadbr youth

of the hair, together with a negro eye and NtimWiriUotsoathanindiji

full lips, in the portraiture of Assyria which

conveys the idea of an evident negro element in Babylonia. Quite probably

the very ancient negro invasion of Mediterranean Europe (of which the

skeletons of the Alpes Maritimes are vestiges) came from Syria and Asia

Minor on its way to Central and Western

Europe.

It is possible that in or on the verge
of Arabia the ancient basal stock of the
generalised negro parted, divided into two
great streams of divergent emigration : one
to proceed to Europe via Syria, and the
other to pass through Arabia^ to Egypt
and tropical Africa. In Arabia or in Egypt
(it may be) arose the difference between the
long-headed African negro and the rounder,
shorter-headed Bushman, the last-named be-
coming more habituated than his congeners
to a life in arid deserts or scrubby, open
country.

aO. FANIVAN WOMAN _,,■' . r . xT ■ J'lT

Negroid biuh-iiibe of saiiihnn India The African Negro was agam differenti-

ated (probably in East Africa) into three main
varieties: (i) t\iG prognathous " Strandlooper" type, of whom vestiges living and

' The Jews are composed of three or four separate racial elements. The Asiatic negroid Blraia shows
ilMir occasional! y in the curty hair, the long eye, and proportions of the skull. The Jewish hybrids with
the Negro in Jamaica and Guiana reproduce most strikingly the Assyrian type (lufra),

' It is quite conceivable that the great peninsula of Arabia was once populated, as fat as its natural
conditions allowed, by a primitive negro stock, which may have been later on partially exterminated by
changing and unfavourable conditions of climate and by the after-coming of the while man in his types

28 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

fossil are found in South Africa and the Sudan; (2) t\\^ Forest Negro and Congo

Pygf*iy, of the Congo basin, Cameroons, West Africa, Uganda, and portions of
. the Bahr-al-Ghazal, with powerful torso, long
arms, disproportionately short legs, very long
head, considerable prognathism, prominent eyes
and a long upper lip; and (3) the Nilotic Negro.
This last (which is not without Australoid and
European- Negro affinities) seems to proceed
from an early intermingling between the Proto-
Caucasian and the Forest Negro, but is a
sufficiently ancient hybrid to have developed
characteristics of its own, due, no doubt, to
its original habitat having been the vast, flat,
marshy regions of the Upper Nile Valley and
the basin of Lake Chad. The Nilotic Negro
has disproportionately long legs and is one of
the tallest races of man. The facial features
vary from the good looks of the straight -nosed
Hamite to the prominent cheek-boned, everted-
lipped negro of the Central Sudan, in whom
there is a " Strandlooper " element

The Forest Negro may be seen in his more

30. A puuvAR BOY pronounced type of powerful chest, huge arms

NegriiauibcafSouiiKniindi. ^^^ short legs, and very prc^nathous face' in

the denser forests of the Congo Basin and in the Niger Delta, and in a modified

form along the west coast of Africa from the Gambia to

the mouth of the Congo ; but the physical type occurs

sporadically in many parts of East, Central, South, and

S.W. Africa. The mingling of Nilotic and Forest Negroes

in past times has produced many tribes of black men with

splendid, comely, and harmonious physical development ;

their limbs having much the same proportions as those

of well-made Europeans, while the face also has acquired

a certain refinement of feature. This is the physical type

so much (but not exclusively) associated with the speak-
ing of Bantu languages : the Upper Congo tribes, the

people of Tanganyika and North Nyasa, the Swahili,

Yao, A-Kamba, Baila, Batonga, Bakaranga, and Zulu.
It is of course possible that the Negro may not have

of Hamile, Semile, and Iberian. The Hamites, or ancestors of the Egypt-
ians, Galas, Somalis, etc., may even have been the result of intertnixlute
in Arabia between the Mediterranean lype of while min (Libyan, Iberiaa,
Persian, elc. ) and the bushman and negio savages of ancient Aratna.

Unless the Negro (and many ol her mammalian types of moilern Africa)
entered (hat continent from Europe [i'm. Spain and Morocco; Sicily-Malta-
Tunis ; Syria-Sinai -Egypl) it is difficult lo avoid the conclusion that
Arabia must have been once an important half-way house to Africa from
both Westirn Asia and India. Tne systematic exploration of this Tast

peninsula {which in existing fauna is slightly more African than Indian or conco pvcmy

■' Paliarctic") would, no doubt, solve many enigmas in the get^raphical ^ bute ituki hivrr
distribution and origin of mammaU and of mankind; but it is, alas I "Uin. iruni ki

rendered very difficult by the lava-hedsand basalt, the shifting sands, heat, ^Sir ^y ^tla™ *™m"lhe

aridity, and most of all the fanaticism and superstition of (he native tribes. W»i«n Congo buin lo tbc

' See Illustration No. z, p. 3. Wcii IndiH

THE NEGRO SUB-SPECIES 29

been the first type of human being to enter Africa, from Arabia or across
the isthmuses of habitable land between Mauretania and the Central Sudan :
the Dark Continent may have been partially colonised by offshoots of
Homo pritnigenius, or by the generalised "Australoid" form of H. sapiens,
or even have received from Asia intermediate Anthropoids akin to Pitke-
MHthropos. Traces of Australoid affinities in skull formation arc not un-
common in the Equatorial belt of Africa from east to west, and there are
remarkable resemblances
in customs, weapons, and
implements between the
most primitive tribes of
the Equatorial belt of
Africa and the Austra-
bids of Australia. Then
again, the Negro was
soon followed up in his
appropriation of Africa
by the Caucasian of an
already negrified Medi-
terranean type : Libyans
wandered across the Sa-
hara, dispossessed the
red-skinned pygmies of
Western Nigeria, ab-
sorbed some of the Forest
Negroes, and formed such
hybrid stocks as the
Songhai, Mandingo, Fula,
and Nyamnyam ; Ham-
ites (Egyptian^ and Gala)
occupied Egypt from
Arabia and pushed west-
wards across the Libyan
Desert, mingling freely
with long-legged or short-
iegged and prognathous
negroes, and thus called
into existence mixed
races like the Tibbu, Nu- 32. thb typical Ethiopian

bian, Ethiopian, Masai, ■* <°"' ■>' ''■« Hmlnido*. iribe. ne« SuslOn. ThsM Eihiopi.m of ibe north.
Andorobo, Hima, Gala, S^lutandlna^cwidcgcKtbui'noi in languae"'o*>be'Kula°or Woian

Somali, and Danikil. ^^""

There has been much infiltration of Caucasian blood from Europe and
Western Asia in more recent, historic times. Pre-Islamic Arabs undoubtedly —
notwithstanding the disputes as to the builders of Zimbabwe — were connected
with and settled in SoutJi-East Africa perhaps more than two thousand years

' There are iadications llial the anceslois of the ancient ^ypcians— themselves probably of Hamilic
'Kt coming from S.W. Arabia— found ihe Lower Valley of the Nile (then to a gteal extern cut off from
Mauretania by culls, lakes, and deserts) in the occupation of a pritnilive negro or "Slrandlooper" race.
"Siraodlooper {shore- runner) was a nickname given by the Boers to the pri^nalhom savages of ihe
South African kitchen -mid dens.

30 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

ago. They must have taken to themselves concubines from the South African
Negroes, and these last — possibly not yet " Bantu " in speech — may have
already created the Hottentot hybrid with the Bushman in South-West Africa.
Then from looo a.d. onwards came many Arabs, Persians, Baluchis, and Hindus
to the East African coast. From out of the mingling of all these elements
in different degrees arose the African peoples of to-day, very few of which are
without some tinge of Caucasian blood due to the White man's persistent
invasion of Africa from — let us say — 12,000 B.C. to the present day.

CHAPTER II
AMERICA BEFORE THE NEGRO CAME

THE relative remoteness in time of the first human peopling of the two
American continents is still an undetermined question. The present
belief Is that man had already permeated Asia and Europe and possibly
parts of Africa before he invaded the North American continent from North-
Eastern Asia ; or if he reached North America in one of the Inter-glacial periods
(and thence spread to South America), he was killed off in the northern con-
tinent by the final triumph of the
ice, while in South America he may
have dwindled away to nothing before
the supreme difficulties of endless
swamps, pathless forests, and still
vigorous wild beasts.

The human types which are indi-
genous to the Americas of to-day are
divisible into two racial groups — the
Eskimo and the Amerindian.' The
Eskimo is a long-headed Mongolian,
and in that respect is the most
primitive form living of the yellow-
skinned, straight- haired, hairless-
bodied, narrow-nosed sub-species of
Homo sapiens;^ but in other direc-
tions this hyperborean race (origi-
nally from Northern Asia) is much ^^' * ^'°" amerind an, n rth auerca
specialised. The Amerindian would seem to be a mixture in varying
degrees of a Proto- Caucasian type [like the Ainu of Japan], the Eskimo,
and a Proto- Mongolian.^ In some of his North American developments he
stands very near to the Caucasian, from whom he differs mainly and only

' AddilioTU.1 information >s lo Amerindian aborigines is given in chapters iv. , v . vi. . xi., and XI v.

' Thea>erage cranial capacitj' of the male Eskimo is very high— 1546 cc. (W. L. H. Duckworth).

' II is always possible that from one to four thousand years Bgo the west coast of South America maji
fuve been reached by Polynesians coming liy way of the Pacific ArchipelaRos. There may well have
l>«n islands or islets that have since been washed away or have sunk below the surface of the sea, which
*"ed to break the jouro« between Hawaii or l^asler Island and the coasts of Mexico or of Chili. But
1' so, the physical type of American man would not have been greatly modiiied, since the Polynesians
>K a hybrid race composed likewise of Mongol and Proto -Caucasian, with an added element of Australoid
°t Melanesian (Asiatic Negro). Subtract the negroid 01 Australoid strain from the Polynesian, and you
love an Amerindian. Many of the Mongoloid peoples of Borneo and Sumatra or Malaysia have a strong
physical resemblance to the Amerindian. This genetalised type (between Caucasian and Eskimo) may
^|ice have inhabited the whole PaciHc coast of Asia, and have reached America by way of Japan, the
Kuiiles, Kamsehatki, and the Aleutian bridge.

32 THE NEGRO. IN THE NEW WORLD

by the still marked prominence of the cheek-bones, the narrow eyes (some-
times with the epicanthic fold), the straight, coarse, round-sectioned head-hair,
and the almost complete absence of hair on the body. In South and Central
America the indigenes have a more Polynesian appearance, some of them
resembling closely the Dayaks of Borneo (in culture as well as in physique^.
Here and there in Brazil and Peru there are
suggestions of the survival of a long-headed and
primitive human stock resembling slightly the
Australoid. (The meaning of these indications,
both existing and fossil, may well be exaggerated.
and are due perhaps to local degeneration or
deviation.) Perhaps on the whole the ancient
dwarfish coast tribes of Peru and the modern
Aymara group of the Peruvian highlands — with
their pentagonal faces, short, flat noses, progna-
thous jaws, and short thighs- — are the lowest in
physical development known to exist in America.
Why the Americas — which in food supply for
man were perhaps more richly endowed by Nature
than the Old World (in the elements of vegetable
food, at any rate)^ — were not as densely popu-
lated as Europe, Asia, and Africa, it is difficult to
say. In Australia before the Island Continent
was reached by Malays, and long after them
by Europeans, the native races (Australoid and
Negrito) had only attained a very low level of
human culture, comparable to that of the lowliest
stage of Homo sapiens. But in Australia man
had to grapple with the increasing aridity of
the centre and west, possibly was cut off from
inhabiting part of the central regions by their
being under water ; and in the south-west, south,
and east of this region had a poor food supply
as compared with the rest of the world,

in North America the causes which kept man
back from a rapid rate of increase were, firstly,
the inclement climate which prevailed over two-
thirds of the northern continent at the close of
RiNDiAN, (jjg Pleistocene; secondly, the destruction by
ibi, « f«. «. insect agencies^ and disappearance of many
JrVntliidrm spccies of Wild beasts which might otherwise
iiiindi from Cuba lad iti< Bihwniu have suppHcd the primitive Amerindians with
C^^'^^^ltlt^!"^^i'^\i ample food; thirdly, the density of the forests
crnii (ram iht CuL.nM jjj other regions wherein at first man was unable

' Indeed it is difficult lo see how in /r^/id/ America any able -boil ied man or woman could 5la[v«
even if they merely lived lilie the beasts of the field on the pro<liice of the seashore, the shallow river, the
forest, savannah, swamp, plateau, and pampas. There were land craba and sea crabs, crayfish, prawns,
fat beetle gcubi, sea hsh, river fish, manatis, iguana licards (most succulent), toothsome game-birds,
rodents innumerable, deer, tapirs, edible palms, nuts, pineapples, maize, papaws, and fruits, roots, tuber<:,
and grains loo numerous to catalogue, besides enormous quantities of wild honey. It was this native
provender which enabled runaway negroes to live so easily in the backwoods.

^ Twospeciesof <7/eij/«aor "tsetse " tly have been discovered fossil in North America [Colorado]. Gloi-
sina may have reached America from West Africa, possibly before the complete disappearance of those

AMERICA BEFORE THE NEGRO CAME 33

to procure sufficient sustenance and was attacked by jaguars, alligators, snakes,
insects (ants, above all), and found his progress barred by appalling barriers
of vegetation.' Then there
was the utter inability to
conceive a humanity common
Co all tribes and nations.
Empires, late in the day,
were, it is true, founded in
Peru and Mexico, which
united under a semi-civilised
government several millions
of human beings — perhaps
len millions in South America
and four millions in Centra!
America, But the popula-
tion here was checked by in-
fanticide, by endless human
sacrifices and probably a
heavy death-rate amongst
children. This last would
quite sufficiently account for
the slow increase of the
Northern Amerindians and
of those living in a low,
savage state in all South
America to the east of the
Andes, The inter-tribal wars,
which, according to legends
and traditions, raged all over
the Americas between the
ice sheet on the north and
the Straits of Magellan on
the south, and the frantic
cannibalism practised by
peoples of eastern tropical
America, would, as in Africa,
explain the constant de-
population or slow increase.
-Again, in many of the
Amerindian tribes there was
and is a certain lack of 35. carib amercndians, northern ouiana

iticts and archipeUftos which almost connected the tropncal legions of Africa and America as Uie as the
Miccene period and aFtei any aclual isthmus had broken down. The GUisina in America may have, ai
inAfiica, dereloped into the medium or the principal medium for transferring fiacellate microbes into the
Uood of (he wild hones, musk oxen, long-horned bisons, mammoths, and the relations of the pronghorn
tod of the South American camels, which still inhabited Northern and Central America after the advent
of man.

' When considering the habitabilily of Africa and South America in earlier times— namely, the eji tent
'A the area which could be easily occupied by man — it must be borne in mind that probably lifteei)
'■0 twenty (hounnd years afo, and farther back still in the Earth's history, the upper basin of the Niger,
ihe region east and west oflhc Chad and the Shari basin, the Bahr-alGhaial, and above all Ihe Congo
i«sin ; and id America the enormous area below a thousand feet in altitude, which is covered by
llie Amaion and its Irihutariei, besides Ihe Orinoco basin, and the Hats of modem Argentina and

34 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

virility ; many of the Amerindian races lack that uxonousness so characteristic
of the Negro, that tremendous race fertility which over and over again repairs
the ravages of disease and of human wickedness.*

36. AN AMKRINUIAN OK SOUTH CENTRAL BRAZIL

Paraguay, were uninhabitable swamps inlersperjed wiih lai^e lakei. All these modern plains through
which huge rivers wind were then in a state of Iransitian bejween the ariginal condition ol vast shallow,
inland seas of fresh or brackish water and their present state of low-lying, flat, forested country or gtassy
pampas.

' Among the Amerindians of Western and Central North Atnerica
Elastern South America, a certain degree of race-suicide was and
and perhaps ancient failure of virility among a. proportion of the men
(homo-sexual ily) among the males of the community. This tendency is

AMERICA BEFORE THE NEGRO CAME

When the Spaniards and Portuguese took possession of the West Indies,
Central and South America, they found these new regions either sparsely
populated or inhabited by peoples disinclined to hard and persistent work and
of not very strong physical constitutions, so that they were fatally subject to
epidemics of disease introduced or spread by the Europeans,^ or easily killed
by hard work or hard blows.

But another reason which prevented the Spaniards from making full use
of the Amerindians as serfs lay in the intervention
of the Roman Church and of such ecclesiastics
or rulers in Spain as had any Christian humanity
in their mental composition. It was ordained
from time to time that Indians who accepted
Christianity and joined the Church of Rome
should be treated on an equal footing in America
as Spanish subjects free in the eyes of the law.
There is no doubt that some of the natives of
Cuba and Porto Rico,* a few in Santo Domingo,
and multitudes in Venezuela, Peru, and Brazil
saved themselves from extermination by becoming
Christians,' and also through the inclination evinced
by both Europeans and Amerindians for a sexual
union which has resulted in the many hybrid
-American peoples of to-day ; half Spanish or
Portuguese, half Amerindian in blood.

So that very early in the history of Euro-
peanised America, the Spaniards first and the
Portuguese later had to supplement their labour
force in tropical America by immigrants who

could work in torrid heat and yet need not be ^^'^j^ *i'b^a "dbl fuego"
regarded as Christians. The problem was no

sooner defined at the commencement of the sixteenth century than it was
answered by the importation of Africans.

ItEcnds, and customs of certain tiibcs, und was so patent in Hispaniola and Mexico at the lime of their
■iiKotay as lo have at once attracted itie attention of the Spanish explorers and historians. The
lice exists still (according to official and scientific American publications) among the Amerindian Iribes
iMaeen Alaska and Northern Mexico, California, and the Mississippi. Its prevalence, past and present,
UBoag (he Amerindians oF Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil is attested by many historians, missionaries,
lod exploiert.

' Between r550 and iSso at least three million Amerindiaos must have died of small-pox in the West
ladies. Central and South America.

' This island is of courie known as Puerto Rico by the Spaniards. An excellent description of the
■boiigines, (he Borinqueos, is given in the Tmenly-fifth Annual Report of tkt Bureau of American
llknekgy, Washington, 1907.

' Especially under the decree entitled " Encomlenda," published in 151a. Under this piotEction the
iodigeoes of Porto Kico were henceforth classed as Spaniards, and now form the principal element in the
peiunlry of (hat island (the "Gibaros").

CHAPTER III

SLAVERY UNDER THE SPANIARD

AFTER the Spaniards had conquered finally the whole of the Canary

/A Archipelago — an achievement which only preceded the discovery of

America by a few years — they despatched to Hispaniola, Cuba, and

Porto Rico Guanche slaves, the indigenes of the Canary Islands,^ besides also

recalcitrant Moorish Jews from Majorca, Jews .and Morescos from Southern

Spain.

The Turks and Arabs in the Crusades, and the Moors of Spain and North
Africa had introduced to the mind of mediaeval Europe the idea of negro
slaves, of '* black Moors "^ who were strong, willing, and faithful servants to
their white employers. Although Moor enslaved Christian and Christian
attempted to enslave Moor from the eighth to the eighteenth century, neither
found it a paying game. The two races were too near akin mentally and
physically, too nearly equal in endowments to reign over each other.

When the Portuguese discoverers, urged on by Prince Henry of Portugal,
had rounded Cape Bojador, and after reaching the Rio d*Ouro^ in 1435, had,
in 1 44 1, captured some Moors on that desert coast and brought them back
to Portugal to become slaves ; the latter soon attracted the attention of
Portuguese notabilities by their noble bearing. They explained that it was
impossible for persons of their race and religion to pass into servitude ; they
would either die of a broken heart or commit suicide. On the other hand,
there was a race cursed by God — the race of Ham and Canaan — the black-
skinned people who were predestined slaves and who dwelt in enormous
numbers to the south of the great desert. If their Portuguese captors would
release them (the Moors of the Sahara coast) they would show the Christians
the way to a river of crocodiles and sea-horses, to the south of which dwelt
the black people who might justifiably and conveniently be imported as slaves
into Portugal.

The offer was accepted, and at the close of the fifteenth century a brisk

* The Guanche in appearance must have been very like the white Moors of North Africa at the present
day and not very dissimilar to the southern Spaniards. The names of some of these rather notable
Guanche emigrants linger actually as the names of villages or plantations in Cuba, Haiti, and Santo
Domingo at the present day. Thus Tinguarra, the name of an American sugar plantation managed by
Englishmen in Cuba, is the name of a Guanche chieftain sent as a slave or prisoner of war to Cuba. The
Canary Islanders in Spanish America are referred to as the '* Islefios.'*

* This is the reason why blackamoor in English, moriaan in Dutch, morian in German, mora in
Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, and moricaud in French were early names for negroes. ** Negro," a
Spanish word, did not come into common use in England till the nineteenth century.

^ '* River of Gold," an inlet on the western Sahara coast, now part of a Spanish protectorate (Rio de
Oro). It was here that the Carthaginians had a great trading dep6t on the island of Kerne, where they
exchanged the trade goods of the Mediterranean for the gold, ivory, and probably the negro slaves of
West Africa.

SLAVERY UNDER THE SPANIARD 37

trade in n^ro slaves was being carried on by the Portuguese between the
Guinea Coast and Mediterranean Europe; Lagos, in Southern Portugal,
becoming a great slave mart.'

38. A CANARY ISLANDBR (GRAND CANARV)
Thii nun rcKmbls ihc ivps of few Wa-ld coloniui unt by Spun ro peopls Pono Rin.
Cubk, SuiiD Daminga, ud ibe Spuiib Main. Tbev trE canxwiil^ kltuded lo in Ibe hiu«y
of ibcGnatu AntillauidCtniial Ameriuu Ibe/i/nliif or "Iiludi'p»pl«"

' According to Biyan Edwards, (he Portuguese obtained (about 1475 ?) a Bull from the Pope san<
i'g Ihe African slave trade. Earlier Popes had forbidden the traffic. A slave market was set
Lisbon, at which from 10,000 to 13,000 negroes were sold annually in the sixteenth century, {/fist,
Sunity e/ Saint Deminge, p. Ma )

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

The decision of Pope Alexander VI in 1493, followed by the Treaty
of Tordesillas in 1494,^ assigned to Portugal the west coast of Africa south
of the Canary Islands, and to Spain the New World (of which, however,
Portugal was soon afterwards able to claim Brazil as her share). * It was
therefore to the Portuguese possessions in Africa that Spain looked — since
the Canary Islanders were not sufficient, or had already become Christians —
for supplies of negroes to labour in the plantations, forests, and mines of
the Antilles and of Eastern South America. By 1502 the first contingent of
Africans had been landed in Hispaniola to work in the mines in lieu of the
feeble-bodied Arawaks, or the fierce, intractable Caribs. They had been
recruited from the negroes employed in the south of Portugal and of Andalusia
as agricultural labourers, and were further supplemented in 1510 from the
same source and in succeeding years by others obtained (through the
Portuguese) direct from Guinea.^

The " Apostle of the Indians," Bartolomeo de Las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa,
in Hispaniola, came to Spain in 15 17 to protest at the court of the young
King-Emperor Charles V against the harsh treatment which the West Indian
indigenes were enduring at the hands of the Spaniards, who in twenty years
had reduced an estimated million^ of gentle-natured Arawaks to about sixty
thousand. As an alternative to the forced labour of the survivors he pro-
posed that the hardier negroes of West Africa should be imported into the
Antilles, to furnish the unskilled labour in mines and plantations for which
the native Amerindians had proved too weakly of constitution. (Later on.
Las Casas himself records having regretted this proposal, when he learnt with

^ The original decision of the Pope [the Bull of Demarcation beginning *' Inter csetera"] drew the
boundary line between the Spanish and Portuguese spheres at a distance of three hundred miles west of
the Azores Islands. This limit discontented the Portuguese, and by the treaty of the following year
at Tordesillas the boundary was shifted to an imaginary north-to-south line at a distance of 370 leagues
(say 1 1 10 miles) west of the Cape Verde Archipelago. This provision cut off much of Brazil from the
Spanish sphere, and enabled the Portuguese to claim this portion of the New World when it was dis-
covered by their navigators Pinion, Cabral, and Amerigo Vespucci in 1499, ^S^^i t^^d 1501.

In 1494, a Papal decision, followed by the Treaty of Tordesillas, had already divided Morocco into a
Spanish and a Portuguese sphere of influence (as we should say nowadays). The Spanish half was the
Moorish kingdom of Tlamsan (Tlemcen) or Eastern Morocco ; the Portuguese division was the western
portion of the country, the Moorish kingdom of Fez or Al-gharb (Algarve) ; and the boundary between
the two spheres commenced on the north coast at Velez, in the Riff country. As the Portuguese domain
in Morocco was that which was best supplied with negro slaves (because most accessible to the Senegal
country and Western Nigeria), Spain was additionally dependent on Portugal for negro workers in Southern
Spain as in America. Under this arrangement of Tordesillas, Melilla, first occupied in 1490, remained
Spanish ; Ceuta, on the other hand, was Portuguese, and was not garrisoned by Spain until 1580, or
finally ceded to Spain until 16S8. The long connection of Portugal with Morocco (not terminated terri-
torially until the loss of Mazagan in 1770) resulted in a brisk trade in slaves for Brazil and the Spanish
Indies, and was one of the routes by which Bornuese and Songhai slaves — many of whom were superior
types of negroid — reached America. The Moorish conquest and occupation of Western Nigeria between
1590 and about 1730 greatly stimulated the slave trade with America through SafH, Tangier, and
Mazagan. But after 1590, the Moroccan oversea slave trade gradually passed into English hands.

^ It is said by the American writer George Parker Winthrop that 300 negro porters and soldiers
accompanied Cortes on his Mexican expeditions ; negroes carried the loads of Balboa on his discovery of
the Pacific Ocean in 15 13, and went with Hernandez to Peru in 1530. Negroes assisted as servants and
labourers in the founding of the Spanish city of St. Augustine in Florida in 1565, and were sailors on the
Spanish ships which explored the coast of Virginia in 1528. A Spanish-negro explorer, Estevan,
discovered New Mexico, the land of the Zufii Indians, in 1539.

^ A total which was probably an exaggeration. Modern opinion is occasionally inclined to the idea
that Las Casas somewhat overstated his case. But the records of Porto Rico, Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica,
the Lesser Antilles, Mexico, Colombia, and Peru make >t clear that (in the West Indies, at any rate) the
behaviour of the local Spanish authorities and settlers towards the Amerindian was extraordinarily bad ;
and this in defiance of the orders of the Spanish sovereign and his ministers and of the protests of the
Church. The emissaries of the Roman Church, especially the Jesuits, got in time the upper hand and
literally saved millions of Amerindians from destruction in Spanish and Portuguese America.

SLAVERY UNDER THE SPANIARD

what cruelty and deception the Portuguese obtained their supplies of slaves
from the West African coast). A year earlier, however (1516), in spite of
the do^ed opposition of Cardinal Ximenes, the first of anti-slavery prelates,
Charles V had anticipated the idea, and had given licences to Flemish
favourites to recruit negroes in West Africa for despatch to the West Indies.
One of these patents issued by Charles gave the exclusive right to a
Fleming named Lebrassa or Lebrasa to supply four thousand negroes
annually to Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Porto Rico. Lebrassa sold
his patent to a group of Genoese merchants, who then struck a bai^ain
with the Portuguese to supply
the slaves.

These licences or patents
were rendered necessary
owing to the rigid monopoly
of trade and traffic in Spanish
America, which lasted till the
end of the eighteenth century
and confined all commerce to
Spanish subjects and Spanish
ships. But also in theory the
slave trade was always an
unchristian and illegal pro-
cedure in Spanish policy, and
to engage in it required the
special Assent ("Asiento")
of the Spanish sovereign. In
course of time this Asiento
became a contract for supply-
ing the Spanish Indies with
negroes — an increasingly
profitable enterprise which
figures often in European and
American history during the
seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.

During the closing years
of his reign Charles turned ,g captain sir john hawkins

against the principle of

slavery for Indian or Negro. He promulgated the Code of 1542 for the better
protection of the Amerindians of Spanish America and directed that all African
slaves should be set free. Pedro de la Casca was sent out to carry this emanci-
pation into effect : but one year after the retirement of Charles to the monas-
tery of Yuste (1558^ slavery and the slave trade were resumed.

Sometimes the contractors of the Asiento passed on a portion of their
privilege to sub- contractors. Thus in 1562 a British sea-captain — John
Hawkins, later Sir John' — took up a contract for the supply of slaves from
Guinea to the Canary Islands, or direct to the Antilles. In 1562, '64, '67 he
made three ventures on the west coast of Africa (Gambia, Sierra Leone,
Western Liberia, and Gold Coast), in the course of which he purchased or

40 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

kidnapped about eight hundred negroes for transport to the Spanish West
Indies. Except for the interruptions of the Elizabethan wars with Spain,
British and Portuguese shippers contrived as sub-contractors to convey several
thousand negroes to Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica, and Porto Rico during the
sixteenth century.

The Asiento passed to a Fleming in 1595, and was undertaken by the
Portuguese governor of Angola in 1600; about 1640 it was conferred on
the Dutch, and in 1701 on the French. In 17 13 under the Treaty of Utrecht
this much-desired contract was granted to the English (the South Sea Com-
pany), who held it till 1739, when it provoked the war of ''Jenkins's ear."
In 1748 the Asiento was abolished, after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.

Contracts given to Portuguese, French, or British shippers to supply the
Spanish Indies with slaves having proved unsatisfactory because of the excuse
they gave for smuggling other goods into the closed markets of Spanish
America, Spain resolved to acquire a recruiting-ground of her own in West
Africa; and therefore in 1777 exchanged with Portugal a small piece of
Spanish coast and an island in the south of Brazil for the (nominally) Portu-
guese island of Fernando P6 in the Gulf of Guinea, together with the islet of
Anno Bom, and also the right to found a Spanish station on Corisco Island
north of the Gaboon River (this last grew in time into the now large-sized terri-
tory of " Spanish Guinea " or the Muni River, about 9800 square miles). But
the intentions of Spain were frustrated. The Bube tribes of Fernando P6 were
doggedly opposed to serving as slaves, and. besides resented so strongly the
landing of white men on their beloved island that they harassed the Spanish
garrison continually. Their attacks combined with the unhealthy climate led to
the evacuation of the island at the close of the eighteenth century.

In 1827 the British naval authorities occupied the north coast of Fernando
P6 as a base of operations for the suppression of the slave-trade ; and although
the British Government was obliged to recognise Spanish claims and eventually
to witness in 1846 the resumption of direct Spanish control (the Spanish
Dominican and the British Baptist — largely Jamaican — missionaries now inter-
vening to protect the Bube natives), yet British intervention effectually pre-
vented Fernando P6 becoming either a recruiting-ground or a receiving depot
for negro slaves, destined in the nineteenth century for the Spanish Antilles.

A good deal of slave-trading, however, went on at Corisco Island until the
French occupied the adjoining Gaboon estuary and founded Libreville.

The slave-trade was declared illegal by the Spanish Government in 1820
after the receipt of a subsidy of ;^400,ooo from Great Britain, but the prohibition
so far as the Spanish authorities were concerned was a farce, and the trade in
slaves from West Africa to Cuba and Porto Rico was only checked by the
vigilance of British and French cruisers.

Debarred from using these Spanish settlements on or off the Cameroons
coast, the slave-traders of nineteenth-century Cuba directed their attention to
the Rio Pongo, a no-man's land north-west of Sierra Leone. Hither came the
Fula traders from the mountainous interior bringing great "coffles"^ of slaves
from the Mandingo and Upper Niger countries. It was from the Rio Pongo that
so many Mandingoes (and even an occasional Fula) reached Cuba and Brazil.
The adjoining rivers and islands of Portuguese Guinea fed a similar slave-
trade. Englishmen from Liverpool and English half-castes like John Ormond*

^ The Arabic hafilah. ^ See for details the author's work on Liberia^ Vol. I.

SLAVERY UNDER THE SPANIARD 41

took an important part in this traffic with Cuba and Brazil, but at length these
Rio Pongo and Bolama slave-depots were broken up by the joint action of
British and French gunboats.

The Cuban ships then found their way to the eastern side of the Sierra
Leone colony, to the Gailinas or Gallinhas lagoon, and the River Sulima.
Here there had settled in 1821 "Don" Pedro Blanco, a native of Malaga,
originally the mate of a sailing-vessel. Gradually he had built np a large
slave-trading business along the unclaimed Grain Coast (now Liberia) from the
Sulima to the vicinity of the Cestos River, and from 1822 to 1839 he contrived
to ship to Cuba, Porto Rico, South Carolina, and Georgia, the Bahamas, and
Brazil an average five thousand slaves annually, some of whom were intercepted
by the British or French cruisers, Blanco
employed Spanish, Portuguese, American,
or Russian ships for his slave- trans ports.
One of his principal lieutenants was
Theodore Canot, a French seaman.'

Blanco was said to have been a man
of cultivated mind " not naturally cruel "
I'as is always said about the Robespierres
and Neros of this world). He lived near
the Gailinas lagoon in an establishment
(with a large harem) "surrounded by
every luxury which could be imported
from Europe." His bills were as promptly
cashed as a bank-note on the West
.African coast, in Cuba, London, or Paris.
He employed large numbers of negroes
as paid servants, watchers, spies, and
police. From a hundred look-outs on
the Gailinas beach and the islands of the
lagoon these men, trained to use tele-
Kopes, watched the hqrizon for the arrival
of British cruisers. By their signals they

repeatedly saved incoming or outgoing 40. a fula from thh wbst afrlcan

ships engaged in the slave-trade from hinterland nrar the uppek nhjer

detection and capture by the British, of Lh.,yp.«of.™fo„ndii.sp.ni.hAm«Lc.

Pedro Blanco and his agents obtained their slaves chiefly from the Gallina,
Mende, Gora, Busi, Vai, and Kpwesi tribes, from the Gibi, Sikong, and other
peoples behind the Basa and Kru coasts.

In 1839 Pedro Blanco retired from the trade with a fortune of nearly
a million sterling. At first he lived in Cuba, but here He got into some
political difficulty and lost some of his money. He then moved to Genoa, and
ended his days quite pleasantly on the Italian Riviera.

The Spanish slave-trading depots on the coasts of Sierra Leone and Liberia
had all been destroyed by the British or the Americo-Liberians by about 1847.
if any slaves reached Cuba or Porto Rico after that date it must have been
through American or Brazilian slave-ships ; for the protests of the British
Government in 1853 practically closed the Spanish slave-trade.

In 1873 the status of slavery was finally abolished in Porto Rico, but in

' See Liberia, chap, x., Vol. I.

42 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Cuba not till 1886. Already the Moret law of 1870 had given freedom to all
slaves in Spanish colonies aged sixty years and over, and to all children of
slaves born after 1870.

The Spanish treatment of slaves down to the stress of the busy nineteenth
century seems to have been much better than that accorded by the same nation
to the indigenous Amerindians.^ It was regarded as an act of piety, much
encouraged by the Spanish priests, to emancipate one's slaves as a death-bed
atonement by declaration or by testament ; or at any time and for any
reason. Contrary to the local laws in British and Dutch possessions (where
manumission was either restricted, forbidden, or heavily fined), the Spanish
laws of 1540, 1563, and 1641 (though the Royal Ordinance of 1789 omits these
passages) provided that any male or female slave who could tender his or her
master 250 dollars (about £s^) was able to purchase liberty, and with it, in the
case of a woman and for an extra twelve dollars, that of her unborn child. In
selling the children of a female slave, the Spanish father thereof was to have
preference over any other purchaser. The Spanish Government ratified and
registered the freeing of a slave gratis. Slaves might not absent themselves
without their master's permission in writing ; if convicted of striking a white
man they might be punished with death ; and they were forbidden to carry
arms. But they were fed on much the same food as their masters, and almost
as well lodged ; * and as the cost of their redemption was not too prohibitive,
masters treated their slaves well lest they might be induced to save, steal, or
beg the amount of money necessary to their redemption.

Once free, the Spanish laws took no note of differences of race or colour,
only of conformity to the Roman Catholic religion. Yet custom excluded the
freedmen (negro and mulatto) from employment as military officers or to
civilian posts of importance.^ Mulattoes were admitted without difficulty in
the priesthood, but not negroes.*

The result of this comparatively kindly treatment was that Spanish slaves
seldom revolted. There was a rising of negroes in 1522 on the plantation of
Diego Columbus in Hispaniola, and later on another in 1555 ; and a few years
afterwards the escaped negroes (** Symerons," i.e. Cimarrones — vide p. 240) on
the coast of Mexico and Panama joined the English adventurers against
the Spaniards. But from the beginning of the seventeenth century, one
hears of no trouble between the Spaniards and their negro slaves until well
into the nineteenth century, when there was a black revolt in Cuba in
1823 and 1844. ,

The 1540, 1563, and 1641 iaws of the Spanish Indies regarding slavery
were summed up in 1789 by a Royal Ordinance or Cedula proclaimed at
Aranjuez on May 31st in that year.^ In Cuba, Santo Domingo, Porto Rico,
Louisiana, Florida, New Andalusia, and Venezuela there remained, no doubt,
the additional or anterior laws, rules, and regulations alongside this Royal

^ " Les Espagnols euxmemes maltraitaient moins leurs esclaves que ne le firent plus tard les planteurs
des Antilles ou de rAm^rique du Nord." (P. Chemin-Dupontes, Les Petites Antilles^ 1908.)

^ Monsieur de Saint- M^ry, in his work on Spanish Santo Domingo, writes of the Spanish slaves :
'* lis sont plut6t les compagnons de leur mattre que ses esclaves."

' In the earlier edicts or local laws of the seventeenth century, freed men were forbidden io the
Spanish possessions to serve as notaries or police officials, to have themselves waited on by Indians, to
carry arms, wear jewellery, silk, or a mantle reaching below the waist. But these laws had become a
dead letter long before 1789.

^ The Portuguese, on the other hand, made no difficulty about admitting pure-blood negroes not only
to the priesthood, but to the episcopate. There have been several black bishops in Brazil.

^ I quote from the English translation of May 31st, 181 1, printed for the House of Commons.

SLAVERY UNDER THE SPANIARD 43

Ordinance which were not annulled thereby; but if not, then the 1789
proclamation was less favourable to the slaves than the pre-existing legislation,
for it makes no definite provision for emancipation either by the master's action
or the slave's self- redemption.

THB CATHEDRAL A

sf Spaniah AmeilcA ; lArq

The substance of the 17S9 edict is this :^

(1) Every one who has slaves is obliged to instruct them in the principles of
the Roman Catholic religion and in the necessary truths in order that the slaves
may be baptized within the (first) year of their residence in the Spanish domin-
ions. On every holiday of the Church (excepting at the time of the crop) they

44 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

are not to be allowed to work either for themselves or for their masters, but are
to receive instruction in Christian doctrine. On these and other days when
they are obliged to hear Mass, the owner of the estate on which they work is to
be at the expense of providing a priest to administer to the slaves the Holy
Sacrament and explain Christian doctrines to them. Every day as soon as
their work is finished the slaves are to say the Rosary in the presence of
the master or the steward " with the greatest composure and devotion."

(2) The justices of the districts in which the estates are situated, with the
approbation of the magistrates and the syndic or recorder (as protector of the
slaves)^ shall fix upon and determine the quantity and quality of the food and
clothes which are to be supplied to the slaves by their masters daily, according
to their ages and sexes, and conformable to the custom of the country — like
those commonly given to (free) day labourers ; " and linen the same as the work-
people have who are free." Which determination, after having been approved
by the Court of the district, shall be fixed upon the door of the town-hall, and of
the churches of every place, and of the oratories or hermitages of the estates,
that every one may know it and that no one may plead ignorance.

(3) The first and principal occupation of slaves must be agriculture and not
those labours which require a sedentary life. . . . The justices of towns and
villages . . . shall regulate the work to be done in the course of the day, and the
slaves shall have two hours to themselves to be employed in manufactures or
other occupations for their own advantage. Neither the masters nor the
stewards are to oblige slaves to work when they are sixty years old or before
they are seventeen. Women slaves were not to be employed in business un-
suited to their sex, or to be employed jn work which would bring them into
promiscuity with the men. The women were to receive two dollars yearly from
their masters for domestic service.

(4) On holy days, when masters cannot oblige or permit their slaves to work,
after they have heard Mass and the Christian doctrine explained to them, the
said masters or their stewards shall allow the slaves to divert themselves inno-
cently in their presence, but they shall not allow them to be amongst those of
the other estates, nor even with the females ; hindering them from excess in
drinking and taking care that their diversions are ended before prayer-time.

(5) This chapter provided (very properly) for the lodging of slaves [a sepa-
rate bed to each slave, not more than two slaves in one bedroom], an infirmary
for their use when sick, treatment at the hospital, and decent burial when dead.

(6) Slaves who on account of old age or illness are not able to work, as like-
wise the children of both sexes, must be maintained by their masters ; and these
cannot give them their liberty in order to get rid of them, except by giving a
sufficient stock (of goods or money) which must be approved by the justices and
syndic (protector of slaves), to maintain them without any other assistance.

(7) The master of slaves must not allow the unlawful intercourse of the two
sexes, but must encourage matrimony. Neither must he hinder them from
marrying with slaves of other masters ; in which case, if the estates were distant
from one another, so that the new-married couple cannot fulfil the object of
marriage, the wife shall follow her husband, whose master shall buy her at a fair
valuation set upon her by skilful men who shall be nominated by the two
parties ; and in case of disagreement a third shall be appointed by the justice to

* Elsewhere the ** protector of slaves" is referred to as the "Attorney-General " in the English transla-
tion of the Spanish word procurador.

SLAVERY UNDER THE SPANIARD 45

fix a price. If the master of the husband does not agree to the purchase the
master of the wife shall have the same faculty.

Chapters (8) and (lo) allude to the obligation of masters to "educate"
their slaves, but this probably means only in suitable industrial work. In (8)
it is laid down that slaves must obey and respect their masters and the stewards,
perform the work given them to do (conformably with their strength), and vene-
rate master and steward " as the heads of the family." Failing to perform their
obligations, slaves must be punished by the master of the estate or by his
steward [according to the nature of the offence] with prison, chains, or lashes,
which last must not exceed the number of twenty-five, and those must be given
them in such a manner as not to cause any contusion or effusion of blood :
which punishments cannot be imposed on slaves but by their masters or the
stewards. In chapter (9) it is provided that in all grave crimes the slave is to be
tried before an ordinary court of justice just as a free person would be ; except
that any fine levied on the slave is to be paid by the master, and that
(apparently) the master of the slave is to carry out any sentence of corporal
punishment, mutilation, or death, which may be awarded by the court on the
guilty slave.

(10) The masters or the stewards who do not fulfil all that is ordered in the
chapters of this Ordinance in regard to the education, food, clothes, diversions,
habitations, etc., of the slaves, or who forsake the slave children or the old and
sickly slaves, are to be fined 50 dollars for the first offence, 100 for the second,
and 200 for the third, and these fines are to be paid by the master, even in the
case where the fault has really been committed by the steward, supposing the
latter not to be able to pay the fine. Of this fine, one third will belong to the
informer who has drawn attention to the offence, another third to theyiw^^, and
the last third is to be put into the " Fines Chests If these fines do not have the
required effect and the Ordinance continues to be broken or not observed, a
somewhat vague threat is uttered, that " I (the King) will take my measures
accordingly." When masters or stewards are guilty of excess in punishing
slaves, causing them contusion, effusion of blood, or mutilation of members,
besides paying the above-mentioned fines, they are to be prosecuted as criminals
and receive punishments suitable to the crime they have committed, while the
injured slave is to be confiscated and sold to another master (if he is able to
work), the selling price being put into the Fines Chest. If he is too injured to
work he is to be practically free, whilst his former master is obliged to make
him a daily allowance (to be fixed by the justice) for his maintenance and
clothes during the remainder of his life, paying this allowance every three
months in advance.

(11) All persons not being the master or steward who chastise slaves, injure,
wound, or kill them, shall incur the same punishment as would be enacted by
the laws against those who committed similar excesses towards free people.
The prosecution is to be initiated by the master of the slave who has been
injured, chastised, or killed, and the Attorney-General of the Colony as Protec-
tor of the slaves is to conduct the case.

(12) Masters of slaves are obliged every year to deliver to the justice of the
town or village in the district in which their estates are situated a list, signed
and sworn to by them, of all the slaves which they have, giving particulars as to
sex and age, in order that the notary of the Court may take account of them
in a separate book which is to be kept for this purpose, together with the lists
presented by the masters. Whenever a slave dies or runs away the justice is to

«e

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

be informed of this fact within three days, in order that the Attorney^
may have this fact noted in the book ; otherwise the master will run tW
suspicion of having killed his slave and of being prosecuted for such a i

(13) In order that every possible means may be taken for ascertain
checking the treatment of slaves by their masters or stewards, it is |
that the priests who go round the estates giving Christian instruct
saying Mass are to obtain information from the slaves as to how I yj
treated by their masters and stewards, so that if there is any wrong-dl
priest may give a secret and reserved notice of it to the Attorney-Gen^
will order the case to be investigated whether or not there is any truti
complaint. The priests who by reason of their ministry give the sah
notice are not to be answerable for anything, even if the complaint!
slaves are not just. The priests are required to render this servic
the Attorney-General may cause the justice to nominate some individu
municipality or other person of approved conduct, who shall in
the business and give a report to the justice, who shall determine wh
take further proceedings or not. .

In addition to the priests the justices and magistrates shall appotf
persons of good character to visit the estates three times a year, to make^
whether all the chapters of the Ordinance are observed, and if not, t
the justices of this default. " It is likewise declared to be a popula
that of informing against a master or his steward for not having fulfill
the whole of the said chapters, as the name of the informer shall not
known, and he shall have the (third) part of the fine which he is en
without being responsible in any other case than in that where it is pro
the information is false. And lastly, it is likewise declared that the just|*;
Attorney-General, as protectors of slaves, will be made answerable
neglect of theirs in not having made use of the necessary means to h
Royal Resolutions put into execution."

(14) The Chest of Fines is to be established at the Court of Justi
towns and villages, to be provided with three keys, one of which will
by the justice of the peace, another by the governor of the province,
third by the Attorney-General. The produce of the fines stored in thj
is to be used to meet the expense of carrying out the regulations »
Ordinance. Not a "single maravedi" is to be taken out of it for anfcu..
purpose, or without an order signed by the three who keep the keys, s
forth the destination of the money. Accounts as to this expenditure at.
submitted yearly to the Intendant of the province. j

■
■

Although this Spanish Slave Code of 1789 was not in many resfl
explicitly benign towards the slaves as the Edict of Louis XIV in 1685^
intended to be put in force (while the other had become a dead letter)[
French planters complained of it in Haiti as likely to lure slaves 0I
border into Spanish Santo Domingo ; the American settlers in GeorgI
tested as it caused many slaves from the United States to escape to Fid
Cuba; and when the British acquired Trinidad in 1797 and British West;
capitalists proceeded to invest their money in the island, it was expressly
lated (in 181 1) that the Spanish Slave Code (in force there from 1789 td '
should be abrogated. I

In the seventeenth century the negro slaves of the Spaniards djT"^
welcome the British as deliverers either at the town of Santo Domingo ,

-O

LtaGorda

F I- O R I D A.

'^Ay

*»

,;„.n£i/i/iy, ^ ,'^i

S«ix.AiX3toiiii.<

*■/

Sluuxr* CU> iSc;.

X«mU Oaywuwij

d« 01^* Tbww*'

SLAVERY UNDER THE SPANIARD 47

Jamaica. They fought gallantly with their Spanish masters to keep out the
English, already acquiring a bad name as slave-drivers.^ On the other hand,
the Spaniards treated their Indian slaves with the greatest harshness, and all
the arrangements made about bloodhounds tracking runaway slaves and
being fed (to make them fierce) on human flesh had rather to do with
fugitive or rebellious Arawaks or Caribs than Negroes. Indeed, down to the
nineteenth century the Spanish as compared to the other European nations in
America were not large holders of negro slaves. In Santo Domingo at the
close of the eighteenth century there were only about 10,000 ; in Cuba (1792)
84,000 ; in Porto Rico about 50,000 ; in Trinidad, Venezuela, New Andalusia,
and Central America about 60,000 ; in Florida and Louisiana about 60,000.

It was not until the second quarter of the nineteenth century that, in com-
mercial rivalry with the now independent Hispaniola and the enfranchised
British West Indies, the Spanish planters in Cuba (to whom had been added
in 1795 French refugees from Haiti) began to overwork their slaves in the rush
to get rich quickly out of sugar and tobacco ; and i« the greater cost of servile
labour due to the British stoppage of the oversea slave-trade.

In spite of the mildness of the Spanish Slave Code the condition of their
slaves during the nineteenth century — especially after 1853 — became almost
unendurable ; the death-rate among them was very high, and those that suc-
ceeded in escaping took to the forests and mountains and became some of the
most dangerous fighters in the two great Cuban insurrections, from 1868 to
1878, and from 1895 to 1898. The slaves were fed on coarse, unwholesome
food, were subjected to exhausting, unremitting toil, and numbers of them died
or went mad from the slow torture of overwork, insufficient rest, and want of
sleep.- The Catholic Church in Cuba in the nineteenth century, unlike the
emissaries of the same Church in Haiti and Brazil, seems to have been utterly
indifferent to the condition of the negro slaves. Many of these remained
fetish-worshippers and believers in nauseous forms of sorcery ; and it was not
till the American brought with him freedom of religion to misgoverned Cuba
and with it came missionaries and teachers from the United States, Jamaica,
and France that the negroes of Cuba — in some respects a fine, vigorous race —
obtained any insight into the more reasonable aspects of Christianity.

As regards the continental dominions of Spain in the two Americas, the
slave-trade was prohibited soon after the various republics had proclaimed their
complete independence. There had never been much demand for negroes on
the mainland of Spanish America, except in the coast lands of Honduras, Costa
Rica, Colombia, and Venezuela.

The status of slavery was abolished in Guatemala by 1824, and in Mexico
by 1829. The remainder of the Central American States stafted "free" by
ignoring the status of slavery in framing their constitutions. In Argentina,
Peru, Chili, Bolivia, and Paraguay slavery ceased to be recognised in law about
1825. It lingered longest in Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, scarcely
coming to an end until from 1840 to 1845. Of ^1' parts of Spanish continental
America perhaps the most negrified was the Panamd isthmus, owing to the

* Intelligent European travellers in Africa and America during the last half of the eighteenth century
recorded opinions of their own and answers to their questions from negroes which went to show that in
the opinion of the n^^roes themselves the slave-holding nations stood thus in order of merit as regards
Wnd treatment of slaves : the Portuguese first ; then the Spaniards, the Daves, the French, English,
and Dutch.

^ John E. Cairnes, The Slave Power, its Character, Career, and Probable Designs, 1833.

48 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

need for transport and the traffic from sea to sea. Even before the making of
the canal attracted many thousand West Indians, the Panamanian population
had a considerable negro element.

In the regions of Northern South America, however, numbers of negroes
had obtained their freedom by serving in the armies of Bolivar and other
revolutionary leaders. Indeed, the independence of Venezuela and Colombia
was partly won by the bravery of negro and mulatto soldiers fighting under
Bolivar, Paez, and Sucre. And Bolivar was helped most materially during the
critical years of his struggle (1814-16) by the assistance in men, arms, and
money — two expeditions in all — granted to him by General Potion, who was

then ruling the' southern part of the negro republic of Haiti. Twice did Bolivar,
the Liberator of South America, find a secure refuge at Aux Cayes in Southern
Haiti when all other neutral ports were closed to him. Yet at a later date he
showed himself most ungrateful to the Haitians : affecting to ignore the
existence of their republic and omitting to send to them as well as to all the
other recently enfranchised states any diplomatic representative of his new
government.

In Santo Domingo — the Spanish portion of Hispaniola — slavery came to
an end (more or less) in 1801, when Toussaint Louverture had made him-
self master of the whole island. The Spanish authorities had quitted San
Domingo soon after the Treaty of Bale (1795) had transferred to France all
Spanish rights over Hispaniola. In 1808, however, the Spaniards returned to

SLAVERY UNDER THE SPANIARD 49

the eastern part of the island to resume possession of their old colony, and the
English assisted them by taking the town of Santo Domingo from the French,
who thenceforth were without a foothold on the island.

Occasional attempts were made by the Spaniards Ijctween 1809 and 1 821
to coerce the enfranchised negro settlers ; and the Spanish officials of the
restored regime of Ferdinand VII (whose ashes should be exhumed and
scattered, for he was the worst foe to the glory and greatness of Spain that
ever existed) made themselves so odious to the native inhabitants, without
distinction, that the intervention of negro Haiti was sought, the Spaniards were
expelled, and from 1822 to 1843 the whole of Hispaniola was united under one
government, that of Haiti.

But the Spanish -speaking Domingans were mainly of mixed Amerindian-
Spanish or nearly pure Spanish descent: only about a third were negro, and
these negroes had long absorbed and adopted the gravity and stateliness of
Spanish manners. The French negroes and mulattoes of Haiti with their incom-
prehensible Creole speech,
their extravagances of words
and actions, their frequent
changes of government, civil
wars, and murderous courts-
martial disgusted the quieter
people of Santo Domingo.
So in 1843 Haitian rule was
shaken off and in 1844 a
separate Dominican Republic
proclaimed. During the
•■ twenties " of the nineteenth
century a small number of
United States free negroes
had settled on the Samani

peninsula of San Domingo ^3. „egro quarters at rio grandh, Panama canal
as farmers and their de-
scendants (now nearly a thousand in number) remain there to this day, still
talking a broken English.

From 1844 to 1861 the Dominican Republic had a very chequered existence,
dreading negro invasions from the west or revolutions from within. The United
States — here as in Haiti — were disliked because they still upheld humiliating
social distinctions of colour. The thoughts of the Spanish-speaking Domingans
turned once more towards Spain, and Queen Isabella H was invited to send
troops to occupy their country and reorganise Santo Domingo as a Spanish
colony. But a tactless archbishop and fanatical Spanish clergy were sent with
the expeditionary force, and quarrelled with the natives on the subject of
religion. The Spanish officials, civil and military, were equally stupid, and
after two years' vain endeavours to win over the Domingans to the same style
of colonial government as that which was ruining Cuba the Spaniards quitted
Santo Domingo and the Dominican Republic was restored. Then followed
more than thirty years of financial chaos and indiscriminate loans ; revolutions ;
assassinations ; yellow fever ; and a stationary population in a land as near the
Earthly Paradise in climate, soil, fruits, scenery, and inherent healthfulness as
one can expect to find in the known world. The enunciation of the Monroe
Doctrine prevented the intervention of any European Power to restore order

; NEW WORLD

So, however reluctantly at first,
:e themselves in the hands of the
of much the same type as that of
r results, Santo Domingo is now
he White man's interests.
he end of the eighteenth century.

\N1SH AND NSGRO-SPANtSH

il mixture of Spanish and Amer-
had languished after the first eager
he enormous mineral wealth of
;haracter of Cuba and Porto Rico
lere than to the first metropolis of
)rmous increase of wild cattle in
:d to this island — especially to the

MEW WORLD

Usion of Spanish blood : he is
; shows better taste in ^ress,
IS and astonishingly brave.
did qualities that mere contact
which have ranged themselves
h, English, and Anglo-Celtic
;w ; and the N^ro. She ought
i, combining the best of racial

,1, Carthaginian. Roman, Goth.
Italian. Yet her every purpose
; her shipbuilding, gun-casting,
painting and appreciation of
: city, and the landscape ; her
blest, most logical development
idustry : all these have availed
years' long struggle with the
which began by the attack of

Sir John Hawl
L'lua^ off the c
the Americans
The slave-ti
New World, w
Spain, though '
form, for the II

the Portuguese
ferring to empl<

[In the old 1
is nigre, afterwE
1 500 French it :

To the Spa I
are indebted foi

' The first Euto]
New World wu Fi
France ; who in Iji
occupied HavBDB b
Ctioiina " ncM the n

J THE NEW WORLD

d other races. As these words will recur in
e as well to enumerate and explain them

ir "muled") is the cross between a pure-blood
{Pardo is an equivalent sometimes used by

:>anish term for the hybrid between a white
CO is the Portuguese (Brazilian) equivalent

ition of criadillo, " a little educated child ")
still most frequently means a white colonist
t of pure European descent. But in Brazil

SLAVERY UNDER THE SPANIARD $5

and Peru it is applied to half-castes, or even (in Brazil) to absolute negroes of
Brazilian birth and descended from negroes long settled in Brazil. In Sierra
Leone the negroes who are freed slaves, or are descended from freed slaves not
indigenous to the country, call themselves " Creoles." Nevertheless, " Creole "

50. A NEGRO Of SANTO DOMINGO

is in the West Indies, Louisiana, and Spanish America (also in the Seychelles,
Mauritius, and Bourbon), a native inhabitant of the White race.

The children of Mulattoes — mulatto father and mulatto mother — are styled
Cascos in Spanish America.

Quadroon (French, "Marabou"). QumUroon, Octoroon (Spanish, CuarterSn,
Quinter6n, and Octorin or Ociaron) are the designation of n^roids mingled in
increasing degrees with pure whites : thus a quadroon has one-fourth of negro

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

blood, a quinteroon one-fifth, and an octoroon one-eighth. To these distinctions
the Anglo-Saxon American adds another — the Near White, sprung perhaps
from the union of an octoroon with a pure white. In most countries outside the
United States, and perhaps Jamaica, the " near white," with one-sixteenth or
.less of negro blood, is reputed white and treated accordingly. (Alexandre
Dumas — possibly even the Empress Josephine — was a " near white ").

A Zambo or Sambo (Spanish, Zambo, " bandy-legged *') is a cross between
a Negro and an Amerindian (sometimes this name is given to the cross between
a pure Negro and a mulatto, which the French call "griffe.") In Brazil the
•offspring of a Zambo or Caburete (half negro, half Amerindian) and a pure Negro
is called Zambo preto or Cafuso, between a Mestizo (half European, half Amer-
indian) and a Negro, Chino, The descendants of Zambos are sometimes called
Cholos, A very common Brazilian term, Caboclo or Cabocolo, means a civilized
pure-blooded Amerindian.

CHAPTER IV
CUBA

IN the latest official census of Cuba (1907-8) there is a native population
of 2,049,000; of which no less than 609,000 are classed as Negroes.
242,382 of these "coloured" people are unmixed negroes, of very black
complexion : the balance of the 609,000 are mulattoes of varying tints. The

colour line in Cuba is obviously not drawn with unkind precision ; octoroons and
people with only a slight evidence of negro ancestry may be classed officially
as whites. And it is evident to any observant traveller penetrating into the
country districts of Cuba that the Spanish peasantry of ancient settlement (as
contrasted with the new Spanish immigrants since 1898) are considerably mixed

58 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

in blood with the Amerindian, and that the "Indian" aboriginies of Cuba,
instead of becoming extinct in the middle of the sixteenth century, have as
half-breeds lingered in Central and Eastern Cuba to the present day. Pure-
blood " Indians " are said to have existed in the East Cuban mountains down to
the early part of the nineteenth century, and I have seen " Indian " reserva-
tions of land which were only finally broken up and thrown open to general
settlement (mainly by Amerindian half-breeds) by the Spanish Government
forty years ago. It is evident (to me) that a large proportion of the Cuban
aborigines were not exterminated, but became absorbed into the Spanish -speak-
ing community. •

Thus in Cuba at the present day — Cuba with a superficies of over 44,000
square miles — there are three main elements of population : a million pure-

'INDIO" (dBSCENDAHT op CUBAN

blooded whites (mainly Spanish, but with an American, Canadian, and a French
admixture not to be overlooked) ; half a million yellows (mixed Indian and
Spanish); and over half a million negroes and negroids, the quadroon and
octoroon members of which class being always eager to desert the negro camp
and fuse with the yellow Cuban middle-class.' Gradually the three or four
hundred thousand negroes or dark-skinned negroids of Cuba are segregating
into a racial group apart from the whites and yellows, but a group to which it
is incorrect to apply any derogatory classification as regards industry or
Intellect. Many Cuban negroes are wealthy citizens, dwelling in good town
houses, and possessing flourishing country farms ; their wives are well dressed,
and their children are being well educated. Negroes or dark mulattoes are to be
found in all the professions and in nearly every branch of the government

CUBA

service, notably in the police, army, post office, and public works. While
the negroes are inferior in many qualifications to the pure-blood whites of
Cuba, they may certainly be ranked next to them in physical efficiency and
in mental vigour. They are a more potent factor in this country than the
oldest section of the population, the yellow-skinned Spanish-Indian hybrid.

Yet Cuba is more a white man's country^ than a future realm of the black
man. The Cuban aristocracy and the town bourgeoisie are quite free from
n^ro intermixture, are, in fact, very much like the population of Southern
Spain, This white element has been re-enforced during recent years by a
strong contingent of Spanish immigrants, numbering in 190S 185,398. These
peasant settlers come mainly from Galicia, the Asturias, and the Basque
provinces, and constitute a most valuable addition to Cuba's resources: for
they are indefatigable workers, are sober, quiet, thrifty and moral. Wives have
accompanied husbands and Spanish children are
constantly raising the Cuban birth-rate. The
success of these new Spanish colonists is attract-
ing other immigrants from Spain and the Canary
Islands, and if this continues for a few more
years Cuba bids fair to become an independent
Spanish- speaking Republic

But for this movement (since 1898) Cuba
had a considerable chance in the near future of
developing into another Haiti or a San Domingo.
The birth-rate among the "white" Cuban
peasantry was low, that of the negroes high.
Many families of the Spanish planting aristocracy
had been ruined by the War of Independence
and had retired to Spain. The negroes were
brave lighters and had been the backbone of
the revolt, supplying the insurgents with their
stubbornest fighting force. They, in common
with all Cuban citizens, without distinction of
race or colour, had received the franchise under

the new Republican Cuban Constitution. In an , ^ spanish cuban

independent Cuba without outside interference

the " coloured " vote would soon have amounted to a third of the total, and
before long to a half, and finally have preponderated over the white
clement — with what effect on public order or efficiency it is difficult to say,
since the Cuban negro differs in many characteristics from the dark race in the
United States and in Haiti, and has not yet been sufficiently tried in positions of
responsibility and public trust to have established a racial character, good or bad.

But the recent Spanish immigration has decided the balance in favour of a
White Cuba, and this idea will be strengthened by the several thousand
Americans and the hundreds of Canadians, Englishmen, Frenchmen, and
Germans who are settling in this truly beautiful country in charge of great
interests and developments of industry and commerce.*

' Few people who have not visitetl Cuba ace awaie how emphatically "while" is a cooiideiable
proportion — al least one half — of its populatioD of >,049,OCK>. The people of the large and aocient town
ot CatiiBguey (for eiaiDple), in Central Cuba, aie entirely of while Spanish descent, and their women are
justly renowned for beauty.

' The peal landed proprietors— Spaniards in the p»sl, now mainly Americans— dwell often in maible
places near their tugit plantations, which recall the most sumptuous dwellings of Andalusia.

NEW WORLD

o establish Cuban independence
ienth-CentLry Spain, runs some
rising White interests. For this
ice during the election period of
n the long War of Independence
to watch politics in the special

f Cuba (since 1898) have had no

;UBAN UDIBS

American administration of the
is yet no "colour line" in public
ment There have been negro
for the government of provinces.
!]uban Government are persons

I and socially, and unless he is
ibourer, petty tradesman, minor
; a "colour" question here as in

CUBA 6i

At present, I repeat, there is none. Negroes and negresses travel alongside

white Cubans in trains or street cars, sit next them in cafes, theatres, and

churches, and the men match their birds against

each other at those coclt-fights which are still

the most important pastime in Cuban life. The

negro or negress merits this liberality of treat-
ment on the part of White Cuba by being always

well dressed, clean, and well mannered in public

life. A lai^er proportion of the coloured people

here^ can read and write than is the case in

most of the Southern Stales of the Union. They

speak as good Spanish as do the white Cubans,

and struck me as being industrious, quiet, sober,

and prosperous. I noticed especially the good

taste and good quality of the negro costumes in

town and country. There was no overdressing,

no ridiculous ostentation of patent leather boots

at inappropriate seasons by the men, nor the

perpetuation of the outworn horrors of European

taste — chimney-pot hats and frock coats. The

women seemed "just right" in their costumes —

so elegant often that after studying with interest

the shape and colour of the dress, one glanced SS- a cuban ladv of Spanish-

with a start at the dark brown or yellow face of french parbntagb

the wearer, surprised (unjustly enough)
: to find so much taste and gracefulness

conjoined with the negro physiognomy.
There was no blind copying of European
fashions, whether or no they were suited
to a person of dark skin and woolly hair;
■ but a certain originality in the colour and

cut of garments, the shape of hats and
the arrangement of the ckevelure which
betokened thoughtfulness and innate
good taste. If I were asked how the
civilised negro and negress should dress

tin a warm climate I should reply "as in
Cuba."

The country negroes of course clothe
themselves more aft^ the fashion of
peasants — Spanish peasants : yet even
here there is a self-respect, an eye for
' suitable colours and shapes, an appro-
priateness to the tasks to be performed,
superior to the slovenly dress of the
; United States negro country-folk or the
occasional nudity of the male Haitian
, peasant- proprietor. The children in the
i • country (white, even, as well as black)

56. A CUBAN MULATTO are most sensibly allowed to run about

* Pecbaps only 15 per cent aie illiterale.

W WORLD

towns the negro children —
never in bad taste or with

le American negro appears
where of course is there the
ro in his higher types : on
itupid barbarity, aggressive
ned better and neater than

States ; the town dwellings
lem the dignity of Spain.

negro peasantry are often
feature in every household,
bans, black and yellow, are
le Americans have tried to
h bull-fights), they have not
sport are certainly a further
le magnificent long-horned
ing- horses.

ed the pride of bearing, the
in. The bad points in the

CUBA 63

negro population of Cuba are described to me by Cubans and Americans as
{[) the tendency to form secret and Masonic societies which are more often than
not leagues for the committing of crimes and foul practices ; (2) gross im-
morality ; (3) petty dishonesty. Their ardent love of gambling is so completely
shared by their white and yellow fellow- citizens in Cuba, as also their over-
bearing demeanour and dishonesty when employed as petty officials, that
it would be Pharisaism on the pari of white critics to add these charges to
the list.

The country negroes of Cuba are imperfectly converted to Christianity.
The Spanish branch of the Church of Rome has not taken them to its bosom

S8. NB,

with any cordiality since the early nineteenth century, and they are now, with
teal political freedom, steadily turning away from that church towards a vague
and vicious heathenism — the fetishistic religions of West Africa — or, with
decided moral improvement, towards the Methodism, even the Anglicanism, of
the United States and Jamaica. The growing influence of Jamaica over the
negroes of Cuba (Eastern Cuba, mostly) and of Haiti is so marked as to
constitute almost a political factor in the future development of the Negro
problem in America. Certainly the black Jamaicans who spread far and wide
over the vast archipelago of the West Indies and the territories of Central
America seem to be intelligent missionaries of a practical type of civilisation
and enthusiastically " British."

^E NEW WORLD

scted by a French clergy and French

I forefront of scientific research and

.1 matters. Here the Methodists and

ates, make little progress in religious

ins and Bahamans is mainly comnier-

:o Domingo — the Jamaican and the

•e rapidly drawing the negro population

5 advantage of their moral and material

1 sap and finally destroy these odious

—against which Rome has always set

in negroes (for example). Moreover,

missionary teaching — of any branch

of the Christian faith — invariably

breaks down racial prejudices and

instils the love of a good and orderly

government.

One diriection in which Rome is
losing negro adherents in Cuba and
Anglo-American protestant Chris-
tianity gaining, is in the matter of
marriages and baptisms. According
to various informants the Roman
Church in thjs island (as represented
not only by the Spanish clergy, but
by the recently established French
priests whom the religious troubles
of the Congregations have driven to
Cuba and elsewhere) makes marriage
so expensive a ceremony that Cuban
negroes — or Cuban whites — prefer
living in a state of concubinage to
paying the fees demanded. (I asked,
however, in one small town what was
the minimum fee, and was told " five
dollars'* — £i — which does not sound
very prohibitive even to a Cuban
negro.) On the other hand, the
Baptists, Methodists, or Episco-
j. The greatest attraction, however,
o the negro all over America is a
service. Hymn-and-psalm-singing is
al, music-loving race. " A Jamaican
table organ and interested the people
It to me in Eastern Cuba, " and there
ch is abandoned and shut up, while
re the people assemble to sing hymns."
thousand Cubans, mostly negroes, had
i» mainly owing to the genial services
d take part." I glanced at the hymns
h translations.
;s with still maintaining in their midst

the dar
doubt t

purpose
masters
as han
scientif

SUpp05«

66 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

lizard, crocodile or leopard), with which are associated frenzied dancing, mes-
merism, gross immorality, cannibalism or corpse eating really exists (or ex-
isted) all over West Africa, from Sierra Leone to Tanganyika, and no doubt
was introduced by Inner Congo, Niger Delta or Dahome slaves into Haiti,
Cuba, Louisiana, South Carolina, Jamaica, the Guianas and Brazil. Where
Christianity of a modem type has obtained little or no influence over the negro
slaves and ex -slaves, these wild dances and witchcraft persist. They are fast
becoming a past phase in the life-condition of the American negro, and much

PLAYING DOMINOES DURING TKSIR MIDDAY RKST

of the evidence to the contrary is out of date, or is manufactured by sensation-
mongers for the compilation of magazine articles.

The last vestige of noxious witchcraft lingering among the Cuban negroes
is (said to be) the belief that the heart's blood or the heart of a white child will
cure certain terrible diseases if consumed by the sufferer. The black prac-
titioners who endeavour to procure this wonderful remedy are known as
"Brujos" or "Brujas" (ie. male or female sorcerers). At the time I was in
Cuba (December, 1908), there were four or five negroes awaiting trial on this
charge at Havana. Other cases — said to have been proved beyond a doubt —
have occurred in Eastern Cuba within the last two or three years. But all
these stories and charges are vague hearsay, and during the short time at
my disposal I was not able to get proof of one. There is little doubt that

CUBA 67

occasionally in the low quarters of the old Spanish towns little white girls do
disappear. It is too readily assumed that the negro is at fault.

I was informed by every resident or official whom I questioned that cases
of negro assaults on white women were practically unknown in Cuba. On the
other hand, young coloured or negro women and girls were never safe with
men of their own race, that rape, or indecent assault, was the commonest
charge on which negroes were arraigned. But further inquiry elicited that
these attacks were generally made by young unmarried men on young un-
married women: were in fact a rough-and-ready courtship which would be
more frequently followed by a formal marriage were it not that marriage fees
{of State or Church?) were too high. The girl generally only brought the
charge to compel the man to marry her. The Cuban courts in such instances

are ready to waive punishment if the culprit and his victim are unmarried and
are ready to go through the form of marriage in court. But it is said that
many a young negro husband afterwards deserts the woman he has wronged.

Before quitting the subject of the Negro in Cuba I might perhaps give some
description of the beautiful island — nearly as large as England — which would
quite conceivably have become in time an independent Negro or Negroid
State, but for the intervention of the American Government in 1898; an
intervention which, with its results, made it possible and tempting for white
emigrants to come here in such numbers as to turn the balance of potency.

In the first place — from the Negro's point of view, as well as the White
man's — it ought at once to be said that not only are the Cubans of all colours
greatly indebted to the courage, genius, and high-mindedness of the United
States for the character and achievements of their intervention, but that the
whole of Tropical America should give thanks for seven years of Twentieth-

EW WORLD

did property which Spain mis>

J the United States ver>' often
ish energy. Huguenot genius,
irage and Scottish tenacity.)

bellow Fever ; have got rid of
draining, and by protecting
windows.) They have made
Before they came the Bible
^mlaargo on modern literature
me. They have endowed, the

CUBA 69

Cuban towns with magnificent public works, paved streets, and pure water;
they have turned brigands into politicians (at any rate harmless to life),
barracks into hotels, prisons into libraries, and hospitals into schools. They
founded a great, secure National Bank ; they established primary education on
a well -equipped basis, and made education compulsory. Religion was freed
from every trammel. Passports were abolished. Tourists increased from about
ten per annum to a yearly thirty thousand. The beauty of the Spanish towns
was not only left undisturbed, but was repaired and enhanced. The railway ■
system under English, Canadian, and American management was extended
throughout the length and breadth of the island. Good sanitation was intro-
duced everywhere, together with up-to-date hospitals, new-style doctors and
dentists, and scientifically trained nurses.'

64. THE KNTRANCe TO THK HARBOUR OF HAVANA, CUBA

This endowment (much of it paid for with American money) was Uncle
Sam's send-off to the Cuban Republic ; and it now rests with the white, yellow,
and black Cubans to show that they can govern themselves in a manner suited
to twentieth-centurj' ideas and ideals.

The following extracts from my travel notes may give some idea of what a
beautiful home the negro — as well as the white man — has in Cuba : —

The dominant note in the scenery is certainly struck bf the royal palm (Oreodoxa
ngta). This is possibly the most beautiful and stately member of a princely order of
plants. It is especially characteristic of Cuba, for although found also (sparingly) in
Hispaniola and in Forto Rico, it is not native to the other Antilles or to tropical
America. The stems of the royal palms are absolutely smooth, rounded like columns,

* The other side of the medal is the much-increased cost of living which has prevailed since (he
Ameiioii occupalion. The clearness of comforlable living in Havana and mosl olher Cuban towns is
the onljr deterrent which can be quoted — besides the sea voyage — to explain why Cuba should not be the
piiDcipal winter reioit of civilised America.

70 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

and a uniform grey-white. The fronds as they wither fall ofT cleanly, leaving no per-
ceptible roughness or scar ; the result is that a row of royal palms looks like a colonnade
of white marble pillars crowned with a copious but neatly arranged gerbe of glossy green
fronds. The greenish — and when ripe, creamy white — blossoms (followed by small,
shining, reddish fruit) grow out with prim neatness below the sheaf of fronds, just where
the white marble column of the stem changes, without transition of tint, into the smooth
emerald-green midribs of the ascending plumes of the fronds. Nearly every residence
or even farmstead in Cuba is approached by an avenue of these palms, and although
they do not precisely grow in forests, still the royal palms permeate Cuba with their
stately influence, redeeming the landscapes from any meanness, even where industrialism
has aimed at substituting the prosperous sameness of sugar-cane, cotton, or tobacco for
the variegated colour and outline of forest, bamboo thicket, and prairie. Other note-
worthy features in the landscapes of the plains and foothills are the brakes of glaucous
green palmetto {Sabai and Inodes) and clumps or actual forests of two other types of
tall, smooth-stemmed fan-palm, belonging to the genera Coccothrinax and Thrinax,

Huge bamboos (besides dwarf species) grow all over Cuba. The smaller bamboos
of the genus Arenaria (similar to those of the Southern States) are obviously indigenous,
as in Haiti. But a good many botanists maintain that the tall bamboos of Cuba, Haiti,
and Jamaica, Trinidad, and other West Indian islands are of an introduced East Indian
species. If so, this imported bamboo has spread everywhere in these lands till it has
become an essential — and very beautiful — feature in the scenery.

An indigenous plant which arrests one's attention in Cuba from its striking appearance
is the cycad, which grows so commonly by the roadside or at the thresholds of the
cottages, no doubt planted by the natives for its handsome appearance.

Above 2000 feet (ordinarily) the Bahama pine makes its appearance, where it has
not already been destroyed by reckless wood-cutting under the Spanish regime. In the
Island of Pines this handsome and valuable conifer grows as low down as 500 feet
altitude above sea-level.

Where the land has not been cleared for plantations, or its elevation (above 3000
or 4000 feet)^ does not induce a temperate climate, the surface of Cuba is still clothed
with dense tropical forest, in which the Cuban mahogany and ebony trees and a good
many examples of the flora of Central America are met with. These forests mostly
linger in East-Central and Eastern Cuba. They are being somewhat ruthlessly cut down
by lumber concessionnaires. The Government of the Cuban Republic is not yet suflfi-
ciently awake to the importance of preserving forests in due measure for the climate
and the amenities of scenery. There is a feature in the Cuban woodland which at once
attracts the attention of the tourist coming from the north, and new to the American
tropics, namely, the large number of aerophytic or epiphytic growths on the branches
and trunks of big trees. These consist of lizard-like flg trees, which eventually strangle
their host ; of members of the pineapple family {Bromeliacea) ; of cacti, aroids, orchids,
and ferns. In Cuba the commonest growth on the trees is a pretty aloe-like Tillandsia^
with a spike of reddish-yellow buds, disappointing in that they barely open their petals.
This 'epiphytic growth begins in the forests of the Southern States in the form of the
celebrated ** Spanish moss." Few people seem to be aware that this extraordinary
growth is not a "moss" or a lichen, but belongs to a genus {Tillandsia) of the pine-
apple family !

I'he moister climate of the Antilles makes them less suited to cactus growth than
the arid regions of the United States and of Mexico. Still cacti enter considerably,
and picturesquely, into the scenery of Eastern Cuba, especially on sandy flats, which are
the recently raised beds of former estuaries or lakes. Here the tall cacti, especially

^ The really lofty Cuban mountains are in the south-eastern part of the island, where the Sierra Maestra
range rises to 8400 feet abruptly from the sea-coast. Its appearance is majestic. Elsewhere, though
the island is hilly (and the hills gave the Cuban insurgents many impregnable retreats), the altitudes
seldom reach 3CXX) feet.

6s. AN AVBHOS OF ROVAL P

of the genus Cereus, offer i. striking parallel in appearance and r61e to
Like them they rise up out of the barren, sun-smitten waste, and servt
a nucleus for other vegetation, thus in time creating oases of forest.

The rivers of Cuba, though seldom offering much facilities of na
perhaps, the case of the Rio Cauto of Eastern Cuba, which has a
inland from its mouth of about forty miles for small boats), are rem;
point of view of scenery. Their upper courses are a succession of fat
snowy falls, as they tear down through the splendid forest of the hi
The bed of each river (away from the alluvial plains) being usually ba

66. CK»EUS CACTI IN THB CtBAH LOWLANDS

colour of the water is a lovely greenish blue. Sometimes they flow o
»t abrupt steps in the rocks, exactly like the formal descents of a
When they have reached sea-level they meander through swampy
American luxuriance, or create vast swamps which are jungles of re
"water-hyacinths," and the home of countless herons, t^ee^iucks, pelicE
and ja^nas. The south coast of Cuba, away from the eastern prolor
more swamp lands of great extent than the northern part of the island,
in the south of Cuba, is over sooo square miles in area. This regi<
breeding-ground of myriads of white herons (egrets) ; and here, in spi
American gunners, urged on a career of abomination by the misplac
millions of unthinking American and European women, the beauti
<grttta is sufficiently numerous to be quite a feature in the landscape.
Cuba are becoming scarce, but the little green todies (with crimson

Other prominent birds in the Cuban
landscapes are the bold Polyborus hawks
(P. chervway) stalking about after their
prey like the African secretary bird (the
Polyborus type is not found in Hispaniola
or Jamaica, and possibly reached Cuba
from Florida) ; the prettily coloured
kestrels (found also in HispanioJa) of
vivid orange-chestnut, dove- grey, and
black barrings; the very numerous black
cuckoos (Crotophaga) with parrot beaks;
and the Turkey buzzards (CoMar/Moara),
These last are only found in Cuba, the Ba-
hamas, and Jamaica; not in Hispaniola.

In Cuba, as in Hispaniola, the do-
mestic pig has run wild, and developed
into a lean long-legged, miniature wild-
boar. The forests, moreover, of Cuba and
of Haiti are full of deer. These I found
to be simply roebuck, with, in the male,
rather fine antlers. The history of this
introduction is that the French first of all
brought the roe from France to Marti-
nique ; then, as they throve there, the
roe deer were carried on to Haiti and San
Domingo, whence the French refugees in
1794 brought them to Cuba.

Cuba, Hispaniola (Haiti), Porto Rico,
and Jamaica (besides the Bahamas, Virgin
Islands, the northern Leeward Islands, and
Barbados) are entirely without poisonous
snakes. In the swamps and river estuaries
of Cuba there are two species of harm-
less crocodile — C. rhombifer (peculiar to
Cuba) and the widespread C. americanus
(aatlus). There is no alligator.

Not one of the old Spanish towns of
Cuba but is a source of inspiration to a
painter. No towns in Spain are more
"Spanish" or more picturesque, with
their narrow streets, projecting balconies
screened by carved wood or iron grilles,
liled roofs, thick walls, patios glowing
with sunlit vegetation, their sixteenth and
scTenteenth century cathedrals, churches,
chapels, monasteries, and convents. The
steeples and doorways of some of these
churches (and of a good many Cuban
buildings generally) almost suggest the
Moorish influence in architecture which
prevailed in Southern Spain down to the
period of Columbus's voyage. Several
of the ecclesiastical buildings still contain
nugnificent altar-pieces and shrines of
haromered silver.

CHAPTER V

SLAVERY UNDER THE PORTUGUESE :
BRAZIL

A LTHOUGH the Portuguese may have slightly forestalled the Spaniards in

J~\ bringing Negroes from Africa to work in Europe, the Spaniards were the

first to transport negroes as a labour force to America, The Portuguese

discovered Brazil^ in the last year of the fifteenth century, but it was not until

1531 that they began to turn their discovery to any account.

' It wu a dye-wood which g&ve > peiniiLiient name to the country of Brasil. Apparently pieces of
"Brasil-wood " (froni Leguminous trees of the genera Casalfinia and Pcliaplierum) cairied oy the Gulf
Stream had been washed up on the shores of Western Europe, and the deep red colour of the wood was
thought to resemble the glow of embers, and therefore derived from some Romance dialect the name of
Broiil. This wood was called by Ihe Portuguese, Pae Braies, and they had no sooner discovered the
coast of Braiil and named it "The New Land of the True Cross" than they made acquaintance with the
forests of Cmatfinia and Ptlltfhorum trees and sent a cargo of billets of this timber (yielding a crimson-
scarlet dye) from Pemambuco to Lisbon as early as 1515. The wood was then called "Feinambuc"
(which was the old name of Petnambuco), but soon afterwards it resumed in commerce its old European
name of " Brasil-vrood," and the country which produced it in such quanlilies was known as A Terra
<b Braal.

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

During the remainder of the sixteenth century they utih'sed the indigenous
Amerindians almost entirely in working these territories, which were at that
period confined to the coastal region and the shores of the great eastern
affluents of the Rio de la Plata. Some of the earliest arrivals among the
Portuguese adventurers mingled with the Indians in patriarchal^ fashion, and
their descendants, together with the well-disposed Amerindians and the fairly
numerous Portuguese immigrants, sufficed during the first hundred years of
Brazilian history to till the soil.

Sugar was introduced into Eastern Brazil about 1540.* The oldest centre
of continuous Portuguese colonisation, however, is Sao Paulo, in the south.
Two European nations attempted to dispute the possession of Brazil
with the Portuguese, in defiance of the Pope's mandate : the French (chiefly
at first the Huguenot section of that nation) and the Dutch. The town of
Rio de Janeiro was actually founded by French Huguenots in 1558, though
captured by the Portuguese in 1567. But these foreign attacks on the
rapid growth of Portuguese colonisation did not take much effect until
Portugal and her possessions became in 1578 part of the Spanish Em-
pire. Then the nations of North-Western Europe saw alike an oppor-
tunity to gratify their hatred of Spain and their longing for a share of,
or at least a foothold in, the wonderful New World, so jealously closed
against their commerce and enterprise by the two kingdoms of the Iberian
peninsula. The Dutch attempted to settle in Guiana — the debatable land
between Spanish and Portuguese America — as early as 1585 ; from 161 2 the
French and from 1624 the Dutch made determined efforts to establish
plantation colonies in North-Eastern Brazil, and began to introduce negroes
from West Africa to assist them ; for they were received with hostility by

^ The story of *'Caramaru," the noble Portuguese who was shipwrecked near Bahia, adopted by the
Tupinamba Indians, elected to be their chief, and who by his numerous native wives created a whole clan
of vigorous half-castes, is typical of the early relations between the Portuguese and the indigenes of
Brazil : a much happier section of American history than the Spanish dealings with the Antilles and Peru.
Great credit is, however, due to the Jesuit missionaries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who in-
tervened most masterfully to save the native tribes of Brazil from unjust treatment at the hands of
the incoming Europeans.

^ According to Mons. L. E. Moreau de Saint-Mery [who in his work on Saint Domingue (1796)
quotes Herrera], the Sugar-cane was first introduced into America by a Spaniard named Aguilon, in 1505.
He brought it from the Canary Islands and planted it in Hispaniola. Another Spaniard, a surgeon
named Vellosa, applied himself assiduously to the cultivation of the cane introduced by Aguilon, and by
1530 there were at least twenty prosperous sugar-mills at work in the eastern half of His{>aniola. The
Portuguese brought the sugar-cane from Madeira to Brazil about 1540, and thence it spread northwards to
the Guiana settlements. From Hispaniola it was borne to Jamaica (about 1570). Its culture was pursued
with some vigour during the greater part of the sixteenth century ; then it languished. But cacao or
chocolate was coming into favour as a drink and confectionery getting more and more popular in Europe.
Coffee beginning to be used in 1640 further increased the demand for sugar, so that from the year 1640,
more or less, arose a renewed interest in cane cultivation in tropical America — the *' Sugar Age" com-
menced which was to enhance enormously the value of the West Indies, Guiana, and Brazil, and also
incresLse a hundredfold the need for N^ro slaves. The sugar-cane was brought from Brazil to Barbados
in 1641, from Guiana to Martinique and Guadeloupe in 1644, the French settlements in Haiti in 1640 (?),
and was reintroduced into Jamaica from Guiana in 1675.

Humboldt at the close of the eighteenth century distinguished three varieties of sugar-cane in cultivation
in tropical America : (i ) the '* Cr^le " cane, with deep green leaves, brought originally from India to Sicily
and Spain and thence to Madeira, the Canary Islands, Hispaniola, Brazil, and Guiana; (2) the "Otaheite'*
cane with light green leaves, brought from the Pacific to Mauritius and thence to Cayenne and Martinique ;
(3) the Batavia cane with purplish-green, broad leaves, introduced from Java into Guiana by the Dutch and
thence spread over Venezuela and the Antilles for its rum-producing qualities. Of all these varieties he
considered the Otaheite the most valuable, as it produced more juice than the others and its refuse made
better fuel.

The edible Betnana or plantain {Musa sapientum) was likewise introduced from the Canary Islands to
Hispaniola (thence to Brazil, etc.) by the Spaniards early in the sixteenth century.

72. SKETCH MAP OF BRAZIL TO ILLUSTRATE DISTRICTS REFERRED TO IN CONNECTION WITH HISTORICAL EVENTS

AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF NEGROES

SLAVERY UNDER THE PORTUGUESE: BRAZIL 8i

the Amerindians, who sided with the Portuguese.^ In spite, however, of the
opposition offered by indigenes and Portuguese settlers, the Dutch managed to
secure a hold over the north-east coast of Brazil which lasted until 1654. and
in 1637-41 captured from the Portuguese several footholds on the west coast
of Africa and a portion of the colony of Angola. Their slave-trade with North-
Eastem Brazil probably introduced the first negroes into that region.

The Portuguese, when they replaced the Dutch in Brazil, took over such
of their negro slaves as had not escaped
to the bush and mingled with the wild
Indians. They, the Portuguese, had not
ceased to be slave-traders since they brought
n^roes from the Moorish coast and Senegal
River to Portugal and Spain in the middle
fifteenth century ; but hitherto they had
chiefly purveyed them in small numbers to
the Spanish Antilles,* themselves preferring
in Brazil the labour of Amerindians or of
Portuguese immigrants — genuine colonists.
But after the recovery of Portuguese inde-
pendence and the expulsion of the foreign
settlers, the cultivation of sugar, begun by
the French and Dutch, was taken up with
vigour; and Negro slaves (better suited to
this work than Amerindians) were brought
over in large numbers from Angola and
the Congo, from Dahom^, Lagos, and Old
Calabar.

But it was not till about 1720-30 that
the great importation of negroes into Brazil

began. This was occasioned by the dis- '3- the ANGOLA^ ulembnt in tmk
covery of diamonds and the eagerness to ^h. kllll!i'sg,,^m2L!^'b!'Ko!.eotyp,-.
work the gold-mines of Minas Geraes iberighihj.iHi. ihefii«.(Miui«d Hoiopwpieof

(South-East Brazil). .b, Angal. lun.=,l«d

At this time the seaboard towns of Brazil between Pernambuco on the
north and Santos on the south became swollen with a slave population, as well

' In fact Ihe "Indians" and the Port UEUtse- Indian h«lf-castea malerially assisted to expel (he Dutch
fiom Bahia in 1625.

' In 1603 the Potluguese coveraor of Angola undetlook the "Asiento" or contract for supplying
ilives to the Spanish Indies. The adventures of Andrew Batlell, given in Purchas : Hh Pilgriaus, pub-
lished in 1615 (book VII. p. 983), throw a very inleresling light on the early Portuguese slave-trade in
Angola. Battell was an Essex fisherman who, seized with a love of adventure so common at the com-
mencement of Elizabeth's reign, shipped in some British vessel making a daring voyaf;e to the Forbidden
New World, and got shipwrecked on Ihe coasl of Brazil somewhere about 1580. (There is a great dis-
crepancy in dales and geographical points in Furchas's narrative, suggesting misunderstanding and
primer's errors ; but I think Ballell's story substantially (rue, and that he wandered in South- West Africa
between isSgand 1606.) Battell was rescued from the Brazilian Indians by the Portuguese, but only lo
be held a prisoner on their ships so that he might not reveal the secrets of Brazilian geography lo his
1^1 ow -countrymen. He was taken over to Angola and eventually left as hostage among the savages,
with whom he lived for years. At last he again reacheil Ihe coast (perhaps near the Congo mouth), and
another slaving ship enabled him to get back to England after movinic a<)ventures. He accompanied the
Portuguese seamen in an extraordinary journey they made in the Benguela counlry with the Jaga (Giaga)
marauding tribe. These dreaded "Jagas" (Jaga was the title of their leaders) were probably the modern
na-jok, or Ba-kioko, now living on the Upper Kwango River. Assisted l>y the Portuguese, they ravaged
the Benguela district, bringing the captives whom Ihey did not eal to sell as slaves to ihe Portuguese
ship, which ever and again would pass over to America, land her cargo of negroes, and relum for more.

E NEW WORLD

cs. The majority of the people of
at the beginning of the nineteenth
ninant in the suburbs of the capital

3lished by Portugal, north of the
; was to continue till 1830); Brazil
ed the trade piracy in 1830. Never-
the nineteenth century that negroes
il — as many as 1,350,000, it has been

of British and French cruisers. The
of 1826 had the right of inspecting
if condemning them if found to con-
local authorities (though not the
at and even encouraged the traffic
Brazil during the nineteenth century
mgo, Dahom^ (Whydah. where there
Ds, Bonny, and Old Calabar. The
:kri, and Sobo (Benin) tribes, but also
i Hausaland. A few (but influential)
nd were mostly of the Mandingo or

3razil during the first quarter of the

SLAVERY UNDER THE PORT'

nineteenth century were of splendid physique,
travellers as being the most vigorous and at!
possible to contemplate, models for a Farnesiar
hardened and improved by exercise, magnif
activity, and as such strongly in contrast to the
descent, who at that period looked the very pei
activity. The best-looking slaves at that tiir
Gaboon and Angola, and the ugliest from Mo
even to have introduced Hottentots and Bushr
region south of the Kunene River). A cons
to have come from the Upper Congo above St
as Anzico, the old Portuguese name for the Ba
mediaries generally in passing on the im-
mense supply of slaves from the Upper
Congo to the coast regions.

Judged by the extent of time and space
covered by their operations the Portuguese
were perhaps the greatest of all slave-trading
nations. But the effect of their commerce
in negroes was not entirely evil, so far as
Africa was concerned. It introduced to the
innermost parts of the Congo basin, as
well as through almost all West Africa from
Mossamedes on the south to the Senegal on
the north, much wealth in brass and silver,
guns and gunpowder [with which the natives
could successfully overcome the ravages of
wild beasts and procure supplies of ivory
for their own enrichment], large supplies of
distilled spirits [harmful, indeed, but provoca-
tive of energy], many industries and arts in
weaving cloth, carving ivory, casting and
working metals. The bronze art of Benin is
almost entirely due to the inspiration of the
Portuguese (who visited that country mainly
designing of pottery (especially in the southen
other arts and industries which have distinctly
negro's culture. Then as r^ards food-stuffs, tl
deed enriched negro Africa. The Portuguese si
the west coast (as also to the east) the sugar-c
plant, maize, pineapples, tomatoes, Chili pepp
the domestic pig, the Muscovy duck, and Euro]
were repeatedly made with the deliberate objei
the historical period have devastated Africa
European historians, whole tribes disappeari
a failure of the rains, a blight, or a disease 1
crops or driven away the wild game. Undouh
guese— attracted to Africa mainly as a source
America — wrought some surprising moveme
of West Africa and in the southern basin of
kingdoms arose which created or stimulated

E NEW WORLD

ps less drearily horrible than the

naked savages beg^an to realise that
ng of gorilla-haunted forests, a world
:ial derelicts beads, brass, iron wire,
i rum. Hitherto they had made
r cannibal feasts ; now they started

which might be bartered for trade
sy Pool or on the River Kwango.

another, which were carried on for
or America, had existed previously
though not on such a large scale).
Lunuchs, concubines, and servants
'ere required for the Moslems (the
eastern Slave-trade) and victims for
he human sacrifices and cannibal
easts of bloody West Africa (Ashanti,
)ahom6, Benin, and the Lower Niger,
Vestern Congoland, and the empire
{ the Mwata Yanvo ; Liberia of
•Iden times, the Ivory Coast, Southern
Nigeria, the Cameroons, and the inner
»asin of the Congo). So far as the
um of human misery in Africa was
oncerned, it is probable that the
rade in slaves between that conti-
lent and America scarcely added to
t. It even to some extent mitigated
he suffering of the negro in his own
lome ; for once this trade was set on
oot and it was profitable to sell a
luman being, many a man, woman,
»r child who might otherwise have
►een killed for mere caprice, or for
he love of seeing blood flow, or as
. toothsome ingredient of a banquet,
/as sold to a slave-trader. Criminals
3 or for trivial offences were spared

ica under conditions several times
jatment of the slave when he or she
able cruelty occurred.

in 1 815 and 1823) abolished the
>ns from 1830 onwards, and received
t Britain. In 1836 it was forbidden
uese colony. But the actual status

Africa until 1878. As a matter of

East Africa did not really come to
per hand of the Confederate South

Portuguese Guinea, Dahome, and
88. Even after that date a modified

SLAVERY UNDER THE PORTUGUESE: BRAZIL 85

form of slave-trade has continued in the Angolan interior to supply the cacao
plantations of S3o Thom^.

The first Emperor of Brazil as early as 1814 drew up regulations to
alleviate the sufferings of the negroes in their passage from the coast of Africa,
by enforcing far more commodious space for them and better provisions on the
slave-ships ; but it is to be feared that later on in the nineteenth century these
regulations were but little observed, after the commerce had become contra-
band, for here is a description of a Brazilian slave-ship seen in the year 1829 by
the Rev. R. Walsh {Notices of Brazil
in iSsS and 182^, London, 1830).'

"The first object that struck us was
an enormous gun, turning on a swivel. On
deck, the constant appendage of a pirate ;
and the next were large kettles for cook-
ing, on the bows, the usual apparatus of
a slaver. Our boat was now hoisted out,
and I went on board with the officers.
When we mounted her decks, we found
her full of slaves. She was called the
Ve/az, commanded by Captain Jose Bar-
bosa, bound to Bahia. She was a very
broad-decked ship, with a mainmast,
schooner-rigged, and behind her foremast
was that large formidable gun, which
turned on a broad circle of iron on deck,
and which enabled her to act as a pirate,
if her slaving speculation had failed. She
had taken in, on the coast of Africa, 336
males and 226 females, making in all
562, and had been out seventeen days,
during which she had thrown overboard
fifty-five. The slaves were all enclosed
under grated hatchways, bet ween -decks.
The space was so low that they sat be-
tween each other's legs, and stowed so
close together that there was no possi-
bility of iheir lying down, or at all chang-
ing their position, by night or day. As

they belonged to and were shipped on j-^, an old Brazilian ex-slavb, bahfa

account of different individuals, they were

all branded, like sheep, with the owners' marks of different forms. . . , These were
impressed under their breasts, or on their arms, and, as the mate informed me, with
perfect indifference, 'queimados pelo ferro quento' — burnt with a red-hot iron. Over
the hatchway stood a ferocious-looking fellow, with a scourge of many twisted thongs
in his hand, who was the slave-driver of the ship. Whenever he heard the slightest
noise below, he shook the whip over them, and seemed eager to exercise it. I was quite

' The Rev. R. Walsh, LUD., whose Notices of Brazil is a classic, was a man quite remaiksble for
his scholarship and breadth of view. He accompanied the British Minister to Brazil as chaplain and
tutor 10 hii family. Walsh was on board a King s ship at the time ; and as the slaves came mainly from
Dahom^ the captain of the man-of-war wished to arrest the slaver and set the slaves free at Sierra Leone.
Unfortunately the Portuguese captain of the ship showed that he had come last from Kabinda, south of
the line, a region not yet excluded from a permissible sphere of slave-trading of the Anglo- Portuguese
Convention ; so the poor wretches passed on to Iheir doom.

86 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

pleased to take this hateful badge out of his hand, and I have kept it ever since, as a
horrid memorial of reality, should I ever be disposed to forget the scene I witnessed.

"As soon -as the poor creatures saw us looking down at them, their dark and melan-
choly visages brightened up. They perceived something of sympathy and kindness in
our looks, which they had not been accustomed to, and, feeling instinctively that we
were friends, they immediately began to shout and clap their hands. One or two had
picked up a few Portuguese words and cried out, 'Viva! viva!" The women were
particularly excited. They all held up their arms, and when we bent down and shook
hands with ihem they could not contain their delight ; they endeavoured to scramble
upon their knees, stretching up to kiss our bands, and we understood that they knew
we were come to liberate them. Some, however, hung down their heads in apparently
hopeless dejection ; some were greatly
emaciated, and some, particularly chil-
dren, seemed dying.

" But the circumstance which struck
us most forcibly was, how it was possible
for such a number of human beings to
exist, packed up and wedged together as
tight as they could cram, in low cells,
3 feet high, the greater part of which,
except that immediately under the grated
hatchways, was shut out from light or
air, and this when the thermometer, ex-
posed to the open sky, was standing in
the shade, on our deck, at 89 degrees.
The space belween-decks was divided
into two compartments 3 feet 3 inches
high ; the size of one was 16 by 18 feel,
and of the other 40 by zi feet ; into the
lirst were crammed the women and girls ;
into the second, the men and boys : ai6
fellow-creatures were thus thrust into one
space 288 feet square; and 336 into an-
other space 800 feet square, giving to the
whole an average of 23 inches, and to each
of the women not more than 13 inches,
though many of them were pregnant. We
78 A Ner.REss (OK ANGOLA ORIGIN) ^'*° found manacles and fetters of differ-

BASTERN BRAZIL ' cnt kinds, but it appears that they had

all been taken off before we boarded.
" The heat of these horrid places was so great, and the odour so offensive, that it was
quite impossible to enter them, even had there been room. They were measured as
above when the slaves had left them. The officers insisted that the poor suffering
creatures should be admitted on deck to get air and water. This was opposed by the
male of the slaver, who, from a feeling that they deserved it, declared they would
murder them all. The officers, however, persisted, and the poor beings were all turned
up together. It is impossible to conceive the effect of this eruption— 51; fellow-
creatures of all ages and sexes, some children, some adults, some old men and women,
all in a state of total nudity, scrambling out together to taste the luxury of a little fresh
air and water. They came swarming up, like bees from the aperture of a hive, till the
whole deck was crowded to suffocation, from stem to stern ; so that it was impossible to
imagine where they could all have come from, or how they could have been stowed
away. On looking into the places where they had been crammed, there were found
some children next the sides of the ship, in the places most remote from light and air ;
they were lying nearly in a torpid state, after the rest had turned out. The little

SLAVERY UNDER THE PORTUGUESE : BRAZIL 87

creatures seemed indifTerent as to life or death, and when they were carried on deck,
many of them could not stand.

" After enjoying for a short time the unusual luxury of air, some water was brought; it
was then that the extent of their sufferings was exposed in a fearful manner. They all
rushed like maniacs towards it. No entreaties, or threats, or blows, could restrain them ;
they shrieked, and struggled, and fought with one another, for a drop of this precious
liquid, as if they grew rabid at the sight of it."

Out of this slaving ship during the first seventeen days of their voyage
fifty-five slaves, dying or dead from dysentery, had been thrown overboard.
Though there was a large stock of medicines displayed in the cabin with a
manuscript book containing directions how they should be used, the so-called
doctor on board was a negro who was unable to read ! On many of these slave-
ships the sense of misery and suffocation was so terrible in the *tween-decks —
where the height sometimes was only eighteen inches, so that the unfortunate
slaves could not turn round, were wedged immovably, in fact, and chained to
the deck by the neck and legs — that the slaves not infrequently would go mad
before dying of suffocation. In their frenzy some killed others in the hopes of
procuring more room to breathe. " Men strangled those next to them, and
women drove nails into each other's brains."^

As long as the slave-trade was recognised in Brazil the Imperial Govern-
ment derived from it a revenue of about one million sterling per annum, the
town of Rio de Janeiro alone producing ;^240,ooo per annum. For every slave
landed in Brazil there was levied about £S in duties, imperial or municipal.
When the slave-trade was ostensibly abolished in 1830, this revenue was
sacrificed.

When a cargo of slaves arrived in Brazil it was usually purchased by a class
of people called " ciganos " or gipsies, and who seem to have been actually of
gipsy origin, with dark olive complexions, black eyes and hair, and a rather
sinister expression of countenance. It is supposed that they descend from the
gipsies who were expelled from Portugal in the seventeenth century and
despatched to Brazil. Dr. Walsh gives the following description of a cigano
slave-driver : —

He was a tall, cadaverous, tawny man, with a shock of black hair hanging about his
sharp but determined-looking visage. He was dressed in a blue jacket and pantaloons,
with buff boots hanging loose about his legs, ornamented with large silver spurs. On his
head he wore a capacious straw hat, bound with a broad ribbon, and in his hand was a
long whip, with two thongs; he shook this over his drove, and they all arranged them-
selves for examination, some of them, particularly the children, trembling like aspen
leaves.

^ What the survivors may have looked like when they were landed at their destined port, Bahia, may
be surmised from this description of Captain Stedman's (written in 1798) : —

** They were a drove of newly imported negroes, men and women, with a few children, who were
just landed from on board a Guinea ship, to be sold as slaves. The whole party was such a set of
scarcely animated automatons, such a resurrection of skin and bones as forcibly reminded me of the last
trumpet. These objects appeared at that moment to be risen from the grave or escaped from Surgeons'
Hall ; and I confess I can give no better description of them than by comparing them to walking
skeletons covered over with a piece of tanned leather." (From J. G. Stedman's Surinam.) These
words, though applying to Guiana, north of Brazil, and to an earlier date than 1829, almost exactly
summarise the scattered references to the condition of recently landed slaves at Brazilian ports in the
works of English and German authors between 1820 and 1848. Much the same description is given by
Bryan Edwards of slaves just landed in Jamaica. But the recuperative power of the Negro is extra-
ordinary, and after ten days' or a fortnight's good feeding many of these physical wrecks were in prime
condition for the slave-market.

88 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

At the sales of slaves conducted by the ciganos in huge warehouses usually
near the sea-shore, the negroes and negresses were exposed for sale, nude or nearly
nude. They were handled by intending purchasers — Brazilian men or women
— without the slightest regard for decency or delicacy, exactly as though they
were animals being purchased for their physical qualities. According to the
Rev. R. Walsh, it was quite a fashionable thing for white Brazilian ladies in the
early part of the nineteenth century to go shopping for slaves just as an English-
woman might visit Bond Street. The elder slaves were usually allowed to sit
on benches while the young ones squatted on the floor.

I was particularly attracted by a group of children, one of whom, a young girl, had
something very pensive and engaging in her countenance. The ciganos observing me
look at her, whipped her up with a long rod, and bade her with a rough voice to come
forward. It was quite affecting to see the poor, timid, shrinking child standing before
roe, in a state the most helpless and forlorn, that ever a being, endued, like myself, with
a reasonable mind and an immortal soul, could be reduced to. Some of these girls have
remarkably sweet and engaging countenances. Notwithstanding their dusky hue, they
look so modest, gentle, and sensible, that you could not for a moment hesitate to
acknowledge that they are endowed with a like feeling and a common nature with your
own daughters. The seller was about to put the child into all the attitudes, and display
her person in the same way, as he would a man ; but I declined the exhibition, and she
shrunk timidly back to her place, and seemed glad to hide herself in the group that
surrounded her.

The men were generally less interesting objects than the women ; their counten-
ances and hues were very varied, according to the part of the African coast from which
they came; some were soot-black, having a certain ferocity of aspect that indicated
strong and fierce passions, like men who were darkly brooding over some deep-felt
wrongs and meditating revenge. When any one was ordered, he came forward with a
sullen indifference, threw his arms over his head, stamped with his feet, shouted to show
the soundness of his lungs, ran up and down the room, and was treated exactly like a
horse, put through his paces at a repository; and when done, he was whipped to
his stall.

The heads of the slaves, both male and female, were generally half shaved ; the hair
being left only on the fore part. A few of the females had cotton handkerchiefs tied
round their heads, which, with some little ornaments of native seeds or shells, gave them
a very engaging appearance. A number, particularly the males, were affected with
eruptions of a white scurf, which had a loathsome appearance, like a leprosy. It was
considered, however, a wholesome effort of nature, to throw off the effects of the salt
provisions used during the voyage ; and, in fact, it resembles a saline concretion.

Many of them were lying stretched on the bare boards; and among the rest,
mothers with young children at their breasts, of which they seemed passionately fond.
They were all doomed to remain on the spot, like sheep in a pen, till they were sold ;
they had no apartment to retire to, no bed to repose on, no cover to protect them ; they
sit naked all day, and lie naked all night, on the bare boards, or benches, where we saw
them exhibited.

A sale of slaves at a country village is thus described by Walsh (writing in
1828). The cigano driver has gone round arousing buyers and inviting them to
the market outside the village inn.

The slaves, both men and women, were walked about, and put into different paces,
then handled and felt exactly as I have seen butchers feel a calf. He occasionally lashed
them and made them jump to show that their limbs were supple, and caused them
to shriek and cry, that the purchasers might perceive their lungs were sound.

Among the company at the market was a Brazilian lady, who exhibited a regular

SLAVERY UNDER THE PORTUGUESE : BRAZIL 89

model of her class in the country. She had on a round felt hat like an Englishman's,
and under it a turban, which covered her head as a night-cap. Though it was a burning
day, she was wrapped up in a large scarlet woollen cloak, which, however, she drew
up so high as to show us her embroidered shoes and silk stockings ; she was attended by
a black slave, who held an umbrella over her head, and she walked for. a considerable
time deliberately through the slaves, looking as if she was proudly contrasting her own
importance with their misery.

These are Dr. Walsh's first impressions of the Negro in Brazil : —

I had been but a few hours on shore, for the first time, and I saw an African negro
under four aspects of society ; and it appeared to me that in every one his character
depended on the state in which he was placed and the estimation in which he was held.
As a despised slave, he was far lower than other animals of burthen that surrounded
him, more miserable in his look, more revolting in his nakedness, more distorted in his
person, and apparently more deficient in intellect than the horses and mules that passed
him by. Advanced to the grade of a soldier, he was clean and neat in his person,
amenable to discipline, expert at his exercises, and showed the port and being of a white
man similarly placed. As a citizen, he was remarkable for the respectability of his
appearance and the decorum of his manners in the rank assigned to him ; and as a
priest, standing in the house of God, appointed to instruct society on their most
important interests, and in a grade in which moral and intellectual fitness is required, and
a certain degree of superiority is expected, he seemed even more devout in his orations
and more correct in his manners than his white associates. I came, therefore, to the
irresistible conclusion in my mind that colour was an accident affecting the surface
of a man, and having no more to do with his qualities than his clothes, that God had
equally created an African in the image of His person, and equally given him an
immortal soul, and that an European had no pretext but his own cupidity for impiously
thrusting his fellow-man from that rank in the creation which the Almighty had assigned
him, and degrading him below the lot of the brute beasts that perish.

As regards their general treatment of the negro slave, male or female, the
Portuguese and Brazilians by no means occupy a bad position in the scale
of international morality. On the contrary, they rival the Spaniards for the
first place in the list of humane slave-holding nations, and even in Africa their
treatment of their slaves (or slave-like apprentices of more recent date) was far
less cruel than that of the Dutch, the British, or the French. Slavery under the
flag of Portugal (or Brazil) or of Spain was not a condition without hope, a life
in hell, as it was for the most part in the British West Indies and, above
all, Dutch Guiana and the Southern United States.

Towards the close of the eighteenth century an official Protector of slaves
was instituted in most of the great centres of slave labour in Brazil to intervene
between bad masters and ill-treated slaves. But the most substantial hope
of all for the Brazilian slave, as for the Spanish (prior to the nineteenth
century), was that at any time he could purchase his own freedom. At all times,
from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, the slave in Brazil could compel
his master by law to liberate him if he or she could repay to the purchaser the
sum of the original purchase price. And in Brazil a slave (male or female) who
was the parent of ten children could demand his or her freedom.

As to the means of getting money for this purpose, the law obliged a slave-
owner or overseer to give liberty to his slaves on all public and ecclesiatical
holidays, together with all Sundays. This meant, including Sundays, eighty-
five days out of the year of 365. On such days the slave was not forbidden to
work (as he was by characteristic Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy in British and British-

90 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

American slavedom), but might hire his labour to whom he chose, or go
hunting, fishing, and money-making on his own account. When the slave had
by great industry amassed sufficient milreis^ he would not only purchase his own
freedom, but next set up as a slave-owner on his own account ! Slaves who
had grown wealthy and had succeeded in freeing themselves would often invest
their further savings in the slave-trade and send money to West Africa to
purchase slaves to be forwarded to them in Brazil, or even, if they were very rich,
send funds, arms, and trade-goods to African connections of potency, and by
these means get up raids in their old homes or amongst neighbouring tribes to
supply the Brazilian slave-market ; for the Negro is scarcely yet altruistic. At
no time until quite recently was he particularly shocked at the slave-trade and
slavery as it affected other people. He might be broken-hearted on his own
account, or on that of his wife, mother, brother, sister, or child, but cared
not the least about the abstract right or wrong in this traffic or the sufferings
of other negroes not related to him.

Of course this indifference on his part w^s no excuse for the better-educated
white man, any more than because a person might have a depraved taste for
spirits it would palliate his being urged by example to dipsomania.

Various writers on Brazil between 1820 and 1850 relate instances of
Portuguese masters or mistresses whipping their slaves to death. But these
cases seem to have been rare, and the facility with which negroes could escape
into the woods and live with the aborigines or by themselves (subsisting on wild
produce) must have restrained slave-owners from driving their slaves to
desperation.

When a slave ran away and was recaptured, or returned of his or her own
accord, it was usual to invoke the intercession of some local personage of rank
or standing, who became the padrinho or sponsor of the slave, and usually
intervened to prevent excessive punishment.

Flogging with a whip or lithe cane was not so common a punishment in
Brazil as in the other slave-holding countries. And in most cases where
" flogging " is alluded to by English writers the use of the palmatorio is really
meant. This is a curious-looking instrument, like a battledore in shape, or
a large lemon-squeezer with a long handle. Its oval, thick, flat " business " end
is pierced with round holes. The palms of the hands (or the soles of the feet)
are slapped with the palmatorio and the suffering to the hands is said to be
frightful. That may be so ; but apparently the power of using the hands is
soon recovered and the body of the slave remains uninjured and unscarred.

The Jesuits, before they were expelled from Brazil (and expelled for being
so very solicitous about the treatment of the Amerindian aborigines and the
negro), did much to raise the condition of their black wards, especially in
religion. In Brazil the Roman Catholic Church (as in Haiti, only more so)
showed a rarely modern attitude towards the negro. Even as early as the
eighteenth century there were not only black clergy, but even black bishops.
And in Brazil the negro clergy seem from the end of the eighteenth century
onwards to have been more reverent, better living, more earnest than the
Portuguese clergy, and it is a question whether this distinction does not still
exist.

Louis Agassiz wrote about 1865 : —

The other day, in the neighbourhood of Rio, I had an opportunity of seeing a mar-
riage between two negroes, whose owner made the religious, or, as it appeared to me on
this occasion, irreligious ceremony, obligatory. The bride, who was as black as jet, was

SLAVERY UNDER THE PORTUGUESE: BRAZIL 91

dressed in white muslin, with a veil of coarse white lace, such as the negro women make
themselves, and the husband was in a white linen suit. She looked, and I think she
really felt, diffident, for there were a good many strangers present, and her position was
embarrassing. The Portuguese priest, a bold, insolent-looking man, called them up and
rallied over the marriage service with most irreverent speed, stopping now and then to
scold them both, but especially the woman, because she did not speak loud enough and
did not take the whole thing in the same coarse, rough way that he did. When he
ordered them to come up and kneel at the altar his tone was more suggestive of cursing
than praying, and having uttered his blessing he hurled an amen at them, slammed the
prayer-book down on the altar, whiffed out the candles, and turned bride and bride-

groom out of the chapel with as little ceremony as one would have kicked out a dog.
As the bride came out, half crying, half smiling, her mother met her and showered her
with rose-leaves, and so this act of consecration, in which the mother's benediction
seemed the only grace, was over. I thought what a strange confusion there must be in
these poor creatures' minds if they thought about it at all. They are told that the rela-
tion between man and wife is a sin, unless confirmed by the sacred rite of marriage ;
they come to hear a bad man gabble over them words which they cannot understand,
mingled with taunts and abuse which ihey understand only too well, and side by side
with their own children grow up the Uttle fair-skinned slaves to tell them practically that
the white man does not keep himself the law he imposes on them. What a monstrous
lie the whole system must seem to them, if they are ever led to think about it at all.

" The funeral service was chanted by a choir of priests, one of whom was
a negro, a large, comely man, whose jet-black visage formed a strong and

92 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Striking contrast to his white vestments. He seemed to perform his part with
a decorum and sense of solemnity which I did not observe in his brethren."
(Dr. Walsh, 1828.)

Brazilian negroes are usually very religious, and with the exception of those
(mostly Mandingoes) who still profess Muhammadanism, are the willing
adherents of the Roman Catholic Church. And there is no doubt that this
Church exercises a wholesome discipline over their lives. The pity of it is that
the Roman Church is — with some notable exceptions — so badly served still in
Brazil by careless, brutal, and licentious Portuguese priests.

The existence of slavery warped the minds and morals of the white people
inhabiting Brazil. The knowledge that you could do almost anything you liked
towards your slave, male or female, and the laxity of public opinion with
regard to sexual morality induced a state of affairs to prevail during the first
seventy years of the nineteenth century which has been referred to in no
measured terms by certain bishops of the Roman Church of European origin,
and by (Sir) Richard Burton^ and numerous British and German travellers, to
whose works the reader who is curious in human depravity is referred.

Here is a printable instance, taken from the volume of the Revs. J. C.
Fletcher and D. P. Kidder.*

These writers, reviewing the morals of slavery, refer to the case of an
Englishman settled in Brazil, who purposely had as many children as he could
by slave women because he found that his children were generally pretty, even
with " light, curling hair, blue eyes, and a skin as light as that of a European,"
and he was consequently able to sell them at a good price when they were old
enough to leave their mothers.

This description of a Luso-Brazilian patriarch and his incestuous slave
family may be thought incredible ; but those who like myself visited Mossamedes
in Southern Angola in the " eighties " of the last century will be able to recall
a precisely similar instance in the household of a retired medical man who
resided in the vicinity of that pleasant city.

" My host was a white Brazilian, more pleasing in his aspect and manners
than most others I had met with. He showed me into a comfortable quarto,
newly plastered with white clay, with beds and mats of green bamboo, which
were fresh and fragrant, and formed a strong contrast with the mouldering filth
I had left. When supper was ready, he took me kindly and courteously by the
hand, to an apartment where it was laid out on a clean cloth, and well and
neatly dressed ; a stewed fowl with pdo de trigo (wheaten bread), accompanied
by green vegetables — a species of Brassica which he cultivated.

" When I had finished, he invited me to his porch, where he brought me
some excellent coffee, and set a mulatto of his establishment on an opposite
bench, to play on the guitar for my amusement. He then called forth and
introduced me to his whole family. This consisted of two mothers, a black
and a white, and twelve children, of all sizes, sexes, and colours ; some with
woolly hair and dusky faces, some with sallow skins and long black tresses.
In a short time they made up a ball, and began to dance. It was opened by
the youngest, Luzia, a child about four years old, with dark eyes and coal-
black hair. She was presently joined by a little black sister, and they com-

^ Burton was consul between 1865 and 1869 at Santos, and wrote an admirable description of Eastern
Brazil in his Highlands of Brazil,

" Brazil atid the Brazilians, by the Rev. James C. Fletcher and Rev. Dr. D. P. Kidder, who
travelled in Brazil at different times between 1857 and 1866.

SLAVERY UNDER THE PORTUGUESE : BRAZIL 93

menced with a movement resembling a Spanish bolero, imitating admirably
well the castanets with their fingers and thumbs. The movement of the dance
was not very delicate ; and the children, when they began, showed a certain
timidity and innate consciousness that they were exhibiting before a stranger
what was not proper ; but by degrees they were joined in succession by all the
children, boys and girls, up to the age of seventeen and eighteen, and finally by
the two mothers of the progeny. 1 never saw such a scene. It was realising
what I had heard of the state of families in the midst of woods, shut out from
intercourse with all other society, and forming promiscuous connexions with
one another, as if they were in an early age of the world, and had no other
human beings to attach themselves to. I had personally known some, and I
had heard of others, brothers and sisters, who without scruple or sense of
shame lived together, supporting in other respects the decencies of life ; but
here it was carried beyond what I could have supposed possible, and this pre-
cocious family displayed among themselves dances resembling what we have
heard of the Otaheitan Timordee." (Dr. Walsh.)

The dances to which negro slaves were trained were not always of the
blameless quality described by Mad Margaret in Ruddigore, They usually
began with a slow movement of two persons, who approached each other with
a shy and diffident air, and then receded bashful and embarrassed. By degrees,
the time of the music increased, the diffidence wore off, and the dance concluded
with " indecencies not fit to be seen nor described." Sometimes it was of
a different character, attended by jumping, shouting, and throwing their arms
over each other's heads, and assuming the most fierce and stern aspects. The
indecent display was a "dance of love," but the shouting dance was a mimicry
of war.

Dancing in Brazil, as elsewhere in America, was the great passion of the
negro, and the one consolation which made his slavery tolerable. Whenever
a group of them met in the street or on a country road, or at the door of an inn
or wineshop, they got up a dance ; and if there was no instrument in the company,
which rarely happened, they supplied its place with singing. On all the estates
where there was a number of slaves, Saturday night would be usually devoted to
a ball. A fire of wood or maize cobs would be lighted up in the biggest
shed, and the slaves would continue dancing till daylight.

Walsh, Fletcher and Kidder, H. W. Bates,^ Burton and other writers on
nineteenth-century Brazil all give instances of the good behaviour of slaves
living under favourable conditions. Here is a typical case quoted by Walsh : —

" I now found that she was the widow of a gentleman, who had been
proprietor of the estate all round. He had died a few years before, leaving her
with two little girls, her daughters, and twenty-four slaves, fourteen males and
ten females. The former were located in huts up the sides of the hills, and the
latter lodged with her in her house. With this large family of slaves, she lived
alone in the mountains, having no white persons but her little children, within
several leagues of her. Yet such was the moral ascendency she had acquired,
that her whole establishment moved with perfect regularity, and cultivated an
estate of several square miles."

Slaves, negro and mulatto, were often trusted by their masters with large
sums of money or supplies of trade goods and sent away to trade in rubber or
other produce. They very seldom betrayed their trust.

1 The Naturalist on the Amazons, by H. W. Bates. A fascinating study of Man and Nature in
Northern Brazil.

94 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Nevertheless, the relatively beneficent laws regulating slavery in Brazil
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were frequently evaded by slave-
owners, and slaves ran away to the woods to escape ill-treatment, or to obtain
remission from incessant hard work. Whenever they were recaptured they were
flogged, and in addition an iron collar was firmly riveted round their necks.
From this collar a long bar projected at right angles, which terminated either in
a cross or in a broad twisted curve. The bar was intended to impede them
if they took to flight again, as it would soon become entangled in the bush.
Slaves thus decorated were very common objects in all the Brazilian towns in
the early part of the nineteenth century, British and German travellers also
note the frequency of suicide amongst the Brazilian slaves before Emancipation
came.

Adult negroes in Brazil seldom became reconciled to slavery, especially if

they had been bom in Brazil, and consequently born to unending servitude.

If they could not secure their freedom in one way or another, they frequently

' committed suicide : usually when a master

before death had promised manumission and

had forgotten to state his intentions in a will

properly executed.

During the first quarter of the nineteenth
century there grew up a considerable aggre-
gation of Muhammadan negroes in the Bra-
zilian towns of Pernambuco, Bahia, and Rio
de Janeiro. These people called themselves
Miisulvti (Moslems), but the non-Muham-
madan negroes styled them MaU, and under
that name they are recorded in the history
of Brazil.

Mal^, or Mali, is an interesting name
which throws some light on the origin, at any
rate, of the leading spirits of the Muham-
madan confraternities throughout Brazil. It
is obviously the race name of the Man-
8a A FULA dingo peoples of Senegambia. We know

Of iiwt)pei™iiinnbM-«nSaircieiRi«f, that through Portuguese Guinea many Man-
«i A riM, Md Braiii dingo and even Fula slaves were brought

to Brazil, and owing to their superior type of physique and character were
generally notable people. But the Abbd Ignace Etienne/ who has written two
interesting articles on this subject, ascribes the Muhammadan negroes of Brazil
for the most part to the Yoruba (Nago), Hausa, and Bornu (?) peoples of the
Lagos hinterland, and also alludes to the Gege, Gruma (?Gurma), Kabinda,
Barba, Mina, Calabar, Ijebu, Mondubi, and Benin, as Muhammadans. The
Barba people of Borgu. and the tribes of Bornu, are certainly more or less
Muhammadans, but the others mentioned (as far as they can be identified)
are pagans in their home of origin, and can only have become Muham-
madans by contact with these influential Yoruba and Hausa peoplf since their
arrival in Brazil. I cannot help thinking that the Abbe Ignace Etienne, and
other writers on the subject, have overlooked the important Mandingo element
in the slaves of Brazil. Mr. Consul O'Sullivan Beare in a letter to the writer

' 1^35 i in Anthropts for January- March,

SLAVERY UNDER THE PORTUGUESE : BRAZIL 95

of this book mentions the interesting fact that Fula people of the Gambari^
tribe or district come backwards and forwards now to Bahia to trade. From
allusions in the works of earlier writers, it would seem as though in the early
nineteenth century Fula or Mandingo slaves who had obtained their freedom
had opened up a considerable commerce between Portuguese Guinea and
Brazil, just as other Brazilian negroes did between Brazil, Lagos, and Dahome.

At the present day the Musulmi of Bahia speak a dialect of Yoruba (the
iVago); formerly (says the Abb^ Ignace Etienne) they could read and write
Arabic. To-day their priests and holy men {A/u/a) no longer understand the
Arabic of the Koran and use a Portuguese translation.

As early as 1694 the n^roes working in the palm forests of Pernambuco
coalesced into a tribe of revolted slaves which for a long time resisted any
attempts at subjugation by the Portuguese. In 17 19 the negroes of the Minas
Geraes province had made a far-reaching conspiracy to massacre all the whites
on Holy Thursday, but like so many of these negro plots it failed of effect
through premature revelations, and the bulk of the negroes to avoid punishment

escaped into the forests, where they lived with the Indians (whom they had
joined in a revolt seven years previously). In 182S, at Bahia, more than a
thousand negroes had risen against the yoke of slavery, but they were van-
quished by Brazilian soldiers at the Piraji River. Another attempt at a rising
was made at Bahia on the loth April, 1830, but also was suppressed without
difficulty by the authorities; but for six years, between 1831 and 1837, the
negroes all over Brazil were simmering in insurrection. The Imperial Govern-
ment of the country was disorganised owing to the abdication of Don Pedro 1
and the long minority of his son which followed. There were attempts at
revolution amongst the whites, so it is hardly surprising that the blacks, having
far more serious grievances, were ready to strike for independence, between
MaranhcLo on the north and Santos (Sao Paulo district) on the south.

But the Male insurrection which broke out on the night of January 14th,
1835, at Bahia, had a distinctly religious as well as a racial character: it was
mainly confined to the Muhammadan negroes, who were determined if success-
ful to found a Muhammadan state in the north-east of Brazil, which was to be
under a negress queen. A good number of the insurgents were not even slaves,

ir Kambari yaji \% th« Fula name

96 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

but free men and wealthy. The total number of Muhammadans or " Mal&"
was probably not more than 1500, but they believed they had obtained the
adhesion of lar^e numbers of pagan or Christian negro slaves who were
disgusted with their condition of servitude. As usual, however, warnings and
denunciations had reached the police officers, and to a certain extent Bahia was
not taken by surprise. In spite of furious fighting, the Males were vanquished
and took to flight. Large numbers of prisoners were taken. Some were shot,
others were flogged ("two hundred, five hundred, and even one thousand
strokes," which could not have left many of them living !) others were sent to

convict establishments, and a few were deported to Africa, The Abb^ Ignace
Etienne is of opinion that if the movement had been more ably directed by its
promoters, and had been better armed, it might, with the furious, reckless
courage displayed by the insurgent negroes, have overwhelmed the Portuguese
and have actually succeeded in establishing — at any rate for a time — a Muham-
madan negro government in the province of Bahia.

Negro slaves were apparently introduced into the State of Matto Grosso' at
the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the mineral wealth of this region
began to be first exploited and when the intervention of the Jesuits had checked

' In ihe soilth-cenlre of Brazil, on ihe rising ground of Ihe soulhern b»sin of ihe Amaion.

SLAVERY UNDER THE PORTUGUESE: BRAZIL 97

the enslavement of Amerindians. In 171S the capital of the State of Cuyaba
was founded by Pascoal Moreira Cabral de Leme. From that date the impor-
tation of negroes grew considerably, and it was entirely due to their labour
that the mines received such development. The negroes were, of course,
brought from the Sao Paulo district. Apart from those that were regularly
introduced, many of the runaway negroes from the regions nearer the coast

83. VISCONDB DO RIO BRANCO

made for Matto Grosso and existed alongside the slaves as a free population
giving its labour for wages.

By 1872 the free negroes largely outnumbered the slaves. In the first half
of the nineteenth century negroes and negroids were twice as numerous as the
whites, and the Amerindian population had shrunk to very small proportions.
At the present day there are about fifty thousand negroes and negroids in this
important State. Here, as elsewhere in Brazil, there was no great shock or
interruption to industry caused by the sudden emancipation of 1888, for the
growth of the free negro element has been so considerable, and while Brazilians

98 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

so accustomed to treating it with consideration and paying it wages for its

service, that the emancipated slaves (where they were not aged pensioners)
joined the ranks of the free coloured people
without difficulty.

Semi- independent, pagan Bush-negroes,
Muhammadan " Mal^s," and Christian "eman-
cipados" have, in the later history of Brazil,
once or twice given trouble to the authorities
in the interior (the eastern and southern
provinces chiefly) by their independent de-
meanour. Before the complete emancipation
in 1888 there were attempts made to send
the more turbulent back to West Africa.'

In 183s there were 2,100,000 slaves in
Brazil; in 1875 the number had dropped
(after the partial emancipation of 1S71) to
1,476,567. But there was a recrudescence of
demand for slave labour (or official estimates
were wrong), for in 1884 the total number
of. slaves was computed at nearly 3,000,000.
In 1888, however, slavery was abruptly
abolished by Imperial decree (under the
regency of the Princess Isabella), and the
discontent caused by this final blow to servi-
tude (just as railway and rubber develop-
ments were giving it a new value in the eyes
of the entrepreneur), coupled with other
causes of political unrest, cost the dynasty of
Bragan^a the Brazilian throne.

After emancipation the movement to-
wards a fusion of races between the ex-slave
and the descendants of his Luso-Brazilian
masters went on more rapidly even than
during the three centuries of mild servitude.
The Portuguese are at heart an essentially
kind, good-natured people, and least of all
Christian European races have a contempt
for the coloured races. Possibly this may
spring from these two facts : that there is a
strong Moorish, North African element in
Southern Portugal, and even an old inter-
mixture with those negroes who were im-
ported thither from North-west Africa in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to till the

84, a"mamrluco"or HVDRiD BETWEEN scantjly populated southern provinces; and
AHBRiNDiAN (cAKiB) AND BURoi-BAN also that Brazil, the Azores, and Madeira were

Aiibou(h ihii individual w>i 1 nitin or Cuiaiu, rather colonised from the Moorish southern
ibt'hUi«(yiJllo"ii'r«mm™m"u«''^'''™^^ half of Portugal than from the Gothic north.

X thousand Braiilian " emancipados " settled at

SLAVERY UNDER THE PORTUGUESE: BRAZIL 99

Arrived in Brazil, the Portuguese — prolific breeders outside Portugal ^ —
another paradox ! — mixed eagerly with the Amerindians and raised up a great,
proud, and warlike intermediary race of Mamelucos.- Then in the late seven-
teenth century they and the mamelucos began to mix maritally with the
imported negresses. Unlike the British and British-Americans, and like the
French and Dutch, they did not spurn or neglect their offspring by slave
concubines. On the contrary, they educated them, set them free (usually),
lifted them above servitude, raised them socially to the level of the Whites ;
and at the present day it may be truly said that among two-thirds of the
Brazilians speaking Portuguese there are no colour distinctions in society or
politics. The co.our problem is only beginning to appear slightly in the
expanding German and Swiss settlements, and more markedly in the centres of
pure white Portuguese colonisation in the south.

The growing-up of a huge empire of mulattoes, of mixed Caucasian-Negro-
Amerindian blood, impressed very unfavourably Louis Agassiz when he
explored Brazil in the later sixties. In his book* he writes as follows : —

This mixture of races seems to have had a much more unfavourable influence on the
physical development than in the United States. It is as if all clearness of type had
been blurred, and the result is a vague compound lacking character and expression.
This hybrid class, although more marked here -because the Indian element is added, is
very numerous in all the cities ; perhaps the fact, so honourable to Brazil, that the free
negro has full access to all the privileges of any free citizen, rather tends to increase than
diminish the number.*

But it may be that Agassiz took a too pessimistic view, and that the new
Brazilian race, though it may have for centuries an unchangeably yellow-brown
skin and undulating hair, may develop into a vigorous human type able to hold
its own against the Nordic or the Mediterranean White man, the pure negro (if

' The area of Portugal, the Azores and Madeira is 35,290 square miles, more than two-thirds the size
of England ; and England, not so completely habitable as well-nigh-perfect Portugal, supports a popula-
tion of thirty millions. The total population of Portugal and the Islands is only six millions.

^ " The product of European and Indian is a fine type ; handsome, well-built, and nice in character.
I believe further that the Indian blood once introduced tends to eat up the other blood and to reproduce
itself again and again. There is more than mere blood in this. One cross of Indian blood will show in
many generations, often stronger in the son than in the father who was nearer the original Indian strain —
ill the clear-cut, sensitive lips and mouth, the straight nose, clear, clean, olive skin, and the extraordinary,
straight, black oily hair — blue-black, and exuding a natural oil which is clean and sweet and keeps the
hair abundant and glossy. The Indian possesses the ** Spirit of the Soil," whatever that is, because he
has been evolved through so many ages where he now lives. The same influences of food, climate, air,
forest, hills, and a thousand imperceptible influences which are at work on the new-comer, causes any
drop of Indian blood in his children to bring out the Indian type peculiarities and cause his descendants,
if the mother have the least tinge of Indian about her, to look more like the aboriginal of Brazil than is
warranted by racial descent." (From a correspondent.)

' A Journey 4n Brazil ^ by Louis Agassiz, 1868.

* Agassiz adds this note : ' ' Let anyone who doubts the evil of this mixture of races, and is inclined, from a
mistaken philanthropy, to break down all barriers between them, come to Brazil. He cannot deny the de-
terioration consequent upon an amalgamation of races, more widespread here than in any other country in
the world, and which is rapidly effacing the l)est qualities of the white man, the negro, and the Indian,
leaving a mongrel nondescript type, deficient in physical and mental energy. At a time when the new
social status of the negro is a subject of vital importance in our statesmanship, we should profit by the
experience of a country where, though slavery exists, there is far more liberality toward the free negro
than he has ever enjoyed in the United States. Let us learn the double lesson : open all the advantages
of education to the negro, and give him every chance of success which culture gives to the man who
knows how to use it ; but respect the laws of nature, and let all dealings with the black man tend
to preserve, as far as possible, the distinctness of his national characteristics, and the integrity of

our own.**

How can Agassiz dogmatise on the laws of Nature? May he not, like Mrs. Partington, be trying to
sweep out the Atlantic?

loo THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

any survive in the New Brazil of the twenty-first century), or the regenerated
Amerindian.^

The liberated negro slave has, like every other Brazilian citizen, the vote.
The franchise is extended to all male citizens over twenty-one years of age who
are literate, not beggars or vagrants, not in active service as soldiers, or monks
in a monastery. The negro or negroid is equally eligible for holding all public,
municipal, and political offices.* He enjoys the same protection of the laws as
his white or yellow fellow-citizen. He is now a " Homem Brazileiro," and the
word negro, even when applied to one of pure negro race, has come to be used
only as a term of abuse, which may be made still further offensive by supple-
menting it with the words ** de Africa." This has come to be one of the most
offensive terms one can apply to a Brazilian citizen, even though he be of un-
mixed negro descent If you must discriminate as to colour in conversation,
you speak of a " preto " [preio in Portuguese = black].

" All colour distinctions in the population of Matto Grosso have fallen
away, and with them all distinction between the white race, the Amerindian,
and the Negro. In Matto Grosso, indeed, the apparently irreconcilable social
disparity between the three races seems to have found a satisfactory solution.'**
Nevertheless, the white race still holds an ascendancy throughout Brazil as the
foremost exponent of modern civilisation ; nor is this ascendancy likely to be
lost, in spite of the climatic advantage possessed by the African race. This is
due, in the opinion of modern writers, to the supreme influence of capital. The
white race has capital behind it : the negro has not.

The conditions regarding the acquisition of land (more especially Govern-
ment land in new districts) require the possession of more or less ready money.
The white man, therefore, acquires the land and surveys it at his own expense.
Before he casts his eye over this likely estate it may already have been squatted
on by negroes, negroids, or " Indians" (these squatters are called " Moradores " in
Brazil), or after the estate has been acquired and surveyed, the Moradores
drift thither and settle on it with or without permission. But before long they
are obliged to come to terms with the real owner of the estate, who has
acquired these rights by a legal contract. So far from the estate owner
desiring to evict the squatter, he is anxious to come to terms with him, because
if he be harsh, the squatter with his invaluable labour will move off to an un-
claimed piece of land or to a more considerate employer. The unwritten law
which all parties believe in and observe is that the Morador shall pay for his
rent and for other benefits in labour, and this he is quite ready to do, provided
the demands on his time are not unreasonable. But the estate owner generally
keeps a store, and is in a small way a banker. The result is that the Mora-
dores— Negro and Indian — are generally more or less in debt to the proprietor
they serve ; and the latter, if need be, has recourse to the law to compel the
payment of debt by a reasonable amount of labour. Usually quite patriarchal
conditions arise between the white Padrao and the coloured "Camarada." This
last receives in theory small monthly wages, which are not always adequate to
the payment of the rent and the purchase of goods ; but then he has a right to

^ A well-informed correspondent in Brazil writes to me on this topic: "The Brazilian negro is fast
disappearing. The future Brazilian will have very much negro blood in him, but he will be a yellovy
man, and will regard Paris as his Mecca. He does already !

'^ ** All negroes are * citizens of Brazil ' — entirely equal, legally, socially, and by democratic sentiment
or instinct. In that respect, Brazil is a true republic." (A correspondent.)

' Dr. Max Schmidt in KolonicUe Rundschau for April, 1909.

SLAVERY UNDER THE PORTUGUESE :

share the two principal meals of his Patron, to whose family
he belongs. The PadrSo is usually the godfather — and his wi
— of the Camarada's children. The PadrSo conceives himse
requirements of good feeling to give occasional entertainmen
with singing, dancing, and fireworks, usually on saints' days.
Until the negro acquires capital, which he invests in

85. IN TH8 KORKSTS OF SOUTH

development of estates, so long will the white man hold tV
ascendancy in Brazil. And it should be noted once agai
very much dislike settling down under ne^ro landlords (w
They infinitely prefer to associate themselves with the de
owned by tvAiU men, or, at any rate, by such persons who
the slight element of the negro or the Amerindian in the!
with the liberality and justice attributed to the white man

NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

at the capabilities of the negro imported from Africa must
■eatest value to the early settler in Brazil, as he possessed
which were lacking in the Amerindians, even if the latter
all the skilled and unskilled labour demanded by the
vast region. The Negro, for example, displayed a remark-
cattle-breeding and an inherent skill in the working and
—the blacksmith's art in particular. As the Amerindians
ically unacquainted with the care of domestic animals at
■ the frontiers of Bolivia and Peru, they did not even know
laco). they were of no use in cattle-breeding. Indeed, as

iduce them to raise live-stock have been fruitless.

izil made it difficult or impossible for a people of

arge of cattle, sheep, goats, or horses. In this

negro has been particularly useful, has dis-

ttle-keeper, and has even imparted those gifts to

ians and with the white man. It is said that

xtion with the breeding and keeping of cattle

uese settlers from the negro, and not taught by

^ly of blacksmith's work which the negro popu-
quite remarkable. With the exception of the
Bolivia and Peru, the working of metals was

irlicle by Dr. Max Schmidt in the Kalmtiait Ruadtckau Tor

SLAVERY UNDER THE PORTUGUESE: BRAZIL 103

practically unknown to the Amerindians of Brazil in the sixteenth century;
and even at the present day most of the iron implements in their possession
(such as lance-heads, arrow-heads, iron rings for striking fire with flint) have
been made for them by negroes living amongst them or in their neighbourhood.
Dr. Max Schmidt observed that the negro in making great lance-heads for the
Guato Indians, imitated very closely the shape and pattern of the old Guato
lance which had a bone point.

Quite a million of the Amerindians are still pagan ; twenty or thirty thou-
sand of the negroes are Muhammadan (more or less) or actually preserve their
fetishistic beliefs brought from Africa. These pagan n^roes have fetish
temples in their villages in which they house the rude figures of gods similar to

87. A SCHOOL TBACHRR AND PUPILS, SOMfiO RIVBR, MINA5 GERASS

those of Dahome and the Niger delta. I have seen a collection made in
Brazil (by Dr. H. W. Furniss, U.S.A. Minister to Haiti) of these wooden
painted idols which might have come from the west coast of Africa. But
Christianity is rapidly spreading among all classes and races. All the Brazilian
Christians, except two hundred thousand (mostly Germans, British, and a few
negroes), belong to the Roman Catholic Church : though there is no State
religion, and all reasonable faiths may be freely held.

Education is not compulsory in Brazil ; and the negro peasantry at the
present time are very poorly educated, few of those who have reached middle
age being able to read and write. These faculties are much more common
amongst the present young people of between ten and fifteen years oT age. In
the towns, however, the standard of negro education is much higher and
scarcely differs from that of the white population. Very few negroids are un-
able to read, write, and cipher.

E NEW WORLD

itry is built of wood and clay and
consists of two fair-sized rooms, with
There is no window, and the house
one means of admitting light. The
. There are a few wooden chests for
ids s. glass case containing images of

i case of the men is usually a shirt and
r slippers, and a broad-brimmed hat
»r a cotton skirt and blouse, but very

The small children run about naked, but on
a short cotton frock and the boys a tattered

negroids are dressed like Frenchmen of good
■ Anglo-French tailors, hosiery usually from
irg hats, and chapeaux de haute-forme (on
ladies of course go to Worth, or imitation
ania with all classes and colours in Brazil,
irst and last thought. But one must admit
ite,"' writes a correspondent in Brazil.

ic cioss between the c1uin!>y negio slave snd the not paiticu*
ewild Indian thrown in— shnuld present such a conliasl to the
ness and smartness. The coloured Brazilian ii the greatest

SLAVERY UNDER TTr

Of course in general mode of 1
people of Brazil are scarcely dis
upper classes, according to their r
ever, away from the towns lead a
house or hut may be a little sup
manners and customs in domestic)
Gold Coast or Dahome — not a vei

At their meals the negro men
but the women and girls (in the
helping themselves to food, and u:

89. BRAZILIAN NEGROES SH

The country negroes and man;
themselves very much about con
women simply live together in w
A woman with or without childrei
pleases her and shares his home
Yet these unions are sometimes as
the Church or contracted under
unrecognised polygamy, and ma
wife.

d«ndy you can imBgine, and the vainest foj
miiroc and a combi and in the streets, trati
u d«at to him as is — oi was — the 'quiff' t<i
himself. One thing I miial ^y in his fivour

io6

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

The irrepressible n^ro and negroid — you may dislike their physiognomy,

call them fop, gorilla, and other disagreeable names, but they always come up
smiling and bear little malice — enters all
careers, serves in all trades, professions, and
employments in Brazil, from the humblest to
nearly the highest, from the scavenger and
sewage collector to the priesthood, college
professorships, party-leadership, even perhaps
to the presidential throne. At least it is said
that more than one of the chief magistrates
of the " United States of Brazil" has had a
tricklet of Ethiopia in his veins.

Negroes constitute a large proportion of
the Brazilian standing army of 19,000 men,
of the police ' and navy (with a personnel of
6000). They furnish in like manner the bulk
of the recruits for military bands and civilian
orchestras. Some of the best music in Brazil
is produced by half-caste negroids or pure-
blooded negroes.

The total area of Brazil is enormous : in-
cluding the recently purchased Acre territory
90. H. B^Nn^^PBfANHA.^pRHsiDENT jj amouuts to 3,293.000 square miles.' The
population for 1908 is approximately

20,000,000, divided roughly under

the following racial types t 8,000,000

whites, 1 ,700,00a mamelucos (Caucaso-

merindian) ; 2,000,000 Amerindians ;

5,582,000 negroids (mulattoes, etc.,

Cafuzos, and hybrids between the

three racial stocks of America) ; and

2,7 1 8,000 more or less pure-blood

Negroes.^

As r^ards the rate of increase,

' The mililary police force of Rio and mosl
other big towns is pure Negro, ur Cafuio
(Negrindian) ; the civil police are almost all
while men or Mamelucos. The General com-
manding the Rio Police is [or was) a Mulatto.
The senior Admiral in the Navy and the present
Minister of Marine (1909) are also Eurafncan in
race. As a rule, however, the officers in the
standing army and in the police force are white,
or while tinged with Amerindian blood.

' Nearly as large as the United States and
Alaska.

' Counting Negroes and N^oids there are
approximately 8,300.000 people of more or less
African descent in Brazil, as against S.ooo.ooo
of European race. If the 8,000,000 whiles joined
with the 1,700,000 Caucaso-merindians and ihe
1,000,000 Amerindians, there would he a White-
Vellow majority of 3,400,00a over the Browns

and Blacks. Bat this is an idle speculation, as 9:, A "CAFtlZO"

h usion is the key-note of Bracilian Government. Hybrid twiwcen N'egra and Amcrindiwi

SLAVERY UNDER THE PC

recent statistics published by Dr. Pires
Commercio during September, 1 909) si
among the pure whites or the absolute
civilised "Indians" (Caboclos) and Matiu
The average number of children produc 1
man and an Amerindian woman is fo.
and a white woman 1%. Negroes marr 1
or about three children per marriage, and 1

There are no statistics con-
cerning uncivilised Amerindians,
but the average increase, i.e.
number of live children born
to their women, is guessed at
under one. Great stress is laid
by Dr. de Almeida on living
children, because he points out
what a large proportion of the
children in Brazil are born dead.
The death -rate among young
children is very high among
negroes, n^roids, and Amer-
indians. Civilised Amerindians
in Brazil {Caboclos) have a pro-
portionate increase of three
children per marriage and a
less heavy infant death - rate.
Negroids intermarrying with
N'egroids show a birth-rate of
3"3. White men uniting with
negresses, and negroes with
white women have a birth-rate
in Brazil of only 2'9. On the
other hand, Amerindians married
to negroes and leading a civilised
e-tistence in cities have a high
birth-rate : 39.

Dr. Bulh5es Carvalho con-
siders the Amerindian the most 9»- * botoci
fecund stock in the country ;
especially when mingled with an infusion of >
Amerindian element is lowering the stature
except in the pure white or unmixed negroes, ii
the beginning of the nineteenth century, befor
racial types began.

The geographical distribution of Negro
approximately as follows : — They inhabit all
hundred miles inland, from Pari (near the r
frontier of Uruguay; the provinces of Minas
Grosso. They are particularly numerous in thi
vicinity of Rio de Janeiro, Santos, Bahia, Pen
A few are found in the coast region of Brazil

io8 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

are scattered sporadically all over Brazil, and as traders and chance workers
penetrate the most remote Amazonian regions, they really only count as the
preponderating element of the population in the coast-lands of Eastern Brazil,
in Minas Geraes. and in the mining districts of Matto Grosso. The rest of
Brazil is given up to a sparse one and three-quarter millions of Amerindians,
civilised^ and uncivilised, to Mamelucos, and to whites. Of course a good
many whites and Caucaso-merindian hybrids inhabit the same parts of Brazil
that are (otherwise) mainly populated by negroes and negroids. The " whitest "

93 ON THE BANKS OF THE AMAZONS RIVER

' The wild, naked — and mosl of the w]]d Amerindians of Brazil go ahgolutely naked, men and
women — aborigines are called \t^ the Portuguese, Indies bravas ; ihe civilised and clothed, Cabocle,
fem. Cttbocla. Ii has alrea.dy been menlioneil thai the name for the hybrid tietween Portuguese and
Amerindian— perhaps Ihe coming race in Brazil — is Mamelnio [a fanciful term derived from the Arabic
Mamluk) ; ihal of the hybrid between Negro and Amerindian is Cafuzs, " a very rake-helly type,"
writes a correspondent, " liul a vigorous one and very prominent in Ihe Brazilian army and military
police." "As lo Ihe Indians of the Amaions, they are very fine chaps mostly, but differ greatly
according to tribe and locality, both in physical form, strength, and skin-colour. Some are copper,
others olive, yellow, or brown ; and some are nearly while. Some are handsome trit)es ; others re-
pulsive in the extreme. 1 here is one emraordinary tribe, the Paraiinlim, exceedingly tall and
abnormally developed in a manner precisely recalling those strange descriptions gathered by the
missionaries of the sixteenth century from native l^ends in Northern South America ; descriptions of
an awful tribe of cannibal, licentious giants which appeared from the Amazon valley and commilled
frightful ravages on the civilised peoples of Colombia and Ecuador." (From a correspondent.)

The present Amerindian population of Brazil can scarcely be less than 2,o30,000. They may not
have increased very much since 1S90, when they were last counted, but in that year no attempt was
made lo include in Iheeensus many tribes in Norlh-Wesl, Central, and Easl-Cenlral Brazil, The number
of mamelucos or Caucaso-merindian hybrids is approximately 1,700,000. They are a type that is in-
creasing faster than any other race in Brazil.

SLAVERY UNDER THE PORTUGUESE : BRAZIL 109

portions of Brazil are the Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catherina, Parana, Sao
Paulo, and south-eastern Matto Grosso.

As regards the white population the Portuguese element is overwhelmingly
large, not only from the pre-independence days, but by the steady Portuguese
immigration since 1850, amounting in all to quite 2,000,000. During the last
fifty years about 230,000 Spanish or Spanish Americans have entered Brazil,
and about 1,000,000 Italians have remained there ; and these " Latin " elements
have easily fused with the nearly related Portuguese, especially in language.
For some reason the German element in the population has been much
exaggerated, and "a million Germans" are often attributed to Brazil by the
American Press. As a matter of cold fact, there appear to be about 1 50,000
Germans, Austrians, Baltic Russians, and German Swiss in Brazil ; but owing
to their energy and increasing wealth they and the four to five thousand
British wield an influence quite out of proportion to their numbers.

Yet the coloured man administers, even if he does not rule ! Especially since
the commencement of the Republic. At the present moment there is scarcely
a lowly or a highly placed Federal or Provincial official, at the head of or
within any of the great departments of State, that has not more or less Negro
or Amerindian blood in his veins. I am not putting this forward as a reproach:
quite the contrary. It is an interesting fact, and an encouraging one.

CHAPTER VI
SLAVERY UNDER THE DUTCH

THE Dutch were hard taskmasters ; as slaveholders disliked perhaps more
than the British or the British Americans. They threw themselves into the
slave-trade and the establishment of slave-worked plantations with a zest
exceeding that of any other nationality : in the Malay Archipelago, at the
Cape of Good Hope, in North America, Guiana, and Northern Brazil.

The Dutch made their first trading voyage to the Guinea Coast in 1595,
sixteen years after throwing off the yoke of Spain. On the plea of warring
with the Spanish Empire, which then included Portugal, they displaced the

94. BLMIKA CASTLK, GOLD COAST
Elfniu— EdfHi in native pulincE— wu Ibc Hnl iltonghsld of ih> Europcui ilivc tiule on
the We>l Coul or Arri<;>. tl wu beld by the Dutch froin i«j7 [o la^i

latter power at various points along the west coast of Africa : at Arguin (north
of the Senegal), at Goree (purchased in 1621 from the natives), Elmina (cap-
tured from the Portuguese in 1637), and at Sio Paulo de Loanda about the
same time. They also threatened Mozambique on the east coast, and possessed
themselves of the island of Mauritius. From the Mozambique coast they
brought slaves to the Cape of Good Hope, some of which were transferred later
to America.

On the Gold Coast, in addition to Elmina the Dutch established sixteen
other forts, some of them alongside British settlements, which last the Dutch
West India Company regarded with the keenest jealousy. The Dutch Gold
Coast Possessions — like the British — were governed by a Chartered Company,
that of the Dutch West Indies.^ Goree and Arggin were lost to the French in

I 1674 and charler«l to control the Guiana

SLAVERY UNDER THE DUTCH in

1677-8, and Angola was only held for about eight years; therefore the Dutch
during all the great period of American colony-making in eastern tropical
America — the "sugar age," from 1660 to 1840 — were obliged to rely on the
Gold Coast for their slave supply. As they purveyed for other nations in
addition, it is mainly the Dutch (but also the British) who are responsible for
the introduction of so many Gold Coast slaves into the West Indies, South
Carolina, and the Guianas. These were usually called " Koromantis," from the
Dutch fort of Cormantyn or Koromanti near Cape Coast Castle, or " Minas"
from EI Mina; and they were probably derived from the Ashanti and the
warlike tribes of the Black and
the White Volta. The Koromanti
slaves were always the prominent
or the sole fighters in the great
slave revolts of the West Indies
and Guiana during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries.'

The Dutch fixed on Guiana first
of all as a region of tropical America
where they would meet with least
opposition from Spaniard or Portu-
guese. They visited the coast as
early as 1580, and continued to
send ships thither on trading ex-
peditions, until in 1614 the states of
Holland granted local monopolies
of trade to any Dutchman who
would found settlements in Guiana.
Thus encouraged, Essequibo was
established in 1616 and Berbice in
1624. Surinam (Paramaribo) was
acquired from the British by treaty
in 1674. But Guiana was also an
attraction to the English and French.
Sir Walter Raleigh sailed up the
Orinoco River in search of the
legendary " El Dorado" country
and revisited the Orinoco region
again in 1617. Although he scarcely
entered the real Guiana country Fr„„„n,
eastward of the Orinoco basin, he
drew attention to its gold-bearing possibilities from 1595 onwards, and British
adventurers attempted and partially succeeded in founding settlements at the
mouths of the many parallel rivers flowing northward through (what are now
the separate colonies of) British, French, and Dutch Guiana.

In 1621 the first Dutch West India Company was established, and after-
wards took the slave-trade in hand as a monopoly in Guiana and the Dutch
West Indies. This company took possession of the island of Santa Cruz,
which commands the passage between the Greater and Lesser Antilles, in 1625,
[Santa Cruz was captured by France and eventually sold to Denmark in 1733.]
Shortly afterwards the Dutch occupied the islands of Cura5oa, Bonaire, and
' The; weie aJso ulled " KoBies," Trom Kofi, a common Ashanti name.

112 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Aruba off the north coast of Venezuela, which have remained Dutch down to
the present day. In 1640 the little island of Saba, and at a later date the
southern half of St. Martin and the island of St. Eustatia (all in the northern-
most group of the Lesser Antilles) were added to the Dutch West Indian
possessions, and became mainly peopled by negroes, besides, like Guiana, afford-
ing a refuge to many Jewish traders.

In 1630 and in 1651-2 British adventurers built small trading towns on the
Surinam coast, particularly at Paramaribo ; and in 1662 Charles II granted the
whole of Guiana to Lord WiJloughby of Barbados, who brought with him a
number of English and negroes and established his head-quarters at Paia-
maribo.* Here his colony was strengthened by several hundred Jews anciently

of Spanish origin, who had first come to America under Dutch protection, but
who fled from one of the temporary Dutch settlements — Cayenne — when it \vas
recaptured by the French in 1664.*

' The long stay aC Ihe British in
firml)' ainoil£Si the Hegra slaves thai e
English than ofatiy olhei language.

' An ioiporiant element in the colonisation of Dutch Guiana were the Jews, mainly of Spanish and
Poituguese origin, who had mignted to Ihe Dutch settlements fiom French Cayenne in 1664 (led by the
heroic Samuel Cohen Naisy), or who came there -when expelled from Spain and Portugal, or proceeded
direct from Holland to Surinam. They brought to or created in the colony gieal wealth, and under the
Dutch Hag they enjoyed peculiar privileges, which were not terminated till 1825, when they became
merged without distinction in the rest of the free citizens of Dutch America. When Lord Willoughby's
Guiana colony was withdrawn in 1675, the Spanish and Portuguese Jews who had settled there migrated
to Jamaica and Barbados. The Jamaica Jews, beating for the most part Spanish names, have been from
lime to lime very notable persons in the development of Ihe West ladies. Many of the Jews with the
Spanish or Portuguese names whom one encounters in English society have derived their fortunes from
the West Indies. I^rd Beaconsfield's " fairy godmother," Mrs. Brydges Williams (iiA Cordova), whose
fortune went so liir to establish his position and power in British politics, had derived her money from the
West Indies.

The West Indian Jews played a considerable part as brokers in the slave-trade, and had representa-
tives at the Gambia, Sierra Leone, and elsewhere 00 the West African coast until the slave-ttkde was
finally extirpated.

SLAVERY UNDER T

But in 1667, by the Peace of Breda, and 1:
1674, the Dutch secured all Guiana (except
and governed it as a number of separate col
New West India Chartered Company.^ Sugi
most lucrative industry, and to work this
brought to Guiana. Many of the slaves, h
forested interior, mingled slightly with the
sav^e tribes, which by the beginning of th
with the Dutch.

Owing to dissatisfacton with negro slave 1
to introduce natives of the East Indies — " ku
the " coolie" traffic of the nineteenth ,
century. But the experiment was a
failure ; the East Indians were badly
treated, many died, and a few ran
away and joined the " bosch negers "
in the forests. Therefore as there
was an ever-increasing demand for
sugar from Essequibo, Demerara,
Berbice, and Paramaribo, and as also
the cultivation of the coco-nut palm
had been introduced (in 1688) and of
cacao (1725), the demand for negro
labour in Guiana once more became
a great impetus to the slave-trade.

During the eighteenth century
the Dutch in their Guiana posses-
sions inflicted shocking cruelties on ix,^
their negro slaves. They probably
fed and housed them better than did
the British, and took more trouble to
educate their half-caste children ; but
otherwise they certainly hold (com-
paring all the records) a sad pre-
eminence over their contemporaries
of all nationalities in the eighteenth
century for extravagant torture and
even reckless massacre in their deal-
ings with negroes free and enslaved.

In Guiana married and unmarried
towards their domestic slaves than had
servants, or labourers. It is recorded o
had her female slaves flogged across the
pain. Negresses in Surinam,^ it is s

^ To whom Guiana was handed over in 1682.

^ Some of these statements and the accompanyi
Expedition to Surinam^ by Captain J. G. Stedi
British Navy, but there being no war on hand anc
Brigade in the service of Holland and was sent wit
Surinam, where they were to combat the Bush or
aniiety. The principal commandant of the force y
oat to show the heartlessness of the Dutch captaii

' IN THE NEW WORLD

sometimes for nothing more serious than breaking
11 their intestines were exposed, and pregnant
. young female slave — having proved unequal to
-was sentenced to receive two hundred lashes and
L chain several yards in length, one end of which
lile the other was affixed to a weight of at least
)me of the plantation houses the Dutch ladies
olutely naked female slaves, the reason given (to
hese young women went about absolutely bare
egnancy, a condition which their mistresses wish
hildren would spoil their shape." The husbands
preferred that their barge-rowers should likewise
y, young, and vigorous, they looked extremely
/e us a full opportunity of observing their skin,
which was shining and nearly as black as
ebony."

" Walking out on the ist of May, I observed

a crowd of people along the waterside, before

the house of Mr. S — Ik — r, where appeared the

dreadful spectacle of a beautiful young mulatto

girl floating on her back with her hands tied

behind, her throat most shockingly cut, and

stabbed in the breast with a knife in more than

eight or ten places. This was reported to have

been the work of that infernal fiend Mrs. S — Ik — r

from a motive of jealousy, suspecting that her

husband might fall in love with this unfortunate

female. This monster of a woman had before

drowned a negro infant merely for crying — nay,

she was accused of still greater barbarity.

Arriving one day at her estate to view some

negroes newly purchased, her eyes chanced to

fall on a fine negro girl about fifteen years old

I language of the country. Observing her to be

1 a sweet engaging countenance, her diabolical

tv to burn the girl's cheeks, mouth, and forehead

cut the tendon Achilles of one of her legs, thus

eformity and a miserable object as long as she

lowing what she had done to deserve so severe

1 no imagined hell is hot enough, but who, alas !
ere in the eighteenth-century record of Dutch
hern United States and one or two British West
•t. Domingue — was supplicated by her slaves for
hereupon she at once — to assert her authority —
uadroon child and caused two young negroes, its

ard into the sea from the fore-yard-arm. " His presence of mind
igside, ' Be not alarmed for me, sir,' in the confidence of meeting
, and even caused some murmuring, as no assistance was offered
rimming a considerable time within view, the unfortunate youog

SLAVERY UNDER THE DUTCH 115

relations, to be beheaded. Some of her slaves afterwards picked up these
bloody heads and went in to Paramaribo to lay them before the Governor,
pleading for his intervention. His only answer was to order them to be
flogged severely round the streets of Paramaribo,

As in the British and French colonies of the period, a slave could not bear
■witness, could not be heard in a court of law. But had a white person witnessed
these atrocities and given evidence on the subject, the utmost penalty that
would have been inflicted was a fine of £50.

There seem to have been a number of Dutch women in the Guiana settle-
ments of the eighteenth century, and
they stood the climate much better
than the men as regards vitality ;
but something in the air, the food,
the life seems to have made them as
energetic, passionate, and vicious as
their husbands tended to become
languid and ramolli. It was no un-
common thing for a Dutch lady of
Surinam to have buried four Euro-
pean husbands and to be on the look
out for a fifth; whereas no Dutch
man was known to have been widowed
(of a white wife) more than twice.
The Dutch women had often good
cause for jealousy, because their hus-
bands after a short residence in
Guiana preferred the society of quad-
roons and mulattoes and even Indian
girls. Yet the men seem to have
been too limp to intervene to save
their wretched mistresses from the
vengeance of the lawful wife.' Ac-
cording to Stedman and several other
writers of the late eighteenth century,
the British Leeward Islands at this
period made a profitable business out
of rearing quadroon and octoroon
girls and sending them to Dutch
Guiana to be sold for the harem. t. ^^ ■ ^^""^ °°^ °*^^

„, , u J lU Doich GuMiUL, aighlttnib «ntuiy

Ihe Jews were as bad as the so-
called Christians. A Jewess of Paramaribo, impelled by groundless jealousy,
killed a young and beautiful quadroon girl by "plunging a red-hot poker into
her body." She was only punished by a trifling fine and banishment to a
country village. Another young negro woman, having her ankles chained so
close together that she could scarcely move her feet, was knocked down with a
cane by a Jew and beaten till the blood streamed out of head, arms, and sides.

For disobedience or anything approaching mutiny (mutiny being often the
refusal of sexual intercourse with a white overseer) women were broken

' With the curious inconsistency of the Saxon, loc&l society in the eighteenth century wag very severe
on Dutch women who were unfaithful to iheir Dutch husbands with while men, and expelled such women
from the colony ; but winked at \ei% avowable amours between white women and n^ro slaves.

ii6 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

alive on the rack with iron bars, decapitated, fli^ged till their flesh was in
ribbons, and hung up by the thumbs to a branch, or tortured in ways that are
unprintable.

If this treatment of the women slaves was as bad as is represented, what is
to be said about the sufferings of the men slaves in Dutch Guiana between the
close of the seventeenth and the end of the eighteenth century? Men were
hung up to gibbets by means of a hook inserted under the ribs, being left to
revolve thus in the blazing sunshine till they died ; they were bound to stakes
and slowly roasted to death ;^ they were covered with wounds (partly self-
inflicted, so as to escape torture by suicide) and then heavily loaded with chains
and fastened close to the fierce,
spirituous heat of rum-stills — a pro-
cess thought to entail a specially
painful and lingering death. Negro
criminals were sometimes executed
by being torn asunder, each limb
being fastened to the saddle of a
restive horse.

The slaves were compelled to
work every day in the week if the
master wished it* As in the Ba-
hamas and the Southern States, it
was thought a smarter commercial
policy to work a strong slave to
death in ten years than to let him
live to old age and then be pen-
sioned ofl".

There were of course exceptions
to this general rule of insane or
thoughtless cruelty. Free persons of
colour were better treated than in the
British possessions or the French
colonies. Some of these lived to be
centenarians. A few Dutch masters
and mistresses were kind-hearted
employers and even philanthropists,
" THR ATROCIOUS HBTHODs OF emoloyin? their spare money in re^

KILLING sLAVBs Pit 1 uBbo Hv STEDMAN dceming sIbvcs that interested them

HiaiiDflhEiB upbyahODk Iodic of ihintimd fiiiDiiH " . . , . ,

or manumitting their own slaves ;
and it was distinctly easier and cheaper in these Dutch possessions for a slave
to purchase his freedom or to be redeemed than in the British American
dominions of the eighteenth century.

Here is the portrait of a typical Dutch planter-magnate of Surinam

■ As late as 1831.

' " With some masters their (uki can never be performed, as they must toil on, day and nighl, even
Sundays not excepted. I recollect a Krong young negro, called Marqtih, who had a wife he loved, with
two line children ; he laboured hard, and geDerally tinished his task of digging a trench of five hundred
feel by four o'clock in the afternoon that he might have some lime to culiivnte his liltte garden
and ^o lo catch fish or fowl lo support his beloved family : hard did Marquis strive to earn this
additional pittance ; when his humane master, apprised of his industry, 101 his encouragement
informed him that if he could delve five hundred feel by four o'clock, he could certainly finish sii
hundred before sunset ; and this [ask the unfortunate young man was condemned ftom that day ever since
to perform." {Sledman.)

SLAVERY UNDER THE DUTCH 117

in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, as delineated by Captain
S ted man : —

"A planter in Surinam, when he lives on his estate, gets out of his
hammock with the rising sun and makes his appearance under the piazza
of his house, where his coHee is ready waiting for him, which he generally takes
with his pipe, instead of toast and butter. There he is attended by half a dozen
of the finest young slaves, both male and female, of the plantation to serve
him; in this sanctum sanctorum he is next accosted by his overseer, who
regularly every morning attends at his levee, and having made his bows at
several yards' distance with the most profound respect, informs his Greatness^
what work was done the day before; what negroes deserted, died, fell sick,
recovered, were bought or born ; and
above all things which of them neg-
lected their work, affected sickness,
or had been drunk or absent. The
prisoners are generally present, being
secured by the negro-drivers, and
instantly tied up to the beams of the
piazza or a tree, without so much as
being heard in their own defence,
when the flogging begins, with men,
women, or children, without excep-
tion. The instruments of torture on
these occasions are long hempen
whips that cut round at every lash
and crack like pistol-shots, during
which they (the slaves) alternately
repeat, 'Dankee, massera' (Thank
you, master). In the meantime the
owner stalks up and down with his
overseer, affecting not so much as to
hear their cries till they are suflli-
ciently mangled, when they are un-
tied and ordered to return to their
work without so much as a dressing.

" This ceremony being over, the
'dressy' negro (a black surgeon) " Vb l"HTRBN?rcBNTURr(/T"^^^^^
comes to make his report; who being

dismissed with a hearty curse for allowing any slaves to be sick, next there
makes her appearance a superannuated matron, with all the young negro chil-
dren of the estate, over whom she is governess ; these being clean-washed in
the river clap their hands and cheer in chorus, when they are sent away to break-
fast on a large platter of rice and plantains ; and the levee ends with a low bow
from the overseer as it began.

" His worship now saunters forth in his morning dress, which consists of a pair
of the finest Holland trowsers, white silk stockings, and red or yellow Morocco
slippers ; the neck of his shirt open and nothing over it, a loose flowing night-
gown of the finest India chintz excepted. On his head is a cotton night-cap.
as thin as a cobweb, and over that an enormous beaver hat that protects his

1 planter of good slandiog wu

ii8 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

meagre visage from the sun, which is already tlie colour of mahogany, while his

whole carcase seldom weighs above eight or ten stone, being generally exhausted

by the climate and dissipation. To give a more complete idea of this fine

gentleman 1, in the annexed plate, present him to the reader with a pipe in his

mouth, which almost everywhere accompanies him, and receiving a glass of

Madeira wine and water from a

female quadroon slave to refresh him

during his walk,

" Having loitered about his estate
or sometimes ridden on horseback to
his fields to view his increasing stores,
he returns about eight o'clock, when
if he goes abroad, he dresses, but if
not remains just as he is. Should
the first take place, having only ex-
changed his trowsers for a pair of
thin linen or silk breeches, he sits
down and holding one foot after the
other, like a horse going to be shod,
a negro boy puts on his stockings and
shoes, which he also buckles, while
another dresses his hair, his wig, or
shaves his chin, and a third is fan-
ning him to keep off the mosquitoes.
Having now shifted he puts on a thin
coat and waistcoat, all white ; when
under an umbrella carried by a black
boy, he is conducted to his barge
which is waiting for him with six or
eight oars, well provided with fruit,
wine, water, and tobacco, by his over-
seer, who no sooner has seen him
depart than he resumes the command
with the usual insolence of office. But
should this prince not mean to stir
from his estate he goes to breakfast
about ten o'clock, for which a table is
.01. A BusH-NKCRo OF TM= SARAHAKA TR.BK, ^pr^Tad in the krgc hall provided with
DUTCH cJuiANA a bacoH-ham, hung beef, fowls, or

pigeons broiled ; plantains, and sweet
cassavas roasted ; bread, butter, cheese, etc., with which he drinks strong beer
and a glass of Madeira, Rhenish, or Mozell wine, while the cringing overseer sits
at the farther end, keeping his proper distance, both being served by the most
beautiful slaves that can be selected ; . . . and this is called breaking the poor
gentleman's fast,

" After this he takes a book, plays at chess or billiards, entertains himself with
music, etc., till the heat of the day forces him to return into his cotton hammock
to enjoy his meridian nap, which he could no more dispense with than a
Spaniard with his siesta, and in which he rocks to and fro like a performer on
the slack rope, till he falls asleep, without either bed or covering; and during
which time he is fanned by a couple of his black attendants, to keep him cool.

SLAVERY UNDER THE DUTCH 119

" About three o'clock he awakes by natural instinct, when having washed'
and perfumed himself, he sits down to dinner, attend^ as at breakfast by his
deputy governor and sable pages, where nothing is wanting that the world can
afford in a western climate of meat, fowls, venison, fish, vegetables, fruits, etc.,
and the most exquisite wines are often squandered in profusion ; after this a
strong cup of coffee and a liqueur finish the repast.

"At six o'clock he is again waited on by his overseer, attended as in the morn-
ing by negro-drivers and prisoners when the flogging once more having
continued for some time and the necessary orders being given for the next
day's work, the assembly is dismissed and the evening spent with weak punch,
sangaree, cards, and tobacco. His worship generally begins to yawn about ten
or eleven o'clock, when he with-
draws, and is undressed by his
sooty pages. He then retires to
rest, where he passes the night
in the arms of one or other of
his sable sultanas (for he always
keeps a seraglio) till about six
in the morning, when he again
repairs to his piazza walk, where
his pipe and coffee are waiting
for him ; and where with the
rising sun he begins his round of
dissipation, like a petty monarch,
as capricious as he is despotic
and despicable.

" Such absolute power indeed
cannot fail to be peculiarly de-
lightful to a man, who in all
probability, in his own country,
Europe, was a — nothing."

Captain Stedman goes on to
relate that when, from accumu-
lated miseries, disease, melan-
choly, or home -sickness slaves

■ •" Ci i- I iL >°3- BUSH-NEGKOES OF THK AUKAN TRIBB,

became unfit for work, the . ' dutch guiana

plantation owner or manager

decided to put them to death; and to avoid incurring the penalty of fifty
pounds which might be inflicted if by chance any white man testified to
such an action, they had various ingenious ways of getting rid of the slaves
they wished to kill. One would be to take the slave out to shoot game
and "accidentally" put a bullet through him ; another, to fasten the slave to a
stake in an open plain under the burning sun, and supply him (or her) "with
one gill of water and one plaintain a day" till the slave dies of hunger or sun-
stroke ; or to fasten him (or her) naked to a tree in the forest with arms and
neck extended under pretence of stretching the limbs. Here the slave is
rejjularly fed, but is actually stung to death by mosquitoes and ants. Or
, unwanted slaves can be drowned "accidentally." One Dutch woman-owner of
slaves used to fasten any one or two she did not want and could not sell inside
\ told in olher woiks) wss having water

I20 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

■a square of piled-up faggots. These were set fire to as though by accident and

the slaves consumed in the flames.

"As to the breaking of their teeth, merely for tasting the sugar-cane

cultivated , by themselves, slitting up their noses and cutting off their ears

from private pique, these are accounted mere sport and not worthy to be

mentioned." '

In fact, in Dutch Guiana during the eighteenth century, as in South

Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee during the nineteenth century, slaves in their

desperation often committed suicide to escape unendurable tortures. They
would leap into the cauldrons of
boiling sugar, drown themselves,
take poison, or throw themselves
from a height

Sometimes they would take re-
venge on their cruel owners before
killing themselves. A case is quoted
by Stedman of a negro who had
been very badly treated by his
master. The latter went away on
a short journey with his wife, and
on his return found that the negro
had shut himself up in his owners'
dwelling-house together with their
three young Dutch children. Seeing
his master and mistress approach,
the negro ascended to the roof of the
house with the children, whom he
threw over one by one on to the
pavement below, flinging himself
over the parapet immediately after-
wards, all four having their skulls
smashed in front of the horrified
Dutch couple. Another negro, whose
wife had been taken from him and
sold by the wife of his Dutch owner,

'°thb*d1)"i^c°h w^t?ndi7compTnvU^^^^^^ ^'^°' ^^^ ^"^"^^ (against whom he

™. , , „ „ .. ^ . „.., .^ had no grievance) and before shoot-

Thii cofM of about Boo Dulch. Swiit, Briliih and Gcrauni T , . & ,^ . , ' , . , „ ,

wucaiployediguDiltheBiuhDeciotioFGuiwu lUg himself Said tO the WldOW, 1

thought if I killed you, your suffering
would be at an end ; whereas if I killed your husband whom you love, you
would suffer as I have done in losing my wife."

It may be imagined that this bad treatment of the slaves — which seems to
have commenced so far as the Dutch were concerned from about 1650 — was the
cause of many of them deserting and taking refuge with the Bush negroes.
This was certainly the case down to the middle of the eighteenth century. But
this was not so after 1761, and still more after 1786, when agreements and
treaties were entered into with the Bush negroes similar to those made between
the British and the Maroons of Jamaica, Under these arrangements runaway
slaves were sometimes returned to their Dutch masters to suffer horrible
tortures and finally death.

' Caplain J. G. Stedman.

SLAVERY UNDER THE DUTCH 121

In those plantations or estates where the negroes were well treated^ a
pleasant picture has been drawn by Captain Stedman.

Under a mild master and an honest overseer, a negro's labour is no more than a
healthy exercise which ends at the selling sun. The remaining time is his own, which
he employs in hunting, fishing, cultivating his garden, or making baskets and fish nets
for sale ; with this money he buys a hog or two, sometimes fowls or ducks, all of which
he fattens upon the spontaneous growth of the soil, without expense and very little
trouble, and, in the end, they afford him considerable profit. Thus pleasantly situated,
he is exempt from every anxiety, and pays no taxes, but looks up to his master as the
only protector of him and his family. He adores him, not from fear, but from a convic-
tion that he is indebted to his goodness for all the comforts he enjoys. He breathes in
a luxurious, warm climate, like his own, which renders clothes unnecessary, and he finds
himself more healthy, as well as more, at his ease, by going naked. His house he may
build after his own fancy. The forest affords him every necessary material for the

cutting. His bed is a hammock, or a matting called /ti/a)'a. His pots he manufactures
himself, and his dishes are gourds, which grow in his garden. He never lives with a
wife he does not love, exchanging for another the moment either he or she becomes
tired, though this separation happens less frequently here than divorces do in Europe.
Besides the regular allowance given him by his master weekly, his female friend has the
art of making many savoury dishes, such as braf, or hodge-podge of plantains and yams
boiled with salt meat, barbacued fish, and Cayenne pepper. Tom-tom is a very good
pudding, composed of the flour of Indian corn, boiled with flesh, fowl, fish, Cayenne
pepper, and the young pods of the ocrg or altbea plant. Pepper-pot is a dish of boiled

' Not all the masters of slaves were monsters of iniquity, and one or two cruel slave-owners were Scotch'
men, for there were quite a number of Scotch settlers, or officials in the Dutch service, in Guiana during
the eighteenth century. On the other hand, some of the kindly and even benevolent slave-owners were
Biitisii Americans who settled in Guiana under the Dutch flag both before and after the Ainericail
Revolt against Great Britain. Some of the higher Dutch officials, owing allegiance isther to the Stktcs-
General or their nomination to the Stadhouder (Prince of Orange) than to the Dutch Chartered Company
which administered the Gaiana settlements down to 1 791, were men of kindly disposition who frequently
attempted 10 better (he condition of the slaves. On the other hand, the spirit animating the Chartered
Compariy was usually pitiless to the last degree. The general condition of the slaves, it is true, improved
after 1786, when peace was finally made with the Bush negroes, and through the influence of the Prince
of Orange, who received and conversed with repiesentativei of the Bush negroes.

I2Z THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

fish and capsicum, eaten with (he roasted plantains. Gangotay is made of dried, and
afo/oo of green plantains. Acanfa and doqutnoo aie composed of the flour of maize, and
the latter is eaten with molasses. His common drink is the limpid stream, sometimes
corrected by a little rum. If he is accidentally wounded or indisposed, he is cured for
nothing ; but it is very seldom he troubles the faculty, being tolerably skilled in herbs
and simples, besides scarifying and puckering the skin, which serves instead of bleeding.
The inconvenience of vermin he remedies with a comb, by plaistering up his hair with
clay, which being dried on the head, and then washed with soap and water, makes him
clean beyond conception ; his teeth are constantly kept as white as ivory ; for this pur-
pose he uses nothing but a sprig of orange-tree, bitten at one end, until the fibres
resemble a small brush ; and no negro, male or female, is to be seen without this little
instrument, which has besides the virtue of sweetening the breath.

So much for his body ; and with regard to his soul, he is seldom troubled with qualms
of conscience, or fear of death, as I have stated, -being firm and unshaken in what he
was taught to believe, which is indeed little, but plain ; and when he is no more, his

Ad luiportut town in Wuitrn Surinui, Dutch Guianii

companions or relatives carry him to some grove of orange-trees, where he is not interred

without expense, being generally put in a coffin of the very best wood and workmanship,
while the cries and lamentations of his surviving friends, who sing a dirge, pierce the
sky. The grave being filled up, and a green turf neatly spread over it, a couple of large
gourds are put by the side, the one with water, the other with boiled fowls, pork, cassava,
, etc., as a libation, not from a superstitious notion, as some believe, that he will eat or
drink it, but as a testimony of that r^ard which they have for his memory and ashes ;
while some even add the little furniture that he left behind, breaking it in pieces over
the grave. This done, every one takes his last farewell, speaking to him as if alive, and
testifying their sorrow at his departure; adding, that they hope to see him, not in
Guinea, as some have written, but in that better place, where he now enjoys the plea-
sant company of his parents, friends, and ancestors ; when another dismal yell ends the
ceremony, and all return home.

The Bush negroes, or " Bosch negers " of the Dutch, were derived, in part,
from the ex-slaves of the English, abandoned on the Guiana coast or along the
rivers of Guiana, when the British by degrees were expelled or withdrew from
this region. These English-speaking negroes greatly disliked their new Dutch
masters, and Bed from them into the trackless forests of the interior, where they
maintained themselves without much difficulty so far as the indigenous Amer-

SLAVERY UNDER THE DUTCH 123

Indians were concerned. Except in regard to the coast tribes of Caribs,
the Amerindians of all Guiana were a. gentle, peaceable race, very well inclined
towards the white man, not liking the negro (nor mingling their blood much
with his), but, on the other hand, no match for him as warriors. The Bush
negroes when hard-pressed by the Dutch settlers or their Indian allies, would
take refuge within the limits of French or Spanish Guiana. With the French
they were much associated, and when the French forces invaded the Surinam
territories in 171 1-I2 under Cassard, all the Dutch slaves that could manage to

107. THE WORKAl

escape joined the Bush negroes and with them assisted the French forces
to inflict the most damaging attack on the Dutch settlements, many of which
were thus destroyed.

From 1715 to 1775 there was an almost unending warfare between the
Dutch, the Bush negroes, or their own slaves for the time' being. There was a
great rising of ill-used slaves on the Upper Surinam River in 1730, b^inning on
one of the plantations of the Chartered Company. This war, which extended
to fighting with the already emancipated Bush negroes, did not come to a close
till 1749, when a formal treaty was made in the name of the Dutch Govern-
ment with 1600 victorious negroes. These idoo {it is observed by W. G.

kO IN THE NEW WORLD

jserved the conditions of their treaty afterwards ; but
ves joined with other bands of Bush negroes and
retreated to the forests at the head-waters
of the River Komowain (Commowijne).
Here they defied the Dutch under a
leader named Sam-sam.

In 1757 Sam-sam was succeeded by
a Muhammadan negro named Arabi,
who may quite possibly have come from
the Northern Senegal coast* and have
been of half Moorish or Arab extrac-
tion. So considerable was the influence
gained by Arabi and his victories over
the Dutch troops, that he might have
succeeded, had he desired, in over-
whelming and destroying the white
settlers throughout this region, but he
chose instead to open negotiations for
permanent peace with the Company's
rcH GUIANA Government, and succeeded in obtaining

llowers not only liberty and independence, but also a
;rritory stretching -
ind Commowijne
i the French fron-
iwain (Maroweyn)
is important group
henceforth known
M Dutch spelling,
fact that the treaty
:m and the Dutch
a plantation called
e Upper Surinam
after this, the run-
/ from the Luango
;d along the banks
ka River, also arose
ned peace from the
.miiar terms to those
kans. In this way
land of the Surinam
ed, so far as hostility
oes was concerned,
in or Corantyn River
Maroweyn (French
t. In what is now "^ "^"""^ women, dutch guiana

;n the Dutch settlements of Berbice, Demerara, and
IS no very great development of Dutch interests and

n, 1876.

)regoedoc" (Poregudok) negroes or negroids in Dutch Guiana who seem lo

Dutch trading stations of Coree and Arguin, north and south of the Senegal.

SLAVERY UNDER THE DUTCH 125

proaperity, and no particular need to take action against such runaway negroes
as had escaped from the settlements to the interior.

But in 1763 nearly all the slaves of the coast region revolted against their
masters, and for a time almost the only places in Dutch hands were the capital,
Paramaribo, and the plantation of Dagerrad, The Bush negroes of the interior
held fast to their treaty engagements and gave no aid to revolted slaves, who
were led by two able chiefs, Bonni and Baron, who established their head-
quarters on the Maroweyn River, from which they obviously received succour
at the hands of the French settlers of Cayenne. In 1770 the Dutch Governor,
Louis Nepveu, organised a corps of enfranchised negroes under a Dutch
officer. Colonel Stoelman, These " Bonni " negroes, as they came to be called,
were tackled with desperate determina-
tion by the Government of the Dutch
Company in 1773. In addition to the
negro corps already organised, the Com-
pany obtained from Holland eight hun-
dred soldiers — Dutch, Scottish, English,
German, and Swiss, under the command
of a Swiss officer, Colonel Fourgeoud.
This was the expedition accompanied,
as one of its officers, by Captain J. G.
Stcdman, the Englishman who wrote
such a vivid account of Dutch Guiana
on his return to England at the close of
the eighteenth century. Though the
Bonni negroes fought desperately, they
had at last to acknowledge themselves
defeated. Bonni himself took up his
residence with some of his followers in
the French colony of Cayenne ; but the
greater number of the insurgents made
terms with the Dutch and settled down
in the interior regions between the
Maroweyn and Surinam Rivers, Their
descendants either still exist under the
clan name of Bonni (derived from the

now-British settlement of Bonny or married to a nrorsss

Obani, in the Niger delta), or have fused
with another clan known as Musinga,' or Bekau (also called Matrokan).

By 1786 all warfare was over between the Dutch and the Bush negroes, and
by 1792 the Government of the Chartered Company was replaced by the direct
rule of the States-General, a rule which was to last four years before the British
swooped on this country, and during those four years to effect great improve-
ment in the condition of such negroes as remained in slavery. As to the Bush
negroes, they were so completely satisfied with their treatment once peace was
concluded with the Dutch, that they fought bravely and determinedly against
both French and British to save Guiana for the Dutch nation. In 1814 the
Netherlands definitely lost the larger western half of Guiana^ to Great Britain,

' These seem 10 have been Gold Coast n^toes.
' This had always been much less " Dutch" than the Suiina
Man; British and a few French planters were settled at Demeiara,

) IN THE NEW WORLD

it region of this great province at intervals since
'.d Surinam to the Dutch but purchased what is
Britain abolished the slave-trade in all this r^ion
nment did not condemn the slave-trade until 1S14
m and the Dutch West India Islands until 1863.
lis colony when in the adjoining British possession
e freedom to the blacks caused great discontent to
;roes in 1832, and an insurrection of slaves in that

year resulted in the capital,

Paramaribo, being partially de-
stroyed by fire. The reprisals
were savage: negroes identified
as incendiaries being burnt alive
in public.

In 1 845 the colony of Surinam
was separated from that of the
Dutch West Indies, and in the
same year came out a Dutch
Governor of Surinam — Baron
van Raders — who remodelled
the administration of the colony,
improved the treatment of the
slaves, and declared the ports
open to the commerce of the
whole world without discrimina-
tion. After careful preparations
slavery was declared at an end
in 1863, about the time when
in spite of free trade the affairs
of Surinam had reached the
lowest depth of depression. But
instead of growing worse after
abolition they began slowly to
improve.

The political constitution was

changed in 1865 to what it now

is. There isa Houseof Assembly,

of which four members are nomi-

^'ecroes °^ ^"^ nated by the Sovereign, and the

uaico " Duuh Guiani remainder — from five to nine —

are elected by the people on a

to all citizens, without distinction of race or colour.

e are only deliberative. It cannot initiate legisla-

vishes may pass a law over the head of its adverse

urnish the Assembly with his reasons in writing.

appears to give complete satisfaction to the multi-

3utch State.

troduced into Surinam in 1873 and now number

t, as elsewhere in tropical America, has been a

:he European capitalist to carry on his productive

the local negro on his mettle. The Surinam

SLAVERY UNDER THE DUTCH 127

negroes imitate the East Indians in many things, even if there is no inter-
mingling of races.

There are some 400 Chinese ; the whites number about 2500, including the
Dutch soldiers, sailors and officials, and 1050 Jews. The settled negroes and
half-castes amount to about 55,000 and the Bush negroes to nearly 30,000.
The Amerindians have diminished much since the eighteenth century owing to
alcoholism and small-pox. There may be as many as 4000 left in the far interior

of Dutch Guiana. They are being pushed into Brazilian territory by the vigorous
Bush negroes.

These latter are aptly described by W. G. Palgrave' as " ranking among the
best specimens of the Ethiopian type. The men are often six feet and more in
height, with well-developed limbs and pleasing open countenance; and the
women in every physical respect are, to say the least, worthy of their mates.
Ill-modelled limbs are in fact as rare among them as they are common
among some lighter-complexioned races. Their skin colour is in general very
dark, and gives no token of the gradual tendency to assume a fairer tint that
> Dulik Guiana, London, 1S76.

IE NEW WORLD

of negroes residing in more northern
t of any Nyam-nyam or Darfuri chief,

■cation, and govern themselves under
important of whom receive investiture
jargon they talk — which is corrupt
h, and a little Dutch — is gradually
) go to work in or who frequent the
It it is doubtful whether Dutch will
;s whose ancestors came from Equa-

nct vowels and (ordinarily) no faucal
ts.

;re scarcely Christians, for at the time
1 missionaries had not got to work in
3razil, brought distorted fragments of
.dans by tradition ; and an attenuated
ongst them,
trinity of two gods and a goddess,
:y are — or were until the Moravian
e nineteenth century — pagans; and
1 as Gran Gado (the " great God "),
»r Amuku, or Banko — the god of the
of a tall cciba or silk cotton tree
water, and Hiari, a demon, associated

(heir habila, cuitoma, belief, and Uneuige, U
hed X Hermhut. Moi>vi>-such ks DU Buifk-
^93 ; Bij de Indiaatn in Bouh-negtrt van Suri-

SLAVERY UNDER THE DUTCH 129

Dutch Guiana (and for the matter of that, the Dutch West India Islands),
which beg^an in the seventeenth century by being a hell for the negro slave, has
ended in becoming, at the commencement of the twentieth century, a negro
paradise. " The combined discipline of Dutch rule and Moravian teachership
have trained the African native into the Surinam cr6ole, the cannibals of the
Gaboon into the peasants of Munnickendam." ^ The teaching and example of
the missionaries have checked the excessive licentiousness of the once-savage
Bush negroes ; their marital unions are more regular (as are those of the
civilised negroes), and in consequence their families of children are larger and
the infant mortality is less. Nor are the Moravians the only agency for good :
there are the Roman Catholic schools and institutes, and some fifteen thousand
of the negro and negroid population of the Dutch colony belong to that
Church. The Dutch Government has set on foot practical tuition in agriculture
and horticulture ; and in many ways the Surinam negro is rising in the social
scale : and as he rises he finds in the men who come and go from the Nether-
lands none of that morgue^ that quiet (and consequently more unbearable)
insolence of disdain which occasionally checks the loyalty of the negro or the
negroid towards the colonial administration of the Anglo-Saxon.

name^ De Binmnlanden van het district Nicker ie (Suriname), and other works by Dr. H. van Cappelle,
published in the Netherlands between 1903 and 1908. Dr. H. van Cappelle*s writings give valuable
bibliographical references as well as much original information on the Bush negroes and Amerindians
of Dutch Guiana.
* Palgrave.

CHAPTER VII

SLAVERY UNDER THE FRENCH

THE Norman French of Dieppe are said to have been the first European
people to trade with the West African coast. According to the stories
and traditions gathered into a book by Villault de Bellefonds (in 1666),
between the years 1339 and 141 2 French ships from the Norman ports had
visited most parts of the West African littoral from the Senegal River to the
Gold CoasL^ Their inducement was the trade in ivory and gold. Negro slaves
were not thought of in those days.

The French also were the first of the European nations to attack the
Iberian monopoly of commerce with the New World. Their assaults on the
Spanish settlements in Mexico and Cuba, their attempts to colonise Florida
and Brazil in the middle of the sixteenth century, are enumerated on pages
S3 and 78. For the remainder of that century they were too much occupied
with domestic feuds to give much thought to America. But when Henri
Quatre was well seated on his throne, charters were given to explorers and
oflUcials who laid the foundation of Canada and visited the coast of Guiana
(in 1604).

In 161 7 there was formed in France a company of adventurers to explore
the " Isles of America," and its agents prospected the Guiana rivers and visited
the Lesser Antilles, then abandoned by the Spaniards and peopled by fierce
Caribs. Through the patronage of Richelieu, Louis XIII granted a charter to
the Compagnie des lies d'Amerique in 1625, and by 1626 its agent, d'Esnambuc,
had secured, by arrangement with the English, half the island of St. Christopher.
By 1^35 ^he French Company had occupied Guadeloupe, Martinique, and
St. Lucia, after several repulses and much hand-to-hand fighting with the
Caribs, whom in these three islands they exterminated. By the year 1648
they had also acquired the island of Grenada.

In 1626 a small body of Norman traders from Rouen settled at the mouth
of the Sinnamary River in what is now French Guiana ; and in 1634 other
Normans founded the town of Cayenne, on an island at the mouth of a small
river (Cayenne is but the French rendering of the widespread Amerindian
geographical term " Guiana '* or " Guayana ").

Between 1643 ^^^ ^652 three Norman companies were founded to develop
Guiana, which was then called " La France Equinoxiale." They all failed, and
between 1650 and 1664 Cayenne was occupied by the Dutch.

But in 1664 a chartered Compagnie des Indes Occidentales was formed
under the patronage of Colbert, and entrusted with the management of the

' This theory of the early voyages of the Dieppois ships to West Africa is very strongly combated by
C. Raymond Beazley in his Dawn of Modem Geography^ Vol. II. It has been equally strongly upheld
in the recent writings (1905-6) of Mons. L. Binger, the great French explorer and administrator.

130

NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

ble to bring to their West India islands various useful plants
-, they imported roe-deer and peacocks from France and let
:intque and Guadeloupe, from which islands they were trans-
)a, and many other parts of the Antilles. The roe-deer now
a, Haiti, and one or two of the Lesser Antilles are derived
irted from France in the seventeenth century; so are the
Iti and Antigua.

if the adventurer-concessionnaires, the noblemen-pro-
lartered companies when they got hold of the Antilles
or of Guiana was colonisation
by Europeans, and Europeans
who would devote themselves to
agriculture and stock - rearing.
Difference of climatic conditions
had hardly been realised ; and
perhaps to men and women com-
ing from sunny France, agricul-
tural work on a breezy West
India islet seemed not beyond
their strength. But the first
colonists of the French islands
were Normans, Bretons, and
people from the west of France ;
Flemings and Picards, later on
Rhenish Germans and Alsatians :
men and women of the Nordic
race, who were well able to fight
or to sail ships, to carry on shel-
tered industries or trades, but
who could not bend their backs
to tillage without getting sun-
stroke and fever. Some came at
their own expense and received
grants of land ; others were ap-
prentices who for the cost of their
voyage and a very poor annual
salary bound themselves as con-
tracted labourers for a term of
■ijuE three years. During this term

of apprenticeship they were little
f their three years they received small grants

forms of tropical agriculture they were no
' beginning of the sugar and coffee boom,
inique to work on the plantations. By
French West Indies and Guiana was in

la) were cultivated during the seventeenth
negro slaves obtained from the Dutch
nerindians as could be induced by the
agriculture ; and above all by French

SLAVERY UNDER THE FRENCH 133

colonists.^ French Guiana made no great demands on the Slave-trade until
the early nineteenth century.* It was to St. Christopher, Haiti, Martinique,
Guadeloupe, St. Lucia, Grenada, Dominica, and Trinidad^ that the French
despatched the negroes they obtained from Africa : as also to Louisiana,
which colony along the lower course and delta of the Mississippi (and the
adjoining territory of Alabama) was founded by the French in 1700-18.

Though possibly the first of European nations to visit the west coast
of Africa, the French were practically the last to establish slave-trading depots
there. The ships of Dieppe and Havre, of Nantes and Bordeaux began to
trade at and examine the Senegal River early in the seventeenth century — from
1604 to 1637 — but no real settlement of a lasting character was made in this
r^ion till the founding of Fort St. Louis du S^n^gal in 1662. This became the
head-quarters of the French West African slave-trade, and to it were added in
1677-8 the Dutch possessions of Rufisque, Portudal, Joal, and Goree Island (off
the modern Dakar) between Cape Verde and the Gambia; and in 1717-24,
Portendic and Arguin Island off the Sahara coast. During the eighteenth
century the French ships traded for slaves with Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Ivory
Coast, and Dahom^ ;* and the Loango coast immediately north of the Congo
mouth. This last region indeed became so important as a slave-recruiting
ground for Saint Domingue (Haiti) that the Portuguese were sternly warned off
it at a time (1786) when they had thought of bringing it under the Government
of Angola.

Owing to the frequent wars with the British during the close of the seven-
teenth and greater part of the eighteenth centuries, the direct French slave-
trade from Africa — especially Senegal — was much interfered with ; and a good
deal of the slave-supply to the French West Indian Islands, Haiti, and Louisi-
ana was undertaken by the Dutch, Danes, and Portuguese. Nevertheless in
1701 the Spanish Government passed on the Asiento Contract to the French

^ From 1674 to the middle of the eighteenth century was the golden age of French American
colonisation, and of Cayenne in particular. The adjoining Dutch colony of Surinam was several times
overwhelmed, and many of the revolted Dutch negroes joined the French as free lighting men and assisted
to open up the forests of the interior. But ** La France Equinoctiale " was still thought a possible home
for a European population. In 1763, the prime minister, the Due de Choiseul, obtained for himself and
a relation, the Dlic de Praslin, a concession of the country between the rivers Kuru and Maroni
(Maroweyn), in Western Guiana. They then sent out some I2,ccx) colonists from Alsace-Lorraine, who
were landed at the mouth of the Kuru, in a swamp where even fresh water was lacking ! It was the
rainy season of the year, no waterproof dwellings were ready to receive the settlers, and many of the
necessaries of life in the tropics were wanting ; although, mirabile dUtu! a supply oi skates was sent out
amongst the equipment deemed necessary for Guiana colonists. No doubt the ignorant bureaucrats who
organised the expedition confused Guiana with *' les quelques arpents de neige," Canada. By 1765 only
918 of the Alsatian colonists were living. In spite of this disaster other attempts at French colonisation
were made between 17S4 and 1788. In the Revolutionary period and under Napoleon many political
offenders were sent here, in most cases to die. Six hundred Royalists were landed at Sinnamary in 1796
and in a few weeks four hundred of them were dead. Not that the climate of Guiana or any other part
of Equatorial America is so deadly, but that the white man requires to be most carefully screened from
sun, rain, cold sea-breeze, and damp ; and at the same time to obtain good and suitable food.

'^ Lafayette, the hero of French intervention in the North American rebellion, and a great Anti-slavery
champion in France between 1790 and 1793, possessed a large plantation near Cayenne which was worked
by negro slaves. These slaves (according to Bryan Edwards in his History of the West Indies) Lafayette
sold to the number of seventy in 1789 ** without scruple or stipulation," not even giving them a chance to
purchase their own freedom.

* Trinidad was almost a French colony (under a Spanish Governor) from 1783 to 1797. Creole
French is still the most widely spoken language in that island among the negroes of the countryside.

* Dahome through Hwida (Whydah, Ajuda) sent many slaves to the French and British West Indies,
especially from its western frontiers from the ** Popo " (often pronounced and written " Pawpaw ") country.
From this region came the ancestors of Toussaint Louverture and President Barclay of Liberia. In the
eighteenth century Dahom^ was written on the French maps '* Dauma," which no doubt is the right
pronunciation.

134 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

** Royal Senegal Company," in whose slave-trade enterprise Louis XIV (uncon-
sciously copying in this the English queens Elizabeth and Anne) held a large
number of shares.

It was the possession of St. Domingue (Haiti)^ however that involved
France most deeply in the slave-trade and in the condition and history of the
Negro in the New World : to an extent more important in its ultimate effects
than the operations of any other European Power save only Britain and her
daughter, the United States. France was the first nation to ridicule the idea
of an Hispano-Portuguese monopoly of the New World. England was a good
second ; and in these splendid piracies the seamen of Southern and Western
England and of Northern and Western France often acted in union and partner-
ship. Together they had got hold of the island of St. Christopher (St. Kitts) in
1625, at a time when many of the smaller Antillean and Bahaman islands were
to be had for the taking* or at worst a tussle with the Caribs. A Spanish naval
force descended on St. Christopher in 1629 and drove out nearly all the French
and English pirate-settlers. These smoked-out hornets circled round several
likely points of vantage (such as Antigua) and finally established themselves on
the island of Tortuga, off the north-west coast of Haiti.

There were Dutchmen and North Germans at first, as well as English and
French, among these West Indian pirates ; and to this mixture we owe the few-
Dutch words in the vocabulary of negro seamen in the West Indies and in the
Negro patois of Haiti, besides the term "freebooter" applied alternately with
" buccaneer " to the settlers of Tortuga. [" Freebooter " comes from the Dutch
vrijbuiter, **free plunderer," and was corrupted by the Spaniards into filibuster
and the French ix\to flibustier,'\ The Dutch buccaneers of Tortuga chiefly came
from the island of Santa Cruz, whence they had been ejected by the Spaniards.

From Tortuga the pirates were wont to resort to the opposite coast of Haiti
to kill the wild oxen which were the descendants of the cattle introduced into

^ It may be convenient at this stage (at the risk of repetition) to explain the nomenclature of this
French possession. The whole island was called ** Espaflola" or "Little Spain" by Columbus (who
spelt the word in semi-Italian fashion, ** Espagnola "). He had previously applied to it the Amerindian
names oi Bohio (really meaning a village or settlement) or Babeque. He landed first at the north-western
extremity (Mole St. Nicholas), December 6th, 1492. This western part of the island was called by the
natives Haiti ox "the mountainous country," and the whole island seems to have been known by these
Arawaks as Kiskika (Quisquica) or the ** vast country," or, as some wrote it, Quisqueya.

Later on Espafiola was latinised into Hispaniola ; and this word remains to this day the most con-
venient general name for the whole island. In 1494 Columbus's brother, Bartolomeo, founded a new
capital for the Spanish colony, in place of the unhealthy '* Isabella" which Christopher had established in
the previous year on the north coast of the island, at the mouth of the little river Bahabonito. This new
capital was named at first "Nueva Isabella," but after Columbus visited it in 1498 he changed the name
to ** Santo Domingo," to commemorate the patron saint of his father, Dominico Colombo. After
Columbus left the place its site was changed from the east to the west side of the River Ozama. Gradu-
ally Spanish interest in this neglected island centred round its capital city, and the name Hispaniola w^as
forgotten except by pedants, and Santo Domingo adopted instead. From this arose the French render-
ing St, Domingu€y which was applied to what we now call Haiti until 1804. But it is interesting to note
that the Amerindian name Haiti, proper to Western Hispaniola, was preserved by the negro slaves, who
no doubt had picked it up from the last of the Arawatcs, with whom their runaways sought refuge.
Already in the latter part of the eighteenth century Haiti was once more in use for North- Western St.
Domingue, and after 1804 it was adopted as the official name of the Negro republic. Santo Domingo or
La Repitblica Dominicana is the omcial designation of the Spanish part of Hispaniola.

' The explanation of the apparent indifference which Spain at first showed to the doings of British,
French, and Dutch in the Lesser Antilles lay in the fact that finding no minerals of value in these
smaller islands and having almost entirely denuded them of Amerindian inhabitants (to supply the planta-
tions and mines of Cuba, Porto Rico, Hispaniola, and Jamaica with Arawak and Lucayan slaves), she
had completely abandoned them and only awoke to their strategic importance when they became the
homes of pirates.

SLAVERY UNDER THE FRENCH 135

Hispaniola by the Spaniards. Many herds of these had made their way to the
depopulated western portion of the great island. To dry the beef of these slain
cattle they erected wooden frameworks from which the chunks of meat were
suspended over a fire. Such arrangements were called Boucan,^ the users of
them, who made a profitable commerce of this grilled or .smoked beef, were
nicknamed boucaniers, or buccaneers. Gradually the French^ preponderated in
the community of buccaneers which had its head-quarters on Tortuga (in fact,
in 1641 the island was declared to be French territory and the English were
driven out), and by 1663 the French King had definitely extended his protection
to the north coast of Haiti and had placed it under the control of a French
commandant (Deschamps-de-la-place).

By 1680 the Spaniards had commenced to recognise the principle of divid-
ing the island of Hispaniola with France. It was not till 1777, however, that a
definite treaty fixed the limits between the French and the Spanish portions of
Hispaniola (Santo Domingo). The full authority of France over this colony
was thus not completely deter-
mined until less than twenty
years before the loss of it by the
negro insurrection (1804-8),

By 1680, there were quite a
number of negro slaves in the
French West Indies, more es-
pecially in the Lesser Antilles.
And the French were not chary
of mingling with the negresses,
so that the problem of the posi-
tion of the half-caste^was he
slave or free?— had already pre- 1,6. cattlr of northbrn haiti

Sented itself to French legists Defended from ih<t wild s»npo>K>Kdbr the BiKciuen

and ecclesiastics. Louis XIV

and his advisers gave very serious consideration to the whole question of
negro slaves in America, their condition and prospects, their rights and
wrongs; and in 1685 promulgated the famous "Code Noir," as the edict was
commonly called, the most humane legislation in regard to the unhappy negroes
which had been devised until the repeal of slavery ; and far superior to any
laws in force in the British slave-holding territories.

The Edict of 1685 ordained that all slaves should be baptised and instructed
in the Apostolic Roman Catholic religion ; that slaves should never be called
upon to work for twenty-four hours, on Sunday, or on any festival of the
Church ; that free men who had children from their concubinage with women-
slaves, together with the master of such slaves (if he consented to such con-
cubinage) should be punished by a fine of two thousand livres of sugar, but if
the man so erring was himself the master of the slave, then, in addition to the
Cine, the slave-concubine and her children should be taken from him, sold for
the benefit of the hospital and never be allowed to be freed ; excepting, that is,
unless the man was not married to another person at the time of his con-
cubinage, in which case he was to marry the woman slave, who, together with
her children, should thereby become free. Masters were forbidden to constrain

' See note on page 51. Boucan, by George Sylvain,a Hnilian wiLter, is said 10 have been applied more
toireeily 10 an underground oven wheKin the Cariba baked iheir me«t.
' (iearly all Normans or Bretons.

136 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

slaves to marry against their will. Children of a slave father and a free mother
were born free ; of a free father and a slave mother, they were the property of
the owner of the female slave. Christian slaves were to be buried in consecrated
ground. Slaves were forbidden to carry arms (except at the command of their
master), to gather in crowds, to sell sugar-cane (even with their masters' per-
mission) or anything else without their masters' sanction and knowledge. For
contravening the regulation as to assembling in crowds they might, if often re-
peated, be killed.

They were to be well nourished and clothed at the expense of their masters,
and if not so treated might complain to a magistrate and the case would be
inquired into and justice done without expense to the slave. The same course
would be taken if a slave was cruelly injured
or abused by his master. Slaves, however,
were incapable of holding property or of in-
heriting it. Everything they might acquire
was the property of their master. They
could not serve in any public office, act as
agent for any free man, or be valid witnesses
in a court of law, civil or criminal. Their
evidence might be taken down to furnish the
court with information without (illogically
enough) the judges drawing therefrom any
presumption, conjecture, or proof. The
slaves themselves could have no recourse to
the law (except in regard to complaining of
their masters' treatment) or seek for repara-
tion for any outrages or deeds of violence
committed against them ; but on the other
hand they could be pursued in justice and
punished "avec les mfimes formalities que
les personnes libres." ]f a slave struck his
master, mistress or their children in the face,
or elsewhere, his blow drawing blood, 'he
would be punished with death ; and the same
117. FRENCH NBOROKs DANccNG ON scnteucc was to bc inflicted if a slave com-
A FftTE DAY mittcd a violent assault on any free person.

IE leent ceniuiy Thcfis Were to be punished with death, brand-

ing, or whipping; and any loss of property due to a slave's theft was to be
made good by the slave's master; failing which the slave became the property
of the person whose goods had been stolen. Runaway slaves were (after a
month's absence) to be punished for the first offence by having the ears cut off
and the shoulder branded with a fleur-de-iys ; for the second offence they were
branded on the other shoulder and hamstrung (!) ; and the third time they ran
away they were to be killed. Any freed man who sheltered a fugitive slave
was fined three hundred pounds of sugar for every day he retained the slave.
Masters were to be allowed to put a slave in chains and to whip him or her
with rods {verges), but were forbidden to torture, mutilate, and still more to kill,
slaves under pain of judicial proceedings and severe penalties. A slave family
— husband, wife, and children under age — belonging to one master might not be
sold separately.

Finally — and for a century, at least, these last provisions of the French Code

SLAVERY UNDER THE FRENCH 137

were thought to be inconveniently liberal in the British-American colonies —
any slave-owner of twenty years old and upwards might during his life or at his
death give freedom to his slaves without assigning any reason or (if a minor) ask-
ing ike opinion or consent of relations or guardians ; any slave appointed under
his masters will universal legatee, executor, or guardian of the master's children
became ipso i^cto free ; and all slaves once freed — by any process that was lawful
— had precisely the same position, privileges, and civil rights as any French man or
woman bom free.

These last words are important to remember, because in this respect, as in
others protecting the rights of the netjroes or " coloured " people, the " Code
Noir " was never properly applied in Haiti ; and thus in course of time arose
the sense of a bitter injustice among the freed men and slaves — near-whites,
mulattoes, and negroes — of this important
French colony.

The Spanish had firmly opposed by
arms the colonisation of Florida by French
or British, and had equally stoutly defended
Mexico; but their resistance to foreign in-
trusion between Florida and Texas died
away during the seventeenth century, and
the French pioneers coming down from
Canada in the far north by means of the
Mississippi and its great affluents (leaving
ineflaceable evidence of their passage and
their colossal exploits in the geographical
names between Chicago and New Orleans)
took possession of the Mississippi delta in
16S2. In 1700 the colony of Louisiana
vras founded; by 171 1 the French had
occupied the Alabama coast and com-
menced to build the town of Mobile. In
1719 an instalment of five hundred negro
slaves " from Guinea " was landed at the
just -commenced settlement of Nouvelle

Orleans, and in 1721 nearly fourteen hun- ^ French .makin "n" «vH:air<^re» [n Lnuuiuu
dred more. In 1732, when Louisiana re-
verted to the Crown of France (these settlements had hitherto been under
Chartered Companies), there were only two thousand negroes, but thenceforth
a steady importation went on till 1805 when Louisiana became part of the
United States, by whom the slave trade had been forbidden.

France had lost interest in her colonies of New Orleans and Mobile when
obliged to withdraw from Canada in 1760-3, and so, by a secret arrangement
transferred Louisiana to Spain (in 1762), and withdrew from Alabama in
favour of Britain in the following year. Neither the French settlers nor their
negro slaves approved the transfer to Spain, and managed to stand out against
it until 1769, in which year Spain took possession with an overwhelming force;
and punished severely by many executions the first serious attempt in America
to dispute the will and disposal of the mother country in Europe. Between
1770 and 1800, the Spaniards introduced many more negroes (the descendants
of whom speak Spanish to this day) into Louisiana. Some of them escaped to
the marshy forests of the south-west and lead still a quasi-wild existence there.

138 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Although the French flag has not flown over Louisiana or Alabama
(Mobile) since 1769, except for a few months In 1802-3, the vitality of the
French tongue, religion, manners, customs, and cookery among the negroes and

"coloured" people in Louisiana, Southern Mississippi, and the Alabama sea-
board is remarkable and from many points of view is not to be regretted.
Whatever they may have done in Haiti, here the French settlers seem to have
treated their slaves with kindness and to have applied faithfully the Code Noir
of 1685.

SLAVERY UNDER THE FRENCH 139

In Haiti — or Saint Domingue, as the colony was called — French colonisa-
tion, under the stimulating profits of sugar cultivation, flourished exceedingly
after the Peace of Ryswick in 1697 had confirmed Louis XIV in the possession
of Western Hispaniola. But the great "essor" of this remarkable colony dates
from 1722, when the wisely inspired government of the Regency' removed
certain restrictions imposed on the trade of Saint Domingue with France. Since
1 713 there had been peace with Great Britain ; the seas were safe ; the slave-

recniiting-grounds in Senegambia were oi^anised ; large numbers of colonists
came from France to Haiti, and there was no stint of negroes to work under
them.

Perhaps nowhere in America was existence made more delightful for the
White man ; and this small territory of ten or eleven thousand square miles
produced during the eighteenth century more sugar, coffee, chocolate, indigo,

' Wi«ely inspired perhaps only in regard to iu foreign and colonial policy, in laking broader views of
which last 1I owed rauch to the ideas of the lemarkable ScotLish adventurer, John Law, who before his
fall in 1710 had a good deal to do jrith the development of Louisiana.

HO THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

timber, dye-woods, drugs, and spices than all the rest of the West Indies put
together. But the French seem to have treated their slaves at times with a
wanton, almost tigerish cruelty which left a deep impression on the Negro

mind and tradition. Yet
they were less proud racially
than the Spaniards and freely
begat half' breed children
with their negress - concu-
bines, thus bringing into
existence several thousand
notable mulattoes, quad-
roons, octoroons, and near-
whites.' By the provisions
of the Code Noir these half-
breeds were all practically
free persons and many of
them possessed considerable
property. The more intelli-
gent and lightest coloured
were sent to France by their
French fathers to be educated
(this in the first half of the
eighteenth century rather
than later).*

But the intentions of the
Code Noir were not carried
out to their logical conclu-
sion. Though these half-
castes and " near whites "
were in the eyes of the
law free citizens, they were
frustrated in the exercise of
their civic rights.

Before 1744 the position

of the black and the coloured

people in Haiti was not so

bad.' Owing to the pro-

,„ „„ „ „ .. visions of the Code Noir,

III. A WATBBFALL IH THE GROUNnSOF AN OLD FRENCH ... , . ^ , '

PLANTATION IH HAITI, FORMING A NATURAL SHOWER-BATH many Of thC Whlte SettlCrS

had married their negro
mistresses and thereby set them and their half-caste children free, some of
whom had become very wealthy by inheriting the property of their white

' Foily thousand in numbers in 17S9.

- Because of Ihe fermenl arising in Ihe minds of the free persons of colour [who went lo France for
iheir education and then on their return 10 Haiti beean lo agitate for the tecognilion of iheir civic lights]
the while planters through their agency or club at Paris hioughl strong inttuence to bear on Louis XVI
to issue an edict forbidding Ihe free men of colour of St, Domingue to come lo France for education or
for any other purpose. This was done in 1777-

In vain was it pointed out by those who pleaded Ihe cause of Ihe free mulattoes that the Code Noir of
Louis XIV, still unrepealed, distinctly proclaimed the complete liberty and "civisme" of all freed slaves.

^ Nevertheless there were serious slave revolts in 1679, 1691, and 171S. In the middle of lh«
eighteenth century there arose a negio named Macandal, who by his clever poisoning of a few wfalte
planters or oliiGials and numerous n^ro overseers and guards created quite a panic.

SLAVERY UNDER THE FRENCH 141

father. Consequently there were many mulatto heiresses. About 1749 there
was a great increase in the white emigration from France to Haiti, and a
large proportion of the immigrants were needy young French women, des filhs
a marier, and without dot. These — and their mothers — were disgusted to find
they were but little in demand, for the young Frenchmen of St. Domingue
preferred mulatto girls with large dowries. From this arose a bitter jealousy
between the white Frenchwomen and their coloured fellow-citizens. The
prejudice against colour grew in intensity and was rendered more acute when,
after the Peace of 1763, a large number of mulattoes who had been sent to
France for their education returned thence to Saint Domingo and wished to
play a part in the affairs of their own country.

They — the mulattoes and octoroon s^were then forbidden to hold any
public office, trust, or employment however insignificant ; they were not even
allowed to exercise any of those professions to which some sort of liberal
education is supposed to be necessary. All the com-
missioned posts in the naval and military departments,
all degrees in law, physic, and divinity, were appro-
priated exclusively by the whites. A mulatto could
not be a priest, a lawyer, a physician, or a surgeon,
an apothecary, a schoolmaster, or a goldsmith. He
was not permitted to undertake any public charge
or commissioned office either in the judiciary or in
the army ; ^ nor to assume the surname of the white
man to whom he owed his being.* Neither did the
distinction of colour terminate, as in the British West
Indies, with the third generation. The privileges of
a white person were not allowed to any descendant
from an African, however remote the origin. The
taint in the blood was incurable, and spread to the _

latest posterity. ,„ ^ typical halfbrebd

" L'inter^t et la suret^ veulent que nous accablions of distinction

la race des noirs d'un si erand m^pris que quiconque GenH»iAie™ncirep*iion, iheum

, J . .1 1 ■ -1 1 ' ^- ^ -. ^ PMident of H»iii. lEoS-iS

«n descend, jusqua la sixieme generation, soit con-
vert d'unc tache inefFai;able," wrote Hilliard d'Auberteuil in 1775 in a book
in two volumes {Considerations sur la colonie de Saint Domingue) which he
published a year afterwards. In this passage he reflected faithfully contemporary
white opinion.

This book was suppressed in 1777 by order of Louis XVI, not on account

forces, Early in the history of the eighteenth century, two of these North Haitian n^roes — VincenlO llivier
and Etienne Auba, had, aomehow or other, become captains in the black militia of the parishes they
inhabited (the troops called " Les Suisses Noirs"), and consequently had the right to "porter Tepee du
toi." Vincent Ollivier even went to Europe and fought as an officer in the German wars under Mar^chal
Villars, and as he was an exceedingly tall man — almost a giant — w^s presented to Louis XIV. He died
in Haiti at theexlraordinary a^eofa hundred and twenty years. Etienne Auba lived to be ninely-eight.

' Whatever might belheir virtues or their wealth, they were never admitted to the parochial meetings. At
shows, theatres, etc., they were pushed on one side and bad separate and inferior places assigned to Ihem
io the churches. The prohibition, however, to bearing European names was very seldom enforced.
" Sang-mel^," or mulaltoei, were forbidden to eat with white people, or to dance after nine o'clock in the
evening, or to use the same stufTs for their clothing as the whiles. To enforce this last regulation, police'

Eoen were enlrasted with the execution of this de ' ' .•...■. •t.-.-.

Ihem even at (he doors of churches tearing olf the 1
sans autre voile que ta pudeur. "

142 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

of its rigorous views as to the "colour question," but because "il attaqua
radministration des chefs de Saint Domingue." Hilliard d'Auberteuil dared to
point out the intolerable tyranny of the military government ^ under which
Saint Domingue was groaning; he illustrated the chafings of the white
colonists against the insolent and wasteful administration of French generals,
colonels, and captains ; chafings which enlisted the planter element against the
" ancien regime" and in favour of constitutionalism, uniil in 1789-92 the great
men of the Revolution espoused the cause of the man of colour.

Even under Louis XIV the "Code Noir" had been modified by local
ordinances which received Royal Approval ; further modifications were intro-
duced under Louis XV and XVI, sometimes by royal decree, sometimes by
resolutions of the Conseil Superieur of Cap Fran9ais. But Article 59 of the
1685 Edict (that which declared that all freed slaves enjoyed the same
liberties and rights as other free men) was left untouched.

It is noticeable (point out one or two writers of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries) that the infractions of the " Code Noir " and the increased
maltreatment of slaves and free mulattoes did not take place until the Jesuits
had been expelled from Saint Domingue about 1766-7.* Here, as in Brazil and
Paraguay, they had exasperated the white colonists by standing up for the
natives or the negro slaves ; and in Hispaniola they had endeavoured to exact
from the local government a full application of the various slave-protecting
edicts. Whatever faults and mistakes they may have been guilty of in the
nineteenth century the Jesuits played for two hundred years a noble part in
acting as a buffer between the Caucasian on the one hand and the backward
peoples on the other.

In their intense desire to obtain recognition of " white " citizenship some of
the wealthy or influential men of colour of Saint Domingue (quadroons,
octoroons, " near-whites") would declare themselves to be of partly " Indian"
descent, thus accounting for their dark complexions. On this plea they would
ask for " letters patent " from the local government officials establishing their
freedom from ^ny negro intermixture. Down to about 1760 this certificate was
rarely refused, and in this way numbers of "sang-m^les" entered white society
and melted finally into the bosom of the French nation ; they or their descen-
dants often becoming the most "acharnes" enemies of the negroid freed man,
or the most pitiless masters of slaves.^

But after 1770 the White planters of the West Indian colonies and French
society at home became so sensitive to the purity of their Caucasian blood (not
knowing that all France and much else of Western and Southern Europe is
saturated with an ancient negroid element indigenous to Europe many, many
thousand years ago) that their influence reacted on the Court and the Secre-
taries of State. In 177 1 the Minister of Marine and the Colonies thus
expressed the Royal views as to the granting of patents of " white " citizenship
to Domingans of rather dark complexion : —

" Sa Majeste n'a pas jug^ k propos de la leur accorder ; Elle a jug6 qu'une

^ There were not infrequently good-hearted governors-general such as M. de Bellecombe and
M. d'Ennery. But they could not stand up against the soldiery on the one hand and the arrogant
planters on the other.

■^ Les Jesuites . . prechaient, attroupaient les negres, for9aient les maftresa retarder leurs travaux ;
faisaient des catechismes, des cantiques, et appelaient tous les esclaves au tribunal de la penitence :
depuis leur expulsion les mariages sont rares. . . ." — Hilliard ct Auberteuil.

' Just as the bitterest enemies and cruellest detractors of the Jews in France, Belgium, Germany^
Austria and Russia have often been Jews that have changed their name and their religion.

SLAVERY UNDER THE FRENCH 143

pareille gr&ce tendrait a ddtruire la difference que la nature a mise entre les
blancs et les noirs, et que le prejuge politique a eu soin d'entretenir comme une
distance a laquelle les gens de couleur et leurs descendans ne devaient jamais
atteindre : enfin, qu'il importait au bon ordre de ne pas affaiblir I'dtat
d'humiliation attache a I'espece dans quelque d6gr6 qu'elle se trouve ; prejuge
d'autant plus utile qu'il est dans le coeur m^me des esclaves, et qu'il contribue
principalement au r^pos des colonies. S.M. approuve en consequence que vous

ayez refuse de solliciter pour les Sieurs la faveur d'etre d^clar^s issus de race

indienne ; et Elle vous recommande de ne favoriser sous aucun pretexte les
alliances des blancs avec les filles de sang-m^l6s.

" Ce que j'ai marque a M. le comte de Nolivos, le 14 de ce mois, au sujet de

M. le Marquis de 7-1 capitaine d*une compagnie de dragons, qui a ^pous6

en France une fille de sang-m^l6, et qui par cette raison ne peut plus servir k
Saint- Domingue, vous prouve combien S.M. est d^terminde a maintenir le
principe qui doit ^carter a jamais les gens de couleur et leur posterity de tous
les avantages attaches aux blancs."

The northern part of Haiti having been earliest and most completely
colonised by the French, and being far ahead of the south in commerce, there
was greater luxury and refinement of manners amongst the French colonists,
and these traits were also characteristic of the 9000 free mulattoes and even of
the 170,000 slaves which the northern province possessed at the time of the
insurrection (1791).^ There were even a number of pure-blooded negroes
amongst the "Affranchis" of the northern province, who were "Chefs de
families respectables presque tous li^s en legitime mariage." Many of these
free negroes were educated, enlightened, quiet and dignified in their manners,
and even ** ayant des inclinations aristocratiques."

But in the western and southern provinces, it was amongst the mulattoes
(who were very numerous) that the most enlightened men and respectable
families were to be found. These mulatto families sent many of their children
to France to receive a liberal education. But in consequence of the injustice
with which these mulattoes or educated negroes were treated by the white
colonists, so far from their ideas being aristocratic, they were democratic, even
revolutionary, especially among those who had obtained their education in
Europe and who returned to Haiti to find a grinding tyranny afflicting their
brothers.

The influence of the modern spirit which arose in France under the teaching

^ According to Hilliard d'Anberteuil, between 1680 and 1776 there were introduced into Saint
Domingue more than 800,000 negro slaves, of which only 290,000 remained in 1776. Their constant
decrease was not due to disease nor to unwillingness to marry and beget children. But many of them
were literally worked to death by unremitting labour, while the masters discouraged the women from
child-bearing because they could not spare them from field-labour during the last month or two of their
pregnancy, or while they were suckling the child. So they frequently forced women who were with child
to abort, and then even grudged the day or two's absence from work while they recovered from such an
operation.

Yet if well treated by kind masters of humane instincts (and of course there were such in
St. Domingue) the negroes would be most prolific. Hilliard saw an old Senegalese negro who had been
eighty-seven years in slavery and had married three wives. These had given him twenty-two children,
who in turn had bred ; and the ultimate result was that this patriarch of over a hundred years old was
surrounded by fifty-three of his descendants to the fourth generation.

In 1789, according to Moreau de Saint Mery, besides the 170,000 slaves in the north province, there
were 168,000 in the west, and 1 14,000 in the south, making 452,000 in all. Then there existed at the
same time several thousand *' maroon " negroes — ancient and modern runaways — who were mostly living
on the Bahoruco mountain in the north-eastern part of Haiti. These, after eighty years of guerilla
warfare with the French and Spaniards, had won respect from both and had concluded peace with the
French in 1780.

•4 THE NEW WORLD

ind Mirabeau led, about 1776. to the discus-
d to the rights of free men of colour. The
lansfield in England (1772) and the first
rade in the House of Commons (1776) were
porary French opinion, and from that time
of St Domingue (forbidden after 1777 to
jympathetic friends and advocates in Paris
o the"Soci^t^ des Amis des Noirs." This
Anti-slavery and Anti-slave-trade organisa-

tion ; its president was Con-

dorcet ; Mirabeau, Lafayette,
Potion, the Duke de la Roche-
foucauld, Robespierre, and
Brissot were among the
members ; but the most eager
advocate among them all of
the rights of the free mulatto
and the negro slave was the
Abb^ Henri Gr^goire, Cure
of Embermenil, afterwards
Bishop of Blois.

He, indeed, in 1789 pre-
sented to the National
Assembly a petition in favour
of the free mulattoes of Saint
Domingue, setting forth all
their disabilities and depriva-
tions. Soon afterwards the
Declaration of the Rights
of Man (in August, 1789)
seemed, if it were logically
applied to the French over-
sea possessions, to accord full
civic rights to the already
free "sang-m^Ms" of St.
Domingue, and also inferen-
tially to discountenance
slavery.

These steps in advance
"" ™'"''''"^ infuriated the strong White
Planter party, the thirty
or less pure blood, whose representatives
ence had their rendezvous in Paris at the
:ituted themselves into a "Club Massiac"
ers in St Domingue. Out in the colony
pts on the part of coloured people to
em under the Decree of 1685 or even
repressed by the white planters with
f life, even white Frenchmen being killed
the mulatto. Children and women were
en accidentally, connected with the freed

SLAVERY UNDER THE FRENCH 145

man who had expressed a desire to possess full civic rights without distinction
of colour,'

In Paris the Club Massiac devoted itself to influencing the members of the
National Assembly against any interference with slavery or explicit recognition
of the rights of the "sang-mfel^s." Too much philanthropy in this direction,
they hinted, might lead to the declaratiom of the local independence of Saint
Domingo, the white residents of that colony having already displayed " des
velleit^s d'independance " in 1788. In that year in fact an irresistible movement
had taken place among the white planters towards the establishment of local
constitutional government, and commissioners had been elected and despatched
to Paris in 1789 to place the views of the White colony before the French
Government.

But the free mulattoes simultaneously desired a consideration of their claims
and grievances, and somehow, notwithstand-
ing the futile law of 1777, they managed to
be represented in Paris by two delegates —
Julien Raymond* and Vincent Og^ envoys
who at once enlisted the sympathies and
help of Gregoire and Brissot.

But virtually the text of the new Consti-
tution of Saint Domingue was drawn up at
the Club Massiac. This Constitution pro-
vided for absolute self-government on the
part of the colony, but resembled the Act
of Union of to-day in South Africa in
ignoring the right of freed coloured citizens
to have any voice in the government of their
own country. It also inferentially main-
tained slavery as an institution. But Gregoire
and Brissot were reconciled to the enacting
of this Domingan constitution by the text
of the " covering despatch " which would
go out with it to the Governor-General
of Saint Domingue. In this there would ,,, .,„, „,„„.p ^.b„,„ „ ,„ „,,^

, i.'A^.i \ f i-i '•4» THE 'jUJ£r (jAKDEN of An OLD

be a paragraph (Article 2) from which frbnch town house, hacti

might be deduced the non-existence of

any colour bar In the formation of the Colonial Assembly.

Vincent Oge, disgusted at the surrender of the National Assembly to the
planter interest, returned quicidy to his native land to plead the cause of the
free mulattoes there and to see that the Governor (Count Peinier) carried out
his instructions as regards non-recognition of the colour bar in the elections
which took place in 1790-1. He conferred first with a friend, a mulatto named
Jean Baptiste Chavannes, who advised him to incite the negro slaves of the
northern province to revolt, and then at their head to demand from the local
government justice for the coloured people, but Og^ shrank from this step,

■ For a detailed account of the iitroci
freedmen, inquiring only as to theii politi
ffaiti.

• Raymond had reached Paris in ijHi, enabled to do so by the backing and sympathy of a noble
minded Governor-General of St. I>>mingue — M. de Bellecombe — who thoroughly sympathised with
the " affianchii. " Raymond, like Oge, was a mulatto ot wealth and of high educaiiun.

146

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

He confined himself to writing rather bombastic letters to the Governor-
General (Count Peinier).

The Governor replied evasively and later attempted to arrest Og6 and
Chavannes, who now raised a force of nearly three hundred armed mulattoes
and with this band disarmed some of the planters in their vicinity. This
action they carried out with very little bloodshed : only one white man was
killed. ' Doubtless Oge thought the negro slaves would rally to his support, but
these latter were given no time for deliberation. The rising was nipped in the
bud by energetic military measures, and Oge and his officers were obliged to
fly across the Spanish frontier and give themselves up to the Spanish authorities.

Og6*s enterprise at the moment met with but little sympathy from the mass
of the negoes and even of the coloured people. So far, he and the rest of the
forty thousand "sang-m^l^s" had not concerned themselves much with the
four hundred thousand negro slaves. They had seldom attempted to plead
much for the condition of the slave or to advocate the abolition of slaver>'.

In January, 1791, the Spanish Governor of Santo Domingo very meanly
surrendered Og6 and his companions to the French,^ and they were all killed
under circumstances of shocking brutality.^

** The blood of martyrs, etc. ! " The news of these fiendish excesses of the
planter government aroused horror and shame in Paris — so soon to be plunged
into far worse horrors — and the Abb^ Gr^goire succeeded on May isth, 1 791, in
carrying a motion to the effect that " the people of colour resident in the French
colonies, born of free parents, were entitled to, as of right, and should be
allowed the enjoyment of all privileges of French citizens and among others
those of being eligible to seats both in the parochial and colonial assemblies."

The enforcement of this precept in 1791 in any case was likely to precipitate
Saint Domingue into civil war, because the planter element was determined
never to admit equality of political rights with forty thousand men of colour.
But apart from this, when the resolution of the National Assembly became
known in the island some of the mulattoes of the north rose in arms to avenge
Oge, and their deeds were soon after thrown in the shade by a black rebellion
which was to prove more awful in its results than any movement of the Negro in
America before or since. The insurrection broke out on August 22nd, 1791, and
was confined to the long northern province of Haiti. Its first leader was a negro
called Bouckman, but its guiding spirit was Toussaint Louverture, though for
several years he kept in the background as a secretary of one of the negro

^ Asking in return that he might be given the decoration of the Cross of St. Louis.

^ The trial of Vincent Og6, Chavannes, and their companions before the Conseil Sup^rieur of Cap
Fran^ais lasted two months. The accused were not allowed any counsel for defence. They were
sentenced to death. Oge and Chavannes were executed (February 25th, 1791) in the following manner,
as were most of the '* officers'' of Og^'s troop): Their arms, legs, thighs and backbones were broken
(with clubs) on a scaffold. They were then fastened round a wheel in such a manner that the face was
turned upwards to receive the full glare of the sun. ** Here," ran the sentence, *' they are to remain for as
long as it shall please God to preserve them alive" : after which their heads were to be cut off and exposed
on tall posts.

There are a good many references to God during the trial. Needless to say He was assumed to be
entirely on the side of the planters and as anxious as they that the coloured man should not get the vote,
and equally horrified at Oge's mad appeal to force. What sickens the decent reader of the record of the
White man's dealings with the Black — and if he were not a philosopher, would turn him into an atheist —
is the hypocrisy of the White man, who is constantly cloaking greed, injustice, chicanery, bloodshed and
fiendish cruelty towards some coloured race by invoking the Deity as his partner, Managing-Director,
aider and abettor. The N^ro has been to the full as cruel as the White man ; he can cheat and rob quite
as well. But he is not an c^ious hypocrite ; he is often a criminal for the sheer pleasure of being cruel or
of taking somebody else's property, but never '*ad majorem gloriam Dei."

SLAVERY UNDER THE FRENCH 147

generals. The revolted blacks and mulattoes killed without pity even masters
and mistresses who had treated them well ; not, in some cases, sparing their
own white fathers. They outraged a few white women, ripped up others who
were pregnant, impaled infants on pikes, and even used an impaled white child
as a banner of defiance. One of their leaders — a hideous creature called
Jeannot — drank the blood of the whites whom he massacred, and several other
negroes relapsed into actual cannibalism.

It is only fair, however, to state that Jeannot was shot for his atrocities by
Jean-Fran5ois, one of the first great leaders of the revolt, that Toussaint Lou-
verture nearly always interposed when he could to save lives and to treat
prisoners with clemency — so much so that he was often accused by other
negroes of undue partiality for the whites. Also it must be remembered that
nearly all these horrors, with the doubtful exception of the blood-drinking and
eating of human flesh, could be paralleled among the contemporaneous wicked-
ness of the French planters and soldiers, who, moreover, had taken the lead in
the perpetration of atrocities on defenceless negroes and half-castes for over a
hundred years.^ No impartial reader of the records dealing with the period
1 680- 1 79 1 can feel over-much pity for the one to two thousand whites who
lost their lives in the first outbreak of the Haitian rising. Simultaneously — or
soon afterwards — the whites, whenever they got any temporary advantage over
the negroes, beheaded, hanged, burnt alive, broke on the wheel, ripped open,
and impaled men, women, and children with a gusto fully equal to that shown
by the most brutal African. It was a shocking time and a shocking system, if
there be any validity in our present ideas of right and wrong.

The French settlements of the west and south were menaced by a small
army of mulattoes (about 4000) under Beauvais, the brothers Rigaud, Marc
Bomo. Petion, and Boyer (to mention a few who subsequently became famous
in Haitian history). They had collected on the Artibonite River near Mire-
balais, and had summoned the Governor-General of St. Domingue in a respect-
fully worded letter to give effect to the pronouncement of the French National
Assembly of May 15th. The Governor (Blanchelande) replied evasively;
there was further correspondence (the mulattoes received a certain support
from the French planters who held republican ideas) ; and at length war broke
out between the bulk of the French planters (with the civil and military
authorities on their side) and the mulattoes. In the skirmish or battle of
Pernier, however, the mulattoes were victorious; and by October, 1791, an
understanding had been reached between the belligerent, **ancien regime"

^ Bryan Edwards, in his historical survey of Saint Domingo, gives the following description of the
manner in which captured negro insurgents were executed : ** Two of these unhappy men suffered in
this manner under the window of the author's lodgings, and in his presence, at Cape r'ran9ois, on Thurs-
day, the 28th of September, 1791. They were broken on two pieces of timber placed crosswise. One
of them expired on receiving the third stroke on his stomach, each of his arms having been first broken
in two places ; the first three blows he bore without a groan. The other had a harder fate. When the
executioner, after breaking his legs and arms, lifted up the instrument to give the finishing stroke on the
breast, and which (by putting the criminal out of his pain) is called le coup de grdce, the mob, with
the ferociousness of cannibals, called out * Arretez ! * (stop) and compelled him to leave his work un-
finished. In that condition the miserable wretch, with his broken limbs doubled up, was put on a cart-
wheel, which was placed horizontally, one end of the axle-tree being driven into the earth. He seemed
perfectly sensible, but uttered not a groan. At the end of forty minutes some English seamen, who
were spectators of the tragedy, strangled him in mercy."

At a later date, when a French army under General Leclerc was endeavouring to reconquer Haiti, an
occasional amusement with the officers at Cap Fran9ais was to make a small arena, fasten in the middle
of it a negro prisoner, and then let in several famished mastiffs, which proceeded to devour piecemeal the
living, shriekmg man.

148 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

whites of Western and Southern Haiti and the mulatto forces, which now
reached a total of four or five thousand men, and in addition were to some
extent allied with the negro insurgents of the north.

At this juncture arrived the text of the decree of the Constituant Assembly
of Paris of September 24th, 1791 (inspired by the Club Massiac and the panic
caused in France by the rising of the negroes). Article 3 of this new colonial
law placed the political status of free coloured people and negroes (as also of
slaves) completely at the mercy of existing colonial assemblies, subject only to
the eventual sanction by the King of laws which might be passed and made
operative by the colonial assemblies (then entirely composed of white men).
Already — besides the vacillating treachery of the French Parliament — another
betrayal of the negro cause was in contemplation amongst the planters of the
" ancien regime " school of thought in St Domingue, and that was to hand over
the colony to the English on the understanding that the " ancien regime " was to
be restored and all the slaves brought back under the yoke. In August, 1791,
the Government of Jamaica had been actually asked by some of the Domingan
officials if it could arrange to send over the Jamaica maroons (wild negroes) to
help subdue the revolted slaves in Northern Haiti.

To restore order and proclaim a general amnesty in Haiti three com-
missioners (one of whom was M. Roume) were sent by the French Government
in the autumn of 1791, bearing with them the decree of September 24th, which
once more annulled the liberties of the coloured people. But they were im-
potent to effect any improvement. On account of this decree the " contre-
revolutionnaires,'* the aristocratic planter party of Port au Prince and Cap
Fran9ais, had once more refused to carry out the promises of equal civic
rights to the coloured men, and the war between the two parties broke out
afresh, mainly in the south of Haiti. Frightful atrocities were committed
on both sides, the whites being fully as bad as the mulattoes, and generally
initiating the horrors.

In the spring of 1792, the new Legislative Assembly at Paris, again anxiously
considering the "colour question'* (the arguments and counter-argumentsdelivered
before it read" so very modern), came round once more to the sentiment that
there should be no colour-bar to civic rights on French territory, so it rendered
the famous decree of April 4th, 1792, subscribed by a constitutional monarch
before whom was already yawning the abyss, and drawn up by a minister —
Roland — who lived and died a hundred years before his appropriate time.

Three new commissioners — Polverel, Sonthonax, and Ailhaud (together
with a new Governor-General, d'Esparbes)— were appointed to proceed to
St. Domingue to put this decree in force and to reorganise the colony
on a new base if necessary. With them went a force of six thousand
troops of a kind more penetrated by the new spirit of liberty than the older
garrisons.

Before their arrival, the Colonial Assembly had passed a decree affirming the
absolute necessity of maintaining slavery as an integral article of the colony's
constitution, and when the commissioners arrived, this was quoted to them.
Both Polverel and Sonthonax (Ailhaud never counted in these conferences, and
soon went home) solemnly assured the members of Assembly that the French
Government had not the slightest intention of abolishing slavery. This declara-
tion they made repeatedly with almost humiliating asseverations, but did not
succeed any the more in securing the adhesion of the *' contre-r^volutionnaires "
— the extreme planter majority in the Colonial Assembly. The rock on which

SLAVERY UNDER THE FRENCH 149

they split was the determination of the new Commissioners to enforce the
decree of April 4th, and oblige the Colonial Assembly to grant the fullest possible
suffrage held bj white men to the free mulattoes and negroes.

Though at one with the armed mulattoes, the three commissioners were
not successful n securing altogether the allegiance of the black army camped
in the north-east of Haiti under the orders of Jean-Francois, Biassou, and the

ever more important Toussaint Louverture. This was partly due to the sus-
picion with which Toussaint and his associates regarded both the whites of any
party and the mulattoes. Yet Toussaint Louverture had not at this juncture
demanded the unconditional emancipation of the slaves ; merely of a few
hundreds among them. His brother generals (if not he himself) frequently
offered slaves for sale to the Spaniards as a means of raising revenue. The
mulattoes were many of them slave-owners. The utmost demands down to the
spring of 1793 was the recognition of full political rights on the part of all
mulattoes and negroes already free.

I50 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WOIRLD

If the situation was already complicated by the intrigilies between the
" contre-revolutionnaires " and the British in Jamaica and in lEngland, it was
rendered increasingly difficult for Sonthonax and Polvirel by Ithe intervention
of Spain (through the Spanish Government of Santo Domingo)! and the execu-
tion of Louis XVI. This last event is supposed to have shoi:ked Toussaint
and the rebellious negroes profoundly. A hundred and md^re years ago,
negroes in Africa and America were entirely monarchical in thtnr ideas. All
their conceptions of government centred in a chief — elected, or more often
hereditary. From their own chiefs they would endure much cruelty and
oppression before they deposed or assassinated. On several occasions be-
tween 1788 and 1792 the negroes in insurrection in this French colony had
wished to lay their grievances before the French monarch directly, thinking he
might prove to be a real father of his people without distinction of colour.
And now to learn that he had been beheaded by his own subjects increased
their utter distrust of the French.

So Toussaint, Jean-Francois, Biassou, and others enlisted under the banner
of Spain, accepted military grades in the Spanish army and jttecorations of
Spanish orders:, all these compliments offered them by the Spanish Governor
of Santo Domingo being in pursuance of the dynastic war declared against
France on the morrow of Louis XVI's execution. They svfrore "to die in
defence of the Bourbons." /'

Events were precipitated by the attack on the two Commissioners at Cap
Francais (Northern Haiti) and on Kigaud and other mulatto leaders in the
southern province. This revolt against their authority was headed by the
French Governor-General (Gal baud) and most of the military and naval forces
of the *' ancien regime," and of course enlisted the sympathies and support of
the planters.

To save the colony for republican France, Sonthonax and Polverel released
the negro gaol-prisoners at Cap Fran^ais, drafted many negro slaves into their
armed forces, and made full use of the mulattoes (in addition to such French
troops as remained faithful to the Republic). Cap Frangais was burnt down
and about three hundred whites — many of them women and children — were
killed by the negro allies of the two Commissioners, who were commanded by
a ferocious Congo negro named Makaya.

On September 20th, 1793, British forces, at the invitation of the French
planter party, were landed at Jer^mie in Southern Haiti, and by May, 1794, the
Mole St. Nicholas, Tiburon, and Port-au-Prince were in British occupation.

But republican France was victorious in Europe, and at the Peace of B41e in
1795 compelled Spain to cede to her the whole of Hispaniola, so that in 1796
the Spanish forces and officials had withdrawn from all the eastern part of the
island except the town of Santo Domingo.

The desperate Commissioners, Sonthonax and Polverel, when the descent
of the British from Jamaica seemed imminent, had by a series of proclamations
and solemn functions between June and September, 1793, proclaimed the final
and universal emancipation of all slaves in Hispaniola.^

Toussaint Louverture was won over to the French cause by the emancipa-

^ Their action was confirmed by a decree of the National Convention at Paris dated February ^k^
jyg4* This confirmation had, however, been opposed by Robespierre, but supported by Danton. It is
said that Danton*s advocacy of the emancipation of the slaves greatly angered Robespierre and was one
of the causes that led to his sending his great rival to the guillotine. Napoleon when First Consul revoked
this decree in 1802 and reinstituted slavery in Hispaniola, the French Antilles, and other possessions.

SLAVERY UNDER THE FRENCH

tion of the slaves. He had begun to doubt the sincerity of the Spj
Governor of Santo Domingo in espousing the cause of the black man.
therefore somewhat abruptly threw off his allegiance to Spain and transfc
it to republican France. No doubt, if he could have been called upon to ju
his action he would have said that he was only loyal to one cause, ih.
the negro, and that he was ready to serve under the banners of the governi
which gave his fellow-negroes the full rights of man. Jean-Francois
Biassou did not agree with him, and eventually passed over to the Spani
altogether. Still, Toussaint Louverture and the other negro leaders who r

terms with the Commissioners confined their military action principally tc
northern parts of Haiti.

In the south the cause of the French Republic (and nf the coloured i
was defended by the mulatto forces under Andr^ Rigaud and other mu
generals. But although the mulattoes fought very bravely (they displayer
traordinary ferocity towards such whites as fell into their power) they couk
succeed at first in dislodging the British, and after the fall of Port-au-Prin
May, 1794, Sonthonax and Polverel made their way across the moun
to Jacmel and left that port in June, 1794, to return to France and to pn
themselves under a Decree of Accusation before the bar of the Nati
Convention, They would certainly have been beheaded by the order of R<
pierre but that fortunately they reached France after the Revolution of The
dor had put an end to the bloodthirsty tyranny of that perverted creature.

General Laveaux, an officer inducted into the principal military and

152 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

commands as Governor, by the two Commissioners, kept on friendly terms with
Toussaint ; and when a mulatto rising at Cap Francjais made Laveaux tempo-
rarily a prisoner, Toussaint Louverture entered Cap Frangais, suppressed the
revolt, and as a reward was promoted by Laveaux to be Lieutenant-General of
the Government of Saint Domingue on the ist April, 1796. Thenceforth the
negroes were supreme in all the northern part of Haiti, while Andre Rigaud
was at the head of the mulatto forces and dominated all parts of the south and
west not in British possession.

At this time Sonthonax returned from France as Commissioner and
promoted Toussaint to be General of Division in the armies of France and
later Commander-in-Chief in Saint Domingue. All this time Toussaint was
steadily drilling his troops, and a deep-seated jealousy was growing up between
him and Rigaud, the Commander of the mulattoes in the south. A new Com-
missioner came out from France to replace Sonthonax, who had been practically
expelled by Toussaint in 1797. This Commissioner — General Hedouville —
called a conference between Rigaud and Toussaint at Cap Fran^ais, affecting to
desire to bring about an agreement between them. But Toussaint, having good
reason to fear, treachery and arrest, made his escape from Cap Fran^ais and
returned to the head-quarters of his army.

By 1798 the British were sick of their futile attempt to conquer Haiti. They
had lost the greater part of their white soldiers and sailors from yellow fever,^
and they found over and over again that their mulatto or negro allies were
faithless. It only remained for them to secure reasonable terms for the French
planters, who had invited the coming of the British and who had often fought
gallantly under the British flag. Brigadier-General Maitland, who conducted
the negotiations for evacuation, tried at first to treat with General Hedouville,
but the latter was a stupid fanatic and attached more importance to the death
or the expulsion of the French planters who sympathised with the "ancien
regime" than to anything else. Consequently, Brigadier-General Maitland
negotiated with Toussaint alone and made over to him the last British strong-
hold in the island — the Mole St. Nicholas.* Toussaint Louverture treated the
French colonists with kindness and honour and enabled many of them to return
to their homes and plantations. Hedouville actually instigated Toussaint's own
nephew, General Moi'se, to murder some of these white colonists who had
settled again near Cap Fran^ais, then took fright at his own action and
embarked for France, meantime authorising Rigaud to consider himself the
Governor of the Southern Department and not to obey Toussaint Yet Rigaud,
whenever he had the power, murdered the whites in the south of Haiti without
pity or hesitation, though at least half-white in his own extraction, and employ-
ing many '* poor " whites in his army of 1 2,000 men.

Meantime, one of the first Commissioners sent out by France in 1789 —
Roume — was residing at the town of Santo Domingo to represent French
authority in the eastern part of the distracted island. Toussaint, who seemed
to be loyal to France, invited Roume to take up his abode with him as
Commissioner. Roume did so, and then tried to effect a reconciliation between
Rigaud and Beauvais (on behalf of the mulattoes) and Toussaint Louverture.

^ Out of over 15,000 troops landed between 1795 ^^^ '79^ ^^^y 3^^^^ survived to leave Hispaniola.
At least 11,000 died of tropical diseases. The total cost of British intervention in Haitian affairs was
;f5,ooo,ooo.

^ Toussaint had at this time a well-drilled army of 18,000 infantry and 1000 cavalry, almost
exclusively negro.

SLAVERY UNDER THE FRENCH

the great negro Commander-in-Chief, but with no ultimate effect. Later o
1/99, Toussaint sent a large force of negroes under Dessalines and Christi
to conquer the south of Haiti. The French Government intervened when
conquest was almost complete by sendinganother Commissioner, who confii
Toussaint in his position and persuaded Rigaud to leave for France.

Finding that Commissioner Roume had been organising without his knowl
a negro revolt in Jamaica, Toussaint ultimately compelled that French r<
sentative to leave Hispaniola, after giving him permission to occupy the ea;
part of the island. Consequently, by the close of 1800 Toussaint Louvci
was the undisputed master of the whole of Hispaniola. He now promulg
a Constitution which for some time past he had been elaborating. ±

154 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Domingue was to be a self-governing colony of France under a Governor to
hold power for five years. Negroes, white men, and mulattoes were to be
absolutely equal before the law, and to hold posts under the new government
without distinction of colour. Trade was to be practically free, with a slight
preference in favour of France. General Toussaint Louverture was, however,
to be President for life, with power to name his immediate successor. This
Constitution was sent to France in 1801 to be submitted to the approval of the
First Consul. Meantime, Toussaint established a civil administration of some
effectiveness. The island was divided into districts, and in each district there
was to be an inspector to see that all the ex-slaves returned to their work at the
plantations and factories on the understanding that they were to be paid for
their services. A fifth part of the produce of each estate was to be divided
amongst the labourers. Friendly arrangements as regards commerce were
concluded with the United States and even with England ; both the finances
of the island and agriculture made distinct progress towards recovery during
1 801.

But his dream — which in its fulfilment might have had such a great effect
on the future of the black man in America — was not to be realised. Napoleon
Bonaparte determined to reduce Haiti once more to the position of a white
man's colony, and at the close of 1801 despatched to the island a force of
twenty-five thousand French soldiers under the command of his brother-in-law
General Leclerc. With Leclerc returned Rigaud, Petion, and Villatte, three
leading mulatto generals eager to serve with the French against their black
fellow-countrymen. Once more the unfortunate town of Cap Fran^ais^ was
set on fire and again destroyed, by Toussaint's general, Christophe, who was
commanding there and was unable to resist so huge an armament as that
brought out by General Leclerc.

The negro troops under Toussaint, Christophe, and Dessalines retreated from
the coast to the mountains after some very stiff fighting in which they proved
their quality. Thousands of the French soldiers died of yellow fever, among
them their commander, Leclerc ; but the war and the sufferings entailed wore
out the patience of Toussaint's generals, notably Christophe, who began to
make terms with the French. Toussaint, wishing to save his country from
further disasters, wrote to Leclerc and tendered his submission. An interview
followed in which he was treated purposely with great distinction, and he then
issued orders to all his officers to acknowledge the authority of France and dis-
arm their soldiers. Having done this, Toussaint retired to his own estate at
Enn^ry. One day he received a letter from a French officer asking for an in-
terview at a place near the plantation. Toussaint kept the appointment, but
was immediately arrested and bound with ropes. His family (wife, children,
and brother) were then collected and all of them despatched to the coast,
whence they were sent on a French ship to France. Toussaint, on his arrival
in that country, addressed a dignified appeal to Napoleon, just about to be made
Emperor, but received no answer. He was separated from his family, who
were left at Rochefort, while he himself was interned at the Chateau de Joux in
the French Alps near Besan^on. Here he died soon afterwards from privations

^ Since the declaration of Haitian independence, the name of this place, which for a hundred years
was practically the French capital, has been changed to Cap Haitien. It was rebuilt once more under
the rule of Christophe, but was again destroyed by a terrible earthquake in 1842. Its present condition
bears but few traces of its magnificence during the eighteenth century, though in its surroundings and
port it has the making of one of the great sea cities of the world.

SLAVERY UNDER THE FRENCH 157

and the effects of the extreme cold, and under such suspicious circumstances
that it was alleged poison had hastened his end — an allegation, however,
that was probably untrue. His body was thrown into the common grave of
prisoners of no distinction. Altogether, the treatment of this man by the
French is a lasting blot on French honour. He was undoubtedly a very fine
creature.

Toussaint Louverture was born in 1746 at the plantation of the Comte de
Br^da, on the mountains just behind Cap Fran^ais, the son of a negro slave
named Gao-Ginu. In the faint traditions preserved about his father's descent,
the father was said to have been a native of the Zaire country, to have come
from a district between the main Zaire (Zaire = Congo) and the "Posambo"
River, from a tribe known as the " Arada." Gao-Ginu was believed (as is said
in all such occurrences) to have been the son of a king. The River Posambo is
not identifiable in the modern maps of Africa, but the " Arada " tribe or country
is obviously "Alada," in Southern Dahom6. There is practically nothing to
confirm the story that Toussaint Louverture was of Congolese origin, i.e. from
the vicinity of the Zaire; whereas the name of his father and other fragmentary
indications make it very probable that he came from Southern Dahome. If so
his father and the grandfather of President Barclay of Liberia were practically
fellow-countrymen. The portraits of Toussaint Louverture show a decidedly
Negro face, but one of a not uncommon type, such as might come from Dahome
or the Gold Coast.

The baptismal names of this Negro hero were Pierre Dominique Toussaint,
to which as he grew up he added the name of Br6da, from the plantation on
which he was born. Soon after the Negro insurrection of 1791 he acquired
and adopted the nickname of Louverture [which he always spelt Louverture,
and not L'Ouverture]. Various explanations are given of this nickname : the
favourite being that it was applied to him because he always made " an open-
ing" in the ranks of the enemy wherever he charged ; but the more probable
derivation is that of the marked gap in his mouth when he spoke. Toussaint
had lost most of his front teeth early in life, and when he spoke it was with a
whistling, lisping sound. As he grew up from being a mere herd-boy to
becoming his owner's coachman, he managed to learn to read and write, and
was always noteworthy for his admirable conduct and honesty. Unlike most
of his fellow-slaves, he would not live in concubinage, but insisted on marrying
his wife in church. She had had a son by a former husband, whom he adopted.
She gave him two sons of his own, but they died before or just after their
father. He had at least one brother — Paul, and there are collateral descendants
of Toussaint at the present day in the north of Haiti, one of whom is Dr. Enoch
Desert, an LL.D. of the Faculty of Paris.

Toussaint all through his life seems to have been sincerely religious, and as
a zealous Catholic was strongly opposed to the African ideas of fetish and
sorcery, which were so prevalent amongst his fellow-slaves. Though his hand-
writing was bad he composed excellent French, and was really quite as much of
a statesman as a warrior. His private life seems to have been absolutely above
reproach, and that in a country which was described by contemporary French
writers as rather worse than "the cities of the Plain." He was not of very
strong physique, but had trained himself to something like athleticism and was
a magnificent rider. He was exceedingly fond of animals and treated them
with a kindness and consideration which are, alas ! too rare in the Negro
nature. He was invariably tender to women and children of no matter

158 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

what colour, especially wretched fugitives whom he could assist. He could deal
pitilessly with men who opposed his plans or who displayed the slightest
treachery, and he certainly did not make war with rose-water.

But the characteristic of Toussaint which most forcibly struck the Euro-
peans who had to deal with him, notably the English, was his loyalty to his
pledged word. He is never known to have been false to his promise, or to have
departed not merely from the letter, but even the spirit of his engagements.
The only exception which might be pleaded by an Advocalus diaboli would
be his treason to Spain. He had accepted a high rank in the Spanish army
and had enrolled himself as a subject of the King of Spain, yet after the
promise of Sonthonax that the slaves should be set free in Haiti, he abruptly
renounced all Spanish engagements and even (it is said) attempted to secure
the person of the Spanish Governor. it may be that he considered the
threatened British attack on Haiti a sufficient excuse — for the British were
then the most determined opponents of emancipa-
tion and the close allies of the tyrannical French
planters. It may also be that he had reason to
.suppose that Spain would be equally hard on the
Negro if the French power was expelled from
Haiti.

His loyalty to his word probably cost him his
life and his chance of reigning as an uncrowned
king : for if he had gone back on the French in
1800 and made a treaty with the British (as he was
invited to do), and perhaps also a treaty with the
United States, it is unlikely that the First Consul
would have ventured to despatch an overwhelming
expedition to reconquer Haiti.

Toussaint certainly lived luxuriously whenever
he had the opportunity, so far as splendid surround-
ings, good food and wine, and general comfort were
concerned : and he amassed large sums of money,
no. TOUSSAINT LouvKRiuRK ^"^ ^^ thcse, again, he seems to have lent volun-
ABouT i8o! ' tarily a great proportion to the French Treasury in

Haiti, and, needless to say, his widow and children
recovered none of it at his death.

One French planter — the Marquis d'Hermonas — said of Toussaint that
" God in this terrestrial globe could not commune with a purer spirit " ; Roume,
the first and last French Commissioner of the island, wrote of Toussaint that
he was a philosopher, a legislator, a general, and a good citizen. The English
officers, military and naval, who had to deal with him recorded with something
like enthusiasm his probity, his perfect manners, simplicity, and bravery. Very
different were the impressions they recorded of the feline Mulattoes, who
might be astute, audacious, heroic sometimes in their bravery (abjectly cowardly
at others), but who seemed in contrast with the grave deportment, calm courage,
and reasonable talk of Toussaint Louverture representatives of a really inferior
brand of man.

It is a disgrace to Haiti that amidst all her monuments, good, bad, and
indifferent, none has been raised to commemorate the character and the
achievements of Toussaint Louverture, whose record is one of the greatest
hopes for the Negro race. No doubt this is partly due to the long political

SLAVERY UNDER THE FRENCH 159

preponderance of the mulattoes, who hated and despised their mothers' race,
and who, though they fought a gallant fight with the domineering planters for
the rights of the coloured man to be treated as a citizen, still in their heart-of-
hearts desired to maintain the status of slavery for the Negro. It is one of the
sad features of the great problem attending the relations between White and
Black that this scission between Negro and Mulatto is perpetuated even to the
present day in Haiti.

General Leclerc died at the close of 1802. He was succeeded by General
Rochambeau (notable for his frightful cruelties to negro prisoners, to whom he
gave no quarter). Something like forty thousand French soldiers died of yellow
fever in 1802 and 1803. The kidnapping of Toussaint Louverture had not
brought peace but a renewal of war, for in spite of the inexcusable treachery of
Christophe, Dessalines, and other Negro generals to their great leader, the mass
of their soldiers resented the abduction of Toussaint and took up arms once
more to attack the French. The British were blockading the coasts, and
Rochambeau to save the remainder of his army — eight thousand men — was
obliged to surrender to the British at discretion. Accordingly by the end of

&^C^^^^ /ct^;:/kzz:y

130. THE HANDWRITING AND SIGNATURE OF TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE

1803 there was no French soldier left in the western part of the island, and only
a few in Santo Domingo (who withdrew soon afterwards and were replaced in
1808 by Spaniards).

On the 1st January, 1804, General Dessalines^ declared the independence of
" Haiti " at Gonaives, in the western part of the island. All the members of his
staff who surrounded him swore for ever to renounce France and to die rather
than live under her dominion. Then followed under the decree of Dessalines
a massacre of almost all the French planters remaining in Haiti, even to their
wives and children. A good deal of the slaughter was carried on under the
eyes of Dessalines himself. He was, in fact, an abominable monster of cruelty,
the Negro at his very worst, and equally unscrupulous in regard to public
finance. In August, 1804, he proclaimed himself Emperor of Haiti, yet
was unable to expel the French from the city of Santo Domingo, a failure
which lessened his prestige. In June, 1805, after publishing a Constitution
which dissatisfied his generals, the mulatto power (temporarily crushed
by Dessalines and Toussaint) raised its head, united with the Negro
notabilities who had grown to hate Dessalines, and this first Emperor of
Haiti was shot in an ambuscade at Pont Rouge in the northern suburbs of
Port-au-Prince.

^ This pure-blood N^ro soldier was born on a plantation in Northern Haiti called Des Salines. His
name originally appears to have been Jean Jacques, to which he afterwards added the name of the planta-
tion on which he was bom.

i6o THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

After his death General Henri Christophe took the first place amongst the
negroes, whilst General Petion' was at the head of the mulattoes and com-
manded in Port-au-Prince, where he proclaimed another Constitution defining
Haiti as a republic. To conciliate the Negro element,
Christophe under his directions was elected as Presi-
dent of the Republic. But Christophe wanted abso-
lute power, and attempted to crush the mulattoes
and capture Port-au-Prince, Failing this, he made
Cap Haitien (formerly Cap Frangais) his capital, and
declared himself (1806) President of Haiti, but at a
later date (181 1) King of Haiti. Potion, however,
was elected President by the Senate at Port-au-
Prince in 1807; in 1810 Rigaud returned from
France, having escaped from prison, and was allowed
by Potion to command in the south. The western
extremity of the long Southern Province had become
an independent chieftainship under a negro named
Goman ; the Spaniards had reoccupied the eastern
part of Hispaniola, and Christophe (1811) had pro-
ni JEAN-JACQUES uBssALiNEs c'^imed himsclf King Henri I, ostensibly of Haiti,
Goimi«.G«i«»i of Hiiii, 1^4; but in reality only of the Northern Province. So
itST '' ^'"^' "^ ""''' that at the close of the great Napoleonic Wars the
island of Hispaniola was divided into five more or
less independent states. A
menace of French reoccupa-
tion in 1814 procured a
temporary truce betxveen all
these elements. General
Potion, the mulatto President
at Port-au-Prince, died in
1S18. In many respects he
was a good man and a
clement ruler. He did much
to assist Bolivar in his
struggles against the power
of Spain. He was succeeded
by another mulatto. General
Boyer. Boyer was energetic
and honest and an able com-
mander in warfare (as is
shown all through the in-
surrectionary struggle) as
well as an administrator.
He conquered the negro
chieftain, Goman, in the
south-west, resumed full con-
trol over the Southern De-
partment, and then prepared '3*- ^'
to try conclusions with the c«p of Libeny, «

; by Leclerc an J was scluall)' confined in the Chiiteau de Joi

SLAVERY UNDER THE FRENCH i6i

savage King Henri I,' who evaded this issue by committing suicide in 1819,
Boyer then entered Cap Haitian, and three years later {1822) occupied Santo
Domingo and reigned over the whole of Hispaniola
as President for twenty-five years.

Between 1822 and 1843 was the Golden Age of
Haiti,* For the greater part of the time the muJattoes
were politically in the ascendant and the affairs of
state were conducted with some ability. France,
who had in 1817 manifested an intention of re-
conquering Haiti, was gradually brought to adopt
a less hostile attitude and at last induced to recog-
nise Haitian independence subject to an indemnity
equivalent to £6,ooo,cx», which was to be distributed
among the dispossessed planters or their heirs. This
indemnity crippled Haiti for perhaps seventy years.
In fact France could hardly have thought of a subtler

revenge. The country could not always pay the in- i3j.gbneralhbnrichkistopkr
stalments (£8o,CXM a year !) out of revenue, and so Af'"**"!" hwi 1, Kim of (Wonhtm)
until the issue of the American Civil War (say in huh, iBh-k.

1867) — after which all European aggression in the New World became a
dangerous enterprise — Haiti went in constant dread
of an attack by France, or by Spain acting with the
permission of France: therefore the military party
in Haiti had the excuse for keeping up an enormous
standing army.* This system imposed on the
country that curse of Military Government which
has so delayed the progress of all the Central and
South American republics. The army makes and
unmakes the Presidents and baulks any effective
measures of reform. At the present day Haiti only
requires a standing army of 2000 men in addition
to a country constabulary and town police; but for
nearly two-thirds of the nineteenth century this
negro republic dared not disarm for fear of imme-
134. jBAN-PiERRB BovBR diatcly falling a prey to either France or Spain,
"""l^^oU »ft«'!sM!"ilfs*" """ ^"* during Boyer's Presidency the French in-

demnity was reduced from a total of ;^6,ooo,ooo
demanded by the Government of Charles X to the :ir3,6oo,ooo asked for by
Louis Philippe's Cabinet. Louis Philippe in 1838 acknowledged the complete

' Henri Chrislophe was born in Ihe island of Grenada, October 6, 1757, and became > waiter at
an hotel, where by amassing a large sum from lips, he managed 10 pnrchase his freedom, Hemigialed
to St. Domingue, and eventually joined Ihe forces of Toussaint Lauveriure, in which through his superior
attainments he soon rose 10 be a general. He was lalenled and ambitious, bul eitraotdinarily cruel. His
wonderful palace of Sans Souci and his extraordinary foitifica lions near Cap Haitien have been well
described by Mr. Hesketh Prichard and other writers. These buildings were [□ a great enlent shattered
and deslioyed in the earthquake of 1842. Though an ignorant man himself, Chrislophe strongly favoured
education and started a number of schools among the people of Northern Haiti.

' Sir Spencer St, John does not allogelher confirm this. He writes in his //aj//i, or Ihe Black Republu
(quoting Haitian writers) that the counliy was in a stale of ruin, wilhoul trade 01 resources of any kind ;
with peculation and jobbery paramount in all the public offices,

' The army during General Boyer's Presidency was fixed in the budget at 45,ocxi men ; yet, subse-
quently, it tended to be a " skeleton army " with a full cadre of officers, but (be men only enumerated on
psper for (he most part and (he appropriations for their pay and rations divided among the officers.

i62 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

independence of Haiti. Great liritain and the United States had done
so by 1825.

A concordat with the Pope in 1836 established
Haiti definitely as a Christian country, though it is
true that it was only superficially so ; and the in-
coming priests, under little or no control, were often
Europeans of evil lives and a source of profound
scandal. In i860 a new concordat was signed with
Rome, and the Haitian Church reorganised by a
French hierarchy. Since then, though the Roman
Catholic Church has become to a very great extent
a foreign body, it has through its French priesthood
done a great deal for Haiti in religion and education.
Beyer's prestige was weakened with his fellow-
countrymen by the exactions of France and Spain
and was brought still lower by the terrible earth-
'ftUum^Hliri'iiliT quake of 1842, which destroyed the town of Cap

Haitien and affected unfavourably all the north of

Haiti. There were several hundred deaths, and

many people lost all their property. Boyer " had

ceased to please" the sovereign people, and upon

the outbreak of an insurrection in the north abdi-
cated and brought to a close an unprecedentedly

long tenure of power in restless Haiti — a Presidency

of twenty-five years. In spite of some mistakes he

was by far the best President Haitian history has

known and remarkably honest. He left more than a .

million dollars in the Treasury when he abdicated.

A new Constitution was promulgated, but Boyer's

immediate successor — H^rard-Riviere, a light mulatto

— only reigned four months. The Spanish portion

of the island secured by Boyer was lost after Boyer's

fall, and for many years the condition of the country

was steadily retrograde. 136- gbnrral soulouque

Between 1843 and 1847 there were no less than '"''"'"^^hm'X^' ^"'''™°'

four presidents, two of whom, Herard- Riviere and

■ Pierrot, were mulattoes. The last of these, Riche, a
negro, was a good ruler, but died after only a year's
administration. Then the Ministry brought about
the election of Soulouque, a captain of the Presi-
dential guards, who had been born a slave and was
an ignorant, heathen creature; bloodthirsty and
cruel.

Soulouque organised a terrible massacre of the
mulattoes in 1848, and proclaimed a new Constitu-
tion in August, 1849 ; with himself as Emperor, and
a military nobility of four princes, fifty-nine dukes,
and a large number of marquises, counts, and
barons. In 1S52 (as if purposely to annoy and
.,- ., »»_ -^^„ ~ forestall Louis Napoleon) he was crowned at Port-

Fraideni of Haiti i8s9-«7 au-Prmcc as Taustin 1. Emperor 01 Haiti. His

SLAVERY UNDER THE FRENCH 163

imperial reign of seven years was unparalleled in its political murders and
financial waste. His attempts to reconquer the Spanish portion of Htspaniola
were attended with crushing disasters. A mulatto
general. Fabre GefTrard, at length placed himself
at the head of popular discontent. The Emperor
Faustin. finding his army deserting him, abdicated
in January, 1859, and was only able to leave Haiti
alive by the intervention of British men-of-war and
artillerymen. He retired to Jamaica in a British ship.
General Getifrard's Government did some good
for Haiti, but was hampered throughout its eight
years of existence by incessant negro insurrections,
the worst of which were headed by a negro named
Salnave, who after Geffrard's resignation in March,
1867. marched on Port-au-Prince and seized the
Government. Like several of his successors, he was

hastily voted President, "I'^pee a la gorge." Con- ^ sylvai.v saln ve

stitutiona! government ceased to e.vist, and his pr«id«oi or H.iti, ise?-*

Presidency was one long civil war, punctuated by

some remarkable feats of arms on the part of
mulatto generals, massacres ordered by Salnave.
powder explosions, the landing of British and
French marines, and the intervention of the
Dominican Government, which arrested Salnave
and handed him over to the revolutionary generals
of Haiti to be tried for his crimes. He was de-
servedly shot.

His successor, Nissage-Saget, a mulatto, ruled as
I President for four peaceful years. Unfortunately, his

j Government for some inexplicable reason favoured

as next candidate for the Presidency a creature
called Domingue, whom Sir Spencer St. John justly
characterised as "an ignorant and ferocious negro
'pmWmo^Hiih^^sr^^ (born in Africa)." Domingue succeeded Nissage-
Saget. and placed at the head of his ministry his
nephew, Septimus Rameau. This last individual .— _
was one of the many evil geniuses of Haiti ; perhaps
the most evil, since he did not merely kill (he caused
the leading mulatto generals to be assassinated),
imprison, banish ; but he plundered to such an
extent that Haiti is still impoverished by his

financial operations. President Domingue was en- |

tirely governed by his nephew, Septimus Rameau,
and therefore must bear the blame for his iniquities.
Septimus Rameau caused Domingue's Government
to raise a loan in Paris of ;^2, 503,000, The loan
was raised at a considerable discount, and the bulk
of the money never reached the Public Treasury of
Haiti at ail, but was divided amongst the friends

and partisans of Domingue's Government. A small ubnbralijoisrond-canai.

balance of this amount remained in the National Pmideni of Huii, iB7«-9

i64 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Bank of Haiti, and it was in attempting to remove this and fly with it to
Jamaica that Rameau was killed by the populace.
France insisted that this loan should be recognised
by the Haitian Government, so that it is a part of
the financial burden which the modern Haitians
have to bear.

Domingue, " the ignorant and brutal negro," was
I succeeded as President by a mulatto general of

I eminence and education, Boisrond-Canal, but the

latter's honest government of the country was made
impossible by the intrigues and insurrections of
another mulatto politician. About this time the
Mulattoes became identified with the name or idea
of a Liberal (Prt^ressive) Party in Haiti, whilst the
Blacks were more or less Conservatives and haters
of the foreigner and of white civilisation.

Naturally, the negroes were enormously in the
PmidtBi of Hwii, 1879-8! ascendancy as regards numbers — more than ten to

one — but had the mulattoes remained united and --

possessed something like real patriotism so as to
subordinate personal ambitions and greed, they
might have been able to remain in power and
gradually raise Haiti by universal education to a
great position in the West Indies. But every man
thought and worked for himself only, and so after
the brief intervals of sweetness and light under
enlightened mulatto administration would follow
terrible periods of negro misrule.

One such period began with the election to
the Presidency (by the mob of Port-au-Prince) of
General Salomon in October, 1879. Salomon was
a negro general and minister who had made himself
notorious during the reign of Soulouque as a

murderer not only by implication but as an actual '**■ **"'^"''*'- '■ ^- LtciTiMB
assassin of mulatto notabilities. During one of his tfaidMiiof H.m. itB^-^

r long exiles he had married a white Frenchwoman,

and at the commencement of his Presidency in 1880
he seemed to be making some effort to reconcile
the opposing parties representing various degrees of
colour and to show that Haiti was not adverse to
White enterprise interesting itself in her develop-
ment. But these good intentions did not last long,
and Salomon's reign was characterised, like that
of all his negro predecessors, by innumerable political
murders, insurrections, incendiary fires, reckless issue
of paper money, and foreign humiliations. Event-
ually in 18S2 he abdicated to save his life, and fled
to Cuba, His successor, Genera! Legitime (who, of
^ _ course, had led the revolt against him) was a dark

143- GENBHAi, HVPPOL1TB muUtto. His tcnure of power also ended in flight —
PreHdtinofHmici, 1889-96 to Ncw York. Then came General Hyppolite, who

UNDER THE FRENCH 165

le was a period of relative tranquillity and

loreover, died peaceably during his Presidency.

■ negro as President —

mon Sam, whose daily

richard,* " to be chiefly

near the window of a

y which overlooks the

5am's Presidency some

ect General Firmin, a

her mulatto candidates

tvour. But somehow or

mmanding the Haitian

nee marched down from

rince and arrived there

oming on. His troops

ting " Vive Nord Alexis, "" '

f unconsciously, without ''''*-^';''"'\'-J"'''.^"* *" "*■

^.' , , FreddenloC Hull!, lE^t-tgn

e was a candidate for

:he supreme post by the Legislature.

.— Under Nord Alexis the reign of terror

, began again. Every mulatto (more especi-
ally) possessing any independence of charac-
~~~f ter and presuming to criticise the mistakes
i^^J of the Government was punished, or, if they
^^^ could get at him, surprised at night and
summarily shot. In this way occurred the
_-iJ(| political murders of March, 1908, the re-
*~-Xm niembrance of which was vivid when f
reached Haiti at the close of that year.
Whether the murders were dictated or not by
the household of the President little matters
so far as his responsibility was concerned.
Yet Nord Alexis is living peaceably in
Jamaica at the present day, no doubt very
well off. As to the allegations of State
plundering attributable to him, his wife, or
his Administration, it is preferable to refer
my readers to the Haitian Press of 1908-9.

The actual cause of his downfall was the
following. Considerable losses to the State
(which derives much of its revenue from
the export duty on coffee) were occurring
through merchants at the seaports getting
the General in command for some civilian
official in charge of the customs) to charge
■'"" them only half the export duty due on large

■' consignments of coffee ; on the understand-

it fraud on the Haitian Government was shared between

''.BhitMamHi, byHesketh Ptichard, 190a

1 66 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

exporter and official. In other words, the exporting merchant would pay only
SO per cent of the export duties actually due to the Government on his coffee
and would give in specie or notes 25 per cent of the export duty to the
fraudulent official. It was believed by General Nord Alexis that frauds on a
very large scale of this kind {I cannot say if they did exist — I am told not)
were going on in the Southern Province of Haiti, which was under the strong
local government of General Auguste Simon. Simon was very popular
throughout the south of Haiti, which he had governed (and governed reason-

146. H. S. ANTOlNt SIMON, PRESIDENT OF 1

ably well and with great clemency) for over twenty years. He was a pure-
blooded negro, but a person held in high esteem locally on account of his
kindliness and peaceable ways. Public attention was more and more directed
to Simon in preference to the noisy General Firmin, who was the oft-recurring
adversary of Nord Alexis. It occurred to the late President of Haiti (after he
had burnt down a third of Port-au-Prince in his search for " Firministe" arms
and ammunition) that General Simon wanted looking up and punishing for
permitting these frauds on the customs-house. He summoned him, therefore,
in October, 1908, to Port-au-Prince to give an account of his stewardship.
Simon anticipated only too surely the perfunctory court-martial arid fusillade.
Therefore, he wisely marched on Port-au-Prince at the head of his better-

SLAVERY UNDER THE FRENCH 167

disciplined troops, and proclaimed the downfall of Nord Alexis. The army of
the latter melted away on the approach of Simon, or joined his force.

The only recourse of the hated Nord Alexis was to drive down to the beach
with the French Minister, covered with the French flag, and embark on a
French war-vessel which landed him in due course in Jamaica. The hurried
election of General Simon to the Presidency followed, and I must say that
although he had only been in office for less than two months before I reached
that disturbed country, the effects of his new administration seemed highly
beneficial. Practically a political amnesty was declared and at most two or
three murderers were executed. It would be ungracious to say that the merit
for this clemency lies with the unpublished exhortations of the American
Government, though these may have had some effect on certain of the poli-
ticians who had gone over to General Simon and were now eager for revenge
on the instruments of Alexis's tyranny. But General Simon himself seems to
be an essentially humane person with a horror of bloodshed.

He has the chance to render his tenancy of the Presidency illustrious by
abating the military power, which is the scourge of Haiti ; and for the first
time in the history of that distracted negro republic, allowing the Constitution
to have fair play, and its provisions to be enforced and administered by the
ordinary processes of the law.

After this resume of the history of Haiti, any further description of French
dealings with the Negro in America and Africa must come rather as an anti-
climax. But France has not done with the question in America. She still
rules — and now rules well — some 370,000 negroes and negroids in the New
World, in Cayenne (Guiana), which has an area of 30,500 square miles, and in
the French Antilles (the islands of St. Barthdl^my, St. Martin, Guadeloupe,
and Martinique), with a superficies of 1069 square miles. Thus she possesses
31,570 square miles of tropical America, with a very considerable commerce:
(an approximate annual value of ;^3,6s6,ooo), and not without political im-
portance.

In 1802 the First Consul restored the status of slavery in French America,
and thereby lost Haiti indefinitely. During the Hundred Days, Napoleon
(perhaps hoping to conciliate Great Britain) theoretically abolished the slave-
trade with Africa as a lawful commerce for French ships, but legislation
on the subject was not in force till 1818. Between 1830 and 1848 (under
Louis Philippe) Libreville was founded on the estuary of the Gaboon River in
Equatorial West Africa, as a place of refuge for freed slaves taken by the
French cruisers from the slave-ships captured off* the West Coast of Africa.
American Protestant missionaries were encouraged to settle in this Gaboon
region, and that is how the Gorilla was discovered.

In 1848, after several partial emancipations, the status of slavery was
abolished throughout the French dominions.

The island of Martinique — the birthplace of the Empress Josephine and
the early home of Fran9oise d*Aubigny [Madame de Maintenon] — passed
through a period of remarkable prosperity between 171 3 and 1762. During
this time its slave population rose to a total of something like 85,000; and
conjoined with this were about 3000 free negroes and negroids, and 7000
whites.^ The introduction of the coffee shrub in 1726^ (by Desclieux, from

^ Including the descendants of 300 Portuguese Jews from Brazil.

^ Apparently, two years earlier coffee plants had been sent to Martinique from Surinam.

AVERY UNDER THE FRENCH 169

deloupe history followed a line of its own. Soon after the
Dned Guadeloupe with 20,000 soldiers arrived one of the giant
he French Revolution to whom nothing was impossible,
ent as Commissioner of the French RepubUc to put the
ecree of February nth, 1794, in operation. He brought with
o French soldiers. Realising the situation as soon as he had
ed to the negro slaves whom he had come to enfranchise.
ms, and in the course of a few months he had not only forced
:uate Guadeloupe with their 20,000 men, but had carried the
rilish West India islands, ravaging, ransoming, burning, and
linst the white man. Unfortunately for his ultimate success
h non-republican more bitterly than an Englishman, and

f. LYCltE CARNOT, POINT X pfeXKB, CUADELOITPB

IJow-countrymen with the guillotine. In 1802 he was
e where he radoucissait his fury, and before the British
d' him out in 1 809 he did much to improve the conditions
I oi its negro slaves.

he Abolition of slavery the French Antillean negroes
I'ork on the plantations, and the trade of Guadeloupe and
nual volume from ;i;4,l6o,ooo to .i;2, 1 20,000. A labour
-under the system then and now prevailing, of large
opean control. Whether at that juncture indeed [just
■ when the negro after two centuries of forced labour
i' have been possible or wise to adopt a new land scheme
urn all the ex-slaves into petty proprietors is a question
V be that a subdivision of the land and a system q^ petite
ntual solution of the commercial decline of the French

i68 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, where it had been received from Arabia) added
greatly to the wealth of Martinique and the rest of the French West Indian
possessions.

Between 1794 and 1S02, and 1809 and 1815, Martinique was in British
hands (as it had been for short periods once or twice before). The British,
who much wished to possess it permanently, always called it punctiliously
"Martinico,"' preferring to think of its distant Spanish discovery rather than
its long prosperity under French development. Like St. Domingue. it was
handed over to the British in 1794 by the Royalist Planter party, who were
infuriated at the abolition of slavery by
■ the French Assembly in that year. As
the British retained the institution of
slavery till they had re- transferred the
island to the French Government in 1802,
or more definitely in 1815, it was not till
1816 that the French authorities had to
face the growing demand for emancipa-
tion from the French n^rocs, here and
in Guadeloupe; the more insistent, since
many of the slaves were in touch with the
free citizens of Haiti who had successfully
thrown off the yoke of France. In 1816,
1822, and 1824 there were serious slave-
risings in Martinique; and in 1831 "a
veritable civil war." * This last arose
because of the bitter disappointment that
the French Revolution of 1830 was not
followed by emancipation. As a matter
of fact, so serious was the attitude of
the negro population in Guadeloupe and
Martinique in 1831, that a partial emanci-
pation was at once decided on, and
measures were taken in succeeding years
which increased the numbers of free
persons of colour by leaps and bounds, so
that in 1848, when slavery was definitely
abolished by the French Parliament, there
147. A FRENCH NBOBo were only a few thousand slaves in the

Muiinique French Antilles remaining to be liberated.

Compensation was granted in this year to the owners at the rate of 500 francs
per slave.

Guadeloupe had much the same eighteenth-century history as Martinique.
Whenever France was at war with England, England seized and held these two
(and other) West Indian islands. In 1789 Guadeloupe reached (like Martinique)
the apogee of its prosperity under the regime of slavery. In that year there was a
population of [4,000 whites, over 3000 free negroes and mulattoes, and over 90,000
slaves. Its annual trade amounted to nearly £1,300,000. The decree abolishing
slavery, of February i ith, 1794, initiated the same civil war here as elsewhere in
the French West Indies, and the Royalist party admitted the British troops.

SLAVERY UNDER THE FRENCH 169

But here Guadeloupe history followed a line of its own. Soon after the
British had garrisoned Guadeloupe with 20,000 soldiers arrived one of the giant
personalities of the French Revolution to whom nothing was impossible,
Victor Hugues, sent as Commissioner of the French Republic to put the
slavery abolition decree of February nth, 1794, in operation. He brought with
him a force of 1 100 French soldiers. Realising the situation as soon as he had
landed, he appealed to the negro slaves whom he had come to enfranchise.
They sprang to arms, and in the course of a few months he had not only forced
the British to evacuate Guadeloupe with their 20,000 men, but had carried the
war into several British West India islands, ravaging, ransoming, burning, and
arming negroes against the white man. Unfortunately for his ultimate success
he hated a French non-republican more bitterly than an Englishman, and

I4S. LVC^B CARNOT, FOINT A P^TKB, GUADBLOUFR

slew many of his fellow-countrymen with the guillotine. In 1802 he was
passed on to Cayenne, where he radoudssait his fury, and before the British
and Portuguese turned him out in 1809 he did much to improve the conditions
of French Guiana and of its negro slaves.

After 1848 and the Abolition of slavery the French Antillean negroes
absolutely refused to work on the plantations, and the trade of Guadeloupe and
Martinique fell in annual volume from j£4,i6o,000 to £2,120,000. A labour
force was necessary — under the system then and now prevailing, of large
properties under European control. Whether at that juncture indeed [just
following on abolition, when the negro after two centuries of forced labour
wanted a rest] it would have been possible or wise to adopt a new land scheme
at great expense and turn all the ex-slaves into petty proprietors is a question
of some interest : it may be that a subdivision of the land and a system o( petite
culture will be the eventual solution of the commercial decline of the French

SLAVERY UNDER THE FRENCH 171

Guadeloupiens of the old slave stock prefer to go in for professions and trades.
Education is at present badly given, or is of an inappropriate character for a
peasantry mainly agricultural. "There is a 'Lyc^e' or public college in
Guadeloupe and Martinique at which teaching (without any * colour ' distinction)
is free and of first-class character : but ' first-class ' from the point of view of the
middle-class population of an important French provincial town. It has but
little relation to life in the West Indies" {from a correspondent). But here as in
Haiti the French have known how to communicate to their coloured people the
French genius for cooking. Martinique and Guadeloupe turn out the best
cooks in the New World. And these Martinique and Guadeloupe negroes
are usually of polished manners, even if they do not conform to the ideal
morality of the Anglo-Saxon. The present negro
and negroid population of the two dependencies
is about 330,000.

At different times during the nineteenth cen-
tury the constitutions of Martinique and Guade-
loupe (the last-named includes the two little
French Windward Islands, St, Barth^l^my and
St. Martin) were shaped with increasing liberality
in popular representation. They now possess
considerable powers of self-government, except
in fiscal matters. Each island has a Governor
and a Privy Council, and an elective Council-
General or Assembly of thirty-six members.
These thirty-six councillors are elected on a
universal male suffrage, distributed without dis-
tinction of race or colour.

Each island also elects two deputies and one
senator to represent the colony in the French
Parliament,' and it is not prescribed that these
citizens of the French Antilles should be white men. ^ ^ cuiana nbgrkss

After the definite abandonment of Haiti in otc«!«iintBdopiihiDirMioire.iyie.
1825, French interest in Cayenne revived. This

colony had been in Portuguese occupation from 1809 to 1817; and despite
the 1815 abolition of the slave-trade in the French possessions, a good many
negroes found their way as slaves to work in the sugar plantations and to search
for the gold which had been first discovered by a French settler in 1819,'

The Portugo-Brazilian occupation of Cayenne from 1809 to 1817 brought
with it a considerable addition to the slave population, but conferreil benefits
on the Brazilian Empire and on the French colony, for while on the one
hand the Portuguese found in the plantations and gardens of French Guiana
valuable spice trees and other vegetable products of tropical Asia and
Africa — carefully brought to Cayenne by French navigators and governors

' ll nould be ft very satisfactory step towards the effective federation of the British Empire (which we
talk so much about and make very few SBcrilices of constitutional pedantry to effect) iF the British West
Indies and East Indies and other r^ions under Ihe direct rule of the United Kingdom could likewise
have their elected representatives (of all shades of colour) in the Imperial Pailiamenl expressing the
wants and aspirations of the coloured people through the mouths of coloured men, and not the cold or
unconvincing deputy of a white man,

' About .£550,000 worth of gold — chiefly worked by negro labour — was eiporled from Cayenne in
t907. This is the average annual output.

172 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

and now carried back by the retiring Portuguese to their Brazilian Empire —
the French learnt from Portuguese Indians where and how to look for alluvial
gold.

In 1852 Cayenne had been again adopted by the French Government as
a region to which criminals or political prisoners might be sent as convict
settlers. In the following year it was decided that convicts of African or
Asiatic race might also be transported to Guiana ; and after 1864 it was mainly
from the prisons of Algeria, Senegal, Pondichery, and Indo-China that the
penitentiary settlements were recruited. The preponderating races among
these " r^cidivistes " were Arab and Negro. A good many Algerians and
Senegalese have in course of time found their way as freemen or runaways
into Dutch and British Guiana, and into Northern Brazil. Occasionally they
have proved themselves desperate criminals, but more often the climate and
discipline of French Guiana have tamed them. They have been popular as
husbands — one might almost say as ** sires" — among the Guianan negresses,
and have during the last fifty years sensibly modified tor the better the physical
type of the negro in these regions.

CHAPTER VIII
HAITI

I SAID good-bye to Cuba under a sunset of crimson and gold, a reminder of
the old Spanish colours which eleven years ago were still waving over the
island — the red and yellow that the Cubans might well have retained <with
a different device) in their national flag instead of the inept red, white, and blue,
which two-thirds of the world now adopt, without reason, as national colours.

151, A WKST INDIAN SUNSET

After a rough passage across the sixty or seventy miles of strait between
the two islands, Haiti received me in the blue and silver of placid water girdled
with lofty ranges of mountains wreathed or crowned with white clouds. The
open arms of Haiti are two peninsulas of alpine heights that enclose a vast gulf
of sheltered sea screened from rough winds and vexing currents; a gulf which
would make the safest and amplest naval station in the world.

174 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, is placed near the south-westernmost
edge of a broad plain, the cul-de-sac of the old French colonists ; but its
suburbs are over the spurs of the southern mountains. In daylight, viewed from
steamer deck in the outer harbour, it does not present a poor appearance. This
is largely due to the magnificent new cathedral, which is placed so as to give a focus
to the town. Without this cathedral (of French design and Belgian construc-
tion), Port-au-Prince, two or three years ago, must have presented a somewhat
paltry aspect for a capital city. The other notable buildings are seldom
remarkable for stateliness of design or prominence of position, though there are
some handsome churches. Behind the actual shore-line (to the south and east)
the land rises rapidly into green highlands, studded with fantastic palaces, and
the highlands enlarge into mountains of almost Alpine character. On the sky
ridges of these may be seen from the shipping in a harbour of intense tropical
heat, the silhouettes of the tall pine trees,
which indicate a land of cool, invigorating
temperature within half a day's climb.

I first saw Port-au-Prince in the late
evening, and the effect, after the brilliant,
variegated lighting of Cuban and American
towns, was disheartening. We might have
been approaching some sullen, pirate capital
of Haiti two hundred and fifty years ago,
desirous of offering no attraction or assistance
to the inquiring stranger. A few dull yellow
lights blinked from the dense foliage of the
suburbs. Here and there a glowing red lamp
seemed to indicate danger. Although Port-
au-Prince, with its suburbs, is a city of 104,000
inhabitants, and is the capital of an indepen-
dent state of some 10,500 square miles in area,
it possesses no system of public illumination.
When one lands here in the morning
\tfl. TUB NEW CAiHBDRAL (steamers may not communicate with the

on.»ii. iKt, Hii shore after sunset) the impression is more

favourable, though docks and wharves are absolutely non-existent, and
landing from or boarding the steamer means a long and weary row. But
it is obvious that Port-au-Prince — thanks to German, American, and Haitian
enterprise — has made considerable strides of late towards the amenities of
life. It is true that in dry weather the streets near the seaside are intolerable
with their clouds of malodorous dust, that there is no continuous side walk
along any of the streets, and that, with the exception of about half a mile of
recently macadamised roadway, the paving of the streets is monstrous in its
grotesque imperfections. But the houses are by no means uncomely, nor is the
town nearly so dirty as it was described by various writers down to the year
190a Either they exaggerated, or their criticisms stirred up the civic
authorities of Port-au-Prince to effect considerable improvements in the cleanli-
ness of the streets. There are shops for most purposes and at least two decent
hotels, where the cooking is superior to the average cuisine in Jamaica, Cuba,
or the Southern United States.

A welcome surprise which greets the visitor to Port-au-Prince who goes
from any other part of America (not excepting Jamaica and the other British

HAITI 175

West India islands) is tKe greater cheapness of living. European luxuries are
perhaps rather dear, but not the essentials of life — good bread, meat, fish, eggs,
vegetables, fruit, coffee, and milk. In fact in Port-au-Prince it seemed to me
that one returned to the prices and the comforts of Kurope, especially in so far
as good food, well cooked, is concerned. Any one not content with Haitian
beef, mutton, fowls, turkeys, eels, sea fish, lobsters, vegetables, oranges, grape
fruit, mangoes, pineapples, guavas, coffee and chocolate must indeed be hard to
please.

The President's palace, situated with its .surrounding garden on one corner
of the extensive Champ de Mar.^ is a turreted, verandahed erection, apparently
roofed and faced with corrugated iron, or with some cold grey glistening metal.

The general appear. mce is not unpleasing, though a little "baroque,"
especially when in times of festivity it is extravagantly decorated with the blue
and red Haitian colours. But the so-called garden which surrounds it is a
dreary trampled waste perpetually paraded by soldiers. Not far away is the
range of Government offices, all in one building. In front of this, painted a
gaudy red and blue, is one of those extraordinary rostrums found in every town
in Haiti, large or small, whether dating or not from the time of the French
colonisation I do not know. From these open-air pulpits addresses are made
to the populace, and laws are proclaimed. The Champ de Mars has, no doubt,
been much improved of late, and may even in time be made an open space of
agreeable appearance. At present it consists of irregular patches of turf,
crossed in many directions by roads authorised and unauthorised. Some of the
former are macadamised.

The houses in the suburbs of Port-au-Prince are for the most part built

176 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

by Germans, and are really tasteful in their architecture, coot, comfortable, and
surrounded by beautiful gardens. The public cemetery, on the other hand,
is a staggering mixture of beauty (v^^tation and the old tombs), grotesque-
ness (the modern miniature houses and goblin huts erected to house the
deceased), and horrors.

Port-au-Prince possesses market buildings which are worthy of Paris in
size and design, but the interior is nauseously filthy, so much so that the
mass of the country people prefer to establish themselves in open-air market-
places away from the great buildings erected for their use. In these open-air
markets there is endless material for the painter or photographer. The sellers
are mainly women, who have journeyed into Port-au-Prince from the country.

riding sideways on donkeys, horses, or mules, situated, it may be, on the top of
enormous panniers of provisions. Nearly every woman wears a large and
picturesque straw hat, fastened by a leather band under the chin that ends in
little twiddles of leather so absurdly resembling the pointed chin beard of the
negro man that the market-women look like men dressed in women's clothes.
These clothes are always ample and picturesque, usually blue cotton, or else
gay prints with many flounces. Some of the women in the market-place are
selling fish which an artist would purchase for their colours alone. They look
like ihe />t>tsst>t/s d'Avril'm Eastertide shop-windows — such combinations of blue
and orange, scarlet and mauve, yellow and black, pink and green. Other
vendors are surrounded by a troop of tethered turkeys, fine plump fowls, or
Muscovy ducks. Goats, sheep, cattle, and pigs wander where they please.
Pigeons and an occasional green parrot lend variety to the immense crowd of
humans, beasts, and birds.

HAITI 177

One curious point about Port-au-Prince and the whole of Haiti and Santo
Domingo is that the turkey buzzard (Caikartes) is entirely absent, a strange
contrast to all the other West India islands and the Southern United States.
Haiti has no other scavengers but pigs and dogs.

The water-supply of Port-au-Prince is grumbled at by the residents, but
though it may not be as perfect as tradition relates it was under the French
Government, it seemed to me to be very much better than in many other West
Indian towns I have visited. Some
of the fountains are very picturesque,
and obviously date from the French
period of over a hundred years ago.
Ail over this large town there is an
abundant supply of good, fresh water
for the poor as welt as the rich, and
the drinking-water usually served in
hotels and private houses seemed to
me pure and good.

Port-au-Prince is always hot, often
dusty, and a good deal afflicted by
mosquitoes ; it has many other faults,
no doubt, and yet it is not without
attractions. Ice is abundant and
cheap. There are at least two good
newspapers, one of which gives a
very ample supply of European
cablegrams. It is a noisy place; the
dogs are perfectly sickening in their
midnight bowlings, alarums, and ex-
cursions ; there is too much military
music, and on festivals people let off
guns and fire crackers. And yet it
is one of those towns that by a
strange inconsistency one is sorry to
leave and glad to return to. The iSS- thb statue to dbssaunks on thb champ

educated Haitians, however they may ^^ j^ xematmti u Iht deelara of HiiUan independence in

mismanage their public affairs, are '8"i- [Thi..i.iiir, *hich iipdiouowmeuii wiih.fl.g of

^ « 1 ^ 1 ^ ... pUdEed [in, 11 AD uely objccl, ■nd dujclit 1a be rejnovedl

most agreeable people to meet m -.j j . —.

society — witty, amusing, well read, except in the natural history and botany of
their own country. There is a very pleasant club where the European and
American residents meet the natives of Port-au-Prince, and a delightful
friendship seems to exist amongst all the foreign residents.

I have referred to the German suburban residences of Port au Prince,
especially those which lie on the south-east of the main town. But perhaps the
most beautiful district within easy reach of the capital is round about Diquiny
and Bizoton. The railway runs along the shore road from Port-au-Prince to
the vicinity of these outlying bourgs, and there is as well a fairly good carriage-
road, with picturesque old bridges over the innumerable streamlets that come
tearing down from the mountains. Here, between Port-au-Prince and Leogane,
many of the beautiful country seats are little more than modernised reconstruc-
tions of the estates of the French planters. The district is musical with a
never-absent ripple of failing water, and the extravagant tropical vegetation is

1/8 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

reduced to orderly pictures by masonry runnels and conduits of the old
French irrigation systems. Probably nowhere else can one see such a complete
riot of brilliant colour. The clouds, attracted by the high mountains, are
always a feature in the landscape — dazzling white cumulus at noonday, becom-
ing flamingo-red in reflection of the sunset. The high mountains are purple-
grey. The sea of the Gulf of Haiti is the most brilliant blue-green. The
distant town of Port-au-Prince is pink and white and grey. Around the many-
coloured houses are groves of crimson-scarlet Poinsettia or smalt-blue Petrsa,
together with roses, oleanders, allamandas, hibiscus, and a hundred and one
flowering shrubs and creepers of the tropics. As to the foliage trees, there are
royal palms and fan palms, trees unknown to me with large glossy leaves like
magnolias, the primly perfect mahogany trees, orange trees loaded with fruit, the
Haitian oak, mimosas, flamboyants. This region is indeed an earthly paradise.

E THB CBMCTERV, POBT-A

with the Delectable mountains behind, up which, if you choose, every morning
you may ride to the pine-ridges and the air of North America.

Every square mile of Haiti (I should think) is beautiful, or at least is
interesting. The greater part consists of ranges of incredibly tortured
mountains. No doubt in the far distant past it has been the scene of
volcanic energy. Yet there is not much of its area covered with igneous rock.
For the most part the formations seem to be of limestone, a limestone which
in places is such a pure, cold white as to look like snow. In the very high
mountains — nearly nine thousand feet — the hasty observer might well be
excused for believing that he saw vestiges of snow in the crevices or deep clefts
of stream valleys. In reality it is due to the rush of water from the summits,
which tears away the surface soil and reveals the limestone. In the dry season
many a river valley is blazing white with its tumbled masses of chalky stones
and pebbles.

The plains of Haiti occupy but a small portion of its area, and they are

HAITI 179

usually fertile, or could be rendered so by irrigation. Where they are unculti-
vated they are overgrown with a low scrub of very thorny mimosa and logwood,
but even this is rendered tolerable by the highly scented yellow blossoms and
by the clumps of weird-looking cacti. Here in this low-lying country are
specimens of arboreal cactus worthy of Mexico. A form of prickly pear {Nopatea)
grows to a height of about thirty feet in a solid stem, and pushes out in all
directions great pudgy hands of flattened leaf-stalk, studded (as though with
giant rubies) by red flower-buds or blossoms, and having a strange resemblance
to some Hindu god or goddess with innumerable hands. A species of Cereus
(bristling with white thorns) grows
in erect columns. A thornless type
of Cereus is so grotesque in the
pointing of its fat, gouty lingers that
it, together with another writhing,
snake-like arboreal cactus, might be
the fit surroundings of an enchanter's
cave in a stage faerie. Perhaps, how-
ever, the most beautiful item in the
vegetation of the plains and moun-
tains of Haiti (ranging from sea-level
to seven thousand feet) is the agave
with its basal cluster of immense,
bright green lily leaves and its flower
stalk twenty to thirty feet in height
tufted with clusters of golden-yellow
blossoms. In and out of the corollas
of these golden flowers dart wood-
peckers of crimson, black, and gold,
starlings of black and silvery yellow,
metallic humming-birds.and innumer-
able small quits of variegated tints.
Hovering over these and occasionally
making a successful dart are small
kestrels of bright chestnut orange and
dove-grey, with bars and splotches

of deep black. Columbus noted the principal makket pobt-au- prince

abundance of bird-life when' he dis- " '

covered this great island, and referred especially to the songs of the " nightin*
gales." [These were really mocking birds, apparently the same as the
American species.]

The scenery of Lake Azuey (beyond the Cul-de-sac plain) is very beauti-
ful. Its salt waters are of an intense blue-green, and the surrounding mountains,
clothed with forests of lignum vita, glaucous green fan-palms, and straight-
stemmed pine-trees rise to altitudes of six to nine thousand feet. At its
eastern, Domingan end is a colony of the scarlet American flamingo. Minia-
ture wild boars (domestic pigs run wild two or three hundred years ago;
see p. 187) come down to its clean sandy beaches to search for stranded
lish or other water oflal.

And what may not be said in detail about the Haitian mountains? The
highest (Mont de la Selle) is a few feet under 9000, but the ridges rise so
abruptly from sea-level or from the tremendous gorges which separate one

i8o THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

massif from another that you get the full value of their height They have
been carved by water, sun, and wind into the most exaggerated reHef, and many
of their crevices are illuminated by the fissures of limestone. Here and there is
a curious intrusive hummock of bright red clay, only partially revealed because
of the exuberant vegetation. This again assumes so many tints owing to the
season or the sunlight that the Haitian hill-sides frequently resemble a turkey
carpet with their scrub of scarlet fuchsia, rose-pink honeysuckle, intensely green
bracken and maidenhair ferns, and the mauve-and-white of certain Compositce,
the purple of many labiates, the yellow-and-silver of everlasting flowers. The
large white blossoms of the local blackberry (which has a most delicious fruit

the size of a mulberry) should not be omitted in describing this mountain
scenery.

In the dells of the mountains, about 40CX) feet, are handsome jungles of tree
ferns. Everywhere grows the glossy green agave, with its lofty column of gold
flower-clusters. The aromatic scent of the pine woods is indescribably good to
the jaded white man exhausted with the tropics.

And nearly everywhere, except on thehighest peaks and ridges, may be
seen the picturesque and happy peasantry — happy if dwelling far enough away
from the oppression of the town governments. Wherever there is a fairly level
patch or plateau there is a collection of thatched huts surrounded by an
emerald grove of bananas, and by fields of maize, sorghum, cabbages, and
sugar-cane. The country swarms with domestic birds and beasts — horses,
donkeys, pigs, dogs, cattle, goats and sheep, turkeys, fowls, and guinea-fowls.
The peasants usually wear clothes of blue-dyed cotton and huge straw hats.

HAITI i8i

The dress of the men is a blue gaberdine and trousers ; that of the women is a
loose robe not unlike the Egyptian costume.

The scenery of such parts of the Republic of Santo Domingo (Republica
Dominicana) as I was enabled to have a glimpse of, naturally resembled that of
Haiti. I am informed by Americans that the landscapes of the auriferous
Cibao range of mountains (highest peaks averaging lo.OOO feet) were surpass-
ingly grand, and the pine forests of Pinus bahamensis more abundant than in
Haiti. The highest point in the whole of the Antilles seems to occur in Santo
Domingo — the Loma de la Tina. This apparently has never been ascended,
and its guessed-at altitude (10,300 feet) has not been as yet confirmed by the

American surveys. In the more northern part of the Cibao range is the
striking peak of Yaqui, about 9700 feet,

~-The Spanish civilisation of the Dominican Republic (which has an area
of nearly 18,000 square miles) gives a picturesqueness to town or village life
which is quite different to the colonial French or purely Negro aspect of
inhabited Haiti. The game-cock is everywhere much in evidence. There
are some negroes in San Domingo, but the mass of the population is of Spanish
or mixed Spanish-Amerindian origin — a handsome, well-set-up, grave, virile-
looking people of olive or pale yellow complexion. The Americans, who are
giving a general direction and advisory control to Dominican affairs, are effect-
ing wonders of happy and wise development in the exploration, communica-
tions, industries, and commerce of Santo Domingo. Their customs officials
and surveyors are of the best American pioneer type.

"The area of the entire island of Hispaniola is computed to be about
28,250 square miles. The area of the Dominican Republic may be stated
approximately at 17,750, and that of Haiti at 10,500 square miles. These com-
putations at present satisfy neither Santo Domingo nor Haiti, The Spanish

i82 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

republic claims the old French frontier as being the eastern limit of Haiti, and
would assign to the Haitians a total area of about 9200 square miles, equivalent
to the extent of the old French colony. The Haitians, however, claim at least
1300 square miles between the Artibonite River and the Cordillera, more
especially the districts of Banica and Hinche, and base their claims on the
fact that this land has been in Haitian occupation since the time of Toussaint
Louverture, and that the natives of the disputed land speak French and are
negroes.

The limits of the old French frontier have nothing to do with the question.
Between 1825 and 1844 the Haitian Government ruled the whole island, and
when in i860 it admitted the independence of the Spanish-speaking portion, it

160. A KBSTAURANT BY '

naturally attributed to Haiti the regions remaining in Haitian occupation and
distinct ethnographically from the Spanish-speaking portion of Hispaniola.

The United States will take care that this frontier argument is settled
amicably, and if it goes by the abstract justice of the matter will see that Haiti
emerges from the dispute with at least 10,500 square miles of territory.

The actual figures as to the population of Haiti given in the latest returns
for 1908 are 2,794,366, of whom i,iiS,ooo are men and 1,676,366 are women
(there are about 250 white and 6,000 coloured foreigners). The Government
publishes no statistics on the subject, but allows journalists to collect them
from the local authorities. According to the aforesaid Haitian journalists or
publicists, the rate of increase of births over deaths in the towns is very high j
but in the country districts a serious mortality occurs amongst children under
the age of five, which sensibly lessens the national increase, reducing it from
about 25 per cent per annum to about 5 per cent

From my own inquiries, researches, and glances at the country I should
think 2,700,000 a modest estimate of the Haitian populatiMi, if by " Haitian "
is meant the negro race in Western Hispaniola speaking Creole French. I

HAITI 183

should be inclined to put it at 3,000,000; and Americans who have travelled
over both Haiti and the Dominican Republic agree with me on this point.
But it must be remembered that during the last thirty or forty years the war-
like half-Spanish population of San Domingo has made marked aggressions on

161, TUB MOUNTAINS AND PINB WOODS (75OO FB&T ALTITUnE) OP HAITI

the original French frontier, thus extending the Spanish (Domingan) influence-
over that portion of the island still inhabited by Creole-speaking negroes.

The population of the Dominican Republic is either more carefully esti-
mated at the present day or has risen markedly since the Government of the
United States imposed peace on that distracted country. It is now computed
at goo,OCX>, and offers a marked contrast physically and mentally to ther

i84 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Haitians. There are Spanish-speaking negroes in parts of the Dominican
State, but they are not numerous. Large negro communities in this region
are limited to the region of the Haitian frontier, and obviously represent
former patches of French influence or rule which have been wrested from the
Haitian Government since its decline in warlike power sixty years ago.

The real Domingans, that is to say, the non-negro, half-Spanish, half-

Indian' population of the State of Santo Domingo (now officially styled
the Dominican Republic), are a good-looking race, with Castilian manners ; as

* It is believed that pure-blooded AiDeiindii.Da lingered in the unexplored >nd densely wooded paits
of Haiti down to within the memory of persons now living. In hybrid types s few are said to exist at
the present day on portions of Domingan territory, and it is evident that Ihey are perpeluBled in a mixed
form in the Domingan population, some members of which resemble very much the " Indios" of Eastern
Cuba, and are evidently of mixed Spanish or Amerindian blood. But a naked Amerindian woman wal
seen in (he mountains of Haiti aliout luenty-live years ago by Monsieur Espinasse, who, I believe, picked
up (heclay water-pot that Ihe uoman had leri behind in her flight, A number of them, moreover, seem to
have mingled their blood with that of the French pirates and colonists and the negro slaves of these last in
the latter part of Ihe seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries.

HAITI 185

a rule, extremely honest and very hospitable, moral (at any rate as regards their
relations with foreigners), and intelligent. Their chief drawbacks hitherto have
been a certain sleepy idleness and a passionate love of gambling, the vehicle of
this being cock-fighting (as in Cuba, and, to a much slighter extent, in Haiti).
They are as quiet and reserved as the Haitians are noisy and expansive.
When they go to war — politically or as a matter of private vendetta — they
mean business. Nevertheless without American support San Domingo a few
years ago ran the risk of being eventually absorbed by Haiti through sheer
weight of numbers.

Until quite recently it is probable that Haiti had developed a good deal

163. >

more culture and civilisation in her towns than was the case with San Domingo.
The Haitians were far more prolific than their neighbours, and probably much
harder workers. It is not necessary to compare the one people with the other
to the disadvantage of either ; it is sufficient to stale that, although on the
map the island looks as though it should be unquestionably one political entity
(just as is the case with the Iberian Peninsula), in reality no two American peoples
are more unlike and naturally separated than the Haitians and the Domingans;
and the union of the two divisions of the island under one executive is as
improbable as the union of Portugal and Spain.

It is scarcely correct to write of "French-speaking" negroes in referring
to the Haitians. As far as I can ascertain, out of the nearly 3,000,000
negroes who may be described as Haitians, only about 200,000 (a generous
estimate) are able to talk and to understand the French language. The
remainder, who are more especially of the peasant class, speak what is
described as "Creole French," but which is an entirely new language, far
more different from French than is "pidgin" English from the language

i86 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

of the United Kingdom or the United States. It is possible for any English-
man or American to understand in a very short space of time even the
corrupt English of the west coast of Africa, to say nothing of the very
much better negro English of the West Indies or of the greater part of the
United States. It is true that in some islands and isolated peninsulas of
Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia, there may be a mixture of English and
African spoken among the negro fishermen or peasants, which is quite in-
comprehensible to an Englishman or an American ; and it is also possible that
similar jargons may have arisen in parts of the British West Indies of which I

know nothing. But in a general way there is no linguistic barrier whatever
between the white and the coloured people in the whole of English-speaking
America.

In Louisiana, however, in Haiti, Guadeloupe. Martinique, St, Lucia,
Dominica Island, and Trinidad, the Creole French which is spoken by the
negroes is essentially a language by itself, differing from French in grammar,
vocabulary, and pronunciation. It is, to my thinking, a barbarous and clumsy
jargon ; but this opinion would be received with indignation by the English,
German, French, and Haitian people who speak it as a second language, having
picked it up from negro servants in their. youth. Creole, especially the dialect
of Haiti, has been so aptly illustrated by Haitian and French authors that I
need not describe it further here. It still preserves archaic French terms, some
words of Breton, a certain element of the Indian languages still lingering in

recklessly destroyed year af
naires. The Government c
"buraliste" in Port-au-Prino
Haiti possesses one of i
wonderful display of bird-lif
anything about the trees, flov

the birds, the fish, the bu'
Not one. And yet thes
educated people know a [
Germany, and Italy; can
Tennyson ; admire the a
Turner. The amazing be
when their attention is <
forward quotations from

HAITI 189

recklessly destroyed year after year by ignorant peasants or hasty concession-
naires. The Government of Haiti, from the President down to the lowest
" buraliste" in Port-au-Prince, does not care an iota.

Haiti possesses one of the most magnificent 6oras in the world and a
wonderful display of bird-life. Do you suppose any Haitian knows or cares
anything about the trees, flowers, or fruit, beautiful or useful, of his own country;

the birds, the fish, the butterflies, the rocks, minerals, rainfall, or wind force?
Not one. And yet these same men amongst the two hundred thousand
educated people know a good deal about the landscapes of France, England,
Germany, and Italy ; can quote with appreciative delight the nature studies of
Tennyson; admire the art of Corot and Daubigny; and have even heard of
Turner. The amazing beauty of their own country is only apparent to them
when their attention is called to it by utter strangers; and then they put
forward quotations from foreign writers on Haitian scenery as an excuse for

190 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

their political shortcomings or financial defalcations. They know all about the
nightingale and nothing of the Haitian warblers. In their poetry they refer to
the eagle and swan (completely absent from their sphere), but never to the
frigate-bird or flamingo.

That they have a sense of beauty, from the highest to the lowest — the
peasant to the president of the Cercle de Port-au-Prince — is evident from the
choice of sites for their villas or villages, the arrangement of trees and flowering
shrubs around their habitations, the breeding of peacocks (these beautiful birds
are abundant in many Haitian towns and hamlets), and the dress and adorn-
ments of the peasantry. As to the dress of the two hundred thousand educated
people, though less exotic than it was, it is still, as in Liberia — a worship of the
tall hat and frock-coat. In the streets of Port-aa-Prince, as of Monrovia, in a
temperature 95 degrees in the shade and something under boiling-point in the
sun, you may see Haitian statesmen cavorting about in black silk hats of
portentous height and glossiness, with frock-coats
down to their knees, and wearing lemon kid
gloves. The peasantry show originality, taste,
and a real sense of appropriateness in their cos-
tume. The educated people in their passionate
admiration of France do not even dress as do
the very sensible French colonists of the French
West Indies or of Africa, but wear what they
believe to be the last fashion of Paris.

In fact it is the attachment to France which

is the great bar to Haitian progress. If the

Monroe Doctrine did not exist and was not

supported by eighty-nine million of people in

the United States, I should say the best thing

which could happen to Haiti would be a French

direction of their country on much the same

lines as the .■American intervention in the affairs

of the Dominican Republic. But the United

168. "josBPH." MAiTBE D'H.-.TRL States Will not permit France, England, or

Anudtkiittypaor HaiiuD Germany to play such a rfile in Haiti. France,

in fact, has ceased to be a great American power, however important may be

her r61e in the other three-quarters of the globe,

Haiti must learn English or Spanish if she wishes to advance and to hold
her own in the American hegemony. In conversation with one of the Haitian
leaders I suggested that, inasmuch as their young men could get no practical
education in tropical agriculture in France, they should be sent instead to learn
that and other essentially useful things at Booker Washington's Tuskegee
Institute in Alabama. He agreed as to the value of Tuskegee training, but put
forward the language difficulty as a reason for not sending Haitians to be
educated in the United States. Yet according to statistics Haitians in the
Government schools are supposed to be taught English, Spanish, and German,
in addition to French. (This, of course, is not the fact, except in the
seminaries of the French priests.)

And so, while the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Mexico, and all the rest of
Spanish-speaking America are interchanging ideas and at the same time
strengthening in a marked manner their commercial relations with the United
States, Canada, and Jamaica, Haiti remains aloof from all these movements,

except th
t>firbarian \
sistexicy t :
the terrib
on the
and on tl
years alie
obliged t I
loroes to ,
tirjnc crip
tion of ai
" tootth.
„ M la I
"aitian r ;
'°?5e stal i
f •'.' Afri,
"■t"o„ of
f^teft™

comse, be :

iiiEsmerisi

As to

194 THE NEGRO IN THE N

paper on this subject, so far as it affects Haiti.

occurrence, owing to the rarity of snakes in Haiti.

exist' are tolerated in some villages or fetish

propensities. The idea has therefore got abroa

sacred animals by the Vudu priests or priestessi

fowls, possibly goats (white fowls or white goa

ancestors or minor deities presiding over the fertili

forces, in fact), and various small animals (perhap;

deemed useful in sorcery. To obtain human bon

materialistic purpose of robbing the dead of the

graves are soi

with the loathf

body. Thisgh

in the Congo

traced to Haiti

Isolated instan

of cannibalism

children) have

records of Hait

years, but the t

all cases, punish

or two not execi

be mad, and we

asylum. These ;

mostly examples

tion. Haiti "V

elements of Freen

It predicts the fu

arranges iove affai

have consulted the

and priestesses as

as an occasional B

,72. A "VUDU" KousB. HA.T. half-kughingly sub

Street palmist, (b

The 2,500,000 Haitian peasants are passionately fonc

sometimes dance almost or quite naked. And following

exercise is much immorality. It is for these dances and n

purposes that the drums may be heard tapping, tapping

night No secret is made, nor is any shame felt alxiut tJ

which many young people take part.

In most of the country districts polygamy is openly p
marriage — civil and religious — is probably confined to at
total adult population. In fact, in almost all features of
dress, language, and rudeness of manners, the Haitian pe:
to African conditions. But so far as placid acceptance of
concerned, and in their perfect courtesy and absence of

' Haiti (HispanioU), like the test of the Greater Antilles, hi! lu polsonoi
possesies one or two species of Tree Bo«a { Efiicratu) \ i specin of WiLer .
makes o( the eenera Dromicui and Liopkit, UrnmiKir, ind Hypntkymes:
Hispanioli. All are small eicepi Ihe Tree &ntl Water Bou, ind the; ire noi
seven Teet long.

HAITI 195

foreigners, the Haitian people may be regarded as civilised. In small things
they are thievish ; in large concerns law-abiding and honest.

Four-fifths of the Haitians — the peasantry of the country, that is to say —
are hard-working, peaceable country people. These four-fifths of three million
are entirely negro in race, and probably represent a mingling of West African
types from Senegambia, Dahom4, and the Congo. It is a race which exhibits,
away from the towns, a fine physical development ; its skin colour is much
darker and the negro type more pronounced than in the United States. Owing

173. ' VUDU" DRUMS, HAITI

to causes at present obscure (locally it is attributed to the consumption of bad
salt codfish) leprosy has obtained a considerable hold over certain districts,
especially in the plains, and syphilis is still answerable for terrible ravages
amongst the coast and town population. Still to the tourist, glancing in a
cursory way, the people of the interior — the peasantry — seem an essentially
healthy, vigorous negro race.

The tourist observer is conscious of another fact about them : that they are
mostly hard-working, the women especially. As the employes of Europeans
they are disheartening, owing to the irregularity of their work. For a day or so, if
amused or interested, they will labour like veritable heroes, then the men will
get drunk or decide on an inopportune spell of rest. Put to piece-work they

195 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

would probably get through more labour than the European in the same period
of time ; but here, as in Africa, they tend at first to resist regularity of industry.

174. THE BASK OF A FETISH TBEB, ON WHICH VOTIVB

They are ready to work when the rest of the world wants to rest. They may
decide to repose when it is the regular time for exertion. They are noisy,
slightly quarrelsome amongst themselves,
and some are inclined to drunkenness.

The women are the best part of the
nation. They are splendid, unremitting
toilers. In the face of all discourage-
ments with which a bad Government
clouds their existence the women of
Haiti remind one of certain patient
types of ant or termite, who, as fast as
you destroy their labour of months or
days, hasten to repair it with unslacken-
ing energy. The market-women that
descend from the country farms to the
Haitian towns know that on their way
to the market-place, and in that market-
place, they will be robbed by soldiers
and officers until the margin of profit on
the sale of their wares has practically
disappeared. Yet they continue to toil,
to raise poultry and cattle, till the fields.
see to their gardens, make pottery and
mats. They cannot stop to reason, but
must go on working from three years old
175. THE REAL AkTicLE ! to thc cud of their lives. Such industry

ApriuKuaribiOhiawiihaiuMinike. (which is almost equally supplemented

La£« HinttriMd ^y jj^^j ^j- ^^^ peasant husbands) pro-

tected should make Haiti one of the richest countries in the world for its size
and population ; but so long as it is cursed by its present military despotism

the utmost thai tt
the waters of batil
The curse of I
to the present tini'
party. Plus fa ck
history of Haiti h

time being, of the
civilian Governnw
a pedantically pc
civil liberty and
ignores the precej
or allows the cou

Ministers. Whem
point out acts of i
then and there,* b
made to undergo
That Presider
Presidential predf
nature, with a reci

198 THE NEGRO IN THE NE

great southern province of Haiti ; but he is an old r
and though he may turn out a complete surprise, yet
to improve the conditions of political elections. The
is still entirely based on the soldiers.

The theoretical standing army of Haiti is 30,0c
there are 10,000 at this moment under the colours, i
tion of the country conscription is in force, and eve
serve for a certain period in the national army. In tl
great magnitude pursuing a world policy universal
going to be, a practical necessity. But countries in thi
be happily exempt from such a tax on industry. U

regards exterior enemies ? Aggressions from any Europeat
United States forbids that, and equally restrains the Domir
any policy of conquest The United States is tlie only
with any success or justification interfere with the independi
what could 10,000 or 30,000 Haitian troops do against the ft
States ? Consequently, Haiti , needs no army for other
maintenance of public order within the limits of the Repui
pose a well-disciplined, well-armed force of 20cx)nien would
together with a constabulary of 1000 rural police. Of their
men might be employed as frontier guards to assist the ci
along the inland frontier l>etween Haiti and the Dominic
might serve as the President's guard in Port-au-Prince, and 1
be stationed in small detatchments in the leading coast toi

are "generals '
of division an
always used i
respect to an
It is ver
education,
chiefs, rulin
their hard-<
woman for
send me t

200 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

fowls, or so many labourers to work on my estate, or I shall force you to serve
in the army." If the peasant or the village head-man refuses such a request, he
is arrested by the general's soldiers and leaves his home, perhaps for ever.

One reason why in Haiti one sees scarcely any other people than women
coming to the markets is because the men are afraid to leave their hidden
villages or mountain eyries and come down into the cities or bourgs, in case
they may be impressed into military service or reimpressed ; for it matters
nothing if they have served before or completed their full term of service.

Under the accursed military despotism of Haiti home life is constantly
broken up ; in fact, it is the old slave-trade again under another form. Once
the men are snatched from their homes and enrolled in this preposterous army,
with its Second Empire costumes, its out-of-date artillery, and its assorted rifles
and mixed ammunition (the soldiers' really effective weapons being the club

itia A KAHSHACKLE

and matchet), with the usual negro insouciance they dry their tears, tend their
weals and bruises, and resign themselves to a city life of laziness, thieving,
debauchery, drunkenness, untidy squalor, and impudent begging. Some of
them become licensed bandits, robbing the stranger as well as the native.
But, since there are decent folk amongst them (as there are in every collection
of negroes), some of them try, during the long periods of military inaction,
to earn a living "by licence" — that is to say, with the permission of their
commanding o^cer they hire themselves out as servants, labourers, or mule-
teers. In such cases quite 50 per cent of their miserable gains have to be paid
to their officers, from the colonel (possibly) down to the sergeant.

Any one who has followed my argument can see how this blighting army
prevents the putting into force of the constitutional Haitian government. If
you are a Haitian and attempt a pacific revolution by appealing to the reason
of your fellow-citizens, the Executive of the day arrests you arbitrarily and
throws you into prison without a trial, using the ignorant army as its force
and remaining victor so long as the army supports its favourite general as

HAITI 201

President If another general can win over or arm better a larger proportion
of the standing army than the man in power, then there is another revolution
and another military President. But what about the Legislature ? That, under
the existing circumstances, is the creature of the military Executive. This is
how elections are at present managed in Haiti. Voters are registered between
October and December in every year ; but no respectable citizens attempt
to go and vote, because they know they will be hustled by the soldiery and
that every form of chicanery and violence will be adopted to prevent their
recording their suffrage (except for the official candidate). The persons told
off by the Executive to register voters finally draw up a more or less nonsensical
list {which, contrary to the law, is never posted up), consisting either of bogus
names, or else the names of soldiers put forward as voters by officers in the

confidence of the Executive ; for the fact that soldiers on active serviea are
allowed to vole in all political and municipal elections is a flaw of the otherwise
immaculate Haitian Constitution.

Once in three years the elections take place for the Chamber of Deputies
(which itself elects the Senate). Unless you are a candidate on the special list
of the Executive — that is to say, the nominee of the military President — your
election is hopeless. First of all, the Election Tribunal is a farce ; if there has
been sufficient support of public opinion to elect on to that tribunal indepen-
dent persons not the creatures of the Executive, the said Executive persuades
or bribes two or three of its agents on the Election Tribunal to resign on some
pretext or another. It then quashes the whole constitution of the tribunal,
nominates instead a committee of citizens to superintend the elections, and
naturally takes care to appoint its own partisans or employes in that capacity.

The soldiers next come forward and vote for the names written down for
them by their officers ; and these names, of course, are those of the Govern-

202 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

ment candidates. Even supposing that, in spite of violence or chicane, some
independent electors have been registered and do put in votes for non-Govern-
ment candidates, this matters little ; for the Government-appointed Judge of
the Election Tribunal calmly ignores such votes and declares the Government
candidate elected unanimously.

And, as I say, any loud or sustained protest against this despotic military
rule (and, unhappily, the military element in Haiti is usually of an uneducated
negro type) is met by peines fortes el dures, or at any rate by severe ostracism
from anything that is going in the way of Government employment.

Will it be so under the rule of Antoine Simon ? Will the truth be allowed

to reach his ears? Will he be allowed by his camarilla to read anything that is

written on the subject? He has a magnificent opportunity. He is President

for six years. He is the head of the army and a military ofBcer of long and

distinguished service. He could do what no civilian in Haiti could accomplish.

He could reduce the army to two thousand

I men and make it no longer an instrument of

tyranny. He could restore that freedom of the

Press which has not existed in Haiti for over

fifty years.

Under the free discussion of a freed Legisla-
ture and an independent Press other reforms
could then be carried out which would right
what is wrong in the finances and institute
public works for the development of Haiti, a
country of remarkable resources, perfect climate,
and inherently hard-working population.

But a few more years of wastefulness and
fraud in the collection and administration of
public revenues, which has been characteristic
of the Haitian Executive since 1870, will make
the country bankrupt, rich as it is, or provoke
the emigration of the peasantry in large numbers
i8a. A HAITIAN MASON to Cuba and San Domingo.

The present External Debt of Haiti, consisting
of the 1875 and 1896 loans, amounted at the end of 1908 to a total of
$1 1,996,355, or ;£2499,240. Of this £y^2,QCO bears interest at 5 per cent, and
;fi,747,240 bears interest at 6 per cent There is said to have been no
amortisation of the bonds of this foreign loan since 1903. Sums for this
purpose are attributed annually in each budget, but apparently do not reach
the French Bank of Haiti.

The Internal Debt of this Republic amounts to about $13,030,184, or,
approximately, ;^2,7i4,622. This is the least valuation which can be assigned
to it. It is probably much lai^er, and in its origin is mainly traceable to unpaid
salaries and other emoluments due to Haitian officials. The employes of the
Government, except those that really form part of the Executive or the officers
of the army who have to be kept faithful to the Executive, are usually paid in
" obligations " (bonds), which the Haitian Government is never able to cash.
These Treasury bonds (so to speak) were once intended to bear an interest of
12 per cent until the Government could redeem them. The Haitian official to
whom these pieces of paper were given, being obliged to maintain himself and
his family, took them to foreign bankers and merchants, who bought them for

is "-ft

204 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

timber, hides, fibre, copper, and other minerals. What keeps the countn-
going practically is coffee derived from the plantations originally planted
by the French colonists. If all the coffee that left the Haitian ports for
France and the United States paid export duty according to the tariff,
the Haitian revenue would be much higher than it is; but at nearly
every port there is a private scheme in force by which the exporting mer-
chants largely understate the weight of the coffee they are sending out of
the country, and share the profits of this swindle with the local and Executive
officials of the day.

Here Ire ibc (ram of poLiiicil mulyn killed tuniaiirily wilhaul
Iriil dnrin; i^oS \yi Dfden of Pteiidcnt Nord Aleib boalne Ibey
cfiliciHd bu iidiDicuHnlion

In addition to the rescue of Haiti from the throttling grasp of the military
party, it will be necessary to institute absolute honesty and thrift in the conduct
of public affairs. Officials — from the highest to the lowest — must be paid
adequate — let us say even handsome — salaries, scaled according to responsi-
bility and efficiency ; but in return the country must exact from them ruthlessly
an honest administration of public moneys.

But what use is it talking of the " country " doing this or willing that when
no more than 200,000 out of 3,000,000 Haitians have the slightest approach to
education ? The masses in Haiti only realise that they are plundered at every
turn by the authorities, and are Just beginning to ask themselves whether they
would not be better off as free settlers in Cuba, Jamaica, or the Dominican
Republic.

HAITI

205

This eastern division of Hispaniola has grown strong enough to keep* the
Haitians at bay, and has found settled peace, prosperity, and the certainty of a
bright future by wisely placing itself under the wing of the United States.
Such, no doubt, is the predestined fate of Haiti : to accept United States advice
in the management of its home concerns (retaining its governing powers to
the full) and to leave its foreign affairs entirely to the State Department at
Washington,

CHAPTER IX
SLAVERY UNDER THl

(BERMUDAS, BARBADOS, TURKS AND
LEEWARD ISLANDS. AND DC

THE English first entered into the African
adventures and contracts of Sir John Hawki
his visits to Senegambia and the Gold Coast fo
ships had from about 1553 (if not earlier) found thefi
Africa to trade in pepper, spices, perfumes, ivory, and

It is suggested by one or two historians'lhat although Qi
twoj ships to Sir John Hawkins and invested money in i
believed in so doing she was merely engaging in the prociirin]
as those already mentioned ; and that when she realised Haw
his or her ships to the kidnapping of n^rocs and their
the Canary Islands and the West Indies, she censured him a
support.

But no great development followed Hawkins' attempts.

' Elspecially Thomas Clarkson, in his Hishry oflktAhiiiliimiflkiA/riraSlii!/

SLAVERY UNDER BRITISH: BARBADOS, ETC. 207

pirate himself towards the Spaniards in the New World, and after his death in
1 595 (near Porto Rico) the Spanish West Indies were closed against British
ships, while the Portuguese on the west coast of Africa, both before and after
the union of their country with Spain, were very hostile to any infringement of
their monopoly and impartially attacked the Dutch, French, and English ships
which sailed along the West African coast or ascended some of the rivers.

It was not, therefore, until the middle of the seventeenth century, when
Portugal was once more independent and seeking alliances against Spain, that
the English were able to set up in a permanent fashion slave-trading establish-

» KcHoiunii aur Cipe Gout

ments on the Gambia River (1618, 1664) and on the Gold Coast (1618, 1626,
and 1668). Before that, they generally bought the slaves they required from
the Dutch ; or exported them from Morocco.

The Sharifian Empire in that country had felled the Portuguese dominion
of Al Gharb by the Battle of Kasr-al-Kebir (1578), and soon afterwards
(1590-5) had conquered Timbuktu, Jenne, Gao, and the Upper Niger, thus
affording a great impetus to the overland slave-trade between Nigeria and
Morocco.

The English began to establish a trade with Morocco in 1577, owing to the
embassy sent in that year by the canny Elizabeth, who saw her way to building
up a Mediterranean trade for England by allying herself in friendship with the

2o8 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Moors and Turks. In 1588 a patented or chartered company — the Company of
Barbary Merchants — was founded and included on its " Board " the Earls of
Warwick and Leicester. From that time to the middle of the eighteenth
century the British had almost the monopoly of Morocco trade, and exported
numbers of slaves thence to British and Spanish America.

• The Bermudas, or Somers Islands, were definitely settled by the English
from 161 2. They were possibly the second portion of British America (Virginia
coming first in 1 619) on which negro slaves were landed ;^ and the Bermudas
were the focus from which radiated much of the early English colonisation
of the Bahamas, St. Kitts, and Antigua. They are narrow curved islets (rarely
more than a mile broad) about 580 miles east of the North Carolina Coast, of
limestone formation, partially covered with coral reefs and sandbanks, with a
total habitable area of little more than nineteen square miles. At first they
served more as a depdt, both for trade, piracy, and colonisation, than as a
plantation ground ; though tobacco grows wild there and was industriously
cultivated by negro slaves (obtained through the Dutch) from about 1660 to
1707. During the last part of the seventeenth century, throughout the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the English colonists of the Bermudas
and their negro slaves developed into a fine bold race of seamen. They built
sailing ships of from two to three hundred tons from the timber of the
Bermuda "cedar" (a red juniper), and in these vessels brought the fish from the
Newfoundland banks to the coasts of Portugal and the Mediterranean, or
waited at the islands of Madeira, Ascension, or St. Helena for the returning
Indiamen, from whom they obtained cargoes of tea, spices, porcelain, silks and
other wares of the Far East. They carried back port wine to Newfoundland,
and Madeira wine to New England and the Carolinas ; and distributed all
along the eastern seaboard of North America the products of the East Indian
trade. The Navigation Acts^ which did so much to alienate the loyalty of the
North American colonies built up a great prosperity for the Bermudas, both for
the privileges they conferrefl on ships under the British flag and the profits to
be obtained by hardy seamen from smuggling in defiance of the regulations in-
tended to operate only in the selfish interests of Great Britain.

After the war of the American rebellion the great value of the Bermuda
archipelago as a naval station in the Western Atlantic became obvious, and
from about 1783 a fresh development took place in the islands' industries, and
the value of their twelve thousand acres of exploitable ground became greatly

^ There were probably negroes here as early as 1620, and by 1630 there were several hundred on the
"still vexed Bermoothes."

^ As the Navigation Acts, of which the first was passed in 165 1, have much to do with the slave-trade and
the development of the West Indies they may be briefly described here : They were laws of the British
Parliament which restricted the carriage of colonial produce to English or Colonial-owned ships with an
English captain and a crew at least three-quarters English. And goods destined for the American
colonies and West India Islands could only be conveyed in ships similarly owned and manned, and loading
in English ports. Moreover, the greater part of the products grown or manufiAtured in the American
colonies or plantations could only be shipped to England. Other closely-relatea laws fettered and pro-
hibited Colonial (just as they did Irish) manufactures ; to such an extent as to outdo the illiberal policy of
Spain towards Spanish America.

The Navigation Laws, of course, were initiated by Cromwell in order to create a great commercial
marine for England and to deal a blow at the Dutch, who had become the world's great carriers in slaves
as in everything else. Supplemented by similar legislature under Charles II they effected their purpose ;
but in the latter half of the eighteenth century cost us our original American colonies and hampered the
commercial development of the British West Indies. These Navigation Laws were almost abolished by
Huskisson's legislation in 1823 and completely disappeared in the sunrise of Free Trade in 1849.

SLAVERY UNDER BRITISH: BARBADOS, ETC. 209

enhanced. While on the one hand it wa^ sought to ameliorate the conditions of
slavery, it was not desired (then) to make it easy for a class of free negroes
and men of colour to grow up and seek a position of equality alongside the
whites.

In 1789 the Legislature of Bermuda passed an Act to make obsolete a much
older Act of the same Legislature, which forbade the forfeiture of the life and
estate of any white man who killed a negro "or other slave." But in 1806 an
Act of the Bermudan Legislature pronounced the rapid increase of the number
of free negroes and free persons of colour " to be a great and growing evil," and

18S. A NItaiHO HOMBSTBAU IS THB BKKMUDA ISLANDS

laid down that no slave under forty years of age should be emancipated, except
on the condition that he left the islands within three months. If a slave was more
than forty years of age he might be emancipated upon the owner paying £$0
into the public treasury. No free negro or person of colour was to be capable
of acquiring or being seized of any real estate whatever. No house was to be
leased to any free negro for a longer term than seven years.

But about 1828, at the instances of the British Government, legislation was
carried through the Bermuda House of Assembly conferring on free negroes
and men of colour the same privileges as their white fellow-citizens ; and in
1834 the status of slavery was abolished. The Bermudan slave-owners received
for some reason only about ;ti2 compensation for each slave; a less amount
than was granted anywhere in the West Indies.

210 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

This House of Assembly, for which negroes and mulattoes may now elect
members and in which, if elected, they themselves may sit, dates almost from
1620: certainly from 1684, in which year the Bermudas became a colony
directly governed by the Crown. The Government consists now of an Execu-
tive Council on which there may be two unofficial, nominated members ;
a Legislative Council with six unofficial nominated members ; and the
House of Assembly with thirty-six members, all elected by the people of Bermuda
on a franchise granted to all resident males having freehold property not less
than ;f6o in value, or an equivalent in annual income. The only qualification
necessary to a member of the House of Assembly (besides British nationality)
is the possession of freehold property of a minimum value of ^^^240. There are
about 1320 electors out of a population of ig.cxx);^ and there are no political
disabilities whatever connected with race or colour. Out of these 19,000 about
12,500 are negro or coloured and 6500 are white.

The remarkable shipping business of the Bermudas has died down since the
abolition of the Navigation Laws and the short spell of profitable blockade-
running during the American Civil War. But for the last forty years the Ber-
mudans — black and white — have made an increasingly profitable pursuit out of
market-gardening and horticulture for their special trade with the United States,

Connected in original history with the Bermudas are the TURKS ^ and C AICOS
Islands (about thirty in number, but only eight inhabited), lying some seven
hundred miles to the south-south-west of the Bermuda group. They are
scarcely the south-easternmost prolongation of the great Bahama bank (as is
often stated), for between them and Inagua and Mariguana (easternmost of the
Bahamas) lies a narrow but very deep strait of water, equally separating them
from Hispaniola. In addition, they have never had any political affinity with
the settlers of the northern and most inhabited Bahamas, and at the close of the
eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries the two or three thousand
whites, mulattoes, and negroes of the Turks and Caicos were constantly in con-
flict with the tyrannical and odious white man's House of Assembly at Nassau.
In 1848 their petition to be severed from the Government of the Bahamas (to
which they had been attached in 1799) was granted, and since that date they
have been an almost separate colony under the general direction of Jamaica.

The total land-area of this group is 166 square miles, and the present
population is 6000, mainly negroid. There are few pure-blooded negroes in this
colony, and barely 100 whites who are free from a negroid strain. The ancestors
of the white "Turks" and Caicans migrated from Bermuda during the seventeenth
century, bringing their negroes with them but not allowing these slaves to marry
and settle down. For a long period they only visited the Turks and Caicos
" cays *' to conduct the annual " salt-raking." * The Spaniards expelled them in

^ This total refers to residents and does not include the garrison of five or six thousand soldiers and
seamen.

^ The name is derived from the stumpy, turban-like ''Turk's head" cacti which grow on these wind-
swept islands. The largest of the islands — Grand Caicos — is twenty miles long by six broad. Grand
Turk is seven miles by two.

' Salt-rakine, to which one sees so many references in studying the history of the West Indies, is an
industry limited mainly to the Southern Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, and some of the outer islands and
islets of the Lesser Antilles. Advantage is taken of the low flat lands practically at sea-level, perhaps
cut off from the sea by dunes or beaches. Canals are dug and these natural reservoirs are flooded with sea-
water. When sufficient has been admitted, the canal mouth is closed by wooden gates and the shallow
sea- water left to evaporate. When the water has been turned into salt by the action of the fierce sun, the salt
is raked into heaps and left to bleach. Salt thus made is particularly good for fish and meat curing.

SLAVERY UNDER BRITISH: BARBADOS, ETC. 211

1 7 10, but some returned and others joined them. Colonisation was reinforced
by "loyalist" white settlers from Georgia in 1784-5 who brought negro slaves
with them. Many slaves also were obtained from the ships wrecked on these
coral islets on their way to Jamaica or Cuba.

Latterly there was no strict slavery on this group, owing to the lack of a
regular government and to the partial fusion of the races. Moreover, many of
the negro slaves escaped into the bush and for a time relapsed into savagery. A
handsome, muscular, sturdy seafaring race ^ is growing up here, which with some
continued further isolation may develop a very interesting local type of Caucaso-
negroid not unlike in aspect to some of the Southern Mediterranean peoples.

They are governed by a Commissioner, aided by a Legislative Board, the
four unofficial members of which are nominated by the Governor of Jamaica.
Laws passed in Jamaica may by special announcement be made to apply to the
Turks and Caicos.

Salt-raking is still the principal industry, and salt to the extent of about
;f 1 5,000 is exported annually. Sponges also are obtained and cured locally
and exported to the value of several thousand pounds annually. Grand Turk
— the most inhabited island of these two little archipelagos — derives some
importance from being a landing-place and station of the British Direct West
India Cable Company.

Education down to the close of the 'eighties was lamentably backward,
but is now well attended to by the local government. The seven elementary
schools are unsectarian, free, and have about 580 children on the roll. There is
an admirable public library at Grand Turk.

The first negroes to reach Barbados^ arrived in 1626 in the same ship
with the first party of English settlers. The English and their ship had
proceeded from London, but they made use of their " letters of marque " on
the way to capture a Portuguese ship near the Bermudas, and out of her they
obtained a few negro labourers.

The British Barbadians next proceeded to the Dutch colonies in Guiana, and
thence recruited Amerindians under solemn covenant with the Dutch Governor to
return them after two or three years of indentured work ; but they shamefully
broke their contract and enslaved the Indians, most of whom eventually died,
while a few succeeded in escaping. More negroes therefore were brought from
some quarter, possibly supplied by the Dutch. • By 1636 a regulation was
passed by the Governor's Council in Barbados to the effect that all negroes or
Indians landed there must be considered as slaves, bound to work on Barbados
for the rest of their lives. By 1645 there were no less than 6400 negroes in
Barbados, brought from Guinea and also from Bonny (Niger delta), presumably
by the Dutch.

In 1647 Yellow Fever made its first appearance at Bridgetown in Barbados,
and in 1692 there was a bad epidemic. Apparently the first outbreaks of yellow
fever spread to Barbados from Porto Rico,* but later on in the eighteenth

^ ''Calm, sober, and contented," writes of them their former Commissioner, Dr. G. S. Hirst. But
the same authority points out the still serious mortality in these naturally healthy islands from Tubercu-
losis. This disease is encouraged by the horror of fresh air in the houses of the poorer people.

* ** Seven or eight " — Captain John Smith's Travels, etc., London, 1630. Barbados had been pros-
pected by the English in 1605.

' Yellow fever was not heard of in America until the slave-trade was in full swing. Apparently it
was first observed in Porto Rico at the close of the sixteenth century, in the French island of Guade-
loupe in 1635-40, at St. Kitts in 1648, and Port Royal, Jamaica, in 1655. Its first appearance in the

2 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

tury the disease broke out afresh when slaves were transported direct from
St Africa to Barbados in British ships. Yellow fever was the first scourge
ch was evolved by the slave-trade as a punishment to the white man for
rcing his black brother into forced labour and expatriation.
In 1674 the number of slaves in the island is said to have exceeded one
idred thousand, and a large proportion were Koromantis from the Gold
1st — a class of negro much in demand for working capacity, but foremost in
the slave revolts and movements towards freedom which were so common in

bados during the last quarter of the seventeenth and throughout the
iteenth century.

In 1667 an Act was passed for "the better ordering and governing of
roes," It commences, " Whereas the plantations and estates of this Island

ed SutCT was al Charleston in 1693. We now know thai it is carried from the blood of one humin
; to that of another by a mosquito of the yenus Sttgemyia (S. la/ofiui).

: would seem to have been an African disease in origin, sin<» negroes and even n^ioids are
ically immune, while Amerindians and Europeans are particularly susceptible. But it is not known
isl in Africa except on the coast region of Senegal, the Gambia, Sierra Leone, and very^occasioBally
beria and the Gold Coast. In these parts it occurs sporadically, and of course must be carried from
auman being 10 another by Slegomyia mosquitoes, which exist in West Africa as well a» in iropiisl
rica. According to H. W. Bates {The /■aluraiitl en Iht Amazons), yellow fever did not reach the
ion Valley and Northern Braiil till the middle of the nineteenth century.

t the time of my visit to Barbados in February, 1909, yellow fever had broken oul in ihewestOT
s. It is time this disease was atiogether suppressed in the island I7 the scientific deslriiclion ot tne
myia mosquitoes. As regirdE, malarial fever, it is almost non-esistent here, mainly bec»iu* 'n'
jw streams and ponds swarm wilh a liny fish (Ginii-dimis), which devours the ^w/ic/w mosquilos
See note on p. iC.

SLAVERY UNDER BRITISH: BARBADOS, ETC. 213

cannot be fully managed and brought into use without the labour and service
of great numbers of negroes and other slaves. . . ."• The negroes are de-
scribed as "barbarous, wild, and savage natures . . . wholly unqualified by
the laws, customs, and practices of our nations " ; and the Act speaks of the
disorders, rapines, and inhumanities to which they are naturally prone and
inclined, and trusts that from these "this Island through the blessing of God
may be preserved and the lives and fortunes of the King's subjects secured,
besides at the same time providing properly for the negroes, and other slaves,
and guarding them from cruelties and insolences." No negroes or other slaves
are to leave on Sabbath days, holy days, or any other time, to go out to their
plantations, except such as are domestic servants and wear a livery, or unless
they carry a ticket under the master's or mistress's hand, or some other person
by his or her appointment. They are forbidden to carry clubs, wooden swords,
or other mischievous or dangerous weapons, or to use or keep drums, horns,
or other loud instruments ; or to give sign or notice to one another of their
" wicked designs or purposes." Any negro or slave
offering any violence to a Christian by striking or
the like is to be severely whipped by the constable,
and for his second offence of that nature, not only
to be severely whipped and burnt in some part of
his face with a hot iron, but to have his nose slit:
unless, of course, such striking of a Christian be in
the lawful defence of a master or mistress, or of
their goods. The Act refers to the many heinous
and grievous crimes such as murders, burglaries,
highway robbery, rape, and incendiarism committed
" many times by negroes and other slaves," as well
as their "stealing, killing, or maiming horses, mares,
gelding-cattle, or sheep." The owner of any slave
executed judicially for his crimes is to be com-
pensated by the State for the loss of the slave, 190, a kakjara negro, fuom
" which value shall never exceed the sum of £2$ '^•°^'^ coast hi.vtkrland
sterling."* No person "of the Hebrew nation" a " Korannn^^^mgro m jta«ry
was allowed to keep or employ more than one

negro or other slave. The Act also provided for the chase of the runaway
negroes who had taken to the woods and other fastnesses of this island, fifty
shillings sterling being given as the reward for every negro taken alive or dead.
" If any negro or other slave under punishment by his master or at his order
unfortunately shall suffer in life or liberty, which seldom happens," no person
whatsoever shall be liable to any fine therefrom. But if any man shall of
wantonness, or only of bloody-mindedness, or cruel intention, wilfully kill a
negro or other slave of his own, he shall pay into the public treasury ;f 15
sterling ; but if he shall so kill another man's, he shall pay the owner of the
negro double the value, and into the public treasury, ^£25 sterling; and he
shall further, by the next justice of the peace, be bound over to good behaviour
during the pleasure of the Governor and Council, and not be liable to any

' All throi^h the second half of the seventeenth century there were of course many English, Irish,
and Welsh indentured apprentices {practically slaves) and poUiical prisoners who were sold as slaves by
the British Government and were worse treated than were the n^oes.

* In the eightMDth ceniuiy the value giadiially rose 10 ;^6o and £100 here and elsewhere in the
West Indies.

:RY UNI

tbes once a
: the women
tx went quit
3^iatdy aftt
■c?5, cominen
f have decla
-laad, as wd
s sennons,
j-j^es thereof
es in privj
TC«ring to
:Q3.tk)n of <
all persons

UNDER BRITISH : BARBADOS, ETC. 215

:e a year — drawers and caps for the men, and petticoats and
jmen, regulations ignored by the planters, whose male slaves
quite naked.'

after the accession of Charles 11 an Act had been passed in
mencing : " Whereas divers opinionated and self-conceited
eclared an absolute dislike to the government of the Church

well as by their aversion and utter neglect or refusal of the
IS, and administration of the sacraments and other rites and
eof used in their several parish churches, as by holding con-
ivate houses and other places, scandalising ministers, and
3 seduce others to their erroneous opinions upon pretence of
F Church government in England," etc. This Act went on to
ns to give due obedience to the government of the Church of

igZ. A WINDMILL AND SUCAR FACTOftV, BARBADOS

another Act passed in the same year (1660) ordained that all
overseers of families shall have prayers openly said or read every

evening "with his family," upon penalty of forty pounds of
; half to the informer, the other half to the public treasury of this
ill masters of families should regularly attend their parish church
amilies." "If a servant make default of repairing to the church
the true intent of this Act, and if the fault be in his master, then
i to pay ten pounds of cotton for every such default ; if the
1 the servant, he is to be punished at the discretion of the next
le peace. Servants and children are to be instructed in the
■ of the Christian religion. The churchwardens of every parish
vided with a strong pair of stocks, to be placed near the church or
he constables, churchwardens, and sidesmen shall in some time of

fishermen of noith-eut Barbados at th« present day are frequently quite nude when

iRY U^

Here ar

ain Cook ; i
>s, heard 1 1
a in agon
:e door at.
le negress
::& her w

^BRITISH: BARBADOS, ETC. 217

examples culled from many attested episodes of

jor Fitch, passing in the night a plantation-house in

:ks of
broke
iH un-
to the
:r was
ch of
pro-
anity.

that
her

ably
.pile
f he
inly
for

pril
:e's

;On '94- A SIVBNTKBNTH-CiNTUBV CHURCH (? ST. MARY's)

:he '" "'"""'E'OWN, BARBADOS

of General Tottenham: "In the year 1780 tn
srbados, I saw a youth about nineteen, entirely
:d, with an iron collar about his neck, having
long projecting spikes. His body both before
i^ehind was covered with wounds. His belly
thighs were almost cut to pieces with running
s all over them ; and a finger might have been
in some of their weals. He could not sit down
use his hinder part was mortified ; and it was
ssible for him to lie down on account of the
js of his collar." On inquiries it was found that
kretched boy had been nearly whipped to death
savage master and then abandoned to starve,
le in Bridgetown took any notice of the incident
he master went unpunished,
>r a hundred years slaves in Barbados were
ited. tortured, gibbeted alive and left to starve
ith, burnt alive, (lung into coppers of boiling
■ The l^al limit.

ERY 1]

tervals of
f the negT
ds perislie

>:i5 militia c

\ m
toseiTei

r Tcgimentsi

SH : BARBADOS, ETC. 219

nine u^hen
:ion. And
hurricanes

3 tiwelve " regi-

-my List of 1798

and ^Tcst India
ilitia corps called
gimenls took, part
;>utch, and Danish

>f vfhich had been
jscendant of to-d»y
<luccd and reorgan-
iViiities, they became
r lV\e officers of which
ts in their midst. In
; one or other of the
he West India Regi-
I^eone. and fiom 1850
le fiiiiish Govemmenl
' SiettB Leone, and in
atta\ion is slationed in
II a Leone. The toUl

sque, yel business-like,
ptactically the Inven-
ned by Colonel A. R.
,8. The Queen had been
»c French Zouaves, and
, het West India regi-
hem. But I have ascer-
laiy Opetationi Ihal the

first proposal I
Regimenl oi iis
Toitable British
A frican dress

: the West India

inappropTK

: from Major Ord in
1856. His proposal was approved and
signed by the Queen, but as his suggested
style of uniform was not adopted it is per-
missible to suppose that the Queen may
have then put farwacd the idea of a Zouave

'i. The late Colonel A. B. Ellis (well iinown
for his elhoi^raphical studies of West
Africa), and more recently Colonel A. R.
Loscombe and Mr. A. E. Aspinall, have
written on the history and qualifications of
these remarkable negro soldiers, who could,
if we wished, play a considerable part in
maintaining the British position in Itopical
America, if it were ever menaced.

For the employment of negro soldiers
(mainly West Indians) by the French in
Europe during the Napoleonic wars, see a
very interesting article in Qiutliens DipU-
matiqius <t Celeiiiales for October i6th,
1909. From hints given here and there,
il is evident that France looks upon Senegal
and Southern Algeria (where the oases con-
tain a more than half negro population) as
valuable recruiting grounds, and intends
Ihence to reinforce her home army shoold
she again be invaded l:^ a foreign ertemy.

SLAVERY UNDER BRITISH : BARBADOS, ETC. 221

The abolition of the slave-trade in 1808 effected a slight amelioration
in the condition of the Barbadian slaves, since owners now began to care
more for the physical and moral welfare of their n^roes. At the same time it
checked a process of manumission which had been going on for a long time,
prompted by conscience, kindliness, or shirking of responsibility. Before the
commencement of the nineteenth century it had become a frequent practice
on the part of owners to turn adrift or grant freedom to slaves who were sick,
aged, or mutilated, and these starving people were becoming an inconvenient
burden on the rates. To check this, and also the increase of the politically-
inconvenient class of free blacks and mulattoes, the House of Assembly passed
a law (similar to those in force in Jamaica, the Bahamas, and most other
West India islands) obliging every person manumitting a slave to pay j£300
into the Treasury for a female and A2oo for a male, so that the freed woman
might receive £tS and the
freed man ;fi2 a year for
their maintenance.

Emancipation was in the
air. The abolition of the
slave-trade was obviously
only preliminary to the
abolition of slavery. The
Barbados blacks became
impatient. Though better
treated they were harder
worked than ever. A free
mulatto, Washington Frank-
lin, in 1815 went about
among the slaves quoting
the speeches denouncing
slavery which were being
delivered in England, and joi. jhl housk ok assembly in briu-.ktoi

pointing to the success One of iheaJdcupuliiuntiilliouKiiiilhc world

which had attended the

Negro rebellion in Haiti. On April 14th, 1816, the slaves rose in the parish of
St. Philip in South- Eastern Barbados and commenced burning cane-fields, wind-
mills, houses, and stores. They did not apparently kill many (? or any) of the
white settlers, who were mostly " quittes pour la peur," The militia and soldiery
promptly dealt with the rising, which was subdued in two or three days with
only one soldier killed on the British side, but with great loss of life to the
negroes. A number of prisoners were hanged on the estates they had ravaged,
and a hundred and twenty -three were deported as convicts to British
Honduras.

But this slave revolt shook up the callous Barbadian Government The
slave laws of the colony were consolidated and ameliorated in 1817, In 1823
an association was formed, with the Governor at its head, for the purpose
of giving instruction in religion to the slaves. In 1831, however, a step was
taken of a far-reaching importance almost greater and more beneficial at that
period than the actual emancipation of the slaves [which followed in 1834-40] ;
and this was the carrying through the House of Assembly by Mr. Robert
Haynes a bill repealing the political disabilities of free negroes or men of colour.
From 1832 all free male negroes or mulattoes have had the same electoral and

SLAVERY UNDER BRITISH: BARBADOS, ETC. 223

an Executive Committee which really carries on the government of the island
and initiates legislation, leaving to the popular Assembly the voting of
supplies and of the laws, which last must be approved by the Legislative
Council and be subject to a veto from the Crown. The British Govern-
ment appoints the principal public officers (except the Treasurer, who is an
official selected by the House of Assembly). The Executive Committee
is composed of the Governor, his Executive Council, one member of the
Legislative Council, and four members of the House of Assembly nomi-
nated by the Governor. On this Executive Committee there is at present

one negro, and there are seven coloured men or negroes in the House of
Assembly.

Education in Barbados is not compulsory, but about 75 per cent of the
negroes and coloured people born since i860 are able to read and write. The
educational system of the island is under a Board appointed by the Governor.
The Bishop of Barbados presides over this Board of Education at the present
time, and the district control of the primary schools is vested in the Church of
England clergyman of the parish.

At present there are 166 primary schools with a roll of 25,178 scholars
(i 5,300 in average attendance), costing the Barbadian Government £1 1,000 per
annum. Another £7000 to ;^8ooo is spent by the same Government on higher-

224 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

grade education at Harrison College,' Bridgetown ; at The Lodge ; and (for girls)
at Queen's College. There are also two fine second-grade schools for boys and
one for girls. The colony provides four scholarships annually (through the
Education Board), each of the handsome value of ;ti7S annually for _/(>«r years.
These are tenable at an English University, or at an Agricultural or Technical
College in America — a broad-minded provision. The Government of Barbados
also places four Island scholarships of £^o a year each at the disposal of
Codrington College, to be reserved for natives of the Island.

Codrington College was founded in 1712, on the bequest of Colonel Chris-
topher Codrington, who died in 1710. He had bequeathed to the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel 763 acres of land, with buildings, mills, 100
cattle and 315 slaves. The
Society was to keep up the sugar
plantations with 300 slaves, but
was to found a college wherein
" physic, chirurgery and divinity "
were to be taught. Of course
during the eighteenth century
instruction was only given to
white students, and at first
theology (of a very barren type)
was the only thing taught; but
later on law and medicine were
added. Candidates were pre-
pared here for holy orders.

The College was at first much
hampered by debt (in spite of
the generous contributions of its
founder's son, William Codring-
ton). The income derived from
the sugar estate was about ;f 2000,
but the cost of the buildings
saddled the Trust with debt-
Even after it was in full activity
(1748 and onwards), mismanage-
ment and continual disasters from
hurricanes abated its usefulness.
204. BH A A jj^ 1813 the number of scholars

had fallen to twelve; but in this year a minister was obtained to give oral
instruction to negroes (as much as might be imparted under the slavery laws).
Improvements were effected in 1825, and in 1830 the institution was solemnly
opened as a college, well equipped with hall, library, chapel, etc. The very
next year nearly everything was blown to the ground by a hurricane! Once

' Harrison's Ciianiniat School ot College was founded in 1733 by Thomas Harrison, a merchant
of Bridgetown, for ihe educalion of lwent>-l')iir indigent (while) biiys of the parish. They were to be
taughl reading, writing, arithmetic, Latin sn<l Greek, without fee or chaige. Outside these Iwenty-four,
paying scholars mighi lie received also into the school. After 1840, more or less, coloured 01 negro boys
were also admitted and now form the preponderating element. The teaching in this school has been
reporlcd as excellent by several visitors, and it musi be so from the number of its students, white and
coloured, who have distinguished themselves at Oxford and Cambridge.

'' By the latter part of the nineteenth century the sugar estate had become so depredated in value
Ihat an appeal for funds became necessary. Subscriptions raised in England by the West India Com-
mittee saved the College from closing ils doors.

SLAVERY UNDER BRITISH: BARBADOS, ETC. 225

more a financial effort was made — verily the White Man does not acknowledge
defeat in the West Indies (Talk about languor ! Where else does he stand up
so bravely to the Devil of Reactionary Nature?) — and the limestone walls of
the College rose anew. Its present appearance has been compared to New
Buildings of Magdalen College, Oxford.

From about 1840, negro or coloured students began to appear among the
alumni ; now they form the large majority of the students at what is the oldest
university in the West Indies. Since 1875 Codrington Collie has been
affiliated with Durham University ; but on visiting Durham a year or two back
it struck me that the graduates of
Codrington [though they appreciated
the distinction of being associated
with the most picturesque cathedral
town in England] found neither the
teaching of its sleepy University nor
its northern climate attuned to the
requirements of West Indians or the
West Indies.

The bulk of the modern Barba-
dians (over 156,000) belong to the
Church of England. There are some
15,000 Wesleyans, 7000 Moravians,
and 816 Roman Catholics. Very
little superstition remains among the
coloured people ; but occasionally
there are proceedings in the police-
courts against Obia men and women
for malicious poisoning of animals or
plants. Sexual morality is perhaps
better than in the other West India
islands. Serious crime is very rare
(among the natives) ; out of a negro
and coloured population of about
180,000 there is a daily average of 105. "BRnzy Barbados"

only 217 in prison. 315 negro con- Tbe pcr»n dopwkd or bit hut by BMbwIiu) »pliTn u

stables and white officers suffice ^^lii^JETo^h™ hte'i^'nSl'n j2X^ "" '"'"*'
to maintain order. I found these

Barbados policemen as civil, obliging, spruce, and intelligent as their comrades
of Jamaica — which is high praise; for the Jamaica constabulary is only to be
matched by the police of the United Kingdom.

About 74,000 acres of Barbados— a little less than two-thirds of its area —
are under cultivation ; 35,000 in sugar-cane, and nearly 20,000 in cotton. The
greater part of these sugar and cotton plantations belong to white men, resident
and absentee, and the coloured inhabitants do not own much of the soil of the
island. As a rule they work for fair wages on the white planters' land.

The coloured Barbadians seem to the passing tourist to be a most indus-
trious people, both men and women. ^ They make rather picturesque pottery
out of porous clay; quarry stone; fish; breed poultry, pigs, goats, and other
live-stock ; cultivate kitchen -gardens ; ride as jockeys at the races ; fill all the

SLAVERY UNDER BRITISH : BARBADOS, ETC. 227

brooches, etc. etc. I know it is the fashion to laugh at such arts at present as
not to be dissociated from the 'forties and 'fifties of the last century; but
personally I think this modern work in
Barbados is often beautiful, and instances a
remarkable taste in colour and design which
possesses an originality of its own. I shall
not live to see it, nor will most of my middle-
aged readers ; but I am sure that the Negro
Race some day, or its hybrid with the
White man, is going to astonish the world
in the arts of Design and Music.

Since the abolition of slavery the general
progress of Barbados towards established
prosperity and well-being has been steady,
except for the unpreventable ravages of
occasional hurricanes. The total negro
and negroid population in 1834 was about
100,000 (in that year there were 83,176
slaves who were emancipated at an average
compensation of ;£"20 14s. each). This
with some fluctuations has risen since to

about 180,000 at the present day, in spite 207. h. b. cRBsiDBhT arthur Barclay,
of the considerable migrations from the "'' "-ibbria

island to other parts of America — some- '^"""™ bKitfranPopo.Diho^ '""""""'
times 18,000 persons in a year. Barbados
is to the seas of Central America what Malta is to the Mediterranean, a hive

: THB HARBOUK OF BRIDGBTOWN

228 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

of industrious people swarming out from their tiny island home (Barbados is
about the size^ of the Isle of Wight, and Malta half that area) to colonise,
trade, teach, preach, serve the British Government, work in all careers, and
labour with their hands and heads. A poor mulatto boy of Barbadian birth —
Reeves — rose to be Sir Conrad Reeves and Chief Justice of Barbados, winning
in that capacity the universal regard of black, white, and coloured. A negro
boy born in Barbados in 1854 migrated to Liberia in 1865, entered the public
service of the State in 1878, and ascended through many different grades of
office till he became the President of this negro republic in 1904, showing
himself through six recent years of difficult and critical work to be a states-
man, a diplorhatist, and a highly educated man of the world.

The present commercial value of Barbados is approximately £2^14.0,000
per annum, of which £1,200,000 represents imports and £^4^0,000 exports
In the palmiest days of Slavery in the eighteenth century the exports were
valued at scarcely more than £600,000 and the imports at £4^0,000. So that
under freedom and free labour the population and commerce of Barbados have
more than doubled.

The British Leeward Islands — now associated in one Federal
Government of five presidencies and including a total area of 714 square miles
— have only shared the same unity of administration since 1832. At present
they consist of the Virgin group, Anguilla, Barbuda, St. Christopher (called for
short St. Kitts), Nevis, Antigua, Montserrat, and Dominica. St. Christopher
vies with Barbados in being the oldest British West India colony, having been
first settled by Englishmen in 1623.^ All the other islands mentioned except
Dominica were included in the ** Leeward Charaibee" Government (the centre
of which was Nevis Island, near St. Christopher) in 1672, during the reign
of Charles II. Antigua afterwards became the seat of government, and from
1816 to 1832 St. Christopher and the adjacent islands and Virgin group became a
separate government. Lovely, reluctant, Frenchified Dominica did not till
1756-63 become a British possession, nor was it grouped with the Leeward
Islands till 1832.

Into all these islands (except Dominica) negro slaves had been introduced
during the middle of the seventeenth century, experiments of a treacherous
nature having first been made with Amerindians. To St. Christopher, Antigua,
and Montserrat a good deal of white convict labour was directed between 1650
and 1700. Many Irish rebels were sent here (or came after the battle of
Limerick expressly to annoy), and it is stated by all who have visited
Montserrat that the negro population of that island speaks English with a
strong Irish brogue and in a very interesting dialect (preserving old English and
some Irish words), derived from the several thousand Irish settlers or convicts
inhabiting Montserrat two hundred years ago.

As early as 166 1 exception was taken to the doctrines of the Quakers as
likely to inspire both white and black slaves with discontent and a struggle for
freedom. In that year Quakers were forbidden access to the island of Nevis,
and in 1677 stny master of a vessel bringing a Quaker to Nevis was to be heavily
fined. Quakers were similarly driven away from Antigua and the Bermudas.

^ Its area is 1 66 square miles.

^ The first colonising expedition in that year was fitted out by Mr. Ralph Merrifield, of London, and
led by Sir Thomas Warner, and the first English name given to the island was '* Merwar's Hope," from
the first syllables of the two founders' names.

SLAVERY UNDER BRITISH : BARBADOS, ETC. 229

There was considerable forced and free white colonisation, even though the
valuable Quakers were kept out, but negro labour proved to be the only way of
cultivating sugar in the Leeward Islands, and by the close of the eighteenth
century there were some forty thousand negro slaves in St. Kitts alone. It
was here that the Rev. James Ramsay lived for nineteen years as chaplain
and studied the condition of the slaves. After his return to England, and
when vicar of Teston in Kent, he wrote the celebrated book An Esiay on the
Treatment and Conversion of the African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies.
which was of such use to Clarkson and other reformers, He was also one of

109. A SUCAR HILL AND OX-TEAM WITH SUCAR CANS, S

the witnesses whose evidence was laid before the House of Commons in the
debates of 1791.

The round, mountain island of Nevis lying close to the attenuated extremity
of St. Kitts was during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries a favourite
health resort in the summer time for the white planters of the West Indies, and
all the year round a great slave-mart and rendezvous of the slave-trading ships.

The treatment of slaves in the Northern Leeward Islands (Dominica was not
associated with the Leeward Islands until 1832) was somewhat better than in
Jamaica or Barbados, British West India.

Antigua was the first of the Leeward Islands to amend the position of the
negro slaves in the eye of the law by passing an Act (about 1787) which gave
accused negroes trial by jury for all serious offences, and allowed in the case of

SLAVERY UNDER BRITISH; BARBADOS, ETC. 231

be paid a dollar a year as long as they so lived together. As in Jamaica (after
1798) and most of the other islands of the British West Indies, a female slave
who had six children living, born in regular cohabitation, was to be relieved of
all but light work. Any owner of slaves or overseer, or other white man who
should attempt to induce any female slave to be unfaithful to her husband was
to be fined ;£'ioo. No slave was to be prevented by his or her master from
receiving religious instruction, or attending church or chapel on Sunday at any
place of worship held by the regularly established clergy, or any Christian sect
tolerated in the Leeward Islands. Nevertheless, very strong opposition was
shown to the creation or increase of a class of free negroes who might ask for
civic rights. In 1802 a law was passed for the Northern Leeward Islands
requiring the owner who wished to register the manumission of his slave to pay

into the public treasury the sum of jf 500 (in the case of a slave not native to
the Leeward Islands, j^iooo). Any one who willed the freedom of his slaves
after his death must provide froiri out of his estate ^^500 in current money, to
be paid into the public treasury for each manumitted slave. [The Legislature of
each island might, however, if it saw fit, forego these conditions.] In 1828 the
free negroes and men of colour were admitted to the same civic and political
rights as the whites in all the Northern Leeward Islands, and Antigua liberated
all its slaves in the autumn of 1833 without waiting for compensation or
asking for apprenticeship.

After the slaves were emancipated they were in time possessed of sufficient
property or employment^ to qualify in some cases as voters for the elected
members of the different Legislatures of Antigua, St. Kitts, and Dominica.
But between 1877 and 1898 the elective principle was done away with (through
the influence of the white colonists and largely to avoid the problem of the

ITISH: BARBADOS, ETC. 233

ue and the Windward Islands farther to the

> ma.gnificent.

trongly occupied by Carib Amerindians [who

■re when they were forced to leave St Christo-
je] that both France and England hesitated to
ich at the close of the seventeenth century won
in number of French settlers to establish them-
ly eighteenth century the French planters intro-
slaves. The British followed the French, but

to consider the island as neutral ; until it was
7 5<3 and annexed at the Peace of 1763. During
i\t\ica had become thoroughly Francicised. The
sh annexation may have amounted to io,cxx}.

sit liking for their French masters and were not at all ■
British taskmasters. The French naturally were out-
island separating Guadeloupe from Martinique.
ecaptured it in 1778. Nevertheless a good many
;d on their plantations, depending on the guarantees of
m made between Governor Stuart and the Marquis de
; spirit nor letter of this treaty was fairly observed by
or, Duchilleau, who, not satisfied with making the posi-
lerally intolerable, armed many of the slaves, and still
oes of the mountains, who attacked and destroyed some
,ons and killed a few of the planters. Although the

iirrukila ind /, dd'uMhiima). The uneaUble Iguana of Jamaica, Cuba,
miiala : ind lUl oi Hispaniola is Melofoceros cortmtus (G. A. Boulenger),

lind the ficsli of the large, handsome lizards of the Iguana genus (which
South Amelia) eilrmcly good. lis laslc is a hlend of turtle and chicken,
muidaEd great dainties by the Dominican negioes, who also eat large buU-

borlDg bcellti.

232 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

coloured voter) ; and now all the members of the five separate island Councils'
are nominated by the Governor, and the non-official councillors themselves
co-opt representatives on the central Legislature for the entire colony.

The island of DOMINICA is one of the most remarkable in the long chain of
the Lesser Antilles. It is extremely mountainous, though the highest point
of its mountains (Grand Diablotin) is barely 5000 feet in altitude. Active
volcanic agencies are still observable throughout the island ; there are numerous
hot sulphur springs, and there is a boiling lake. The total area of the island is
about 304 square miles,* but of this, even at the present day, barely a third
is under cultivation. The rainfall appears to be of an average 118 inches per
annum, varying from 182 inches on the eastern side to a bare 50 inches on the
western shore. The innumerable streams which descend from the rugged
mountains in beautiful cascades are remarkably well supplied with edible fresh-
water fish and with crayfish. Land-crabs, apparently of three kinds, swarm in

211. THE PRINCIPAL LANO-CHAB (gECAKCINUS LATERALIS) OF THE WEST INtllBS
Specially common, wid »ugbl after u a delicisui ulicle of food, in Dominick

the mountain forests and on the coast-lands, and in former times iguana lizards
were very abundant* There appear to be no venomous snakes in Dominica

' (ll The Virgin Islands of Toitola. Virgin Gord&, Anegida, Sombrero, e(c. ; (H St. Ctiristophet (Si.
Kills), Nevis, and Anguilia ; (3} Aniigua, Redonda, and Barbuda ; [4) Montserrat ; (5) Dominica.

' It has uDlil recenliy been underslaled at 291. The total acreage is 191,140 acres (The llonble.
Douglas Young).

' The land-crabs of Dominica are classed by the native* in three sorts, the while, the black, Ihe red.
[These are two varieties of Cecariinus laliralis, and Pseudofhelphusa Jenta/a.] The While land-crabs are
regarded as poisonous becaiine ihey feeil — or have fed quite recently — on the blossoms and leaves of the
Manchineal i/fifi/'amane mam ine/la). This is a tree growing in ihe marshy diatiicta along ihe coasts of
Ihe West India Islands and or Central America, lis leaves, bark, and blossoms are extremely poisonous.
The tree grows sometimes to as much as forty leel in height. The water below it is rendered poisonous
by its decaying leaves. The flowers are a sickly yellow colour, something like those of poppies, but
ralher larger, and the poison is derived from the milky juice or sap of the Iwanches, liaves. and flowers.
All other creatures but these land-crabs »eeni to find the Manchineal a deadly poison But the bark of
this tree is fibrous and makes eicelleni rope, and the trunk and branches are very similar to cork wood, as
light, duiable, and useful for floats and buoys.

The Black crabs are said to be eacellenl and quite safe for food, if taken from places far away from the
Manchineal trees. They are very fal when in season (this is during ihe winter monlhs when ihey ate in
their burrows and moulting their shellsl, and the females are full of a rich, glutinous spawn which is de-
Scribed as " perfectly delicious." The Red crabs are much smaller, but are also wholesome and delicious
10 eat, especially when full of spawn. A pepper-pot is made liy the negroes of Dominica with the flesh of
ihe black crabs as its l)a«is, mixed with a kind of cabbage and capsicum pods, and eaten with rice or a
pudding made of ma ice flour.

Another negro dminly throughout Ihe Leeward and Windward West India Islands is, or used to he.

riSH : BAE

; and the Wind

nagniflcent.

3nBly occupied I

when they were

j tha.t both Frani

1 at the close of t

number of Frenc
eighteenth centur
ives. The Britisl
3 consider the isl
9 and annexed at
ica had become th
annexation may

iking for their French
ish taskmasters. The
ind separating Guadelc
atured it in 1778. f
n their plantations, def
lade between Governor
;rit nor letter of this tr
Duchilleau, who, not sat
lly intolerable, armed n
>r the mountains, who a

and killed a few of t

Ho ind /. iklkalinima). The
1 ,* and ihit of Hupaniela is jl/r.
the flesh of the large, handsome
Ameriu) etlremely good. Its
-id gi»t diiatics by the Domini

234 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

English regained possession of Dominica in 17S3, this ferment amongst the
negro population continued. The latter, though many of their ancestors had
deserted from Martinique owing to the oppressive regulations in force there,
were exceedingly French in sympathies, and belonged as well to the Roman
Catholic Church. They combined under a leader named Parcel in 1791 and
1794, murdered a number of English planters,
and gave cause for much anxiety to the British
authorities in Dominica, who had great difficulty
in subduing the insurrection. Curiously enough,
by so acting the Dominican n^roes were the
principal cause of the arrest in England of the
Anti-Slavery and Anti-Slave-Trade movement.
The news of this negro war in Dominica (to-
gether with the anxiety caused by foreign affairs)
brought the Anti-Slave-Trade proceedings in
the House of Commons to a temporary close,
and delayed for something like fourteen years
any drastic reforms in this direction.

In the eighteenth century and down to 189S,
the white settlers of Dominica (and later on all
persons possessing the requisite qualifications)
enjoyed representative institutions, and in 1863
these were consolidated into a single Chamber
combining the Council and House of Repre-
sentatives, nine of the twenty-eight members of
this Chamber being nominated by the Governor
and nineteen elected by the people. In 1865
it was attempted by the British Government
to abolish the electoral franchise and to make
Dominica a Crown Colony. But this attempt
roused such bitter opposition on the part of
the populace that it was abandoned in favour
of a reduction of members of the Legisla-
tive Chamber and the bare provision for
a Government majority. This was further
altered in 1871, when Dominica and the other
Leeward Islands were more closely united
in a single Federal Colony. The seat of
214. A COLOURED WOMAN OF Govemmcnt was transferred to the far more
ShowiniDiiMi^of rl^ch Ciuib,iind English Antigua, and eventually a Commis-
NigraWood ' ' sioner (instead of a Governor) was placed at

the head of the Dominican Administration.
The island Legislature still persisted, but many of the affairs of Dominica
were now dealt with by the Federal Executive and Legislative Councils for
all the Leeward Islands. These last were modified by the Act of 1899,
which did away with the directly elected element in the composition of
the Federal legislative body, substituting eight members elected by the non-
oflicial nominated members of the Councils of Antigua, St. Kitts, and Dominica.
As regards the partly elective Legislating Assembly of Dominica, this in
1898 was abolished and a Crown Colony system substituted, in which the
six non-oBicial members (two or three of them negroes or negroids at the

SLAVERY UNDER BRITISH : BARBADOS. ETC. 235

present time) were nominated by the Governor and not elected by the people,
who have now no franchise in legislation. There is representative administra-
tion of municipal affairs at the capital, Roseau (the Town Board); all the
elective members are coloured. When employed in positions of trust they do
not prove more dishonest than their white fellow-citizens.

The present acting assistant to the Attorney- General is a full-blooded
negro {a native of Barbados). A dark-coloured man (a Dominican) was
Registrar and Provost Marshal from 1886 to 1891, and also acted as Chief
Justice of the island in 1873, and as Solicitor-General and Attorney-General of
the Leeward Islands on several
occasions from 1881 to 1886.

There is no doubt that the
deep impression made by the
French on the character and
manners of the Dominican ne-
groes in the first half of the
eighteenth century led to their
being, until quite recently, very
discontented Britishsubjects. The
island was a second time invaded
by the French under Victor
Hugues in 1795, and fresh en-
couragement was then given tn
the maroon negroes to continue
their attacks on the British resi-
dents. Another serious French
invasion occurred in 1805. The
capital, Roseau, was burnt by
negroes and French soldiers, and
the latter were only persuaded to
leave the island by the payment
of a large sum of money. By
1813, however, after indescribable
difficulties in a country where
transport, even at the present
day, can only be effected on the ,,, , ,.„, ,„ ™„,„,^.

, ' '. , / , , , *'S' « LANK IN 1>Oh1N1CA

shoulders of men or the backs

of sure-footed mules, the strength of the maroon negroes was overcome. This
stru^ic between the British and the runaway negroes of Dominica had lasted
for forty years, and had completely exhausted the resources of the island and
arrested its commercial development.

In 1844 a rebellion known as " La guerre negre" broke out as the result of
an attempt on the part of the British Administration to take a census. The
real cause was the irritation of the negroes, many of them recently emancipated
from slavery, at the attempt to reserve for the Government a strip of land
about a hundred feet in width all round the shore of the island. The negroes
thought that they were to be driven inland away from the sea-coast, and then
to be once more enslaved by law. In 1847 there were again riots, this time
caused by the quarrels between the British settlers, who were mainly Protes-
tants, and the French Creole planters and French and Irish Roman Catholic
priests, together with the mass of the negro population, who were all Roman

236 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Catholics. It is observable, in fact, down to the very close of the nineteenth
century, that the Roman Catholic Church in Dominica was steadily anti-
British in sentiment, and seems to have worked up the feeling of the negro
population of the island in the direction of a possible reunion with France.
This impression gave great acerbity to the debates in the Legislative
Assembly, as the Protestants became ultra-Protestant in their desire not to
weaken the British connection, while the Catholics became passionately
Catholic and exaggeratedly French. More trouble connected with land occurred
iri 1853, and again in 1863, 1869, 1886, and finally 1893 I when in a serious riot
(also due to the attempt of the local Administration to uphold the right of the
Government to vacant land) four or five negroes were killed by police or blue-
jackets. Much bitterness also had arisen between the Governor of the Leeward
Islands and educated people of all parties in Dominica as to the application of
public funds to road-making and other public works. It is difficult to say who
was in the right, because it was really Nature that was in the wrong, terrible
floods having wrecked much of the road and bridge work.

The British Government sent out in 1893 a Royal Commission under Sir
Robert Hamilton to inquire into the cause of these disturbances and the
friction between the Administration and the people. This Commission produced
an excellent and instructive report ; and many of its recommendations were
carried out by the Imperial Government. Since the close of the nineteenth
century Dominica has been far more contented and peaceable throughout its
diverse population than in any former period of its long and troubled history.
It is interesting to note that it still retains an indigenous Carib popula-
tion numbering about 300, and dwelling in specially allotted land in the
north-eastern portion of the island. The population of the island at the
present day (33»cxx)) consists of about 500 whites, 400 Caribs (mixed with
negro, but also of pure blood), 100 East Indians or Chinese, about 24,000
negroes, and 8000 negroids, nearly the whole of these speaking a French-Creole
language (similar to that of Martinique and Haiti) and only a small proportion
understanding English.

The " colour question " exists, as in other West Indian colonies, though not
perhaps to such a marked degree, because of the paucity of whites in Dominica.
There have been no marriages between black and white during the last twenty-
seven years, but white men (chiefly Englishmen) have occasionally married
coloured girls, and a small section of the best born and educated coloured
people have always moved in good society with the whites.

The criminal statistics of Dominica are evidence for the good character of
its people. Sexual crimes, murder, burglaries, or other grave offiences against
property or person are of very rare occurrence. But the marriage rate is low,
and the proportion of illegitimate births is nearly fifty-nine per cent (1908).
Illiteracy is very marked, in spite of the fact that there is a compulsory Education
Act and that the Government maintains elementary schools throughout the
island which aflbrd free education to all children between the ages of five and
twelve. It is stated that only ten per cent of the adult negroes can read and
write. The coloured people send their children to England (mostly) to be
educated.

The principal avocations of the negroes are agriculture (many of them are
peasant proprietors), mason's work, carpentry, petty trading, shop-keeping,
school-teaching, and medicine. There are four negro doctors in Dominica,
one of whom is a Government District Medical Officer. The police force is

238

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

perhaps elsewhere by the Imperial Agricultural Department, which has its head-
quarters in Barbados. This work has created or revived an interest in the planting
of Sea Island cotton among the whites and the coloured people in the Virgin
Islands, and cotton has almost completely ousted sugar in Montserrat. In
Tortola (the largest of the Virgins) there is a singular abundance of fibrous plants
— agaves, tillandsias, bromelias, etc. (relations, of the pineapple). Cacao and
lime-juice (from the small green lime, Citrus niedicus) are the chief growths and
exports of Dominica and Montserrat ; Dominica also sends coffee, nutmegs, spices,
sugar, vegetable oils, timber, and fruit. Pineapples are exported from Antigua
and Montserrat ; sugar, molasses, rum, arrowroot, and tobacco from St. Kitts
and Nevis ; the tiny islet of Sombrero (only added to the British dominions in
1904) exports valuable phosphate of lime, so also does Barbuda; salt is "raked"
and exported from Barbuda, St. Kitts, and Anguilla ; cattle and horses are bred
in Barbuda — the last of the undeveloped, proprietary islands. Anguilla also
breeds and exports cattle, ponies, and turkeys. There are wild peacocks
in Antigua and wild fallow-deer (or roebuck ?) in Barbuda.^

So that surely the negro and negroid should find enough to occupy them
profitably in these paradisiacal Leeward Islands, without going elsewhere to
earn a livelihood ; and the population, instead of decreasing in the Antigua and
St. Kitts groups, should increase steadily and wax in comfort, wealth, and
intelligence? Where does the weakness lie? The five or six thousand whites
seem to be languid, and the "poor" whites to have inbred too much and
lost their stamina (so, at least, one is told). But the 175,000 vigorous negroes
and negroids of the Leeward Islands should become a million in number
and still have plenty of room and plenty to do. What is lacking in the
Leeward State? Want of a compulsory and appropriate education, I
suspect.

^ The island of Barbuda within the government of the Leeward Islands is peculiar in that it is
private property^ ostensibly belonging to the English iamily of Codrington, whose rights descend from the
seventeenth century. Actually, it is administered, not by the British Government, but by two con-
cessionnaires in whom are vested the rights of the Codringtons. It is rather a large island compared to
some of its neighbours, having an area of about 140 square miles, with a negro population of 770, and
a handful of whites. Its surface is low (the highest point being below 200 feet in altitude), but it
is remarkably fertile and well watered, and a good deal of its area is covered with fine forests. It is,
indeed, described as being one of the most beautiful islands of the Antilles, but its cotuessUnnairgs do not
favour immigration, and only encourage cattle*breedine and the exportation of phosphates of lime.
A French authority estimates Barbuda could easily sustain 100,000 inhabitants. If this is true, it seems
irreconcilable with the policy of the twentieth century that the agents of the Codrington family should
continue to lock up in a condition of uselessness one of the best islands of the Leeward group. They
ought to be all expropriated at a fair valuation by the Leeward Federal Government, and Barbuda be
thrown open to general settlement.

CHAPTER X

SLAVERY UNDER THE BRITISH— Cor^timeJ

JAMAICA

JAMAICA occupies an important place in the past history and in the
future prospects of the Negro in the New World. This island of 4207
square miles, lying nearly in the middle of the Mexico-Caribbean Sea.
almost equidistant from the north coast of South America and the south
coast of North America, between Central America and the outer ring of the
Lesser Antilles, was discovered by Columbus in 1494, and was apparently first
called by the Spanish " Isla de Sant' lago," but afterwards by its native name
of Xaymaca.^

The island was then well populated by Arawak Amerindians of the same
race as those of Cuba, Hispaniola, and the rest of the Antilles, but by degrees
the indigenes perished at the hands of the Spaniards, or were transported else-
where, or fled in their canoes to Yucatan. Negroes were introduced into
Jamaica perhaps as early as 15 17. The Spaniards, beginning at St. Ann's
Bay, confined their settlements principally to the north coast regions and to
that splendid tract of park-like country in the very middle of Jamaica, round
about Moneague. No minerals of value having been found in the island,
Spanish efforts were chiefly confined to sugar cultivation, while the amazing
beauty of the island seems to have so impressed them that they colonised it
partly from that point of view. In those days there was no yellow or malarial
fever; there were no ticks; live-stock throve amazingly; a hot sun, abundant
rainfall, and rich soil produced a remarkable abundance of food.

Jamaica was aimed at once or twice by the bold seamen-pirates of Queen
Elizabeth's time; but the Spaniards remained masters of the island until 1655,
when it was captured by an expedition sent out by Cromwell to seize the large
island of Hispaniola. This expedition was beaten off by the Spanish at San
Domingo, and not daring to return home and report a failure, it contented
itself with the much easier conquest of Jamaica.

When this took place the greater part of the negro slaves belonging to the
Spaniards fled to the mountains. Even before this date those negroes who
disliked the mild servitude under the Spaniard (who never maltreated his
African slaves as he did his Amerindian subjects) were constantly running
away and living in the dense forests of the mountain peaks, where they made

^ Said to mean in the Arawak language of the Greater Antilles " (the land oO wood and water."
The name Xaymaca, or Jamaica, recurs in the geography of Eastern Cuba, and perhaps under slightly
different forms in Haitian place-names, and in the Lesser Antilles. Xaymaca was probably at the time
of Columbus's discovery pronounced Shaimaka, for it is possible that at that period the letter x in
Castilian (as in Portuguese, Catalan, and most of the other Romance dialects of Spain) represented sA
and not x (=^^)f ^ ^^ present.

239

IN THE NEW WORLD

Jted Arawaks. To these escaped slaves was
s," or mountaineers — from Cinia (a peak) — a
les (English, Maroons). The earlier Maroons
r midst a small remnant of the Amerindian
3m, from disease and Spanish oppression, had
Df the seventeenth century. Several thousand
comfortably under the Spanish colonists, and
a British force in 1655 many of the negro
; side of the Spaniards. When the Spanish

.ted from the island (by the defeat of Governor
)st of the Spanish-speaking negroes took to the
daroons.

ed negroes was partially allayed in 1663 by the

r freedom and the grant of twenty acres to

under the British Government, and by the

It " out of the more civilised young men, who

head-man named Juan de Bolas. This leader
n the Jamaica militia.

d, and his regiment deserted or perished in the
n in 1664, and lasted almost without intermission

During this long period the Maroons (seldom

JAMAICA 243

more than three thousand in number of fighting-men) seriously hindered the
settlement and prosperity of Jamaica. They were at home in the pathless
forests of the mountains, lived in the caves and among the precipices of
the Cockpit country in North-West Jamaica, carried on a little furtive
agriculture, and were dependent for their food on the wild pigs with which
Jamaica then abounded, on land-crabs, pigeons, and hsh ; besides such
vegetables as they stole from the white men's plantations or found in the
forest,

A small band of them would creep up to some planter's house at dead ot
night, and if the place was insecurely guarded and the planter could be

taken by surprise, would

murder all the whites and
burn down the buildings. .
White women were scarcely |
ever outraged ; they and ,
their children were con-
temptuously killed.

A special police was or-
ganised— white and black —
and the example of the
Spaniards was followed in
the employment of dc^s to
hunt down these bush thieves
and assassins. (These dogs
are described by Bryan
Edwards in 1791 as "much
resembling the shepherds'
dogs in Great Britain, and
being no larger, but possess-
ing the keen scent of the
bloodhound, the greyhound's
agility, and the bulldog's
courage.") In addition to
the special bush constabulary
with their fortified posts and
packs of savage dogs, the
Assembly of Jamaica decided
in 1737 to import two hun-
dred Mosquito Indians from ^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^ ^„,^^^ .,„^ „,^,,„ ^^„
^1caragua to track down the thb maroon negroes of west Jamaica. 1738
enemy.'

These measures wore away the resistance of the Maroons, whose chiefs,
" Captain Cudjoe, Captain Accompong, Captain Johnny, Captain Cuffee, Captain
Quaco," accepted the overtures of peace proposed by the Governor, Sir William
Treiawney. in 1738. In the articles of pacification they were granted 1500 acres
of land at Treiawney town (twenty miles inland from Montego, N.W. Jamaica),
and 1000 acres at Accompong town and elsewhere in the Cockpit country. Their,
personal freedom was recognised, and they were to be paid thirty shillings in

' In 1741 ■ Jamaica law laid it down Tery positively that all Indians arrivi:^ in Jamaica were to be
regarded ai free people, thai any attempt to sell ihem was punishable, und would be null and void. And
a furlher law of George III intliclcd the penalty of death od any one who kidnapped or stole an Indian.

244 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

future (afterwards increased to three pounds) for every fugitive slave they
brought back to his owner.

From 1738 to 1795 the Maroons remained at peace with the British Govern-
ment, and even in 1760 were allied with the British forces in putting down a
serious rebellion of the Koromanti slaves in St Mary parish. Hut in 1795 (on
a very frivolous pretext, probably because they had heard of the successful
rising in Haiti) they broke out into rebellion and endeavoured to provoke a
general rising of the slaves. In this they were nearly successful (but for the
prompt action of Governor the Earl of Balcarres). A few surrendered to the
British at the commencement of the trouble, but the remainder — only some five
hundred fighting-men, all told — inflicted several reverses on the British troops.

SBTTLKMEUr

retired into the difficult Cockpit country and thence sent out marauding expe-
ditions resulting in the murder of numerous white men and women. The only
thing which had any effect on them was the threatened employment of dogs.
Forty Cuban hunters and ore hundred Cuban dogs were imported, and soon
afterwards the whole of the .Maroons had surrendered to the authorities. Those
who gave themselves up before January 1st, 1796. were allowed to remain in
Jamaica, and from them are descended the Maroons of to-day,' settled at Moore
Town (N.E, Jamaica) and at various places in their old haunts round the Cock-
pit country. But of the most recalcitrant nearly si.-i hundred were transported
to Nova Scotia and eventually to Freetown, Sierra Leone. Here they gave
more trouble and were generally at the bottom of any rows or riots occurring in
the early days of that once dreary settlement and now model colony,

' Whom Governor Eyie employetl in supprcising ihe alleged negro molt of 1S65.

311. IN A MAROON 1

JAMAICA 247

There was a remarkable spirit about the Maroons which, in spite of occa-
sional episodes of cowardice or treachery, seems to have inspired a liking and
respect in the minds of the British officers fighting against them, the sympathy
felt for the " first-class fighting-man." So much so, that when the Assembly of
Jamaica decided to transport a third of the Maroons to Nova Scotia (and thereby
rid the colony of the terror they had inspired for a hundred and forty years)
Major-General Walpole, the principal officer commanding the troops engaged
in suppressing the Maroon rising, declined to accept the sword of honour voted
him by the House of Assembly.

The Maroons can scarcely be said to have " reverted " to savagery, since they

had never known civilisation. They went

almost naked, and frequently became
cannibals in the excitement of warfare or
revenge. They were principally de-
rived from the tribes of the Gold Coast —
some unusually warlike strain — and did
not among themselves speak English, but
a jargon compdssd (it is said) of two or
three Gold Coast languages, some Spanish,
and a little English. Of the very few
African words which survive in the negro
dialects and folk-lore of Jamaica it is
certain that the majority are derived from
the Chwt language of the Ashanti and
Fanti. The word for "white man" —
bakara (buckra) is, however, from the
Bantu or semi-Bantu languages of the
Cross River and Western Camcroons
(Mu-kara, singular; Ba-kara, plural).

In 1673 the cultivation of sugar was
systematically commenced in Jamaica by
twelve hundred {mainly English) settlers
who arrived from Surinam (Dutch
Guiana), where they had been placed by

Lord Willoughby in 1663. They cole „^ „„^„ „ ,„„„ ,.„,,„

nised Westmoreland parish (westernmost

Jamaica). The last quarter of the seventeenth century saw an enormous
demand for sugar arising throughout Europe. No longer content with the
niggardly and costly supplies received from the Spanish Antilles (through the
trading houses of Seville and Barcelona) or from Madeira or Egypt, the
awakening world of Northern and Central Europe saw in the undefended
portions of Brazil, of the Guianas, and of the lesser West Indian islands splendid
opportunities for the unlimited production of sugar from the sugar-cane ; the
only rival to which as a saccharoid being the analogous sweet Sorghum or
Holcus reed of Asia and Africa (also introduced into America), or the honey
of antiquity ; for beetroot as a source of sugar was not to be called into existence
till the beginning of the nineteenth century. The cultivation of sugar-cane
could only be carried on by negro labour ; consequently it produced a great
development of the African slave-trade.

In 1673 there were 9504 negroes in Jamaica (apart from the Maroons)
as against 7768 whites. In 1690 the number of negro slaves had risen to

248 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

40,000, while the whites had decreased to a slight extent. Coffee was in-
troduced into Jamaica (from Surinam) in 1721' and increased the need of
servile labour for its cultivation. Pimento or Allspice' was a wild Jamaican
product which only patient negroes could gather.

Apart from the needs of Jamaican agriculture, lai^e numbers of slaves were
imported into Jamaica from the West African coast, in order to keep the
Spanish Antilles supplied with black labour under the Asiento. This contract
with the Spanish Crown had been assigned to a French company in 1701,
though apparently a British company had been formed for the purpose in

Tbe originul OpIUl of Junaic* ificr ihe nnhquike il Pan Royal in |6«> DPiil 1B71.
wban [be kbi of govaiaiiwDi wu icmand 10 Kioiiion

' The genus Coffta giowi naturally in the densely forested regions of iropical Africa and Asia, a closely
allied genus also being found in Iroincal Ameiica. The twin seeds of the Asiatic Caffea are useless foi
making Ihe beverage : they are too bitter. In Africa the genus Cd^a develops si ileen or seventeen dislinci
species, of which the Liberian coifee is remarkable for its large berry and resistance to fungoid diseases,
and Ceffea arabita — the first type to become known to the civilised world — for its delicious aroma and
small benr. Coffta araiica piobibly grows wild id the forested pari of Southern Abyssinia and
Galaland, Uganda, and the welt -watered legionsof Equatorial Africa. It was first of all valued by ihe
Gala and GaU-like negroids for the sweet pulp of its lierries, but the Abyssinians and later the Arabs of
Yaman and Aden (Ihe ihiub was early introduced into Ihe well-watered mountains of Yaman) look
(o roasting Ihe beans and making from them a stimulating beverage. The vogue of this decoction
leached Constaotinople and thence Europe through ihe French and English merchants trading with
the Levant. Coffee-drinking was well established in France by 1650 and in England by 1660, Some
Arabs who traded between Mokha and Java gave a few coffee beans to the Dutch Governor- General
of that island, who forthwith commenced the cullivalion of coffee in Java, and furlhei sent snr plant to
the Dutch East India Company at AmsteTdi.m. This one plant produced Ihe seeds and plants which
were sent out to Surinam (Dutch Guiana) in IJIS ; and from Surinam the coifee shrub spread to Jamaica
(1721), Martinique (17^)i Haili, and Brazil. In Jamaica the coffee shrub flourished so greatly that it
gave rise to distinct varieties of value, such as Ihe " Orange" and the " Blue Mountain," and these have
been sent 10 stock the plantations of Nyasaland in South-East Africa.

' Pimento is Ihe beny of a tree about thirty feet high, which grows exclusively ID (he West Indies bikI
parlicularly in Jamaica on the limestone hills near the sea^coasl. It is the Ekk™" pimenta and might
almost be adopted as Ihe nalional tree of Jamaica. Apparently il is impossible to transplant or to
cultivate Ihe Pimento tree. All thai can be done is lo clear the ground around the Ircei, saplbgs, and
bushes to encourage their natural growih.

JAMAICA 249

Jamaica in 1689, and the profitable privilege having been transferred to French
hands was one of the grievances which provoked the fjreat war of the Spanish
succession in 1702,^ By the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 the monopoly of the
Spanish slave-trade fell to Britain, and the South Sea Company was founded
(1711) to carry slaves from Jamaica to Spanish South America.

BUILDINGS IN SPANISH TOWN
Iq Ibe rorvfrovnd u ode of ihe gum CApiured by Rodaey froDi Count De GruK on

Apcil i>th, 17S1, in liH deciuK nSTaf victory

In 1732 occurred the first hint of better times for the Jamaica slaves : the
Moravian missionaries settled in the island.^ But the maltreatment of the
slaves was considerable. They were constantly running away to the wild

* Anilher wu that in June, 1694, ■ French fleet under Du Cas»:, the Governor o! St. Domingue, h>d
landeil soldiers on the south-east coast of Jamaica near Kingston and ravaged the cnuntiy as far as Port
MorHnc, atteniplinj; 10 raise the negroes against ihe English ; burning the white settlements, and cruelly
torturing Ihe white planters or ofticials whom they captured, tiy a reiinement of wickedness, i/ans U vrai
ts^it gaulsii they (the French soldiers) forced these captive planters to witness the violation of their
English wives by their own negro slaves (Bryan Edwards).

* Also in Antigua and radiating from St. Thomas. See p. 330 and chapter 00 Danish West Indiei.

250 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Maroons in the western part of the island, and when this outlet to their
feelings was checked by the agreement with the Maroons already referred
to, the slaves broke out into serious insurrections in 1746 and 1760.

In 1764 there were 140454 slaves in Jamaica, but public attention in Britain
was becoming interested in the ethics of slavery.^ The Methodists of England
_ , _ began in 1760 {in Antigua)-

to preach to the slaves ; in
1 783 a negro Baptist preacher
was actually addressing slave
congregations in Kingston
(Jamaica).

The American War found
negroes fighting in the British
armies, and these black sol-
diers had virtually been
emancipated by this service
to the Crown. Some of these
men of the South Carolina
Regiment were eventually
merged in the ist West
India Regiment, raised in
"Martinico" in 1795, under
Major-GeneralWhyte; others
drifted to Jamaica, settled in
the towns, and added to the
number of the embarrassing
free negroes.

In 1787 the Wesleyan
Mission was founded in
Jamaica.

In 1777 the first motion
was made in England against
the Slave-trade.

In 1787-8 the growing

agitation in England against

MS. THB PIMENTO TRKB OF JAMAICA thc slavc-tfadc and slavery,

and the return to Jamaica

of released slaves, excited a ferment among the Jamaica negroes (quite distinct

from the Maroon movement) which culminated in a slave insurrection in Tre-

lawney parish, early in 179S.

Prior to tliis uprising of the Jamaica slaves an attempt had been made in
March, 1792, to amend and consolidate the local laws dealing with slavery and
the slave-trade. As early as 1735 a law had been passed ordaining that slave
families put up to auction on their arrival from Africa were as far as possible to
be sold as one family to a single master, but this rule had fallen into disuse.

' Araongsi other harsh regulaiiona in force about Ihis lime and for long afierwatds was the fallowing :
No mutallo, " Indian," or negro whalsoever was allowed in Jamaica to hswt or carry about, to sell anjr
sort oF goods, wares, merchandise whatsoever, except proviiiions, fruits, fresh fish, milk, and poultTy ; but
these again could only be sold provided the mulaiio, " Indian," or negto had ■ ticket from the master or
owner of such goods. Mulaltoei, " Indians," or negroes were entirely confined to retail trade in these
articles. If they bought up provisions, etc. , " to re-vend or engross," tliey were to be flogged with not
mote than thirty-nine lashes. This r^uUtion applied to free negroes and mulattoes a$ well as to slaves.

JAM/

It uras now revived in the Consolidatec
further provided that it should be part o
Jamaica to appoint and appropriate a ce
either before or after the performance of
every free person of colour and of e^
baptised and instructed in the doctrin(
time there were about 4000 free negrc
position was very miserable as they wen
In 1799 Commissioner Roume of Haiti :
to stir up a rebellion among the free me
embarrass the British Gov-
ernment, but his efforts failed
and a number of incriminated
blacks and mulattoes were
shot or hanged.

Nevertheless, in spite of
simmering discontent among
the slaves, Jamaica exported
in 1803 her record crop of
sugar, and the island was
very prosperous, though it
required an average annual
consignment of 6000 slaves
to keep up the requisite
labour supply. In 1807,
when the slave-trade was
abolished by the British Par-
liament (to take effect the
next year), there were 323,827
negroes in Jamaica. In 18 14
Jamaica exported 34,045,585 lbs. of
despatched from the island.

In 1 8 10, in the jubilee year of Ge
down the law that no slave by becomii
since the abolition of the slave-trade th
And though the House of Assembly
Commons Resolutions of 1823,* for
of slavery, they had already passed in
sisting, clothing and better order, regul
According to the terms of this Act

' This Act, I believe, or one somewhat later, d
Jamaica or the other British West India coloni
misery often entailed on Jamaica slaves by the deal

'* In a few years a good negro gets comfortably
wife, and begins to see a young family rising abou
industry And the staff of his existence, affords hin:
thing to the mere necessaries of life. In this siti
separated from his wife and children, dragged tc
sent to terminate his miserable existence in the i
heaven, and all this without any crime or demerit
his master is dead or has been unfortunate.*' (B
adds in a foot-note that it was he himself who ca;
Bill making it illegal to sell negroes so as to expa

^ See page 312.

226. AN OLI

252 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

fitted for baptism, baptised, and " made sensible of a duty to God and the
Christian faith." They were to be allowed one free day in every fortnight
besides Sundays, except during the crop season (though the Sunday was not
of much lise to them owing to the compulsory closing of shops!). But even
during the crop season the slaves were to have an absolute remission from work

between Saturday night and Monday morning. When not provided with
a piece of land to cultivate on his own account a slave was to be allowed
3$. 4d. a week for his maintenance. They were also to be supplied with proper
and sufficient clothing. Every female slave who had six children living, either
born to her or adopted by her and brought up, was to be exempted from all
hard labour in the field, and the owner of such female slave was to be ex-
empted from all taxation on account of such female slave. No master was to

JAMAICA 253

turn away slaves on account of sickness or infirmity, but was to maintain them
in food, clothing, and lodging for the rest of their lives. Manumitted negroes
without means of support were to be maintained by the parishes, who were to
recover their expenditure from the master, unless he had made sufficient provi-
sion for the freed slave. By this law also it was definitely laid down that any
person wantonly, willingly, or bloody-mindedly killing, or causing to be killed,
any negro or slave, should be adjudged guilty of felony, without benefit of
clergy, and suffer death accordingly. Imprisonment was also to be inflicted on
any person who mutilated, cruelly treated, or confined without sufficient support
any slave ; and in the case of atrocious cruelty the slave might be given his free-
dom and receive a sum of £10 a year for his or her maintenance and support.
It was also forbidden to load the body or limbs of a slave with chains or weights,
or to fix an iron collar about the neck without the directi6ns of a magistrate.

Manumission of slaves by will was facilitated. But if the deceased's estate
was in debt, the manumission might not hold good, as the slaves would have
first of all to be sold in satisfaction of such debts. Any slave going under the
appellation of " Obeah," man or woman, and pretending to have communication
with the Devil and other spirits, and attempting to use their influence to excite
rebellion or other evil purposes, or to endanger the life or health of any other
slave, were upon conviction to suffer death or transportation. A slave was also
•*by flagellation or imprisonment with hard labour" to be punished if found
guilty of preaching and teaching as an Anabaptist or otherwise, without a per-
mission from the owner and the quarter sessions. Transportation was to be in-
flicted ** on any slave found in the possession of poisonous drugs, pounded glass,
parrot beaks, dogs' teeth, alligators' teeth, or other materials notoriously used in
the practice of witchcraft." ^

In 1824 free negroes and people of colour were admitted to the Courts
to give evidence on oath.^

^ Odia (misspelt Obeah) seems to be a variant or a corruption of an Efik or I bo word from the north-
east or east of the Niger delta, which simply means " Doctor." The system embodied in that word (say
also ** medicine") is, like all European medical practice before the eighteenth century and many of the
rites of Christianity in its healing formulae, largely empirical. It is at once fetishism and magic, sorcery,
hypnotism, faith-healing, thought-transference : in short, that royal road to results in a command over
natural forces that humanity constantly hopes to achieve : not by patient study of cause and effect, and
the employment of the proper physical agencies, but by blind guesswork, by wild supposition ; hopng
througn some hundredth chance to stumble, without many years of preparatory study, on some wonder-
ful new law which like the X-rays may make light of matter.

Obia is like Hudu or Vudu a part of the fetishistic belief which prevails over nearly all Africa, much
of Asia, and a good deal of America. It would have been quite at home in the England of Elizabeth.
In its '* well-meaning" forms, it is medical treatment by drugs or suggestion, combined with a worship of
the powers of Nature and a propitiation of evil spirits ; in its bad types it is an attempt to frighten, obsess,
and hypnotise, and failmg the production of results by this hocus-pocus, to poison.

From the fiss-fass-fuss which is made by writers on American subjects relative to Obia and Vudu, one
would think that this mixture of nonsense, of empiricism, of nauseous superstition, malignity, kindly
sympathy, pathetic ** feeling after God," positive knowledge of genuine therapeutics, glimmering of the
possibilities latent in the human brain was peculiar to the mental composition of the Negro. Whereas
it is (or was yesterday) just as evident in the white man's religion, freemasonry, medicine, quacks and
quackery, Mrs. Eddys, Cagliostros, peasant witchcraft, and ex-voto offerings : it is equally sublime
and not much more ridiculous.

The negro police of Jamaica are now (no doubt by order) very much — and very rightly — ** down " on
those who practise Odia. In TAt Gieaner^ the principal newspaper of Jamaica, there was correspondence
during 1909 which complained that the police dealt too harshly with men and women whose utmost crime
was little worse than that of some of the new, ostensibly religious, sects in Jamaica — the obtaining
money under false pretences. Severe floggings (it is alleged) ** until the blood runs from the wounds
are inflicted on so-called Obia men who have merely attempted to tell fortunes by palmistry or crystal-
gazing.

^ About the same period (as part of the reforms encouraged by Canning in the British Parliament of
1823) similar concessions — the admission of slave evidence on oath against their master or any one else

254 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

In 1 83 1, however, the negroes of North- West Jamaica, impatient of the slow
progress of the emancipation movement, broke out into rebellion and destroyed
property to the value of ^^666,977, and the British Government had to come to
the relief of the wellnigh ruined planters with a loan of ;^200,ooo.^

1834 saw the definite abolition of slavery in Jamaica and the rest of the
British possessions in America. The slaves then existing in Jamaica on whom
compensation was paid (^^5,853,975 altogether) only numbered 255,290. These
were to continue to serve as apprentices for another four years.

In 1838, therefore, the white and coloured Jamaica planters found them-
selves with no certain labour force at their disposal, for many of the ex-slaves
declined to do any work when they had provided for their immediate susten-
ance. An attempt was made by some of the planters to recruit more " free
labourers " from West Africa, but this was opposed by the British Government
as likely to renew slavery under another name. Indian coolies were imported
in 1845, the experiment having already been successfully tried in British
Guiana in 1838. But the Honourable East India Company imposed such
expensive restrictions on this enterprise that it was abandoned and not renewed
until 1868.

During this interval of time — between 1845 and 1868 — the condition of
Jamaica was discouraging. The adoption of Free Trade by the Mother
Country actually ruined the island and made it bankrupt, however splendid

in the British Courts of the West Indies — removed a great hindrance to the administration of justice.
Hitherto as no slave could testify (at any rate against a white man), very few owners in British America or
in the Southern United States were ever convicted of heinous crimes against their slaves.

^ No honest -hearted person can wonder that the negroes rose in rebellion against the cruel planters
of this time who delves into the annals of the years between i8i6 and 1833. When the anxieties of the
Napoleonic wars and of the Haitian conspiracies were over the treatment of Jamaican slaves again
became unbearably bad, especially in the north and west of the island.

Charles Buxton, the son of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, quotes the following instance (of which at
least a hundred similar are recorded in other books and Government Reports) of the flowing of women
in Jamaica occurring as late as 1832. It is recorded by a Mr. Whiteley, who was bookkeeper on the New
Ground Plantation near St. Ann's Bay in Jamaica.

'* The twelfth instance (he has quoted other cases of the same atrocious character) was that of a
married woman, the mother of several children. She was brought up to the overseer's door one morning,
and one of the drivers who came with her accused her of having stolen a fowl. Some feathers, said to
have been found in her hut, were exhibited as evidence nf her guilt. The overseer asked her if she could
pay for the fowl. She said something in reply which I did not clearly understand. The question was
repeated, and a similar reply again was given. The overseer then said, * Put her down.' On this the
woman set up a shriek, and rent the air with her cries of terror. Her countenance grew quite ghastly,
and her lipe became pale and livid. I was close to her, and particularly noticed her remarkable aspect
and expression of countenance. The overseer swore fearfully, and repeated his order, ' Put her down ! '
The woman was then extended on the ground, and held down by two negroes. Her gown and shift were
literally torn from her back, and, thus brutally exposed, she was subject^ to the cart*whip. The punish-
ment inflicted on this poor creature was inhumanly severe. She was a woman somewhat plump in her
person, and the whip being wielded with great vigour, every stroke cut deep into the flesh. She writhed
and twisted her body violently under the infliction, moaning loudly, but uttering no exclamation in words,
except one, when she cried out entreating that her nakedness might not be indecently exposed, appearing
to suffer from matronly modesty even more acutely on account of her indecent exposure than the cruel
laceration of her body. But the overseer only noticed her appeal by a brutal reply, and the flogging
continued. Disgusted as I was, I witnessed the whole to a close. I numbered the lashes, stroke by
stroke, and counted _^?y, thus exceeding by eleven the number allowed by the colonial law to be inflicted
at the arbitrary will' of the master or manager. This was the only occasion on which I saw the legal
number of thirty-nine lashes exceeded ; but I never knew the overseer or head bookkeeper give less than
thirty-nine. This poor victim was shockingly lacerated. When permitted to rise she again shrieked
violently. The overseer swore roughly, and threatened if she was not quiet to put her down again. He
then ordered her to be taken to the hot-house, or hospital, and put in the stocks. She was to be continued
in the stocks for several nights, while she worked in the yard during the day at light work. She was too
severely mangled to be able to go to the field for some days." — From The Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell
Buxton^ Bart,^ by Charles Buxton (John Murray, 1877).

might be the results of cheap
Before 1846, the sugar of the
ports by a heavy differential
United States, etc.). As this
Jamaica had now to be worke<
as both received equal treatn
and other British American suj
Cholera ravaged the island
yellow fever. The enfranchis(
their meagre allotment of lane
one cause and another the mas
starvation.

Although with freedom cai
tions in the exercise of the
franchise, yet as a matter of
fact the greater part of the
coloured population of Jam-
aica was on various specious
pretexts kept out of the
franchise which was legally
its due. The Jamaican House
of Assembly all through the
first half of the nineteenth
century seems to have been
singularly arbitrary and cor-
rupt. The Governor was
little more than a cipher,
and the white planters, for
good or ill, completely swayed
the Government of Jamaica.
No regard whatever (accord-
ing to the testimony of
Governor Eyre) was paid to
the fitness in character, edu( I
the island whose appointmc :
ment ; it was sufficient tha
justice were not infrequent
white magistrates and J.P. I
1864, out of a total popul ■
entitled to vote for the for i
the greater part of these v< 1
one or two negro or negroic
amongst the free people of •
but these cases became rai 1
was only in the proportion
castle when Colonial Minis
the fact that " the bulk of
Assembly."

^ Some writers in the forties s I
devotion to Free Trade principles a
sagar and cotton grown oy slaves a 1

256

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

During the middle of the nineteenth century the Acts which were passed
by this white House of Assembly were frequently of such an oppressive and
even outrageous character that they were constantly refused the approval of the
Queen. "Of forty Acts actually passed by the Assembly in 1861-2, and
allowed by the Colonial Office, only one in the slightest degree touched the
well-being of the labouring classes — an Act about Industrial Schools. All the
rest related to increased taxation, the increase of paid offices. Immigration
Bills, which in no respect could be said to be beneficial to the labouring classes,
and the like. Not one gave direct attention to the wants of the coloured
people. Some were actually injurious to their welfare. The planters and the
white population were careful of their own
interests alone"'

This denunciation of the Assembly
was endorsed by several white mem-
bers of that body, who referred to the
rest of their colleagues as the " forty
thieves."

The state of affairs grew worse during
the long illness of Governor Darling, and
Mr. Edward John Eyre (who had pre-
viously been administering the affairs of
Antigua) was sent to Jamaica in 1862 as
Lieutenant-Governor. His first achieve-
ments were certainly those of a reformer,
and in consequence he was soon at issue
with the corrupt House of Assembly,
whose proceedings he characterised in
terms of the strongest condemnation.
In 1864 the House of Assembly forwarded
a memorial to the Queen in which they
declined to do any further business with
Governor Eyre. Nevertheless he was in
that year appointed Captain- General and
219. A NE<;ito PEASANT RETi^KMNc FROM Govemor of JamaicH.

MARKET, JAMAICA Aod yet Mr. Eyre seems not to have

grasped the true causes of Jamaican
unrest and commercial failure, viz. the outrageous over-taxation of the poor
people (j^300,ooo had been added to the public taxes during the first two
years of Eyre's administration, and that " not for the public benefit, but for
the profit of private individuals"), the denial to them of the barest justice
in the law courts, the unchecked exactions of land agents and white land-
lords. Eyre himself, in a despatch to the Colonial Office in March, 1865.
wrote : " The young and strong of both sexes, those who are well able to
work, fill the gaols of the colony." The American Civil War then raging
added in various ways to the misery of Jamaica and the grinding poverty of
75 per cent of its population. But Eyre, though he was quick to detect
and denounce the licentiousness, drunkenness, and political dishonesty of
the white minority, could devise no jilan for bettering the condition of the

' These remaiks are quoted /rom a l>ook nf gtt il interest dealing wilh the Jamaica of Ihe »xlie& —
TAi TragtdyBj Meraul Hay. by Edward Bean Underhill, LL.D., then Honorary Secretary of the Baptist

Missionary Society. (London^ '^5')

JAMAICA 257

black peasantry but to punish them for their complaints and imprison them
for their idleness.

It was under these circumstances that Dr. Edward Bean Underbill, the
Honorary Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society of Great Britain, who had
travelled through Jamaica in 1859-60, decided to write to the Secretary of
State for the Colonies. [The Society whose affairs he directed had in 1864 felt
it necessary to send a considerable sum of money to relieve the famine and
distress amongst the negroes of Jamaica, and had received from the pastors
of its church in that island a detailed description of the misery of the black
populace and its causes.] His letter went to the root of the matter.^

Mr. Cardwell, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, sent a copy of this
" Underbill " letter to Governor Eyre. Somehow the contents of the letter
leaked out from the Governor's office (though not in any way through the
Baptist Missionary Society) ; in fact it had become public property in Jamaica
by the 28th February, 1865. Early in March of that year publicity was given by
the Governor himself to the letter, through its being sent with an accompanying
circular to almost every official, great and small, throughout the island, and
to the clergy of all denominations. Consequently it was reprinted in all the
newspapers and made known to everybody, rich and poor, black and white.

The result was an extraordinary ferment amongst the negroes and
mulattoes, a ferment to a certain extent countenanced by such whites (even
magistrates) as were inclined to deal fairly with the coloured population.

A great public meeting was called for the 3rd of May, in the city of
Kingston. The mayor of that city was to have presided, but was prevented
at the last moment by illness. His place was taken by George William
Gordon,* a mulatto or octoroon citizen, who represented Port Morant district

' It is quoted in full on page xiii in the book already alluded to, The Tragedy of Morant Bay, It
recapitulated the extreme poverty of the Jamaica negroes, and state of intermittent starvation ; the
excessive taxation, unemployment owing to decay of sugar industry, and the unjust tribunals. It made
some most sensible and ** modern *' recommendations as to curative measures. It was, in fact, a states-
manlike document.

^ Dr. Underbill describes George William Gordon as "a half-caste by birth, but a man of property^
of good education and standing in society, married to an English wife, and of a religious habit ofmind
... a staunch and an unfailing advocate of the interests of the negro . . . and often an opponent of
the Governor's measures in the Assembly." He was latterly a member of the Baptist Church andi
interested himself a good deal in Baptist missionary work, as well as in an attempt to solve the land!
-disputes with fairness to the coloured people. He was described by Governor Eyre as '* the most con-
sistent and untiring obstructor of the public business in the House of Assembly." He had long helct
a commission as a magistrate, but this was taken from him by Governor Eyre. Although the Secretary^
of State for the Colonies did not restore the commission, he nevertheless required Governor Eyre Xxy
apologise to the " Honble. George William Gordon " for harsh terms used in correspondence. (Gordon's-
magistracy was taken away from him because he had spoken angrily to a brother magistrate as to the-
insanitary condition of a certain gaol, for which the latter was responsible.)

A year or so before the outbreak at Morant Bay, Gordon, though elected, had failed to secure appoint-
ment to the office of churchwarden, and attributed this disappointment to the hostility of Baron von
Ketelhodt and the Rev. Mr. Herschell, a clergyman-magistrate. His desire to sit as a churchwarden
arose from his wish to criticise the expenditure of public funds by the Church of England clergy of
Morant Bay Parish.

Gordon was in serious financial difficulties at the time of the outbreak, owing as much as ;£'35,ooo ;
but he had a great deal of landed property. His financial stress seems to have been due to failure of
crops and the inability of many of his tenants to pay their rents.

Gordon attacked the administration of Governor Eyre in the press and freely criticised him in
private conversations. He was wont, after the manner of coloured people of that period, to ventilate his
private and public grievances rather windily, with many invocations of^ the Deity, and vague aspirations
that a special Divine vengeance would fall on the oppressors of the coloured man and of himself in
particular. His recorded utterances were just as much — and no more— provocative of an armed rising as
are the daily diatribes of politicians at the present day againsl^he party in power, in England or the
United States.

258 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

of St. Thomas's Parish in the House of Assembly. At this first meeting in
Kingston, Mr. Gordon, though chairman, said scarcely anything.

A good many other meetings were held at all the principal centres of the
population about the island, usually presided over by white members of the
House of Assembly who agreed with the terms of Dr. Underbill's letter and
were in favour of general reform. In April, 1865, the negroes of Northern
Jamaica (the Parish of St. Ann) drew up themselves and forwarded through
the Government to Queen Victoria a humble petition, describing their
destitute state and their inability to pay the heavy taxes now demanded, and
equally heavy export duty on their produce. Unfortunately the reply to this
petition (obviously drawn up by Governor Eyre himself, though sent from the
Colonial Office in London) was needlessly unsympathetic and harsh, in fact,
a State blunder. When made known to the black people of Jamaica it caused
the profoundest dissatisfaction, and for this condition of their minds blame was
venomously thrown back by Governor Eyre on the Baptists and the inter-
vention of Dr. Underbill. The Colonial Office in London called Dr. Underbill's
attention to Governor Eyre's reports, and Underbill then advised that a Royal
Commission should be sent out to Jamaica at once to report impartially on the
condition of the country. Had this advice been adopted and notice of it sent
out to Jamaica, there would have been no tragedy of Morant Bay, and the
subsequent career of Governor Eyre might quite possibly have ended happily.
But the Colonial Office did nothing except continue its conferences with
Dr. Underbill.

On the 1 2th August, 1865, a public meeting was called at the little seaside
town of Morant Bay (St Thomas in the East) by the Custos of the parish,
Baron von Ketelhodt, to discuss the "Underbill" Letter. G. W. Gordon, who,
as already stated, represented this district in the House of Assembly, took the
chair ; and a number of resolutions were unanimously adopted calling atten-
tion to the unsatisfactory condition of Jamaica. Although the Custos
(a German planter-magistrate) called the meeting, he disliked Mr. Gordon,
and vainly attempted to prevent the meeting taking place when he learned
who was asked to preside over it. After the meeting was over a deputa-
tion walked forty miles to Spanish Town (then the capital) to lay the resolu-
tions before the Governor. He refused to receive the deputation.

At that time much dissatisfaction was felt over land and trespass questions
round about Morant Bay, where a certain Church of England clergyman-
magistrate and the aforementioned Baron von Ketelhodt had made themselves
disliked by their "oppressive and unjust conduct" Baron von Ketelhodt
presided at a Court of Petty Sessions on the 7th October. It was a market-
day, and a large number of negro peasants were collected in the vicinity of
the Court. A case of assault was brought by a woman against a boy, who was
convicted and fined four shillings. But the Court added to the fine costs
amounting to twelve shillings and sixpence. A negro who was present in
Court advised the boy to pay the fine only and not the costs. A rumpus
ensued, the negro being arrested for contempt of court and rescued by the
bystanders. A far more important case was about to be tried dealing with land
disputes at Stony Gut (a place five miles north of Morant Bay). This was
a case which should have been put before a judge and jury. In dealing with
this the Court of Petty Sessions was acting ultra vires.

The land about Stony Gut was claimed by several whites, including a
curate, the Rev. Mr. Herschell ; but the negroes in the vicinity declared it was

JAMAICA 259

Crown I land and that they were at liberty to squat on it. Foremost among
these squatters was a negro, Paul B<^le, who assumed a very truculent tone
with the authorities in his communications. He was also an ardent Baptist
and a friend and correspondent of G. W. Gordon. But both he and Gordon
may have thought they were defending the legitimate rights of the peasantry
against white land-grabbers. In the matter of Stony Gut it does not follow
that they were, and Paul Bogle and his brother Moses were not precisely

peasants, but educated men somewhat inclined to work up grievances and turn
them to profit. In fact in the two brothers Bogle — especially Paul — we have
the only two culpable ringleaders concerned in this Morant Bay rising. Paul
Bogle (who was afterwards hanged) was certainly guilty of stirring up the
people to attack and plunder without provocation the plantations and houses
of the whites. But no evidence could be adduced of the Bogles being ui^ed
by G. W. Gordon to deeds of violence or to anything worse than contentious
litigation.

The trouble following the riot of the 7th October and the anxiety about the
issue of this land-suit led to the usual appeal to Governor Eyre, met by the
usual rebuff. On the 12th October, 1865, a large crowd of dissatisfied negroes

26o THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

assembled in an open space facing the Court House. Baron von Ketelhodt
called upon them to disperse, but as they began to throw stones he very shortly
afterwards ordered the volunteers to fire on the crowd, several of whom were
killed. There was instantly the cry of " war." The volunteers were disarmed^
a few white men were killed [amongst them Baron von Ketelhodt^ and the
Rev. Mr. Herschell, "whose oppressive acts of injustice had especially roused
the passions of the people"*], but not a single white woman or child was
injured. During the two following days, however, several plantations were
attacked, houses burnt, and one or two planters killed. The total number of
persons (only a few of whom were white) murdered by the rioters amounted to
eighteen^ and the wounded whites and blacks were thirty-one. Two or three
of the whites were killed by being beaten to death, the others were slain with
guns or knives in the general m^lee or in the attacks on the plantations. A
few buildings were burned at Morant Bay, including the Court House and
school. That was the entire extent of the " Morant Bay Rebellion." No
white woman was outraged. Many negresses and a few negroes intervened
at the risk of their lives to save white men from death.

So much for the crime. This was the punishment. Mr. Eyre and a
sufficient military force were soon on the scene, and martial law was proclaimed
on the 13th October, the day following the outbreak. The number of persons
executed by the order of this and other courts-martial was ascertained to have
been 354 ; but in addition there were shot, hung, or killed without trial 85 —
a total of 439 negro men and women. Of these, 147 were put to death on the
25th October, at least ten days after the extinction of anything resembling
riot or disorder. One thousand negro houses were burnt to the ground, and
literally thousands of negroes were more or less cruelly flogged or mutilated.
The Maroons who were called in to aid in punishing the peasantry of Eastern
Jamaica killed children by dashing their brains out, and ripped open pregnant
women. The Royal Commissioners — finally appointed to deal with the Jamaican
situation at the close of 1865 — described these floggings as "reckless and
positively barbarous." *

But this was not all. Mr. Eyre seems almost to have parted with his reason
and to have believed without any proof in a " diabolical conspiracy to murder
the white and coloured inhabitants of Jamaica" a conspiracy which he boasted
of having crushed within the first three days following the preliminary
outbreak.*

He then returned to Kingston on the i6th October and issued a warrant at
that place {which was not under martial law) for the arrest of George William
Gordon, determining to hold him responsible for the outbreak at Morant Bay,,
though he had not visited that place since presiding at the " Underbill " meeting
of August 1 2th, 1865. Gordon, who resided near Kingston, being warned by
friends before the issue of the warrant that owing to unguarded expressions

^ It should be noted that when the situation seemed hopeless Baron von Ketelhodt offered to give^
himself up to the rioters if they would let the other white men go free.

2 Dr. Underhill.

^ The floggings were sometimes inflicted with a cat in the strings of which piano-wire was inter-
woven. Sometimes two hundred lashes were administered : frequently one hundred. Women were
flogged (with the cat, but not with piano-wire) and received from fifty to ten lashes. Vide Report of Royat
Commission f 1866.

^ Nevertheless, though the insurrection was so speedily at an end martial law was maintained, and the
iniquitous Assembly (happily near extinction) passed repeated Acts interfering with the liberty of the
subject, and authorising the local authorities to flog for almost every offence in the calendar, while other
legislation attempted to interfere with the freedom of religion.

JAMAICA 261

which had fallen from the Governor at Morant Bay, he, Gordon, would be held
answerable for the circumstances of the riot, nevertiieless refused to go away or
to hide himself, saying that to do so would look as though he was guilty.
Hearing that the warrant was issued, he actually proceeded alone to the office
of the commander of the troops and gave himself up. He was placed under
arrest by the Governor in person, even though the city of Kingston had been
specially exempted from the operation of martial law. Eyre then took his

231. SUNDAY IX A SMALL JAMAICAN COUNTRV TOWN

captive on a steamer to Morant Bay and committed him to the custody of a
man who was to become notorious for cruelty, Provost- Marshal Gordon Duberry
Ramsay,' The Governor had from the moment of the arrest prohibited all
access to Gordon, He was not even allowed to receive a letter from his solicitor
advising him as to the line of defence he should take up. This letter was read
and destroyed by Brigadier- General Nelson, in command at Morant Bay. Here
General Nelson formed a court-martial composed of two young lieutenants of the
Royal Navy and a young ensign of the 4th battalion. West India Raiment. It
assembled at two o'clock on Saturday the 2ist,and "care was taken to exclude all

' Ramuy tud faugbt bravely as a soldiet in the Crimea and had won the Victoria Cioss.

262 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

persons friendly to the prisoner." The whole description of the trial, as subse-
quently published by the Royal Commissioners, is on a par with the worst
doings of the revolutionary tribunals in Paris during the reign of terror. Five
witnesses were put forward by the prosecution, and the Provost-Marshal Ramsay
" taught them their evidence with a rope round their necks and giving them a
lash with a whip in between every sentence to enforce their false evidence on
their minds." ^ Even though most of these wretched witnesses were under
sentence of death and might have hoped to save their miserable lives by their
perjury, yet no fragment of recorded evidence could be brought forward to
implicate Gordon with this abortive rising. He was actually prevented from
calling any witnesses on his own account. After being allowed for an hour to
speak in his own defence, in which he resolutely pleaded " Not Guilty," the
Court adjourned for a brief interval of deliberation. ' It then reassembled to
pronounce Gordon guilty and to sentence him to death.

The finding of the Court and its sentence were at once referred through
General Nelson to Governor Eyre for confirmation. The Governor lost no time
in writing that he quite concurred in the justice of the sentence and the necessity
of carrying it into effect. Gordon was forthwith hung (October 23rd, 1865), ^Y
two or three sailors, from the centre of the ruined arch of the Court House at
Morant Bay. It is difficult to read unmoved the letter which he wrote to his
wife a few minutes before his judicial murder took place, a murder entirely and
absolutely the work of Edward John Eyre, Captain-General and Governor of
Jamaica.

Any one wishing to revel in horrors, or, let us say, to appreciate how
wicked white men can be, as well as black, should read the many documents
collected and published in the Blue Books of 1866 regarding what went on in
Jamaica between the 7th October, 1865, and the cessation of Eyre's reign of
terror by the arrival of a Royal Commission on January 6th, 1866.*

It is sufficient to say, in conclusion, that it is one of the few really shocking
episodes in the recent history of the British Empire. Before the Commission,
however, could be appointed and got to work, Eyre did two things which saved
him possibly from a criminal sentence. In the first place, he caused the House
of Assembly to pass on his behalf an Act of Indemnity ; and in the second
place he induced this corrupt Legislature to pronounce its own demise, to
surrender the Constitution granted by Oliver Cromwell, and make it easy for
the Government of Queen Victoria to deal with Jamaica unfettered by any
local privileges.

The evidence collected by the Royal Commission and its report on that
evidence were inevitably so damaging to Governor Eyre that a strong feeling
was created in England, and attempts were made to punish Eyre, at any rate
for the judicial murder of George William Gordon, if not in a general way for
the atrocities committed without reproof on his part by such agents of the
Government as Provost-Marshal Ramsay. But the British Government of
the day contented itself with merely dismissing Mr. Eyre from his post and
from all future employment in the civil service of the Crown, though acknow-
ledging at the same time the obligation of the Government towards him '* for
effecting an entire change in the system of the government in operation in
Jamaica." Mr. Eyre retired, I believe, on a pension. A private prosecution

1 Dr. Underbill.

- Sir Henry Storks was appointed the head of this Royal Commission and also Governor of Jamaica,
to supersede Mr. Edward John Eyre.

^vas subsequently insti'
member of the Jamaii
the case Similarly a
General Nelson and
created and presided
that in their case th'
mitted the verdict j
Governor, who con fit
harmless, innocent
own hand in time of
others without trial
abused witnesses,
frenzy till the fl
bespattered the g
murder in Jamaic
white Grand Jur^
If bare just
out without cor
colour, there
Governor Edw;
have been ad
manslaughter <
don, and hav<
of penal servi
and, if there
grave, has p<
to the many
through his
tion of the
and some
who read
raking up
tragedy a
making [
approve '
denuncia
Haiti, o
petrated
States].

1850 t
deeds
Marsh
to as'

are 1'
their
into
of)

264 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

and most efficient police force in America south of the Canadian border. It is
composed entirely of negroes, except in regard to officers, and these are mostly
selected from the Royal Irish Constabulary.^

Yet during the Dismal Period of Jamaica's history — from 1838 to 1868 — a
period in which the sugar industry was wellnigh killed, in which there were
visitations of cholera and yellow fever, the usual allowance of storms and
hurricanes, toll-bar riots, and State bankruptcy, there was really a steady
advance towards material and mental improvement on the part of the negroes
and mulattoes. Especially remarkable throughout the island was the work of
the Baptist and Presbyterian ministers and missionaries, and this led to Jamaica
actually having some effect on the subsequent history of West Africa. A
movement was begun in 1838-40 under the auspices of the Baptist Missionary
Society of Great Britain for the transference to Africa of such Jamaica negroes
and mulattoes as might be discontented with their lot in the West Indies.
Something of the kind also was attempted by the United Presbyterian Church
Missionary Society (commencing in Jamaica), which founded the potent
mission stations of the Old Calabar and Cross River district. As the result of
this work (and similar institutions at Sierra Leone under the Church Missionary
Society) not a few Jamaicans — negroes and mulattoes, men and women —
embarked for West Africa between 1840 and 1870. To Sierra Leone, Liberia,
Old Calabar, Fernando P6, and the Cameroons they brought some degree of
civilisation not to be overlooked in describing the history of that period in
West Africa. They introduced the bread-fruit tree. West Indian cultivated
bananas, West Indian oranges, guavas, bamboos, cacao, and other useful shrubs
and plants. They founded (practically) the present agricultural prosperity of
Fernando P6, where some of their descendants still remain.

In 1868 came the first suggestion — unrecognised at the time — of a brighter
era dawning in Jamaica. In that year the captain of a small American steamer
had taken a cargo from New Orleans to Port Antonio (Jamaica), and not
wishing to go back empty, filled up his ship with bananas. He found a ready
market for this fruit in the Southern States, and thus began the fruit trade of
Jamaica, which is now atoning for the slump in sugar and coffee (though these
latter exports are reviving), and bids fair, with the cultivation of cacao, the
breeding of cattle and horses, and the cultivation generally of tropical pro-
ducts (together with the exploitation of some of the loveliest tropical scenery
in the world), not only to revive the fortunes of Jamaica but to make that
island wealthy and prosperous as it has never yet been in its past history.

In 1884 a considerable measure of elective government was restored to the
country. Nine of the members of the Legislative Council of Jamaica were to
be elected on a low property and literacy franchise, which was to be distributed
without distinction of race or colour. Provision was however made for securing
a very positive official majority in case of need.

The political constitution of Jamaica, as finally shaped by the law of 1886
and the Order-in-Council of 1895, consists of a Governor, a Privy Council, and

^ This constabulary is a credit both to the race which supplies the raw material and to that which
furnishes the officers. The uniform is very like that of the Royal Irish Constabulary, on which, indeed,
the whole force is modelled, while most of the officers are drawn from Ireland. The urban police wear
a white helmet and a different, perhaps less soldierly-looking, uniform, but they resemble their comrades
of the rural district in politeness and efficiency. I formed a high opinion of the negro constabulary
throughout all those portions of the British West Indies which I personally visited. Its efficiency and
good behaviour have enabled us to withdraw the greater part of the white troops who were formerly
maintained in Jamaica and other islands at such a severe cost m money and health.

JAMAICA 267

a Legislative Council. The Privy Council consists of the senior military officer
in the island, the Colonial Secretary, the Attorney-General, and eight other
persons (or less) nominated by the Sovereign (these councillors are usually pro-
visionally appointed by the Governor, and the appointment is then submitted
to the approval of the King). The tenure of office of the Privy Councillors
appointed by the King is limited to five years. The Governor of the island,
however, though he is required ordinarily to consult with the Privy Councillors,
is nevertheless authorised to act without such consultation or to act in opposi-
tion to their advice and decision if he deems his independence of action neces-
sary for the welfare of Jamaica or of the Empire ; but, of course, in taking such

B OF A PROSPEROUS ^

a step he must satisfy the Secretary of State for the Colonies that he was right
in doing so.

After the Privy Council, which is a kind of Ministry and Senate in one,
comes the Legislative Council, which is presided over by the Governor, and con-
Xaxa'sfive ex-officio members, ten who are nominated by the Crown (or provision-
ally appointed by the Governor), and fourteen elected members. The President
(the Governor) has no deliberative vote, but only a casting vote. But assuming
that the ten nominated members vote with the five ex-officio councillors, there
is already a majority of one over the elected members.

But the votes of the ex-officio and nominated members of the Council may
not be recorded in support of any law, vote, or resolution imposing any new ■
tax or appropriating any public revenue, if not less than nine of the elected
members have voted against any such law, vote, or resolution, or unless the
Governor declares his opinion that the passing of such law, vote, or resolution
is of paramount importance to the public interest, and this provision applies to

268 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

any other measure or law discussed by the Legislative Council where the whole
of the fourteen members cast their votes unanimously in one or other direction,
that is to say, they may not be opposed by the official vote unless the Governor
compels them to any such opposition by the declaration of his opinion. The
Governor has also the right to veto legislation (by refusing his assent to a Bill)
which would aflfect the Imperial position of Jamaica, Imperial regulations
regarding marriage and divorce, commercial treaties with other Powers, the
equal rights of all the inhabitants of Jamaica, without distinction of race or
colour.

The qualifications of an elected member of the Legislative Council are that
he shall possess the franchise, and that he shall not be holding any office of
emolument under the Crown or Government of Jamaica, and that he shall
either have resided in the electoral district for at least twelve months preceding
the day of election, or be in possession of an income of at least £\\o (in his
own right or that of his wife) arising from land belonging to him or to her
within the electoral district, or of a minimum of £200 arising partly from land
and partly from any other source or business, or of a minimum of £iQO annually
accruing from any source whatever, or being able to show that he pays annually
in direct taxes or export duty at least £\o per annum.

The franchise qualifications are limited to male persons of over twenty-one
years of age, not legally incapacitated ; British subjects by birth or naturalisa-
tion ; and householders and ratepayers to the extent of the poor-rates and tax-
payers of at least los. per annurn^ or parish taxpayers of at least ^os. per annum,
or else in receipt of an annual salary of at least ;f 50 ; provided that no person
shall be registered as a voter who has been in prison with hard labour or for
more than twelve months, or has been recently in receipt of public or parish
relief. [The former condition of being able to write has been abolished.]

Nevertheless, in the returns of 1906 there were only 8607 registered voters
in the whole of Jamaica out of a total population then standing at 820437.
The number of registered voters in 1901 was 16,256. It would really seem as
though, having the right to vote by law, the Negro population of Jamaica was
content with that assurance and did not care to register as voters.

On the Legislative Council of to-day onXyfour of the elected members are
of unmixed Nordic-European descent ; four are of well-known Jamaican-
Jewish families descended from the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of Guiana
and Brazil;^ one member is an absolute negro (of Bahaman birth), and the
remainder {five^ are octoroons and mulattoes of Jamaican birth.

As regards religion, the Roman Catholic Church, since i860, has been
gathering a large following in Jamaica, and has thirty-one or more churches in
the island ; but its work lies more among the whites and half-castes than
the negroes. It also has under its charge about nine thousand Catholics
from Cuba and Haiti. The Church of England is not only holding its own,
but has had a marked increase of influence under the energetic administration
of the present Bishop of Jamaica (Archbishop of the West Indies), whose views,
teaching, and attitude toward the negro question are all that a practical

^ This is the reason why at the present day not only are Spanish and Portuguese names very common
amongst the apparently white and English inhabitants of Jamaica (chiefly along the south coast), but
why not a few rather handsome Moorish -looking negroes (recalling sometimes with strange vividness the
luxuriant -bearded, prominent-nosed, full-eyed Assyrians of 3000 B.C.) equally bear high-sounding Spanish
names. The Jews, since the beginning of the seventeenth century, have played a most important part
in the development of the British, French, Dutch, and Danish West Indies.

270

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

a baptismal ceremony at a place on the Hope River about ten miles from
the capital. Bottles of his blessed water are sold at a shilting each, and
at each of his monthly functions his wife prepares a mea! for those who
participate.

Apparently the sum of one shilling covers the cost of the baptism and the
picnic feast, and the small profit on this enterprise, together with the less
defensible sale of the magic water, constitute Bedward's gains out of his trade
as Prophet. How far it is wholesome or sanitary for hundreds of negroes and
Regresses to be immersed at the same time in a pool which gradually becomes
of very filthy water I cannot say ; these "communions" are perhaps insanitary
in their results. But if the local
government at the present time were
to intervene and forcibly put down
Bedward's movement it would in-
crease his sect to a gigantic following.
This and other foolish superstitions
are best left to be dissipated by the
spread of education.

At the present day only about
one-quarter of the total coloured
population of Jamaica can read and
write. In literacy the Jamaica negro
is much behind his brother in British
Guiana, Trinidad, Barbados, and the
United States. Education, though
free (and somewhat generously as-
sisted by Government grants and
splendid philanthropic institutions),
is not, as it ought to be. compulsory '
or sufHciently practical in relation to
Jamaican needs. But more attention
is being given now (since \cfx>) to the
teaching of Agriculture, Horticulture,
Bee-keeping, Poultry-rearing, etc.

Prior to 1 834 there was practically
no education given to negroes, except
n on the religion which the White man
so unctuously preached and so flagrantly malpractised in his dealings with the
Black. Indeed, as late as 1833 it was forbidden to teach slaves to read or
write. Money was frequently bequeathed by repentant Christians in the island
for the instruction of the children of freed slaves, but it was generally em-
bezzled for some other purpose. The Moravian Brethren did what they could,
especially after 1823, but it was not till Emancipation year (1834) that the
flood-gates of education were really thrown open.^

In that year the first, Sir Thomas Powell Buxton did a smart stroke

a pragmatical and useless oral disquisiti<

' By the law of \%f)i the Govecnoi is empowered to declare elementary education compulsory, but no
Gorernor has yet done so.

^ From 183810 1843 the British Parliament made a special education grant to Jamaica ((or teaching
D^roes) of ^£30,000 per annum ; and from 1S43 to 1S4S of about ^f 15,000 per annum. But this generous
provision was misapplied by the wicked and corrupt House of Assembly. Sir John Peter Grant was the
nest Governor of Jamaica who in 1S66-7 took any active interest in education.

272 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

poor struggling, martyred, yet undefeated Humanity. In 1903 there came
a cyclone which blew down a number of the newly constructed schools. In
1907 the Kingston earthquake destroyed completely the new training-college of
the Mico Charity outside Kingston — a building which had just cost ;f 12,000.
The floods of the autumn of 1909 have destroyed many other school buildings.
Prior to this last disaster there were about 690 schools and colleges in Jamaica
with an approximate attendance of 50,000 scholars.^

A notable personality during the past fifteen years in furthering elementary
and secondary education in Jamaica has been the Most Rev. Enos NuttalU
Archbishop of the West Indies, to whom I have already referred.

The total population of Jamaica for the year 1908 was approximately
840,500. Deducting the 15,000 pure whites (in round numbers) and the i3,8oc>
East Indians and about 700 Chinese (29,500 non-negro people) we are left with
a total of 811,000 negroes and negroids as the main element of the Jamaican
population at the present day. From this total, to arrive at the number of
pure blacks one must deduct approximately 157,500 negroids — ranging from
brown mulattoes or half-castes to octoroons (counting the "near-whites" as
whites) — and there remain about 654,000 people of unmixed negro stock in
Jamaica.

The conjectured increase in the whites between 1891 and 1908 is ascribed more
to the immigration of British and Americans for business purposes (and a termin-
able stay) than to actual colonisation. Yet the resident whites look healthy
and vigorous, and to judge from what one sees at " going-to-school" hours in
the suburbs of Kingston, Port Antonio, St. Ann's, and the inland and western
towns, there seems to be plenty of young white Jamaicans growing up likely
in body and mind to be creditable examples of the white race.^ The white
birth-rate, however, seems to be small, partly owing to the large proportion of
bachelors among the whites and the tendency of white women in the tropics
to bear fewer children. Nevertheless, with our increasing mastery over tropical
diseases there is no reason why a white population of at least half a million
should not grow up alongside a negroid race of four millions in a perfectly
cultivated Jamaica, provided the whites were allotted land in the central, cool,
mountainous part of the island : such as the delightful country between the
Blue Mountains in the east and the Nassau Mountains in the west, of which
the Moneague district is an example.

The birth-rate among the negroes is about 38 per 1000, that of the
" coloured " people a little lower. The death-rate for 1907 was about 26 per 1000.
There is at the present time an annual surplus of births over deaths of io,ooo-

' Most of the school buildings I visited seemed to me large, commodious, clean, and in good repair,
and the instruction which was being given by coloured masters or mistresses was at least tolerably good.
Some of these teachers are half-castes, and are quite as efficient as the ordinary school teacher of a
country town or village in England. But, of course, the curriculum contains far too large a share of the
Old Testament and of history and geography much more suited to the British Isles than to the centre of
the West Indies. Industrial and agricultural education for the mass of the negro population lags much
behind that which is offered to all and sundry in the United States ; and this is probably why so many
ambitious young Jamaicans go to Tuskegee for their higher education. Amongst educational factors of
importance in Jamaica, however, should certainly be mentioned the Hope Botanical Gardens, and all the
instruction in botany and horticulture which radiates therefrom and from the dstleton Hill Gardens ; and
secondly, the Institute of Jamaica, with its museum and its excellent public library of nearly 12,000
volumes, so readily and pleasantly accessible under Mr. Frank Cundall*s direction.

' The proportion of j amaicans (of Anglo-Saxon race) in the Civil Service of the Crown (England and
Colonies), in the Church, the Army, Medicine, and other careers is quite remarkable. Sir E. Maunde
Thompson, who has just retired from the control of the British Museum, is a Jamaican by birth.

E NEW WORLD

gola, the Calabar district (Mokos),
mds from Lagos (Akus>, Yoruba
hundred Mandingos from Senc-
or Moor leavened the lump and
some features and a clearer bronze
:iviHsation, and a steady increase of

rie negro men and women of the towns
igure which is not always revealed by

. This is shown by the greater part _. j — _ —
linlerland, and to the fact that the fiagmeDtS of
x<. a! Jatnsira aie derived from the Chwi language
so called for Ibeit faking "Ananai," the ipidei,
the valuable work by Mr. Walter J eky II, /»»«'>«•

JAMAICA 277

the clumsy clothes or the unnecessary skirts which they may wear. Mr. Ralph
Hall Caine, in his work The Cruise of the "Port Kingston" describes so aptly
the young woman of this race brought up under favourable surroundings, that
I cannot do better than quote his words : —

" At sixteen years of age she is a perfect example of the physical woman,
and nowhere in the whole of the wide world can she be excelled in beauty of
form and grace of carriage. Hard labour in field and mill, and in the inter-
minable task of keeping her skin, no less than her clothes, in a state of im-
maculate cleanliness, has given to each muscle that sufficiency of exercise
which shall reveal its presence in all suppleness, smoothness, and grace of
outline, while the soft shiny skin, as the natural reflex of her food, is a match-
less picture of healthful functional activity. Her teeth are pearly white, with
a cleanness and a perfection of regular
moulding that is the happy legacy of an
unstinted appetite for gnawing at the close
sinewy fibre of the sugar cane. Her head
is poised with that nice accuracy which has
been gained by balancing loads, heavy but
within her strength. Her neck is neither
long nor short, nor fat, nor lean, but
shoulders, neck, and chest are all reve-
lations of the woman who is leading a
life close to primitive nature, clothed in
fulness of flesh that shall show no ugly
Adam's apple, or protruding clavicle, while
the breasts are firm and full without a trace
of that elongation that is at once her own
pride and our despair."

But amongst the peasantry the men are
ordinarily better looking than the women ;
and it must be admitted that some of both
sexes display n^ro features of the coarsest
and ugliest type, while their dress is neither
so tidy nor so picturesque as that of the
Cubans or even the Haitians. tvt. a jamaican negro artisan

Educated men and women of this race
dress as nearly as possible like the white people of Jamaica, smartly and
becomingly.^

As regards the " Colour Question " in Jamaica 1 should like to quote some
passages from Sir Sydney OHvier's volume in the Socialist Librarj-. White
Capital and Coloured Labour (Sir Sjdney has been for some years Acting-
Governor and is now Governor of Jamaica) ; —

In Jamaica there is beyond question an aversion on the part of white Creoles to
intermarriage with coloured families, and this aversion may be relied on, at any rate
for a long time to come, to check any such obliteration of race distinctions as is fore-
boded by negrophobists in the United States as the necessary result of the admission
of social equality.

In the lower social ranks of employees in stores, mixed marriages between wholly
white* and coloured people may frequently be met with.

' book oa Jamaica ( Nf essis. A. and C. Black,

278

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

The effects of a first cross between black and white are no doubt constitutionally
disturbing, and many persons of mixed origin are of poor physique, but the phthisis
and other diseases from which they suffer are equally common amongst the West Indian
population of apparently pure African blood, and arise among these from the over-
crowding of dwellings, bad nutrition, insanitary habits, and o^er preventable causes.
There may naturally be aversion and a strong social objection on the part of the white
woman against her marriage with a black or coloured man. There is no correspondingly
strong instinctive aversion, nor is there so strong an ostensible social objection to a
white man's marrying a woman of mixed descent. The latter kind of union is much
more likely to occur than the former. There is good physiological reason for this
distinction. Whatever the potentialities of the African stocks as a vehicle for human
manifestation — and I myself believe them to be, like those of the Russian people,
exceedingly important and valuable — a matrix of emotional and spiritual energies that
have yet to find their human expression in suitably adapted forms — the white races are
now, in fact, by far the further advanced in effectual human development, and it would
be expedient on this account alone that their maternity should be economised to the
utmost. A woman may be the mother of a limited number of children, and our notion
of the number advisable is contracting ; it is bad natural economy, and instinct very
potently opposes it, to breed backwards from her. There is no such reason against
the begetting of children by white men in countries where, if they are to breed at all,
it must be with women of coloured or mixed race. The offspring of such breeding,
whether legitimate or illegitimate, is, from the point of view of efficiency, an acquisition
to the community, and, under favourable conditions, an advance on the pure-bred
African. For notwithstanding all that it may be possible to adduce in justification of
that prejudice against the mixed race, of which I have spoken, and which I have myself
fully shared, I am convinced that this class as it at present exists is a valuable and
indispensable part of any West Indian community, and that a colony of black, coloured,
and whites has far more organic efficiency and far more promise in it than a colony of
black and white alone. A community of white and black alone is in far greater danger
of remaining, so far as the unofficial classes are concerned, a community of employers
and serfs, concessionnaires and tributaries, with, at best, a bureaucracy to keep the peace
between them. The graded mixed class in Jamaica helps to make an organic whole
of the community and saves it from this distinct cleavage.

A very significant light is thrown on the psychology of colour prejudice in mixed
communities by the fact that, in the whites, it is stronger against the coloured than
against the black. I believe this is chiefly because the coloured intermediate class do
form such a bridge as I have described, and undermine, or threaten to undermine, the
economic and social ascendancy of the white, hitherto the dominant aristocracy of these
communities. This jealousy or indignation is much more pungent than the allied
natural instinct of racial-aversion.

It is interesting to note in Jamaica (as in the United States) how the cross
between Nordic White and Negro endows the half-breed so frequently with
yellow or red hair and blue-grey eyes : though the texture of the hair may be
woolly and the complexion brown.

Since 1866 and the new order of things which followed the Storks Commis-
sion and the governorship of Sir John Peter Grant, the criminality of the
Jamaican negroes and negroids has been slight. That is to say, as regards any
crime of a serious nature. Unfortunately, as elsewhere in the Negro world, the
peasants are dishonest in very small things ; in petty thieving which books of
reference refer to portentously as " Praedial larceny " — the stealing from one
another (mostly) and from white people of poultry, fruit, vegetables, etc.* In
twelve months of 1907-8 there were 12,118 summary convictions (but this
record refers also to low-class Europeans and East Indians) for theft, bad

JAMAICA 279

language, drunkenness (the negro is not so nearly cured from the alcohol habit
in Jamaica as he is in the U.S.A.), common assaults, and other minor breaches
of the law. In the same period there were 7290 convictions for serious crimes.
On an average day in 1908 there were 1695 prisoners in jail, about 1500 of
whom were negroes or negroids.

Indecent assaults by negroes on negro women or children are not un-
common, a little more common, possibly, than they are among people of the
same social status in England and in some Scotch towns.^ But it is scarcely
too sweeping an assertion to say that there has been no case in Jamaica or any
other British West India island of rape, or indecent assault or annoyance on
the part of a black man or mulatto against a white woman since the Emancipa-
tion of the Slaves. Sir Sydney Olivier, reviewing this topic as regards Jamaica,
says with truth: "A young white woman can walk alone in the hills or about
Kingston, in daylight or dark, through populous settlements of exclusively
black or coloured folk, without encountering anything but friendly salutation
from man or woman. Single ladies may hire a carriage and drive all over the
island without trouble or molestation. . . . Whatever may be the cause, it is an
indisputable fact that Jamaica, or any other West India island, is as safe for
white women to go about in, if not safer than, any European country with
which I am acquainted." The same statement might be applied with equal
truth to all parts of Negro Africa.

Personally I found with one exception all classes and all colours in Jamaica
exceptionally civil and obliging to the stranger : even a stranger like myself
who was (with the best intentions) prying into back yards, photographing
many things and many human types, and often in too much of a hurry to request
permission or explain the motive. It was a real pleasure to ask the way or the
name of a plant, bird, estate, or village because of the politeness of the response.
The exception was in the case of the Maroons of north-eastern Jamaica, whom
I found insolent and disobliging, and inclined to levy blackmail on any one
who passed through their villages or plantations and wished to photograph the
scenery.

I should say [so far as I can judge by one visit to Jamaica, by conversation
with many Jamaican negroes and mulattoes, and by a study of the local Press
and contemporary literature] that at the present day there is no people more
loyal to the British Crown and Empire than the coloured Jamaicans. Gradually^
the old evil effects of slavery and forced labour have died out. The kuli and
the Chinaman have inspired the lower classes of negroes with a desire to work,,
to amass money, to acquire land, to live in better houses and in better style.
Education spreading yearly amongst the coloured people, especially those with
an element of the Caucasian, has suggested to them careers in and outside of
Jamaica, comforts, luxuries, and delights to be obtained through work of some
kind or another. The Jamaican negro, in fact, has become almost an apostle of
work in revivifying Central America. By thousands — almost hundreds of
thousands — he has gone to labour on the Panama Canal from the time of its
inception by De Lesseps to its resumption by the Americans. If you hear of
a particularly enterprising negro in Haiti he is sure to be a Jamaican.

' In Sussex, for example, and in many parts of Hampshire, it is dangerous for a young woman to walk
alone on the downs or in woods. She would run a great risk of being assaulted indecently by tramps,
"masterless men," and those strange monsters that haunt the precincts of pleasure cities or garrison
towns. One hears little of these cases because, as in George Moore's story in Celibates, the assaulted
woman strives in horror and shame to keep the dreadful incident a secret.

28o THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Jamaican pastors, teachers, and preachers are bringing the negroes of Cuba into
the fold of the Protestant churches. Jamaicans also come over to Africa and
work there with excellent results.

The negroid in this island enters into all the professions and careers and
fills nine-tenths of the posts under Government, The coloured population,
besides residing as cultivators in the country, frequents the towns and earns
a living as doctors, dentists, ministers of religion, teachers, waiters, tradesmen,
skilled artisans, clerks, musicians, postal employes, press reporters,' the superior
servants of the State railways, overseers of plantations, hotel-keepers (and very
good ones) ; in fact, they fill all the posts required in a civilised community
(and Jamaica has tous Us agriments de la vie) which are below the white man's
high standard of salary and above the grasp of the, as yet, uneducated negro.
The pure negro in Jamaica is mainly a peasant and a countryman. It is
computed that there are "joofXO negro and negroid Jamaicans — men, women,

343. A NBUttO KOMKSTEAU IN NORTH JAMAICA

and children — who live on the land, in the proportion of about 620,000 blacks
to 80,000 half-castes.

Out of the n 3,000 holdings of property on the Valuation Roll of the Island
in 1905. 91,260 were below £ip in value and belonged to the black peasantry.
The acreage of these holdings varied from less than an acre to a hundred acres.
(Sir Sydney Olivier).

The Jamaican peasant for the most part is a freeholder with no superior land-
lord above him. He has squatted on virgin land and gradually obtained it in
fee simple ; he has purchased land or been given land. It is complained, indeed,
that in many directions he has been too leniently dealt with, in that he has
acquired (mainly by squatting) nearly three-quarters of the cultivable area
of Jamaica; and this he has cultivated most wastefully on African methods,
has destroyed the forest by fire, practised no alternation of crops or system
of manuring. He is, I can add on my own observation, a merciless gunner,
shooting for the sale of the plumage or for food every bird within his reach. So

» of the United Kingdom,

JAMAICA 281

great has been the destruction of bird-life in Jamaica — partly through the negro
gunner, and partly through the mongoose introduced by the white man to kill
the rats — that with the disappearance of so many forms of insectivorous birds
there has been a damaging increase in numbers of insects and ticks,' to the
prejudice of the cattle and poultry and the discomfort and even disease
of human visitors or settlers.

The negro peasants (as I have pointed out in other writings) are recklessly
destroying the beauty spots of Jamaica, by deflecting waterfalls for temporary
and rather futile irrigation, by digging up ferns of priceless beauty to plant
twopenny-halfpenny cabbages and bananas, and hacking down trees of monu-
mental splendour to obtain a honeycomb or a few orchids for sale to tourists.
Well might the Nature Study which has passed into the curriculum of the

Negro's elementary education in British Guiana be taught to every child in
Jamaica, so that he may realise the wonders and the unsurpassed beauties of
his own island, and realise them as a commercial asset ; for there is no better
way of making people good than that of pointing out how goodness " pays " in
the long run.

Every child or student should be presented with that classic The Birds of
Jamaica, by Philip Gosse ; and it should become a Negro ambition to restore
the bird fauna of Jamaica to what it was in Gosse's day: to bring back the
vanished Macaw, subsidise the scarlet- bellied Trogon, shoot the man who shoots
a Tody or a Humming-bird, preserve the Rosy Mountain- Dove, whisper to the

' The tick now prevailing throughoat Jamaica is said lo have been inlroduced as recently as 185S with
cattle that weie bronehl over from Mexico. At first it was not nntewotthy as an addition to the island's
plaguei, but duiing the last ten years, since there has been such a notable decrease in the birds of Jamaica,
the tick has liecome the cutse of the island. Many a lourist has had his aupremc pleasure in Jamaican
j-r. I M. L. .1 bites of these ticks, which often bring on a serious inflammation of

282 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Flamingo, " All is now safe ; come here and nest along our southern coast,"
lynch the plumage-hunter who pursues the Snowy Egret, let the^black and
lemon-crested Tyrant-bird become in very sooth a tyrant, and give perpetual
harbourage and licence to the True Buzzards (eagle-like, but in spite of their
nobility now nearly extinct), and to the Turkey-buzzard, the bird of Jamaica
(which is no buzzard, neither a turkey, but a miniature Condor, and an elegant
incident in every Jamaican landscape).*

It is the sight of the birds, the marvellous-coloured fish and crabs and
crinoids of the honeycombed limestone coast, the harmless Crocodiles* of the

' Th« Turkey- bnizatd {Cathartts aura) can in certain l^hls and aspects become a picltuetque featnte
in the laodtcape. The culmea of the ahup-hooked beak is a brilliant ivoiy-ohite, but the whole rest of
the &ce and neck of [be adult biid is a bare scai let -crimson. The thickly feathered neck is a glouy
bluish black, as are also the tail and under parts. The wiiigi are of a dark sepia-brown, but the under
surface of the pinions is ■ satiny white ; and this is a particularly noteworthy feature when the bird ii
soaring in the aii, the smooth greyish white of the under surface of the outspread pinions contrastii^
finely with the velvety black of the body and neck, the bold pink of the legs, and the brilliant crimson-
scarlet of the bore head.

* There is one species of Crocodile (C amiricantu, sometimes called C. atuiui) in Jamaica and the
rest of the Greater Antilles. There is no Alligalor in America, exeepi in the Soutkern Slaits tf Ike
Unim, from the Rio Grande to North Carolina. TTie only other Alligator in the world is in East Clhina.
The so-called Alligators of Central and South America are Caimans, a difFetent genus. Since the
leoKleis destruction of the Alligator in the United States, the Mocassin Snake has inaeased coiuiderablf

JAMAICA 283

southern rivers (why shoot them, you senseless tourist, you unreasoning sports-
man 7 You are not one-quarter so interesting), the ring-tailed Iguana lizards,
(also nearly extinct . . . Why ?), the sea-birds of the Tropics nesting on the

guano- whitened "cays," which will attract the crowds of educated tourists, who
will in future visit Jamaica as a living museum, where they may see the

■Dd caused many deaths (I am so glad] by its bites. The Musk-rats, focmerlr kept ander by the
AUigatoi, aie now multiplying fast in Louisiaoi, and are (I am delighted to know) botrowing into Ihe
lereet and embaakmeiits along the Miuisiippi, and causing maoy ibousaod pounds' woith of damage
Tamaica, take waining !

r THE NEW WORLD

rican tropics with the accompaniment or
fortable railways and steamers, and perfect
season, and except for an earthquake once

; made out of the exhibition of Jamaica's
: consideration of the future intellectual
emselves. Some day they will awaken to
3f other manifestations of Nature's enei^
of living forms, so far as intellectuality is

'oil bauiT of ihi> colosi
. objecu

ern if the present ignorant generation
the Yam. They will endeavour to
much zeal as they plant Rubber Trees
1 as well as the Edible Banana,
lan ; and the unthinking coster who
ing to catch the goldfinch or rav^e
flowers — is instinct with a spirit of
le is never happy unless he is killing
tion to the rat, the fly, the flea, the
e mosquito. Jamaica, like Barbados
-nains extraordinarily ignorant (here
s to blame) of the theory of the pro-
\f insect or arachnid agencies: the

JAMAICA

theory suggested by Sir Patrick Manson, invented by Professor Ronald
and supported by the investigations of so many modest, quiet, ofltimes
saints of the New Hierarchy in British India, Italy, the United States,
land, France, and Germany, Carrying out this theory unfalteringly, evi
the sacrifice of noble martyrs (some day to be beatified by the New Chur
Humanity), the American Government has extirpated the Stegomyia mos
from the towns of Cuba and of the Panama Canal Zone, of Louisiana, Fl<
and Porto Rico, and has thereby destroyed Yellow Fever from any x<
under the American flag. The British Government might now be we

the way towards eradicating the

Plague from India by eradicating ""
the rat and the flea : were it not
for the crassly stupid opposition
of Brahmins and Muhammadans;
who would sooner see a million
people die of Plague than allow
temporarily the abrogation of the
Purdah in the harem or the pro-
fanation of a temple, rotten with
disease-breeding nlth. Still, even
in India we are making progress
by applying the theory of Ronald
Ross [who in that region tracked
down the Anopheles that has de-
stroyed far more people with
Malarial Fever than have ever
been killed by tiger or snake].
Somehow our Governors in the
West Indies (with the exception
of his present Excellency of
Jamaica) thought all these new-
fangled ideas had nothing to
do with the islands under their
government ; the churches and
the missionaries went on teach-
ing the negro a lot of perfectly
useless stu^about the ten piques ^' * '^'^
of Egypt, the Israelites in a very
wearisome wilderness [which is now being crossed by a railway promote
Israelites], and some antiquated Noah's Ark natural history, and never
a word about the Fly, the Flea, the Gnat, the Rat, the Tick, the Bug
Nematode Worm, the Trypanosome, Micrococcus, and Treponeme, abou
pre ven lability of nearly all disease by the extermination of disease-can
insects.

In Barbados, where, so far as climate ts concerned, every one should li
be bicentenarians, the expenditure of public moneys on the extirpation t
Stegomyia mosquito has been resisted by Negro Assemblymen and coli
journalists (their faulty education is to blame, poor things) ; in Jamaica, s
the authorities Colonial and Parochial (with the exception of the Gove
have done nothing — and the citizens, black, white, and yellow, have been ace
cent in their torpor — to get rid of the dangerous mosquitoes from the vi(

286 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

of human settlements, and so relieve this island entirely of the risk of Yellow
Fever. Further drastic action on the same lines might eradicate the Malarial
Fever which still makes portions of the coast-lands unhealthy for the native-
born, as welt as for the passing tourist who departs from the beaten track.

4 THE JAMAICA S

Jamaica is a paradise which should have no preventable dangers. Earthquakes
slay their thousands in tropical America and hurricanes their hundreds; but
mosquito -carried diseases wipe out millions of human beings, and render those
that are not killed unfitted to be the parents of healthy children.

With a view to enabling the untravelled reader better to understand the

JAMAICA 287

environment of the Negro in Jamaica, t venture to append a few descriptions
of Jamaican scenery from my note-book : —

In the roadstead of Kingston. The spit of Port Royal is a flat tongue of land
accentuated at its extremity by ullish buildings — earthquake-shattered — and casuarina

(" rat-catcher") TREE C
d«cr>TH(e nurlr ewrr gvden im

trees and coco-palms ; but it partially encloses like a huge natural breakwater a vast
lagoon — one of the best natural harbours in the world. Beyond this and the narrow
green plain, hazy with the smoke of Kingston, rise the majestic Blue mountains, tier
after tier, til! their summits are often lost in the clouds. They are very different to the

IN THE NEW WORLD

oured mountains of Cuba, or the bare blue ridges
crested with scattered pine forest in Haiti. The
•ly clothed with diversified forest that their outlines
It in a distant view is indigo or purple. Jamaica at
edition of Madeira. . . .

>d unill, la Jimak* ud ihE xnihcro Wot India bai ■
lie giowlb : uddi, fanj, brosKliactoui (Lt piiHappJc-tike}

spring in Jamaica, and the flower-shows of fields and
^asonable description. Particularly remarkable is the
ilossom of the logwood-trees, and an almost Japanese
jadsides and in garden fences by the Gliricidia with its
ossoms, laburnum-like in growth. Verandahs and out-
nse white or smalt-blue flowers of the Thunbergias, by
Brazil, white Jasmines, yellow Allamandas, and magenta
ded with golden fruit border every suburban road.

JAMAICA 289

Away from the handiwork of man, the forested mountains constitute beautiful
natural hotanical gardens. The copses of tree ferns on the lower and middle slopes of
the Blue mountain range are alone worth the twelve days' journey from England. Then
there are the handsome upright fronds of the wild bananas {Htliconia) with blue-green
stems and scarlet and yellow spathes ; the foliage of the eight species of palms indi-
genous to Jamaica ; a naturalised myrtle with large creamy-white flowers : the
extraordinary cacti, trailing, arborescent, and stumpy ; the handsome papyrus-lilce rush
in the coast swamps, and the king of the reeds {Cynerium) with an immense plume
of fawn-coloured blossom : the lofty
bamboos with their yellow -green
foliage and bottle-green stems ; the
banyan fig trees with innumerable
depending roots and trunks of im-
mense girth ; the silk-cotlon trees
with their glabrous mauve - white
trunks and horizontal branches
towering one hundred to two hun-
dred feet into the air ; and several
other giants of the forest, which
might be nicknamed " poor relations'
trees," since their main trunks and
huge horizontal branches support an
extraordinary family of divers para-
sitical plants — aroids, bromeliaceffi,
cacti, and ferns. A feature of the
Jamaica hedgerows at this season
(January) which is grateful to the
eye of the English or American
tourist is the large white wild rose
(Rasa lavigata), with its centre of
golden stamens.

Along the north coast of Jamaica
there are about three hundred miles
of road following closely the sea-
shore, with forested, verdure -clad
cliffs or mountains (broken occa-
sionally by river- valleys) on one side,
and on the other, palm groves and
limestone rocks or coral reefs, over .
which the blue sea breaks in fountains
of snowy foam when the northern ^S'
breeze blows stiffly. Amid these reefs ^ ^

there are marvellous sea - gardens, ' Atnerica

wherein from the road parapet im-
mediately above you can descry sponges, anemones and polyps, sea-lilies, crabs, and
parrot-coloured fish, through a film of blue-green water in times of flat calm.

One element of the picturesqueness of Jamaican scenery is the limestone formation
which is characteristic of so much of the coast and the lower mountain ranges. Rain-
water has carved the limestone into remarkable amphitheatres, known locally as " cock-
pits" (Kingston harbour is really a submerged cockpit), or has washed out large and
small caverns — many a one of which along the north coast must have been seen by
Shakespeare with the intuition of genius when he described the island home of Prospero.
Or there are natural bridges; strange tunnels thrcyigh which a stream disappears under-
ground to emerge on the other side of a mountain as a full-blown river. The entrances
to these caverns, worthy of Prospero or Merlin, are hung with lantastic curtains of

290 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

trailing aroids and cacti, dmperies of maidenhair ferns, and matted tangles of ptnk
begonias. On the white limestone rocks lizards of blended ultramarine, grass-green,
and dull red bask in the sun. Humming-birds with emerald gorgets and long black
plumes to their tails flutter in the sunlight round the tubular blossoms — orange, blue,
mauve, rose-pink, waxy-white, purple, lavender, and sulphur-yellow — of a hundred
different kinds of creepers, lianas, or rock-dwelling plants. Some caverns might be
arranged for Sycorax rather than Prospero and Ariel, Their portals are wreathed with
snaky cacti or are defended by stiff Bromeliacea, whose sharp-pointed leaves are armed
with the teeth of a saw. The limestone bottoms of the tranquil streams and still pools
where the overflowing waters of Jamaica rest after precipitous descents from mountain
peak to valley, give a lovely tone of blue-green to the clear water which is a frequent
interlude in the landscapes to the limestone crags, cliffs, boulders, and caverns.

The splendidly made, limestone-surfaced, parapeted roads of the Jamaica coast-line

253. A ROAII IN WESTERN JAMAICA

lead the delighted traveller past one romantic harbour after another — harbours partly
enclosed by fantastic Capri-like islands, where picturesque sailing craft {the bulls often
painted bright red) lie in still waters of purple and green, alongside piers of bamboo and
palm, at which they unload or receive brightly coloured cargoes of fruit or foreign
produce. The harbours mostly bear Spanish names, and are frequently reminders of
some episode in the history of Jamaica during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
centuries. Here was a pirate stronghold ; there was the last stand of the Spaniards.
From that ruined fort, half overgrown by palmetto palms, may have been witnessed the
decisive defeat of a Spanish or French attack, or the capture of a contraband slave ship.
The mined dweUing-bouses and sugar-mills tell of a less distant past when, under the
changing industrial condition of Jamaica— the transition from slavery to eventual free
labour and the competition of beet-sugar — many an old free-living family of British
Jamaicans came to financial grief. The old home was abandoned, and the sugar planta-
tion gave way in course of time to coffee, oranges, cacao, or bananas. The ruins may
not be more than sixty to a hundred fears old, but they have sometimes the dignity of a
mouldering castle or monastery. The climate of Jamaica has coloured the walls of

JAMAICA ai

Stone or brick with brilliant lichens and thick green moss-fems in every cranny, a
perpendicular fringes of the Rhipsalis cactus, like mistletoe in its growth.' Lofty tn
grow from the desecrated alcoves or the bow windowed front of a drawing-roo
The unheeded leat of water which once played some important part in the industry
the sugar-mill now drips away to form a magnificent pool of water-hyacinths. T
crumbling masonry tank that was once a refreshing plunge-bath has become the t
playground of brilliant -coloured lizards.

Yet in close proximity to these ruins are spick-and-span verandahed houses of paint
wood, mounted high above the ground on pillars or blocks of concrete, approached
flights of steps and terraces of stone or brick, bright with flowering shrubs or ros
There are ruined churches — why ruined no one can tell me, since they were abandon
long before the recent earthquake — and within sight of them new chapels of wood a
corrugated iron. Corrugated iron, indeed, enters somewhat too lavishly into the modt
architecture of Jamaica, from the negro cottage to the Government building. A mu

more picturesque form of roofing is the American shingle of pine wood. The Spani
tile seems to be unused. As a rule, however, the Jamaican towns and villages i
pleasing to the eye. There is no uniformity in the style of houses, and they are usua
gay with colour or dazzling white with limewash ; and, of course, every dwelling
surrounded by magnificent foliage and brilliant Rowns— Hibiscus, TAunbergia, Bignon
Petraa, and BougainvilUa : by the red, yellow-green, and purple leaves of the crolor
and by glossy orange trees hung with their golden balls or thickly set with odorc
blossom, aims racemosus with its lemon-yellow globes, the crimson-fruited akees, a
the purple-and-green star-apples.

Though a constant destruction of bird-life has been going on at the hands of t
European and negro gunners, partly to supply the plumage market, wild birds are slil
feature in Jamaican scenery. Besides the two or three species of humming-birds, thf
is another exquisite form in the green tody, the " robin " of the Jamaican negroes. Tl
is a tiny bird distantly related to the kingfisher group, with long flat yellow beak and
plumage of emerald -green, shading here and there into green-blue, and in additi
3. splendid patch of scarlet feathers on the throat and breast. The orange qu
{Giossoptila) are worthy of remark : their plum^e is deep smalt-blue, with orange thro

' For an illustration of this epiphytic Rhipsalis see p<%e 3>o.

292 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Then there are the black Crotophaga cuckoos with parrot-like beaks, the tyrant birds
with crests of black and lemon-yellow and shouting cries, the copper-coloured, rosy-tinted
mountain pigeons, the titly little ground-doves, the green pink-cheeked parrots, the large
buzzards (almost the size of eagles), and, atmve all, the vulture-like turkey buzzards
(Cathartes aura), whom the Jamaicans call " John Crows."

So as to include in this survey all portions of America which are mainly
inhabited by Negroes or Negroids, it is necessary to make a brief reference to
the Cayman Islands, which lie to the west-north-west of Jamaica. The largest
of the three. Grand Cayman, is 178 miles distant from the western extremity of
Jamaica, and is about eighty-five square miles in area. Altc^ether the group

aSJ. CAYMAN ISLANDERS, GRAND CAVMAN

of three islands (Grand Cayman, Little Cayman, and Cayman Brae) has a
habitable land surface of 100 square miles.

Geographically they belong to Cuba, though they may not have had any
actual land connection : politically they have never been anything but British,
though they were an early resort of the Anglo-French Buccaneers who, Mhen
harassed by British warships, fled thence to Louisiana. Since the latter part of
the seventeenth century they have been under the British flag and the government
of Jamaica. From this island they were colonised by Englishmen, who brought
with them several hundred negro slaves. Besides this a number of derelict
English seamen settled here during the nineteenth century. The population
to-day numbers in all about 6000, 70x3 or 800 of whom are white, 2000 coloured,
and the remainder negro. The people of all shades are vigorous, moral, and
are increasing somewhat in numbers, though there is much temporary emigration.
The proportion of illegitimate births is only 127, a great contrast to the rest
of the West Indies, and to Jamaica especially.

"There is no pauper-roll and little actual poverty. All the colonists are

JAMAICA 293

freeholders: a rented house is practically unknown."^ The homesteads are
quoted as remarkably tidy, and although the islands are well furnished with
courts and jails, there is hardly any crime. ** My experience of the Negro
here is that he is a law-abiding, respectful and honest man. He does not ape
European customs and manners, except so far as his clothes are concerned "
{G, S. S. Hirst), Education is described as "neglected." In 1905 a law was
passed in the island's legislature establishing elementary schools in each
district. Of course, as soon as the Devil heard of this, he sent a devastating
hurricane (in 1907) and blew down nearly all the schools. The parents then
— perhaps wisely — gave up a futile struggle with the Evil One and relapsed
into apathy on the subject of reading and writing.

The local legislature referred to is styled ** Justices and Vestry." It is com-
posed of magistrates appointed by the Governor of Jamaica and vestrymen
elected by the people. Its laws are subject to the sanction of the Governor of
Jamaica, who also appoints the Commissioner who directs the affairs of the
three islands. The people in Grand Cayman belong mainly to the Presbyterian
Church, and in Little Cayman and Cayman Brae to the Baptist Church.

The Cayman Islanders are chiefly seafaring in their occupations. Those
to whom a sea life is distasteful usually emigrate to Nicaragua or the Southern
States, but return home to spend the money they have earned. Indeed, were
it not for a hurricane once in ten years (the islands are low in many parts,
nowhere reaching to more than 150 feet above sea-level, and therefore very
unprotected) one cannot imagine their wishing to live anywhere else : for they
are very slightly taxed, and their three islands teem with the romance of
buried pirate-treasure ; with natural curiosities in the way of stupendous
caves under the sea, subterranean passages, and an immense natural cistern in
the middle of a cliff of solid flint, together with dense coco-nut groves on the
two little islands and, on Grand Cayman, splendid forests of mahogany, cedar
{/untperus), and most of the timber and dye-woods of Jamaica and Yucatan.
There are remarkable orchids, found nowhere else ; and there is a pretty species
of Chrysotis parrot peculiar to Grand Cayman.

The principal industries are the export of coco-nuts, shipbuilding from the
timber of Grand Cayman ; the working of phosphates, the capture of Green
turtle and Hawk's-bill (tortoiseshell) turtle on the rocks and in the shoal water
to the north-east of Nicaragua ; the making of basket-work, etc., out of the young
leaves of the Inodes palmetto palm ; the breeding and export of cattle, ponies,
goats, rabbits, and poultry ; and lastly, most fascinating of all occupations ! the
fishing for pink pearls obtained from the large conch shells.

^ Mr. Frank Cundall, f.s.a., from whose Handbook of Jamaica some of this information is drawn,
the remainder being supplied by His Honour the Commissioner (G. S. S. Hirst, Esq. ).

ER XI

HE BRITISH — Continued

.ANDS, TRINIDAD, BRITISH
BRITISH GUIANA)

)f an archipelago of large, flat islands
" Northern Hispaniola and the coast of
^so far as shallowness of water is con-
eparated from Hispaniola by a narrow,
da by a strait of water which has an
average depth of three thousand
feet. The Great Bahama Bank
(of which the Islands of Andros,
New Providence, and Eleuthera
are fragments) was once a huge
island larger than Hispaniola.
Its upper surface is entirely
composed of and overlaid by
a sedimentary limestone com-
posed of coral and other cal-
careous detritus. Apparently
the archipelago is again rising
above the surface of the sea. It
offers now, excluding mere rocks,
an area of 4241 square miles.^

The Bahamas were the first
portion of the New World reached
by Columbus, who landed at
Watling Island on October 12th,
1492. They were found to be
inhabited by a friendly race of
Amerindians, named by the
Spaniards *' Lucayans," and ob-
viously related in race and lan-
guage to the Arawaks of Porto
Rico, Haiti and Cuba.

' About half the sire of Wales, and
larger than Jamaica ; but this estimate is
now disputed and the total land surface of
the 29 islands, 66t "cays" or islets ind
2387 rocks, is placed at 5450 square mile.

BAHAMAS, ETC., HONDURAS, GUIANA 295

During the fifty years following Columbus's landfall the Spaniards lured
away the Lucayans to service in Hispaniola, Cuba and the American mainland,
or, if they would not come willingly, took them away by force. It is generally
assumed that none of these Amerindians remained in the Bahamas when the
Rritish began to settle here after 1629; but a few may have lingered till
the eighteenth century in the island of Andros.

A few English colonists came out in 1629 under a patent of Charles I and
settled on the little island " New Providence,"' but twelve years afterwards ■
the Spaniards descended on them and wiped them out. In 1649 a band of
English people from the Bermuda Islands, expelled from that colony for their
religious dissent, settled on the Bahaman island of Eleuthera and apparently
brought some negroes with them. In 1666 New Providence was recovered
from the Spaniards and settled anew, and in 1670 Charles II gave a Charter for

the Bahamas to the Lords-Proprietors of the newly created Carolina territory,
through whose efforts in 1672 the total population of the Northern Bahamas
was raised to about five hundred persons.

But even before this date the archipelago with its intricate channels, reefs,
sand-banks, sheltered harbours, supplies of salt for meat and fish-curing, springs
of fresh water, its facilities for whale hunting, and treasures of washed-up
ambergris, its shipbuilding timber {Juniperus barbadensts or "cedar") and dye-
woods,* and above all its splendid healthiness, had become the chosen resort and
stronghold of the pirates and buccaneers of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean
Sea. From these islands the piratical ships of the English, and sometimes the
French and Dutch, preyed on Spanish commerce and attacked rich Spanish-
American coast towns. Many of the seamen on these pirate ships were negroes.

Consequently the Spaniards again in 1684 and in 1703 seized and held the

' Thit name was not given lo the island till 1667.

' Lt^iTood and Brazilello. " Biaiilello" [Casalfinia vcsiiana) is h neai idalion of Braiil wood. Il
piodaces A bright red or orange dye.

296 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

settlement of Nassau and carried off the English pirate-colonists. Hut the
place was soon regained, and at last the British Government tool< its duties
seriously. The Lords- Proprietors of North and South Carolina surrendered
their Bahaman charter to the Crown,' and King George 1 sent a gallant sea-
captain — Admiral Woods Rogers— to govern the Bahamas and exterminate the
pirates. Also the Hanoverian king was instrumental in obtaining for New
Providence Island a potent addition to its white population — a band of
Germans from the Rhine. By 1770 the British settlements in the Bahama
Islands had a population of two thousand whites and one thousand negro
slcives. About this time the cultivation of cotton had been introduced from
Georgia, the seed being of the Persian variety. More slaves were imported to
work this cotton, and over four thousand acres had been planted by 1783.

After the close of the American War in 1783 (in the course of which war
Spain had seized and garrisoned the island of New Providence, and had been
turned out of it by a small force of British-American Loyalists from South
Carolina and Florida), the Bahamas seemed to offer a welcome refuge to those
subjects of Great Britain in the Southern States of the new Union who had
taken the part of the British Government in the struggle, and now found it
difficult to settle down under the Stars and Stripes. Accordingly, between 1 784
and 1786 about four thousand white British-Americans and six thousand negro
slaves arrived in the Bahamas, where the white men were given free grants of
land. The new-comers went to work vigorously to plant cotton, and in a few
years had added three thousand acres to the area already under cotton. Un-
fortunately they also brought with them a spirit of harshness in their "slave-
driving" and their general treatment of negroes which had not hitherto been
characteristic of the Bahaman whites. At first the new colonists were not well
received by the old-established settlers, and attempts were made to deny them
' 1 heir proprietar)' rights were bought up by Ihe British Government in 1 787.

BAHAMAS, ETC., HONDURAS, GUIANA 297

the right to the franchise and membership of the House of Assembly, But
by about 1790 all this sentiment had passed away, and all white planters,
whether of American or European origin, were united in opposing any humane
measures which were put forward by the Governor for ameliorating the condi-
tion and treatment of the slaves. The Governor, on his part, was constrained
to move in the matter because of the growing feeling in the British House of
Commons relative to the wrongs of slavery, a feeling which put pressure on
the Government of the day, and caused the Secretary for War and the Colonies
to urge on the colonial legislatures new and more humane slave laws.

In the Bahama Islands an Act was passed in 1796 dealing with the treat-
ment of slaves, which was obviously based, like much contemporary legislation
in the British West Indies, on the provisions of the Spanish Code of 1789
(see pp. 43-6). Slaves above ten years of age were to be provided with the
following food allowance : either one peck of un-
ground maize or sorghum, or twenty-one pints
of wheat flour, or seven quarts of rice; 6fty-six
jxjunds of potatoes or yams per week, over and
above a sufficient quantity of land for the slave
to cultivate and use as a kitchen garden or
orchard. Children were to receive half this food
allowance. No infirm or aged slave was to be
abandoned by the owner, but to be properly
provided for. Two suits of proper and sufficient
clothing were to be granted to each slave in the
course of every year. Slaves were to be in-
structed in the Christian religion and to be bap-
tised. Mutilation of slaves was to be severely
punished, and if necessary the slave was to be
freed by the court. Moreover, the law was not
to direct slaves to be mutilated for any offence.

The killing of a slave wilfully and with malice 159. a <ioon type of necro
aforethought was to be adjudged murder, and to seaman

be punished with death without benefit of clergy. c«pi. b ^, iihtpmuierof iinBihuna
Any person wantonly or cruelly whipping or

otherwise maltreating, imprisoning, o( confining without proper support a slave,
was to be punished by fine and imprisonment. No slave was to receive more than
twenty lashes at any one time or for any one offence, unless the owner, or the
keeper of a gaol, was present; and under no circumstances was the flogging to
consist of more than thirty-nine lashes. " And whereas a mischievous practice
hath prevailed in some of the colonies of punishing ill-disposed slaves and
such as are apt to abscond, by fixing iron collars with projecting bars or hooks
round their necks ; be it enacted and declared that such practice is utterly
unlawful."

Equally unlawful was the loading of the body of such a slave with weights
and iron chains, except such as were absolutely necessary for securing the
person of a slave in confinement. Every slave was to be allowed Christmas
Day and the two following working days as a holiday. Free people of colour
shielding or concealing runaway slaves might suffer loss of freedom as a punish-
ment. A slave offering violence by striking or otherwise to any white person
might be punished with death. Any slave who played at dice or cards, or was
guilty of any kind of gaming, would be publicly whipped.

298 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

From the very commencement of the nineteenth century to the abolition
of slavery in 1833, the House of Assembly which debated and passed the
laws for this scattered archipelago was in constant conflict with the Governor
or the Attorney-General or the British Colonial Office over the treatment of
slaves. The members of the Assembly- — needless to say — were all white, and
were elected until 1834 by a purely white electorate, perhaps averaging in
numbers about two thousand men.* The slaves numbered about ten thousand
during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. There were three or four

thousand free negroes and mulattoes, but (until 1834) they possessed no civic
rights.

Perhaps nowhere in the West Indies did the white planters fight more
doggedly to maintain the abuses of slavery than in the Bahamas. The flogging
of women slaves was regarded as a very Ark of the Covenant, Once take
away from the Bahaman cotton-planter this legal right to be vilely inhumane,
and the prosperity of the Bahama Islands would crumble and disappear. The
oft-times ferocious and lubric flogging of female slaves did not come to an end
until the abolition of slavery in 1834. Negro men and women were not
infrequently whipped to death. One typically horrible case is recorded in
' The sum tol«l of whiles as late as 1831 was only 4140.

BAHAMAS, ETC., HONDURAS, GUIANA

tSs3 by Lieut.-Governor B. T. Balfour as having just occurred on WatI
Island (Columbus's landfall). A slave was suspended from a beam b>
hands and feet, face downwards. Another slave was placed across the
pended body and whilst in that posture a merciless flogging was administ
with the result that death ensued (apparently to both).

Before 1796 there was practically no legal limit to the number of 1:
which might be laid on the quivering body of a male or female slave, b
that year a law of the As-
sembly grudgingly limited
the number to thirty-nine ;
a limitation contemptuously
disregarded in practice, and
with safety, as slaves might
not testify against their
masters ; planters, with one
or two exceptions, never told
tales of each other, and
white juries never convicted
white men of cruelty to
negroes. Some slight re-
forms, however, were effected
in 1824, In that year a law
was enacted permitting a
slave to purchase his free-
dom at current prices from
his master. In 1829 the
slave laws of the Bahamas
were consolidated and fur-
ther improved as regards
humane treatment of the
slave, though the legislators
still clung to the privilege
of whipping women as well
as men. Nevertheless they
stuck into the new Act

the usual sickening humbug ^, ^ ^^^^ dwelling on a country road,

atxjut religious mstruction new providence island, Bahamas

being given to the men and

women whom at their own wicked will they might, in savage moods, tortun
kill with virtual immunity.

At last in 1 834 came abolition of slavery, followed by four years of enf(
apprenticeship. The slave-owners were compensated from the pocket o
British taxpayer to the extent of a little over £20 per slave. In 1838 ihf
cargo of African slaves had been landed on the Bahama Islands (for the
in slaves with Africa did not really receive its death-blow in the British '
Indies until slavery itself was abolished); and from about 1840 onward:
Bahama archipelago entered on a new and more prosperous life.

During the last hundred years the white element in the populatior
risen from about 4000 to over 16,000,' and the negro or coloured element,

\0 IN THE NEW WORLD

44,000. The negroes of the Bahamas have been

delta, Dahome, the Eastern Gold Coast, and the

Congo. They have fused into a stalwart type,

I and a healthy one, except for leprosy, which is
the curse of some of the islands. An interesting
point about the Bahama negroes is the relative
frequency of polydactylism — six fingers and
six toes.

The Bahamas have possessed since their
more definite establishment as a British Colony
in 1719 a Constitution based on an Elective
House of Assembly, From 1834 the franchise
to elect and the right to be elected to this
Assembly have been shared by negroes and
negroids with the white race. There is a
Legislative Council of nine members nominated
by the Crown, among whom are one or two
coloured men ; and there is the nearly two-
hundred-years-old House of Assembly. This
consists of twenty-nine members, elected by
male British subjects who have resided at least
a year in the Bahamas, and who possess land of
at least £$ in value, or occupy premises at a
is. (in New Providence Island, or £1 4s. in the
ification for membership is the possession of an
rty worth not less than £200. At present there are
our in the House of

hamas seems to be

ng to the criticisms,

lave come under my

em of primary educa-

\ Hoard of Education

jction given in the

ir subsidised schools.

ominational primary

nearly 7C00 scholars

y aided schools. In

ipported and directed

id and are attended

hree Roman Catholic

with 500 pupils) are

in Church. Further !

lis for the tuition of ■

10 can afford to pay *^3- interior of st. agnes'

Government primary '

ind-in bleeding, and the results are evident in the lai^e perccDtaee oF
laralyscd, idiol, scrofulous, tuberculous, and leprous people. "Close
ion of abnormalities has been productive of a shocking condition of
iahama Islands, by George B Shalluck (New York ; 1 90s). But it is
<t many of the "poor" whites and the n^roes of the Bahamas are
e "Hook- Worm disease. Seep, 17 ti stg.

BAHAMAS, ETC., HONDURAS, GUIANA 301

education is free, and education is compulsory in New Providence and the
lai^er islands.

A good secondary education is given almost gratuitously in the Nassau
Grammar School and St Hilda's School (for young women), both of which are
conducted by the Church of England. There is also Queen's College, a teach-
ing institution supported by the Wesleyan Church.

The complaints generally uttered about the style of education given in the
Bahama Islands would seem to concentrate on this point : that the instruction
is not sufficiently shaped to meet the immediate modern needs of the Bahamans;
is not practical enough.^ In 1905 (partly in consequence of the utterance given

in the foot-note), a "Young Men's Intellectual and Industrial Institute" was
founded on the lines of the American Hampton and Tuskegee ; and this has

' The temacks on [his aubjeci made by a former Goveinoi (Sir Gilbert Cailer) in 1904 are worlh
quoting ; —

" I Tear that in this colony the type of education provided under (he auspices of (he Government is
not Ihnt which is best suited to the needs of the masses, and if any real prioress is to be efiecled, a radical
alteration must be made in the present system. It may be said thai none of the boys reached by the
Education Act proceed with their studies after leaving school. As a rule, the main object of the parents.
is lo gel them away from school, so that their services may be utilised on board a sponger or in some form
of manual labour. In the very unlikely event of a boy showing an aptitude for booji-learning, and making
the best use of his training, his great ambition is to become a clerk in a store, or possibly to enter the
Government service. But the demand for this form of labour is extremely limited and very poorly
remunerated, whereas there is need for a good clasi of artisans. At present there is not one master
carpenter, blacksmith, or mason in the colony, and no means of training these and possible exponents of
other industrial arts. There are men who build houses and small craft, and fashion wood and iron into
various shapes ; but it is the ' rule of thumb ' which reigns, and there is tittle of the pecision which
comes of the trained hand and eye in conjunction with a trained mind. What is wanted here is a sysleirk
based on that so ably conducted by Mr. Booker Washington at Tuskegee, Alabama, United States of
America, and until that or some similar scheme based upon industrial training as the main factor in the
educational method is adopted, I fear that no improvement in thecondition of the la^e native population
in this colony will be manifested. It is easy, however, to make a destructive criticism ; but although an
alternative system may be advocated, it is almost impossible in a colony like this, where the revenue il
never sufficient for the calls uponit, to make the radical change which woidd be necessary in order to place this
question upon a proper foundation, and unfortunately so far little disposition has been shown by the Legisla-
ture to assist the Government in its efforts to encourage practical agriculture, which, after all, is the-
industry upon which the mass of the people must rely, and about which at pcesent they know next to
nothing."

302 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

now become the "The Benton Normal and Industrial Institute," duly
incorporated.

The supreme industry of the Bahamas is sponge-fishing: an enterprise
which employs over 6000 negro men and boys, a few negro women, and
a hundred or so white men. Nearly 300 schooners and over 300
sloops of a total tonnage of about 7000 tons, and about 2700 open boats,
form the fleet of the sponge-fishing industry. The search for sponges (by
diving) and " pink pearls," and the capture of turtles for " tortoises hell," besides
the catching and curing of fish and the collection of beautiful shells, are maritime
pursuits which have made the Bahaman negro a seaman of daring, resource,
and instinctive local knowledge.

Another important industry carried on principally by negro labour is
the cultivation of " Bahama hemp " or " Sisal." This is a fibre-producing agave
{Agave stsalia) introduced from Yucatan to the Bahamas in 1850, Excellent
pineapples, oranges, and the huge delicious
Citrus racemosus (perversely called by Americans
"grape-fruit" — there being nothing about it to
suggest a grape) are cultivated now and exported
chiefly to the United States. The thin soil
overlying the coral-limestone rock has become
(except in the interior of the larger islands) too
exhausted for cotton-growing. A good deal of
salt is still manufactured for West Indian con-
sumption from the stagnant pools and lakelets
of intensely salt water .on the more southern
islands of the group.

In the better-populated islands the Bahamans
may be described as industrious, besides possess-
ing many otiier good qualities. The women in
their homes manufacture table-cloths, napkins,
materials for dresses, etc., out of fine linen in what
a6-. A STONGE CART IN THB '^ callcd "Spauish drawn-thread work." This
STREETS OF NASSAU is eagerly bought up by American tourists, who

are increasingly resorting to the Bahama Islands
to spend the winter months.^ The Bahaman women (negress or coloured)
are deft and tasteful as dressmakers ; to such a degree that many American
women-visitors take advantage of their winter stay in New Providence to get
smart dresses made for summer wear.

The negro men are chiefly engaged in husbandry* and seafaring pursuits.
Those that are town-dwellers go in for almost every avocation that attracts the
white man. They are (unskilled) masons, carpenters and joiners ; storekeepers,
engineers, blacksmiths; lawyers, doctors, ministers in chapels; clerks, minor
oflicials, postmen, policemen, firemen, volunteer soldiers, and musicians. Wages
are very low : ranging from 3s. to i8s. a week ; los. being the average.

' Amone the other assets of this group, and a great ■nract
aquariumi among the while coral rocks, and the biectling-pUc

pelican 1.

'' Most of ihem work for while employers on the vaiious plantations 1 but every negro family living
outside ihe towns hai its own oichard and kitchen garden, looked after mostly by the women. Curiously
enough, howevei, Governor Carter reported a feu/ years back that the nt^to peasantry think it much more
Stylish 10 eat canned fruit and vegetables from abroaii. and provisions generally that are grown on the spot
and not imported and preserved are considered lo be " low down."

BAHAMAS, ETC., HONDURAS, GUIANA 303

There is not much serious crime in the Bahamas ; such as there is, is more
common, proportionately, among the indigenous white population than among
the coloured. The Bahaman negro bears a good reputation in this American
Mediterranean. He is honest in big things, exceedingly good-tempered, brave,
law-abiding, and hard-working. Perhaps rather superstitious; for Obia
practices still linger amongst the peasantry and fetishes are still hung on the
fruit trees to protect them.

Among themselves the negroes of the Bahamas are charitable and even
provident. Except in the semi-barbarous, sparsely- populated, outlying islands
they all belong to mutual help societies which provide funds for burying
the dead, for relief in sickness, and also act as savings-banks. The affairs of
these benefit associations are conducted with remarkable shrewdness and

honesty. Noteworthy amongst them is that of the "Congo United Society."
This has an adult membership of more than six hundred, besides a juvenile
branch. It was founded by Congo slaves towards the close of the Slavery
period. Although many of its members are illiterate the affairs of the society
arc administered honestly and wisely.^

Another method of promoting thrift is apparently of Yoruban origin.
Little associations called ■' Asu " are formed of one or two dozen people who
agree to contribute weekly a small sum towards a common fund. Every
month (?) the amount thus pooled is handed to a member, in order of seniority
of admission, and makes a little nest-egg for investment or relief. These
" Asu " have no written statutes or regulations, no regular officers, but carry on
their affairs without fraud or miscalculation.

Altogether the outlook for the Negro in the Bahamas is hopeful. The pre-
sent population — over 6o,ooo — is ridiculously small for a habitable area of
4000 square miles enjoying a perfectly salubrious climate and free from
most tropical diseases. Though the cultivable soil is thin and has been

' Dr. A. R. Hotly, in letter 10 authoi.

304 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

exhausted in many places, it can easily be renewed by local manures —
phosphates, guano, dead fish, etc. The average annual rainfall is Rfty inches,
and vegetation is so abundant on the larger islands (in the interior) as to
create serious obstacles to exploration. It is indeed a fact that the whole
surface of Andros Islands' (about 2300 square miles in extent) has not yet

■)

been examined by a white man ; and down to a hundred years ago Lucayan
aborigines were believed to be lurking unseen in the dense forests. These
forests contain mahogany, pines, fan-palms, junipers ("cedars"), wild cinna-
mon (canella bark), the handsome Quassia tree {Simaruba). Gum-elemi,
numerous splendid flowering trees (native or introduced), and others valuable
for their dyes, drugs, perfumes, timber, bark, or fruit. Many of these trees are

miles long by 21 miles broad, bjt [uerced through the middle by a

BAHAMAS, ETC., HONDURAS, GUIANA 305

low-growing, sturdy, and gnarled (as compared to their congeners in the more
mountainous West India Islands), because one of the drawbacks of the
Bahamas is their low elevation (the highest hills are scarcely over 250 feet),
and the fierce winds from the open Atlantic sweep over them unopposed.

The mean track of those awful Hurricanes', which are the supreme curse
(balanced by an otherwise superb endowment) of the West Indies, lies fre-

quently across the easternmost islands of the widespread Bahama archipelago,
and these perhaps will never be desirable sites for colonisation. But hurri-

' The West Indian hurricanes for the most part originate in the seas around the L«$ser Antilles, or
to the eastwarii of that chain. The rate cyclones of June and July usually spring up in Ihe Caribbean
Sea near the north coast of South America or in the vicinity of Trinidad. The course of all the hurri-
canes is invariably from the south and east to the west and north, with a curve, slight or abrupt, in the
middle of their course. Violent winds occur off the Georgian and Florida coasts occasionally in May,
but not in the West Indies, Cyclonic winds in this r^ion or in the Caribbean may commence in June
and are more frequent in July. But August is pre-eminently Ihe hurricane month. September and October
are bad. November shows an occasional, rare cyclonic wind. After that there is peace and salety till
June or July. The mean track of the worst August -October hurricanes lies from the chain of the Lesser
Antilles, along the north coasts of Hispaniola and Cuba, through either the north-west or south-east of
the Bahamas 10 Florida. Jamaica has frightful thunderstorms accompanied by incredible deluges of rain,
but is not often ravaged by a cyclonic wind. The Lesser Antilles, and especially the Leeward Islands,
suffer most frequently from devastating hurricanes.

These disturbances are more frequent, and cause more loss of life and damage to property than
earthquakes. From earthquakes, Trinidad, the Windward Islands, Barbados, and a^l the Lesser
Antilles (except St. Thomas} are practically free. Hispaniola and Jamaica have suffered much, Culia
a little, the Bahamas not at all. It ought to be within the limits of Man's science in the next hundred
years to acquire a control over the meteoToli%ical causes which create violent disturbances of the air and
so put a atop to hurricanes and cyclones. When this comes about, and disease is also eliminated by the
extirpation of insect pests, then, indeed, will the West Indies become Ihe Earthly Paradise \

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

leir chiefs spoke French with elegance and aptness. They were
protest against the partition of "their" island among Britbh

:nying to any European Power the claim to possess it. " We were
here or fled here from our oppressors. We intermarried with the

ners, the Caribs, then fought with and subdued them. It is our

ick Caribs were in 1773 (after much stiff fighting) induced to sign
peace and friendship, and about one-third of the island (at the
of St. Vincent) was allotted to them as their exclusive property,
□ntinued to maintain some friendship for the French, and in 1779
;m to ravage British St. Vincent and conquer the island. St.
s restored to Great Britain in 1783, but once again in 1795 it was

the Black Caribs. Sir Ralph Abercromby restored order in 1796,
ish the Black Caribs for their unprovoked aggressions and many
white people the survivors among them (more than five thousand)
:ed to the large island of Kuatan, off the north-east coast of what
ndependent republic of Honduras.'

ribs of Grenada had been brutally exterminated by the French
SO and 1656. From about 1670 a few hundred negro slaves wctc
nto that island, and after 1713 until 1762 (when the island became
ritish) the French planters obtained considerable supplies of negroes

lays Brilain maintained sovereignty over Ruatan and the " Bay " Islands, as pan of the
' Mosquito " diilrid where British adventurers went with negro slaves to cut maht^ui)''
iirids — independently of the Black Cacilis — had somehow arisen in these coast ilisiriclsof
Eastern Spanish Honduras. They were known as the " Sambos," and gradually made
vilh the Black Caribs, as did some of the Amerindians of Honduras and Guatemala. The
from St. Vincent now number some tweiMy or thirty thousand, and aie the dominant
jasl belt of Honduras. The negro element ia dwindling under repealed crossing with the
in, but to this race Ihey have imparted fertility and vigour and a superb physique. The
he Black Caribs still retain the use of a French jaigon (mixed with Carib) and adhcreocf
ulic Christianity.

BAHAMAS, ETC., HONDURAS, GUIANA

through the Dutch, so that by 1762 the number of slaves in the island (am
string of little islets known as the Grenadines) amounted to about 3c
Under subsequent British and French rule (for France reoccupied Grenat
'779-83) the amount of slaves decreased and a number of free blacks
mulattoes became landholders and planters. These retained their Fr
sympathies. Indeed throughout the history of the West Indies and
Southern States of the North American Union it is remarkable — with the
exception of St. Domingue — what a great hold the French quickly obt<
over the negro and how loath the latter was to be transferred to the rule o
Anglo-Saxon. When that scourge of Britain in the Leeward and Wind

Islands, Victor Hugues,^ sent emissaries to Grenada (as to St. Vincent) in
the French negroes and mulattoes rose against the British settlers i
a mulatto leader named Jules FWon and massacred without pity all the B
on whom they could lay hands. Sir Ralph Abercromby suppressed the i
rection fifteen months afterwards.

St. Lucia was invaded by both British and French adventurers and se
between 1635 and 1674, followed by alternate war and peace with the Ci
The French intermarried with these Amerindians, who, by also mingling
the negroes that were introduced after 1674, became gradually absorbed

' Victor Hugues was boin of poor parenls in Fr&nce and went to Guadeloupe as apprentice to
diessef , afterwards becoming innkeeper, master of a. small sailing-vessel, and then lieutenanl in the .
navy. Reiurtting to France, he was elected a deputy to the National Assembly and attached him
Robespierre, who in 1794 sent him as Commissioner 10 Guadeloupe. He was Governor of Cayeni

310 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

the parti-coloured community and by 1700 had ceased to exist as a separate
people. The island was almost abandoned between 1666 and 1722 owing to its
unhealthiness and the conflicting claims of France and England, but after that
date, even though St. Lucia was declared neutral, the French and their negro slaves
from Martinique began to colonise it in ever-increasing numbers until it was

definitely declared French in 1763. Thence to 1803 it remained French, except
during brief British military occupations. During all this time the thirty
or forty thousand negro slaves became thoroughly Frenchified in language and
traditions. There were also wild maroon negroes in the mountains descended
from the earliest slaves introduced in the seventeenth centuijr and much mixed

BAHAMAS, ETC., HONDURAS, GUIANA 311

in blood with the Caribs. The French also had not disdained to interbreed
with these two races, so that at the present day we are confronted with a very
mixed type of negroid in Dominica, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent, speaking a
French patois and obviously compacted of European, Amerindian, and Negro.
St. Vincent Island had much to do with the formation of the West India
regiments at the beginning of the nineteenth century during the Napoleonic
wars. Even now this island furnishes recruits for the consolidated West India
Regiment. An example of one is given here for the additional reason that it
illustrates the fine-looking negroid type growing up in the Windward Islands.

In 1797 a Consolidated Slave Act was passed by the House of Assembly
of Grenada (? and also of St. Vincent), which was of similar purport to the
Bahama Act of 1796 (see p. 297). This improved the conditions of slave
labour. The political constitutions of Grenada and St. Vincent were until
1876 similar to those of the other British West India islands (except St. Lucia),
namely, consisting in part of elected legislators dependent on a popular
franchise. To this franchise, after the abolition of slavery in 1834, negroes and
men of colour were admitted on the same terms as white men. St. Lucia,
however (held more or less under martial law until 181 5), was never given
a Constitution, and has always been a " Crown Colony." In 1876 the Constitu-
tions of Grenada and St. Vincent (the two islands between them control
the Grenadines) were surrendered to the Crown and replaced by Crown Colonial
government : that is to say, the non-official members of the Legislative Council
are nominated by the Crown, and are not elected on a franchise.

All things considered — the small size of the islands, the very diverse and
mixed elements in the population ^ — this simplified character of the administra-
tion is best suited to their present requirements, though here and there a grumble
may be heard from the educated men of colour of Grenada as to their exclusion
from active political life and the too great preponderance in the Government of the
white official element.

In 1778 a French colonist resident in Grenada, Monsieur Roume de St.
Laurent, paid a visit to Trinidad, and was so struck by its many and great
natural resources and the extraordinary fertility of the soil that he decided not
only to settle in the island himself, but to do all he could to induce his country-
men and others to follow his example. The result of his efforts was a scheme
of colonisation which was approved by the Court of Spain and chartered at
Madrid on the 24th November, 1783. A new Spanish Governor, Don Jose
Maria Chacon (speaking both French and English), was sent out to Trinidad
in 1784 to put the new charter (printed simultaneously in Spanish, French, and
English) into circulation and operation. The result of this liberal action on
the part of Spain was the colonisation of Trinidad up to 1789 by nearly 11,000

^ In St. Lucia there are now about 55>ooo people, composed of 50,cxx> negroes and negroids, some
800 East Indian kulis, and 4200 whites and Creoles, mostly of French descent.

In Sl Vincent and Bequia there are 52,000 people — about 1000 British, 500 East Indians, 3000
Portuguese, and the remainder negroes and negroids, some of whom are slightly tinged with the old Carib
intermixture.

In Grenada there is a population of about 70,000, out of which some 3000 are white or Creole, and the
remainder negro or negroid. Grenada is one of the most precious jewels in the West Indian chain. It is
healthy, free from hurricanes, marvellously beautiful, and singularly fertile. Consequently it seems to be
creating a special type of negro — good-looking and intelligent.

Almost the entirety of the negroes in the Windward Islands are Roman Catholic in religion and speak
a French patois. St. Vincent is the most English of the lot. French culture, manners, and traditions
have left a very strong impress on the 163,000 negroes and negroids of the Windward Islands.

312 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

French immigrants, mixed with a few Spaniards and Irish Roman Catholics.
In 1793 more French came hither from Saint Domingue, and later on from
other French West Indian islands after their seizure by the British forces. But
in 1797 Trinidad was captured by a British fleet, and Don Chacon was suc-
•ceeded as Governor of the island by Lieutenant-Colonel I'icton. At this time
there was a population of about 18,000 whites, two or three thousand negro slaves,
and 1083 Amerindians, the survivors of the large" Indian" population originally
inhabiting the island at the time of its discovery in 1498. As soon as Trinidad
'had been occupied by Great Britain many negroes were imported from Africa;
but the slave-trade having been declared illegal in 1807, the labour supply for
the sugar-planters was very inadequate. In 1851 only 8000 of the Trinidad
negroes had been born in Africa, and there is scarcely any survivor at the pre-
sent day of the ex-slave population not born in Trinidad, though there are a

few free immigrants from West Africa, The negroes now inhabiting Trinidad
-are immigrants from Barbados, Jamaica, the Windward Islands, and Demerara,
■or the descendants of the negroes imported by the French and British prior to
1812.

In 1823 a series of resolutions was passed by the House of Commons of
which the following is a summary, and these resolutions formed the basis of new
legislation in the West Indian colonies, more especially in Trinidad, which
being then, as now, a Crown Colony, had no elected Legislature to be con-
sulted.

1. The flogging of female slaves was to be discontinued,

2. Effective and decisive measures were to be taken for the amelioration of
the condition of slaves in order that they might be gradually fitted for participa-
tion in the rights and privileges of British citizenship, so that emancipation

BAHAMAS, ETC., HONDURAS, GUIANA 313

might take place at the earliest period compatible with a fair consideration of
the rights of private property. The Trinidad Order-in-Council which gave
etTect to these resolutions was published and put in force in 1824. Its more
important provisions were as follows:—

A Protector of slaves was to be appointed to reside at the capital of the
colony, there to have an office which should be free of access at all times to
slaves, whose complaints were to be carefully noted ; the Protector was not to
be interested in slave property by ownership or management, or by guardian-
ship of the owners of slaves ; he was to keep the records of the operations of the ,
slave laws, was to attend all trials affecting the lives or property of slaves ; and
in all his functions he was to have the
assistance of the commandant of the
military forces of the colony.

Sunday markets were to be abolished
throughout the colony ; slaves were not
to be allowed to work between sundown
on Saturday evening and sunrise on
Monday morning. The use of the whip
or " cat" as a mark of the authority of
the slave-driver was to be prohibited ;
only limited punishments restricted to
twelve lashes were to be allowed to be
inflicted on any one day; the flogging
of females was altogether forbidden ;
and strict records of all punishments
inflicted were to be kept on each planta-
tion. With the consent of the owner,
the commandant of the colony could
issue licences for the marriage of slaves ;
husbands and wives were not to be
separated from each other, nor children
under fourteen years of age from their
parents. Slaves were to enjoy property
rights, householding and inheritance, etc, ;

savings-banks were to be established for ^'5" * "'^^'^^xRiNmAi')^''^ ^^ spai.-j,
the security of the property of slaves.

The tax on manumissions was to be abolished ; slaves were to be allowed
to purchase their own freedom, or that of their wives or children ; manu-
missions by private contract were to be in writing and made to the
Protector. Slave evidence on oath was to be admitted to the courts in all
cases ; and ministers of religion were to certify as to the qualifications of
slaves to be put on oath. Cruelty to a slave was to cause the right of
the owner to hold the slave to be put at the discretion of the courts ; a second
conviction forfrited the right of the owner to hold any slave at all, or of
the manager of a plantation to hold the position of a manager of slaves. In
slave trials the burden of the proof was on the master. The Protector was to
make an annual report of the conduct of his office, and the number of cases
that came under his jurisdiction. This Order-in-Council represented the high-
water mark of slavery legislation before the edicts of abolition ; and if it had
been copied and adopted in the United States forty years of suffering among
four millions of people might have been avoided.

314 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW

In 1837 some excitement was caused in Trinidad
negro soldiers of the ist West India Regiment, headed
Daaga or Donald Stewart.

Daaga was a slave-trader of the Popo country of
had raided the lands west of the Dahome kingdom, h
to the coast and sold them to the Portuguese, whei
companions were lured on board a Portuguese ship, o'
with the rest of the captives. On the journey across
. ship was captured by a British cruiser and taken with

ward Islands. Here Daaga and some of his companic
the 1st West India Regiment as recruits. They reali
return to Dahome, but had no option than to follow t
captors. Still, after entering the British army and rea
and the other Popos and many of the kindred Yorubas i
to rise against their white masters, and after overpowerii
to Guinea by land !

This mutiny of homesick slaves cost the life of one
no white man was killed or even wounded ; indeed,
prevent a white officer being injured. But thirty of the
in the fighting, six committed suicide, three were shoi
court-martial (one of these was Daaga), and one was kill

Since those days, with the exception of a little negrc
the nineteenth century (due to jealousy of the Indiar
with the institution of a water-supply at Port of Spain), 1
quil and prosperous. There is a negro or negroid po]

:orapinions vi,^ •

BAHAMAS, ETC., HONDURAS, GUIANA 317

I SOXXX), together with 90,000 East Indians, about 5000 Chinese and unclassified
hybrids, and nearly 50,000 whites of British, French, Corsican, German, Spanish
and Portug^iese descent. In the adjoining island of Tobago (which has been
British since 1763 save for two intervals of French occupation) there are about
10,000 negroes or negroids out of a population of ig,ooo, the remainder being
mainly whites descended from French colonists, from Courlanders or Baltic
Finns, from Dutch and English.

In Trinidad the white population consists of about 10,000 unstable
British [who — apart from the officials — have here no abiding city, but keep at
the back of their minds a retirement to the United Kingdom when they can

WS. INDIAN KU

aflford it] and a staying Creole population to whom Trinidad is a lovely and a
permanent home. With the French Creoles have mingled the descendants of
the Spanish, Irish, and German settlers. The prevailing language is French or
Creole French, and the religion of the majority is that of the Roman Catholic
Church. There are now no pure-blooded living descendants of the Amerindian
inhabitants, which even in the eighteenth century were still fighting with the
Spaniards. As elsewhere they were largely exterminated by smallpox. In
1798 there were computed to be 1082 ; in 1830 about 700, and these were con-
centrated in and around the town of Arima in Northern Trinidad. From this
period onwards the Amerindians melted rapidly into the negroid majority.
Negro women manifested a preference for Amerindian husbands, and the
females of this latter race preferred to mate with negroes, both proving the
more fertile for the change.

3i8 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

The abolition of slavery and compulsory apprenticeship was fully effected
in Trinidad by 1838, and in this same year the British Government was
arranging in Calcutta with the Government of the East India Company for the
recruitment of kulis lo cultivate plantations in Guiana and the West Indies
For the first impulse of tlie Negro in Trinidad and elsewhere was to do nothing
now that he was a free man. Scarcely a strange turn of mind on his part after
being so long compelled to labour six or even seven days a week from dawn to
sunset for another man's profit !
Moreover, the natural tendency
of the negro and negress is to-
wards commerce, not agriculture.
Digging and weeding the ground
so bores the un regenerate, aver-
age negro that in his own con-
tinent he usually (though not
always) turns over to his sub-
missive women the toil of agri-
culture, and addicts himself to
hunting and fishing, to warfare,
to herding and tending flocks,
and to trading. He likes a
sea life, likes soldiering, likes
palavering, law, politics, preach-
ing, postman's work, domestic
service, tailoring, shaving, build-
ing, timber-cutting, road-making,
mining, porterage, engineering,
hotel-keeping, horse-racing,
quarrying, coal-heaving, diving
for pearls, climbing for coco-
nuts, and letting off" fireworks.
He dislikes most of all the very
work he was brought specially
to do in the New World — agri-
culture. Though, if he chooses,
he can become a very good
planter and field-hand, can attain
to much and do much that the
^79. A CACAO TREE BEARING POOS OF COCOA BEANS £^5^ indis^Ti may never accom-
plish or even contemplate.
But between 1S3S and 1845 the Trinidadian negro was taking things easy.
Also there were not at that time, perhaps, more than 40,000 negroes in
Trinidad. So in 1845 came the first batch of East Indian kulis to Trinidad.
They were a success ; and although many have returned with their savings to
India, many out of the 144,000 — in approximate numbers — who have reached
Trinidad between 1845 and 1^,09 have remained there permanently. As they
bring a considerable proportion of their women with them, thej' are not tempted to
mix much with the negroids. I n their new home they are developing into a very
fine race from a physical standpoint, though they are much more backward in
education — above all, world education — than the negro. But the importation of
the Dravidian indentured labourer from the Panjab, from Eastern and Southern

BAHAMAS, ETC., HONDURAS, GUIANA 319

India, was an excellent stimulus for the Negro. It was calling the Old World
in to redress the balance of the New. Otherwise the Black man in British
Tropical America had the White man at his mercy, and whilst the Negro took
a hundred years to educate himself in true political economy (two-thirds of
which is agriculture), the West Indies would have gone bankrupt.

Now such islands as Jamaica, Dominica, Grenada, and notably Trinidad
(which last is specially endowed with its wonderful, inexhaustible supplies of
asphalt-making, semi-fossil "pitch") are advancing towards permanent
prosperity, because they possess in perfection — especially Trinidad — the right
soil and climate for growing the Cacao tree. The world's demand for chocolate

and cocoa, in spite of some fluctuations, is of necessity on the increase ; and
the parts of the earth's surface suited climatically to the growth of this product
are very limited.

Trinidad' is a sumptuously beautiful country of 1754 square miles in extent.

' Jottings from my note-book on ftrtiving at Port of Spain, Trinidad ; —

The majestic cliffs and pierced, fantastic islandi, ciowned and draped with forest — above them stoim
clouds of superb shape with snowy, cauliflower crowns atid fawn^rey, blue grey bodies and skirts.

P-. 1: ^ 5„gj, rainbows, ollen doubled, and the outer edge of the iris shading i"'"

asy, reflecting everything in a softened satiny faah""~ -^'- - . - .. ,

nidad beside this inky, jogged country looks the li
Patos Island, lying under the lee of Venezuela ; fertile in dispute:
under the British iiag by s wrench of geographical aflinities.

The steamBT slops two miles from tlic shore of Port of Spain ! The vial harbour is silting up. The
shallow sea here is full of rising and sinking lavender -coloured Siphonophora, shaped like cups with a
bunch of organs or tentacles at the top. These jelly-Gsh look like wonderful achievements in Venetian
glass. . . .

On shore. Clean, straight streets and well- furnished stores. Electric trams. Stand-pipes wilh

320 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

It is one or the many earthly paradises which Fate has allotted to'the control of
Great Britain. There is a certain amount of malarial fever, especially along the

lipbyn nciui which ciHndt ill

1 rang, (too lropio.1

Eupplies of pure water nl frequent intervals. Everything looks very prosperous; the shops remind ooe
much more of England than of America. The Indian kulis and the charming costumes of their hand-
some nose-jewelled women. On the quay there was a group of these Indian women clad in pure,
undiluted orange robes. Against a background of pale azure, satin sea, and purple-green mountains it
made a sjpetb scheme of colour.

The negroes look much as they do in Jamaica, with perhaps a la^er element of "white" in Ihcir
composition and a slightly^ more Spanish appearance. I like to see them going about selling demure
peen-and-ied parrots, a little in the style of pages carrying hawks on the fist. The parrots are all
docility till they have been purchased ; then they bitK ! '.

Outride the town there are spreading trees of immense size draped with the Rhipsalis cactus, which so
strangely resembles the utterly unrelated 5|>Bnish moss. I looked hurriedly into the Lepers' Asylum. It
is surrounded by a tall, pointed corrugated -iron fence, but inside there is a superb park. . . .

On the slopes of the mountains the forest with its immensely tall, white-stemmed trees and lavish in-
florescence of the lower-growing trees and shrubs— scarlet, grey-while, pale mauve, pink, cream-colour,
magenta— reminded mc of the high woods of Sierra Leone in January.

BAHAMAS, ETC., HONDURAS, GUIANA 321

coast and in the low-lying parts of the island where mosquitoes abound. The
land rises, however, sufficiently into hills and even mountains to provide many
cool places for the invigoration of the white man, and I cannot say that I
thought the indigenous white people showed much sign of physical degenera-
tion. They are, of course, a dark-haired, dark-eyed people, because of the con-
siderable element of French and Spanish blood. But they are by no means a
negligible quantity in the future politics of tropical America.

Partly, perhaps, owing to the clearly defined parti-coloured occupation of the
island by a white race, a black race, and a yellow people (the East Indians),
Trinidad has less in the way of representative government than any other
British West India island, though as its conditions are very similar to those of
British Guiana (where there is representative government which seems to work
smoothly and satisfactorily) it is not easy to understand the long-continued
tutelary condition of Trinidad; except that it is justified by its exceeding
prosperity. The Legislative Council includes eleven unofficial members who
are nominated (for five years) by the Governor. Amongst them, I believe, at
the present day there are two persons of negro or negroid race. Two of the
smaller towns have elective municipal councils ; but the capital, Port of Spain,
with nearly sixty thousand inhabitants, is managed by a board of thirteen per-
sons nominated by the Governor, and including one or two negroes.

The large colony of BRITISH HONDURAS (7562 square miles), which lies
on the east coast of Central America between Yucatan and Guatemala, began
early in the seventeenth century by the attempts of the English buccaneers
[under the leadership of a legendary Wallis^] to establish themselves. In
1638 an English ship was wrecked on the eastern coast of Yucatan, and such
of the crew as escaped drowning settled there and somehow conveyed the news
to the crews of other pirate ships that it was a goodly country. In 1642
English adventurers seized the island of Ruatan and held it for eight years, till
a very large Spanish force compelled evacuation.

The Spaniards had already started a great industry in timber-felling, more
especially to obtain logwood,^ which had come into use in Europe as an invalu-
able deep black or purple dye.

For various reasons the Government of Queen Elizabeth and of the first
two Stuarts were prejudiced against logwood (as a dye) and penalised its use.
This prejudice, however, passed away, and about 1657 the British pirate-
adventurers discovered, firstly, that logwood was worth ;{I^ioo a ton, and

^ Wallis or Wallace is said to have been a Scottish pirate-adventurer who harried the coasts of
Yucatan at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The Spaniards corrupted his name into Valis
or Balis, and this became later Balise and Belize Certainly in the eighteenth century the river on which
this settlement was formed was called the '* Wallis or Belize." But another and more probable explana-
tion derives the name of this principal settlement near the mouth of the River Belize from *' balise," a
beacon or light-signal : a French term in use among the British-French buccaneers.

' Logwood, sometimes called Campeachy wood, is the timber of a beautiful tree of the bean order
which is known to botanists as Hamatoxylon campechianum. It grows freely on nearly all the West
Indian islands, as well as in its original home. Central America. From its wood is obtained a powerful
dye, which ranges in colour from blue-black to rich purple and pale mauve. It was much used at
one time for colouring ink and adulterating port wine. The tree itself is always grateful to the eye, with
abundant, graceful, evergreen mimosa-like foliage ; and yellow blossoms exhaling the most delicious
honeyed scent. When in full blossom each graceful tree or tall bush is completely covered with the
mass of pale gold or straw-yellow flowers. It is one of the most beautiful sights in tropical America to
see a grove of logwood trees in full blossom. Logwood is a distant relation of '* Brazil-wood," the
timber which yields a brilliant scarlet or crimson die, and is derived from trees of the leguminous genera
Casalpinia and Peltophorum,

322 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW

secondly.that it grew in profusion along the coasts facii
About 1662, coming from Jamaica, they settled about
" Wallis " or " Belize," and also on the western side of Y
were eventually expelled by the indignant Spaniards,
them to slave in the mines of Mexico. But on thi
Yucatan they stuck fast, and in 1670 the Spanish
recognised their right, at any rate to cut logwood, in th

Nevertheless, having got rid of these obnoxious
Campeche district of Yucatan, the Spaniards made a
to abolish the Honduras settlements, and renewed th
throughout the eighteenth century whenever Spain \

Britain. Nor can this obstinate clinging to the political
Spain to all Central America be wondered at, when it wa
officially and unofficially, were aiming at occupying Centr
and as early as ly^o had projected an inter-oceanic cai
which would be under British control.

The Spaniards had neglected or abandoned this e:
America ; and the Amerindian tribes along the coa
Nicaragua — "Mosquitia" or the Mosquito coast, as thi
region was called — received the English pirates, buccanei
with great friendliness, especially during the eighteenth 1
passed up the River San Juan into the great Nicaragua I
that it only needed a canal of about twenty miles tc

BAHAMAS, ETC., HONDURAS, GUIANA 323

water route to the Pacific. The great Nelson took part in an invasion of
Nicaragua by British ships in 1780.

Spain made her last warlike attack on the Belize settlements in 1798 ; after
that, and the treaty-making which followed the close of the Napoleonic wars,
the claim to British sovereignty over this south-eastern portion of Yucatan was
fully recognised.

In their long struggle against the formidable Spanish power in Mexico and
Guatemala the British settlers had undoubtedly been helped by their warlike
negro slaves. Negroes were first introduced into this region about 17 18 from
Jamaica and the other West Indian islands, not direct from Africa. The value
of a slave on importation was at least ;^I20 — a much higher price than ruled
elsewhere at the same period. After being trained to the work of timber-
cutting the value of the expert negro rose to as much as ;£^300. Men of this
price were not to be treated inconsiderately ; they must be well fed, well
clothed and housed, and given good reason to prefer servitude under a white
master to a wild life in the woods, or flight to some Spanish settlement where
they would be indulgently received. It was impossible to treat the select
slaves of British Honduras with the restrictions on personal liberty necessary
or customary on a West Indian plantation. The life of the woods was a life
of liberty. '* The slave was not driven in a gang to his daily toil, but worked
side by side with his master, sharing with him the unrestricted life of the back-
woods . . . performing the noble work of the axeman, which in itself has a
smack of freedom about it . . . his cutlass . . . always by his side." ^

During the greater part of the eighteenth century the average number of
negroes in the Hondo, Belize, New River and Old River, and Sibun settlements
scarcely exceeded 2000. By 1805 there were 2540 slaves, and 1098 free negroes
and mulattoes.

Early in the eighteenth century the cutting of mahogany* had begun, and
the export of this splendid timber gradually became a more important feature
than logwood. The Spanish Government had never admitted (till the nineteenth
century) that British Honduras was withdrawn from Spanish sovereignty : it
only agreed (in between its different wars) to allow the British to settle in this
region for the purpose, first, of cutting logwood ; and it was not till the Conven-
tion of 1786 that mahogany was added to dye-woods as a legitimate article of
export by the British. Even as late as this date the British were not allowed to
establish any plantations : they were merely to fell timber.

Great Britain had at different times assumed a right to dispose of the Bay
Islands and Ruatan, off the north coast of Spanish Honduras. Hither were sent
in 1796 the insurgent Black Caribs of St. Vincent. [It is curious to note that the
French in November, 1791, transported to Ruatan the Negro militia or
" Suisses" employed against the victorious rebel mulattoes of Haiti ;* and again
in 1 8 14, under the restored Bourbons, thought of capturing by some ruse the
mulatto leaders in Haiti and deporting them to the same string of islands in the

^ British Honduras, by Archibald Robertson Gibbs (London : 1883).

^ Mahogany — Swielenia mahogani — is a tall, particularly handsome tree native to Central America and
the larger West India islands. The tallest and biggest trees come from Southern Mexico, and those
furnishing big timbers of the best average equality from British Honduras. '* Spanish " mahogany for cabinet-
making came from Santo Domingo (Hispaniola), but the mahogany forests in that island have been
almost completely destroyed. The tree still grows (rarely) in Haiti, and much more abundantly in Cuba
and Jamaica.

' These unfortunate Negro soldiers marooned on Ruatan were transported by the British to Jamaica
and sent back to Haiti, where they were massacred in cold blood by the mulattoes and French.

324 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Gulf of Honduras.] The Black Caribs landed here in 1796 have prospered
greatly, and are extending their trading range actually into the confines of
British Honduras and all along the northern coastline of the Honduras
Republic. The whole of this coast-line down to the confines of Nicaragua
is much " negrified " by British importations of negroes or by runaway
slaves.

But although in 1S52 the Bay Islands (including Ruatan) were created a

1S3. A MAHOGANY TREE

British Colony dependent on Jamaica, the influence of the United States under
the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 (a singularly futile and self-denying ordi-
nance on the part of Great Britain) constrained Great Britain to abandon her
very definite and legitimate protectorate over the Nicaraguan Mosquito Coast
(1856), and in 1859 to cede the Bay Islands and the c<Mitrol over the Black
Caribs to the Republic of Honduras.

Representative institutions and orderly government came into exist-
ence in British Honduras during the second half of the eighteenth

BAHAMAS, ETC., HONDURAS, GUIANA 325

century,^ and long before this possession was finally acknowledged by Spain
as being part of the British Empire. During nearly two-thirds of the nine-
teenth century these institutions continued, and, of course, after the abolition
of slavery in 1834 and the
extinction of apprenticeship
a few years later, the negro
or negroid inhabitants of the
colony were as much eligible
— on a property qualification
— to elect and to be members
of the Legislative Assembly
as persons of unmixed Euro-
pean descent. But during the
'sixties the colony was much
harassed by the raids of
Amerindian tribes, and con-
stant quarrels on matters
of finance and police oc-
curred between the Lieu-
tenant - Governor and the
Legislative Assembly. Fol-
lowing the precedent of
Jamaica in 1865, the settlers
of British Honduras in 1869
were induced to agree to
the surrender of their poli-
tical Constitution, which took
effect in 1870. From that
time onwards the country has
been governed as a Crown
Colony by a Governor, an
Executive containing the
Governor, three officials, and
two non - officials ; and a
Legislative Council of the
Governor, three official mem-
bers, and five non -official,
who are nominated by the
Governor and who usually
include one or more repre-
sentatives of the coloured 184. a HVUKID between NE(;R0 ash AMEBINUIAN OF
people. BRITISH CUIANA

In 1880 the colonists be- ind Bmiih Handum

came very restive under the

somewhat despotic administration of the Lieutenant-Governor and petitioned
the Secretary of State for the restitution of self-government, but Mr. Gladstone's

' A. R. Gibbs in his excellent /^frforyo/'Jrt/ijA Honduras, published in 1883, gives iSTOas the dale
al which "free representative inslilulians came into existence. But these do not seem to have taken
a definite or continuous shape until after the visit of Vice-Admiral Sir William Burnaby in 1765. In
l86z British Honduras was elected to the status of a colony depending on Jamaica, and in 181(4 to the
rank of an independent colony.

326 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Cabinet could not see its way to granting their request. Since the year 1884,
the Governors of British Honduras having usually been carefully selected, there
has been no outward sign of discontent with the present method of adminis-
tration, which, though it may seem arbitrary as applied to a country of nearly
8000 square miles, is perhaps in the long run the more efficient and economical
when the still small population of this region — ^42,300 — is taken into account
Of this population at the present day 37,000 (approximately) are negroes or
negroids, about 3000 are Amerindian half-breeds with the negro — Mosquito
Indians (Waikfia) and Black Caribs — or pure-blooded Amerindians of the
Santa Cruz, Icaiche, Maya, and Peten tribes. Of the remainder 2000 are
whites or near whites, European or of European descent, a few being derived
from the Southern States of the Union. There are said to be relatively few
pure-blooded negroes in British Honduras, the coloured population of that
colony — the Creoles — being much mixed with white blood.

There is a continuous feud going on between the Waikflas and Black
Caribs on the one hand, and the pure-blooded Amerindians on the other, who
are styled Ladinos, and, of course, are Spanish-speaking in contrast to the
Carib (who talk Carib mixed with French) and Mosquito half-breeds (who talk
jargons compounded of French, English, Carib, Toltec, and negro languages).
But there are also a few East Indians who have migrated from Jamaica, and
an increasing number of Chinese. It is remarkable, in fact, how the Chinese
are mingling with the Maya Indians of south-east Yucatan, finding beside the
evident physical affinity some mental sympathy as well.

'* There is no class feeling here," writes a correspondent of the author in
British Honduras. " The complete mixture of races has done away with that.
Negroes or negroids have occupied some of the highest positions in the colony
without giving rise to ill-feeling. There has been a negro captain in the
police.

" But we suffer from lethargy, as they do in the West Indies. Our people,
while willing to take an infinitude of trouble in discussing matters, and
revelling in polite argumentativeness, nevertheless shirk the responsibility of
a definite decision. The negro element loves politics, but is badly educated
and easily led by * talkers.' The negro here has taught himself to think that
British Honduras is in all matters ahead of other parts of the world and of the
British Empire, including England ; and that this proud position is due to the
intelligence of the Honduran negro.

**Our local education is only primary^ and is given chiefly by religious
bodies in forty-two elementary schools. Well-to-do people send their children
to the United States or to Scotland to school. Eighty per cent of the coast-
town negroes are illiterate^ and ninety-five per cent of the timber-cutters. . . .
This might be a rich as well as a beautiful colony ; but some change in our
present methods of development is needed. We have lived long on , our
mahogany and the supply of this timber is very limited, while past administra-
tions have taken no heed of forestry regulations or of replanting. The
labourers are so used to the roving life of the woods,* with its liberal allowance

^ Perhaps this explains and excuses the ignorance mentioned in the preceding paragraph. — H. H. J.

^ "The mahogany labourers of Honduras are capable of severe physical toil, but prefer to be relieved
by idle spells and indulgence in feasting and merry-making. They are as excitable as negroes generally
are, as frivolous and unreliable, as good-humoured, easily pleased, vain, passionate, and variable in all
their humours and inconsequent in their ideas. They are insincere, and if not consciously untruthful are
given to great exaggeration in their statements. . . . The labourers care chiefly for rum, music, dancing,

BAHAMAS, ETC., HONDURAS, GUIANA 327

of holidays — a month to six weeks at Christmas ! — that they dish'ke settling
down to agriculture. It will therefore be necessary to import field labour from
some other source, probably East Indian kulis. Much of the coast country is
extremely fertile."

The writer goes on to advocate the creation in British Honduras of con-
siderable colonies of East Indians.

Nevertheless, though the Honduran negroes or negroids shirk agriculture —
as the negro of the passing generation does everywhere — this particular type,
the new Honduran, is very intelligent if given a chance of becoming well
educated. But as a rule educated Hondurans do better for themselves outside
British Honduras, mostly in Louisiana, Texas, and the Greater Antilles.

One coloured citizen of this colony by birth is Dr. Ernest Lyon, the present
United States Minister- Resident in Liberia, at one time a schoolmaster and
a member of the Baptist ministry. But he received the education which
permitted him to occupy such positions in the United States ; where, of course,
the mulatto or negro — however he may be maltreated socially — has a splendid
education offered him at very little cost. Several of the Honduran negroes
have received medical diplomas enabling them to practise as physicians.

The Honduran police force and volunteers are nearly entirely composed of
negroes and negroids with white officers.

•

Though the British and French had often attempted, as one of the episodes
of warfare raging in America, to occupy Dutch GuiANA wholly or in part,
neither of these Powers did more than hold for a short time the Dutch settle-
ments west of the Corantyn River. But these temporary occupations of the
Dutch Chartered Company's possessions did much to upset the conditions of
slavery. After the Peace of 1783 the Dutch Government took a more direct
interest in the management and government of these regions, in anticipation
of the time when the charter of the New West India Company would come
to a close and not be renewed. In October, 1784, the reorganised Dutch
Government of the colonies of Essequibo and Demerara issued regulations for
the treatment of servants and slaves. As regards the latter, the punishment
of flogging was to be restricted to twenty-five lashes at any one time and " not
to be inflicted until the offender had been laid on his face and tied between
four stakes." Slaves were to be properly supplied with provisions, and ground
on which they might plant. They might be allowed to dance once a month,
but not later than two o'clock in the morning. " If any one wanted to place
the head of a negro suicide on a pole, as a deterrent to others," he was to
apply to the nearest authority, the Burgher officer. It was forbidden to work
slaves on Sundays and holidays ; negroes were not to be allowed to sing their
usual songs on board vessels where there were whites, on pain of arbitrary
correction, etc.

and sexual pleasures. Their wants are easily supplied. Their' dwellings are little better than outhouses
even in the towns ; their food is coarse and ill-prep>ared, consisting for the mostpart of salt fish, plan-
tains, vams, flour, pork, tropical fruits, vegetables, fresh fish, rice, and maize. Tlieir favourite drink is
coffee. [Not a dietary to be complained of. — Au/Aor,] ** Their clothing when at work is a shirt and
trousers for the men, a skirt and bodice for the women, with a handkerchief round the bead. But they
spend a large proportion of their wages on dress and finery for holidays and Sundays. They are usually
cleanly in their persons and habits. They are healthy and active, yet when an infectious disease is
introduced the mortality amongst them is very high, as they * crumple up' at once and are without the
resisting power of the tougher European. They are .not so superstitious as the average West Indian
negro ; and this in spite of education being singularly backward among these timber -cutters and
peasants.'* — From another correspondent.

328 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

This ordinance was received with anger and contempt by the Dutch
planters (because it was considered too mild) ; and apparently it was not
vigorously enforced.

Already the western part of Dutch Guiana had become very English, partly
owing to the British occupation of 1781, partly to the throwing open of these
regions by the Company for general settlement in 1730 and the consequent
attraction thither of English, Scottish, and Anglo-American planters. The
English language seems to have been more used by the negroes than Dutch
or French, and in the latter part of the eighteenth century, newspapers,
pasquinades, and public notices were, as often as not, printed in English.

In 1793 the charter of the Dutch West India Company came to an end,

and for three years Dutch Commissioners introduced considerable improvements

into the government of all Guiana. But all this time the Bush negroes were

increasing in numbers and constantly attacking

the planters' settlements.

The invasion of Holland by France precipi-
tated the long-contemplated action of the British
Government, who after the great American War
of 1777-83 had made up its mind on two points :
that it wanted the Cape of Good Hope and the
rivers of Guiana. In May, 1795, a British naval
force appeared off the Demerara River, Soon
afterwards the Bush negroes rose. The Dutch
enlisted slaves and Amerindians, and after one
or two serious disasters in which the Dutch
troops were cut to pieces, this mixed force (in
which a Scottish officer took a prominent place)
succeeded in inflicting severe punishment on
the Bush negroes. Thirteen of these who were
taken prisoners were broken on the wheel, and
one of their leading chiefs was burnt at the stake
" with the horrible accompaniment of having his
flesh pinched out with red-hot tongs." But in
Half AmetindiiB, quuiM DuKii, ijg^ a force Under Sir Ralph Abercromby took

possession of Demerara, practically with the
agreement of the local Dutch authorities, who yielded to overwhelming force,
and soon afterwards the whole of Dutch Guiana was in the possession of
the British. Between 1796 and 1801 the British seem to have pacified the
slaves of Dutch Guiana by kindlier treatment, and as every one believed that
the British occupation would be permanent and that there was increased
security for order and good government, large numbers of slaves were
brought over from Africa. But after the Peace of Amiens the British forces
evacuated all Guiana, one of the conditions of that treaty being that the Dutch
settlements were to be nominally restored to Holland, but that the French
Colony of Cayenne was to be allowed to extend its hinterland behind Surinam
and Demerara to the Essequibo River: in other words. Napoleon intended
eventually to secure for France the whole of Guiana, probably up to the
Orinoco River.»

However, this withdrawal did not last long, for in advance of the formal
n the Old World he lost the ooe possible chance of makiofi

BAHAMAS, ETC., HONDURAS, GUIANA 329

declaration of war in 1803 in the West Indies against France and Holland, the
British forces had once more taken possession of the Dutch colonies, and
although the region that is now called Surinam was restored to Holland in
1814, the colonies of " Demerary," Essequibo, and Berbice were purchased from
the Dutch and united to form the colony of BRITISH GUIANA. which by
subsequent extension westwards and southwards over a no-man's-land now
covers an area of 90,277 square miles [or nearly 3000 square miles larger than
the whole of Great Britain].

In 1823 a great ferment began amongst the negro slaves in what was now
British Guiana. They had heard through the conversation of their masters of
the great Anti-Slavery agitation being carried on in London, and of the
1823 resolutions of the House of Commons as to the better treatment of
slaves. Moreover, from the beginning of the nineteenth century, missionaries
of the London Missionary Society had come out
to British Guiana as they had gone to Cape
Colony ; and in both directions they had taken
up the cause of the Negro.

One of their missionaries in Guiana was the
Rev. John Smith, who had established a chapel
and attracted a large slave congregation, to
whom he talked vaguely, but strenuously, of the
approach of a time when they might all be free.
Gradually the idea spread amongst the negroes
of the coast region of British Guiana that King
George IV had ordered their freedom, but that
the planters kept this order from their know-
ledge and refused to carry it out. The result
was a slave insurrection, in which two or three
white men lost their lives, and some houses were
burnt and property destroyed. As a matter
of fact, the remarkable feature of this out-
break was the loyalty of many of the slaves i^^^^TJi"^
to their masters and mistresses, and the way

in which even when the large bands of armed negroes were temporarily
victorious they refrained from pushing their victory to the extent of
murdering any of the white people in their possession. However, the
Governor took prompt measures with the military and naval forces at
his command (being also helped by loyal Amerindians),' put down the revolt,
executed a number of prisoners by hanging, issued a proclamation to appease
the slaves still in rebellion, and arrested the Rev. John Smith, To overawe
the negroes who did not join in the revolt, the bodies of rebels after execution
were hung in chains, or were decapitated and their heads stuck about on poles
in the towns and on the plantations.

The Rev. John Smith was tried by court-martial, and on the 24th November,
1823, was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. As far as can be ascer-
tained, no clear evidence of any kind was brought forward to involve Smith in
ii/y complicity with this nearly bloodless revolt against servitude; the utmost
that could be alleged against him with truth being that by his preaching, and

' II is noteworthy through a centuiy »ad a half of Guiana history how often the Ameriodiao tribes,
especially the Carils, came to the assistance of the whiles to enable them to keep the Qegioes under
con I rot.

330 THE NEGRO IN THE N]

perhaps writing, he had led the negroes to believe 1

they would obtain their freedom at the hands of th

Fortunately, the death sentence of the court wa

mendation to mercy, and still more fortunately t

was not an Eyre. General John Murray subixiitt*

and the sentence for the consideration of the Crow

John Smith died in prison on the 6th February, i<

had long been sickly, but it was alleged by his br

death was hastened by the agitation of the trial and

The British Government, alarmed at the ferm

Guiana and other parts of British America, made

and issued royal proclamations in 1824 denying

measures for a genera! emancipation were under C(

on the slaves that the

cnce to their masters

the laws.

In 1831 the thr
Demerara, Berbice. ai
into the one colony o
the status of sl.ivery
elsewhere in British A
apprenticeship had co
year it became necess.
from India to work on
tions in lieu of the i
masters of their own s
field labour with disg
cultivate their own pli
themselves with food-:
labourers were introdL
— kuli traffic. About thi

2 7. A BoviANiJER^oF BRITISH j^ arrivc numcrous Por

Quiner Negro, tbm-itiiincr Amnndlu This Colony pOSSCS

tutions even under the
guaranteed and continued from the first British oc
by the Act of 1891, the Legislature known as th
the power of imposing the colonial taxes and audit!
and discussing freely and without reserve the items
prepared by the Governor in Executive Council. .-
under the name of "the Court of Policy," which consist
official or ex-officio members, and eight elected membei
the additional financial representatives of the peop
the Court of Policy form the Combined Court or (
elected by the direct vote of the people on a franchif
twenty-one years of age (British subjects or naturalised
a property qualification, but without any conditions of
The qualification of a membership of the Court of Pol
Court is likewise the possession of property combii
Briti.'ih citizenship or British naturalisation. There a
colour disabilities in the Constitution of British Qui
but the preliminary condition of possessing a reasona

BAHAMAS, ETC., HONDURAS, GUIANA 331

prevents the negro from electing or being elected to membership of the Guiana
Parliament.^ As a matter of fact, half the number of seats in the Legislature
are held to-day by negroes or negroids ; and the negro element wields much
power in the Guiana State, yet cannot be said down to the present time to
have abused his position.

In British Guiana, both under Dutch and British rule, the Amerindians
were well treated, and if they have diminished in numbers to any extent it
was not in any way the fault of the Europeans, but of some inherent
want of racial stamina. As in Brazil, they now seem to be recovering,
and their birth-rate is high. The early Dutch settlers married Amer-
indian wives, and there is a considerable riverside population, called the
" Bovianders,** of sturdy half-castes derived from these unions. At no time,
apparently, has there been any racial prejudice against these unions or the
half-caste results. The mother of George Augustus Sala is said to have been
the daughter of an Amerindian Guiana chief, and the naturalist Waterton
married an Amerindian half-caste. Male Amerindians of Guiana are some-
times described- as selfish, grasping, improvident, lazy, sullen, and revengeful,
though not hasty in temper. But they are usually inoffensive, capable of great
endurance in work if they work at all, though still unfortunately much addicted
to intoxication from native-made alcohol {piwarri), which when persisted in
gives them a serious disease of the intestines.

Whilst slavery prevailed in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nine-
teenth centuries the Amerindians of Guiana were subsidised by the Dutch and
British to assist in capturing runaway negro slaves, and in consequence a deep-
set ill-feeling has grown up between Amerindians and Negroes. Nevertheless,
there has been much racial intermixture between the two in the interior

^ "By the constitution of 1891 direct representation in the Legislative Council has been granted to
people who have shown eagerness to avail themselves of their privil^es. For the first time in its history
the Court of Policy in 1894 was entered by a pure-blooded African, who as representative for his native
country filled his place with modesty and dignity. Once grant the principle of representation, and its
logical outcome must be a preponderance of the coloured element in the Legislative Assembly. The
African races are more numerous than any other, as they number more than half the whole population of
the Colony. The East Indians come next in point of numbers, and ought to be represented by some
educated babu ; whilst the Portuguese, who although not very numerous have a large pecuniary stake in
the Colony, should endeavour to obtain the election of one of their number to champion their particular
interests in the Chamber." {Twenty-five Years in British Guiana^ pp. 286, 287, by Henry Kirke, M.A.,
B. c. L. , Oxon. Formerly Sheriff of Demerara. )

The property qualifications for the suffrage and the membership of the Court of Policy and Financial
Representatives are rather high for America.

Voters (if they live in the country) must own three acres of land under cultivation, or be tenants of not
less than six acres under cultivation, or own a house worth £20 a year, or occupy a house worth £^0 a
year, or have an annual income of £\Oti^ or have paid direct taxes of at least £\ 3s. 4d. for at
least a year previous to registration, and have resided in the district at least six months. In
the towns the qualification is ownership of a house worth at least £\o^ 3s. 4d. (one would think
legists who fix these quaint odd sums must be suffering from a perverted sense of humour), or occu-
pation of a house on a rental oi £2^ a year or an annual income of ;£'ioo coupled with residence in the
town, or residence and payment of a year's previous taxes of at least £^ 3s. 4d.

I suppose these totals of pounds, shillings, and pence instead of plain pounds are intended to be a
further arithmetic test !

There are at the present time about 3100 registered electors throughout British Guiana.

The qualification for membership as above is to own 80 acres of land of which at least 40 are under
cultivation, or to own property worth £iS^2 los., or a house, etc., worth an annual rental oi £2^0. If
you wish to be eligible for a Financial Representative you must in addition to all this possess a clear
annual income of at least ;f 300.

' Mr. A. £. Aspinall in his excellent West Indian Pocket Guide (Stanford) gives a much more sympa-
thetic description of the Carib on page 93. The great authority on the Amerindians of Guiana is Sir
Everard Im Tbum, G.C.M.G., now Governor of Fiji.

332 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

fiarts of British Guiana. But under normal circumstances the Amerindian
though he or she exhibits no repugnance to an association with either the
European or the East Indian] detests and despises the Negro. The East
Indian kulis sometimes intermarry with the Amerindians, and the result is
quite a handsome type of humanity.

When, in 1853, the first attempt was made to introduce Chinese labourers into
British Guiana, instead of a respectable class of labourer being recruited, the
Chinese Government officials sent prisoners from the jails, beggars, and vile
persons. But in later attempts (1859 and subsequently) a very good class

of Chinese kuli was imported, and many of these after their arrival not only
became Christians, but have remained such, and constitute a sound element
in the Guianan policy.

The Negroes are afraid of the Chinese, and do not behave to them in the
bullying manner they sometimes adopt toward the East Indian. The Chinese,
on the other hand, without hesitation, take to themselves mulatto or negro
concubines, and a considerable number of hybrid types are arising between
the two races, which, as in Jamaica, look like very vigorous, stalwart
Amerindians.

That the climate is well suited to East Indians is shown by the fine healthy
appearance of the kulis; the men are stronger and the women fairer than their
parents in India. In fact a fine race of people is springing up in Guiana, the

"Jrfcr

^//£

•'Vflf

,<*«,

''Or/

Wee ,

■Wa/,

'«<

'9 ind .

'^-,

"yofiiK,,,.

334

THE NEGRO IN THE NE

Writers on British Guiana usually discrimin;
negroes, who are descended from the former slaves,
the country down to 1824, and the free African im
the colony much more recently, have, in fact, been
these there are a number of Krumen, engaged chi
occupations, and easily identified by their chippe<
" blue " noses. The other " African " negroes are ol
tion compared to those born in the colony, but
agriculture.

The Negroes indigenous to British Guiana are a

size above the average not only of the East Indians,

but of the Europeans, while the women (as is ofter

nearly as big and powerful as the men. They

petty dishonesty, but i

affection towards Eurc

other race in the colon

somewhat inclined U

good-tempered and s

are stated to be enti

sexual relations, but

to unite with low-clas^

no sexual dislike for t

natives of India, on tl

greatest antipathy for

probably little sexual i

for this reason. An Ini

prefer to live unmarried

a negress : they are m

about marriage with mti

The Negro surnam

ridiculous and inapproc

290. A YooNG^woMAN OF BRITISH qIj skvery days, whe

Thm-quHtir Negro, qunner chioeM patronymic of their est

— possibly some name

England, or one thrust upon them by their facetious

Hercules, Napoleon.'

Elementary education seems to be well advancec
coloured population of British Guiana. It is said amc
generation between the ages of ten and thirty at least i
write.

No school for negroes existed in this colony until li
the 1823 House of Commons' Resolutions two free sc
were started in Georgetown, Demerara.

The first Colonial Government grant for public edi
in 1830. In 1834 the "Lady Mico Charity" (referred

' " There ire a large number of highly educated black or coloured pen
not at all from a similar diss io England or Scolland. Some of the blac
courts are singularly polite and courteous in word and manner. Of coursi
reverse, but none of them worse than the coarse, brow-beating pnctilione
race the Kegro is much more courteous than the Biiton. The coarseness
labourer of Briton ate absent, and his manners and language are gen
(Henry Kirke, in Tvienty-five Years in British Guiana.)

BAHAMAS, ETC., HONDURAS, GUIANA 335

lished six schools in different parts of the colony. By 1840 there were seventy-
four denominational schools conducted by the Church of England, the
Presbyterians, Wesleyans, Congregationalists, and Baptists, which had a roll of
nearly five thousand negro scholars and received a Government grant-in-aid

of £3 1 59-

In 1876 an admirable Education Ordinance was passed by the Legislature
and brought into force. By this attendance at school was made compulsory
(oh, Jamaica! why did you not follow suit?). Parents or guardians of children
which failed to attend school might be punished. The employment of children
under the age of nine was forbidden, and every child of nine years old and
upwards to fourteen years was required to attend school for at least two and a
half hours each day the school was open. The establishment of private indus-
trial schools was authorised, especially in regard to imparting instruction to
children in practical agriculture, a proportion of the money thus earned to go
to the child or its parents. This Ordinance with some amendments and
additions is in force at the present day.

The following is the curriculum of the Government and private Primary
schools in British Guiana : reading, writing, arithmetic, school gardens, trades
or industries, Nature study, English, geography, elementary hygiene, sewing,
singing, and physical drill. In all these schools there are, of course, no colour
or race disabilities.

Special attention is given to the teaching of agriculture by school gardens,
lectures on agricultural chemistry and botany, the education of native pupil-
teachers and demonstrators, apprenticeship under the Government Botanical
Department, and other rewards and inducements. But it is said that the
Guianan negro still shows himself averse to tilling and planting as compared
to other avocations, though of late he has evinced a disposition to compete
with the East Indian as a rice-grower.

In 1909 there were 223 primary schools in British Guiana and 32,085
scholars on the books (a muster on inspection of 27,526) ;^ 23,979 were ex-
amined in 1908-9, and in the same twelve months the local Government grant
towards primary education was approximately ;f 25,000. Education equal to
that of a public school is provided for boys at Queen's College, a Government
institution (undenominational and very highly equipped). The education here,
though not quite gratuitous (and admittance is dependent on success in en-
trance examination), is very cheap — in the highest grades only ;f 12 a year.
There are at present 126 negroes and negroid students at this college, together
with a few Europeans and East Indians.

The Government and private benevolence have established a number of
important, well-furnished scholarships which would enable the gainer of them
(in a competitive examination) to complete his studies at a foreign university.
Out of twenty-five scholarships recently bestowed eight have been won by
negroes or negroids. It is gratifying to note (despite the gloomy predictions
once emitted by the dying planter aristocracy) that this spread of education
in Guiana is coincident with a diminution of crime. A correspondent in
Guiana, who is in a position to know, writes to me as follows : " Crime is
decidedly on the decrease. The suicide of a black man or woman is nowadays
almost unheard of, though so common an occurrence in slavery days. Negroes
and negroids are very rarely charged with murder or serious felony. The

^ Out of a total population of 304,549 in 1908.

336 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

negro is a clumsy plotter, and is not vindictive or morose : he has more bark
than bite in him. Since the final emancipation of the slaves in 1838 there
have been only three riots in the colony, and each of these was carried on
principally by women and children."

The daily average of prisoners and convicts in jail or penal settlements
throughout British Guiana for the year 190S-9 was only 50f26 (out of a popula-
tion of 304,549). Of these, two-thirds were negroes or negroids. In 1905-6
the same average was 6i8'2 ; in 1884, 739; in 1881,958. The population in
i88r was approximately 252,186. But irregularity In morals still dogs the
negro's upward advance in Guiana as elsewhere ; or it may be that he is less
cunning a hypocrite, his faults are more eagerly laid bare by the white
statistician, and he is also frankly philoprogenitive, and likes begetting and
bringing forth children. The man is seldom simultaneously polygamous, and
his consecutive adulteries arise mostly from the innate desire of the pregnant
negress to withdraw from her husband's society
till the child is born and weaned. The per-
centage of illegitimate births in the negro popu-
lation of British Guiana was 58*4 per cent in the
year 1907,

Some remarkable figures as to the birth-rates
of the various races in British Guiana have re-
cently been transmitted to me by Mr. J. van
Sertima. In the year 1907 the birth-rate among
the Europeans of " Nordic " type was 136 per
thousand, as against I2'2 in 1906; the Portuguese
birth-rate was 23'9 (in 1906, 288), The East
Indian birth-rate for 1907 was 24*4 (325 in
1906); that of the Chinese, 329 (in 1906, 312).
Of the semi - civilised Amerindians (Caribs,
Arawaks, Warraus, etc) the birth-rate, strange
to say, is the highest in the community, from
50 to 52 per thousand. [See page 107 for
^'and EAs^rVND^N^'fo'uiASA*)''" birth-rate in Bra7.iI.] That of the negro is
32 to 34 per thousand, and of the half-castes
(mainly negroids), 32 to 28 per thousand.

Of the total births registered during 1907, 438 per thousand were amongst
the negroes, 1 1 5 per thousand represented the mixed negroid element, and, in
the same proportion, 360 the East Indian, 40 the Amerindian, 29 the Portu-
guese, 9 the Chinese, and 6 the Nordic Europeans.

The total population for 1908 was 304,549; of which approximately
117,798 were negroes (1413 of African birth); 34,325 mixed race, largely
negroid; 7500 Amerindian ;' 123,326 were East Indians; 4000 Chinese; 4,600
Nordic Europeans, and 13,000 Portuguese.

The bulk of the negroes and negroids are Protestant Christians and the
remainder Roman Catholics. There is scarcely a single Muhammadan amongst
them, and nowadays fetish worshippers or believers in Obia are rare, especially
as compared to the West India Islands. The language commonly used by the
Guiana negroes is that Creole dialect of all Guiana and of the British, Danish,

' The eslimate for the Amerindians is, of course, much under ihe total number in the colony, as so
many groups of this people still lead a Ecmi-nomad existence in the forests, and keep aloof from all con-
nection with the colony.

BAHAMAS, ETC., HONDURAS, GUIANA 337

and Dutch West Indies, which has English for its basis, mixed with African,
Carib, French, and Dutch words. Of course, all the even slightly-educated
negroes and mulattoes can speak good English, much more easily understood
by a Londoner than the dialects of Scotland and Northern England.

As has been repeatedly mentioned, the Guianan negroes (like those of
Trinidad, Honduras, and several West India islands) have shown themselves
very averse, since the abolition of slavery, from agriculture as a calling, especially
in the case of the descendants of former slaves. The Negro had such a sickener
of this pursuit from having cultivated the White Man's plantations for nearly
two hundred years under the lash that he seems instinctively predisposed
against this most praiseworthy of all callings. And he has now such a sense of
his own importance that he asks for work in the fields a higher wage than the
modern planter or company can afford to pay with the more patient, careful,
silent, industrious kuli at hand. The place of the negro men, women, and
children on the sugar estates has now been completely taken by the East
Indian family. On the other hand, the negro is still disposed to cultivate rice,
and suffers less from mortality in that most unhealthy pursuit than the other
peoples of Guiana.

But it is in the trades, industries, and professional careers that the Guianan
negro or coloured man comes to the front. He is not a good man of business,
and though successful as a pedlar or petty market salesman (or woman), he
seldom keeps a shop in this colony ; in all Georgetown (the capital) there
is only one negro grocer. As a shopkeeper, large or small, he has been ousted
by the Chinese and Portuguese. But, on the other hand, almost all the
carpenters, joiners, upholsterers, painters, masons, engineers, machinists, pan-
boilers, timber-cutters, printers, bookbinders, and plumbers are negroes or
coloured men. From this race is drawn nearly all the thirteen thousand miners
who do the rough work in the gold and diamond mines of the interior.

Negroes are employed to collect rubber, balata gum,^ the fibres, barks,
timber, and other products of the interior forests. They are certainly not,
therefore, an idle or an unimportant people in the economy of British Guiana.
They furnish nearly all the police and soldiery ; they or their half-caste relations
are the clerks, the book-keepers, and petty employes of the commercial houses
of the towns. They provide most of the lawyers and doctors, the pastors,
school-teachers, press reporters, several of the magistrates, most of the lesser
Government officials. In all these posts they are pronounced (as in Dominica)
to be *' just as honest as the Whites." Indeed, in following the recent criminal
records of this colony one might go farther and state that the negroes and
negroids of Guiana bear an excellent character for honesty in all serious
responsibilities where money and valuable property are concerned.

There is a slight "colour question" in Guiana, but the sensitiveness lies
rather between the "near-whites" of pale ivory complexion and the darker-
tinted mulattoes or negroes. There is now practically no intermarriage between
whites and blacks; on the other hand, numerous unions take place between
whites, especially Portuguese, and the lighter-skinned negroids, many of whom
would almost sooner perish in celibacy than intermarry with the negro or
mulatto.

^ A substance like caoutchouc, derived from a tall Mimusops tree.

CHAPTER XII

THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT IN

GREAT BRITAIN

THE following brief recital of the events and personages connected
with the abolition of Slavery and the Slave-Trade in America may be
of use to the reader of this book :—

The earliest revulsion of feeling in the minds of Englishmen regarding the righteous-
ness of condemning fellow human beings to transportation and servitude arose con-
currently with the vigorous development of the African Slave-Trade, in the last forty
years of the seventeenth century. At first British sympathies were mainly extended to
the wretched apprentices, convicts, Or political prisoners who were sent to the plantations
in America from London, Bristol, and other English cities, from Scotland, and from
Ireland. But before this British philosophers had grown sentimental over the wrongs
inflicted by the Spaniards on the Amerindians ; and had even denounced the treacherous
treatment of the Caribs by the early English settlers in the Leeward Islands.

From the idealised Carib or Arawak, sympathy gradually turned towards the negroes.
It was observed that rich West Indian planters bringing negro slaves with them to
England frequently treated these slaves with great cruelty and harshness. As early
as 1670 (?) the Rev. Morgan Godwyn, a clergyman of the Church of England, wrote a
treatise entitled " A Negro's and Indian's Advocate," based on the sufferings of slaves
in the Island of Barbados, of which he had been a witness. He dedicated his treatise
to the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was succeeded as an author by many other Church
of England or Nonconformist divines during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
notably Richard Baxter (? 1675), the Rev. Griffith Hughes, Rector of the church of
St. Lucy in Barbados (1750), Dr. Hayter, Bishop of Norwich (1755), Bishop Warburton
(1766), John Wesley (1774), Dr. Porteus, Bishop of Chester (1776), and the Rev. James
Ramsay^ ('784).

In 1729 the question of whether a negro was or was not a free man within the limits
of the United Kingdom was decided by a joint opinion of the Attorney-General and
Solicitor-General then advising the Government. They were of opinion that a slave
coming from the West Indies into Great Britain or Ireland did not become free
whether or not he was baptised, and that his master could legally compel him to return
again to the plantations.

In 1765 a much-mishandled West African Negro from Barbados — Jonathan Strong —
applied to a London surgeon for advice. The brother of this surgeon — the afterwards
celebrated Granville Sharp —took up this man's case, enabled him to recover his health ;
and when his former master — a drunken ruffian called David Lisle — attempted to kidnap
and sell him, Sharp defended the wretched slave by an appeal to the Lord Mayor, who
set Strong free. Nevertheless the captain of the ship delegated for the purpose by
Strong's new purchaser attempted to seize the ex-slave by force, and Sharp intervened

^ Referred to on page 229.

338

ABOLITION MOVEMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN

339

with great courage before the rather \'acitlating Lord Mayor, and carried olf Strong
triumphantly, afterwards putting him in a secure refuge.

He then determined to take up the case in a decisive manner, and eventually — in 1 769
—after a tremendous research into the laws and customs of Great Britain and Ireland, he
produced a book entitled A Representation of the Injustice and Dangerous Tendency
of Tolerating Slavery in England. He rescued various other slaves from re-trans-
portation to the West Indies, and finally the question was fought to an issue over James
Somerset, a slave who had been brought (apparently from Africa) to England by
his master, Charles Stuart, and who was to he sold as a slave and sent to Jamaica. The
case of James Somerset was argued before Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, who finally, in
the name of the whole bench, on the 22nd June, 1772, pronounced the decision that as
soon as the Slave set his foot on the soli of the British Islands he became free. After
this decision Granville Sharp wrote to the principal Secretary of State, Lord North,
urging him most earnestly to abolish immediately both the trade in and the slavery of the
human species in all the British Dominions, as
being utterly irreconcilable with the principles of
the British Constitution and the established religion
of the land.

In 1 776 David Hartley, M.P. for Hull, moved in
the House of Commons "That the Slave-trade was
contrary to the laws of God and the rights of man."
But his motion met with little sympathy, as did
several subsequent petitions to Parliament from
English towns. Amongst these was a petition from
Bridgewater, Somerset, presented in 1785, which
was well to the fore in this movement against
Slavery and the Slave-trade, not entirely, however,
without the desire to cast a slur on Bristol-'

In 1 785, however. Dr. Peckard, Vice- Chancel lor
of Cambridge University, who had conceived a
strong dishke to the principle of Slavery, composed
as a subject for a Latin prize essay the question " Is
it lawful to make slaves of others against their

will ? "

The "Senior Bachelor" of Cambridge — Thomas agj. cbanvillb sharp

Clarkson — Saint Thomas Clarkson, I hope he may

some day be called among the beatitudes of an universal Christian Church — had already
taken prizes for Latin essays and resolved to compete for this one. To fit himself for
the task, he determined to read a remarkable book. An Historical Account of Guinea,
by Anthony Benezet,'' This book contained the sum of the writings and obser\-ations
of the explorers Adanson, Moor, Barbot, Bosman, and others.

As the result of his studies, Clarkson became body and soul devoted to the cause,
first, of abolishing the Slave-trade between Africa and America, and secondly, of
getting rid of Slavery altogether. But although an enthusiast, his zeal was splendidly
tempered by judgment and discretion, as is occasionally the case with the great men of
Britain and America. He realised that the first battle to be fought was over the aboli-
tion of the Slave-trade. If that could be won, the status of Slavery itself might next be
tackled. At any rate, if the planters could no longer look to Africa for the recruitment
of fresh negroes year by year, they might be disposed to treat more kindly and consider-
ately the staves already in their possession. He resolved to devote his life to this cause,

' Bristol >nd Lirerpool were the great strongholds of the British Slxve-trade. No doubt Bristol had
in some w>y aanoyed Bridgewaler—just as Manchester then and (henceforth posed as the antithesis and
antidote of Liverpool.

34°

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

and his Latin essay {which obtained the prize) was expanded into a book on Slavery
and the Slave-trade, published (in English, of course) in 1 786, This led to his making
the acquaintance of William Dillwyn, who had been born in North America, but who
had settled in Essex and had thrown himself for years past vehemently into the cause of
the slaves, he having caught this enthusiasm from (Saint) Anthony Benezet, whose book
on Guinea had also inspired Clarkson.

Granville Sharp about this time was commencing his interest in the Sierra Leone
Chartered Company, which was to acquire land on the west coast of Africa for the
repatriation of homeless freed slaves. He soon heard of Thomas Clarkson. Both of
them now came into contact with William Wilberforce, who after a wild youth had
settled down into an eager philanthropic Member of Parliament. Wilberforce (after
one or two others had failed) promised to bring up again the question of the Slave-
trade before the House of Commons.*

The first committee to collect evidence and move for the abolition of the Stave-trade
was formed on the aand May, 1787, under the
presidency of Granville Sharp, Wilberforce found
in the great minister William Pitt, a sympathiser
in this movement against the Slave-trade, and Pitt
appointed in 1788 a Committee of the Privy
Council to inquire into the question. Wilberforce
got this changed into a Committee of the whole
House, which commenced to consider the matter
in May, 1789. The discussion of Wilberforce's
twelve resolutions continued till 1791 ; but the
Bill to put a stop to the British Slave-trade which
was brought forward on April i8th, 1791, was pre-
judiced by the negro insurrections already com-
mencing in San Domingo, Martinique, and the
British island of Dominica, and was defeated in the
House of Commons by a great majority. Finally,
after one or two partial successes, Wilberforce carried
a resolution on the ist January, 1796, that the
British Slave-trade should come to an end. But in
the final stage of the Bill the measure was lost by

293. THOMAS CLARKSON foUf VOteS.

Between 1796 and 1807 Wilberforce stuck to
his object with splendid tenacity, helped whole-heartedly by the Prime Minister Pitt, and
by his almost equally great opponent Charles Fox." However they might disagree

' A good many dinners and social meetings occurred if this period and drew together most of the
represeDlatives of light and learning to discuss with Clarkson, Wilherforce, and Granville Sharp the
rights and wrongs of Slavery and ihe Slave trade. The great painter Sir Joshua Reynolds was an
ardent Anti-Slavery man ; so also through Ihe influence of Dr. Samuel Johnson was for a time James
Boswell, Johnson's biographer, who made one or two rather happy remarks. To those who repealed
the planters' preposterous argument that " Africans were made happier by being carried from Iheir own
country to the West Indies," Boswell remarked, "Be il so. But we have no right to make people
happy against their will." But with his customary fickleness, Boswell afterwards turned round and
derided the Anti-Slavery movement.

^ The details of this long and exciting struggle must, of course, he read in The Hiitory cf the Abotiltmi
of Iht Stone Trade, by Thomas Clarkson. But a passage from the speech of Mr. Huddlestone in 1805
deserves special quotation.

" He asked how it happened, that sugar could be imported eheaptr from the Eati Indies, than from
the Wcsl Indies, notwithstanding the vast difleience of the length of the voyages ; was it on account of
the impolicy of slavery, or that il was made in the former case by Ihe industry of free men, and in the
latter by the languid drudgery of slaves?

" As he had had occasion 10 advert to the eastern part of the world, he would make an observation
upon an argument which had been collected from that quarter. The condition of the negroes in Ihe
West Indies had been lately compared with that of the Hindoos. Bui he would observe that the Hindoo,

ABOLITION MOVEMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 341

on other policies, great and small, Pitt and Fox rivalled one another in the remarkable
eloquence and pith of their attacks on the Slave-trade (and inferentially on Slavery).
But Pitt died at the beginning of 1806, and Fox died in the following October of that
year. The mantle of Fox fell on the shoulders of Lord Grenville, who by a clever move
first of all carried the Bill for the abolition of the Slave-trade through the House of
Lords.

Finally, on the i6th March, 1807, the third reading of the Bill was passed without
a division, to the effect that no vessel should clear out for slaves from any port within
the British Dominions after May i, iSo;, and that no slaves should be landed in British
colonies after March i, 1808. This meant, of course, the abolition of the Slave-trade
under the British flag. It only remained that this great measure should receive the
renewed assent of the Lords (since it had been amended), and finally the Royal sanction.
The crisis was one of palpitating anxiety to the supporters of the measure, because the
petulant King (George III, not known to sympathise very strongly with the Anti-Slavery
movement) had intimated that he was about to
dismiss his ministers over the question of justice to
Roman Catholics. However, Lord Grenville carried
the Bill with extraordinary despatch through the
House of Lords (helped by the Duke of Norfolk
and all the Church of England Bishops),' the
measure was submitted to the King, and "as the
clock struck twelve, just when the sun was in its
meridian splendour to witness this august act and
to sanction it by its most vivid and glorious
beams," the King's Commission was opened by the
Lord Chancellor and the Royal assent to the
abolition of the Slave-trade was completed. The
Ministry then delivered up their seals of office to
the King.

Amongst those who made themselves odious or
ridiculous in history by a malignant or stupid
opposition to this long-debated act of justice were
the Duke of Clarence, afterwards \Villiam IV, who
was, however, balanced in the House of Lords by

his brother the Duke of Gloucester;" a certain **•■ wclliam wilherfobcb

General Gascoyne (who, as usual, appealed to '*\S wks^Sp""!!!* qraiLm"of °h 'sil«'!ir^l*''
Scripture to sanction the Slave-trade and Slavery

in its utmost extent). Lord Hawkesbury, Sir William Yonge, the Lord Chancellor Eldon,
and the Earl of Sheffield ; the principal or the most effective supporters of Mr, Wilber-
force in the Legislature were (besides those persons already mentioned) Mr. Barham, a
planter in the West Indies, Henry (afterwards Lord) Brougham, the Earl of West-

miMrable >s his hovel was, had sources of pride and happiness to which not only the West Indian slave,
but even his masler, was s stranger. He was, lo be sure, a peasani ; and his industry was subservient lo
the gralilicition of ■ European lord. But he was, in his own lielief, vaslly superior to him as one of the
lowest caste. lie would not on any consideration eat from the same plale. He would not sufTet his son
to marry ihe daughter of his master, even if she could bring him all the West Indies as her portion. He
would observe, too. thai Ihe Hindoo peasant drank his water frotn his native well ; that if his meal were
scanty, he received it from the hand of hei who was most dear to him ; that when he labouied, he
laboured for her and his ofTspring. His daily task being finished, he reposed with his family. No retro,
spect of the hap[riness of former days, compared with existing misery, disturbed his slumber ; nor horrid
dreams oceosioned him lo wake in agony at the dawn of day. No barbarous sounds of cracking whips
reminded him that with the form and image of a man his destiny was that of the beast of the field. Let
the advocates for the bloody traffic slate what Ihey had to set forth on Ibeir side of the question against
Ihe comforts and independence of the man with whom they compared the slave."

' Notably the Bishop of London (Dr. Porteus] and the Bishop of Llandalf.

* The Duke of Gloucester — the best of George Ill's sons — ^made a most efTeclive speech against the
Slave-trade in the final debate in (he Lords.

342 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

moriand, Sir Samuel Rotnilly, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Lord Henry Petty, and
Mr. Canning,

It was recognised on all hands that this parliamentary struggle which began in 1776
with the motion against the Slave-trade by David Hartley and closed in 1807 with the
theoretical abolition of the British Slave-trade, really involved the much greater issue of
the abolition of the status of Slavery on British soil, and this, of course, was why the
former was so long and bitterly opposed by those who had vested interests in America.
In 1807 the African Institution was founded in England with a view to keeping a vigi-
lant watch on slave-traders, and to procuring the abolition of the Slave-trade by other
European nations. Further, it was to promote the instruction of the Negro races and to
difliise information respecting the agricultural and commercial possibilities of Africa ;
so as to create a legitimate commerce in that continent which should remove all induce-
ment to trade in human beings. This African
Institution led to great results both in West Africa
and the West Indies.

In 1811 (Lord) Broi^hajn carried through
Parliament a Bill which declared the traffic in
slaves to be a felony punishable with transportation ;
and this measure, coupled with the vigorous action
of British warships, to a great extent brought the
British Slave-trade to a close. And the negotia-
tions with the British Government at the close of
the Napoleonic Wars induced most of the Euro-
pean nations with commercial fleets (as also the
United States) similarly to abolish and punish
slave-trading.

But so long as Slavery existed in America it was

impossible to bring the Slave-trade completely to a

close. Moreover, the cessation of large and free

supplies of slaves accentuated the cruelty of slavery

conditions in the United States and in the British,

Danish, and Dutch West Indies. Wilberforce

195. SI THOMAS F E 1, BUXTON, ^^^ j^j^ fnends Thomas Fowell Buxton, Zachary

FEniBuonei: died 18,5 Macaulay, Df. Lushington, and Lord Suffield

recommenced in 1821 thefr activities in Parliament

for the abolition of Slavery, and in 1 82 3 established the Anti-Slavery Society. [Sir] Thomas

Fowell Buxton ' relieved the aged Wilberforce of the stress of fighting in the new movement.

On the 5th May, 1823, he moved in the House of Commons a measure for the gradual

abolition of Slavery. But the Prime Minister, Canning, saw this measure foredoomed to

failure, and instead carried through the House of Commons several resolutions dealing

with the amelioration of Slavery conditions and recommending these to the attention of

the Colonial Legislatures, at the same time bringing them into immediate effect in the

Crown Colony of Trinidad. These were the celebrated 1823 Resolutions which took whole

or partial effect throughout the West Indies and Guiana in 1824, and which, though they

did a good deal to help the slave, only made his desire for freedom more acute.

In 1828 the free people of colour in most (but not all) of the West Indian colonies
were placed on a footing of equality with the whites. But in 1830 the agitation in Par-
liament for the complete abolition of slavery was renewed. The movement was delayed
by the contemporary excitement over the Reform Bill ; but when that became law, the

' He was niadE a Baronet in 1S40, not so much for his greil work in bringing about emancipalion as
for hia strenuous efforls and expenditure of funds 10 create a legitimate commerce in West Africa which
might take the place of (he Slave-trade. See Memoirs of Sir T. F. BuxIoh, etc., by hii son Charles
Kuxton [John Murray, iSj?} : a book of exceptional inleresi, for Buiton was concerned with many other
things besides Slavery. His relations wilh Pope Gregory XVI and his descriptions of the Rome of 18J9-40
are well worth recording. Pope Gregory was a keen ami-slavery reformer.

ABOLITION MOVEMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 343

great Reform Ministry under Earl Grey adopted abolition as a Government measure.
It was carried through the House of Commons and the House of Lords with little diffi-
culty, and received the Royal Assent on the 28th of August, 1833. By this measure all
children under six years of age were at once emancipated, but as regards the rest of the
slaves, they were required to remain as apprentices to their masters for seven years,
during which they were to give their labour for three-fourths of the working day and
were to be liable to corporal punishment if they failed to do so. On the other hand,
they were to be supplied with food and clothing gratis.

But this long apprenticeship was displeasing to the Anti-Slavery Party, and was
reduced eventually to four years from 1834 instead of six. In Antigua, and perhaps one
or two other West Indian islands, the planters made the best of a bad business, and all
the slaves were liberated within the year 1833. But in any case, on August 28, 1838,
Slavery ceased' to be a legal status throughout the British Dominions in America, Africa,
and Asia.

A sum of ;£2o, 000,000 was voted by the House of Commons from the British tax-
payers' money as compensation to the slave-owners in the British Dominions, and also,
no doubt, as a kind of "conscience money" in expiation of national wrong-doing.
About ^16,000,000 of this went to the British West Indies, Guiana, and Honduras;
the rest to the Cape and Mauritius.

William Wilberforce died in 1833, a month before the Emancipation Bill received
the Royal Assent. Clarkson lived to 1846 (he was eighty-six at the time of his death),
having had the supreme satisfaction of commencing this struggle in 1786, following its
course for sixty years, and seeing every item in his programme carried into effect.

In the last quarter of the eighteenth century the annual import of negroes into
America was : —

By the British, 38,000; French, 20,000; Dutch, 4000; Danes, 2000; Portuguese,
10,000; total, 74,000.

Of these [it is calculated by Bryan Edwards], 700 came from the Gambia, 1500
from the Isles de Los and adjacent rivers, 2000 from Sierra Leone, 3000 from the Grain
Coast (Liberia), 1000 from the Ivory Coast, 10,000 from the Gold Coast, 1000 from
Quita and P5po (Togoland), 4500 from Dahome, 3500 from Lagos, 3500 from Benin,
14,500 from the Niger delta, 7000 from Old Calabar and the Cameroons, 500 from the
Gaboon, 14,500 from Loango, the Lower Congo, and northernmost Angola, 7000 from
S^o Paulo de Loanda and Benguela (Central Angola).

After the Napoleonic Wars were over, in spite of the Slave-trade having been for-
bidden by several of the leading European nations and by the United States, the export
of negroes from Africa to the Southern States, Cuba, Porto Rico, and the French VVest
Indies went on increasing in volume till the annual average in (say) 1820 was about
100,000. The British Government took up its self-imposed duty of preventive service in
1819, and from that year to about 1878 it employed a considerable squadron to patrol
the sea between Cape Verde, Brazil, the Cape of Good Hope, and Fernando Po
[besides a similar work off the East African coasts and Persian Gulf, which was con-
tinued till 1895].

Its principal rendezvous in West Africa was Sierra Leone. This peninsula had been
acquired by a philanthropic Chartered Company in 1787 as a refuge for Negro emigrants,
notably those who had drifted to England after the American War. Later on, most of
the rebellious Maroons from Jamaica were sent here. In 1808 the Imperial Government
annulled the Charter and took over Sierra Leone as a colony. Soon after 181 1 it
became the principal place where the British Government maintained courts to con-
demn slave-ships and to land released slaves.

Between 18 19 and 1828 the British cruisers captured and landed at Sierra Leone
13,281 slaves, an annual average of about 1400. Between 1828 and 1878 an
approximate 50,000 negroes released from slave-ships were disembarked here ; but the
history of this interesting colony after 1808 belongs to the history of Africa.

CHAPTER XIII

SLAVERY UNDER THE DANES, ETC.

OTHER northern powers besides the Dutch and English were drawn by
the demand for sugar and spices to acquire a West India island or two
for their "plantations," and some establishment on the west coast
of Africa for the recruitment of slaves to cultivate the sugar and cull the spice.
In 164I a Duke of Courland — the Teutonic ruler of a little Baltic duchy lon<^
since merged in Russia — obtained the grant of the island of Tobago^ (near
Trinidad) from Charles I of England [who had no more right to dispose
of it than the King of France]. But the rival attempts at settlement on the
part of the Dutch made things very disagreeable for the Courlanders, and
eventually the Duke who reigned over Courland in 168 1 disposed of his title to
a company of London merchants.

In 1681 the "Great Elector" of Brandenburg (Frederick William) formed a
company to trade in slaves from the Gold Coast to America, and not being able
to obtain a West India island of his own, made common cause with the Danish
Chartered Company of Guinea and the West Indies, Brandenburg ships from
Stettin, and East Friesland vessels from Emden (the Prussian Company) pro-
ceeded to the Gold Coast, where in 1682 and 1685 they built forts (Grossfried-
richsburg and Dorotheaburg), and traded for gold dust and slaves. The Great
Elector even purchased from the Dutch the little island of Arguin, near Cape
Blanco (North Senegal coast), but this North German irruption into the slave-
trade led to nothing. By 1720 the African and West Indian enterprise was
abandoned.

The Swedes commenced to trade in slaves about 1640, and built in 1645 the
well-known fort of Christiansborg, near Accra, on the Gold Coast. This was
taken from them by the Danes in 1657. In 1784 Sweden bought from France
the small West Indian island of St. Bartholomew, where with the aid of negro
slaves the Swedes endeavoured to grow sugar for the Swedish market*

In 18 1 3 Sweden abolished the slave-trade as a lawful enterprise for Swedish
ships, and in the same year acquired the French island of Guadeloupe from the
British Government. But this transfer only took place on paper, and in 181 5
Guadeloupe was restored to France.^

^ The island of Robinson Crusoe described by Defoe.

' This island was repurchased by France in 1877.

' Amongst other curious ruling powers introduced into the West Indies and the inevitable slave-trade
during the seventeenth century was the Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, which had become
a sovereignty in the Mediterranean by their occupation of the islands of Malta and Gozo. In 165 1 they
are said to have purchased or been granted by France the islands of St. Christopher, St. Martin,
St. Bartholomew, Tortuga (off the Haitian coast), and St. Croix. Their interest in these islands lapsed
to France a few years afterwards. The idea of Louis XIV in drawing the Knights of St. John to the
West Indies was to get them to war against the pirates who infested the Caribl)ean Sea in the last
half of the seventeenth century.

344

SLAVERY UNDER THE DANES, ETC. 345

The connection of Denmark with the slave-trade and negro slavery was
more important and lasting. In 1657 the Danes captured Christiansborg Castle
(on the Gold Coast) from the Swedes ; and although they then sold it to the
Portuguese, they repurchased it three years afterwards, and thenceforth set
to work vigorously to establish the Danish power on the Gold Coast, The
Danish West India and Guinea Company was formed in Copenhagen in 1671,
and built forts along the Gold Coast between Christiansborg and the eastern
side of the Volta River.

In 1666 the island of St, Thomas in the West Indies (about thirty-three
square miles in area and situated at the eastern extremity of the long line of the
Greater Antilles) was occupied by the Danes and taken over by their West

196.

India Company in 1671. Slaves were first introduced here from the Danish
Gold Coast in 1680. The adjoining island of St. Jan (twenty-one square miles)
was occupied in 1684, but not definitely annexed till 1717. The much larger
island of St. Croix (Santa Cruz, forty miles south-east of St. Thomas, eighty-four
square miles in area) was purchased by the King of Denmark from France in
1733 for over £30,000.^

Although on the coast of Africa the Dane was rated as a kindly master, only
second to the Spaniard and Portuguese, yet even the Danes went through
their period of cruelty.^ In the island of St, Jan, as the result of ill-

' Before thai purchase Santa Ctui had been Dutch, English, Spanish, and French. It was the Porto
Rican Spanish massacre of the SnnlB Cruz English colonists in 1650 which provoked Cromwell to declare
war and seiie Jamaica in 165$.

^ B«sides the usual floggings, cutting ofF of ears, hanils, and 1^, and tinal hangings (when Iheie
was nothing more to toitufe), the Danes — till the influence of ihe Moravian missionaries liellered things —
were in the halnt of "pinching" recreant slaves with red-hot iron pincers, or fur heinous offences
" pinching pieces of flesh out of them." This pastime spread to the United States, and was not unknown
there in the nineteenth century.

346

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

treatment there was a terrible slave insurrection in 1733. All the whites were
killed, except a few who gathered round an old English planter and one surgeon
spared by the negroes to dress wounds ; and the Danish authorities were
obliged to appeal to the French in Martinique to assist them in putting down
the rising. Then when the last three hundred of the revolted slaves were
surrounded and offered their lives if they would surrender, they preferred com-
mitting suicide to giving themselves back to slavery.

Between 1755 and 1764 the Danish Crown bought from the Danish West
India Company St. Thomas and St. Jan, and then governed directly all the
Danish West Indies. For nine years during the first fifteen of the nine-
teenth century the Danish West Indies were under British control — a cir-
cumstance which implanted very firmly the English language amongst the
negro slaves. Even now English, and not Danish, is the common speech of
the islands.

The' Danish slave-trade left this mark on the west coast of Africa : the
Danes introduced in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century a special type
of long-barrelled gun, known to the trade as "long Danes." To this day the
type of long-barrelled musket is in request in remote parts of West Africa, and
it was with " long Dane guns " that the Ashanti people made such desperate war
on the British.

In 1792 the Prince Regent of Denmark (afterwards Frederick VI) issued a
decree prohibiting the slave-trade to Danish subjects from and after the year
1802. Although, as it were, ten years' grace was allowed for the cessation
of the traffic, this action afforded a powerful stimulus to the anti-slave-trade
movement. It set an example which put other civilised nations on their mettle.
The United States felt obliged to follow suit in 1794 and 1807 ; Great Britain
also.

In 1792 the charter of the Danish West India Company came to an end
and was not renewed, the Crown (as previously in the West Indies) taking
over the direct management of the Gold Coast forts. These last grew during
the first half of the nineteenth century into quite a large domain, including a
Danish protectorate over the Akwapim country and the Lower Volta River. In
spite of the Danish prohibition of the slave-trade, however, one cannot help
thinking that a clandestine traffic in slaves must have continued from the
Danish Gold Coast,^ for when the Danish Government abolished the status of
slavery in all its oversea possessions in 1848 (especially in the West Indies),
the four Gold Coast forts and the Volta River protectorate were soon found
to be of little value or interest to Denmark ; so that these African
possessions were sold to Great Britain in 1850 for the modest sum of ;f 10,000,
and have constituted since a very important part of the British Gold Coast
Colony.

In 1733 there was a slave insurrection in the Danish island of St Jan,
which was only subdued by the help of the French Governor of Martinique,
who sent a force of four hundred soldiers to the assistance of the Danish
Governor. Otherwise the condition of the negroes under Danish Government
in the West Indies was a better one (in slavery days) than under other flags.
The Moravian missionaries were encouraged during the middle of the eighteenth
century, beginning in 1732, to teach and Christianise the slaves. A good
example of the type of negro which grew up under Danish rule is a remark-

^ As late as 1830 slave-ships under the Danish flag were captured by British cruisers.

SLAVERY UNDER THE DANES, ETC. 347

able personality at the present day: Dr. Edward Wilmot Blyden, born in
St. Thomas in 1832.^

The substitution of the direct rule of the Danish Crown for that of a
Chartered Company did not at first improve the commercial development of
these three islands, as their trade was strangled by a protectionist tariff entirely
in favour of the Crown revenues. But by degrees the Danish sovereign relaxed
the monopoly, until in 1766 he went — very wisely — to the opposite extreme and
declared St. Thomas a free port. This policy led to an enormous increase in
the value of the Danish Antilles, especially as St. Thomas possessed a splendid
natural harbour, particularly well situated as a refuge for sailing-vessels enter-
ing or leaving the Caribbean Sea, Sugar cultivation covered every square
mile of utilisable soil on St Croix, and the slave population of this island irt
1792 must have risen to sixty
thousand. Not many Danes came
to settle either here or at St.
Thomas; the European planters
were chiefly French Protestants —
Huguenots— who were unable to
live then in any French possession ;
Jews of various nationalities ; Eng-
lish, Spaniards, and Swedes. During
the war of the French Revolution,
from 1793 to 1801, St, Thomas and
St. Croix brimmed over with pros-
perity, because as Denmark was then
a neutral power, much colonial pro-
duce could sail safely under the
Danish fl^.

After the Napoleonic Wars were
over, St. Thomas and St, Croix con-
tinued so prosperous that the Danish
Government seems to have regretted
its condemnation of the slave-trade
in 1702, and to have been reluctant . , '97- »R- bdwaru *^"-*'<"' b'-vdbn

',-',' , , A foraieiSKretinr of Swunnd DipLoniMK! Envoyof

to add to that measure a complete Ubtri.: bomEn Si. Thomu

emancipation of the slaves. But

Britain's action in setting free the slaves of the British West Indies between 1834
and 1838 made it necessary for the Danish Government to put an end to slavery-
Early in 1847 a decree of King Christian VII was promulgated by which all
children born in the Danish Antilles after July 28th, 1847, would be born free.
Yet this measure was wholly insufficient for the angry slaves of St, Croix, who
forthwith rose and dominated the island. The Danish Governor could only re-
cover possession of St. Croix by declaring slavery to be completely at an end.
Since the year 1848 slavery ceased to be recognised as a legal status in Danish
Africa or America, But even then, the rebellion having spread to St, Thomas,

' Dr, BlydcD wen! to Lilierin at the age of nineteen, and became first a professor in Liberia College,
then an eiploTer, and lalteily a minister of slate and a diplomatic repiesenutive of Liberia in England
and France. Dr. Blyden has also served the (British) Sierra Leone Government as a superintendent of
Muhammadan education. He is deeply versed in Arabic and Hebrew, Greek and Latin, and is the
author (amongst many olher works) of a well-known book entitled Chriilianity, islam, arid Ike Negro
Race.

348 THE NEGRO IN THE NE''

the Danes would have been driven from their Antill
been for the intervention of the Spanish Governtri'
spirit of successful revolt spreading to Porto Rico an
landed in St. Thomas and restored Danish authority

The free negroes now returned to work, and laws
planters by introducing a method of apprenticeship, a
vagrants, and petty offenders were apprenticed for a
planters. Although the apprenticing took place befc
nominal payment, the system was little else than
great indignation among the negro population. Yet
prosperity of St, Croix as a sugar- and rum-producin

But combined with the refusal of the local Go\

St. Croix to free negro settlers, it led to another serio
nearly ruined the island. Houses, factories, the who
and many of the cane-fields were destroyed by fire ; a:
this revolt several hundred negroes and thirty or forty
Since 1870, however, the pros[)erity of the Danish .
downhill. It was not merely the decline in the price c
of forced labour, but the growth of steam navigation whi
far less important as a port of call for steamtirs tha
for sailing-ships. The negro population has been
the last thirty years, the young men emigrating in sea
ties to other West India islands and to Panama.
thousand more women in the three islands than there i
population has decreased from 2475 in 1835' to 925 ;

' In i8o» ihere were aooo whiles, locx) free negroes and negtc

SLAVERY UNDER THE DANES, ETC. 349

the total population of the three islands (of which about a thousand are Euro-
peans) is now under 30,000, whereas in 1835 it was 43,178. The population of
St. Thomas is nearly all confined to the capital town of Charlotte- Amalia.
This island is without springs or wells, and has a very poor and uncertain rain-
fall. Yet the scenery is said to be lovely,^ and the island enjoys increasing
favour with tourists because of its good roads, its clean, beautiful capital of
Charlotte-Amalia, its glorious views of azure sea and distant islands and islets,
its own pretty hill scenery and romantic, ruined " pirate castles " (which, how-
ever, were really built by the Danish Company).

The island of St. Jan is used for rearing horses, cattle, and poultry. It is
the home of the ** bay-leaf" tree {Pimenta acris), which is used for making
*' bay-rum." This aromatic toilet requisite is manufactured in St. Thomas.

St. Croix has a better rainfall than the other two islands and a fertile soil,
but no good port. Like St. Thomas, it has admirable roads ; indeed, the road-
system of St. Croix is said to be the best and the most complete of any island
in the West Indies.^ Sugar-cane cultivation and the manufacture of sugar
are still its principal industry, although fruit-growing and cattle-breediVig are
becoming important.

The present government of the Danish Antilles is that of a Crown Colony
with partially representative institutions. The Governor is assisted in his
functions by two colonial councils, one for St. Thomas and St. Jan and the
other for St Croix. In the first there are four members nominated by the
Crown and eleven elected by the people ; in the second, five councillors are
nominated and thirteen are elected. In both suffrage and councillorship there
are no colour distinctions.

It is said that a project is on foot for developing with Danish funds the
resources of these islands, whose inhabitants will be allowed to elect one or two
representatives to sit in the Danish Riksdag. If this plan is to be carried out
and similar facilities are offered to Danish Greenland, we may live to see the
quaint spectacle of a Negro from the West Indies and an Eskimo from the
Arctic Circle sitting side by side as Danish subjects in a Danish Parliament.

It seemed a more likely outcome of the difficulties in which the Danish
Antilles found themselves at the commencement of the twentieth century, that
the three little islands might be sold to the United States and the Danish
negroes be merged into the English-speaking community of Aframericans.
But the United States by taking up and making the Panama Canal has itself
greatly enhanced the value of the Danish Antilles, with their splendid harbours
of Charlotte-Amalia (St. Thomas) and Coral (St. Jan).^ These once again as
free ports on the direct line of route from northern and western Europe to
Colon may recover their old importance, especially as a point-de-repkre for
Scandinavian and North German shipping. So that the African Negro, who
already speaks English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and three or four
separate Creole jargons, may have to add Danish to his curriculum.

But if for no other reason than that they gave the first harbourage and
support to the pioneer Moravian missionaries (who made St. Thomas their
West Indian head-quarters from 1732 to 1782), the Danes have played a
notable part in the history of the Negro in the New World. For the Moravian

1 A. E. Aspinall, The Pocket Guide to the West Indies (London : 1907).

2 Les Petites Antilles (Lcs Antilles Danoises), par. P. Chemin-Dupont (Paris : 1908).

• Coral Bay is a harbour of refuge from hurricanes. The port of St. Thomas is sometimes swept by
these terrible wind-storms.

350 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Brethren "were the truest and best guides Europe has ever supplied to the
African race," as was written of them more than thirty years ago by one not
usually enthusiastic about Christian propaganda (W. G. Palgrave). To the
miserably unhappy negro slaves in Danish, Dutch, and British tropical America,
and to those labouring under even harder circumstances in North America,
they brought the first ray of hope. And it must be remembered that the
Moravians were supplied with funds by the Danish kings and travelled in
Danish ships. But for this active support on the part of Kings Christian VI
and Frederick V it is doubtful whether the Moravian Brethren would ever have
got or maintained a footing in the West Indies, and all but the Danish posses-
sions were closed to them.

Through the intercession of their powerful Saxon protector Count Zinzendorf
(who had great influence at the Danish
Court) they were allowed in October, 1732,
to start for St, Thomas.' The two pioneers
were Leonard Dober and David Nitsch-
mann, and they were accompanied by a
released slave — Anthony — frdm Denmark.
Mission work was commenced in St.
Thomas in December, 1732. In the year
1733 a terrible slave insurrection broke out
on the little island of Sl Jan, and for several
succeeding years prejudice against teaching
the negroes was very strong ; but as it
became evident that slaves drawn within
the mission fold by the Moravians stood
apart from the turbulent element and were
far better workers (especially where the plea
for kinder treatment from the master was
listened to), the Moravians grew in favour
with the planters, as they did also in
the British colonies of North America
299. LEONARD DOBER and in Dutch Guiana, where they estab-

oniof ih=i"ifir.|^Mon^Un^m^.ioMriBn.Kiti. lishcd themsclvcs betwccn 173 s and 1745.
In Dutch Guiana the most noteworthy
Moravian pioneer was Friedrich Martin.

The news of the betterment of the Danish slaves in St. Thomas and
St. Croix spread to Jamaica and Antigua ; and the Moravian missionaries were
invited by private planters or by the Governor to establish in those islands
(Jamaica in 1754 and Antigua in 1760).

They could not, however, do very great things in the British West Indies,
Dutch Guiana, or North America till all the slaves were emancipated (though
their educational work among the freedmen was remarkable) ; but in these
countries under Protestant Powers it was mainly through the Moravian and

' Counl Zinzendorf (see later) came out himself in 17J9 to see how the missionaries were getting on in
the Danish islands, and raised them up out of crushing persecutions at the hands of jealous Lulheiant and
angry planters. Zintendorf became a Bishop and head of the Moravian Church. He was one of the
most remarkable persons of the eighteenth century, and really worthy of the twentieth century in his ideas.
He founded Moravian missions among the Hottentots of South Africa, the natives of Ceylon (both ihew

SLAVERY UNDER THE DANES, ETC. 351

the Quaker that the door of hope was first opened to the despairing negroes,
who at that period of the eighteenth century, in Georgia, the British West
Indies, and Guiana, were committing suicide at a rate which alarmed even their
callous owners.

The Moravian Church, whose educational work is now world-wide, from
near the North Pole to Australia and South Africa, fron:i Tibet to the coast of
Nicaragua, arose out of Hussite reforms and religious warfare in Bohemia and
Moravia. I.t was reconstituted as an episcopal Church in 1467, and its tenets
were as nearly as possible (and are still) based on the plain teaching of Christ.
Dogmatic formulation of creed counted for little,
the main object of the Unitas Fratrum (as this
Church styled itself) being to lead a simple,
godly life and encourage industry as much as
possible.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies the Moravian Brethren were persecuted
horribly by the Holy Roman Empire and (sad
to say) by the Roman Catholic Church, In
Bohemia and Moravia they were almost exter-
minated. Towards the close of the seventeenth
century they effected some community with the
Church of England, which has never lessened,
and even as early as 1739 we find an Archbishop
of Canterbury assisting them to work in Georgia.
In 1722 the remnants of the Moravian Church
crossed over into Saxony, where a refuge had
been offered to them by [Saint] Nicolaus Ludwig,

Graf von Zinzendorf,on hisestates. Herethetown ^°°' ^"'^^^^'ch martin

of Herrnhut was founded, the centre of Moravian ' "' ""DtKhCuiini'* °"'"'"
mission work down to the present day. But it

was really the Count of Zinzendorf who founded the true Moravian Church and
imparted to it that largeness of view and sweet reasonableness in theology
which make it remarkable in the narrow-minded Christianity of the eighteenth
century. The original Moravians received by him were fanatical, ignorant
peasants, who not long after his most generous and ample establishment of them
at Herrnhut denounced him as the Beast of the Apocalypse. They were
indeed — as fifty other sects have been from 900 a.d. to ipcx) a.d, — half crazed
with warped study of that dangerous and needless addition to the books of the
New Testament, the Revelation of John ; and it required the saving common
sense of Zinzendorf — the General Booth of his century — to turn their fervour
into the channel of perfect service to man.

CHAPTER XIV

SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES

IN 1619 the first negroes were landed in the English Colonies on the North
American continent. In that year a supply of slaves was being brought by
the Dutch from the west coast of Africa to serve in the Dutch settlements
of Manhadoes and New Amsterdam (New York), and on its way thither the
ship conveying the slaves called in at Jamestown, Virginia, and sold some
twenty negroes to the tobacco-planters of that newly founded British colony.

The planting of tobacco from 1620 onwards became a most profitable enter-
prise in Virginia and was indeed the principal cause of the British ** catching
on" in North America, where hitherto their efforts had several times been
checked or completely frustrated by inclemencies of climate, hostility of indi-
genes, and the absence of any easily obtained mineral, vegetable, or animal
product which would enable people to get rich quickly so that they might
stomach the dangers and discomforts of life in a savage land.

The white convict transport system began about this time through James I
putting into execution laws that had been framed by Queen Elizabeth's Parlia-
ment for dealing with vagabonds ; but until the reign of Charles II there was no
great output of white convict labour from British gaols to serve as slaves or
indentured apprentices in the American plantations.

Therefore throughout the seventeenth century from 1 620 onwards there was
an increasing demand in the States of the eastern seaboard of North America
for negro labour. The white convicts when they did arrive, if females, were
soon married and ceased to be useful as labourers ; and if male, either
struck against field labour of an exhausting kind or died from the effects
of it. To do the dirty and the fatiguing work of opening up the temperate
and sub-tropical regions of North America, the negro seemed a more useful
immigrant.

The work of tobacco-planting was a healthy occupation, and the Virginian
negroes throve and were not unhappy in their slavery during the seventeenth
century. There was little or no temptation to run away because the fierce
Indians haunted the backwoods, and to attempt to escape by sea was impossible.
At the close of the seventeenth century, or actually in the year 1700, rice was
introduced into South Carolina as a profitable article of export ; but the cultiva-
tion of rice in swamps under the hot sun proved most unhealthy to the negroes,
whilst it was an impossibility for a white man. Consequently the slave supply
for South Carolina, and later still for Georgia, had to be constantly renew^ by
drafts from Africa.

The rush to get rich during the first half of the eighteenth century enhanced
the value of slaves in North America and incited their white owners to get all

352

XIV

NITED STAT.

the English Colonics oc
p!yofsla\-cs was being
: to sme in the Datch :
)'ork),and on its way :
lestowTi, V'ir^nia, and
t newly founded Brit:.^
Is beame a most profits
>al cause of the Briti:^
r efforts had several t::
ncies of climate, hostilir
led mineral, i-egctahJe.
ridi quickly so that tti
1 a savage land.
about this time thnsuf ^
ned by Queen £Iizabcd~.
; reign of Charles 11 the:
ritish gaols to serve as
tions.

iryfrom i620onwardi "
stern seaboard of North
the}' did arrive, if fema
labourers; and if mai
kind or died from ti
\i of opening up the z-.
he negro seemed a mi:.

V occupation, and the ^
: slavery during the se^
to run away because t
10 escape by sea was irr
tually in the year 170c
rticle of export ; but th>
most unhealthy to the
Consequently the slav
id to be constantly ren

he eighteenth century t
ed their white owners ■

354 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Nova Scotia,^ to England, ^ the Bermudas, Bahamas, and Jamaica ; and some
formed the nucleus of the ist West India Regiment (Barbados).

By 1800 there were 1,002,037 negroes and negroids in the United States,
about 200,000 of whom were freed men and women.

Slavery as an institution had, however, been condemned to public disap-
proval by the Quakers early in the history of North America. In 1671 George
Fox, after a long journey in the previous year through the island of Jamaica,
had denounced to. the newly founded Society of Friends or Quakers of England
the condition of slavery as iniquitous no matter to what race it was applied ;
and when compelled to leave England by religious persecution, or deported
thence as felons, the Friends in North America, especially in Pennsylvania
(1696), Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia (as well as in St Kitts, Jamaica, and
Barbados), set their faces steadily against negro slavery and endeavoured to do
all they could to alleviate the lot of the slaves.* With them joined to a great
extent the Puritan element in the New England colonies, together with all the
Nonconformist bodies, beginning with the Baptists, who were finding it possible
to exist independently of the Church of England in North America or in
Britain.

The first great anti-slavery apostle who arose in the United States — whilst
they were still under the dominion of Great Britain — was Anthony Benezet —
Saint Anthony Benezet, as he will some day be called. He was born in
Picardy (Northern France) in 1713. Being a Protestant, he and his father
were expelled from France and settled in London. Thence Anthony Benezet
moved to Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania.* He joined the Quakers, and under
the influence of John Woolman became an eager but a reasoning, eloquent,
and learned denouncer of slavery and the slave-trade. He wrote much on the
subject, but the two most convincing of his works were published in 1762:
A Caution and Warning to Great Britain and her Colonies on the Calamitous
State of the Enslaved Negroes in the British Dominions ; and An Historical
Account of Guinea^ its Situation^ Produce^ and the General Disposition of its
Inhabitants ; with an Enquiry into the Rise and Progress of the Slave-trade,
its Nature and Calamitous Effects,

He had opened up relations with John Wesley and Granville Sharp in
England so that they might co-operate in the common cause, and as late as
1783 he wrote in the simple "thou and thee*' phrasing of the Quakers a letter
to Queen Charlotte which probably secured her sympathy in the anti-slave-
trade movement. But it was his Historical Account of Guinea which really set
the forces of English philanthropy moving. Public opinion in England after
the declaration of the law that there could be no slavery within the limits of
the Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland had relapsed into toleration of
what went on in the Colonies and in Africa. Another crusader was required.
Benezet's book on Guinea turned the Cambridge student Clarkson to the one
great purpose of his life.

^ There are now about 6000 negroes and negroids in Nova Scotia. Most of these were the refugees
or the children of refugee slaves who escaped from the United States and were only safe from recapture on
British territory.

^ Emigrated afterwards to Africa.

' In 1776 all Friends who would not emancipate their slaves and renounce the practice of slave-
holding were expelled from the membership. Mention should also be made of the efforts in the same
direction (in America) of the Lutheran Moravian missionaries and of the Huguenots (French Protestants).

^ He lived here with his wife and three brothers, and made a modest livelihood by teaching French
and writing books.

356 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa were organised as a Territory
in 1787, and slavery was wholly excluded "for ever" from the lawful con-
ditions of life. Maine was an offshoot of Massachusetts after that State had
abolished slavery.

Maryland was the most northern Slave State of the Union, and remained such
down to the early part of the great Civil War in 1863. The Federal District of
Columbia (Washington) recognised slavery as of local validity until 1862, and
runaway slaves from other States could be arrested on its small territory under
the Federal Fugitive Slave Act. Slaves, however, were happy in and around
Washington ; they were so near head-quarters that ill-treatment would be
punished.

The United States in Congress in 1794 forbade the participation of American
subjects in the Slave-trade between Africa and foreign countries.

So far as it affected the coast ports of Georgia, that State in 1798 declared
the trade in slaves between Africa and Georgia to be prohibited. North
Carolina closed its ports to the importation of slaves from Africa as early as
1793. In 1 8 19, however, the State of Virginia annulled as much as possible its
anti-slave-trade prohibitions of the previous century.

On the 1st January, 1808, the Federal Government of the United States
prohibited the importation of African slaves into United States territory. At
the Peace of Ghent in December, 18 14, the United States and Great Britain
mutually pledged themselves to do all in their power to extinguish the slave-
trade.

Nevertheless, in spite of these Federal laws and engagements, the slave-trade
between Africa and the States of the Union to the south of the Mason-Dixon
line went on with very little interruption of an official kind until the American
Civil War. This was notably the case with regard to South Carolina and
Georgia. Probably the southern coast of South Carolina was the last portion
of the United States that received slave cargoes from Africa. There are
negroes still living in this region (also in Virginia and Georgia) that were bom
in Africa.

Between 1780 and 18 16 there had grown up in the United States (chiefly
in Maryland, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, New York, and Virginia),
a considerable class of free negroes or men of colour ; mostly slaves who had
been manumitted by their masters or allowed to purchase their freedom. Such
freedmen were becoming a source of trouble to the white community in these
States, because though not slaves, they were not allowed the ordinary privileges
of citizens, and being more educated than their brother slaves, they began to
ask awkward questions and inspire the slaves with a similar discontent

So it was resolved by their well-wishers to ship them off (if they were
inclined to go) to Africa, to create there a new home where they could live as
freemen. Naturally it was the British experiment of Sierra Leone which
suggested the idea.

At first it was decided to join forces with Great Britain and send these
negro colonists to Sierra Leone ; but the British Governor of that colony
viewed the proposal suspiciously. Besides, he himself had begun to appreciate
this important factor in the question of an American negro colony on the West
African coast : namely, that West Africa belonged to the West Africans, who
were not disposed to welcome any large colony of strangers.

So the American envoys passed on, in 1821, to the adjoining "Grain

SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES 357

Coast," and in that year founded the future Republic of Liberia by establishing
its nucleus at Monrovia.

The history of the Liberian experiment has been so fully described in my
book on that country ^ that I need say no more of it here, except to add that it
did not solve the difficulties of the Free Negro question in the United States
between 1820 and 1870. Firstly, the negroes in the United States preferred
life in that Republic (especially after 1865) to life anywhere else; secondly, if
they had been born in America they suffered from the West African climate
and diseases nearly as much as a white man ; and lastly, the native inhabitants
of " Liberia " were fairly numerous and not at all inclined to make way for
American strangers. They were also too warlike and well armed to be easily
subdued.

The Liberian experiment will probably succeed in this way : that the
thirty or forty thousand descendants of American negroes and the natives
they have already affiliated to their government may form the nucleus of
a future civilised, self-governed, independent Negro State ; but the bulk of the
citizens of that State will be of local African origin.

The outcome of the Liberian Colony has at any rate been too trifling in
importance to have provided an "expatriation " solution for the American negro
problem. Nothing that has been achieved in Liberia will encourage the American
negro and negroid to emigrate in millions to Africa. If he has noticed
Liberia at all, it is in the direction of deciding more emphatically than ever to
stay in the New World, where he is — with all his disadvantages — far better off
than he would be as a belated colonist of Africa. Moreover, in returning to
Africa, he runs the risk of finding himself some day once more the subject of a
European Power ; and in these new and great Republics of the West he hopes
that the lesson of equal rights and equal opportunities for all races of mankind
has been better mastered than in the Old World.

Thomas Jefferson had proposed in 1784 that in the new territory to be
acquired by the United States (especially the region divided into Tennessee,
Alabama/ and Mississippi), there should after the year 1800 be neither slavery
nor involuntary servitude, otherwise than in punishment of crime; but he
failed to carry this proviso, even though in 1787 at the Convention of Phila-
delphia the majority of those who framed the Constitution of the United States
were opposed to slavery. South Carolina, however, Georgia most of all, and
Virginia, less fiercely,^ contended for the retention of the status of slavery in
the Constitution of their respective States.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century the slave-holding States were
divided from those in which all men, theoretically, were free, by the Mason and
Dixon line ; that boundary which was traced by two English surveyors. Mason

^ Zfi^r/Vi (London: 1906).

' As early as the seventeenth century the Legislature of Virginia had enacted that "all persons who
have been imported into the colony, and who were not Christians in their native country^xcept Turks
and Moors in amity with His Majesty, and those who can prove their being free in England or in any
other Christian country — shall be counted and be slaves, shall be bought and sold, notwithstanding their
conversion to Christianity after their importation." About the same time, it was further laid down by
law that a white man marrying a negress should be banished from Virginia, and the clergyman who per-
formed the marriage service should l^ subjected to a heavy fine.

Between the years 1609 and 1772 the Legislature of Virginia passed numerous Acts to discourage the
imp3rtation of slaves. The means resorted to was the imposition of c jnsiderable duty on imported slaves.
But the King of Great Britain, as advised by his ministers, vetoed most of these Acts.

358 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

and Dixon, in 1763-7, originally for the purpose of dividing Pennsylvania on
the north from Maryland and (West) Virginia on the south. This line in 1 820
was extended westwards along the course of the Ohio River (the northern
frontier of Kentucky) to the Mississippi, and across this river it mounted
northwards so as to include Missouri within the area of States wherein slavery
was permissible.

This was what is known in United States history as the " Missouri Com-
promise " : a compromise, but at the same time the first definite acknowledg-
ment of the scission between north and south.

First came the difference between Pennsylvania on the one hand, and
Virginia and Maryland on the other, which in 1780 turned the Mason-Dixon
line into the boundary between Slavery and Freedom. Then in 1787 an
Ordinance of Congress adopted the Ohio River as the continuation westwards
of the Mason-Dixon line between the Slave States and those which were
contemplating or achieving cessation of slavery. This brought the distinction
westward to the Mississippi. When Louisiana had been taken over from the
French, the right of Slavery to continue on the west bank of the Lower
Mississippi had been tacitly admitted. How far northwards and westwards
was this licence of Slavery to extend ?

The admission of Missouri into the Union as a State was to be the test.
Missouri as a Territory had radiated from the old French settlement and town
of St. Louis, founded in 1764. Under the subsequent rule of Spain negro
slaves had been introduced by the French colonists. Missouri upheld the
institution when it sought to be promoted in 18 19 from a mere Territory to a
self-governing State. Yet if it were admitted to the Union as a Slavery State
it would disturb the balance of power in the Senate. A solution was found in
1 82 1 by the admission of Missouri as a Slavery State and simultaneously the
promotion to Statehood of Maine^ which had been detached from Massa-
chusetts. But the chief point in the Compromise was that the Slavery limit
westward of the Mississippi, to the Pacific, should follow the degree of
N. Latitude 36** 30'. South of that line it was tacitly, but not implicitly,
admitted that slavery might continue.

Oil the strength of this Compromise, Arkansas was admitted as a Slave
State in 1836; Florida and Texas in 1845. In both the two last of course
slavery had existed theoretically since the early times of Spanish occupation.
But Florida had really been ** Indian " territory with the merest fringe of
European colonisation (though it contains the oldest town in the United States,
St. Augustine, founded in 1566) until 1827-35; when the whites of Georgia
calmly, and defiant of Federal veto, removed most of the Seminole " Indians"
and sent white emigrants and negro slaves to take their place.^

In 1822 there was alleged to have been discovered a plot at Charleston (S.C.)
amongst the slaves and free negroes for an uprising of black against white,
and the destruction of the whites, on July 4th of that year. The principal
leader was Denmark Vesey, a blacksmith who had won a prize in a lottery
twenty-two years before, and with the proceeds had purchased his freedom.
His lieutenants were Monday Gell, a self-educated, talented negro harness-
maker ; and Gullah Jack and Peter Poyas, half-savage leaders among the

^ The Amerindian tribe or nation of the Seminoles of eastern Florida kept negro slaves in the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But it was remarked that they were vei y good and indulgent
to these slaves, and never, under the greatest pressure of hunger and need, sold l\iem if they were un-
willing to go to a white master.

SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES 359

Angola slaves with whom South Carolina was then being so abundantly
furnished by the Portuguese slave-trade.

As a result of the timely discovery of this conspiracy by the Charleston
pohcc, thirty-five negroes were hanged, a number were probably flogged,
and others were transported or imprisoned. But the plot deserves mention
because it was cited as the excuse for the greater harshness of South Carolina
slavery laws after 1822, and for the sending off as many free negroes as
possible to Liberia. Further excuse for the putting in force of cruel laws
was afforded by the great rising of negro slaves under Nat Turner, in Virginia

303. WILLIAM LtOVD CARBISON

(Southampton County), on August 21, 1831. Some whites lost their lives in
this revolt, which was suppressed with the usual ruthlessness.*

In 1833 the American Anti-Slavery Society was founded in Boston by
a brave man, William Lloyd Garrison. Two years previously, in Boston, he
had commenced to publish " without a dollar of capital " an anti-slavery journal,
the Liberator ; and had addressed the world in its first number, with these
stirring words ; " I am in earnest^I will not equivocate — 1 will not excuse —
I will not retreat a single inch^and I will be heard." He lived till 1879 to see
his rushlight grow to a blaze of illumination, his paper and his society terminated
in their existence only by the full accomplishment of their programme : the
complete abolition of slavery throughout the Union in 1865.

' For informaiion on this and other incidents of the ante-bellutn slavery times in South Carolina, see
Ihe articles in the Political Siitnct QuarUr'y of Boston, Mass., by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips— especially
" The Slave Labor Problem in the Chaileslon District " (Boston ; 1907).

6o THE NEGRO IJV TJ

Meantime the year 1850 had brought ai
he conquest, annexation, and organisatio
jain raised the question' whether the first
■ " Free." Congress, with the superior vt.
orth, decided that California should be a
outh. avoided fixing the " Slave or Free '
id New Mexico, and declared that the P
osed to the slave-trade, was a region in wh
le celebrated Fugitive Slave Law,

This Act provided for the arrest of ru

nion to which they had fled, and the hi

maj

Sta

Fed

clair

'^^^ with

of se
factic
they
autho
they
cases
floggir

Kansas
braska,
Stateho
western
the fair
Com pro
be " Fr<
South ■
adopted
304. JOHN P. HA..« sovcreig

Ons of ihe Aiiii-SU«>7 Ksniu miimou of i8jj. . , . . , V"

■• Fnt uil, rrtt ipccch, rnc I.C«ir, free men I " With ttlC

tories to
an they should live. If, therefore, the South c

excess of the North, they might by a super
ansas, as New Mexico had been turned, into a
terwards State. A regular local-civil war arose :

A striking landmark in the progress towarc
:ott" decision. Dred Scott was a negro slave
aster from the Slave State of Missouri to re
erritory of Kansas. Afterwards he was sold in I
eedom (no doubt put up to do so by Abolitio.

' ffoui bored B tweniieih •century person, if he could bm live,
ry, would have becatne wiih Ihe one-ideaed Soulhetn sUlcsmin ,'
J in Charleston the reinslilulion of the Africiin Sl«vt-tr»dt on the

the England of that period a» to imagine thai the Britijh Gam
reisal of progress. They simply could not conceive ol any p>licy
jst shape itself to the mistaken needs of South Carolina. And
kdstoae, Kinssley, Huxley, and Cailyle I

^sh

^crisis
power
t distriZ '^^

Ol5

'Cry

r of — '«

.^^ a

o -

At 5

he p Prot-erf
0 be ^*^^

to --i

IS '

•S w^

rT^ '^Cfr O^ ~V»\-

«fth,

x'^ < ,

^
c-

362

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

United States territory. It further put Scott out of court as being a slave or
descendant of a slave, and consequently not a citizen of the United States or
having any standing in the Federal Courts.^

This cynical and pedantic decision was the real provocation of the Civil
War, a war which cost the lives by bullet or disease of 300,000 men and
a National Debt of 8000 millions of dollars, and left behind a legacy of hatred
between white and coloured in the south-east of North America which it may
take another generation to heal. It is to be hoped that if any of these Supreme
Court judges of 1858 are living who pronounced a decision clamping the
United States Constitution to the maintenance of slavery as an institution, they
still writhe in their senile consciences at the fruits of their pitiless pedantry,
the worship of the letter and disregard of the spirit.

The Dred Scott decision made civil war inevitable. The South could now
plead that they abode by the Constitution. The Abolitionists in the North
were inflamed to fanaticism against Slavery. During the ten years^ which
followed the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 (which in its sub-
sequent operations was the cause of incredible cruelties, fraudulent kidnappings,
scandals, blackmailing, and frequent manslaughter), the publication of ** Uncle
Toffis Cabin'' ^ in 1852; the civil war provoked by the South in Kansas
(1854-6); the murderous assault on Charles Sumner,* who had made a series

* Yet, when it was a matter of getting a representation in Congress out of all proportion to the
numbers of its free* white citizens, at the time of the framing of the United States Constitution, the
Southern States had been allowed to count three-fifths of the slaves as having a right to indirect repre-
sentation in the House of Representatives.

^ In this splendid period of ten years, ever to be a ^lory in the annals of America, slavery was hotly
and indignantly opposed by some of the greatest geniuses that the United States had yet produced,
geniuses and apostles. William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, William £. Chan-
nine, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John G. Whittier, Henry Wads worth Longfellow, William CuUen Bryant,
Wiut Whitman, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Law Olmsted, are a few amongst the names of the
notabilities who attacked, with risk to life, limb, health, and fortune, the hydra-headed monster — a
monster only scotched, remember, not completely killed, which may issue from its cavern yet again and
again at the call of Mammon and racial arrogance. But in the eyes and minds of the general public,
mostly of a generation now passing away, it will be felt that four persons more than any others in the
United States (acting quite independently one of the other) abolished slavery. The first was William
Lloyd Garrison, the second Harriet Beecher-Stowe, the third John Brown, and the fourth Abraham
Lincoln.

' Mrs. Harriet Beecher-Stowe, whose novel Uncle Tom*s Cabin set the whole world on fire, and
ranged most Europeans and Americans (outside the United States and the West Indies) on the side of
the slave, was born (181 1) in Connecticut (like John Brown), and died in that State at Hartford in 1896.
Uncle Toms Cabin was almost literally true, based on such works as Tht NarrcUive of the Life and
Adventures of Charles Ball (published at New York in 1837) and on its author's personal observations
of Kentucky and Tennessee. A few years ago I was taken over Osborne House by a friend who had
access to that residence of the late Queen before it had been completely thrown open to its present
purposes. In the library I saw lying on a table, much as it had been left by the Queen before her death,
a copy of Uncle Tofns Cabin^ rather prettily bound in a pink and silver wrapper. Inside on the fly-leaf
in the Queen's own handwriting were words much like these : '* From my dear Mama, Xmas, 1859. This
book has made a deep impression on me."

We all know that subsequently, when the actual decision of peace or war lay with Queen Victoria
(most of whose Liberal Ministers were in favour of the recognition of the South and war with the
North), the Queen resolutely decided on complete neutrality, moved thereto by the consciousness that
the North stood for freedom and the South for an impossible continuance of slavery. There is little
doubt in my own mind that the agency which made of Queen Victoria so resolute an Abolitionist was the
novel written by Harriet Beecher-Stowe : one of the few instances in history of the pen being mightier
than the sword. — H. H. J.

* Charles Sumner made a great speech on the 1 8th of May, 1856, against the conditions under which
the slave lived in South Carolina and Virginia. A senator of South Carolina, Preston S. Brooks, no
doubt bom a decent man, but his mind twisted by the corrupting influence of slavery into the mind of
an assassin, stole after Sumner till he caught him writing m the Senate Chamber. Coming up behind
him unawares, he thrashed him with a heavy stick, till he left him for dead. Was he apprehended?
(at Washington on the very borders of Virginia?). No. He walked about a free man and was pre-

SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES 363

oj speeches in Congress denouncing the " Crime against Kansas " (the attempt
of leading Southern statesmen to force Kansas, against the will of the majority
of its settlers, to become a Slave State) ; the Dred Scott decision ; and lastly,
the pamphlet On the Impending Crisis of the South, by a poor white of North
Carolina named Helper: al] these events and influences bred uncontrollable
fury in the North against the despotism of the South. Amongst the few
whose excitement could not vent itself sufficiently in speech or written word
was John Brown, a native of Connecticut, who had been one of the leading
fighters in the civil war of Kansas. He entered the State of Virginia at
Harper's Ferry with fourteen resolute men and seized a Federal arsenal in the
dead of night, designing to distribute its store of arms and ammunition among
such slaves as he could induce to revolt against their masters. It was a " raid "
which, if moderately successful, would, he thought, precipitate the struggle
between North and South and lead
to the abolition of slavery.

His invasion was a flash in the
pan, for he was soon overwhelmed,
captured (twelve of his following
likewise), and led to execution on
December 2, 1859. "But his soul
went marching on."

Abraham Lincoln denounced
Brown's violent effort as "absurd."
With regard to its chances of success
it zuas wildly absurd, besides being
"quite unconstitutional." It was of
the order of deeds which cannot be
defended by appeal to any man-
made law, and which, if they were
not quite properly visited with the
death penalty, would reduce civilised
society to chaos. Very often the
cause for which a John Brown may
commit a raid or an isolated murder
is a rotten, a selfish, or a lunatic

one; and the raider richly deserves ^^t. charles sumnbr

his execution. In one case out of

five hundred a John Brown may be fighting (most irregularly) for some cardinal
point of liberty, for something which will lead to the enhanced spiritual or
physical welfare of mankind. If he succeeds and does not get killed, he is
possibly made a cabinet minister, a dictator, or a privy councillor. If he dies
he receives, or should receive, beatification, for he has earned it by giving up
his life for the future welfare of many people.

The election of Abraham Lincoln was the last episode which decided
South Carolina — protagonist of the Slave Powers, and rightly so called, for it
had been from first to last the wickedest of the Slave States — to secede from
the Union. As soon as the assembled Presidential electors of that State

sented by the gTBteful Viicinians wiih ■ magniticeiil gold-headed stick to replace Ihe one with which
(so far as intention went) he had murdered the man who had d&red 10 speak against slavery. Sumner
partially recovered, and did not die till 1S74, but owing 10 the blows of his would-be assassin having
affected the spine, he was always semi-paralysed. His would-be murderer died in 1859,

364 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

heard by telegram in November, i860, that Abraham Lincoln had secured
a majority of votes in the Presidential electorate and was therefore certain to
become President of the United States in the following March, they summoned

307, JOHN brown's portrait AND AUiOGRAPH

a State Convention. This body on December 20th passed an Ordinance
seceding from the rest of the United States of America.

Lincoln had never advocated abolition of slavery throughout the Union.
He merely stood for a bai^ain being kept. He hated slavery and wished to
restrict the area in which this institution was to exist to the narrowest limits
consistent with the pre-existing inter-state agreements or understandings.
But a bargain being a bargain, he resented the attempts of the South to with-

SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES 365

draw from the agreements of 1820 and 1850 ; and most of all he opposed any
idea of secession.

As early as 1849 he had proposed to Congress to emancipate the slaves in
the District of Columbia (against compensation): and in 1854 he came to the
front as an opponent of the extension of Slave Territories or States. Despite
his protestations of wishing to uphold the Union above all and everything, he
had plainly said in 1858 that there could be no protracted compromise in the
matter of slavery : " A house divided against itself cannot stand, I believe
this Government cannot endure permanently, half-slave and half-free ... it
will become all one thing or all the other."

As it was incredible that the overwhelming voting power of the North and
New West would declare itself in
favour of slavery everywhere, this
utterance from the favourite can-
didate of the North, and his subse-
quent election as the nominated new
President by the Republican National
Convention on a " No Extension of
Slavery" ticket (May i6th, i860),
made the breach with South Carolina
inevitable.

War was begun by the South in
January, 1861, and the gage of battle
taken up by Lincoln on April 15th,
1861. Half Virginia, and the other
Slave States of Delaware, Maryland,
Kentucky, and Missouri stood by
the Union ; the rest, from Texas to
Eastern Virginia, confederated with
South Carolina.

In the great struggle which ensued
the Negroes and Negroids of all the
former Slave States signalised them-
selves in history for two things : their 308- Abraham Lincoln
considerate behaviour towards their F.om«prinipuWtth*d^ii«j«fo™ii«Hgningof the
defeated masters and their bravery in

battle. They remained quiescent throughout the South, where active fighting
was not going on ; and although every white man may have been absent at the
war, they respected strictly the property of their owners and the chastity of
their owners' wives. Not even in the prejudiced history of the South can it be
maintained that the negroes revenged themselves for their servitude and ill-
treatment while those who had held them in bondage were away from their
homes. Of course if a Northern army was near, many slaves would run away
to obtain liberty or to enlist under its colours. Frequently they were turned
back and ordered to return on their employers' plantations till the issue was
decided. In some cases they were enlisted (if there was a justification) in the
armies of the Federal Government (though its negro soldiers were usually
obtained from Washington, Maryland, West Virginia, and the free negroes of
the Northern States) : in all such cases the negro troops fought under the
Unionist banner with such bravery, and — if one may say so — such Chris-
tianity, that they won admiration from their white comrades and materially

366 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

hastened the day of their emancipation by influencing public opinion in their
favour.

On January 1st, 1863, Lincoln signed a Proclamation emancipating the
slaves in the States of Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi,
Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Caro-
lina, Tennessee, and certain portions of Louisiana and
Virginia, giving liberty in theory (and two years after-
309. pKBsiDENT Lincoln's wards in practice) to over four millions of human beings.
sir.NATURE TO THE PRO- Lincoln Hvcd to see this "unconstitutional" measure
PATioN, 1863 ratified by Congress on January 31st, 1865, m the adop-

tion of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution
of the United States; which provided that "neither slavery nor involuntarj'
servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have

310. A CRAVBYARD OF FEDERAL
Adjwiing Ihc grtMDdi of Ibc InttilnH for Ihe higbcr Irmining of tbt Negro

been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject
to their jurisdiction."

This was confirmed by a vote of twenty-seven States and proclaimed
December i8th, 1865, as an integral part of the United States' Constitution :
to be accepted, of course, by the seceded States as part of the war settlement.

This action was followed up by the triumphant and dominant Republican
Party in the enactment of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the
Constitution. The Fourteenth .Amendment, which became part of the Consti-
tution in 1866, provided (amongst other things) for full rights of citizenship being
bestowed without distinction on all persons born or naturalised in the United
States, as a whole, and in the State in which the person resided. The Fifteenth
Amendment gave the Federal and State Franchise to all citizens of the United

SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES 367

States, independently of race or colour. This was adopted in 1870, and by
1 87 1 all the seceded States were back in the Union, and had their local free-
dom of administration restored.

Then followed the trying period of Reconstruction. The slave was given
a vote ; his master was in an electoral minority. As the slave was too ignorant,
in almost all cases, to come forward as a candidate for Congress or for the
Senate, the "carpet bag" politicians of the North were the only Republicans
who could be elected by the ex-slave voters. Between 1866 and 1876 the White
South, according to its own account, " passed under the harrow," and is sup-
posed to have suffered cruelly in its sensitive feelings and its property from the
conjoint rule of ex-slave and Northern governor.^ It endeavoured to right
matters with violence. Negro voters were bribed to remain away from the
polling-stations, or terrorised into not voting by violence or threats of non-
employment. The Ku-Klux-Klan and other secret societies sprang into
existence to make the Negro franchise inoperative and to drive away the
Northern politician.

A small civil war broke out in 1874 (in Louisiana) which was suppressed
by Federal troops ; but the North was disinclined to take up the gauntlet or to
risk another internecine conflict to enforce the strict carrying out of the Four-
teenth and Sixteenth Amendments. It left the Negro in the old States of the
Secession still in social bondage, an ill-treated, neglected ward instead of a slave :
trusting to the sense of justice and humanity which would come in time to a
better-educated South and lead it of its own free will to make expiation and
atonement.

^ For an excellent summary of the actually beneficial results of the conjoined Northern governor and
negro voter, see the pamphlet Why the Negro was Enfranchised, by Richard P. Hallowell (Boston :
1903). The writer brings clearly into the light the admirable reconstruction work in South Carolina of
Governor David H. Chamberlain.

CHAPTER XV

SLAVERY IN THE SOUTHERN STATES : II

BEFORE dwelling on the present difficulties yet generally happy condition
of the Negro in the United States, South as well as North, it may be as
well to realise his existence there as a slave between the beginning of the
eighteenth century and the year i860. He was not treated well by Dutch,
English, or French settlers prior to 1700, but the contemporaneous behaviour
of the free white colonists and the European officials towards the white convicts,
apprentices, and religious dissidents, and towards the Amerindian aborigines,
was so bad that their demeanour with the African slave attracts no special
attention.

We have already seen ^ that the State of Virginia as early as about 1680
showed a determination to retain the negro in slavery, and was (perhaps wisely)
intolerant of any mixing of the blood. But the negroes of "Ole Virginny"
did not dislike tobacco planting and curing, and in many respects they were
content and even happy down to the tightening of servitude in the nineteenth
century. It was in South Carolina in the first quarter of the eighteenth
century that life was made unbearable and short for the unfortunate African,
and that, being driven to mad despair, the negroes broke out in the Charleston
revolt of 1740 and attempted (small blame to them !) to slay the pitiless devils
who were their masters.

This rising, repressed with ease by the white folk (and followed by atrocious
punishments) gave a more stringent character to future slave legislation in the
"Southern" States,^ which then consisted of Maryland, Virginia, North
Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The remembrance of the Charleston
revolt kept the American colonists on the alert for a hundred and twenty years
afterwards to forestall and nip in the bud any possible negro rising.

But as a matter of fact, though the slave legislation was as cruel in the
eighteenth as in the nineteenth century, there were fewer slaves to be afflicted
by it, the mass of the slaves were too brutish to feel the iron entering into their

^ In the foot-note on page 357.

' Already distinguished from the more Quaker, Puritan North as the region wherein white men directed
and slaves laboured. North of the Mason-Dixon line the whites did every kind of work. In North
Carolina there were many **poor" white labourers, and this State had a better slavery record than its
neighbours.

Mr. James Bryce, in his Study of the American Commonwealth (p. 618), points out the striking con-
trast between the culture of the North and of the South from the very beginning. When in the early
eighteenth century the English Commissioners for foreign plantations asked for information on the subject
ofeducation from the respective Governors of Virginia (a Southern State) and Connecticut (a Northern), the
Governor of Virginia replied, '^ I thank God there are no free schools or printing-presses, and I hope we
shall not have any these hundred years." From the Governor of Connecticut came the answer, ''One-
fourth of the annual revenue of the colony is laid out in maintaining free schools for the education of our
children. "

368

,AVERY IN THE SOUTHERN STATES 369

le colonial wars against France and England — and against the
bes between 1750 and 1815 — provided interesting distractions for
their masters. Fighting often brought freedom in its train, and a
life or pioneering work in the backwoods could never be so heart-
agriculture under the whip. Moreover, it must be remembered
about 1816 the British Americans were not really free to organise
effectively, and with the full application of the wicked laws they had
-e about to enact : Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Alabama had been

previously under the kindly sway (so far as the negro was concerned) of the
French or Spanish, or were still strongly held by Amerindian tribes.

So that we need not waste time over the eighteenth century in drawing up
our indictment against the Southern States : we can begin our survey with the
commencement of the long peace following the far-reaching Napoleonic Wars ;
a period during which the United States grew (in occupation, not merely in
paper agreements) from an area of about 960,000 square miles to one of nearly

370 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

three million square miles, extending not merely to the Mississippi, but to the
Pacific, to Mexico, and to the Hudson's Bay Territory.

According to the law of Louisiana (down to 1865), "A slave is one who is
in the power of the master to whom he belongs. The master may sell him,
dispose of his person, his industry, and his labour : he can do nothing, possess
nothing, or acquire nothing but what must belong to his master."^

In the laws of Maryland, slaves were frequently classed with " working
beasts, animals of any kind."

The Supreme Court of North Carolina in 1829 laid it down that " The end
of slavery is the profit of the master, his security, and the public safety. The
subject is one doomed in his own person and his posterity to live without
knowledge and without the capacity to make anything his own, and to toil that
another may reap the fruits. . . . The power of the master must be absolute
to render the submission of the slave perfect"

The penal codes of the slave-holding States bore much more severely upon
slaves than upon white people. In the State of Virginia there were sixty-eight
penal offences with the death penalty attached in the case of slaves^ but of which
only one (murder in the first degree) was punished with death in the case of a
white person. In the State of Mississippi there were thirteen offences, includ-
ing high treason, murder, robbery, rape, burglary, and forgery, for which a white
person as well as a negro might be sentenced to death, but in addition there
were thirty-eight offences for which the slave was to be executed, with or with-
out "the benefit of clergy," but which in the case of a white person were
punished by fine or imprisonment. In Alabama there was positively no
offence for which the death penalty in the case of white people was rigidly
prescribed, and there were only six offences for which it might be inflicted by
the judge. But in the case of slaves, the fixed and only punishment was death
for almost every offence known to the law, and the death penalty could even
be inflicted on the mere accessories to the committing of trifling delinquencies,
the only exception being, ironically enough, that any slave guilty of the man-
slaughter of a slave, " a free negro, or a mulatto," was only to be punished by
stripes not exceeding thirty-nine, or by branding in the hand. In South
Carolina, which had a very bloody code, there were capital sentences in con-
nection with twenty-seven offences in the case of white people, and for thirty-
six crimes committed by slaves. Simple larceny to the value of one dollar and
seven cents was a capital offence whether perpetrated by a white person or a
slave, without benefit of clergy ! In this barbarous State (as it must have been
until the conclusion of the American Civil War) for some offences even white
women were to be publicly whipped after being branded with a red-hot iron,
whereas men only received the branding.

In Tennessee the death penalty was inflicted on whites for murder, and
being accessory to murder, but slaves were liable to death for eight crimes until
1 83 1, when the capital offences for slaves were reduced to six. In the case of
the other two, flogging, the pillory, and imprisonment were substitutable at the
will of the judge. In Kentucky four crimes were capital offences amongst white
people and eleven amongst slaves. In Missouri there was almost an equality
in the allotment of death to the two divisions of society. In most of these
Southern States murder in the case of the white people was described as being

^ A Sketch of the Laws /delating to Slavery in the Several States of the United States of Ameri<a,
Second edition. By George M. Stroud. Philadelphia, 1856.

SLAVERY IN THE SOUTHERN STATES 371

of the first or second degree, and only in the first case (which was very seldom
proved^) was the death penalty inflicted.

Even as late as 1856 the Constitution of Maryland enacted that a negro
convicted of murder should have the right hand cut off, should be hanged in
the usual manner, the head severed from the body, the body divided into four
quarters, and the head and quarters set up in the most public places of the
county where such act was committed.

In several of the States slaves were forbidden, or might be denied the
security of trial by jury for offences of a higher grade than petty larceny ; and
this was ironically countered by other laws stating that the slave was not to be
tried by a jury save for offences " more serious than petty larceny " — that is to
say, capital offences. In Maryland and the Northern States, however, the
slave, like the free man, was entitled to "a speedy trial by an impartial
jury."

A slave could not be a witness against a white person either in a civil or a
criminal cause ; he could not be party to a civil suit ; he could not be educated ;
the law even discountenanced his receiving moral and religious instruction ; he
was required to give implicit submission to the will of his master only, but not
to that of other white persons.

As early as 1740 the Legislature of South Carolina enacted that any
person or persons whatsoever who shall hereafter teach, or cause any slave or
slaves to be taught to write, or who should use any slave as a scribe in any
manner of writing, should for such offence be fined £\oo current money. In
1780 the «ame State declared any assembly of slaves, /r^^ negroes, mulattoes,
or mestizoes ... for the purpose of mental instruction in a confined or secret
place, to be an unlawful meeting, and the persons taking part in such assembly
might be punished with twenty lashes each. Another part of the same Act
made it unlawful even when white persons were present for such negroes, free
or enslaved, to meet anywhere for mental instruction. In 1834 the same State
enacted another law which punished most severely any white person (by fines),
free coloured people or slaves (with fifty lashes) for imparting instruction, or
the keeping of school, or teaching any slave or free person of colour to read
or write. Virginia made much the same laws down to 1849, Georgia also,
North Carolina, and Alabama, with some variation, the fines being perhaps
less, but on the other hand, reading being prohibited, together with writing, or
any form of mental instruction.

North Carolina allowed slaves to be taught arithmetic ! but sternly forbade
reading and writing, or the giving or selling of any book or pamphlet. In
Alabama slaves or any coloured persons, bond or free, might not even be
taught to spell.*

The steady perusal of the many books and pamphlets published between
1830 and 1865, dealing with the maltreatment of slaves in the Southern States,
as well as the speeches made in Congress by Charles Sumner and others,
leaves even the hardened reader and the cynical with a feeling of nausea,
perhaps even with a desire for some posthumous revenge on the perpetrators
of this Outrage on Humanity, worse than anything recorded in the nineteenth
century of the Turk in Europe or the European in Congoland. Until I went
through this course of reading I vaguely thought of John Brown as a violent,
half-crazy old man, of William Lloyd Garrison as a well-meaning fanatic, and

1 Especially in regard to negroes or negroids, for slaves might not bear evidence against white people.
^ In the State of Mississippi slaves who had learnt to write had their right thumb cut off.

372 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

the host of northern denunciators of the South between 1850 and i860 as
" inebriated with the exuberance of their own verbosity."

I only wonder now they kept themselves so much under control, that ten
thousand men did not march behind John Brown to clear out this Augean
stable.

Here are a few extracts from books and newspapers to show the type of
cruelties perpetrated. These extracts could be multiplied a hundredfold, a
thousandfold, it must be understood, if I had the space to devote to such a
gruesome purpose and anything was to be gained by such a bloody recital.

The following is from the Nashville (Tennessee) Banner ^ June, 1834 : —

" Interesting Trial. — During the session of the circuit court for Davison
County, which adjourned a few days since, a case was tried of more than usual
interest to the public. It was that of Meeks against Philips, for the value of a
slave who had been killed by Philips whilst in the employ of Meeks as his
overseer. ... It appeared in evidence that the negro had disobeyed Philips's
orders in going away one night without his permission, for which in accordance
with his duty he undertook to chastise him. The boy proved somewhat re-
fractory, and probably offered resistance, though there is no direct evidence of
the fact. From Philips's evidence, which must be taken for, as well as against
him, it seems he had a scuffle with the boy, during which the boy inflicted a
blow upon him which produced great pain. Philips, with assistance, finally
subdued him. While endeavouring to swing him to the limb of a tree he
resisted by pulling back, whereupon Philips, who is a large and strong man,
gave him several blows upon the head with the butt of a loaded horsewhip.
Having tied him to the limb the rope gave way, and the boy fell to the ground,
when Philips gave him several kicks in the side and again swung him to the
tree.

" He then called for a cowhide (whip), which was accordingly brought and
the chastisement was commenced anew. The suffering wretch implored for
mercy in vain (there must be a Hell, for Philips et huic generis omnes I — H.H. J.),
Philips would whip him awhile and then rest, only to renew his strokes and
wreak his vengeance ; for he repeatedly avowed his intention of whipping him
to death ! — saying, he had as good a negro to put in his room or remunerate
his master for the loss of him. The sufferer writhing under the stinging tortures
of the lash continued to implore for mercy, while those who were present inter-
posed and pleaded too in his behalf; but there was no relenting arm until life
was nearly extinct and feeling had taken its departure. He was cut loose,
bleeding and weak, and died in a few minutes after."

The jury found for the plaintiff, and Philips was possibly mulcted in
damages for the value of the slave, but there was no record of his having been
tried and punished for manslaughter or murder ; and the bystanders (whites
presumably, since blacks would have incurred the same fate if they had inter-
posed) merely remonstrated with Philips: did not knock him down or shoot
him.

Here is an epitome of the Souther case quoted by Stroud^ as having
occurred on the ist September, 1849, in Virginia: —

" The indictment contains fifteen counts, and sets forth a case of most cruel
and excessive whipping and torture. The negro was tied to a tree and whipped
with switches. When Souther became fatigued with the labour of whipping,

^ A Sketch 0/ the Laws Relating io Slavery ^tic. Second edition. By George M. Stroud. Phila-
delphia, 1856.

SLAVERY IN THE SOUTHERN STATES 373

he called upon a negro man of his and made him ' cob ' Sam with a shingle. He
also made a negro woman of his help to ' cob ' him. And, after * cobbing ' and
whipping, he applied fire to the body of his slave, about his back, belly, and
private parts. He then caused him to be washed down with hot water in
which pods of red pepper had been steeped. The negro was also tied to a log,
and to the bed-post, with ropes, which choked him, and he was kicked and
stamped upon by Souther. This sort of punishment was continued and repeated
until the negro died under its infliction."

The slave's offences, according to the master's allegation, were ^^ getting
drunkl^ and dealing with two persons — white men — who were present, and
witnessed the whole of the horrible transaction, without, as far as appears in the
report, having interfered in any way to save the life of the slave.

" The jury found the master guilty of murder in the second degree." Which
meant that it was punished as manslaughter by a short term of imprison-
ment.

The following remarks and story are quoted from F. L. Olmsted's Cotton
Kingdom in relation to the northern and more hilly part of Alabama : —

** The whip was evidently in constant use, however. There were no rules on
the subject, that I learned ; the overseers and drivers punished the negroes
whenever they deemed it necessary, and in such manner, and with such
severity, as they thought fit, 'If you don't work faster,' or * If you don't work
better,' or ' If you don't recollect what I tell you, I will have you flogged,' I
often heard. I said to one of the overseers, * It must be disagreeable to have
to punish them as much as you do ? ' * Yes, it would be to those who are not
used to it — but it's my business, and I think nothing of it. Why, sir, I wouldn't
mind killing a nigger more than I would a dog.' I asked if he had ever killed a
negro. * Not quite that,' he said, * but overseers were often obliged to. Some
negroes are determined never to let a white man whip them, and will resist
you when you attempt it ; of course you must kill them in that case.'"

Mr. Olmsted visited (in the late 'fifties) an estate in central Alabama^ and
witnessed this episode : —

He had been riding over the estate with the overseer, and as they crossed
on horseback a leafy gully his horse shied at something concealed in the under-
growth. It turned out to be a young Negro girl hiding there from the overseer
because she should have been at work and knew it — at work not on any busi-
ness of her own or to fulfil any contract into which she had entered of her own
free will, but because another human being arrogated to himself the right to
make her work for him all the year round.

The overseer questioned her : her explanation seemed to him unsatisfactory.

Whether her story were true or false, could have been ascertained in two minutes
by riding on to the gang with which her father was at work, but the overseer had made
up his mind.

"That won't do," said he; "get down." The girl knelt on the ground. He got
off his horse, and holding him with his left hand, struck her thirty or forty blows across
the shoulders with his tough, flexible, " raw-hide " whip (a terrible instrument for the
purp)ose). They were well laid on, at arm's length, but with no appearance of angry
excitement on the part of the overseer. At every stroke the girl winced and exclaimed,
" Yes, sir ! " or " Ah, sir ! " or " Please, sir ! " not groaning or screaming. At length he
stopped and said, " Now tell me the truth." The girl repeated the same story. " You

^ I have visited more or less the same district (1908) fifty years after Olmsted and have found the old
•estates divided up into thriving negro farms. — H. H. J.

374 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

have not got enough yet," said he. " Pull up your clothes ; lie down." The girl, without
any hesitation, without a word or look of remonstrance or entreaty, drew closely all her
garments under her shoulders, and lay down upon the ground with her face toward
the overseer, who continued to flog her with the raw hide, across her naked loins
and thighs, with as much strength as before. She now shrunk away from him, not
rising, but writhing, grovelling, and screaming, " Oh, don't, sir ! oh, please stop, master !
please, sir ! please, sir ! oh, that's enough, master ! oh, Lord ! oh, master, master ! oh,
God, master, do stop ! oh, God, master ! oh, God, master ! "

A young gentleman of fifteen was with us ; he had ridden in front, and now, turning
on his horse, looked back with an expression only of impatience at the delay. It
was the first time I had ever seen a woman flogged. I had seen a man cudgelled and
beaten in the heat of passion before, but never flogged with a hundredth part of the
severity used in this case. I glanced again at the perfectly passionless but rather grim,
business-like face of the overseer, and again at the young gentleman, who had turned
away. If not indifferent, he had evidently not the faintest sympathy with my emotion.
Only my horse chafed. I gave him rein and spur, and we plunged into the bushes and
scrambled fiercely up the steep acclivity. The screaming yells and the whip strokes had
ceased when I reached the top of the bank. Choking, sobbing, spasmodic groans only
were heard. I rode on to where the road, coming diagonally up the ravine, ran out
upon the cotton-field. My young companion met me there, and immediately afterward
the overseer. He laughed as he joined us, and said :

" She meant to cheat me out df a day's work, and she has done it, too."

" Did you succeed in getting another story from her ? " I asked, as soon as I could
trust myself to speak.

" No ; she stuck to it."

" Was it not perhaps true ? "

Any meeting of slaves " under pretence of divine worship " might be dis-
persed, and the slaves receive twenty-five lashes on the bare back without
trial. No slave or free negro might conduct a religious service. In some States,
in a very grudging way, within the hours of daylight, religious instruction
might be imparted by white persons, and, of course, masters were free to take
their slaves with them to church in attendance on them. It was repeatedly
proclaimed that however much slaves might be baptised into Christianity, they
did not thereby acquire a right to freedom ; though in arguing the case of
slavery, many of its apologists would profess to find sanction for it from the
fact that Christianity only disapproved of the enslavement of Christians. It
was pointed out by those who attacked slavery that the much-abused Turk, if
the slave whom he captured in warfare became a Muhammadan, could no
longer hold him as a slave.

Many of the State Legislatures profess to forbid — " save at the time of a
sugar crop " — working on a Sunday. But the putting of this law in force was
left entirely and solely to the conscience of the slave-owner or overseer, and all
who travelled through the Southern States down to i860 note in their journals
and reports the constant working of slaves on that supposed day of rest,
which, indeed, was allotted to them in law so that they might not rest but
cultivate the plots of ground allotted to them and raise food for their subsist-
ence. In Louisiana the law required that if a slave worked on Sunday he was
to receive compensation by being given a subsequent holiday, but this, again,
was purely a matter for the owner to arrange. In South Carolina and Georgia
the slaves very seldom got any seventh-day rest, except in the slackest winter
months.

Throughout the Southern States slaves could not redeem themselves with-

SLAVERY IN THE SOUTHERN STATES 375

out the acquiescence of their master, even though the latter had been cruel to
them ; with the doubtful exceptions of Louisiana and Kentucky, provided
cruelty could be proved, which owing to the law of evidence was very seldom
the case. The slave could make no contract, therefore could not be legally
married, could not be punished for adultery, nor prosecuted for bigamy.
Slavery was ^^ hereditary and perpetuaV in the Southern States, but the
children of imported slaves were usually able in the Northern States to claim
their liberty.

Referring to the general condition of the negro slave in the United States
in 1855 and comparing it with the worst conditions of European peasantry,
F. L. Olmsted writes : " Bad as is the condition of the mass of European
labourers, the man is a brute or a devil who, with my information, would prefer
that of the American slave." ^

He and other writers^ between 1833 ^i^^^ 1861 descant on the constant
episodes of hunger in the life of the slaves of the Southern States. When
they were kept at work of an important and lucrative kind from early morn to
night time they were usually given large quantities of rough vegetable food ;
but in other times they were half starved. The slaves had an extraordinary
craving for meat in some form, especially mutton or pork. It was very
seldom that they were granted any meat but bacon, and that as a rule
was only given to them occasionally. Louisiana was the only State in
which meat was required by law to be furnished to the slaves. The required
ration was four pounds a week (this law was afterwards described as a dead
letter and unobserved by the planters in that State). In North Carolina
the law fixed a quart of com per day as " the proper allowance of food " for
a slave.

Many of the thefts charged to the negroes were simply the stealing of
vegetables, cereals, poultry, sheep or pigs, or fish from the weir by famished
negroes ; and the thefts were punished by the most frightful floggings, often
ending in the slave's death.

Famines (as in eighteenth-century Jamaica) were of frequent occurrence in
the Southern States, especially those in the Valley of the Mississippi, during
the first half of the nineteenth century. Their existence was scarcely noticed
in the Southern press during that period, and usually they were only recorded
in local annals, which were subsequently published in some of the Northern
newspapers. During these famines or periods of food-scarcity hundreds or even
thousands of negroes died of sheer starvation.

As among the Arabs of East Africa or the Nubians, Arabs, and Hausa of
the Sudan, so in tropical and sub-tropical America the institution (pace the late
De Bow) created a lust for blood, and an indifference even to monetary loss if
the vilest passions could have full fling. Not only were Southerners almost
less concerned about the killing of a negro than they were over the killing of a

^ The Cotton Kingdom^ in two volumes, by Frederick Law Olmsted. (Second edition. New York,
1861.) Olmsted was a fine fellow, who on horseback, or if need be on foot, travelled all over the Slave
States of the Union between 1850 and i860. His books, four in number, are profoundly interesting.
They are cool, calm, a series of photographs. He gives the reader a succession of sober word-pictures,
and leaves him mostly to form his own conclusions. He can also depict the beautiful, unappreciated
scenery of the sub-tropical South as no other writer of his period was able to do. His works (Seaboard
Slave States ; Texas Journey ; Journey in the Back Country ; and {Journeys and Explorations in) The
Cotton Kingdom oj America should be reprinted.

3 Read on this subject The Narrative of Charles Ball^ a Black Man (New York, 1817).

376

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

COW or a mule, but they rather liked killing them for fun.^ Olmsted quotes a
number of instances of this callousness in the Southern press of the 1850-60
period.

It had become almost proverbial in America that the feelings of afTection
for wife and children were not to be taken into account if the caprice of an
owner or his bankruptcy or death required a negro or negress to be sold. In
this respect the United States were more inhumane than the British West
Indies, the Spanish or Portuguese, or the French (if they obeyed the Code
Noir, which they did not). Thousands and thousands of instances in the nine-
teenth century (and earlier) occurred in the Southern States of husbands and
wives (some of them mulattoes, octoroons, and "near-whites") being thus
arbitrarily parted, never perhaps to meet again ; or being forced for " stud *'
purposes to contract other unions. Little children were torn from their
mothers' arms soon after they were weaned, to be kept perhaps as "a pet" by
some languid Southern lady ; treated as a pet till death, or a fit of ill-temper
on the part of the owner sent the "pet" to toil under the lash of an overseer
with a hoe or a sickle.

From this cause more than any other (I am not thinking of Uncle Tom's
Cabin, but of the actual plain statistics on which it was founded), negroes and
negresses would run away, knowing full well if they did so that there was one
chance in a hundred of their reaching Mexico (where slavery was abolished in
1829) or Canada.

They might, if they got far enough North in the hundred or thousand miles
of their flight, meet a Quaker, who showed them the way to the " underground
railway," 2 or friendly negro freedmen or fellow-slaves willing to risk tortures
and imprisonment or death to help — at any rate, not to hinder — a comrade in
distress. But they must first elude the bloodhounds put on their track. If
they escaped these, they might die of starvation in the pathless woods, be
frozen to death in the Alleghany Mountains, poisoned by rattlesnakes or
"mocassins," drown in crossing wide rivers, or be shot at sight by a white
patrol.

Better these things than recapture, when the master or overseer would feel
it was preferable to lose an emaciated slave or a cadaverous ex-mistress than

^ That this species of humour is not quite extinct in the reconstructed South may be seen by the
enclosed extract, which I clipped myself from a Tennessee newspaper in 1908.— H. H. J.

SHOT THEM FOR FUN
A White Man Kills Three Negroes, Wounds Four
A Cold-Blooded Murder Occurs in Memphis — What the Murderer said when he was Arrested

Memphis, Tenn., Dec. 11. — "I shot 'em, and that*s all there's to it.*' Beyond this, which he
mumbled as he was being led to a cell at police headquarters, William Latura, a white man of this city,
proffered no explanation of the killing of three negroes and wounding four others at a saloon here early
to-day.

According to the statement of bystanders, when Latura entered the saloon a group of negroes were
about a pool table in the rear room, engaged in a game. As he walked into the room, it is declared,
Latura, after surveying the crowd, leisurely unbuttoned his long overcoat and drew out an automatic
pistol If any words were passed, those who escaped the rain of bullets which followed by dodging
behind the furniture, declare they heard none. As Latura shot one after another of the negroes they fell.
When the police arrived three were dead and four others were lying about the floor wounded. One of
the latter was a woman. After his weapon was empty Latura threw it away, and walked to a neighbour-
ing saloon, where he quietly submitted to arrest.

' The hiding and forwarding system which the Quakers concocted for sending runaway slaves to
Canada.

SLAVERY IN THE SOUTHERN STATES 377

to forego the exquisite delight of torturing a human being to death, unrebuked
by public opinion. Public opinion indeed had, as likely as not, been evoked to
" see the fun " ; and had ridden over on its blood horses or driven with its fast
trotters to see a wretched negro or negress, an octoroon or " near white " whipped
to death or lunacy by hickory switches ; or hung up by the thumbs and flogged

MAS so OFTEN SUPPLIED FUGITIVE SLAVE!
Tbe fniil ii p

into a bloody pulp with cowhide thongs dipped into scalding cayenne pepper-
tea before each stroke.'

As to the pursuit of runaways by dogs, the breed of dog employed was
usually a cross between the Spanish bloodhound and some mongrel dog of
good size and strength, perhaps with elements of the greyhound and the bull-
dog. They were ugly-looking creatures, smaller than the ordinary bloodhound
and most ferocious. They were, in fact, trained to hate negroes. Down to
1 861 throughout the Southern States there were men who madeit a profession to

' Every one of these allusions is drawn from accuraie auihoritics.

378 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

keep " ni^er d<^s " and with them to follow up and catch runaway slaves, and
packs of about a dozen were employed at a time. When the runaway was
caught by the dogs they were usually allowed to bite and tear him to a certain
extent, to satisfy their rage. " The owners don't mind having them kind o'
"'gg^rs tore a good deal ; runaways ain't much account nohow, and it makes
the rest more afraid to run away when they see how the others are sarved."

N THK STACK ANT

The payment for catching the runaway within two or three days was
from ten to twenty dollars; but as much as two hundred dollars would be paid
if the hunting occupied two or three weeks. It was not that the slave was
then of any value to his owner, but an example must be made to deter others.

Of course, whenever the fugitive saw a tree, he endeavoured to climb it, but
in such case a bullet or a charge of buckshot dislodged him.

This being the case, when a runaway realised that there was no escape from

SLAVERY IN THE SOUTHERN STATES 379

the dogs or the master, he frequently committed suicide, or fought with the dogs
till he was killed by them, the white bystanders heartily enjoying the spectacle.
As these scenes frequently took place in a bayou or by the banks of a river, the
wretched negro when all was up would endeavour to drown himself.

As has been pointed out by numerous Northern writers or modern authors
of the New South (for in many districts there is a New South growing or grown
up which loathes and burns with shame for the wickedness of its ancestry or its
predecessors), the immorality of slavery reacted on the nature and disposition
of the White South. The poor whites were shockingly ignorant and were
virtually slaves to the aristocratic planters, who treated them like dirt and with-
held the franchise from them.^

Manners, morals, and speech were exceedingly coarse. The negro slaves
were (at any rate until about 1850) often obliged, men and women, to work
stdrk naked in the plantations and even alongside the miserably-made public
roads. White children and young women were accustomed to such sights, such
indecencies of speech and action as must have left them with no ignorance of
the existence of filthy and refined sensuality. So crudely indecent in fact were
the conditions of slave life that the slightly veiled concupiscence yet compara-
tive lack of prurience in the eighteenth-century British and French West Indies
— still more the grave Spanish propriety in clothing and personal demeanour in
public life — seem positively a glimpse of wholesomeness compared to the condi-
tion of South Carolina, Georgia, Northern Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and
Northern Louisiana in the first sixty years of the nineteenth century. If this
indictment is thought too strong, read the books published between 1830 and
1861, in the libraries of the United States and of Great Britain. Many of these
quote from the files of Southern newspapers and those of the Northern States
on the borderland, to illustrate by the reports of trials and scandals the state of
morals in the South. Some no doubt are prejudiced or purposely exaggerate.
But the evidence in the mass is damning ; and includes frequent descriptions of
duels between men, or even boys, which commenced with revolvers (to punish a
saucy word) and finished up with a bowie-knife hand-to-hand combat — a slicing
of the fallen man by the victor. There were, as we know. Southern vendettas
which did not end till three or four households of men and boys had been wiped
out by assassination. Scarcely a single instance is recorded of any one of these
white duellists or murderers being punished even by a fine.

At the burning of a negro near Knoxville in Eastern Tennessee about 1852,
the editor of a local paper (a white Methodist preacher) wrote of this punish-
ment of a negro who had killed a white man : ** We unhesitatingly affirm that
the punishment was unequal to the crime. Had we been there we should have
taken a part, and even suggested the pinching of pieces out of him with red-
hot pincers — the cutting off of a limb at a time, and then burning them all in
a heap."

^ " And yet, as fine and well-disposed men, and as anxious to improve, are to be found in the South-
western States as are to be found anywhere. They are as honest as men ever are, and they will treat a
stranger the best they know how. The trouble is, the large slave-holders have got all the good land.
There can be no schools, and if the son of a poor man rises above his condition there is no earthly chance
for him. He can only hope to be a slave-driver, for an office is not his, or he must leave and go to
a Free State. Were there no Free States, the white people of the South would to-day be slaves.'*

*' There are to-day . . . more than 30,000 people in Tennessee alone, who have not a foot of land or
a bit of work to do. . . . I have seen hundreds of families living in log cabins ten or twelve feet square,
where the children run around as naked as ever they were born, and a bedstead or chair was not m the
house, and never will be. I have seen the children eat wheat and grass, growing in the field. I have seen
them eat dirt." — Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom,

380 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

About 1857 a negro of Georgia assassinated his master by felling him with
a bludgeon. He was caught and tried ; then sentenced to death and roasted at
a slow fire on the site of the murder in the presence of many thousand slaves
driven to the ground from all the adjoining counties, and when at length his
life went out, the fire was intensified until his body was reduced to ashes
which were scattered to the winds and trampled under foot. After this,
magistrates and clergymen addressed appropriate warnings to the assembled
multitude.

" The popular report of Southern hospitality is a popular romance. Every
wish of the Southerner is imperative ; every belief, undoubted ; every hate,
vengeful ; every love, fiery. Hence, for instance, the scandalous fiend-like
street fights of the South. . . . The Southerner seems crazy for blood. Intensity
of personal pride and prejudice; an intense partisanship. . . . The talents of
the South all turn into two channels, politics and sensuality. The ratio of
illiterate citizens in the South was three times larger than in the North, and
a proportionate difference in the libraries and publishers of the one division as
compared to the other." ^

Many Northern writers during the close of the Slavery period would point
out the erroneous conception held by the South that white men who had to toil
as artisans or mechanics in the North lived under miserable circumstances ; and
that the preferable ideal was a white aristocracy and negro slaves to perform
all the manual labour. But as a matter of. fact, the true state of the case was
that the white masses of working-men and working-women in the North — even
in the early and middle parts of the nineteenth century — lived on a very much
higher scale of comfort and possessed far more of the amenities of life than
most well-to-do Southerners.

The difference really lay in this, that partly owing to a more benign climate
the Southern white man was content with very little, was willing to "pig"
it sooner than take any trouble. Travellers through the Southern States
(Northern Americans, Englishmen, and Germans) in ante-bellum days point out
the miserable discomforts of Southern hospitality ; the difficulty in obtaining a
room to one's self or a bed to one's self; the filthy condition of the beds ; the
absence of couches or arm-chairs, of decent reading-lamps, of curtains and
carpets, of windows that would open and shut or that contained any glass ; the
rarity of obtaining even a jug of hot water for shaving — much less a hot
bath ; the absence of flower gardens and fruit trees, decent cooking and varied '
food, good stabling and considerate treatment of horses. " From the banks of
the Mississippi to the banks of the James River (Virginia) I did not [writes
Olmsted] see, except perhaps in one or two towns, a thermometer, a book of
Shakespeare, a pianoforte or a sheet of music, a decent reading-lamp, an
engraving, or a work of art of the slightest merit I am not speaking of
what are commonly called "poor whites," but of houses which were the
residences of cotton planters and well-to-do shareholders in cotton plantations."^

So much for the homes and vaunted hospitality of the South (for which, by
the by, the traveller almost invariably had to pay one or more dollars a day).
Of course, there were exceptions, "a dozen or so" between Virginia and the
Mississippi, but they were chiefly in the old French districts of Louisiana or
Southern Alabama.

^ Extracts from various writers, 1854-61.

' Exceptions to these statements must be taken in so far as they refer to the area of Louisiana and
Alabama under French civilisation.

SLAVERY IN

As regards the value of sh
all these writers on the ante-bel
selves, when they were allowei
fonrer in favour of the latter,
the constant cry of the Souti
slovenliness of her domestic sli
the negro derives no benefit fro
gets through it sufficiently to t
hired out their slaves as servan
and it was soon discovered b

cheaper to get down Gen
them fair wages.

How the " lazy, brut'
sympathetically treated
others of their interviev
Arkansas, and Virginia
It seemed inherently t
whatever from their lal
owned or hired, tips ai
the negro saw that he
money perhaps get t(
and never dream of ri

The hundred-thoi
behalf of twelve or t
government to the on

382

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

system. They permitted no free press, no free pulpit, no free politics. Religion
must be specially prostituted to their liking or out it went. By the middle of the
nineteenth century the Baptist church, the Independents, Methodists,^ and latterly
the Presbyterians had to split into two Churches, one for the North and West
which denounced slavery, and one for the South which upheld or palliated it.
The Roman Catholic Church and the American form of the Church of England
remained undivided, but at the cost of condoning slavery or evading any
pronouncement.

As the 'fifties progressed towards the 'sixties and the inevitable struggle
between North and South grew nearer, the tyranny of the South grew greater
and more stringent till it was in a worse condition than even the worst descrip-
tions of the Russia of yesterday. There was a severe censorship of the press,
a constant interference with mail-bags and private correspondence, and the
rejection of all mail matter coming from England or from the Northern States
which might spread views subversive of slavedom. School-books imported from
the outer world were reprinted with alterations and emendations to distort all
the teaching to a support of slavery. It was even proposed by responsible
persons like J. O. B. De Bow^ that the circulators of books containing any
criticism of slavery as an institution should be subject to imprisonment for life
or the infliction of the death penalty ! The same writer described an excellent
geographical compendium published by Appleton and Co., of New York
(which slightly animadverted on slavery), as a work which would " encourage
crimes that would blanch the cheek of a pirate," and other publications by the

^ The Methodist Protestant^ a religious newspaper edited by a clergyman in Maryland, where the
slave population was to the free only in the ratio of one to twenty-five, printed in 1857 an account of a
slave auction in Java (translated from a Dutch paper — slavery was not abolished in the Dutch possessions
till 1863), at which the father of a slave family was permitted to purchase his wife and children at a
nominal price, owing to the humanity of the spectators. The account concluded as follows : —

'* It would be difficult to describe the joy experienced by these slaves on hearing the fall of the hammer
which thus gave them their liberty ; and this was further augmented by the presents given them by
numbers of the spectators, in order that they might be able to obtain a subsistence till such time as they
could procure employment.

" These are the acts of a noble generosity that deserve to be remembered, and which, at the same
time, testify that the inhabitants of Java begin to abhor the crying injustice of slavery, and are willing
to entertain measures for its abolition."

To give currency to such ideas, even in Maryland, would have been fatal to the support of
a minister's white congregation ; and accordingly (wrote Olmsted) in the editorial columns prominence
was given the next day to the following salve to the outraged sensibilities of the subscribers : —

"SLAVE AUCTION IN JAVA.

" A brief article, with this head, appears on the fourth page of our paper this week. It is of a class
of articles we never select, because they are very often manufactured by paragraphists for a purpose, and
are not reliable. It was put in by our printer in place of something we had marked out. ^Ve did not see
this objectionable substitute until the outside form was worked off, and are therefore not responsible
for it."

' J. O. B. De Bow was a writer or editor of reviews, encyclopaedias, etc., dealing with the Southern
States. He was a native of Maryland and acquired a great reputation as a literary man. He was,
however (in literature), a pompous ass, and his celebrated Resources of the South and IVest, in several
volumes, though it is replete with interesting information, is throughout vitiated by his rancour against
the Northern advocates of decent treatment to the Negro. Here is an extract from his great Review : —

*'The Almighty has thought well to place certain of His creatures in certain fixed positions in this
world of ours, for what cause He has not seen fit to make quite clear to our limited capacities ; and why
an ass is not a man, and a man is not an ass, will probably for ever remain a mystery. God made the
world ; God gave thee thy place, my hirsute brother, and according to all earthly possibilities and
probabilities, it is thy destiny there to remain, bray as thou wilt. From the same great Power have our
sable friends, Messrs. Sambo, Cuffee, and Co., received their position also. . . . Alas, my poor black
brother ! thou, like thy hirsute friend, must do thy braying in vain." — The braying seems to have been
done by De Bow !

SLAVERY IN THE SOUTHERN STATES 383

same firm as "ulcerous and polluting agencies issuing from the hot-beds of
abolition fanaticism."

As late as 1852 in the revised statutes of Louisiana, it was set forth that
"any one who might write anything with a tendency to produce discontent
amongst the free coloured population of the State, or make use of such language
from the bar, the bench, the stage, or the pulpit . . . might suffer death at the
discretion of the court or be sentenced to imprisonment at hard labour for life."
But in spite of these precautions, the tranquillity of the South (wrote Olmsted
in his introduction to The Englishman in Kansas) was that of hopelessness on
the part of the subject race. In the most favoured regions this broken spirit
of despair on the part of the negro was as carefully maintained by the white
citizens, and with as unhesitating an application of force (when necessary
to teach humility) as it was by the army of the Czar in Poland, or the
omnipresent police of the Austrian Kaiser in Italy. In Richmond and Charles-
ton and New Orleans the citizens were as careless and gay as in Boston
or London ; and their servants " a thousand times as childlike and cordial, to all
appearance, in their relations with them as our servants are with us." " But go
to the bottom of this security and dependence, and you come to police
machinery such as you can never find in towns under free government : citadels,
sentries, passports, grape-shotted cannon, and daily public whippings for acci-
dental infractions of police ceremonies. I happened myself to see more direct
expression of tyranny in a single day and night at Charleston (South Carolina)
than at Naples (under Bomba) in a week ; and I found that more than half the
inhabitants of this town were subject to arrest, imprisonment, and barbarous
punishment, if found in the streets without a passport after the evening * gun-
fire.' Similar precautions and similar customs may be discovered in every large
town in the South."

Yet in a fatuous conviction that no amendment was necessary to its polity
the articulate^ South went on year after year in the 'fifties boasting of its
culture (which did not exist) and its immense superiority to the barbarian
North ; despite the absence of glass from many of its windows, bath-rooms, and
sanitary appliances of at least 1850 civilisation from most of its houses, the
seventy-nine per cent illiteracy of its women and forty-five per cent illiteracy
of its men.2

^ A large proportion of the white South was f^articulate — could not read or write or vote, or speak
intelligently, but was inherently intelligent enough to be most dissatisfied with its aristocratic government.

^ These remarks do not apply to Virginia ; still less to Maryland. The culture of these States border*
ing on the North had something of Northern thoroughness. The following extracts, however, will
illustrate the Chinese complacency of the South prior to the outbreak of the Civil War : —

'* The institution of slavery operates by contrast and comparison ; it elevates the tone of the superior,
adds to their refinement, allows more time to cultivate the mmd, exalts the standard in morals, manners,
and intellectual endowments ; operates as a safety-valve for the evil-disposed, leaving the upper race
purer, while it really preserves from degradation in the scale of civilisation the inferior, which we see is
their uniform destiny when left to themselves. The slaves constitute essentially the lowest class, and society
is immeasurably benefited by having this class, which constitutes the offensive fungus — the great cancer
of civilised life— a vast burthen and expense to every community, under surveillance and control ; and not
only so, but under direction as an efficient agent to promote the general welfare and increase the wealth
of the community. The history of the world furnishes no institution under similar management where
so much G;ood actually results to the governors and the governed as this in the Southern States of North
America. ' — From an address on " Climatology" by Dr. Barton (New Orleans, 1856).

A welUknown Southern newspaper, the Richmond Enquirer of Virginia, was in the habit of compar-
ing the North to the South on the same analogy as the relations between Greece and Rome during
the Augustan ^ra. The South, of course, represented in the eyes of this journalist the dignity and
energy of the Roman character conspicuous in war and politics, which could not easily be tamed and
adjusted to the arts and industry and literature. On the other hand, the Northerners were compared to

384 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

And so the South drifted on to Secession and the Civil War, with, as its
inevitable results, the abolition of Slavery and Reconstruction : a reconstruc-
tion not yet complete, nor will be, till the Negro and the Coloured man enjoy
the same citizen's rights in the eleven seceded States as are accorded to the
Amerindian, the White man, the Chinese and Japanese. So slight a retribu-
tion has this been to the South in comparison with its Slavery record that
future historians will be greatly puzzled in picking up the chain of events in

North America, and think there is a chapter missing somewhere ; or be more
than ever inclined to desert the old-fashioned view of God's judgments.

What vexes my sense of justice is to see that Brother North has stepped in
and borne the greater part of the penalty ; has sent his clever sons to construct
or reconstruct many things — plantations, pilotage, ports, mining, smelting, and
casting; sanitation, house-building, furniture-making, forest-preservation, rail-

ihe '' dcgeneiBle and plianl Greeks, excelled in the handicraft and polile professions, who weie the mosl
useful and mosl capable of servants, whether as pimps or professors of rhetoric. Obsequious, deitcious,
and ready, the versatile Greeks monopolised the business oF leaching, publishing, and manuhcturing
in the Roman (as the Northerners in the American) Hmpire— allowing their masters ample leisure for the
service of the State, in the Senate or in the field."

" It is bf the existence of slavery, exempting so large a portion of our ciliiens from labour, that
we have leisure for intellectual purauits."— Governor Hammond in Seuthtm Literary Mtutngtr, South
Carolina.

SLAVERY IN THE SOUTHERN STATES 385

ways, press, and sound banking ; that he has shouldered so great a proportion
of the war debt ; has provided about ten million pounds sterling to educate,
civilise, convert the Negro, where the very-slightly- repentant South has (in
thirty years) spent barely a million. And the North has not merely spent
money, but has furnished just the right kind of Northern men and women to do
this apostles' work.

And all the time the naughty South — the more-than-ever dare-devil, hand-
some South (for whom the plain Elder Brother has always had a certain
weakness) — goes about with its panama or broad-brimmed felt hat cocked on
one side, with a twinkle in the eye and an amused glance at the Negro institutes
and colleges which are rising on every side, created or subsidised (for the most
part) by the Puritan, Quaker, Christian North.

CHAPTER XVI

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO IN THE
UNITED STATES : HAMPTON INSTITUTE

PRIOR to the Civil War, and during the tightening of Slavery which
followed the Peace of 1 815 and lasted till the Secession from the Union,
there were no avowed schools or institutes for educating the Negro in the
fourteen Slave States. There could not be, of course, since it was illegal to
educate him. Gradually the Moravians and Methodists had withdrawn their
schools to the north of the Mason-Dixon line.

But in Pennsylvania the Presbyterian friends of the coloured race had
established in 1854 a college named the Ashmun^ Institute, which in 1864 and
after the war was strengthened, enlarged, and renamed " Lincoln University."
It remains devoted chiefly to Negro education. The white Methodists con-
joined with the African Methodists began in Ohio in 1856 what became in
1863 (thenceforth wholly under the auspices of the African Methodist Church)
the Wilberforce University.

In 1855 a Kentucky Abolitionist, John Fee, established a Negro college at
Berea, in Kentucky, which still flourishes, but now has more white than coloured
students.^

But these schools and institutions with a strange lack of foresight arranged
their curriculum (then and indeed now) only to produce negro divines, lawyers,
grammarians, and orators : the industrial, outdoor side of life was quite neglected.
Students were and are taught a vast deal of wholly useless classics, of old-
fashioned, incorrect history, and of the Old Testament and seventeenth-century
theology.

However good the intentions which prompted the bestowal of this educa-
tion, there was not in it the solution of the Negro problem in America either
before or after the Abolition of Slavery. For this solution the civilised world

will always be indebted to General S. C. Armstrong.

In the middle of the nineteenth century there were living in the island of
Maui (Hawaii Archipelago) a missionary and his wife of the name of Arm-
strong, who were of Scotch-Irish descent. They had a son, who was named
Samuel Chapman Armstrong, born and bred in Maui, who, as he grew up, took
a very keen and practical interest in the educational work his parents were
conducting amongst the Polynesian natives of the Hawaian kingdom. Young
Armstrong gradually realised that the missionary work — perhaps not of his

^ Named after Jehudi Ashmun, the white American who founded Liberia (see my book on Liberia).
He was a fine character and an attractive, handsome personality, in spite of his hideous fore-name.

^ I am indebted for much information on the subject of N^to education to a publication of the
Atlanta University Press, edited by W. E. Burghardt DuBois (Atlanta, 1900) : 7^ ColIt^-bred Negro,

386

388 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

assumed command of Negro troops in Virginia and led them several times to
victory. This was a peculiarly hazardous enterprise, because the generals of
the South had declared that there would be no quarter given to white men who
led Negroes against them in battle.'

During a lull in the war, after the Emancipation Edict of Lincoln, when
Armstrong was in command in the northern part of Virginia, he had to keep
order amongst ignorant multitudes of masterless Negroes, and conceived the
idea of occupying their limbs and minds in industrial work of an educational
character. When peace was finally made between North and South he was
established in charge of a Freedman's Bureau for finding work for ex-slaves,
Amerindians, and, if need be, poor whites, and was allowed to make use of his
disciplined Negroes as settlers and teachers in an industrial colony.

The land and buildings at Hampton
— Old Point Comfort — a peninsula on
the south side of Chesapeake Bay, had
been confiscated by the United States
Government, and in 1868 the American
Missionary Association — a body which
deserves the greatest credit for the
persistence and patience with which,
through long, thankless decades, it dealt
with the task of saving the Amerindian
and educating the Negro — acquired a
large portion of this Hampton peninsula
to enable General Armstrong to develop
his plan for training the Negro and
Amerindian in industrial and agricultural
work. With the co-operation of the
Federal Government, the Hampton Nor-
mal and Industrial Institute was founded,
and grew under private and State sub-
sidies till it had become a great college
for the education of the Negro and
- - Negroid (of all shades of colour) and
317. coLOHBL ROBERT COULD SHAW the Amcrindlan. The institute is now

under the control of seventeen trustees,
of whom Mr. R. C. Ogden, of New York, is president. It has an annual income
from investments of over j£l2,ooo (860,000). In addition to this, there is a
further revenue derived from State grants, students' fees and other sources. It
is able to spend perhaps £20,000 a year.

General S. C. Armstrong died in 1 896, having had the satisfaction in his
last years of seeing the uprise of Tuskegee and the success of Booker
Washington's work. He seems to have been a peculiarly lovable type, not
uncommon among the Anglo-Saxons of the New World, good without being
pietistic, essentially manly, hard-gritted and practical, having no delusions
about the Negroes' or the Amerindians' defects of character and racial draw-
backs, but most large-hearted and universal in his sympathies — a foretaste

' The lemembiance is still vivid in the Slates of the achievement of General Robecl Gould Shaw, in
command of the Srsl Negro regiment at the bailie of Fori Wagner in 1S63, and the death of this gallani
while general, whose body was found almost buried under the corpses of the slain. His march through
Virginia has been commemoraled by some of the beauliful sculpture of Augustus St. Gaudens.

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 389

perhaps of a type of more perfected human being that may exist all the world
over at the close of the twentieth century; free from racial prejudices, and
treating every human being on his or her merits and capabilities. If the
United States succeeds in solving the Negro problem in a way that satisfies
the best of the blacks and the best of the whites, the initial credit for this great
achievement must be laid to the memory of Samuel Chapman Armstrong,

He was succeeded as director of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural
Institute by Dr. Hollis Burke Frissell, an American of English descent, still
speaking with a trace of the pleasant Northumbrian accent.

When, on such an autumn morning as I saw it, you reach Hampton from
the north by steamer across the Chesapeake Gulf, you behold a region of
narrow, scalloped peninsulas, enclosing blue
lagoons and inlets of the sea. The land is
perfectly flat, yet retieved to the eye by
notable buildings and picturesque vegetation.
Above the shore-line of the water there is a
bordering of orange sedge ; then the eye
travels over good-tempered-looking forts,
with no aggressive armament in sight, chiefly
built, it would seem, to provide smooth green
slopes for the use of nurses, children, and
khaki-clad soldiers. These shaven lawns are
made to look reasonably martial by occa-
sional pyramids of obsolete cannon-balls.

Then as you travel out to Hampton
Institute you observe in turn the sandy roads
with their tram-lines, low wooden bridges
over straits of water, fields of great yellow
maize-stalks, weeping-willows, sycamores,
rich green cypresses and dark green pines
and cedars, flaming crimson oaks, hedges
over which the wild vines noted by the
Norsemen trail orange-russet foliage and
display their pretty clusters of small, lead-
blue grapes, In the clear air black turkey- 3"8- dr.^hollk^burkb^piussbll.
buzzards are soaring.

The grounds of Hampton Institute offer an orderly beauty rarely to be
seen in the United States. Noble trees flank stately buildings; grey-white
pavement walks lead to and through cloisters of brick and stone ; green lawns
slope gently to the canals of blue water on which white-sailed yachts make a
silent progress. There are occasional piers with green weedy steps advancing
into the water from the formal flower gardens of the " old-time " mansions, now
the residences of the teachers or the locations of students. There is a hand-
some red-brick church with a lofty clock tower and a cloister porch. The
library is of pale pink brick, with white stone copings and columns, and a
leaden dome of blue-grey. The schools for teaching trades are plain tall
buildings of sufficient comeliness. I can only suggest one necessary addition
to the collegiate centre of Hampton : there should be peacocks — birds rare
even yet in the United States — trailing their beauty over the smooth green
lawns and under the shade of the magnificent magnolia trees.

The grounds of Hampton surround a peaceful, walled, cypressed cemetery,

390 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

where lie the remains of the soldiers of North and South, white man and negro,
who fell in this part of Virginia fighting over the Slave issue. But Hampton,
though attractive and inspiring in its outward appearance — perhaps one of the
most beautiful amongst the many beautiful educational institutions in the
United States — is thoroughly practical in its teaching resources. Besides a
model farm at Shellbank, some five miles distant, there are fields for agri-
cultural and horticiiltural experiments within the home area, together with
greenhouses and hot-houses for the training of Negro gardeners, poultry runs
to teach the students the principles of poultry farming ; cowsheds and stables
and yards for horse and mule breeding or training. There are shops for teach-
ing bricklaying and masonry, waggon, cart, and carriage building, painting and
lettering, tailoring and hat-making, millinery and dressmaking, printing and
bookbinding, architectural designing and surveying. There are iron foundries

319. LATE FOR LUNCH ; HAMPTON INSTITDTB, I P.M.

and electrical engineering works. Such of the students as show aptitude are
trained in music, and there is a fine students' band.

To some extent, also, arts of design in addition to architecture are en-
couraged and stimulated. The Amerindians in this respect at Hampton outvie
the negroes ; their basket-work and mat-making are exquisite, and some of
them have executed remarkable specimens of wood-carving. [The Amerindian
is going to surprise the world yet by some genius in the plastic or pictorial arts
before he becomes finally fused into the great American nation.] The Negro,
however, takes the lead in music.

Indeed, one dimly perceives a musical solution of the Negro-culture
problem, a possibility that in music the Aframerican — perhaps even the
Negro of Africa — may achieve triumphs not yet attained by the White men.
This race is sensitive to rhythm and melody to an extraordinary degree; it
almost seems as though they were, or could be, ruled by music. At any rate,
at Hampton, as at Tuskegee, music is the main discipline. The big and small
children of the Whittier School, moving to and out of their class-rooms — a
hundred or more at a time — to some inspiriting tune, and the adult students
entering and leaving the church and lecture-hall in the same manner, hold

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 391

themselves well, look up with bright, confident faces, and extort one's sympathy
by their grace of movement

In this undenominational chapel-theatre of Hampton (as also in the same
building at Tuskegee) it is a wonderful experience to hear the singing of the
Negro students and teachers, both in a mass and in solo parts. They really
constitute an already made opera troupe ; indeed the singing was more perfect
in tune and time than one has heard in many an opera-house. There are
Negro tenors at Hampton and Tuskegee that, were it not for the prejudice of
colour, would be in immediate request by some impresario.^

The choral singing at Hampton is perhaps a little more finished in training
than that of Tuskegee ; but the choice of songs at both places (perhaps from
the reason that all these performances take place in the building which is used
as a chapel) tends too much to be monotonously religious and even doleful.
The excuse at both institutes is the desire to keep alive the old plantation

songs. Until I visited America I had always thought that negro plantation
songslwere of the Christy Minstrel type, or even of the joyous " coon " variety,
the really good melodies of which have relieved many a musical comedy of
stupidity. But it is not so. With two or three rare exceptions I could not
ascertain that a single one of the deservedly popular "nigger" songs which
have come from America to England between i860 and 1908 were ever
initiated or composed by negro or coloured musicians. The plantation songs
so well sung by these choruses in the States are hymns, the words of which
were in most cases of negro invention during the old slavery days, while the
tunes to which they are sung probably accompanied the Methodist hymns of
the eighteenth century, and may be of English or French origin, several
hundred years old. None of these melodies seem to be of African origin.
The wordsJ[are usually sad, wistful reminders of a land of glory or bright

' I think all who weie present with me >t Tuskegee in November, 1908, will agtee as to Ihe fine
quality of Ihe soprano voice of a mulatto teacher, who was fonneily a Ituijeni. It wis really worthy of
grand opera.

392 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

mansions beyond the grave, or very materialistic descriptions of the passage
from life to death over the "River," and of the sober joys which will be
experienced in Paradise.*

Beautiful as is the music to which these (usually silly) canticles are sung, it

surely does not mark the limit of the vast capacity of these singers for music in

its higher branches, or even in its more joyous workaday types ? Why should

they not be allowed from time to time to sing some rousing, rollicking "coon "

song — decorous, of course, but inclining singers and listeners to rhythmic mirth ?

They need not shriek or trill in the themes of conventional Italian opera (thank

goodness, they have not yet adopted the tremolo of our white sopranos, or the

baaing or bellowing of stout Italian tenors!), but pending the emergence from

among them of a first-class Negro composer, they could certainly be taught to

render the music of Handel, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Gounod, ?arry, Elgar, and

Sullivan. At one place which I visited in the States I induced^for they are

very quick to learn — a chorus of Negro singers to

render that sextet out of Sullivan's Patience, " I hear

the soft note of an echoing voice," and the effect was

tender and delightful. (For the matter of that, the

Williams and Walker Company, and other troupes

of negro actors and actresses have shown what they

can do entirely on their own account in comic

opera.)

Although Hampton and Tuskegee are described
as undenominational in religion (Hindu and Mu-
hammadan students are received at both places
without question), there is still a great deal of
doctrinal religion enforced on the students, who
besides scarcely ever singing any song or chorus
that is not "sacred," are required to attend rather
lengthy religious services in the chapel. At these
times the singing is always a delight, and the organ-
lai A REAL HEGBo MINSTREL p'^X'"? maguificent, while the prayers are short and
LOUISIANA ' sensible. But a good deal of the Old Testament is

read and expounded, and the Bible almost entirely
absorbs and limits the speculation, the poetry, the science, and the historical
study of this remarkable race, trembling as it is (at least as I believe) on
the verge of great possibilities of intellectual expansion If a Negro student
at Hampton or Tuskegee contributed an article to a review, it would probably
be on the subject of Jephtha's daughter — was she sacrificed or not? the righ-
teousness of the fate which overtook the children who mocked Elisha, or the
trials of Job; as though any of these or similar problems are of the slightest
practical utility in the Negro world of to-day, any more than the legends of
Iphigenia, of Romulus and Remus, or other stories told in the infancy of history.

of ihe nonsense sung as a plaDtation song or hymn
es, but unworlhy of a growing-up race of hopeful m
" March de angels, march,

Maich de angels, march,

My soul arise in heaven, Lord,

For lo see when Jordan roll,

De Prophet sat on de tree ot Life

For to see when Jordan roll,

Roll Jurdan, roll Jordan, roll Jordan, roll."

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO

393

The Negro students in Africa and America, as those of the white and
yellow races in civilised countries, might surely be initiated now into the
knowledge of the newer Bible we are just learning to read, the Story of the
Earth on which we dwell. Without carrying them too far away from practical
and industrial studies, they might be initiated now into the elements of modern
theories in geolt^y and biology, if only to explain the difficulties and
peculiarities of their own racial problem, the purport of the natural science
they have to acquire in dealing with the cultivation of the fields, the breeding
of live-stock, and the elimination of disease. 1 do not think for a moment
that the highly educated, broad-minded men and women who direct the teach-
ing at Hampton (and their colleagues of the coloured race at Tuskegee) are
naturally inclined to give the Negro an instruction of too " Sunday-school " a
character : the fault, if any, perhaps lies with the trustees, and the magnificently
generous men and women of the Northern
States who have so endowed these educational
institutes, but who are not. all of them, quite
in sympathy with the New Learning.

It seems to be expected by these supporters
of the movement for the higher education of
the Negro, that no matter what enlightenment
may pervade the colleges and schools for the
white people, a very strong element of dogmatic
religion shall enter into the curriculum of the
Negro and the Amerindian, with the idea, no
doubt, that the unbalanced mind of these back-
ward races requires the discipline of what we
call " Christian teaching." Much of this last,
as understood in the United States, is a wholly
unnecessary attempt to combine Judaism and
Christianity, to make a fetish of the Old Testa-
ment, which hangs as heavily round the neck
of these young men and women going out to
the battle of their existence in the world of the

twentieth century, as does the actual Koran 3"- a negro student of hampton
sewn up in its leather case, and slung round

the shoulders of some misguided Arab or Negro dashing into a "holy war"
against the civilisation of the Christian.

That the Negro students would be receptive of the wonderful gospel which
has been revealed to us through the books of Darwin, Spencer, Charles Kingsley.
Haeckel, Edward Clodd, Lindley, Huxley, Humboldt, Bates, Wallace, Agassiz.
Lyell, Geikie, E. D. Cope, Henry Fairfield Osborn, and the great astronomers
and chemists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is evident by the
interest shown in the lectures of a Welsh professor directing the research
department at Hampton,' and those of Professor Carver at Tuskegee (on
botany).

But though attempts are now being made to deal in a scientific manner with

' Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones, who has written much in Ihe i'mi^A*™ IVerimaii on the Negro and olher racial
problems. Amongst his bound collection of papers is Siyial SludUs in ike Hampton Curriculum. The
Soulkertt tVariman, established by General Aimitrong in 1S76, and now conducted by Mr, William Aery,
is a remarkkbly intcresling monthly magazine (well illustrated). publishe<l ai Hampton Institute {price 5d.,
01 10 cents). It deals mainly wit& the ethnology of backward peoples o.\\ over the world.

394 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

sociology [so as to instruct the Negro in what may be called the practical policy
of the Ten Talents], the teaching body at Hampton endeavours to steer clear of
any burning political question, either State or Federal, It hopes to effect its
purpose in the improvement of the Negro's social status by concentrating all
its efforts on imparting a sound industrial training, and on the creation of a
moral standard and a standaVd of domestic culture amongst the Negro students
which may, by its spreading from this centre (and from Tuskcgee), create in
time a self-respect amongst tjie coloured people, a racial conscience which shall
setj up and maintain such high ideals of industry, talent, and morality, that
these qualities, becoming at last characteristic of the Negro race in the
United States, may dissipate the race prejudice of the Caucasian, and cause

jaj. HAMPTON STU1)BNTS AT THEIR MBAI.S

him to yield with a good grace a full recognition of the right on the part of his
Negro fellow -citizen to absolutely equal treatment.

The teaching at Hampton aspires to make the Negro and the Indian
student, male and female, not only an efficient artisan, agriculturist, tailor, dress-
maker, gardener, architect, secretary, cook, or housekeeper, but also a person of
reasonable refinement, abhorring dirt, tawdriness, and bad taste ; appreciating
not only clean but comely surroundings. The rooms of the boy and girl
students (1 found, on several surprise visits) are altogether such as might have
been occupied gladly by a university student in England. The furniture (made,
I believe, on the spot) was as good as all American furniture is nowadays — a
surprise to the English visitor because of the absence of veneer and sham, and
the beauty of the native woods. Flowers or foliage plants often decorated the
rooms, each of which had its own little library of books. As at Tuskegee, so
here, the students were taught in turn the appropriate and tasteful arranging
of a house (proportionately to various incomes), and the manner of laying table
for_a meal. And as regards manners at table, it is thought that these are best

:ation of the negro

395

mixing the sexes at the meal hours. Girls and

le at Hampton (and Tuskegee) to give the Negro
proper pride in
in comeliness
cooking-stoves^
IS — even in the
the Shellbeach
ass and orna-
ornament, and
s) are fit for a
>eautiful speci-
lour and form,
cooking- ranges
iie smaller and
ingements are
lurners. In all
ight to aim at
tourlessness in

Hampton (and

(, semi-military

ne stripe down

aphs show the

dents present.

rn by the male ^** * "^

.t a wholesome

smartness, and bodily efficiency is given to the
students of the Institute by a Negro officer.
Major Moton, the military instructor. The
boys at Hampton really receive a military
education, which should fit them, if necessary,
to become members of a citizen army if the
United States were engaged in a great war.
This training makes them patriotic as well
as manly, self-respecting, yet respectful to
superior authority. There is no aggressive
waving of the Stars and Stripes at Hampton.
Least of all is there the slightest attempt to
revive the bitterness between North and
South.

The women students wear dark blue-
black skirts, and dark blue coats and " waist
shirts " (blouses, as we should say) of laven-
der, pale blue, or white." There are no hats,
the hood of the cloak serving the purpose

' This is characleristically American, where a truly
STtislic feeling in making all the furniture of a house part
of ils scheme of decoration— all solid, real, appropnate,
and pleasing to the eye — is spreading to a degree far
eiceediog any similar movement in Great Britain,

' The college colours of Hampton are blue and white.

396 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

when necessary of a head-covering, a fashion which might be followed with
advantage over the rest of the civilised world. The girl students dress their
hair very carefully, and untidiness in personal appearance is treated as a
misdemeanour, though occasionally it is a little difficult for the Indian girls
to keep their long black wisps of hair under proper control. It is surprising,
on the other hand, what sleekness and length the negresses can impart to their
head-covering by the careful and persistent combing and brushing of the kinky
tresses,

A noteworthy point about these Negro students at Hampton and Tuskegee
is the pleasant, deep-toned, melodious voices of the men and the low-pitched
voices of the women (also, to an Englishman, the absence of the " American "
accent in the intonation of English). All the
students at these institutions are taught to
speak as clearly and distinctly as possible,
and to be particularly careful as to their
pronunciation. They are advised to speak
from the chest, and not through the nose.
Although the so - called American accent
(which is largely the provincial pronunciation
of the eighteenth century in Britain, and can
be matched in several parts of England at
the present day) is gradually disappearing
from the United States under the uncon-
■ scious admiration for the voice utterance of
educated people in Europe, it still lingers in
a more marked form with the whites than
with the blacks. Yet there is a good deal
of nasality in the pronunciation of several
millions of American Negroes still unedu-
cated. In the eastern coast belt of the
Southern States I believe this to be due to
the fact that so many of the Negroes came
3x6. AN AMEKiNPiAN woMAH-sTUDENT ^^o^ the Guiuca CoBst rcgiou, where the
HAMPTON [ssTiTurE ' native languages are extremely nasal.

An interesting adjunct of the Hampton
Institute is the Whittier School for children, which begins with a kinder-
garten, and ascends through higher grades of instruction till the child is
able (if its parents wish) to re-enter the Institute as a college student.
It is pretty to see these children with their pearly-white teeth and
gleaming white eyeballs, plump little bodies, and perfect satisfaction with
their own personal appearance, marching into school to a musical drill,
and singing with a fervour due rather to the tune than to the out-of-date
words "An' befo' Ah'll be a slave, Ah'll be buried in ma grave, and ma
spirit shall ascend to God on high." Alas! all this revolt against "slavery"
must be tempered now by the feeling that we are nearly all of us slaves to the
exigencies of civilised life. There are white slaves toiling in England and in
America more unremittingly, more breathlessly, than any African who formerly
worked on a cotton plantation or in a mine ; not under the lash, it is true, but
dreading to stop on the treadmill of life lest they should be caught by the
cruel fangs of hunger, or the disrespectability which comes of not being able
to pay your way.

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 397

It is surprising to note amongst these Negro children and students at
Hampton, as at Tuskegee, the extraordinary prevalence, with dark eyes and
a dark skin, of red, blond, or golden hair. There are even examples of blue-
eyed, fair-haired Negroids, retaining, as the only trace of their African blood,
the undulating curl in the hair and the pale olive complexion. Have we here
a new race in the making ? The features are fine, regular, and beautiful : it
is only that terrible murky complexion which ties down this child, this man
or woman, to the dark primeval days when the Negro rioted in the wealth of
food provided by the Indian or African plains and forests, and hid his talent
in a napkin.

What incident in his race-history relieved the Amerindian of this stigma of
an ineradicable skin pigment ? He led seemingly a life as feckless as that of the
African black man ; yet dressed in civilised clothes he at once sinks naturally
into the white community, and when he mingles his blood with that of the
white race, his descendants are handsome according to the white ideal, and the
olive of his skin is permeated with a rosy blush.

CHAPTER XVII

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO:
TUSKEGEE

IN reviewing the new turn of the Negro problem in the States since the
outbreak of civil war between North and South, namely, the attempt by
education to fit the ex-slave and his descendants for citizenship, I should
have given priority of place to the Penn School of St Helena Island, off the
coast of South Carolina.'

This work of redemption began as far back as 1861, though the Penn
School was not actually founded and named
till a few years later.

Previous to 1861, the negroes of the
island of St. Helena were considered among
the lowest slaves of the South. They were
ruled by black drivers, and, under the strict-
est overseeing, raised the finest of all cotton,
that known as Sea Island, which takes a
whole year's labour to perfect Cleanliness
or neatness were as unknown as the alpha-
bet, and decent home-life was nowhere to
be found among the plantation negroes, to
whom the appearance of a white face was
so rare as to frighten the children by its
novelty.

The approach of the Federal naval forces
in November, 1861, led to the abandonment
of the island by its white families. Realising
the necessity for prompt action, the Govern-
ment and public-spirited Northerners sent
down men and women to teach the negroes,
to give them clothing, and to direct the
327. IN ST. HELENA ISLAND, SOUTH worklng of thc plantations, so that some
CAROLINA cotton and at least provision crops might

Th=pijni.^«ww«jw«,«.,.b. be raised. Gradually a new order of affairs

was introduced, and out of the work of the
Freedmen's Aid Society there has grown up a school which for forty years
was under the headship of the first woman teacher to land in St Helena,

' Unfoclunately, pressure of time &nd uncerliinty of health ptevenled my pmying ■ personal visit to
St. Helena Island ; and my account of the negroes of this district and the work of the Penn School a
derived from the iaformition kindly supplied by Miss Rossa B. Cooley and Miss Grace Btgelow- House.

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 399

Miss Laura W. Towne. This able woman, who cheerfully gave her life
and private means to the ignorant blacks about her, was the uncrowned queen
of St. Helena Island. She conducted this "experiment station" with most
gratifying results, and lived to see the Penn School (as it is now called) grow
into a flourishing and incorporated institution under a Board of Trustees,
with academic and industrial departments, and a school farm in charge of a
trained agriculturist, who is a graduate of Hampton Institute.

During Miss Towne's long career she helped the negroes to grow out of the
barbaric conditions of slavery into a law-abiding, self-respecting people. The
heads of the families now own their farms. They have passed beyond the
one-room cabin stage, some of them being proud possessors of " painted houses
with glass windows " ; and they are as temperate and moral as the average
country communities in the North, and far superior to many portions of Rhode
Island and Delaware. All this was facilitated by the sale in 1863 of the
plantations, for unpaid taxes, their repurchase by the United States Govern-
ment, and their subsequent resale in farms of ten acres, readily acquired by the
negroes and jealously guarded. During all this time the objectionable poor
white has been wholly absent ; none the less, the negro has been constantly
subject to political frauds, so that at present only about one hundred coloured
men of the nine hundred qualified are permitted to vote. Although scourged
by frequent epidemics of smallpox, and devastated by the cyclone of 1893,
which cost three hundred lives, their isolation, land ownership, and freedom
from interference have enabled the negroes to rise steadily, morally, and in-
dustrially, until the island promises to become a very well-to-do and successful
community, as well as a striking object-lesson of the possibilities of growth
among coloured people when intelligently guided.

The Penn School is now devoting itself to industrial training, for the methods
of agriculture are still primitive, and scientific farming would double or treble the
cotton crop. For the simplest ironwork the people must go to Beaufort, there
being but two trained mechanics on the island. These, be it noted, are
coloured missionaries from Hampton, come to teach carpentering, black-
smithing, and harness-making, and to give other instruction to the 275 pupils
of the school. Eight public schools have been established, largely owing to
Miss Towne, and they are reported to be much above the average Southern
school in equipment and instruction, though of course far below the Penn
School. The latter has among its varied departments one for "domestic
science," for the teaching of home sanitation, comfort, comeliness of surround-
ings, and decent cooking.

In Beaufort County (with an area of perhaps 15,000 square miles) there is
at present a population of some 50CX) whites and 31,500 negroes and coloured.
The school attendance among the white children by the last returns was an
average of 260 for the year 1908 ; for the negroes and negroids it was 5618.
Yet the allowance of State funds for the education of these 260 white children
was an approximate ;£'5000, and for the blacks ;£^I750. This will give some
idea of the South Carolinian sense of justice towards its negro citizens.

But by means of Northern generosity and the allotment of some educational
funds distributed by the General Education Board of New York the work at
Penn School is carried on with ever-increasing happy results.

Between 1864 and 1869 there came into existence thirteen Negro Universities,
which were established by the co-operation of General Armstrong's Freed-
men's Bureau and the co-operation of the American Missionary Association,

400 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

the Baptists, the Friends, and even the Negro soldiers of the United States
army.' Noteworthy among these are Howard University of Washington,
D.C. ; Fisk University of Nashville, Tennessee; Atlanta University' of
Georgia ; Biddle University of North Carolina ; Southland College of Arkansas
(first among the thirteen in point of age) ; the Rust University of Mississippi ;
Clafiin University of South Carolina; and the Straight University of New
Orleans.

Then, later in foundation, are the Leland University of New Orleans, created

and endowed by Mr. H. Chamberlain in 1870; the New Orleans University
(Methodist Church, 1873); the Shaw University of Raleigh, North Carolina
(Baptist Church, 1874) ; the Wiley University of Marshall, Texas (Methodists,
1S80); the Livingstone College of Salisbury. North Carolina (Zion Methodist
Church, 1880); the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute of Petersburg,
supported and managed by the State of Virginia ; the Georgia State Industrial
College (Savannah, 1890) ; the Branch Normal College of Pine Bluff, Arkansas,

' Lincoln Institute in Missouri, though now a Stale-supported College, was founded on a donation of
aboul;^ Ijoo, subscribed by Nei;ro soldiers of the 62nil and 63rd Infantry Regiments.

' Atlanta University is the home of the great writer on Negro questions, w. E. Bnrghartlt DuBois.

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 401

founded by the State in 1875; and the Alcorn Agricultural University of
Mississippi State.

^ This list still leaves unmentioned many notable Colleges and Universities
specially founded and maintained for Negro instruction in the Seceded States ^
by the Free Churches (Methodists, Baptists, Friends, and Presbyterians).

It is noteworthy that the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant
Episcopal (Anglican) Church in the United Stales maintain nothing in the way

329. FROFKiSOR W. E. BUBGHARllT DUBOIS

of Negro education, have never at any time shown particular sympathy with or
desire to help the Negro slave. Indeed, in slavery times numerous Bishops
and Institutions of the Church of England — which afterwards became the
Protestant Episcopal Church — held slaves. Yet the Anglican and the Roman
Churches in the West Indies and South America have been the great opponents
of Slavery, and the Anglican Church, especially for the last forty years, has
been an ardent champion of Negro education in tropical America.

' It is Dol necessary to deal with N^ro educalional hcilitie^ in the rest of the United Stales, as
besides the special Negro colleges such as the Slate College of Delaware and those others alr^dy
mentioned, l)ie Negro or Negroid child or student may be educated with the young white citizens.

402 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

From the point of view of the White man as well as the superior type of
Negro it is a question still whether these universities founded by generous men
or by generous religious communities are not too narrowed in usefulness by
their imitation of eighteenth to nineteenth century English and Scottish
Universities and Colleges. They still afflict the Negro and the coloured man
(as their "white" sister institutions do the White American student) with an in-
ordinate and wholly unnecessary amount of Greek and Latin grammar and
literature,^ the only essential good of which might be picked up by a clever
student in a few days' reading at a modern encyclopaedia. They give the negro
of to-day John Bunyan and Milton (to excess); the Evidences of Chris-
tianity (the origin of nine-tenths of school and college disbelief) ; time-wasting
rot about Logic — the best Logic is the accomplished fact, the fist, the dollar,
the kiss, the wot^-^Psychology and Metaphysics : and Yellow Fever, Dysentery,
Cancer, Tuberculosis, Malaria still unsubdued ! And lastly there are courses of
Bible study (quite apart from a sensible short exposition of the teaching of
Christ and of Christ-like men) which in their elaboration and taking up
of precious time are only defensible in the case of professional Orientalists and
Ethnologists — which few of these n^ro students aspire to be.

Oh for the besom of a reformer, here and in Britain ! Latin is profoundly
interesting and is even important to the merchant and the statesman if taught
as the parent of the seven living Romance languages, not otherwise ; Greek
might be briefly mentioned in general lectures on Philology ; all that is of value
in the literature of these dead tongues can be obtained in good English transla-
tions and its best essence is embodied in English poetry : the rest could be left
to specialists. The Old Testament should be reserved for those who are making
a particular study of the history of man and of religious beliefs, and cease to be
the fetish of the Protestant Churches; "Rhetoric," "Logic," and ** Metaphysics"
should be penalised.

^ Here is a list of the principal works in the Classics more or less forced on the students at these Negro
Universities and Colleges, works included in the published curriculum (at any rate down to a few years ago): —

In Greek : Xenophon (Attadasis), Homer's I/iodi and Odyssey, Thucydides, Demosthenes' Orattctt on
the Crown and Olyntkictcs and Fhilippics, Plato's Apology, the Tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles, the
works of Aristotle and Herodotus (why not the travels of H. M. Stanley?), the Greek New Testament
(and of course the Old Testament in Hebrew !), ^schylus {^Prometheus Bound), etc.

In Latin : Carsar's Gallic War, several books of Sallust, Virgil's Aineid, Horace in his Odes and
Epodes, Satires and Epistles, Cicero on Friendship and on Old Age, and in his Oration agaifut Catiline
and other " old unhappy things of long ago " ; Livy on the Second Punic War, Tacitus on the Germans of
A.D. loo, etc. etc.

In the name of true religion and of common sense, of man's all-too-short life on this wonderful planet,
of the necessity of teaching the principles of forest preservation and disease prevention, of respect for
beautiful birds and beasts and other wonderful works of God, of all that should make the seven years of
studenthood fruitful in real useful learning, cannot some termination be put to this fetishistic nonsense,
this solemn cant, this abominable waste of time and brain-power ? How many ideas are there in any of
these classical writers except perhaps Plato, Aristotle, and Homer, which cannot be — for the ordinary
man and woman — crystallised into a dozen quotations in English? But this mistaken passion for the
Greek and Roman Classics seems peculiar to Protestant Christians in Britain, Germany, and the
United States. It is as if when their ancestors boldly left some State Church to found another less regular
sect of Christianity they were more than ever concerned to show themselves orthodox in the ''Classics."
So they carried the worship of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin to a mania.

Is it not time this nonsense was brought to an end in the rational United States ?

From the foregoing diatribe I ought perhaps to except partially the Shaw University of Raleigh, N.C,
in which Greek is stated to be "optional," and German is taught with some care, besides French. But
WHY NOT SPANISH and PORTUGUESE? Here we have the United States with a population of nearly
ninety millions impinging on and also ruling countries in which the language spoken (by many millions) is
Spanish ; and trading with and deeply concerned with a sister republic of equally vast area — Brazil —
wherein the language of twenty millions is Portuguese ; and I doubt whether there is a single School,
College, or University in the United States, white or n^ro, in which either of these languages is taught
or encouraged. — H. H. J.

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 403

Then, in place of these solemn pretexts for wasting precious time and
youthful zeal, should come instruction of an inspiriting kind in the most modern
presentments of History and Geography, of Anthropology, Zoology, Botany,
and of that New Bible the Story of the Earth itself — Geology. Astronomy
should be taught to all classes : Freshmen, Sophomores, and Advanced. Like-
wise Mathematics (very little Euclid), a reasonable dose of Geometry, much
Chemistry, much Physiology, and the theories of the origin and prevention of
disease ; and, besides an unpedantic illustration of the English Language and
its history and application to thought-rendering, a thorough grounding should be
given to all students in SPANISH, French, and German. Inducements should
also be offered to study Portuguese and Italian. Persons eager about language
study (a splendid source of enlightenment but made horrible to boys and
youths by the wicked, fetishistic worship of Greek and Latin) should be
encouraged to get an insight into Irish and Welsh, Dutch and Danish, Sanskrit
and Arabic : just an insight to let them understand a little better how civilised
man talks and thinks to-day as he does.

But of course it is to-day obvious to all intelligent people in America (as it
was to General Armstrong forty-six years ago) that the Negro, Negroid, and
Amerindian must be civilised not only in mind but in body ; taught to be clean-
minded and clean-skinned, adroit in the use of his hands above all : workers,
not merely talkers, constructors, artists, inventors, mechanicians, intelligent
agriculturists, doers of the Word, not merely listeners and cogitators. These
colleges and universities are well enough — would be better still if my suggested
curriculum were adopted ; but they merely train clergymen, lawyers, politi-
cians, petty officials, schoolmasters (to teach second-hand knowledge of no
great value), third-rate writers, a few geniuses able, as geniuses are, to suck
nourishment from marl or verjuice — but they don't solve the tremendous need of
the United States for field-hands — INTELLIGENT field-hands ; they don't turn
out cooks — and cooks, as Booker Washington points out in pleasanter language
than mine, are more necessary than preachers. They don't send out into
Twentieth-Century-America machinists, inexpensive electricians, plumbers,
builders, bricklayers, carpenters, cabinet-makers, gardeners, stockmen, sawyers,
hydraulic engineers, printers, tailors, dressmakers, bootmakers, metal-workers,
and laundry-hands.

Hampton having therefore proved a success in spreading this New learning,
has been the parent institute, the model from which have sprung by direct
transplanting or by imitation the many other Industrial Schools and Colleges
in the United States for the training of Negroes, Negroids, and Amerindians to
useful or beautiful handicrafts and to an appreciation of the amenities of
civilised existence. The greatest of these is " The Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute for the training of coloured young men and women." ^

^ The following institutions have grown out of the Tuskegee Institute and have been chartered
under the laws of the various States where they are situated. Not only have they been founded by
Tuskegee graduates, but the officers and in many cases the entire faculty are composed of Tuskegee
graduates : —

Mt. Meigs Institute, Waugh, Alabama ; Sfuyw Hill Institute, Snow Hill, Alabama ; Calhoun
School {{ox women), Alabama; Voorhees Industrial School, Denmark, South Carolina ; East Tennessee
Normal afui IndustricU Institute, Harriman, Tennessee ; Robert Hungerford IndustritU Institute, Eaton-
ville, Florida ; Topeka Educational and Industrial Institute, Topeka, Kansas ; Allengreene Normal
and Industrial Institute, Ruston, Louisiana ; Utica Normal and Industrial Institute, Utica, Mississippi ;
Christiansburg Institute, Cambria, Virginia. The Utica Normal Institute is conducted by a well-known
educational expert of the new school, Mr. W. H. Holtzclaw.

THE EDUCATION

>e black trunks and branches of the

=-ir. even at the end of the train on t

~ :>lLage of the evergreen trees was hea

It was unmitigated winter till ir

TDartial thaw. This was checked bv

Tts'-i!t in the sunset glow was wond'

A land of glass. Telegraph wires w

rsri-^s and branches of innumerable tr

Glaj^s forests, in fact, surrounded us (

train slowly travelled. The w

time the pink glow of the sunse

in the shadow, the ice film was

b-lue. In the following morning, [

tm rough Georgia, there was a heav

on the ground and a cobalt tone ab

:i istance, but we had returned to the j

coiouring of October as seen in mon

erm latitudes. Against a backgrc

creen pines with grey stems and W

interspaces flamed the vivid crimson

P'urple, lemon of the diverse o;

z:?irches, liquidambars, sycamor

raaples. In central Alabama it

late summer or early September

our arrival, a humorous touch of

the air which made the banana (

ornamental gardens look seared ar

Scarcely stopping at Tuske

the special portion of our train

for the Institute passed through '

shady town of country - housi

churches, and cotton-ginneries a

us comfortably at the entran

Xuskegee Institute. Here Mr.

Hr}xe were greeted by a large

>^egro students from the Br

Indies and two or three Ej

i Hindus). At the entrance to

a.rch of evergreens, decorated

marched in a procession to tl

of both countries. Then w^^

residence, and commenced ou:

afiiiiated schools the follow\rv^

The idea of the Tuskege<

1879 by a Negro tinsmith ua

Southern aristocratic type, M

dents at Tuskegee to^vn. I n t^

struck with the work already

grant an annual subsidy ^,

therefore decided to apply

Hampton, for a coloured tea

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 405

the black trunks and branches of the trees and the sides of buildings. The
air, even at the end of the train on the car's open platform, was icy, and the
foliage of the evei^reen trees was heavy with its snow burden.

It was unmitigated winter till midday. Then the bright sun effected a
partial thaw. This was checked by a frost in the late afternoon, and the
result in the sunset glow was wonderful : we seemed to be passing through
a land of glass. Telegraph wires were strung with glass beads, and all the
twigs and branches of innumerable trees on the foot-hills were encased in glass.
Glass forests, in fact, surrounded us on both sides of the valley through which
the train slowly travelled. The woods on the eastern heights caught at
one time the pink glow of the sunset, and shivered in amethyst tints. To the
west, in the shadow, the ice film was a cold
blue. In the following morning, passing
through Georgia, there was a heavy rime
on the ground and a cobalt tone about the
distance, but we had returned to the autumn
colouring of October as seen in more north-
em latitudes. Against a background of
green pines with grey stems and blue-grey
interspacesflamed the vivid crimson, orange
purple, lemon of the diverse oaks, the
birches, liquidambars, sycamores, and
maples. In central Alabama it was still
late summer or early September with, on
our arrival, a humorous touch of frost in
the air which made the banana clumps in
ornamental gardens look seared and forlorn

Scarcely stopping at Tuskegee itself
the special portion of our train destined
for the Institute passed through the pretty,
shady town of country - houses, stores
churches, and cotton-ginneries and landed
us comfortably at the entrance to the
Tuskegee Institute. Here Mr. and Mrs

Bryce were greeted by a lai^e number of ■'^'' -"^'■h^'f'lt^'^^

Negro students from the British West ""TuiktiM'inHiiuie " °""

Indies and two or three East Indians

(Hindus). At the entrance to the Institute estate we passed under a triumphal
arch of evergreens, decorated with the American and British flags, and we
marched in a procession to the music, alternately, of the National Anthems
of both countries. Then we proceeded to our lodgings at the Principal's
residence, and commenced our inspection of this great training-college and its
affiliated schools the following day.

The idea of the Tuskegee Institute was partly conceived and initiated in
1879 by a Negro tinsmith named Lewis Adams, and by a white banker of the
Southern aristocratic type. Mr. George W. Campbell. Both of them were resi-
dents at Tuskegee town. In the following year the State Legislature of Alabama,
struck with the work already achieved in the education of Negroes, decided to
grant an annual subsidy to the Institute. Messrs. Campbell and Adams
therefore decided to apply to General Samuel Armstrong, the Principal of
Hampton, for a coloured teacher who should be competent to direct the little

4o6 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

school which had been founded on the site of unsuccessful cotton plantations, in
the outskirts of Tuskegee. The man whom Armstrong selected was Booker
Washington, and he commenced work in 1881 with two frame houses and a
ruined chapel,^

The now celebrated Booker Taliaferro Washington, an ex-slave once valued
at $400, the child of a poor negress of Virginia, and of a white or mulatto
father, who possibly bore the Italian name of Tagliaferro,* was born about the
year 1858. He has written his own Life, which has been translated into many
languages, and to it I refer the reader who is interested in his personality. He
managed by dint of extraordinary exertions and privations to become a student
at Hampton in 1873, and here he attracted the notice of General Armstrong,
who with much other encouragement gave him his chance at Tuskegee.

Washington's work gradually attracted out-
side attention, and the amount of the small State
grant was slightly increased ; but the enormous
work carried on by the present Institute could
never have been effected without the really
remarkable donations and subsidies of wealthy
Americans. Noteworthy amongst these was
Mrs. Mary E. Shaw, a Negro woman of New
York, who left the whole of her fortune to
Tuskegee, But there should also specially be
mentioned Andrew Carnegie, who not only pre-
sented the Institute with a magnificent library,
noteworthy for its wide range of literature and
its beautiful architecture and furniture, but also
endowed Booker Washington and his Institute
so that he was henceforth free from all monetary
anxieties. He has secured to him for life (with
ultimate provision for his widow) an income
^^Ruii^mfcHA^pEi/'^vHi^'H n)SMEi) whlch, though modest as incomes go in the
THE United States, is equivalent to that of the well-
paid principal of an English college. He is
iiiid« therefore able to devote the whole of his energies
and resources to the work of the Institute, and
has not now to think, as formerly, of earning enough money to support his
wife and family. William H. Baldwin, Collis Huntingdon, Maurice Jesup, and
Albert Willcox are other donors (all white men of the Northern Stales) who
have not only endowed Tuskegee with large sums of money, but have personally
put their ideas into the Institute and have seen that their money was spent to
the greatest possible advantage.

The special feature of Tuskegee (as of Hampton) is industrial education ;
and the special importance of Booker Washington and his teaching lies in the
fact that he has brushed aside all discussion of the political claims of the \egro,

' The chapel itself was Eubsequently removed, and is now set up in the giounds of Tusk^ee In&tilute.

' Taglia retro or Taillefer ("Cut Through Iron") was a common nickname in Norman and Crusading
times which grew into an Italian. French, and British surname. The Teirerf, Tallifers, etc., are English
and U.S.A. variants. Ho doubt Englishmen bearing this Norman name emigrated to Virginia, lor in a
corrupted form it is still met with in that Slate. Booker Washington's while grandfather may, however,
have reached Virginia in the late eighleenth cenlury, when so many European adventurers follotved the
French troops thither in the War of Independence. It would be curious if the btood of some Crusader
of medieval Italy flowed in the veins o( this r^enerator of the Southern N^o !

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 407

and the justice or the injustice of his treatment by the South, to concentrate his
own attention and that of his listeners on the supreme necessity of making the
Negro a valuable citizen of the United States. He has probably said to hinnself
over and over again, " Satan Bnds some mischief still for idle hands to do." He
wants the Negro to become the most industrious race in the United States, to
be'as avaricious of time as Jews used to be of money, to live as well as possible.

eat well-cooked, wholesome food set forth daintily, to build no house that has
not got a bath-room, to be fastidiously clean in person and neat in dress ; to be
able to do everything, but most of all to be accomplished masons, architects,
carpenters, cooks, dressmakers, tailors, hatters, ploughmen, gardeners, cotton-
cultivators, tobacco -growers, poultry-keepers, horse breeders and trainers
carriage -builders, bootmakers, botanists, typewriters, shorthand clerks, and
electricians.

Neither at Hampton nor Tuskegee is the education of a "charitable"
description. At both places the student must make a small deposit on being

4o8 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

admitted, and an annua) payment (in Tuskegee merely for board), though there
are scholarships to be gained by the industrious which may relieve him or her of
the entire cost of their education.

The instruction given by these two great institutes, and through their now
numerous daughter-schools and affiliated colleges, is intended to create, by
dispersed tuition, a great middle class of educated coloured people, who shall
gradually replace the illiterate, unskilled, dirty, improvident Negroes of the
South and East, and yet not unduly swell the ranks of the n^ro lawyers,
doctors, and clei^. You could not, for example, come to Tuskegee and engage
one of the female students as a parlourmaid (though after seeing their work in
this line of life you might well wish to do so). The young woman who has
shown that she thoroughly understands how to lay a table attractively, how to
wait at table, how to answer a door and
announce visitors, and such other duties as
are theoretically those of a parlourmaid, is
to go out into the world not necessarily to
become a parlourmaid herself straight off,
but to radiate this instruction from smaller
schools and institutions, or, if she marries,
as she probably will, to know henceforth
how the house and household of a decent-
living person should be kept. Of course
many of the male and female students obtain
immediate employment in different careers
as soon as they leave Tuskegee (or Hamp-
ton), but a large proportion of them really
go out into the world as well-equipped, all-
round, educated teachers in other schools;
and it is their pupils who are destined to fill
the industrial ranks.

It should perhaps again be insisted on
that Tuskegee, like Hampton, is very large-
hearted as to the nationality of its students.
334. A TUSKEGEE STUDENT Both pSaccs arc becoming an alma mater

not only to the Negroes of the British West
Indies, to Amerindians and Filipinos, to Cubans and Porloricans, but e%'en to
natives of British Africa. I saw several Zulus either at Hampton or Tuskegee,
also Liberians, and natives of Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast.

This tendency, if it grows, and if concurrently the whites of the Southern
States treat the American Negro with greater fairness, cannot fail to spread
" American " influence amongst the coloured peoples of the world, perhaps
to the advantage of the United States.^

During my stay of ten days at Tuskegee I visited in detail all the
departments of education. Especially interesting was the Kindergarten for
the tiny children, in which there were golden-haired, blue-eyed babies ; red-

' I doubt ir it be realised fullf in Great BTil>.in wtut & commercial gain has accrued to the United
Stales by the establishment of American missionary schools in the Turkish Empire — Rumelia, Asia Minor,
Syria, Armenia, and Egypt. This result was certainly not intended by the pious aod philanthropic
person* who, with singleness of purpose, devoted either their money or themselves to spreading knowled^
and civilisation amongst the backward peoples of the Near East ; but nevettbeless this is one way in
which (heir nation ii ^ing rewarded.

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 409

haired, brown-eyed children; and brown-black negrolets. In the case of the
seemingly- white children there was the dull sallow complexion, or some other
detail which might have revealed the drop of Negro blood in their ancestry to
some cunning and possibly cruel person, who by proving the fact in their case
might have raised a clamour had such a child been sent to a white school
for superior education. But whether brown, yellow, or white, black-haired, red-
haired, or blonde, these children danced and sang and went through their
exercises with a grace and an adroitness which brought them the hearty
plaudits of Mrs. Bryce and other visitors.

The Children's House is the Public School of the Institute community, to
the maintenance of which the county of Macon (in which Tuskegee is situated^
contributes a small annual grant. Besides the Kindergarten there is a regular
school for boys and girls, which gives them a thorough education, and if they
wish it, prepares them through preliminary classes to enter as students the
College of the Institute.

It is of course the Industrial Education that makes Tuskegee specially worth
visiting. There is a School of Agriculture and a chemical laboratory, and
a museum where specimens of the very varied vegetable products of the South
are preserved for illustrating lectures, and where the animals (including insects)
of the South-eastern States are illustrated. Attached to this Agricultural

THE EDUCATION

cjcing of good pork. At the sane
i~ of choice breeds, and a la^e i

ticalar attention was l)cing given t

raiors, and the fattening of pullets.

'. mules.
Sound instruction is given in Velei

r.kc^'s and horses) and mares for
ter-nary schools, it is interesting to

a consido^ble size — bang led into

le lecture hall, so that they m
erfection and imperfection of b
In the vast Slater-Armstror
u^tries are taught in an effecli
■-■■ler-houses, and shops for insi
■wilding, whcelwrighting, harn
:>ux- and carriage-painting,
lechanical drawing, shoemak
laking, and printing. A tVn
rickmaking, bricklaying, and
oots and shoes — shapely and
f the shoemaking departmei
fctions of the Institute the i'
t>-to-date character. The s<

DUCATIO

yt dazzling bio
s for educated
si, and which
; law of taste, t

iTcical side of tl

t proportion of

y in the prepond

i white races.

1 women. But it

jn, at any rate— a

i genius.

is, it seems to \

1 Negro. As reg

ia by the exceedi

1, and perhaps als<

ike an Arab, or lik

es almost naturalb

tendency to mock

Jermis seems more

3r red-mottled banc

(risited Sierra Leon

: failed to contrast

nd tight waistcoat,

icy-pot" or hard-stra

nd voluminous skirt

:h some extravaganc

jhammadan people p

, dignified, and yet ve

other hand, I am quit

fashions for men suit

r straw hat, the Tyrolt

s head, as do the sh

ihaped body. The col

i quite recently in Arr

y limp and stamed wit]

}m the artisan to the

as the average white

J nothing to gird at. Tl

Liberian coast towns, es^

r. Booker Washington ai

;' good cut. I am aloios

ock-coat and silk hat in

irs of the N^ro j>eople

:h only look well on t>vo

/ and inappropriate on a ]

But it is in regard to the

dans that some specia.1 eff

In a great ''white" dressxnaUiri
tors had the moral courage to set
I of the firm's costumes as mrere m*

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 413

fitted all seemed to be dazzling blondes.^ This, it seems to me — the special
designing of costumes for educated colour women — is a point that Tuskegee
has not quite grasped, and which it should go into most thoroughly and
perhaps lay down the law of taste, to be spread far and wide through America
by its pupils.

Of course, the farcical side of the colour question in the States is that at
least a considerable proportion of the "coloured people" are almost white-
skinned, and belong in the preponderance of their descent and in their mental
associations to the white races. These, of course, require to dress as do
European men and women. But it is undeniable that for people of dark skin —
amongst the women, at any rate — a special standard of appropriate taste awaits
the definition of a genius.

This, indeed, is, it seems to me, a matter of crucial importance to the
civilised Christian Negro. As regards the Muhammadan, it is solved at once
in Africa and Asia by the exceedingly picturesque, dignified, and suitable cos-
tume of the men, and perhaps also of the women, in the Muhammadan world.
Dress a Negro like an Arab, or like a Hindu, and you really forget that he is a
Negro : he passes almost naturally into that Eastern world where people have
far less right or tendency to mock at a coloured skin, where, indeed, the brown
tint of the epidermis seems more in keeping with these tropical surroundings
than the pale or red-mottled hands and face of the European.

Who that visited Sierra Leone, say, ten years ago, or Liberia at the present
day, can have failed to contrast unfavourably the Negro in high white collar,
black coat and tight waistcoat, trousers, patent leather boots, and an ugly
black "chimney-pot" or hard-straw hat ; or a negress in a green silk blouse, very
tight waist and voluminous skirt (her exaggerated mop of woolly hair crowned,
possibly, with some extravagance in millinery worthy of a typical coster girl),
with the Muhammadan people passing by, aptly clothed in costumes that were
cheap, cool, dignified, and yet very picturesque?

On the other hand, I am quite ready to admit that the latest developments of
European fashions for men suit the Negro's appearance remarkably well — the
panama or straw hat, the Tyrolese or squash hat, the motoring cap, look well on
a Negro's head, as do the shorter jacket, fairly loose, straight trousers on
his well-shaped body. The collars need not be too low-necked (as they used
to be till quite recently in America), nor need they be Gladstonian and con-
sequently limp and stamed with perspiration. All over the States now Negro
men from the artisan to the college professor are as a rule not only as well
dressed as the average white American, but are nicely dressed, so that they
present nothing to gird at. This is also the case to-day in Sierra Leone and in
some Liberian coast towns, especially among the Kru-boy element.

Dr. Booker Washington and his sons dress well in appropriate clothes that
are of good cut. I am almost inclined to hope and believe that he possesses
no /rock-coat and silk hat in his wardrobe. I certainly trust that he and other
leaders of the Negro people will not fail to inveigh against these garments,
which only look well on two white men out of ten, and never look other than
ugly and inappropriate on a person of dark complexion.

But it is in regard to the Negro women of civilisation who are not Muham-
madans that some special effort should be made in the way of dictating a law

^ In a great "while'* dressmaking establishment at Birmingham (Alabama), I saw that the pro-
prietors had the moral courage to set up amongst their dummies quadroon and octoroon types to show off
such of the firm's costumes as were more suitably worn by women of colour.

414 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

of taste and suitability in costume. The right notion is a difficult thing to
seize, but I have had glimmerings myself. I remember once in New York
stopping for a moment to look at a mulatto woman standing on the pavement
to await a tramcar. She had a golden-yellow skin, dark, mournful eyes, rather
a long, thin face, with projecting cheek-bones. Except for her eyes she was an
ugly woman, and in an inappropriate costume would have been frightful. As it
was, one felt she could only be done justice to, in her />os£ at that moment, by
a Carolus Duran. Her figure was beautiful, and she wore a modification of the
Directoire costume, the waist svelte, but not pulled in, the hips not enhanced.
The dress was all black, and the small hat, partly veiled, was dull black also
She was the embodiment of elegance, and the dark, long-lashed eyes, the sad
face, with its yellow skin partly revealed under the gauze of the hat, had a
poignant note of romance. One felt she
was a fine creature, and respected her
for knowing how to clothe herself.

At a large evening party which took
place at Tuskegee whilst I was there,
I passed in review some two hundred
female costumes. Only a few were
tasteful. Some n^resses of almost
black skin came in dresses of snowj'
white, or cream colour, which simply
made them unendurably grotesque.
Others were in pale blue, bright pink.
or vivid green. On the other hand,
those that dressed in ecru, in varying
shades of brown, dark blue, or the
greenish blue of the indigo dye; in
grey-green, ash-grey, or crimson, looked
exceedingly nice.

In treating of this most delicate ques-
339. AN oi,TOKO0N lARi-ouRMAiii TRAINED *'"^" ^^ costumc, On which pcopIe are
Av TU-.KEG11B more sensitive than they are on religion,

I might repeat some remarks made to
me by Mr. Roosevelt at the time of my visit to America. He was referring to
those passages in my book on Liberia, wherein I had ventured to criticise the
American Negroes of that country for wearing black frock-coats, black silk
hats, high collars, and tight trousers, in a temperature seldom less than eighty
degrees in the shade. In discussing the matter, I referred as usual to the
singularly picturesque costume adopted by the Muhammadan Negroes in
Liberia.

His comment was, " Yes ; and I have often heard people recommend the
"very picturesque uniform of the British West India Regiment. But does it
"not occur to you that the Negro is sensitive about making a side-show of
"himself when he dresses up in what we think to be fantastic garments? If
" he does not wish to become a Muhammadan, whj' should he dress like one ?
"Why should he introduce the spirit of the Ghetto? It was the special
"costume forced on the Jew in the Middle Ages — the costume which at any
"rate was to be markedly different from that of the Christian or the Muham-
"madan^which did so much to keep the Jews as a separate and despised
"caste. Never, for example, would you get the coloured people of the United

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 415

"States to dress differently to their white fellow-citizens; but if they did so,
" even though they might be picturesque in the eyes of painters, they would
" be objects of ridicule to the rest of the community."

All the girl students who pass through Tuskegee are expected, without
exception, to master a certain amount of cooking and of domestic science (the
work of housemaids, parlourmaids, and children's nurses). It is deliberately
intended thus, that no matter what role they may fill in life, they should be
competent to direct the affairs of a home, and that they shall realise all the
responsibilities of motherhood. The boys are likewise taught the elements of
cooking. And all this teaching has to be put to a practical test by the students
serving in turn as cooks to their own and the teachers' dining-rooms. There
arc, therefore, no salaried cooks at Tuskegee merely for the preparation of
meals, though there are special in-
structors in the art of cooking.

As at Hampton, great stress is
laid on the jcsthetic surroundings
of a home. Dr. Washington is
perpetually preaching the gospel
of cleanliness — of the person and
of the house in which he or she
is to live. Constant bathing is
insisted on at Tuskegee, and a
good deal of attention is given
to teaching swimming amongst
women as well as men. 1 did
not find all the students' quarters
as immaculately clean and tidy
as they were at Hampton, and it
will take time before this passion
for cleanliness and scrupulous
order has seized hold of the
Negro race as it has over a small
portion of the Caucasian (chiefly

the people of Northern and ^^^ ^^ octoroon student at tuskegee

North-western Europe and their

descendants in the United States). But to the eye of the casual observer
there is no difference in the outer aspect of Tuskegee and of Hampton.
Every girl student seems to be well dressed and with tidy hair ; and
the boys wear the well-cut, handsome military uniform already described.
And their bearing matches their uniform, for they are assiduously drilled
by a staff of military officers of the United States Army attached to the
service of the Institute.

I never entered a class-room that did not seem faultlessly clean and sweet,
and wilh windows always open. Many of these rooms are bright with flowers
from the gardens of the Institute. To all the students (who, of course, come
mainly for industrial training) a simple academical teaching is given in geo-
graphy, the English language, the history of the United States and of Great
Britain. Visitors to Tuskegee, both expected and unexpected, have a feeling
that the teachers of these classes are ladies and gentlemen in the best sense of
these terribly abused words. They may be so " near white " as to be mistaken
for teachers borrowed from the white world, or they may be of unmixed Negro

4i6 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

race,^ like Professor Carver, who teaches scientific agriculture, botany, agricul-
tural chemistry, etc. He is, as regards complexion and features, an absolute
Negro; but in the cut of his clothes, the accent of his speech, the soundness of
his science, he might be professor of Botany not at Tuskegee, but at Oxford
or Cambridge. Any European botanist of distinction, after ten minutes' con-
versation with this man, instinctively would deal with him " de puissance en
puissance"

I have met in my journey through America and the West Indies not a few
Negroes of the type of Professor Carver (most of all in the States); after
'meeting them I have felt inclined to re-
sent with militant bitterness the outrageous
attacks on the Negro in general, emanating
from a few rampant platform orators of
Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina,
who in education and manners are not fit to
associate with some of the men and women
who teach in the Institute at Tuskegee. One
of the officials of this college, in appearance
and mainly in descent, is a good-looking
Irishman of six feet one. He is a " near
white," and his wife is, I believe, altogether
of the white race. They once ventured to
travel on a Tennessee railroad in a car in-
tended for "white" people. Some malicious
individual spread the news that this indi-
vidual travelling with his wife was only a
"near white," had a little of the Negro race
in his composition. Whereupon a large party
of white railway passengers dragged this
man from the car in the presence of his wife
and lashed him with whips before the railway
officials could intervene. Needless to say, he
got no redress,
341, iiR. ROBEkT E, PARK Thcsc arc not subjccts, howevcf, OH which

*N«^"A'ISIS,^«^o''^l.l^^V.^''d«l'"ilE Dr. Booker Washington desires to dwell,
pitrfVi«"',.'fhS?T ,hi/^k'rilh"nt«".".S; either personally or vicariously. He realises
■ndiuiiuki fair and square the difficulties of the Negro's

position, and the root of it all, the root of it
which must be logically traced back, on the lines of the parable of the Ten
Talents, to the Negro's age-long neglect of his opportunities in Africa. He does
not pretend that he is dealing with ideal Americans like the white and coloured
philanthropists who have founded Hampton and Tuskegee, have spent millions
of dollars and lifetimes of work to help his people. He has got to appease
the violent prejudices of at least 15,000,000 Southern whites, and the
indifference or hostility of perhaps another 15,000,000 white people in the
rest of North America. He has got to correct, battle with, acknowledge,
and apologise for the backwardness, silliness, laziness, weakness of resistance

' I believe t am right in saying ihil lh«re U bul one man of pure "white" descent in ibt ferstmiul
of Tuskegee Instilute, and thai is Dr. Robert E. Park, who in an honorary capacity assists Dr. Wash-
ington in some of his woik. I have be«n much indcliled (o Dr. Park for varied mfomialion on the

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 417

to alcohol and sensuality of perhaps 4,000,000 of his own people in the United
States.

He knows that the overwhelming majority of the white people in the
States are opposed to any further mixture in blood, are angrily resolved to
keep the white race white. Booker Washington — 1 believe — would have the
existing types of Negro and Negroid (from octoroon to undiluted black) reunite
and interfuse, thus possibly creating a new race altogether; which by its
industriousness, sobriety, wealth, and good manners, may win for itself such a
place in the regard of white America that it may be accorded in practice what
is at present only granted in principle — equal suffrage with the other educated
peoples- of North America. He takes
courage from the review of the Jews'
position in the world to-day and the con-
dition of the Jews fifty to a hundred years
ago — without the franchise, shut out from
the social circles of Christians or Muham-
madans, almost without protectors, and
affected racially by this boycotting: obliged
to live, possibly, in the unhealthy quarter
of a town, and under most unhealthy con-
ditions; unable to own land, compelled to
dress differently, massacred in times of
popular excitement, swindled, and exiled.
He sees them to-day not only on a parity
with the Christian and superior to the
Muhammadan, but even playing a very
large part in the direction of the world's
destinies. He knows that such and such a
Jew really determined the British occupation
of Egypt, that another made it possible
for Britain to reconquer tlie Sudan, that a
third may have stepped in to prevent the
needy Republic of Liberia from becoming

French or German ; that a group of Jews 342. professor c. w. carves

probably holds in its hands at the present a »k.i Nttm Bot.ni.r .nd p™(«»or of

day the decision as to whether there is to g'lcmur. miury

be war in Europe between the ambitions of Germany, Russia, and the Westerrt
Powers.

He believes that the course to be followed by the Negro will be far more
arduous and lengthy than that which has at last placed a small and very mixed
caste of Syrian people among the great races of history, and in the most
arrogant and secret of the world's great councils at the present day. liut the
power needed to do for the Negro what has been accomplished for the Jew,
for the Parsi, the Armenian, the modern Greek, and the Japanese is iiionej:
And money can only be produced by industry. And it is no good making
money by the sweat of your brow or the keenness of your brains, if you have
only an ill-nourished, unwashed, badly dressed, ugly body to make use of that
money, and to defend the possession of it. So that physical development, the
social and economic well-being of the Negro, are as much his preoccupation
(and that of many others like him, now teaching in the States) as the intro-
duction of the Negro into habits of ceaseless industry. His is a gospel of

4t8 the negro in THE NEW WORLD

work. He hates having to speak, though he talks to great effect when he does.
But he realises how much of the Negro's energy and time is wasted in palaver,
that the passion for talking is as much of a snare and a drawback to the Negro
as it is to the Celtiberian in Ireland and Wales, in France and Portugal, and in
Latin America.

How far he will be justified of his faith and hope for the Coloured People
depends at the present time on how much longer he lives to direct with energy
the "Tuskegee movement," The University of Harvard has made him a
Doctor of Law ; a President of the United States publicly received him as his
guest at the White House, sat down to break bread with him, and thus re-
moved the tabu placed on the Negro by the
narrow-minded South. This action of Mr.
Roosevelt's produced an uproar in the States
which probably amused and astonished the late
King Edward ; who, as ruler of the British
Empire, frequently sat at meat with other rulers,
vassal princes, men of science, councillors, or
simple citizens of Negro or Asiatic race.

But until recently the mass of the people
of the United States were singularly narrow
in their outlook. They might have splendid
thews and sinews, healthy minds for their own
society and their own work, and be the germ
of the mightiest people yet to come; but their
outlook was that of the village; far narrower
even than an ordinary English village, for
amongst the rustics of the remotest English
county there is one who has served in many
parts of the world as soldier or sailor,
mechanician or miner. It is an amusing
instance of this paltry-mindedness that although
the United States created Liberia, it did not
T.. 343- M*]OB J. B, RAMSAv definitely recognise the independence of that

The eolound militmy inilruclot ■! the ., -li , i- ,- , ~

Tuikiij!«! iniiiiutc. A (ypioL "neir- Negro Republic for nearly twenty years after

belmnitedTiwiitttiniiMd^ocniMr^ih Other civilised Powcrs had done so, because of

«*S'MiJT'vh!H"'!?hmrt!orrh«H!r'' ^^^ awkward situation which would arise if

Liberia sent a coloured man to represent

her at Washington, and this negro or mulatto had to be asked to an ofiBcial

banquet ! The same worry has constantly affected the United States' relations

with Haiti or with Brazil, with Abyssinia or with Zanzibar. The negro tram

conductor or railway official may — and does very often, unnecessarily — sit

down beside you and enter into conversation unasked, and the white American

replies civilly, and sees nothing to take exception to in such familiarity. But

Professor Carver, or Booker Washington, or W. E. DuBois may not travel as

a passenger in the same compartment with you. the white man, and you are

socially tabued in the South if you take a meal with them !

This nonsense has got to be uprooted if the United States is logically to
extend its beneficent governing influence beyond its actual geographical
frontiers. If it is to direct the destinies of Filipinos, Cubans, Portoricans ;
perhaps also Haitians, Liberians, and Spanish Americans in Central America
or in Venezuela ; it must take a larger view of skin colour, and exact as its only

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO 419

tests of full rights of citizenship, educational attainments, morality, and to a
slight extent /ro/cr/y.

The earner and producer of nothing — the drone — has no right to a voice
in the destinies of any country he or she may inhabit. Booker Washington
is the last person in the world to advocate adult suffrage for the Negro (or for
the white man, for the matter of that). Perhaps, even, in view of the present
backwardness of the Negro, the friends of that race in the United Slates
would consent — unwillingly — to a slightly greater property qualification than
might be exacted from the Caucasian (provided that the same restriction
applied equally to the Amerindian
or Asiatic) ; but not even the
most placable and moderate-minded
amongst the educated Negroes of
the United States at the present
day can acquiesce in the present
situation, in which through the
prevalence of mob -law in nearly
all the eleven Southern States of
the Secession, the Negro or coloured
man is practically without a voice in
either municipal or political affairs.
Theoretically he has that voice, but
practically he is restrained by the
threat of mob violence from exer-
cising it. or using it to any effect.

However, once again Booker
Washington deprecates excitement
about this grievance. His main
object is to get the Negro to WORK,
and to stop talking. He wants at
least to achieve this before he dies
(and when I say " he," it must be
borne in mind that I am obliged
to regard him as a type of thinker,
and that his thoughts and work are
shared by other Negro or coloured
leaders), and during his lifetime to 344
succeed in raising the mass of ten '*'
million men, women, and children
of the Negroid races in the United States above the slough of immorality,
alcoholism, and sloth, in which many of them exist undoubtedly at the
present time. Many of his people — -he realises — are tempted to commit
crimes of violence not only in the mania caused by whisky or cocaine or
other forms of alcohol or drugs, but in the rough justice of revenge— revenge
for brutal and unjust treatment by the whites : and even from lack of interest
in life. If alcohol breeds quite half the Negro crime in the United States, and
injustice is responsible for a quarter, one-eighth at least is caused by lack of
occupation for the mind and body, the remainder being due to unchecked,
inherited impulses. He hopes that the States and the Federal Government,
as well as private philanthropy, will maintain and extend institutions like
Hampton and Tuskegee, and notably the work which is carried on from New

XVllI

J ALABAMA

lys in the State of Alabama are as
as elsewhere in the United States
. and north). I thought I had never
n the world as those of Georgia and
to try the roads of Mississippi. Of
£5e new countries it has been much
raiUvays than to lay out macadam-
Aotor will, however, bring this last

P 346. 1

,e driver thereof, especially if he be a Negro,
; roads and can bednven without an accident
.ps and brakes of bamboo, and into running
finced by experience that an American buggy
0 and descend steep banks and thread its way
type which 1 made over so much of this State
le agricultural settlements of negroes) seemed
ir peril. The scenery, moreover, of the wood-
Atul; and between the terror of a disaster to life
thusiasm for the landscapes on the other, it was
eful statistical inquiry. Occasionally I obtained
by a spell of smart prepress along a red clay
"(ace, one which had been a famous slave-route of

422 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

the past, along which the slaves were marched in chains from coast-port to
interior- market.

In these journeys I wished more particularly to see not only the average
homestead of the better class of Negro planter, but also to ascertain to what
extent the teaching emanating from Tuskegee during the last twenty years had
affected the well-being of the agricultural negroes.

In no case did I see any negro dwellings so poor and "African" in appearance

as in some of the country districts of Virginia, The log-huts on the borders

of the beautiful pine forests were picturesque and not at all slovenly. Their

general aspect is sufficiently illustrated by my photographs. Affixed to each

dwelling-house would be a chimney of clay to serve the kitchen hearth.

Occasionally, the interior of the house was rather rough. But the beds were

ample, comfortable, and seemed to be spotlessly

clean (with most artistic patchwork quilts). These

large log cabins were surrounded by outbuildings

also of logs, erected for live-stock — cows, horses,

mules, donkeys, poultry, and pigs The boundary

of the home enclosure was usually marked by a

zigzag fence of split pine stems or by strands of

barbed wire strung from post to post.

In the better class of negro homestead the
dwelling-house was neatly built of grey planks,
the roof of grey shingles, with glass windows,
green shutters, and green verandah rails. The
house, of course, was mounted on brick piles a few
feet above the ground — it was very rare to see any
negro or other dwelling in the States which had
not a space between the ground floor and the earth
beneath. The front garden of these negro houses
was always fenced off from the road by a planta-
tion, and nearly always divided into flower-beds.
These at the time of my visit (November) were still
gay with chrysanthemums and bordered by violet
Aincuiiurji iiaiructw. who mccom- plants in full bloom, sceuting the air deliciously.
in Aiibuu The garden might also contam a rough pergola

of pea-vine and ornamental clumps of tall
pampas grass, or of the indigenous Eriantkus reed ; there would almost
certainly be wooden beehives, and beyond the flower-beds a kitchen garden
containing cabbages, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, gourds, and other vegetables.
In the back premises there was an abundantly furnished poultry-yard of fowls,
guinea-fowls, turkeys, and geese — the latter being licensed wanderers, requiring
no supervision. There was .sure to be a pigsty, for the pig is as necessary to
the Negro farmer as to the Irish peasant. Then there would be stables for
mules and horses, cowsheds, barns, and stacks of " hay " (various kinds of
fodder). A plantation of cotton might extend for ten to a hundred acres
round the homestead.

The interior of these houses was almost always neat and clean, and divided
into at least two bedrooms, a hail, a kitchen, and a parlour. The big wooden
bedsteads not only had clean linen, but were spread with handsome quilts of
gay colours worked by the mistress of the house. Some of these patchwork
quilts — as in Liberia — exhibited real artistic talent. [Indeed, if the women of

34S. IK LOVBLV ALABAMA

THE NEGRO IN ALABAMA 425

Liberia or Negro America would only make these bedspreads on a large
scale, there should be quite a market for them in Europe. They design
patterns, usually of conventional groups of fruit, foliage, or flowers, and obtain
the colours for their design by cutting out and applying patches of various
calicoes, cloths, or silks to the quilt]

There are usually many pictures on the walls: chiefly coloured prints from
newspapers. It was almost invariable to see in these negro homes (all over
America) portraits of Booker Washington, Frederick Douglass, and W. E. B.
DuBois ; of Presidents Lincoln and Roosevelt, and even of the late King
Edward VII and Queen Victoria. The last-named is a great favourite in
American- Negro circles. There are also photographs of negroes and mulattoes,

An inunicliw «f lh« Amcrlnn Bovd of Agriculture, giving advin to ■ n^ro fmrnier on miizc growing

relatives or friends of the household. In several farmhouses the housewife would
show me with pride her china cabinet. This would be a well-designed piece of
furniture fitting into a corner, and here would be stored dinner and breakfast
services in china or earthenware, together with a certain quantity of real or
imitation cut-glass. Indeed, the furniture of these dwellings was often sur-
prisingly good, as it is throughout America — a fact that never seems to me to
have been sufficiently noted by British travellers.

The illumination of these country dwellings of the Negroes was usually
petroleum lamps with candles in addition ; but the poorest jieopje sometimes
use nothing but rough lamps or saucers apparently filled with some form of
turpentine obtained from the pines, Besides a large family Bible there might
be quite a number of other books, some of which were manuals dealing with the
cultivation of cotton or maize or the fertilisation of soils. Usually both husband

-LABAMA 427

ileepy South. A sense of well-
food, the temperature, the lovely
\vhich should go far not only to
i of Alabama, Southern Georgia,
jes in being the citizens of such
1 of winter, just a sufficient touch
*ch to keep the resident vigorous
an. Then comes the spring with
surely touch the heart even of the
but it is dry and there is always
A-ith the magnolias two hundred

ly-white flowers, while the aromatic

ite with a wholesome and pungent

f the American year ; when some of
crimson, purple, orange, and russet,
; when the beeches become lemon-
ne ; while the young pines stand out
of thrce-hundred-feet altitude offer a
by their foliage of deep blue-green.
^eek palmetto palms which give an
his again is varied with the yellow-
nes"). Here and there the monotony
ithus reeds, with tall, cream-coloured
tand splendid transformation scene,
lere are azure-and-russet Bluebirds

THE NEGRO IN ALABAMA 429

in comfort, happiness, and even in intellectuality : for many of these peasant

proprietors of Alabama had a greater range of reading, or were better supplied

with newspapers, than is the case with the English

peasantry, except in the home counties. • '

And in their dress they compared equally or

favourably with the same class in England in

being neatly and becoming clothed. Of course,

when the men were engaged in very rough field

work they wore coarse clothes, or merely shirts

and trousers ; but as often as not they — as do all

white workmen throughout the United States —

would don a clean blue cotton overall covering

trousers and waist. The men wore the rather

picturesque Southern hat of black felt with the

high crown and the broad brim ; the women the

flounced and plaited white or lilac sun-bonnets,

once characteristic of rural England and still

so common and so picturesque in provincial

America. When dressed in their best they were

costumed in good taste, with well-fitting, smart- ^ ^^,^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^„^^ ^^^

lookmg boots, Panama (or squash) hats for negro children, Alabama

the men, and neat straw hats for the women.

The women's clothes seemed to me well made and neat and free from
glaring eccentricitie."; in colour or outline.

The postal service throughout Alabama is ap-
parently excellent, and most of these negro farm-
steads had their own post-box for the receipt and
despatch of letters on the high-road or by-road
nearest to the house.

Of course the keeping of live-stock is a very
important feature in the life of the agricultural
Negroes of this and other States, and has of late
been remarkably encouraged and benefited by the
teaching of Tuskegce. On most of the holdings
there were good milch cows descended from
Guernsey or Holstein stock. Many a negro farmer
kept mares and a jackass for mule breeding. I was
surprised at the excellence of the poultry. There
were Leghorns. Buff Orpingtons, Plymouth Rocks,
and oiher good breeds for laying and for the table.
Turkeys, of course, were kept on a very large scale ;
also geese and guinea-fowl.

At intervals of a few miles, travelling through

Alabama and Eastern Georgia, one encounters a

neat church of timber (raised on brick piles) and an

equally neat school-house, both of them intended

for and entirely maintained by the negro popula-

^^^' * camp^meet'^nc" " * ^'°"- These buildings are usually painted white

with green roofs. Even if there is a State grant

for the school the church is entirely maintained by Negro subscriptions, several

churches being usually served by the one itinerant pastor, himself probably a

THE NEGRO IN ALABAMA 431

white planters. These agricultural Negroes either own their farms as free-
hold, rent them from white landowners, or work the farm on the system of half
the produce going to the landowner.

In the Macon county of Alabama 421 Negro farmers (in 1908) owned
amongst them as freehold 55,976 acres of land, or more than one-seventh part
of the land of the county. Some of the " old time " colonial mansions of the
ante-bellum period are now owned by negroes or mulattoes, in one or two
instances actual descendants of the slaves on the estate which the "great
house" dominated. In one instance pointed out to me the handsome old
dwelling, with its avenue of live-oaks had been purchased from his former white
master by the slave boy, grown up to be a prosperous farmer.

CHAPTER XIX

THE INDUSTRIAL SOUTH

I DO not know why the eleven Southern States of the old Confederacy-
are (apparently) so little visited by British tourists who have crossed
the Atlantic (or if visited, then by people who leave their impressions
unrecorded), any more than I understand why the artist-painters of the United
States have failed to see what a field of inspiration lies before them in the
gorgeous landscape beauty (I must underline the words) to be found in South
Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana — possibly also in Texas.
In the first place there is a great deal of the world's history of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries illustrated in the coast towns of the Southern States
(most of which are beautiful, and many extremely picturesque). There is also
a romantic interest attaching to Montgomery, the State capital of Alabama,
and once the Federal capital of the seceded Confederacy. From the capital of
Montgomery was launched the declaration of the independence of the South
from the dictation of the Northern States. Here was elected the President of
the new Confederacy, and from this centre went forth some of the best blood,
the finest fighting-men of the white South, to fight in a perfectly hopeless
cause, to display valour, heroism, chivalry, and brilliant tactics in defence of
a rotten social system.

The Capitol at Montgomery is an imposing building, though here and there
is a suggestion of stucco, characteristic no doubt of the bad middle nineteenth
century, but singularly rare amongst the honest and sumptuous architecture of
modern America. But the place is penetrated with a certain dignity and sad
romance, forbidding one to smile at any particle of homely rubbish, Berlin-wool-
antimacassar culture that may linger in the corners of the gaunt rooms [which
are now unmeaning in their majestic proportions since they have ceased to
belong to the central palace of a nation]. About the Capitol are quiet gardens,
and of course in this region there is very little winter, so that though the month
of my visit was December, I could see that the violets and roses picked for me,
unasked, with that delightful instinctive courtesy of the American, would certainly
not be missed out of the wealth of flowers that made the place fragrant and full
of colour.

The library of the Capitol has become a sort of museum, which illustrates
in an exceedingly interesting way the history of the hopeless struggle of the
South. There are innumerable portraits — paintings (execrably bad, but yet. one
feels, strong likenesses of the subjects), daguerreotypes, enlarged photographs,
crayon drawings, steel engravings — illustrating handsome, manly men and
beautiful women. The badness of the art cannot efface this impression of
physical beauty, neither does it wholly conceal the unbalanced mentality of
the women. The men look hard-gritted, some of them a little cruel, but on the

432

THE INDUSTRIAL SOUTH

433

whole Englishmen of a fine type, with a mixture here and there of the fiery-
French or sullen Spaniard, still, mostly English in look.

The women are too beautiful to have been altogether useful : it is a beauty
such as one could match immediately at the present day in the "Society"
of England and Ireland. Their natures must have been spoilt by being the
mistresses of slaves. They were not sobered by domestic service. Somehow,

in looking at these hundreds of portraits one feels that it was the women who
precipitated and maintained the struggle between South and North, the women
who were to blame (a rare episode in the history of the world). And it is still
mostly the women who maintain the perfectly nonsensical and out-of-date
scission of brotherly feeling between North and South, so far as it is maintained
at all. It is the women who keep alive the false sentiment which still permeates
Southern circles, and still attempts to band together the cream of Southern
society in associations for perpetuating memories of that criminal Civil War,
28

434 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

instead of relegating it to the limbo of losses that are cut, blunders which we
wince at remembering. So we have (in Alabama especially) the United Sons
of Confederate Veterans, and the United Daughters of the Confederacy?-

The men, of course, are shaking themselves free of much of this stale
nonsense. They want to make money, and fortified with money, to marrj*
beautiful women and rear a large family of beautiful children in homes which, in

PINE, AND PALM IN THK INCOMPARABLE SOUTHERN STATES

their architecture and decoration, their pictures and statuary, their gardens
and motor garages, shall not be inferior even to the splendours of the
North-Eastern States.

' I would venture to suggesi that if the Masonic feeling which permeates alt America cannot
be retisled, and the women musl Innd together into clubhand societies instead of acting individually, they
should maintain theii present heHcfirtnl organisations and rename Ihcm : call themselves " Diyads of the
Spanish Moss," the Companions of the Cypress," " M^nolia Maidens," and devote their energies,
amoriESl other aims, to the preservation of the Southern forests and Ihe wonderful landscape beauty of the
South, which is too much threatened now by an industrialism not always profilabk.

THE INDUSTRIAL SOUTH 435

One sees no sign of race decrepitude here. As already stated, the absolutely
white population of the eleven ex-slave States is at least twenty millions, as
against seven to eight millions of coloured people. Mineral oil has been dis-
covered in Louisiana, and perhaps also elsewhere in the South. The northern
counties of Alabama are extremely rich in coal and iron ; there is still a million
acres or so of hard-wood forest scattered about the Southern States ; so that in
addition to the agriculture which still produces the world's largest crop of the best-
quality cotton, an enormous supply of oranges and grape-fruit, of apples, peaches,
grapes, and strawberries, and a maize which is perhaps the best in the world,
the South now looks to derive great wealth from its industries, so that it
will no longer be dependent on the North and North-East for manufactured
goods.

And this outlook is making the Southern men more tolerant of the Negro,
who is so valuable to them as a labour force that they can no longer afford to
treat him badly. As it is, there are laws in existence — and if they are unwritten
in the Statute-book, they are nevertheless just as much in vigour — which would
be appealed to should any person attempt to induce Negroes in large numbers
to leave the Southern States, or even one Southern State for another. Public
feeling in Alabama, in Louisiana, for example, will not allow the Negroes
of those States to be recruited for service on the Isthmus of Panama or on the
railways of Mexico. This is why the American Government, in constructing
the Canal and other public works in the State of Panama, is compelled to
obtain its labour force from the British West Indies, from Spain and Italy,
Central and South America. Surely this is a sufficient answer to the foolish
negrophobe writers (chiefly hailing from Virginia and the North-Eastern States)
who advocate the expulsion of the Negro en masse from North America?
Why, if this idea were even formulated, the South ^vould rise once more
in rebellion against it, for as things stand at the present, the South would
be ruined if the Negro left it.

Of course, the Southern Negro is a free agent, and if uninvited he chose to
leave the Southern States for anywhere else, he could not be restrained.
Therefore the fact that he stays where he is shows that he is not on the whole
badly treated, but it also means that if he were, he would migrate to other
parts of America and leave the twenty million Southern whites dependent
on their own hands and arms, or on such foreign white labour as they could
recruit from Europe. No doubt they could obtain this labour force from
the white peoples of the Old World, and eventually it might become as
strong, as hard-working, and as efficient as the most modern type of
Southern Negro ; but in the interval that would ensue during the replacing
of the Negro by another type of labour most of the Southern whites would
go bankrupt.

I was strongly advised to visit Birmingham, in Southern Alabama, if I
wished to realise the meaning of the " Industrial South."

This great city, the population of which (including suburbs) is about
100,000, is not unlike the British Birmingham in its outward appearance ; for
though it lies twenty degrees nearer to the Equator, it stands on rather high
ground (at the southern termination of the Appalachian chain), and it has a
winter nearly as tart as that of its English godmother.

Birmingham, Alabama, is in close touch with the great iron and coal mines
— the iron, coal, and limestone which are going to make Alabama as important
in American industries as it already is in American agriculture. On the out-

436 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

skirts of the town there are already uncountable hundreds of tall, big
chimneys, puffing out night and day, with scarcely a Sunday rest, volumes of
black or white smoke. But in the centre of the town shops and buildings are
handsome, commodious, and modern.

Negroes form a large proportion of the population, for in the adjacent
iron mines about ninety per cent of the labour is negro, while the same
race furnishes fifty-five per cent of the coal miners and fifty per cent
at least of the men employed in the great steel works and iron foundries
{it might be mentioned incidentally that throughout the Southern States
seventy-five per cent of the men employed in constructing and repairing
the railroads are negroes).

In Birmingham there are several
negro banks. I visited one of them
which was lined with marble and
upholstered with handsome woods.
There are, as in the other towns
of Alabama, negro doctors, dentists,
haberdashers, modistes, shoemakers,
barbers, grocers, druggists, and
general storekeepers. There are
theatres for coloured people at
which only negro actors and ac-
tresses perform. Excellent are these
performances, usually in musical
comedy — how excellent, amusing,
and of good taste may be known
by those who have witnessed (for
example) the performances of the
Williams-Walker travelling com-
pany in England or America.
There are Negro churches which
have cost from $10,000 to $30,000
to build. There is a Negro press.
and there are numbers of young
negro or mulatto men and women
359- "l'homme a tout kairb" who are expert stenographers and

A nfgro bwtm.l.«, tr.™=d >l Tu.ke(« typistS.

But the main object of my
journey to this industrial region was to see the great steel works and iron
foundries of Bessemer and Ensley (in the distant suburbs of Birmingham),
where a large number of negroes are employed conjointly with white Ameri-
cans in work involving intelligence, strength, courage, and a just apprecia-
tion of the dangers involved in the harnessing of the forces of fire, steam,
and electricity. •

To an imaginative person the journey was not unlike a visit to
some marvellously realistic reproduction of Dante's Hell, such a repro-
duction as might conceivably have been constructed by some eccentric
American multi-millionaire as a realistic warning to that strange American
public, white and black^ — two-thirds of which probably believes more strongly
in this phase of an after-life than in any other detail of the Christian
cosmogony.

438 THE NEGRO IN THE NI

for the great steel works. We, being of anothei
entrance, but a short colloquy furnished us wit
With him we passed through the great red iron g
than by speech, were warned of all the chances of
— from locomotives, if we walked between the n
if we stepped here, boiling water if we ventured
molten metal if we gazed up at that.

Never have 1 wajked more circumspectly, or
intrude. But the irresistible fascination of the '

us through a region of machinery hut\g ■wvi
into a vast space, the roof of which seem
the increasing roar of steam and flame tves
this universality of deafening sound was
insistent, agonising yells, as of tortured %
voice — the Devil himself, no doubt.

Mercifully the volume of sound less*
longer retain consciousness, yet dared no
Then I began to notice there was mctho<
devils were at work cutting and sV^aping
cession of white-hot iron bars, fish-plat<
ently under the direction of a golden-1
no doubt, fallen from the Heavenly Hos

THE INDUSTRIAL SOUTH 439

black with soot or grime, climbed perpendicular ladders out of sight into
the vastitude of the roof, visiting as they went casements (containing as
it were imprisoned souls) into which they plunged instruments of torture.
Each step they took up the rungs of the ladders was marked by blue electric
flames.

We climbed iron bridges, descended iron steps, and sidled between hideous
dangers till we reached the central
Hell of all, a building longer and
higher than the eye could follow.
Speech was an impossibility in the
awful persistence of sound, and sight
was occasionally blinded by the
activities of a volcano which irregu-
larly sent up showers of molten
stars and clouds of awful luminosity.
Turning my back on this pulsating
flare, I was aware of negroes travel-
ling to and fro on chariots of
blue flame, directing the infernal
couplings of gigantic pistons which
lunged continually at cells and
fed them with molten metal. Each
thrust was followed by shrieks and
shrieks. . , .

At last we reached, half blinded,
a cooler region, lit by lamps of
violet and blue. Here lay sullenly
cooling masses, cylinders, rods and
rails of red iron and steel, which
at times would scream and gasp
under jets of steam, as though ex-
pressing uncontrollable agony. Ne- ,5^ "l'homme A tout fairs"
groes and a few white men (though AncgioEiectriuieniiiiinrfiniiMduTiuketEc
their complexions differed in no mid .mpioysi in Biriningb.a.)
way, and one only discriminated by

the hair) banged, hammered, cut, and shaped these crude substances into
finished implements.

And then, at the end of our sight-seeing, we emerged into the cold, fading
daylight, into an amphitheatre of blasted hills, quarried and scarred in the
search for iron and limestone. Near at hand were the pit mouths of the coal
mines, and thither were trooping white and negro miners in their working
clothes, while others strode homewards to their brick cottages to wash and
change and enjoy the respectable amusements of Ensley.

CHAPTER
THE MISSISSIPPI SI

FEW regions, I imagine, would seem moi
man than trans- Appalachian Americi
cially the region of the Mississippi p
Delta, which occupies so much of the area ol
borders of Arkansas and Tennessee, It \
imagine, that Dickens located his settlement
Martin Ckuzzlewit}

To any one fresh from the splendid pine

southern Alabama, or the diversified hill-:
Alabama and eastern Tennessee, the Mis;;
month at spring-time — must be for a lonj
countries in the world. The low. scrubb
browned by the summer heats. They are
a miserable streak or patch of yellow folia
is of dead creepers or lifeless bushes, pare!
is of cracked mud. The stubbly fields a
withered maize stalks. The cotton is chi
plants, while many of these plantations
reduced to black charcoal or grey ashe.s.
be more than snow-flecked in the worst

1 Probably Eden was higher up the great riv

THE MISSISSIPPI SETTLEMENTS 441

its off-season ugliness would be veiled under that beautiful mantle of white
which lends so much dignity in the winter -time to North American landscapes.

Towns along the railway line are numerous, but they are the ugliest settle-
ments so far that I have seen in America. The frame houses are usually
unpainted, and with shingle roofs of cold grey, nearly as depressing as corru-
gated iron. The churches — never absent from the smallest settlements — and
likewise the schools, are often the only comely buildings in the place. The
interiors of the houses (you Bnd on examination) are well furnished and com-
fortable, but the surroundings of the dwellings are ollen actually squalid.
There is little or no garden about the home, and no attempt at a tidy fence
round each domain. The waste land be-
tween the cottages is strewn with paper,
straw, empty tins, and rusting iron. The
stores (shops) are garish in their allure-
ments, and any hoarding or blank wall is
covered with violent advertisements. The
ill-defined, excessively muddy or dusty
streets are the wandering-ground of cows,
d(^s, ht^s, scabby mules and horses with
drooping heads. To keep out these cattle,
the untidy cotton plantations are fenced in
by stakes of different lengths, linked to-
gether with rusty wire.

The white people who inhabit these
settlements are, however, very different in
appearance from the ague-stricken, lank-
haired creatures described by Dickens. The
men are tall, essentially virile, and often
handsome. The women are so usually
good-looking that a female with a homely
face is a startling exception. Both men
and women are well and tastefully dressed,
and apparently as close up to the fashions

of the day as in New York. The children ^^^^^ 3^t_-^ '^*^*'* montgombry ^
are spoilt and ill-mannered, while the other- "MoulSs^'oiN^^nla^^^iatS^i"'
wise charming women require missionaries

from the north-east and south to teach them voice production. At present they
speak with an exaggerated accent and range of tone which to a twentieth-
century American or a Britisher are jarring and discordant.

Yet it must be admitted that the modern Edenites are, like the rest of the
Americans, of unbounded civility and kindness to a stranger. One can but
admire their cheerfulness in a region of dismal, monotonous ugliness. No doubt
it is more tolerable in the spring-time, when the scrubby, paltry forests burst
out into fresh verdure, and the untidy fields are fresh with new corn, or
gay with yellow and red cotton blossoms. But it is a land without the dignity
of a snowy winter, without the splendour of semi-tropical forests ; almost
absolutely flat, yet with the horizon constantly limited, and the view circum-
scribed to an untidy foreground by the ugly scattered trees growing in feature-
less forests of uniform height' Twenty years ago there remained considerable

442 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

areas of land to the west and the east of the Mississippi Valley (principally
what is called the Yazoo Delta), between Memphis and Vicksburg, in which it
seemed impossible to establish a settled population. The district was too
aguish for the whites. It occurred therefore to the management of the rail-
roads of the Mississippi Valley to attract Negro colonists who might turn this
region to some end, and produce cotton or other crops for the freight trains to
carry. Relations were entered into with Mr. Isaiah T. Montgomery, as the
recognised leader among the negro people in northern Louisiana. Montgomery
explored the vacant lands which the railway company were able to offer for
settlement and came with a few followers in 1888 to what is now called "Mound
Bayou." (In this flat, low-lying region there is a lai^e mound which may

1 PART OF THE TOWNSHIP,
MOUND BAVOU, MISSISSIPPI

possibly be the burial-place of some vanished tribe of Indians: close by it is a
winding creek, sometimes filled with water.)

Isaiah Montgomery is one of the remarkable personalities among the ten
million coloured people in the United States at the present day. He is a
pure-blooded Negro, originally of Virginia origin, and must now be about
seventy years of age. It is a pity that whilst he retains such a clear memory of
the distant past he docs not employ a stenographer to take down his experiences
from his youth up. He has a remarkable command of the English language, and
to listen to him is like hearing the recital of a sequel to Uncle Tom's Cabin; for
hisaccountof his father's, mother's, brother's and his own experiences of slavery
from about the time that Uncle Tom's Cabin leaves off" until the close of the Civil
War would finish the work of Mrs. Harriet Beecher-Stowe. (It is interesting, by

any rale in ihe amends made 10 the American public twenty-five years after its publication. The people
whom Dicliens holds up for our sympathy all ran away from the heart-breaking difliculliex of opening new
grounds in Ihe basin of the Mississippi. Those whom posterity nii^ht possibly admire the more were the
lew who stuck to " Eden " and the " New Thermopyis," and little by little paiDfiilly conquered this
dismal wilderness, at any rate from the point of view ot healthfulness and prosperity. The making of
beauty has to follow.

+44-

e m a n cipa tio
by the resu
tAontgomery

entirely with'
the Davis fai
Isaiah Mont^;
farmers in th i
When tht
exceedingly 1)
circulating thi ■
swamp. Sucli
snakes. The i
extent, and to
poultry. Alii; \

crossed dry land i
swarms of raosqu
made life intoler;
abundant that the '
Gradually in I
has altered to an a ^
there was once thi i
of which are really
There is a Negro
ginneries, and a lai
spot, of cot ton- see
there are four chu
serves— as do mo-s
hall, and centre ft
varnished pine plar
«ome appearance, e^
Two of the handsc

THE MISSISSIPPI SETTLEMENTS

445

white builders, but all the rest of the houses, the bank, churches, and schools,
were erected by negro masons and carpenters. There are good stores in the
town, selling most things except alcohol.

The only criticisms I have to offer apply properly to the whole State of
Mississippi and almost al! the towns therein — black or white — namely, the
shocking condition of the roads and the general untidiness which prevails out-
side the houses. Hogs, dogs, mules, thin cows, geese, turkeys, and fowls wander
about the streets seeking their living. The hogs and the dogs are the most
objectionable.

A few of the Mound Bayou houses had neatly fenced-in gardens. One of
these was smart enough for a Bournemouth villa, with lawns and flower-beds,
which at this season were bright with rose bushes in full blossom, chrysanthe-

mums, and borders of violets. But the roads are so bad that driving in any
vehicle is both ludicrous and painful. The soil, of course, is nothing but deep
mud after rain, or loose dust in dry weather. The difficulty here, as elsewhere
in America, seems to be the expense of transporting stone and breaking it up
for macadam. Where the road becomes an absolute slough or a dust-pit,
short lengths of the stems or boughs of trees are laid across it, but these
either rot or get dislodged by the hoof-beats of the mules. The innumerable
creeks are roughly bridged, but with such insecurity that only foot passengers
cross the bridge, and waggons and carts prefer to struggle through the mud
and water.

In Greenville, Mississippi (a prosperous country town about twenty-five
miles south of Mound Bayou), the contrast between handsome buildings and
squalid roads is seen at its most exaggerated. The very heart of the town, it is
true, has its broad streets neatly paved with encaustic brick — an idea, it is to
be hoped, which may, for many reasons besides aesthetic ones, extend by degrees

446 THE

over the whole tow
the Mississippi St;
noble churches an<
gardens, the main r
unwholesome tract;
of cement slabs e>
and tiles to any ext
prosperity increases
not with moulderin

369. COTTON BA

(to say nothing of Al
such laws as limitin
chimneys. This is ar

Apart from these
about the Mississipp
Mound Bayou does r
be too busy to loaf or
there is very little crii

On the other hand
charge of a gang of
impressions. He spo
the leaders of the con

THE MISSISSIPPI SETTLEMENTS • 447

and who are hard-working, trustworthy, and moral ; but he declared the young
people to be the reverse. Away from the immediate precincts of the town he
spoke of crime, of robbery with violence being constantly committed, and of
much immorality amongst the young men and women. The young people,
he said, were spoilt by book education, cared nothing for farming, and wished
to drift away to life in the towns.

The crimes of violence — murder for robbery — by negroes against negroes
in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana are unhappily very frequent, though
perhaps proportionately not so numerous as they are among the Italian
settlers. The immorality among the younger people seems also to be on the
increase, but it arises partly from the excessive dullness of their lives. The
more extended education which the new generation has received has awakened
a keener appetite for pleasure, and this must be met and satisfied to a greater
extent than at present through the churches. These, it seems to me, were
becoming alive to their importance as centres of social activity. Many of the
negro pastors are now educated men, students of well-equipped negro colleges
or universities. They are encouraging musical performances and reading exer-
cises amongst their people. (The champion speller of the whole of the United
States in a 1908 competition was a little negro girl of Tennessee!) The
danger which lies before the work of Hampton, Tuskegee, and Mound Bayou
is lest agriculture may not prove sufficiently attractive to the younger people
now growing up, and that they may thus drift away into careers and profes-
sions of the towns, already overcrowded, or of a character which brings them
into abrupt competition with the whites, while the whole community is in a
transition period of race conflict.

CHAPTER XXI
LOUISIANA

NEGRO life in Louisiana at the present day is probably more like the old
slavery times of the ante-bellum period than is the case with the other
Southern States. Though there are many towns and villages peopled
exclusively by Negroes, there do not seem to be — or I have not discovered
them — Negro farmers on a large scale as in Mississippi and Alabama.
The general surface of the State of Louisiana — which is much more pleasing
in appearance than grey, scrubby Mississippi — seems to be divided into larjje
plantations and estates owned by white American people, and worked by
Negroes as hired labourers or tenants : or small holdings in the possession of
French Creoles or Acadians, Spaniards of ancient establishment, or Italians
recently arrived. A vast deal of employment, however, is given to coloured
labour on the levees of the Mississippi, and the railways, canals, wharves, and
other public works of the State. Apparently the coloured people of Louisiana
are exceedingly prosperous, but they strike one as being of a lower class
intellectually than those of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. They are more
definitely Negro (often very illiterate), and the mulatto or octoroon class is not
so obvious as in the other Southern or Eastern States. The women of this
mixed type have in the past too often drifted away into a career of prostitution^
and are consequently dying out without leaving descendants, while the male
mulattoes or octoroons evidently find a more attractive sphere for their energies
in the regions further to the north or east.

The Negroes of southern Louisiana are, like the whites, strongly impreg-
nated with French civilisation.^ They are the descendants of the slaves of
old Creole families, which had settled and prospered between the commence-
ment of the eighteenth century and the date at which Louisiana was purchased
by the United States from the French Republic (1803). Louisiana (see p. 137),
of course, had been founded as a European colony by the French at the close
of the seventeenth century, but it was afterwards ceded to Spain, together

^ I extract an interesting commentary on this aspect of Louisiana by F. L. Olmsted, written fifty
years ago.

** The people after passing the frontier changed in every prominent characteristic. French became
the prevailing language, and French the prevailing manners. The gruff Texan bidding, * Sit up,
stranger ; take some fry ! ' became a matter of recollection, of which * Monsieur, la soupe est servie/
was the smooth substitute. The good-nature of the people was an incessant astonishment. If we
inquired the way, a contented old gentleman waddled out and showed us also his wife's house-pet, an
immense white crane, his big crop of peaches, his old fig-tree, thirty feet in diameter of shade, and 10
his wish of Mx)n voyage ' added for each a bouquet of the jessamines we were admiring. The homes were
homes, not settlements on speculation ; the house, sometimes of logs, it is true, but hereditary logs, and
more often of smooth lumber, with deep and spreading galleries on all sides for the coolest comfort.
For form, all ran or tended to run to a peaked and many-chimneyed centre, with here and there
a suggestion of a dormer window. Not all were provided with figs and jessamines, but each had some
inclosure betraying good intentions."

448

450 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

dants of prisoners of war and others brought by the Spaniards from the Sulu
Archipelago or the Philippine Islands.

On some of the great sugar estates there has been a continuity of service,
pleasant to note, from the days before the Civil War down to the present
time ; that is to say, that slaves, when fret J, remained on the plantation
as paid labourers, and their descendants work there, or in the domestic service
of the house, to the present day.

A few of those amongst the domestic servants are mulattoes. Like so many
of the coloured people of Southern Louisiana, they are biiinfrual : as familiar
with French as with English. Indeed, a good many of the Louisiana Negroes,
as well as the white descendants of the Creole colonists, are trilingual, speak-
ing equally well English, French, and Spanish. Some of them even add a fourth
language — Italian or Sicilian : for the Italian
or Sicilian emigration into Louisiana has pro-
duced another racial element which cannot
be overlooked in its importance. These hard-
working people, still slightingly known by
the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants as "Dagos,"'
form an important skilled-labour element on
the plantations, and as kitchen gardeners
or horticulturists. Their tendency is, how-
ever, to save hard for a few years, and then
establish themselves in towns as fruiterers,
greengrocers, and restaurateurs. They cannot
be regarded as a permanent element in field
culture, and it is probable therefore that the
sugar and rice planters in Louisiana wilt
never be able to afford to part with the
invaluable labour of the Negroes: especially
when the opening of the Panama Canal
doubles the value of the Southern States.

The Italian (it is as well to observe)
absolutely refuses to mingle sexually with
371. A NEGRO CENTENARCAN, LOUISIANA the Negro in Loulslaua, whatever may
occur elsewhere. I have seen it stated
that the opposite was the case, and that the Negro element in the United
States would eventually become fused into the white American community
through the obliging medium of the Italian. Apart from my personal
observations of the attitude of the one race towards the other, I am assured
by several sound authorities that Italian miscegenation with the Negro is
almost non-exisiciii. On the other hand, the Italians blend readily with
Spaniards, Germans, Irish, and Slavs.

A sight well worth seeing is an old-time Southern mansion, the " great
house" of some aristocratic family of planters. As often as not the present
owner of such a house is, on the father's side, of Northern descent, and the
estate came into his family at some date since 1S15, by intermarriage between
some hardy Northern pioneer and a Creole heiress of French descent. This
mixture of peoples (with here and there a touch of Spanish blood) has pro-

' A silly term, dtrived from the common Spanish name Diego, which might well be abandoned by
common consent, as much for the dignity of the United Slates as for consideration due to the Italian
people.

LOUISIANA 453

thirds of the skilled work are performed by coloured men, pure negroes for the
most part.

The field work in the vast plantations of sugar-cane is also mainly in the
hands of negro men, women, and children, who toil for good wages under the
supervision of negro and white overseers. A few Italians or Sicilians work
alongside the black people, without quarrelling, but without social intermixture.
By negro labour the cane is attended throughout the year. In November-
December it is cut, stripped of leaves, and carefully laid on the ground in
parallel rows, ready to be picked up mechanically by machinery — huge iron
arms and fingers cleverly directed by negroes or mules (working in a merry
accord which seems unattainable between mules and white men) — and de-
posited in large waggons. When the cane is first laid low with great knives, it
lies — with its unnecessarily luxuriant leaves — in many acres of hopeless con-
fusion about the sturdy limbs and bulky petticoats of the negro women. But

375. OUTSIDE A SUGAR MANUFACTORY, LOUISIANA

— as if by magic — it is deftly lopped, pruned, and laid in absolutely straight
rows while you stand and watch. The colour of the cane being mainly light
purple, these lanes of cane-stalks constitute, with the alternate intervals of
rejected foliage (up and down which the mule waggons and machinery are
driven), ribbons of mauve between broader bands of yellow-green. Thus the
flat plains of Louisiana at this season resemble vast silken skirts in two gay
colours, slashed and trimmed, here and there, by white roads and dykes of pale
blue water, and fringed along the distant outer-edge with grey-green forest.
Trains of trucks or miniature railways, mule waggons, and even ox-carts convey
the cut cane to the crushing-mills. It is only between November and February
that the great factories where the sugar is made and refined are working with
all hands and at high pressure, and perhaps in November and December only
that an unremitting seven -days- a- week, night-and-day labour of black men and
white men is carried on. This is the critical period. The cane must be cut
and carried before any frost can cause deterioration ; and as soon as it is cut
it must be crushed. Machinery working with a furlong of "endless" chain
transfers the cane from the carts and railway trucks up an ascending trough

i. i

LOUISIANA 455

friend of our childhood — treacle, molasses — it seems in these American
factories to be a disappearing by-product : the cunning of chemistry can now
turn nearly all the liquid element of the sugar-cane into sugar of three or four
qualities. The residue of sheer muck is subjected to tremendous pressure, and
issues therefrom in large cakes of dry mud. This is broken up into a manure,
and is spread over the cane-fields, together with the ashes of the fibrous refuse
burnt in the furnaces.

Thus there is now practically no waste in the sugar production of a well-
managed Louisiana plantation. The cane is cut down close to the ground, but
springs again from the roots. Meantime the stumps are shielded from winter
frosts and the ground around them is eventually manured by their being
covered over with the refuse leaves and tops of the cut cane. The furnaces are
fed by the fibrous refuse of the crushed cane, the ashes of which, combined
with the irreducible compressed " muck " of the juice, form the manure for the
next year's crop. To this is added the digging-in of the decaying swathes of
leaves which have protected the spring shoots, and there you have the almost
endless cycle of the sugar crops — assisted occasionally by the importation of
newer seedling canes from Demerara, or the sprinkling of the soil with
'* fertilisers " ; or broken temporarily by outbreaks of boring insects, or some
unwontedly cold winter or unmitigatedly dry autumn.

And through all this cycle, with its varying cares and responsibilities, negro
labour seems to be the one unfailing resource of the Louisiana planter. The
white men have strikes, are called away by higher ambitions, or are stricken by
occasional epidemics of disease. The Negro is there all the time He is a
spendthrift, yet loves to have money to spend. There are the sugar or the rice
planters and the fruity growers, the railway companies, builders, and shipping
firms always ready with work at good wages. The Italians, Hungarians, and
Slavs save and often transmit to Europe the payment for their labour. The
Negro is at home, and spends his money locally as soon as he earns it.

Great indeed is the debt which the Industrial and Agricultural South owes
to the co-operation of the Negro.

CHAPTER XXII
THE NEGRO AND CRIME

I WAS told in New Orleans that I took too favourable a view of the N^ro
in the South. The usual stories were related about the vicious con-
ditions of his life, his drunkenness, fondness for gambling, excessive
addiction to sexual pleasures, the insulting attitude he assumed towards
white women, and the danger they ran from Negro assaults in lonely places,
and so forth.

Through the kindness of some American friends — a charming lady amongst

377- THE AUTHOR ON THE MISSISSIPPI

the number, herself a widely travelled woman and a native of Tennessee — I
was enabled to visit a number of outlying Negro villages along the Mississippi
River near its mouth ; and again, later, other Negro villages in the western part
of Louisiana. The people here were certainly "saucy" to a stranger, inclined
even to be insolent; but it may have appeared impertinent to them that a
"foreigner" (as I was at once declared to be) should walk about photographing
houses and people, even when apologies were tendered or permission requested.
But whenever this Tennessee lady appeared on the scene, or any other of my
American guides more or less known to the people, the surly attitude was at
4S6

THE NEGRO AND CRIME 457

once dropped.* The best solution of any trouble which might arise through ray
putting questions or taking photographs was always found in an appeal to the
local minister of religion (sometimes in origin a British West Indian). These
men were invariably polite, and quick to appreciate my purpose.

The negresses of the country districts in Louisiana, especially those who
talk Creole French, wear a very ugly head-dress, as may be seen by the photo-
graphs. With some of the old women this bundle of rags and false hair is
arranged so as to simulate a great backward projection of the skull, and gives
them a hideous, ape-like appearance. Some of the men, however, are good-
looking, and with a refined version of the negro features.

Neither men nor women give the impression of idleness : true, I encountered
one wandering minstrel playing plaintive airs on a guitar; but even he was
working for his living.

As to drunkenness, there was little or no sign of it, possibly because
the new prohibition laws were producing their
effect.

I believe, however, that the men gamble ex-
cessively ; but although this is very regrettable
from their own point of view, it is a stimulus to
industry rather than otherwise, since the loss of
their money compels them to keep steadily at
work, while if they gain in lotteries, by betting,
or at cards, they spend their gains on smart
clothes and good living, which is beneficial to
trade.

To see the Negro at his worst, 1 visited those
parts of the vast city and suburban area of New
Orleans where the coloured people of the lower
classes mostly congregate. I was escorted by
an official of the police force ; no restrictions
were placed on where I went, but no doubt 1
was unconsciously guided, and possibly the
worst parts of the town were withheld from 37?. the hidi
my view, though, as a matter of fact, my very ''""'

obliging guide seemed anxious to give me a
truthful impression, and to show me the worst aspects he could find ot
Negro life.*

I came out from this inspection of " bad " New Orleans scandalised at what
I had seen, but not so far as it affected the negroes ; I was merely araazed at
the shamelessness of the whites. Here and there, it is true, I saw a tipsy
negro. In one saloon they were playing cards, but every one seemed to be in a
good humour. There were no angry voices (there was a marked absence of
obscenity in speech, I should state), and no one complained of being cheated.
In another saloon, to the music of a gramophone, some twenty Negro men
were dancing, but not indecorously. Here there was not the slightest sign of

' I noticed amongst the Negro men near New Orleans not the slightest resentment towards the United
Slates, or the Stale of Loaiaiana in particular, for any racial trouble which might have arisen affecting
the Negro's position i on the conlfary, an intense " American " patriotism, a desire to vaunl the institu-
tions of (he United States in season and out of season, and to compare them favourably with those of
Great Britain or the British colonies.

'' Though he was far from being unfair to the coloured people, and on the contrary had much to say

458 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

drunkenness. Moreover, all these " bad " places seemed to be far cleaner than
similar haunts in England.

But at last we reached the streets of strange sights. We passed through a
quarter of the town inhabited by negro and coloured prostitutes, and entered
some of their houses ; but none of the black or yellow women thus encountered

gave any sign in their outward appearance of the manner in which they earned
their living. There was nothing immodest in their speech, gesture, or clothing.
In fact, they might all have been the keepers or tenants of respectable lodgings
(furnished with almost Puritan respectability, with old prints and lithographs
illustrating Scripture subjects, portraits of notabilities between 1850 and 1S70,
illuminated texts, Longfellow's poems, Uncle Tom's Cabin, horsehair sofas, and
Berlin-wool antimacassars), but for the information of the police officer that they
were women of the town, and visited, by the b)', by white men as well as black.

460 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

as regards the sacredness of the white woman. Any person without let
or hindrance can reach and perambulate these streets, just as one can pass at
any time of the day or night from Regent Street to Soho ; ^ it is apparently
one of the amusements in vogue among the lower classes and strangers in New
Orleans (and in one or two other great Southern towns) to stroll round the
prostitution quarter after ten p.m. "just for the fun of it/' just to have this
spectacle of lascivious, more than half naked, painted, and grotesquely
costumed white women spread before the passer-by or those who like to
tarry. Every now and then the women, tired of playing the spider, would
walk out into the street or sit in their doorways accosting men. [It was pathetic
enough to see some of these poor things " off duty," as it were, repairing to
coffee-stalls. They then dropped their smiles and leers — though they appeared
painfully incongruous in their ballet-girls' skirts and excessively low-cut bodices,
the paint under the flaring light of the naphtha lamps looking such very obvious
paint. It might even be streaked and furrowed with tears — tears that flowed at
some little word of kindliness from a bystander that was not a brute ; or at
neglect ; at some feminine quarrel ; or from some passing shudder of disgust
at the loathsome life they had compelled themselves to lead.] The most
shameless among these women were of our own race — Anglo-Saxon Americans,
or girls from the Old Country who had somehow strayed across to the States.

The whole thing seemed to me like a nightmare, half horrible, half supremely
ludicrous and inconsistent. For instance, one very smart house, with a Turkish
Parlour, a Hall of Mirrors, a Louis Quinze salon (no mere tawdriness, but
everything extremely well done), was the property of a retired negress or
mulatto woman of the town, almost world-famous in her day — why, only a
psychologist could determine, for her numerous framed, enlarged photographs
resembled more than anything else an obese female gorilla. This person, I
believe, is just deceased, but for years prior to her death was famous in New
Orleans and in Louisiana for her splendid donations to charities, especially for
hospitals. The greater part of the money she raked in from her numerous
houses of prostitution she spent on or bequeathed to institutions of the noblest
character ! ^

She employed [or the syndicate which had taken over her business,
employed] to keep this particular house that I am describing, a New England
lady of great personal distinction so far as outward aspect went — a woman of
slightly stern features, with fine eyebrows and an intellectual brow, surmounted
by well-dressed grey-white hair, wearing pince-nez which of themselves bespoke
a rigid chastity and a cultivated mind, while the well-cut and modest evening
dress of black and white enhanced the look of somewhat frigid distinction.
This woman, as soon as she abandoned her professional oaths, talked with a
shrewd kindliness, a convincing respectability that was in strange contrast to her
manner of earning her living. She spoke of the numerous young women
present with a motherly interest, describing how she had married their
predecessors to wealthy clients, and hoped in time to pass on all she had
now to a similarly prosperous and wholesome middle-age.

I believe that although such establishments as this are often kept by a
negress, a mulatto, or a quadroon, the racial distinction is maintained here as
in other departments of life, and only "white" clients are admitted to the
society of the white women of the town.

^ Though Soho is now respectability embodied, given up to pianos, publishers, and old-print shops.
' Who probably knew nothing of the character of their benefactress.

THE NEGRO AND CRIME 461

But I repeat (and what I have described with absolute truthfulness regard-
ing New Orleans I know to exist with regard to several other large Southern
towns), does such a spectacle as this tend to enhance the negro's respect for
white women ?

If he argued about the subject at all (but his own literature is far too
prudish to do so), he might say, " Well, at any rate, the brothels dedicated to
my own people are conducted with such outward decorum that their vicious
character is not apparent to the casual observer." The fact is that much of the
negro's vice is excessive uxoriousness, unlimited adultery, and that here, as in
Africa, there is a standard of decorum as regards actual physical and verbal
decency maintained by the Negro which is absent from many of the white
peoples of the world.

It is such spectacles as may be seen at night in New Orleans by any
negro passer-by which may tend to inflame the imagination of Negro men ;
and when to these is added the maddening influence of drugs (the sale of
which is still unchecked by law) and of bad alcohol — and here the law of the
State has stepped in and effected supremely good results — it is scarcely wonder-
ful that Negro men have occasionally made attacks on the virtue of white
women. Before they can be blamed without reserve for such vile actions, the
White South should at any rate suppress all public indecency affecting the
prestige and honour of the white woman.

As far as I could ascertain — though it is very difficult to obtain reliable
information — within those Eleven States of the South, which contain an approxi-
mate coloured population of seven and a half millions, and in which there is
special social legislation affecting the Negroes, there were twenty-four cases of
proved indecent assault or rape by Negroes on white women during the year
1907. I could not learn that any statistics were compiled, or at any rate
published, as to white criminality in regard to this particular offence. Either it
was not thought to matter, since the worst result would simply be another
white baby added to the vigorous and handsome white population of the South,
or it may be that white men here, as elsewhere in America, are much more
moral in their relations with women of their own colour and nationality than
they are in Europe.

In the Eleven Southern States marriages between Negroes and Negroids
and White people are illegal. Cases are frequently cited in magazine and
newspaper articles of the cruel intervention of the law in this respect. A man
with just the slightest drop of Negro blood in his composition — a mulatto
grandmother, perhaps — falls in love with a poor girl of wholly white ancestry
and offers her a home, or she may equally be drawn to him by his personal
attractions. They cannot marry. If they live together as husband and wife
(possibly with children as the result), the law when it discovers the fact inter-
venes and punishes them for indecency. Yet they have only to cross the line,
which is now entirely ignored by the Federal Constitution of the United States
— the Mason and Dixon Line — to be free to marry or to cohabit with the
recognition of the law and without punishment for an act which in the legisla-
tion nowadays of most countries is regarded as one affecting only the personal
conscience. Yet the most inconsistent South does not apparently intervene in
the public brothels I have described in this chapter, and appoint a professed
anthropologist to determine the exact racial composition of the prostitutes or
their clients.

According to Ray Stannard Baker and other white authorities on the Negro

462 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

problem in the States, a good deal of immorality still exists (more particularly
as regards youths of the white race and coloured women in a dependent
position as domestic servants) in the south-eastern third of the United States,
especially in the plantations of the country districts. I cannot say that I met
with obvious traces of this myself. It seemed to me that such unions now have
become as repellent to white racial pride as to the growing self-respect of the
coloured community. The mulatto element certainly appears to be on the
increase in the North and North-East, but that, I think, is due to the tendency
of Negroes in the coloured regions of the United States (as in the healthier
parts of South Africa) to develop a lighter tone of skin colour ; and no doubt
the half-white women are now marrying back into the Negro community,
carrying with them their quota of Caucasian blood.

There is, I am convinced, a deliberate tendency in the Southern States to
exaggerate the desire of the Negro for a sexual union with white women, and
the crimes he may commit under this impulse. A few exceptional Negroes in
West and South Africa, and in America, are attracted towards a white consort,
but almost invariably for honest and pure-minded reasons, because of some in-
tellectual affinity or sympathy. The mass of the race, if left free to choose,
would prefer to mate with women of its own type. When cases have occurred
in the history of South Africa, South- West, East, and Central Africa, of some
great Negro uprising, and the wives and daughters of officials, missionaries, and
settlers have been temporarily at the mercy of a Negro army, or in the power
of a Negro chief, how extremely rare are the proved cases of any sexual abuse
arising from this circumstance ! How infinitely rarer than the prostitution of
Negro women following on some great conquest of the whites, or of their black
or yellow allies ! I know that the contrary has been freely alleged and falsely
stated in histories of African events ; but when the facts have been really
investigated, it is little else than astonishing that the Negro has either had too
great a racial sense of decency, or too little liking for the white women (I
believe it to be the former rather than the latter) to outrage the unhappy white
women and girls temporarily in his power. He may have dashed out the
brains of the white babies against a stone, have even killed, possibly, their
mothers, or taken them and the unmarried girls as hostages into the harem
of a chief (where no attempt whatever has been made on their virtue), but in
the history of the various Kafir wars it is remarkable how in the majority
of cases the wives and daughters of the British, the Boers, and the Germans,
after the slaughter of their male relations, were sent back unharmed to white
territory.

There are depraved white women in the States as in England,^ as in France,
as in Germany who have invited the attentions of Negroes or Negroids, and
have even been base enough when discovered to accuse the coloured man of
the initiative. There are also undoubted cases of criminal negro lust : horrible
cases, as bad as those that can be found year after year in the English or
American criminal records of white men assaulting white women and young
girls. But not only can no excessive preponderance in this crime or mis-
demeanour be laid to the charge of the Negro, but he certainly sins less fre-
quently, as regards white women, than is the case with the Caucasian. And
even his attitude towards his own womenkind in the United States very rarely

^ Witness the behaviour towards the black contingents that have visited London within the last
twenty-five years, and the crop of subsequent police court or Divorce Court cases ; the desire to marry a
Zulu prince or an Ashanti noble on the part of young women of the lower middle class.

THE NEGRO AND CRIME 463

oiTeTids against public decency, which is not always the case with the white
peoples.

A shocking case occurred in 1907, in Georgia, of rape and mutilation in-
dicted by a Negro on a white girl fourteen years old, The girl did not die, but
the details of the case were sufficiently abominable to make any decent man,
black or white, grind his teeth and " see red " as he thought of the vengeance
which should be inflicted on this unspeakable brute. But this solitary instance
in the annals of 1907 — singular, I mean, in its revolting character — was re-
peated and reiterated under slightly varying forms in the press, in magazine
articles, and in the conversation of white Americans, until the stranger might
well believe it was a weekly occurrence in
the State of Georgia, instead of being an
abnormal episode of horror.

In various sober-minded analyses of re-
cent cases of assaults on white women by-
Negroes it has been shown by white writers
as well as Negro journalists that the bulk
of these crimes were due to the maddening
influence of vile whisky and cocaine snuff;
and a proportion of the assaults resulted
from the temptations of proximity [negro
men being allowed to work on the farms of
poor whites alongside white women-drudge.=,
the same temptation leading, admittedly, to
a good deal of immorality among the white
field labourers]. One or two episodes were
acts of revenge for the seduction of coloured
girls by whites, and the remainder were
attributable to dementia. I cannot recall
a single recent instance of indecent assault
or rape on the part of a Negro against a
white woman in which the criminal came
from the educated negro classes, or was

a settled agriculturist, a well-established 381. "u.vbiiucatf.[> semlsavages"

tradesman, or any kind of citizen with a

stake in the country. The only cases quoted in the press and in books are
those of artisans, farm hands, loafers, and uneducated semi-savages.'

The elimination of spirit-drinking and unchecked drug-selling will, together
with extended education, go far to remove the cause of these rare and occa-
sional attacks by the coloured man on the honour of the white woman. But
meantime the municipal authorities in the cities of the South should do all they
can to elevate the white woman in the respect and estimation of the Negro by
suppressing those public exhibitions of white debauchery described in this
chapter. It is a coincidence worth noting that in several recent cases of assaults
on white women in country districts the negro convicted of the assault came
from one or other of the seaboard cities that maintain these public brothels.

' [ do not believe, as already staled, that ihere is any inherent tendency on the part of the Negro in
America or Africa 10 dishonour the while woman ; rather the contrary. I have already quoted the fact
thai in the most densely " Black" parts oF the United Stales while women caQ live alone in perfect
safely. There is not a complete absence of danijer to lonely white women and girU anywhere in the
United States (or in many parts of England. Germany, and France], but the danger may arise even more
frequently from white Iramps and social outcasts than from negroes.

THE NEGRO AND CRIME 465

last fifteen years because white women and even children have become panic-
struck by the foul stories spread as to negro propensities, and have wildly accused
coloured men of intentions which they never entertained, or they have mis-
construed perfectly innocent acts and gestures. In the recent literature dealing
with this subject the evidence of several negro notabilities has been collected —
mostly ministers of religion — to the effect that when running through a lonely
suburb to catch a tram-car, some silly fool of a woman has started up from their
path and begun to shriek for help. In some cases the negro notability
relating the story has stated that his only chance of safety was to stand
perfectly still and to rely on his known name, position, and antecedents. But
it required great courage and presence of mind to do this. Others fled for.
their lives to avoid even the risk of identification.

Justification for Lynching has been pleaded in that the accused culprit
might be declared innocent by a jury or might be given an inadequate punish-
ment if found guilty. It has been maintained that the only way to strike terror
into the whole negro community was to have the man accused of assault on a
white woman (and captured under incriminating circumstances) immediately
executed by the mob, often in a most cruel and barbarous fashion. Sometimes,
to satisfy the mob conscience, the wretched negro has been tortured till he
confessed his guilt, and photographers have been present and been permitted
to photograph ^ the torture during its infliction either in broad day- or flash-light
if the proceedings were conducted in comparative darkness. The fact that
these numerous photographs and "picturesque" descriptions of lynchings,
executions, tortures, or the physical or mental agony of the accused or of the
victim of the crime should have been allowed without let or hindrance, even —
one might judge — arranged for the special benefit of the photographer, illus-
trates sufficiently the depravity of the uneducated white South. Can one even
say with truth uneducated ? The crowd seems to consist frequently of well-
dressed men and women who — the United States being what it is — were
presumably well able to read and write.

Lynching, of course, and those unreasoning outbreaks of mob violence
against the negroes in Georgian, Carolinian, Tennessee, and Maryland cities,
which result in serious loss of life and property (and are a disgrace to the civic
authorities) are of course a remnant of the cruel Slavery days prior to 1863.
The South knows at the bottom of its national heart that it has injured
the negro anciently and hates him for that reason, as well as the irrational one
that he is a negro ! " Twoad, be 'ee ? Til larn thee to be a twoad," says the
country boy in a clever number of Mr. Punch some years ago ; and forthwith
bashes the toad to death. This is the spirit that animates many a mob and
many a writer, pressman, and pamphleteer in their attacks on the unfortunate
Ethiopian, who can only change the colour of his skin by miscegenation or by a
thousand years of evolution.

But that this lynching spirit will in time affect the interests of White
America is well shown in the following extracts from a New York newspaper
(summarised), which appeared in the late autumn of 1908, at the time of some
quarrels about land ownership in Tennessee : —

** Let me call your attention to the fact that this * Night-Rider ' business is essentially
an ominous development. It is the first-fruits of the mob spirit reaching higher with its

^ These photographs and much other information on lynching aie given in The Negro^ by
R. W. Shufeldt, m.d. (Boston, 1907).

466 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

lawless hand. I have no doubt but that the two prominent lawyers in Tennessee, who
have just suffered horribly at the hands of a mob, have many a time shrugged their
shoulders nonchalantly over the lynching of negroes. When the mob spirit begins, as
it is beginning, to ' hoist the Colonels by their own petard/ the dominating forces of
public opinion are going to see what some of us have been pointing out all the time,
that the mob that lynched the negro for rape is father to the mob that lynched him for
other and lesser crimes, and grandfather to the mob that now lynches him for no crime,
and great-grandfather to the mob that lynches the white man and burns his property."

This summary of a letter from a prominent Southerner goes true to the mark. For
years we have maintained that the lynching of negroes in the South must be put down,
if for no other reason than that lynchings of whites were sure to follow. No mob of
excited, irresponsible, whisky-inflamed men. North or South, can be trusted to enforce
lynch law with discrimination. Some tried it in Springfield, Illinois, only to find out
afterwards that the man originally accused was innocent ; they did not confine themselves
to seeking him out, but killed, robbed, and destroyed at random. The forces of evil once
unleashed, no one can direct and no public sentiment can control, whether in Illinois,
or in Tennessee, or in Mississippi. Granted, if you please, for argument's sake, that
there is a higher Anglo-Saxon law, which compels short work with the criminal where
rape or an indecent assault is committed, it is a long-proved fact that its self-appointed
instruments never stop there. They go from hanging to burning ; from killing for rape
to slaughtering for an impertinent remark ; from lynching men to torturing women ; and
then, the spirit of lawlessness being well rooted, they kill whites who have offended them,
or who sell their tobacco where they please.

The descent of this road to barbarism is facile and swift. Examples of it are more
frequent in the South because that region, misled by the cessation of the Ku Klux
horrors, believed that lynching could be held in sufficient check. We have in mind a
community in northern Alabama where the lynchings and burnings of innocent and
guilty alike became so menacing that the neighbouring sheriff at Wetumpka found it neces-
sary to form a posse and round up the entire crowd, whose " defence of white woman-
hood " had created a new sport — nigger-killing — superior to any other local amusement.
Twelve white men were sent to the chain-gang or driven away, and there has been peace
between the races and obedience to the laws ever since. We reported two years ago a
horrible case where a negro woman in Mississippi, accused only of being the wife of
a man alleged to have done wrong, was tortured as by savages, fine splinters being driven
into her flesh and set fire to. Nobody was punished. Now, how could any community
tolerate such a crime and not sink in the scale of civilisation ? We guarantee that if
the law were similarly permitted to fall into disrepute in New York or Massachusetts we
should have our Night-Riders too. There is no such thing as saying to lynchers : "Thus
far and no further."

It is so essential that lynching and mob-law should be put down in what
is in some respects the foremost country of the world (and should therefore be
the world's exemplar) ; that, when next there is a lynching outbreak in any district
(and the State authorities do not promptly suppress it, track down and punish
the white ringleaders and their followers), if the President of the United States
despatched a large force of Federal troops to the offending county of the
misgoverned State, and levied a war contribution on the White or the Black
inhabitants of that county (whichever was the first to begin the trouble), and
distributed the overplus of this heavy impost (after paying war expenses)
among the people of the injured race, I believe that President would be
elected to a second or a third term of office. The Americans may elect their
rulers, but they love a chief magistrate who rules.

The great racial weakness of the Negro is dishonesty of a petty kind.
The European, and to a certain extent the Asiatic, has got a stage farther

468 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

atrocities and number of killed the massacre of Saint Bartholomew or a
Russian pogrom.^

What the United States wants is a good Rural Constabulary, white and
coloured : best of all a Coloured Police, mounted and unmounted, under White
Officers, a Police to be under the orders of the State Governor. If she had
such a constabulary as that of Jamaica (or of her own devising in Cuba and in
Panama) crime would diminish enormously, and insecurity of life and property
diminish to as low a figure as in the British West Indies or the Canal Zone.

^ See for details the works of Kay Stannard Baker and W. £. Burghardt DuBois.

CHAPTER XXIII
THE NEGRO AS CITIZEN

IN Florida I found the Negroes in an advantageous and creditable position
(a position demanding probity and marked ability), largely through the result
of Tuskegee and Hampton teaching. A high Stale post has been held at
Jacksonville (the capital) by a negro, Mr. Joseph E, Lie, who is also a Solicitor
in Chancery. In Jacksonville also
negroes have been elected by their
fellow-citizens as municipal judges
and have served their term satis-
factorily.

In the north-western part of
Florida the rougher class of negro
works a good deal in the pine
forests, collecting turpentine. I had
a glimpse of some of these camps
in the pine woods, but thanks to
that blessed spread of Prohibition
in the South and the restrictions
on the sale of alcohol, these camps
seemed — and are, I am told —
orderly and without crime, although
the country Negro of Florida, like
his brother of the other Southern
States, still lies under the stigma
of being a petty thief, prone to
carry off at night the fowls, turkeys,
or vegetables of some homestead in
his vicinity.

Yet there seemed to me, travel-
ling through Florida, a singular lack
of ill-feeling between the whites and
the " Nigs." Nearly all the rough 384- "l'homme A tout faire-

1 ci^l -J I, ■ J u NtgroM Lying down. ir»iiiir»y in Florida

work 01 rlonda was being done by

good-tempered negroes under the direction of white foremen or engineers.
Negroes entirely, under white supervision, are building that wonderful East
Coast of Florida railway, from Miami to Key West— one of the world's
wonders, a railway which crosses the shallow, open sea for miles on low
viaducts, and carries you from one fairy-like coral island to another till you
are brought within ninety miles of Cuba.
469

470 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

In Florida the Negro seems to be preferred to Italians or other " foreign "
whites. It is probably in northern Florida, western Georgia, Mississippi,
Arkansas, eastern Texas, Louisiana, and Alabama (most of all) that the
American Negro is seen at his best as peasant, peasant proprietor, farmer,
artisan, professional man, and member of society. Here I detected no bump-
tiousness of manner amongst the educated, and experienced little or no rude-
ness from the uncultivated.

My visits to the cities or towns of Georgia and South Carolina were so few
and so fleeting that I could form no personal impressions of the negro worth
recording. From the publications which issue from the Atlanta University
(and are written or compiled by Negroes and negroids) one would say — with other
evidence — that there was a good deal of intellectuality among the town-dwelling
coloured people in this and in Augusta and the
other inland towns of this large State. But the
student for a comprehension of this now com-
plex question of the extremes of negro life and
culture in Georgia, of prosperity and the ruin
of hopes (after white riots), of well-directed
State industrial education, of the abuses of the
penitentiary and the leasing-out of convicts
(which brought a new slavery into existence),
is advised to study the works of Mr. Ray
Stannard Baker, W. E. Bui^hardt DuBois,
Edgar Gardner Murphy, and William Archer.

There is much in the city life of negroes in

these two States which requires the attention

of white and coloured philanthropists. But

it is specially in Savannah and Charleston

that the charge of excessive immorality and

crimes of violence are laid on the negroes by

the press of Georgia and South Carolina. But

the " poor " white population of the sea-coast

cities also bore a bad reputation, and in both

38s. 0NC8 A SLAVE! VIRGINIA cases immoderate consumption of bad spirits

was the root of nearly all the evil. Increasing

habits of temperance or abstinence fostered by State legislation and Church

influence are rapidly making these accusations stale.

In the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina (between the rivers
Santee and Savannah) there are negroes living at the present day who were
bom in Africa and landed here as slave youths or children in the 'forties and
'fifties. Others are descended from runaways, and very early in the conflict
between North and South control was temporarily abandoned over the negro
population of these almost tropical, swampy, flat islands, separated from the
mainland by broad tidal creeks.

From these and other reasons, these amphibious South Carolina island
n^roes are in some places leading a wilder, more primitively African existence
than anywhere else in the United States except it be in remote swamps of
south-west Louisiana. Many of the Sea Islanders retain a remembrance of
their original African language (which in the few words I have seen in print
appears to be of the Yoruba stock or from the Niger delta). They retain
their belief, or their parents' belief — in witchcraft and fetishes, they maintain

THE NEGRO AS CITIZEN

47"

their medicine-men — "guffer doctors" — and their fetish temples are called
"Praise Houses." It is here that their religious dances — called very appro-
priately •' shouts " — take place. In the less-visited islands the " English " of these
negro squatters and fishermen is scarcely recognisable as English, and contains

"mammy" op

many African words and a few Portuguese expressions current once on the
West Coast of Africa. Also they are when away from white influence inclined
to sparsity of clothing— not nowadays a common trait in the United States
negro. They are also pure negroes, entirely without any infusion of white
blood.

Crime is very rare among them. They are almost all peasant proprietors.

472 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

many having bought their holdings from the State out of confiscated and
abandoned white plantations. From these islands once came the celebrated
Sea Island cotton ; and it comes still, and in increasing quantity, but grown now
by free negro estate owners. I have already referred to the educational work
done in this region by the Fenn School.

There is a relatively small Negro population in North Carolina, which in
comparison to its neighbours north and south is a very " white " State which
was settled originally by English, Scotch, and Irish settlers — colonists of a
good stamp.

As regards the country life of the Negroes in Virginia, it is probably on
a lower level than in the great States of the South. The coloured people —
mainly pure n^roes — away from the influence of Hampton, seemed to me
rather stupid peasants, and their
houses were often miserable, dirty
huts. On the sea coast of Virginia
the fishermen are nearly all negroes,
either pursuing their calling in their
own fishing boats or engaged by
white proprietors to guard and super-
intend the oyster fisheries. In parts
of the coast they have relapsed into
a semi-savage existence, so easily
nourished are they on the oysters,
clams, and sea-fish they obtain for
the taking.

In the old slavery days of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
Virginia proverbially turned out
the smartest and most intelligent
negroes. Nearly every prominent
negro in history or fiction prior to
1863 came from Virginia, and no
„ ,, , . „ part of the United States was more

387. "l'homme a toot fairk" "^ . ^ . 1 _j u ii. 1.1 1

A Dcirg mugn virginii passionatcly lovcd by the black race

in actuality or tradition than the

State of Virginia. Here indeed, in spite of ferocious slave laws, they were

more kindly and paternally treated, became more closely associated — feudally

— with the great white families.

Yet though Virginian towns and schools still turn out clever negroes and
mulattoes, one has a feeling as one passes through the towns of this aristocratic
State that the educated negro has here no abiding city, that things are made
hard for him, and he finds it better to carry his ambitions farther South or West :
for, curiously enough, West Virginia, so without negroes in its population at the
outbreak of the Civil War that it was Abolitionist in policy, is now receiving or
breeding negroes in ever increasing numbers, no doubt in connection with
its mining industries.

In Maryland there is a very intolerant feeling in white circles against
the coloured population, still very considerable in the towns. Here and in the
eastern part of Pennsylvania there are many thousand negroes engaged in
industrial pursuits.

In Baltimore and in Philadelphia there are Negro quarters which certainly

THE NEGRO AS CITIZEN 473

were foul-smelling slums, nearly as bad as the ordinary London slum. Here
the conditions of Negro life might cause the passing visitor to shake his head
if he did not stop to reflect that these conditions had been deliberately brought
about by white men. So much has this been realised by the better class of
white men in these cities, that probably before these lines are printed the worst
of the Negro slums in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Richmond will have been
swept away by the civic authorities. They have been the property of wicked
white landlords, and have lain under the thumb and the spell of the vile saloons
wherein the Negro has been maddened by poisonous alcohol. Certain other
economic conditions, moreover, have almost compelled a section of the N^ro
community to develop vicious conditions
of existence for the gratification of sexual
passion in the dissolute sections of the
white community.

These questions were fully investigated
after the terrible anti-Negro riots which
prevailed in Baltimore a few years ago.
The respectable members of the Negro
community faced the situation with splendid
courage. The ringing earnestness of their
appeal for fair play touched the hearts even
of the city "bosses" among the whites,
even of the corrupt municipalities of these
great American cities of the east The
result has been a co-operation between the
well-thinking and the right-doing of both
races, and an immense recent improve-
ment in the conditions of Negro life in
the cities of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and
northern Virginia.

It is often a grievance to the indignant
Southerner that the Federal Capital should
contain such a large Negro population —
about one hundred thousand. The coach-
men are nearly all negroes, the men who

attend to the streets are negroes, so, of 388. "l'homme A tout faire"

course, are all the lesser employes on the a mto coj>cbm»n in wuhinpgn

railways and at the railway stations ; many

of the clerks, typists, shorthand writers ; barbers and shop assistants. In
addition there are numerous coloured doctors, dentists, lawyers, and surveyors,
engineers, electricians, builders, and architects. Not a few of the excellent
officials in the great public offices, museums, galleries, are negroes or negroids.
I heard here no stories of negro violence or tendency to crime which would
contrast this section of the Washington population with that of pure " White "
origin.

Then look at Washington. There is a poor Negro population certainly
in the environs, and even scattered about the main thoroughfares of that City
of the Future, which does live in a condition of ramshackle poverty — perhaps
one may say dirt — which would not be tolerated in New York. Though it
does not conduce to the appearance one would expect of the Federal Capital,
still it is evidence of a kindly treatment of the coloured race to see ridiculous

THE NEGRO AS CITIZEN 475

furniture was solid, well-designed, and tasteful. The appointments of the
dining-table were such as the most fastidious English man or woman could not
object to. There were well-furnished libraries, and all the new appliances
of civilisation at their highest perfection — such as telephones, bathrooms, dinner-
lifts, electric fans, heating apparatus — in regard to which New York is so much
in advance of London. The poorest part that I visited, in what was declared by
the police to be the worst existing tenements in the negro quarter, was clean,
wholesome, and attractive as compared to the dwellings of many respectable,
hard-working Londoners.

The staircases, for example, were always clean and well lit ; there was none
of that horrible odour of the indiscretions du chat (as the French delicately
phrase it) which is so characteristic of the frowsy, early-nineteenth-century
houses of respectable lower- middle-class London ; there were no disagreeable
smells of bad cooking ; the sanitary arrangements appeared to be quite up-to-
date and devoid of offence. The
people 1 visited of the poorer class
were cooks (of both sexes), long-
shore men, railway porters, and
car attendants ; tram-conductors,
seamstresses, washerwomen, and
so forth. Their rooms seemed to
becomfortably furnished, and were
superior in every way to the worst
slums of London.

The educated class apparently
supplied school teachers, shorthand
writers, typists, dressmakers, tailors,
and an infinitude of other small
tradespeople and professionals to
New York's hive of industry. I
could really see no difference in sur-
rOundings, in culture, in decorum
between the lives of these absolute

Negroes, or of the many different degrees of Negroids, and the lives led by
Anglo-Saxon white people earning the same wages in New York ; while there
was a balance in favour of the Negro if you compared his life with the lowest
class of recently arrived Irish or Italian emigrants, Bohemians and Hungarians;
and it was by many degrees superior to the Asiatic squalor and unwholesome
mystery which surrounded even the police-inspected Chinese dwellings. In fact,
the best way to appreciate the community of feeling between the N^ro and'
the White man in the United States is to compare this interchange of sympathy
and this community of culture with the condition of the American Chinese.
They are aliens, if you like.

In the States of Ohio, Missouri, and Indiana there is little or no country
population of negroes, except in the south-eastern part of Missouri. The Negroes
and Negroids congregate in the great towns, where they are on much the same
social and industrial footing as has already been described in reference to New
York. There are, of course, Negroes in the railway services of the North-
Eastern,' North-Central, North-Western, and Western States, but in all this

476

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

part of North America the Negro is sporadic, and does not fill a very important
place in the social economy. In the regions of Kentucky and Tennessee,
below the mountains sloping to the valleys of the rivers, he is present here and
there as a country settler, sometimes a descendant of a freedman of the old
slavery days, while he is very abundant in the Kentucky and Tennessee towns,
and not necessarily in a very inferior position. But the country-folk of these
two States is now mainly white, and in the mountains perhaps the lowest type
of the American white, mentally^ though ordinarily of good physical develop-
ment. Much of the lynching and of the trouble in connection with the Negro
problem originates in Tennessee and Kentucky, especially in such a place as
Nashville. In the eastern part of Kansas the country Negro is making con-
siderable progress as a cultivator and farmer.

North of the old States of the Secession, the coloured people — some
2,500,000 in number — not only have the electoral and municipal vote like any
other citizen of the United States, but exercise their voting privileges without
let or hindrance. In New York City, for example, there are nearly 19,000
Negro voters, and in Philadelphia at least 20,000. But the Negro, like the
Jew, nowhere votes uniformly in the North, where he has absolute justice. It is
only in the South (where in a measure his very existence is at stake) that he
votes " solid " and " Republican."

By 1880 the White South had entirely regained power over the administra-
tion of all the States of the Secession.^ The Negro had been shouldered
away from the polling-booth, and as regarded the new generation born out
of Slavery, Election or Registration-of-Franchise Acts were being passed by
the White legislators which made it difficult for the coloured man to obtain a
vote. These difficulties do not appear on paper. The bald statement of the

beautiful city. Here they even hold professional posts. It is complained by some critics of the N^rro
that he is a spoilt person in Massachusetts. It is in this State more than in any other that marriages
have taken place between full-blooded Negroes and white women, and it is alleged that the results of
these marriages have often been unhappy. Although Harvard again and again asserts its superiority to
race prejudice by receiving Negroes amongst its alumni, or conferring degrees on N^roes, and although
many of the more notable philo-Negro philanthropists, male and female, hail from the Athens of the
United States, there has been a tendency lately rather to tire of this enthusiasm and to profess to find
the educated Negro a bumptious and irksome personage in Boston society, from which, indeed, he is
being politely but firmly excluded. Those persons who discussed this matter with me at Boston cited a
number of instances where social encouragement offered to educated people of colour had resulted in
their becoming — to put it plainly — a bore. They were not content (it was said) with the interchange of
social civilities, but tried to force themselves into the intimacy of the whites. In fact they are already
classed in the English slang, which, together with other British tendencies, is making Boston less
foreign to London than is Edinburgh or Dublin, as ''bounders." This tendency of thought, whether it
be just or unjust, is worth regarding, as it is slightly affecting already the attitude of Massachusetts
towards the colour question.

^ To make these questions clearer to my English readers, I would remind them that down to 1863 there
were fourtren States which upheld Slavery as a lawful institution: Virginia, Maryland, North
Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Missouri,
Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. There were, however, only eleven States which
seceded in 186 1 : Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Alabama,
Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. The other three on the northern borderland between
Slave and Free either remained faithful to the Union or were controlled by the Executive at Washington.
The western part of Virginia was also detached from the Slave and Secession cause, and therefore after
the Civil War was begun was made in 1863 into a separate State, and never having possessed many
slaves or negro inhabitants took henceforth the side of the North in its public policy towards n^roes.
But the Elez'en States of the Secession have remained to this day apart from the rest of America in their
domestic policy towards the negro and people of colour with any drop of black blood in their veins.
Here alone — except perhaps in the Transvaal, Orange State, and Natal of British South Africa — does
the racial composition of a citizen (and not mere dirtiness, drunkenness, or inability to pay) exclude him
or her from municipal or national privileges and public conveniences otherwise open to all and paid for
by all.

THE NEGRO AS CITIZEN 477

qualifications required for the registration of a voter in the Southern States does
not seem to exclude any slightly educated negro or negroid, and few people
would plead for the vote to be given to an absolutely illiterate man. In
Mississippi the vote is refused to persons who have not paid taxes, who
"cannot read or understand the United States Constitution"; and no doubt
this last test can be strained to exclude many Negro citizens. In Louisiana
an applicant for the vote must be able to read and write or possess $300, or be
the son or grandson of a person qualified to vote on January, 1867. The first
two alternative conditions, coupled with a knowledge of the U.S.A. Con-
stitution, are conditions of the vote in South Carolina. In Virginia the
applicant must be able, six months before
the date of the election, to show that he has
paid all his State poll-tax for the three
preceding years — a "tiresome," meticulous
condition which no doubt serves as a
useful sieve to exclude many N^ro would-
be voters.

Still in the published text of voting
qualifications of the Southern States there
is not much to explain why in the year
1909 there are so few Negro voters on the
franchise-roll of these States.

In the same way the Coloured man is
shut out almost entirely from the municipal
franchise in the Southern States. Therefore
he has no effective say as to the manner in
which public moneys (to which he is a
contributor) are expended. He can put
in no effective protest against the utterly
indefensible system of the boycotting of one
race by another — the forcing of negroes or
any person with the least (supposed) drop
of negro blood in their veins to ride in
special railway-cars or in a railed -off part of

the tram-cars ; their being unable to go to waitihc the 'juffrace

the samechurch.theatre, hotel, public library, whkh.if h»rdworkeonni»tM»oyihiiig ihe
and often public park, as the white man. negcai Hcbiy dt«rv«

Surely this procedure, which prevails
throughout the whole Slave States, is a breach of the Fourteenth Amendment
of the United States Constitution? However that may be, it persists; and it
is sought to excuse it by the plea that the common use of ail public buildings,
vehicles, etc., might lead to social intercourse between the sacred white people
and their coloured fellow-citizens. And social intercourse might lead . . . not
to intermarriage, for that is forbidden by law in most of the seceded States,
but to the concubinage of the white with the black. Further argument leads
to a reference to that obsession of the South : attempts at rape or indecent
assault on the part of negroes against white women.

Yet with all these imperfections in the social acceptance of the coloured
people of the United States — imperfections which with time and patience and
according to the merits of the Neo-negro will disappear — the main fact was
evident to me after a tour through the Eastern and Southern States of North

478 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

America : that nowhere in the world — certainly not in Africa — has the Negro
been given such a chance of mental and physical development as in the United
States.

Also that nowhere else has the Negro so greatly availed himself of his
opportunities. Intellectually, and perhaps physically, he has attained his
highest degree of advancement as yet In the United States. Politically he
is freer there, socially he is happfer than in any other part of the world.

From the point of view of happiness this statement may be called in ques-
tion. I may be reminded that the negroes of the British West Indies, or of Haiti,
or of Brazil are theoretically happier than their brethren in the United States,
because it is imagined by people who do not know intimately tropical America,
or who are not good observers, that the banana and certain other food products
grow luxuriantly and without the assistance of human labour, that the negro
enjoys an intensely hot climate and under such
tropical conditions has the best of health. This
is not the case. Food perhaps in some parts of
the West Indies is easier come by than in North
America: it is certainly cheaper, but then, on the
other hand, the public wealth is much less. But
it is not so varied or so good as it is in North
America, where the whole resources of a continent
ranging from the Arctic to the Tropic are by a
network of railways and thousands of steamers
placed at the negroes' disposal, so that fresh or
preserved he can with the money at his command
live far better not only than his brethren in tropical
America and Africa, but even than the European
artisan, with the exception of the people of France
and the United Kingdom. In America, moreover,
he has his own excellent theatres and many
^''of''^th'e*Vuthern^'un'ited oppoi'tunities for hearing music, good, bad, and
STATES indifferent. He has access to some of the finest

Shrewd, riiik, and ihrifiy and most Conveniently appointed libraries in the

world. The climate also is more reasonable. It is
a mistake to assume the negro is fond of the sun's heat or of a muggy atmo-
sphere. He endures these discomforts better than we do and is physically
much better suited than we are to exist in a perpetual Turkish-bath atmosphere.
But Just as his ideal of beauty is the same as ours, so probably is his ideal
climate. No region of Africa, however elevated, has proved too cold for negro
habitation. By a curious coincidence some of the plateau regions and high
mountains in that continent are at the present time uninhabited and open to
the white man, but this has arisen more from intertribal feuds and struggles
for the possession of them than dislike to the cold climate of these altitudes.
In North .America the negro probably stands cold as well as the white man
does, and in North America and South Africa his race is as much stimulated
to better physical and mental development by a temperate climate as is the
case with the Caucasian.

The present Negro and Negroid population of the United States is about
10,000,000.* The pure white population is about 79,000,000. Another million
of Amerindians, Mongolians, and other non-Caucasian types makes up the
approximate present total of 90,000,000.

THE NEGRO AS CITIZEN 481

The "white" element in this assemblage of peoples increases monthly by
leaps and bounds, by immigration, by a very fair birth-rate, and by the
absorption of the Amerindian (who is almost of the " White-man " sub-species).
The Negroes and Negroids are not increasing in North America at anything
like the same rate. They yearly lose a fringe of their race — -the " near-
whites" by their absorption into the white community — in the West, perhaps,
or the North Centre, where the newer peoples are not so particular about
racial tabu. Death (from neglect, improper food, infectious diseases) still takes
twice as heavy a toll from negro babyhood as from the white nursery.
Mulattoes are less prolific (ordinarily) than
pur< whites and pure blacks. Phthisis kills
annually as many negroes or mulattoes as
it do-;s Caucasians ; pneumonia is still more
deadly in the negro community. Except
a few thousand West Indians and Central
American people of colour, the Dark race
receives no recruits from the world outside
the United States.

In 1790 the Negro element formed 19
per cent of the total population of the
United States [7S7i2o8 Negroes as against ■
3,172,006 Whites]; in 1880 the percentage
had dropped to 13-1, in 1900 to 11-6. In
Delaware, Maryland, the District of Co-
lumbia, Virginia, North and South Caro-
lina, the (native) White population was
increasing between 1890 and 1900 at the
rate of 292 per cent, and the Negro in
the same States at the rate of only 199
per cent.

On the other hand, in West Virginia,
Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma,
and Arkansas the Coloured people are in-
creasing faster than the Whites.

And the solution will probably be that
the two races— white-skinned and brown- 39^ the kegro and the

skinned — will co-exist In amity and com- stars and stripes

mon American citizenship on the 3,000,000

square miles of the United States. Whilst ten millions of Aframericans are
slowly increasing to twenty millions between Florida and Alaska, two, three,
four, five millions of Euramericans will be leaving the North American
continent for Central America and South America and the paradises of the
West Indies.

For in cleansing Cuba and in making the Panama Canal, the white
American has learnt the secret of the Tropics: of how to live under an
Equatorial sun amid torrential rain, and yet by exterminating or avoiding
insect poisoners to keep his health and vigour.

In the larger Imperialism of to-morrow, when the influence of the English.

French, and German-speaking White man extends from Cape Columbia (in

Grinnell Land) to Cape Horn, there will be room in between his stride and

his thrones for brother peoples of darker skins but equal brains. In that

482 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

day, when the white American meets his brown-skinned brother on equal
terms in the mart, the exchange, the university, and the theatre, he will, if
he comes across them in some old book of the early twentieth century, smile
at the rude diatribes of a Vardaman and frown at the discourtesy of a
departed Dean of a Missouri Medical College.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

THE following is an approximately correct summary of the numbers
and distribution of the Negroes and Negroids in the New World at
the close of 1909 : —

Dominion of Canada (about) .....

30,000

United States (say) ......

10,000,000

Bermudas .......

12,500

British Honduras ......

37,000

West Indies—

Bahamas ..... 44,000

Jamaica and Dependencies . . . 810,000

Cuba ...... 609,000

Hispaniola (mainly Haiti) . . 2,900,000

Porto Rico ..... 375,000

British Leeward Islands , . . 125,000

Danish Islands .... 30,000

Dutch Islands .... 30,000

French Islands .... 330,000

British Windward Islands . . 163,000

Barbados ..... 180,000

Trinidad and Tobago . . 160,000

•

5,756,000

Panama (40,000) and the rest of Central America (say 40,000) .

80,000

Venezuela and Colombia (say) .....

60,000

British Guiana .......

118,000

Dutch Guiana .......

85,000

French Guiana .......

22,500

Brazil (about) .......

8,300,000

Remainder of South America (say) ....

90,000

Total

24,591,000

Only round figures are employed in this calculation, and a slight reduction
has been made on all estimates that were vague. The total, therefore, is
scarcely likely to be an over-estimate of the proportionate importance of the
negro peoples in the two Americas.

This 24.^91,000 of the African race in the New World (including its ten
millions of hybrids with the White peoples) may be contrasted with the

483

484 THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

110^^0,000 Whites of European origin or descent, the 20,8^^,000 hybrids
between the White and the Amerindian ; the 16,000,000 of pure-blood Amer-
indian and Eskimo ; and the jgj^ooo Asiatics (216,000 East Indian, 150,000
Chinese, 27,000 Japanese) which combine to form the population of the New
World. It will be noticed that in point of numbers the Negroes and Negroids
come second in the list, though they are hard pressed by the yellow peoples of
mixed Amerindian and Caucasian blood. The last-named can with difficulty
be kept long from fusion, political and social, with the White race in the
Americas — the distinction even now is rather fanciful — and this union would
materially increase the proportial importance of the whites, an importance to be
further augmented, as time goes on, by the ranging of the Amerindian on the
side of the Caucasian. To the White man's community again will surely
gravitate the descendants of at least four millions out of the ten million
mulattoes, octoroons, and " near- whites " (the negroid hybrids) which are at
present classed with the " coloured " or negro people of the United States,
West Indies, Brazil, and Spanish-speaking America. Then if this Caucasian-
Amerindian-Octoroon fusion be already assumed (producing as an ultimate result
a series of racial types extremely like those of modern Europe), we shall find
ourselves discussing a New World with a population divided into two racial
groups : (i) the White or Caucasian (mingled with the Amerindian and tinged as
are the Mediterranean peoples with a little Negroid intermixture) amounting at
the present time to nearly 14.0,000,000 ; and (2) the dark-skinned Negro, now
over 20,000,000 in numbers, if in our calculations we class with him the negroid
mulattoes. For reasons to be found in contemporary literature (some of which
are quoted in this book) it would seem probable that the rate of increase is
likely to be the same in both groups for a considerable time to come ; so that
we may not see during the first half of the twentieth century any displace-
ment of the relative strength in numbers of the " White " and the " Coloured "
people in the Western Hemisphere.

INDEX

Abercromby, Sir Ralph, 308, 328

Abyssinia, 418

Acadians, the, 448

Adams, Lewis (Negro philanthropist \ 405

Aery, Mr. Wm., xvi, 393

Aeta negritos of Philippines, 5, 26

'* Affranchis, les," in Haiti, 143

Aframerican, the : and Music, 390 ; numbers in

the United States, 481
Africa, 15; former habitability of, 33-4
African Methodist Church, 386
Agassiz, Louis, and his remarks on Brazil, 90 et

seq, , 99 ; and slavery, 90 et seq.
Agaves, 180, 238, 302

Agriculture, Board of. United States, 420, 425
Agricultural Department, Imperial, of the British

West Indies, xii {preface)
Agricultural Education : in British Guiana, 335 ;

in the West Indies, xii, 272 ; in the United

States, 420, 425
Ailhaud (French Commissioner), 148
Ainu people, 31
Alabama, xiv, 137, 366 ; scenery of, 404-5,

426-8, 432-3 ; industries of, 435-9 J ^"^

slavery, 357, 366, 369, 373, 380: and the

French, 137 et seq., 369, 380; death penalty

in, 370 ; and its roads, 421
Alaska, 481
Albinism, 3
Alcohol and the negro, 83, 419, 457, 463, 469;

and the Amerindian, 127, 331
Alcorn Agricultural University, 401
Alexander VI, Pope, 38
Alexis, Nord, General, President of Haiti, 165-7,

203-4
Algeria, 172, 219
Alleghany Mts., 376, 404
AUengreene N. and I. Institute, 403
Alligator, the, 75, 282-3, 244
Almeida, Dr. P. de, 107
Alsatian colonists in Guiana, 132-3
Amazons River, 108
Amendments, the celebrated, to United States

Constitution dealing with the negro's position,

366-7, 477
America and its indigenous races, 31 ^/ seq, ;

natural food supply for early man, 32
American Anti-Slavery Society, 359
American Civil War (1861-5), 365-7, 388
American "Indians*': see Amerindian
American War of Independence (1777-83), 353
American Missionary Association, the, 388, 399
American Missionary Schools, 408

American (United States) Influence and work
in Cuba, 68>9, 75-6 ; in Santo Domingo, 50-1,
181, 205 ; in Haiti, 161-2, 167, 198

Americans and yellow fever, 20, 68, 285

Amerindian races and tribes, considered anthro-
pologically, 2, 14, 31 et seq,, 99, 106-8, 397 ;
lack of virility amongst, 34 ; attitude of Roman
Church towards, 35, 38

Amerindians (American Indians) of North
America, 31, 358, 388, 390, 396-7, 404; of
Peru, 32 ; of Cuba, Hispaniola, and the
Antilles, 32 et seq,^ 35, 3S, 51, 57 et seq,,
130-1, 134, 142-3, 181, 184 : of Brazil, 32 et
seq.f 54-6, 78, 99, 106-8 ; of Trinidad, 312 ; of
British Honduras, 326; of Guiana, 127, 336

Anaemia : in Negroes and Whites, causes of, 17-
20, 300

Ancylostomum (Hook-worm), 16 ^/ seq.

Andamanese Negroes, 5, 9-10, 19, 26

And r OS Id., 294-5, Z^^

Anglo-Saxondom, definition of,'68; and the Negro,
129

Angola and the slave-trade, 81, 92, ill, 343

Anguilla, 228, 232, 237-8

Anne, Queen, and the slave-trade, 39, 355

Anno Bom Id., 40

Anopheles mosquitoes, 16, 212, 285

Anthropological Institute, Royal, xvi, 9

Antigua, Id. of, 132, 134, 208, 228-32, 237-8

Antilles, the Greater, 194, 239, 306

Antilles, the Lesser, 134, 305-6

Anti-Slave-Trade and -Slavery Movement
in Britain, 338 et seq, ; commencement, 250,
338 ; renewal in 1823-33, 342-3

Apprentices, white, in the West Indies and North
America, 338

Arabia, 27-8, 248

Arabi (Negro leader), 124

Arabs, the, 29-30, 172, 248, 375

Arawak " Indians," 32 etseq.^ 134, 294, 336, 338

Archer, William (articles on American negro),
470

Ardouin, B. (Haitian writer), 145

Argentine Republic, 47

Arguin Id., no, 124, 133

Arkansas, 481 ; becomes a state, 358; and slavery,
358, 366 ; and education, 400

Armstrong, General, S.C, xi, 387-8, 403,
405

Artibonite River, 147, 182

Ashanti negroes and language, 13, 48, ill, 247,
276

Ashmun, Jehudi, 386

4^5

486

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Asiastic Negroes, 5 ei seq.^ 17, 19, 26

"AsiENTo"* (The Slave-Trade CoNTRAcr),
39 et seq., 81, 133-4, 248-9

Aspinail, Mr. A. E., xv, 219, 331, 349

Assembly, National, of France and Haiti, 144-6

Assembly, House of, in Bahamas, 210 ; Ber-
muda, 210; Barbados, 221-6; Jamaica, 231,
255 et seq, , 262

Assyrians (connected with Negroes), 27, 268

Atlanta, Georgia, 400

Atlanta University, 400

Auberteuil, Hilliard d', 141 et seq.

Augustine, St. , town of, 358

Auka Bush Negroes, 124

Austen, Mr. E. E. (on disease-carryingmosquitoes,
eic,)f preface, 16

Australoid races, I et seq., 10 ei seq., 25-7, 32

Austriansand Brazil, 109

Author : see Johnston, Sir Harry

Autumn foliage in the United States, 389, 405,

427
Aux Cayes, 48

Azuey, Lake, 179, 186-7

Bacteria, bacilli, 16, 21

Bahama Islands, The: 210, ig^etseq. ; geo-
logy and scenery of, 294, 302 ; vegetation and
cultivation, 296, 302, 304 ; Amerindian naiives
of, 294-5 ; negroes of, 9, 16, 299-300 ; history
and government of, 208, 295-300

Bahia, 84-S> 9S» ^^7

Baker, Mr. Ray Stannard (writings on the negro

problem), 461, 468, 470
Baldwin, William H., 406
Balfour, Governor B. T. (Bahamas), 299
Bai/f Narrative of Charles (a runaway negro),

362, 375. 464
Baltimore (U.S.A.), 9, 16, 473

Bamboos, 70, 289, 421, 427

Banana, the : origin, 78 ; in Jamaica, 264-5, 281,
284-5

Bananas, Wild, 284-5, 289

Bantu negroes (and languages), 24-5, 28

Baptist Church, and Baptists, 64, 237 ; in
Jamaica, 250, 253, 256 et seq,f26g ; in Guiana,
335; in U.S.A., 382, 400

Baptist Missionary Society, 256-7, 264

Barbados, Island of: 16, 211 et seq. : sugar-
cane brought to, 78 ; area, 228 ; population,
220, 225 ; scenery of, 225-6 ; climate of, 285 ;
education of, 223-5 * the Barbadian negro, 217,
218, 225, 227-8, 338; legislature of, 221-3;
franchise in, 222; discovery of, 211 ; negroes
landed in, 211-12, 220 ; condition of, 16 ; under
slavery, 213-18, 220-2 ; representative institu-
tions, 222-3 ; exports and imports, 228 ; birds
of, 226

Barbuda, Id. of, 228, 238

Barclay, President, of Liberia, 133, 157, 227-8

Barthel^my, Id. of St., 131, 167, 171

Bates, H. W. (and Brazil), 93, 212

Battell, Andrew, 81

Baxter, Richard (Anti-Slavery), 338

Bay Ids., the, 308, 323-4

Bayous, or swamps, 378-9, 428

Bay-rum, 349

Beare, Mr. O'SuUivan, xiv, 94

Beaufort County (South Carolina), 399

Beauvais (mulatto general), 147, 152

Bed ward, and the Bedwardite Baptists, 269

Beecher-Stowb, Harriet, 355, 361-2, 442-3,

451
Beetroot, as a source of sugar, 247, 290

Belize, 321-3

Bellecoml)e, M. de, 142, 145

Benezet, Anthony, 339, 354

Benguela, 81, 343

Benin, 82-3, 343

Bequia Id., 307, 311

Berbice, xii, 124, 329-30

Beri-beri, 15

Bermudas Ids., 208 et seq.

Biassou (Haitian leader), 149 et seq.

Bible, the, 68, 285, 392-3

Biddle University, 400

Bigelow- House, Miss G., 398

Biikarzia, 16

Biology, should be taught to negroes, 20-1,

285. 393
Birds, 73-5, 177, 179, 190, 226, 281-2, 291-2,

302, 389, 427-8

Birmingham, 435, 437

Birmingham (Ala.), 435-7

Birth-rate and Statistics, 107 ; in Brazil,
107 ; in British Guiana, 336 ; in Haiti, 182 ;
in Jamaica, 272, 275; Cayman Ids., 292; in
U.S. A., 481

Blackwater Fever (see HamogIobinuria\ 16

Blanchelande, Governor of St. Domingue, 147

Blanco, Pedro (slave-trader), 41

Bloodhounds, 47, 243-4, 377-9

Blyden, Dr. E. W., 347

Boisrond-Canal, President of Haiti, 163-4

Bolivar, General, 48, 160

Bonibax (silk-cotton) tree, 127-8, 289 : see also
Ceiba

Bonni negroes (Guiana), 125

Borneo, natives of, 31-2

Bomo, Marc (Haitian leader), 147

Boston (Mass.) and the n^ro, 359, 367, 476;
and its English accent, 476 ; and its British
tendencies, 476

Boswell, James, 340

Botocudos Amerindians, 107

Bouckman (a negro leader in Haiti), 146

Bourbons, the, 150

Boyer, General (President of Haiti), 147, 160
et seq.

Bozzolo, Dr. (on parasitic worms), 19

Brains of different human races, 10

Branch Normal College, 400

Brazil, 32, 35, 38, 42, 81 et seq. ; scenery of,
91, 101-2 ; area of, 106; population of, 106;
discovery of, by Portuguese, 77 ; settlement by
French, 78 ; by Dutch, 81 ; Portuguese colon-
isation of, 78 et seq., 109; independence of, 85 ;
Emperor of, 85, 95 ; and the slave-trade, 82,
87 et seq. ; negroes in, 16, 42, %\ et seq., 94
et seq. ; citizenship in, ico ; and slavery, 42, 89
et seq. , 98 ; and slave laws, 89 et seq. , 98 ; and
Amerindians, 78 ; and the Roman Catholic
Church, 90-1 ; religion in, 103

Brazil wood, 77, 295

Braziletto wood, 295

Brazilians, Modern, 104-5

Brazilian Negroes and West Africa, 9S

INDEX

487

Breda, Comte de, 157

Breda, the Peace of, 113

Bretons and French America, 132, 135

Bridgetown, Barbados, 211 et seq,, 217, 221, 225
et seq.

Bridgewater (Somerset), 339

Bridgewater versus Bristol, 339

Brissot (Anti-Slavery reformer, France), X44

Bristol and the slave-trade, 338-9

British, the (also British Government) and the
slave-trade, 40-1, 338 et seq,<, 343 ; and Brazil
(r^arding slavery), 82 ; and Dutch Guiana,
124-5, 327-^ ; «Tid Haiti, 150-2, 162-3 ^' ^^9'*
and Barbados 211 ^/ seq. ; and Honduras and
Central America, 321 et seq.; and Trinidad,
312 et seq.; and the Windward Ids., 306
et seq.; and Bahamas, 295 et seq.; and
Jamaica, 239 et seq,, 262, 272 ; and Guiana,
328 et seq.

British Guiana, 125, 329 et seq.

British Honduras, 321 et seq.

Bromeliacea^ 70, 238, 288-90

Brooks, Preston S. , 362-3

Brooks, Mr. Theodore, xv, 76

Brougham, Lord, and slave-trade, 342

Brown, John (anti-slavery martyr), 363-4, 372

Bryant, William Cullen, 362

Bryce, Rt. Hon. James, xiv, 368, 404

Buccaneers: origin of name, 51, 135; settle-
ment in Tortuga, Haiti, and Cayman Ids., 135
et seq., 292, 344

Buggy, the American, 421

Bunyan, John, 402

Burton, Sir Richard, 92-3

Bush Negroes in America and West Indies, 124,
307 ; in Guiana, ix, 113-14 et seq., 125-8

Bushman Race, 2, 5 et seq., 8, ii, 20-1, 27

Buttrick, Dr., xiv

Buxton, Charles, 342, 354

Buxton, Sir Thomas Fowell (first Baronet), 270-1,
342, 354

Caboclo (civilised Amerindian), 56, 107-8
Cabral (discovers Brazil), 38, 77
Cacao (chocolate), 78, 113, 175, 238, 264, 318-19
Cacti, 54, 73, 179, 183-4, 200, 210, 289, 290-1,

320
Cafiizo (Negrindian), 56, 106-8
Caicos Ids., 210-11

Caiman, the (a genus of Crocodiles), 282
Cairnes, John E., 43
Calabar, Old, 81, 264, 276, 307, 343
Calhoun School, 403
California and slavery, 360
Cailicarpa americana, 426
Cameroons, the, 247, 264, 307, 343
Campbell, Mr. George W. (a founder of Tuske-

gee Institute), 405
Campbell, Mr. T. M., 422, 425
Canada, Canadians, 69, 130-1, 133, 137 et seq.^

264, 376, 459
Canary Islands and Islanders, 36 et seq. , 78, 449
Cannibalism : (Amerindian), 33, 108 ; (Negro),

84, 147, 194, 247
Canning, George (Prime Minister), 253, 342
Canot, Theodore, 41
Cap Fran9ais (Haiti), 142, 150, 152
Cape Haitien, 154, 160, 161 -5

Cape of Good Hope, 343

Cappelle, Dr. H. van (and Dutch Guiana), xvi,

129
Caramaru, 78

Cardwell, Mr. (Secretary of State), 257
Caribs : of the West Indies, 32, 130 et seq., 233,

237, 306-8, 338 ; of Guiana, 98, 329, 336 ;

the Black Caribs, 307-8, 323-6
Carlyle, Thomas, 360
Carnegie, Mr. Andrew, xii, 406, 409
Carter, Governor Sir Gilbert, 301-2
Carter, Miss M. H., 18
Carvalho, Dr. Bulhdes de, 107
Carver, Professor (Tuskegee), 416-17, 418
"Cascos" (mulattoes), 55
Cathartes, 75, 177, 282, 292
Cattle : in the British West Indies, 238, 281 ;

in Danish West Indies, 349 ; in Brazil, 102 ;

in Haiti, 50, i34-5» I35i 197 ; in the United

States, 410, 42§-9
Caucasian, the (European), sub-species, races,

type, etc. (see also White man), i et seq.^ 4, 6,

10 et seq., 25, 29-31
Cayenne, 112, 125, 130-3, 167, 171-2
Cayenne pepper (capsicum) : (used as a a torture),

373 ; as a condiment, 232
Cayman Ids., 392-3
Ceard, 107
Cedar, of the West Indies and Honduras, 208,

293. 295. 304
Ceiba (Bombax) tree, 127-8, 289

Central America, 31-2; and the negro, 47;
and the Inter-Oceanic Canal, 322-3

Cereus cacti, 54, 73, 179, 1 84

Cestos River (Liberia), 41

Chacon, Don J. M. (Governor of Trinidad), 311

Chamberlain, Dr. Leander, xiv

Chamberlain, Governor David H., South Caro-
lina, 367

Chamberlain, Mr. H.,400

Channing, William £., 362

Charles I (of Great Britain), 295, 344

Charles II (of Great Britain), 112, 215, 228,

295» 352
Charles V (of Spain and the Empire), 38-9

Charles X (of France), 161

Charleston (S.C.), 212, 353, 358, 360, 368,

383
Charlotte, Queen, 354
Charlotte-Amalia, 348-9
Chavannes, J. B., 145-6
Chesapeake Bay, 389
Chile, Republic of, 31, 47
Chinese: anthropologically, 7, 11 et seq. ; as

labourers and emigrants in America and the

West Indies, 58, 125, 127, 170, 236, 237, 272,

279. 326, 332, 336, 384, 475, 484
Cholera, 255, 264
Christian VI (Denmark), 350
Christian VII (Denmark), 347
Christianity and the Amerindian, 35, 38 ; and

the Haitians, 193 ; and other negroes, 225,

230, 269 et seq., 350
Christiansborg, 344-%
Christophe, Henri, Haitian general, 154,

159-61 ; King of Northern Haiti, 160-I
Christopher, St. (St. Kitts), 20, 134, 208

228-30, 232, 237-8

488

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Church of England: and Episcopal Protes-
tant Church in the United States, 64, 382, 401 ;
attitude towards the Negro, 64, 382 ; in Bar-
bados, 215, 223, 225 ; Leeward Ids., 237 ;
in Jamaica, 257-8, 268--9 ; its attitude towards
the Slavery question in Great Britain, 338, 341 ;
in United States, 382, 401

Church of the Disciples of Christ (Jamaica),
269

Church of Humanity, The New, 285

Church Missionary Society, 264

Church, Roman Catholic, in America: its
attitude towards the Amerindian, vi, 35, 38 ;
towards the N^ro, 37 et seq.^ 42 et seq.^ 47,
90^/ seq,^ 382, 401 ; in Santo Domingo, 49 ;
in Cuba, 64; in Haiti, 64, 136, 162 et seq.^
174, 188; in Brazil, 90 et seq. ; in Dutch
Guiana, 129 ; in Dominica, 235-6 ; in Jamaica,
268; in Trinidad, 317; in British Guiana,
336 ; in United States, 382, 401

Citrus fruits, 175, 238, 291, 302-4

Claflin University, 400

Clarkson, Thomas, 339-43

Qodd, Edward, 393

Cocaine (drug used by negroes), 419

Cock-fighting, 61-2, 185

Coco-nut palm in Dutch Guiana, 113; Cayman
Ids., 293

Code Noir (slave legislation of Louis XIV), 135
et seq,, 142

Codrington, Christopher, 224

Codrington, William, 224

Codrington College, 222, 224-5

Codrington family, 238

Coffee : introduction of, to Tropical America, 78,
167, 248; in Haiti, 139, 165, 204; in French
West Indies, 167 ; in Jamaica, 248

Colbert and French colonisation, seventeenth
century, 130

Colombia, Republic of, 35, 108 ; and the Negro,

47-8
Colonial Office and Governor Eyre, 257-8
*• Colour Question," vii, viii, 2, 12 ; in Cuba,

60 ; in Dominica, 236 ; in Jamaica, 2>5, 277-8 ;

in British Guiana, 337 ; in British Honduras,

326 ; in Brazil, 99-100 ; in Haiti, 141-2 et seq.,

148 ; in United States, 397, 416, 418, 477-8,

481-2, 484
Columbia, Federal District of (Washington),

365-6
Columbus, Christopher, 134, 179
Columbus, Dieco, 42 ; Dominico, 134
Commowijne (Komowain) River, (Guiana), 124
Condorcet (French Anti-Slavery reformer), 144
Congo, thr River, and Congoland generally,

28, 33-4, 82-4, 133, 300, 343, 371
Congo (Kongo) Negroes, 81, 83 ^/ seq., 276
Congo pygmies, 2, 9, 14, 19, 28
Connecticut and slavery, 355, 362, 363, 368
Congregationalist (Independent) Church, 335,

382
Constabulary, Royal Irish, 264
Constituant Assembly, the, of Paris, 144, 148
Cooley, Miss R. B., xi, 398
Coolies, 113, 126, 1 70-1 : see Kulis
Cope, E. D. (biologist), 393
Coppename River, 112
Corantyn (Korantain) River, 124

Cotton : its introduction into the Bahamas,
296, 302 ; introduced into Georgia and the
Southern United States, 353 ; its connection
with the Civil War in the United States, viii ;
its cultivation by the modern United States
negro, 384, 428, 472; in the Virgin Ids.
and Montserrat, 238

Cotton Kingdom (book by F. L. Olmsted), 373,

375. 379
Courland, Duke of, 344

Courlanders in the West Indies, 317, 344

Crabs, land-crabs, 32, 232

Cranial capacity in the human races, 10, 25, 31

Creole, Creoles : origin of word, 54-5, 235, 317

Creole French, 49, 133, 185-7, 306, 311, 317,

448, 450
Crime : in the Bahamas, 303 ; in Cuba, 67 ;

in British Guiana, 335-6 ; in Jamaica, 278-9 ;

amongst the negroes in the United States, 456

et seq.
Crocodiles, 75, 282

Croix, St., Id. of (Santa Cruz), iii, 134
Cromwell, Oliver, and the Navigation Laws,

208 ; and Jamaica, 239, 262
Cross River, West Africa ("Moko" negroes),

247, 307i 343
Crotopkaga, 75, 29 1

Cruelty to the Negro, 113 et seq., 140,
146-7, 159, 216 et seq., 253-4, 260, 263, 297-^,
328, 372-9, 464-5

Crusaders, the, 21, 53, 406

Cuba : Amerindians of, 57 et seq. ; area of, 58 ;
population of, 57 ; negroes of, 57-63 ; scenery
of, 69 et seq. ; mountains of, 70 ; palms of, 69
et seq. ; birds of, 73-5 ; crocodiles of, 75 ;
Spanish architecture of towns, 69, 75-6; racial
elements, 57 ^/ seq. ; witchcraft in, 66 ; what
should be the national colours of, 1 73 ; and
slave laws, slave trade, 41, 47; a ** White**
country, 59 ; Cuba and modem Spanish immi-
gration, 57, 59 et seq. ; and the French, 132

Cuckoos, 75, 291

Cundall, Mr. Frank, 272, 293

Custom-house frauds in Haiti, 165-6, 204

Cycads, 70

Daaga and his mutiny (Trinidad), 314

** Dagos," 450

Dahomb : original name, Dauma, 133 ; connec-
tion with slave-trade, 81-2, 133, 300, 343;
with Brazil, 98; with Toussaint Louverture,
157 ; natives of, 82, 133, 157, 227, 276, 314

Damaraland, Damara negroes (S.W. Africa), 23-4

Dances, Negro, 66, 92-3, 135, 194

Danton and slavery, 150

Davis, Jefferson (President of Confederated
States), 443-4

De Bow, J. O. B. (Maryland slavery champion),
382

Deer in Cuba and the West Indies, 75, 238

Delaware and slavery, 353-4, 365 ; and education,
401

Delgado, General M., 60

Demerara, 124, 327-30»45S

Dengue fever, 15

Denmark, Danes: and the slave-trade, iii,
343» 344 ^^ seq. ; and slavery, 476, 34 et seq. ;
and the West Indies, 345 et seq.

INDEX

489

Desert, Dr. E., 157

Dbssalinbs, J. J. : Haitian general, 154, 159,

177; Emperor of Haiti, 15^^
Dkvil, the real, xiii, 14, 225, 271, 293
Diamonds in Brazil, 81-2, 104 ; in Guiana, 337
Dickens, Charles, and the Eden Settlement, 440-1
Dieppe and West Africa, 130, 133
DiUwyn, William, 340
Diseases of the Negro, 15 et seg., 87-8, 195,

211, 286-7, 300, 402, 481
Dober, Leonard, 350

Dochmius (worm) : see Ancylostomum^ 16 et seq.
Dogs and negroes, 147, 177, 243-4, 377-9
Domingue, President of Haiti, 163
Domingue, St. (Haiti), 134, 139 et seq, : see St.

Domingue
Dominica Id., 2%2-S; history of, 131, 233-4,

340 ; scenery of 231-2 ; negroes of, 232 e/ srq.,

337 ; land-crabs of, 232
Dominican Republic (see also Santo Domingo),

49 e/ seq.y 181 ^/ seq,
Domingans, 50-1, 142, 181, 184-5
Douglass, Frederick (coloured diplomatist), 425
Drake, Francis, 53
Dravidian race (India), 2, 318
Dred Scott decision, 361-2
Dubini, Professor, on Hook-worms, 16-17
DuBois, W. E. B., xv, 386, 400, 401, 418, 468,

470
Du Casse, Governor of St. Domingue, 249
Duckworth, Mr. W. L. H., 9, 10, 31
Dumas, Alexandre, 56
Dupont^s, P. Chemin (Les Petites Antilles^ 42,

168, 170
Durham University, 225
Dutch (Guiana, iio et seq,, 129 (as a Negro

Paradise), 327 et seq.
Dutch planters of the olden time, the, 1 16-17

et seq,
Dutch, the*, and Guiana, vii, 78, no et seq.,

328; and Brazil, 81 ; and the slave-trade, no

et seq., 126, 133, 343 ; and slavery, 47, 81, 112

et seq., 328 ; and the abolition of slavery, 126 ;

and the Jews, 112, 115, 127, 268; in North

America, 352
Dutch women in Guiana, 1 14-15
Dutch West India Companies, no et seq., 113,

120, 123, 125, 327-8
Dutch West Indies, in- 12, 126
Dysentery, 15-16, 87, 402

Earthquakes, 154, 16 1-2, 248, 272, 284, 286-

7, 305-6
East Indians, 113, 126, 161, 237, 272, 311,

3>7-i9. 321, 327, 332-3. 336 : see also Kulis
East Indian students, 392
East Tennessee Normal and Industrial Institute,

403
Ecuador, Kepublic of: Amerindians, 35 ; slavery

in, 47

Education of free negroes, Amerindians, etc. :

in Brazil, 103 et seq. ; in the British West

Indies, preface, 238, 224 ; in Barbados, 222-5 '>

in British Guiana, 334-5 ; in British Honduras,

326-7 ; in Dutch Guiana, 129 ; in the French

West Indies, 171 ; in Haiti, 140, 162, 187-90,

204; in the United States, 386, 388 et seq.,

398 et seq., 425 et seq,, 429-30 ; in Jamaica,

270-2, 281, 285; in Bahamas, 300-1 ; in the
Leeward Ids., 237-8 ; Cayman Ids., 293 ; Turks
and Caicos Ids., 21 1

Edward VII, King, 418, 425

Edwards, Bryan, 37, 87, 133, 147, 249, 251,

343
Egrets, 73

Egypt and the Egyptians, 9-10, 12, 14, 18
(hook-worm disease), 22, 27-9

Elamites, a negroid people, 27

Eldon, Lord Chancellor, 341

Elephantiasis, 16

Eleuthera Id., 294-5

Elizabeth, Queen, 352 ; and the slave-trade, 39,
206-7, 352

Ellis, Colonel A. B., 219

Elmina, no

Emancipation of Slaves : under French Code
^oir, 135-7 ; under Spanish laws, 42 ; in
Haiti, 150; in Antigua, 231 ; in Jamaica,
253-4 ; in Bahamas, 298-9 ; in British Guiana,
329-30; in Danish West Indies, 347-8; in
Dutch America, 116; in French West Indies,
168 ; in the United States, 354, 365-6, 388 ;
in Cuba, 42 ; in Brazil, 89, 98 ; in Barbados,
221, 222 ; in Bermuda, 209

Emerson, R. W., 362

English, the: typically, 6; in Morocco, 38,
207-8; in the West Indies, 211-13, 228, 239
etseq., 295, 307 ; in North America, 352 et seq.;
and the slave-trade, 38-40, 81, 206 et seq.,
338 et seq. ; and slavery, 47, 92, 338 et seq.,
342-3, 352 et seq, : see also British

•* Encomienda " decree (1512), 35

Ensley, Alabama, 435

Episcopalian Church of United States, 64, 354,
401

Erianthus reeds, 422, 427

Eskimo, 10, 13, 31

Esnambuc, d* (French pioneer in West Indies),

130
Espinasse, Mons. (Amerindians in Haiti), 184

Essequibo, in, 124, 327, 330

Ethiopian type (negroid), 29

Etienne, the Abb^ Ignace, 94 et seq.

Eupatorium, 426

Europe, i

European races (see also Caucasian), 8, 25

Eyre, Governor, E. J., 244, 255, 256 et seq.,

263, 330

Fallow Deer in the West Indies, 338

Famines in slavery times, 375

Fee, John (founder of first Negro college), 386

Ferdinand VII (of Spain), 49

Fernando Pd, 40, 264

Ferns of Jamaica, 281-2, 289

Ferns, Tree: of Haiti, 180; of Jamaica, 273,

289 ; of Brazil, 102
Fiji Ids., 27

Filaria and filarial worms, filariasis, 16
Firmin, General (a Haitian politician), 165-6
Fisk University, 400
Flagellates, 16
Fleas, 16, 284-5
Flemings, the, 39
Fletcher and Kidder, the Revs., and their book

on Brazil, 92

490

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Flies, i6, 284-5

Flogging of negroes, 90, 116-17 et seq,^ 213,
217. 253-4, 260, 262-3, 297-9, 327, 300, 370,
372-5; of negresses, 1 13-17, 217, 254, 298,
312, 373-4

Florida: and the French, 53, 137; and the
Spaniards, 137, 369 ; and its Amerindian tribes,
358 ; and slavery, 358, 366 ; and the present
condition of the n^ro, 469-70 ; scenery of, 432 ;
coast railway of, 469

Flowers : in Haiti, 178-80 ; in Jamaica, 286-
91 ; in Trinidad, 320 ; in the Southern States,
426-8, 432

Foot, shape of, amon^t negroes, 8

Forest Negro, the (West African type), 28

Forests in the Bahama Ids., 304 ; Brazil, loi

Fourgeoud, Colonel, 125

Fox, Charles (Secretary of State), 340-x

Fox, George, 354

France (and the French) : ancient negroid types
of, 25-6 ; first European nation to dispute
Iberian monopoly of New World, 53, 130 ;
first appearance as a colonising power in
America, 53, 130 et seq, ; and the slave-trade,
47. 131 *' ^eq,y 139, 167, 170, 343; and West
Africa, 130 et seq.^ 139, 167, 170 ; and slavery,
47, 132 et seq., 135 et seq,, 144, 167-9, 3^9 ;
and Toussaint Louverture, 157; and the aboli-
tion of slavery, 150 et seq,^ 168-9; influence
at the present day in America, vii-viii, 167, 171 ;
France and North America, 130-1, 354, 369,
448 ; and Louisiana, 137-8, 369, 380, 448-50 ;
and the Caribs, 130-1 ; and Guiana, 123, 130
et seq,^ 171 ; and Cuba, 75 ; and Brazil, 77-8 ;
and the Antilles, 130 et seq,^ 167-71 ; and
Haiti, 134 et seq,, 140 et seq,^ 161-7, 1^8
et seq.y 193, 204

Franchise for the negro and man of colour : in
Brazil, 100 et seq, ; in British Guiana, 331 ; in
Dutch Guiana, 126 ; in French Antilles, 171 ;
in Haiti, 201 ; in Bermuda, 209-10 ; in Bar-
bados, 222; in the Leeward Ids., 231; in
United States, 366-7, 419, 476-7 ; in Danish
West Indies, 349 ; in Jamaica, 268

Franklin, Washington, 221

Frederick V (Denmark), 350

Frederick VI (Denmark), 346

Freebooters, the, 134

Free Trade and its effect on the West Indies, x,

254-5
Freedman's bureau, 388

Freemasonry, 194

French, Creole, 133 : see Creole French

French Governors-General of Haiti, 135 et seq*^

146-50
French Guiana, 130, 133, 171-2
French, the, and introduction of animals and

plants into the West Indies, 75, 132, 167, 171
French West India Companies, 130
French West Indies, the, 130 et seq.^ 167 et

seq. : see also Martinique, Guadeloupe, St.

Martin, St. Barthel^my
Friends, Society of, 354, 400-1 : see also

Quakers
Frissell, Dr. H. B., xi, xiv, 389
Fruit culture, Tuskegee, 410
Fugitive Slave Law, 360
Fula negroids, 29, 40-1, 94-5

Fumiss, Dr. H.- W., xv, 103 (and in the List of
Illustrations)

Gaboon and the slave-trade, 167, 170, 343

Galas, the (Hamitic negroids), 24, 28, 248

Gambia, the : tribes, river, and colony, 28, 207

Ganda, Ba-, 28

Garrison, William Lloyd, (anti-slavery
writer), 359, 362

Gascojrne, Colonel (opponent of slave-trade
abolition), 341

Gaudens, A. St., 388

Geese, 411, 422

Geffrard, General (President of Haiti), 162-3

Gell, Monday (a negro of Charleston), 358

Genitalia of negroes, 9

George I, 296

George 111,243, 251, 341

Georgia State Industrial College, 400

Georgia, State op: 211, 296, 400, 405, 416,
4291 432 ; and slavery, 46, 352-3, 366, 368,
379> 380 ; and slave laws, 374 ; forbids slave-
trade, 356

Germans : and Hook-worm discoveries, 17 ;
and Brazil, 109 ; and Cuba, 68 ; and the
Island of Tobago (Courlanders), 344 ; in Haiti,
I34» '74; Guiana, 120, 132; and the slave-
trade, 344 ; and the West India Islands, 134,
3^7, 349-5' ; and U.S.A., 68. 381

Gibhs, Archibald Robertson (British Honduras),

323. 325
Gibraltar, fossil man of, i et seq,, 10

Gillreath, Mr. Bclton (a Trustee of Tuskegee),

437

Gtrardtnus : the mosquito-destroying fish of Bar-
bados, 16, 212

Gladstone, W. E. (Prime Minister), 360

Glossina flies, 15-16, 32-3

Gloucester, Duke of, and slave-trade, 341

God : invoked by the French in Haiti, 146 ; by
the British in Barbados, 220 ; in Jamaica, 352 ;
by the Southern aristocracy in the United
States, 368, 382 ; negro ideas of, 128, 193

Godwyn, R«v. Morgan (anti-slavery advocate),

338
Gold Coast, iio, 207, 247, 275, 343

Gold in Tropical America, 172, 337

Goman (negro chief in Haiti), 160

Gomez, General J. M. (President of Cuba), 51

Gonaives, 159

Gordon, George William, 257-63

Goree Id., no, 133

Gorilla, the, 10, 14, 84, 167

Gosse, Philip (birds of Jamaica), 281

** Gothic "Portugal. 98

Grant, Sir J. P. (Governor of Jamaica), 270, 278

Grape fruit, 175, 302, 304

Great Britain and the slave-trade (see also

British, English), 40, 82, 85, 338-43
Greek, Teaching of, 402
Greeks, the (compared to the "Northern**

Americans), 384
Greenland, 349
Greenville, Mississippi, 445
Gr^goire, Henri (Bishop of Blois), 144-5
Grenada, Id. of (Windward Ids.), 130, 161, 306,

308-9. 310
Grenadines, the, 306

INDEX

491

Grenville, Lord, 341

Grimaldi, Grottoes of, and their negroid remains,

10, 25-6
Guatemala and the Negro, 47
Guadeloupe, 78, 12,0 et seq.^ 167-71, 211
Guiana, the Guianas, 32, 78, 107, no et seq,^

130-2 : see also British Guiana, Dutch Guiana,

French Guiana, etc.
Guinea, An Historic Account of, 339, 354
"Guinea- worm," 16
Gynerium reeds, 289
Gypsies in Brazil, 87

Haeckel, Professor, 393

Hamamocba, 16

HcEmoglobinuria, 1 6

Hair : in the Negro, 3 et seq, ; in the European,
II ; in Negroids, 3 ; in Amerindians, il, 99

Haiti*, origin of name, 134; independence of,
154} I59> national emblems of, 160; Golden
Age of, 161 ; army of, 161, 198 et seq. ;
rulers of, 159 et seq,, 197 et seq» ; debt of, 163,
202-3; area of, 181-2; population, 182-3;
etiucation in, 1S7-90 ; commerce of, 203-4 ;
military tyranny of, 159, 161-7, 197-200 ;
scenery and vegetation of, 139-40, 155,
178-80 ; birds of, 179 ; snakes of, 194 ;
Amerindian names for, 134; discovery of,
134 ; colonisation by French, 78, 134 et seq, ;
subsequent history of, 159 et seq, ; Presidents
of, 160 et seq. ; Generals of, 199 ; police of,
199; Emperors of, 159, 162; King of, 160-1 ;
finances of, 163, 193, 202-3 > Press of, 202 ;
negroes of, 141, 143, 146 et seq., 159-60,
176 et seq., igo et seq,, 1 94 et seq. ; Haiti and
custom>house frauds, 165-6, 204 ; and slave
laws, 140 et seq. ; and Santo Domingo, 49, 51,
163 ; and the Roman Church, 64, 142, 162,
188 ; and modern France, 188, 190, 193 ; and
Toussaint Louverture, 1 58

Haitians, characteristics of modern, 185, 188
et seq., 1 94-5

Hall Caine, Mr. Ralph, 269, 275, 277

Hallowell, Richard P. (Boston), 367

Hamilton, Sir Robert, 236

Hamite race, languages, 24, 28-9

Hampshire, 279

Hampton, the Institute of, 366, 388 et seq,,
403, 406-8, 415. 430

Harrison College, 224

Hartley, David (anti-slavery speaker, eighteenth
century), 339

Harvard University (Cambridge, Boston), 3,
418, 476

Hausa negroes, 82, 375

Havana, 53, 69, 76

Hawaii, 27, 31, 386

Hawkesbury, Lord, 341

Hawkins, Sir John, 39, 53, 206

Haynes, Robert (Barbados), 221

Hayter, Dr. (Bishop of Norwich), 338

H^douville, General, 152

Helena, St., Id. (Sea Ids., South Carolina),

398-9, 472
Hell, 1 14, 372, 43^
Helper (anti-slavery writer), 363
Henderson and Forrest (their book on Jamaica),

277

H^rard- Riviere (President of Haiti), 162

Herrnhut (Moravian head-quarters), 128, 351

Herschell, Rev. Mr., 258, 260

Hima (Ba-hima) negroids, 24, 29

Hindus, 340-1 : see also East Indians

Hirst, Dr. G. S. S., Commissioner of Cayman

Ids., xvi, 211, 293
HisPANiOLA : discovery and colonisation, de-
vel6pment, etc., of, 35, 38, 181, 185 ; name of,
134; and the slave-trade and slavery, 38-9, 42,
47-8; and the Spaniards, 49 et seq., 134;
and the sugar-cane, 78 ; under Haitian rule,
160-2 ; area, 181
Holly, Dr. A. R., xvi, 303
Holtzclaw, Mr. W. H. (negro educationalist),

403
Homo: species of, i et seq., 29-32 ; primigenius,

I et seq,, 10, 25, 29 et seq, ; sapiens, i et seq.,

II, 26-32
Honduras, British, 321 et seq.
Honduras, Spanish, 30^, 322-4
Honey, 32

Hook-worms and the Hook-worm disease, 16-18
Hospitality of the " South," the, xv, 380
Hottentots, 9, 22, 25, 30, 83
House of Commons and the slave-trade and

slavery questions, 312, 339-43
Howard University (Washington), 400
Huddlestone, Mr. (M.?.), 340
Hughes, Rev. Griffith (anti-slavery), 338
Huguenots (French Protestants), 53, 68, 78, 130,

534
Hugues, Victor, 169, 309

Humboldt, Baron von, 393

Humming-birds, 74

Huntingdon, CoUis, 406

Hurricanes of the West Indies, 219-20, 272,

293, 305
Huxley, T. H., 360, 393

Hybrids between Negro and other races (includ-
ing French), 26-30, 49-51. 54-6, 99, 140-2,
233-4, 307-8, 311, 317, 326, 328-9, 334-7
(see also Miscegenation) ; Spaniards and
Amerindians, 49 et seq,, 184 ; and negroes, 51 ;
Portuguese and Amerindians, 78, 98-107;
British (Anglo-Saxons) and negroes, 272, 278,
397) 409, 413 » Dutch and Amerindians, 328-9

Hyppolite, General (President of Haiti), 164

Ibo negroes, 253*, 276

Iguana lizards of the West Indies, 32, 233, 283

Illinois and slavery, 356

Indecency of slavery, 88, 114, 215, 379

India : the original home of Man, 26 ; and of
the negro, 26 et seq, ; Indian negroes at the
present day, 2, 26, 27 ; Indian students in
America, 392, 405 ; Indian kulis in Tropical
America, 113, 126, 161, 237, 272, 311,327,

332-3. 336
Indiana and slavery, 356

*'Indios"ofCuba. 57-8

Insect pests in America, 16, 32, 284-5

Intestines and intestinal worms, 16-20

Iowa and slavery, 356

Irish : in the West Indies, 213, 218, 228 ; in the

United States, 381, 416, 450

Isabella of Brazil, Princess, 98

Isabel II., Queen, and Santo Domingo, 49

492

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Italy, Italians: 17, 19, 25; in the United
States, 450, 453, 455, 470; and the negro,
450» 453 ■» in Brazil, 109

Jacksonville, Florida, 469 et seq.

Jaguar, the, 33, 428

Jamaica : and sanitation, 20 ; and the Spaniards,
47* 239-40; and the sugar-cane, 78, 247, 251,
255* 290; and yellow fever, 211 ; and the
English, 239 et seq, ; scenery of, 240-1, 287-91 ;
area of, 239; birds of, 281-2, 291-2, 293;
crocodile of, 282 ; iguana of, 233, 283 ; ferns of,
281-2, 288-91 ; waterfalls of, 281 ; roads of,
284, 290 ; railways of, 280, 284 ; police of, 243,
253, 263, 264 ; white planters of, 249, 254, 255,
et seq. ; and West Africa, 247, 264 ; and Haiti,
63-4, 148, 153, 163-4; white Jamaicans, 272 ;
black Jamaicans, 275-7 et seq, ; peasantry of,
252, 280 ; population of, 272 ; constitution of,
264, 267-8 ; Imnkruptcy of, 254 ; name of, 239 ;
history of, z^getseq. ; House of Assembly, 243,
251, 255-6, 258 et seq. ; 262-3 ; and slave laws,
conditions of slave life, 250, 254, 375

James I, England, 352

Jamestown (Virginia;, 352

Japanese, the : as a race, 2, 24, 27, 31, 417 ; as
emigrants to America, 384

Java, 78, 248 ; and slavery, 382

Jean-Fran9ois (Haitian general), 147, 150, 151

jeannot (Haitian negro), 147

Jefferson, Thomas, 357

Jekyll, Mr. Walter (Jamaica folk-lore), 276

J^remie, 150

Jesuit Missionarihs, work of, vi, 78, 90,
96-7, 142

Jesup, Maurice, 406
Bws, THE: xiii, 142, 417; negroid strain in,
27, 268 ; and slavery, 36, 213 ;. and the slave-
trade, 112; in Guiana, 27, 112; in Barbados,
213, 216 ; in Jamaica, 27, 268 ; and the French
West Indies, 167

John, St. : see St. John, or St. Jan
ohnson. Dr. Samuel, 340

Johnston, Sir Harry (author of book) : and
New York, xiv ; and Liberia, 357, 386, 414,
418 ; inquiries into Olmsted's statements, 373 ;
on the teaching of Greek and Latin and modern
languages, 402-3 ; anecdote concerning Queen
Victoria and Unc/e Tonics Cabin^ 362; on
the Old Testament and negro education, 285,
386, 392-3, 402 ; on the New Bible, 393, 403 ;
on the scenery of Haiti, 173 et seq, ; on Santo
Domingo, 181 ; on Haitian education, 188 ;
on Haitian misrule, 197 et seq,

Jones, Dr. Thomas Jesse, 393

Josephine, the Empress, 56, 167

Juniperus^ Junipers, ** Cedars," 208

Kafirs and Zulus of South Africa, 5, 408, 462

Kansas : and slavery, 360, 362-3 ; and educa-
tion, 403 ; and the free negro, 476

Keith, Dr. A., xv, 10

Kentucky : and slavery, 358, 362, 375 ; and
death penalty, 370 ; and education, 386 ; and
the Union, 365 ; and the free negro, 476

Ketelhodt, Baron von, 258, 260

Key West, 469

Kindergarten schools for negro children, 396,

408-9
Kingsley, Charles, 360

Kingston (Jamaica), 248, 260, 272, 287, 289
Kirke, Mr. Henry (British Guiana; , 331, 333,

334
Kitts, St. (see Christopher, St), 208, 228 et seq,

Knoxville (Tennessee), 279
KoUniaU Rundschau^ 100, 102
Koran, the, 95

KoROMANTi negroes, in, 212-13, 218,244, 275
Kru negroes, 2, 41, 334» 413
Ku-Klux Klan, 367, 464

KuLis, Indian (see India), 113, 126, 170, 237,
311, 317-19, 321, 327,-332-3» 336

Lafayette, Marquis de, and slavery, 133

Lagos (Portugal) and the slave-trade, 37 ; Lagos

(Africa) and the slave-trade, 81-2, 94, 276
Land-crabs, 32, 232
Las Casas, Bishop, 3S-9

Latura, William (killing negroes ** for fun "), 376
Laveaux, General, 15 1-2
Law, John (eighteenth century), 139
Lebrassa (a Fleming), 39
Lederc, General, 154, 159
Leeward Islands, the, 115, 22S et seq.
Legitime, General (President of Haiti), 164
Leiper, Dr. R. T. (researches into hook-worms),

xiv, 17, 18
Leland University, 400
" Lemuria," 26
Leprosy, 15-16, 21, 195, 300
Liberia, 41, 157; founded by private efforts in

United States, 356, 386, 418; becomes a

republic, 357 ; negroes of, 41, 84, 343, 408,

413, 414, 425
Libyans, 24, 29

Lie, Mr. Joseph £. (Negro official), 469
Lime, phosphate of, 238
Limes (Citrus), 238
Limestone formations, 178, 289, 294
Lincoln, ABRAHAM(President of United States),

362, 363 et seq, ; and slavery, 364-6 ; opinion

on John Brown, 363 ; signs proclamation of

emancipation, 366
Lincoln University, 400
Lisbon and the slave-trade, 37
Liverpool and the slave-trade, 40, 339
Livingstone College (N.C.), 400
Loango coast, 133, 170, 343
Log-huts, 422, 426
Logic taught to the negro, 402
Logwood and the logwood tree, 286, 321
Loma de la Tina (Domingan mountain), 181
London, 17

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (poet), 362, 458
Looss, Dr. (researches into hook-worms), 17
Loscombe, Colonel A. R., 219
Louis XIII, 130
Louis XIV and the slave-trade, 134-5, 139,

14I-2 ; and the Code Noir, 46, 135 et seq,
Louis XV and Haiti, 142
Louis XVI and Haiti, 140-2, 150
Louis, St. (U.S.A.), 358
Louis Philippe, King, 161, 167, 193
Louisiana: colonised by French, 133, 448-9;

occupied by Spaniards, 137, 448-9 ; ceded to

INDEX

493

the United States, 448 ; conditions of life in,
380, 448 ; and slavery, 133, 358, 366-7 ; treat-
ment of slaves in, 42, 47, 375, 379, 449;
sugar-planting in, 452-5 ; forests and scenery
of, 432, 454 ; present condition of negroes in,
400-3, 448 et-^seq.^ 456-60; and slave laws,
370, 375 ; territory of. 358, 560

Lucayan Amerindians, 134, 294-5, 304

Lucia, St., Id., of, 130-1, 306 et seq, ; history
of, 1 30- 1, 306, 309-11 ; population of, 311

Lynching of negroes, 37gl-8o, 464-5

Lyon, Dr. Ernest, 327

Macandal (Haitian negro), 140

Macaulay, Zachary, 342

McClures Magazitie^ xiv, 18

Madeira, 78, 98, 208, 333

Magnolia trees, 427, 434

Mahogany tree and industry, 70, 178, 323-4

et seq.
Maine and slavery, 356, 358
Maintenon, Madame de, 167
Maitland, General (British officer in Haiti), 152
Maize, 32, 420, 425, 435
Makaya (Haitian negro), 150
Malaria, malarial fevers, 16, 212, 284-6, 320-1
Malays (in Louisiana), 449
Mal^, the, or Muhammadan negroes of Brazil,

82, 94, 98
Malta, 227-8, 344

" Mamelucos," 54, 98-9, 106-7 etseq,
Man, Mr. E. ^,^ preface^ 9
Manchester versus Liverpool, 339
Manchineal tree, 232
Mandineo negroes, 29, 40, 82, 276
Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice, 144
Manson, Sir Patrick, 285
Maranhiio, 107
Maroons, the, 148, 240-7, 250, 260, 275 ;

maroon negroes, 42, 143, 233-5, 307
Marowain River (Marrowyne), 124
Marriage among Negroes, 91, 105, 121, 129,

135, 142, 194, 275, 336, 375-6
Marseilles and the slave-trade, 170
Martin Ckuzzfezvit, 440-2
Martin, St., Id., 112, 131, 167, 171
Martinique, 78, 130-1, 167-71
Maryland : and slavery, 353-4, 356» 35^, 3^5.

368, 382-3 ; and barbarous punishments, 371 ;

and the modem negro, 472-3
Mason-Dixon Line, 357-8, 368, 386, 461
Masonic Societies of the Negro, 63-4, 194
Massachusetts: and slavery, 356; and the

free negro, 276
Massac, the Club, 144-5, ^4^
Matto Grosso, 96, 100, 102, 107
Melanesians, 27, 387
Memphis, Tennessee, 376
Mery, Moreau de St., 78, 143 : see Saint-Mery
Mestizo, 54
Methodist Church, 63-4, 269, 338, 382, 386,

400-1
Mexico, 31, 33, 53, 360; and the negro, 38,

47, 251, 322, 376
Michigan and slavery, 356
Mico Charity, 271-2, 334-5
Mice, Lady, 271
Milton, John, 402

Minas Geraes, 81, 107

Mineral oil in the Southern States, 420

Mirabeau, 144

Miscegenation of human races in America: in

Brazil, especially, 78, 98, 99, 107, 125, 135,

140-2, 449-50 : see also Hybrids
Mississippi River, Region, etc., 131, 137 etseq,^

283, 358, 444, 446
Mississippi, State of: 357, 440 et seq. ; and

slavery, 366, 37 1 , 442-3 ; and death penalty,

370 ; and education, 400-1, 403
Missouri Compromise (1820), 358
Missouri, State of: its foundation, 358 ; stands

by Union, 365 ; and slavery, 360
Mobile (capital of Alabama), 137
Mo9ambique, 83, no
Mocassin snakes, 282-3, 37^
Mo'i'se (Haitian general), 152
** Moko" negroes (see Cross River), 276, 307
Mole St. Nicholas, 134, 150, 152
Monaco (n^roid skeletons found near), 25-6
Moneague, Jamaica, 240, 272
MONGOLIC (Asiamerican) races, i et seq.^ 10, 12,

24, 26, 31
Monroe doctrine, 190, 324
Montgomery (Alabama), 432
Montgomery, Mr. Isaiah, negro agriculturist,

441-4
Montserrat, 131
Morant Bay, x, 258, 261-2
Moravian missionaries, Moravian Church, 12S,

129, 225, 230, 237, 249, 270, 349-5 1 » 353.

356, 386
Moret Law, the (Spain), 42
Morocco (Moors) : and the British, 207-8 ; and

the Spaniards and Portuguese, 36-8, 207 ; and

the slave-trade, 36-8, 207-8
Mosquitia, or the Mosquito Coast, 243, 308, 322
Mosquitoes: 16, 212, 284-6, 444; and dis-
ease, 16
Mound Bayou, 442 et seq.
Mountains: Cuba, 70; Haiti, 155, i73-4»

179-80 ; Jamaica, 272-3, 287 ; Dominica,

231-2
Mount Meigs Institute, 403
Muhammadans, Muhammadanism, 24, 95,

98, 103, 124, 413, 417
Mulatto, mulattoes: physique and character

of, 14-15 ; 54 et seq., 158, 278 ; in the Spanish

church, 42 ; names for, 54-6 ; in Haiti, 141-3,

146-9, 15S et seq., 161-5 ; in Martinique,

132; in Guiana, 114, 336-7; in America

generally, 483-4 ; in the United States, 397,

406, 413, 478, 481 ; in Brazil, 99, 106 et seq. ;

in Jamaica, 278-80 ; Barbados, 228 ; and

music, 106, 391 ; and birth-rate, 107, 481 ;

elegance of 104-5, 4 '4
Murphy, Mr. £. Gardner (writer on negro

problems), xv, 470
Nagana, or Tse-tse disease, 15
Napoleon I, 150, 154, 167, 328
Narrative of Charles Ball, the, 362, 375, 464
Nashville, Tennessee, 372, 476
Natal, 476

Nature study as taught in British Guiana, 335
Navigation Acts or Laws of England, 208-9
Neanderthal skull (see also Homo priniigenius),

494

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

«* Near- whites,*' 56, 142, 237, 272, 337, 409,

413, 415-18, 481, 484
Nebraska and slavery, 363

NeccUor anuricanus ( Hook-worm ), 1 6 ^/ seq, ,18-19
Negress, the, 9-10, i4i 22, 1 13-14; industry of,

23. 196, 477
Negritos (see also Asiatic Negroes), 2, 5, 7, 9 et

seg.^ 26
Negro, The, i et seq, ; origin of the word, 53 ;
author's remarks on, 13-14, 22-4
physical characteristics of, 2 et seq, , 7 et seq, ,

25, 27-8 ; brain of, 10
colour of, 2 et seq,
cranial capacity of, 10, 25-6
diseases of, 15 «/ seq,^ 21 et seq.^ 87, 88, 195,

211, 286-7, S^Of 402,481
laziness of, 18, 23, 318, 326, 335, 381
pithecoid features of, 7 et seq.^ 20
unchastity of. 22, 93, 194, 275, 326-7, 334,

336, 447i 461

origin of, 24 et seq,

prehistoric negroes in France, 25, 26 et seq,^
142

African, types of, 2, 10, 20 et seq.^ 25-30

American, 10, 100--9, 127, 182-90, 195, 218
et seq., 230 et seq,, 276-7, 297-8, 310, 326,
328 et seq., 369, 392, 400-1, 407, 417
et seq., 429, 439, 446, 448, 449, 457-8
et seq,, 469 et seq,, 478, 481

Asiatic, 5 et seq,^ 26-7 : see Asiatic Negro

eye of, 10-12

face of, 5, 7, 28 ; genitalia of, 9, 10

feet of, 2, 8, 9

hair of, 3 et seq,

hands of, 9

heel of, 9, 25

limbs of, 9, 25, 28

lips of, 6, 28 ; nose of, 5

skeleton of, 7 et seq. , 25

skulls of, 5, \\ et seq,, 25-6 ; smell of, II

teeth of, 7, 25

the racial weaknesses of, 21-3, 194, 275,

278, 334, 467
introduction to America, 38 et seq, , 352 et seq,

share in the exploration and conquest of
America, 38

first appearance of, in Bermudas and Bar-
bados, 208, 211

first coming of, to United States, 38, 352

Spanish treatment of, 42 et seq,, 47, 369,

449
Portuguese treatment of, 47, 81-4

Dutch treatment of, 47, 113 et seq,, 328

French treatment of, 47, 1 35-8, 146-7, 159,
168-71, 448-9

Danish treatment of, 47, 345-9

English (British) treatment of, x, 47, 213
etseq., 216-22, 227-8, 229-31, 2^'()et seq,,
256 et seq,, Yn-%, 297 et seq., 318, 323,
328-30, 338<f/j^^.,340

United States treatment of, xi, 353, 362, 368
et seq,, 386 et feq,, 398 et seq., 416 et seq,,
448 et seq., 464 et seq., 469 et seq., 472

Amerindian tribes' treatment of, 358 ;

census of, in the New World, 483-4

folk-songs of, 276, 292

French (Creole) language of, 133, 185-7, 236,

311,317,448,450

Negro, The, continued —
Dutch jargon of, 128
*' American" patriotism of, 457
banks and bankers of, 436, 444
churches of, 174,181, 300, 428-9, 436,444, 446
the Press of, 165, 182, 202, 280, 436
names adopted by the, 334
and alcohol, 334, 419, 456-7. 4^31 469, 473
and Chinese, 125, 332
and Christianity, 24, 128 e/ seq,, 215, 230,

252,270,402,413,417
and cookery, 121-2, 171, 174, 232, 403, 42S,

475
and disease, 15 ^/ seq,, 20, 122, 195, 481 : see

Diseases of Negro
and dressmaking, tailoring, taste in costume,

etc., 302,412-15,429
and animals, cattle, etc, 102, 157, 281, 284,

291, 410-11, 429, 452-3
and marriage, 64, 67, 91, 105, 230, 236, 275,

313' 336, 375. 425-6, 461-2
and music, 106, 390-2, 446
and Washington, 356, 365, 473-4
and polydactylism, 9, 300
and poultry, 429
and the railways of the United States, 22,

436, 448, 469
and religion, 24, 43-4, 92, 193, 128, 193,

236, 253, 268-70, 392-3, 402, 429-30
as a farmer, 180, 193. 269, 399, 419, 420,

422 et seq., 429 "3 '» 470| 476
as a land-holder in Jamaica, 280 ; in the

United States, 430, 444 et seq. , 476
as a slave-trader, 90
as a soldier, 310; in Europe, 219; U.S.A.,

365. 388
as a priest, 42, 89, 90-2, 18S
as a seaman, 208, 211, 292-3, 297, 3^2, 31S
in the Bahamas, 295-6
in Brazil, 42, 79 ei seq,, 89-107
in British Honduras, 323
in Cuba, 47, 57 et seq,, 62-7
in Danish America, 349
in Dutch America, 126
in Dutch Guiana, 113 et seq., 328
in Florida, 38, 358, 469-70
in Guiana, in

in Mexico, 38, 47, 251, 322, 376
in French Guiana, 17 1-2
in Haiti under the French, 140 et seq.
under the Haitian Government, 159 etseq.,

162 et seq, , 176 et seq, , iSSet seq. , 197, 200
in the French Antilles, 132, 167-71
in Jamaica, 47
in Louisiana under the Spaniards, 42, 47 ;

under the French, 375, 379, 449
in New York, 355, 414, 474-5
in Santo Domingo, 42, 50-5, 146, 150, 154,

183-4
in St. Domingue, i/^et seq,\ in Haiti, 201 ;
in Trinidad, 46-7, 312 et seq,
in the United States, 352-484, 476-7, 478
in Virginia, 352, 472
in the West Indies, 198, 218-19, 310
characteristics of, in general, 12 etseq,, 275-7,

3".3«8. 334. 39O1 396, 4i3-'4, 418,460;
in Barbados, 225 et seq, ; Bahamas, 303 ;
in the Lesser Antilles, 327-8

INDEX

495

Negro, The, continued—

the avocations of, in Africa and America,
23-4, 106, 188-9, 210, 225-6. 236, 280, 302,
318, 326-7, 337, 352-3, 399, 403, 430,

436-9
indifference of, to beauty in landscape, 189-

90, 281-4, 426
English patois of, 112, 128, 186, 336-7, 396,

430» 471
and his clothes, 61, 104, 125-8, 176 ^Z seq,^

190, 230, 277, 297-8, 327, 412-15, 429,

457
and crime, 67, 225. 236, 278-9, 303, 3^6,

457. 461-3, 467, 473 » and sorcery, 47, 64,
66, 128, 194, 225. 253, 470
and the Moravian Church, 128-9, 230, 249,

270, 349-51. 353. 35^, 386
and the drug habit, 419, 461, 463
and education, 20-1, 103, 187 et seq., 204,

211, 223-5, 237-8, 270-2, 281, 300-1,

326, 3M-5. 371, 386 et seq., 398 et seq.
and the franchise : in Cuba, 59 ; British West

Indies, 210, 222, 231, 268; Brazil, 100;

United States, 366-7, 419, 476-7. See

Franchise
and sanitation, 18-20, 174, 415, 475
and his social position in the United States,

416-17, 418, 478
and the white woman, 67, 115, 243, 249,

260, 279, 460, 465
Negro hybrids and red or golden hair, 3, 11, 92,

278, 397, 408
Negro and money, without capital behind him,

xiii, 100- 1, 417
Negroids, 26-30, 106-7, 141-2, 211, 233-4, 236,

272, 310-11, 328-30, 334, 336-7, 416, 418, 478,

483-4
Nematoda^ Nematode parasitic worms, 16, et seq,
Neo-Brazilians, the, 100, \q6 et seq,
Nevis, Id. of, 229
New Bible, the, 393, 403
New England States of U.S.A., 355
Newfoundland, 208

New Guinea and the Papuan peoples, 27
New Hampshire and slavery, 355
New Ireland, 17, 27
New Jersey and slavery, 355
New Mexico, 38, 360
New Orleans, 137, 383, 452, 456 et seq., 459 ;

and its police force, 457 ; and its criminal

quarter, 457 et seq.
New Orleans University, 400
New Providence Id., 295 et seq.
New York, xiv ; and slavery, 353, 355 ; and

the negro, 4U, 465. 474-6
New 2^aland (has a negroid strain in the Maoris),

27
Nicaragua and the British, 243, 322-4
Nicholas, St., Mole. 134
Nickerie (Dutch Guiana), 122, 129
Niger, Niueria, Niger Basin, 28-9, 38, 253,

276, 343
Nigeria, Southern, Niger Delta, 84, 253, 276,

300, 343

•• Night-riders," 465-6

Nilotic negroes, 7, 25, 28-9

Nissage-Saget (President of Haiti), 163

Nitschmann, David, 350

Nord Alexis (President of Haiti), 165-7

Nordic Race (the whitest Whites), 7, 11, 13,
99. 278, 336

Norfolk, Duke of, and slave-trade, 341

Normans, the, 130-2, 135

North America, 31 et seq.

North Carolina : and the "hook-worm" dis-
ease, 18 ; and slavery, 363, 366, 370 ; forbids
slave-trade, 356 ; and slave laws, 36S, 371, 375 ;
and education, 400 ; and free negroes, 472, 476

North, Northerners, as contrasted with
Southerners in the United States, 362, 365,
368, 380, 383-4, 385, 476

Nova Scotia and negroes, 244, 247, 354

Nubians, 21, 375

Nudity: in slavery, 114, 218, 379; amongst
free negroes, 194, 215, 247, 471

Nuttall, Archbishop, 269, 272

Nyanego, 65

Oaks, diverse forms of, in the United States, etc. ,

178, 389. 405, 427. 440, 454
Obia superstition, 194, 196, 225, 253
Octoroons, 55, 115, 140-1 et seq,, 272, 376,

426, 448, 484
Odour of skin in Negro and other races, 1 1
Ogden. Mr. R. C, 388, 404
Oge, Vincent, 145-6
Ohio, 440 ; and slavery, 358 ; and education,

386 ; and the negro, 475
Oklahoma, State of, and the negro, 481
Old Testament and negro education, 272, 285,

392-3, 402
Olivier, Sir Sydney, xv, 277-8, 279
Ollivier, Vincent (Haitian Negro officer of early

eighteenth century), 141
Olmsted, F. L., and his writings on the Slave

States, 373, 375. 379. 3^3. 44»
Orange State, 476

Oranges, orange trees, 178, 264, 288, 290
Ordinance, Royal Spanish, dealing with slavery,

42. 43-^
Orinoco River, iii, 328
Osborn, H. F. (biologist), 393

Palgrave, the late W. G. (remarks on negro and

on Dutch Guiana), 12, 123-4, 129
Palmetto {/nodes and Sabal), 70, 293, 398
Palms, Royal, 69 et seq, ; Fan {Coccothrinax and

Thrinax), 70, 224, 226, 304
Panama and the negro, 22, 47-8, 279, 483
Panama Canal, xv, 279, 285, 481
Papuan type (negroid), 2, 27
Paraguay, 47
Paramaribo, ill, 121

Paratintins, the (Amerindian tribe of Brazil), 108
Park, Dr. Robert E., xiv, 416
Parrots, 176, 292, 293, 320
Paulo, Sao (Brazilian province), 78, 97, 107
Peace of Amiens, 328
Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), 40
Peace of Bale, 153
Peace of Breda, 113
Peace of Ghent (1814^ 356
Peace of Ryswick, 139

Peace of Versailles (1783), 208, 234, 296, 353
Peacocks : in America, 389 ; in the West Indies,

132, 190

496

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Pearl-fishing and pink pearls, 293, 302

Pcckard, Dr., 339

Pedro I, Dom, 95

Peinier, Count, 145-6

Penn School, the, 398-9

Pennsylvania: and slavery, 354-S, 356, 358;

and education, 386 ; and the free negro, 472-3
Pernambuco, 77, 94-5, 107
Persia, 26

Peru, Peruvians, 32, 47
Potion, General (President of Haiti), 48, 141,

147, 154, 160
Petraa (flower), 178, 291
Philadelphia, 357, 472, 476
Philippine Islands and Islanders (Filipinos), 26,

418
Phillips, U. B. (writer on slavery .problems), 359
Phillips, Wendell, 362
Phosphates, 238, 304
Phthisis (see Tuberculosis), 481
Picardy, 132, 354
Picton, Lieut. -Colonel, 312
Protector of slaves, under Portuguese law,

89 ; under British law, 313 ; under Spanish

law, 44 et seg,
Pierrot, President of Haiti, 162
Pigs, domestic, 197, 422 ; Feral, 75
Pine, Bahama, 70, 188 ; Georgian, 427, 433
Pineapples, 32, 284, 302
Pines: in Haiti, 174, 181-3, 188 ; in Cuba, 70;

in Bahamas, 304 ; in Southern United States,

427, 433
Pimento, 248, 250, 249

Pithecanthropos^ 10, 29

Pithecoid foot, the, 2, 8, 9

Pitt, William (Prime Minister), 340-1

Plague, the bubonic, 15, 16

Plantation songs, 391

Planters : in Dutch Guiana, 1 16-20 ; in
British West Indies, 214 et seg,, 22g ef seg,,
254-6, 258, 296-8, 299, 309 ; in St. Dominiaue
(Haiti), 144-50, 161, 177, 204 ; in British
Guiana, 328 et seg. , 337 ; in the United States,

352-3
Plumer, W. (jun.), an Anti-Slavery Reformer,

U.S.A., 4

Pneumonia, 21, 481

Police, policemen, ne|[ro: in Barbados, 212,
225 ; in Jamaica, 263-4 ; elsewhere in the
British West Indies and Tropical America,
236-7, 327 ; in Haiti, 199; in Brazil, 106; in
the United States, 468 ; in New Orleans, 457-9

Polverel (French Commissioner in Haiti), 148-51

Polydactylism in the Negro, 9, 300

Polygamy, 194, 275. 33^, 376

Polynesians, 2, 20-1, 31-2

Pongo, Rio (West Africa), 40-1

**PooR Whites," "Mean Whites" (see also

Whites), 20, 152, 238, 299-300, 363, 368, 379-

80, 463, 470
Pope, the, and Haiti, 162
Popes, connection of the, with slavery and the

slave-trade, 37, 38, 342
Popo country (Dahome), 133, 227, 276, 314, 343
Port Antonio, 264

Port-au-Prince, 150-1, 160, 162-3, '74^' ^^9'
Port Morant (Jamaica), 249
Port Royal, 287

Porteus, Dr. (Bishop of Chester, afterwards of
London), 338, 341

Porto Rico, 35, 37, 39, I34» 207, 408, 418, 483

Portugal and the Portuguese: area and
population, 98-9 ; and Africa, 83 ; connec-
tion with the slave-trade, 36 et seg.^ 81-4, 207,
343 ; intermarriage with Amerindians, 35, 78,
99-107; with negroes. 99 e/ seg.^ 333, 337;
general treatment of slaves, 42, 47, 81-4, 98 ;
and the abolition of slavery, 84 ; in the West
India Is. and British Guiana. 311, 317, 330,
333, 336 ; racial elements in, 98 ; relations with
Morocco and North- West Africa, 36, 38, 207 ;
connection with Brazil, 77 et seg.^ 91, 99, 109

Portuguese immigrants, 99, 109, 311, 317, 330,

333. 336
Portuguese language, 128, 471 ; importance of

learning, 402-3
Presbyterian Churches, 269, 335, 382, 386, 401
Prichard, Mr. Hesketh, 161, 165
Priests, negro, 89-92, 106 ; Portuguese, 91 ;

French, 162, x88 ; Haitian, 188
Protestant Episcopal (Anglican) Church of the

United States, 64, 401
Prostitutes, Prostitution, 22, 448, 458 et seg,^ 462
Prussia (Brandenburg) and the slave-trade, 344
Puma, the, 428
Punchy Mr,^ 465
Punishment of slaves, 90, 116-20, 136, 147,

213, 217, 254, 297-9, 328, 370-4. 377. 379-So
Pygmies (Congo), 2, 9 et seg»^ 14, 19, 28

Quadroons, 55, 140- 1

Quakers, the : in Barbados, 214 ; in Jamaica,
354 ; in the Leeward Ids., 228-9 f ^^ England,
354 ; in the United States, 354-5, 376, 400

Railway travelling in the United States, 404, 416,

469
Raleigh (N.C.), 400

Raleigh, Sir Walter, ill

Rameau, Septimus, 163

Ramsay, Provost-Marshal G. D., 261-3

Ramsay, Rev. James, and the slave-trade, 229,

338
Rape, 67, 279, 463-4, 466
Raymond, Julien, 145
Raynal, Abb^, 355
Reeds, ornamental, 289, 422, 427
Regency, dealing of the French, with Haiti, 139
Relapsing fever (Asiatic), 15 ; (Zambezian), 16
Religion, 285, 392-3, 403 ; of the Haitians,

193,; of the Bush Negroes (Guiana), 128
Religious ideas of Negro, etc., 91, 128, 194-5*

392-3
Reynolds, Sir Joshua (anti-slavery), 340
RhipscUis cactus, 291, 320
Rhode Id. and slavery, 399
Ribe, Carl (on the Solomon Islanders), 9
Rice cultivation by negroes, 337, 352
Riche (President of Haiti), 162
Richelieu, Cardinal, 130
Richmond (Virginia), 383, 473
Rigaud, Andre (Haitian mulatto general), 147,

1 50- 1 et seg,f 160
Rio Branco, Visconde de, 97
Rio de Janeiro, 78, 82, 91, 106-7
Robert Hungerford Institute, 403

INDEX

497

Robespierre and slavery, 144, 1 50-1

Robinson Crusoe's Island, 344

Rochambeau, General, 159

Roe-deer, introduced into the West Indies, 75,

132

Roman Catholic Church (see Church,
Roman) : and slavery, 38, 42 et seq. , 47 ; and
Santo Domingo, 49 ; and Brazil, 78, 90 et seq, ;
and Dutch Guiana, 129 ; and Haiti, 62, 142 ^
162, 188 ; and Dominica, 235-6 ; Jamaica,
268; Windward Ids., 311 ; British Guiana,
336 ; United States, 382, 401

Ronald Ross, Professor, 285

Roosevelt, Theodore (Ex- President of the
United States), xiv, 414, 418, 441

Rose, Wild, of Jamaica, 289 ; of the Southern
United States, 426

Roseau, 235, 237

Roume, (French Commissioner to Haiti), 148,

152-3. 158
Royal Commission of Jamaica (1865), 262-3

Ruatan, Id. of, 308, 323-4

Russia and Brazil, 109

Rust University, 400

St Domingue (see Domingue), 134 et seq,, 139

et seq,y 145 et seq,
St. Jan (St. John), Danish West India island,

345-6, 349. 35°
St. John, Knights of, and the West Indies, 344
St. John, Sir Spencer, 161
St. Louis — see Louis, St., U.S.A. (Most words

beginning "St." will be found under the

Christian name that follows. )
Saint-M6ry, M. Moreau de, 42, 78, 143
Salnave (President of Haiti), 163
Salomon, General (President of Haiti), 164
Salt and salt-raking, 210
Sam, General (President of Haiti), 165
Sam-sam (Negro leader, eighteenth century),

124
Saman^ Peninsula (San Domingo), 49
Sambos, or Zambos, negro hybrids, 56
Sandwith, Dr. F. (researches into hook-worms),

17
** Sang-m816s," 140 et seq.^ 144

Santa Cruz Id., iii, 134, 345, 347-9

Santiago de Cuba, 76

Santo Domingo : origin of name, 134; popu-
lation, 183, 187 ; area of, 181-2 ; scenery of,
181 ; American control over, 50-1 ; character-
istics of, 49, 52-4, 181 et seq, ; and natives,
50-1, x8i, 184-5 * ^^^ slavery, the slave-
trade, 42 et seq. , 48 ; and the Spaniards, 48
et seq,, i34-5» 146, 150, 159; and Haiti,
160-3

Santos, 81, 93, 107

Saramaka River and negroes, 118, 124

Savannah, 400, 470

Scenery: of Southern States (North America),
423, 426-8, 432-34, 454 ; of Brazil, 91, 101-2 ;
of Bahamas, 302, 304 ; of Jamaica, 218, 238,
281-91 ; of Cuba, 69 et seq.; of Haiti, 139,
140, 155, 173 et seq., 178 et seq, ; of Trinidad,
319-20 ; of the Windward Ids., 309, 311

Schmidt, Dr. Max, xvi, 100-3

Sclater, Dr. P. L.,26

Scott, Dred (negro), 360-2

Scottish people and slavery and the slave-trade,.

121, 125
Sea Ids. (South Carolina), 398-9, 470-2
Secession, States of the, 476 : see also Southern

States
Secret societies, 65
Seminoles (Amerindian tribe), 358
Senegal River, Senegambia, country and negroes,.

133
Serpent worship, 65-6

Sertima, Mr. J. van, xvi

Seville, 247

Sexual crime, 279, 461-4 ; depravity (Amer*
indians), 34-5

Sharp, Granville, 338-40

Shattuck, George B., 300

Shaw, General R. G., 388

Shaw University, 400

Shingles as a roofing material, 291, 422, 441

Shropshire, 26^

Shufeldt, Dr. R. W., and The Negro, 465

Sierra Leone, 112, 275, 343; foundation of,
244, 264, 343, 356

Simon, General (President of Haiti, 1908), 166-7,
197-8, 202

Sinnamary River (French Guiana), 130, 133

Sisal hemp, 302-3

Slave Codes and Laws : of Spain, 42 et seq., 46;
of Portugal, 89; of France, 46, 135 et seq,';
of Britain, 209, 212 et seq,, 221, 230 et seq,,
2Soetseq,, 297 etseq., 312-13, 327-8, 342-3 ; of
Dutch Guiana, 1 15-16, 327 ; in Danish West
Indies, 348; in Virginia, while a British
colony, 357; in the United States, 370-1,
374-6, J82-3

Slave-holding nations in order of merit (accord-
ing to negro testimony), 47, 369

Slavery, Negro, and Slave-trade, 23, 362 ;
first institution of, by Spaniards and Portuguese,
36 et seq. ; French, 132 et seq, ; Abolition of,
by Britain, 221, 231, 254, 299, 318, 330,
341-3 ; France, 150, 167-9 '* Denmark, 347-8;
Holland, 126; Brazil, 98; Spain, 40-2,
Portugal, 84; United States, 366-7, 386;
Spanish -American republics, 47-8

Slavery as defined by legislation in United
States, 357, 370

Slaves: cruelty to, 45, 90, 113 et seq,, 140-59,
2x6 et seq., 253-4, 29iS-9, 328, 372-9 ; emanci-
pation of, 42, 89, 116, 150, 221, 253-4. 299,

313* 343i 347, 354, 355-6, 365-6, 374-5 ; "g^t*
of, 44, 89-90*/ seq,, 136-7, 230. 252, 297, 313 ;
education of, 45, 224, 371 ; marriage of, 44,
91, 135, 143 : allowed or not allowed to bear
witness in law courts, 115, 136, 253-4, 299, 313,
371 ; mutilation of, 119-20, 136, 213, 217, 299,

371, 379 ; flogging of, 45, 9©, 1 16-17, 136, 217,
254, 298-9, 371-4; food and rations of, 44,
121, 230, 252, 297, 375 ; clothing or nudity of,
44, "4, 141, 2x5, 218,230, 297, 379; houses of,
44 ; protection of, 45-6, 89, 25X, 313 ; punish-
ment of, 45, 90, XX4-20, X36, 2x7, 254, 298-9,
371-80; religious teaching of, 4^ etseq., 135,
2x5-16, 230-1, 251-2, 297, 299, 374 ; fugitive,
94, 360, 376-8 ; slave-dealers and slave
markets, 87-9 ; justice dealt out to, 45, 136,
313, 370 ; suicide of, 94, xi6, 327, 379
Slave ships, 85-6

498

THE NEGRO IN THE NEW WORLD

Slavs in America, 459

Sleeping sickness, 15

Small-pox, 15, 35, 127, 317, 399

Smith, Captain John (of Virginia, 1630), 211

Smith, Dr. Allen J. (Texas), 17, 20

Smith, Rev. John (Guiana), 329-30

Snakes : of Hispaniola, 194 ; poisonous, 282-3,

376
Snake worship, 194, 196
Snow Hill Institute, 403
Solomon Islanders (Oceanic Negroes), 2 et seq, , 8,

18, 27
Somalis, the, 28-9
Sombrero Id. , 238
Somerset, James (a negro), 339
Sonthonax (French Commissioner to Haiti), 148-

Sorghum, Sweet, 428

Soulouque (President, and afterwards Emperor,
of Haiti), 162-3

"South" and Southern civilisation contrasted
with that of ** North," 380, 383-4

** South": see Southern States

South America, 31 et seg.^ 33-4

South Carolina : i ii ; and the " Hook-worm "
disease, 18; and slavery, 353, 356-7, 359,
360, 366, 368, 374, 379 ; and^'secession, 363,
365 ; and its bloody criminal code, 370 ; and
rice cultivation, 352-3 ; and cotton, 353

Souther case (cruelty to a slave), 372-3

Southern States : and slavery, 352-3, 356-7,
360, 362-3, 368, 375-^j 3841 476 ; and the free
Negro, 465, 469, 472-3, 476; secede from
union, 364-5, 476 ; hospitality in, xv, 380 ;
ante-bellum conditions of life in, 379-80;
tyrannous government of, in slavery times,
382-3 ; indecency in, in ante-bellum times, 379 ;
lack of education in, 368, 380, 382-3 ; splendid
resources of, 420, 435 ; existing prejudices,
416-17, 418, 465 ei seg,^ 476; roads of, 421 ;
women of, their beauty, 432-4, 441 ; men of,
their characteristics, 432-3, 434-5, 441, 451 ;
and mineral oil, 420, 435 ; industrial parts of,
435 et seq. ; their indebtedness towards the
negro, 435, 455, 469; franchise in the, 419,
477-8 ; elements of population, 420, 435,
478-9, 481 ; scenery of, 421, 423, 426-8, 432,
440

Southern IVorhman, the^ xvi, 393

Southland College, 400

Spain, Spaniards: and the Ameriidians, 35,
38 ; and the Negro, 38 et seq, , 42-8 ; and the
Canary Ids., 36-7 ; and Santo Domingo, 48
tt seq. ; and Haiti, 161-2 ; and abolition of
slave-trade and slavery, 40-42 ; characteristics
and achievements of, 52-3 ; in Brazil, 109

Spanish architecture : in Cuba, 69, 75-6

Spanish Guinea, 40

Spanish language, importance of learning, 402-3

"Spanish Moss," {Tillandsia usncotcUs)^ 70, 434

Spencer, Herbert, 393

Spices, 171, 248, 250

Sponges, and sponge fishing, 301-2

Sporozoa, 16

** Stars and Stripes," the Negro and the, 395,

457, 481
State College, Delaware, 401
Steatopygia in negroes, 10

Stedman, Captain J. G., and his experiences in
Dutch Guiana, 87, 113-25

Stegomyia mosquitoes, 16, 285

Stiles, Dr. C. W. (U.S.A.), 17, 20

Stony Gut (Jamaica), 358

Storks, Sir Henry, 262

Stowe, Mrs. Harriett Beecher, 355, 361-2

Straight University, 400

** Strandlooper " type of Negro, 20, 27-8

Stroud, George M. (on Laws relating to Slavery,
etc), 270, 272

Sugar-cane, sugar : introduction to America,
78 ; varieties of, 78 ; cultivation of, in His-
paniola, 51, 78, 139; Jamaica, 78, 239, 247,
25 ^ 255; Brazil, 78, 81; Guiana, 78, 113;
Leeward Ids., 229 ; Danish West Indies, 344-7t
349; Cuba, 70; Barbados, 214, 215, 225-6;
Louisiana and Southern United States, 420,
428, 452, 453-5

Suisses Noirs, the (negro militia of Haiti), 141,

323
Sullivan, Sir Arthur (musician), 392

Sumner, Charles, 362-3

Sunday, as a day of rest, etc, 89-90, 116, 135,

215-16,231,252,313, 374
Supreme Court of United States, and slavery,

361-2
Surinam, ill, 124, 167 (see Dutch Guiana)
Sussex, 279
Sweden : and the slave-trade, 344-5 ; and the

West Indies, 344
Swiss : in Brazil, 109 ; in Dutch Guiana, 120, 125
Sylvain, George (Haitian writer), 135
Syphilis, 15, 195
Syria, Syrians, 27

Tahiti, 78, 93

Tasmanian negroids, 27

Ten Talents, Parable of the, 416

Tennessee : 440, 465-6 ; and slavery, 366, 372 ;

and death penalty, 370 ; and the Negro, 376,

400, 403, 416, 476
Texas : 17, 432, 448, 476 ; becomes a State of

the Union, 3^8 ; and slavery, 358, 365, 366,

381 ; and education, 400
Thomas, St., Id. of, 345-50
Thompson, Mr. J. O. (Collector of Revenue,

Alabama), xiv, 437
Threadworms : see Nematoda
Ticks, 16, 281, 284-5
Tierra del Fuego, 35
Ttllandsia, 70, 238, 434
Timber (lumber), 208, 238, 293, 304, 321-3,

326. 337
Timbuktu, 207

Tobacco, 208, 238, 352

Tobago, Id. of, 317, 344

Tody, the Green, 73, 281, 291

Topeka, E. I. Institute, 403

Tordesillas, Treaty of (1494), 38

Tortoiseshell, collection of, 293, 303

Tortuga, Id. of, 134

Toussaint Louverture : origin and birth,
133, 157 ; rise to power, 146-7 ; character and
disposition, 157-8 ; l^ecomes ruler of all His-
paniola, 48, 153 ; capture by the French and
death, 154 ; various opinions on, 158; portraits
of, 149, 153, 158; handwriting of, 159

INDEX

499

Towne, Miss Laura W., xi, 399

Transvaal, 476

Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), 38

Utrecht (1713), 40, 249

Bale (I795)f 48, 150

Trematode worms, 16

Trepofuma^ 16

Tkjnidad: history of, 133, 311 et seg, ; slaves

in, 47, 312-13 ; slave regulations of, 46, 312-13 ;

scenery of, 312, 319 ; population of, 317-18,321
Trogons, 74, 281

Trypanosoma^ Trypanosomiasis, 15, 16
Tuberculosis (phthisis) and the negro, 19, 21,

211, 300, 481
Turkey, Empire of, and Turks, 357, 408
Turkey Buzzards (American Vultures, Caihartes),

75, 177, 282, 292, 389
Turks Ids., 2 10- 1 1
Turner, Nat (negro), 359
Turpentine (extraction &om pines and collecting

by negroes), 469
Turtle, the Green, and the Hawksbill, and

turtle fishing, 293, 302
Tuskegee, town, 404
TusKEGBB Institute, 190, 405 ^/ seg,, and

fruit culture, 410 ; and poultry, 411

Uganda (and Ba-ganda), 18, 28
Imcinaria (see Hook-worms), 17
Uncie Toffi's Cabin, 361-2, 376, 442-3
Underhill, Dr. E. B., 256-8, 260, 262
United Daughters of the Confederacy, 434
United States : and Haiti, 161-2, 167, 198,
205 ; and Santo Domingo, 49-50, 181, 205 ;
and Cuba, 67-8, 75-6; and Panama, 279,
481 ; first admits slaves, 208, 352 ; forbids
participation of American subjects in slave
trade, 356; Supreme Court of, 361-2; Con-
gress of, 356, 360, 365-6; Constitution of,
357> 3^ ; amendments to, 366, 477 ; roads in,
421, 441, 445
Utica, N. and I. Institute, 403

Vardaman, Mr., 482

Veddahs, the, 2, 10, 26

Venezuela, 319 ; and the negro, 47-8

Vermont : and slavery, 355

Vesey, Denmark (neero), 368

Victoria, Queen (United Kingdom), 219, 256,

258, 362, 425

Villatte (Haitian mulatto), 154

Vincent, St., Id. of, 131

Vipan, Captain J. A. M. (on mosquito-deslroy-
in|; fish), 16

Virgin Ids., 228, 232, 238

Virginia : 38, 476, 481 ; first received slaves,
208, 352, 353 ; and slavery, 353 ei seg,, 357-8,
362 et seg,, 368-9, 372, 383, 388; tobacco in,
352; and free negroes, 356, 388, 422, 472;
and education, 368, 388 ei seg., 400, 403

Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute, 400

Volta River (West Africa), 1 1 1

Voorhees Industrial School, 403

Vudu (African religion), 65-6, 195, 253

Walsh, the Rev. Dr. R., and Brazil, 85-9,

92-3
Wallace, A. R. (biologist), 393

Warburton, Bishop, 338

Washington (D.C. ), 409 ; and the negro, 356,
365, 473

Washington, Dr. Booker : birth and origin of,
406 ; name, 406 ; at Hampton, 406 ; assists to
found Tuskegee Institute, 406 ei seg. ; the lead-
ing points in his teaching, 407 et seg,, 41^, 415,
416-18, 419-20; gospel of cleanliness, 415

Washington, General George, 355

Washington, Mr. J. H., 410

Welsh, in the West Indies, 213

Wesley, John, 338, 354

Wesleyans, the, in America, 225, 237, 269,

335
West Africa, and West African negroes, 21,

2Set seg,, 66, 195, 275
West India Committee, xv, 224
West India Regiments, 218-19, 310-11, 354,

414
West Indies : hurricanes of, 219, 305
West Virginia : its boundaries, 358 ; and slavery,

365 .
Westminster, Treaty of, 113

Wheel, breaking on the, 113, 146-7

"White Man,*' the, 13 et seg., 21, 23, 30, 50,
106 et seg., 141, 146, 210, 272, 278, 333, 336,
481, 483-4 (see also Caucasian) ; negro names
for, 247

White women : and their safety in Dutch
Guiana, 1 14-15 ; in the West Indies, 67, 279 ;
in English counties, 279 ; in the United
States, 462, 463-4 ; in New Orleans, 459-61

Whites, "Poor,* "Mean," 20, 152, 238, 299-

300. 363* 368, 379» 380, 463, 470
Whitefield, George, 353
Whitman, Walt, 362
Whittier, JohnG., 362
Whittier School at Hampton, 396
Whydah (Hwida), 133
Wilberforce, William, 340-3
Wiley University, 400
William IV : and the slave-trade, 341
Williams and Walker Theatrical Company, 436
Willoughby, Lord, 112, 247
Windward Ids., the, 306 et seg.
Winthrop, G. P., 38
Wisconsin : and slavery, 356
Witchcraft, 66, 253
Witness, no slave could be a, against white

people : see under Slaves
Woods- Rogers, Admiral, 296
Woolman, John (Anti-Slavery), 354
Worms, parasitic, 15-18

Ximenes, Cardinal, 39

Yaqui, Mt., 181

"Yaws" disease, 16

Yazoo Delta, the, 442, 444

Yellow Fever, 16, 21, 68, 152, 154, 159,

211-12
Yoruba negroes, 94, 276, 314, 470
Yucatan, 239, 322-3

Zambo (negro hybrid), 56
Zanzibar, 418
Zinzendorf, Count, 350- x
Zulu negroes

^unt, 31
, 5, 408"

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