My Dear Elsie, I wonder if you remember as vividly as I do the very drastic criticism of a book of mine that first introduced us to each other. My publisher showed it to me with some hesitation because it was so scathing, but it went right to the point. Most of the book was scrapped there and then, and my literary education was begun under your care. It was you indeed who taught me that I needed educating in my art. That is twelve years ago, and I have never since let a book go into the world ti

Sainte Agnes, France. 8th September 1921. CONTENTS PREFACE WHERE THE TWAIN MEET CHAPTER I—BRITAIN'S FIRST TROPICAL COLONY CHAPTER II—THE WHITE BONDSMEN CHAPTER III—JAMAICA'S FIRST HISTORIAN CHAPTER IV—THE CASTLES ON THE GUINEA COAST CHAPTER V—THE MIDDLE PASSAGE CHAPTER VI—THE PLANTATION CHAPTER VII—SLAVE REBELLIONS CHAPTER VIII—THE MAROONS CHAPTER IX—THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE YEARS CHAPTER X—THE MAKING OF CHRISTIANS CHAPTER XI—THE FREEING OF THE SLAVE CHAPTER XII—JAMAICA AS I SAW IT...

S pain first set foot in the Western World, and if the discovery brought great wealth it brought also much individual suffering and bitter hardship. In Jamaica, she found no people living in barbaric splendour, no stores of gold and silver and precious stones, only a lovely land, fruitful and fertile, valuable only to her because she did not dare let another nation settle so close to the rich possessions of which she was mistress. But the other nations of Europe were naturally anxious to share i

W hen first I took passage to Jamaica it seemed as if purest chance were sending me there. But I begin to believe there is no such thing as chance, for when I remembered that Jamaica was an old slave colony I realised that this last coincidence was but the culmination of a curious series that have guided my steps through long years. No one in my youth that I ever heard of wanted to go to West Africa, and yet from the time I was twelve years old I had an intense desire to go there, without the fa

I n this year of Our Lord, 1922, there are still people who regard Jamaica as a far, far distant country, and when it was conquered in 1660 it must have been farther from the British Isles than any spot now on this earth. Indeed, few people would know where it was and fewer still cared. But some—the wise ones, the Great Protector among them, rejoiced over this new possession. It seemed as if the wild tales the seamen told of adventure on the Spanish Main were now put into concrete form. Spain ha

I t is fascinating to read up the old books that have been written about Jamaica. Wearisome sometimes naturally, because for one illuminating remark you must wade through a mass of turgid stuff. I confess even to having skipped occasionally Hans Sloane, and I read Hans Sloane—in the original edition with the long “s's”—sitting on the verandah of my house looking over the Caribbean Sea, and when I had finished I felt I had known him, so charming is he. I was sorry I could not write and thank him

J amaica is a thickly populated country. The last census taken in 1911 gave a population of 197 to the square mile, and this is mostly black, for the same statistics give something under 16,000 white people to close on 800,000 black and coloured, and in all probability among the so-called white there would be a trace of colour. Now I was warned not to touch on the colour question when I wrote on Jamaica, which is really like writing about the present times without mentioning the Great War. You m

A ll up and down the roads of Jamaica tramp ceaselessly the dark people. In the towns now, I notice many of the men, when they have anything to carry, carry it in their hands, under their arms, or on their backs, but the women are not so progressive. I don't quite believe the yarn about the girl, who, having been sent to buy a postage stamp, put it on her head, with a stone to keep it in place, but, certainly, the women still adhere to the old African way of bearing a burden on their heads. From

I can hardly say it too often—in reading about the slaves and their sufferings we must remember that past ages had different standards, and that, although undoubtedly the slaves suffered horribly it was the custom of the times, and other people suffered as well. Even at the beginning of this century, coming to England from a land where the working man could always make enough to keep himself in decency and comfort, I was shocked and horrified at the condition of the poorer classes in the great c

C onsidering that every Great House was surrounded by hundreds of these alien dark people, most of them dumbly resentful of their condition, it is to me a little surprising that the white man ever brought out his wife and children to share his home. And yet he did sometimes. Of course, nothing is more certain than that we grow accustomed to a danger that is always threatening. There are people who take matches into powder factories and those who dwell on the slopes of Vesuvius and Etna. From the

C onsidering the size of Jamaica, it seems strange to say that in the fastnesses of its mountains there lived a body of men, just a handful of them, who actually defied the British Government and all the arms they could bring against them, not for a year or twenty years, but for close on one hundred and forty years! It seems incredible; but when I went to live at the Hyde I began to believe it, once I had gone up to Maroon town I quite understood it, and before I had left Jamaica, having spent t

I t is very difficult to understand the attitude towards trivial offences of people who lived in a time when the death penalty was legally inflicted for breaking down the banks of a fish pond, stealing anything over the value of a shilling from the person, or illegally felling trees. With the last clause I have some sympathy. I sometimes feel I could cheerfully see the death penalty inflicted upon whoever was responsible for making Jamaican towns bare of trees, for decreeing that telephone and t

T he feud that raged over the religious instruction of the negroes makes a curious piece of Jamaican history. “The imported Africans were wild, savage and barbarous in the extreme; their untractable passions and ferocious temperament rendered severity necessary. They provoked the iron rule of harsh authority; and the earliest laws, constructed to restrain their unexampled atrocities, were rigid and inclement. They exhibited, in fact, such depravity of nature and deformity of mind as gave colour

T he freeing of the slaves came in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Think of it, not ninety years ago! And a short time before Matthew Lewis wrote— “The higher classes are in the utmost alarm at rumours of Wilberforce's intention to set the negroes entirely free; the next step to which would be in all probability a general massacre of the whites, and a second edition of the horrors of St Domingo.” It must have been with some misgivings then, that the great day dawned when the slaves

D orinda came home from church. She had on a neat, blue cotton dress, a snow-white handkerchief was wrapped round her head, her pretty black feet were bare, and her comely dark face stood clear cut in the evening light against the white wall of the house. “What church do you belong to, Dorinda?” “Baptist, missus.” So she was one of the Black Family, the church that bravely tried first to teach the slaves. “And have you been baptised?” “No, missus. I'm an enquirer.” It troubled her mistress a lit