Part 3 (1/2)
They went away with this information; and in a short time eight or nine others came and surrounded me, asking the same questions. My answers--and I was very particular--raised quite a storm of uncomplimentary remarks.
”Guess a n.i.g.g.e.r woman don't go along with us in this saloon,” said one. ”I never travelled with a n.i.g.g.e.r yet, and I expect I shan't begin now,” said another; while some children had taken my little servant Mary in hand, and were practising on her the politenesses which their parents were favouring me with--only, as is the wont of children, they were crueller. I cannot help it if I shock my readers; but the _truth_ is, that one positively spat in poor little Mary's frightened yellow face.
At last an old American lady came to where I sat, and gave me some staid advice. ”Well, now, I tell you for your good, you'd better quit this, and not drive my people to extremities. If you do, you'll be sorry for it, I expect.” Thus hara.s.sed, I appealed to the stewardess--a tall sour-looking woman, flat and thin as a dressed-up broomstick. She asked me sundry questions as to how and when I had taken my pa.s.sage; until, tired beyond all endurance, I said, ”My good woman, put me anywhere--under a boat--in your store-room, so that I can get to Kingston somehow.” But the stewardess was not to be moved.
”There's nowhere but the saloon, and you can't expect to stay with the white people, that's clear. Flesh and blood can stand a good deal of aggravation; but not that. If the Britishers is so took up with coloured people, that's their business; but it won't do here.”
This last remark was in answer to an Englishman, whose advice to me was not to leave my seat for any of them. He made matters worse; until at last I lost my temper, and calling Mac, bade him get my things together, and went up to the captain--a good honest man. He and some of the black crew and the black cook, who showed his teeth most viciously, were much annoyed. Muttering about its being a custom of the country, the captain gave me an order upon the agent for the money I had paid; and so, at twelve o'clock at night, I was landed again upon the wharf of Navy Bay.
My American friends were vastly annoyed, but not much surprised; and two days later, the English steamer, the ”Eagle,” in charge of my old friend, Captain B----, touched at Navy Bay, and carried me to Kingston.
CHAPTER VII.
THE YELLOW FEVER IN JAMAICA--MY EXPERIENCE OF DEATH-BED SCENES--I LEAVE AGAIN FOR NAVY BAY, AND OPEN A STORE THERE--I AM ATTACKED WITH THE GOLD FEVER, AND START FOR ESCRIBANOS--LIFE IN THE INTERIOR OF THE REPUBLIC OF NEW GRANADA--A REVOLUTIONARY CONSPIRACY ON A SMALL SCALE--THE DINNER DELICACIES OF ESCRIBANOS--JOURNEY UP THE PALMILLA RIVER--A FEW WORDS ON THE PRESENT ASPECT OF AFFAIRS ON THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA.
I stayed in Jamaica eight months out of the year 1853, still remembered in the island for its suffering and gloom. I returned just in time to find my services, with many others, needful; for the yellow fever never made a more determined effort to exterminate the English in Jamaica than it did in that dreadful year. So violent was the epidemic, that some of my people fell victims to its fury, a thing rarely heard of before. My house was full of sufferers--officers, their wives and children. Very often they were borne in from the s.h.i.+ps in the harbour--sometimes in a dying state, sometimes--after long and distressing struggles with the grim foe--to recover. Habituated as I had become with death in its most harrowing forms, I found these scenes more difficult to bear than any I had previously borne a part in; and for this reason perhaps, that I had not only to cheer the death-bed of the sufferer, but, far more trying task, to soothe the pa.s.sionate grief of wife or husband left behind. It was a terrible thing to see young people in the youth and bloom of life suddenly stricken down, not in battle with an enemy that threatened their country, but in vain contest with a climate that refused to adopt them. Indeed, the mother country pays a dear price for the possession of her colonies.
I think all who are familiar with the West Indies will acknowledge that Nature has been favourable to strangers in a few respects, and that one of these has been in instilling into the hearts of the Creoles an affection for English people and an anxiety for their welfare, which shows itself warmest when they are sick and suffering.
I can safely appeal on this point to any one who is acquainted with life in Jamaica. Another benefit has been conferred upon them by inclining the Creoles to practise the healing art, and inducing them to seek out the simple remedies which are available for the terrible diseases by which foreigners are attacked, and which are found growing under the same circ.u.mstances which produce the ills they minister to.
So true is it that beside the nettle ever grows the cure for its sting.
I do not willingly care to dwell upon scenes of suffering and death, but it is with such scenes that my life's experience has made me most familiar, and it is impossible to avoid their description now and then; and here I would fain record, in humble spirit, my conclusions, drawn from the bearing of those whom I have now and then accompanied a little distance on their way into the Valley of the Shadow of Death, on the awful and important question of religious feeling. Death is always terrible--no one need be ashamed to fear it. How we bear it depends much upon our const.i.tutions. I have seen some brave men, who have smiled at the cruellest amputation, die trembling like children; while others, whose lives have been spent in avoidance of the least danger or trouble, have drawn their last painful breath like heroes, striking at their foe to the last, robbing him of his victory, and making their defeat a triumph. But I cannot trace _all_ the peace and resignation which I have witnessed on many death-beds to temperament alone, although I believe it has much more to do with them than many teachers will allow. I have stood by receiving the last blessings of Christians; and closing the eyes of those who had nothing to trust to but the mercy of a G.o.d who will be far more merciful to us than we are to one another; and I say decidedly that the Christian's death is the glorious one, as is his life. You can never find a good man who is not a worker; he is no laggard in the race of life. Three, two, or one score years of life have been to him a season of labour in his appointed sphere; and as the work of the hands earns for us sweet rest by night, so does the heart's labour of a lifetime make the repose of heaven acceptable. This is my experience; and I remember one death, of a man whom I grew to love in a few short weeks, the thought of which stirs my heart now, and has sustained me in seasons of great danger; for before that time, if I had never feared death, I had not learnt to meet him with a brave, smiling face, and this he taught me.
I must not tell you his name, for his friends live yet, and have been kind to me in many ways. One of them we shall meet on Crimean soil. He was a young surgeon, and as busy, light-hearted, and joyous as a good man should be; and when he fell ill they brought him to my house, where I nursed him, and grew fond of him--almost as fond as the poor lady his mother in England far away. For some time we thought him safe, but at last the most terrible symptoms of the cruel disease showed themselves, and he knew that he must die. His thoughts were never for himself, but for those he had to leave behind; all his pity was for them. It was trying to see his poor hands tremblingly penning the last few words of leave-taking--trying to see how piteously the poor worn heart longed to see once more the old familiar faces of the loved ones in unconscious happiness at home; and yet I had to support him while this sad task was effected, and to give him all the help I could. I think he had some fondness for me, or, perhaps, his kind heart feigned a feeling that he saw would give me joy; for I used to call him ”My son--my dear child,” and to weep over him in a very weak and silly manner perhaps.
He sent for an old friend, Captain S----; and when he came, I had to listen to the dictation of his simple will--his dog to one friend, his ring to another, his books to a third, his love and kind wishes to all; and that over, my poor son prepared himself to die--a child in all save a man's calm courage. He beckoned me to raise him in the bed, and, as I pa.s.sed my arms around him, he saw the tears I could not repress, rolling down my brown cheeks, and thanked me with a few words. ”Let me lay my head upon your breast;” and so he rested, now and then speaking lowly to himself, ”It's only that I miss my mother; but Heaven's will be done.” He repeated this many times, until the Heaven he obeyed sent him in its mercy forgetfulness, and his thoughts no longer wandered to his earthly home. I heard glad words feebly uttered as I bent over him--words about ”Heaven--rest--rest”--a holy Name many times repeated; and then with a smile and a stronger voice, ”Home! home!” And so in a little while my arms no longer held him.
I have a little gold brooch with his hair in it now. I wonder what inducement could be strong enough to cause me to part with that memorial, sent me by his mother some months later, with the following letter:--
”My dear Madam,--Will you do me the favour to accept the enclosed trifle, in remembrance of that dear son whose last moments were soothed by your kindness, and as a mark of the grat.i.tude of, my dear Madam,
”Your ever sincere and obliged,
”M---- S----.”
After this, I was sent for by the medical authorities to provide nurses for the sick at Up-Park Camp, about a mile from Kingston; and leaving some nurses and my sister at home, I went there and did my best; but it was little we could do to mitigate the severity of the epidemic.
About eight months after my return to Jamaica, it became necessary that some one should go to the Isthmus of Panama to wind up the affairs of my late hotel; and having another fit of restlessness, I prepared to return there myself. I found Navy Bay but little altered.
It was evening when I arrived there; and my friend Mr. H----, who came to meet me on the wharf, carefully piloted me through the wretched streets, giving me especial warning not to stumble over what looked like three long boxes, loosely covered with the _debris_ of a fallen house. They had such a peculiar look about them that I stopped to ask what they were, receiving an answer which revived all my former memories of Darien life, ”Oh, they're only three Irishmen killed in a row a week ago, whom it's n.o.body's business to bury.”
I went to Gorgona, wound up the affairs of the hotel, and, before returning to Navy Bay, took the occasion of accompanying my brother to the town of Panama. We did not go with the crowd, but rode alone on mules, taking with us three native guides on foot; and although the distance was not much over twenty miles, and we started at daybreak, we did not reach Panama until nightfall. But far from being surprised at this, my chief wonder was that we ever succeeded in getting over the journey. Through sand and mud, over hill and plain--through thick forests, deep gulleys, and over rapid streams, ran the track; the road sometimes being made of logs of wood laid transversely, with f.a.ggots stuffed between; while here and there we had to work our way through a tangled network of brushwood, and over broken rocks that seemed to have been piled together as stones for some giant's sling. We found Panama an old-fas.h.i.+oned, irregular town, with queer stone houses, almost all of which had been turned by the traders into stores.
On my return to Navy Bay--or Colon, as the New Granadans would have it called--I again opened a store, and stayed there for three months or so. I did not find that society had improved much in my absence; indeed, it appeared to have grown more lawless. Endless quarrels, often resulting in bloodshed, took place between the strangers and the natives, and disturbed the peace of the town. Once the Spanish were incensed to such an extent, that they planned a general rising against the foreigners; and but for the opportune arrival of an English war-steamer, the consequences might have been terrible. The Americans were well armed and ready; but the native population far outnumbered them.
Altogether, I was not sorry when an opportunity offered itself to do something at one of the stations of the New Granada Gold-mining Company, Escribanos, about seventy miles from Navy Bay. I made the journey there in a little vessel, all communication by land from Navy Bay being impossible, on account of the thick, dense forests, that would have resisted the attempts of an army to cut its way through them. As I was at this place for some months altogether, and as it was the only portion of my life devoted to gold-seeking, I shall make no apologies for endeavouring to describe the out-of-the-way village-life of New Granada.
Escribanos is in the province of Veraguas, in the State of New Granada--information uninteresting enough, I have little doubt, to all but a very few of my readers. It lies near the mouth of a rivulet bearing that name, which, leaving the river Belen, runs away to the sea on its own account, about a mile from the mouth of that river. It is a great neighbourhood for gold-mines; and about that time companies and private individuals were trying hard to turn them to good account.