BARBADOES

CHAPTER I.

PASSAGE

Barbadoes was the next island which we visited.  Having failed of a passage in the steamer,[A] (on account of her leaving Antigua on the Sabbath,) we were reduced to the necessity of sailing in a small schooner, a vessel of only seventeen tons burthen, with no cabin but a mere hole, scarcely large enough to receive our baggage.  The berths, for there were two, had but one mattress between them; however, a foresail folded made up the complement.

[Footnote A:  There are several English steamers which ply between Barbadoes and Jamaica, touching at several of the intermediate and surrounding islands, and carrying the mails.]

The being for the most part directly against us, we were seven days in reaching Barbadoes.  Our aversion to the sepulchre-like cabin obliged us to spend, not the days only, but the nights mostly on the open deck.  Wrapping our cloaks about us, and drawing our fur caps over our faces, we slept securely in the soft air of a tropical clime, undisturbed save by the hoarse voice of the black captain crying “ready, bout” and the flapping of the sails, and the creaking of the cordage, in the frequent tackings of our staunch little sea-boat.  On our way we passed under the lee of Guadaloupe and to the windward of Dominica, Martinique and St. Lucia.  In passing Guadaloupe, we were obliged to keep at a league’s distance from the land, in obedience to an express regulation of that colony prohibiting small English vessels from approaching any nearer.  This is a precautionary measure against the escape of slaves to the English islands.  Numerous small vessels, called guarda costas, are stationed around the coast to warn off vessels and seize upon all slaves attempting to make their escape.  We were informed that the eagerness of the French negroes to taste the sweets of liberty, which they hear to exist in the surrounding English islands, is so great, that notwithstanding all the vigilance by land and sea, they are escaping in vast numbers.  They steal to the shores by night, and seizing upon any sort of vessel within their reach, launch forth and make for Dominica, Montserrat, or Antigua.  They have been known to venture out in skiffs, canoes, and such like hazardous conveyances, and make a voyage of fifty or sixty miles; and it is not without reason supposed, that very many have been lost in these eager darings for freedom.

Such is their defiance of dangers when liberty is to be won, that old ocean, with its wild storms, and fierce monsters, and its yawning deep, and even the superadded terrors of armed vessels ever hovering around the island, are barriers altogether ineffectual to prevent escape.  The western side of Guadaloupe, along which we passed, is hilly and little cultivated.  It is mostly occupied in pasturage.  The sugar