The harvest was a time of special activity, of good feeling, and even of a certain degree of pageantry.  Lafcadio Hearn, many years after the slaves were freed, described the scene in Martinique as viewed from the slopes of Mont Pelee:  “We look back over the upreaching yellow fan-spread of cane-fields, and winding of tortuous valleys, and the sea expanding beyond an opening to the west....  Far down we can distinguish a line of field-hands—­the whole atelier, as it is called, of a plantation—­slowly descending a slope, hewing the canes as they go.  There is a woman to every two men, a binder (amarreuse):  she gathers the canes as they are cut down, binds them with their own tough long leaves into a sort of sheaf, and carries them away on her head;—­the men wield their cutlasses so beautifully that it is a delight to watch them.  One cannot often enjoy such a spectacle nowadays; for the introduction of the piece-work system has destroyed the picturesqueness of plantation labor throughout the islands, with rare exceptions.  Formerly the work of cane-cutting resembled the march of an army;—­first advanced the cutlassers in line, naked to the waist; then the amarreuses, the women who tied and carried; and behind these the ka, the drum,—­with a paid crieur or crieuse to lead the song;—­and lastly the black Commandeur, for general."[19]

[Footnote 19:  Lafcadio Hearn, Two Years in the French West Indies (New York, 1890), p. 275.]

After this bit of rhapsody the steadying effect of statistics may be abundantly had from the records of the great Worthy Park plantation, elaborated expressly for posterity’s information.  This estate, lying in St. John’s parish on the southern slope of the Jamaica mountain chain, comprised not only the plantation proper, which had some 560 acres in sugar cane and smaller fields in food and forage crops, but also Spring Garden, a nearby cattle ranch, and Mickleton which was presumably a relay station for the teams hauling the sugar and rum to Port Henderson.  The records, which are available for the years from 1792 to 1796 inclusive, treat the three properties as one establishment.[20]

[Footnote 20:  These records have been analyzed in U.B.  Phillips, “A Jamaica Slave Plantation,” in the American Historical Review, XIX, 543-558.]

The slaves of the estate at the beginning of 1792 numbered 355, apparently all seasoned negroes, of whom 150 were in the main field gang.  But this force was inadequate for the full routine, and in that year “jobbing gangs” from outside were employed at rates from 2s. 6d. to 3s. per head per day and at a total cost of L1832, reckoned probably in Jamaican currency which stood at thirty per cent, discount.  In order to relieve the need of this outside labor the management began that year to buy new Africans on a scale considered reckless by all the island authorities.  In March five men and five women were bought; and in October 25 men,