than nine
and thirty thousand were caught."[22]

[Footnote 22: William Beckford, _A Discriptive Account of Jamaica_ (London,
1790), I. 55, 56.]

In the "weeding gang," in which most of the children from five to eight
years old were kept as much for control as for achievement, there were
twenty pickaninnies, all black, under Mirtilla as "driveress," who had
borne and lost seven children of her own. Thirty-nine other children were
too young for the weeding gang, at least six of whom were quadroons. Two of
these last, the children of Joanny, a washerwoman at the overseer's house,
were manumitted in 1795.

Fifty-five, all new negroes except Darby the foreman, and including Blossom
the infant daughter of one of the women, comprised the Spring Garden squad.
Nearly all of these were twenty or twenty-one years old. The men included
Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Burke, Fox, Milton, Spencer, Hume and
Sheridan; the women Spring, Summer, July, Bashfull, Virtue, Frolic,
Gamesome, Lady, Madame, Dutchess, Mirtle and Cowslip. Seventeen of this
distinguished company died within the year.

The "big gang" on Worthy Park numbered 137, comprising 64 men from nineteen
to sixty years old and 73 women from nineteen to fifty years, though but
four of the women and nine of the men, including Quashy the "head driver"
or foreman, were past forty years. The gang included a "head home wainman,"
a "head road wainman," who appears to have been also the sole slave plowman
on the place, a head muleman, three distillers, a boiler, two sugar
potters, and two "sugar guards" for the wagons carrying the crop to port.
All of the gang were described as healthy, able-bodied and black. A
considerable number in it were new negroes, but only seven of the whole
died in this year of heaviest mortality.

The "second gang," employed in a somewhat lighter routine under Sharper as
foreman, comprised 40 women and 27 men ranging from fifteen to sixty years,
all black. While most of them were healthy, five were consumptive, four
were ulcerated, one was "inclined to be bloated," one was "very weak," and
Pheba was "healthy but worthless."

Finally in the third or "small gang," for yet lighter work under Baddy as
driveress with Old Robin as assistant, there were 68 boys and girls, all
black, mostly between twelve and fifteen years old. The draught animals
comprised about 80 mules and 140 oxen.

Among the 528 slaves all told--284 males and 244 females--74, equally
di