as in a district mostly
occupied by small freeholders, and containing but few estates. In
planting districts the number of worthless, idle negroes is much larger.
I have been assured that the negroes of the parish of Vere are
peculiarly so. The men, I have been told, do scarcely any work, except
in crop time; the women do none at all, not even to keep their houses
neat. There is scarcely a cottage in the parish that has a bread-fruit
or a cocoanut tree on its ground.[3] Everything is dirty and forlorn. On
the other hand, in Metcalfe and the adjoining parts of St. Andrew, and
St. Thomas in the Vale, although the mass of the working people have
certainly not learned much about comfort yet, still the number of neat,
floored, and glazed houses, the fruit trees on almost every negro plot,
the neat hibiscus hedges, with their gay red flowers, surrounding even
the poorer huts, the small cane fields and coffee pieces noticeable at
every turn, and the absence of loungers about the cottages, go to make
up a very different picture from what has been drawn of Vere. It is
plain, then, that the impressions which travellers bring away with them
from Jamaica will vary almost to entire opposition, according to the
quarters they have visited. Now what is the cause of these glaring
contrasts? The negro character is remarkably uniform. If there are great
differences among them, every one that knows them will ascribe it to a
difference in circumstances. What is the difference then between
Metcalfe and Vere? Simply this: Metcalfe is the home of small
freeholders; Vere is a sugar parish, where the estates are in prosperous
activity. It has been less affected by emancipation than any other
parish. In Metcalfe the negroes are independent; in Vere they are
completely subject to the planters. It is said that not even an ounce of
sugar is permitted to be sold in the parish. All is for exportation. If
the writer then attempts to vindicate the character of the blacks from
the reproaches of incurable laziness and unthriftiness that have been
cast upon it, he wishes it to be understood that he speaks only for the
freeholders, who have homes of their own, which they have an inducement
to improve and beautify, and who have land of their own which no
dishonest motive prompts them to neglect, and for the estate laborers
whose condition most nearly resembles theirs. If the blacks on many
plantations are little disposed to adorn homes from which they may be