A true & exact history of the island of BarbadosLigon, Richard
History
A true & exact history of the island of Barbados
Ligon, Richard
Barbados -- Description and travel; Plants -- Barbados; Sugar -- Manufacture and refining -- Barbados
drawers, when they awak’d out of their sleeps, they found themselves
very cold; and a cold taken there, is harder to be recovered, than
in _England_, by how much the body is infeebled by the great toyle,
and the Sun’s heat, which cannot but very much exhaust the spirits
of bodies unaccustomed to it. But this care and charity of Collonell
_Walrond’s_, lost him nothing in the conclusion; for, he got such
love of his servants, as they thought all too little they could do
for him; and the love of the servants there, is of much concernment
to the Masters, not only in their diligent and painfull labour, but
in fore seeing and preventing mischiefes that often happen, by the
carelessnesse and slothfulnesse of retchlesse servants; sometimes by
laying fire so negligently, as whole lands of Canes and Houses too,
are burnt down and consumed, to the utter ruine and undoing of their
Masters: For, the materialls there being all combustible, and apt to
take fire, a little oversight, as the fire of a Tobacco-pipe, being
knockt out against a drie stump of a tree, has set it on fire, and
the wind fanning that fire, if a land of Canes be but neer, and they
once take fire, all that are down the winde will be burnt up. Water
there is none to quench it, or if it were, a hundred _Negres_ with
buckets were not able to do it; so violent and spreading a fire this
is, and such a noise it makes, as if two Armies, with a thousand
shot of either side, were continually giving fire, every knot of
every Cane, giving as great a report as a Pistoll. So that there is
no way to stop the going on of this flame, but by cutting down and
removing all the Canes that grow before it, for the breadth of twenty
or thirty foot down the winde, and there the _Negres_ to stand and
beat out the fire, as it creeps upon the ground, where the Canes are
cut down. And I have seen some _Negres_ so earnest to stop this fire,
as with their naked feet to tread, and with their naked bodies to
tumble, and roll upon it; so little they regard their own smart or
safety, in respect of their Masters benefit. The year before I came
away, there were two eminent Planters in the Iland, that with such an
accident as this, lost at least 10000 l. sterling, in the value of
the Canes that were burnt; the one, Mr. _James Holduppe_, the other,
Mr. _Constantine Silvester_: And the latter had not only his Canes,
but his house burnt down to the ground. This, and much more mischiefe
has been done, by the negligence and wilfulnesse of servants. And yet
some cruell Masters will provoke their Servants so, by extream ill
usage, and often and cruell beating them, as they grow desperate, and
so joyne together to revenge themselves upon them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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