CHAPTER XXXV. MISCELLANIES. "Not much of any thing, but a little of every thing." THE bells of the estates were ringing, to call the negroes to their work; the sound of the merry conch shells struck upon my ear, as the drivers blew the sonorous blast that summoned their gangs to the field; the bland breeze of the morning passed softly through the trees, the sun was peeping over the eastern hills of St. Vincent, and darting his splendid beams into the green valleys below, the dew was updrawn from the wild flowers that grew by the road side, and the negroes were driving their cattle to the rich pasture lands, when, returning from my morning ride, I beheld the signal for the packet and a sloop, waving in the breeze, on the flagstaff at Dorsetshire Hill. I was glad to see this signal; for the packet had been long expected, and there were now three due in the colony, which had been kept back by contrary winds. I went home and breakfasted; pleasure always sharpens my appetite, so I did ample justice to the roast yam and caviched fish which Mat had taken so much pains to get dressed for me: after which I repaired to the post-office, where I found many others waiting, with anxious looks, for the opening of the important window from which the letters are delivered. The scene around a West Indian post-office is by no means uninteresting to an observer, and I have often experienced much pleasure in witnessing it. The sight of the packet from England occasions a great sensation among the colonists; and the moment it makes its appearance in the harbour the post-office is beset with a crowd of visitors of all classes. The lawyers from their offices, the merchants from their stores, the officers from their garrison, the soldiers from their barracks, the captains from their ships, and the planters from their estates, all flock thither, and wait, with the greatest impatience and anxiety, to hear the news in the mother country, and to receive their letters from home. Here, walking to and fro beneath the covered gallery, or taking their seats on the benches, they converse together on various topics, until the opening of the first window, which announces that the newspapers are ready for delivery; then they rush like soldiers to charge, as eager for their papers as troops are for victory: the parcels are opened in a moment, the news spreads like a pestilence in a plague-struck city; and before ten minutes have passed away every one is acquainted with what is going on at home. This word at home is the common expression of the West India settlers. England, Scotland, or Ireland is still their home. Unlike the inhabitants of the French colonies, they look upon the island in which they reside as a place to which they are, as it were, exiled for a certain period; as a place containing their properties, and, therefore, of the greatest consequence to them; but very few of them expect to die on those properties. Those who can afford it are in the habit of making trips every three or four years to the United Kingdom; and nearly all look forward to spending their last days in the land of their birth. This feeling, however, exists less in Barbados than in the other colonies; and yet I have seen a Barbadian excessively anxious about the affairs of the mother country; and I have heard him argue the catholic question with an Englishman as vehemently as if he expected to become one of the emancipated. But to return to the post-office. We had been waiting some time, in expectation of seeing the packet make her appearance round Cane Garden Point, when a little sloop, for which I had seen the signal made in the morning, scudded into the harbour, and attracted the notice of the crowd around the office. She was, certainly, a stranger; for her private signal was unknown to any of the merchants, and nobody could guess where she came from. The harbour-master went off, and, after two or three tacks, brought her to an anchor; and the captain came on shore to take his papers to the custom house. As the anecdote which accounts for the appearance of this little sloop is somewhat extraordinary, I will relate it to the reader. Every one has heard of the little fishing smacks employed in cruising along the coast of Scotland, which carry herrings and other fish to Leith, Edinburgh, or Glasgow, worked by three or four hardy sailors, and generally commanded by a low Scotchman, only fit for that service, and with no other knowledge of navigation than that which enables him to keep his dead reckoning, and to take the sun with his quadrant at noonday. It appears that a man who owned and commanded one of these coasting vessels, and had, besides, a little money in the pouch of his woollen breeches, had been in the habit of seeing the West India ships load and unload in the several ports of Scotland, and having learned that sugar was a very profitable cargo, half determined, by way of speculation, on making a trip to St. Vincent, and returning to the Scottish market with a few hogsheads of the said commodity. Yet Sawney was prudent, and looked before he leaped. Ere he resolved he hesitated "To be or not to be? This is the question, "And, when the wind is blawing like the devil, Sawney compared the disagreeables of the latter with the advantages of the former question, and at length decided on making the trip. The natives were perfectly astonished; they had never heard of such a feat before, and they deemed it quite impossible that a mere fishing smack, worked by only four men, and commanded by an ignorant master, should plough the boisterous billows of the Atlantic, and reach the West Indies in safety ;-yet so it was. The hardy Scotchman got his freight on board— made sail-crossed the Bay of Biscay in a galegot into the trades, and scudded along before the wind, at the rate of seven knots an hour, trusting to his dead reckoning all the way. He spoke no vessel during the whole voyage, and never once saw land until the morning of the thirty-fifth day, when he descried St. Vincent right a-head; and, setting his gaft-topsail, ran down, under a light breeze, along the windward coast of the island, and came to anchor about eleven o'clock under the circumstances beforementioned. He remained about a month at St. Vincent, during which time he used to walk about the town in the same garb which he wore in Scotland, when the snow covered the ground and the ice was frozen in the rivers. His thick flannel shirt, his blue cloth jacket, his grey trowsers, and his worsted stockings, all maintained their seat on the athletic limbs of the gallant captain; and though the tropic sun shone upon his body, and the perspiration oozed from every pore, "I'm a' in a muck," and " this, this is a muckle hot land," were the only murmurs of complaint that ever burst from his contented lips. At the expiration of a month he left St. Vincent to |