The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 4, October, 1863

Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell said,7 in parliament, in 1842, five years before the famine in Ireland: 'We are not, we cannot be, independent of foreign nations, any more than they can of us: * * * two millions of our people have been dependent on foreign countries for their daily food. At least five millions of our people are dependent on the supplies of cotton from America, of foreign wool or foreign silk. * * * The true independence of a great commercial nation is to be found, not in raising all the produce it requires within its own bound, but in attaining such a preëminence in commerce that the time can never arise when other nations will not be compelled, for their own sales, to minister to its wants.'

Now this principle, enunciated twenty years ago by men, who now hold the reins of the English Government, is especially one for us to bear in mind. While England, from her limited surface, can never be independent of other countries for the supply of food, we may say, and we can demonstrate, that the United States can reach that preëminence to which the great English statesman alluded—a preëminence which he would gladly attain for his own countrymen.

To the General Government was confided by the framers of the Constitution the power to 'coin money, and regulate the value thereof;' and the States were forbidden to 'emit bills of credit;' from which we may infer that it was intended to place the control of the currency in the hands of the General Government. It will be generally conceded that it would be wiser to have one central point of issue than several hundred as at present. There should be but one form for, and one source of, the currency. It should emanate from a source where the power cannot be abused, and where the interests of the people at large, and not of individuals, will be consulted.

The people have thus an interest at stake. It is for their benefit that a national circulation, of a perfectly reliable character, should be established. The remark made by Sir Robert Peel, in parliament, in May, 1844, at the time of the recharter of the bank, applies with equal force to the national currency of this or any other country.

'There is no contract, public or private, national or individual, which is unaffected by it. The enterprises of trade—the arrangements made in all the domestic relations of society—the wages of labor—pecuniary transactions of the highest amount and the lowest—the payment of the national debt—the provision for the national expenditure—the command which the coin of the lowest denomination has over the necessaries of life—are all affected by the decision to which we may come.'

Sir Robert Peel wisely comprehended the powers and attributes of a national currency, and we may wisely adopt his idea that such a national currency, controlled by the national legislature, for the use and benefit of the people, is the only one that can be safely adopted.

The national banking system established by Congress, in the year 1863, at the suggestion of Secretary Chase, of the Treasury Department, is the initiatory step toward a highly desirable reform in the paper currency of the country. Already over seventy national banks have been organized, under the act of Congress, with a combined capital of ten millions of dollars, whose circulation will have not only a uniform appearance, but a uniform value throughout the whole country. Numerous others are in process of organization. To the community at large the new system is desirable, because it secures to the people a currency of uniform value and perfect reliability. The notes of these institutions will be at par in every State in the Union, and holders may rely upon the certainty of redemption upon demand: whether the institution be solvent or not—in existence or not—the Government holds adequate security for instant redemption of all notes issued under the law.

This feature of the paper currency of the country is one that has long been needed. For the want of it the States have been for many years crowded with a currency of unequal market value, and of doubtful security. Added to this is a marked feature of the new system which did not pertain to the Bank of the United States in its best days. Its workings are free from individual favoritism. No loans are granted to political or personal friends, at the risk of the Government, and all temptation to needless and hurtful expansion is thus destroyed. There is no mammoth institution, under the control of one or a few individuals, liable at times to be prostituted to political and personal ends of an objectionable character. While the banks under the new system are spread over a large space, they perform what is needed of the best managed institutions; and although perfectly independent of each other in their liabilities, expenses, losses, and in their action generally, yet together they form a practical unit, and will be serviceable in counteracting that tendency to inflation and speculation which has marked many years in the commercial history of this country.

We consider the Bank Act of 1863 as one of the most important features of the Thirty-seventh Congress, and of this Administration. It will create a link long wanted between the States and Territories, and do much to strengthen the Union and maintain commercial prosperity. The country will hereafter honor Secretary Chase for the conception and success of this scheme, even if there were no other distinguished traits in his administration of the Treasury and the Government finances.

OCTOBER AFTERNOON IN THE HIGHLANDS

Slowly toward the western mountains    Sinks the gold October sun;Longer grow the deepening shadows,    And the day is nearly done.Rosy gleams the quiet River    'Neath the crimson-tinted sky;White-winged vessels, wind-forsaken,    On the waveless waters lie.Glow the autumn-tinted valleys,    On the hills soft shadows rest,Growing warmer, purple glowing,    As the sun sinks toward the west.Slanting sunlight through the Cedars,    Scarlet Maples all aglow,Long rays streaming through the forests,    Gleam the dead leaves lying low.Golden sunshine on the cornfields,    Glittering ripples on the stream.And the still pools in the meadows    Catch the soft October gleam.Warmer grows the purple mountains,    Lower sinks the glowing sun,Soon will fade the streaming sunlight—    See, the day is nearly done!

THE ISLE OF SPRINGS

CHAPTER III

THE COUNTRY

After having been detained in town several days longer than I had reckoned on, by heavy rains, which ran through the streets in rivers, and filled the bed of Sandy Gully, through which we must pass, with a rushing torrent of irresistible strength, a small party of us left Kingston one morning for the mountains of St. Andrew and Metcalfe, among which lie the stations of the American missionaries whom we had come to join. We were mounted on the small horses of the country, whose first appearance excited some doubts in the mind of a friend whether he was to carry the horse or the horse him. However, they are not quite ponies, and their blood is more noble than their size, being a good deal of it Arab. They are decidedly preferable for mountain travel to larger animals.

We directed our course over the hot plains towards the mountains which rose invitingly before us, ready to receive us into their green depths. On leaving the town, we passed first through sandy lanes bordered by cactus hedges, rising in columnar rows, and then came out upon the excellent macadamized road over which thirteen of the sixteen miles of our journey lay. As we went along we met a continual succession of groups of the country people, mostly women and children, coming into Kingston with their weekly load of provisions to sell. They eyed us with expressions varying from good-natured cordiality to sullenness, and occasionally we heard a rude remark at the expense of the 'Buckras;' but for the most part their demeanor was civil and pleasant. Most of them had the headloads without which a negro woman seems hardly complete in the road, varying in dimensions from a huge basket of yams or bananas to an ounce vial. How such a slight thing manages to keep its perpendicular with their careless, swinging gait, is something marvellous, but they manage it to perfection. Almost every group, in addition, had a well-laden donkey—comical little creatures, looking hardly bigger under their huge hampers than well-sized Newfoundland dogs, and hurrying nimbly along, with a speed that betokened a wholesome remembrance of a good many hard thrashings in the past and a reasonable dread of similar ones in the future. If I held the doctrine of transmigration, I should be firmly persuaded that the souls of parish beadles, drunken captains, and other petty tyrants, shifted quarters into the bodies of Jamaica negroes' donkeys. One patriotic black woman, whose donkey was rather refractory, relieved her mind by exclaiming, in a tone of infinite disgust, 'O-h-h you Roo-shan!' accompanying her objurgation by several emphatic demonstrations on his hide of how she was disposed to treat a 'Rooshan' at that present moment.8

Going on, we passed several beautiful 'pens,' as farms devoted to grazing are called. These near town are little more than mere pieces of land surrounding elegant villas, the residence of wealthy gentlemen whose business lies in Kingston. Here you see 'the one-storied house of the tropics, with its green jalousies and deep veranda,' surrounded by handsomely kept meadows of the succulent Guinea grass, which clothes so large a part of the island with its golden green, and enclosed by wire fences or by the intricate but delicate logwood hedges, or else by stone walls. On either side of the carriage road which swept round before the most elegant of these villas, that of Mr. Porteous, we noticed rows of the mystic century plant.

At last we left the comparatively arid plain, with its scantier vegetation, and began to ascend Stony Hill, which is 1,360 feet high where the road passes over it. The cool air passing through the gap, and our increasing elevation, now began to temper the heat, and soon the clouds began to gather again, and a slight rain fell. But I did not notice it, for every step of the journey now seemed to bring me farther into the heart of fairyland. It was not any variety of colors, but the unutterable depth of green, enclosing us, as we ascended, more and more completely in its boundless exuberance. From that moment the richest verdure of my native country has seemed pale and poor. Reaching the top of the hill, we saw above us the higher range, looking down on us through the shifting mists, with that inexpressible gracefulness which tempers the grandeur of tropical mountains.

We descended the hill on the other side into a small inland valley, containing the two estates of Golden Spring and Temple Hall. The former, which presented nothing very noticeable then, has since passed under the management of a gentleman who to a judicious and energetic personal oversight has added a kindliness and strict honesty in his dealings with the laborers much more desirable than frequent in the island. As a result of this, Golden Spring has become a garden. A great many more dilapidated estates would become gardens under the same efficacious mode of treatment.

The streams were so swollen by the rain that on coming to what is commonly a trifling rivulet, we found it so high as to cost us some trouble to cross. However, we all got over, although one servant boy with his pack horse was caught by the current and carried down several rods almost into the river, which was rushing by in a turbid torrent. I ought to have been much alarmed, but having a happy way, in new circumstances, of taking it for granted that everything which happens is just what ought to happen then and there, I stood composedly on the farther bank, nothing doubting that the boy and the beast had their own good reasons for striking out a new track, and it was not till they were both safe on land that I learned with some consternation that they had come within an inch of being drowned.

At length we turned aside into a byroad leading up a steep hill, slippery with mud, and left this pleasant valley. I passed through it many a time afterwards, and never lost the impression of its peaceful richness.

We now found ourselves in the wild country in which our missionary stations lie. Hills rose around on every side; their surfaces broken and furrowed into every fantastic variety of shape, with only distance enough between their bases for the mountain streams to flow. In our latitude such a country would be much of the time a bleak desolation. But here the mantle of glorious and everlasting green softens and enriches the broken and fluctuating surfaces into luxuriant and cloying beauty. In such an ocean of verdure we now found ourselves, its emerald waves rolling above, below, and around us. Our road, when once we had surmounted the short hill, was a narrow, winding bridle path, which kept along almost upon a level over a continual succession of natural causeways, spanning the gullies with such an appearance of art as I have never seen elsewhere. I afterward learned that these are dikes of trap, from which the softer rock has been gradually disintegrated, leaving them thus happily arranged for human convenience.

After three miles' travel over these roads of nature's making, in a rain which at last became quite uncomfortable, we came finally to Oberlin Mission House. A West Indian country house, without fire or carpets, must be very pleasingly fitted up not to look dreary in a wet day, and Oberlin House appeared rather cheerless as we alighted with streaming garments, the romance pretty well soaked out of us for the time. But after supper and a change of clothes, and the clearing away of the clouds, our dismal spirits cleared up too, and we went out into the garden to enjoy the rare flowers and plants—the crimson-leaved ponsetto, the Bleeding Heart, with its ensanguined centre, the curiously pied and twisted Croton Pictum, the Plumbago, well named from the leaden hue of its flowers, the long, deep-red leaves of the Dragon's Blood, the purple magnificence of the Passion flower, relieved by the more familiar beauty of the Four o'clock and of the Martinique rose. Seeing something that pleased me, I stepped forward to view it more narrowly, when a sudden access of acute pain in one foot, quickly spreading to the knee, admonished me that I had got into mischief in the shape of an ant's nest, and gave me the first instalment of a lesson I learned in due time very thoroughly, that the beauties of Jamaica are to be enjoyed with a very cautious regard to the paramount rights of the insect creation.

When I went to bed, I found the bedclothes saturated with dampness. But I learned that it was like a Newport fog, too saline to be mischievous. The atmosphere of the island, even in the brightest and most elastic weather, is so impregnated with moisture, that a Leyden jar will lose its charge in being taken across the room, and an electrical machine will not work without a pan of coals under the cylinder. But as no part of the island is more than twenty-five miles from the sea, this continual moisture appears to be quite innocuous, its worst effect being the musty smell which it causes in everything in the mountains, where there is the most rain. Use fortunately takes from us the perception of this, or it would be quite intolerable. Perpetual summer, and the utmost glory of earth, sky, and sea, are not to be enjoyed without drawbacks that would make a careful housekeeper very doubtful about the desirableness of the exchange. And so ended my first day in the country.

CHAPTER IV

GEOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE ISLAND

I had intended writing some of my first impressions about Jamaica, particularly its negro population. But I find, on reviewing my residence of five years and a half in the tranquil island, that first impressions melt so imperceptibly into final conclusions, that it appears best not to attempt a too formal separation of them. Before recounting the results of my own experience, however, in any form, it will not be amiss to attempt some general description of the island and of its population, and to give a slight sketch of its history.

The parallel of 18° N lat. passes through the island of Jamaica, which has thus a true tropical climate. It is 160 miles in length and 40 in average breadth, having thus a plane area of 6,400 square miles, being about equal to the united area of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Although the third in size of the Greater Antilles, it comes at a great remove after Hayti, the second, being not more than one-fourth as large. Nor does it compare in fertility with either Hayti or Cuba. The former island is the centre of geological upheaval, and the great rounded masses, sustaining a soil of inexhaustible depth, run off from thence splintering into sharp ridges, which in Jamaica become veritable knife edges, sustaining a soil comparatively thin. The character of the island is that of a mountain mass, which, as the ancient watermark on the northern coast shows, has at some remote period been tilted over, and has shot out an immense amount of detritus on its southern side, forming thus the plains which extend along a good part of that coast, varying in breadth from ten to twenty miles, besides the alluvial peninsula of Vere. In the interior, also, there is an upland basin of considerable extent, looking like the dry bed of a former lake, which now forms the chief part of the parish of St. Thomas-in-the-Vale. The mountain mass which makes the body of the island, running in various ranges through its whole length, culminates in the eastern part of it in the Blue Mountains, whose principal summit, the Blue Mountain Peak, is 7,500 feet high. It is said that Columbus, wishing to give Queen Isabella an impression of the appearance of these, took a sheet of tissue paper, and crumpling it up in his hand, threw it on a table, exclaiming, 'There! such is their appearance.' The device used by the great discoverer to convey to the mind of the royal Mother of America some image of her new-found realms, forcibly recurs to the mind of the traveller as he sails along the southeastern coast, and notices the strange contortions of the mountain surfaces. But seen from the northern shore, at a greater distance, through the purple haze which envelops them, their outlines leave a different impression. I shall always remember their aspect of graceful sublimity, as seen from Golden Vale, in Portland, and of massive sweetness, as seen from Hermitage House, in the parish of St. George. The gray buttresses of their farthest western peak, itself over 5,000 feet in height, rose in full view of a station where I long resided, and the region covered by their lower spurs, ranging in elevation from seven to ten and twelve hundred feet, is that which especially deserves the name of the 'well-watered land,' or, as it is poetically rendered, the 'isle of springs,' of which Jamaica, or perhaps more exactly Xaymaca, is the Indian equivalent. There you meet in most abundance with those crystal rivulets, every few hundred yards threading the road, and going to swell the wider streams which every mile or two cross the traveller's way, laving his horse's sides with refreshing coolness, as they hurry on in their tortuous course from the mountain heights to the sea. Farther west the mountains and hills assume gentler and more rounded forms, particularly in the parish of St. Anne, the Garden of Jamaica. I regret that I know only by report the scenes of Eden-like loveliness of this delightful parish. It is principally devoted to grazing, and its pastures are maintained in a park-like perfection. Grassy eminences, crowned with woods, and covered with herds of horses and the handsome Jamaica cattle, descend, in successive undulations, to the sea. Over these, from the deck of a vessel a few miles out, may be seen falling the silver threads of many cascades. Excellent roads traverse the parish, which is inhabited by a gentry in easy circumstances, and by a contented and thriving yeomanry. St. Anne appears to be truly a Christian Arcadia.

In respect of climate and vegetation, there are three Jamaicas—Jamaica of the plains, Jamaica of the uplands, and Jamaica of the high mountains. The highest summit of the mountain region, is below the line at which snow is ever formed in this latitude, and it is disputed whether an evanescent hoarfrost even is sometimes seen upon it. As high as four and five thousand feet there are residences, which, however, purchase freedom from the lowland heats at the expense of being a large part of the time enveloped in chilling fogs. Here the properly tropical productions cease to thrive, and melancholy caricatures of northern vegetables and fruits take their place. You see in the Kingston market diminutive and watery potatoes and apples, that have come down from the clouds, and on St. Catherine's Peak I once picked a few strawberries, which had about as much savor as so many chips. The noble forest trees of the lower mountains, as you go up, give way to an exuberant but spongy growth of tree-ferns and bushes. Great herds of wild swine, descended from those introduced by the Spaniards, roam these secluded thickets, and once furnished subsistence to the runaway negroes who, under the name of Maroons, for several generations annoyed and terrified the island.

In these high mountains the sense of deep solitude is at once heightened and softened by the flute-like notes of the solitaire. I shall never forget the impression produced by first hearing this. It was on the top of St. Catherine's Peak, fifty-two hundred feet above the sea, in the early morning, when the mountain solitude seemed most profound, that my companion and I heard from the adjacent woods its mysterious note. It was a soft and clear tone, somewhat prolonged, and ending in a modulation which imparted to it an indescribable effect, as if of supernal melancholy. It seemed almost as if some mild angel were lingering pensively upon the mountain tops, before pursuing his downward flight among the unhappy sons of men.

The uplands of the island, from 800 to 1,500 feet above the sea, are a cheerful, sunny region, in which the tropical heat is tempered by almost constant refreshing breezes, and, in the eastern part at least, by abundant showers. Some of the western parishes not unfrequently suffer terribly from drought. There are two or three which have not even a spring, depending wholly upon rain water collected in tanks. These sometimes become dry, causing unutterable distress both to man and beast. We hear even sometimes of poor people starving during these seasons of drought. But our more favored region in the east scarcely knows dearth. Our mighty mountain neighbors seldom permitted us even to fear it, and were more apt to send us a deluge than a drought.

In the uplands our winter temperature was commonly about 75° in the shade at noon, and the summer temperature about ten degrees higher. The nights are almost always agreeably cool, and frequent showers and breezes allay the sultriness of the days. I never saw the thermometer above 90° in the shade, and seldom below 65°. It once fell to 54°, to the lamentable discomfort of our feelings and fingers. Of course, where the sun for months is nearly vertical, and twice in the summer actually so, the heat of his direct beams is intense. But those careful precautions of avoiding travelling in the middle of the day, on which some lay such stress, we never concerned ourselves with in Jamaica, and I could not discover that we were ever the worse for it. An umbrella was enough to stand between us and mischief.

On the whole, it may safely be said that there is no climate more like that which we imagine of Eden than that of the highland region of Jamaica during a large part of the year. It is true that after a while northern constitutions begin to miss the stimulus of occasional cold. But for a few years nothing could be more delightful. The chief drawback is that at uncertain cycles there come incessant deluges of rain for months together, making it dreary and uncomfortable both in doors and out. Years will sometimes pass before there is any excessive amount of these, and then sometimes for years together they will prevail to a most disagreeable extent. They break up the mountain roads and swell the mountain streams to such a degree as to render travelling almost impossible, and in a country where your friends are few, you do not like to be kept back from seeing them by the imminent risk of finding no road at all on the side of a hill where at best there is barely room enough between the bank and the gully for one horse to pass another, or of finding yourself between two turns of a stream, with a sudden shower making it impossible for you to get either forward or back. But during my residence I had just enough of these adventures to give a pleasant zest to life. And after a tremendous rain of hours, when the sun reappeared, and the banks of fleecy cloud were once more seen floating tranquilly in heaven, and the streams ran again crystal clear, and the hills smiled again in all the glory of their brilliant green, and the air had again its wonted temper, at once balmy and elastic, it was enough to make amends for all previous discomfort.