CHAPTER IV
The glamour of the West Indies--Captain Marryat and Michael
Scott--Deadly climate of the islands in the eighteenth century--The
West Indian planters--Difference between East and West Indies--"Let us
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die"--Training-school for British
Navy--A fruitless voyage--Quarantine--Distant view of Barbados--Father
Labat--The last of the Emperors of Byzantium--Delightful little Lady
Nugent and her diary of 1802--Her impressions of Jamaica--Wealthy
planters--Their hideous gormandising--A simple morning meal--An
aldermanic dinner--How the little Nugents were gorged--Haiti--Attempts
of General Le Clerc to secure British intervention in Haiti--Presents
to Lady Nugent--Her Paris dresses described--Our arrival in
Jamaica--Its marvellous beauty--The bewildered Guardsman--Little trace
of Spain left in Jamaica--The Spaniards as builders--British and
Spanish Colonial methods contrasted.
Since the earliest days of my boyhood, the West Indies have exercised
a quite irresistible fascination over me. This was probably due to my
having read and re-read _Peter Simple_ and _Tom Cringle's Log_ over and
over again, until I knew them almost by heart; indeed I will confess
that even at the present day the glamour of these books is almost as
strong as it used to be, and that hardly a year passes without my
thumbing once again their familiar pages.
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