This, with a straw hat,
and a short gun in their hand, with a sling to be used on a march,
completes their equipment--in better keeping with the climate, than the
padded coats, heavy caps, tight cross--belts, and ponderous muskets of our
regulars. As we drove up to the door, the overseer began to bawl, "Boys,
boys!" and kept blowing a dog--call. All servants in the country in the
West Indies, be they as old as Methuselah, are called boys. In the
present instance, half--a--dozen black fellows forthwith appeared, to take
our luggage, and attend on massa in other respects. The great man was
as austere to the poor overseer, as if he had been guilty of some
misdemeanour, and after a few short, crabbed words, desired him to get
supper, "do you hear?"
The meat consisted of plantation fare--salted fish, plantains and yams,
and a piece of goat mutton. Another "observe,"--a South Down mutton,
after sojourning a year or two here, does not become a goat exactly, but
he changes his heavy warm fleece, and wears long hair; and his progeny
after him, if bred on the hot plains, never assume the wool again. Mr
Fyall and I sat down, and then in walked four mutes, stout young fellows,
not over--well dressed, and with faces burnt to the colour of brick--dust.
They were the bookkeepers, so called because they never see a book, their
province being to attend the negroes in the field, and to superintend the
manufacture of sugar and rum in the boiling and distilling--houses.
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