"
There had been three families on board, with their servants, who were
emigrating to Cuba, all of whom had been abandoned by the males, who, as
already related, must in all human probability have perished after their
unmanly desertion. As the whole of the provisions were under water, and
could not be got at, the survivors had subsisted on raw flesh so long as
they had strength to cut it, or power to swallow it; what made the poor
creature tell it, I cannot imagine, if it were not to give the most
vivid picture possible, in her conception, of their loneliness and
desolation, but she said, "no sea--bird even ever came near us."
It were harrowing to repeat the heart--rendering description given by
her, of the sickening of the heart when the first night fell, and still
no tidings of the boats; the second sun set--still the horizon was
speckless; the next dreary day wore to an end, and three innocent
helpless children were dead corpses; on the fourth, madness seized on
their mothers, and--but I will not dwell on such horrors.
During these manifold goings and comings I naturally enlarged the circle
of my acquaintance in the island, especially in Kingston, the mercantile
capital; and often does my heart glow within me, when the scenes I have
witnessed in that land of fun and fever rise up before me after the
lapse of many years, under the influence of a good fire and a glass of
old Madeira. Take the following sample of Jamaica High Jinks as one of
many.
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