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Page 62
Jamaica coffee is of an excellent quality; the berries, it is said, if
kept two years, being equal to the best Mocha. As some one laments that
the cooks and grooms of the Romans spoke better Latin than even Milton
among the moderns could write, so I can boast in behalf of the Jamaica
negroes, that even Delmonico, unless he could secure the services of one
of them who understands the true method of reducing the browned berry to
an impalpable powder, by pulverizing it between a flat stone and a round
one, must give up all hopes of presenting his guests with the ideal cup
of coffee. I would give the whole process by which an amber-colored
stream, of perfect flavor, might be poured out, without a trace of
sediment, to the very last drop, did I not reflect with pity that
probably in all the wide extent of my country there is neither the
apparatus of grinding nor the sable domestic with skill to use it. Nay,
even in Jamaica, where one would think they could afford to be slow
_for_ a good thing, since they are so amazingly slow _to_ every good
thing, I grieve to say that the barbarous mill, hacking and mangling the
fragrant berry, has almost universally supplanted the more laborious
ancient method by which it was gently reduced to its most perfect
attrition, yielding up every particle of its aromatic strength. Thus the
modern demon of expedition, to whom quickness is so much more than
quality, has invaded even the slumberous repose of our fair island,
bringing under his arm, not a locomotive, but a coffee mill. There are,
to be sure, two or three locomotives on the twelve-mile railway between
Kingston and Spanishtown, but it would be a cruel sarcasm to intimate
that the genius of expedition ever brought them.
There are several other vegetable products of Jamaica, which it owes
likewise to a happy accident. The mango, for instance, which now grows
in such profusion on uplands and plains, that if the groves should be
cut down, the face of the country would seem naked, was a spoil of war,
being brought from a French ship destined for Martinique, somewhere
about 1790. At first it is said the mangoes sold for a guinea a piece,
with the express stipulation that the seed should be returned. Now, in a
good bearing season, I have actually seen a narrow mountain road fetlock
deep with decaying mangoes, besides the thousands consumed by man and
beast. During the summer, in the good years, they furnish the main
subsistence to the negro children, and a large part of the subsistence
of the adults, and make a grateful and wholesome change from the yam and
salt fish which constitute the staples of their diet the rest of the
time. It is this, probably, which has given rise to the absurd report
that the negroes live principally on fruits spontaneously growing.
The young leaves of the mango are of a brownish red; and amid the
general profusion of green, they impart a not ungrateful relief to the
eye. Even their russet blossoms have a pleasant look. But in a good
season, when the fruit is ripe, the groves have a magnificently rich
appearance. Rows upon rows of yellow fruit look like lines of golden
apples. Most people are extravagantly fond of them; but for myself I
must say that, excepting the superb 'No. 11'--so named from being thus
numbered on the captured French ship--and one or two other rare kinds, I
concur with the late Prof. Adams, of Amherst, in thinking that a very
good mango might be made by steeping raw cotton in turpentine, and
sprinkling a little sugar over it.
Another fortuitous gift to Jamaica, so far as human intention is
concerned, was the invaluable donation of the Guinea grass. Toward a
century ago some African birds were brought as a present to a gentleman
in the west of the island. Some grass seeds had been brought along for
their feed; and when they reached their journey's end, the seeds were
thrown away. After a while it was noticed that the cattle were very
eager to reach the grass growing on a certain spot, and on examination
it was found that the seeds thrown away had come up as a grass of
remarkable succulence and nutritiousness. It was soon distributed, and
now it is spread over the island. You pass rich meadows of it on every
lowland estate; and it clothes hundreds of hills to their tops with its
yellowish green. I do not see what the island would do without it. The
pens or grazing farms in particular have been almost wholly created by
it.
Jamaica has, of course, the usual West Indian fruits, the orange, the
shaddock, the lime, the pineapple, the guava, the nispero, the banana,
the cocoanut, and many others not much known abroad. But the
lusciousness of tropical fruits compares ill with the thousand delicate
flavors which cultivation has extended through our temperate clime;
while, at the same time, steam makes nearly all the best fruits of the
West Indies familiar to our markets. The resident of New York or
Philadelphia, and still more of Baltimore has small occasion to wish
himself in the tropics for the sake of fruit.
The great staple of negro existence, and therefore the great staple of
existence to the immense majority of the inhabitants, is the yam. There
are some indigenous kinds; but the species most in use appear to have
been brought in by the imported African slaves. This solid edible dwarfs
our potatoes, a single root varying in weight from five to ten pounds,
and sometimes even reaching the weight of fifty pounds. They are of all
shapes, globular, finger shaped, and long; and the latter, with their
thick, brown rinds, look more like billets of wood, crusted with earth,
than anything else. People in this country are apt to imagine them to be
a huge kind of sweet potato, with which they have no other connection
than that both are edible roots. The white yams, boiled and mashed, are
scarcely distinguishable from very superior white potatoes. Above ground
the plant is a vine, requiring to be trained on a pole, and a yamfield
looks precisely like a vineyard. But oh, the difference! while the
vineyard calls up a thousand recollections of laughing girls treading
the grape, and the sunny lands of story, a yamfield reminds you only
that under the ground is a bulky esculent, which some months hence will
be put into a negro pot, and boiled and eaten, with an utter absence of
poetry, or of anything but appetite and salt. It is plain that in this
case solid usefulness stands no chance with erratic and rather
loose-mannered brilliancy. And yet some kinds of yam in flower diffuse a
fragrance more exquisite, I am persuaded, than comes from any vineyard.
So that, after all, their homely prose has some flavor of poetry, which,
when African poets arise, will doubtless be duly canonized in song.
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