JOURNAL OF A WEST INDIA PROPRIETOR,
Kept During a Residence in The Island of Jamaica
By Matthew Gregory Lewis
Author of “The Monk,” “The Castle Spectre,” “Tales Of Wonder,” &c.
London: John Murray, Albemarle Street.
MDCCCXXXIV
“I WOULD GIVE MANY A SUGAR CANE,
MAT. LEWIS WERE ALIVE AGAIN!”
BYRON.
CONTENTS
JOURNAL OF A WEST INDIA PROPRIETOR
ADVERTISEMENT.
The following Journals of two residences in Jamaica, in 1815-16, and in 1817, are now printed from the MS. of Mr. Lewis; who died at sea, on the voyage homewards from the West Indies, in the year 1818.
JOURNAL OF A WEST INDIA PROPRIETOR
Expect our sailing in a few hours. But although the vessel left the Docks on Saturday, she did not reach this place till three o’clock on Thursday, the 9th. The captain now tells me, that we may expect to sail certainly in the afternoon of to-morrow, the 10th. I expect the ship’s cabin to gain greatly by my two days’ residence at the “———————,” which nothing can exceed for noise, dirt, and dulness. Eloisa would never have established “black melancholy” at the Paraclete as its favourite residence, if she had happened to pass three days at an inn at Gravesend: nowhere else did I ever see the sky look so dingy, and the river “Nunc alio patriam quaero sub sole jacentem.”—Virgil.
1815. NOVEMBER 8.
(WEDNESDAY)
I left London, and reached Gravesend at nine in the morning, having been taught to exso dirty; to be sure, the place has all the advantages of an English November to assist it in those particulars.