118 Timehri. 



bosoms, from her and take them away to show what the black people in 

 Berbice could do. - ' As for patching clothes, the old Winkel people could 

 patch a blouse so that it looked naturally new. 



Other of the women could wash. They washed for the Governor and 

 the officers at the Fort ; and some of those officers, if report be true, would 

 have died rather than not appear in the whitest of linen. A story is told 

 of one of the old Winkel washers. She had gone to the Fort on a Monday 

 morning and brought away the Colonel's washing. Late that afternoon 

 the Colonel sent a messenger running to ask, had she seen any money in 

 his trousers pockets ? No (said Aunt Judy) she hadn't seen none. All 

 she had seen was one or two little pictures, and those she had stuck up on 

 the wall. " And there, sir, were the Colonel's good, good Joe Notes stuck 

 up with starch on Aunty Judy's wall ! '1 hey say they had work to get 

 them off. 



Most of the old lights are associated with a trade. They could all 

 do something and did it. The women could wash, or sew, or bake — if 

 only in a mud oven — or make preserves. The men could build a house — 

 the Mission Chapels, first and second, were built by Winkel carpenters, 

 as were the first houses in Queenstown and the " Colony Church " — or 

 lay a copper-wall, or make a crabwood bedstead, or forge a horse-shoe, 

 although few of the horses on the old mud-dams were shod. We took a 

 walk — Ferdinand and I — one wet morning to the site of the old black- 

 smith's shop. The village smithy went to bits long ago. My guide does not 

 remember it himself, although when a boy he found many pieces and scraps 

 of iron lying about here, and buried in the ground. The place is now 

 high in grass. This part of the village is called " Guava Bush " from its 

 number of wild guava trees. 



We came upon water. 



" Now this here, is the Winkel Pond. This is here where they used 

 to bring we poor children five o'clock in the morning — dark and very 

 cold to bathe. We would stand on the dam, and our mothers would dip 

 water from the Winkel Pond. In those days the Pond was kept clean, — 

 none of this grass and weeds j ou see now. The Winkel Pond ! Ask 

 any of the old people — of course they are all dead and gone now — about 

 the Winkel Pond ! " 



Just about here, too, was the hospital. "I remember about forty 

 years ago there was just the pillars standing, and one or two old beams. 

 The people had good attention in those days, you know, — oh yes, any 

 complaint at all, they went to the Winkel Hospital and the doctor pre- 

 scribed for them." 



Nowadays half the people in the Winkel know nothing at all about 

 the village. They are strangers. A few are connected, in some round- 

 about fashion, with the descendants of the old Crown slaves. A number 

 are strangers. They know nothing of the traditions of King William. 

 All they know is that they have a little plot of land to settle on. They 

 are there by permission of the original grantees. 



In a few years, I suppose, the story of the Winkel Village will have 

 been forgotten Many of the descendants of the old Winkels have 



