A i) Old Book Upon Barbados. 23 



Evelyn mentions in his Diary that he had perused Ligon. Richard 

 Steele, too, — whose tirst wife was a Barbadian — read him too, and in the 

 •• Spectator " for March 13, 1710-11 (No. 11) borrows from Ligon, with 

 tome inimitable touches of his own, the sad tale of the Indian maid, 

 Varico. The wailful fate of Yarico has been told in several languages, 

 according to the Abbe Raynal.* In the English language, the best 

 known work after Steele's Essay is the younger Column's play of " Inkle 

 and Yarico." in which appeared the well-known lines :— 



UNow let us dance and sing- 

 While all Barbadoe's bells do ring. 



As for later writers on the West Indies, not one of them neglects his 

 Ligon from Sloane onwards. 



One asks, — and it is a Avorthy motive because in historical matters 

 one dare not trust one's own grandfather — how far is Ligons account of 

 Barbados reliable ? A pleasant humour which plays about his pages has 

 raised a doubt as to his trustworthiness in the mind of Dry-as-Dust, who 

 associates a pleasant style with flippancy, and accurate learning with 

 insufferable dulness. Dry-as-Dust may be quite easy in his mind ; Ligon 

 may be read with profit as well as pleasure. 



No man in his day knew more, about the early records of his native 

 land than Mr. Nathan Lucas of Farley Hill, Barbados, Mr. Lucas vvas a 

 grandfather of Charles Kingsley, and in Kingsley there sprung to deeper 

 life, the interest in matters of history notable in his grandfather. Mr. 

 Lucas was a Judge of the Precinct of St. Michael when he retired on 

 pension. Unless he has a hobby, your old pensioner is the most desolate 

 of men. But the Judge had a hobby, and this he rode during the re- 

 maining years of his life, to his country's benefit. Did you want the 

 Judge in those latter years, you might find him among the dusty and 

 water-stained, burnt and vvorm-eaten books and papers which littered the 

 rubbish-rooms of the old Colonial Secretary's Office. Nowadays the 

 historical student will find that four or five of the original volumes of the 

 early Council Minutes have disappeared. By taking thought however, 

 he may get Judge Lucas's copies of those volumes, which are almost as 

 good, and in one sense better because they are indexed. Here and there, 

 iu his own volumes, the Judge adds a footnote which occasionally runs to 

 a page or two, and in two or three instances broadens out into a Miscellan- 

 eous volume, embodying some tradition current in his day. or something 

 that one of the " oldest inhabitants had told him, in amplification of the 

 official minute. It is here we touch Ligon, whose statements the Anti- 

 quary had frequent opportunity of checking. 



On page 22 of his book. Ligon mentions the acreage, crop by crop, 

 together with other particulars of Modiford's plantation, Judge Lucas 

 notes : — " Ligon : s pnrticulars I know to be true, from the original 



*" Yarico's Pond" was formerly a feature of Kendall's plantation in Barbados. I 

 visited " Kendall's " in 1906 but found that a cow -pen had been built over "yarico's Pond." 



