386 MEXICO, CENTEAL AMERICA, WEST INDIES. 



of the island the English expelled the old Spanish landowners, but they kept the 

 slaves that had not escaped from the plantations, and took active steps to increase 

 their numbers. 



In Jamaica the Bristol and Liverpool traders henceforth possessed a depot 

 where they could consign their human freight while awaiting purchasers from 

 the rest of the Antilles. Bryan Edwards estimates at 2,180,000 the total number 

 of blacks imported by the English slavers into the New World, and at 610,000 

 those landed in Jamaica alone between the years 1680 and 1786. But the traffic 

 had already begun in 1 628, so that from the time of the English conquest down 

 to the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, Jamaica must have received altogether 

 nearly a million of blacks, about half of whom may perhaps have been destined 

 for the plantations of the island itself. 



Yet when the abolition of slavery was proclaimed in 1838, only 309,000 

 remained to be emancipated. This was due to the fact that most of those 

 imported died out without leaving any posterity, and the stock had to be con- 

 stantly renewed by fresh supplies from Africa. A great bar to the formation of 

 family groups was the practice of polygamy, which still continued to prevail 

 even under the slave system. Down to the beginning of the present century the 

 black "commanders" had the right to take from two to four wives according to 

 their rank in the slave world, so that the number of bachelors was all the greater 

 amongst "the common herd."' 



Other African customs were also long preserved. The magicians offered 

 sacrifices to Tuniu, the evil spirit who sent storms, and thanked Naskiu, the 

 good deity who took the blacks after death back to their African homes. When 

 a serious charge was brought against anyone his lips were rubbed with a little 

 earth from a fresh-dug pit, and this was supposed to act like the poisoned cup 

 amongst the Congo tribes. 



The tilaves were subjected to very harsh treatment by the Jamaica planters, and 

 the laws passed against them w^ere more severe than in the other West Indian 

 islands. Many of the owners had their initials branded with redhot iron on the 

 bodies of their human chattel. A negro convicted of having twice beaten a white 

 was quartered, or burnt over a slow fire, beginning with his feet. Civil rights were 

 withheld from freedmen till the third generation, or till they had seven-eighths of 

 white blood. In criminal cases their evidence was not accepted against whiles, 

 and their rights of property or inheritance were strictly limited. 



But the neighbourhood of the wooded uplands, with their labyrinthine valleys 

 and " cockpits," offered a refuge to the runaways, who found a sufficient support 

 by clearing the forests, planting yams, and hunting the wild boar. From the 

 time of their arrival in the island the English had failed to recover all the fugi- 

 tives from the Spanish plantations ; a few little republics had even been set up in 

 the forests, and these gradually expanded, especially by the escape of the Kru or 

 Koromanti, the most indomitable of all the blacks. Their language, mixed with 

 English elements, even became the current speech amongst the Maroons,* as the 



* That is, " wild," " savage," a contraction of the Spanish cimarron. from cima rra mountain- top. 



