"Buckra" land : two weeks in Jamaica : details of a voyage to the West Indies, day by day, and a tour of Jamaica, step by step / by Allan Eric.

  • Charles W. Willis
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: "Buckra" land : two weeks in Jamaica : details of a voyage to the West Indies, day by day, and a tour of Jamaica, step by step / by Allan Eric. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    32/130 (page 24)
    *4 man. So the little tots, almost as soon as they are able to walk, fol- low the example of their elders, and if they meet a stranger by the road- side they stop, and perhaps as they put a tiny brown finger to their mouths, give him a friendly greeting in a very small voice—which must always be acknowledged or these small persons are very much offended^ There is no baby more cunning or more interesting than the Jamaica baby, with its big, dark eyes, its tiny, round, dusky face and little brown hands. And it is a much petted child—the idol of its father and mother. As soon as it has grown strong enough it accompanies its mother everywhere, generally sitting astride her hips, supported in its place by one arm of its mother and by its own tiny hands which clutch desperately her scanty dress, while its head bobs about from side to side and the wondering eyes gaze at you with an expression of the ut- most seriousness. When at home, the Jamaica child is-often seen sitting on the ground beneath the palm trees, by the door of the thatched house of its parents, sometimes in vain trying to conceal a whole banana in the small mouth, or else industriously sucking a joint of sugar cane. The young child of our own country is often hired to “be a good baby with a luni]) of sugar or a piece of candy. The Jamaica mother peels a piece of juicy cane, puts it into her baby's hand and goes away to her washing, to picking coffee, to hoeing yams, or to roasting bread fruit and tanniers— the baby, meanwhile, perhaps falling asleep with one small hand clutch- ing the sweet morsel. Almost as soon as the Jamaica children can talk they will supplement their greetings to the traveller with a request for a “quattie, which is a penny ha'penny, or three cents, and sometimes several of them will trot along for miles after you until the coveted nickel coins are tossed to them, when their faces will light up with joyous smiles and they drop you a courtesy in return. It is the universal custom of the people to carry everything, of what- ever name or nature, from the smallest to the biggest article, on then- heads, and by constant practice from childhood, they are able to carry enormous loads, trudging for miles over the hills and along the roads