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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.


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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