this insensible nose that, her brother began to fear, would be dipping into everything upon this plantation named Amity before too long.
But there was one curiosity which Caroline Mortimer had found herself entering upon with an uncharacteristic trepidation. The negroes. Before she embarked upon her journey, her brother had written to advise that she should be sure to bring with her a maid servant—a steady young woman, respectable, trustworthy, perhaps even of a religious character. For her brother went on to warn that negroes did not always make the kind of servants to which Caroline may have become accustomed.
This extraordinary missive caused Caroline not only to laugh, but to wish her late husband were still alive to read it. For it had always been a source of great aggravation to Edmund Mortimer that his wife’s brother would boast, on his all-too-frequent visits, how many slaves he possessed in the Caribbean and, of that number, how many of those slaves toiled round and about his great house. With a flourish of the hand and the ponderous look of someone who could not quite bring it to mind, he would tell his sister and her husband, ‘Oh there are more than fifty and one hundred upon the land and well, upwards of thirty in the house.’
It would irritate Edmund Mortimer beyond torment when, upon observing their one slatternly, grubby, maid-of-all-work serving at table, Caroline’s brother would eye their situation with something like pity. And there was her brother now telling her that she should bring that one miserable girl across the seas. Dress her up in her cast-offs so she might pass as a lady’s maid, when he had what? Upwards of two hundred slaves at his command! Her husband would surely have turned in his grave at this suggestion, if it were not for the fact that Edmund Mortimer, when buried, was so fat that there was not the required space within the box.
So, upon arrival in this often and eagerly conjured place, Caroline was expecting to encounter several negroes about the house, for it was no more than she had been led to believe. But what she had not foreseen was that, when the door of her brother’s fine property was at first opened, she would find herself quite girdled by a swarm of black faces. While her brother busied himself with an instruction to a ragged black boy upon the veranda of the house on where to take Mary—the requested maid servant who was, after the voyage, really quite sick—three negro women paused in their tasks so they might better stare upon Caroline.
One—wearing a bright-red madras kerchief upon her head and an apron at her waist that was so splattered with stains it did appear like a map—was chewing upon something with her mouth agape. Another picked at the contents of her nose, wiping it upon the filthy rag of her skirt as she angled her head awkwardly so she might better see through an eye that was bruised-bloody, swollen and half closed. The third, a tall, gangly creature, had the bodice of her dress untied, which drooped slovenly at her waist, leaving her arms, like the branches of some dead tree, quite naked. None had on shoes.
But Caroline, unperturbed by the glowering of these slaves, gazed upon them civilly, for she believed they would soon curtsey, then offer her some light refreshment perhaps. She was even unpinning her bonnet, for she was sure they would want to take it from her to set it upon some stand. But they did not. Instead their eyes, which Caroline thought appeared like shining marbles rolling in soot, commenced to peruse her slowly, from the bottom of her brown leather boots to the top of her fleshy blond head. Then, opening her arms wide, the tall gangly one said, ‘Come, see how broad is she!’ At which Caroline took a long step away from them—not on account of this impudent scorning, but in fear of the teeth in their heads that, as they laughed upon her, bared white and sharp as any savage beasts.
Just then a chicken had run by her, wings flapping, squawking loudly, slipping and falling upon the polished floor. It was being chased by a young negro girl, whose outstretched arms made a clumsy grab for the neck of the fowl, all the while screeching, ‘Catch it up quick. Catch it up!’ Soon another chicken appeared, which looked to be chasing the girl. The three negro women promptly joined