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Practical View of the Present State of Slavery in the West Indies
Practical View of the Present State of Slavery in the West Indies Author:Alexander Barclay Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Houses and Gardens of the Negroes, their Mode of Life, 8$c. The most common size of the negro houses is 28 feet long by 14 broad. Posts of hard wood about 9 f... more »eet long, or 7 above ground, are placed at a distance of two feet from one another, and the space between is closely wattled up and plastered. The roof is covered with the long mountain-thatch, palmeto-thatch, or dried guinea-grass, either of which is more durable than the straw thatch used in this country. Cane tops are also used for the purpose, but are not so lasting. To throw off the rain the thatch is brought down a considerable distance over the walls, which in consequence look low, and the roof high. The house is divided into three, and sometimes four apartments. The room in the middle, occupying the whole breadth of the house, has a door on each side, to admit a circulation of air. This is the sitting apartment, and here the poorer class make fire and cook their victuals; the more wealthy have a separate kitchen at a little distance. The smaller houses have the sitting room in one end, and two sleeping apartments in the other. Behind the house is the garden, filled with plantains, ochras, and other vegetables, which are produced at all seasons. It abounds also withcocoa-nut and calabash trees. A good cocoa-nut will be a meal to a man, and boiled among the sugar (which the negroes frequently do), would be a feast to an epicure. It contains also about a pint of a delicious juice, called ' cocoa-nut milk; the leaves, which are thick, and twelve or fifteen feet long, are shed occasionally all the year round, and not only make excellent fuel, but are sometimes used for thatch. The nut also yields oil for Jamps, and the shell is made into cups. Thus one tree affords meat, drink, fuel, thatch, oil for lamps, and cups t...« less