Sterling found a pleasant residence,with all its adjuncts,ready for him,at Colonarie,in this "volcanic Isle"under the hot sun.An interesting Isle:a place of rugged chasms,precipitous gnarled heights,and the most fruitful hollows;shaggy everywhere with luxuriant vegetation;set under magnificent skies,in the mirror of the summer seas;offering everywhere the grandest sudden outlooks and contrasts.His Letters represent a placidly cheerful riding life:a pensive humor,but the thunder-clouds all sleeping in the distance.
Good relations with a few neighboring planters;indifference to the noisy political and other agitations of the rest:friendly,by no means romantic appreciation of the Blacks;quiet prosperity economic and domestic:on the whole a healthy and recommendable way of life,with Literature very much in abeyance in it.
He writes to Mr.Hare (date not given):"The landscapes around me here are noble and lovely as any that can be conceived on Earth.How indeed could it be otherwise,in a small Island of volcanic mountains,far within the Tropics,and perpetually covered with the richest vegetation?"The moral aspect of things is by no means so good;but neither is that without its fair features."So far as I see,the Slaves here are cunning,deceitful and idle;without any great aptitude for ferocious crimes,and with very little scruple at committing others.But I have seen them much only in very favorable circumstances.They are,as a body,decidedly unfit for freedom;and if left,as at present,completely in the hands of their masters,will never become so,unless through the agency of the Methodists."[9]
In the Autumn came an immense hurricane;with new and indeed quite perilous experiences of West-Indian life.This hasty Letter,addressed to his Mother,is not intrinsically his remarkablest from St.Vincent:but the body of fact delineated in it being so much the greatest,we will quote it in preference.A West-Indian tornado,as John Sterling witnesses it,and with vivid authenticity describes it,may be considered worth looking at.
"_To Mrs.Sterling,South Place,Knightsbridge,London_.
"BRIGHTON,ST.VINCENT,28th August,1831.
"MY DEAR MOTHER,--The packet came in yesterday;bringing me some Newspapers,a Letter from my Father,and one from Anthony,with a few lines from you.I wrote,some days ago,a hasty Note to my Father,on the chance of its reaching you through Grenada sooner than any communication by the packet;and in it I spoke of the great misfortune which had befallen this Island and Barbadoes,but from which all those you take an interest in have happily escaped unhurt.
"From the day of our arrival in the West Indies until Thursday the 11th instant,which will long be a memorable day with us,I had been doing my best to get ourselves established comfortably;and I had at last bought the materials for making some additions to the house.But on the morning I have mentioned,all that I had exerted myself to do,nearly all the property both of Susan and myself,and the very house we lived in,were suddenly destroyed by a visitation of Providence far more terrible than any I have ever witnessed.
"When Susan came from her room,to breakfast,at eight o'clock,Ipointed out to her the extraordinary height and violence of the surf,and the singular appearance of the clouds of heavy rain sweeping down the valleys before us.At this time I had so little apprehension of what was coming,that I talked of riding down to the shore when the storm should abate,as I had never seen so fierce a sea.In about a quarter of an hour the House-Negroes came in,to close the outside shutters of the windows.They knew that the plantain-trees about the Negro houses had been blown down in the night;and had told the maid-servant Tyrrell,but I had heard nothing of it.A very few minutes after the closing of the windows,I found that the shutters of Tyrrell's room,at the south and commonly the most sheltered end of the House,were giving way.I tried to tie them;but the silk handkerchief which I used soon gave way;and as I had neither hammer,boards nor nails in the house,I could do nothing more to keep out the tempest.I found,in pushing at the leaf of the shutter,that the wind resisted,more as if it had been a stone wall or a mass of iron,than a mere current of air.There were one or two people outside trying to fasten the windows,and I went out to help;but we had no tools at hand:one man was blown down the hill in front of the house,before my face;and the other and myself had great difficulty in getting back again inside the door.The rain on my face and hands felt like so much small shot from a gun.There was great exertion necessary to shut the door of the house.
"The windows at the end of the large room were now giving way;and Isuppose it was about nine o'clock,when the hurricane burst them in,as if it had been a discharge from a battery of heavy cannon.The shutters were first forced open,and the wind fastened them back to the wall;and then the panes of glass were smashed by the mere force of the gale,without anything having touched them.Even now I was not at all sure the house would go.My books,I saw,were lost;for the rain poured past the bookcases,as if it had been the Colonarie River.
But we carried a good deal of furniture into the passage at the entrance;we set Susan there on a sofa,and the Black Housekeeper was even attempting to get her some breakfast.The house,however,began to shake so violently,and the rain was so searching,that she could not stay there long.She went into her own room and I stayed to see what could be done.
