Notes on the West Indies, vol. 2 of 2

"Notes on the West Indies, vol. 2 of 2" by George Pinckard is a travelogue and epistolary account written in the early 19th century. It follows a British army physician through the Guianas and the Caribbean, blending vivid travel observation with medical reporting on yellow fever, and frank commentary on colonial society, slavery, and Indigenous life. The opening of the volume lays out a string of letters from the colonies of Berbice, Demerara, and Mahaica, moving from camp news and curiosities (an enormous snake, debates about “mermaids”) to planter hospitality and social absurdities. Pinckard contrasts army practice with local Dutch medicine over the treatment of “yellow fever,” recounts a Dutch military punishment and an electric eel demonstration, and sketches encounters with Indigenous visitors and a tiny “lion-monkey.” A stark scene of color prejudice appears when a mulatto woman refuses to touch a black infant. The narrative then shifts to a surge of fever cases, the author’s exhausting hospital duties, scant provisions, and his role officiating funerals, including the quiet, rapid death of a fellow officer. A harrowing centerpiece describes the murder of an enslaved man and the brutal flogging of his wife on the Lancaster estate, the enslaved community’s defiant funeral rites, and a callous attorney’s defense of such cruelty, followed by the woman’s neglected, maggot-infested wounds. Pinckard notes folk beliefs about tides and fever, a failed attempt at prophylaxis among soldiers, and small consolations like fresh meat from nearby estates.

Notes on the West Indies, vol. 2 of 2, by George Pinckard. Republished by OpenStories from Project Gutenberg eBook #77323.