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Colin McCrea, Captain Brown's consignee, the unaffected and gentlemanlike reception I met with, both from him and his lady, with their subsequent kind conduct, can never be effaced from my memory. Captain Brown soon joined us, and in the most engaging terms we were invited to become inmates with Mr. McCrea and his partner, which we availed ourselves of during our stay in Demerary.
Keep him from troubling gentlemen like us wid him lies. Plantation? Yah! He make me sick. Tell you, me know Demerary well 'nuff. De town is in flames. Oh, my Georgiana!" So much, indeed, was beyond doubt before long, and as the fire seemed perilously close to the wharves and shipping, the captain decided to lie off for the night.
The colonial produce of Demerary, Essequibo, and Berbice, chiefly consists in sugar, coffee, cotton, rum, and molasses; but the richness and fertility of the soil is capable of raising any tropical production; new sources being daily unfolded, of the immense wealth derivable from these colonies, and their great importance to Great Britain.
At this period these valuable possessions were nearly in a defenceless state, having a very inadequate and feeble military force to defend them, and being almost without naval protection; they had literally only an armed brig and schooner, built and set a float by the colony of Demerary, to guard an extensive coast, and an immense property.
In an exceedingly exhausted state, but much recovered, I again embarked on board the Minerva, where I had a second attack of the fever, accompanied by dysentery, which reduced me to the lowest state of existence; and after one of the most distressing and disagreeable voyages I ever experienced, we arrived in Demerary roads after a passage of 71 days, and, by the providence of the Almighty, we escaped both disease and the enemy.
It may be interesting to notice, that at the island of Grenada, I had an opportunity of correctly ascertaining the truth of a statement, I had heard from a medical gentleman of respectability at Demerary, that, that ravager of the human species, the yellow fever, was first imported into this island from the island of Bulam, in the Rio Grande, upon the coast of Africa, by a ship called the Hankey, which brought away the sickly colonists from that unfortunate expedition.
A few days after, I became acquainted with Mr. Alexander McCrea, brother to my kind host, and as soon as my health would permit, visited him at his plantation, the Hope, 11 miles from Stabroke, the capital of the colony of Demerary.
Ah, we'll all live to see the day when you're a millionaire, laying the foundation-stone of some of these big things the Aberdeen men build, and speechifying away to the rising generation of how ye began life with nothing but a stuffed Demerary parrot in your pocket. Willie, can't ye lend me some kind of a gun, that I may get him a few of these highly-painted fowl of the air?
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