Conversations on Religion, with Lord Byron
James Kennedy to an unknown correspondent, March 1827
“Jamaica, Stony Hill, March, 1827.
“I view this beautiful
country with a sort of distrust and dislike, as if death lurked under every
blooming tree, and amidst the blossoming flowers—yet I have a feeling of
perfect confidence in God. I am an exile here, waiting literally till God, in
his providence shall conduct me from this pestilential abode to England.
“Kingston is the largest town in the island—there
are troops at Port Royal, and Up-Park camp, two miles from ![]()
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Kingston. There are also detachments at Fort Augusta, and Fort Henderson:
all these are on the sea-shore; behind these a plain, of ten miles in extent,
opens, with trees and sugar-canes; at the end of this plain the mountains
commence, on the top of the first line of which, situated eight hundred feet
above the level of the sea, are Stony-Hill Barracks. The air is more pure, and
of course the degree of temperature is less than in any of the towns on the
plains, of which we command a complete view. The whole country is mountainous,
and covered with trees of every variety, from the top of the highest mountain
which is eight thousand feet above the level of the sea.—There are four
thousand species of plants.
“The white inhabitants never associate with the
Creoles; the latter, whatever be their wealth, cannot enter a ball-room. There
are only twenty thousand whites, while there are four or five hundred thousand
blacks.”
