- Thy chief attention; and the ambrosial cane [55]
- Thou long’st to see, with spiry frequence, shade
- Many an acre: planter, chuse the slave,
- Who sails from barren climes; where art1 alone,
- Offspring of rude necessity, compells
- The sturdy native, or to plant the soil, [60]
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Or stem vast rivers for his daily food.
- SUCH are the children of the Golden Coast;2
- Such the Papaws,3 of negroes far the best:
- And such the numerous tribes, that skirt the shore,
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From rapid Volta to the distant Rey.4 [65]
- BUT, planter, from what coast soe’er they sail,
- Buy not the old: they ever sullen prove;
- With heart-felt anguish, they lament their home;
- They will not, cannot work; they never learn
- Thy native language; they are prone to ails; [70]
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And oft by suicide their being end.—5
- MUST thou from Africk reinforce thy gang?—6
- Let health and youth their every sinew firm;
- Clear roll their ample eye; their tongue be red;
- Broad swell their chest; their shoulders wide expand; [75]
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The “Errata” list at the end of The Sugar-Cane indicates that “art” should read “want.” ↩︎
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Term used by Europeans to define one of the four major trading regions on the West African coast. Although it is difficult to establish the borders of these regions with exactitude, they included the Grain Coast (roughly corresponding to modern Sierra Leone and Liberia), the Ivory Coast (modern Côte d’Ivoire), the Gold Coast (modern Ghana), and the Slave Coast (modern Togo, Benin, and Nigeria). British slave ships often made port on the Cape Verde islands off the coast of modern Senegal before sailing down the coast of Africa, trading goods along the way. Once they had rounded the Bight of Benin, they turned west and followed the equator past the island of Saint Thomas (São Tomé) and toward the Caribbean. It is important to note that people were enslaved and embarked from a much larger region than the one denominated by the Slave Coast (the region of embarkation ranged from at least Senegal to Angola). ↩︎
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Papaws or Popos. Name of people from the region between Accra in modern Ghana and Ouidah in Benin. ↩︎
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The Volta is the Volta river in Ghana, which empties into the Atlantic Ocean northeast of Accra. The Rey is likely the Rey (or Rio del Rey) estuary in modern Cameroon. It is not clear whether Grainger means a specific river within this estuarial system. ↩︎
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Suicide was prevalent in the Atlantic slave trade and occurred during various stages of the process of transportation. It also occurred on plantations. Europeans proposed various theories to explain these suicides. In particular, physicians like Grainger often suggested that suicide by the enslaved was caused by physical illness or by a disease known as fixed melancholy. European Christians considered suicide to be a sin (it was a breach of the sixth commandment forbidding murder), but their concern for preventing suicide among the enslaved stemmed primarily from economic motives, as Grainger suggests in these and later lines. ↩︎
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Gang was the general term used to designate groups of enslaved persons. ↩︎