Digital Grainger

An Online Edition of The Sugar-Cane (1764)

130

  • Soon grow familiar; while unusual toil,

  • And new severities their husbands kill.

  • THE slaves from Minnah1 are of stubborn breed:
  • But, when the bill, or hammer, they affect; [100]
  • They soon perfection reach. But fly, with care,

  • The Moco-nation; they themselves destroy.2

  • WORMS lurk in all: yet, pronest they to worms,3
  • Who from Mundingo4 sail. When therefore such
  • Thou buy’st, for sturdy and laborious they, [105]
  • Straight let some learned leach5 strong medicines give,
  • Till food and climate both familiar grow.
  • Thus, tho’ from rise to set, in Phoebus’ eye,
  • They toil, unceasing; yet, at night, they’ll sleep,
  • Lap’d in Elysium;6 and, each day, at dawn, [110]

  • Spring from their couch, as blythsome as the sun.

  • ONE precept more, it much imports to know.—
  • The Blacks, who drink the Quanza’s7 lucid stream,
  • Fed by ten thousand springs, are prone to bloat,
  • Whether at home or in these ocean-isles: [115]
  • And tho’ nice art the water may subdue,

  1. Elmina, a city on modern Ghana’s Atlantic coast. It was the first European settlement in West Africa and a major stop on the routes of the Atlantic slave trade. ↩︎

  2. The Moco nation refers to people from the region between Bonny Island and Calabar on the southeastern coast of modern Nigeria. On some historical maps, the Moco nation appears in the same region as the Igbo or Ebo people. The reference to suicide in this line (“they themselves destroy”) matches a well-worn steroetype that the Igbo were especially liable to taking their lives. ↩︎

  3. Grainger is referring to parasitic worms (helminths) that live in the digestive tracts of human beings and other animals. There are many such parasites, including tapeworms and roundworms. Worms were a major health concern in the eighteenth century, producing such physical effects as malnutrition and anemia, as well as cognitive problems. ↩︎

  4. The Mundingo, Mandingo, or Mandinka were people of the West African interior centering around the modern nation of Mali but also coming from Senegal, Guinea, and Côte D’Ivoire. With respect to religion, the Mandinka are most closely associated with Islam. ↩︎

  5. Physician. ↩︎

  6. Part of the Greek underworld reserved for heroes. ↩︎

  7. Cuanzo (or Kwanza) river in modern Angola. It drains into the Atlantic Ocean south of Luanda (known in the eighteenth century as Loango or Loando). This line refers to enslaved people from Angola, who were primarily enslaved by the Portuguese. ↩︎