de labor the management began that year to buy new Africans on a
scale considered reckless by all the island authorities. In March five men
and five women were bought; and in October 25 men, 27 women, 16 boys, 16
girls and 6 children, all new Congoes; and in the next year 51 males and 30
females, part Congoes and part Coromantees and nearly all of them eighteen
to twenty years old. Thirty new huts were built; special cooks and nurses
were detailed; and quantities of special foodstuffs were bought--yams,
plantains, flour, fresh and salt fish, and fresh beef heads, tongues,
hearts and bellies; but it is not surprising to find that the next outlay
for equipment was for a large new hospital in 1794, costing L341 for
building its brick walls alone. Yaws became serious, but that was a trifle
as compared with dysentery; and pleurisy, pneumonia, fever and dropsy had
also to be reckoned with. About fifty of the new negroes were quartered
for several years in a sort of hospital camp at Spring Garden, where the
routine even for the able-bodied was much lighter than on Worthy Park.

One of the new negroes died in 1792, and another in the next year. Then in
the spring of 1794 the heavy mortality began. In that year at least 31 of
the newcomers died, nearly all of them from the "bloody flux" (dysentery)
except two who were thought to have committed suicide. By 1795, however,
the epidemic had passed. Of the five deaths of the new negroes that year,
two were attributed to dirt-eating,[21] one to yaws, and two to ulcers,
probably caused by yaws. The three years of the seasoning period were now
ended, with about three-fourths of the number imported still alive. The
loss was perhaps less than usual where such large batches were bought; but
it demonstrates the strength of the shock involved in the transplantation
from Africa, even after the severities of the middle passage had been
survived and after the weaklings among the survivors had been culled out at
the ports. The outlay for jobbing gangs on Worthy Park rapidly diminished.

[Footnote 21: The "fatal habit of eating dirt" is described by Thomas
Roughley in his _Planter's Guide_ (London. 1823) pp. 118-120.]

The list of slaves at the beginning of 1794 is the only one giving full
data as to ages, colors and health as well as occupations. The ages were of
course in many cases mere approximations. The "great house negroes" head
the list, fourteen in number. They comprised four housekeepers