ABSTRACT
My friend took me the following morning to the house of the planter from whom he had borrowed the mulatto girl. He was not at home, but we were, nevertheless, ushered into an apartment, atone end of 74which was fitting an old negress, smoking her pipe; near her was an elderly mulatto woman; at a little distance was a female still less tawny of complexion, called in the country, as I believe, a mestee; and at the other end of the room I observed a yellow quadroon giving suck to a child, which, though a little fallow, was as white as children in Europe generally are. I could not help remarking to the West-Indian this regular gradation of light and shade. “This,” said he, “is the family of my friend, Mr. Winter; the three younger females and the child are the progeny of the old negress.”— “And who are the fathers?” “Mr. Winter himself is the father of them all,” replied he: “when he was very young he had the mulatto 75woman by the negress: when the mulatto was twelve years old, he took her for his mistress, and had by her the mestee. At about the fame age his intimacy with the mestee produced the quadroon, who had by him a few months ago the white child you see in her arms. This is what is called in this country washing a man’s self white, and Mr. Winter has the credit of having washed himself white at a very early age, being at this time less than sixty years old.” This complicated incest, and the coolness with which my friend spoke of it, made me begin to think it no wonder that Barbadoes was subject to hurricanes.
