Sherry Chandler

Diaries

Just occurred to me that I’m currently reading on-line blogs/diaries from a 4-century sweep of British/American history.

From the 17^th Century London, there’s Pepys’ Diary. On October 12, 1665, a Thursday when it was 48 °F in London, Pepys says:

Called up before day, and so I dressed myself and down, it being horrid cold, by water to my Lord Bruncker�s ship, who advised me to do so, and it was civilly to show me what the King had commanded about the prize-goods, to examine most severely all that had been done in the taking out any with or without order, without respect to my Lord Sandwich at all, and that he had been doing of it, and find him examining one man, and I do find that extreme ill use was made of my Lord�s order.

…

Good newes this week that there are about 600 less dead of the plague than the last. So home to bed.

One hundred and ten years later and on another continent, from the 18^th Century, Boston 1775 (not actually a diary) takes a close look at that portentous year in Boston. J. L. Bell’s entry for October 13 seeks to solve a mystery:

Among many other things, the Declaration of Independence complains that bad, bad George III has harmed his American subjects by �transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offenses.� The standard line is that this is a reference to the Administration of Justice Act, which Parliament passed in 1774.

However, when I looked at the wording of that law, I saw that it applied only to employees of the royal government. It said nothing about any other criminal defendants. So it wasn�t designed to deprive colonists of fair trials by moving them far from their homes. Instead, it was designed to give Crown employees fair trials by moving them away from supposedly prejudiced juries.

So where, I asked, did the �transporting us beyond seas� complaint come from?

From the 19^th Century, Charles Darwin’s Beagle Diary, where on October 12, 1833, Mr. Darwin was socked in by bad weather, en route from Santa Fe to Buenos Aires:

Embarked on board the Balandra; a one masted vessel of a hundred tuns; we made sail down the current. The weather continuing bad, we only went a few leagues & fastened the vessel to the trees on one of the islands. The Parana is full of islands; they are all of one character, composed of muddy sand, at present about four feet above the level of the water; in the floods they are covered. An abundance of willows & two or three other sorts of trees grow on them, & the whole is rendered a complete jungle by the variety & profusion of creeping plants. These thickets afford a safe harbour for many capinchas & tigers. The fear of these latter animals quite destroyed all pleasure in scrambling in the islands. On this day I had not proceeded a hundred yards, before finding the most indubitable & recent sign of the tiger. I was obliged to retreat; on every islands there are tracks; as in a former excursion the “rastro” of the Indians had been the constant subject of observation, so in this was the “rastro” del tigre”.

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The jaguar is a much more dangerous animal than is generally supposed: they have killed several wood-cutters; occassionally they enter vessels.

With a note from the editors:

Jaguars were historically found from the southwestern United States to southern Argentina. Its range is now reduced. The results from WCS’s workshop, held in Mexico in 1999, indicated that jaguars have been lost from over 50% of their range since 1900. Most of the loss has occurred in Mexico and the United States in the north, and in Brazil and Argentina in the south. The largest contiguous area of jaguar range is centered in the Amazon Basin and includes adjoining areas in the Cerrado, Pantanal, and Chaco to the south and extending to the Caribbean coast in Venezuela and the Guianas. Jaguar range has decreased due to deforestation, conversion of land to other uses, and killing of jaguars and their prey.

And about a hundred years later, in the 20^th century, October 12, 1938, George Orwell had domestic concerns—how to find decent livestock in Morocco:

A lot cooler. No snow now visible on the Atlas, but perhaps obscured by clouds.

Have installed the hens & goats. Hens about the size of the Indian fowl, but of all colours, some with a species of topknot, white ones very pretty. These are supposed to be laying pullets but have not laid yet. Twelve brought crammed together in two small baskets, then sent on donkey back about 5 miles, at the end of which one fowl was dead, apparently pecked to death by others. They appear not to like maize, probably not used to it, or possibly when unbroken it is too big for them. Arabs always keep them in completely grassless runs. Tried giving them some green stuff at which they pecked not very enthusiastically. Hope they may take to it later.

Goats are tiny. Searching all over the market could not find any of decent size or with large bags, though one does see some not actually bad goats in the flocks that graze on the hillsides. The breed here is very shaggy and tends to get its coat dirty.