80
GILES BLIZARD.
About seventy years ago, a gentleman of the name of Giles Blizard owned an estate in that part of Antigua called Pope's Head, which estate at the present day is added to another, and the whole is in possession of the Hon. Bertie E. Jarvis. Giles Blizard was- a true planter of the olden time. He resided in an old roomy mansion upon his estate, where wealth and meanness were strongly contrasted,— where the silver flagons and costly salvers glittered amid the coarse earthenware of England, like a proud and high-born beauty, who by some strange chance has been mixed with the common herd,—where the polished surface of the mahogany furniture mocked the unwashed walls and darkened roof of the apartments, whose protruding beams afforded safe protection to innumerable hordes of insects. Surrounded by his numerous slaves, the old gentleman exercised the power of a prince, and gave no bad idea of the Saxon Thane, or more haughty feudal baron. Everything in his dwelling was conducted upon a scale of heavy munificence ; his table groaned beneath the weight of its various viands ; but there was no order, no delicacy observed in the arrangement of them. Like the generality of Antiguan planters, he was hospitable in the extreme ; his doors were ever open, and every visiter was sure of a hearty welcome. A stranger would have been surprised at having wines of the choicest vintage handed to him by a bare-footed butler, or his every movement attended to by a host of half-naked negroes ; but such was the domestic arrangement of the old Antiguan mansions. Giles Blizard was supposed to be exceedingly rich, and to keep by him a noble portion of hard cash, which in those golden days was generally in the form of doubloons and joes.* He was fond of boasting of his ample share of this world's wealth ; and this exciting the rapacity of two of his slaves, prompted them to murder him, that they might become possessed of his store. A convenient opportunity for perpetrating this * A gold coin, of about the value of 3/. 4s. sterling. gold coin worth about 36s. sterling.
The joe was a