Notes on the West Indies

George Pinckard (1768-1835) was an army surgeon who arrived in the West Indies in 1796. His letters to a friend were published as Notes on the West Indies in 1806; a second edition came out in 1816. Having been separated by bad weather from the fleet and arriving long before his regiment, he had plenty of time to explore Barbados, which he describes in detail in Volume 2. He is critical of the treatment of some slaves which he witnesses, but seldom questions slavery itself, and considers that, under a good owner, slaves were better off than they would have been in Africa; however, he found that elderly slaves who could no longer work were badly neglected. As a doctor, he is interested in illnesses suffered on the island, such as elephantiasis and yellow fever, and he also describes an expedition to Dutch Guiana.