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THE WEST INDIES
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GOETHE
THE ENGLISH
IN
THE WEST INDIES
OR
THE BOW OF ULYSSES
BY
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
r.
SILK COTTON TREE, JAMAICA
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS ENGRAVED ON WOOD BY G. PEARSON
AFTER DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1888
All rights reserved
PEIXTED BY
SPOTTISWOODK AND CO., KEW-STREET BQUAUE
LOKDOI
PREFACE.
MY PUEPOSE in writing this book is so fully explained
in the book itself that a Preface is unnecessary.
I visited the West India Islands in order to increase
my acquaintance with the condition of the British
Colonies. I have related what I saw and what I
heard, with the general impressions which I was led
to form.
In a few instances, when opinions were conveyed
to me which were important in themselves, but which
it might be undesirable to assign to the persons
from whom I heard them, I have altered initials
and disguised localities and circumstances.
The illustrations are from sketches of my own,
which, except so far as they are tolerably like
the scenes which they represent, are without value.
They have been made producible by the skill and
care of the engraver, Mr. Pearson, to whom my
warmest thanks are due.
J. A. F.
ONSLOW GARDENS : November 15, 1887.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Colonial policy Union or separation Self-government Varieties
of condition The Pacific colonies The West Indies Pro-
posals for a West Indian federation Nature of the population
American union and British plantations Original conquest
of the West Indies . 1
CHAPTEE II.
In the train for Southampton Morning papers The new
' Locksley Hall ' Past and present The ' Moselle ' Heavy
weather The petrel The Azores 11
CHAPTEE III.
The tropics Passengers on board Account of the Darien canal
Planters' complaints West Indian history The Spanish
conquest Drake and Hawkins The buccaneers The pirates
French and English Rodney Battle of April 12 Peace
with honour Doers and talkers . . 23
CHAPTEE IV.
First sight of Barbadoes Origin of the name Pere Labat
Bridgetown two hundred years ago Slavery and Christianity
Economic crisis Sugar bounties Aspect of the streets
Government House and its occupants Duties of a governor of
Barbadoes ........... 37
CHAPTEE V.
West Indian politeness Negro morals and felicity Island of
St. Vincent Grenada The harbour Disappearance of the
whites An island of black freeholders Tobago Dramatic
art A promising incident 48
viii THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
CHAPTEE VI.
PAOE
Charles Kingsley at Trinidad ' Lay of the Last Buccaneer ' A
French forban Adventure at Aves Mass on board a pirate
ship Port of Spain A house in the tropics A political meet-
ing Government House The Botanical Gardens Kingsley's
rooms Sugar estates and coolies ...... 59
CHAPTER VII.
A coolie village Negro freeholds Waterworks Snakes
Slavery Evidence of Lord Rodney Future of the negroes
Necessity of English rule The Blue Basin Black boy and
crayfish 75
CHAPTER VIII.
Home Rule in Trinidad Political aspirations Nature of the pro-
blem Crown administration Colonial governors A Russian
apologue Dinner at Government House ' The Three Fishers '
Charles Warner Alternative futures of the colony . . 85
CHAPTER IX.
Barbadoes again Social condition of the island Political constitu-
tion Effects of the sugar bounties Dangers of general bank-
ruptcy The Hall of Assembly Sir Charles Pearson Society
in Bridgetown A morning drive Church of St. John's Sir
Graham Briggs An old planter's palace The Chief Justice
of Barbadoes 100
CHAPTER X.
Leeward and Windward Islands The Caribs of Dominica Visit
of Per e Labat St. Lucia The Pitons The harbour at Castries
Intended coaling station Visit to the administrator The
old fort and barracks Conversation with an American Con-
stitution of Dominica Land at Roseau 129
CHAPTER XI.
Curiosities in Dominica Nights in the tropics English and
Catholic churches The market place at Roseau Fishing ex-
traordinary A storm Dominican boatmen Morning walks
Effects of the Leeward Islands Confederation An estate culti-
vated as it ought to be A mountain ride Leave the island
Reflections . . 150
CONTENTS ix
CHAPTER XII.
PAGE
The Darien canal Jamaican mail packet Captain W. Retro-
spect of Jamaican history Waterspout at sea Hayti Jacmel
A walk through the town A Jamaican planter First sight
of the Blue Mountains Port Royal Kingston The Colonial
Secretary Gordon riots Changes in the Jamaican consti-
tution 176
CHAPTER XIII.
The English mails Irish agitation Two kinds of colonies
Indian administration How far applicable in the West Indies
Land at Kingston Government House Dinner party
Interesting officer Majuba Hill Mountain station Kingston
curiosities Tobacco Valley in the Blue Mountains . . 204
CHAPTER XIV.
Visit to Port Royal Dockyard Town Church Fort Augusta
The eyrie in the mountains Ride to Newcastle Society in
Jamaica Religious bodies Liberty and authority . . . 222
CHAPTER XV.
The Church of England in Jamaica Drive to Castleton
Botanical Gardens Picnic by the river Black women Ball
at Government House Mandeville Miss Roy Country
society Manners American visitors A Moravian mission-
ary The modern Radical creed ...... 237
CHAPTER XVI.
Jamaican hospitality Cherry Garden George William Gordon
The Gordon riots Governor Eyre A dispute and its conse-
quences Jamaican country-house society Modern specula-
tion A Spanish fable Port Royal The commodore
Naval theatricals The modern sailor 255
CHAPTER XVII.
Present state of Jamaica Test of progress Resources of the
island Political alternatives Black supremacy and probable
consequences The West Indian problem .... 277
CHAPTER XVIII.
Passage to Cuba A Canadian commissioner Havana The
Moro The city and harbour Cuban money American
a
x THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
PAQK
visitors The cathedral Toinb of Columbus New friends
The late rebellion Slave emancipation Spain and progress
A Trail fight 288
CHAPTER XIX.
Hotels in Havana Sights in the city Cigar manufactories
West Indian industries The Captain-General The Jesuit
college Father Vinez Clubs in Havana Spanish aristocracy
Sea lodging house 309
CHAPTER XX.
Return to Havana The Spaniards in Cuba Prospects American
influence Future of the West Indies English rumours
Leave Cuba The harbour at night The Bahama Channel
Hayti Port au Prince The black republic West Indian
history 331
CHAPTER XXI.
Return to Jamaica Cherry Garden again Black servants Social
conditions Sir Henry Norman King's House once more
Negro suffrage The will of the people The Irish python
Conditions of colonial union Oratory and statesmanship . 350
CHAPTER XXII.
Going home Retrospect Alternative courses Future of the
Empire Sovereignty of the sea The Greeks The rights of
man Plato The voice of the people Imperial federation
Hereditary colonial policy New Irelands Effects of party
government . 362
ILLUSTEATIONS.
MOUNTAIN CRATER, DOMINICA Frontispiece
SILK COTTON TREE, JAMAICA Title page
BLUE BASIN, TRINIDAD To face page 82
MORNING WALK, DOMINICA ., 154
PORT ROYAL, JAMAICA . ,, 194
VALLEY IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS, JAMAICA .... ,, 220
KINGSTON AND HARBOUR, FROM CHERRY GARDEN ,, 2C6
HAVANA, FROM THE QUARRIES ., 294
PORT AU PRINCE, HAYTI 327
CHAPTER I.
Colonial policy Union or separation Self-government Varieties of con-
dition The Pacific colonies The West Indies Proposals for a West
Indian federation Nature of the population American union and
British plantations Original conquest of the West Indies.
THE Colonial Exhibition has come and gone. Delegates
from our great self-governed dependencies have met and
consulted together, and have determined upon a common
course of action for Imperial defence. The British race
dispersed over the world have celebrated the Jubilee of the
Queen with an enthusiasm evidently intended to bear a
special and peculiar meaning. The people of these islands
and their sons and brothers and friends and kinsfolk in
Canada, in Australia, and in New Zealand have declared
with a general voice, scarcely disturbed by a discord, that
they are fellow-subjects of a single sovereign, that they are
united in feeling, united in loyalty, united in interest, and
that they wish and mean to preserve unbroken the integrity
of the British Empire. This is the answer which the
democracy has given to the advocates of the doctrine of
separation. The desire for union while it lasts is its own
realisation. As long as we have no wish to part we shall
not part, and the wish can never rise if when there is occa-
sion we can meet and deliberate together with the same
regard for each other's welfare which has been shown in
the late conference in London.
Events mock at human foresight, and nothing is cer-
2 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
tain but the unforeseen. Constitutional government and
an independent executive were conferred upon our larger
colonies, with the express and scarcely veiled intention
that at the earliest moment they were to relieve the
mother country of responsibility for them. They were
regarded as fledgelings who are fed only by the parent
birds till their feathers are grown, and are then expected
to shift for themselves. They were provided with the
full plumage of parliamentary institutions on the home
pattern and model, and the expectation of experienced
politicians was that they would each at the earliest
moment go off on their separate accounts, and would bid
us a friendly farewell. The irony of fate has turned to
folly the wisdom of the wise. The wise themselves, the
same political party which were most anxious twenty years
ago to see the colonies independent, and contrived constitu-
tions for them which they conceived must inevitably lead
to separation, appeal now to the effect of those very
constitutions in drawing the Empire closer together, as
a reason why a similar method should be immediately
adopted to heal the differences between Great Britain and
Ireland. New converts to any belief, political or theological,
are proverbially zealous, and perhaps in this instance they
are over-hasty. It does not follow that because people
of the same race and character are drawn together by
equality and liberty, people of different races and different
characters, who have quarrelled for centuries, will be
similarly attracted to one another. Yet so far as our own
colonies are concerned it is clear that the abandonment by
the mother country of all pretence to interfere in their
internal management has removed the only cause which
could possibly have created a desire for independence.
We cannot, even if we wish it ourselves, shake off con-
nections who cost us nothing and themselves refuse to be
divided. Politicians may quarrel; the democracies have
COLONIAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 3
refused to quarrel ; and the result of the wide extension of
the suffrage throughout the Empire has been to show that
being one the British people everywhere intend to remain
one. With the same blood, the same language, the same
habits, the same traditions, they do not mean to be shattered
into dishonoured fragments. All of us, wherever we are,
can best manage our own affairs within our own limits ;
yet local spheres of self-management can revolve round a
common centre while there is centripetal power sufficient
to hold them ; and so long as England ' to herself is true '
and continues worthy of her ancient reputation, there are
no causes working visibly above the political horizon which
are likely to induce our self-governed colonies to take wing
and leave us. The strain will come with the next great
war. During peace these colonies have only experienced
the advantage of union with us. They will then have to
share our dangers, and may ask why they are to be involved
in quarrels which are not of their own making. How
they will act then only experience can tell ; and that there
is any doubt about it is a sufficient answer to those rapid
statesmen who would rush at once into the application of
the same principle to countries whose continuance with us
is vital to our own safety, whom we cannot part with though
they were to demand it at the cannon's mouth.
But the result of the experiment is an encouragement
as far as it has gone to those who would extend self-
government through the whole of our colonial system.
It seems to lead as a direct road into the ' Imperial
Federation ' which has fascinated the general imagina-
tion. It removes friction. We relieve ourselves of re-
sponsibilities. If federation is to come about at all as a
definite and effective organisation, the spontaneous action
of the different members of the Empire in a position in
which they are free to stay with us or to leave us as they
please, appears the readiest and perhaps the only means by
B 2
4 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
which it can be brought to pass. So plausible is the theory,
so obviously right would it be were the problem as simple
and the population of all our colonies as homogeneous as
in Australia, that one cannot wonder at the ambition of
politicians to win themselves a name and achieve a great
result by the immediate adoption of it. Great results
generally imply effort and sacrifice. Here effort is un-
necessary and sacrifice is not demanded. Everybody is
to have what he wishes, and the effect is to come about
of itself. When we think of India, when we think of
Ireland, prudence tells us to hesitate. Steps once taken
in this direction cannot be undone, even if found to lead to
the wrong place. But undoubtedly, wherever it is possible
the principle of self-government ought to be applied in our
colonies and will be applied, and the danger now is that it
will be tried in haste in countries either as yet unripe for
it or from the nature of things unfit for it. The liberties
which we grant freely to those whom we trust and who do
not require to be restrained, we bring into disrepute if we
concede them as readily to perversity or disaffection or to
those who, like most Asiatics, do not desire liberty, and
prosper best when they are led and guided.
In this complex empire of ours the problem presents
itself in many shapes, and each must be studied and dealt
with according to its character. There is the broad distinc-
tion between colonies and conquered countries. Colonists
are part of ourselves. Foreigners attached by force to
our dominions may submit to be ruled by us, but will
not always consent to rule themselves in accordance with
our views or interests, or remain attached to us if we
enable them to leave us when they please. The Crown,
therefore, as in India, rules directly by the police and
the army. And there are colonies which are neither one
nor the other, where our own people have been settled and
have been granted the land in possession with the control of
VARIETIES OF CHARACTER 5
an insubordinate population, themselves claiming political
privileges which had to be refused to the rest. This was
the position of Ireland, and the result of meddling theoreti-
cally with it ought to have taught us caution. Again,
there are colonies like the West Indies, either occupied
originally by ourselves, as Barbadoes, or taken by force
from France or Spain, where the mass of the population
were slaves who have been since made free, but where the
extent to which the coloured people can be admitted to
share in the administration is still an unsettled question.
To throw countries so variously circumstanced under an
identical system would be a wild experiment. Whether we
ought to try such an experiment at all, or even wish to try
it and prepare the way for it, depends perhaps on whether
we have determined that under all circumstances the reten-
tion of them under our own flag is indispensable to our safety.
I had visited our great Pacific colonies. Circumstances
led me afterwards to attend more particularly to the West
Indies. They were the earliest, and once the most prized,
of all our distant possessions. They had been won by the
most desperate struggles, and had been the scene of our
greatest naval glories. In the recent discussion on the
possibility of an organised colonial federation, various
schemes came under my notice, in every one of which the
union of the West Indian Islands under a free parliamentary
constitution was regarded as a necessary preliminary. I was
reminded of a conversation which I had held seventeen
years ago with a high colonial official specially connected
with the West Indian department, in which the federation
of the islands under such a constitution was spoken of as
a measure already determined on, though with a view to an
end exactly the opposite of that which was now desired.
The colonies universally were then regarded in such quarters
as a burden upon our resources, of which we were to relieve
ourselves at the earliest moment. They were no longer of
6 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
value to us ; the whole world had become our market ; and
whether they were nominally attached to the Empire, or were
independent, or joined themselves to some other power, was
of no commercial moment to us. It was felt, however, that
as long as any tie remained, we should be obliged to defend
them hi time of war ; while they, in consequence of their
connection, would be liable to attack. The sooner, therefore,
the connection was ended, the better for them and for us.
By the constitutions which had been conferred upon
them, Australia and Canada, New Zealand and the Cape,
were assumed to be practically gone. The same measures
were to be taken with the West Indies. They were not
prosperous. They formed no outlet for British emigration.
The white population was diminishing; they were dis-
satisfied; they lay close to the great American republic,
to which geographically they more properly belonged.
Eepresentative assemblies under the Crown had failed to
produce the content expected from them or to give an
impulse to industry. The free negroes could not long be
excluded from the franchise. The black and white races
had not amalgamated and were not inclining to amalga-
mate. The then recent Gordon riots had been followed by
the suicide of the old Jamaican constitution. The govern-
ment of Jamaica had been flung back upon the Crown, and
the Crown was impatient of the addition to its obligations.
The official of whom I speak informed me that a decision
had been irrevocably taken. The troops were to be with-
drawn from the islands, and Jamaica, Trinidad, and the
English Antilles were to be masters of their own destiny,
either to form into free communities like the Spanish
American republics, or join the United States, or to do
what they pleased, with the sole understanding that we
were to have no more responsibilities.
I do not know how far the scheme was matured. To
an outside spectator it seemed too hazardous to have been
WHITES AND BLACKS ^
seriously meditated. Yet I was told that it had not been
meditated only but positively determined upon, and that
further discussion of a settled question would be fruitless
and needlessly irritating.
Politicians with a favourite scheme are naturally san-
guine. It seemed to me that in a West Indian Federation
the black race would necessarily be admitted to their full
rights as citizens. Their numbers enormously preponderated,
and the late scenes in Jamaica were signs that the two colours
would not blend into one, that there might be, and even
inevitably would be, collisions between them which would
lead to actions which we could not tolerate. The white
residents and the negroes had not been drawn together by
the abolition of slavery, but were further apart than ever.
The whites, if by superior intelligence they could gain the
upper hand, would not be allowed to keep it. As little
would they submit to be ruled by a race whom they despised ;
and I thought it quite certain that something would happen
which would compel the British Government to interfere
again, whether we liked it or not. Liberty in Hayti had
been followed by a massacre of the French inhabitants,
and the French settlers had done no worse than we had done
to deserve the ill will of their slaves. Fortunately opinion
changed in England before the experiment could be tried.
The colonial policy of the doctrinaire statesmen was no
sooner understood than it was universally condemned, and
they could not press proposals on the West Indies which
the West Indians showed so little readiness to meet.
So things drifted on, remaining to appearance as they
were. The troops were not recalled. A minor confedera-
tion was formed in the Leeward Antilles. The Windward
group was placed under Barbadoes, and islands which
before had governors of their own passed under subordinate
administrators. Local councils continued under various
conditions, the popular element being cautiously and silently
S THE ENGLISH IN THE \VEST INDIES
introduced. The blacks settled into a condition of easy-
going peasant proprietors. But so far as the white or English
interest was concerned, two causes which undermined West
Indian prosperity continued to operate. So long as sugar
maintained its price the planters with the help of coolie
labour were able to struggle on ; but the beetroot bounties
came to cut from under them the industry hi which they
had placed their main dependence ; the reports were con-
tinually darker of distress and rapidly approaching ruin.
Petitions for protection were not or could not be granted.
They were losing heart the worst loss of all ; while the
Home Government, no longer with a view to separation,
but with the hope that it might produce the same effect
which it had produced elsewhere, were still looking to
their old remedy of the extension of the principle of self-
government. One serious step was taken very recently
towards the re-establishment of a constitution in Jamaica.
It was assumed that it had failed before because the blacks
were not properly represented. The council was again
made partially elective, and the black vote was admitted
on the widest basis. A power was retained by the Crown
of increasing in case of necessity the nominated official
members to a number which would counterbalance the
elected members ; but the power had not been acted on
and was not perhaps designed to continue, and a restless
hope was said to have revived among the negroes that the
day was not far off when Jamaica would be as Hayti and
they would have the island to themselves.
To a person like myself, to whom the preservation of
the British Empire appeared to be the only public cause in
which just now it was possible to feel concern, the problem
was extremely interesting. I had no prejudice against self-
government. I had seen the Australian colonies growing
under it in health and strength with a rapidity which
rivalled the progress of the American Union itself. I had
THE AMERICAN UNION 9
observed in South Africa that the confusions and perplexi-
ties there diminished exactly in proportion as the Home
Government ceased to interfere. I could not hope that as
an outsider I could see my way through difficulties where
practised eyes were at a loss. But it was clear that the
West Indies were suffering, be the cause what it might. I
learnt that a party had risen there at last which was
actually in favour of a union with America, and I wished
to find an answer to a question which I had long asked
myself to no purpose. My old friend Mr. Motley was once
speaking to me of the probable accession of Canada to the
American republic. I asked him if he was sure that Canada
would like it. ' Like it ? ' he replied. ' Would I like the
house of Baring to take me into partnership ? ' To be a
partner in the British Empire appeared to me to be at least
as great a thing as to be a state under the stars and
stripes. What was it that Canada, what was it that any
other colony, would gain by exchanging British citizenship
for American citizenship ? What did America offer to
those who joined her which we refused to give or neglected to
give ? Was it that Great Britain did not take her colonies
into partnership at all ? was it that while in the United
States the blood circulated freely from the heart to the
extremities, so that ' if one member suffered all the body
suffered with it,' our colonies were simply (as they used
to be called) ' plantations,' offshoots from the old stock set
down as circumstances had dictated in various parts of the
globe, but vitally detached and left to grow or to wither
according to their own inherent strength ?
At one time the West Indian colonies had been more to
us than such casual seedlings. They had been regarded
&s precious jewels, which hundreds of thousands of English
lives had been sacrificed to tear from France and Spain.
The Caribbean Sea was the cradle of the Naval Empire of
Great Britain. There Drake and Hawkins intercepted the
io THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
golden stream which flowed from Panama into the exchequer
at Madrid, and furnished Philip with the means to carry
on his war with the Eeformation. The Pope had claimed
to be lord of the new world as well as of the old, and had
declared that Spaniards, and only Spaniards, should own
territory or carry on trade there within the tropics. The
seamen of England took up the challenge and replied with
cannon shot. It was not the Crown, it was not the Govern-
ment, which fought that battle : it was the people of
England, who fought it with their own hands and then:
own resources. Adventurers, buccaneers, corsairs, priva-
teers, call them by what name we will, stand as extra-
ordinary but characteristic figures on the stage of history,
disowned or acknowledged by their sovereign as suited
diplomatic convenience. The outlawed pirate of one year
was promoted the next to be a governor and his country's
representative. In those waters the men were formed and
trained who drove the Armada through the Channel into
wreck and ruin. In those waters, in the centuries which
followed, France and England fought for the ocean empire,
and England won it won it on the day when her own
politicians' hearts had failed them, and- all the powers of
the world had combined to humiliate her, and Rodney
shattered the French fleet, saved Gibraltar, and avenged
York Town. If ever the naval exploits of this country are
done into an epic poem and since the Iliad there has been
no subject better fitted for such treatment or better deserv-
ing it the West Indies will be the scene of the most
brilliant cantos. For England to allow them to drift away
from her because they have no immediate marketable
value, would be a sign that she had lost the feelings with
which great nations always treasure the heroic traditions of
their fathers. When those traditions come to be regarded
as something which concerns them no longer, their great-
ness is already on the wane.
PAST AND PRESENT
CHAPTEE II.
In the train for Southampton Morning papers The new ' Locksley Hall '
Past and 'present The 'Moselle' Heavy weather The petrel The
Azores.
THE last week in December, when the year 1886 was waning
to its close, I left Waterloo station to join a West Indian
mail steamer at Southampton. The air was frosty ; the fog
lay thick over city and river ; the Houses of Parliament
themselves were scarcely visible as I drove across West-
minster Bridge in the heavy London vapour a symbol of
the cloud which was hanging over the immediate political
future. The morning papers were occupied with Lord
Tennyson's new ' Locksley Hall ' and Mr. Gladstone's
remarks upon it. I had read neither ; but from the criti-
cisms it appeared that Lord Tennyson fancied himself to
have seen a change pass over England since his boyhood,
and a change which was not to his mind. The fruit of
the new ideas which were then rising from the ground had
ripened, and the taste was disagreeable to him. The day
which had followed that ' august sunrise ' had not been
' august ' at all ; and ' the beautiful bold brow of Freedom '
had proved to have something of brass upon it. The ' use
and wont ' England, the England out of which had risen
the men who had won her great position for her, was losing
its old characteristics. Things which in his eager youth
Lord Tennyson had despised he saw now that he had been
mistaken in despising ; and the new notions which were to
remake the world were not remaking it in a shape that
iz THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
pleased him. Like Goethe, perhaps he felt that he was
stumbling over the roots of the tree which he had helped
to plant.
The contrast in Mr. Gladstone's article was certainly
remarkable. Lord Tennyson saw in institutions which
were passing away the decay of what hi its tune had been
great and noble, and he saw little rising in the place of
them which humanly could be called improvement. To Mr.
Gladstone these revolutionary years had been years of the
sweeping off of long intolerable abuses, and of awaking to
higher and truer perceptions of duty. Never, according to
him, in any period of her history had England made more
glorious progress, never had stood higher than at the
present moment in material power and moral excellence.
How could it be otherwise when they were the years of his
own ascendency ?
Metaphysicians tell us that we do not know anything as
it really is. What we call outward objects are but impres-
sions generated upon our sense by forces of the actual nature
of which we are totally ignorant. We imagine that we hear
a sound, and that the sound is something real which is out-
side us ; but the sound is in the ear and is made by the
ear, and the thing outside is but a vibration of air. If no
animal existed with organs of hearing the vibrations might
be as before, but there would be no such thing as sound ;
and all our opinions on all subjects whatsoever were equally
subjective. Lord Tennyson's opinions and Mr. Gladstone's
opinions reveal to us only the nature and texture of their
own minds, which have been affected in this way or that
way. The scale has not been made hi which we can weigh
the periods in a nation's life, or measure them one against
the other. The past is gone, and nothing but the bones of
it can be recalled. We but half understand the present,
for each age is a chrysalis, and we are ignorant into what
it may develop. We do not even try to understand it
PAST AND PRESENT 13
honestly, for we shut our eyes against what we do not wish
to see. I will not despond with Lord Tennyson. To take
a gloomy view of things will not inend them, and modern
enlightenment may have excellent gifts in store for us
which will come by-and-by, but I will not say that they
have come as yet. I will not say that public life is im-
proved when party spirit has degenerated into an organised
civil war, and a civil war which can never end, for it renews
its life like the giant of fable at every fresh election. I will
not say that men are more honest and more law-abiding
when debts are repudiated and law is defied in half the
country, and Mr. Gladstone himself applauds or refuses to
condemn acts of open dishonesty. We are to congratulate
ourselves that duelling has ceased, but I do not know that
men act more honourably because they can be called less
sharply to account. ' Smuggling,' we are told, has disap-
peared also, but the wrecker scuttles his ship or runs it
ashore to cheat the insurance office. The Church may
perhaps be improved in the arrangement of the services and
in the professional demonstrativeness of the clergy, but I
am not sure that the clergy have more influence over the
minds of men than they had fifty years ago, or that the
doctrines which the Church teaches are more powerful over
public opinion. One would not gather that our morality
was so superior from the reports which we see in the news-
paper, and girls now talk over novels which the ladies'
maids of their grandmothers might have read in secret but
would have blushed while reading. Each age would do
better if it studied its own faults and endeavoured to mend
them instead of comparing itself with others to its own
advantage.
This only was clear to me in thinking over what Mr.
Gladstone was reported to have said, and in thinking
of his own achievements and career, that there are two
classes of men who have played and still play a pro-
i 4 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
minent part in the world those who accomplish great
things, and those who talk and make speeches about them.
The doers of things are for the most part silent. Those who
build up empires or discover secrets of science, those who paint
great pictures or write great poems, are not often to be found
spouting upon platforms. The silent men do the work. The
talking men cry out at what is done because it is not done as
they would have had it, and afterwards take possession of it
as if it was their own property. Warren Hastings wins India
for us ; the eloquent Burke desires and passionately tries to
hang him for it. At the supreme crisis in our history
when America had revolted and Ireland was defiant, when
the great powers of Europe had coalesced to crush us, and
we were staggering under the disaster at York Town, Eodney
struck a blow in the West Indies which sounded over the
world and saved for Britain her ocean sceptre. Just in
time, for the popular leaders had persuaded the House of
Commons that Kodney ought to be recalled and peace
made on any terms. Even in politics the names of ora-
torical statesmen are rarely associated with the organic
growth of enduring institutions. The most distinguished
of them have been conspicuous only as instruments of de-
struction. Institutions are the slow growths of centuries.
The orator cuts them down in a day. The tree falls, and
the hand that wields the axe is admired and applauded. The
speeches of Demosthenes and Cicero pass into literature,
and are studied as models of language. But Demosthenes
and Cicero did not understand the facts of their time ;
their language might be beautiful, and their sentiments
noble, but with their fine words and sentiments they
only misled their countrymen. The periods where the
orator is supreme are marked always by confusion and
disintegration. Goethe could say of Luther that he had
thrown back for centuries the spiritual cultivation of man-
kind, by calling the passions of the multitude to judge of
15
matters which should have been left to the thinkers. We
ourselves are just now in one of those uneasy periods, and
we have decided that orators are the fittest people to rule
over us. The constituencies choose their members accord-
ing to the fluency of their tongues. Can he make a speech ?
is the one test of competency for a legislator, and the most
persuasive of the whole we make prime minister. We
admire the man for his gifts, and we accept what he says
for the manner in which it is uttered. He may contradict
to-day what he asserted yesterday. No matter. He can
persuade others wherever he is persuaded himself. And
such is the nature of him that he can convince himself of
anything which it is his interest to believe. These are the
persons who are now regarded as our wisest. It was not
always so. It is not so now with nations who are in a
sound state of health. The Americans, when they choose
a President or a Secretary of State or any functionary
from whom they require wise action, do not select these
famous speech-makers. Such periods do not last, for the
condition which they bring about becomes always intoler-
able. I do not believe in the degeneracy of our race. I
believe the present generation of Englishmen to be capable
of all that their fathers were, and possibly of more ; but we
are just now in a moulting state, and are sick while the
process is going on. Or to take another metaphor. The
bow of Ulysses is unstrung. The worms have not eaten
into the horn or the moths injured the string, but the
owner of the house is away and the suitors of Penelope
Britannia consume her substance, rivals one of another,
each caring only for himself, but with a common heart in
evil. They cannot string the bow. Only the true lord and
master can string it, and in due time he comes, and the
cord is stretched once more upon the notch, singing to the
touch of the finger with the sharp note of the swallow ; and
the arrows fly to their mark in the breasts of the pretenders,
1 6 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
while Pallas Athene looks on approving from her coign of
vantage.
Eandom meditations of this kind were sent flying
through me by the newspaper articles on Tennyson and
Mr. Gladstone. The air cleared, and my mind also, as we
ran beyond the smoke. The fields were covered deep with
snow ; a white vapour clung along the ground, the winter
sky shining through it soft and blue. The ponds and
canals were hard frozen, and men were skating and boys
were sliding, and all was brilliant and beautiful. The ladies
of the forest, the birch trees beside the line about Farn-
borough, were hung with jewels of ice, and glittered like a
fretwork of purple and silver. It was like escaping out of
a nightmare into happy healthy England once more. In
the carriage with me were several gentlemen ; officers going
out to join their regiments ; planters who had been at home
on business; young sportsmen with rifles and cartridge
cases who were hoping to shoot alligators, &c., all bound
like myself for the West Indian mail steamer. The elders
talked of sugar and of bounties, and of the financial
ruin of the islands. I had heard of this before I started,
and I learnt little from them which I had not known already ;
but I had misgivings whether I was not wandering off after
all on a fool's errand. I did not want to shoot alligators,
I did not understand cane growing or want to understand
it, nor was I likely to find a remedy for encumbered and
bankrupt landowners. I was at an age too when men
grow unfit for roaming, and are expected to stay quietly at
home. Plato says that to travel to any profit one should
go between fifty and sixty ; not sooner because one has
one's duties to attend to as a citizen ; not after because the
mind becomes hebetated. The chief object of going abroad,
in Plato's opinion, is to converse with dsloi avSpss, inspired
men, whom Providence scatters about the globe, and from
whom alone wisdom can be learnt. And I, alas ! was long
THE 'MOSELLE' "17
past the limit, and ffslot avBpss are not to be met with in
these times. But if not with inspired men, I might fall in at
any rate with sensible men who would talk on things which
I wanted to know. Winter and spring in a warm climate
were pleasanter than a winter and spring at home ; and as
there is compensation in all things, old people can see some
objects more clearly than young people can see them.
They have no interests of their own to mislead their percep-
tion. They have lived too long to believe in any formulas
or theories. ' Old age,' the Greek poet says, ' is not wholly
a misfortune. Experience teaches things which the young
know not.' * Old men at any rate like to think so.
The * Moselle,' in which I had taken my passage, was a
large steamer of 4,000 tons, one of the best where all are
good on the West Indian mail line. Her long straight sides
and rounded bottom promised that she would roll, and I may
say that the promise was faithfully kept ; but except to the
stomachs of the inexperienced rolling is no disadvantage.
A vessel takes less water on board in a beam sea when she
yields to the wave than when she stands up stiff and straight
against it. The deck when I went on board was slippery
with ice. There was the usual crowd and confusion before
departure, those who were going out being undistinguishable,
till the bell rang to clear the ship, from the friends who had
accompanied them to take leave. I discovered, however,
to my satisfaction that our party in the cabin would not be
a large one. The West Indians who had come over for the
Colonial Exhibition were most of them already gone. They,
along with the rest, had taken back with them a conscious-
ness that their visit had not been wholly in vain, and that
the interest of the old country in her distant possessions
.seemed quickening into life once more. The commis-
1 & TfKvov, ov oirai'To T< fftpci KO.KO. '
1 8 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
sioners from all our dependencies had been feted In the
great towns, and the people had come to Kensington in
millions to admire the productions which bore witness to-
the boundless resources of British territory. Had it been
only a passing emotion of wonder and pride, or was it a
prelude to a more energetic policy and active resolution ?
Any way it was something to be glad of. Keceptions and
public dinners and loyal speeches will not solve political
problems, but they create the feeling of good will which
underlies the useful consideration of them. The Exhibition
had served the purpose which it was intended for. The
conference of delegates grew out of it which has discussed
in the happiest temper the elements of our future rela-
tions.
But the Exhibition doors were now closed, and the multi-
tude of admirers or contributors were dispersed or dispersing
to their homes. In the ' Moselle ' we had only the latest
lingerers or the ordinary passengers who went to and fro
on business or pleasure. I observed them with the curiosity
with which one studies persons with whom one is to be
shut up for weeks in involuntary intimacy. One young
Demerara planter attracted my notice, as he had with him
a newly married and beautiful wife whose fresh complexion
would so soon fade, as it always does in those lands where
nature is brilliant with colour and English cheeks grow
pale. I found also to my surprise and pleasure a daughter
of one of my oldest and dearest friends, who was going out
to join her husband in Trinidad. This was a happy accident
to start with. An announcement printed in Spanish in
large letters in a conspicuous position intimated that I
must be prepared for habits in some of our companions
of a less agreeable kind.
' Se suplica a los sefiores pasajeros de no escupir sobre
la cubierta de popa.'
I may as well leave the words untranslated, but the
THE MOSELLE' 19
* supplication ' is not unnecessary. The Spanish colonists,
like their countrymen at home, smoke everywhere, with the
usual consequences. The captain of one of our mail boats
found it necessary to read one of them who disregarded it
a lesson which he would remember. He sent for the
quartermaster with a bucket and a mop, and ordered him
to stay by this gentleman and clean up till he had done.
The wind when we started was light and keen from the
north. The afternoon sky was clear and frosty. Southamp-
ton Water was still as oil, and the sun went down crimson
behind the brown woods of the New Forest. Of the ' Mo-
selle's ' speed we had instant evidence, for a fast Government
launch raced us for a mile or two, and off Netley gave up
the chase. We went leisurely along, doing thirteen knots
without effort, swept by Calshot into the Solent, and had
cleared the Needles before the last daylight had left us. In
a few days the ice would be gone, and we should lie in the
soft air of perennial summer.
Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes :
Eripuere jocos, Venerem, convivia, ludum
But the flying years had not stolen from me the delight of
finding myself once more upon the sea ; the sea which is
eternally young, and gives one back one's own youth and
buoyancy.
Down the Channel the north wind still blew, and the
water was still smooth. We set our canvas at the Needles,
and flew on for three days straight upon our course with a
steady breeze. We crossed ' the Bay ' without the fiddles
on the dinner table ; we were congratulating ourselves that
mid-winter as it was we should reach the tropics and never
need them. I meanwhile made acquaintances among my
West Indian fellow-passengers, and listened to their tale of
grievances. The Exhibition had been well enough in its
way, but Exhibitions would not fill an empty exchequer or
restore ruined plantations. The mother country I found
c 2
20 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
was still regarded as a stepmother, and from more than one
quarter I heard a more than muttered wish that they could
be ' taken into partnership ' by the Americans. They were
wasting away under Free Trade and the sugar bounties.
The mother country gave them fine words, but words were
all. If they belonged to the United States they would have
the benefit of a close market in a country where there were
50,000,000 sugar drinkers. Energetic Americans would
eoine among them and establish new industries, and would
control the unmanageable negroes. From the most loyal I
heard the despairing cry of the Britons, ' the barbarians
drive us into the sea and the sea drives us back upon
the barbarians.' They could bear Free Trade which
was fair all round, but not Free Trade which was made
into a mockery by bounties. And it seemed that their
masters in Downing Street answered them as the Romans
answered our forefathers. ' We have many colonies, and we
shall not miss Britain. Britain is far off, and must take
care of herself. She brings us responsibility, and she brings
us no revenue ; we cannot tax Italy for the sake of Britons.
We have given them our arms and our civilisation. We
have done enough. Let them do now what they can or
please.' Virtually this is what England says to the West
Indians, or would say if despair made them actively trouble-
some, notwithstanding Exhibitions and expansive senti-
ments. The answer from Rome we can now see was the
voice of dying greatness, which was no longer worthy of the
place in the world which it had made for itself in the days
of its strength ; but it doubtless seemed reasonable enough
at the time, and indeed was the only answer which the
Rome of Honorius could give.
A change in the weather cut short our conversation, and
drove half the company to their berths. On the fourth
morning the wind chopped back to the north-west. A
beam sea set in, and the ' Moselle ' justified my conjectures
A STORM AT SEA 21
about her. She rolled gunwale under, rolled at least forty
degrees each way, and unshipped a boat out of her davits
to windward. The waves were not as high as I have known
the Atlantic produce when in the humour for it, but they
were short, steep, and curling. Tons of water poured over
the deck. The few of us who ventured below to dinner
were hit by the dumb waiters which swung over our
heads ; and the living waiters staggered about with the
dishes and upset the soup into our laps. Everybody was
grumbling and miserable. Driven to my cabin I was
dozing on a sofa when I was jerked off and dropped upon
the floor. The noise down below on these occasions is con-
siderable. The steering chains clank, unfastened doors
slam to and fro, plates and dishes and glass fall crashing
at some lurch which is heavier than usual, with the roar
of the sea underneath as a constant accompaniment.
When a wave strikes the ship full on the quarter and
she staggers from stem to stern, one wonders how any
construction of wood and iron can endure such blows with-
out being shattered to fragments. And it would be shattered,
as I heard an engineer once say, if the sea was not such a
gentle creature after all. I crept up to the deck house to
watch through the lee door the wild magnificence of the
storm. Down came a great green wave, rushed in a flood
over everything, and swept me drenched to the skin down
the stairs into the cabin. I crawled to bed to escape cold,
and slid up and down my berth like a shuttle at every roll
of the ship till I fell into the unconsciousness which is a
substitute for sleep, slept at last really, and woke at seven in
the morning to find the sun shining, and the surface of the
ocean still undulating but glassy calm. The only signs left
of the tempest were the swallow-like petrels skimming to
and fro in our wake, picking up the scraps of food and the
plate washings which the cook's mate had thrown overboard;
smallest and beautifullest of all the gull tribe, called petrel
22 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
by our ancestors, who went to their Bibles more often than
we do for their images, in memory of St. Peter, because
they seem for a moment to stand upon the water when they
stoop upon any floating object. 1 In the afternoon we passed
the Azores, rising blue and fairy-like out of the ocean ;
unconscious they of the bloody battles which once went on
under their shadows. There it was that Grenville, in the
' Revenge,' fought through a long summer day alone against
a host of enemies, and died there and won immortal honour.
The Azores themselves are Grenville's monument, and in
the memory of Englishmen are associated for ever with his
glorious story. Behind these islands, too, lay Grenville's
comrades, the English privateers, year after year waiting
for Philip's plate fleet. Behind these islands lay French
squadrons waiting for the English sugar ships. They are
calm and silent now, and are never likely to echo any more
to battle thunder. Men come and go and play out their
little dramas, epic or tragic, and it matters nothing to
nature. Their wild pranks leave no scars, and the decks
are swept clean for the next comers.
1 This is the explanation of the name which is given by Dampier.
LIFE AT SEA
CHAPTEE III.
The tropics Passengers on board Account of the Darien Canal Planters'
complaints West Indian history The Spanish conquest Drake and
Hawkins The buccaneers The pirates French and English Eodney
Battle of April 12 Peace with honour Doers and talkers.
ANOTHER two days and we were in the tropics. The north-
east trade blew behind us, and our own speed being taken
off from the speed of the wind there was scarcely air enougli
to fill our sails. The waves went down and the ports were
opened, and we had passed suddenly from winter into per-
petual summer, as Jean Paul says it will be with us in
death. Sleep came back soft and sweet, and the water was
warm in our morning bath, and the worries and annoy-
ances of life vanished in these sweet surroundings like
nightmares when we wake. How well the Greeks understood
the spiritual beauty of the sea ! d\aa-<ra K\VSI, irdvra rdv-
0pa)7T(0v Katcd, says Euripides. ' The sea washes off all the
woes of men.' The passengers lay about the decks in their
chairs reading story books. The young ones played Bull.
The officers flirted mildly with the pretty young ladies.
For a brief interval care and anxiety had spread their wings
.and flown away, and existence itself became delightful.
There was a young scientific man on board who inte-
rested me much. He had been sent out from Kew to take
charge of the Botanical Gardens in Jamaica was quiet,
modest, and unaffected, understood his own subjects well,
.and could make others understand them ; with him I had
much agreeable conversation. And there was another
.singular person who attracted me even more. I took him
24 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
at first for an American. He was a Dane I found, an-
engineer by profession, and was on his way to some South
American republic. He was a long lean man with grey
eyes, red hair, and a laugh as if he so enjoyed the thing
that amused him that he wished to keep it all to himself,,
laughing inwardly till he choked and shook with it. His
chief amusement seemed to have lain in watching the per-
formances of Liberal politicians in various parts of the
world. He told me of an opposition leader in some parlia-
ment whom his rival in office had disposed of by shutting
him up in the caboose. ' In the caboose,' he repeated,
screaming with enjoyment at the thought of it, and evi-
dently wishing that all the parliamentary orators on the
globe were in the same place. In his wanderings he had
been lately at the Darien Canal, and gave me a wonderful
account of the condition of things there. The original
estimate of the probable cost had been twenty-six millions of
our (English) money. Most of these millions had been spent
already, and only a fifth of the whole had as yet been exe-
cuted. The entire cost would not be less, under the exist-
ing management, than one hundred and twenty millions,
and he evidently doubted whether the canal would ever be
completed at all, though professionally he would not confess
to such an opinion. The waste and plunder had been incal-
culable. The works and the gold that were set moving by
them made a feast for unclean harpies of both sexes from
every nation in the four continents. I liked everything
about Mr. except his ears, the flaps of which stood
out at right angles. Tom Cringle's Obed may have been
something like him.
There was a small black boy among us, evidently of.
pure blood, for his hair was wool and his colour black
as ink. His parents must have been well-to-do, for the boy
had been in Europe to be educated. The officers on board
and some of the ladies played with him as they would play
PASSENGERS 25.
with a monkey. He had little more sense than a monkey,
perhaps less, and the gestures of him grinning behind
gratings and pushing out his long thin arms between the
bars were curiously suggestive of the original from whom
we are told now that all of us came. The worst of it was
that, being lifted above his own people, he had been taught
to despise them. He was spoilt as a black and could not
be made into a white, and this I found afterwards was the
invariable and dangerous consequence whenever a superior
negro contrived to raise himself. He might do well enough
himself, but his family feel their blood as a degradation.
His children will not marry among their own people, and
not only will no white girl marry a negro, but hardly any
dowry can be large enough to tempt a West Indian white
to make a wife of a black lady. This is one of the most
sinister features in the present state of social life there.
Small personalities cropped up now and then. We had
representatives of all professions among us except the
Church of England clergy. Of them we had not one. The
captain, as usual, read us the service on Sundays on a
cushion for a desk, with the union jack spread over it. On
board ship the captain, like a sovereign, is supreme, and in
spiritual matters as in secular. Drake was the first com-
mander who carried the theory into practice when he ex-
communicated his chaplain. It is the law now, and the
tradition has gone on unbroken. In default of clergy we
had a missionary, who for the most part kept his lips closed.
He did open them once, and at my expense. Apropos of
nothing he said to me, ' I wonder, sir, whether you ever
read the remarks upon you in the newspapers. If all the
attacks upon your writings which I have seen were collected
together they would make an interesting volume.' This
was all. He had delivered his soul and relapsed into
silence.
From a Puerto Eico merchant I learnt that, if the
26 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
English colonies were in a bad way, the Spanish colonies
were in a worse. His own island, he said, was a nest of
squalor, misery, vice, and disease. Blacks and whites were
equally immoral ; and so far as habits went, the whites
were the filthier of the two. The complaints of the English
West Indians were less sweeping, and, as to immorality
between whites and blacks, neither from my companions in
the ' Moselle ' nor anywhere afterward did I hear or see
.a sign of it. The profligacy of planter life passed away
with slavery, and the changed condition of the two races
makes impossible any return to the old habits. But they
had wrongs of their own, and were eloquent in their ex-
position of them. We had taken the islands from France
and Spain at an enormous expense, and we were throwing
them aside like a worn-out child's toy. We did nothing
for them. We allowed them no advantage as British
subjects, and when they tried to do something for them-
selves, we interposed with an Imperial veto. The United
States, seeing the West Indian trade gravitating towards
New York, had offered them a commercial treaty, being
willing to admit their sugar duty free, in consideration
of the islands admitting in return their salt fish and
flour and notions. A treaty had been actually agreed to
between the United States and the Spanish islands. A
similar treaty had been freely offered to them, which might
have saved them from ruin, and the Imperial Government
had disallowed it. How, under such treatment, could we
expect them to be loyal to the British connection ?
It was a relief to turn back from these lamentations to
the brilliant period of past West Indian history. With the
planters of the present it was all sugar sugar and the lazy
blacks who were England's darlings and would not work for
them. The handbooks were equally barren. In them I found
nothing but modern statistics pointing to dreary conclu-
sions, and in the place of any human interest long stories
WEST INDIAN HISTORY 27
of constitutions, suffrages, representative assemblies, powers
of elected members, and powers reserved to the Crown.
Such things, important as they might be, did not touch my
imagination. And to an Englishman, proud of his country,
the West Indies had a far higher interest. Strange scenes
streamed across my memory, and a shadowy procession of
great figures who have printed their names in history.
Columbus and Cortez, Vasco Nunez, and Las Casas ; the
millions of innocent Indians who, according to Las Casas,
were destroyed out of the islands, the Spanish grinding
them to death in their gold mines ; the black swarms who
were poured in to take their place, and the frightful story
of the slave trade. Behind it all was the European drama
of the sixteenth century Charles V. and Philip fighting
against the genius of the new era, and feeding their armies
with the ingots of the new world. The convulsion spread
across the Atlantic. The English Protestants and the
French Huguenots took to sea like water dogs, and chal-
lenged their enemies in their own special domain. To the
popes and the Spaniards the new world was the property
of the Church and of those who had discovered it. A
papal bull bestowed on Spain all the countries which lay
within the tropics west of the Atlantic a form of Monroe
doctrine, not unreasonable as long as there was force to
maintain it, but the force was indispensable, and the Pro-
testant adventurers tried the question with them at the
cannon's mouth. They were of the reformed faith all of
them, these sea rovers of the early days, and, like their
enemies, they were of a very mixed complexion. The
Spaniards, gorged with plunder and wading in blood, were
at the same time, and in their own eyes, crusading soldiers
of the faith, missionaries of the Holy Church, and de-
fenders of the doctrines which were impiously assailed in
Europe. The privateers from Plymouth and Eochelle paid
.also for the cost of their expeditions with the pillage of ships
28 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
and towns and the profits of the slave trade ; and they too
were the unlicensed champions of spiritual freedom in their
own estimate of themselves. The gold which was meant
for Alva's troops in Flanders found its way into the
treasure houses of the London companies. The logs of the
voyages of the Elizabethan navigators represent them
faithfully as they were, freebooters of the ocean in one
aspect of them ; in another, the sea warriors of the Refor-
mation uncommissioned, unrecognised, fighting on their
own responsibility, liable to be disowned when they failed,
while the Queen herself would privately be a shareholder
in the adventure. It was a wild anarchic scene, fit cradle
of the spiritual freedom of a new age, when the nations of
the earth were breaking the chains in which king and
priest had bound them.
To the Spaniards, Drake and his comrades were corsarios,
robbers, enemies of the human race, to be treated to a short
shrift whenever found and caught. British seamen who-
fell into their hands were carried before the Inquisition at
Lima or Carthagena and burnt at the stake as heretics.
Four of Drake's crew were unfortunately taken once at
Vera Cruz. Drake sent a message to the governor-general
that if a hair of their heads was singed he would hang ten
Spaniards for each one of them. (This curious note is at
Simancas, where I saw it.) So great an object of terror at
Madrid was El Draque that he was looked on as an incar-
nation of the old serpent, and when he failed in his last
enterprise and news came that he was dead, Lope de Vega
sang a hymn of triumph in an epic poem which he called
' The Dragontea.'
When Elizabeth died and peace was made with Spain,,
the adventurers lost something of the indirect countenance
which had so far been extended to them ; the execution of
Ealeigh being one among other marks of the change of
mind. But they continued under other names, and no
WEST INDIAN HIS TOR Y 29
active effort was made to suppress them. The Spanish
Government did in 1627 agree to leave England in posses-
sion of Barbadoes, but the pretensions to an exclusive right
to trade continued to be maintained, and the English and
French refused to recognise it. The French privateers
.seized Tortuga, an island off St. Domingo, and they and
their English friends swarmed in the Caribbean Sea as
buccaneers or flibustiers. They exchanged names, perhaps
as a symbol of their alliance. ' Flibustier ' was English
and a corruption of freebooter. ' Buccaneer ' came from the
boucan, or dried beef, of the wild cattle which the French
hunters shot in Espanola, and which formed the chief of
their sea stores. Boucan became a French verb, and,
according to Labat, was itself the Carib name for the
cashew nut.
War breaking out again in Cromwell's time, Penn and
Venables took Jamaica. The flibustiers from the Tortugas
drove the Spaniards out of Hayti, which was annexed to
the French crow r n. The comradeship in religious enthu-
siasm which had originally drawn the two nations together
cooled by degrees, as French Catholics as well as Protestants
took to the trade. Port Royal became the headquarters of
the English buccaneers the last and greatest of them
being Henry Morgan, who took and plundered Panama, was
knighted for his services, and was afterwards made governor
of Jamaica. From the time when the Spaniards threw
open their trade, and English seamen ceased to be delivered
over to the Inquisition, the English buccaneers ceased to
be respectable characters and gradually drifted into the
pirates of later history, when under their new conditions
they produced their more questionable heroes, the Kidds
and Blackbeards. The French flibustiers continued long
after far into the eighteenth century some of them with
commissions as privateers, others as forbans or unlicensed
rovers, but still connived at in Martinique.
30 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
Adventurers, buccaneers, pirates pass across the stage
the curtain falls on them, and rises on a more glorious scene.
Jamaica had become the depot of the trade of England
with the western world, and golden streams had poured
into Port Royal. Barbadoes was unoccupied when England
took possession of it, and never passed out of our hands ;
but the Antilles the Anterior Isles which stand like a
string of jewels round the neck of the Caribbean Sea, had
been most of them colonised and occupied by the French,
and during the wars of the last century were the objects of
a never ceasing conflict between their fleets and ours. The
French had planted their language there, they had planted
their religion there, and the blacks of these islands gene-
rally still speak the French patois and call themselves
Catholics ; but it was deemed essential to our interests that
the Antilles should be not French but English, and Antigua,
Martinique, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Grenada were
taken and retaken and taken again in a struggle perpetu-
ally renewed. When the American colonies revolted, the
West Indies became involved in the revolutionary hurri-
cane. France, Spain, and Holland our three ocean rivals
combined in a supreme effort to tear from us our Imperial
power. The opportunity was seized by Irish patriots ta
clamour for Irish nationality, and by the English Radicals
to demand liberty and the rights of man. It was the most
critical moment in later English history. If we had yielded
to peace on the terms which our enemies offered, and the
English Liberals wished us to accept, the star of Great
Britain would have set for ever.
The West Indies were then under the charge of Rodney,
whose brilliant successes had already made his name
famous. He had done his country more than yeoman's
service. He had torn the Leeward Islands from the French.
He had punished the Hollanders for joining the coalition
by taking the island of St. Eustachius and three millions'
RODNEY 31
worth of stores and money. The patriot party at home
led by Fox and Burke were ill pleased with these victories,
for they wished us to be driven into surrender. Burke
denounced Rodney as he denounced Warren Hastings,
and Eodney was called home to answer for himself. In
his absence Demerara, the Leeward Islands, St. Eustachius
itself, were captured or recovered by the enemy. The
French fleet, now supreme in the western waters, blockaded
Lord Cornwallis at York Town and forced him to capitulate.
The Spaniards had fitted out a fleet at Havannah, and the
Count de Grasse, the French admiral, fresh from the
victorious thunder of the American cannon, hastened back
to refurnish himself at Martinique, intending to join the
Spaniards, tear Jamaica from us, and drive us finally and
completely out of the West Indies. One chance remained.
Kodney was ordered back to his station, and he went at his
best speed, taking all the ships with him which could then
be spared. It was mid-winter. He forced his way to Bar-
badoes in five weeks spite of equinoctial storms. The
Whig orators were indignant. They insisted that we were
beaten ; there had been bloodshed enough, and we must
sit down in our humiliation. The Government yielded,,
and a peremptory order followed on Rodney's track, ' Strike
your flag and come home.' Had that fatal command
reached him Gibraltar would have fallen and Hastings's
Indian Empire would have melted into air. But Eodney
knew that his time was short, and he had been prompt to
use it. Before the order came, the severest naval battle in
English annals had been fought and won. De Grasse was
a prisoner, and the French fleet was scattered into wreck
and ruin.
De Grasse had refitted in the Martinique dockyards.
He himself and every officer in the fleet was confident that
England was at last done for, and that nothing was left but
to gather the fruits of the victory which was theirs already.
32 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
Not Xerxes, when he broke through Thermopylae and watched
from the shore his thousand galleys streaming down to the
Gulf of Salamis, was more assured that his prize was in his
hands than De Grasse on the deck of the ' Ville de Paris,'
the finest ship then floating on the seas, when he heard that
Rodney was at St. Lucia and intended to engage him. He
did not even believe that the English after so many reverses
would venture to meddle with a fleet superior in force and
inspirited with victory. All the Antilles except St. Lucia
were his own. Tobago, Grenada, the Grenadines, St.
Vincent, Martinique, Dominica, Guadaloupe, Montserrat,
Nevis, Antigua, and St. Kitts, he held them all in proud
possession, a string of gems, each island large as or
larger than the Isle of Man, rising up with high volcanic
peaks clothed from base to crest with forest, carved into
deep ravines, and fringed with luxuriant plains. In St.
Lucia alone, lying between St. Vincent and Dominica,
ihe English flag still flew, and Rodney lay there in the
harbour at Castries. On April 8, 1782, the signal came
from the north end of the island that the French fleet
had sailed. Martinique is in sight of St. Lucia, and
the rock is still shown from which Rodney had watched
day by day for signs that they were moving. They were
out at last, and he instantly weighed and followed. The
air was light, and De Grasse was under the high lands of
Dominica before Rodney came up with him. Both fleets
were becalmed, and the English were scattered and divided
by a current which runs between the islands. A breeze
at last blew off the land. The French were the first to feel it,
and were able to attack at advantage the leading English
division. Had De Grasse ' come down as he ought,' Rodney
thought that the consequences might have been serious.
In careless imagination of superiority they let the chance
go by. They kept at a distance, firing long shots, which as
it was did considerable damage. The two following days
BATTLE OF THE TWELFTH OF APRIL
33
the fleets manoeuvred in sight of each other. On the night
of the eleventh Rodney made signal for the whole fleet
to go south under press of sail. The French thought he was
flying. He tacked at two in the morning, and at daybreak
found himself where he wished to be, with the French fleet
-on his lee quarter. The French looking for nothing but
again a distant cannonade, continued leisurely along under
the north highlands of Dominica towards the channel
which separates that island from Guadaloupe. In number
of ships the fleets were equal ; in size and complement of
crew the French were immensely superior ; and besides
the ordinary ships' companies they had twenty thousand
soldiers on board who were to be used in the conquest
of Jamaica. Knowing well that a defeat at that moment
would be to England irreparable ruin, they did not dream
that Rodney would be allowed, even if he wished it, to
risk a close and decisive engagement. The English admiral
was aware also that his country's fate was in his hands.
It was one of those supreme moments which great men
dare to use and small men tremble at. He had the ad-
vantage of the wind, and could force a battle or decline
it, as he pleased. With clear daylight the signal to en-
gage was flying from the masthead of the 'Formidable,'
Rodney's ship. At seven in the morning, April 12, 1782,
the whole fleet bore down obliquely on the French line,
cutting it directly in two. Rodney led in person. Having
passed through and broken up their order he tacked again,
still keeping the wind. The French, thrown into confusion,
were unable to reform, and the battle resolved itself into a
number of separate engagements in which the English had
the choice of position.
Rodney in passing through the enemy's lines the first
time had exchanged broadsides with the ' Glorieux,' a
seventy-four, at close range. He had shot away her masts
-and bowsprit, and left her a bare hull ; her flag, however,
D
34 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
still flying, being nailed to a splintered spar. So he left
her unable at least to stir ; and after he had gone about came
himself yardarm to yardarm with the superb ' Yille de Paris,'
the pride of France, the largest ship in the then world,
where De Grasse commanded in person. All day long the
cannon roared. Rodney had on board a favourite bantam
cock, which stood perched upon the poop of the ' Formid-
able ' through the whole action, its shrill voice heard crowing
through the thunder of the broadsides. One by one the
French ships struck their flags or fought on till they
foundered and went down. The carnage on board them was
terrible, crowded as they were with the troops for Jamaica.
Fourteen thousand were reckoned to have been killed,
besides the prisoners. The ' Ville de Paris ' surrendered
last, fighting desperately after hope was gone till her masts
were so shattered that they could not bear a sail, and her
decks above and below were littered over with mangled
limbs. De Grasse gave up his sword to Eodney on the
'Formidable's' quarter-deck. The gallant ' Glorieux,' un-
able to fly, and seeing the battle lost, hauled down her flag,
but not till the undisabled remnants of her crew were too-
few to throw the dead into the sea. Other ships took
fire and blew up. Half the French fleet were either taken
or sunk ; the rest crawled away for the time, most of them
to be picked up afterwards like crippled birds.
So on that memorable day was the English Empire
saved. Peace followed, but it was 'peace with honour.'
The American colonies were lost; but England kept her
West Indies; her flag still floated over Gibraltar; the
hostile strength of Europe all combined had failed to
twist Britannia's ocean sceptre from her : she sat down
maimed and bleeding, but the wreath had not been torn
from her brow, she was still sovereign of the seas.
The bow of Ulysses was strung in those days. The
order of recall arrived when the work was done. It wa>
THOSE WHO MAKE EMPIRES 35
proudly obeyed ; and even the great Burke admitted that
no honour could be bestowed upon Rodney which he had
not deserved at his country's hands. If the British Empire
is still to have a prolonged career before it, the men who
make empires are the men who can hold them together.
Oratorical reformers can overthrow what deserves to be over-
thrown. Institutions, even the best of them, wear out, and
must give place to others, and the fine political speakers are
the instruments of their overthrow. But the fine speakers
produce nothing of their own, and as constructive states-
men their paths are strewed with failures. The worthies
of England are the men who cleared and tilled her fields,
formed her laws, built her colleges and cathedrals, founded
her colonies, fought her battles, covered the ocean with
commerce, and spread our race over the planet to leave a
mark upon it which time will not efface. These men are
seen in their work, and are not heard of in Parliament.
When the account is wound up, where by the side of them
will stand our famous orators ? What will any one of them
have left behind him save the wreck of institutions which
had done their work and had ceased to serve a useful
purpose ? That was their business in this world, and they
did it and do it ; but it is no very glorious work, not a work
over which it is possible to feel any 'fine enthusiasm.' To
chop down a tree is easier than to make it grow. When
the business of destruction is once completed, they and
their fame and glory will disappear together. Our true
great ones will again be visible, and thenceforward will be
visible alone.
Is there a single instance in our own or any other
history of a great political speaker who has added any-
thing to human knowledge or to human worth? Lord
Chatham may stand as a lonely exception. But except
Chatham who is there ? Not one that I know of. Oratory
is the spendthrift sister of the arts, which decks itself like
D 2
36 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
a strumpet with the tags and ornaments which it steals
from real superiority. The object of it is not truth, but
anything which it can make appear truth ; anything which
it can persuade people to believe by calling in their passions
to obscure their intelligence.
BARBADOES 37
CHAPTEE IV.
First sight of Barbadoes Origin of the name Pere Labat Bridgetown two
hundred years ago Slavery and Christianity Economic crisis Sugar
bounties Aspect of the streets Government House and its occupants
Duties of a governor of Barbadoes.
ENGLAND was covered with snow when we left it on
December 30. At sunrise on January 12 we were anchored
in the roadstead at Bridgetown, and the island of Barbadoes
lay before us shining in the haze of a hot summer morning.
It is about the size of the Isle of Wight, cultivated so far
as eye could see with the completeness of a garden ; no
mountains in it, scarcely even high hills, but a surface
pleasantly undulating, the prevailing colour a vivid green
from the cane fields ; houses in town and country white
from the coral rock of which they are built, but the glare
from them relieved by heavy clumps of trees. What the
trees were I had yet to discover. You could see at a glance
that the island was as thickly peopled as an anthill. Not
an inch of soil seemed to be allowed to run to waste. Two
hundred thousand is, I believe, the present number of
Barbadians, of whom nine-tenths are blacks. They re-
fuse to emigrate. They cling to their home with innocent
vanity as though it was the finest country in the world, and
multiply at a rate so rapid that no one likes to think about
it. Labour at any rate is abundant and cheap. In Bar-
badoes the negro is willing enough to work, for he has no
other means of living. Little land is here allowed him to
grow his yams upon. Almost the whole of it is still held by
the whites in large estates, cultivated by labourers on the old
3 8 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
system, and, it is to be admitted, cultivated most admirably.
If the West Indies are going to ruin, Barbadoes, at any
rate, is being ruined with a smiling face. The roadstead
was crowded with shipping large barques, steamers, and
brigs, schooners of all shapes and sorts. The training
squadron had come into the bay for a day or two on their
way to Trinidad, four fine ships, conspicuous by their
white ensigns, the squareness of yards, and generally im-
posing presence. Boats were flying to and fro under sail
or with oars, officials coming off in white calico dress, with
awnings over the stern sheets and chattering crews of negroes.
Notwithstanding these exotic symptoms, it was all thoroughly
English ; we were under the guns of our own men-of-war.
The language of the Anglo-Barbadians was pure English,
the voices without the smallest transatlantic intonation.
On no one of our foreign possessions is the print of
England's foot more strongly impressed than on Barbadoes.
It has been ours for two centuries and three-quarters, and
was organised from the first on English traditional lines,
with its constitution, its parishes and parish churches and
churchwardens, and schools and parsons, all on the old
model ; which the unprogressive inhabitants have been wise
enough to leave undisturbed.
Little is known of the island before we took possession
of it so little that the origin of the name is still uncertain.
Barbadoes, if not a corruption of some older word, is Spanish
or Portuguese, and means ' bearded.' The local opinion is
that it refers to a banyan or fig tree which is common there,
and which sends down from its branches long hairs or
fibres supposed to resemble beards. I disbelieve in this
derivation. Every Spaniard whom I have consulted con-
firms my own impression that ' barbados ' standing alone
could no more refer to trees than ' barbati ' standing alone
could refer to trees in Latin. The name is a century older
than the English occupation, for I have seen it in a Spanish
PAST HISTORY 39
chart of 1525. The question is of some interest, since it
perhaps implies that at the first discovery there was a race
of bearded Caribs there. However this may be, Barbadoes,
.after we became masters of it, enjoyed a period of unbroken
prosperity for two hundred years. Before the conquest of
Jamaica, it was the principal mart of our West Indian
trade ; and even after that conquest, when all Europe drew
its new luxury of sugar from these islands, the wealth and
splendour of the English residents at Bridgetown astonished
.and stirred the envy of every passing visitor. Absenteeism
;as yet was not. The owners lived on their estates, governed
the island as magistrates unpaid for their services, and
equally unpaid, took on themselves the defences of the island.
Pere Labat, a French missionary, paid a visit to Barbadoes
:at the beginning of the eighteenth century. He was a clever,
sarcastic kind of man, with fine literary skill, and describes
what he saw with a jealous appreciation which he intended
to act upon his own countrymen. The island, according to
Mm, was running over with wealth, and was very imper-
fectly fortified. The jewellers' and silversmiths' shops in
Bridgetown were brilliant as on the Paris boulevards. The
port was full of ships, the wharves and warehouses crammed
with merchandise from all parts of the globe. The streets
were handsome, and thronged with men of business, who
were piling up fortunes. To the Father these sumptuous
.gentlemen were all most civil. The governor, an English
milor, asked him to dinner, and talked such excellent French
that Labat forgave him his nationality. The governor, he
rsaid, resided in a fine palace. He had a well-furnished
library, was dignified, courteous, intelligent, and lived in
istate like a prince. A review was held for the French
priest's special entertainment, of the Bridgetown cavalry.
Five hundred gentlemen turned out from this one district
iidmirably mounted and armed. Altogether in the island
lie says that there were 3,000 horse and 2,000 foot, every one
40 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
of them of course white and English. The officers struck
him particularly. He met one who had heen five years a
prisoner in the Bastille, and had spent his time there in
learning mathematics. The planters opened their houses
to him. Dinners then as now were the received form of
English hospitality. They lived well, Labat says. They
had all the luxuries of the tropics, and they had imported
the partridges which they w r ere so fond of from England-
They had the costliest and choicest wines, and knew how
to enjoy them. They dined at two o'clock, and their dinner
lasted four hours. Their mansions were superbly furnished,,
and gold and silver plate, he observed with an eye to
business, was so abundant that the plunder of it would
pay the cost of an expedition for the reduction of the
island.
There w r as another side to all this magnificence which
also might be turned to account. There were some thou-
sands of wretched Irish, who had been transplanted thither
after the last rebellion, and were bound under articles to.
labour. These might be counted on to rise if an invading
force appeared ; and there were 60,000 slaves, who would
rebel also if they saw a hope of success. They were ill fed
and hard driven. On the least symptom of insubordina-
tion they were killed without mercy ; sometimes they were
burnt alive, or were hung up in iron cages to die. 1 In the
French and Spanish islands care was taken of the souls of
the poor creatures. They were taught their catechism, they
were baptised, and attended mass regularly. The Anglican
1 Labat seems to say that they were hung up alive in these cages, and
left to die there. He says elsewhere, and it may be hoped that the explana-
tion is the truer one, that the recently imported negroes often destroyed
themselves, in the belief that when dead they would return to their own
country. In the French islands as well as the English, the bodies of
suicides were exposed in these cages, from which they could not be stolen-
to convince the poor people of their mistake by their own eyes. He says
that the contrivance was successful, and that after this the slaves did not
destroy themselves any more.
SLAVERY AND CHRISTIANITY 41
clergy, he said with professional malice, neither baptised
them nor taught them anything, but regarded them as
mere animals. To keep Christians in slavery they held
would be wrong and indefensible, and they therefore met
the difficulty by not making their slaves into Christians.
That baptism made any essential difference, however, he
does not insist. By the side of Christianity, in the Catholic
islands, devil worship and witchcraft went on among the
same persons. No instance had ever come to his knowledge
of a converted black who returned to his country who did
not throw away his Christianity just as he would throw
away his clothes ; and as to cruelty and immorality, he
admits that the English at Barbadoes were no worse than
his own people at Martinique.
In the collapse of West Indian prosperity which followed
on emancipation, Barbadoes escaped the misfortunes of the
other islands. The black population being so dense, and the
place itself being so small, the squatting system could not
be tried ; there was plenty of labour always, and the
planters being relieved of the charge of their workmen
when they were sick or worn out, had rather gained than
lost by the change. Barbadoes, however, was not to escape
for ever, and was now having its share of misfortunes. It
is dangerous for any country to commit its fortunes to an
exclusive occupation. Sugar was the most immediately
lucrative of all the West Indian productions. Barbadoes
is exceptionally well suited to sugar-growing. It has no
mountains and no forests. The soil is clean and has been
carefully attended to for two hundred and fifty years. It
had been owned during the present century by gentlemen
who for the most part lived in England on the profits of their
properties, and left them to be managed by agents and
attorneys. The method of management was expensive.
Their own habits were expensive. Their incomes, to which
they had lived up, had been cut short lately by a series of
42 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
bad seasons. Money had been borrowed at high interest
year after year to keep the estates and their owners going.
On the top of this came the beetroot competition backed up
by a bounty, and the Barbadian sugar interest, I was told,
had gone over a precipice. The unencumbered resident
proprietors could barely keep their heads above water. The
returns on three-quarters of the properties on the island no
longer sufficed to pay the expenses of cultivation and the
interest of the loans which had been raised upon them. There
was impending a general bankruptcy which might break up
entirely the present system and leave the negroes for a time
without the wages which were the sole dependence.
A very dark picture had thus been drawn to me of the
prospects of the poor little island which had been once so
brilliant. Nothing could be less like it than the bright
sunny landscape which we saw from the deck of our vessel.
The town, the shipping, the pretty villas, the woods, and the
wide green sea of waving cane had no suggestion of ruin
about them. If the ruin was coming, clearly enough it
had not yet come. After breakfast we went on shore in a
boat with a white awning over it, rowed by a crew of black
boatmen, large, fleshy, shining on the skin with ample feed-
ing and shining in the face with innocent happiness. They
rowed well. They were amusing. There was a fixed tariff,
and they were not extortionate. The temperature seemed
to rise ten degrees when we landed. The roads were blind-
ing white from the coral dust, the houses were white, the
sun scorching. The streets were not the streets described
by Labat ; no splendid magazines or jewellers' shops like
those in Paris or London ; but there were lighters at the
quays loading or unloading, carts dashing along with mule
teams and making walking dangerous ; signs in plenty of
life and business ; few white faces, but blacks and mulattoes
swarming. The houses were substantial, though in want of
paint. The public buildings, law courts, hall of assembly
THE STREETS OF BRIDGETOWN 43
&c. were solid and handsome, nowhere out of repair,
though with something to be desired in point of smartness.
The market square would have been well enough but for
a statue of Lord Nelson which stands there, very like, but
small and insignificant, and for some extraordinary reason
they have painted it a bright pea- green.
We crept along in the shade of trees and warehouses
till we reached the principal street. Here niy friends
brought me to the Icehouse, a sort of club, with reading
rooms and dining rooms, and sleeping accommodation for
members from a distance who do not like colonial hotels.
Before anything else could be thought of I was intro-
duced to cocktail, with which I had to make closer acquaint-
ance afterwards, cocktail being the established corrective
of West Indian languor, without which life is impossible.
It is a compound of rum, sugar, lime juice, Angostura
bitters, and what else I know not, frisked into effervescence
by a stick, highly agreeable to the taste and effective for its
immediate purpose. Cocktail over, and walking in the heat
being a thing not to be thought of, I sat for two hours in a
balcony watching the people, who were thick as bees in
swarming time. Nine-tenths of them were pure black ; you
rarely saw a white face, but still less would you see a
discontented one, imperturbable good humour and self-
satisfaction being written on the features of every one.
The women struck me especially. They were smartly
dressed in white calico, scrupulously clean, and tricked
out with ribands and feathers ; but their figures were so
good and they carried themselves so well and gracefully,
that, although they might make themselves absurd, they
could not look vulgar. Like the Greek and Etruscan
women, they are trained from childhood to carry heavy
weights on then- heads. They are thus perfectly upright, and
plant their feet firmly and naturally on the ground. They
might serve for sculptors' models, and are well aware of
44 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
it. There were no signs of poverty. Old and young seemed
well fed. Some had brought in baskets of fruit, bananas,
oranges, pine apples and sticks of sugar cane ; others had
yams and sweet potatoes from their bits of garden in the
country. The men were active enough driving carts,,
wheeling barrows, or selling flying fish, which are caught
off the island in shoals and are cheaper than herrings in
Yarmouth. They chattered like a flock of jackdaws, but
there was no quarrelling; not a drunken man was to be
seen, and all was merriment and good humour. My poor
downtrodden black brothers and sisters, so far as I could
judge from this first introduction, looked to me a very
fortunate class of fellow-creatures.
Government House, where we went to luncheon, is a large
airy building shaded by heavy trees with a garden at the
back of it. West Indian houses, I found afterwards, are all
constructed on the same pattern, the object being to keep
the sun out and let in the wind. Long verandahs or
galleries run round them protected by green Venetian
blinds which can be opened or closed at pleasure ; the rooms
within w r ith polished floors, little or no carpet, and con-
trivances of all kinds to keep the air in continual circula-
tion. In the subdued green light, human figures lose
then* solidity and look as if they were creatures of air
also.
Sir Charles Lees and his lady were all that was polite
and hospitable. They invited me to make their house my
home during my stay, and more charming host and hostess
it would have been impossible to find or wish for. There
was not the state which Labat described, but there was the
perfection of courtesy, a courtesy which must have be-
longed to their natures, or it would have been overstrained
long since by the demands made upon it. Those who have
looked on at a skating ring will have observed an orange
or some such object in the centre round which the evolu-
DUTIES OF A GOVERNOR 45
tions are described, the ice artist sweeping out from it in
long curves to the extreme circumference, curving back on
interior arcs till he gains the orange again, and then off
once more on a fresh departure. Barbadoes to the West
Indian steam navigation is like the skater's orange. All
mails, all passengers from Europe, arrive at Barbadoes first.
There the subsidiary steamers catch them up, bear them
north or south to the Windward or Leeward Isles, and on
their return bring them back to Carlisle Bay. Every vessel
brings some person or persons to whom the Governor is
called on to show hospitality. He must give dinners to the
officials and gentry of the island, he must give balls and
concerts for their ladies, he must entertain the officers of
ihe garrison. When the West Indian squadron or the
training squadron drop into the roadstead, admirals,
commodores, captains must all be invited. Foreign ships
of war go and come continually, Americans, French,
Spaniards, or Portuguese. Presidents of South American
republics, engineers from Darien, all sorts and conditions
of men who go to Europe in the English mail vessels, take
their departure from Carlisle Bay, and if they are neglected
regard it as a national affront. Cataracts of champagne
must flow if the British name is not to be discredited.
The expense is unavoidable and is enormous, while the
Governor's very moderate salary is found too large by
economic politicians, and there is a cry for reduction
of it.
I was of course most grateful for Sir Charles's invitation
to myself. From him, better perhaps than from anyone,
I could learn how far the passionate complaints which 1 had
heard about the state of the islands were to be listened to
as accounts of actual fact. I found, however, that I must
postpone both this particular pleasure and my stay in
Barbadoes itself till a later opportunity. My purpose had
been to remain there till I had given it all the time which
4 6 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
I could spare, thence to go on to Jamaica, and from Jamaica-
to return at leisure round the Antilles. But it had been
ascertained that in Jamaica there was small-pox. I suppose
that there generally is small-pox there, or typhus fever, or
other infectious disorder. But spasms of anxiety assail
periodically the souls of local authorities. Vessels coming
from Jamaica had been quarantined in all the islands, and I
found that if I proceeded thither as I proposed, I should be
refused permission to land afterwards in any one of the other
colonies. In my perplexity my Trinidad friends invited me to
accompany them at once to Port of Spain. Trinidad was the
most thriving, or was at all events the least dissatisfied, of
all the British possessions. I could have a glance at the
Windward Islands on the way. I could afterwards return to
Barbadoes, where Sir Charles assured me that I should still
find a room waiting for me. The steamer to Trinidad sailed
the same afternoon. I had to decide in haste, and I decided
to go. Our luncheon over, we had time to look over the
pretty gardens at Government House. There were great
cabbage palms, cannon-ball trees, mahogany trees, almond
trees, and many more which were wholly new acquaint-
ances. There was a grotto made by climbing plants and
creepers, with a fountain playing in the middle of it, where
orchids hanging on wires threw out their clusters of flowers
for the moths to fertilise, ferns waved their long fronds
in the dripping showers, humming birds cooled their
wings in the spray, and flashed in and out like rubies and
emeralds. Gladly would I have lingered there, at least for
a cigar, but it could not be ; we had to call on the Com-
mander of the Forces, Sir C. Pearson, the hero of Ekowe in
the Zulu war. Him, too, I was to see again, and hear inte-
resting stories from about our tragic enterprise in the
Transvaal. For the moment my mind was filled sufficiently
with new impressions. One reads books about places, but
the images which they create are always unlike the real
NEW IMPRESSIONS 47
object. All that I had seen was absolutely new and unex-
pected. 1 was glad of an opportunity to readjust the in-
formation which I had brought with me. We joined our
new vessel before sunset, and we steamed away into the
twilight.
48 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
CHAPTER V.
West Indian politeness Negro morals and felicity Island of St. Vincent
Grenada The harbour Disappearance of the whites An island of black
freeholders Tobago Dramatic art A promising incident.
WEST Indian civilisation is old-fashioned, and has none of
the pushing manners which helong to younger and perhaps
more thriving communities. The West Indians themselves,
though they may be deficient in energy, are uniformly ladies
.and gentlemen, and all their arrangements take their com-
plexion from the general tone of society. There is a re-
finement visible at once in the subsidiary vessels of the mail
service which ply among the islands. They are almost as
large as those which cross the Atlantic, and never on any
line in the world have I met with officers so courteous and
cultivated. The cabins were spacious and as cool as a tem-
perature of 80, gradually rising as we went south, would
permit. Punkahs waved over us at dinner. In our berths a
single sheet was all that was provided for us, and this was one
more than we needed. A sea was running when we cleared
out from under the land. Among the cabin passengers was
a coloured family in good circumstances moving about with
nurses and children. The little things, who had never been
at sea before, sat on the floor, staring out of their large
helpless black eyes, not knowing what was the matter with
them. Forward there were perhaps two or three hundred
coloured people going from one island to another, singing,
dancing, and chattering all night long, as radiant and happy
NEGRO MORALS 49
as carelessness and content could make them. Sick or not
sick made no difference. Nothing could disturb the imper-
turbable good humour and good spirits.
It was too hot to sleep ; we sat several of us smoking
on deck, and I learnt the first authentic particulars of the
present manner of life of these much misunderstood people.
Evidently they belonged to a race far inferior to the Zulus
and Caffres, whom I had known in South Africa. They
were more coarsely formed in limb and feature. They
would have been slaves in their own country if they had
not been brought to ours, and at the worst had lost nothing
by the change. They were good-natured, innocent, harm-
less, lazy perhaps, but not more lazy than is perfectly
natural when even Europeans must be roused to activity
by cocktail.
In the Antilles generally, Barbadoes being the only ex-
ception, negro families have each their cabin, their garden
ground, their grazing for a cow. They live surrounded by
most of the fruits which grew in Adam's paradise oranges
and plantains, bread-fruit, and cocoa-nuts, though not apples.
Their yams and cassava grow without effort, for the soil is
easily worked and inexhaustibly fertile. The curse is taken
off from nature, and like Adam again they are under the
covenant of innocence. Morals in the technical sense they
have none, but they cannot be said to sin, because they have
no knowledge of a law, and therefore they can commit no
breach of the law. They are naked and not ashamed.
They are married as they call it, but not parsoned. The
woman prefers a looser tie that she may be able to leave a
man if he treats her unkindly. Yet they are not licentious.
I never saw an immodest look in one of their faces, and
never heard of any venal profligacy. The system is strange,
but it answers. A missionary told me that a connection
rarely turns out well which begins with a legal marriage.
The children scramble up anyhow, and shift for themselves
50 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
like chickens as soon as they are able to peck. Many die in
this way by eating unwholesome food, but also many live,
and those who do live grow up exactly like their parents.
It is a very peculiar state of things, not to be understood,
as priest and missionary agree, without long acquaintance.
There is evil, but there is not the demoralising effect of evil.
They sin, but they sin only as animals, without shame,
because there is no sense of doing wrong. They eat the
forbidden fruit, but it brings with it no knowledge of the
difference between good and evil. They steal, but if detected
they fall back upon the Lord. It was de will of de Lord
that they should do this or that. De Lord forbid that they
should go against his holy pleasure. In fact these poor
children of darkness have escaped the consequences of the
Fall, and must come of another stock after all.
Meanwhile they are perfectly happy. In no part of the
globe is there any peasantry whose every want is so com-
pletely satisfied as her Majesty's black subjects in these
West Indian islands. They have no aspirations tq make
them restless. They have no guilt upon their consciences.
They have food for the picking up. Clothes they need not,
and lodging in such a climate need not be elaborate. They
have perfect liberty, and are safe from dangers, to which if
left to themselves they would be exposed, for the English
rule prevents the strong from oppressing the weak. In
their own country they would have remained slaves to
more warlike races. In the West Indies their fathers
underwent a bondage of a century or two, lighter at its
worst than the easiest form of it in Africa ; their de-
scendants in return have nothing now to do save to laugh
and sing and enjoy existence. Their quarrels, if they
have any, begin and end in words. If happiness is the
be all and end all of life, and those who have most of it
have most completely attained the object of their being, the
' nigger ' who now basks among the ruins of the West
ST. VINCENT 51
Indian plantations is the supremest specimen of present
humanity.
We retired to our berths at last. At waking we were
at anchor off St. Vincent, an island of volcanic mountains
robed in forest from shore to crest. Till late in the last
century it was the headquarters of the Caribs, who kept up
a savage independence there, recruited by runaway slaves
from Barbadoes or elsewhere. Brandy and Sir Ralph
Abercrombie reduced them to obedience in 1796, and St.
Vincent throve tolerably down to the days of free trade.
Even now when I saw it, Kingston, the principal town,
looked pretty and well to do, reminding me, strange to say,
of towns in Norway, the houses stretching along the shore
painted in the same tints of blue or yellow or pink, with
the same red-tiled roofs, the trees coming down the hill
sides to the water's edge, villas of modest pretensions shining
through the foliage, with the patches of cane fields, the equi-
valent in the landscape of the brilliant Norwegian grass. The
prosperity has for the last forty years waned and waned.
There are now two thousand white people there, and forty
thousand coloured people, and the proportion alters annually
to our disadvantage. The usual remedies have been tried.
The constitution has been altered a dozen times. Just now
I believe the Crown is trying to do without one, having
found the results of the elective principle not encouraging,
but we shall perhaps revert to it before long ; any way, the
tables show that each year the trade of the island de-
creases, and will continue to decrease while the expenditure
increases and will increase.
I did not land, for the time was short, and as a beautiful
picture the island was best seen from the deck. The
characteristics of the people are the same in all the
Antilles, and could be studied elsewhere. The bustle and
confusion in the ship, the crowd of boats round the ladder,
the clamour of negro men's tongues, and the blaze of colours
52 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
from the negro women's dresses, made up together a scene
sufficiently entertaining for the hour which we remained.
In the middle of it the Governor, Mr. S , came on board
with another official. They were going on in the steamer
to Tobago, which formed part of his dominions.
Leaving St. Vincent, we were all the forenoon passing
the Grenadines, a string of small islands fitting into their
proper place in the Antilles semicircle, but as if Nature had
forgotten to put them together or else had broken some
large island to pieces and scattered, them along the line.
Some were large enough to have once carried sugar planta-
tions, and are now made over wholly to the blacks ; others
were fishing stations, droves of whales during certain months
frequenting these waters ; others were mere rocks, amidst
which the white-sailed American coasting schooners were
beating up against the north-east trade. There was a stiff
breeze, and the sea was white with short curling waves,
but we were running before it and the wind kept the deck
fresh. At Grenada, the next island, we were to go on shore.
Grenada was, like St. Vincent, the home for centuries of
man-eating Caribs, French for a century and a half, and
finally, after many desperate struggles for it, was ceded to
England at the peace of Versailles. It is larger than St.
Vincent, though in its main features it has the same
character. There are lakes in the hills, and a volcanic
crater not wholly quiescent ; but the especial value of
Grenada, which made us fight so hardly to win it, is the
deep and landlocked harbour, the finest in all the Antilles.
Pere Labat, to whose countrymen it belonged at the time
of his own visit there, says that ' if Barbadoes had such a
harbour as Grenada it would be an island without a rival
in the world. If Grenada belonged to the English, who
knew how to turn to profit natural advantages, it would be
a rich and powerful colony. In itself it was all that man
could desire. To live there was to live in paradise.' Labat
GRENADA
53
found the island occupied by countrymen of his own, 'paisans
aisez,' he calls them, growing their tobacco, their indigo
and scarlet rocou, their pigs and their poultry, and contented
to be without sugar, without slaves, and without trade.
The change of hands from which he expected so much had
actually come about. Grenada did belong to the English,
and had belonged to us ever since Kodney's peace. I was
anxious to see how far Labat's prophecy had been fulfilled.
St. George's, the ' capital,' stands on the neck of a
peninsula a mile in length, which forms one side of the
harbour. Of the houses, some look out to sea, some
inwards upon the carenage, as the harbour is called. At
the point there was a fort, apparently of some strength, on
which the British flag was flying. We signalled that we
had the Governor on board, and the fort replied with a puff
of smoke. Sound there was none or next to none, but we
presumed that it had come from a gun of some kind. We
anchored outside. Mr. S - landed in an official boat, with
two flags, to distinguish it from a missionary's boat, which
had only one. The crews of a dozen other boats then
clambered up the gangway to dispute possession of the
rest of us, shouting, swearing, lying, tearing us this way
and that way as if we were carcases and they wild beasts
wanting to dine upon us. We engaged a boat for ourselves
as we supposed ; we had no sooner entered it than the
scandalous boatman proceeded to take in as many more
passengers as it would hold. Eemonstrance being vain, we
settled the matter by stepping into the boat next adjoining,
and amidst howls and execrations we were borne trium-
phantly off and were pulled in to the land.
Labat had not exaggerated the beauty of the landlocked
basin into which we entered on rounding the point. On
three sides wooded hills rose high till they passed into
mountains ; on the fourth was the castle with its slopes
'and batteries, the church and town beyond it, and every-
54 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
where luxuriant tropical forest trees overhanging the violet-
coloured water. I could well understand the Frenchman's
delight when he saw it, and also the satisfaction with which
he would now acknowledge that he had been a shortsighted
prophet. The English had obtained Grenada, and this is
what they had made of it. The forts which had been
erected by his countrymen had been deserted and dismantled;
the castle on which we had seen our flag flying was a ruin ;
the walls were crumbling and in many places had fallen
down. One solitary gun was left, but that was honeycombed
and could be fired only with half a charge to salute with. It
was true that the forts had ceased to be of use, but that
was because there was nothing left to defend. The harbour
is, as I said, the best in the West Indies. There was not
a vessel in it, nor so much as a boat-yard where a spar
could be replaced or a broken rivet mended. Once there had
been a line of wharves, but the piles had been eaten by
worms and the platforms had fallen through. Bound us
when we landed were unroofed warehouses, weed-choked
courtyards, doors gone, and window frames fallen in or out.
Such a scene of desolation and desertion I never saw in my
life save once, a few weeks later at Jamaica. An English
lady with her children had come to the landing place to
meet my friends. They, too, were more like wandering
ghosts than human beings with warm blood in them. All
their thoughts were on going home home out of so miser-
able an exile.
Nature had been simply allowed by us to resume posses-
sion of the island. Here, where the cannon had roared,
and ships and armies had fought, and the enterprising
English had entered into occupancy, under which, as we
are proud to fancy, the waste places of the earth grow
green, and industry and civilisation follow as its inevitable
fruit, all was now silence. Not Babylon itself, with its
bats and owls, was more dreary and desolate. And this*
GRENADA 55
was an English Crown colony, as rich in resources as any
area of soil of equal size in the world. England had de-
manded and seized the responsibility of managing it this
was the result.
A gentleman, who for some purpose was a passing
resident in the island, had asked us to dine with him. His
house was three or four miles inland. A good road re-
mained as a legacy from other times, and a pair of horses
and a phaeton carried us swiftly to his door. The town of
St. George's had once been populous, and even now there
seemed no want of people, if mere numbers sufficed. We
passed for half a mile through a straggling street, where
the houses were evidently occupied though unconscious for
many a year of paint or repair. They were squalid and
dilapidated, but the luxuriant bananas and orange trees
in the gardens relieved the ugliness of their appearance.
The road when we left the town was overshadowed with
gigantic mangoes planted long ago, with almond trees and
cedar trees, no relations of our almonds or our cedars, but
the most splendid ornaments of the West Indian forest.
The valley up which we drove was beautiful, and the
house, when we reached it, showed taste and culture.
Mr. had rare trees, rare flowers, and was taking
advantage of his temporary residence in the tropics to
make experiments in horticulture. He had been brought
there, I believe, by some necessities of business. He told
us that Grenada was now the ideal country of modern
social reformers. It had become an island of pure peasant
proprietors. The settlers, who had once been a thriving and
wealthy community, had melted away. Not more than six
hundred English were left, and these were clearing out at
their best speed. They had sold their estates for anything
which they could get. The free blacks had bought them,
and about 8,000 negro families, say 40,000 black souls in all,
now shared the soil between them. Each family lived hide-
56 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
pendently, growing coffee and cocoa and oranges, and all were
doing very well. The possession of property had brought
a sense of its rights with it. They were as litigious as Irish
peasants ; everyone was at law with his neighbour, and the
island was a gold mine to the Attorney-General ; otherwise
they were quiet harmless fellows, and if the politicians
would only let them alone, they would be perfectly con-
tented, and might eventually, if wisely managed, come to
some good. To set up a constitution in such a place was a
ridiculous mockery, and would only be another name for
swindling and jobbery. Black the island W 7 as, and black it
would remain. The conditions were never likely to arise
which would bring back a European population ; but a
governor who was a sensible man, who would reside and use
his natural influence, could manage it with perfect ease.
The island belonged to England ; we were responsible for
what we made of it, and for the blacks' own sakes we ought
not to try experiments upon them. They knew their own
deficiencies, and would infinitely prefer a wise English ruler
to any constitution which could be offered them. If left
entirely to themselves, they would in a generation or
two relapse into savages ; there were but two alternatives
before not Grenada only, but all the English West Indies
either an English administration pure and simple like the
East Indian, or a falling eventually into a state like that of
Hayti, where they eat the babies, and no white man can
own a yard of land.
It was dark night when we drove back to the port.
The houses along the road, which had looked so miserable
on the outside, were now lighted with paraffin lamps. I
could see into them, and was astonished to observe signs of
comfort and even signs of taste arm-chairs, sofas, side-
boards with cut glass upon them, engravings and coloured
prints upon the walls. The old state of things is gone, but
a new state of things is rising which may have a worth of
DRAMATIC ART AMONG THE NEGROES 57
its own. The plant of civilisation as yet has taken but
feeble root, and is only beginning to grow. It may thrive
yet if those who have troubled all the earth will consent for
another century to take their industry elsewhere.
The ship's galley was waiting at the wharf when we
reached it. The captain also had been dining with a friend
on shore, and we had to wait for him. The offshore night
breeze had not yet risen. The harbour was smooth as a
looking glass, and the stars shone double in the sky and
on the water. The silence was only broken by the whistle
of the lizards or the cry of some far-off marsh frog. The
air was warmer than we ever feel it in the depth of an
English summer, yet pure and delicious and charged with
the perfume of a thousand flowers. One felt it strange that
with so beautiful a possession lying at our doors, w r e should
have allowed it to slide out of our hands. I could say for
myself, like Pere Labat, the island was all that man could
desire. ' En un mot, la vie y est delicieuse.'
The anchor was got up immediately that we were on
board. In the morning we were to find ourselves at Port
of Spain. Mr. S , the Windward Island governor, who
had joined us at St. Vincent, was, as I said, going to Tobago.
De Foe took the human part of his Eobinson Crusoe from
the story of Juan Fernandez. The locality is supposed to
have been Tobago, and Trinidad the island from which the
cannibal savages came. We are continually shuffling the
cards, in a hope that a better game may be played with
them. Tobago is now annexed to Trinidad. Last year
it was a part of Mr. S 's dominions which he periodi-
cally visited. I fell in with him again on his return,
and he told us an incident which befell him there, illus-
trating the unexpected shapes in which the schoolmaster is
appearing among the blacks. An intimation was brought
to him on his arrival that, as the Athenian journeymen had
played Pyramus and Thisbe at the nuptials of Theseus and
58 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
Hippolyta, a party of villagers from the interior of Tobago
would like to act before his Excellency. Of course he con-
sented. They came, and went through their performance.
To Mr. S 's, and probably to the reader's astonishment,
the play which they had selected was the 'Merchant of
Venice.' Of the rest of it he perhaps thought, like the queen
of the Amazons, that it was ' sorry stuff,' but Shylock's
representative, he said, showed real appreciation. With
freedom and a peasant proprietary, the money lender is a
necessary phenomenon, and the actor's imagination may
have been assisted by personal recollections.
CHARLES KINGSLEY 59
CHAPTER VI.
Charles Kingsley at Trinidad ' Lay of the Last Buccaneer ' A French forban
Adventure at Aves Mass on board a pirate ship Port of Spain
A house in the tropics A political meeting Government House The
Botanical Gardens Kingsley 's rooms Sugar estates and coolies.
I MIGHT spare myself a description of Trinidad, for the
natural features of the place, its forests and its gardens,
its exquisite flora, the loveliness of its birds and insects,
have been described already, with a grace of touch and a
fullness of knowledge which I could not rival if I tried, by
my dear friend Charles Kingsley. He was a naturalist by
instinct, and the West Indies and all belonging to them
had been the passion of his life. He had followed the logs
and journals of the Elizabethan adventurers till he had made
their genius part of himself. In Amyas Leigh, the hero of
' Westward Ho,' he produced a figure more completely re-
presentative of that extraordinary set of men than any other
novelist, except Sir Walter, has ever done for an age re-
mote from his own. He followed them down into their
latest developments, and sang their swan song in his ' Lay
of the Last Buccaneer.' So characteristic is this poem of
the transformation of the West Indies of romance and ad-
venture into the West Indies of sugar and legitimate trade,
that I steal it to ornament my own prosaic pages.
THE LAY OF THE LAST BUCCANEER.
Oh ! England is a pleasant place for them that's rich and high,
But England is a cruel place for such poor folks as I ;
And such a port for mariners I'll never see again
AB the pleasant Isle of Aves beside the Spanish main.
60 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
There were forty craft in Aves that were both swift and stout,
All furnished well with small arms and cannon all about ;
And a thousand men in Aves made laws so fair and free
To choose their valiant captains and obey them loyally.
Then we sailed against the Spaniard with his hoards of plate and gold,
Which he wrung with cruel tortures from Indian folks of old ;
Likewise the merchant captains, with hearts as hard as stone,
Who flog men and keelhaul them and starve them to the bone.
Oh ! palms grew high in Aves, and fruits that shone like gold,
And the colibris and parrots they were gorgeous to behold,
And the negro maids to Aves from bondage fast did flee
To welcome gallant sailors a sweeping in from sea.
Oh ! sweet it was in Aves to hear the landward breeze
A swing with good tobacco in a net between the trees,
With a negro lass to fan you while you listened to the roar
Of the breakers on the reef outside which never touched the shore.
But Scripture saith an ending to all fine things must be,
So the king's ships sailed on Aves and quite put down were we.
All day we fought like bull dogs, but they burnt the booms at night,
And I fled in a piragua sore wounded from the fight.
Nine days I floated starving, and a negro lass beside,
Till for all I tried to cheer her the poor young thing she died.
But as I lay a gasping a Bristol sail came by,
And brought me home to England here to beg until I die.
And now I'm old and going : I'm sure I can't tell where.
One comfort is, this world's so hard I can't be worse off there.
If I might but be a sea dove, I'd fly across the main
To the pleasant Isle of Aves to look at it once again.
By the side of this imaginative picture of a poor
English sea rover, let me place another, an authentic one,
of a French forban or pirate in the same seas. Kingsley's
Aves, or Isle of Birds, is down on the American coast.
There is another island of the same name, which was
occasionally frequented by the same gentry, about a hun-
dred miles south of Dominica. Pere Labat going once
from Martinique to Guadaloupe had taken a berth with
Captain Daniel, one of the most noted of the French corsairs
of the day, for better security. People were not scrupulous
A fRENCH PIRATE 61
in those times, and Labat and Daniel had been long
good friends. They were caught in a gale off Dominica,
blown away, and carried to Aves, where they found an
English merchant ship lying a wreck. Two English ladies
from Barbadoes and a dozen other people had escaped on
shore. They had sent for help, and a large vessel came for
them the day after Daniel's arrival. Of course he made
a prize of it. Labat said prayers on board for him before
the engagement, and the vessel surrendered after the first
shot. The good humour of the party was not disturbed by
this incident. The pirates, their prisoners, and the ladies
stayed together for a fortnight at Aves, catching turtles
and boucanning them, picnicking, and enjoying themselves.
Daniel treated the ladies with the utmost politeness,
carried them afterwards to St. Thomas's, dismissed them
unransomed, sold his prizes, and wound up the whole affair
to the satisfaction of every one. Labat relates all this with
wonderful humour, and tells, among other things, the
following story of Daniel. On some expedition, when he
was not so fortunate as to have a priest on board, he was in
want of provisions. Being an outlaw he could not furnish
himself in an open port. One night he put into the har-
bour of a small island, called Los Santos, not far from
Dominica, where only a few families resided. He sent a
boat on shore in the darkness, took the priest and two
or three of the chief inhabitants out of their beds, and car-
ried them on board, where he held them as hostages, and
then under pretence of compulsion requisitioned the island
to send him what he wanted. The priest and his com-
panions were treated meanwhile as guests of distinc-
tion. No violence was necessary, for all parties understood
one another. While the stores were being collected, Daniel
suggested that there was a good opportunity for his crew
to hear mass. The priest of Los Santos agreed to say it for
them. The sacred vessels &c. were sent for from the church
62 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
on shore. An awning was rigged over the forecastle, and
an altar set up under it. The men chanted the prayers.
The cannon answered the purpose of music. Broadsides
were fired at the first sentence, at the Exaudiat, at the
Elevation, at the Benediction, and a fifth at the prayer for
the king. The service was wound up by a Vive le Roi ! A
single small accident only had disturbed the ceremony.
One of the pirates, at the Elevation, being of a profane mind,
made an indecent gesture. Daniel rebuked him, and, as
the offence was repeated, drew a pistol and blew the man's
brains out, saying he would do the same to any one who
was disrespectful to the Holy Sacrament. The priest being
a little startled, Daniel begged him not to be alarmed ; he
was only chastising a rascal to teach him his duty. At any
rate, as Labat observed, he had effectually prevented the
rascal from doing anything of the same kind again. Mass
being over, the body was thrown overboard, and priest and
congregation went their several ways.
Kingsley's ' At Last ' gave Trinidad an additional inte-
rest to me, but even he had not prepared me completely
for the place which I was to see. It is only when one has
seen any object with one's own eyes, that the accounts
given by others become recognisable and instructive.
Trinidad is the largest, after Jamaica, of the British
West Indian Islands, and the hottest absolutely after none
of them. It is square-shaped, and, I suppose, was once
a part of South America. The Orinoco river and the
ocean currents between them have cut a channel between
it and the mainland, which has expanded into a vast
shallow lake known as the Gulf of Paria. The two en-
trances by which the gulf is approached are narrow and
are called bocas or mouths one the Dragon's Mouth, the
other the Serpent's. When the Orinoco is in flood, the
water is brackish, and the brilliant violet blue of the
Caribbean Sea is changed to a dirty yellow ; but the
PORT OF SPAIN 63
harbour which is so formed would hold all the commercial
navies of the world, and seems formed by nature to be the
depot one day of an enormous trade.
Trinidad has had its period of romance. Columbus
was the first discoverer of it. Raleigh was there after-
wards on his expedition in search of his gold mine, and
tarred his vessels with pitch out of the famous lake. The
island was alternately Spanish and French till Picton took
it in 1797, since which time it has remained English. The
Carib part of the population has long vanished. The rest
of it is a medley of English, French, Spaniards, negroes,
and coolies. The English, chiefly migratory, go there to
make money and go home with it. The old colonial
families have few representatives left, but the island
prospers, trade increases, coolies increase, cocoa and coffee
plantations and indigo plantations increase. Port of Spain,
the capital, grows annually ; and even sugar holds its own
in spite of low prices, for there is money at the back of it,
and a set of people who, being speculative and commercial,
are better on a level with the times than the old-fashioned
planter aristocracy of the other islands. The soil is of
extreme fertility, about a fourth of it under cultivation, the
rest natural forest and unappropriated Crown land.
We passed the ' Dragon's Jaws ' before daylight. The
sun had just risen when we anchored off Port of Spain.
We saw before us the usual long line of green hills with
mountains behind them ; between the hills and the sea was
a low, broad, alluvial plain, deposited by an arm of the
Orinoco and by the other rivers which run into the gulf.
The cocoa-nut palms thrive best on the water's edge. They
stretched for miles on either side of us as a fringe to the
shore. Where the water was shoal, there were vast swamps
of mangrove, the lower branches covered with oysters.
However depressed sugar might be, business could not
be stagnant. Ships of all nations lay round us taking in or
64 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
discharging cargo. I myself formed for the time being
part of the cargo of my friend and host Mr. G , who had
brought me to Trinidad, the accomplished son of a brilliant
mother, himself a distinguished lawyer and member of the
executive council of the island, a charming companion, an
invaluable public servant, but with the temperament of
a man of genius, half humorous, half melancholy, which
does not find itself entirely at home in West Indian sur-
roundings.
On landing we found ourselves in a large foreign-looking
town, ' Port of Spain ' having been built by French and
Spaniards according to their national tendencies, and espe-
cially with a view to the temperature, which is that of a
forcing house and rarely falls below 80. The streets are
broad and are planted with trees for shade, each house where
room permits having a garden of its own, with palms and
mangoes and coffee plants and creepers. Of sanitary ar-
rangements there seemed to be none. There is abundance
of rain, and the gutters which run down by the footway
are flushed almost every day. But they are all open.
Dirt of every kind lies about freely, to be washed into them
or left to putrefy as fate shall direct. The smell would not
be pleasant without the help of that natural scavenger the
Johnny crow, a black vulture who roosts on the trees and
feeds in the middle of the streets. We passed a dozen of
these unclean but useful birds in a fashionable thorough-
fare gobbling up chicken entrails and refusing to be
disturbed. When gorged they perch in rows upon the
roofs. On the ground they are the nastiest to look at
of all winged creatures ; yet on windy days they presume
to soar like their kindred, and when far up might be taken
for eagles.
The town has between thirty and forty thousand
people living in it, and the rain and Johnny crows between
them keep off pestilence. Outside is a large savannah or
A HOUSE IN THE TROPICS 65
park, where the villas are of the successful men of business.
One of these belonged to my host, a cool airy habitation
with open doors and windows, overhanging portico, and
rooms into which all the winds might enter, but not the
sun. A garden in front was shut off from the savannah by
a fence of bananas. At the gate stood as sentinel a cabbage
palm a hundred feet high ; on the lawn mangoes, oranges,
papaws, and bread-fruit trees, strange to look at, but
luxuriantly shady. Before the door was a tree of good
dimensions, whose name I have forgotten, the stern and
branches of which were hung with orchids which G had
collected in the woods. The borders were blazing with
varieties of the single hibiscus, crimson, pink, and fawn
colour, the largest that I had ever seen. The average
diameter of each single flower was from seven to eight
inches. Wind streamed freely through the long sitting-
room, loaded with the perfume of orange trees ; on table
and in bookcase the hand and mind visible of a gifted and
cultivated man. The particular room assigned to myself
would have been equally delightful but that my possession
of it was disputed even in daylight by mosquitoes, who for
bloodthirsty ferocity had a bad pre-eminence over the worst
that I had ever met with elsewhere. I killed one who was
at work upon me, and examined him through a glass.
Bewick, with the inspiration of genius, had drawn his exact
likeness as the devil a long black stroke for a body, a nick
for a neck, horns on the head, and a beak for a mouth,
spindle arms, and longer spindle legs, two pointed wings, and
a tail. Line for line there the figure was before me which in
the unforgetable tailpiece is driving the thief under the
gallows, and I had a melancholy satisfaction in identifying
him. I had been warned to be on the look-out for scorpions,
centipedes, jiggers, and land crabs, who would bite me if I
walked slipperless over the floor in the dark. Of these, I
met with none, either there or anywhere ; but the mosquito
F
66 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
of Trinidad is enough by himself. For malice, mockery,
and venom of tooth and trumpet, he is without a match in
the world.
From mosquitoes, however, one could seek safety in
tobacco smoke, or hide behind the lace curtains with which
every bed is provided. Otherwise I found every provision
to make life pass deliciously. To walk is difficult in a
damp steamy temperature hotter during daylight than the
hottest forcing house in Kew. I was warned not to exert
myself and to take cocktail freely. In the evening I might
venture out with the bats and take a drive if I wished in the
twilight. Languidly charming as it all was, I could not help
asking myself of what use such a possession could be either
to England or to the English nation. We could not colonise
it, could not cultivate it, could not draw a revenue from
it. If it prospered commercially the prosperity would be of
French and Spaniards, mulattoes and blacks, but scarcely,
if at all, of my own countrymen. For here too, as elsewhere,
they were growing fewer daily, and those who remained were
looking forward to the day when they could be released.
If it were not for the honour of the thing, as the Irish-
man said after being carried in a sedan chair which had no
bottom, we might have spared ourselves so unnecessary a
conquest.
Beautiful, however, it was beyond dispute. Before
sunset a carriage took us round the savannah. Tropical
human beings like tropical birds are fond of fine colours,
especially black human beings, and the park was as
brilliant as Kensington Gardens on a Sunday. At nightfall
the scene became yet more wonderful ; air, grass, and trees
being alight with fireflies each as brilliant as an English
glowworm. The palm tree at our own gate stood like a
ghostly sentinel clear against the starry sky, a single long
dead frond hanging from below the coronet of leaves
and clashing against the stem as it was blown to and fro
POLITICS IN TRINIDAD 67
by the night wind, while long-winged bats swept and
whistled over our heads.
The commonplace intrudes upon the imaginative. At
moments one can fancy that the world is an enchanted place
after all, but then comes generally an absurd awakening.
On the first night of my arrival, before we went to bed there
came an invitation to me to attend a political meeting which
was to be held in a few days on the savannah. Trinidad is
a purely Crown colony, and has escaped hitherto the intro-
duction of the election virus. The newspapers and certain
busy gentlemen in ' Port of Spain ' had discovered that they
were living under ' a degrading tyranny,' and they demanded
a * constitution.' They did not complain that their affairs
had been ill managed. On the contrary, they insisted that
they were the most prosperous of the West Indian colonies,
and alone had a surplus in their treasury. If this was so,
it seemed to me that they had better let well alone. The
population, all told, was but 170,000, less by thirty thousand
than that of Barbadoes. They were a mixed and motley
assemblage of all races and colours, busy each with their
own affairs, and never hitherto troubling themselves about
politics. But it had pleased the Home Government to set up
the beginning of a constitution again in Jamaica, no one
knew why, but so it was, and Trinidad did not choose to be
behindhand. The official appointments were valuable, and
had been hitherto given away by the Crown. The local
popularities very naturally wished to have them for them-
selves. This was the reality in the thing so far as there was
a reality. It was dressed up in the phrases borrowed from
the great English masters of the art, about privileges of
manhood, moral dignity, the elevating influence of the
suffrage, &c., intended for home consumption among the
believers in the orthodox Eadical faith.
For myself I could but reply to the gentlemen who
had sent the invitation, that I was greatly obliged by the
F 2
68 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
compliment, but that I knew too little of their affairs to
make my presence of any value to them. As they were
doing so well, I did not see myself why they wanted an
alteration. Political changes were generally little more than
turns of a kaleidoscope ; you got a new pattern, but it was
made of the same pieces, and things went on much as
before. If they wanted political liberty I did not doubt
that they would get it if they were loud and persistent
enough. Only they must understand that at home we were
now a democracy. Any constitution which was granted
them would be on the widest basis. The blacks and coolies
outnumbered the Europeans by four to one, and perhaps
when they had what they asked for they might be less
pleased than they expected.
You rise early in the tropics. The first two hours of
daylight are the best of the day. My friend drove me round
the town in his buggy the next morning. My second duty was
to pay my respects to the Governor, Sir William Kobinson,
who had kindly offered me hospitality, and for which I must
present myself to thank him. In Sir William I found one of
those happy men whose, constitution is superior to climate,
who can do a long day's work in his office, play cricket or
lawn tennis in the afternoon, and entertain his miscellaneous
subjects in the evening with sumptuous hospitality a
vigorous, effective, perhaps ambitious gentleman, with a
clear eye to the views of his employers at home on whom
his promotion depends certain to make himself agreeable
to them, likely to leave his mark to useful purpose on the
colonies over which he presides or may preside hereafter.
Here in Trinidad he was learning Spanish in addition to
his other linguistic accomplishments, that he might show
proper courtesies to Spanish residents and to visitors from
South America.
The ' Kesidence ' stands in a fine situation, in large
grounds of its own at the foot of the mountains. It has
GOVERNMENT HOUSE AND GARDENS 69
been lately built regardless of expense, for the colony is rich,
and likes to do things handsomely. On the lawn, under the
windows, stood a tree which was entirely new to me, an
enormous ceiba or silk cotton tree, umbrella shaped, fifty
yards in diameter, the huge and buttressed trunk throwing
out branches so massive that one wondered how any woody
fibre could bear the strain of their weight, the boughs
twisting in and out till they made a roof over one's head,
which was hung with every fantastic variety of parasites.
Vast as the ceibas were which I saw afterwards in other
parts of the West Indies, this was the largest. The ceiba
is the sacred tree of the negro, the temple of Jumbi the
proper home of Obeah. To cut one down is impious. No
black in his right mind would wound even the bark. A
Jamaica police officer told me that if a ceiba had to be
removed, the men who used the axe were well dosed with
rum to give them courage to defy the devil.
From Government House we strolled into the adjoining
Botanical Gardens. I had long heard of the wonders of
these. The reality went beyond description. Plants with
which I was familiar as shrubs in English conservatories
were here expanded into forest giants, with hundreds of
others of which we cannot raise even Lilliputian imitations.
Let man be what he will, nature in the tropics is always
grand. Palms were growing in the greatest luxuriance, of
every known species, from the cabbage towering up into the
sky to the fan palm of the desert whose fronds are reservoirs
of water. Of exogenous trees, the majority were leguminous
in some shape or other, forming flowers like a pea or vetch
and hanging their seed in pods ; yet in shape and foliage they
distanced far the most splendid ornaments of an English
park. They had Old World names with characters wholly
different : cedars which were not conifers, almonds which
were no relations to peaches, and gum trees as unlike
eucalypti as one tree can be unlike another. Again, you
70 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
saw forms which you seemed to recognise till some unex-
pected anomaly startled you out of your mistake. A gigantic
Portugal laurel, or what I took for such, was throwing out
a flower direct from the stem like a cactus. Grandest
among them all, and happily in full bloom, was the sacred
tree of Burmah, the Amkerstia nobilis, at a distance like a
splendid horse-chestnut, with crimson blossoms in pendant
bunches, each separate flower in the convolution of its
parts exactly counterfeiting a large orchid, with which it
has not the faintest affinity, the Amherstia being leguminous
like the rest.
Underneath, and dispersed among the imperial beauties,
were spice trees, orange trees, coffee plants and cocoa, or
again, shrubs with special virtues or vices. We had to be
careful what we were about, for fruits of fairest appearance
were tempting us all round. My companion was preparing
to eat something to encourage me to do the same. A
gardener stopped him in tune. It was nux vomica. I
was straying along a less frequented path, conscious of a
heavy vaporous odour, in which I might have fainted had
I remained exposed to it. I was close to a manchineel
tree.
Prettiest and freshest were the nutmegs, which had a glen
all to themselves and perfumed the surrounding air. In
Trinidad and in Grenada I believe the nutmegs are the largest
that are known, being from thirty to forty feet high ; leaves
brilliant green, something like the leaves of an orange, but
extremely delicate and thin, folded one over the other, the
lowest branches sweeping to the ground till the whole tree
forms a natural bower, which is proof against a tropical
shower. The fragrance attracts moths and flies ; not
mosquitoes, who prefer a ranker atmosphere. I saw a pair
of butterflies the match of which I do not remember even
in any museum, dark blue shot with green like a peacock's
neck, and the size of English bats. I asked a black boy to
A REMARKABLE VINE 7 i
c&tch me one. ' That sort no let catchee, massa,' he said ;
and I was penitently glad to hear it.
Among the wonders of the gardens are the vines as they
call them, that is, the creepers of various kinds that climb
about the other trees. Standing in an open space there was
what once had been a mighty ' cedar.' It was now dead,
only the trunk and dead branches remaining, and had been
murdered by a ' fig ' vine which had started from the root,
twined itself like a python round the stem, strangled out
the natural life, and spreading out in all directions had
covered boughs and twigs with a foliage not its own. So far
the ' vine ' had done no worse than ivy does at home, but there
was one feature about it which puzzled me altogether. The
lowest of the original branches of the cedar were about
twenty feet above our heads. From these in four or five
places the parasite had let fall shoots, perhaps an inch in
diameter, which descended to within a foot of the ground and
then suddenly, without touching that or anything, formed
a bight like a rope, went straight up again, caught hold of
the branch from which they started, and so hung suspended
exactly as an ordinary swing. In three distinctly perfect
instances the ' vine ' had executed this singular evolution,
while at the extremity of one of the longest and tallest
branches high up in the air it had made a clean leap of
fifteen feet without visible help and had caught hold of
another tree adjoining on the same level. These perform-
ances were so inexplicable that I conceived that they must
have been a freak of the gardener's. I was mistaken. He
said that at particular times in the year the fig vine threw
out fine tendrils which hung downwards like strings. The
strongest among them would lay hold of two or three others
and climb up upon them, the rest would die and drop off, while
the successful one, having found support for itself above,
would remain swinging hi the air and thicken and prosper.
The leap he explained by the wind. I retained a suspicion
72 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
that the wind had been assisted by some aspiring energy in
the plant itself, so bold it was and so ambitious.
But the wonders of the garden were thrown into the shade
by the cottage at the extreme angle of it (the old Govern-
ment House before the present fabric had been erected),
where Kingsley had been the guest of Sir Arthur Gordon.
It is a long straggling wooden building with deep verandahs
lying in a hollow overshadowed by trees, with views opening
out into the savannah through arches formed by clumps of
tall bamboos, the canes growing thick in circular masses
and shooting up a hundred feet into the air, where they
meet and form frames for the landscape, peculiar and even
picturesque when there are not too many of them. These
bamboos were Kingsley's special delight, as he had never
seen the like of them elsewhere. The room in which he
wrote is still shown, and. the gallery where he walked up and
down with his long pipe. His memory is cherished in the
island as of some singular and beautiful presence which still
hovers about the scenes which so delighted him in the closing
evening of his own life.
It was the dry season, midwinter, yet raining every day
for two or three hours, and when it rains in these countries
it means business. When the sky cleared the sun was
intolerably hot, and distant expeditions under such condi-
tions suited neither my age nor my health. With cocktail
I might have ventured, but to cocktail I could never
heartily reconcile myself. Trinidad has one wonder in it,
a lake of bitumen some ninety acres in extent, which all
travellers are expected to visit, and which few residents
care to visit. A black lake is not so beautiful as an ordi-
nary lake. I had no doubt that it existed, for the testimony
was unimpeachable. Indeed I was shown an actual spe-
cimen of the crystallised pitch itself. I could believe with-
out seeing and without undertaking a tedious journey. I
rather sympathised with a noble lord who came to Port of
NEGROES AND COOLIES 73
Spain in his yacht, and like myself had the lake impressed
upon him. As a middle course between going thither and
appearing to slight his friends' recommendations, he said
that he would send his steward.
In Trinidad, as everywhere else, my own chief desire
was to see the human inhabitants, to learn what they were
doing, how they were living, and what they were thinking
about, and this could best be done by drives about the
town and neighbourhood. The cultivated land is a mere
fringe round the edges of the forest. Three-fourths of the
soil are untouched. The rivers running out of the
mountains have carved out the usual long deep valleys,
and spread the bottoms with rich alluvial soil. Here
among the wooded slopes are the country houses of the
merchants. Here are the cabins of the black peasantry
with their cocoa and coffee and orange plantations, which
as in Grenada they hold largely as freeholds, reproduc-
ing as near as possible the life in Paradise of our first
parents, without the consciousness of a want which they
are unable to gratify, not compelled to work, for the earth
of her own self bears for them all that they need, and
ignorant that there is any difference between moral good
and evil.
Large sugar estates, of course, there still are, and as the
owners have not succeeded in bringing the negroes to work
regularly for them, 1 they have introduced a few thousand
coolies under indentures for five years. These Asiatic im-
portations are very happy in Trinidad ; they save money, and
many of them do not return home when their time is out, but
stay where they are, buy land, or go into trade. They are
proud, however, and will not intermarry with the Africans.
Few bring their families with them ; and women being
1 The negroes in the interior are beginning to cultivate sugar cane in
small patches, with common mills to break it up. If the experiment suc-
ceeds it may extend.
74 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
scanty among them, there arise inconveniences and some-
times serious crimes.
It were to be wished that there was more prospect of
the race becoming permanent than I fear there is. They
work excellently. They are picturesque additions to the
landscape, as they keep to the bright colours and graceful
drapery of India. The grave dignity of their faces con-
trasts remarkably with the broad, good-humoured, but
common features of the African. The black women look
with envy at the straight hair of Asia, and twist their un-
happy wool into knots and ropes in the vain hope of being
mistaken for the purer race ; but this is all. The African
and the Asiatic will not mix, and the African being the
stronger will and must prevail in Trinidad as elsewhere in
the West Indies. Out of a total population of 170,000,
there are 25,000 whites and mulattoes, 10,000 coolies, the
rest negroes. The English part of the Europeans shows no
tendency to increase. The English come as birds of
passage, and depart when they have made their fortunes.
The French and Spaniards may hold on to Trinidad as a
home. Our people do not make homes there, and must be
looked on as a transient element.
A COOLIE VILLAGE 75
CHAPTER VII.
A coolie village Negro freeholds Waterworks Pythons Slavery-
Evidence of Lord Rodney Future of the negroes Necessity of English
rule The Blue Basin Black boy and crayfish.
THE second morning after my arrival, my host took me to
a coolie village three miles beyond the town. The drive
was between spreading cane fields, beneath the shade of
bamboos, or under rows of cocoa-nut palms, between the
stems of which the sun was gleaming.
Human dwelling places are rarely interesting in the
tropics. A roof which will keep the rain out is all that is
needed. The more free the passage given to the air under
the floor and through the side, the more healthy the habi-
tation ; and the houses, when we came among them, seemed
merely enlarged packing cases loosely nailed together and
raised on stones a foot or two from the ground. The rest
of the scene was picturesque enough. The Indian jewellers
were sitting cross-legged before their charcoal pans, making
silver bracelets and earrings. Brilliant garments, crimson
and blue and orange, were hanging to dry on clothes lines.
Men were going out to their work, women cooking, children
(not many) playing or munching sugar cane, while great
mango trees and ceibas spread a cool green roof over all.
Like Eachel, the coolies had brought their gods to their new
home. In the centre of the village was a Hindoo temple,
made up rudely out of boards with a verandah running round
it. The doors were locked. An old man who had charge
told us we could not enter ; a crowd, suspicious and sullen,
gathered about us as we tried to prevail upon him. So we
76 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
had to content ourselves with the outside, which was gaudily
and not unskilfully painted in Indian fashion. There were
gods and goddesses in various attitudes ; Vishnu fighting
with the monkey god, Vishnu with cutlass and shield, the
monkey with his tail round one tree while he brandished two
others, one in each hand, as clubs. I suppose that we smiled,
for our curiosity was resented, and we found it prudent to
withdraw.
The coolies are useful creatures. Without them sugar
cultivation in Trinidad and Demerara would cease alto-
gether. They are useful and they are singularly ornamental.
Unfortunately they have not the best character with the
police. There is little crime among the negroes, who
quarrel furiously but with their tongues only. The coolies
have the fiercer passions of their Eastern blood. Their
women being few are tempted occasionally into infidelities,
and would be tempted more often but that a lapse in virtue
is so fearfully avenged. A coolie regards his wife as his
property, and if she is unfaithful to him he kills her with-
out the least hesitation. One of the judges told me that he
had tried a case of this kind, and could not make the man
understand that he had done anything wrong. It is a pity
that a closer intermixture between them and the negroes
seems so hopeless, for it would solve many difficulties.
There is no jealousy. The negro does not regard the coolie
as a competitor and interloper who has come to lower his
wages. The coolie comes to work. The negro does not
want to work, and both are satisfied. But if there is no
jealousy there is no friendship. The two races are more
absolutely apart than the white and the black. The Asiatic
insists the more on his superiority in the fear perhaps that
if he did not the white might forget it.
Among the sights in the neighbourhood of Port of Spain
are the waterworks, extensive basins and reservoirs a few
miles off in the hills. We chose a cool afternoon, when the
NEGRO FREEHOLDS 77
temperature in the shade was not above 86, and went to
look at them. It was my first sight of the interior of the
island, and my first distinct acquaintance with the change
which had come over the West Indies. Trinidad is not
one of our oldest possessions, but we had held it long enough
for the old planter civilisation to take root and grow, and
our road led us through jungles of flowering shrubs which
were running wild over what had been once cultivated estates.
Stranger still (for one associates colonial life instinctively
with what is new and modern), we came at one place on an
avenue of vast trees, at the end of which stood the ruins of
a mansion of some great man of the departed order. Great
man he must have been, for there was a gateway half
crumbled away on which were his crest and shield in stone,
with supporters on either side, like the Baron of Bradwar-
dine's Bears ; fallen now like them, but unlike them never,
I fear, to be set up again. The Anglo- West Indians, like the
English gentry in Ireland, were a fine race of men in their
day, and perhaps the improving them off the earth has
been a less beneficial process in either case than we are in
the habit of supposing.
Entering among the hills we came on their successors.
In Trinidad there are 18,000 freeholders, most of them
negroes and representatives of the old slaves. Their cabins
are spread along the road on either side, overhung with bread-
fruit trees, tamarinds, calabash trees, out of which they make
their cups and water jugs ; the luscious granadilla climbs
among the branches ; plantains throw their cool shade over
the doors ; oranges and limes and citrons perfume the air,
and droop their boughs under the weight of their golden
burdens. There were yams in the gardens and cows in the
paddocks, and cocoa bushes loaded with purple or yellow
pods. Children played about in swarms, in happy idleness
and abundance, with schools, too, at intervals, and an occa-
sional Catholic chapel, for the old religion prevails in
78 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
Trinidad, never having been disturbed. What form could
human life assume more charming than that which we were
now looking on ? Once more, the earth does not contain
any peasantry so well off, so well cared for, so happy, so
sleek and contented as the sons and daughters of the eman-
cipated slaves in the English West Indian Islands. Sugar
may fail the planter, but cocoa, which each peasant can
grow with small effort for himself, does not fail and will
not. He may ' better his condition,' if he has any such
ambition, without stirring beyond his own ground, and so
far, perhaps, his ambition may extend, if it is not turned off
upon politics. Even the necessary evils of the tropics are
not many or serious. His skin is proof against mosquitoes.
There are snakes in Trinidad as there were snakes in Eden.
' Plenty snakes,' said one of them who was at work in his
garden, ' plenty snakes, but no bitee.' As to costume, he
would prefer the costume of innocence if he was allowed.
Clothes in such a climate are superfluous for warmth, and to
the minds of the negroes, unconscious as they are of shame,
superfluous for decency. European prejudice, however, still
passes for something ; the women have a love for finery,
which would prevent a complete return to African simpli-
city ; and in the islands which are still French, and in those
like Trinidad, which the French originally colonised, they
dress themselves with real taste. They hide their wool in
red or yellow handkerchiefs, gracefully twisted ; or perhaps
it is not only to conceal the wool. Columbus found the
Carib women of the island dressing their hair in the same
fashion. 1
The waterworks, when we reached them, were even more
beautiful than we had been taught to expect. A dam has
been driven across a perfectly limpid mountain stream ; a
wide open area has been cleared, levelled, strengthened with
1 Traen las cabezas atadas con unos panuelos labrados hermosos que
parecen de lejos de seda y almazarrones.
THE WATERWORKS OF PORT OF SPAIN 79
masonry, and divided into deep basins or reservoirs, through
which the current continually flows. Hedges of hibiscus
shine with crimson blossoms. Innumerable humming
birds glance to and fro among the trees and shrubs, and
gardens and ponds are overhung by magnificent bamboos,
which so astonished me by their size that I inquired if
their height had been measured. One of them, I was told,
had lately fallen, and was found to be 130 feet long A single
drawback only there was to this enchanting spot, and it
w r as again the snakes. There are huge pythons in Trinidad
which are supposed to have crossed the straits from the
continent. The cool water pools attract them, and they are
seen occasionally coiled among the branches of the bamboos.
Some washerwomen at work in the stream had been dis-
turbed a few days before our visit by one of these monsters,
who had come down to see what they were about. They
are harmless, but trying to the nerves. One of the men
about the place shot this one, and he told me that he had
shot another a short time before asleep in a tree. The
keeper of the works was a retired soldier, an Irish-Scot from
Limerick, hale, vigorous, and happy as the blacks them-
selves. He had married one of them a remarkable exception
to an almost universal rule. He did not introduce us, but
the dark lady passed by us in gorgeous costume, just noticing
our presence with a sweep which would have done credit to
a, duchess.
We made several similar small expeditions into the
settled parts of the neighbourhood, seeing always (what-
ever else we saw) the boundless happiness of the black race.
Under the rule of England in these islands the two million
of these poor brothers-in-law of ours are the most perfectly
contented specimens of the human race to be found upon
the planet. Even Schopenhauer, could he have known them,
would have admitted that there were some of us w 7 ho were
not hopelessly wretched. If happiness be the satisfaction
8o THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
of every conscious desire, theirs is a condition which
admits of no improvement : were they independent, they
might quarrel among themselves, and the weaker become
the bondmen of the stronger ; under the beneficent despotism
of the English Government, which knows no difference of
colour and permits no oppression, they can sleep, lounge,
and laugh away their lives as they please, fearing no danger.
If they want money, work and wages are waiting for them.
No one can say what may be before them hereafter. The
powers which envy human beings too perfect felicity
may find ways one day of disturbing the West Indian
negro ; but so long as the English rule continues, he may
be assured of the same tranquil existence.
As life goes he has been a lucky mortal. He was taken
away from Dahomey and Ashantee to be a slave indeed,
but a slave to a less cruel master than he would have found
at home. He had a bad time of it occasionally, and the
plantation whip and the branding irons are not all dreams,
yet his owner cared for him at least as much as he cared
for his cows and his horses. Kind usage to animals is
more economical than barbarity, and Englishmen in the
West Indies were rarely inhuman. Lord Eodney says :
' I have been often in all the West India Islands, and I have
often made my observations on the treatment of the negro
slaves, and can aver that I never knew the least cruelty in-
flicted on them, but that in general they lived better than
the honest day-labouring man in England, without doing a
fourth part of his work in a day, and I am fully convinced
that the negroes in our islands are better provided for and
live better than when in Guinea.' Eodney, it is true, was
a man of facts and was defective in sentiment. Let us
suppose him wrong, let us believe the worst horrors of the
slave trade or slave usage as fluent tongue of missionary
or demagogue has described them, yet nevertheless, when
we consider what the lot of common humanity has been
ENGLISH RULE AND THE NEGROES 81
and is, we shall be dishonest if we deny that the balance
has been more than redressed ; and the negroes who were
taken away out of Africa, as compared with those who were
left at home, were as the ' elect to salvation,' who after a
brief purgatory are secured an eternity of blessedness.
The one condition is the maintenance of the authority of
the English crown. The whites of the islands cannot
equitably rule them. They have not shaken off the old
traditions. If, for the sake of theory or to shirk responsi-
bility, we force them to govern themselves, the state of
Hayti stands as a ghastly example of the condition into
which they will then inevitably fall. If we persist, we
shall be sinning against light the clearest light that was
ever given in such affairs. The most hardened believer in
the regenerating effects of political liberty cannot be com-
pletely blind to the ruin which the infliction of it would
necessarily bring upon the race for whose interests they
pretend particularly to care.
The Pitch Lake I resisted all exhortations to visit, but
the days in the forest were delightful pre-eminently a
day which we spent at the ' Blue Basin,' a pool scooped out
in the course of ages by a river falling through a mountain
gorge; blue, not from any colour in the water, which is
purely transparent, but from a peculiar effect of sky reflec-
tion through an opening in the overhanging trees. As it
was far off, we had to start early and encounter the noon-
day heat. We had to close the curtains of the carriage to
escape the sun, and in losing the sun we shut out the wind.
All was well, however, when we turned into the hills.
Thenceforward the road followed the bottom of a densely
wooded ravine; impenetrable foliage spreading over our
heads, and a limpid river flashing along in which our horses
cooled their feet and lips as we crossed it again and again.
There were the usual cabins and gardens on either side of
us, sometimes single, sometimes clustering into villages,
G
8z THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
and high above them the rocks stood out, broken into pre-
cipices or jutting out into projecting crags, with huge trees
starting from the crevices, dead trunks with branching arms
clothed scantily with creepers, or living giants with blue or
orange-coloured flowers. Mangoes scented the valley with
their blossom. Bananas waved their long broad leaves
some flat and unbroken as we know them in conservatories,
some split into palm-like fronds which quivered in the
breeze. The cocoa pods were ripe or ripening, those which
had been gathered being left on the ground in heaps as we
see apples hi autumn in an English orchard.
We passed a lady on the way who was making sketches
and daring the mosquitoes, that were feeding at leisure
upon her face and arms. The road failed us at last. We
alighted with our waterproofs and luncheon basket. A
couple of half- naked boys sprang forward to act as guides
and porters nice little fellows, speaking a French patois
for their natural language, but with English enough to
earn shillings and amuse the British tourist. With their
help we scrambled along a steep slippery path, the river
roaring below, till we came to a spot where, the rock being
soft, a waterfall had cut out in the course of ages a natural
hollow, of which the trees formed the roof, and of which
the floor was the pool we had come in search of. The fall
itself was perpendicular, and fifty or sixty feet high, the
water issuing at the top out of a dark green tunnel among
overhanging branches. The sides of the basin were draped
with the fronds of gigantic ferns and wild plantains, all in
wild luxuriance and dripping with the spray. In clefts
above the rocks, large cedars or gum trees had struck their
roots and flung out their gnarled and twisted branches,
which were hung with fern ; while at the lower end of the
pool, where the river left it again, there grew out from
among the rocks near the water's edge tall and exquisitely
grouped acacias with crimson flowers for leaves.
BLUE BASIN, TRINIDAD
THE BLUE BASIN 83
The place broke on us suddenly as we scrambled round
a corner from below. Three young blacks were bathing in
the pool, and as we had a lady with us, they were induced,
though sullenly and with some difficulty, to return into their
scanty garments and depart. Never certainly was there a
more inviting spot to swim in, the more so from exciting
possibilities of adventure. An English gentleman went to
bathe there shortly before our coming. He was on a rock,
swaying his body for a plunge, when something caught his
eye among the shadows at the bottom. It proved to be a
large dead python.
We had not the luck ourselves of falling in with so in-
teresting a beast. Great butterflies and perhaps a hum-
ming bird or two were flitting among the leaves as we came
up ; other signs of life there were none, unless we call life
the motion of the plantain leaves, waving in the draughts
of air which were eddying round the waterfall. We sat
down on stones, or on the trunk of a fallen tree, the
mosquitoes mercifully sparing us. We sketched a little,
talked a little, ate our sandwiches, and the male part of us
lighted our cigars. G then, to my surprise, produced a
fly rod. In the streams in the Antilles, which run out of
the mountains, there is a fish in great abundance which
they call mullet, an inferior trout, but a good substitute
where the real thing is not. He runs sometimes to five
pounds weight, will take the fly, and is much sought after
by those who try to preserve in the tropics the amusements
and habits of home. G had caught many of them in
Dominica. If in Dominica, why not in Trinidad ?
He put his tackle together, tied up a cast of trout flies,
and commenced work. He tried the still water at the
lower end of the basin. He crept round the rock and
dropped his line into the foam at the foot of the fall. No
mullet rose, nor fish of any kind. One of our small boys
had looked on with evident impatience. He cried out at
G 2
84 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
last, ' No mullet, but plenty crayfish,' pointing down into the
water ; and there, following the direction of his finger, we
beheld strange grey creatures, like cuttle-fish moving about
on the points of their toes, the size of small lobsters. The
flies were dismounted, a bare hook was fitted on a fine gut
trace, with a split shot or two to sink the line, all trim and
excellent. A fresh-water shrimp was caught under a stone
for a bait. G went to work, and the strange things
took hold and let themselves be lifted halfway to the sur-
face. But then, somehow, they let go and disappeared.
Our small boy said nothing ; but I saw a scornful smile
upon his lips. He picked up a thin dry cane, found some
twine in the luncheon basket which had tied up our sand-
wiches, found a pin there also, and bent it, and put a
shrimp on it. With a pebble stone for a sinker he started
in competition, and in a minute he had brought out upon
the rock the strangest thing in the shape of a fish which
I had ever seen in fresh water or salt. It was a true
' crayfish,' ecrevisse, eight inches long, formed regularly
with the thick powerful tail, the sharp serrated snout,
the long antennae, and the spider-like legs of the lobster
tribe. As in a crayfish, the claws were represented by
the correctly shaped but diminutive substitutes.
When we had done wondering at the prize, we could
admire the smile of conscious superiority in the face of the
captor. The fine tackle had been beaten, as usual, by the
proverbial string and crooked pin, backed by knowledge in
the head of a small nigger boy.
HOME RULE IN TRINIDAD 85
CHAPTEE VIII.
Home Eule in Trinidad Political aspirations Nature of the problem
Crown administration Colonial governors A Russian apologue Dinner
at Government House ' The Three Fishers ' Charles Warner Alter-
native futures of the colony.
THE political demonstration to which I had been invited
came off the next day on the savannah. The scene was
pretty enough. Black coats and white trousers, bright-
coloured dresses and pink parasols, look the same at a
distance whether the wearer has a black face or a white
one, and the broad meadow was covered over with sparkling
groups. Several thousand persons must have attended, not
all to hear the oratory, for the occasion had been taken when
the Governor was to play close by in a cricket match, and
half the crowd had probably collected to see His Excellency
at the wicket. Placards had been posted about the town,
setting out the purpose of the meeting. Trinidad, as I
said, is at present a Crown colony, the executive council and
the legislature being equally nominated by the authorities.
The popular orators, the newspaper writers, and some of
the leading merchants in Port of Spain had discovered, as
I said, that they were living under what they called ' a
degrading tyranny.' They had no grievances, or none that
they alleged, beyond the general one that they had no
control over the finance. They very naturally desired that
the lucrative Government appointments for which the colony
paid should be distributed among themselves. The elective
principle had been reintroduced in Jamaica, evidently as a
step towards the restoration of the full constitution which
86 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
had been surrendered and suppressed after the Gordon
riots. Trinidad was almost as large as Jamaica, in pro-
portion to the population wealthier and more prosperous,
and the people were invited to come together in over-
whelming numbers to insist that the ' tyranny ' should end.
The Home Government in their action about Jamaica had
shown a spontaneous readiness to transfer responsibility
from themselves to the inhabitants. The promoters of the
meeting at Port of Spain may have thought that a little
pressure on their part might not be unwelcome as an
excuse for further concessions of the same kind. Whether
this was so I do not know. At any rate they showed that
they were as yet novices hi the art of agitation. The
language of the placard of invitation was so violent that,
in the opinion of the legal authorities, the printer might
have been indicted for high treason. The speakers did
their best to imitate the fine phrases of the apostles of
liberty in Europe, but they succeeded only hi caricaturing
their absurdities. The proceedings were described at length
in the rival newspapers. One gentleman's speech was said
to have been so brilliant that every sentence was a * gem of
oratory,' the gem of gems being when he told his hearers
that, ' if they went into the thing at all, they should go
the entire animal.' All went off good-humouredly. In
the Liberal journal the event of the day was spoken of as
the most magnificent demonstration in favour of human
freedom which had ever been seen in the West Indian
Islands. In the Conservative journal it was called a ridi-
culous fiasco, and the people were said to have come
together only to admire the Governor's batting, and to
laugh at the nonsense which was coming from the platform.
Finally, the same journal assured us that, beyond a hand-
ful of people who were interested in getting hold of the
anticipated spoils of office, no one in the island cared about
the matter.
COLONIAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 87
The result, I believe, was some petition or other which
would go home and pass as evidence, to minds eager to
believe, that Trinidad was rapidly ripening for responsible
government, promising relief to an overburdened Secretary
for the Colonies, who has more to do than he can attend to,
and is pleased with opportunities of gratifying popular
sentiment, or of showing off in Parliament the development
of colonial institutions. He knows nothing, can know no-
thing, of the special conditions of our hundred dependen-
cies. He accepts what his representatives in the several
colonies choose to tell him ; and his representatives, being
birds of passage responsible only to their employers at
home, and depending for their promotion on making them-
selves agreeable, are under irresistible temptations to report
what it will please the Secretary of State to hear.
For the Secretary of State, too, is a bird of passage as
they are, passing through the Colonial Office on his way to
other departments, or holding the seals as part of an ad-
ministration whose tenure of office grows every year more
precarious, which exists only upon popular sentiment, and
cannot, and does not, try to look forward beyond at furthest
the next session of Parliament.
But why, it may be asked, should not Trinidad govern
itself as well as Tasmania or New Zealand? Why not
Jamaica, why not all the West Indian Islands ? I will an-
swer by another question. Do we wish these islands to
remain as part of the British Empire ? Are they of any
use to us, or have we responsibilities connected with them
of w r hich we are not entitled to divest ourselves ? A govern-
ment elected by the majority of the people (and no one
would think of setting up constitutions on any other
basis) reflects from the nature of things the character of
the electors. All these islands tend to become partitioned
into black peasant proprietaries. In Grenada the process
is almost complete. In Trinidad it is rapidly advancing.
88 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
No one can stop it. No one ought to wish to stop it. But
the ownership of freeholds is one thing, and political power
is another. The blacks depend for the progress which they
may be capable of making on the presence of a white com-
munity among them ; and although it is undesirable or
impossible for the blacks to be ruled by the minority of the
white residents, it is equally undesirable and equally im-
possible that the whites should be ruled by them. The
relative numbers of the two races being what they are,
responsible government in Trinidad means government by
a black parliament and a black ministry. The negro voters
might elect, to begin with, their half-caste attorneys or
such whites (the most disreputable of their colour) as would
court their suffrages. But the black does not love the
mulatto, and despises the white man who consents to be
his servant. He has no grievances. He is not naturally a
politician, and if left alone with his own patch of land, will
never trouble himself -to look further. But he knows what
has happened in St. Domingo. He has heard that his race
is already in full possession of the finest of all the islands.
If he has any thought or any hopes about the matter, it is
that it may be with the rest of them as it has been with St.
Domingo, and if you force the power into his hands, you
must expect him to use it. Under the constitution which
you would set up, whites and blacks may be nominally
equal ; but from the enormous preponderance of numbers
the equality would be only in name, and such English
people, at least, as would be really of any value, would re-
fuse to remain in a false and intolerable position. Already
the English population of Trinidad is dwindling away
under the uncertainties of their future position. Complete
the work, set up a constitution with a black prime minister
and a black legislature, and they will withdraw of them-
selves before they are compelled to go. Spaniards and
French might be tempted by advantages of trade to remain
COLONIAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 89
in Port of Spain, as a few are still to be found in Hayti.
They, it is possible, might in time recover and reassert
their supremacy. Englishmen have the world open to
them, and will prefer lands where they can live under less
degrading conditions. In Hayti the black republic allows
no white man to hold land in freehold. The blacks else-
where with the same opportunities will develop the same
aspirations.
Do we, or do we not, intend to retain our West Indian
Islands under the sovereignty of the Queen ? If we are
willing to let them go, the question is settled. But we
ought to face the alternative. There is but one form of
government under which we can retain these colonies with
honour and security to ourselves and with advantage to
the negroes whom we have placed there the mode of
government which succeeds with us so admirably that it is
the world's wonder in the East Indies, a success so unique
and so extraordinary that it seems the last from which we
are willing to take example.
In Natal, where the circumstances are analogous, and
where report says that efforts are being also made to force
on constitutional independence, I remember suggesting a
few years ago that the governor should be allowed to
form his own council, and that in selecting the members
of it he should go round the colony, observe the farms
where the land was well inclosed, the fields clean, the
farm buildings substantial and in good repair ; that he
should call on the owners of these to be his advisers and
assistants. In all Natal he might find a dozen such.
They would be unwilling to leave their own business for so
thankless a purpose ; but they might be induced by good
feeling to grant him a few weeks of their time. Under
such an administration I imagine Natal would have a
happier future before it than it will experience with the
boon which is designed for it.
90 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
In the West Indies there is indefinite wealth waiting
to be developed by intelligence and capital ; and men
with such resources, both English and American, might
be tempted still to settle there, and lead the blacks along
with them into more settled manners and higher forms of
civilisation. But the future of the blacks, and our own
influence over them for good, depend on their being pro-
tected from themselves and from the schemers who would
take advantage of them. However little may be the share
to which the mass of a population be admitted in the
government of their country, they are never found hard to
manage where they prosper and are justly dealt with. The
children of darkness are even easier of control than the
children of light. Under an administration formed on the
model of that of our Eastern Empire these islands would be
peopled in a generation or two with dusky citizens, as proud
as the rest of us of the flag under which they will have
thriven, and as willing to defend it against any invading
enemy as they are now unquestionably indifferent. Partially
elected councils, local elected boards, &c., serve only as con-
trivances to foster discontent and encourage jobbery. They
open a rift which time will widen, and which will create for
us, on a smaller scale, the conditions which have so troubled
us in Ireland, where each concession of popular demands
makes the maintenance of the connection more difficult.
In the Pacific colonies self-government is a natural right ;
the colonists are part of ourselves, and have as complete a
claim to the management of their own affairs as we have to
the management of ours. The less we interfere with them
the more heartily they identify themselves with us. But if
we choose besides to indulge our ambition with an empire,
if we determine to keep attached to our dominion countries
which, like the East Indies, have been conquered by the
sword, countries, like the West Indies, which, however
acquired, are occupied by races enormously outnumbering
JENGLANLfS DUTY 9 i
us, many of whom do not speak our language, are not con-
nected with us by sentiment, and not visibly connected by
interest, with whom our own people will not intermarry or
hold social intercourse, but keep aloof from, as superior from
inferior to impose on such countries forms of self-govern-
ment at which we have ourselves but lately arrived, to
put it in the power of these overwhelming numbers to shake
us off if they please, and to assume that when our real
motive has been only to save ourselves trouble they will
be warmed into active loyalty by gratitude for the confi-
dence which we pretend to place in them, is to try an
experiment which we have not the slightest right to expect
to be successful, and which if it fails is fatal.
Once more, if we mean to keep the blacks as British
subjects, we are bound to govern them, and to govern them
well. If we cannot do it, we had better let them go alto-
gether. And here is the real difficulty. It is not that men
competent for such a task cannot be found. Among the
public servants of Great Britain there are persons always
to be found fit and willing for posts of honour and difficulty
if a sincere effort be made to find them. Alas ! in times past
we have sent persons to rule our Baratarias to whom
Sancho Panza was a sage troublesome members of Parlia-
ment, younger brothers of powerful families, impecunious
peers; favourites, with backstairs influence, for whom a
provision was to be found; colonial clerks, bred in the
office, who had been obsequious and useful.
One had hoped that in the new zeal for the colonial
connection such appointments would have become impossible
for the future, yet a recent incident at the Mauritius has
proved that the colonial authorities are still unregenerate.
The unfit are still maintained in their places ; and then,
to prevent the colonies from suffering too severely under
their incapacity, we set up the local councils, nominated
or elected, to do the work, while the Queen's representative
92 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
enjoys his salary. Instances of glaring impropriety like
that to which I have alluded are of course rare, and among
colonial governors there are men of quality so high that we
would desire only to see their power equal to it. But so
limited is the patronage, on the other hand, which remains
to the home administration, and so heavy the pressure
brought to bear upon them, that there are persons also
in these situations of whom it may be said that the less
they do, and the less they are enabled to do, the better
for the colony over which they preside.
The West Indies have been sufferers from another cause.
In the absence of other use for them they have been made
to serve as places where governors try their 'prentice hand
and learn their business before promotion to more important
situations. "Whether a man has done well or done ill makes,
it seems, very little difference unless he has offended pre-
judices or interests, at home: once in the service he acquires
a vested right to continue in it. A governor who had been
suspended for conduct which is not denied to have been
most improper, is replaced with the explanation that if he
was not sent back to his old post it would have been neces-
sary to provide a situation for him elsewhere. Why would
it ? Has a captain of a man-of-war whose ship is taken
from him for misconduct an immediate claim to have
another ? Unfortunate colonies ! It is not their interest
which is considered under this system. But the subject is
so delicate that I must say no more about it. I will re-
commend only to the attention of the British democracy,
who are now the parties that in the last instance are
responsible, because they are the real masters of the Em-
pire, the following apologue.
In the time of the Emperor Nicholas the censors of the
press seized a volume which had been published by the
poet Kriloff, on the ground that it contained treasonable
matter. Nicholas sent for Kriloff. The censor produced
COLONIAL GOVERNORS 93
the incriminated passage, and Kriloff was made to read it
aloud. It was a fable. A governor of a Russian province
was represented as arriving in the other world, and as being
brought up before Ehadamanthus. He was accused, not of
any crime, but of having been simply a nonentity of
having received his salary and spent it,, and nothing more.
Ehadamanthus listened, and when the accusing angel had
done sentenced the prisoner into Paradise. ' Into Para-
dise ! ' said the angel, ' why, he has done nothing ! ' ' True,'
said Ehadamanthus, ' but how would it have been if he had
done anything ? '
' Write away, old fellow,' said Nicholas to Kriloff.
Has it never happened that British colonial officials who
have similarly done nothing have been sent into the Para-
dise of promotion because they have kept things smooth
and have given no trouble to their employers at home ?
In the evening of the day of the political meeting we
dined at Government House. There was a large represen-
tative party, English, French, Spaniards, Corsicans ladies
and gentlemen each speaking his or her own language.
There were the mayors of the two chief towns of Trinidad
Port of Spain and San Fernando both enthusiastic for a
constitution. The latter was my neighbour at dinner, and
insisted much on the fine qualities of the leading persons
in the island and the splendid things to be expected when
responsible government should be conceded. The training
squadron had arrived from Barbadoes, and the commodore
and two or three officers were present in their uniforms.
There was interesting talk about Trinidad's troublesome
neighbour, Guzman Blanco, the President of Venezuela. It
seems that Sir Walter Ealeigh's Eldorado has turned out
to be a fact after all. On the higher waters of the Orinoko
actual gold mines do exist, and the discovery has quickened
into life a long unsettled dispute about boundaries between
British Guiana and the republic. Don Guzman has been
94 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
encroaching, BO it was alleged, and in other ways had been
offensive and impertinent. Ships were going had been
actually ordered to La Guyra, to pull his nose for him, and
to tell him to behave himself. The time is past when we flew
our hawks at game birds. The opinion of most of the
party was that Don Guzman knew it, and that his nose
would not be pulled. He would regard our frigates as
picturesque ornaments to his harbour, give the officers in
command the politest reception, evade their demands, offer
good words in plenty, and nothing else but words, and in
the end would have the benefit of our indifference. 1
In the late evening we had music. Our host sang well,
our hostess was an accomplished artist. They had duets
together, Italian and English, and the lady then sang ' The
Three Fishers,' Kingsley being looked on as the personal
property of Trinidad and as one of themselves. She sang
it very well, as well as any one could do who had no direct
acquaintance with an English sea-coast people. Her voice
was beautiful, and she showed genuine feeling. The silence
when she ended was more complimentary than the loudest
applause. It was broken by a stupid member of council,
who said to me, ' Is it not strange that a poet with such a
gift of words as Mr. Kingsley should have ended that song
with so weak a line ? " The sooner it's over the sooner to
sleep " is nothing but prose.' He did not see that the fault
which he thought he had discovered is no more than the
intentional ' dying away ' of the emotion created by the
story in the common lot of poor humanity. We drove
back across the savannah in a blaze of fireflies. It is not
till midnight that they put their lights out and go to sleep
with the rest of the world.
One duty remained to me before I left the island. The
Warners are among the oldest of West Indian families,
1 A squadron did go while I was in the West Indies. I have not heard
that any other result came of it.
CHARLES WARNER 95
distinguished through many generations, not the least in
their then living chief and representative, Charles Warner,
who in the highest ministerial offices had steered Trinidad
through the trying times which followed the abolition of
slavery. I had myself in early life been brought into rela-
tions with other members of his family. He himself was
a very old man on the edge of the grave ; but hearing that
I was in Port of Spain, he had expressed a wish to see me.
I found him in his drawing room, shrunk in stature, pale,
bent double by weight of years, and but feebly able to lift
his head to speak. I thought, and I judged rightly, that he
could have but a few weeks, perhaps but a few days, to live.
There is something peculiarly solemn in being brought
to speak with a supremely eminent man, who is already
struggling with the moment which is to launch him into
a new existence. He raised himself in his chair. He
gave me his withered hand. His eyes still gleamed with
the light of an untouched intelligence. All else of him
seemed dead. The soul, untouched by the decay of the
frame which had been its earthly tenement, burnt bright
as ever on the edge of its release.
When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain,
And they breathe truth who breathe their words in pain.
He roused himself to talk, and he talked sadly, for all
things at home and everywhere were travelling on the road
which he well knew could lead to no good end. No states-
man had done better practical work than he, or work which
had borne better fruit, could it be allowed to ripen. But
for him Trinidad would have been a wilderness, savage as
when Columbus found the Caribs there. He belonged to
the race who make empires, as the orators lose them, who
do things and do not talk about them, who build and do
not cast down, who reverence ancient habits and institutions
as the organic functions of corporate national character ;
a Tory of the Tories, who nevertheless recognised that
96 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
Toryism itself was passing away under the universal sol-
vent, and had ceased to be a faith which could be believed
in as a guide to conduct.
He no more than any one could tell what it was now
wisest or even possible to do. He spoke like some ancient
seer, whose eyes looked beyond the present time and the
present world, and saw politics and progress and the wild
whirlwind of change as the play of atoms dancing to and
fro in the sunbeams of eternit3% Yet he wished well to our
poor earth, and to us who were still struggling upon it.
He was sorry for the courses on which he saw mankind to
be travelling. Spite of all the newspapers and the blowing
of the trumpets, he well understood whither all that was
tending. He spoke with horror and even loathing of the
sinister leader who was drawing England into the fatal
whirlpool. He could still hope, for he knew the power of
the race. He knew that the English heart was unaffected,
that we were suffering only from delirium of the brain.
The day would yet come, he thought, when we should struggle
back into sanity again with such wreck of our past great-
ness as might still be left to us, torn and shattered, but
clothed and in our right mind, and cured for centuries of
our illusions.
My forebodings of the nearness of the end were too well
founded. A month later I heard that Charles Warner was
dead. To have seen and spoken with such a man was
worth a voyage round the globe.
On the prospects of Trinidad I have a few more words
to add. The tendency of the island is to become what
Grenada has become already a community of negro free-
holders, each living on his own homestead, and raising or
gathering off the ground what his own family will consume.
They will multiply, for there is ample room. Three-quarters
of the soil are still unoccupied. The 140,000 blacks will
rapidly grow into a half-million, and the half-million, as
FUTURE OF THE ISLAND 97
long as we are on the spot to keep the peace., will speedily
double itself again. The English inhabitants will and
must be crowded out. The geographical advantages of
the Gulf of Paria will secure a certain amount of trade.
There will be merchants and bankers in the town as float-
ing passage birds, and there will be mulatto lawyers and
shopkeepers and newspaper writers. But the blacks hate
the mulattoes, and the mulatto breed will not maintain
itself, as with the independence of the blacks the intimacy
between blacks and whites diminishes and must diminish.
The English peasant immigration which enthusiasts have
believed in is a dream, a dream which passed through the
ivory gate, a dream which will never turn to a waking reality ;
and unless under the Indian system, which our rulers will
never try unless the democracy orders them to adopt it, the
English interest will come to an end.
The English have proved in India that they can play a
great and useful part as rulers over recognised inferiors.
Even in the West Indies the planters were a real some-
thing. Like the English in Ireland, they produced a
remarkable breed of men : the Codringtons, the Warners,
and many illustrious names besides. They governed
cheaply on their own resources, and the islands under their
rule were so profitable that we fought for them as if our
Empire was at stake. All that is gone. The days of
ruling races are supposed to be numbered. Trade drifts
away to the nearest market to New York or New Orleans
and in a money point of view the value of such posses-
sions as Trinidad will soon be less than nothing to us.
As long as the present system holds, there will be an
appreciable addition to the sum of human (coloured human)
happiness. Lighter-hearted creatures do not exist on the
globe. But the continuance of it depends on the continu-
ance of the English rule. The peace and order which they
benefit by is not of their own creation . In spite of schools
H
9 8 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
and missionaries, the dark connection still maintains itself
with Satan's invisible world, and modern education con-
tends in vain with Obeah worship. As it has been in Hayti,
so it must be in Trinidad if the English leave the blacks
to be their own masters.
Scene after scene passes by on the magic slide. The
man-eating Caribs first, then Columbus and his Spaniards,
the French conquest, the English occupation, but they
have left behind them no self-quickening seed of healthy
civilisation, and the prospect darkens once more. It is
a pity, for there is no real necessity that it should
darken. The West Indian negro is conscious of his
own defects, and responds more willingly than most to
a guiding hand. He is faithful and affectionate to those
who are just and kind to him, and with a century or two
of wise administration he might prove that his inferiority
is not inherent, and that with the same chances as the
white he may rise to the same level. I cannot part with
the hope that the English people may yet : insist that the
chance shall not be denied to him, and that they may yet
give their officials to understand that they must not, shall
not, shake off their responsibilities for this unfortunate
people, by flinging them back upon themselves ' to manage
their own affairs,' now that we have no further use for them.
I was told that the keener-witted Trinidad blacks are
watching as eagerly as we do the development of the Irish
problem. They see the identity of the situation. They see
that if the Eadical view prevails, and in every country
the majority are to rule, Trinidad will be theirs and the
government of the English will be at an end. I, for myself,
look upon Trinidad and the West Indies generally as an
opportunity for the further extension of the influence of
the English race in their special capacity of leaders and
governors of men. We cannot with honour divest ourselves
of our responsibility for the blacks, or after the eloquence
BRITISH DOMINION 99
we have poured out and the self-laudation which we have
allowed ourselves for the suppression of slavery, leave them
now to relapse into a state from which slavery itself was
the first step of emancipation. Our world-wide dominion
will not be of any long endurance if we consider that we
have discharged our full duty to our fellow-subjects when we
have set them free to follow their own devices. If that is
to be all, the sooner it vanishes into history the better for
us and for the world.
H 2
ioo THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
CHAPTER IX.
Barbadoes again Social condition of the island Political constitution
Effects of the sugar bounties Dangers of general bankruptcy The Hall
of Assembly Sir Charles Pearson Society in Bridgetown A morning
drive Church of St. John's Sir Graham Briggs An old planter's
palace The Chief Justice of Barbadoes.
AGAIN at sea, and on the way back to Barbadoes. The
commodore of the training squadron had offered me a berth
to St. Vincent, but he intended to work up under sail against
the north-east trade, which had risen to half a gale, and I
preferred the security and speed of the mail boat. Among
the passengers was Miss - , the lady whom I had seen
sketching on the way to the Blue Basin. She showed me
her drawings, which were excellent. She showed me in her
mosquito-bitten arms what she had endured to make them,
and I admired her fortitude. She was English, and was on
her way to join her father at Codrington College.
We had a wild night, but those long vessels care little
for winds and waves. By morning we had fought our way
back to Grenada. In the St. Vincent roadstead, which we
reached the same day, the ship was stormed by boatloads
of people who were to go on with us ; boys on their way to
school at Barbadoes, ladies young and old, white, black,
and mixed, who were bound I know not where. The night
fell dark as pitch, the storm continued, and we were no
sooner beyond the shelter of the land than every one of them
save Miss and myself was prostrate. The vessel
ploughed on upon her way indifferent to us and to them.
"We were at Bridgetown by breakfast time, and I was now
NEGROES IN BARBADOES 101
to have an opportunity of studying more at leisure the
earliest of our West Indian colonies.
Barbadoes is as unlike in appearance as it is in social
condition to Trinidad or the Antilles. There are no moun-
tains in it, no forests, no rivers, and as yet no small free-
holders. The blacks, who number nearly 200,000 in an
island not larger than the Isle of Wight, are labourers,
working for wages on the estates of large proprietors. Land
of their own they have none, for there is none for them.
Work they must, for they cannot live otherwise. Thus every
square yard of soil is cultivated, and turn your eyes where
you will you see houses, sugar canes, and sweet potatoes.
Two hundred and fifty years of occupation have imprinted
strongly an English character ; parish churches solid and
respectable, the English language, the English police and
parochial system. However it may be in the other islands,
England in Barbadoes is still a solid fact. The headquarters
of the West Indian troops are there. There is a commander-
in-chief residing in a 'Queen's House,' so called. There is
a savannah where there are English barracks under avenues
of almond and mahogany. Bed coats are scattered about
the grass. Officers canter about playing polo, and naval
and military uniforms glitter at the side of carriages, and
horsemen and horsewomen take their evening rides, as \vell
mounted and as well dressed as you can see in Botten Bow.
Barbadoes is thus in pleasing contrast with the conquered
islands which we have not taken the trouble to assimilate.
In them remain the wrecks of the French civilisation which
we superseded, but we have planted nothing of our own.
Barbadoes, the European aspect of it at any rate, is English
throughout.
The harbour when we arrived was even more brilliant
than we had left it a fortnight before. The training
squadron had gone, but in the place of it the West
Indian fleet was there, and there were also three American
102 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
frigates, old wooden vessels out merely on a cruise, but
heavily sparred, smart and well set up, with the stars and
stripes floating carelessly at their sterns, as if hi these western
seas, be the nominal dominion British, French, or Spanish,
the American has a voice also and intends to be heard.
We had no sooner anchored than a well-appointed
boat was alongside with an awning and an ensign at the
stern. Colonel , the chief of the police, to whom
it belonged, came on board in search of Miss , who
was to be his guest in Bridgetown. She introduced me
to him. He insisted on my accompanying him home
to breakfast, and, as he was a person in authority, I had
nothing to do but obey. Colonel , to whose politeness
then and afterwards I was in many ways indebted, had seen
life in various forms* He had been in the navy. He had
been in the army. He had been called to the bar. He
was now the head of the Barbadoes police, with this
anomalous addition to his other duties, that in default of
a chaplain he read the Church service on Sundays in
the barracks. He had even a licence from the bishop to
preach sermons, and being a man of fine character and
original sense he discharged this last function, I was told,
remarkably well. His house was in the heart of the town,
but shaded with tropical trees. The rooms were protected
by deep outside galleries, which were overrun with Bougain-
villier creepers. He was himself the kindest of entertainers,
his Irish lady the kindest of hostesses, with the humorous
high breeding of the old Sligo aristocracy, to whom she
belonged. I found that I had been acquainted with some
of her kindred there long ago, in the days when the Anglo-
Irish rule had not been discovered to be a upas tree, and
cultivated human life was still possible in Connaught.
Of the breakfast, which consisted of all the West Indian
dainties I had ever heard or read of, I can say nothing,
nor of the pleasant talk which followed. I was to see more
THE CONSTITUTION OF BARBADOES 103
of Colonel - , for he offered to drive me some day across
the island, a promise which he punctually fulfilled. My
stay with him for the present could be but brief, as I was
expected at Government House.
I have met with exceptional hospitality from the gover-
nors of British colonies in many parts of the world. They
are not chosen like the Roman proconsuls from the ranks of
trained statesmen who have held high administrative offices
at home. They are appointed, as I said just now, from
various motives, sometimes with a careful regard to fitness
for their post, sometimes with a regard merely to routine or
convenience or to personal influence brought to bear in their
favour. I have myself seen some for whom I should have
thought other employment would have been more suitable ;
but always and everywhere those that I have fallen in with
have been men of honour and integrity above reproach or
suspicion, and I have met with one or two gentlemen in these
situations whose admirable qualities it is impossible to praise
too highly, who in their complicated responsibilities respon-
sibilities to the colonies and responsibilities to the authorities
at home have considered conscience and duty to be their
safest guides, have cared only to do what they believed to
be right to the best of their ability, and have left their
interests to take care of themselves.
The Governor of Barbadoes is not despotic. He controls
the administration, but there is a constitution as old as the
Stuarts; an Assembly of thirty-three members, nine of whom
the Crown nominates, the rest are elected. The friction
is not so violent as when the number of the nominated
and elected members is equal, and as long as a property
qualification was required for the franchise, the system may
have worked tolerably without producing any violent mis-
chief. There have been recent modifications, however,
pointing in the same direction as those which have been
made in Jamaica. By an ordinance from home the suffrage
104 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
has been widely extended, obviously as a step to larger
intended changes.
Under such conditions and with an uncertain future a
governor can do little save lead and influence, entertain
visitors, discharge the necessary courtesies to all classes of
his subjects, and keep his eyes open. These duties at least
Sir Charles Lees discharges to perfection, the entertaining
part of them on a scale so liberal that if Pere Labat carne back
he would suppose that the two hundred years which have
gone by since his visit was a dream, and that Government
House at least was still as he left it. In an establishment
which had so many demands upon it, and where so many
visitors of all kinds were going and coming, I had no claim
to be admitted. I felt that I should be an intruder, and had
I been allowed would have taken myself elsewhere, but Sir
Charles's peremptory generosity admitted of no refusal. As
a subject I was bound to submit to the Queen's representa-
tive. I cannot say I was sorry to be compelled. In
Government House I should see and hear what I could
neither have seen nor heard elsewhere. I should meet
people who could tell me what I most wanted to know. I
had understood already that owing to the sugar depression
the state of the island was critical. Officials were alarmed.
Bankers were alarmed. No one could see beyond the next
year what was likely to happen. Sir Charles himself would
have most to say. He was evidently anxious. Perhaps if
he had a fault, he was over anxious ; but with the possi-
bility of social confusion before him, with nearly 200,000
peasant subjects, who in a few months might be out of work
and so out of food, with the inflammable negro nature, and
a suspicious and easily excited public opinion at home, the
position of a Governor of Barbadoes is not an enviable one.
The Government at home, no doubt with the best intentions,
has aggravated any peril which there may be by enlarging
the suffrage. The experience of Governor Eyre in Jamaica
SOCIAL CONDITION 105
has taught the danger of being too active, but to be too
inactive may be dangerous also. If there is a stir again in
any part of these islands, and violence and massacre come of
it, as it came in St. Domingo, the responsibility is with the
governor, and the account will be strictly exacted of him.
I must describe more particularly the reasons which
there are for uneasiness. On the day on which I landed I
saw an article in a Bridgetown paper in which my coming
there was spoken of as perhaps the last straw which would
break the overburdened back. I know not why I should be
thought likely to add anything to the load of Barbadian
afflictions. I should be a worse friend to the colonies than
I have tried to be if I was one of those who would quench
the smoking flax of loyalty in any West Indian heart. But
loyalty, I very well know, is sorely tried just now. The
position is painfully simple. The great prosperity of the
island ended with emancipation. Barbadoes suffered less
than Jamaica or the Antilles because the population was
large and the land limited, and the blacks were obliged to
work to keep themselves alive. The abolition of the sugar
duties was the next blow. The price of sugar fell, and the
estates yielded little more than the expense of cultivation.
Owners of properties who were their own managers, and had
sense and energy, continued to keep themselves afloat ; but
absenteeism had become the fashion. The brilliant society
which is described by Labat had been melting for more
than a century. More and more the old West Indian
families removed to England, farmed their lands through
agents and overseers, or sold them to speculating capitalists.
The personal influence of the white man over the black,
which might have been brought about by a friendly inter-
course after slavery was abolished, was never so much as
attempted. The higher class of gentry found the colony
more and more distasteful to them, and they left the ar-
rangement of the labour question to persons to whom the
106 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
blacks were nothing, emancipated though they might be,,
except instruments of production. A negro can be attached
to his employer at least as easily as a horse or a dog.
The horse or dog requires kind treatment, or he becomes
indifferent or sullen; so it is with the negro. But the
forced equality of the races before the law made more dim-
cult the growth of any kindly feeling. To the overseer on
a plantation the black labourer was a machine out of
which the problem was to get the maximum of work with
the minimum of pay. In the slavery tunes the horse and
dog relation was a real thing. The master and mistress
joked and laughed with their dark bondsmen, knew Caesar
from Pompey, knew how many children each had, gave
them small presents, cared for them when they were sick,
and maintained them when they were old and past work.
All this ended with emancipation. Between whites and
blacks no relations remained save that of employer and
employed. They lived apart. They had no longer, save
in exceptional instances, any personal communication with
each other. The law refusing to recognise a difference, the
social line was drawn the harder, which the law was unable
to reach.
In the Antilles, the plantations broke up as I had seen
in Grenada. The whites went away, and the land was
divided among the negroes. In Barbadoes, the estates
were kept together. The English character and the English
habits were printed deeper there, and were not so easily
obliterated. But the stars in their courses have fought
against the old system. Once the West Indies had a mono-
poly of the sugar trade. Steam and progress have given
them a hundred natural competitors ; and on the back of
these came the unnatural bounty-fed beetroot sugar com-
petition. Meanwhile the expense of living increased in the
days of inflated hope and ' unexampled prosperity.' Free
trade, whatever its immediate consequences, was to make
DANGERS OF BANKRUPTCY 107
everyone rich in the end. When the income of an estate
fell short one year, it was to rise in the next, and money
was borrowed to make ends meet ; when it didn't rise, more
money was borrowed ; and there is now hardly a property
in the island which is not loaded to the sinking point. Tied
to sugar-growing, Barbadoes has no second industry to fall
back upon. The blacks, who are heedless and light-hearted,
increase and multiply. They will not emigrate, they are
so much attached to their homes ; and the not distant pros-
pect is of a general bankruptcy, which will throw the land
for the moment out of cultivation, with a hungry unem-
ployed multitude to feed without means of feeding them,
and to control without the personal acquaintance and
influence which alone can make control possible.
At home there is a general knowledge that things are
not going on well out there. But, true to our own ways of
thinking, we regard it as their affair and not as ours. If
cheap sugar ruins the planters, it benefits the English work-
man. The planters had their innings ; it is now the con-
sumer's turn. What are the West Indies to us ? On the
map they appear to belong more to the United States than
to us. Let the United States take them and welcome.
So thinks, perhaps, the average Englishman; and, analogous
to him, the West Indian proprietor reflects that, if admitted
into the Union, he would have the benefit of the American
market, which would set him on his feet again ; and that
the Americans, probably finding that they, if not we, could
make some profit out of the islands, would be likely to
settle the black question for him in a more satisfactory
manner.
That such a feeling as this should exist is natural and
pardonable ; and it would have gone deeper than it has gone
if it were not that there are two parties to every bargain,
and those in favour of such a union have met hitherto with
no encouragement. The Americans are wise in their gene-
io8 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
ration. They looked at Cuba ; they looked at St. Domingo.
They might have had both on easy terms, but they tell you
that their constitution does not allow them to hold depen-
dent states. What they annex they absorb, and they did
not wish to absorb another million and a half of blacks
and as many Eoman Catholics, having enough already of
both. Our English islands may be more tempting, but
there too the black cloud hangs thick and grows yearly
thicker, and through English indulgence is more charged
with dangerous elements. Already, they say, they have
every advantage which the islands can give them. They
exercise a general protectorate, and would probably interfere
if France or England were to attempt again to extend their
dominions in that quarter ; but they prefer to leave to the
present owners the responsibility of managing and feeding
the cow, while they are to have the milking of it.
Thus the proposal of annexation, which has never gone
beyond wishes and talk, has so far been coldly received ; but
the Americans did make their offer a short time since, at
which the drowning Barbadians grasped as at a floating
plank. England would give them no hand to save them
from the effects of the beetroot bounties. The Americans
were willing to relax their own sugar duties to admit West
Indian sugar duty free, and give them the benefit of their
own high prices. The colonies being unable to make
treaties for themselves, the proposal was referred home and
was rejected. The Board of Trade had, no doubt, excellent
reasons for objecting to an arrangement which would have
flung our whole commerce with the West Indies into
American hands, and might have formed a prelude to a
closer attachment. It would have been a violation also of
those free-trade principles which are the English political
gospel. Moreover, our attitude towards our colonies has
changed, too, in the last twenty years ; we now wish to
preserve the attachment of communities whom a generation
EFFECTS OF THE SUGAR BOUNTIES 109
back we should have told to do as they liked, and have
bidden them God speed upon their way ; and this treaty may
have been regarded as a step towards separation. But the
unfortunate Barbadians found themselves, with the harbour
in sight, driven out again into the free-trade hurricane.
We would not help them ourselves ; we declined to let the
Americans help them ; and help themselves they could
not. They dare not resent our indifference to their in-
terests, which, if they were stronger, would have been more
visibly displayed. They must wait now for what the future
will bring with as much composure as they can command,
but I did hear outcries of impatience to which it was
unpleasant to listen. Nay, it was even suggested as a
means of inducing the Americans to forego their reluctance
to take them into the Union, that we might relinquish such
rights as we possessed in Canada if the Americans would
relieve us of the West Indies, for which we appeared to care
so little.
If Barbadoes is driven into bankruptcy, the estates will
have to be sold, and will probably be broken up as they
have been in the Antilles. The first difficulty will thus be
got over. But the change cannot be carried out in a day.
If wages suddenly cease, the negroes will starve, and will
not take their starvation patiently. At the worst, however,
means will probably be found to keep the land from falling
out of cultivation. The Barbadians see their condition in
the light of their grievances, and make the worst of it.
The continental powers may tire of the bounty system,
or something else may happen to make sugar rise. The
prospect is not a bright one, but what actually happens in
this world is generally the unexpected.
As a visit my stay at Government House was made
simply delightful to me. I remained there (with interrup-
tions) for a fortnight, and Lady L - did not only permit,
but she insisted that I should be as if in an hotel, and come
no THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
and go as I liked. The climate of Barbadoes, so far as I
can speak of it, is as sparkling and invigorating as cham-
pagne. Cocktail may be wanted in Trinidad. In Barba-
does the air is all one asks for, and between night breezes
and sea breezes one has plenty of it. Day begins with
daylight, as it ought to do. You have slept without know-
ing anything about it. There are no venomous crawling
creatures. Cockroaches are the worst, but they scuttle out
of the way so alarmed and ashamed of themselves if you
happen to see them, that I never could bring myself to hurt
one. You spring out of bed as if the process of getting
up were actually pleasant. Well-appointed West Indian
houses are generally provided with a fresh-water swimming
bath. Though cold by courtesy the water seldom falls
below 65, and you float luxuriously upon it without dread
of chill. The early coffee follows the bath, and then the
stroll under the big trees, among strange flowers, or in
the grotto with the ferns and humming birds. If it
were part of one's regular life, I suppose that one would
want something to do. Sir Charles was the most active of
men, and had been busy in his office for an hour before I
had come down to lounge. But for myself I discovered
that it was possible, at least for an interval, to be perfectly
idle and perfectly happy, surrounded by the daintiest
beauties of an English hothouse, with palm trees waving
like fans to cool one, and with sensitive plants, which are
common as daisies, strewing themselves under one's feet
to be trodden upon.
After breakfast the heat would be considerable, but with
an umbrella I could walk about the town and see what was
to be seen. Alas ! here one has something to desire. Where
Pere Labat saw a display of splendour which reminded him of
Paris and London, you now find only stores on the American
pattern, for the most part American goods, bad in quality
and extravagantly dear. Treaty or no treaty, it is to
THE HALL OF THE ASSEMBLY in
America that the trade is drifting, and we might as well
concede with a good grace what must soon come of itself
whether we like it or not. The streets are relieved from
ugliness by the trees and by occasional handsome buildings.
Often I stood to admire the pea-green Nelson. Once I
went into the Assembly where the legislature was discussing
more or less unquietly the prospects of the island. The
question of the hour was economy. In the opinion of
patriot Barbadians, sore at the refusal of the treaty, the
readiest way to reduce expenditure was to diminish the
salaries of officials from the governor downwards. The
officials, knowing that they were very moderately paid
already, naturally demurred. The most interesting part of
the thing to me was the hall in which the proceedings were
going on. It is handsome in itself, and has a series of
painted windows representing the English sovereigns from
James I. to Queen Victoria. Among them in his proper
place stood Oliver Cromwell, the only formal recognition of
the great Protector that I know of in any part of the
English dominions. Barbadoes had been Cavalier in its
general sympathies, but has taken an independent view of
things, and here too has had an opinion of its own.
Hospitality was always a West Indian characteristic.
There were luncheons and dinners, and distinguished per-
sons to be met and talked to. Among these I had the special
good fortune of making acquaintance with Sir Charles
Pearson, now commanding-in-chief in those parts. Even in
these days, crowded as they are by small incidents made
large by newspapers, we have not yet forgotten the defence of
a fort in the interior of Zululand where Sir Charles Pearson
and his small garrison were cut off from their communica-
tions with Natal. For a week or two he was the chief object
of interest in every English house. In obedience to orders
which it was not his business to question, he had assisted
Sir T. Shepstone in the memorable annexation of the
ii2 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
Transvaal. He had seen also to what that annexation led,
and, being a truth-speaking man, he did not attempt to con-
ceal the completeness of our defeat. Our military establish-
ment in the West Indies is of modest dimensions ; but a
strong English soldier, who says little and does his duty, and
never told a lie in his life or could tell one, is a comforting
figure to fall in with. One feels that there will be some-
thing to retire upon when parliamentary oratory has finished
its work of disintegration.
The pleasantest incident of the day was the evening drive
with Lady L . She would take me out shortly before
sunset, and bring me back again when the tropical stars were
showing faintly and the fireflies had begun to sparkle about
the bushes, and the bats were flitting to and fro after the
night moths like spirits of darkness chasing human souls.
The neighbourhood of Bridgetown has little natural
beauty ; but the roads are excellent, the savannah pic-
turesque with riding parties and polo players and loung-
ing red jackets, every one being eager to pay his or her
respect to the gracious lady of the Queen's representative.
We called at pretty villas where there would be evening
teas and lawn tennis in the cool. The society is not exten-
sive, and here would be collected most of it that was worth
meeting. At one of these parties I fell in with the officers
of the American squadron, the commodore a very in-
teresting and courteous gentleman whom I should have
taken for a fellow-countryman. There are many diamonds,
and diamonds of the first water, among the Americans as
among ourselves ; but the cutting and setting is different.
Commodore D was cut and set like an Englishman.
He introduced me to one of his brother officers who had
been in Hayti. Spite of Sir Spencer St. John, spite of all
the confirmatory evidence which I had heard, I was still
incredulous about the alleged cannibalism there. To my
inquiries this gentleman had only the same answer to
A MORNING DRIVE 113
give. The fact was beyond question. He had himself
known instances of it.
The commodore had a grievance against us illustrating
West Indian manners. These islands are as nervous about
their health as so many old ladies. The yellow flags float
on ship after ship in the Bridgetown roadstead, and crews,
passengers, and cargoes are sternly interdicted from the
land. Jamaica was in ill name from small-pox, and, as
Cuba will not drop its intercourse with Jamaica, Cuba falls
also under the ban. The commodore had directed a case
of cigars from Havana to meet him at Barbadoes. They
arrived, but might not be transferred from the steamer
which brought them, even on board his own frigate, lest he
might bring infection on shore in his cigar case. They
went on to England, to reach him perhaps eventually in
New York.
Colonel 's duties, as chief of the police, obliged him
to make occasional rounds to visit his stations. He re-
collected his promise, and he invited me one morning to
accompany him. We were to breakfast at his house on
our return, so I anticipated an excursion of a few miles at
the utmost. He called for me soon after sunrise with a
light carriage and a brisk pair of horses. We were rapidly
clear of the town. The roads were better than the best I
have seen out of England, the only fault in them being the
white coral dust which dazzles and blinds the eyes. Every-
where there were signs of age and of long occupation. The
stone steps leading up out of the road to the doors of the
houses had been worn by human feet for hundreds of years.
The houses themselves were old, and as if suffering from
the universal depression gates broken, gardens disordered,
.and woodwork black and blistered for want of paint. But
if the habitations were neglected, there was no neglect in
the fields. Sugar cane alternated with sweet potatoes and
jams and other strange things the names of which I heard
i
ii4 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
and forgot ; but there was not a weed to be seen or broken
fence where fence was needed. The soil was clean, every
inch of it, as well hoed and trenched as in a Middlesex
market garden. Salt fish and flour, which is the chief food
of the blacks, is imported ; but vegetables enough are
raised in Barbadoes to keep the cost of living incredibly
low ; and, to my uninstructed eyes, it seemed that even if
sugar and wages did fail there could be no danger of any
sudden famine. The people were thick as rabbits in a
warren ; women with loaded baskets on their heads laugh-
ing and chirruping, men driving donkey carts, four donkey*
abreast, smoking their early pipes as if they had not a
care in the world, as, indeed, they have not.
On we went, the Colonel's horses stepping out twelve
miles an hour, and I wondered privately what was to-
become of our breakfast. "We were striking right across
the island, along the coral ridge which forms the backbone
of it. We found ourselves at length in a grove of orange
trees and shaddocks, at the old church of St. John's, which
stands upon a perpendicular cliff; Codrington College on
the level under our feet, and beyond us the open Atlantic
and the everlasting breakers from the trade winds fringing
the shore with foam. Far out were the white sails of the
fishing smacks. The Barbadians are careless of weather,
and the best of boat sailors. It was very pretty in the
bright morning, and the church itself was not the least
interesting part of the scene. The door was wide open.
We went in, and I seemed to be in a parish church in
England as parish churches used to be when I was a child.
There were the old-fashioned seats, the old unadorned
communion table, the old pulpit and reading desk and the
clerk's desk below, with the lion and the unicorn conspicu-
ous above the chancel arch. The white tablets on the wall
bore familiar names dating back into the last century. On
the floor were flagstones still older with armorial bearings and
ST. JOHN'S CHURCH 115
letters cut in stone, half effaced by the feet of the genera-
tions who had trodden up the same aisles till they, too, lay
down and rested there. And there was this, too, to be
remembered that these Barbadian churches, old as they
might seem, had belonged always to the Anglican com-
munion. No mass had ever been said at that altar. It
was a milestone on the high road of time, and was venerable
to me at once for its antiquity and for the era at which it
had begun to exist.
At the porch was an ancient slab on which was a coat of
arms, a crest with a hand and sword, and a motto, ' Sic
nos, sic nostra tuemur.' The inscription said that it was
in memory of Michael Mahon, ' of the kingdom of Ireland,'
erected by his children and grandchildren. Who was
Michael Mahon ? Some expatriated, so-called rebel, I sup-
pose, whose sword could not defend him from being
Barbados'd with so many other poor wretches who were
sent the same road victims of the tragi-comedy of the
English government of Ireland. There were plenty of them
wandering about in Labat's time, ready, as Labat observes,
to lend a help to the French, should they take a fancy to
land a force in the island.
The churchyard was scarcely so home-like. The graves
were planted with tropical shrubs and flowers. Palms
waved over the square stone monuments stephanotis and
jessamine crept about the iron railings. The primroses
and hyacinths and violets, with which we dress the mounds
under which our friends are sleeping, will not grow in the
tropics. In the place of them are the exotics of our hot-
houses. We too are, perhaps, exotics of another kind in
these islands, and may not, after all, have a long abiding
place in them.
Colonel , who with his secular duties combined
serious and spiritual feeling, was a friend of the clergyman
of St. John's, and hoped to introduce me to him. This
i 2
n6 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
gentleman, however, was absent from home. Our round
was still but half completed ; we had to mount again and
go another seven miles to inspect a police station. The
police themselves were, of course, blacks well-grown fine
men, in a high state of discipline. Our visit was not
expected, but all was as it should be ; the rooms well swept
and airy, the horses in good condition, stable clean, harness
and arms polished and ready for use. Serious as might be
the trials of the Barbadians and decrepit the financial con-
dition, there were no symptoms of neglect either on the
farms or in the social machinery.
Altogether we drove between thirty and forty miles that
morning. We were in time for breakfast after all, and I
had seen half the island. It is like the Isle of Thanet, or
the country between Calais and Boulogne. One character-
istic feature must not be forgotten : there are no rivers
and no waterpower ; steam engines have been introduced,
but the chief motive agent is still the never-ceasing
trade wind. You see windmills everywhere, as it was in
the time of Labat. The planters are reproached as being
behind the age ; they are told that with the latest improve-
ments they might still defy their beetroot enemy. It may
be so, but a wind which never rests is a force which costs
little, and it is possible that they understand their own
business best.
Another morning excursion showed me the rest of the
country, and introduced me to scenes and persons still more
interesting. Sir Graham Briggs l is perhaps the most dis-
tinguished representative of the old Barbadian families.
He is, or was, a man of large fortune, with vast estates in
this and other islands. A few years ago, when prospects
were brighter, he was an advocate of the constitutional
1 As I correct the proofs I learn, to my great sorrow, that Sir Graham
is dead. I have lost in him a lately made but valued friend ; and the colony
has lost the ablest of its legislators.
SIX GRAHAM BRIGGS 117
development so much recommended from England. The
West Indian Islands were to be confederated into a dominion
like that of Canada, to take over the responsibilities of
government, and to learn to stand alone. The decline in the
value of property, the general decay of the white interest
in the islands, and the rapid increase of the blacks, taught
those who at one time were ready for the change what the
real nature of it would be. They have paused to consider ;
and the longer they consider the less they like it.
Sir Graham had called upon me at Government House,
and had spoken fully and freely about the offered American
sugar treaty. As a severe sufferer he was naturally irri-
tated at the rejection of it ; and in the mood in which I
found him, I should think it possible that if the Americans
would hold their hands out with an offer of admission into
the Union, he and a good many other gentlemen would
meet them halfway. He did not say so I conjecture only
from natural probabilities, and from what I should feel
myself if I were in their position. Happily the temptation
cannot fall in their way. An American official laconically
summed up the situation to me : ' As satellites, sir, as much
as you please; but as part of the primary no, sir.' The
Americans will not take them into the Union ; they must
remain, therefore, with their English primary and make
the best of it ; neither as satellites, for they have no proper
motion of their own, nor as incorporated in the British
Empire, for they derive no benefit from their connection
with it, but as poor relations distantly acknowledged. I
did not expect that Sir Graham w T ould have more to say to
me than he had said already; but he was a cultivated
and noteworthy person, his house was said to be the
most splendid of the old Barbadian merchant palaces,
and I gratefully accepted an invitation to pay him a short
visit.
I started as before in the early morning, before the sun
n8 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
was above the trees. The road followed the line of the
shore. Originally, I believe, Barbadoes was like the Antilles,
covered with forest. In the interior little remains save
cabbage palms and detached clumps of mangy-looking
mahogany trees. The forest is gone, and human beings
have taken the place of it. For ten miles I was driving
through a string of straggling villages, each cottage or
cabin having its small vegetable garden and clump of
plantains. Being on the western or sheltered side of the
island, the sea was smooth and edged with mangrove,
through which at occasional openings we saw the shining
water and the white coral beach, and fishing boats either
drawn up upon it or anchored outside with their sails
up. Trees had been planted for shade among the houses.
There were village greens with great silk-cotton trees,
banyans and acacias, mangoes and oranges, and shad-
docks with their large fruit glowing among the leaves
like great golden melons. The people swarmed, children
tumbling about half naked, so like each other that one
wondered whether their mothers knew their own from their
neighbours' ; the fishermen's wives selling flying fish, of
which there are infinite numbers. It was an innocent,
pretty scene. One missed green fields with cows upon
them. Guinea grass, which is all that they have, makes
excellent fodder, but is ugly to look at; and is cut and
carried, not eaten where it grows. Of animal life there were
innumerable donkeys no black man will walk if he can find
a donkey to carry him infinite poultry, and pigs, familiar
enough, but not allowed a free entry into the cabins as in
Ireland. Of birds there was not any great variety. The
humming birds preferred less populated quarters. There
were small varieties of finches and sparrows and buntings,
winged atoms without beauty of form or colour ; there were
a few wild pigeons ; but the prevailing figure was the Bar-
badian crow, a little fellow no bigger than a blackbird, a
NEGRO WOMEN u 9
diminutive jackdaw, who gets his living upon worms and
insects and parasites, and so tame that he would perch upon
a boy's head if he saw a chance of finding anything eatable
there. The women dress ill in Barbadoes, for they imitate
English ladies ; but no dress can conceal the grace of their
forms when they are young. It struck Pere Labat two
centuries ago, and time and their supposed sufferings as
slaves have made no difference. They work harder than
the men, and are used as beasts of burden to fetch and
carry, but they carry their loads on their heads, and thus
from childhood have to stand upright with the neck straight
and firm. They do not spoil their shapes with stays, or
their walk with high-heeled shoes. They plant their feet
firmly on the ground. Every movement is elastic and
rounded, and the grace of body gives, or seems to give,
grace also to the eyes and expression. Poor things ! it can-
not compensate for their colour, which now when they are
free is harder to bear than when they were slaves. Their
prettiness, such as it is, is short-lived. They grow old
early, and an old negress is always hideous.
After keeping by the sea for an hour we turned inland,
and at the foot of a steep hill we met my host, who trans-
ferred me to his own carriage. We had still four or five
miles to go through cane fields and among sugar mills. At
the end of them we came to a grand avenue of cabbage
palms, a hundred or a hundred and twenty feet high. How
their slim stems with their dense coronet of leaves survive
a hurricane is one of the West Indian marvels. They
escape destruction by the elasticity with which they yield
to it. The branches which in a calm stand out symmetri-
cally, forming a circle of which the stem is the exact centre,
bend round before a violent wind, are pressed close together,
and stream out horizontally like a horse's tail.
The avenue led up to Sir Graham's house, which stands
800 feet above the sea. The garden, once the wonder of the
i2o THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
island, was running wild, though rare trees and shrub&
survived from its ancient splendour. Among them were twa
Wellingtonias as tall as the palms, but bent out of shape by
the trade winds. Passing through a hall, among a litter of
Carib curiosities, we entered the drawing room, a magnifi-
cent saloon extending with various compartments over the
greater part of the ground-floor story. It was filled with
rare and curious things, gathered in the days when sugar
was a horn of plenty, and selected with the finest taste ;
pictures, engravings, gems, antiquarian relics, books, maps,
and manuscripts. There had been fine culture in the West
Indies when all these treasures were collected. The English
settlers there, like the English in Ireland, had the tastes of
a grand race, and by-and-by we shall miss both of them
when they are overwhelmed, as they are likely to be, in
the revolutionary tide. Sir Graham was stemming it to the
best of his ability, and if he was to go under would go
under like a gentleman. A dining room almost as large
had once been the scene of hospitalities like those which are
celebrated by Tom Cringle. A broad staircase led up from
the hall to long galleries, out of which bedrooms opened ;
with cool deep balconies and the universal green blinds.
It was a palace with which Aladdin himself might have
been satisfied, one of those which had stirred the envying
admiration of foreign travellers in the last century, one
of many then, now probably the last surviving representa-
tive of Anglo- West Indian civilisation. Like other forms
of human life, it has had its day and could not last for ever.
Something better may grow in the place of it, but also
something worse may grow. The example of Hayti ought
to suggest misgivings to the most ardent philo-negro
enthusiast.
West Indian cookery was famous over the world. Pere
Labat devotes at least a thousand pages to the dishes com-
pounded of the spices and fruits of the islands, and their
SOCIAL REVOLUTION 121
fish and fowl. Carib tradition was developed by artists
from London and Paris. The Caribs, according to
Labat, only ate one another for ceremony and on state
occasions ; their common diet was as excellent as it
was innocent ; and they had ascertained by careful expe-
rience the culinary and medicinal virtues of every animal
and plant around them. Tom Cringle is eloquent on the
same subject, but with less scientific knowledge. My own
unfortunately is less than his, and I can do no justice
at all to Sir Graham's entertainment of me ; I can but say
that he treated me to a West Indian banquet of the old
sort, infinite in variety, and with subtle differences of
flavour for which no language provides names. The wine
laid up consule Planco, when Pitt was prime minister,
and the days of liberty as yet were not was as admirable
as the dishes, and the fruit more exquisite than either.
Such pineapples, such shaddocks, I had never tasted before,
and shall never taste again.
Hospitable, generous, splendid as was Sir Graham's re-
ception of me, it was nevertheless easy to see that the
prospects of the island sat heavy upon him. We had a
long conversation when breakfast was over, which, if it
added nothing new to what I had heard before, deepened
and widened the impression of it.
The English West Indies, like other parts of the world,
are going through a silent revolution. Elsewhere the
revolution, as we hope, is a transition state, a new birth ; a
passing away of what is old and worn out, that a fresh and
healthier order may rise in its place. In the West Indies
the most sanguine of mortals will find it difficult to enter-
tain any such hope at all. We have been a ruling power
there for two hundred and fifty years ; the whites whom
we planted as our representatives are* drifting into ruin,
and they regard England and England's policy as the prin-
cipal cause of it. The blacks whom, in a fit of virtuous
i22 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
benevolence, we emancipated, do not feel that they are par-
ticularly obliged to us. They think, if they think at all,
that they were ill treated originally, and have received no
more than was due to them, and that perhaps it was not
benevolence at all on our part, but a desire to free ourselves
from the reproach of slaveholding. At any rate, the tenden-
cies now in operation are loosening the hold which we possess
on the islands, and the longer they last the looser that hold
will become. French influence is in no danger of dying out
in Martinique and Guadaloupe. The Spanish race is not
dying in Cuba and Puerto Eico. England will soon be no
more than a name in Barbadoes and the Antilles. Having
acquitted our conscience by emancipation, we have left our
West Indian interest to sink or swim. Our principle has been
to leave each part of our empire (except the East Indies) to
take care of itself : we give the various inhabitants liberty,
and what we understand by fair play ; that we have any
further moral responsibilities towards them we do not
imagine, even in our dreams, when they have ceased to be
of commercial importance to us; and we assume that the
honour of being British subjects will suffice to secure their
allegiance. It will not suffice, as we shall eventually dis-
cover. We have decided that if the West Indies are to
become again prosperous they must recover by their own
energy. Our other colonies can do without help ; why not
they ? We ought to remember that they are not like the
other colonies. We occupied them at a time when slavery
was considered a lawful institution, profitable to ourselves
and useful to the souls of the negroes, who were brought by
it within reach of salvation. 1 We became ourselves the
1 It was on this ground alone that slavery was permitted in the French
islands. Labat says :
' C'est une loi tres-ancienne que les terres soumises aux rois de France
rendent libres tous ceux qui s'y peuvent retirer. C'est ce qui fit que le roi
Louis XIII, de glorieuse inemoire, aussi pieux qu'il dtoit sage, eut toutes les
peines du monde a consentir que les premiers habitants des isles eussent
WEST INDIAN CONFEDERATION 123
chief slave dealers in the world. We peopled our islands
with a population of blacks more dense by far in proportion
to the whites than France or Spain ever ventured to do.
We did not recognise, as the French and Spaniards did,
that if our western colonies were permanently to belong to
us, we must occupy them ourselves. We thought only of
the immediate profit which was to be gathered out of the
.slave gangs ; and the disproportion of the two races always
dangerously large has increased with ever-gathering velo-
city since the emancipation. It is now beyond control on
the old lines. The scanty whites are told that they must
work out their own salvation on equal terms with their
old servants. The relation is an impossible one. The in-
dependent energy which we may fairly look for in Australia
and New Zealand is not to be looked for in Jamaica and
Barbadoes ; and the problem must have a new solution.
Confederation is to be the remedy, we are told. Let the
islands be combined under a constitution. The whites
collectively will then be a considerable body, and can assert
themselves successfully. Confederation is, as I said before
of the movement in Trinidad, but a turn of the kaleidoscope,
the same pieces with a new pattern. A West Indian self-
governed Dominion is possible only with a full negro vote.
If the whites are to combine, so will the blacks. It will be
a rule by the blacks and for the blacks. Let a generation
or two pass by and carry away with them the old tradi-
tions, and an English governor-general will be found pre-
siding over a black council, delivering the speeches made for
him by a black prime minister ; and how long could this
endure ? No English gentleman would consent to occupy
<les esclaves : et ne se rendit enfin qu'aux pressantes solicitations qu'on luy
faisoit de leur octroyer cette permission que parce qu'on lui remontra que
c'6toit un moyen infaillible et 1'unique qu'il y eut pour inspirer le culte du
vrai Dieu aux Africains, les retirer de 1'idolatrie, et les faire perse"verer
jusqu'a la mort dans la religion chr6tienne qu'on leur feroit embrasser.'
Vol. iv. p. 14.
124 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
so absurd a situation. The two races are not equal and will
not blend. If the white people do not depart of themselves,
black legislation will make it impossible for any of them to-
stay who would not be better out of the way. The Anglo-
Irish Protestants will leave Ireland if there is an Irish
Catholic parliament in College Green ; the whites, for the
same reason, will leave the West Indies ; and in one and
the other the connection with the British Empire will dis-
appear along with them. It must be so ; only politicians
whose horizon does not extend beyond their personal future,
and whose ambition is only to secure the immediate triumph
of their party, can expect anything else.
Before my stay at Barbadoes ended, I had an oppor-
tunity of meeting at dinner a negro of pure blood who has
risen to eminence by his own talent and character. He
has held the office of attorney-general. He is now chief
justice of the island. Exceptions are supposed proverbially
to prove nothing, or to prove the opposite of what they
appear to prove. When a particular phenomenon occurs
rarely, the probabilities are strong against the recurrence
of it. Having heard the craniological and other objections
to the supposed identity of the negro and white races, I
came to the opinion long ago in Africa, and I have seen no
reason to change it, that whether they are of one race or
not there is no original or congenital difference of capacity
between them, any more than there is between a black
horse and a black dog and a white horse and a white dog.
With the same chances and with the same treatment,
I believe that distinguished men would be produced equally
from both races, and Mr. 's well-earned success i&
an additional evidence of it. But it does not follow that
what can be done eventually can be done immediately, and
the gulf which divides the colours is no arbitrary prejudice,,
but has been opened by the centuries of training and dis-
cipline which have given us the start in the race. We set
HISTORY OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 125
it down to slavery. It would be far truer to set it down to
freedom. The African blacks have been free enough for
thousands, perhaps for tens of thousands of years, and it
lias been the absence of restraint which has prevented them
from becoming civilised. Generation has followed genera-
tion, and the children are as like their father as the suc-
cessive generations of apes. The whites, it is likely enough,
succeeded one another with the same similarity for a long
series of ages. It is now supposed that the human race
has been upon the planet for a hundred thousand years at
least, and the first traces of civilisation cannot be thrown
back at farthest beyond six thousand. During all those
ages mankind went on treading in the same steps, century
after century making no more advance than the birds and
beasts. In Egypt or in India or one knows not where,
accident or natural development quickened into life our
moral and intellectual faculties ; and these faculties have
grown into what we now experience, not in the freedom in
which the modern takes delight, but under the sharp rule
of the strong over the weak, of the wise over the unwise.
Our own Anglo-Norman race has become capable of self-
government only after a thousand years of civil and spiritual
authority. European government, European instruction,
continued steadily till his natural tendencies are superseded
by a higher instinct, may shorten the probation period of
the negro. Individual blacks of exceptional quality, like
Frederick Douglas in America, or the Chief Justice of Bar-
badoes, will avail themselves of opportunities to rise, and
the freest opportunities ought to be offered them. But it
is as certain as any future event can be that if we give the
negroes as a body the political powers which we claim for
ourselves, they will use them only to their own injury.
They will slide back into their old condition, and the chance
will be gone of lifting them to the level to which we have
no right to say that they are incapable of rising.
126 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
Chief Justice K owes his elevation to his English
environment and his English legal training. He would
not pretend that he could have made himself what he is in
Hayti or in Dahomey. Let English authority die away,
and the average black nature, such as it now is, be left free
to assert itself, and there will be no more negroes like him
in Barbadoes or anywhere.
Naturally, I found him profoundly interested in the
late revelations of the state of Hayti. Sir Spenser St. John,
an English official, after residing for twelve years in Port
au Prince, had in a published narrative with many details
and particulars, declared that the republic of Toussaint
1'Ouverture, the idol of all believers in the new gospel of
liberty, had, after ninety years of independence, become a
land where cannibalism could be practised with impunity.
The African Obeah, the worship of serpents and trees and
stones, after smouldering in all the West Indies in the form
of witchcraft and poisoning, had broken out in Hayti in all
its old hideousness. Children were sacrificed as in the old
days of Moloch and were devoured with horrid ceremony,
salted limbs being preserved and sold for the benefit of
those who were unable to attend the full solemnities.
That a man in the position of a British resident should
have ventured on a statement which, if untrue, would be
ruinous to himself, appeared in a high degree improbable.
Yet one had to set one incredibility against another. Not-
withstanding the character of the evidence, when I went out
to the West Indies I was still unbelieving. I could not
bring myself to credit that in an island nominally Catholic,
where the French language was spoken, and there were
cathedrals and churches and priests and missionaries, so
horrid a revival of devil-worship could have been really
possible. All the inquiries which I had been able to make,
from American and other officers who had been in Hayti,
confirmed Sir S. St. John's story. I had hardly found a
CANNIBALISM IN HAYTI 127
person who entertained a doubt of it. I was perplexed and
uncertain, when the Chief Justice opened the subject and
asked me what I thought. Had I been convinced I should
have turned the conversation, but I was not convinced and
I was not afraid to say so. I reminded him of the universal
conviction through Europe that the Jews were habitually
guilty of sacrificing children also. There had been de-
tailed instances. Alleged offenders had been brought before
courts of justice at any time for the last six hundred
years. Witnesses had been found to swear to facts which
had been accepted as conclusive. Wretched creatures
in Henry III.'s time had been dragged by dozens at horses'
tails through the streets of London, broken on the wheel,
or torn to pieces by infuriated mobs. Even within the
last two years, the same accusation had been brought
forward in Russia and Germany, and had been established
apparently by adequate proof. So far as popular conviction
of the guilt of the Jews was an evidence against them,
nothing could be stronger ; and no charge could be without
foundation on ordinary principles of evidence which revived
so often and in so many places. And yet many persons, I
said, and myself among them, believed that although the
accusers were perfectly sincere, the guilt of the Jews was
from end to end an hallucination of hatred. I had looked
into the particulars of some of the trials. They were
like the trials for witchcraft. The belief had created the
fact, and accusation was itself evidence. I was prepared to
find these stories of child murder in Hayti were bred simi-
larly of anti-negro prejudice.
Had the Chief Justice caught at my suggestion with
any eagerness I should have suspected it myself. His grave
diffidence and continued hesitation in offering an opinion
confirmed me in my own. I told him that I was going to
Hayti to learn what I could on the spot. I could not expect
that I, on a flying visit, could see deeper into the truth
128 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
than Sir Spenser St. John had seen, but at least I should
not take with me a mind already made up, and I was not
given to credulity. He took leave of me with an expression
of passionate anxiety that it might be found possible to
remove so black a stain from his unfortunate race.
129
CHAPTER X.
Leeward and Windward Islands The Caribs of Dominica Visit of Pere
Labat St. Lucia The Pitons The harbour at Castries Intended
coaling station Visit to the administrator The old fort and barracks
Conversation with an American Constitution of Dominica Land at
Koseau.
BEYOND all the West Indian Islands I had been curious to
see Dominica. 1 It was the scene of Eodney's great fight
on April 12. It was the most beautiful of the Antilles and
the least known. A tribe of aboriginal Caribs still lingered
in the forests retaining the old look and the old language,
and, except that they no longer ate their prisoners, retain-
ing their old habits. They were skilful fishermen, skilful
basket makers, skilful in many curious arts.
The island lies between Martinique and Guadaloupe, and
is one of the group now called Leeward Islands, as distin-
guished from St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Grenada, &c., which
form the Windward. The early geographers drew the
line differently and more rationally. The main direction
of the trade winds is from the east. To them the
Windward Islands were the whole chain of the Antilles,
which form the eastern side of the Caribbean Sea. The
Leeward were the great islands on the west of it Cuba,
St. Domingo, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica. The modern
division corresponds to no natural phenomenon. The drift
of the trades is rather from the north-east than from the
1 Not to be confounded with St. Domingo, which is called after St.
Domenic, where the Spaniards first settled, and is now divided into the
two black republics of St. Domingo and Hayti. Dominica lies in the chain
of the Antilles between Martinique and Guadaloupe, and was so named by
Columbus because he discovered it on a Sunday.
K
1 30 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
south-east, and the names serve only now to describe our
own not very successful political groupings.
Dominica cuts in two the French West Indian posses-
sions. The French took it originally from the Spaniards,
occupied it, colonised it, planted in it their religion and their
language, and fought desperately to maintain their posses-
sion. Lord Rodney, to whom we owe our own position in
the West Indies, insisted that Dominica must belong to us
to hold the French in check, and regarded it as the most
important of all our stations there. Rodney made it
English, and English it has ever since remained in spite
of the furious efforts which France made to recover an
island which she so highly valued during the Napoleon
wars. I was anxious to learn what we had made of a place
which we had fought so hard for.
Though Dominica is the most mountainous of all the
Antilles, it is split into many valleys of exquisite fertility.
Through each there runs a full and ample river, swarming
with fish, and yielding waterpower enough to drive all the
mills which industry could build. In these valleys and on the
rich levels along the shore the French had once their cane
fields and orange gardens, their pineapple beds and indigo
plantations.
Labat, who travelled through the island at the close
of the seventeenth century, found it at that time chiefly
occupied by Caribs. With his hungry appetite for know-
ledge, he was a guest in their villages, acquainted himself
with their characters and habits, and bribed out of them
by lavish presents of brandy the secrets of their medicines
and poisons. The Pere was a clever, curious man, with a
genial human sympathy about him, and was indulgent to
the faults which the poor coloured sinners fell into from
never having known better. He tried to make Christians
of them. They were willing to be baptised as often as he
liked for a glass of brandy. But he was not very angry
THE CARIES 131
when he found that the Christianity went no deeper. Moral
virtues, he concluded charitably, could no more be expected
out of a Carib than reason and good sense out of a woman.
At Roseau, the capital, he fell in with the then queen of
Dominica, a Madame Ouvernard, a Carib of pure blood,
who in her time of youth and beauty had been the mis-
tress of an English governor of St. Kitts. When Labat
saw her she was a hundred years old with a family of
children and grandchildren. She was a grand old lady,
unclothed almost absolutely, bent double, so that under
ordinary circumstances nothing of her face could be seen.
Labat, however, presented her with a couple of bottles of
eau de vie, under the influence of which she lifted up to
him a pair of still brilliant eyes and a fair mouthful of
teeth. They did very well together, and on parting they
exchanged presents in Homeric fashion, she loading him
with baskets of fruit, he giving a box in return full of pins
and needles, knives and scissors.
Labat was a student of languages before philology had
become a science. He discovered from the language of the
Caribs that they were North American Indians. They called
themselves Banari, which meant ' come from over sea.'
Their dialect was almost identical with what he had heard
spoken in Florida. They were cannibals, but of a peculiar
kind. Human flesh was not their ordinary food ; but they
' boucanned ' or dried the limbs of distinguished enemies
whom they had killed in battle, and handed them round to
be gnawed at special festivals. They were a light-hearted,
pleasant race, capital shots with bows and arrows, and ready
to do anything he asked in return for brandy. They killed
a hammer shark for his amusement by diving under the
monster and stabbing him with knives. As to their
religion, they had no objection to anything. But their real
belief was in a sort of devil.
Soon after Labat's visit the French came in, drove the
132 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
Caribs into the mountains, introduced negro slaves, and an
ordered form of society. Madame Ouvernard and her court
went to their own place. Canes were planted, and indigo
and coffee. A cathedral was built at Eoseau, and parish
churches were scattered about the island. There were
convents of nuns and houses of friars, and a fort at the
port with a garrison in it. The French might have been
there till now had not we turned them out some ninety
years ago ; English enterprise then setting in that direc-
tion under the impulse of Eodney's victories. I was my-
self about to see the improvements which we had introduced
into an acquisition which had cost us so dear.
I was to be dropped at Eoseau by the mail steamer
from Barbadoes to St. Thomas's. On our way we touched
at St. Lucia, another once famous possession of ours.
This island was once French also. Eodney took it in 1778.
It was the only one of the Antilles which was left to us in
the reverses which followed the capitulation of York Town.
It was in the harbour at Castries, the chief port, that
Eodney collected the fleet which fought and won the great
battle with the Count de Grasse. At the peace of Ver-
sailles, St. Lucia was restored to France ; but was retaken
in 1796 by Sir Ealph Abercrombie, and, like Dominica,
has ever since belonged to England. This, too, is a beauti-
ful mountainous island, twice as large as Barbadoes, in
which even at this late day we have suddenly discovered
that we have an interest. The threatened Darien canal has
awakened us to a sense that we require a fortified coaling
station in those quarters. St. Lucia has the greatest
natural advantages for such a purpose, and works are al-
ready in progress there, and the long-deserted forts and
barracks, which had been made over to snakes and lizards,
are again to be occupied by English troops.
We sailed one evening from Barbadoes. In the grey of
the next morning we were in the passage between St.
THE PITONS OF ST. LUCIA 133
Lucia and St. Vincent just under the ' Pitons,' which were
soaring grandly above us in the twilight. The Pitons are
two conical mountains rising straight out of the sea at the
southern end of St. Lucia, one of them 3,000 feet high,
the other a few feet lower, symmetrical in shape like sugar
loaves, and so steep as to be inaccessible to any one but a
member of the Alpine Club. Tradition says that four
English seamen, belonging to the fleet, did once set out to
climb the loftier of the two. They were watched in their
ascent through a telescope. "When halfway up one of them
was seen to drop, while three went on ; a few hundred feet
higher a second dropped, and afterwards a third ; one
had almost reached the summit, when he fell also. No
account of what had befallen them ever reached their ship.
They were supposed to have been bitten by the fer de
lance, the deadliest snake in St. Lucia and perhaps in
the world, who had resented and punished their intrusion
into regions where they had no business. Such is the
local legend, born probably out of the terror of a reptile
which is no legend at all, but a living and very active
reality.
I had gone on deck on hearing where we were, and saw
the twin grey peaks high above me in the sky, the last stars
glimmering over their tops and the waves washing against
the black precipices at their base. The night had been
rough, and a considerable sea was running, which changed,
however, to an absolute calm when we had passed the Pitons
and were under the lee of the island. I could then observe
the peculiar blue of the water which I was told that i should
find at St. Lucia and Dominica. I have seen the sea of
very beautiful colours in several parts of the world, but I
never saw any which equalled this. I do not know the cause.
The depth is very great even r close to the shore. The
islands are merely volcanic mountains with sides extremely
steep. The coral insect has made anchorages in the bays
i 3 4 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
and inlets, elsewhere you are out of soundings almost im-
mediately. As to St. Lucia itself, if I had not seen Grenada,
if I had not known what I was about to see in Dominica, I
should have thought it the most exquisite place which nature
had ever made, so perfect were the forms of the forest-clothed
hills, the glens dividing them and the high mountain ranges
in the ulterior still draped in the white mist of morning.
Here and there along the shore there were bright green
spots which meant cane fields. Sugar cane in these
countries is always called for brevity cane.
Here, as elsewhere, the population is almost entirely
negro, forty thousand blacks and a few hundred whites,
the ratio altering every year to white disadvantage. The
old system has not, however, disappeared as completely as
in other places. There are still white planters with large
estates, which are not encumbered as in Barbadoes. They
are struggling along, discontented of course, but not wholly
despondent. The chief complaint is the somewhat weary
one of the laziness of the blacks, who they say will work
only when they please, and are never fully awake except at
dinner time. I do not know that they have a right to
expect anything else from poor creatures whom the law calls
human, but who to them are only mechanical tools, not so
manageable as tools ought to be, with whom they have no
acquaintance and no human relations, whose wages are
but twopence an hour and are diminished by fines at the
arbitrary pleasure of the overseer.
Life and hope and energy are the qualities most needed.
When the troops return there will be a change, and spirit
may be put into them again. Castries, the old French
town, lies at the head of a deep inlet which runs in among
the mountains like a fiord. This is to be the future
coaling station. The mouth of the bay is narrow with a
high projecting ' head ' on either side of it, and can be
easily and cheaply fortified. There is little or no tide in
THE HARBOUR AT ST. LUCIA 135
these seas. There is depth of water sufficient in the
greater part of the harbour for line-of-battle ships to anchor
and turn, and the few coral shoals which would be in the
way are being torn up with dredging machines. The
island has borrowed seventy thousand pounds on Govern-
ment security to prepare for the dignity which awaits it
and for the prosperity which is to follow. There was real
work actively going on, a rare and perhaps unexampled
phenomenon in the English West Indies.
We brought up alongside of a wharf to take in coal. It was
a strange scene ; cocoa-nut palms growing incongruously out
of coal stores, and gorgeous flowering creepers climbing over
the workmen's sheds. Volumes of smoke rose out of the
dredging engines and hovered over the town. We had
come back to French costume again ; we had left the white
dresses behind at Barbadoes, and the people at Castries
were bright as parrots in crimsons and blues and greens ;
but fine colours looked oddly out of place by the side of the
grimy reproduction of England.
I went on shore and fell in with the engineer of the
works, who kindly showed me his plans of the harbour, and
explained what was to be done. He showed me also some
beautiful large bivalves which had been brought up in the
scrapers out of the coral. They were new to me and new
to him, though they may be familiar enough to more
experienced naturalists. Among other curiosities he had a
fer de lance, lately killed and preserved in spirits, a rat-
tailed, reddish, powerful-looking brute, about four feet long
and as thick as a child's wrist. Even w r hen dead I looked
at him respectfully, for his bite is fatal and the effect
almost instantaneous. He is fearless, and will not, like
most snakes, get out of your way if he hears you coming,
but leaves you to get out of his. He has a bad habit, too,
of taking his walks at night ; he prefers a path or a road
to the grass, and your house or your garden to the forest ;
136 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
while if you step upon him you will never do it again.
They have introduced the mongoose, who has cleared
the snakes out of Jamaica, to deal with him; but the
mongoose knows the creature that he has to encounter, and
as yet has made little progress in extirpating him.
St. Lucia is under the jurisdiction of Barbadoes. It has
no governor of its own, but only an administrator indif-
ferently paid. The elective principle has not yet been
introduced into the legislature, and perhaps will not be
introduced since we have discovered the island to be of
consequence to us, unless as part of some general confedera-
tion. The present administrator Mr. Laborde, a gentle-
man, I suppose, of French descent is an elderly official,
and resides in the old quarters of the general of the forces,
900 feet above the sea. He has large responsibilities, and,
having had large experience also, seems fully equal to the
duties which attach to him. He cannot have the authority
of a complete governor, or undertake independent enter-
prises for the benefit of the island, as a Rajah Brooke might
do, but he walks steadily on in the lines assigned to him.
St. Lucia is better off in this respect than most of the
Antilles, and may revive perhaps into something like
prosperity when the coaling station is finished and under
the command of some eminent engineer officer.
Mr. Laborde had invited us to lunch with him. Horses
were waiting for us, and we rode up the old winding track
which led from the town to the barracks. The heat below
was oppressive, but the air cooled as we rose. The road is
so steep that resting places had been provided at intervals,
where the soldiers could recover breath or shelter them-
selves from the tropical cataracts of rain which fall without
notice, as if the string had been pulled of some celestial
shower bath. The trees branched thickly over it, making
an impenetrable shade, till we emerged on the plateau at
the top, where we were on comparatively level ground, with
THE CANTONMENTS AT ST. LUCIA 137
the harbour immediately at our feet. The situation had
been chosen by the French when St. Lucia was theirs.
The general's house, now Mr. Laborde's residence, is a long
airy building with a deep colonnade, the drawing and dining
rooms occupying the entire breadth of the ground floor, with
doors and windows on both sides for coolness and air. The
western front overlooked the sea. Behind were wooded hills,
green valleys, a mountain range in the background, and the
Pitons blue in the distance. As we were before our time,
Mr. Laborde walked me out to see the old barracks, maga-
zines, and water tanks. They looked neglected and dilapi-
dated, the signs of decay being partly hid by the creepers
with which the walls were overgrown. The soldiers' quarters
were occupied for the time by a resident gentleman, who
attended to the essential repairs and prevented the snakes
from taking possession as they were inclined to do. I forget
how many of the fer de lance sort he told me he had killed
in the rooms since he had lived in them.
In the war time we had maintained a large establish-
ment hi St. Lucia ; with what consequences to the health
of the troops I could not clearly make out. One informant
told me that they had died like flies of yellow fever, and
that the fields adjoining were as full of bodies as the
Brompton cemetery ; another that yellow fever had never
been known there or any dangerous disorder ; and that if
we wanted a sanitary station this was the spot for it.
Many thousands of pounds will have to be spent there
before the troops can return ; but that is our way with the
colonies to change our minds every ten years, to do and
undo, and do again, according to parliamentary humours,
while John Bull pays the bill patiently for his own ir-
resolution.
The fortress, once very strong, is now in ruins, but, I
.suppose, will be repaired and rearmed unless we are to trust
to the Yankees, who are supposed to have established a
138 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
Pax Dei in these waters and will permit no aggressive ac-
tion there either by us or against us. We walked round
the walls ; we saw the hill a mile off from which Aber-
crombie had battered out the French, having dragged his
guns through a roadless forest to a spot to which there
seemed no access except on wings. The word ' impossible *
was not known in those days. What Englishmen did once
they may do again perhaps if stormy days cojme back.
The ruins themselves were silently impressive. One could
hear the note of the old bugles as they sounded the reveille
and the roaring of the feu de joie when the shattered
prizes were brought in from the French fleet. The signs
of what once had been were still visible in the parade
ground, in the large mangoes which the soldiers had planted,
in the English grass which they had introduced and on
which cattle were now grazing. There was a clump of guavas,
hitherto only known to me in preserves. I gathered a
blossom as a remembrance, white like a large myrtle
flower, but heavily scented too heavily, with an odour of
death about it.
Mr. Laborde's conversation was instructive. His enter-
tainment of us was all which our acquired West Indian
fastidiousness could desire. The inevitable cigars followed,
and Mr. L. gave me a beating at billiards. There were
some lively young ladies in the party, and two or three of
the ship's officers. The young ones played lawn tennis,
and we old ones looked on and wished the years off our
shoulders. So passed the day. The sun was setting when
we mounted to ride down. So short is the twilight in these
latitudes, that it was dark night when we reached the town,
and we required the light of the stars to find our boat.
When the coaling process was finished, the ship had been
washed down in our absence and was anchored off beyond the
reach of the dirt ; but the ports were shut ; the windsails had
been taken down ; the air in the cabins was stifling ; so I
A CASUAL AMERICAN 139
stayed on deck till midnight with a clever young American,
who was among our fellow-passengers, talking of many
things. He was ardent, confident, self-asserting, but not
disagreeably either one or the other. It was rather a
pleasure to hear a man speak in these flabby uncertain
days as if he were sure of anything, and I had to notice
again, as I had often noticed before, how well informed
casual American travellers are on public affairs, and how
sensibly they can talk of them. He had been much in the
West Indies, and seemed to know them well. He said that
all the whites in the islands wished at the bottom of their
hearts to be taken into the Union ; but the Union Govern-
ment was too wise to meddle with them. The trade would
fall to America of itself. The responsibility and trouble
might remain where it was. I asked him about the
Canadian fishery dispute. He thought it would settle it-
self in time, and that nothing serious would come of it.
' The Washington Cabinet had been a little hard on Eng-
land,' he admitted ; ' but it was six of one and half a dozen
of the other.' ' Honours were easy ; neither party could
score.' ' We had been equally hard on them about Alaska.'
He was less satisfied about Ireland. The telegraph had
brought the news of Mr. Goschen's defeat at Liverpool,
and Home Rule, which had seemed to have been disposed
of, was again within the range of probabilities. He was
watching with pitying amusement, like most of his country-
men, the weakness of will with which England allowed
herself to be worried by so contemptible a business ; but he
did seem to fear, and I have heard others of his country-
men say the same, that if we let it go on much longer the
Americans may become involved in the thing one w r ay or
another, and trouble may rise about it between the two
countries.
We weighed ; and I went to bed and to sleep, and so
missed Pigeon Island, where Rodney's fleet lay before the
140 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
action, and the rock from which, through his telescope, he
watched De Grasse come out of Martinique, and gave his
own signal to chase. We rolled as usual between the
islands. At daylight we were again in shelter under
Martinique, and again in classic regions ; for close to us
was Diamond Rock once his Majesty's ship ' Diamond, 5
commissioned with crew and officers one of those curious
true incidents, out of which a legend might have grown in
other times, that ship and mariners had been turned to
stone. The rock, a lonely pyramid six hundred feet high,
commanded the entrance to Port Royal in Martinique.
Lord Howe took possession of it, sent guns up in slings to
the top, and left a midshipman with a handful of men in
charge. The gallant little fellow held his fortress for
several months, peppered away at the French, and sent
three of their ships of war to the bottom. He was blockaded
at last by an overwhelming force. No relief could be spared
for him. Escape was impossible, as he had not so much
as a boat, and he capitulated to famine.
We stayed two hours under Martinique. I did not land.
It has been for centuries a special object of care on the part
of the French Government. It is well looked after, and,
considering the times, prosperous. It has a fine garrison,
and a dockyard well furnished, with frigates in the harbours
ready for action should occasion arise. I should infer from
what I heard that in the event of war breaking out between
England and France, Martinique, in the present state of
preparation on both sides, might take possession of the rest
of the Antilles with little difficulty. Three times we took
it, and we gave it back again. In turn, it may one day,
perhaps, take us, and the English of the West Indies
become a tradition like the buccaneers.
The mountains of Dominica are full in sight from
Martinique. The channel which separates them is but
thirty miles across, and the view of Dominica as you
FIRST SIGHT OF DOMINICA 141
approach it is extremely grand. Grenada, St. Vincent,
St. Lucia, Martinique are all volcanic, with lofty peaks and
ridges ; but Dominica was at the centre of the force which
lifted the Antilles out of the ocean, and the features which
are common to all are there in a magnified form. The
mountains range from four to five thousand feet in height.
Mount Diablot, the highest of them, rises to between five
and six thousand feet. The mountains being the tallest in
all the group, the rains are also the most violent, and the
ravines torn out by the torrents are the wildest and most
magnificent. The volcanic forces are still active there.
There are sulphur springs and boiling water fountains, and
in a central crater there is a boiling lake. There are strange
creatures there besides : great snakes harmless, but ugly
to look at ; the diablot from which the mountain takes its
name a great bird, black as charcoal, half raven, half
parrot, which nests in holes in the ground as puffins do,
spends all the day in them, and flies down to the sea at
night to fish for its food. There were once great numbers
of these creatures, and it was a favourite amusement to
hunt and drag them out of their hiding places. Labat says
that they were excellent eating. They are confined now in
reduced numbers to the inaccessible crags about the peak
which bears their name.
Martinique has two fine harbours. Dominica has none.
At the north end of the island there is a bay, named after
Prince Rupert, where there is shelter from all winds but
the south, but neither there nor anywhere is there an
anchorage which can be depended upon in dangerous
weather.
Roseau, the principal or only town, stands midway
along the western shore. The roadstead is open, but as
the prevailing winds are from the east the island itself
forms a breakwater. Except on the rarest occasions there
is neither surf nor swell there. The land shelves off
i 4 2 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
rapidly, and a gunshot from shore no cable can find the
bottom, but there is an anchorage in front of the town,
and coasting smacks, American schooners, passing steamers
bring up close under the rocks or alongside of the jetties
which are built out from the beach upon piles.
The situation of Eoseau is exceedingly beautiful. The
sea is, if possible, a deeper azure even than at St. Lucia ; the
air more transparent ; the forests of a lovelier green than I
ever saw in any other country. Even the rain, which falls in
such abundance, falls often out of a clear sky as if not to inter-
rupt the sunshine, and a rainbow almost perpetually hangs
its arch over the island. Eoseau itself stands on a shallow
promontory. A long terrace of tolerable-looking houses
faces the landing place. At right angles to the terrace,
straight streets strike backwards at intervals, palms and
bananas breaking the lines of roof. At a little distance,
you see the towers of the old French Catholic cathedral,
a smaller but not ungraceful-looking Anglican church, and
to the right a fort, or the ruins of one, now used as a police
barrack, over which flies the English flag as the symbol of
our titular dominion. Beyond the fort is a public garden
with pretty trees in it along the brow of a precipitous cliff,
at the foot of which, when we landed, lay at anchor a
couple of smart Yankee schooners and half a dozen coast-
ing cutters, while rounding inwards behind was a long
shallow bay dotted over with the sails of fishing boats.
"White negro villages gleamed among the palms along the
shore, and wooded mountains rose immediately above
them. It seemed an attractive, innocent, sunny sort of
place, very pleasant to spend a few days in, if the inner side
of things corresponded to the appearance. To a looker-on
at that calm scene it was not easy to realise the desperate
battles which had been fought for the possession of it, the
gallant lives which had been laid down under the walls of
that crumbling castle. These cliffs had echoed the roar of
THE DOMINICAN CONSTITUTION 143
Rodney's guns on the day which saved the British Empire,
and the island I was gazing at was England's Salamis.
The organisation of the place, too, seemed, so far as I
could gather from official books, to have been carefully
attended to. The constitution had been touched and
retouched by the home authorities as if no pains could be
too great to make it worthy of a spot so sacred. There is
an administrator, which is a longer word than governor.
There is an executive council, a colonial secretary, an
attorney - general, an auditor - general, and other such
* generals of great charge.' There is a legislative assembly
of fourteen members, seven nominated by the Crown and
seven elected by the people. And there are revenue officers
and excise officers, inspectors of roads, and civil engineers,
and school boards, and medical officers, and registrars,
and magistrates. Where would political perfection be
found if not here with such elaborate machinery ?
The results of it all, in the official reports, seemed equally
satisfactory till you looked closely into them. The tariff of
articles on which duties were levied, and the list of articles
raised and exported, seemed to show that Dominica must
be a beehive of industry and productiveness. The revenue,
indeed, was a little startling as the result of this army of
officials. Eighteen thousand pounds was the whole of it,
not enough to pay their salaries. The population, too, on
whose good government so much thought had been ex-
pended, was only 30,000 ; of these 30,000 only a hundred
were English. The remaining whites, and those in scanty
numbers, were French and Catholics. The soil was as rich
as the richest in the world. The cultivation was growing
annually less. The inspector of roads was likely to have an
easy task, for except close to the town there were no roads
at all on which anything with wheels could travel, the old
roads made by the French having dropped into horse tracks,
and the horse tracks into the beds of torrents. Why in an
144 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
island where the resources of modern statesmanship had
been applied so lavishly and with the latest discoveries in
political science, the effect should have so ill corresponded
to the means employed, was a problem into which it would
be curious to inquire.
The steamer set me down upon the pier and went on
upon its way. At the end of a fortnight it would return and
pick me up again. Meanwhile, I was to make the best of
my time. I had been warned beforehand that there was no
hotel in Koseau where an Englishman with a susceptible
skin and palate could survive more than a week ; and as I
had two weeks to provide for, I was uncertain what to do
with myself. I was spared the trial of the hotels by the
liberality of her Majesty's representative in the colony.
Captain Churchill, the administrator of the island, had heard
that I was coming there, and I was met on the landing
stage by a message from him inviting me to be his guest
during my stay. Two tall handsome black girls seized my
bags, tossed them on their heads, and strode off with a light
step in front of me, cutting jokes with their friends ; I
following, and my mind misgiving me that I was myself the
object of their wit.
I was anxious to see- Captain Churchill, for I had heard
much of him. The warmest affection had been expressed
for him personally, and concern for the position in which
be was placed. Notwithstanding ' the latest discoveries of
political science,' the constitution was still imperfect. The
administrator, to begin with, is allowed a salary of only
500Z. a year. That is not much for the chief of such an
army of officials; and the hospitalities and social civili-
ties which smooth the way in such situations are beyond
his means. His business is to preside at the council, where,
the official and the elected members being equally balanced
and almost invariably dividing one against the other, his
duty is to give the casting vote. He cannot give it against
THE DOMINICAN CONSTITUTION 145
liis own officers, and thus the machine is contrived to create
the largest amount of friction, and to insure the highest
amount of unpopularity to the administrator. His situa-
tion is the more difficult because the European element in
Roseau, small as it is at best, is more French than English.
The priests, the sisterhoods, are French or French-speaking.
A French patois is the language of the blacks. They are
almost to a man Catholics, and to the French they look
as their natural leaders. England has done nothing, abso-
lutely nothing, to introduce her own civilisation ; and thus
Dominica is English only in name. Should war come, a
boatload of soldiers from Martinique would suffice to re-
cover it. Not a black in the whole island would draw a
trigger in defence of English authority, and, except the
Crown officials, not half a dozen Europeans. The adminis-
trator can do nothing to improve this state of things. He
is too poor to open Government House to the Roseau shop-
keepers and to bid for social popularity. He is no one.
He goes in and out unnoticed, and flits about like a bat in
the twilight. He can do no good, and from the nature of
the system on the construction of which so much care was
expended, no one else can do any good. The maximum of
expense, the minimum of benefit to the island, is all that
has come of it.
Meanwhile the island drifts along, without credit to
borrow money and therefore escaping bankruptcy. The
blacks there, as everywhere, are happy with their yams and
cocoa nuts and land crabs. They desire nothing better
than they have, and do not imagine that they have any
rulers unless agitated by the elected members. These
gentlemen would like the official situations for themselves
as in Trinidad, and they occasionally attempt a stir with
partial success ; otherwise the island goes on in a state of
torpid content. Captain Churchill, quiet and gentlemanlike,
.gives no personal offence, but popularity he cannot hope
146 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
for, having no means of recommending himself. The only
really powerful Europeans are the Catholic bishop and
the priests and sisterhoods. They are looked up to with
genuine respect. They are reaping the harvest of the long
and honourable efforts of the French clergy in all their
West Indian possessions to make the blacks into Catholic
Christians. In the Christian part of it they have suc-
ceeded but moderately ; but such religion as exists in the
island is mainly what they have introduced and taught,
and they have a distinct influence which we ourselves have
not tried to rival.
But we have been too long toiling up the paved road to
Captain Churchill's house. My girl-porter guides led me
past the fort, where they exchanged shots with the lounging
black police, past the English church, which stood buried
in trees, the churchyard prettily planted with tropical
flowers. The sun was dazzling, the heat was intense, and
the path which led through it, if not apparently much used,
looked shady and cool.
A few more steps brought us to the gate of the Eesidence,
where Captain Churchill had his quarters in the absence of
the Governor-in-Chief of the Leeward Islands, whose visits
were few and brief. In the event of the Governor's arrival
he removed to a cottage in the hills. The house was hand-
some, the gardens well kept ; a broad walk led up to the
door, a hedge of lime trees closely clipt on one side of it, on
the other a lawn with orange trees, oleanders, and hibiscus,
palms of all varieties and almond trees, which in Dominica
grow into giants, their broad leaves turning crimson before
they fall like the Virginia creeper. We reached the
entrance of the house by wide stone steps, where countless
lizards were lazily basking. Through the bars of the
railings on each side of them there were intertwined the
runners of the largest and most powerfully scented stepha-
notis which I have ever seen. Captain Churchill (one of
CAPTAIN CHURCHILL AND HIS HOUSEHOLD 147
the Marlborough Churchills) received me with more than
cordiality. Society is not abundant in his Barataria, and
perhaps as coming from England I was welcome to him in
his solitude. His wife, an English Creole that is, of pure
English blood, but born in the island was as hospitable as
her husband. They would not let me feel that I was a
stranger, and set me at my ease in a moment with a warmth
which was evidently unassumed. Captain C. was lame,
having hurt his foot. In a day or two he hoped to be able
to mount his horse again, when we were to ride together
and see the curiosities. Meanwhile, he talked sorrowfully
enough of his own situation and the general helplessness of
it. A man whose feet are chained and whose hands are in
manacles is not to be found fault with if he cannot use
either. He is not intended to use either. The duty of an
administrator of Dominica, it appears, is to sit still and do
nothing, and to watch the flickering in the socket of the
last remains of English influence and authority. Individu-
ally he was on good terms with everyone, with the Catholic
bishop especially, who, to his regret and mine, was absent
at the time of my visit.
His establishment was remarkable ; it consisted of two
black girls a cook and a parlourmaid who ' did every-
thing,' and 'everything,' I am bound to say, was done well
enough to please the most fastidious nicety. The cook-
ing was excellent. The rooms, which were handsomely
furnished, were kept as well and in as good order as in
the Churchills' ancestral palace at Blenheim. Dominica
has a bad name for vermin. I had been threatened with
centipedes and scorpions in my bedroom. I had been
warned there, as everywhere in the West Indies, never
to walk across a floor with bare feet, lest a land crab
should lay hold of my toe or a jigger should bite a hole
in it, lay its eggs there, and bring me into the hands
of the surgeon. Never while I was Captain C.'s guest
148 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
did I see either centipede, or scorpion, or jigger, or any
other unclean beast in any room of which these girls had
charge. Even mosquitoes did not trouble me, so skilfully and
carefully they arranged the curtains. They were dressed in
the fashion of the French islands, something like the Moorish
slaves whom one sees in pictures of Eastern palaces. They
flitted about silent on their shoeless feet, never stumbled,
or upset chairs or plates or dishes, but waited noiselessly
like a pair of elves, and were always in their place when
wanted. One had heard much of the idleness and care-
lessness of negro servants. In no part of the globe have
I ever seen household work done so well by two pairs of
hands. Of their morals I know nothing. It is usually
said that negro girls have none. They appeared to me to
be perfectly modest and innocent. I asked in wonder what
wages were paid to these black fairies, believing that at no
price at all could the match of them be found in England.
I was informed that they had three shillings a week each, and
* found themselves,' i.e. found their own food and clothes.
And this was above the usual rate, as Government House
was expected to be liberal. The scale of wages may have
something to do with the difficulty of obtaining labour in the
West Indies. I could easily believe the truth of what I had
been often told, that free labour is more economical to the
employer than slave labour.
The views from the drawing-room windows were enchant-
ingly beautiful. It is not the form only in these West Indian
landscapes, or the colour only, but form and colour seen
through an atmosphere of very peculiar transparency. On
one side we looked up a mountain gorge, the slopes covered
with forest; a bold lofty crag standing out from them
brown and bare, and the mountain ridge behind half buried
in mist. From the other window we had the Botanical
Gardens, the bay beyond them sparkling in the sunshine,
and on the farther side of it, a few miles off, an island for-
VIEW FROM THE GARDENS 149
tress which the Marquis de Bouille, of Eevolution notoriety,
took from the English in 1778. The sea stretched out blue
and lovely under the fringe of sand, box trees, and almonds
which grew along the edge of the cliff. The air was per-
fumed by white acacia flowers sweeter than orange blossom.
Captain C. limped down with me into the gardens for a
fuller look at the scene. Dusky fishermen were busy with
their nets catching things like herrings, which come in
daily to the shore to escape the monsters which prey upon
them. Canoes on the old Carib pattern were slipping along
outside, trailing lines for kingfish and bonitos. Others
were setting baskets, like enormous lobster pots or hoop
nets such as we use to catch tench in English ponds
these, too, a legacy from the Caribs, made of strong tough
cane. At the foot of the cliff were the smart American
schooners which I had seen on landing broad-beamed,
shallow, low in the water with heavy spars, which bring
Yankee ' notions ' to the islands, and carry back to New
York bananas and limes and pineapples. There they
were, models of Tom Cringle's 'Wave,' airy as English
yachts, and equal to anything from a smuggling cruise to a
race for a cup. I could have gazed for ever, so beautiful, so
new, so like a dream it was, had I not been brought back
swiftly to prose and reality. Suddenly out of a clear sky,
without notice and without provocation, first a few drops of
rain fell, and then a deluge which set the gutters running.
We had to scuttle home under our umbrellas. I was told,
and I discovered afterwards by fuller experience, that
this was the way in Dominica, and that if I went out any-
where I must be prepared for it. In our retreat we
encountered a distinguished-looking abbe with a collar
and a gold cross, who bowed to my companion. I would
gladly have been introduced to him, but neither he nor
we had leisure for courtesies in the torrent which was falling
upon us.
150 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
CHAPTER XI.
Curiosities in Dominica Nights in the tropics English and Catholic
churches The market place at Koseau Fishing extraordinary A
storm Dominican boatmen Morning walks Effects of the Leeward
Islands Confederation An estate cultivated as it ought to be A moun-
tain ride Leave the island Reflections.
THERE was much to be seen in Dominica of the sort which
travellers go in search of. There was the hot sulphur
spring in the mountains ; there was the hot lake ; there
was another volcanic crater, a hollow in the centre of the
island now filled with water and surrounded with forest ;
there were the Caribs, some thirty families of them living
among thickets, through which paths must be cut before
we could reach them. We could undertake nothing till
Captain C. could ride again. Distant expeditions can
only be attempted on horses. They are bred to the work.
They climb like cats, and step out safely where a fall or a
twisted ankle would be the probable consequence of at-
tempting to go on foot. Meanwhile, Roseau itself was to
be seen and the immediate neighbourhood, and this I could
manage for myself.
My first night was disturbed by unfamiliar noises and
strange imaginations. I escaped mosquitoes through the
care of the black fairies. But mosquito curtains will not
keep out sounds, and when the fireflies had put out their
lights there began the singular chorus of tropical midnight.
Frogs, lizards, bats, croaked, sang, and hissed with no in-
termission, careless whether they were in discord or har-
mony. The palm branches outside my window swayed in
the land breeze, and the dry branches rustled crisply as if
NIGHT SOUNDS 151
they were plates of silver. At intervals came cataracts of
rain, and above all the rest the deep boom of the cathedral
bell tolling out the hours like a note of the Old World. The
Catholic clergy had brought the bells with them as they
had brought their faith into these new lands. It was
pathetic, it was ominous music ; for what had we done and
what were we doing to set beside it in the century for
which the island had been ours ? Towards morning I
heard the tinkle of the bell of the convent adjoining the
garden calling the nuns to matins. Happily in the tropics
hot nights do not imply an early dawn. The darkness
lingers late, sleep comes at last and drowns our fancies in
forgetfulness.
The swimming bath was immediately under my room.
I ventured into it with some trepidation. The basement
story in most West Indian houses is open, to allow the air
free passage under them. The space thus left vacant is
used for lumber and rubbish, and, if scorpions or snakes are
in the neighbourhood, is the place where one would look for
them. There the bath was. I had been advised to be
careful, and as it was dark this was not easy. The fear,
however, was worse than the reality. Awkward encounters
do happen if one is long in these countries ; but they are
rare, and seldom befall the accidental visitor ; and the
plunge into fresh water is so delicious that one is willing to
risk the chance.
I wandered out as soon as the sun was over the hori-
zon. The cool of the morning is the time to see the
people. The market girls were streaming into the town with
their baskets of vegetables on their heads. The fishing
boats were out again on the bay. Our Anglican church
had its bell too as well as the cathedral. The door was open,
and I went in and found a decent-looking clergyman pre-
paring a flock of seven or eight blacks and mulattoes for the
Communion. He was taking them through their catechism,
152 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
explaining very properly that religion meant doing one's
duty, and that it was not enough to profess particular
opinions. Dominica being Eoman Catholic, and Eornan
Catholics not generally appreciating or understanding the
claims of Anglicans to the possession of the sacraments, he
pointed out where the difference lay. He insisted that we
had priests as well as they ; we had confession ; we had
absolution ; only our priests did not claim, as the Catholics
did, a direct power in themselves to forgive sins. Their
office was to tell sinners that if they truly and sincerely re-
pented and amended their lives God would forgive them.
What he said was absolutely true ; but I could not see in
the dim faces of the catechumens that the distinction was
particularly intelligible to them. If they thought at all,
they probably reflected that no divinely constituted succes-
sor of the Apostles was needed to communicate a truism
which every sensible person was equally able and entitled
to tell them. Still the good earnest man meant well, and I
wished him more success in his missionary enterprise than
he was likely to find.
From the Church of England to the great rival establish-
ment was but a few minutes' walk. The cathedral was five
times as large, at least, as the building which I had just
left old in age, old in appearance, with the usual indif-
ferent pictures or coloured prints, with the usual decorated
altar, but otherwise simple and venerable. There was no
service going on, for it was a week-day; a few old men
and women only were silently saying their prayers. On
Sundays I was told that it was overflowing. The negro
morals are as emancipated in Dominica as in the rest of
the West Indies. Obeah is not forgotten ; and along with
the Catholic religion goes on an active belief in magic and
witchcraft. But their religion is not necessarily a sham
to them ; it was the same in Europe in the ages of faith-
Even in enlightened Protestant countries people calling.
STREETS OF ROSEAU 153
themselves Christians believe that the spirits of the dead
can be called up to amuse an evening party. The blacks
in this respect are no worse than their white kinsmen. The
priests have a genuine human hold upon them ; they
baptise the children ; they commit the dead to the ceme-
tery with the promise of immortality ; they are personally
loved and respected ; and when a young couple marry, as
they seldom but occasionally do, it is to the priest that
they apply to tie them together.
From the cathedral I wandered through the streets of
Boseau; they had been well laid out; the streets them-
selves, and the roads leading to them from the country, had
been carefully paved, and spoke of a time when the town
had been full of life and vigour. But the grass was grow-
ing between the stones, and the houses generally were
dilapidated and dirty. A few massive stone buildings there
were, on which time and rain had made no impression ; but
these probably were all French built long ago, perhaps in
the days of Labat and Madame Ouvernard. The English
hand had struck the island with paralysis. The British
flag was flying over the fort, but for once I had no pride in
looking at it. The fort itself was falling to pieces, like the
fort at Grenada. The stones on the slope on which it stands
had run with the blood which we spilt in the winning of it.
Dominica had then been regarded as the choicest jewel in
the necklace of the Antilles. For the last half-century we
have left it to desolation, as a child leaves a toy that it is
tired of.
In Eoseau, as in most other towns, the most interesting
spot is the market. There you see the produce of the soil ;
there you see the people that produce it ; and you see them,
not on show, as in church on Sundays, but in their active
working condition. The market place at Eoseau is a large
square court close to the sea, well paved, surrounded by ware-
houses, and luxuriantly shaded by large overhanging trees.
154 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
Under these trees were hundreds of black women, young
and old, with their fish and fowls, and fruit and bread, their
yams and sweet potatoes, their oranges and limes and
plantains. They had walked in from the country five or
ten miles before sunrise with their loaded baskets on their
heads. They would walk back at night with flour or salt
fish, or oil, or whatever they happened to want. I did not
see a single sullen face among them. Their figures were
unconscious of lacing, and their feet of the monstrosities
which we call shoes. They moved with the lightness
and elasticity of leopards. I thought that I had never seen
in any drawing room in London so many perfectly graceful
forms. They could not mend their faces, but even in some
of these there was a swarthy beauty. The hair was hope-
less, and they knew it, but they turn the defect into an
ornament by the coloured handkerchief which they twist
about their heads, leaving the ends flowing. They chattered
like jackdaws about a church tower. Two or three of the
best looking, seeing that I admired them a little, used their
eyes and made some laughing remarks. They spoke in their
French patois, clipping off the first and last syllables of the
words. I but half understood them, and could not return
their shots. I can only say that if their habits were as
loose as white people say they are, I did not see a single
licentious expression either in face or manner. They seemed
to me lighthearted, merry, innocent young women, as free
from any thought of evil as the peasant girls in Brittany.
Two middle-aged dames were in a state of violent
excitement about some subject on which they differed in
opinion. A ring gathered about them, and they declaimed
at one another with fiery volubility. It did not go beyond
words ; but both were natural orators, throwing their heads
back, waving their arms, limbs and chest quivering with
emotion. There was no personal abuse, or disposition to
claw each other. On both sides it was a rhetorical out-
THE MARKET GIRLS 155
pouring of emotional argument. One of them, a tall pure
blood negress, black as if she had just landed from Guinea,
began at last to get the best of it. Her gesticulations be-
came more imposing. She shook her finger. Mandezthis,
she said, and mandez that, till she bore her antagonist down
and sent her flying. The audience then melted away, and
I left the conqueror standing alone shooting a last volley at
the retreating enemy and making passionate appeals to the
universe. The subject of the discussion was a curious one.
It was on the merits of race. The defeated champion had
a taint of white blood in her. The black woman insisted
that blacks were of pure breed, and whites were of pure breed.
Mulattoes were mongrels, not creatures of God at all, but
creatures of human wickedness. I do not suppose that the
mulatto was convinced, but she accepted her defeat. The
conqueror, it was quite clear, was satisfied that she had the
best of the discussion, and that the hearers were of the
same opinion.
From the market I stepped back upon the quay, where
I had the luck to witness a novel form of fishing, the most
singular that I have ever fallen in with. I have mentioned
the herring-sized white fish which come in upon the shore
of the island. They travel, as most small fish do, in
enormous shoals, and keep, I suppose, in the shallow waters
to avoid the kingfish and bonitos, who are good judges in
their way, and find these small creatures exceptionally
excellent. The wooden pier ran out perhaps a hundred
and fifty feet into the sea. It was a platform standing on
piles, with openings in several places from which stairs led
down to landing stages. The depth at the extremity was
about five fathoms. There is little or no tide, the difference
between high water and low being not more than a couple
of feet. Looking down the staircases, I saw among the
piles in the brilliantly clear w-ater unnumbered thousands
of the fish which I have described. The fishermen had
156 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
carried a long net round the platform from shore to shore,,
completely inclosing it. The fish were shut in, and had no-
means of escape except at the shore end, where boys were
busy driving them back with stones ; but how the net was-
to be drawn among the piles, or what was to be done next,.
I was curious to learn. I was not left long to conjecture.
A circular bag net was produced, made of fine strong thread,
coloured a light green, and almost invisible in the sea.
When it was spread, one side could be left open and could be
closed at will by a running line from above. This net was
let carefully down between the piles, and was immediately
swollen out by the current which runs along the coast into
a deep bay. Two young blacks then dived ; one saw them
swimming about under water like sharks, hunting the fish
before them as a dog would hunt a flock of sheep. Their
companions, who were watching from the platform, waited
till they saw as many driven into the purse of the inner net
as they could trust the meshes to bear the weight of. The
cord was then drawn. The net was closed. Net and all
that it contained were hoisted into a boat, carried ashore and
emptied. The net itself was then brought back and spread
again for a fresh haul. In this way I saw as many fish
caught as would have filled a large cart. The contrivance,
I believe, is one more inheritance from the Caribs, whom
Labat describes as doing something of a similar kind.
Another small incident happened a day or two after,,
which showed the capital stuff of which the Dominican
boatmen and fishermen are made. They build their own
vessels large and small, and sail them themselves, not
afraid of the wildest weather, and doing the local trade
with Martinique and Guadaloupe. Four of these smacks,
cutter-rigged, from ten to twenty tons burden, I had seen
lying at anchor one evening with an American schooner
under the gardens. In the night, the off-shore wind rose
into one of those short violent tropical storms which if
DOMINICAN BOATMEN 157
they lasted longer would be called hurricanes, but in these
winter months are soon over. It came on at midnight, and
lasted for two hours. The noise woke me, for the house
.shook, and the roar was like Niagara. It was too dark,
however, to see anything. It died away at last, and I slept
till daybreak. My first thought on waking was for the
smacks and the schooner. Had they sunk at their
moorings ? Had they broken loose, or what had become
of them ? I got up and went down to the cliff to see. The
damage to the trees had been less than I expected. A few
torn branches lay on the lawn and the leaves were cast
about, but the anchorage was empty. Every vessel of
every sort and size was gone. There was still a moderate
gale blowing. As the wind was off-shore the sea was
tolerably smooth for a mile or two, but outside the waves
were breaking violently, and the foam scuds were whirling
off their crests. The schooner was about four miles off,
beating back under storm canvas, making good weather of
it and promising in a tack or two to recover the moorings.
The smacks, being less powerful vessels, had been driven
farther out to sea. Three of them I saw labouring heavily
in the offing. The fourth I thought at first had disap-
peared altogether, but finally I made out a white speck on
the horizon which I supposed to be the missing cutter. One
of the first three presently dropped away to leeward, and
I lost sight of her. The rest made their way back in good
time. Towards the afternoon when the wind had gone
down the two that remained came in after them, and before
night they were all in their places again.
The gale had struck them at about midnight. Their
cables had parted, and they had been blown away to sea.
The crews of the schooner and of three of the cutters
were all on board. They got their vessels under command,
and had been in no serious danger. In the fourth there
was no one but a small black boy of the island. He had
158 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
been asleep, and woke to find himself driving before the
wind. In an hour or two he would have been beyond
the shelter of the land, and in the high seas which then
were running must have been inevitably swamped. The
little fellow contrived in the darkness no one could tell
how to set a scrap of his mainsail, get his staysail up,
and in this condition to lie head to the wind. So handled,,
small cutters, if they have a deck over them, can ride out an
ordinary gale in tolerable security. They drift, of course ;
in a hurricane the only safety is in yielding to it ; but they
make fair resistance, and the speed is checked. The most
practical seaman could have done no better than this boy.
He had to wait for help in the morning. He was not
strong enough to set his canvas properly, and work his-
boat home. He would have been driven out at last, and as
he had neither food nor water would have been starved
had he escaped drowning. But his three consorts saw him.
They knew how it was, and one of them went back to his
assistance.
I have known the fishing boys of the English Channel
all my life ; they are generally skilful, ready, and daring
beyond their years ; but I never knew one lad not more
than thirteen or fourteen years old who, if woke out of his
sleep by a hurricane in a dark night and alone, would have
understood so well what to do, or have done it so effectually.
There are plenty more of such black boys in Dominica, and
they deserve a better fate than to be sent drifting before
constitutional whirlwinds back into barbarism, because we,
on whom their fate depends, are too ignorant or too care-
less to provide them with a tolerable government.
The kind Captain Churchill, finding himself tied to his
chair, and wishing to give me every assistance towards see-
ing the island, had invited a Creole gentleman from the other
side of it to stay a few days with us. Mr. F , a man
about thirty, was one of the few survivors from among the
WALKS IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD 159
planters ; he had never been out of the West Indies, but
was a man of honesty and intelligence, could use his eyes,
and form sound judgments on subjects which immediately
concerned him. I had studied Eoseau for myself. With
Mr. F for a companion, I made acquaintance with the
environs. We started for our walks at daybreak, in the cool of
the morning. We climbed cliffs, we rambled on the rich levels
about the river, once richly cultivated, and even now the soil
is luxuriant in neglect ; a few canefields still survive, but most
of them are turned to other uses, and you pass wherever
you go the ruins of old mills, the massive foundations of
ancient warehouses, huge hewn stones built and mortared
well together, telling what once had been ; the mango trees,
which the owners had planted, waving green over the wrecks
of their forgotten industry. Such industry as is now to be
found is, as elsewhere in general, the industry of the black
peasantry. It is the same as in Grenada : the whites, or
the English part of them, have lost heart, and cease
to struggle against the stream. A state of things more
hopelessly provoking was never seen. Skill and capital and
labour have only to be brought to bear together, and the
land might be a Garden of Eden. All precious fruits, and
precious spices, and gums, and plants of rarest medicinal
virtues will spring and grow and flourish for the asking.
The limes are as large as lemons, and in the markets of the
United States are considered the best in the world.
As to natural beauty, the West Indian Islands are like
Scott's novels, where we admire most the one which we
have read the last. But Dominica bears the palm away
from all of them. One morning Mr. F took me a
walk up the Koseau river, an ample stream even in what is
called the dry season, with deep pools full of eels and mul-
let. We entered among the hills which were rising steep
above us. The valley grew deeper, or rather there were a
series of valleys, gorges dense with forest, which had been
160 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
torn out by the cataracts. The path was like the mule tracks
of the Alps, cut in other days along the sides of the precipices
with remnants of old conduits which supplied water to the
mills below. Eich odorous acacias bent over us. The
flowers, the trees, the birds, the insects, were a maze of
perfume and loveliness. Occasionally some valley opposite
the sun would be spanned by a rainbow as the rays shone
through a morning shower out of the blue sky. We wan-
dered on and on, wading through tributary brooks, stopping
every minute to examine some new fern or plant, peasant
women and children meeting us at intervals on their way
into the town. There were trees to take shelter under
when indispensable, which even the rain of Dominica could
not penetrate. The levels at the bottom of the valleys and
the lower slopes, where the soil was favourable, were care-
lessly planted with limes which were in full bearing. Small
black boys and girls went about under the trees, gathering
the large lemon-shaped fruit which lay on the ground thick
as apples in a West of England orchard. Here was all this
profusion of nature, lavish beyond all example, and the
enterprising youth of England were neglecting a colony
which might yield them wealth beyond the treasures of the
old sugar planters, going to Florida, to Texas, to South
America, taking their energy and their capital to the land of
the foreigner, leaving Dominica, which might be the garden
of the world, a precious emerald set in the ring of their
own Antilles, enriched by the sacred memories of glorious
English achievements, as if such a place had no existence.
Dominica would surrender herself to-morrow with a light
heart to France, to America, to any country which would
accept the charge of her destinies. Why should she care
any more for England, which has so little care for her?
Beauties conscious of their charms do not like to be so
thrown aside. There is no dislike to us among the blacks,
they are indifferent, but even their indifference would be
ENGLISH RULE 161
changed into loyalty if we made the slightest effort to
recover it. The poor black was a faithful servant as long
as he was a slave. As a freeman he is conscious of his
inferiority at the bottom of his heart, and would attach
himself to a rational white employer with at least as much
fidelity as a spaniel. Like the spaniel, too, if he is denied
the chance of developing under guidance the better qualities
which are in him, he will drift back into a mangy cur.
In no country ought a government to exist for which
respect is impossible, and English rule as it exists in
Dominica is a subject for a comedy. The Governor-
General of the Leeward Islands resides in Antigua, and in
theory ought to go on progress and visit in turn his subordi-
nate dominions. His visits are rare as those of angels. The
eminent person, who at present holds that high office, has
been once in Nevis ; and thrice in Dominica, but only for the
briefest stay there. Perhaps he has held aloof in consequence
of an adventure which befell a visiting governor some time
ago on one of these occasions. When there is a constitution
there is an opposition. If there are no grievances the
opposition manufacture them, and the inhabitants of Eoseau
were persuaded that they were an oppressed people and
required fuller liberties. I was informed that His Excellency
had no sooner landed and taken possession of Government
House, than a mob of men and women gathered in the market
place under the leadership of their elected representative.
The girls that I had admired very likely made a part of it.
They swarmed up into the gardens, they demonstrated under
the windows, laughing, shouting, and petitioning. His
Excellency first barricaded the doors, then opened them and
tried a speech, telling the dear creatures how much he loved
and respected them. Probably they did not understand him,
as few of them speak English. Producing no effect, he
retreated again, barred the door once more, slipped out at a
back entrance down a lane to the port, took refuge on board
M
1 62 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
his steamer, and disappeared. So the story was told me
not by the administrator, who was not a man to turn English
authority into ridicule but by some one on the spot, who
repeated the current report of the adventure. It may be
exaggerated in some features, but it represents, at any rate,
the feeling of the place towards the head representative of
the existing government.
I will mention another incident, said to have occurred
still more recently to one of these great persons, very like
what befell Sancho Panza in Barataria. This, too, may
have been wickedly turned, but it was the subject of general
talk and general amusement on board the steamers which
make the round of the Antilles. Universal belief is a fact
of its kind, and though it tends to shape itself in dramatic
form more completely than the facts justify, there is usually
some truth at the bottom of it. The telegrams to the
West Indies pass through New York, and often pick up
something on the way. A warning message reached a
certain colony that a Yankee-Irish schooner with a Fenian
crew was coming down to annex the island, or at least
to kidnap the governor. This distinguished gentleman
ought perhaps to have suspected that a joke was being
played upon his fears ; but he was a landlord. A governor-
general had been threatened seriously in Canada, why
not he in the Antilles? He was as much agitated as
Sancho himself. All these islands were and are entirely
undefended save by a police which cannot be depended on
to resist a desperate invasion. They were called out.
Eumour said that in half the rifles the cartridges were
found afterwards inverted. The next day dispelled the
alarm. The schooner was the creation of some Irish
telegraph clerk, and the scare ended in laughter. But
under the jest lies the wretched certainty that the Antilles
have no protection except in their own population,, and so
little to thank England for that scarcely one of the inha-
EFFECTS OF CONFEDERATION 163
bitants, except the officials, would lift a finger to save the
connection.
Once more, I tell these stories not as if they were
authenticated facts, but as evidence of the scornful feeling
towards English authority. The current belief in them is
a fact of a kind and a very serious one.
The confederation of the Leeward Islands may have been
a convenience to the Colonial Office, and may have allowed
a slight diminution in the cost of administration. The
whole West Indies might be placed under a single governor
with only good results if he were a real one like the
Governor-General at Calcutta. But each single island has
lost from the change, so far, more than it has gained.
Each ship of war has a captain of its own and officers of
its own trained specially for the service. If the Antilles
are ever to thrive, each of them also should have some
trained and skilful man at its head, unembarrassed by
local elected assemblies. The whites have become so weak
that they would welcome the abolition of such assemblies.
The blacks do not care for politics, and would be pleased to
see them swept away to-morrow if they were governed
wisely and fairly. Of course, in that case it would be
necessary to appoint governors who would command con-
fidence and respect. But let governors be sent who
would be governors indeed, like those who administer the
Indian presidencies, and the white residents would gather
heart again, and English and American capitalists would
bring their money and their enterprise, and the blacks
would grow upwards instead of downwards. Let us per-
sist in the other line, let us use the West Indian governments
as asylums for average worthy persons who have to be pro-
vided for, and force on them black parliamentary institu-
tions as a remedy for such persons' inefficiency, and these
beautiful countries will become like Hayti, with Obeah
triumphant, and children offered to the devil and salted and
H 2
1 64 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
eaten, till the conscience of mankind wakes again and the
Americans sweep them all away.
I had an opportunity of seeing what can really be done in
Dominica by an English gentleman who has gone the right
way to work there. Dr. Nicholls came out a few years ago
to Roseau as a medical officer. He was described to me as
a man not only of high professional skill, but with consider-
able scientific attainments. Either by purchase or legacy
(I think the latter) he had become possessed of a small
estate on a hillside a mile or two from the town. He had
built a house upon it. He was cultivating the soil on
scientific principles, and had politely sent me an invitation
to call on him and see what he was about. I was delighted
to avail myself of such an opportunity.
I do not know the exact extent of the property which
was under cultivation ; perhaps it was twenty-five or thirty
acres. The chief part of it was planted with lime trees, the
limes which I saw growing being as large as moderate-sized
lemons ; most of the rest was covered with Liberian coffee,
which does not object to the moist climate, and was growing
with profuse luxuriance. Each tree, each plant had been
personally attended to, pruned when it needed pruning, sup-
ported by bamboos if it was overgrowing its strength, while
the ground about the house was consecrated to botanical
experiments, and specimens were to be seen there of every
tropical flower, shrub, or tree, which was either remarkable
for its beauty or valuable for its chemical properties. His
limes and coffee went principally to New York, where they
had won a reputation, and were in special demand ; but
ingenuity tries other tracks besides the beaten one. Dr.
Nicholls had a manufactory of citric acid which had been
found equally excellent in Europe. Everything which he
produced was turning to gold, except donkeys, seven or eight
of which were feeding under his windows, and which mul-
tiplied so fast that he could not tell what to do with them.
CAPABILITIES OF THE SOIL 165
Industries so various and so active required labour,
and I saw many of the blacks at work with him. In ap-
parent contradiction to the general West Indian experience,
he told me that he had never found a difficulty about it.
He paid them fair wages, and paid them regularly without
the overseer's fines and drawbacks. He knew one from the
other personally, could call each by his name, remembered
where he came from, where he lived, and how, and could
joke with him about his wife or mistress. They in con-
sequence clung to him with an innocent affection, stayed
with him all the week without asking for holidays, and
worked with interest and goodwill. Four years only had
elapsed since Dr. Nicholls commenced his undertakings,
and he already saw his way to clearing a thousand pounds
a year on that one small patch of acres. I may mention
that, being the only man in the island of really superior
attainments, he had tried in vain to win one of the seats
in the elective part of the legislature.
There was nothing particularly favourable in the situa-
tion of his land. All parts of Dominica would respond as
willingly to similar treatment. What could be the reason,
Dr. Nicholls asked me, why young Englishmen went plant-
ing to so many other countries, went even to Ceylon and
Borneo, while comparatively at their own doors, within a
fortnight's sail of Plymouth, there was this island im-
measurably more fertile than either ? The explanation, I
suppose, is the misgiving that the West Indies are consigned
by the tendencies of English policy to the black population,
and that a local government created by representatives of the
negro vote would make a residence there for an energetic
and self-respecting European less tolerable than in any
other part of the globe. The republic of Hayti not only
excludes a white man from any share of the administration,
but forbids his acquisition or possession of real property in
any form. Far short of such extreme provisions, the most
i66 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
prosperous industry might be blighted by taxation. Self-
government is a beautiful subject for oratorical declamation.
If the fact corresponded to the theory and if the possession
of a vote produced the elevating effects upon the character
which are so noisily insisted upon, it would be the welcome
panacea for political and social disorder. Unfortunately
the fact does not correspond to the theory. The possession
of a vote never improved the character of any human being
and never will.
There are many islands in the West Indies, and an
experiment might be ventured without any serious risk.
Let the suffrage principle be applied in its fullness where
the condition of the people seems best to promise success.
In some one of them Dominica would do as well as any
other let a man of ability and character with an ambition
to distinguish himself be sent to govern with a free hand.
Let him choose his own advisers, let him be untrammelled,
unless he falls into fatal and inexcusable errors, with inter-
ference from home. Let him have tune to carry out any
plans which he may form, without fear of recall at the end
of the normal period. After ten or fifteen years, let the
results of the two systems be compared side by side. I
imagine the objection to such a trial would be the same
which was once made in my hearing by an Irish friend of
mine, who was urging on an English statesman the conver-
sion of Ireland into a Crown colony. ' You dare not try
it,' he said, ' for if you did, in twenty years we would be
the most prosperous island of the two, and you would be
wanting to follow our example.'
We had exhausted the neighbourhood of Eoseau. After
a few days Captain C. was again able to ride, and we
could undertake more extended expeditions. He provided
me with a horse or pony or something between both, a
creature that would climb a stone staircase at an angle of
forty -five, or slide down a clay slope soaked by a tropical
A MOUNTAIN RIDE 167
shower, with the same indifference with which it would
canter along a meadow. In the slave times cultivation had
been carried up into the mountains. There were the old
tracks through the forest engineered along the edges of
precipices, torrents roaring far down below, and tall green
trees standing in hollows underneath, whose top branches
were on a level with our eyes. We had to ride with
macintosh and umbrella, prepared at any moment to have
the floods descend upon us. The best costume would be
none at all. While the sun is above the horizon the island
seems to lie under the arches of perpetual rainbows. One
gets wet and one dries again, and one is none the worse
for the adventure. I had heard that it was dangerous.
It did no harm to me. A very particular object was to
reach the crest of the mountain ridge which divides Dominica
down the middle. We saw the peaks high above us, but it
was useless to try the ascent if one could see nothing when
one arrived, and mists and clouds hung about so persistently
that we had to put off our expedition day after day.
A tolerable morning came at last. We started early. A
faithful black youth ran alongside of the horses to pick us
up if we fell, and to carry the indispensable luncheon basket.
We rode through the town, over the bridge and by the foot
of Dr. Nicholls's plantations. We passed through lime and
banana gardens rising slowly along the side of a glen
above the river. The road had been made by the French
long ago, and went right across the island. It had once
been carefully paved, but wet and neglect had loosened
the stones and tumbled them out of their places. Trees
had driven their roots through the middle of the track.
Mountain streams had taken advantage of convenient
cuttings and scooped them into waterways. The road
commissioner on the official staff seemed a merely orna-
mental functionary. We could only travel at a foot pace and
in single file. Happily our horses were used to it. Along
1 68 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
this road in 1805 Sir George Prevost retreated with the
English garrison of Eoseau, when attacked in force from
Martinique ; saved his men and saved the other part of the
island till relief came and the invaders were driven out
again. That was the last of the fighting, and we have been
left since in undisturbed possession. Dominica was then
sacred as the scene of Kodney's glories. Now I suppose,
if the French came again, we should calculate the mercantile
value of the place to us, and having found it to be nothing
at all, might conclude that it would be better to let them
keep it.
We went up and up, winding round projecting spurs of
mountain, here and there coming on plateaus where pio-
neering blacks were clearing patches of forest for their yams
and coffee. We skirted the edge of a valley several miles
across, on the far side of which we saw the steaming of the
sulphur springs, and beyond and above it a mountain peak
four thousand feet high and clothed with timber to the
summit. In most countries the vegetation grows thin as
you rise into the higher altitudes. Here the bush only
seems to grow denser, the trees grander and more self-
asserting, the orchids and parasites on the boughs more
variously brilliant. There were tree ferns less splendid
than those in New Zealand and Australia, but larger than
any one can see in English hothouses, wild oranges bending
under the weight of ripe fruit which was glowing on their
branches, wild pines, wild begonias scattered along the
banks, and a singularly brilliant plant which they call the
wild plantain, but is not a plantain at all, with large broad
pointed leaves radiating out from a centre like an aloe's,
and a crimson flower stem rising up straight in the middle.
It was startling to see such insolent beauty displaying itself
indifferently in the heart of the wilderness with no human
eye to look at it unless of some passing black or wandering
Carib.
A MOUNTAIN RIDE 169
The track had been carried across hot streams fresh
from boiling springs, and along the edge of chasms where
there was scarcely foothold for the horses. At length we
found ourselves on what was apparently the highest point
of the pass. We could not see where we were for the
trees and bushes which surrounded us, but the path began
to descend on the other side. Near the summit was a lake
formed in an old volcanic crater which we had come specially
to look at. We descended a few hundred feet into a hollow
among the hills where the lake was said to be. Where was
it, then ? I asked the guide, for I could discover nothing
that suggested a lake or anything like one. He pointed
into the bush where it was thicker with tropical under-
growth than a wheatfield with ears of corn. If I cared to
creep below the branches for two hundred yards at the risk
of meeting snakes, scorpions, and other such charming
creatures, I should find myself on the water's edge.
To ride up a mountain three thousand feet high, to be
near a wonder which I could not see after all, was not what
I had proposed to myself. There was a traveller's rest
at the point where we halted, a cool damp grotto carved
into the sandstone ; we picketed our horses, cutting leafy
boughs off the trees for them, and making cushions for
ourselves out of the ferns. We were told that if we walked
on for half a mile we should see the other side of the island,
and if we were lucky we might catch a glimpse of the lake.
Meanwhile clouds rolled down off the mountains, filled the
hollow where we stood, and so wrapped us in rnist, that the
question seemed rather how we were to return than whether
we should venture farther.
While we were considering what to do, we heard steps
approaching through the fog, and a party of blacks came
up on their way to Eoseau with a sick companion whom
they were carrying in a palanquin. We were eating our
luncheon in the grotto, and they stopped to talk to our
1 70 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
guide and stare at us. Two of them, a lad and a girl, came
up closer to me than good manners would have allowed if
they had possessed such things ; the ' I am as good as
you, and you will be good enough to know it,' sort of tone
which belongs to these democratic days showing itself
rather notably in the rising generation in parts of these
islands. I defended myself with producing a sketch book
and proceeding to take their likenesses, on which they fled
precipitately.
Our sandwiches finished, we were pensively consuming
our cigars, I speculating on Sir George Prevost and his
party of redcoats who must have bivouacked on that very
spot, when the clouds broke and the sun came out. The
interval was likely to be a short one, so we hurried to our
feet, walked rapidly on, and at a turn of the path where a
hurricane had torn a passage through the trees, we caught a
sight of our lake as we had been told that perhaps we might
do. It lay a couple of hundred feet beneath us deep and
still, winding away round a promontory under the cragts and
woods of the opposite hills : they call it a crater, and I suppose
it may have been one, for the whole island shows traces of
violent volcanic disturbance, but in general a crater is a
bowl, and this was like a reach of a river, which lost itself
before one could see where it ended. They told us that in
old times, when troops were in the fort, and the white men
of the island went about and enjoyed themselves, there were
boats on this lake, and parties came up and fished there.
Now it was like the pool in the gardens of the palace of the
sleeping princess, guarded by impenetrable thickets, and
whether there are fish there, or enchanted princesses, or the
huts of some tribe of Caribs, hiding in those fastnesses from
negroes whom they hate, or from white men whom they do
not love, no one knows or cares to know. I made a hurried
pencil sketch, and we went on.
A little farther and we were out of the bush, at a.
A MOUNTAIN RIDE 171
rocky terrace on the rim of the great valley which carries
the rainfall on the eastern side of the mountains down into
the Atlantic. We were 3,000 feet above the sea. Far
away the ocean stretched out before us, the horizon line
where sky met water so far distant that both had melted
into mist at the point where they touched. Mount
Diablot, where Labat spent a night catching the devil
birds, soared up on our left hand. Below, above, around
us, it was forest everywhere ; forest, and only forest, a
land fertile as Adam's paradise, still waiting for the day
when ' the barren woman shall bear children.' Of course
it was beautiful, if that be of any consequence moun-
tain peaks and crags and falling waters, and the dark
green of the trees in the foreground, dissolving from
tint to tint to grey, violet, and blue in the far-off distance.
Even at the height where we stood, the temperature must
have been 70. But the steaming damp of the woods was
gone, the air was clear and exhilarating as champagne.
What a land ! And what were we doing with it ? This
fair inheritance, won by English hearts and hands for the
use of the working men of England, and the English
working men lying squalid in the grimy alleys of crowded
towns, and the inheritance turned into a wilderness.
Visions began to rise of what might be, but visions which
were taken from me before they could shape themselves.
The curtain of vapour fell down over us again, and all
was gone, and of that glorious picture nothing was left but
our own two selves and the few yards of red rock and soil
on which we were standing.
There was no need for haste now. We returned slowly
to our horses, and our horses carried us home by the
way that we had come. Captain C. went carelessly in
front through the fog, over boulders and watercourses and
roots of fallen trees. I followed as I could, expecting
every moment to find myself flying over my horse's head ;
172 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
stumbling, plunging, sliding, but getting through with it
somehow. The creature had never seen me before, but was
as careful of my safety as if I had been an old acquaintance
and friend. Only one misadventure befell me, if misad-
venture it may be called. Shaken, and damp with heat,
I was riding under a wild orange tree, the fruit within
reach of my hand. I picked an orange and plunged my
teeth into the skin, and I had to remember my rashness
for days. The oil in the rind, pungent as aromatic salts,
rushed on my palate, and spurted on my face and eyes.
The smart for the moment half blinded me. I bethought
me, however, that oranges with such a flavour would be
worth something, and a box of them which was sent home
for me was converted into marmalade with a finer flavour
than ever came from Seville.
What more can I say of Dominica ? I stayed with the
hospitable C.'s for a fortnight. At the appointed time the
returning steamer called for me. I left Captain C. with a
warm hope that he might not be consigned for ever to a
post which an English gentleman ought not to be con-
demned to occupy; that if matters could not be mended
for him where he stood, he might find a situation where
his courage and his understanding might be turned to
useful purpose. I can never forget the kindness both of
himself and his clever, good, graceful lady. I cannot
forget either the two dusky damsels who waited upon me
like spirits in a fairy tale. It was night when I left. The
packet came alongside the wharf. We took leave by the
gleaming of her lights. The whistle screamed, and Domi-
nica, and all that I had seen, faded into a memory. All
that I had seen, but not all that I had thought. That
island was the scene of the most glorious of England's
many famous actions. It had been won for us again and
again by the gallantry of our seamen and soldiers. It had
been secured at last to the Crown by the genius of the
REFLECTIONS ON ENGLISH ADMINISTRA TION 1 7 3
greatest of our admirals. It was once prosperous. It
might be prosperous again, for the resources of the soil are
untouched and inexhaustible. The black population are
exceptionally worthy. They are excellent boatmen, excel-
lent fishermen, excellent mechanics, ready to undertake
any work if treated with courtesy and kindness. Yet in
our hands it is falling into ruin. The influence of England
there is gone. It is nothing. Indifference has bred in-
difference in turn as a necessary consequence. Something
must be wrong when among 30,000 of our fellow-subjects
not one could be found to lift a hand for us if the island
were invaded, when a boat's crew from Martinique might
take possession of it without a show of resistance.
If I am asked the question, What use is Dominica to us ?
I decline to measure it by present or possible marketable
value ; I answer simply that it is part of the dominions of the
Queen. If we pinch a finger, the smart is felt in the brain.
If we neglect a wound in the least important part of our
persons, it may poison the system. Unless the blood of an
organised body circulates freely through the extremities, the
extremities mortify and drop off, and the dropping off of
any colony of ours will not be to our honour and may be to
our shame. Dominica seems but a small thing, but our
larger colonies are observing us, and the world is observing
us, and what we do or fail to do works beyond the limits of
its immediate operation. The mode of management which
produces the state of things which I have described cannot
possibly be a right one. We have thought it wise, with a
perfectly honest intention, to leave our dependencies gene-
rally to work out their own salvation. We have excepted
India, for with India we dare not run the risk. But we
have refused to consider that others among our possessions
may be in a condition analogous to India, and we have allowed
them to drift on as they could. It was certainly excusable,
and it may have been prudent, to try popular methods first,
174 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
but we have no right to persist in the face of a failure so
complete. We are obliged to keep these islands, for it
seems that no one will relieve us of them ; and if they are
to remain ours, we are bound so to govern them that our
name shall be respected and our sovereignty shall not be a
mockery. Am I asked what should be done ? I have
answered already. Among the silent thousands whose
quiet work keeps the Empire alive, find a Eajah Brooke if
you can, or a Mr. Smith of Scilly. If none of these are
attainable, even a Sancho Panza would do. Send him out
with no more instructions than the knight of La Mancha
gave Sancho to fear God and do his duty. Put him
on his metal. Promise him the respect and praise of
all good men if he does well ; and if he calls to his help
intelligent persons who understand the cultivation of soils
and the management of men, in half a score of years
Dominica would be the brightest gem of the Antilles.
From America, from England, from all parts of the world,
admiring tourists would be flocking there to see what
Government could do, and curious politicians with jealous
eyes admitting reluctantly unwelcome conclusions. ,
Woman ! no mortal o'er the widespread earth
Can find a fault in thee ; thy good report
Doth reach the widespread heaven, as of some prince
Who, in the likeness of a god, doth rule
O'er subjects stout of heart and strong of hand ;
And men speak greatly of him, and his land
Bears wheat and rye, his orchards bend with fruit,
His flocks breed surely, the sea yields her fish,
Because he guides his folk with wisdom. And they grow
In grace and manly virtue. 1
' & yvvai, OVK &v ris <re fiporuv tir airelpova yatav
veiKfot $ yap arev K\tos ovpavbv fvpvv iKavei
SiffTf rev % j8oriAf)os d/tv/tocos, offre OfovS^s
avtipaffiv Iv iro\.\otffi Kal I<p6l/j.oiffiv avdvffuv,
evSucias a.vi'X.'riai ' <f>fpr]ffi Se yaia fj.f\a.iva
irvpobs Kal Kpi6ds, &pi6r)ffi 5e SeVSpea /cupirf,
TiKTft 5' ffjiireSa /uijAa, 9d\acrffa 5e irapfxet j'x#Ds,
e'{ tvriyfffiris ' apertaffi Se Aaol vir avrov. Odyssey, xix. 107.
REFLECTIONS ON ENGLISH ADMINISTRA TION 1 75
Because ' he guides with wisdom.' That is the whole
secret. The leading of the wise few, the willing obedience
of the many, is the beginning and the end of all right
action. Secure this, and you secure everything. Fail to
secure it, and be your liberties as wide as you can make
them, no success is possible.
176 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
CHAPTER XII.
The Darien canal Jamaica mail packet Captain W. Retrospect of
Jamaican history Waterspout at sea Hayti Jacmel A walk through
the town A Jamaican planter First sight of the Blue Mountains Port
Royal Kingston The Colonial Secretary Gordon riots Changes in
the Jamaican constitution.
ONCE more to Barbadoes, but merely to change there from
steamer to steamer. My course was now across the Carib-
bean Sea to the great islands at the bottom of it. The
English mail, after calling and throwing off its lateral
branches at Bridgetown, pursues its direct course to Hayti
by Jamaica, and so on to Vera Cruz and the Darien canal.
This wonderful enterprise of M. Lesseps has set moving the
loose negro population of the Antilles and Jamaica. Un-
willing to work as they are supposed to be, they have
swarmed down to the isthmus, and are still swarming
thither in tens of thousands, tempted by the dollar or
dollar and a half a day which M. Lesseps is furnishing.
The vessel which called for us at Dominica was crowded
with them, and we picked up more as we went on. Their
average stay is for a year. At the end of a year half of
them have gone to the other world. Half go home, made
easy for life with money enough to buy a few acres of land
and ' live happy ever after.' Heedless as schoolboys, they
plunge into the enterprise, thinking of nothing but the
harvest of dollars. They might earn as much or more at
their own doors if there were any one to employ them, but
quiet industry is out of joint, and Darien has seized their
imaginations as an Eldorado.
If half the reports which reached me are correct, in all
THE DARIEN CANAL 177
the world there is not perhaps now concentrated in any
single spot so much swindling and villany, so much foul
disease, such a hideous dungheap of moral and physical
abomination, as in the scene of this far-famed undertaking
of nineteenth-century engineering. By the scheme, as it
was first propounded, six-and-twenty millions of English
money were to unite the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, to
form a highway for the commerce of the globe, and enrich
with untold wealth the happy owners of original shares.
The thrifty French peasantry were tempted by the golden
bait, and poured their savings into M. Lesseps's lottery
box. Almost all that money, I was told, has been already
spent, and only a fifth of the work is done. Meanwhile the
human vultures have gathered to the spoil. Speculators,
adventurers, card sharpers, hell keepers, and doubtful
ladies have carried their charms to this delightful market.
The scene of operations is a damp tropical jungle, intensely
hot, swarming with mosquitoes, snakes, alligators, scor-
pions, and centipedes ; the home, even as nature made it,
of yellow fever, typhus, and dysentery, and now made im-
measurably more deadly by the multitudes of people who
crowd thither. Half buried in mud lie about the wrecks
of costly machinery, consuming by rust, sent out under
lavish orders, and found unfit for the work for which they
were intended. Unburied altogether lie also skeletons
of the human machines which have broken down there,
picked clean by the vultures. Everything which imagina-
tion can conceive that is ghastly and loathsome seems to
be gathered into that locality just now. I was pressed to
go on and look at the moral surroundings of ' the greatest
undertaking of our age,' but my curiosity was less strong
than my disgust. I did not see the place, and the descrip-
tion which I have given may be overcharged. The accounts
which reached me, however, were uniform and consistent.
N
178 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
Not one person whom I met and who could speak from per-
sonal knowledge had any other story to tell.
We looked again into St. Lucia on our way. The train-
ing squadron was lying outside, and the harbour was covered
with boats full of blue-jackets. The big ships were rolling
heavily. They could have eaten up Kodney's fleet. The
great ' Ville de Paris ' would have been a mouthful to the
smallest of them. Man for man, officers and crew were
as good as Eodney ever commanded. Yet, somehow, they
produce small effect on the imagination of the colonists.
The impression is that they are meant more for show than
for serious use. Alas ! the stars and stripes on a Yankee
trader have more to say in the West Indies than the white
ensigns of a fleet of British ironclads.
At Barbadoes there was nothing more for me to do or see.
The English mail was on the point of sailing, and I hastened
on board. One does not realise distance on maps. Jamaica
belongs to the West Indies, and the West Indies are a col-
lective entity. Yet it is removed from the Antilles by the
diameter of the Caribbean Sea, and is farther off than
Gibraltar from Southampton. Thus it was a voyage of
several days, and I looked about to see who were to be my
companions. There were several Spaniards, one or two
English tourists, and some ladies who never left their
cabins. The captain was the most remarkable figure : an
elderly man with one eye lost or injured, the other as
peremptory as I have often seen in a human face ; rough
and prickly on the outside as a pineapple, internally very
much resembling the same fruit, for at the bottom he was
true, genuine, and kindly hearted, very amusing, and inti-
mately known to all travellers on the West Indian line, in
the service of which he had passed forty years of his life.
In his own ship he was sovereign and recognised no superior.
Bishops, colonial governors, presidents of South American
republics were, so far as their office went, no more to him
THE JAMAICA MAIL PACKET 179
than other people, and as' long as they were on board were
chattels of which he had temporary charge. Peer and
peasant were alike under his orders, which were abso-
lute as the laws of Medes and Persians. On the other
hand, his eye was quick to see if there was any personal
merit in a man, and if you deserved his respect you would
have it. One particular merit he had which I greatly
approved. He kept his cabin to himself, and did not turn
it into a smoking room, as I have known captains do a great
deal too often.
All my own thoughts were fixed upon Jamaica. I had
read so much about it, that my memory was full of persons
and scenes and adventures of which Jamaica was the stage
or subject. Penn and Venables and the Puritan conquest,
and Morgan and the buccaneers ; Port Eoyal crowded with
Spanish prizes; its busy dockyards, and English frigates
and privateers fitting out there for glorious or desperate
enterprises. The name of Jamaica brought them crowding
up with incident on incident ; and behind the history came
Tom Cringle and the wild and reckless, yet wholesome and
hearty, planter's life in Kingston ; the dark figures of the
pirates swinging above the mangroves at Gallows Point ;
the balls and parties and the beautiful quadroons, and the
laughing, merry, innocent children of darkness, with the
tricks of the middies upon them. There was the tragic
side of it too, in slavery, the last ugly flash out of the cloud
being not two decades distant in the Eyre and Gordon
time. Interest enough there was about Jamaica, and things
would be strangely changed in Kingston if nothing re-
mained of the society which was once so brilliant. There,
if anywhere, England and English rule were not yet a
vanished quantity. There was a dockyard still, and a com-
modore in command, and a guardship and gunboats, and
English regiments and West Indian regiments with English
officers. Some representatives, too, I knew were to be found
N 2
i8o THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
of the old Anglo-West Indians, men whose fathers and
grandfathers were born in the island, and whose fortunes
were bound up in it. Aaron Bang ! what would not one
have given to meet Aaron ? The real Aaron had been
gathered to his fathers, and nature does not make two such
as he was ; but I might fall in with something that would
remind me of him. Paul Gelid and Pepperpot Wagtail,
and Peter Mangrove, better than either of them the like-
ness of these might be surviving, and it would be delightful
to meet and talk to them. They would give fresh flavour
to the immortal ' Log.' Even another Tom was not im-
possible; some middy to develop hereafter into a frigate
captain and to sail again into Port Royal with his prizes
in tow.
Nature at all events could not be changed. The white
rollers would still be breaking on the coral reefs. The
palms would still be waving on the spit which forms the
harbour, and the amber mist would be floating round the
peaks of the Blue Mountains. There were English soldiers
and sailors, and English people. The English language
was spoken there by blacks as well as whites. The religion
was English. Our country went for something, and there
would be some persons, at least, to whom the old land was
more than a stepmother, and who were not sighing in their
hearts for annexation to the American Union. The
governor, Sir Henry Norman, of Indian fame, I was sorry
to learn, was still absent ; he had gone home on some legal
business. Sir Henry had an Imperial reputation. He had
been spoken of to me in Barbadoes as able, if he were
allowed a chance, to act as Viceroy of all the islands, and
to set them on their feet again. I could well believe that
a man of less than Sir Henry's reputed power could do it
for in the thing itself there was no great difficulty if
only we at home were once disenchanted ; though all the
ability in the world would be thrown away as long as the
PRESIDENT SALOMON 181
enchantment continued. I did see Sir Henry, as it turned
out, but only for a few hours.
Our voyage was without remarkable incident ; as voyages
are apt to be in these days of powerful steamboats. One
morning there was a tropical rain storm which was worth
seeing. We had a strong awning over the quarter-deck,
so I could stand and watch it. An ink-black cloud came
suddenly up from the north which seemed to hang into the
sea, the surface of the water below being violently agitated.
According to popular belief, the cloud on these occasions is
drawing up water which it afterwards discharges. Were
this so, the water discharged would be salt, which it never
is. The cause of the agitation is a cyclonic rotation of air
or local whirlwind. The most noticeable feature was the
blackness of the cloud itself. It became so dark that it
would have been difficult to read any ordinary print. The
rain, when it burst, fell not in drops but in torrents.
The deck was flooded, and the scuttle-holes ran like jets
from a pump. The awning was ceasing to be a shelter,
for the water was driven bodily through it ; but the down-
pour passed off as suddenly as it had risen. There was
no lightning and no wind. The sea under our side was
glassy smooth, and was dashed into millions of holes by
the plunging of the rain pellets.
The captain in his journeys to and fro had become
acquainted with the present black President of Hayti, Mr.
Salomon. I had heard of this gentleman as an absolute
person, who knew how to make himself obeyed, and who
treated opposition to his authority in a very summary
manner. He seemed to be a favourite of the captain's.
He had been educated in France, had met with many
changes of fortune, and after an exile in Jamaica had
become quasi king of the black republic. I much wished
to see this paradise of negro liberty ; we were to touch at
Jacmel, which is one of the principal ports, to leave the
1 82 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
mails, and Captain W was good enough to say that, if I
liked, I might go on shore for an hour or two with the officer
in charge.
Hayti, as everyone knows who has studied the black
problem, is the western portion of Columbus's Espanola, or
St. Domingo, the largest after Cuba and the most fertile in
natural resources of all the islands of the Caribbean Sea. It
was the earliest of the Spanish settlements in the New World.
The Spaniards found there a million or two of mild and inno-
cent Indians, whom in their first enthusiasm they intended
to convert to Christianity, and to offer as the first fruits of
their discovery to the Virgin Mary and St. Domenic. The
saint gave his name to the island, and his temperament to
the conquerors. In carrying out their pious design, they
converted the Indians off the face of the earth, working
them to death in their mines and plantations. They filled
their places with blacks from Africa, who proved of tougher
constitution. They colonised, they built cities ; they throve
and prospered for nearly two hundred years, when Hayti, the
most valuable half of the island, was taken from them by
the buccaneers and made into a French province. The rest,
which keeps the title of St. Domingo, continued Spanish,
and is Spanish still a thinly inhabited, miserable, Spanish
republic. Hayti became afterwards the theatre of the exploits
of the ever-glorious Toussaint 1'Ouverture. When the
French Eevolution broke out, and Liberty and the Eights of
Man became the new gospel, slavery could not be allowed
to continue in the French dominions. The blacks of the
colony were emancipated and were received into the national
brotherhood. In sympathy with the Jacobins of France,
who burnt the chateaux of the nobles and guillotined the
owners of them, the liberated slaves rose as soon as they
were free, and massacred the whole French population,
man, woman, and child. Napoleon sent an army to punish
the murderers and recover the colony. Toussaint, who had
THE BLACK REPUBLIC 183
no share in the atrocities, and whose fault was only that he
had been caught by the prevailing political epidemic and
believed in the evangel of freedom, surrendered and was
carried to France, where he died or else was made an end
of. The yellow fever avenged him, and secured for his
countrymen the opportunity of trying out to the uttermost
the experiment of negro self-government. The French
troops perished in tens of thousands. They were reinforced
again and again, but it was like pouring water into a sieve.
The climate won a victory to the black man which he could
not win for himself. They abandoned their enterprise at
last, and Hayti was free. We English tried our hand to
recover it afterwards, but we failed also, and for the same
reason.
Hayti has thus for nearly a century been a black inde-
pendent state. The negro race have had it to themselves
and have not been interfered with. They were equipped
when they started on their career of freedom with the
Catholic religion, a civilised language, European laws and
manners, and the knowledge of various arts and occupations
which they had learnt while they were slaves. They speak
French still ; they are nominally Catholics still ; and the tags
and rags of the gold lace of French civilisation continue
to cling about their institutions. But in the heart of them
has revived the old idolatry of the Gold Coast, and in the
villages of the interior, where they are out of sight and can
follow their instincts, they sacrifice children in the ser-
pent's honour after the manner of their forefathers. Per-
haps nothing better could be expected from a liberty which
was inaugurated by assassination and plunder. Political
changes which prove successful do not begin in that way.
The Bight of Leogane is a deep bay carved in the side
of the island, one arm of which is a narrow ridge of high
mountains a hundred and fifty miles long and from thirty
to forty wide. At the head of this bay, to the north of the
1 84 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
ridge, is Port au Prince, the capital of this remarkable
community. On the south, on the immediately opposite
side of the mountains and facing the Caribbean Sea, is
Jacmel, the town next in importance. We arrived off it
shortly after daybreak. The houses, which are white,
looked cheerful in the sunlight. Harbour there was none,
but an open roadstead into which the swell of the sea sets
heavily, curling over a long coral reef, which forms a
partial shelter. The mountain range rose behind, sloping
off into rounded woody hills. Here were the feeding
grounds of the herds of wild cattle which tempted the
buccaneers into the island, and from which they took their
name. The shore was abrupt ; the land broke off in cliffs of
coral rock tinted brilliantly with various colours. One rather
striking white cliff, a ship's officer assured me, was chalk ;
adding flint when I looked incredulous. His geological
education was imperfect. We brought up a mile outside
the black city. The boat was lowered. None of the other
passengers volunteered to go with me ; the English are
out of favour in Hayti just now ; the captain discouraged
landings out of mere curiosity ; and, indeed, the officer with
the mails had to reassure himself of Captain W 's con-
sent before he would take me. The presence of Europeans
in any form is barely tolerated. A few only are allowed to
remain about the ports, just as the Irish say they let a
few Danes remain in Dublin and Waterford after the battle
of Clontarf, to attend to the ignoble business of trade.
The country after the green of the Antilles looked
brown and parched. In the large islands the winter
months are dry. As we approached the reef we saw the
long hills of water turn to emerald as they rolled up the
shoal, then combing and breaking in cataracts of snow-
white foam. The officer in charge took me within oar's
length of the rock to try my nerves, and the sea, he did
not fail to tell me, swarmed with sharks of the worst pro-
J AC MEL 185
pensities. Two steamers were lying inside, one of which,
belonging to an English company, had ' happened a mis-
fortune,' and was breaking up as a deserted wreck. A
Yankee clipper schooner had just come in with salt fish
and crackers a singularly beautiful vessel, with immense
beam, which would have startled the builders of the Cowes
racers. It was precisely like the schooner which Tom
Cringle commanded before the dockyard martinets had
improved her into ugliness, built on the lines of the old
pirate craft of the islands, when the lives and fortunes of
men hung on the extra speed, or the point which they
could lie closer to the wind. Her return cargo would be
coffee and bananas.
Englishmen move about in Jacmel as if they were
ashamed of themselves among their dusky lords and
masters. I observed the Yankee skipper paddling him-
self off in a canoe with his broad straw hat and his
cigar in his mouth, looking as if all the world belonged to
him, and as if all the world, and the Hayti blacks in
particular, were aware of the fact. The Yankee, whether
we like it or not, is the acknowledged sovereign in these
waters.
The landing place was, or had been, a jetty built on
piles and boarded over. Half the piles were broken ;
the planks had rotted and fallen through. The swell was
rolling home, and we had to step out quickly as the boat
rose on the crest of the wave. A tattered crowd of negroes
were loafing about variously dressed, none, however, en-
tirely without clothes of some kind. One of them did kindly
give me a hand, observing that I was less light of foot than
once I might have been. The agent's office was close by.
I asked the head clerk a Frenchman to find me a guide
through the town. He called one of the bystanders whom
he knew, and we started together, I and my black com-
panion, to see as much as I could in the hour which
was allowed me. The language was less hopeless than at
Dominica. We found that we could understand each
other he, me, tolerably; I, him, in fragments, for his
tongue went as fast as a shuttle. Though it was still
barely eight o'clock the sun was scalding. The streets
were filthy and the stench abominable. The houses were
of white stone, and of some pretensions, but ragged and
uninviting paint nowhere, and the woodwork of the win-
dows and verandahs mouldy and worm-eaten. The in-
habitants swarmed as in a St. Giles's rookery. I suppose
they were all out of doors. If any were left at home
Jacmel must have been as populous as an African ants'
nest. As I had looked for nothing better than a Kaffir
kraal, the degree of civilisation was more than I expected.
I expressed my admiration of the buildings ; my guide was
gratified, and pointed out to me with evident pride a new
hotel or boarding house kept by a Madam Somebody who
was the great lady of the place. Madame Ellememe was
sitting in a shady balcony outside the first-floor windows.
She was a large menacing-looking mulatto, like some
ogress of the ' Arabian Nights,' capable of devouring, if she
found them palatable, any number of salt babies. I took
off my hat to this formidable dame, which she did not
condescend to notice, and we passed on. A few houses in
the outskirts stood in gardens with inclosures about them.
There is some trade in the place, and there were evidently
families, negro or European, who lived in less squalid
style than the generality. There was a governor there,
my guide informed me an ornamental personage, much
respected. To my question whether he had any soldiers, I
was answered 'No; ' the Haytians didn't like soldiers. I was
to understand, however, that they were not common blacks.
They aspired to be a commonwealth with public rights and
alliances. Hayti a republic, France a republic : France
and Hayti good friends now. They had a French bishop
JACMEL zS?
and French priests and a French currency. In spite of
their land laws, they were proud of their affinity with the
great nation ; and I heard afterwards, though not from my
Jacmel companion, that the better part of the Haytians
would welcome back the French dominion if they were not
afraid that the Yankees would disapprove.
My guide persisted in leading me outside the town, and
as my time was limited, I tried in various ways to induce
him to take me back into it. He maintained, however, that
he had been told to show me whatever was most interest-
ing, and I found that I was to see an American windmill-
pump which had been just erected to supply Jacmel with
fresh water. It was the first that had been seen in the island,
and was a wonder of wonders. Doubtless it implied ' pro-
gress,' and would assist in the much-needed ablution of
the streets and kennels. I looked at it and admired, and
having thus done homage, I was allowed my own way.
It was market day. The Yankee cargo had been un-
loaded, and a great open space in front of the cathedral was
covered with stalls or else blankets stretched on poles to keep
the sun off, where hundreds of Haytian dames were sitting
or standing disposing of their wares piles of salt fish,
piles of coloured calicoes, knives, scissors, combs, and
brushes. Of home produce there were great baskets of
loaves, fruit, vegetables, and butcher's meat on slabs. I
looked inquisitively at these last ; but I acknowledge that
I saw no joints of suspicious appearance. Children were
running about in thousands, not the least as if they were
in fear of being sacrificed, and babies hung upon their
mothers as if natural affection existed in Jacmel as much
as in other places. I asked no compromising questions,
not wishing to be torn in pieces. Sir Spencer St. John's
book has been heard of in Hayti, and the anger about it is
considerable. The scene was interesting enough, but the
smell was unendurable. The wild African black is not
1 88 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
filthy in his natural state. He washes much, and, as wild
animals do, at least tries to keep himself clear of vermin. The
blacks in Jacmel appeared (like the same animals as soon
as they are domesticated) to lose the sense which belongs
to them in their wild condition. My prejudices, if I have
any, had not blinded me to the good qualities of the men
and women in Dominica. I do not think it was prejudice
wholly which made me think the faces which I saw in
Hayti the most repulsive which I had ever seen in the world,
or Jacmel itself, taken for all in all, the foulest, dirtiest,
and nastiest of human habitations. The dirt, however, I
will do them the justice to say did not seem to extend to
their churches. The cathedral stood at the upper end of
the market place. I went in. It was airy, cool, and decent-
looking. Some priests were saying mass, and there was a
fairly large congregation. I wished to get a nearer sight
of the altar and the images and pictures, imagining that
in Hayti the sacred persons might assume a darker colour
than in Europe ; but I could not reach the chancel without
disturbing people who were saying their prayers, and,
to the disappointment of my companion, who beckoned
me on, and would have cleared a way for me, I controlled
my curiosity and withdrew.
My hour's leave of absence was expired. I made my way
back to the landing place, where the mail steamer's boat was
waiting for me. On the steamer herself the passengers
were waiting impatiently for breakfast, which had been put
off on our account. We hurried on board at our best speed ;
but before breakfast could be thought of, or any other
thing, I had to strip and plunge into a bath and wash
away the odour of the great negro republic of the West
which clung to my clothes and skin.
Leaving Jacmel and its associations, we ran all day
along the land, skirting a range of splendid mountains be-
tween seven and eight thousand feet high ; past the Isle a
A JAMAICA PLANTER 189
Vache ; past the bay of Cayes, once famous as the haunt of
the sea-rovers ; past Cape Tubiron, the Cape of Sharks. At
evening we were in the channel which divides St. Domingo
from Jamaica. Captain insisted to me that this was
the scene of Eodney's action, and he pointed out to me the
headland under which the British fleet had been Iving.
/ O
He was probably right in saying that it was the scene
of some action of Eodney's, for there is hardly a corner
of the West Indies where he did not leave behind him
the print of his cannon shot ; . but it was not the scene
of the great fight which saved the British Empire. That
was below the cliffs of Dominica; and Captain W , as
many others have done, was confounding Dominica with
St. Domingo.
The next morning we were to anchor at Port Eoyal.
We had a Jamaica gentleman of some consequence on
board. I had failed so far to make acquaintance with him,
but on this last evening he joined me on deck, and I gladly
used the opportunity to learn something of the present
condition of things. I was mistaken in expecting to find a
more vigorous or more sanguine tone of feeling than I had
left at the Antilles. There was the same despondency,
the same sense that their state was hopeless, and that no-
thing which they could themselves do would mend it. He
himself, for instance, was the owner of a large sugar estate
which a few years ago was worth 60,OOOZ. It was not en-
cumbered. He was his own manager, and had spared no
cost in providing the newest machinery. Yet, with the pre-
sent prices and with the refusal of the American Commercial
Treaty, it would not pay the expense of cultivation. He
held on, for it was all that he could do. To sell was im-
possible, for no one would buy even at the price of the
stock on the land. It was the same story which I had
heard everywhere. The expenses of the administration,
this gentleman said, were out of all proportion to the
190 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
resources of the island, and were yearly increasing. The
planters had governed in the old days as the English
landlords had governed Ireland. They had governed
cheaply and on their own resources. They had authority ;
they were respected ; their word was law. Now their
power had been taken from them, and made over to paid
officials, and the expense was double what it used to be.
Between the demands made on them in the form of taxation
and the fall in the value of their produce their backs were
breaking, and the ' landed interest ' would come to an
end. I asked him, as I had asked many persons without
getting a satisfactory answer, what he thought that the
Imperial Government could do to mend matters. He
seemed to think that it was too late to do anything. The
blacks were increasing so fast, and the white influence was
diminishing so fast, that Jamaica in a few years would be
another Hayti.
In this gentleman, too, I found to my sorrow that there
was the same longing for admission to the American Union
which I had left behind me at the Antilles. In spite of
soldiers and the naval station, the old country was still
looked upon as a stepmother, and of genuine loyalty there
was, according to him, little or nothing. If the West Indies
were ever to become prosperous again, it could only be when
they were annexed to the United States. For the present,
at least, he admitted that annexation was impossible. Not
on account of any possible objection on the part of the
British Government ; it seems to be assumed by every one
that the British Government cares nothing what they do ;
nor wholly on account of the objections of the Americans,
though he admitted that the Americans were unwilling to
receive them ; but because in the existing state of feeling
such a change could not be carried out without civil war.
In Jamaica, at least, the blacks and mulattoes would resist.
There were nearly 700,000 of them, while of the whites
JAMAICAN PROSPECTS 191
there were but 15,000, and the relative numbers were every
year becoming more unfavourable. The blacks knew that
under England they had nothing to fear. They would have
everything more and more their own way, and in a short
time they expected to have the island to themselves. They
might collect arms ; they might do what they pleased, and
no English officer dared to use rough measures with them ;
while, if they belonged to the Union, the whites would re-
cover authority one way or another. The Americans were
ready with their rifles on occasions of disorder, and their
own countrymen did not call them to account for it as
we did. The blacks, therefore, preferred the liberty which
they had and the prospects to which they looked forward,
and they and the mulattoes also would fight, and fight des-
perately, before they would allow themselves to be made
American citizens.
The prospect which Mr. laid before me was not
a beautiful one, and was coming a step nearer at each
advance that was made in the direction of constitutional
self-government ; for, like every other person with whom I
spoke on the subject, he said emphatically that Europeans
would not remain to be ruled under a black representative
system ; nor would they take any part in it when they
would be so overwhelmingly outvoted and outnumbered.
They would sooner forfeit all that they had in the world
and go away. An effective and economical administration
on the Indian pattern might have saved all a few years
ago. It was too late now, and Jamaica was past recovery.
At this rate it was a sadly altered Jamaica since Tom
Cringle's time, though his friend Aaron even then had
seen what was probably coming. But I could not accept
entirely all that Mr. had been saying, and had to dis-
count the natural irritation of a man who sees his fortune
sliding out of his hands. Moreover, for myself, I never listen
much to a desponding person. Even when a cause is lost
192 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
utterly, and no rational hope remains, I would still go
down, if it had to be so, with my spirit unbroken and my
face to the enemy. Mr. perhaps would recover heart
if the price of sugar mended a little. For my own part, I do
not care much whether it mends or not. The economics of
the islands ought not to depend exclusively on any single
article of produce. I believe, too, in spite of gloomy pro-
gnostics, that a loyal and prosperous Jamaica is still among
the possibilities of the future, if we will but study in earnest
the character of the problem. Mr. , however, did most
really convey to me the convictions of a large and in-
fluential body of West Indians convictions on which they
are already acting, and will act more and more. With
Hayti so close, and with opinion in England indifferent to
what becomes of them, they will clear out while they have
something left to lose, and will not wait till ruin is upon
them, or till they are ordered off the land by a black legis-
lature. There is a saying in Hayti that the white man has
no rights which the blacks are bound to recognise.
I walked forward after we had done talking. We had
five hundred of the poor creatures on board on their way to
the Darien pandemonium. The vessel was rolling with a
heavy beam sea. I found the whole mass of them reduced
into the condition of the pigs who used to occupy the fore-
deck in the Cork and Bristol packets. They were lying in a
confused heap together, helpless, miserable, without con-
sciousness apparently, save a sense in each that he was
wretched. Unfortunate brothers-in-law ! following the
laws of political economy, and carrying their labour to the
dearest market, where, before a year was out, half of them
were to die. They had souls, too, some of them, and
honest and kindly hearts. I observed one man who was
suffering less than the rest reading aloud to a prostrate
group a chapter of the New Testament ; another was read-
ing to himself a French Catholic book of devotion.
KINGSTON 193
The dawn was breaking in the east when I came on
deck in the morning. The Blue Mountains were hanging
over us on our right hand, the peaks buried in white mist
which the unrisen sun was faintly tinting with orange.
We had passed Morant Bay, the scene of Gordon's rash
attempt to imitate Toussaint 1'Ouverture. As so often in
the Antilles, a level plain stretched between the sea and
the base of the hills, formed by the debris washed down by
the rivers in the rainy season. Among cane fields and
cocoa-nut groves we saw houses and the chimneys of the
sugar factories ; and, as we came nearer, we saw men and
horses going to their early work. Presently Kingston itself
came in sight, and Up Park Camp, and the white barracks
high up on the mountain side, of which one had read and
heard so much. Here was actually Tom Cringle's Kingston,
and between us and the town was the long sand spit which
incloses the lagoon at the head of which it is built. How
this natural breakwater had been deposited I could find
no one to tell me. It is eight miles long, rising but a few
feet above the water-line, in places not more than thirty
yards across nowhere, except at the extremity, more than
sixty or a hundred. The thundering swell of the Caribbean
Sea breaks upon it from year's end to year's end, and never
washes it any thinner. Where the sand is dry, beyond the
reach of the waves, it is planted thickly all along with
palms, and appears from the sea a soft green line, over
which appear the masts and spars of the vessels at an-
chor in the harbour, and the higher houses of Kingston
itself. To reach the opening into the lagoon you have to run
on to the end of the sandbank, where there is a peninsula
on which is built the Port Royal so famous in West Indian
story. Halfway down among the palms the lighthouse
stands, from which a gun was fired as we passed, to give
notice that the English mail was coming in. Treacherous
coral reefs rise out of the deep water for several miles,
o
i 9 4 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
some under water and visible only by the breakers over them,
others forming into low wooded islands. Only local pilots
can take a ship safely through these powerful natural de-
fence works. There are but two channels through which
the lagoon can be approached. The eastern passage, along
which we were steaming, runs so near the shore that an
enemy's ship would be destroyed by the batteries among
the sandhills long before it could reach the mouth. The
western passage is less intricate, but that also is com-
manded by powerful forts. In old times Kingston was un-
attackable, so strong had the position been made by nature
and art combined. It could be shelled now over the spit
from the open sea. It might be destroyed, but even so
could not easily be taken.
I do not know that I have ever seen any scene more
interesting than that which broke upon my eyes as we
rounded the point, and the lagoon opened out before me.
Kingston, which we had passed half an hour before, lay
six miles off at the head of it, now inside the sand ridge,
blue and hazy in the distance. At the back were the
mountains. The mist had melted off, standing in shadowy
grey masses with the sun rising behind them. Imme-
diately in front were the dockyards, forts, and towers of
Port Koyal, with the guardship, gunboats, and tenders, with
street and terrace, roof and turret and glistening vane, all
clearly and sharply defined in the exquisite transparency of
the air. The associations of the place no doubt added to
the impression. Before the first hut was run up in Kings-
ton, Port Eoyal was the rendezvous of all English ships
which, for spoil or commerce, frequented the West Indian
seas. Here the buccaneers sold their plunder and squan-
dered their gains in gambling and riot. Here in the later
century of legitimate wars, whole fleets were gathered to
take in stores, or refit when shattered by engagements.
Here Nelson had been, and Collingwood and Jervis, and all
PORT ROYAL I95
our other naval heroes. Here prizes were brought in for
adjudication, and pirates to be tried and hanged. In this
spot more than in any other, beyond Great Britain her-
self, the energy of the Empire once was throbbing. The
' Urgent,' an old two-decker, and three gunboats were all that
were now floating in the once crowded water ; the ' Urgent,'
no longer equipped for active service, imperfectly armed,
inadequately manned, but still flaunting the broad white
ensign, and grand with the houses which lay behind her.
There were batteries at the point, and batteries on the op-
posite shore. The morning bugle rang out clear and in-
spiriting from the town, and white coats and gold and silver
lace glanced in and out as men and officers were passing
to parade. Here, at any rate, England was still alive.
The channel at the entrance is a mile in width. The
lagoon (the open part of it) may be seven or eight miles
long and half as many broad. It forms the mouth of the
Cobre river, one of the largest in Jamaica, on which, ten
miles up, stands the original seat of government established
by the Spaniards, and called after them Spanish Town.
The fashion of past times, as old as the times of Thucydides,
and continued on till the end of the last century, was to
choose the sites for important towns in estuaries, at a dis-
tance from the sea, to be out of the reach of pirates.
The Cobre, running down from Spanish Town, turns the
plain through which it flows into a swamp. The swamp
covers itself with mangroves, and the mangroves fringe the
shore of the lagoon itself for two-thirds of its circuit. As
Jamaica grew in wealth and population the trade was
carried from Port Royal deeper into the bay. Another
town sprang up there, called King's Town, or shortly
'Kingston.' The administration was removed thither for
convenience, and though fallen away from its old conse-
quence, Kingston, with its extended suburbs, its churches
and warehouses, and large mansions overhung with trees,
o 2
196 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
looks at a distance like a place of consideration. Many ships
lay along the wharves, or anchored a few cables' distance
off. Among them were a couple of Spanish frigates, which
remain there in permanence on the watch for refugees
from Cuba. On the slopes behind the town, as far as eye
could see, were the once splendid estates of the sugar
princes of the last century. One of them was pointed out
to me as the West Indian home of the author of * Tom
Cringle.'
We had to stop for a few minutes as the omcer of the
port came alongside for the mails. We then went on at
reduced speed. The lagoon is generally shoal. A deep
water channel runs along the side of it which is farthest
from the sea ; made, I suppose, by the river, for as usual
there is little tide or none. Halfway up we passed under
the walls of Fort Augusta, now a ruin and almost deserted,
but once mounting a hundred guns. The money which
we spent on the defence of Jamaica in the old times was
not always laid out wisely, as will be seen in an account
which I shall have to give of this remarkable structure ;
but, at any rate, we were lavish of it.
Of the sharks with which the water used to swarm we
saw none. Port Eoyal Jack and his kindred are said to
have disappeared, driven or frightened out by the screws of
the steamers. But it is not a place which I should choose
for a swim. Nor did the nigger boys seem as anxious as I
had seen them in other spots to dive for sixpences under
the ship's side.
No account is made of days when you come into port
after a voyage. Cargoes have to be landed, or coal has to
be taken in. The donkey engines are at work, hoisting
packing cases and luggage out of the hold. Stewards run
to and fro, and state-room doors are opened, and busy
figures are seen through each, stuffing their portmanteaus
and preparing for departure. The church bells at Kingston,
KINGSTON HARBOUR
197
ringing for early service, reminded me that it was Sunday.
We brought up at a jetty, and I cannot say that, close at
hand, the town was as attractive as it had appeared when
first I saw it. The enchantment was gone. The blue haze
of distance gave place to reality. The water was so fetid
under the ship's side that it could not be pumped into the
baths. Odours, not Arabian, from open drains reminded
me of Jacmel. The streets, up which I could see from the
afterdeck, looked dirty and the houses shabby. Docks
and wharves, however, are never the brightest part of any
town, English or foreign. There were people enough at
any rate, and white faces enough among them. Gang-
ways were rigged from the ship to the shore, and ladies
and gentlemen rushed on board to meet their friends.
The companies' agents appeared in the captain's cabin.
Porters were scrambling for luggage ; pushing, shoving,
and swearing. Passengers who had come out with us, and
had never missed attendance at the breakfast table, were
hurrying home unbreakfasted to their wives and families.
My own plans were uncertain. I had no friends, not even
an acquaintance. I knew nothing of the hotels and lodging
houses, save that they had generally a doubtful reputation.
I had brought with me a letter of introduction to Sir H.
Norman, the governor, but Sir Henry had gone to England.
On the whole, I thought it best to inclose the letter to Mr.
Walker, the Colonial Secretary, who I understood was in
Kingston, with a note asking for advice. This I sent by a
messenger. Meanwhile I stayed on board to look about
me from the deck. The ship was to go on the next morn-
ing to the canal works at Darien. Time was precious.
Immediately on arriving she had begun to take in coal,
Sunday though it might be, and a singular spectacle it
was. The coal yard was close by, and some hundreds of
negroes, women and men, but women in four times the
number, were hard at work. The entire process was by
198 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
hand and basket, each basket holding from eighty to a
hundred pounds weight. Two planks were laid down at a
steep incline from the ship's deck to the yard. Swinging
then* loads on their heads, erect as statues, and with a step
elastic as a racehorse's, they marched up one of the planks,
emptied their baskets into the coal bunkers, and ran down
the other. Eound and round they went under the blazing
sun all the morning through, and round and round they
would continue to go all the afternoon. The men took it
comparatively easy. The women flew along, laughing,
and clamouring, as if not knowing what weariness was
willing beasts of burden, for they had the care upon them
of their children ; the men disclaiming all responsibilities
on that score, after the babies have been once brought into
the world. The poor women are content with the arrange-
ment, which they prefer to what they would regard as legal
bondage. They earn at this coaling work seven or eight
shillings a day. If they were wives, their husbands would
take it from them and spend it in rum. The companion
who is not a wife can refuse and keep her earnings for her
little ones. If black suffrage is to be the rule in Jamaica,
I would take it away from the men and would give it
to the superior sex. The women are the working bees of
the hive. They would make a tolerable nation of black
amazons, and the babies would not be offered to Jumbi.
When I had finished my meditations on the coaling
women, there were other black creatures to wonder at ;
great boobies or pelicans, old acquaintances of the Zoo-
logical Gardens, who act as scavengers in these waters.
We had perhaps a couple of dozen of them round us as
large as vultures, ponderous and sleepy to look at when
squatting on rocks or piles, overweighted by their enormous
bills. On the wing they were astonishingly swift, wheeling
in circles, till they could fix their prey with their eyes,
then pouncing upon it with a violent slanting plunge. I
A WEST INDIAN BREAKFAST 199
suppose their beaks might be broken if they struck directly,
but I never saw one miss its aim. Nor do they ever go
below the surface, but seize always what is close to it. I
was told I do not know how truly that like the diablots
in Dominica, they nest in the mountains and only come
down to the sea to feed.
Hearing that I was in search of quarters, a Miss Burton,
a handsome mulatto woman, came up and introduced
herself to me. Hotels in the English West Indies are
generally detestable. This dame had set up a boarding
house on improved principles, or rather two boarding
houses, between which she invited me to take my choice,
one in the suburbs of Kingston, one on the bank of a river
in a rocky gorge in the Blue Mountains. In either of
these she promised that she would make me happy, and I
do not doubt that she would have succeeded, for her fame
had spread through all Jamaica, and her face was as merry
as it was honest. As it turned out I was provided for
elsewhere, and I lost the chance of making an acquaint-
ance which I should have valued. When she spoke to me
she seemed a very model of vigour and health. She died
suddenly while I was in the island.
It was still early. When the vessel was in some order
again, and those who were going on shore had disappeared,
the rest of us were called down to breakfast to taste some
of those Jamaica delicacies on which Paul Gelid was so
eloquent. The fruit was the chief attraction : pineapples,
of which one can eat as much as one likes in these
countries with immunity from after suffering; oranges,
more excellent than even those of Grenada and Dominica ;
shaddocks, admirable as that memorable one which seduced
Adam ; and for the first time mangoes, the famous Number
Eleven of which I had heard such high report, and was now
to taste. The English gardeners can do much, but they
cannot ripen a Number Eleven, and it is too delicate to
bear carriage. It must be eaten in the tropics or nowhere.
The mango is the size and shape of a swan's egg, of a
ruddy yellow colour when ripe, and in flavour like an
exceptionally good apricot, with a very slight intimation of
resin. The stone is disproportionately large. The flesh
adheres to it, and one abandons as hopeless the attempt
to eat mangoes with clean lips and fingers. The epicures
insist that they should be eaten only in a bath.
The heat was considerable, and the feast of fruit was
the more welcome. Soon after the Colonial Secretary
politely answered my note in person. In the absence of
the governor of a colony, the colonial secretary, as a
rule, takes his place. In Jamaica, and wherever we
have a garrison, the commander of the forces becomes
acting governor ; I 'suppose because it is not convenient
to place an officer of high military rank under the orders
of a civilian who is not the direct representative of the
sovereign. In the gentleman who now called on me I
found an old acquaintance whom I had known as a boy
many years ago. He told me that, if I had made no other
arrangements, Colonel J , who was the present chief,
was expecting me to be his guest at the ' King's House '
during my stay in Jamaica. My reluctance to trespass on
the hospitality of an entire stranger was not to be allowed.
Soldiers who have distinguished themselves are, next to
lawyers, the most agreeable people to be met with, and
when I was convinced that I should really be welcome, I
had no other objection. An aide-de-camp, I was told,
would call for me in the afternoon. Meanwhile the secre-
tary stayed with me for an hour or two, and I was able to
learn something authentic from him as to the general con-
dition of things. I had not given entire credit to the re-
presentations of my planter friend of the evening before.
Mr. Walker took a more cheerful view, and, although the
prospects were not as bright as they might be, he saw
THE COLONIAL SECRETARY 201
no reason for despondency. Sugar was down of course.
The public debt had increased, and taxation was heavy.
Many gentlemen in Jamaica, as in the Antilles, were sell-
ing, or trying to sell, their estates and go out of it. On
the other hand, expenses of government were being re-
duced, and the revenue showed a surplus. The fruit trade
with the United States was growing, and promised to grow
still further. American capitalists had come into the island,
and were experimenting on various industries. The sugar-
treaty with America would naturally have been welcome ;
but Jamaica was less dependent on its sugar crop, and the
action of the British Government was less keenly resented.
In the Antilles, the Colonial Secretary admitted, there
might be a desire for annexation to the United States,
and Jamaican landowners had certainly expressed the same
wish to myself. Mr. Walker, however, assured me that, while
the blacks would oppose it unanimously, the feeling, if it
existed at all among the whites, was confined as yet to a
very few persons. They had been English for 230 years,
and the large majority of them wished to remain English.
There had been suffering among them ; but there had been
suffering in other places besides Jamaica. Better times
might perhaps be coming with the opening of the Darien
canal, when Kingston might hope to become again the
centre of a trade. Of the negroes, both men and women,
Mr. Walker spoke extremely favourably. They were far
less indolent than they were supposed to be ; they were
settling on the waste lands, acquiring property, growing
yams and oranges, and harming no one ; they had no
grievance left ; they knew it, and were perfectly contented.
As Mr. Walker was an official, I did not ask him about
the working of the recent changes in the constitution ; nor
could he have properly answered me if I had. The state
of things is briefly this : Jamaica, after the first settlement,
received a parliamentary form of government, modelled on
202 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
that of Ireland, the colonial liberties being restricted by a
law analogous to Poynings' Act. The legislature, so con-
structed, of course represented the white interest only and
was entirely composed of whites. It remained substantially
unaltered till 1853, when modifications were made which
admitted coloured men to the suffrage, though with so high
a franchise as to be almost exclusive. It became generally
felt that the franchise would have to be extended. A
popular movement, led by Mr. Gordon, who was a member
of the legislature, developed into a riot, into bloodshed and
panic. Gordon was hanged by a court-martial, and the
assembly, aware that, if allowed to exist any longer, it could
exist only with the broad admission of the negro vote, pro-
nounced its own dissolution, surrendered its powers to the
Crown, and represented formally ' that nothing but a strong
government could prevent the island from lapsing into the
condition of Hayti.'
The surrender was accepted. Jamaica was administered
till within the last three years by a governor, officials, and
council, all nominated by the Queen. No dissatisfaction
had been expressed, and the blacks at least had enjoyetf
a prosperity and tranquillity which had been unbroken by
a single disturbance. If the island has suffered, it has
suffered from causes with which political dissatisfaction has
had nothing to do, and which, therefore, political changes
cannot remove. In 1884 Mr. Gladstone's Government, for
reasons which I have not been able to ascertain, revived
suddenly the representative system ; constructed a council
composed equally of nominated and of elected members,
and placed the franchise so low as to include practically
every negro peasant who possessed a hut and a garden. So
long as the Crown retains and exercises its power of nomi-
nation, no worse results can ensue than the inevitable
discontent when the votes of the elected members are dis-
regarded or overborne. But to have ventured so important
JAMAICAN CONSTITUTION 203
an alteration with the intention of leaving it without
further extension would have been an act of gratuitous
folly, of which it would be impossible to imagine an English
cabinet to have been capable. It is therefore assumed and
understood to have been no more than an initial step to-
wards passing on the management of Jamaica to the black
constituencies. It has been so construed in the other
islands, and was the occasion of the agitation in Trinidad
which I observed when I was there.
My own opinion as to the wisdom of such an experiment
matters little : but I have a right to say that neither blacks
nor whites have asked for it ; that no one who knows any-
thing of the West Indies and wishes them to remain English
sincerely asked for it ; that no one agitated for it save a
few newspaper writers and mulattoes whom it would raise
into consequence. If tried at all, it will be tried either with
a deliberate intention of cutting Jamaica free from us alto-
gether, or else in deference to English political supersti-
tions, which attribute supernatural virtues to the exercise
of the franchise, and assume that a form of self-government
which suits us tolerably at home will be equally beneficial
in all countries and under all conditions.
204 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
CHAPTER XIII.
The English mails Irish agitation Two kinds of colonies Indian
administration How far applicable in the West Indies Land at
Kingston Government House Dinner party Interesting officer
Majuba Hill Mountain station Kingston curiosities Tobacco Valley
in the Blue Mountains.
I AM reminded as I write of an adventure which befell
Archbishop Whately soon after his promotion to the see of
Dublin. On arriving in Ireland he saw that the people
were miserable. The cause, in his mind, was their ignor-
ance of political economy, of which he had himself written
what he regarded as an excellent manual. An Irish
translation of this manual he conceived would be the best
possible medicine, and he commissioned a native Scripture
reader to make one. To insure correctness he required
the reader to retranslate to him what he had written line
by line. He observed that the man as he read turned
sometimes two pages at a time. The text went on cor-
rectly, but his quick eye perceived that something was
written on the intervening leaves. He insisted on know-
ing what it was, and at last extorted an explanation,
'Your Grace, me and my comrade conceived that it was
mighty dry reading, so we have just interposed now and
then a bit of a pawem, to help it forward, your Grace.'
I am myself imitating the translators, and making sand-
wiches out of politics and local descriptions.
We had brought the English mails with us. There were
letters to read which had been in the ship with us, though
out of our reach. There were the newspapers to read*
LETTERS FROM ENGLAND 205
They told me nothing but the weary round of Irish out-
rages and the rival remedies of Tory or Eadical politicians
who cared for Ireland less than I did, and considered only
how to trim their sails to keep in office or to get it. How
sick one is of all that ! Half-a-dozen times at least in
Anglo-Irish history things have come to the same point.
' All Ireland cannot govern the Earl of Kildare,' said some-
one in Henry VIII. 's privy council. Then answered Wolsey,
in the tone of Mr. Gladstone, ' Let the Earl of Kildare
govern all Ireland.' Elizabeth wished to conciliate. Shan
O'Neil, Desmond, Tyrone promised in turn to rule Ireland
in loyal union with England under Irish ideas. Lord Grey,
who was for ' a Mahometan conquest,' was censured and
* girded at : ' yet the end was always broken heads. From
1641 to 1649 an Irish parliament sat at Kilkenny, and
Charles I. and the Tories dreamt of an alliance between
Irish popery and English loyalism. Charles lost his head,
and Cromwell had to make an end of Irish self-government
at Drogheda andWexford. Tyrconnell and James II. were
to repeal the Act of Settlement and restore the forfeited
lands to the old owners. The end of that came at the Boyne
and at Aghrim. Grattan would remake the Irish nation.
The English Liberals sent Lord Fitzwilliam to help him,
and the Saxon mastiff and the Celtic wolf were to live as
brothers evermore. The result has been always the same ;
the wretched country inflated with a dream of independence,
and then trampled into mud again. So it has been. So it
will be again. Ireland cannot be independent, for England
is stronger than she, and cannot permit it. Yet nothing
less will satisfy her. And so there has been always a
weary round of fruitless concessions leading to demands
which cannot be gratified, and in the end we are driven
back upon force, which the miserable people lack the
courage to encounter like men. Mr. Gladstone's experi-
ment differs only from its antecedents because in the past
2o6 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
the English friends of Irish liberty had a real hope that a
reconciliation was possible. They believed in what they
were trying to do. The present enterprise is the creation
of parliamentary faction. I have never met any person
acquainted with the minds and motives of the public men
of the day who would not confess to me that, if it had
suited the interests of the leaders of the present Eadical
party to adopt the Irish policy of the Long Parliament,
their energy and their eloquence would have been equally at
the service of the Protestant ascendency, which they have
now denounced as a upas tree. They even ask you with
wide eyes what else you would expect ?
Mr. Sexton says that if England means to govern
Ireland she must keep an army there as large as she keeps
in India. England could govern Ireland in perfect peace,
without an army at all, if there was no faction in the House
of Commons. Either party government will destroy the
British Empire, or the British nation will make an end of
party government on its present lines. There are sounds
in the air like the cracking of the ice of the Neva at the
incoming of spring, as if a nobler spirit was at last awaking
in us. In a few more years there may be no more Radicals
and no more Conservatives, and the nation will be all
in all.
Here is the answer to the question so often asked,
What is the use of the colonies to us ? The colonies are a
hundredfold multiplication of the area of our own limited
islands. In taking possession of so large a portion of the
globe, we have enabled ourselves to spread and increase
and carry ourselves, our language and our liberties, into
all climates and continents. We overflow at home ; there
are too many of us here already : and if no lands belonged
to us but Great Britain and Ireland, we should become a
small insignificant power beside the mighty nations which
are forming around us. There is space for hundreds of
THE USE OF COLONIES 207
millions of us in the territories of which we and our
fathers have possessed ourselves. In Canada, Australia,
New Zealand we add to our numbers and our resources.
There are so many more Englishmen in the world able
to hold their own against the mightiest of their rivals.
And we have another function, such as the Kornans had.
The sections of men on this globe are unequally gifted.
Some are strong and can govern themselves ; some are
weak and are the prey of foreign invaders or internal
anarchy ; and freedom, which all desire, is only attainable
by weak nations when they are subject to the rule of
others who are at once powerful and just. This was the
duty which fell to the Latin race two thousand years ago.
In these modern times it has fallen to ours, and in the dis-
charge of it the highest features in the English character
have displayed themselves. Circumstances forced on us
the conquest of India ; we have given India in return
internal peace undisturbed by tribal quarrels or the ambi-
tions of dangerous neighbours, with a law which deals
out right to high and low among 250,000,000 human
beings.
Never have rulers been less self-seeking than we have
been in our Asiatic empire. No ' lex de repetundis ' has
been needed to punish avaricious proconsuls who had
fattened on the provinces. In such positions the English
show at their best, and do their best. India has been the
training school of our greatest soldiers and greatest admi-
nistrators. Strike off the Anglo-Indian names from the
roll of famous Englishmen, and we shall lose the most illus-
trious of them all.
In India the rule of England has been an unexampled
success, glorious to ourselves and of infinite benefit to our
subjects, because we have been upright and disinterested,
and have tried sincerely and honourably to do our duty.
In other countries belonging to us, where with the same
208 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
methods we might have produced the same results, we
have applied them with a hesitating and less clean hand.
We planted Ireland as a colony with our own people, we
gave them a parliament of their own, and set them to
govern the native Irish for us, instead of doing it ourselves,
to save appearances and to save trouble. We have not failed
altogether. All the good that has been done at all in that
poor island has been done by the Anglo-Irish landlords.
But it has not been much, as the present condition of
things shows. In the West Indies similarly the first settlers
carried with them their English institutions. They were
themselves a handful. The bulk of the population were
slaves, and as long as slavery continued those institutions
continued to work tolerably in the interest of the white
race. When the slaves were emancipated, the distinction
of colour done away with, and the black multitude and
their white employers made equal before the law and
equally privileged, constitutional government became no
longer adapted to the new conditions. The white minority
could not be trusted with the exclusive possession of poli-
tical power. The blacks could not be trusted, with the
equally dangerous supremacy which their numbers would
insure them. Our duty, if we did not and do not mean
to abandon them altogether, has been to govern both with
the same equity with which we govern at Calcutta. If you
choose to take a race like the Irish or like the negroes
whom you have forced into an unwilling subjection and
have not treated when in that condition with perfect justice
if you take such a race, strike the fetters off them, and
arm them at once with all the powers and privileges of
loyal citizens, you ought not to be surprised if they
attribute your concessions to fear, and if they turn again
and rend you. When we are brought in contact with races of
men who are not strong enough or brave enough to defend
their own independence, and whom our own safety cannot
MEDITATIONS ON GOVERNMENT 209
allow to fall under any other power, our right and our
duty is to govern such races and to govern them well, or
they will have a right in turn to cut our throats. This is
our mission. When we have dared to act up to it we have
succeeded magnificently ; we have failed when we have
paltered and trifled ; and we shall fail again, and the great
empire on which the sun never sets will be shattered to
atoms, if we refuse to look facts in the face.
From these meditations, suggested by the batch of news-
papers which I had been studying, I was roused by the
arrival of the promised aide-de-camp, a good-looking and
good-humoured young officer in white uniform (they all
wear white in the tropics), who had brought the governor's
carriage for me. Government House, or King's House, as
it is called, answering to a ' Queen's House ' in Barbadoes,
is five miles from Kingston, on the slope which gradually
ascends from the sea to the mountains. We drove through
the town, which did not improve on closer acquaintance.
The houses which front towards the streets are generally
insignificant. The better sort, being behind walls or over-
hung with trees, were imperfectly visible. The roads were
deep in white dust, which flies everywhere in whirling clouds
from the unceasing wind. It was the dry season. The
rains are not constant in Jamaica, as they are in the
Antilles. The fields and the sides of the mountains were
bare and brown and parched. The blacks, however, were
about in crowds in their Sunday finery. Being in a British
island, we had got back into the white calicoes and ostrich
plumes, and I missed the grace of the women at Dominica ;
but men and women seemed as if they had not a care in the
world. We passed Up Park Camp and the cantonments of
the West India regiments, and then through a ' scrub ' of
dwarf acacia and blue-flowered lignum vitae. Handsome
villas were spread along the road with lawns and gardens,
and the road itself was as excellent as those in Barbadoes.
p
210 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
Half an hour's drive brought us to the lodge, and through
the park to the King's House itself, which stands among
groups of fine trees four hundred feet above the sea.
All the large houses in Jamaica and this was one of
the largest of them are like those in Barbadoes, with the
type more completely developed, generally square, built of
stone, standing on blocks, hollow underneath for circulation
of air, and approached by a broad flight of steps. On the
three sides which the sun touches, deep verandahs or bal-
conies are thrown out on the first and second floors, closed
in front by green blinds, which can be shut either com-
pletely or partially, so that at a distance they look like
houses of cards or great green boxes, made pretty by the
trees which shelter them or the creepers which climb over
them. Behind the blinds run long airy darkened galleries,
and into these the sitting rooms open, which are of course
still darker with a subdued green light, in which, till you
are used to it, you can hardly read. The floors are black,
smooth, and polished, with loose mats for carpets. The
reader of ' Tom Cringle ' will remember Tom's misadventure
when he blundered into a party of pretty laughing girls,
slipped on one of these floors with a retrospective misad-
venture, and could not rise till his Creole cousin slipped a
petticoat over his head. All the arrangements are made to
shut out heat and light. The galleries have sofas to lounge
upon everybody smokes, and smokes where he pleases ;
the draught sweeping away all residuary traces. At the
King's House to increase the accommodation a large
separate dining saloon has been thrown out on the north
side, to which you descend from the drawing room by
stairs, and thence along a covered passage. Among the
mango trees behind there is a separate suite of rooms for
the aides-de-camp, and a superb swimming bath sixty feet
long and eight feet deep. Altogether it was a sumptuous
sort of palace where a governor with 7,0007. a year might
KING 'S HOUSE 211
spend his term of office with considerable comfort were it
not haunted by recollections of poor Eyre. He, it seems,
lived in the 'King's House,' and two miles off, within sight
of his windows, lived Gordon.
I had a more than gracious welcome from Colonel J
and his family. In him I found a high-bred soldier, who
had served with distinction in India, who had been at the
storm of Delhi, and who was close by when Nicholson was
shot. No one could have looked fitter for the post which
he now temporarily occupied. I felt uncomfortable at being
thus thrust upon his hospitality. I had letters of intro-
duction with me to the various governors of the islands,
but on Colonel J I had no claim at all. I was not
even aware of his existence, or he, very likely, of mine. If
not he, at any rate the ladies of his establishment, might
reasonably look upon me as a bore, and if I had been
allowed I should simply have paid my respects and have
gone on to my mulatto. But they would not hear of it.
They were so evidently hearty in their invitation to me
that I could only submit and do my best not to be a bore,
the one sin for which there is no forgiveness.
In the circle into which I was thrown I was unlikely
to hear much of West Indian politics or problems. Colonel
J was acting as governor by accident, and for a few
months only. He had his professional duties to look after ;
his term of service in Jamaica had nearly expired ; and he
could not trouble himself with possibilities and tendencies
with which he would have no personal concern. As a
spectator he considered probably that we were not making
much of the West Indies, and were not on the way to make
much. He confirmed the complaint which I had heard so
often, that the blacks would not work for wages more than
three days in the week, or regularly upon those, preferring
to cultivate their own yams and sweet potatoes ; but as it
was admitted that they did work one way or another at
p 2
212 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
home, I could not see that there was much to complain of.
The blacks were only doing as we do. We, too, only work
as much as we like or as we must, and we prefer working
for ourselves to working for others.
On his special subjects the Colonel was as interesting as
he could not help being. He talked of the army and of the
recent changes in it without insisting that it was going to
the devil. He talked of India and the Eussians, and for
a wonder he had no Kussophobia. He thought that
England and Russia might as easily be friends as enemies,
and that it would be better for the world if they were.
As this had been my own fixed opinion for the last thirty
years, I thought him a very sensible man. In the even-
ing there was a small dinner party, made up chiefly of
officers from the West Indian regiments at Kingston.
The English troops are in the mountains at Newcastle,
four or five thousand feet up and beyond common visit-
ing distance. Among those whom I met on this occasion
was an officer who struck me particularly. There was a
mystery about his origin. He had risen from the ranks,
but was evidently a gentleman by birth; he had seen
service all over the world ; he had been in Chili, and,
among his other accomplishments, spoke Spanish fluently ;
he entered the English army as a private, had been in the
war in the Transvaal, and was the only survivor of the
regiment which was surprised and shot down by the Boers
in an intricate pass where they could neither retreat nor
defend themselves. On that occasion he had escaped and
saved the colours, for which he was rewarded by a com-
mission. He was acquainted with many of my friends
there who had been in the thick of the campaign ; knew
Sir Owen Lanyon, Sir Morrison Barlow, and Colley. He had
surveyed the plateau on Majuba Hill after the action. I
had heard one side of the story from a Boer officer ; from
Mr. I heard the other ; and they were not very unlike.
RECOLLECTIONS OF THE BOER WAR 213
Both agreed that the ball which killed Colley did not come
from a Dutch rifle. My Boer informant said that he
was last seen trying to rally a party of his own men who
were running. They wheeled round and fired wildly.
Colley was six or eight yards behind them. One of the
balls struck him and he fell dead. Mr. said that,
seeing the day irreparably lost, and his own reputation
shattered along with it, he was generally believed to have
shot himself. Friend and foe alike loved Colley, and
legends like these are an unconscious tribute to his me-
mory. The truth can never be known. We believe as
we wish or as we fancy. Mr. was so fine an officer,
so clever a man, and so reserved about his personal affairs,
that about him too ' myths ' were growing. He was
credited in the mess room with being the then unknown
author of ' Solomon's Mines.' Mr. Haggard will forgive a
mistake which, if he knows Mr. , he will feel to be a
compliment.
From general conversation I gathered that the san-
guine views of the Colonial Secretary were not widely
shared. The English interest was still something in
Jamaica ; but the phenomena of the Antilles were present
there also, if in a less extreme form. There were 700,000
coloured people in the island, but 14,000 or 15,000 whites ;
and the blacks there also were increasing rapidly, and the
whites were stationary if not declining. There was the
same uneasy social jealousy, and the absence of any social
relation between the two races. There were mulattoes in
the island of wealth and consequence, and at Government
House there are no distinctions ; but the English residents
of pure colonial blood would not associate with them, social
exclusiveness increasing with political equality. The blacks
disliked the mulattoes ; the mulattoes despised the blacks,
and would not intermarry with them. The impression
was that the mulatto would die out, that the tendency of
2i 4 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
the whites and blacks was to a constantly sharpening
separation, and that if things went on as they were going
for another generation, it was easy to see which of the two
colours would then be in the ascendant. The blacks were
growing saucy, too ; with much else of the same kind. I
could but listen and wait to judge for myself.
Meanwhile my quarters were unexceptionable, my kind
entertainers leaving nothing undone to make my stay with
them agreeable. In hot climates one sleeps lightly ; but
light sleep is all that one wants, and one wakes early.
The swimming bath was waiting for me underneath my
window. After a plunge in the clear cold water came
coffee, grown and dried and roasted on the spot, and
* made ' as such coffee ought to be. Then came the early
walk. One missed the tropical luxuriance of Trinidad
and Dominica, for the winter months in Jamaica are al-
most rainless ; but it would have been beautiful anywhere
else, and the mango trees were in their glory. There was
a corner given to orchids, which were hung in baskets and
just coming into flower. Lizards swarmed in the sun-
shine, running up the tree trunks, or basking on the garden
seats. Snakes there are none ; the mongoose has cleared
them all away so completely that there is nothing left for
him to eat but the poultry, in which he makes havoc, and,
having been introduced to exterminate the vermin, has
become a vermin himself.
To drive, to ride, to visit was the employment of the
days. I saw the country. I saw what people were doing,
and heard what they had to say.
The details are mostly only worth forgetting. The
senior aide-de-camp, Captain C , an officer in the
Engineers, was a man of ability and observation. He, too,
like the Colonel, was more interested in his profession, to
which he was anxious to return, than in the waning for-
tunes of the West Indies. He superintended, however, the
THE MOUNTAIN STATION 215
social part of the governor's business to perfection. Any-
thing which I wished for had only to be mentioned to be
provided. He gave me the benefit too, though less often
than I could have wished, of his shrewd, and not ungenial,
observations. He drove me one morning into Kingston.
I had passed through it hastily on the day of my landing.
There were libraries, museums, public offices, and such like
to be seen, besides the town itself. High up on the moun-
tain side, more often in the clouds than out of them, the
cantonments of the English regiments were visible from
the park at Government House. The slope where they
had been placed was so steep that one wondered how they
held on. They looked like tablecloths stretched out to dry.
I was to ride up there one day. Meanwhile, as we were
driving through the park and saw the white spots shining
up above us, I asked the aide-de-camp what the privates
found to do in such a place. The ground was too steep
for athletics ; no cricket could be possible there, no lawn
tennis, no quoits, no anything. There were no neighbours.
Sports there were none. The mongoose had destroyed the
winged game, and there was neither hare nor rabbit, pig nor
deer ; not a wild animal to be hunted and killed. With
nothing to do, no one to speak to, and nothing to kill, what
could become of them ? Did they drink ? Well, yes. They
drank rum occasionally ; but there were no public-houses.
They could only get it at the canteen, and the daily allow-
ance was moderate. As to beer, it was out of reach alto-
gether. At the foot of the mountains it was double the
price which it was in England. At Newcastle the price was
doubled again by the cost of carriage to the camp. I
inquired if they did not occasionally hang themselves.
* Perhaps they would,' he said, ' if they had no choice, but
they preferred to desert, and this they did in large num-
bers. They slipped down the back of the range, made their
way to the sea, and escaped to the United States.' The
216 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
officers what became of them ? The officers ! Oh, well !
they gardened ! Did they like it ? Some did and some
didn't. They were not so ill off as the men, as occasionally
they could come down on leave.
One wondered what the process had been which had led
the authorities to select such a situation. Of course it was for
the health of the troops, but the hill country in Jamaica is
wide ; there were many other places available, less utterly
detestable, and ennui and discontent are as mischievous as
fever. General , a short time ago, went up to hold an in-
quiry into the desertions, and expressed his wonder how such
things could be. With such air, such scenery, such views
far and wide over the island, what could human creatures
wish for more ? ' You would desert yourself, general,' said
another officer, ' if you were obliged to stay there a month.'
Captain C undertook that I should go up myself in
a day or two. He promised to write and make arrange-
ments. Meanwhile we went on to Kingston. It was not
beautiful. There was Eodney's statue. Eodney is venerated
in Jamaica, as he ought to be ; but for him it would have
been a Spanish colony again. But there is nothing grand
about the buildings, nothing even handsome, nothing even
specially characteristic of England or the English mind.
They were once perhaps business-like, and business having
slackened they are now dingy. Shops, houses, wharves,
want brightness and colour. We called at the office of the
Colonial Secretary, the central point of the administration.
It was an old mansion, plain, unambitious, sufficient per-
haps for its purpose, but lifeless and dark. If it represented
economy there would be no objection. The public debt has
doubled since it became a Crown colony. In 1876 it was
half a million. It is now more than a million and a half.
The explanation is the extension of the railway system, and
there has been no culpable extravagance. I do not suppose
that the re-establishment of a constitution would mend
PUBLIC EXPENDITURE 217
matters. Democracies are always extravagant. The ma-
jority, who have little property or none, regulate the
expenditure. They lay the taxes on the minority, who
have to find the money, and have no interest in sparing
them.
Ireland when it was governed by the landowners,
Jamaica in the days of slavery, were administered at a cost
which seems now incredibly small. The authority of the
landowners and of the planters was undisputed. They
were feared and obeyed, and magistrates unpaid and local
constables sufficed to maintain tolerable order. Their
authority is gone. Their functions are transferred to the
police, and every service has to be paid for. There may be
fewer serious crimes, but the subordination is immeasurably
less, the expense of administration is immeasurably greater.
I declined to be taken over sugar mills, or to be shown the
latest improvements. I was too ignorant to understand in
what the improvements consisted, and could take them
upon trust. The public bakery was more interesting. In
tropical climates a hot oven in a small house makes an
inconvenient addition to the temperature. The bread for
Kingston, and for many miles around it, is manufactured
at night by a single company and is distributed in carts in
the morning. We saw the museum and public library.
There were the usual specimens of island antiquities of
local fish, birds, insects, reptiles, plants, geological forma-
tions, and such like. In the library were old editions of
curious books at the West Indies, some of them unique,
ready to yield ampler pictures of the romance of the old
life there than we at present possess. I had but leisure to
glance at title-pages and engravings. The most noticeable
relic preserved there, if it be only genuine, is the identical
bauble which Cromwell ordered to be taken away from the
Speaker's table in the House of Commons. Explanations
are given of the manner in which it came to Jamaica.
218 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
The evidence, so far as I could understand it, did not
appear conclusive.
Among the new industries in the island in the place of
sugar was, or ought to be, tobacco. A few years ago I
asked Sir J. Hooker, the chief living authority in such
matters, why Cuba was allowed the monopoly of delicate
cigar tobacco whether there were no other countries where
it could be grown equally good. He said that at the very
moment cigars, as fine as the finest Havanas, were being
produced in Jamaica. He gave me an excellent specimen
with the address of the house which supplied it ; and for a
year or two I was able to buy from it what, if not perfect,
was more than tolerable. The house acquired a reputation ;
and then, for some reason or other, perhaps from weariness
of the same flavour, perhaps from a falling off in the
character of the cigars, I, and possibly others, began to be
less satisfied. Here on the spot I wished to make another
experiment. Captain C introduced me to a famous
manufacturer, a Spaniard, with a Spanish manager under
him who had been trained at Havana. I bespoke his good
will by adjuring him in his own tongue not to disappoint
me ; and I believe that he gave me the best that he had.
But, alas ! it is with tobacco as with most other things.
Democracy is king; and the greatest happiness of the
greatest number is the rule of modern life. The average
of everything is higher than it used to be; the high
quality which rises above mediocrity is rare or is non-
existent. We are swept away by the genius of the age, and
must be content with such other blessings as it has been
pleased to bring with it.
Why should I murmur thus and vainly moan ?
The gods will have it so their will be done. 1
The earth is patient also, and allows the successive
1 Euripides.
VALLEY IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS 219
generations of human creatures to play their parts upon
her surface as they please. She spins on upon her own
course; and seas and skies, and crags and forests, are
spiritual and beautiful as ever.
Gordon's Town is a straggling village in the Blue Eange
underneath Newcastle. Colonel J- had a villa there, and
one afternoon he took me over to see it. You pass abruptly
from the open country into the mountains. The way to
Gordon's Town was by the side of the Hope river, which
cuts its way out of them in a narrow deep ravine. The
stream was now trickling faintly among the stones; the
enormous boulders in the bed were round as cannon balls,
and weighing hundreds of tons, show what its power must
be in the coming down of the floods. "Within the limits of
the torrent, which must rise at such times thirty feet above
its winter level, the rocks were bare and stern, no green
thing being able to grow there. Above the line the tropical
vegetation was in all its glory : ferns and plantains waving
in the moist air ; cedars, tamarinds, gum trees, orange trees
striking their roots among the clefts of the crags, and hang-
ing out over the abysses below them. Aloes flung up their
tall spiral stems ; flowering shrubs and creepers covered
bank and slope with green and blue and white and yellow,
and above and over our heads, as we drove along, stood
out the great limestone blocks which thunder down when
loosened by the rain. Farther up the hill sides, where the
slopes are less precipitous, the forest has been burnt off by
the unthrifty blacks, who use fire to clear the ground for
their yam gardens, and destroy the timber over a dozen
acres when they intend to cultivate but a single one. The
landscape suffers less than the soil. The effect to the eye
is merely that the mountains in Jamaica, as in temperate
climates, become bare at a moderate altitude, and their
outlines stand out sharper against the sky.
Introduced among scenery of this kind, we followed the
22<a THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
river two or three miles, when it was crossed by a bridge,
above which stood my friend Miss Burton's lodging house,
where she had designed entertaining me. At Gordon's
Town, which is again a mile farther on, the valley widens
out, and there are cocoa and coffee plantations. Through
an opening we saw far above our heads, like specks of snow
against the mountain side, the homes or prisons of our
unfortunate troops. Overlooking the village through which
we were passing, and three hundred feet above it, was
perched the Colonel's villa on a projecting spur where a
tributary of the Hope river has carved out a second ravine.
We drove to the door up a steep winding lane among coffee
bushes, which scented the air with their jessamine-like
blossom, and wild oranges on which the fruit hung un-
touched, glowing like balls of gold. We were now eleven
hundred feet above the sea. The air was already many de-
grees cooler than at Kingston. The ground in front of the
house was levelled for a garden. Ivy was growing about
the trellis work, and scarlet geraniums and sweet violets
and roses, which cannot be cultivated in the lower regions,
were here in full bloom. Elsewhere hi the grounds there
was a lawn tennis court to tempt the officers down from
their eyrie in the clouds. The house was empty, in charge
of servants. From the balcony in front of the drawing
room we saw peak rising behind peak, till the highest,
four thousand feet above us, was lost in the white mist.
Below was the valley of the Hope river with its gardens
and trees and scattered huts, with buildings here and
there of higher pretensions. On the other side the
tributary stream rushed down its own ravine, while the
breeze among the trees and the sound of the falling waters
swayed up to us in intermittent pulsations.
The place had been made, I believe, in the days of
plantation prosperity. What would become of it all, if
Jamaica drifted after her sisters in the Antilles, as some
VALLEY IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS, JAMAICA
VALLEY IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS 221
persons thought that she was drifting, and became, like
Grenada, an island of small black proprietors ? Was such
a fate really hanging over her ? Not necessarily, not by any
law of nature. If it came, it would come from the dispirit-
ment, the lack of energy and hope in the languid repre-
sentatives of the English colonists ; for the land even in the
mountains will grow what it is asked to grow, and men do
not live by sugar alone; and my friend Dr. Nicholl in
Dominica had shown what English energy could do if it
was alive and vigorous. The pale complaining beings of
whom I saw too many, seemed as if they could not be of the
same race as the men who ruled in the days of the slave
trade. The question to be asked in every colony is, what
sort of men is it rearing? If that cannot be answered
satisfactorily, the rest is not worth caring for. The blacks
do not deserve the ill that is spoken of them. The Colonel's
house is twelve miles from Kingston. He told me that a
woman would walk in with a load for him, and return on
the same day with another, for a shilling. With such
material of labour wisely directed, whites and blacks might
live and prosper together ; but even the poor negro will
not work when he is regarded only as a machine to bring
grist to his master's mill.
222 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
CHAPTER XIV.
Visit to Port Eoyal Dockyard Town Church Fort Augusta The eyrie
in the mountains Bide to Newcastle Society in Jamaica Religious
bodies Liberty and authority.
A NEW FORT was being built at the mouth of the harbour.
New batteries were being armed on the sandbanks at Port
Royal. Colonel J had to inspect what was going on, and
he allowed me to go with him. We were to lunch with the
commodore of the station at the Port Royal dockyard. I
could then see the town or what was left of it, for the story
went that half of it had been swallowed up by an earth-
quake. We ran out from Kingston, passing under the sterns
of the Spanish frigates. I was told that there were always
one or more Spanish ships of war stationed there, but no
one knew anything about them except generally that they
were on the look-out for Cuban conspirators. There was no
exchange of courtesies between their officers and ours, nor
even official communication beyond what was formally neces-
sary. I thought it strange, but it was no business of mine.
My surprise, however, was admitted to be natural. As
the launch drew little water, we had no occasion to follow
the circuitous channel, but went straight over the shoals.
We passed close by Gallows Point, where the Johnny crows
used to pick the pirates' bones. In the mangrove swamp
adjoining, it was said that there was an old Spanish ceme-
tery ; but the swamp was poisonous, and no one had ever
seen it. At the dockyard pier the commodore was waiting
for us. I found that he was an old acquaintance whom I
PORT ROYAL 223
had met ten years before at the Cape. He was a brisk,
smart officer, quiet and sailor-like in his manners, but with
plenty of talent and cultivation. He showed us his stores
and his machinery, large engines, and engineers to work
them, ready for any work which might be wanted, but ap-
parently with none to do. We went over the hospital, airy
and clean, with scarcely a single occupant, so healthy has
now been made a spot which was once a nest of yellow fever.
Naval stores soon become antiquated ; and parts of the
great square were paved with the old cannon balls which
had become useless on the introduction of rifled guns. The
fortifications were antiquated also, but new works were be-
ing thrown up armed with the modern monster cannon.
One difficulty struck me ; Port Eoyal stood upon a sand-
bank. In such a place no spring of fresh water could be
looked for. On the large acreage of roofs there were no
shoots to catch the rain and carry it into cisterns. "Whence
did the water come for the people in the town ? How were
the fleets supplied which used to ride there ? How was it
in the old times when Port Eoyal was crowded with revelling
crews of buccaneers ? I found that ever} r drop which is
consumed in the place, or which is taken on board either of
merchant ship or man-of-war, is brought in a steam tug
from a spring eight miles off upon the coast. Before steam
came in, it was fetched in barges rowed by hand. Nothing
could be easier than to save the rain which falls in abun-
dance. Nothing could be easier than to lay pipes along the
sand-spit to the spring. But the tug plies daily to and fro,
and no one thinks more about the matter.
A West Indian regiment is stationed at Port Eoyal.
After the dockyard we went through the soldiers' quarters
and then walked through the streets of the once famous
station. It is now a mere hamlet of boatmen and fishermen,
squalid and wretched, without and within. Half-naked
children stared at us from the doors with their dark, round
224 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
eyes. I found it hard to call up the scenes of riot, and con-
fusion, and wild excitement which are alleged to have been
witnessed there. The story that it once covered a far larger
area has been, perhaps, invented to account for the incon-
gruity. Old plans exist which seem to show that the end of
the spit could never have been of any larger dimensions than
it is at present. There is proof enough, however, that in
the sand there lie the remains of many thousand English
soldiers and seamen, who ended their lives there for one
cause or other. The bones lie so close that they are turned
up as in a country churchyard when a fresh grave is dug.
The walls of the old church are inlaid thickly with monu-
ments and monumental tablets to the memory of officers of
either service, young and old ; some killed by fever, some
by accidents of war or sea; some decorated with the
honours which they had won in a hundred fights, some
carried off before they had gathered the first flower of fame.
The costliness of many of these memorials was an affecting
indication how precious to their families those now rest-
ing there once had been. One in high relief struck me
as a characteristic specimen of Rubillac's workmanship.
It was to a young lieutenant who had been killed by the
bursting of a gun. Flame and vapour were rushing out of
the breech. The youth himself was falling backwards, with
his arms spread out, and a vast preternatural face death,
judgment, eternity, or whatever it was meant to be was
glaring at him through the smoke. Bad art, though the
execution was remarkable ; but better, perhaps, than the
weeping angels now grown common among ourselves.
After luncheon the commodore showed us his curiosities,
especially his garden, which, considering the state of his
water supply, he had created under unfavourable condi-
tions. He had a very respectable collection of tropical
ferns and flowers, with palms and plantains to shade and
shelter them. He was an artist besides, within the lines of
FORT AUGUSTA 225
his own profession. Drawings of ships and boats of all
sorts and in all attitudes by his own brush or pencil were
hanging on the walls of his working room. He was good
enough to ask me to spend a day or two with him at
Port Eoyal before I left the island, and I looked forward with
special pleasure to becoming closer acquainted with such a
genuine piece of fine-grained British oak.
There were the usual ceremonies to be attended to.
The officers of the guardship and gunboats had to be called
on. The forts constructed, or in the course of construction,
were duly inspected. I believe that there is a real serious
intention to strengthen Port Eoyal in view of the changes
which may come about through the opening, if that event
ever takes place, of the Darien canal.
Our last visit was to a fort deserted, or all but deserted
the once too celebrated Fort Augusta, which deserves
particular description. It stands on the inner side of the
lagoon commanding the deep-water channel at the point of
the great mangrove swamp at the mouth of the Cobre
river. For the purpose for which it was intended no
better situation could have been chosen, had there been
nothing else to be considered except the defence of the
harbour, for a vessel trying to reach Kingston had to pass
close in front of its hundred guns. It was constructed on a
scale becoming its importance, with accommodation for two
or three regiments, and the regiments were sent thither,
and they perished, regiment after regiment, officers and
men, from the malarious exhalations of the morass. Whole
battalions were swept away. The ranks were filled up by
reinforcements from home, and these, too, went the same
,road. Of one regiment the only survivors, according to
the traditions of the place, were a quartermaster and a
corporal. Finally it occurred to the authorities at the
Horse Guards that a regiment of Hussars would be a useful
addition to the garrison. It was not easy to see what Hussars
Q
226 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
were to do there. There is not a spot where the horses
could stand twenty yards beyond the lines ; nor could they
reach Fort Augusta at all except in barges. However, it
was perhaps well that they were sent. Horses and men
went the way of the rest. The loss of the men might
have been supplied, but horses were costly, and the loss
of them was more serious. Fort Augusta was gradually
abandoned, and is now used only as a powder magazine.
A guard is kept there of twenty blacks from the West Indian
force, but even these are changed every ten days so deadly
the vapour of that malarious jungle is now understood
to be.
I never saw so spectral a scene as met my eyes when
we steamed up to the landing place ramparts broken
down, and dismantled cannon lying at the foot of the wall
overgrown by jungle. The sentinel who presented arms
was like a corpse in uniform. He was not pale, for he was
a negro he was green, and he looked like some ghoul or
afrite in a ghastly cemetery. The roofs of the barracks
and storehouses had fallen in, the rafters being left standing
with the light shining between them as through the bones
of skeletons. Great piles of shot lay rusting, as not worth
removal; among them conical shot, so recently had this
fatal charnel house been regarded as a fit location for
British artillerymen.
I breathed more freely as we turned our backs upon the
hideous memorial of parliamentary administration, and
steamed away into a purer air. My conservative instincts
had undergone a shock. As we look back into the past, the
brighter features stand out conspicuously. The mistakes
and miseries have sunk in the shade and are forgotten.
In the present faults and merits are visible alike. The
faults attract chief notice that they may be mended ; and
as there seem so many of them, the impulse is to conclude
that the past was better. It is well to be sometimes re-
NEWCASTLE 22?
minded what the past really was. In Colonel J I
found a strong advocate of the late army reforms. Thanks
to recovering energy and more distinct conscientiousness,
thanks to the all-seeing eye of the Press, such an experi-
ment as that of Fort Augusta could hardly be tried again,
or if tried could not be persisted in. Extravagance and
absurdities, however, remain, and I was next to witness an
instance of them.
Having ceased to quarter our regiments in mangrove
swamps, we now build a camp for them among the clouds.
I mentioned that Captain C had undertaken that I
should see Newcastle. He had written to a friend there to
say that I w r as coming up, and the junior aide-de-camp
kindly lent his services as a guide. As far as Gordon's Town
we drove along the same road which we had followed before.
There, at a small wayside inn, we found horses waiting
which were accustomed to the mountain. Suspicious mists
were hanging about aloft, but the landlord, after a glance at
them, promised us a fine day, and we mounted and set off.
My animal's merits were not in his appearance, but he had
been up and down a hundred times, and might be trusted
to accomplish his hundred and first without misfortune.
For the first mile or so the road was tolerably level,
following the bank of the river under the shade of the
forest. It then narrowed into a horse path and zigzagged
upwards at the side of a torrent into the deep pools of
which we occasionally looked down over the edges of
uncomfortable precipices. Then again there was a level,
with a village and coffee plantations and oranges and
bananas. After this the vegetation changed. We issued
out upon open mountain, with English grass, English
clover, English gorse, and other familiar acquaintances
introduced to make the isolation less intolerable. The
track was so rough and narrow that we could ride only in
single file, and was often no better than a watercourse ; yet
Q '2
22 8 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
by this and no other way every article had to be carried
on donkeys' backs or human heads which was required
for the consumption of 300 infantry and 100 artillerymen.
Artillerymen might seem to imply artillery, but they have
only a single small field gun. They are there for health's
sake only, and to be fit for work if wanted below. An
hour's ride brought us to the lowest range of houses, which
were 4,000 feet above the sea. From thence they rose,
tier above tier, for 500 feet more. The weather so far
had held up, and the views had been glorious, but we
passed now into cloud, through which we saw, dimly,
groups of figures listlessly lounging. The hillside was
bare, and the slope so steep that there was no standing
on it, save where it had been flattened by the spade ;
and here in this extraordinary place were 400 young
Englishmen of the common type of which soldiers are
made, with nothing to do and nothing to enjoy remain-
ing, unless they desert or die of ennui, for one, two, or
three years, as their chance may be. Every other day
they can see nothing, save each other's forms and
faces in the fog ; for, fine and bright as the air may be
below, the moisture in the air is condensed into cloud by
the chill rock and soil of the high ranges. The officers
come down now and then on furlough or on duty ; the
men rarely and hardly at all, and soldiers, in spite of
General , cannot always be made happy by the
picturesque. They are not educated enough to find
employment for their minds, and of amusement there is
none.
We continued our way up, the track if anything
growing steeper, till we reached the highest point of the
camp, and found ourselves before a pretty cottage with
creepers climbing about it belonging to the major in com-
mand. A few yards off was the officers' mess room. They
expected us. They knew my companion, and visitors from
NEWCASTLE
229
the under- world were naturally welcome. The major was
an active clever man, with a bright laughing Irish wife,
whose relations in the old country were friends of my own.
The American consul and his lady happened to have rid-
den up also the same day ; so, in spite of fog, which grew
thicker every moment, we had a good time. As to seeing, we
could see nothing ; but then there was nothing to see except
views ; and panoramic views from mountain tops, extolled
as they may be, do not particularly interest me. The officers,
so far as I could learn, are less ill off than the privates.
Those who are married have their wives with them ; they
can read, they can draw, they can ride ; they have gardens
about their houses where they can grow English flowers
and vegetables and try experiments. Science can be followed
anywhere, and is everywhere a resource. Major told
me that he had never known what it was to find the day too
long. Healthy the camp is at any rate. The temperature
never rises above 70 nor sinks often below 60. They require
charcoal fires to keep the damp out and blankets to sleep
under ; and when they see the sun it is an agreeable change
and something to talk about. There are no large incidents,
but small ones do instead. While I was there a man came
to report that he had slipped by accident and set a stone
rolling ; the stone had cut a water pipe in two, and it had
to be mended, and was an afternoon's work for somebody.
Such officers as have no resources in themselves are, of
course, bored to extinction. There is neither furred game
to hunt nor feathered game to shoot ; the mongoose has
eaten up the partridges. I suggested that they should
import two or three couple of bears from Norway ; they
would fatten and multiply among the roots and sugar canes,
with a black piccaninny now and then for a special delicacy.
One of the party extemporised us a speech which would be
made on the occasion in Exeter Hall.
We had not seen the worst of the weather. As we
230 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
mounted to ride back the fog changed to rain, and the rain
to a deluge. The track became a torrent. Macintoshes
were a vanity, for the water rushed down one's neck, and
every crease made itself into a conduit carrying the stream
among one's inner garments. Dominica itself had not
prepared me for the violence of these Jamaican downpour-
ings. False had proved our prophet down below. There
was no help for it but to go on ; and we knew by experience
that one does not melt on these occasions. At a turn of
the road we met another group of riders, among them
Lady N , who, during her husband's absence in England,
was living at a country house in the hills. She politely
stopped and would have spoken, but it was not weather to
stand talking in ; the torrent washed us apart.
And now comes the strangest part of the story. A
thousand feet down we passed out below the clouds into
clear bright sunshine. Above us it was still black as ever ;
the vapour clung about the peaks and did not leave them.
Underneath us and round us it was a lovely summer's day.
The farther we descended the fewer the signs that any rain
had fallen. When we reached the stables at Gordon's Town,
the dust was on the road as we left it, and the horsekeeper
congratulated us on the correctness of his forecast. Clothes
soon dry in that country, and we drove down home none
the worse for our wetting. I was glad to have seen a place
of which I had heard so much. On the whole, I hoped that
perhaps by-and-by the authorities may discover some
camping ground for our poor soldiers halfway between the
Inferno of Fort Augusta and the Caucasian cliffs to which
they are chained like Prometheus. Malice did say that
Newcastle was the property of a certain Sir , a high
official of a past generation, who wished to part with it, and
found a convenient purchaser in the Government.
The hospitalities at Government House were well main-
tained under the J administration. The Colonel was
PARTIES AT GOVERNMENT HOUSE 231
gracious, the lady beautiful and brilliant. There were lawn
parties and evening parties, when all that was best in the
island was collected ; the old Jamaican aristocracy, army
and navy officers, civilians, eminent lawyers, a few men
among them of high intelligence. The tone was old-
fashioned and courteous, with little, perhaps too little, of
the go-a-headism of younger colonies, but not the less
agreeable on that account. As to prospects, or the present
condition of things in the island, there were wide differences
of opinion. If there was unanimity about anything, it was
about the consequences likely to arise from an extension of
the principle of self-government. There, at all events, lay
the right road to the wrong place. The blacks had nothing
to complain of, and the wrong at present was on the other
side. The taxation falls heavily on the articles consumed
by the upper classes. The duty on tea, for instance, was a
shilling a pound, and the duties on other luxuries in the
same proportion. It did not touch the negroes at all.
They were acquiring land, and some thought that there
ought to be a land tax. They would probably object and
resist, and trouble would come if it was proposed, for the
blacks object to taxes ; as long as there are white men to
pay them, they will be satisfied to get the benefit of the
expenditure. But let not their English friends suppose
that when they have the island for their own they will tax
themselves for police or schools, or for any other of those
educational institutions from which the believers in pro-
gress anticipate such glorious results.
As to the planters, it seemed agreed that when an estate
was unencumbered and the owner resided upon it and
managed it himself, he could still keep afloat. It was
agreed also that when the owner was an absentee the cost
of management consumed all the profits, and thus the
same impulse to sell which had gone so far in the Antilles
was showing itself more and more in Jamaica also. Fine
232 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
properties all about the island were in the market for any
price which purchasers could be found to give. Too many
even of the old English families were tired of the struggle,
and were longing to be out of it at any cost.
At one time we heard much of the colonial Church and
the power which it was acquiring, and as it seems unlikely
that the political authority of the white race will be allowed
to reassert itself, it must be through their minds and
through those other qualities which religion addresses that
the black race will be influenced by the white, if it is ever
to be influenced at all.
I had marked the respect with which the Catholic clergy
were treated in Dominica, and even the Hayti Eepublic
still maintains the French episcopate and priesthood. But
I could not find that the Church of England in Jamaica
either was at present or had ever been more than the
Church of the English in Jamaica, respected as long as the
English gentry were a dominant power there, but with no
independent charm to work on imagination or on super-
stition. Labat says, as I noted above, that the English
clergy in his time did not baptise the black babies, on the
curious ground that Christians could not lawfully be held
as slaves, and the slaves therefore were not to be made
Christians. A Jesuit Father whom I met at Government
House told me that even now the clergy refuse to baptise
the illegitimate children, and as, according to the official
returns, two-thirds of the children that are born in Jamaica
come into the world thus irregularly, they are not likely
to become more popular than they used to be. Perhaps
Father was doing what a good many other people do,
making a general practice out of a few instances. Perhaps
the blacks themselves who wish their children to be Chris-
tians carry them to the minister whom they prefer, and
that minister may not be the Anglican clergyman. Of
Catholics there are not many in Jamaica ; of the Moravians
INFLUENCES OF RELIGION 233
I heard on all sides the warmest praise. They, above all
the religious bodies in the island, are admitted to have a
practical power for good over the limited number of people
which belong to them. But the Moravians are but a
few. They do not rush to make converts in the highways
and hedges, and my observations in Dominica almost led
me to wish that, in the absence of other forms of spiritual
authority, the Catholics might become more numerous
than they are. The priests in Dominica were the only
Europeans who, for their own sakes and on independent
grounds, were looked up to with fear and respect.
The religion of the future ! That is the problem of
problems that rises before us at the close of this waning
century. The future of the West Indies is a small matter.
Yet that, too, like all else, depends on the spiritual beliefs
which are to rise out of the present confusion. Men will
act well and wisely, or ill and foolishly, according to the
form and force of their conceptions of duty. Once be-
fore, under the Eoman Empire, the conditions were not
wholly dissimilar. The inherited creed had become unbe-
lievable, and the scientific intellect was turning materialist.
Christianity rose out of the chaos, confounding statesmen
and philosophers, and became the controlling power among
mankind for 1,800 years. But Christianity found a soil
prepared for the seed. The masses of the inhabitants of
the Eoman world were not materialist. The masses of the
people believed already in the supernatural and in penal
retribution after death for their sins. Lucretius complains
of the misery produced upon them by the terrors of the
anticipated Tartarus. Serious and good men were rather
turning away from atheism than welcoming it ; and if they
doubted the divinity of the Olympian gods, it was not
because they doubted whether gods existed at all, but be-
cause the immoralities attributed to them were unworthy
oTthe exalted nature of the Divine Being. The phenomena
234 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
are different now. Who is now made wretched by the
fear of hell ? The tendency of popular thought is against
the supernatural in any shape. Far into space as the
telescope can search, deep as analysis can penetrate into
mind and consciousness or the forces which govern natural
things, popular thought finds only uniformity and connection
of cause and effect no sign anywhere of a personal will
which is influenced by prayer or moral motive. When a
subject is still obscure we are confident that it admits of
scientific explanation ; we no longer refer ' ad Deum,'
whom we regard as a constitutional monarch taking no
direct part at all. The new creed, however, not having
crystallised as yet into a shape which can be openly pro-
fessed, and as without any creed at all the flesh and the
devil might become too powerful, we maintain the old names
and forms, as we maintain the monarchy. We surround
both with reverence and majesty, and the reverence, being
confined to feeling, continues to exercise a vague but whole-
some influence. We row in one way while we look another.
In the presence of the marked decay of Protestantism as
a positive creed, the Protestant powers of Europe may,
perhaps, patch up some kind of reconciliation with the old
spiritual organisation which was shattered in the sixteenth
century, and has since shown no unwillingness to adapt
itself to modern forms of thought. The Olympian gods
survived for seven centuries after Aristophanes with the
help of allegory and ' economy.' The Church of Eome
may survive as long after Calvin and Luther. Carlyle
mocked at the possibility when I ventured to say so to him.
Yet Carlyle seemed to think that the mass was the only form
of faith in Europe which had any sincerity remaining in it.
A religion, at any rate, which will keep the West Indian
blacks from falling back into devil worship is still to seek.
Constitutions and belief in progress may satisfy Europe,
but will not answer in Jamaica. In spite of the priests,
LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY 235
child murder and cannibalism have reappeared in Hayti ;
but without them things might have been worse than they
are, and the preservation of white authority and influence
in any form at all may be better than none.
White authority and white influence may, however, still
be preserved in a nobler and better way. Slavery was a sur-
vival from a social order which had passed away, and slavery
could not be continued. It does not follow that per se it was
a crime. The negroes who were sold to the dealers in the
African factories were most of them either slaves already to
worse masters or were servi, servants in the old meaning
of the word, prisoners of war, or else criminals, servati or
reserved from death. They would otherwise have been killed ;
and since the slave trade has been abolished are again killed
in the too celebrated ' customs.' It was a crime when the
chiefs made war on each other for the sake of captives whom
they could turn into money. In many instances, perhaps
in most, it was innocent and even beneficent. Nature has
made us unequal, and Acts of Parliament cannot make us
equal. Some must lead and some must follow, and the
question is only of degree and kind. For myself, I would
rather be the slave of a Shakespeare or a Burghley than
the slave of a majority in the House of Commons or the
slave of my own folly. Slavery is gone, with all that
belonged to it ; but it will be an ill day for mankind if no
one is to be compelled any more to obey those who are
wiser than himself, and each of us is to do only what is
right in our own eyes. There may be authority, yet not
slavery : a soldier is not a slave, a sailor is not a slave, a
child is not a slave, a wife is not a slave ; yet they may not
live by their own wills or emancipate themselves at their
own pleasure from positions in which nature has placed
them, or into which they have themselves voluntarily
entered. The negroes of the West Indies are children,
and not yet disobedient children. They have their dreams,
23 6 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
but for the present they are dreams only. If you enforce
self-government upon them when they are not asking for
it, you may turn the dream into a reality, and wilfully drive
them back into the condition of their ancestors, from which
the slave trade was the beginning of their emancipation.
SUNDAY AT KINGSTON 237
CHAPTER XV.
The Church of England in Jamaica Drive to Castleton Botanical Gardens
Picnic by the river Black women Ball at Government House
Mandeville Miss Roy Country society Manners American visitors
A Moravian missionary The modern Radical creed.
IF I have spoken without enthusiasm of the working of the
Church of England among the negroes, I have not meant
to be disrespectful. As I lay awake at daybreak on the
Sunday morning after my arrival, I heard the sound of
church bells, not Catholic bells as at Dominica, but good old
English chimes. The Church is disestablished so far as law
can disestablish it, but, as in Barbadoes, the royal arms
still stand over the arches of the chancel. Introduced with
the English conquest, it has been identified with the ruling
order of English gentry, respectable, harmless, and useful,
to those immediately connected with it.
The parochial system, as in Barbadoes also, was spread
over the island. Each parish had its church, its parsonage
and its school, its fonts where the white children were bap-
tised in spite of my Jesuit, I shall hope not whites only ;
and its graveyard, where in time they were laid to rest.
With their quiet Sunday services of the old type the coun-
try districts were exact reproductions of English country
villages. The church whose bells I had heard was of the
more fashionable suburban type, standing in a central
situation halfway to Kingston. The service was at the old
English hour of eleven. We drove to it in the orthodox
fashion, with our prayer books and Sunday costumes, the
Colonel in uniform. The gentry of the neighbourhood are
238 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
antiquated in their habits, and to go to church on Sunday
is still regarded as a simple duty. A dozen carriages stood
under the shade at the doors. The congregation was upper
middle-class English of the best sort, and was large, though
almost wholly white. White tablets as at Port Royal
covered the walls, with familiar English names upon them.
But for the heat I could have imagined myself at home.
There were no Aaron Bangs to be seen, or Paul Gelids, with
the rough sense, the vigour, the energy, and roystering light-
heartedness of our grandfathers. The faces of the men were
serious and thoughtful, with the shadow resting on them of
an uncertain future. They are good Churchmen still, and
walk on in the old paths, wherever those paths may lead.
They are old-fashioned and slow to change, and are perhaps
belated in an eddy of the great stream of progress ; but they
were pleasant to see and pleasant to talk to. After service
there were the usual shakings of hands among friends out-
side ; arrangements were made for amusements and expedi-
tions in which I was invited to join which were got up,
perhaps, for my own entertainment. I was to be taken to
the sights of the neighbourhood ; I was to see this ; I was
to see that ; above all, I must see the Peak of the Blue
Mountains. The peak itself I could see better from below,
for there it stood, never moving, between seven and eight
thousand feet high. But I had had mountain riding enough,
and was allowed to plead my age and infirmities. It was
arranged finally that I should be driven the next day to
Castleton, seventeen miles off over a mountain pass, to see
the Botanical Gardens.
Accordingly early on the following morning we set off ;
two carriages full of us ; Mr. M , a new friend lately
made, but I hope long to be preserved, on the box of his four-
in-hand. The road was as good as all roads are in Jamaica
and Barbadoes, and more cannot be said in their favour.
Forest trees made a roof over our heads as we climbed to
DRIVE TO CASTLETON 239
the crest of the ridge. Thence we descended the side of a
long valley, a stream running below us which gradually
grew into a river. We passed through all varieties of culti-
vation. On the high ground there was a large sugar plan-
tation, worked by coolies, the first whom I had seen in
Jamaica. In the alluvial meadows on the river-side were
tobacco fields, cleanly and carefully kept, belonging to my
Spanish friend in Kingston, and only too rich in leaves.
There was sago too, and ginger, and tamarinds, and cocoa,
and coffee, and cocoa-nut palms. On the hill-sides were
the garden farms of the blacks, and were something to see
and remember. They receive from the Government at an
almost nominal quit rent an acre or two of uncleared forest.
To this as the first step they set light ; at twenty different
spots we saw their fires blazing. To clear an acre they waste
the timber on half a dozen or a dozen. They plant their yams
and sweet potatoes among the ashes and grow crops there
till the soil is exhausted. Then they move on to another,
which they treat with the same recklessness, leaving the
first to go back to scrub. Since the Chinaman burnt his
house to roast his pig, such waste was never seen. The
male proprietors were lounging about smoking. Their
wives, as it was market day, were tramping into Kingston
with their baskets on their head ; we met them literally in
thousands, all merry and light-hearted, their little ones
with little baskets trudging at their side. Of the lords of
the creation we saw, perhaps, one to each hundred women,
and he would be riding on mule or donkey, pipe in mouth
and carrying nothing. He would be generally sulky too,
while the ladies, young and old, had all a civil word for us
and curtsied under their loads. Decidedly if there is to be
a black constitution I would give the votes only to the
women.
We reached Castleton at last. It was in a hot damp
valley, said to be a nest of yellow fever. The gardens
240
slightly disappointed me ; my expectations had been too
much raised by Trinidad. There were lovely flowers of
course, and curious plants and trees. Every known palm
is growing there. They try hard to grow roses, and they
say that they succeed. They were not in flower, and I
could not judge. But the familiar names were all there,
and others which were not familiar, the newest importations
called after the great ladies of the day. I saw one labelled
Mabel Morrison. To find the daughter of an ancient
college friend and contemporary giving a name to a plant
in the New World makes one feel dreadfully old ; but I
expected to find, and I did not find, some useful practical
horticulture going on. They ought, for instance, to have
been trying experiments with orange trees. The orange in
Jamaica is left to nature. They plant the seeds, and
leave the result to chance. They neither bud nor graft,
and go upon the hypothesis that as the seed is, so will be
the tree which comes of it. Yet even thus, so favourable
is the soil and climate that the oranges of Jamaica are
prized above all others which are sold in the American
market. With skill and knowledge and good selection
they might produce the finest in the world. ' There are
dollars in that island, sir,' as an American gentleman said
to me, 'if they will look for them in the right way.'
Nothing of this kind was going on at Castleton ; so much
the worse, but perhaps things will mend by-and-by. I
was consoled partly by another specimen of the Amherstia
nobilis. It was not so large as those which I had seen at
Trinidad, but it was in splendid bloom, and certainly is
the most gorgeous flowering tree which the world contains.
Wild nature also was luxuriantly beautiful. We pic-
nicked by the river, which here is a full rushing stream
with pools that would have held a salmon, and did hold
abundant mullet. We found a bower formed by a twisted
vine, so thick that neither sun nor rain could penetrate
CASTLETON
241
the roof. The floor was of shining shingle, and the air
breathed cool from off the water. It was a spot which
nymph or naiad may haunt hereafter, when nymphs are
born again in the new era. The creatures of imagination
have fled away from modern enlightenment. But we were a
pleasant party of human beings, lying about under the
shade upon the pebbles. We had brought a blanket of ice
with us, and the champagne was manufactured into cup
by choicest West Indian skill. Figures fall unconsciously
at such moments into attitudes which would satisfy a
painter, and the scenes remain upon the memory like some
fine finished work of art. We had done with the gardens,
and I remember no more of them except that I saw a
mongoose stalking a flock of turkeys. The young ones and
their mother gathered together and showed fight. The old
cock, after the manner of the male animal, seemed chiefly
anxious for his own skin. On the way back we met the
returning stream of women and children, loaded heavily as
before and with the same elastic step. In spite of all that
is incorrect about them, the women are the material to
work upon ; and if they saw that we were in earnest, they
would lend their help to make their husbands bestir them-
selves. A Dutch gentleman once boasted to me of the
wonderful prosperity of Java, where everybody was well off
and everybody was industrious. He so insisted upon the
industry that I asked him how it was brought about. Were
the people slaves? 'Oh,' he cried, as if shocked, 'God
forbid that a Christian nation should be so wicked as te>
keep slaves ! ' 'Do they never wish to be idle ? ' I asked.
' Never, never,' he said ; ' no, no : we do not permit anyone
to be idle.'
My stay with Colonel J was drawing to a close ; one
great festivity was impending, which I wished to avoid ;
but the gracious lady insisted that I must remain. There
was to be a ball, and all the neighbourhood was invited.
R
342 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
Pretty it was sure to be. Windows and doors, galleries
and passages, would be all open. The gardens would be
lighted up, and the guests could spread as they pleased.
Brilliant it all was ; more brilliant than you would see in
our larger colonies. A ball in Sydney or Melbourne is like
a ball in the north of England or in New York. There are
the young men in black coats, and there are brightly
dressed young ladies for them to dance with. The chape-
rons sit along the walls ; the elderly gentlemen withdraw
to the card room. Here all was different. The black coats
in the ball at Jamaica were on the backs of old or middle-
aged men, and, except Government officials, there was hardly
a young man present in civilian dress. The rooms glittered
with scarlet and white and blue and gold lace. The offi-
cers were there from the garrison and the fleet; but of
men of business, of professional men, merchants, planters,
lawyers &c. there were only those who had grown up to
middle age in the island, whose fortunes, bad or good,
were bound up with it. When these were gone, it seemed
as if there would be no one to succeed them. The coveted
heirs of great estates were no longer to be found for mothers
to angle after. The trades and professions in Kingston
had ceased to offer the prospect of an income to younger
brothers who had to make their own way. For 250 years
generations of Englishmen had followed one upon another,
but we seemed to have come to the last. Of gentlemen
unconnected with the public service, under thirty-five or
forty, there were few to be seen ; they were seeking
their fortunes elsewhere. The English interest in Jamaica
is still a considerable thing. The English flag flies over
Government House, and no one so far wishes to remove it.
But the British population is scanty and refuses to grow.
Ships and regiments come and go, and officers and State
employes make what appears to be a brilliant society.
But it is in appearance only. The station is no longer a
MANDEVILLE
243
favourite one. They are gone, those pleasant gentry whose
country houses were the paradise of middies sixty years ago.
All is changed, even to the officers themselves. The
drawling ensign of our boyhood, brave as a lion in the
field, and in the mess room or the drawing room an
idiot, appears also to be dead as the dodo. Those that one
meets now are intelligent and superior men no trace of
the frivolous sort left. Is it the effect of the abolition of
purchase, and competitive examinations ? Is it that the
times themselves are growing serious, and even the most
empty-headed feel that this is no season for levity ?
I had seen what Jamaican life was like in the upper
spheres, and I had heard the opinions that were current in
them ; but I wished to see other parts of the country. I
wished to see a class of people who were farther from head
quarters, and who might not all sing to the same note. I
determined to start off on an independent cruise of my
own. In the centre of the island, two thousand feet
above the sea, it was reported to me that I should find
a delightful village called Mandeville, after some Duke of
Manchester who governed Jamaica a hundred years ago.
The scenery was said to have a special charm of its own,
the air to be exquisitely pure, the land to be well cultivated.
Village manners were to be found there of the old-fashioned
sort, and a lodging house and landlady of unequalled merit.
There was a railway for the first fifty miles. The line at
starting crosses the mangrove swamps at the mouth of the
Cobre river. You see the trees standing in the water on
each side of the road. Eising slowly, it hardens into level
grazing ground, stocked with cattle and studded with
mangoes and cedars. You pass Spanish Town, of which
only the roofs of the old State buildings are visible from
the carriages. Sugar estates follow, some of which are still
in cultivation, while ruined mills and fallen aqueducts show
where others once had been. The scenery becomes more
K 2
244 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
broken as you begin to ascend into the hills. Eiver beds,
dry when I saw them, but powerful torrents in the rainy
season, are crossed by picturesque bridges. You come to
the forest, where the squatters were at their usual work,
burning out their yam patches. Columns of white smoke
were rising all about us, yet so abundant the timber and
so rapid the work of restoration when the devastating
swarm has passed, that in this direction they have as yet
made no marked impression, and the forest stretches as far
as eye can reach. The glens grew more narrow and the
trees grander as the train proceeded. After two hours we
arrived at the present terminus, an inland town with the
singular name of Porus. No explanation is given of it in
the local handbooks ; but I find a Porus among the com-
panions of Columbus, and it is probably an interesting relic
of the first Spanish occupation. The railway had brought
business. Mule carts were going about, and waggons ;
omnibuses stood in the yards, and there were stores of
various kinds. But it was all black. There was not a
white face to be seen after we left the station. One of
my companions in the train was a Cuban engineer, now
employed upon the line ; a refugee, I conjectured, be-
longing to the beaten party in the late rebellion, from
the bitterness with which he spoke of the Spanish
administration.
Porus is many hundred feet above the sea, in a hollow
where three valleys meet. Mandeville, to which I was
bound, was ten miles farther on, the road ascending all the
way. A carriage was waiting for me, but too small for my
luggage. A black boy offered to carry up a heavy bag for
a shilling, a feat which he faithfully and expeditiously per-
formed. After climbing a steep hill, we came out upon a
rich undulating plateau, long cleared and cultivated ; green
fields with cows feeding on them ; pretty houses standing
in gardens ; a Wesleyan station ; a Moravian station, with
MANDEVILLE
245
chapels and parsonages. The red soil was mixed with
crumbling lumps of white coral, a ready-made and in-
exhaustible supply of manure. Great silk-cotton trees
towered up in lonely magnificence, the home of the dreaded
Jumbi woe to the wretch who strikes an axe into those
sacred stems ! Almonds, cedars, mangoes, gum trees spread
their shade over the road. Orange trees were everywhere ;
sometimes in orchards, sometimes growing at their own
wild will in hedges and copse and thicket. Finally, at the
outskirts of a perfectly English village, we brought up at
the door of the lodging house kept by the justly celebrated
Miss Eoy. The house, or cottage, stood at the roadside, at the
top of a steep flight of steps ; a rambling one-story building,
from which rooms, creeper-covered, had been thrown out as
they were wanted. There was the universal green verandah
into which they all opened ; and the windows looked out over
a large common, used of old, and perhaps now, as a race-
course ; on wooded slopes, with sunny mansions dropped here
and there in openings among the woods ; farm buildings at
intervals in the distance, surrounded by clumps of palms ;
and beyond them ranges of mountains almost as blue as
the sky against which they were faintly visible. Miss Eoy,
the lady and mistress of the establishment, came out to
meet me : middle-aged, with a touch of the black blood, but
with a face in which one places instant and sure depen-
dence, shrewd, quiet, sensible, and entirely good-humoured.
A white-haired brother, somewhat infirm and older than
she, glided behind her as her shadow. She attends to
the business. His pride is in his garden, where he has
gathered a collection of rare plants in admired disorder ;
the night-blowing cereus hanging carelessly over a broken
paling, and a palm, unique of its kind, waving behind it.
At the back were orange trees and plantains and coffee
bushes, with long-tailed humming birds flitting about their
nests among the branches. All kind of delicacies, from
246 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
fruit and preserves to coffee, Miss Roy grows for her visitors
on her own soil, and prepares from the first stage to the
last with her own cunning hands.
Having made acquaintance with the mistress, I strolled
out to look about me. After walking up the road for a
quarter of a mile, I found myself in an exact reproduction
of a Warwickshire hamlet before the days of railways and
brick chimneys. There were no elms to be sure there
were silk-cotton trees and mangoes where the elms should
have been ; but there were the boys playing cricket, and a
market house, and a modest inn, and a shop or two, and a
blacksmith's forge with a shed where horses were standing
waiting their turn to be shod. Across the green was the
parish church, with its three aisles and low square tower, in
which hung an old peal of bells. Parish stocks I did not
observe, though, perhaps, I might have had I looked for
them ; but there was a schoolhouse and parsonage, and,
withdrawn at a distance as of superior dignity, what had
once perhaps been the squire's mansion, when squire and
such-like had been the natural growth of the country. It
was as if a branch of the old tree had been carried over
and planted there ages ago, and as if it had taken root and
become an exact resemblance of the parent stock. The
people had black faces ; but even they, too, had shaped their
manners on the old English models. The men touched
their hats respectfully (as they eminently did not in Kings-
ton and its environs). The women smiled and curtsied,
and the children looked shy when one spoke to them.
The name of slavery is a horror to us ; but there must
have been something human and kindly about it, too, when
it left upon the character the marks of courtesy and good
breeding. I wish I could say as much for the effect of
modern ideas. The negroes in Mandeville were, perhaps,
as happy in their old condition as they have been since
their glorious emancipation, and some of them to this day
AMERICAN GUESTS 247
speak regretfully of a time when children did not die of
neglect ; when the sick and the aged were taken care of,
and the strong and healthy were, at least, as well looked
after as their owner's cattle.
Slavery could not last ; but neither can the condition
last which has followed it. The equality between black and
white is a forced equality and not a real one, and Nature
in the long run has her way, and readjusts in their proper
relations what theorists and philanthropists have disturbed.
I was not Miss Eoy's only guest. An American lady
and gentleman were staying there ; he, I believe, for his
health, as the climate of Mandeville is celebrated. Ameri-
cans, whatever may be their faults, are always unaffected ;
and so are easy to get on with. We dined together, and
talked of the place and its inhabitants. They had been
struck like myself with the manners of the peasants, which
were something entirely new to them. The lady said, and
without expressing the least disapproval, that she had
fallen in with an old slave who told her that, thanks to God,
he had seen good times. ' He was bred in a good home,
with a master and mistress belonging to him. What the
master and mistress had the slaves had, and there was no
difference ; and his master used to visit at King's House,
and his men were all proud of him. Yes, glory be to God,
he had seen good times.'
In the evening we sat out in the verandah in the soft
sweet air, the husband and I smoking our cigars, and the
lady not minding it. They had come to Mandeville, as we
go to Italy, to escape the New England winter. They
had meant to stay but a few days ; they found it so
charming that they had stayed for many weeks. We
talked on till twilight became night, and then appeared a
show of natural pyrotechnics which beat anything of the
kind which I had ever seen or read of : fireflies as large
as cockchafers flitting round us among the leaves of the
248 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
creepers, with two long antennae, at the point of each of
which hangs out a blazing lanthorn. The unimaginative
colonists call them gig-lamps. Had Shakespeare ever
heard of them, they would have played round Ferdinand
and Miranda in Prospero's cave, and would have borne a
fairer name. The light is bluish-green, like a glowworm's,
but immeasurably brighter ; and we could trace them far
away glancing like spirits over the meadows.
I could not wonder that my new friends had been
charmed with the place. The air was exquisitely pure;
the temperature ten degrees below that of Kingston, never
oppressively hot and never cold ; the forest scenery as
beautiful as at Arden; and Miss Eoy's provision for us,
rooms, beds, breakfasts, dinners, absolutely without fault.
If ever there was an inspired coffee maker, Miss Roy was
that person. The glory of Mandeville is in its oranges.
The worst orange I ate in Jamaica was better than the best
I ever ate in Europe, and the best oranges of Jamaica are
the oranges of Mandeville. New York has found out their
merits. One gentleman alone sent twenty thousand boxes to
New York last year, clearing a dollar on each box ; and this,
as I said just now, when Nature is left to produce what she
pleases, and art has not begun to help her. Fortunes
larger than were ever made by sugar wait for any man,
and the blessings of the world along with it, who will set
himself to work at orange growing with skill and science in
a place where heat will not wither the trees, nor frosts, as
in Florida, bite off the blossoms. Yellow fever was never
heard of there, nor any dangerous epidemic, nor snake nor
other poisonous reptile. The droughts which parch the
lowlands are unknown, for an even rain falls all the year
and the soil is always moist. I inquired with wonder why
the unfortunate soldiers who were perched among the crags
at Newcastle were not at Mandeville instead. I was told
that water was the difficulty ; that there was no river or
MANDEVILLE 249
running stream there, and that it had to be drawn from
wells or collected into cisterns. One must applaud the
caution which the authorities have at last displayed ; but
cattle thrive at Mandeville, and sheep, and black men and
women in luxuriant abundance. One would like to know
that the general who sold the Newcastle estate to the
Government was not the same person who was allowed to
report as to the capabilities of a spot which, to the common
observer, would seem as perfectly adapted for the purpose
as the other is detestable.
A few English families were scattered about the neigh-
bourhood, among whom I made a passing acquaintance.
They had a lawn-tennis club in the village, which met once
a week ; they drove in with their pony carriages ; a lady
made tea under the trees ; they had amusements and
pleasant society which cost nothing. They were not rich ;
but they were courteous, simple, frank, and cordial.
Mandeville is the centre of a district which all resembles
it in character and extends for many miles. It is famous
for its cattle as well as for its fruit, and has excellent grazing
grounds. Mr. , an officer of police, took me round
with him one morning. It was the old story. Though
there were still a few white proprietors left, they were
growing fewer, and the blacks were multiplying upon them.
The smoke of their clearances showed where they were at
work. Many of them are becoming well-to-do. We met them
on the roads with their carts and mules ; the young ones
armed, too, in some instances with good double-barrelled
muzzle-loaders. There is no game to shoot, but to have
a gun raises them in their own estimation, and they like to
be prepared for contingencies. Mr. had a troublesome
place of it. The negro peasantry were good-humoured, he
said, but not universally honest. They stole cattle, and
would not give evidence against each other. If brought
into court, they held a pebble in their mouths, being under
250 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
the impression that when they were so provided perjury
did not count. Then: education was only skin-deep, and
the schools which the Government provided had not
touched their characters at all. Mr. 's duties brought
him hi contact with the unfavourable specimens. I received
a far pleasanter impression from a Moravian minister, who
called on me with a friend who had lately taken a farm. I
was particularly glad to see this gentleman, for of the
Moravians everyone had spoken well to me. He was not
the least enthusiastic about his poor black sheep, but he
said that, if they were not better than the average English
labourers, he did not think them worse. They were called
idle. They would work well enough if they had fair wages,
and if the wages were paid regularly ; but what could be
expected when women servants had but three shillings a
week and ' found themselves/ when the men had but a
shilling a day and the pay was kept in arrear, in order that,
if they came late to work, or if they came irregularly, it
might be kept back or cut down to what the employer
chose to give? Under such conditions any man of any
colour would prefer to work for himself if he had a garden,
or would be idle if he had none. ' Living ' costs next to
nothing either to them or their families. But the minister
said, and his friend confirmed it by his own experience,
that these same fellows would work regularly and faithfully
for any master whom they personally knew and could rely
upon, and no Englishman coming to settle there need be
afraid of failing for want of labour, if he had sense and
energy, and did not prefer to lie down and groan. The
blacks, my friends said, were kindly-hearted, respectful,
and well-disposed, but they were children ; easily excited,
easily tempted, easily misled, and totally unfit for self-
government. If we wished to ruin them altogether, we
should persevere in the course to which, they were sorry to
hear, we were so inclined. The real want in the island
AMERICAN EXPERIENCES 251
was of intelligent Englishmen to employ and direct them,
and Englishmen were going away so fast that they feared
there would soon be none of them left. This was the
opinion of two moderate and excellent men, whose natural
and professional prejudices were all on the black man's
side.
It was confirmed both in its favourable and un-
favourable aspects by another impartial authority. My
first American acquaintances had gone, but their rooms
were occupied by another of their countrymen, a specimen
of a class of whom more will be heard in Jamaica if the
fates are kind. The English in the island cast in their lot
with sugar, and if sugar is depressed they lose heart.
Americans keep their ' eyes skinned,' as they call it, to look
out for other openings. They have discovered, as I said,
' that there are dollars in Jamaica,' and one has come, and
has set up a trade in plantains, in which he is making a
fortune ; and this gentleman had perceived that there were
' dollars in the bamboo,' and for bamboos there was no
place in the world like the West Indies. He canie to
Jamaica, brought machines to clear the fibre, tried to make
ropes of it, to make canvas, paper, and I know not what.
I think he told me that he had spent a quarter of a million
dollars, instead of finding any, before he hit upon a pay-
ing use for it. The bamboo fibre has certain elastic incom-
pressible properties in which it is without a rival. He
forms it into ' packing ' for the boxes of the wheels of rail-
way carriages, where it holds oil like a sponge, never
hardens, and never wears out. He sends the packing over
the world, and the demand grows as it is tried. He has
set up a factory, thirty miles from Mandeville, in the valley
of the Black Eiver. He has a large body of the negroes
working for him who are said to be so unmanageable.
He, like Dr. Nicholls in Dominica, does not find them
unmanageable at all, They never leave him ; they work for
252 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
him from year to year as regularly as if they were slaves.
They have their small faults, but he does not magnify them
into vices. They are attached to him with the old-fashioned
affection which good labourers always feel for employers
whom they respect, and dismissal is dreaded as the severest
of punishments. In the course of time he thought that
they might become fit for political privileges. To confer
such privileges on them at present would fling Jamaica
back into absolute barbarism.
I said I wished that more of his countrymen would
come and settle in Jamaica as he had done and a few
others already. American energy would be like new blood
in the veins of the poor island. He answered that many
would probably come if they could be satisfied that there
would be no more political experimenting ; but they would
not risk their capital if there was a chance of a black
parliament.
If we choose to make Jamaica into a Hayti, we need
not look for Americans down that way.
Let us hope that enthusiasm for constitutions will for
once moderate its ardour. The black race has suffered
enough at our hands. They have been sacrificed to slavery ;
are they to be sacrificed again to a dream or a doctrine ?
There has a new creed risen, while the old creed is failing.
It has its priests and its prophets, its formulas and its.
articles of belief.
Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary
that he hold the Eadical faith.
And the Radical faith is this : all men are equal, and
the voice of one is as the voice of another.
And whereas one man is wise and another foolish, and
one is upright and another crooked, yet in this suffrage
none is greater or less than another. The vote is equal,
the dignity co-eternal.
THE RADICAL CREED 253
Truth is one and right is one ; yet right is right because
the majority so declare it, and justice is justice because
the majority so declare it.
And if the majority affirm one thing to-day, that is
right ; and if the majority affirm the opposite to-morrow,
that is right.
Because the will of the majority is the ground of
right and there is no other, &c. &c. &c.
This is the Radical faith, which, except every man do
keep whole and undefiled, he is a Tory and an enemy of the
State, and without doubt shall perish everlastingly.
Once the Radical was a Liberal and went for toleration
and freedom of opinion. He has become a believer now.
He is right and you are wrong, and if you do not agree
with him you are a fool; and you are wicked besides.
Voltaire says that atheism and superstition are the two
poles of intellectual disease. Superstition he thinks the
worse of the two. The atheist is merely mistaken, and can
be cured if you show him that he is wrong. The fanatic
can never be cured. Yet each alike, if he prevails, will
destroy human society. What would Voltaire have expected
for poor mankind had he seen both the precious qualities
combined in this new 7 Symbolum Fidei ?
A creed is not a reasoned judgment based upon experi-
ence and insight. It is a child of imagination and passion.
Like an organised thing, it has its appointed period and
then dies. You cannot argue it out of existence. It works
for good ; it works for evil ; but work it will while the life
is in it. Faith, we are told, is not contradictory to reason,
but is above reason. Whether reason or faith sees truer,
events will prove.
One more observation this American gentleman made
to me. He was speaking of the want of spirit and of the
despondency of the West Indian whites. ' I never knew.
254 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
sir,' he said, ' any good come of desponding men. If you
intend to strike a mark, you had better believe that you can
strike it. No one ever hit anything if he thought that
he was most likely to miss it. You must take a cheerful
view of things, or you will have no success in this world.'
' Tyne heart tyne a',' the Scotch proverb says. The
Anglo- West Indians are tyning heart, and that is the worst
feature about them. They can get no help except in them-
selves, and they can help themselves after all if we allow
them fair play. The Americans will not touch them
politically, but they will trade with them ; they will bring
their capital and their skill and knowledge among them, and
make the islands richer and more prosperous than ever
they were on one condition : they will risk nothing in
such enterprises as long as the shadow hangs over them of
a possible government by a black majority. Let it suffice
to have created one Ireland without deliberately manufac-
turing a second.
CHERRY GARDEN 255
CHAPTER XVI.
Jamaican hospitality Cherry Garden George William Gordon The Gor-
don riots Governor Eyre A dispute and its consequences Jamaican
country-house society Modern speculation A Spanish fable- Port
Royal The commodore Naval theatricals The modern sailor.
THE surviving representatives of the Jamaican gentry are
as hospitable as their fathers and grandfathers used to be.
An English visitor who wishes to see the island is not
allowed to take his chance at hotels where, indeed, his
chance would be a bad one. A single acquaintance is
enough to start with. He is sent on with letters of intro-
duction from one house to another, and is assured of a
favourable reception. I was treated as kindly as any
stranger would be, and that was as kindly as possible.
But friends do not ask us to stay with them that their
portraits may be drawn in the traveller's journals ; and I
mention no one who was thus good to me, unless some
general interest attaches either to himself or his residence.
Such interest does, however, attach to a spot where, after
leaving Mandeville, I passed a few days. The present
owner of it was the chief manager of the Kingston branch
of the Colonial Bank : a clever accomplished man of busi-
ness, who understood the financial condition of the "West
Indies better perhaps than any other man living. He was
a botanist besides; he had a fine collection of curious
plants which were famous in the island ; and was other-
wise a gentleman of the highest standing and reputation.
His lady was one of the old island aristocracy high-bred,
256 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
cultivated, an accomplished artist ; a person who would
have shone anywhere and in any circle, and was, there-
fore, contented to be herself and indifferent whether she
shone or not. A visit in such a family was likely to be
instructive, and was sure to be agreeable ; and on these
grounds alone I should have accepted gratefully the oppor-
tunity of knowing them better which they kindly made for
me by an invitation to stay with them. But their place,
which was called Cherry Garden, and which I had seen
from the grounds at Government House, had a further im-
portance of its own in having been the house of the unfor-
tunate George William Gordon.
The disturbances with w r hich Mr. Gordon was connected,
and for his share in which he was executed, are so recent
and so notorious that I need give no detailed account of
them, though, of course, I looked into the history again
and listened to all that I could hear about it. Though I
had taken no part in Mr. Eyre's defence, I was one of those
who thought from the first that Mr. Eyre had been un-
worthily sacrificed to public clamour. Had the agitation
in Jamaica spread, and taken the form which it easily
might have taken, he would have been blamed as keenly by
one half of the world if he had done nothing to check it
as he was blamed, in fact, by the other for too much energy.
Carlyle used to say that it was as if, when a ship had been
on fire, and the captain by skill and promptitude had put
the fire out, his owner were to say to him, ' Sir, you poured
too much water down the hold and damaged the cargo.'
The captain would answer, ' Yes, sir, but I have saved your
ship.' This was the view which I carried with me to
Jamaica, and I have brought it back with me the same in
essentials, though qualified by clearer perceptions of the
real nature of the situation.
Something of a very similar kind had happened in
Natal just before I visited that colony in 1874. I had
GEORGE WILLIAM GORDON 257
seen the whites there hardly recovering from a panic in
which a common police case had been magnified by fear
into the beginning of an insurrection. Langalibalele, a
Caffir chief within the British dominions, had been in-
subordinate. He had been sent for to Maritzberg, and
had invented excuses for disobedience to a lawful order.
The whites believed at once that there was to be a general
Caffir rebellion in which they would all be murdered.
They resolved to be beforehand with it. They carried
fire and sword through two considerable tribes. At first
they thought that they had covered themselves with glory ;
calmer reflection taught many of them that perhaps they
had been too hasty, and that Langalibalele had never in-
tended to rebel at all. The Jamaican disturbance was of a
similar kind. Mr. Gordon had given less provocation than
the Caffir chief, but the circumstances were analogous, and
the actual danger was probably greater. Jamaica had
then constitutional, though not what is called responsible,
government. The executive power remained with the Crown.
There had been differences of opinion between the governor
and the Assembly. Gordon, a man of colour, was a pro-
minent member of the opposition. He had called public
meetings of the blacks in a distant part of the island, and
was endeavouring to bring the pressure of public opinion
on the opposition side. Imprudent as such a step might
have been among an ignorant and excitable population,
where whites and blacks were so unequal in numbers, and
where they knew so little of each other, Mr. Gordon was
not going beyond what in constitutional theory he was
legally entitled to do ; nor was his language on the plat-
form, though violent and inflammatory, any more so than
what we listen to patiently at home. Under a popular
constitution the people are sovereign ; the members of
the assemblies are popular delegates ; and when there is
a division of opinion any man has a right to call the
8
258 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
constituencies to express their sentiments. If stones were
thrown at the police and seditious cries were raised, it was
no more than might be reasonably expected.
We at home can be calm on such occasions because
we know that there is no real danger, and that the law is
strong enough to assert itself. In Jamaica a few thousand
white people were living in the middle of negroes forty
times their number once their slaves, now raised to be
their political equals each regarding the other on the least
provocation with resentment and suspicion. In England
the massacre in Hayti is a half-forgotten story. Not
one person in a thousand of those who clamoured for the
prosecution of Governor Eyre had probably ever heard of
it. In Jamaica it is ever present in the minds of the
Europeans as a frightful evidence of what the negroes are
capable when roused to frenzy. The French planters had
done nothing particularly cruel to deserve their animosity,
and were as well regarded by their slaves as ever we had
been in the English islands. Yet in a fever of political
excitement, and as a reward for the decree of the Paris
Revolutionary Government, which declared them free, they
allowed the liberty which was to have elevated them to
the white man's level to turn them into devils ; and they
massacred the whole of the French inhabitants. It was
inevitable that when the volcano in Jamaica began to show
symptoms of similar activity the whites residing there
should be unable to look on with the calmness which we,
from thousands of miles away, unreasonably expected of
them. They imagined their houses in flames, and them-
selves and their families at the mercy of a furious mob.
No personal relation between the two races has grown up
to take the place of slavery. The white gentry have blacks
for labourers, blacks for domestic servants, yet as a rule
(though, of course, there are exceptions) they have no
interest in each other, no esteem nor confidence : there-
GOVERNOR EYRE AND GORDON 259
fore any symptom of agitation is certain to produce a
panic, and panic is always violent.
The blacks who attended Gordon's meetings came armed
with guns and cutlasses ; a party of white volunteers went
in consequence to watch them, and to keep order if
they showed signs of meaning insurrection. Stones were
thrown; the Riot Act was read, more stones followed,
and then the volunteers fired, and several persons were
killed. Of course there was fury. The black mob then
actually did rise. They marched about that particular
district destroying plantations and burning houses. That
they did so little, and that the flame did not spread, was
a proof that there was no premeditation of rebellion, no
prepared plan of action, no previous communication be-
tween the different parts of the island with a view to any
common movement. There was no proof, and there was
no reason to suppose, that Gordon had intended an armed
outbreak. He would have been a fool if he had, when
constitutional agitation and the weight of numbers at his
back would have secured him all that he wanted. When
inflammable materials are brought together, and sparks
are flying, you cannot equitably distribute the blame or the
punishment. Eyre was responsible for the safety of the
island. He was not a Jamaican. The rule in the colonial
service is that a governor remains in any colony only long
enough to begin to understand it. He is then removed
to another of which he knows nothing. He is therefore
absolutely dependent in any difficulty upon local advice.
When the riots began every white man in Jamaica was of
one opinion, that unless the tire was stamped out promptly
they would all be murdered. Being without experience
himself, it was very difficult for Mr. Eyre to disregard so
complete a unanimity. I suppose that a perfectly calm
and determined man would have seen in the unanimity
'itself the evidence of alarm and imagination. He ought
s 2
a6o THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES
perhaps to have relied entirely on the police and the re-
gular troops, and to have called in the volunteers. But
here again was a difficulty ; for the police were black, and
the West India regiments were black, and the Sepoy re-
bellion was fresh in everybody's memory. He had no
time to deliberate. He had to act, and to act promptly ;
and if, relying on his own judgment, he had disregarded
what everyone round him insisted upon, and if mischief
had afterwards come of it, the censure which would have
fallen upon him would have been as severe as it would
have been deserved. He assumed that the English colo-
nists were right and that a general rebellion had begun.
They all armed. They formed into companies. The dis-
turbed district was placed under martial law, and these
extemporised regiments, too few in number to be merciful,
saw safety only in striking terror into the poor wretches.
It was in Jamaica as it was in Natal afterwards ; but we
must allow for human nature and not be hasty to blame.
If the rising at Morant Bay was but the boiling over of a
pot from the oratory of an excited patriot, there was de-
plorable cruelty and violence. But, again, it was all too
natural. Men do not bear easily to see their late ser-
vants on their way to become their political masters, and
they believe the worst of them because they are afraid. A
model governor would have rather restrained their ardour
than encouraged it, but all that can be said against Mr.
Eyre (so far as regarded the general suppression of the
insurgents) is that he acted as nine hundred and ninety-
nine men out of a thousand would have acted in his place,
and more ought not to be expected of average colonial
governors.
His treatment of Gordon, the original cause of the dis-
turbance, was more questionable. Gordon had returned to
his own house, the house where I was going, within sight of
Eyre's windows. It would have been fair, and perhaps right'
EYRE AND GORDON 261
to arrest him, and right also to bring him to trial, if he
had committed any offence for which he could be legally
punished. So strong was the feeling against him that, if
every white man in Kingston had been empannelled, there
would have been a unanimous verdict and they would not
have looked too closely into niceties of legal construction.
Unfortunately it was doubtful whether Gordon had done
anything which could be construed into a capital crime.
He had a right to call public meetings together. He had
a right to appeal to political passions, and to indulge as
freely as he pleased in the patriotic commonplaces of plat-
forms, provided he did not himself advise or encourage
a breach of the peace, and this it could not easily be
proved that he had done. He was, however, the leader of
the opposition to the Government. The opposition had
broken into a riot, and Gordon was guilty of having ex-
cited the feelings which led to it. The leader could not
be allowed to escape unpunished while his followers were
being shot and flogged. The Kingston district where he
resided was under the ordinary law. Eyre sent him into
the district which was under martial law, tried him by a
military court and hanged him.
The Cabinet at home at first thanked their representa-
tive for having saved the island. A clamour rose, and they
sent out a commission to examine into what had happened.
The commission reported unfavourably, and Eyre was dis-
missed 
