CHAPTER VI
SUITABLE CLOTHING—PEDESTRIANS IN JAMAICA—SELF-HELP SOCIETY
Before I launch out into ecstasies over the tropical scenery, and the luxuriant multiplicity of the flora of this island, I intend to rid my memory of certain precautionary information with which I consider, at this juncture, it will be well to acquaint any reader who may be meditating a visit to this part of the world.
In the matter of dress I advise those who wish to see the island scenery to leave their heavy luggage at either of the hotels they choose to stay at when first landing. Since the interior parts of the island are in many places only accessible either on horseback, as to houses high up in the Blue Mountains, or as Mandeville, by long drives in buggies from the railway stations, it is advisable to carry only a limited amount of what one absolutely requires in bags, portmanteaus, or bundles tightly strapped in waterproof cases. I cannot do better than warn persons of the tropical rains which are so frequent in the West Indian islands. Do not time your visit either in May or October, for these are the rainy months, but you are always liable to sudden outpourings at other times of the year and in the finest weather. These rains drench you to the skin often before you can find shelter, and the danger of catching fever is great if you do not at once change your wet clothing. Personally, I consider the waterproof cloak which Messrs Elvery in Conduit Street, W., supply for tropical countries about the most suitable that I have seen. For everyday wear, washing skirts and blouses, the latter without lining, are by far the best; a light, fine serge dress will be useful for a sojourn amongst the mountains where fires are sometimes necessary in the evening, and blankets are slept under. The true test of the Jamaican climate is whether or not one can sleep under a woollen cover. Shady hats, and one or two silk dresses for evening or Sunday wear, are about as much as one wants for a tourist’s visit of six weeks to a couple of months.
If, however, you come out to spend the winter at Constant Spring Hotel and expect to go much into society, you cannot bring out too many smart gowns, or too much flummery in the shape of millinery, for the heat soon takes the freshness off your airiest confections. Let the gowns, however, be such as you would wear in the hottest summer in England, and you will then be fairly near the mark.
Whilst I am speaking on the subject of dress I may as well acquaint you with the fact that muslins and cottons are to be bought here as reasonably as they are in England. Some people say they are cheaper, and are made and exported especially for colonial use. This probably is a correct version, when it is taken into consideration that by law all the blacks have to provide themselves with decent clothing. With the women, this always takes the form of cotton, either as print, drill, piqué, or muslin. There are very fair dressmakers, who are certainly very moderate in their charges, to be found at Kingston. They are excellent copyists and clever machinists. Provided they have a good pattern they will turn out a well-made skirt for about six shillings, and a blouse for a little less. Many people coming out from England employ them, and there is this to be said in their favour, they do not keep you waiting long for your dresses, but generally send them to you in two or three days.
Another important item to be considered in a visit to Jamaica is boots. Some persons tell you to get a size larger, both in gloves and shoes, than your ordinary sizes for coming out here. At any rate, provide yourself with soft kid boots coming high up the leg, to protect your ankles from the insects which seem by preference to attack that particular part of your limbs. At Kingston the mosquitoes are virulent, here at Mandeville there are scarcely any. But far worse than these are the ticks which render it positively dangerous to walk in long grass, or to gather at random from the country hedges as you take your walks. These obnoxious insects are the curse of the island; they attack both man and beast. Years ago West Indians say they roamed as children about the hills and woods, gathering what wild flowers they liked, never thinking or troubling about these insects. Now the nurses have strict injunctions not to let the children wander in long grass for fear of the noisome little pests. The introduction of foreign cattle into Jamaica some twenty-five years ago accounts for their presence; since then they have increased and multiplied till they are a positive plague. In the Port Antonio we brought out a number of starlings sent by Sir Alfred Jones, who is the moving spirit of Elder, Dempster & Co., and who is most energetic in his attempts to benefit the island. This gentleman hopes they may acquire a taste for ticks in the same way the mongoose on its arrival in Jamaica devoted his attentions to the extermination of rats and snakes. It would indeed be a good thing if they could be got rid of. I hear that another gentleman having the same object in view has imported a lot of common hedge-sparrows. The poor starlings we brought out with us suffered terribly from sea-sickness, scarcely half of them surviving the journey. The timorous-hearted may be thankful that there is nothing in the animal or reptile world to be afraid of in country rambles. At home we have poisonous snakes, here there are none. There are lizards, but the natives eat them, and also the land crab. Scorpions are rarely met with, and are not considered so dangerous here as elsewhere. Ants and sand-flies are found in the low-lying lands. The most charming live things are the beautiful little humming-birds often seen trembling over sweet-smelling tree blossoms. I have often watched them flitting over flowering acacia bushes. There are twenty different sorts of these enumerated by a naturalist called Goese. Those I have generally seen have bright bodies of metallic shimmering peacock green, with black feathers on the head, tail and back.
To return to the subject of dress. Gentlemen will find their summer suits and flannels indispensable; they should also provide themselves with good macintoshes.
For an athlete, or indeed for anybody possessed of good walking powers, it is not impossible to take a walking trip over part of this island—especially as there are small weekly boats starting from Kingston every Tuesday, stopping at the various ports and harbours as they make the circuit of Jamaica. These call at each place for fruit on behalf of the American Fruit Company, whose boats run between Port Antonio and Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The chief harbours are Port Morant, Kingston, Old Harbour, Green Island, Montego Bay, Falmouth, Port Maria, St Ann’s Bay, Lucea, and Port Antonio; these boats stop at all these. The island of Jamaica itself is only 144 miles at its extreme length, and its greatest width is 49 miles. From Kingston to Annotto Bay on the north coast it is only 21½ miles. The roads are exceptionally good throughout, thanks to Sir H. A. Blake, and there is no reason why a good pedestrian should not fix upon Jamaica as a fitting spot to be done on shankses’ pony, provided always he be suitably dressed, and commences his peregrinations at sunrise, rests from 11 A.M. to 4 P.M., and takes up his journey then till dusk, or as far into the night as he pleases. The same applies to bicycling and to riding on horseback.
FRUIT STEAMER ON ITS WEEKLY ROUND.
There is this to be said to people who cannot accommodate themselves to somewhat primitive conditions of existence, or who are not in the enjoyment of at least moderately good health: they should not come to the West Indies at all. In the first place, the excessive heat in the middle of the day is decidedly trying; even the strongest take some time to become acclimatised. Then the food is not the same as English people are used to—that is, in the country lodging-houses and hotels. To this day I abstain from salt-fish and akee, a favourite West Indian breakfast dish; nor can I acquire a taste for the Avocado pear, which is eaten as a salad, but which to me seems identical with soft soap. Papaw too, which is handed round for dessert, I find as unpalatable as mangoes; both the latter are, however, considered delicious by West Indians notwithstanding the flavour of turpentine which characterises the latter. Yams are nice; they resemble potatoes. The garden egg and Cho Choes are also acceptable, the latter resembling greatly our vegetable marrow.
At Constant Spring Hotel I first became acquainted with Jamaican fruits, and the profusion and quantity of them, together with their cheapness, constitute one of the most agreeable features in the island housekeeping. Grape fruit, delicious tangerines, too ripe for export, juicy pines, cool water-melons, bananas ad lib., were always piled up in a big central dish on our breakfast table. Along the road-sides here, at Mandeville, from whence I am writing these pages, oranges and grape fruit fall off the trees, and nobody considers it worth their while to pick them up. The waste of ripe fruit seems enormous, where the means of transit are not present to convey it to a shipping port.
One of the most delicious things they give you at this hotel is guava jelly served with cocoa-nut cream. Indeed the table is unexceptionally good, also both at Myrtle Bank and Constant Spring.
The day following my arrival being Sunday I did not leave the hotel, but completed a somewhat large correspondence I wanted to send viâ America. Letters sent to England viâ the Atlas Steamship Company’s vessels to the States reach home in twelve days; you can also send them by the Direct Mail and the Royal Mail Service. There are innumerable places of worship, not only in Kingston but all over the island; in fact the Church of England, Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Wesleyans, Methodists, and Moravians, all do their best to keep the population in that narrow path where to convince them of sin seems to be the favourite doctrine. No doubt the attractions of the broad way which leads to destruction require pointing out vigorously to the semi-heathen intelligence; but from expositions I heard in nonconformist chapels, I wondered what form of amusement was left open to “believers.”
Once I was present at Cambridge when a venerable American bishop, since dead, but known as the “Apostle of the Indians,” uttered the following words, which I have never forgotten. The occasion was the centenary of a religious society. Preachers of different persuasions had spoken of the advance of the society in their own particular sectarian sphere. “Far be it from me to present to the heathen a divided Christianity!” I hear that the puzzled wits of the woolly-haired race do give way occasionally under the strain of theological pressure. I travelled with a poor black, afflicted with religious mania, from St Thomas to Antigua, and a doctor told me that there was a good deal of it amongst the natives.
As I had several purchases to make and to expedite by the Port Antonio on its homeward passage, I prepared myself for a long day’s shopping on Monday, and indeed I did very little else before going to the first official garden-party at King’s House on the Friday following my arrival.
The town of Kingston has been called in my hearing “a collection of shanties,” and although I will not give my assent quite to this appellation, I cannot honestly admire it. Fine buildings it certainly lacks. The chief street is Harbour Street, and having once found that, the other streets run either at right angles or parallel with it.
My first commission was to order a number of tortoiseshell articles, which are made here cheaply and well by a man called Andrews. Then it is a nice thing to know that you can send your friends a box containing a hundred oranges properly packed for the sum of twelve shillings, provided they do not live beyond a certain distance from London. Blue Mountain coffee is also an acceptable present. Experts declare that there is no better in the world; and whether it be true or not I cannot tell, but I learnt from apparently reliable authority that the Czar is supplied entirely with the product of one of these upland plantations. Guava jelly made in the island is delicious, and often sent home by request of those who have known it out here. Indeed I think many families with delicate-chested members might do worse than live, for a while at least, in Jamaica. House-rent in the upper part of the town is not dear, and the houses are well built, all of them being surrounded with gardens of varying size, where bougainvillia, hibiscus, palm-trees, and the crimson-leaved poin-settia are nearly always to be seen. The rents of these vary from £50 to £100, according to size. They have three postal deliveries per diem. Fruit, vegetables and fish are cheap, and prices generally most moderate; for instance, beef is sixpence a pound, pork, ninepence, bread, threepence, sugar, twopence, coffee, one shilling, fish, sixpence. The dearest articles of diet are ham, at eighteenpence, tea, three shillings, good butter, eighteenpence to two shillings, English cheese, eighteenpence. Fruit and vegetables are not worth mentioning; pines are to be had for twopence, and for a penny you can get a dozen bananas. The native produce is of course cheap, and you pay more in proportion for imported goods. A buggy to hold four persons costs, when new, about £40, and you can buy sufficiently good horses from £15 to £20, and even cheaper; but the town of Kingston and environs is so well served by the tramway service, and the hire of buggies within the urban limits so cheap, that it is quite possible to live comfortably in the suburbs without a conveyance. The streets are well lighted by gas, some of the hotels and public buildings by electricity. Labour is not a very dear item either; the working hours are from 6 A.M. to 5 P.M., with an hour off, between 11 and 12 o’clock. On Saturdays no work is done after 11 o’clock. Labourers are paid from eighteenpence to two shillings a day, women from ninepence to one shilling. Many of the domestic servants live away from the houses, coming early in the morning, and leaving about nine in the evening. In a great many households the mistress does not feed the women-servants. If there are several, they have a room to eat in, providing for themselves; and I should imagine this was by far the best way, for the nauseous compounds in their stock-pots, when they thus choose their own provender, are unsuitable to the stomach of any average English domestic servant. Salt-fish in an advanced stage of decay is a favourite dish with them, but nothing comes amiss, and all finds its way into the big pot.
There are not many curios to be bought in any of the West Indian islands, but for what few there are it is best to go to the Women’s Self-Help Society. Here you can get lamp-shades, doyleys, mats of all descriptions made from lace-bark, and ferns artistically arranged; long chains for the neck, or muff, made from native seeds dried and strung together. Those which are mostly bought are known locally as “Job’s Tears” and “Women’s Tongues.” There was a great run on these a week or two back when Dr Lunn’s tourist steamer, the Argonaut, put into Kingston Harbour, and its passengers, to the number of a hundred and thirty, spent £70 on the island curiosities. Great joy reigned amongst the lady promoters of the Society: such a windfall does not often happen to them.
This “Women’s Self-Help Society” was founded by Lady Musgrave, the wife of a former Governor, and was opened in 1879. Apparently there are a number of what some of our papers at home are pleased to designate as decayed gentlewomen in Jamaica, and the object of this industry is to find a sale for all kinds of work which they, when industriously inclined, are able to do. There is, however, an agency attached to it whereby distressed needlewomen can get orders to execute for ladies and gentlemen, and there is a stock of clothes always kept ready, suitable for servants and working people.
The latest Handbook of Jamaica says of this institution: “The Society has been a great boon to many people in reduced circumstances who have to work for their living, but find it difficult to get suitable employment. It also enables other women, who do not require the profit of their work for themselves, to earn something for charities and philanthropic objects, as well as to raise the standard of work by bringing to bear on it that cultivated taste and artistic grace which is the natural result of a refined education.” So much for this Society and its aims. I should mention that the seeds called “Women’s Tongues” are those which hang in long pods from a tree called ponciana. When the seeds are dry, and the wind blows the boughs of the trees, they rattle in the pods, hence the title. “Job’s Tears” are the seeds of a plant which bends by the water-edge, its melancholy attitude having given rise to the name.