CHAPTER XVIII
MONEAGUE HOTEL—THE TROUBLES OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
Returning from Montego Bay, I went by rail to Ewarton, which is in the centre of Jamaica. To go there I had to change at Spanish Town, which is 10 miles or so from Kingston. There is only one train every day that runs the whole distance from Montego Bay to Kingston; this starts at eight o’clock in the morning, stopping at every station, and reaches its destination about four in the afternoon. On this occasion I fell in with a number of the island clergy, who entered the train at every stopping-place, several having driven distances of 25 and 30 miles, having risen before daybreak. Since most of the cocks in Jamaica are different from their feathered kindred of other climes, and keep up one unhallowed chorus of crowing all through the night, it is not a great difficulty to tear yourself from your couch.
They were on their way to attend the yearly Synod, which holds its meetings every January, or, as in this case, February. I met my new acquaintance, the rector of Montego Bay, in the train. He told me he had been over twenty years in Jamaica, and he was, I should say, a man of about forty-five years of age.
“But you have been home of course several times in those years?” I questioningly asked him.
“Not a bit of it, Madam,” was his curt rejoinder. Apparently he was in the best of health, and had, to my knowledge, taken four services without assistance the day previous, which was Sunday, that I never imagined for a moment it was possible to keep so much vitality and energy going without occasional recruiting sea-voyages and change from this enervating climate.
“How do you think I look?” asked he, slapping his chest, and drawing himself up to his full height, which was not beyond that of the average male adult.
“Very fit,” was my reply.
“Go home and tell them what a man can look like out here, after twenty years of total abstinence, and never going home once in all that time.” A mischievous gleam shot from his eyes as he spoke.
“How many services did you take yesterday?” I asked him.
“An early celebration and a baptism before I met you.” This had been about half-past nine in the morning, when I was sitting on one of the crazy tombs in the churchyard, with my attention divided between the sketch I had been making and my dread of being walked over by a huge spider, or chance scorpion, to say nothing of occasional futile attempts to thin the mosquito life of the island, for they always pestered me so when sketching that I had no conscientious scruples as to massacring them mercilessly.
“Yes,” I said; “then you had a second celebration after the eleven o’clock service, and you preached a good twenty minutes.”
“Did you time me?” I laughed. “Well!” continued he, “I had a children’s service in the afternoon, and evensong at six, so you will admit I had a fairly busy day.”
“What a pity they don’t send out our curates to do a good ten years in the colonies before giving them livings in England!” I exclaimed, thinking of some of the weaklings who complained of being overworked at home. Our conversation drifted to other topics. I said the black race struck me as being nothing more than grown-up children, and he agreed that that was the best way of regarding them. He told me of the reduced circumstances which some families owning, formerly, large estates had fallen into; this, according to him, being the result of reckless extravagance, and never putting aside for a rainy day.
“They must have had splendid incomes,” I commented.
“There’s no doubt of it,” assented he.
“What did they spend their money on?” I asked, thinking of the hundred and one ways, nowadays, in which money flies, and of the really few amusements that would present themselves in the middle of the eighteenth century to these planters.
“Themselves,” he answered, without hesitation; “in luxuriant living, in dress, and in having a good time at home.”
Before Spanish Town was reached, I met some persons whom I had seen previously at Mandeville, and we drove together from Ewarton Station over Mount Diabolo, which is 2000 feet above sea-level, and from whence most exquisite views are to be obtained over St Thomas in the vale. This is one of the best drives in the island, and certainly should not be missed. The Moneague Hotel is a very spacious and comfortable building; it stands on a hill, and before you turn up towards it, a huge cotton-tree, with the longest spurs I ever saw, stands in the centre of a pasture, extending its gaunt limbs from its huge truck as a terrestrial octopus might be supposed to do. I went up to Moneague especially to visit this part of the country, which is perfectly lovely whichever way you go. The day following my arrival I took a forty-mile drive. A most entertaining coloured man acted in the capacity of coachman, and as we drove along in a one-seated buggy drawn by a pair of strong ponies, he told me the names of those trees with which I was not acquainted. I faintly suspected in one or two cases he drew upon his imagination: he did not answer quite so glibly as he had done previously. We passed very fine grazing estates, and I gathered from my loquacious informer that some persons in the island had made very fair fortunes through grazing and cattle-rearing. The chief charm of this long day was the road leading through Fern Gully down to the small town of Ora Cabessa, on the north side of the island. You drive between enormously high cliffs covered with every variety of fern; the moisture and shade causes their growth to be quite gigantic, and you look up to the bit of blue sky overhead through the interlacing and waving greenery of countless tropical plants. On emerging from the Gully you arrive at Ora Cabessa, where a police-station, a post-office, and a telegraph-station acquaint you with the fact that you are once more in the haunts of civilisation. Here groves of cocoa-nut-trees bend almost down to the water’s edge, and the coast scenery is lovely. Ochos Rios, meaning “eight rivers,” is a little further on.
In the vicinity are the two waterfalls made by the Roaring River in its course to the sea; the lower is very pretty, but the fall a mile higher up in private property is well worth seeing. Here a more villainous breed of ticks seems to abound, for everyone warns you to beware of them, and several men we met on the road who had visited the falls, were diligently inspecting their nether garments; they were what the native contemptuously calls “walkfoot buckra,” as distinguished from “carriage buckra.” There are many funny nigger sayings which, the longer one lives in Jamaica, the more one grasps their significance. “To a dog’s face say Mr Dog, behind his back Dog,” is one of them. Substitute for the dog the white man, and you have learnt a fundamental truth. I was told by my coloured coachman that no native will wear cast-off clothing. Another thing that interested me, as pertaining to the native folk-lore, was the reverence in which children hold spiders. They will curtsey to them, talk to them on their way to school. Some persons say this is the last vestige of some old African totem-worship connected with this insect. I have not mentioned the land crabs which abound at these waterfalls. The natives call them “soldiers”; they are quite harmless, and I have heard that they are eaten by the blacks.
I cannot turn my back on this lovely northern coast without alluding to the ever-memorable landing of the great Columbus, which happened in 1504, during his fourth journey to the New World near this spot. He had discovered the highlands of Jamaica in 1494, and in the united names of Ferdinand and Arragon had taken possession of it. A devout Catholic, he could do no otherwise than obey the decree of Pope Alexander VI. to the effect that “omnes insulas et terras firmas inventas et inveniendas, detectas et detegendas versus Occidentem” were given to the Spanish Crown.
It is sorrowful reading which tells us how, suffering from base ingratitude, in tempestuous weather, and with much difficulty, he reached a haven since known as Don Christopher’s Cove, on the north side of the island, with two crippled and leaking ships, which he ran aground to prevent their foundering. He quite made up his mind to die there. His crews revolted, the Indians deserted him, the Governor of Hispaniola mocked his misfortunes. In much suffering, and amongst his rebellious countrymen, he writes to the King of Spain, and says how low “his zeal for the service of King Ferdinand and his mistress Queen Isabella had brought him, how his men who were in health mutinied under Poras of Seville.” He adds: “As my misery makes my life a burthen to myself, so I fear the empty title of Vice-Roy and Admiral render me obnoxious to the hatred of the Spanish nation.
“It is visible that all methods are adopted to cut the thread that is breaking, for I am in my old age oppressed with insupportable pains of the gout, and am now languishing and expiring with that and other infirmities among savages, when I have neither medicines nor provisions for the body, priest nor sacrament for the soul. My men in a state of revolt, my brother, my son, and those that are faithful, sick, starving, and dying. Let it not bring a further infamy on the Castilian name, nor let future ages know that there were wretches so vile in this, that think to recommend themselves to Your Majesty by destroying the unfortunate and miserable Christopher Columbus.” In conclusion, he pathetically appeals to Queen Isabella: “She, if she lives, will consider that cruelty and ingratitude will bring down the wrath of Heaven, so that the wealth I have discovered shall be the means of stirring up all mankind to revenge and rapine, and the Spanish nation suffer hereafter, for what envious, malicious, and ungrateful people do now.”
The Spaniards brought their priests over with them when they took possession of the island. The religious ceremonies were conducted in handsome edifices, although no traces remain of them. At the first capital, Seville D’oro, founded by Diego, the discoverer’s son, a collegiate church was built. In 1688 the founder of the British Museum declared that there were ruins of ecclesiastical buildings at Seville, which were situated near the modern St Ann’s Bay, but all such remains have long since passed away with the increased agriculture and the rapid growth of tropical flora. No one seems able to tell why the Spaniards changed their seat of government in 1530, from Seville D’oro to St Jago de la Vega, the modern Spanish town, where an abbey, churches, and chapels were built.
I returned to Moneague viâ Claremont. The road ascends for a long distance through fine estates; it is well graded, and, looking back, lovely peeps of the sea are afforded. At the top of the hill it is well to leave the carriage and climb up on a gate or wall, when an extended coast scene, including St Ann’s Bay, is visible. A pretentious little fruit-boat, busy as a honey-bee, was puffing away towards Ora Cabessa, where she anchored, for the coast is too shallow at most of the ports where the ships call for fruit to allow of their coming alongside the wharf. The sea was an exquisite blue, and a band of bright green cane-fields bordered the coast, whilst pimento-trees and cocoa-nut groves waved in the distance.
I told the driver to be merciful to his beast up that long hill. I was tired, I said, and had come a long journey the day previously. When I told him I had come from Montego Bay to the hotel, he expressed surprise that I was able to take so long a drive as that we were going.
“Ladies ’bout yar would go to bed after a journey like dat, and not rise up again till de turd day.”
I told him Englishwomen were able to endure much greater hardships than West Indian ladies.
“Did I not want a coachman to take back with me?” he asked. He would so much like to go to England. A little further conversation, and I elicited from him he had a weak lung. That, I said, put that matter completely out of the question. If in Jamaica his lungs were weak, he would not live a month in our colder climate. That seemed to upset his calculations.
“Besides, you would not like the food,” I told him. “We have not half the good things at home you have here.” And we fell to discussing foods.
“Give a man out yar salt-fish and akee and roasted bread-fruit far breakfast, and he trow away all de ham and eggs into de street,” said he.
We met some desperately poor, ill-clad negroes, and I asked if they were not very idle.
“No, missus; they can’t get work to do. They don’t know how to do any ting properly for to get any money. Some of dem don’t earn eight dollars in a whole year,” he added.
I reckoned up eight dollars as not quite two pounds, and felt aghast at that for a living wage. The driver had all unwittingly put his finger upon a sore spot in the educational policy of Jamaica. The present generation are mostly too grand to work with their hands as their parents did before them. They connect domestic service and work with slavery, and every girl who has a smattering of knowledge wants to be a school-teacher or a dressmaker. The next generation, it is to be hoped, will not be educated above their position in life, then existence in Jamaica for white women may cease to be the harrowing anxiety it seems to be at present. We are not ignorant of the difficulties of housekeeping at home, with a class of women-servants who are not trained to work, and who are neither reliable or conscientious, but, with the thickheadedness of the black thrown in, the case is much worse out here.
COCOA-NUT GROVE.
I will not conclude this chapter without alluding to the cultivation of the cocoa-nut palm-tree. Owing to the long time it is necessary to wait for the first crop, not so much has been done in growing this tree. It seldom bears until seven years old, but when once it is in good bearing, it goes on for a hundred years. The yield of a tree averages one hundred nuts yearly; the bright green blossom and the ripe fruit appear simultaneously. The cocoa-nut palm grows best near the sea, but does not require such rich, moist soil as the banana. The rule is that as soon as the tops are out of reach, the land on which they grow can be put into pasture. The nut is mostly harvested before it is quite ripe. Cocoa-nut milk is made from gratings of the kernel. They carve the shell, and it serves many purposes. The dried kernel is known as “kopra,” and is boiled down for the preparation of oil. The solid fat is made into candles, and the oil is used for cooking and for lamps. The cake which is left, or “poonac,” is a good food for cattle, also used as a manure. The husk of the fruit yields a fibre which is made into cordage, nets, etc. The tender leaves are made into mats and boxes, the mature into matting, sails, etc. The ash yields potash. The midribs of the leaflets are converted into brooms and brushes; the stalk of the spadix into brushes for whitewashing. Other parts are also useful.