II.
In order to form a just estimate of the Englishman’s work and methods in Jamaica, one must leave Kingston, and take to the roads outside, for example that one along the Rio Cobre which winds in and out among the mountains in a most enchanting course. This particular drive of eleven miles, called the “Bog Walk Drive,” leads to a little settlement called “Bog Walk.” It is to be hoped that there was at one time some excuse for this name, but as bogs do not disappear in a day, it must have been in quite a distant past that the name had any real significance. We saw no suggestion of a Bog Walk, although actively on the alert for it. We had uncertain anticipations of having to scramble over wet and oozing turf, and one of us, without saying a word to any one else, tucked a pair of rubbers into a capacious basket. But the rubbers stayed right there, for there was no bog, nor any suggestion of one,—funny way these English have of naming things!
And speaking of names,—well, there never was a place—except other English colonial towns—where the good old British custom of naming houses is more rampant than in Kingston. Had the houses of some pretension been so labelled, it might not have seemed so strange; but, no, every little cottage had a name painted somewhere on its gate-post, and very grandiloquent ones they were, I assure you. No two-penny affairs for them! There was “Ivy Lodge” and “Myrtle Villa” and “Ferndale” and “Oakmere” and “The Hall,” tacked on to the wobblety fence-posts of the merest shanties. And yet, in spite of their apparent incongruity, there was a sort of pitiful fitness in those names. It was a holding-on, in a crude way, to some half-forgotten ideal of the old English life. It might have been a memory of the far-away mother country, left as the only legacy to a Creole generation; it might have been the last reaching for gentility; who can tell what “The Hall” meant to the inmates of that shambling roof. But for the “Bog Walk” there was no reason apparent, and we did not waste a bit of sympathy on the supposititious man who first sank to his armpits in what may have been a bog.
The Bog Walk road is wide enough for the passing of vehicles, and as solid as a rock. The English in the West Indies—as elsewhere—have ever been great road-builders. Now this bit of road—eleven miles long, as smooth as a floor, as firmly built as the ancient roads of Rome—is part of a great system of roads which extends for hundreds of miles throughout the island, and these roads have been constructed with so much care that, in spite of the torrents of tropical rain which must at times flood them, they remain as firm and enduring as the mountains themselves, seemingly the only man-made device in the West Indies which has been able to withstand the ravages of the tropical elements.
Jamaica is one hundred and forty-four miles long and fifty miles wide, and its entire area is a network of these wonderful roads. Roads which would grace a Roman Empire, here wind through vast lonely forests and plantations of coffee and cacao, past towns whose ramshackle houses are giving the last gasps of dissolution. Jamaica has evidently suffered under the affliction of road-making governors, whose single purpose has been to build roads though all else go untouched, and they have held to that ambition with bulldog pertinacity. No one can deny the wonder of the Jamaican highway. But whither, and to what, does it lead? Good roads are truly civilisers, and essential to the good of a country, but there must be a reason for their existence which is mightier than the way itself. Had there been half as many forest roads in Jamaica as there are now, and the money which has been buried in practically unused paths put into good schools and the encouragement of agriculture, Jamaica might to-day show a very different face. The most casual observation tells us of vast, unreasoning waste of money on the beautiful island, and one cannot but pity the patient blacks who have suffered so much from the poor administration of their white brothers.
It was our pleasure to drive some distance on these hard turnpikes, and in miles we met but one conveyance of any kind, and that was a rickety old box on wheels, carrying a family of coolies to Spanish Town.
This place out-Spanished any Spanish town we had ever seen in filth and general dilapidation. It was simply a lot of rambling old shacks, huddled together under the long-suffering palms—dirty, forlorn, forsaken, never good for much when young, and beyond redemption in its puerile old age. Down through these haunts of the half-naked blacks, there sweeps a road fit for a chariot and four. Diamond necklaces are queenly prerogatives, and the proper setting for a royal feast; but, thrown about the neck of a starving child, they are, to say the least, out of place. Nothing can be more entrancing, when perfect of its kind, than either diamonds or children, but they do not belong together. It may be, that, when the child is grown, circumstances will make the wearing of such a necklace a graceful adornment, but, until that time does come, the child’s belongings should be those of simple necessity, all else being sacrificed to the normal growth of body and mind; let this be once well under way and adornments may follow. Jamaica has given her children a diamond necklace, and, although magnificent and wonderful, it is out of place, and the worst of it is, the children have had to pay dearly for it.
What Jamaica would have been under wise and prudent management, and with a different racial problem, no one can say. She has certainly never been lacking in resources, nor has she lacked amenable—though not always desirable—subjects. But there is a hitch somewhere, and to find that hitch would take a long unravelling of a torn and broken skein, the kind of work few care to undertake; but it is the work which must be done if Jamaica is ever to have a future.
Dusty and hot and still wondering where the “Bog Walk” would appear, we left the carriages for an inn which stood close to the road. It was somewhat—no, I should say much—above the average Jamaican house, passably clean, just passably, and in a way rather inviting to the traveller who is glad enough to go anywhere, where he can be satisfied, if he is hungry and tired. But the house was not what I wanted to tell you about; it was the grande dame within, who played the indifferent hostess. We did not see her as we ran up-stairs to the upper balcony; it was well after we had sipped our rum and lemonade—for we did sip it; we not only sipped it, but we drank it, and it was fine, and we felt so comfortable that, when she—la grande dame—appeared, it never occurred to us to express our disappointment over the Bog Walk; we just agreed with her in everything she said, and felt beatific. I think we would have agreed with her even without the rum and lemonade, for she had an air about her that made one feel acquiescent. She was tall and angular. Her features were as clean-cut as though chiselled in marble; she was clearly Caucasian in type. Her lips were thin, her nose was aquiline, and her mouth had a haughty, indifferent curve, suggesting a race of masters, not slaves. But her skin was like a smoke-browned pipe, and her hair was glossy, and waved in quick little curves in spite of the tightly drawn coil at the back of her stately neck. She was dressed in the fashion of long ago, with a full flounced skirt and a silk shawl. She sent her menials to wait upon us, although I noticed that, in spite of herself, she was taking an interest in the strangers.
The Madame went before, and we followed, through the ever-open door of the West Indian home. The Madame’s skirts swept over the uneven threshold, over the bare, creaky floors, and her noiseless feet led the way into a past, rich in romance and disaster. The Madame had little to say; she just glided on before us like a black memory. Here on the bare, untidy floors were the Madame’s treasures; treasures she used daily, for the table was spread (the Madame served dinner there just the hour before). Here was a table of Dominican mahogany with carved legs and oval top, and there on the sideboard was rare old plate, and quaintest pieces of Dresden china and Italian glass glistened as it once had done near the lips of its lordly master. The side-table of mahogany gave out a dull, rich lustre of venerable age, and there was a punch-bowl—silver, and much used—and curious candlesticks with glass shades. Ah! The Madame was rich. What a place, I thought, for a lover of the antique!
In her bedroom hard-by, a massive four-poster reached to the ceiling, and off in a dark corner there was an old chest, richly ornamented with brass. In every room there were chairs and davenports in quaintest fashion, all dull and worn and beautiful, while the billiard-room outside was well filled by a massive old-fashioned rosewood billiard-table whose woodwork, undermined by the extensive ravages of ants, was fast falling in pieces. “Where has it come from?” we ask; and she replies, with a lofty air, that her grandfather brought all these over from England long, long ago. No doubt the Madame would have sold any and all of it, and we caught ourselves wondering how we could get one of those old pieces home. It really seemed as if we ought to buy something, for the black Madame, towering above us, certainly expected to make a sale. But we didn’t buy; we just admired it all, and particularly the Madame, and then we began again to try and think out the dreary tangle.
There was just one thing the Madame had which she would not sell, and that was the one thing we wanted most: the story of that grandfather. She was the grande dame; his history was sealed behind those unfathomable eyes. She admitted only the patrician in her blood, not the savage. The grandfather had left his stamp upon that face, but there was that other stamp! Alas, the Englishman has sold his birthright in Jamaica; he is selling it to-day, and what more hopeless future could rest over a people than does this day over the island of Jamaica?