The port of Orangetown is attractively picturesque, part of it straggling along just above the reach of the lazy waves and part clambering up a [[130]]steep hill to where, three hundred feet above the sea, the Dutch flag still flies from its staff above the fort. For one who desires to escape from the noise and strife and worries of great cities and modern life Statia would be an ideal retreat, for its climate is excellent, it is extremely healthful, and anything and everything may be grown to perfection in its rich volcanic soil. Otherwise it is but another of those sleepy isles made famous in history and now content to bask in the tropic sun and dream of its past.
Far more interesting is Statia’s neighbor to the west, a massive sheer-sided volcanic peak upjutting from the tumbling sea for nearly three thousand feet—the most remarkable island, the most topsyturvy, astonishing bit of land in all the seven seas, and known as Saba. Like Statia, Saba is Dutch, and, among its many other distinctions, it is the only island in the Antilles that has never changed hands and that has no bloody stories of battles or of ruthless slaughter of the aborigines to mar its history.
Saba’s feet are bathed in water thousands of fathoms in depth, its head is veiled in clouds thousands of feet in the air, its coast is forbidding, hemmed by thundering surf and beetling cliffs. It has no harbor, [[131]]no anchorage, and no landing-place worthy of the name; and yet it supports a thrifty, happy, healthy population of nearly two thousand souls whose everyday lives, whose occupations, and whose habitat all go far to prove that it is indeed “hard to beat the Dutch.”
Viewing the island from the sea, one would scarcely dream that a human being dwelt upon this mid-sea pinnacle, but a thousand feet above the water, snugly hidden in an extinct crater as though dropped from the clouds, is a delightfully neat, pretty, and typical Dutch village, which, with the habitual upsidedownness of the Sabans, is called “The Bottom” because it is at the top!
Completely out of the world is Bottom, and yet it is doubtful if any town on earth can boast that so large a percentage of its people have traveled far and wide. For, incongruous as it seems, nearly all the able-bodied Saban men are sailors by choice and profession, and, from early manhood until declining years force them to forsake the sea, they roam the ocean highways as officers of great sailing-ships and liners. But ever when done with sailoring they return to spend their old age in their strange island home, and from their lofty aery—which must remind them of the masthead of a ship[[132]]—pass their time watching the vessels that ply back and forth across the Caribbean, but never stop to make a call at Saba.
And to visit this remarkable ocean-girt scrap of Holland is not by any means an easy matter, either. To reach it one must travel from St. Kitts or one of the larger islands by sail-boat, and must choose propitious weather or the voyage will be for naught. Then, if the sea is fairly calm, the visitor lands, or “goes aboard,” as the Sabans say, upon a steep bit of shingly beach on the southern shore of the island. Here, close to the water’s edge, stands a wooden shack—the combined custom-house and harbor-master’s office of this harborless isle, with the flag of the Netherlands fluttering above it.
Near at hand a flight of roughly hewn stone steps leads upward toward the clouds—the road or, as the inhabitants call it, “The Ladder,” from the landing-place to the town. Eight hundred steps there are, a veritable Jacob’s ladder; but the Sabans are accommodating and hospitable, and if the stranger views with trepidation the thousand-foot climb he can make the journey in comparative ease and comfort seated in a rocking-chair lashed between a couple of oars and borne upon the shoulders of herculean blacks. [[133]]
The Sabans, however, think nothing of the climb, and carry up the ladder every ounce of merchandise which comes to their island. It is not unusual to see a colored Saban ascending the precipitous way with a half-barrel of flour or a tierce of pork upon his or her head, and when a cargo arrives these goat-like porters and portresses often make a dozen or more round trips in a single day.
But at the end of the climb all else is forgotten in the view that greets the traveler’s eyes. Spread like a map in a great green bowl, surrounded on every side with towering peaks, are neatly walled, carefully tended gardens, and in the center the toy village of white, red-roofed houses separated by narrow lanes between cañon-like walls of stone. Here, in a temperate climate of perpetual June, the fair-haired, blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked people dwell, with a few yellow-brown and black Sabans as well, and here, a thousand feet above the surf, they raise potatoes, strawberries, and many Northern vegetables and fruits, as well as all those of the tropics.
Indeed, aside from the incomes of their sailor laddies, the Sabans depend largely upon the products of their gardens, and carry them regularly to the market at St. Kitts. But they have many another industry besides, and many a quaint and [[134]]curious custom. Passing through the streets, one may often see an elderly pair, who might have stepped from some cottage in Holland, industriously brushing and polishing a coffin in their dooryard, for the Sabans believe in preparedness; and, knowing the futility and the uncertainties of life and the inevitability of death, they keep their coffins ready for emergencies and as much a part of their household furnishings as chairs or tables.