While the inhabitants of this strange little island are thoroughly Dutch in appearance, the recognized language of Saba is English, and, save among the older people, the tongue of the Netherlands is seldom used.
Owing to the absence of so many of the men at sea, women seem in the great majority at Bottom and like all the women of their race they are never idle for a moment, and they keep their homes and village so tidy and clean that one is convinced that here is the original “spotless town.” In the intervals between scrubbing, dusting, washing, and cooking the Saban women find time to make beautiful drawn-work and lace, which find a ready sale and add many guilders and dollars to their pin-money.
But all that has gone before pales into insignificance when we learn of the leading industry of the [[135]]Sabans, the work with which the youths and older men occupy themselves, the business that makes the visitor pinch himself to make sure he is not dreaming; for who in the world would ever imagine that it is, of all things, boat-building! Yes; stanch, seaworthy boats, renowned throughout the West Indies, are built here in a crater a thousand feet above the sea, where every plank and timber used in their construction must be carried on people’s heads up the ladder of eight hundred stone steps! And when at last one of these mountain-top boats is built, how, you may well ask, do the Sabans get it down to the water? By the simplest method in the world: they let it down the sides of the cliffs exactly as though their island were a ship and they were lowering their craft from the davits! [[136]]
CHAPTER VIII
ST. KITTS AND THE GORGEOUS ISLE
Despite all their interest, neither Statia nor Saba held aught that linked them with the buccaneers,—indeed, I doubt if these adventurers ever visited either,—and so, dipping our colors to old Fort Orange in memory of the salute the ancient guns gave the Andrew Doria, we bore on to Basseterre, the port and capital of St. Kitts.
To one who has seen only the more northern islands, St. Kitts is a revelation,—a fascinating sight,—and even after one has viewed the more southerly isles with their overpowering grandeur of mile-high mountains and wondrous forests, St. Kitts still holds its own, for it possesses charms unlike those of any other of the Caribbees.
From the cloud-draped summit of Mount Misery—dark and sinister, four thousand feet above the sea—to the beaches rimmed with creaming foam, St. Kitts is a glorious mass of green,—green of a thousand shades and tints, from that of ripening cane to that of the deep, shadowy ravines of its [[137]]mountain forests. Upward from the sandy beaches and rugged bluffs sweep the broad cane-fields, undulating over hill and dale and reminding one so strongly of the downs of Sussex that one no longer marvels that the homesick English settlers, weary of the long and tedious voyage, gazed with brimming eyes upon this smiling, sun-bright isle. Vividly, tenderly green are the fields of young canes, golden or russet the others, sienna-red the plowed acres between, but all are drenched with tropic sunshine, and all, from a distance, seem as well tended and as regularly laid out as a great garden.
And everywhere are the palms. As far as eye can see, the swaying coco-palms line the shores above the tumbling surf. Against the sky the plume-topped cabbage-palms show their sharp silhouettes above the lesser trees upon the mountain sides. For miles along the winding, perfect roads the towering royal palms form avenues of great columnar trunks and drooping, feathery fronds. They cluster above the lowly negro huts or shade the great plantation homes without discrimination and with equal beauty, and they nod like giant feather dusters above the roof-tops of the town.