The West Indies and the Spanish Main

by Anthony Trollope

The only place at which I came across any vestiges of the yellow fever was at Trinidad. There it had been making dreadful havoc, and chiefly among the white soldiers. My visit was in March, and the virulence of the disease was then just over. It had been raging, therefore, not in the summer but during the winter months. Indeed, as far as I could learn, summer and winter had very little to do with the matter. The yellow fever pays its visit in some sort periodically, though its periods are by no means understood. But it pays them at any time of the year that may suit itself.

At this time a part of the Savanah was covered with tents, to which the soldiers had been moved out of their barracks. The barracks are lower down, near the shore, at a place called St. James, and the locality is said to be wretchedly unhealthy. At any rate, the men were stricken with fever there, and the proportion of them that died was very great. I believe, indeed, that hardly any recovered of those on whom the fever fell with any violence. They were then removed into these tents, and matters began to mend. They were now about to return to their barracks, and were, I was told, as unwilling to do so as my fair friend was to leave her pretty house.

If it be necessary to send white troops to the West Indies—and I take it for granted that it is necessary—care at any rate should be taken to select for their barracks sites as healthy as may be found. It certainly seems that this has not been done at Trinidad. They are placed very low, and with hills immediately around them. The good effect produced by removing them to the Savanah—a very inconsiderable distance; not, as I think, much exceeding a mile—proves what may be done by choosing a healthy situation. But why should not the men be taken up to the mountains, as has been done with the white soldiers in Jamaica? There they are placed in barracks some three or four thousand feet above the sea, and are perfectly healthy. This cannot be done in Barbados, for there are no mountains to which to take them. But in Trinidad it may be done, quite as easily, and indeed at a lesser distance, and therefore with less cost for conveyance, than in Jamaica.

At the first glance one would be inclined to say that white troops would not be necessary in the West Indies, as we have regiments of black soldiers, negroes dressed in Zouave costume, specially trained for the service; but it seems that there is great difficulty in getting these regiments filled. Why should a negro enlist any more than work? Are there not white men enough—men and brothers—to do the somewhat disagreeable work of soldiering for him? Consequently, except in Barbados, it is difficult to get recruits. Some men have been procured from the coast of Africa, but our philanthropy is interfering even with this supply. Then the recruiting officers enlisted Coolies, and these men made excellent soldiers; but when interfered with or punished, they had a nasty habit of committing suicide, a habit which it was quite possible the negro soldier might himself assume; and therefore no more Coolies are to be enlisted.

Under such circumstances white men must, I presume, do the work. A shilling a day is an object to them, and they are slow to blow out their own brains; but they should not be barracked in swamps, or made to live in an air more pestilential than necessary.

My hostess, the lady to whom I have alluded, had been attacked most virulently by the yellow fever, and I had heard in the other islands that she was dead. Her case had indeed been given up as hopeless.

On the morning after my arrival I took a ride of some sixteen miles through the country before breakfast, and the same lady accompanied me. "We must start very early," she said; "so as to avoid the heat. I will have coffee at half-past four, and we will be on horseback at five."

I have had something to say as to early hours in the West Indies before, and hardly credited this. A morning start at five usually means half-past seven, and six o'clock is a generic term for moving before nine. So I meekly asked whether half-past four meant half-past four. "No," said the husband. "Yes," said the wife. So I went away declaring that I would present myself at the house at any rate not after five.

And so I did, according to my own very excellent watch, which had been set the day before by the ship's chronometer. I rode up to the door two minutes before five, perfectly certain that I should have the pleasure of watching the sun's early manœuvres for at least an hour. But, alas! my friend had been waiting for me in her riding-habit for more than that time. Our watches were frightfully at variance. It was perfectly clear to me that the Trinidadians do not take the sun for their guide as to time. But in such a plight as was then mine, a man cannot go into his evidence and his justification. My only plea was for mercy; and I hereby take it on myself to say that I do not know that I ever kept any lady waiting before—except my wife.

At five to the moment—by my watch—we started, and I certainly never rode for three hours through more lovely scenery. At first, also, it was deliciously cool, and as our road lay entirely through woods, it was in every way delightful. We went back into the hills, and returned again towards the sea-shore over a break in one of the spurs of the mountain called the Saddle; from whence we had a distant view into the island, as fine as any view I ever saw without the adjunct of water.