For an athlete, or indeed for anybody possessed of good walking powers, it is not impossible to take a walking trip over part of this island—especially as there are small weekly boats starting from Kingston every Tuesday, stopping at the various ports and harbours as they make the circuit of Jamaica. These call at each place for fruit on behalf of the American Fruit Company, whose boats run between Port Antonio and Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The chief harbours are Port Morant, Kingston, Old Harbour, Green Island, Montego Bay, Falmouth, Port Maria, St Ann’s Bay, Lucea, and Port Antonio; these boats stop at all these. The island of Jamaica itself is only 144 miles at its extreme length, and its greatest width is 49 miles. From Kingston to Annotto Bay on the north coast it is only 21½ miles. The roads are exceptionally good throughout, thanks to Sir H. A. Blake, and there is no reason why a good pedestrian should not fix upon Jamaica as a fitting spot to be done on shankses’ pony, provided always he be suitably dressed, and commences his peregrinations at sunrise, rests from 11 A.M. to 4 P.M., and takes up his journey then till dusk, or as far into the night as he pleases. The same applies to bicycling and to riding on horseback.
FRUIT STEAMER ON ITS WEEKLY ROUND.
There is this to be said to people who cannot accommodate themselves to somewhat primitive conditions of existence, or who are not in the enjoyment of at least moderately good health: they should not come to the West Indies at all. In the first place, the excessive heat in the middle of the day is decidedly trying; even the strongest take some time to become acclimatised. Then the food is not the same as English people are used to—that is, in the country lodging-houses and hotels. To this day I abstain from salt-fish and akee, a favourite West Indian breakfast dish; nor can I acquire a taste for the Avocado pear, which is eaten as a salad, but which to me seems identical with soft soap. Papaw too, which is handed round for dessert, I find as unpalatable as mangoes; both the latter are, however, considered delicious by West Indians notwithstanding the flavour of turpentine which characterises the latter. Yams are nice; they resemble potatoes. The garden egg and Cho Choes are also acceptable, the latter resembling greatly our vegetable marrow.
At Constant Spring Hotel I first became acquainted with Jamaican fruits, and the profusion and quantity of them, together with their cheapness, constitute one of the most agreeable features in the island housekeeping. Grape fruit, delicious tangerines, too ripe for export, juicy pines, cool water-melons, bananas ad lib., were always piled up in a big central dish on our breakfast table. Along the road-sides here, at Mandeville, from whence I am writing these pages, oranges and grape fruit fall off the trees, and nobody considers it worth their while to pick them up. The waste of ripe fruit seems enormous, where the means of transit are not present to convey it to a shipping port.
One of the most delicious things they give you at this hotel is guava jelly served with cocoa-nut cream. Indeed the table is unexceptionally good, also both at Myrtle Bank and Constant Spring.
The day following my arrival being Sunday I did not leave the hotel, but completed a somewhat large correspondence I wanted to send viâ America. Letters sent to England viâ the Atlas Steamship Company’s vessels to the States reach home in twelve days; you can also send them by the Direct Mail and the Royal Mail Service. There are innumerable places of worship, not only in Kingston but all over the island; in fact the Church of England, Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Wesleyans, Methodists, and Moravians, all do their best to keep the population in that narrow path where to convince them of sin seems to be the favourite doctrine. No doubt the attractions of the broad way which leads to destruction require pointing out vigorously to the semi-heathen intelligence; but from expositions I heard in nonconformist chapels, I wondered what form of amusement was left open to “believers.”
Once I was present at Cambridge when a venerable American bishop, since dead, but known as the “Apostle of the Indians,” uttered the following words, which I have never forgotten. The occasion was the centenary of a religious society. Preachers of different persuasions had spoken of the advance of the society in their own particular sectarian sphere. “Far be it from me to present to the heathen a divided Christianity!” I hear that the puzzled wits of the woolly-haired race do give way occasionally under the strain of theological pressure. I travelled with a poor black, afflicted with religious mania, from St Thomas to Antigua, and a doctor told me that there was a good deal of it amongst the natives.