Here it was that Rodney broke De Grasse’s line, took and destroyed seven French ships of war, and scattered the rest: saving Jamaica, and, in sooth, the whole West [pg 187]Indies, and bringing about the honourable peace of 1783. Yon lovely roadstead of Dominica: there Rodney caught up with the French just before, and would have beaten them so much the earlier but for his vessels being becalmed. In that deep bay at Martinique, now lined with gay houses, was for many years the Cul-de-sac Royal, the rendezvous and stronghold of the French fleet. That isolated rock hard by, much the shape and double the size of the great Pyramids, is Sir Samuel Hood’s famous Diamond Rock,[113] to which that brave old navigator literally tied with a hawser or two his ship, the Centaur, and turned the rock into a fortress from whence to sweep the seas. The rock was for several months rated on the books of the Admiralty as “His Majesty’s Ship, Diamond Rock.” She had at last to surrender, for want of powder, to an overwhelming force—two seventy-fours and fourteen smaller ships of war—but did not give in till seventy poor Frenchmen were lying killed or wounded, and three of their gun-boats destroyed, her own loss being only two men killed and one wounded. Brave old sloop of war! And, once more, those glens and forests of St. Lucia remind us of Sir John Moore and Sir Ralph Abercrombie, who fought, not merely the French, but the “Brigands”—negroes liberated by the Revolution of 1792.
THE CENTAUR AT THE DIAMOND ROCK, MARTINIQUE.
But the good ship must proceed; and as British naval interests are under consideration, let her bows be turned to Bermuda—a colony, a fortress and a prison, and where England owns an extensive floating dock, dock-yards, and workshops.[114] Trollope says that its geological formation is mysterious. “It seems to be made of soft white stone, composed mostly of little shells—so soft, indeed, that you might cut Bermuda up with a hand-saw. And people are cutting up Bermuda with hand-saws. One little island, that on which the convicts are established, has been altogether so cut up already. When I visited it, two fat convicts were working away slowly at the last fragment.” Bermuda is the crater of an extinct volcano, and is surrounded by little islets, of which there is one for every day of the year in a space of twenty by three miles. These are surrounded again by reefs and rocks, and navigation is risky.
Were the Bermudas the scene of Ariel’s tricks? They were first discovered, in 1522, by Bermudez, a Spaniard; and Shakespeare seems to have heard of them, for he speaks of the
“Still vexed Bermoothes.”
Trollope says that there is more of the breed of Caliban in the islands than of Ariel. Though Caliban did not relish working for his master more than the Bermudian of to-day, there was an amount of energy about him entirely wanting in the existing islanders.
There are two towns, St. George and Hamilton, on different islands. The former is the head-quarters of the military, and the second that of the governor. It is the summer head-quarters of the admiral of the station. The islands are, in general, wonderfully fertile, and will, with any ordinary cultivation, give two crops of many [pg 188]vegetables in the year. It has the advantages of the tropics, plus those of more temperate climes. For tomatoes, onions, beet-root, sweet potatoes, early potatoes, as well as all kinds of fruits, from oranges, lemons, and bananas to small berries, it is not surpassed by any place in the world; while arrowroot is one of its specialities. It is the early market-garden for New York. Ship-building is carried on, as the islands abound in a stunted cedar, good for the purpose, when it can be found large enough. The working population are almost all negroes, and are lazy to a degree. But the whites are not much better; and the climate is found to produce great lassitude.
BERMUDA, FROM GIBBS HILL.