At Rosalie, an old-fashioned sugar-mill and a scattering of huts on the north coast, I made a calculation. The sun was high overhead; it could not be later than two; the map in my hand showed the distance around the eastern end of the island to be less than twice that over the mountain; a coast road would be comparatively level and much to be preferred to another climb of 2500 feet on a jaded horse. Besides, I have a strong antipathy to returning the same way I have come. I made a few inquiries. The childlike inhabitants on this coast spoke almost no English and nothing that could easily be recognized as French, but they seemed to understand both tongues readily enough. I had only to ask if it were about four hours ride to the capital to be assured that such was the case. It was not until too late that I realized they were giving me the answer they thought would please me best, like most uncivilized tribes, with perfect indifference to the facts of the case. Any distance I chose to assume in my question was invariably the exact distance; when I awoke to my error and took to asking direct instead of leading questions, the reply was invariably a soft “Yes, sir,” with an instant readiness to change to “No, sir,” if anything in my manner suggested that I preferred a negative answer. But by this time I was too far along the coast-road to turn back.
I had only myself to blame for what soon promised to be a pretty predicament. Certainly I had traveled enough in uncivilized countries to know such people cannot be depended upon for even approximate accuracy in matters of distance or time. I surely was mountain-experienced enough to realize that an island as small and as lofty as Dominica could have but little level land, even along the coast. As a matter of fact it had virtually none at all. Never did the atrocious trail find a hundred yards of flat going. One after another, in dogged, insistent, disheartening succession, the great forest-clad buttresses of the island plunged steeply down to the sea, forcing the stony path to claw its way upward or make enormous detours around the intervening hollows, only to pitch instantly down again from each hard-earned height into a mighty ravine, beyond which another appalling mountain-wall blocked the horizon immediately ahead. To make matters worse, the horse began to show all too evident signs of giving out. In vain did I lash him with such weapons as I could snatch from the jungle-wall alongside, not daring to take time to dismount and seek a better cudgel. Steadily, inevitably, his pace, none too good at the best, decreased. By what I took to be four o’clock he could not be urged out of a slow walk, even on the rare bits of level going; by five he was merely crawling, his knees visibly trembling, coming every few yards to a complete halt from which he could be driven only by all the punishment I could inflict upon him. His condition was one to draw tears, but it was no time to be compassionate. The steamer was sailing at midnight. It would be the last one in that direction for two weeks. Rachel was waiting to join me on it at Martinique and continue to Barbados. No one on board knew I had gone on an excursion into the hills, nor even that I had left the steamer. My possessions would be found scattered about my stateroom; by the time the ship reached Martinique it would be assumed that I had fallen overboard or suffered some equally pleasant fate. I had barely the equivalent of five dollars on my person, not an extra pair of socks, not even a toothbrush—and the Dominica cable was broken. Clearly it was no time to spare the cudgel.
But it was of no use. Near sunset the horse took to stumbling to his knees at every step. For long minutes he stood doggedly in his tracks, trembling from head to foot. The sweat of fatigue, as well as heat, ran in rivulets down his flanks. I tumbled off and tried to lead him. We were climbing another of those incessant, interminable buttresses. With all my strength I could only drag him a few creeping steps at a time. After each short advance he sat down lifelessly on his haunches. If I abandoned him in the trail there was no knowing whether the owners would ever see him again; certainly they would not the saddle and bridle, and the owners were a simple mulatto family of Roseau who could ill bear such a loss. But I could scarcely risk further delay. The sun was drowning in the Caribbean; the hazy form of Martinique thirty miles away was still on my port bow, so to speak, showing that I had not yet turned the point of the island, that I was not yet halfway to Roseau. It was stupid of me not to have realized before that Dominica, for all its scant 35,000 ignorant inhabitants, was almost as large as the French island in the offing, and that to encircle one end of it was a stiff all-day job.
Roseau, capital of beautiful Dominica
A woman of Dominica bringing a load of limes down from the mountain
Kingstown, capital of St. Vincent
