Gardens of the Caribbees, v. 2/2 / Sketches of a Cruise to the West Indies and the Spanish Main

by Ida May Hill Starr

Well, we’ve found out one thing. The houses were empty sure enough. The people are all on our ship. What a good thing it was we left the bandbox right side up! There would have been no one to rescue the plump lady.

V.

Our friends, Mr. and Mrs. U——, come toward us with a group of strangers—Curaçaoan—whose acquaintance happened just as the best things of life come to us—by the merest chance. They were driving about the city in company with the American consul, when, in passing one of the most attractive residences, their attention was drawn toward two young women who were standing out on the veranda, waving a great flag—our Stars and Stripes—in utter disregard of heat and sun; waving it forth in the yellow and white glare with all the love of country and home which motion could express. Their enthusiasm at once called forth a response on the part of the visitors; the carriage stopped and forthwith all the occupants of the house, following the two girls with the flag, came to welcome the strangers. The newcomers were bidden to enter and there was no limit to their hospitable entertainment.

The flag-bearers were two homesick Southern girls, married to the sons of a leading Dutch family. They had not visited their native land since their marriage, and, oh! how they longed to see the dear old South again! When their countrymen set foot at Curaçao, all of the slumbering mother-country love broke forth again, and the old flag came out, and they feasted the strangers, and did their utmost to honour the precious sentiment of loyalty to home. And, after the ices and cooling drinks and fruits and confections, they and their friends were invited aboard ship, where it was our pleasure to make their acquaintance.

We find here, as we have in all the other islands, that the leading families—the men in power—are comparatively pure representatives of the original colonising stock; that is, pure Dutch, Dane, Castilian, French, as the case may be; but that the people are a strange mixture of all nationalities, speaking languages for the most part unwritten, handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth, strangely intangible, and yet as fixed and well recognised among the people as is the old Common Law in the courts of Anglo-Saxon countries. Our friends in Curaçao tell us that the well-born natives speak Dutch, English, Spanish, and often French, with equal facility; added to this is another language which must be learned in order to deal with the common people.

This curious language—“Papaimiento,” it is called—has been reduced to a certain degree of form in order to facilitate its being taught in the schools. Children learn this language from their nurses, just as our Southern children acquire the negro dialect from the old “mammies.” The comparison cannot be carried out to its full extent for the reason that, while our negro dialect bears a close and intelligible likeness to English, Papaimiento is so unlike Dutch as to render its acquisition almost as difficult for a Dutchman as that of any other foreign language, but fortunately the Dutch are good linguists. It bears, of course, some likeness to Dutch in the fundamentals, but aside from that, it is a strange combination of speech—perhaps more Spanish than anything else—put together, it would seem, to meet the needs of as many people as possible. The meaning of the name Papaimiento is, in the dialect, “The talk we talk,” i. e., “our language.”

Curaçao lies some fifty miles off the coast of South America, and her favourable position between Venezuela and the Windward Islands has made her free port a most desirable one for the smugglers who wish to supply cheap goods to the South American ports. Thousands of flimsy tin-covered trunks ready for Venezuelan voyagers bear evidence of her popularity as a free and unquestioning port. Here, also, many steamers touch. But, above all, Curaçao is the haunt and refuge of the disappointed or temporarily exiled Spanish American politician or revolutionist.

Here, like puppets in a show, appear from time to time many noble patriots ready to fight for their undying principles and incidentally to absorb any loose property in the track of their conquering “armies;” and here hies the deposed “President,” or the lately conquered general, with his chests of treasure, waiting for a ship to his beloved Paris. Watch our own American newspapers for the warlike notes that Willemstad, Curaçao, ever feeling the pulse of northern South America, sends out to the world. Did she not give us the earliest news of Cervera’s mysterious fleet? Does she not thrill us with the momentous gymnastics of President Castro, and the blood-curdling intentions of General Matos, General Uribe-Uribe, General Santiago O’Flanigan et hoc genus omne?

The date of our visit to Curaçao is about the time of the little Queen of Holland’s wedding, so that Wilhelmina and her prospects, and all the gossip attending so charming a personage, becomes with us, as we sit chatting together on the deck, a lively topic of interest. Mrs. C—— tells us of a gold box which is to be sent the young queen as a bridal gift from her subjects in Curaçao; a box fashioned after the most perfect art of the native goldsmith, in filigree so rare that none but a queen were fit to open it. This box, perchance the size of Pandora’s once enchanted casket, is to be filled with the needlework of Curaçaoan women—work as far-famed as the lace of Maracaibo, the lace we expected to see everywhere in Caracas, while we were then so near the Maracaibo country, but which one can never find unless the open-sesame of the Spanish home is discovered, as impossible a task as the quest of the immortal Ponce de Leon. We did not see the Maracaibo lace, nor the Curaçaoan lace, and we are told that such a disappointment is not unusual; it is only for the elect—the Curaçaoan people themselves—that these wonderful specimens of the skill of patient women are visible.

I shall never forget hearing that unwritten page in the tragic history of Spain’s noble son, Admiral Cervera, as the Doctor in his quiet, low voice told how the great admiral touched first at Curaçao after his long and perilous voyage from Spain. It was the Doctor’s son who sent the cable message to the United States, telling that the Spanish fleet was in the offing. But it was the Doctor himself who went with the surgeons who had been sent ashore by Cervera on their humiliating errand, to all the pharmacies in Curaçao for surgical supplies. The fleet had been hurried from Spain unprepared, and in fact almost unseaworthy, with not so much as a single bandage aboard or the most ordinary necessities for the immediate succour of the wounded. They had absolutely nothing in the way of such medical and surgical equipment at hand, although they knew their imminent and terrible need for just such things. Doctor C——, with the true physician’s love for his fellow men, went from pharmacy to pharmacy with the surgeon, and bought up all the bandages and gauze and iodoform and other supplies which were to be found. Meantime detachments from the ships’ crews began to land—hungry and worn, sad with the shadow of the great coming tragedy—and they fell upon the island like a lot of starved wolves. They actually had not food enough aboard to keep body and soul together, for the corrupt and procrastinating government at Madrid had not even properly victualled this fleet of war-ships before sending them to their certain destruction. The market was cleaned of everything it could afford, and even then it was a mere drop in the bucket to that unhappy host. Later Doctor C—— went out to the flag-ship with the surgeon, and spoke with Cervera, who prophetically told him that he knew he was going to his doom—but it had to be! And the twisted skeletons of those noble ships which we later saw strewn from Santiago on along the southern Cuban coast was but the fulfilment of the miserable fate he then so clearly foresaw, but which, after his unavailing pleas to the Spanish government before sailing, the staunch old admiral, with a Spaniard’s pride and bravery, would not avoid. For so it was written! Is there not a strain of the Moor’s fatalism still traceable in the true Spaniard?