We anchored in the river, but now the steamers run alongside a wharf, which is a comfort that cannot be too highly estimated. A hundred voices greeted us on landing, with offers to convey our luggage to the hotel, and “Kerridge, sir, kerridge,” resounded on all sides. Not only were there “kerridges” of different descriptions, but there was actually a “hansom” in waiting. Had it not been for the numerous black faces, we might have landed on the coast of England, but, then again, the numerous bangled women and turbaned men suggested India.
We were quickly driven to the new “Tower” Hotel, which looked clean and comfortable, but not a room was vacant. In Georgetown, house-rent is so exorbitant that many resident bachelors, and occasionally families, live together at the hotels; consequently, strangers often find accommodation unobtainable or indifferent.
Across the road was the “Kaieteur Hotel,” a large, rambling, wooden structure, but with the prestige of antiquity, and kept by Captain Holly, the American consul at Barbadoes. Here we found rooms, and the worthy proprietor did his best to make us comfortable, but it must be allowed that, with all his kindness and attention, he had not then attained the art of keeping a good hotel. But as the two I have mentioned are by far the best hotels in the West Indies, allowances must be made for a few short-comings. There is one item though for which no allowance ought to be made, and in the tropics it is a most important one. In the matter of baths and bath rooms the hotels and boarding houses in the West Indies are disgracefully negligent.
At St. Thomas, to reach the cobwebby and tarantula-occupied bath room, it is necessary to descend a flight of dirty stone steps and to pick your way across a courtyard which is never swept, and which is a repository for old boots, rags, banana skins, and fowls. At Martinique there were no bath rooms in my hotel, and I had to hire a tub; I was told that even in the best hotels—the Hôtel Micas—there were no baths. At Barbadoes, one very small shower-bath taken on the bare bricks did duty for the whole establishment at Hoad’s. At Trinidad, a green, slimy tank into which fresh water ran, but which was never emptied or cleaned, was the sole bathing accommodation for Miss Emma Clark, her boarders, and servants. And here at the “Kaieteur,” the two bath rooms—one on each floor—were not fit for sculleries, a use by the way to which they were frequently put. Their size was such that they barely held a small tub, and it was difficult to stand upright in them; as for a chair, there was not room for one, and, what with the intense heat and the want of space, I have frequently seen people come out of the wretched hole streaming with perspiration after their bath. The supply of water, too, was very limited, as in Demerara rain water alone is used, and when we arrived there the long continued drought had nearly emptied the tanks.
The average rain-fall in Demerara is estimated by feet instead of inches; but last year (1877) had been very dry, and now the absence of rain in the usual short wet season—December, January, and February—had already created more loss to the planters, and as it was too late to expect rain before May, a water famine was anticipated. It used to be positively asserted that the year was divided into two wet and two dry seasons in British Guiana, but it is gradually dawning on the public mind that no uniformity in weather ever did, or can exist, and that, though the climate remains, the weather changes.
Georgetown is a handsome, well-built town, with broad streets, avenues, excellent stores, and shops of all descriptions, and with a lively, well to-do air that is as invigorating as the heat is depressing. In the streets, besides the white race, you meet sharp-featured Madrassees, Hindoos of various castes, Parsees, Nubians, and half-breeds. Stepping timidly along may also be seen two or three “bucks,” as the natives from the interior are called, dressed—if dressed at all—in a motley suit of old clothes, and only anxious to sell or exchange their parrots and hammocks, and then return to their wilds. From a merchant’s store filled with European goods, you step into a little shop redolent of the East, and stocked with bangles and silver ornaments worked by their Cingalese proprietor. There stands a Portuguese Jew, ready to fleece the first “buck” whom he can entice into his cheap general-store, and here sits stolid John Chinaman, with his pigtail wreathed round his head, keeping guard over his home-made cigars.
The Government Building is a large, fine-looking structure, the numerous churches are graceful and picturesque, and everywhere there is a home look about the town, without pretension, that is very attractive. The reading-room is cool and very comfortable, the library well managed, and the museum in the same building is likely, under the care of Mr. Im Thurm, the new curator, to become a very valuable acquisition to the colony. Under his superintendence, a very interesting exhibition of native produce and industry had been held previous to my arrival, and I was sorry to have missed it.
It has been said that hospitality is on the wane in the West Indies; well, if that of Demerara may be taken as an example, may it always be on the wane! A kinder, more hospitable community I never met. It seems to be the object of the residents to make a stranger’s sojourn among them as home-like and agreeable as they can. Some one once remarked, and it has been the fashion to repeat, that the French alone in the West Indies make the land of their adoption their home, and that the English make it merely a place of business, from which they hasten at the earliest opportunity. This may be so, for the English of all others are a home-loving race, and “the old country” is more, I think, to them than “fatherland” to the Germans, or “notre pays” to the French. But, whilst they are in exile, they, at any rate in Demerara, surround themselves as far as possible with home comforts and home reminiscences, and infuse something of the far off country sweetness into the inner circle of their lives. No heart—no, not even a Savoyard’s—feels expatriation so deeply as an Englishman’s, and none, save those whose lot has been to sojourn far from home, can imagine the intense longing to see again the native shores. Do you remember that old poem called “The Home Fever: A reminiscence of the West Indies?”—the first verse is—
“We sat alone in a trellised bower,
And gazed o’er the darkening deep,