[10] It was on this ground alone that slavery was permitted in the French islands. Labat says:
C'est une loi très-ancienne que les terres soumises aux rois de France rendent libres tous ceux qui s'y peuvent retirer. C'est ce qui fit que le roi Louis XIII, de glorieuse mémoire, aussi pieux qu'il étoit sage, eut toutes les peines du monde à consentir que les premiers habitants des isles eussent des esclaves: et ne se rendit enfin qu'aux pressantes sollicitations qu'on luy faisoit de leur octroyer cette permission que parce qu'on lui remontra que c'étoit un moyen infaillible et l'unique qu'il y eût pour inspirer le culte du vrai Dieu aux Africains, les retirer de l'idolâtrie, et les faire persévérer jusqu'à la mort dans la religion chrétienne qu'on leur feroit embrasser.—Vol. iv. p. 14.
CHAPTER X.
Leeward and Windward Islands—The Caribs of Dominica—Visit of Père Labat—St. Lucia—The Pitons—The harbour at Castries—Intended coaling station—Visit to the administrator—The old fort and barracks—Conversation with an American—Constitution of Dominica—Land at Roseau.
Beyond all the West Indian Islands I had been curious to see Dominica.[11] It was the scene of Rodney's great fight on April 12. It was the most beautiful of the Antilles and the least known. A tribe of aboriginal Caribs still lingered in the forests retaining the old look and the old language, and, except that they no longer ate their prisoners, retaining their old habits. They were skilful fishermen, skilful basket makers, skilful in many curious arts.
The island lies between Martinique and Guadaloupe, and is one of the group now called Leeward Islands, as distinguished from St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Grenada, &c., which form the Windward. The early geographers drew the line differently and more rationally. The main direction of the trade winds is from east to west. To them the Windward Islands were the whole chain of the Antilles, which form the eastern side of the Caribbean Sea. The Leeward were the great islands on the west of it—Cuba, St. Domingo, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica. The modern division corresponds to no natural phenomenon. The drift of the trades is rather from the north-east than from the south-east, and the names serve only now to describe our own not very successful political groupings.
Dominica cuts in two the French West Indian possessions. The French took it originally from the Spaniards, occupied it, colonised it, planted in it their religion and their language, and fought desperately to maintain their possession. Lord Rodney, to whom we owe our own position in the West Indies, insisted that Dominica must belong to us to hold the French in check, and regarded it as the most important of all our stations there. Rodney made it English, and English it has ever since remained in spite of the furious efforts which France made to recover an island which she so highly valued during the Napoleon wars. I was anxious to learn what we had made of a place which we had fought so hard for.
Though Dominica is the most mountainous of all the Antilles, it is split into many valleys of exquisite fertility. Through each there runs a full and ample river, swarming with fish, and yielding waterpower enough to drive all the mills which industry could build. In these valleys and on the rich levels along the shore the French had once their cane fields and orange gardens, their pineapple beds and indigo plantations.
Labat, who travelled through the island at the close of the seventeenth century, found it at that time chiefly occupied by Caribs. With his hungry appetite for knowledge, he was a guest in their villages, acquainted himself with their characters and habits, and bribed out of them by lavish presents of brandy the secrets of their medicines and poisons. The Père was a clever, curious man, with a genial human sympathy about him, and was indulgent to the faults which the poor coloured sinners fell into from never having known better. He tried to make Christians of them. They were willing to be baptised as often as he liked for a glass of brandy. But he was not very angry when he found that the Christianity went no deeper. Moral virtues, he concluded charitably, could no more be expected out of a Carib than reason and good sense out of a woman.