His establishment was remarkable; it consisted of two black girls—a cook and a parlourmaid—who 'did everything;' and 'everything,' I am bound to say, was done well enough to please the most fastidious nicety. The cooking was excellent. The rooms, which were handsomely furnished, were kept as well and in as good order as in the Churchills' ancestral palace at Blenheim. Dominica has a bad name for vermin. I had been threatened with centipedes and scorpions in my bedroom. I had been warned there, as everywhere in the West Indies, never to walk across the floor with bare feet, lest a land crab should lay hold of my toe or a jigger should bite a hole in it, lay its eggs there, and bring me into the hands of the surgeon. Never while I was Captain C.'s guest did I see either centipede, or scorpion, or jigger, or any other unclean beast in any room of which these girls had charge. Even mosquitoes did not trouble me, so skilfully and carefully they arranged the curtains. They were dressed in the fashion of the French islands, something like the Moorish slaves whom one sees in pictures of Eastern palaces. They flitted about silent on their shoeless feet, never stumbled, or upset chairs or plates or dishes, but waited noiselessly like a pair of elves, and were always in their place when wanted. One had heard much of the idleness and carelessness of negro servants. In no part of the globe have I ever seen household work done so well by two pairs of hands. Of their morals I know nothing. It is usually said that negro girls have none. They appeared to me to be perfectly modest and innocent. I asked in wonder what wages were paid to these black fairies, believing that at no price at all could the match of them be found in England. I was informed that they had three shillings a week each, and 'found themselves,' i.e. found their own food and clothes. And this was above the usual rate, as Government House was expected to be liberal. The scale of wages may have something to do with the difficulty of obtaining labour in the West Indies. I could easily believe the truth of what I had been often told, that free labour is more economical to the employer than slave labour.
The views from the drawing room windows were enchantingly beautiful. It is not the form only in these West Indian landscapes, or the colour only, but form and colour seen through an atmosphere of very peculiar transparency. On one side we looked up a mountain gorge, the slopes covered with forest; a bold lofty crag jutting out from them brown and bare, and the mountain ridge behind half buried in mist. From the other window we had the Botanical Gardens, the bay beyond them sparkling in the sunshine, and on the farther side of it, a few miles off, an island fortress which the Marquis de Bouillé, of Revolution notoriety, took from the English in 1778. The sea stretched out blue and lovely under the fringe of sand, box trees, and almonds which grew along the edge of the cliff. The air was perfumed by white acacia flowers sweeter than orange blossom.
Captain C. limped down with me into the gardens for a fuller look at the scene. Dusky fishermen were busy with their nets catching things like herrings, which come in daily to the shore to escape the monsters which prey upon them. Canoes on the old Carib pattern were slipping along outside, trailing lines for kingfish and bonitos. Others were setting baskets, like enormous lobster pots or hoop nets—such as we use to catch tench in English ponds—these, too, a legacy from the Caribs, made of strong tough cane. At the foot of the cliff were the smart American schooners which I had seen on landing—broad-beamed, shallow, low in the water with heavy spars, which bring Yankee 'notions' to the islands and carry back to New York bananas and limes and pineapples. There they were, models of Tom Cringle's 'Wave,' airy as English yachts, and equal to anything from a smuggling cruise to a race for a cup. I could have gazed for ever, so beautiful, so new, so like a dream it was, had I not been brought back swiftly to prose and reality. Suddenly out of a clear sky, without notice, and without provocation, first a few drops of rain fell, and then a deluge which set the gutters running. We had to scuttle home under our umbrellas. I was told, and I discovered afterwards by fuller experience, that this was the way in Dominica, and that if I went out anywhere I must be prepared for it. In our retreat we encountered a distinguished-looking abbé with a collar and a gold cross, who bowed to my companion. I would gladly have been introduced to him, but neither he nor we had leisure for courtesies in the torrent which was falling upon us.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Not to be confounded with St. Domingo, which is called after St. Domenic, where the Spaniards first settled, and is now divided into the two black republics of St. Domingo and Hayti. Dominica lies in the chain of the Antilles between Martinique and Guadaloupe, and was so named by Columbus because he discovered it on a Sunday.
CHAPTER XI.
Curiosities in Dominica—Nights in the tropics—English and Catholic churches—The market place at Roseau—Fishing extraordinary—A storm—Dominican boatmen—Morning walks—Effects of the Leeward Islands Confederation—An estate cultivated as it ought to be—A mountain ride—Leave the island—Reflections.
There was much to be seen in Dominica of the sort which travellers go in search of. There was the hot sulphur spring in the mountains; there was the hot lake; there was another volcanic crater, a hollow in the centre of the island now filled with water and surrounded with forest; there were the Caribs, some thirty families of them living among thickets, through which paths must be cut before we could reach them. We could undertake nothing till Captain C. could ride again. Distant expeditions can only be attempted on horses. They are bred to the work. They climb like cats, and step out safely where a fall or a twisted ankle would be the probable consequence of attempting to go on foot. Meanwhile, Roseau itself was to be seen and the immediate neighbourhood, and this I could manage for myself.
My first night was disturbed by unfamiliar noises and strange imaginations. I escaped mosquitoes through the care of the black fairies. But mosquito curtains will not keep out sounds, and when the fireflies had put out their lights there began the singular chorus of tropical midnight. Frogs, lizards, bats, croaked, sang, and whistled with no intermission, careless whether they were in discord or harmony. The palm branches outside my window swayed in the land breeze, and the dry branches rustled crisply, as if they were plates of silver. At intervals came cataracts of rain, and above all the rest the deep boom of the cathedral bell tolling out the hours like a note of the Old World. The Catholic clergy had brought the bells with them as they had brought their faith into these new lands. It was pathetic, it was ominous music; for what had we done and what were we doing to set beside it in the century for which the island had been ours? Towards morning I heard the tinkle of the bell of the convent adjoining the garden calling the nuns to matins. Happily in the tropics hot nights do not imply an early dawn. The darkness lingers late, sleep comes at last and drowns our fancies in forgetfulness.