The English in the West Indies; Or, The Bow of Ulysses

by James Anthony Froude

The swimming bath was immediately under my room. I ventured into it with some trepidation. The basement story in most West Indian houses is open, to allow the air free passage under them. The space thus left vacant is used for lumber and rubbish, and, if scorpions or snakes are in the neighbourhood, is the place where one would look for them. There the bath was. I had been advised to be careful, and as it was dark this was not easy. The fear, however, was worse than the reality. Awkward encounters do happen if one is long in these countries; but they are rare, and seldom befall the accidental visitor; and the plunge into fresh water is so delicious that one is willing to risk the chance.

I wandered out as soon as the sun was over the horizon. The cool of the morning is the time to see the people. The market girls were streaming into the town with their baskets of vegetables on their heads. The fishing boats were out again on the bay. Our Anglican church had its bell too as well as the cathedral. The door was open, and I went in and found a decent-looking clergyman preparing a flock of seven or eight blacks and mulattoes for the Communion. He was taking them through their catechism, explaining very properly, that religion meant doing one's duty, and that it was not enough to profess particular opinions. Dominica being Roman Catholic, and Roman Catholics not generally appreciating or understanding the claims of Anglicans to the possession of the sacraments, he pointed out where the difference lay. He insisted that we had priests as well as they; we had confession; we had absolution; only our priests did not claim, as the Catholics did, a direct power in themselves to forgive sins. Their office was to tell sinners that if they truly and sincerely repented and amended their lives God would forgive them. What he said was absolutely true; but I could not see in the dim faces of the catechumens that the distinction was particularly intelligible to them. If they thought at all, they probably reflected that no divinely constituted successor of the Apostles was needed to communicate a truism which every sensible person was equally able and entitled to tell them. Still the good earnest man meant well, and I wished him more success in his missionary enterprise than he was likely to find.

From the Church of England to the great rival establishment was but a few minutes' walk. The cathedral was five times as large, at least, as the building which I had just left—old in age, old in appearance, with the usual indifferent pictures or coloured prints, with the usual decorated altar, but otherwise simple and venerable. There was no service going on, for it was a week-day; a few old men and women only were silently saying their prayers. On Sundays I was told that it was overflowing. The negro morals are as emancipated in Dominica as in the rest of the West Indies. Obeah is not forgotten; and along with the Catholic religion goes on an active belief in magic and witchcraft. But their religion is not necessarily a sham to them; it was the same in Europe in the ages of faith. Even in enlightened Protestant countries people calling themselves Christians believe that the spirits of the dead can be called up to amuse an evening party. The blacks in this respect are no worse than their white kinsmen. The priests have a genuine human hold upon them; they baptize the children; they commit the dead to the cemetery with the promise of immortality; they are personally loved and respected: and when a young couple marry, as they seldom but occasionally do, it is to the priest that they apply to tie them together.

From the cathedral I wandered through the streets of Roseau; they had been well laid out; the streets themselves, and the roads leading to them from the country, had been carefully paved, and spoke of a time when the town had been full of life and vigour. But the grass was growing between the stones, and the houses generally were dilapidated and dirty. A few massive stone buildings there were, on which time and rain had made no impression; but these probably were all French—built long ago, perhaps in the days of Labat and Madame Ouvernard. The English hand had struck the island with paralysis. The British flag was flying over the fort, but for once I had no pride in looking at it. The fort itself was falling to pieces, like the fort at Grenada. The stones on the slope on which it stands had run with the blood which we spilt in the winning of it. Dominica had then been regarded as the choicest jewel in the necklace of the Antilles. For the last half-century we have left it to desolation, as a child leaves a plaything that it is tired of.

In Roseau, as in most other towns, the most interesting spot is the market. There you see the produce of the soil; there you see the people that produce it; and you see them, not on show, as in church on Sundays, but in their active working condition. The market place at Roseau is a large square court close to the sea, well paved, surrounded, by warehouses, and luxuriantly shaded by large overhanging trees. Under these trees were hundreds of black women, young and old, with their fish and fowls, and fruit and bread, their yams and sweet potatoes, their oranges and limes and plantains. They had walked in from the country five or ten miles before sunrise with their loaded baskets on their heads. They would walk back at night with flour or salt fish, or oil, or whatever they happened to want. I did not see a single sullen face among them. Their figures were unconscious of lacing, and their feet of the monstrosities which we call shoes. They moved with the lightness and elasticity of leopards. I thought that I had never seen in any drawing room in London so many perfectly graceful forms. They could not mend their faces, but even in some of these there was a swarthy beauty. The hair was hopeless, and they knew it, but they turn the defect into an ornament by the coloured handkerchief which they twist about their heads, leaving the ends flowing. They chattered like jackdaws about a church tower. Two or three of the best looking, seeing that I admired them a little, used their eyes and made some laughing remarks. They spoke in their French patois, clipping off the first and last syllables of the words. I but half understood them, and could not return their bits of wit. I can only say that if their habits were as loose as white people say they are, I did not see a single licentious expression either in face or manner. They seemed to me light-hearted, merry, innocent young women, as free from any thought of evil as the peasant girls in Brittany.

Two middle-aged dames were in a state of violent excitement about some subject on which they differed in opinion. A ring gathered about them, and they declaimed at one another with fiery volubility. It did not go beyond words; but both were natural orators, throwing their heads back, waving their arms, limbs and chest quivering with emotion. There was no personal abuse, or disposition to claw each other. On both sides it was a rhetorical outpouring of emotional argument. One of them, a tall pure blood negress, black as if she had just landed from Guinea, began at last to get the best of it. Her gesticulations became more imposing. She shook her finger. Mandez this, she said, and mandez that, till she bore her antagonist down and sent her flying. The audience then melted away, and I left the conqueror standing alone shooting a last volley at the retreating enemy and making passionate appeals to the universe. The subject of the discussion was a curious one. It was on the merits of race. The defeated champion had a taint of white blood in her. The black woman insisted that blacks were of pure breed, and whites were of pure breed. Mulattoes were mongrels, not creatures of God at all, but creatures of human wickedness. I do not suppose that the mulatto was convinced, but she accepted her defeat. The conqueror, it was quite clear, was satisfied that she had the best of the discussion, and that the hearers were of the same opinion.

MORNING WALK, DOMINICA.

From the market I stepped back upon the quay, where I had the luck to witness a novel form of fishing, the most singular I have ever fallen in with. I have mentioned the herring-sized white fish which come in upon the shores of the island. They travel, as most small fish do, in enormous shoals, and keep, I suppose, in the shallow waters to avoid the kingfish and bonitos, who are good judges in their way, and find these small creatures exceptionally excellent. The wooden pier ran out perhaps a hundred and fifty feet into the sea. It was a platform standing on piles, with openings in several places from which stairs led down to landing stages. The depth at the extremity was about five fathoms. There is little or no tide, the difference between high water and low being not more than a couple of feet. Looking down the staircases, I saw among the piles in the brilliantly clear water unnumbered thousands of the fish which I have described. The fishermen had carried a long net round the pier from shore to shore, completely inclosing it. The fish were shut in, and had no means of escape except at the shore end, where boys were busy driving them back with stones; but how the net was to be drawn among the piles, or what was to be done next, I was curious to learn. I was not left long to conjecture. A circular bag net was produced, made of fine strong thread, coloured a light green, and almost invisible in the sea. When it was spread, one side could be left open and could be closed at will by a running line from above. This net was let carefully down between the piles, and was immediately swollen out by the current which runs along the coast into a deep bag. Two young blacks then dived; one saw them swimming about under water like sharks, hunting the fish before them as a dog would hunt a flock of sheep. Their companions, who were watching from the platform, waited till they saw as many driven into the purse of the inner net as they could trust the meshes to bear the weight of. The cord was then drawn. The net was closed. Net and all that it contained were hoisted into a boat, carried ashore and emptied. The net itself was then brought back and spread again for a fresh haul. In this way I saw as many fish caught as would have filled a large cart. The contrivance, I believe, is one more inheritance from the Caribs, whom Labat describes as doing something of a similar kind.

Another small incident happened a day or two after, which showed the capital stuff of which the Dominican boatmen and fishermen are made. They build their own vessels large and small, and sail them themselves, not afraid of the wildest weather, and doing the local trade with Martinique and Guadaloupe. Four of these smacks, cutter rigged, from ten to twenty tons burden, I had seen lying at anchor one evening with an American schooner under the gardens. In the night, the off-shore wind rose into one of those short violent tropical storms which if they lasted longer would be called hurricanes, but in these winter months are soon over. It came on at midnight, and lasted for two hours. The noise woke me, for the house shook, and the roar was like Niagara. It was too dark, however, to see anything. The tempest died away at last, and I slept till daybreak. My first thought on waking was for the smacks and the schooner Had they sunk at their moorings? Had they broken loose, or what had become of them? I got up and went down to the cliff to see. The damage to the trees had been less than I expected. A few torn branches lay on the lawn and the leaves were cast about, but the anchorage was empty. Every vessel of every sort and size was gone. There was still a moderate gale blowing. As the wind was off-shore the sea was tolerably smooth for a mile or two, but outside the waves were breaking violently, and the foam scuds were whirling off their crests. The schooner was about four miles off, beating back under storm canvas, making good weather of it and promising in a tack or two to recover the moorings. The smacks, being less powerful vessels, had been driven farther out to sea. Three of them I saw labouring heavily in the offing. The fourth I thought at first had disappeared altogether, but finally I made out a white speck on the horizon which I supposed to be the missing cutter. One of the first three presently dropped away to leeward, and I lost sight of her. The rest made their way back in good time. Towards the afternoon when the wind had gone down the two that remained came in after them, and before night they were all in their places again.