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

by James Anthony Froude

The gale had struck them at about midnight. Their cables had parted, and they had been blown away to sea. The crews of the schooner and of three of the cutters were all on board. They got their vessels under command, and had been in no serious danger. In the fourth there was no one but a small black boy of the island. He had been asleep, and woke to find himself driving before the wind. In an hour or two he would have been beyond the shelter of the land, and in the high seas which were then running must have been inevitably swamped. The little fellow contrived in the darkness—no one could tell how—to set a scrap of his mainsail, get his staysail up, and in this condition to lie head to the wind. So handled, small cutters, if they have a deck over them, can ride out an ordinary gale in tolerable security. They drift, of course; in a hurricane the only safety is in yielding to it; but they make fair resistance, and the speed is checked. The most practical seaman could have done no better than this boy. He had to wait for help in the morning. He was not strong enough to set his canvas properly, and work his boat home. He would have been driven out at last, and as he had neither food nor water would have been starved had he escaped drowning. But his three consorts saw him. They knew how it was, and one of them went back to his assistance.

I have known the fishing boys of the English Channel all my life; they are generally skilful, ready, and daring beyond their years; but I never knew one lad not more than thirteen or fourteen years old who, if woke out of his sleep by a hurricane in a dark night and alone, would have understood so well what to do, or have it done so effectually. There are plenty more of such black boys in Dominica, and they deserve a better fate than to be sent drifting before constitutional whirlwinds back into barbarism, because we, on whom their fate depends, are too ignorant or too careless to provide them with a tolerable government.

The kind Captain Churchill, finding himself tied to his chair, and wishing to give me every assistance towards seeing the island, had invited a creole gentleman from the other side of it to stay a few days with us. Mr. F——, a man about thirty, was one of the few survivors from among the planters; he had never been out of the West Indies, but was a man of honesty and intelligence, could use his eyes, and form sound judgments on subjects which immediately concerned him. I had studied Roseau for myself. With Mr. F—— for a companion, I made acquaintance with the environs. We started for our walks at daybreak, in the cool of the morning. We climbed cliffs, we rambled on the rich levels about the river, once amply cultivated, and even now the soil is luxuriant in neglect; a few canefields still survive, but most of them are turned to other uses, and you pass wherever you go the ruins of old mills, the massive foundations of ancient warehouses, huge hewn stones built and mortared well together, telling what once had been; the mango trees, which the owners had planted, waving green over the wrecks of their forgotten industry. Such industry as is now to be found is, as elsewhere in general, the industry of the black peasantry. It is the same as in Grenada: the whites, or the English part of them, have lost heart, and cease to struggle against the stream. A state of things more helplessly provoking was never seen. Skill and capital and labour have only to be brought to bear together, and the land might be a Garden of Eden. All precious fruits, and precious spices, and gums, and plants of rarest medicinal virtues will spring and grow and flourish for the asking. The limes are as large as lemons, and in the markets of the United States are considered the best in the world.

As to natural beauty, the West Indian Islands are like Scott's novels, where we admire most the one which we have read the last. But Dominica bears the palm away from all of them. One morning Mr. F—— took me a walk up the Roseau river, an ample stream even in what is called the dry season, with deep pools full of eels and mullet. We entered among the hills which were rising steep above us. The valley grew deeper, or rather there were a series of valleys, gorges dense with forest, which had been torn out by the cataracts. The path was like the mule tracts of the Alps, cut in other days along the sides of the precipices with remnants of old conduits which supplied water to the mills below. Rich odorous acacias bent over us. The flowers, the trees, the birds, the insects, were a maze of perfume and loveliness. Occasionally some valley opposite the sun would be spanned by a rainbow as the rays shone through a morning shower out of the blue sky. We wandered on and on, wading through tributary brooks, stopping every minute to examine some new fern or plant, peasant women and children meeting us at intervals on their way into the town. There were trees to take shelter under when indispensable, which even the rain of Dominica could not penetrate. The levels at the bottom of the valleys and the lower slopes, where the soil was favourable, were carelessly planted with limes which were in full bearing. Small black boys and girls went about under the trees, gathering the large lemon-shaped fruit which lay on the ground thick as apples in a West of England orchard. Here was all this profusion of nature, lavish beyond example, and the enterprising youth of England were neglecting a colony which might yield them wealth beyond the treasures of the old sugar planters, going to Florida, to Texas, to South America, taking their energy and their capital to the land of the foreigner, leaving Dominica, which might be the garden of the world, a precious emerald set in the ring of their own Antilles, enriched by the sacred memories of glorious English achievements, as if such a place had no existence. Dominica would surrender herself to-morrow with a light heart to France, to America, to any country which would accept the charge of her destinies. Why should she care any more for England, which has so little care for her? Beauties conscious of their charms do not like to be so thrown aside. There is no dislike to us among the blacks; they are indifferent, but even their indifference would be changed into loyalty if we made the slightest effort to recover it. The poor black was a faithful servant as long as he was a slave. As a freeman he is conscious of his inferiority at the bottom of his heart, and would attach himself to a rational white employer with at least as much fidelity as a spaniel. Like the spaniel, too, if he is denied the chance of developing under guidance the better qualities which are in him, he will drift back into a mangy cur.

In no country ought a government to exist for which respect is impossible, and English rule as it exists in Dominica is a subject for a comedy. The Governor-General of the Leeward Islands resides in Antigua, and in theory ought to go on progress and visit in turn his subordinate dominions. His visits are rare as those of angels. The eminent person, who at present holds that high office, has been once in Nevis; and thrice in Dominica, but only for the briefest stay there. Perhaps he has held aloof in consequence of an adventure which befell a visiting governor some time ago on one of these occasions. When there is a constitution there is an opposition. If there are no grievances the opposition manufacture them, and the inhabitants of Roseau were persuaded that they were an oppressed people and required fuller liberties. I was informed that His Excellency had no sooner landed and taken possession of the Government House, than a mob of men and women gathered in the market place under the leadership of their elected representative. The girls that I had admired very likely made a part of it. They swarmed up into the gardens, they demonstrated under the windows, laughing, shouting, and petitioning. His Excellency first barricaded the doors, then opened them and tried a speech, telling the dear creatures how much he loved and respected them. Probably they did not understand him, as few of them speak English. Producing no effect, he retreated again, barred the door once more, slipped out at a back entrance down a lane to the port, took refuge on board his steamer, and disappeared. So the story was told me—not by the administrator, who was not a man to turn English authority into ridicule—but by some one on the spot, who repeated the current report of the adventure. It may be exaggerated in some features, but it represents, at any rate, the feeling of the place towards the head representative of the existing government.

I will mention another incident, said to have occurred still more recently to one of these great persons, very like what befell Sancho Panza in Barataria. This, too, may have been wickedly turned, but it was the subject of general talk and general amusement on board the steamers which make the round of the Antilles. Universal belief is a fact of its kind, and though it tends to shape itself in dramatic form more completely than the facts justify, there is usually some truth at the bottom of it. The telegrams to the West Indies pass through New York, and often pick up something on the way. A warning message reached a certain colony that a Yankee-Irish schooner with a Fenian crew was coming down to annex the island, or at least to kidnap the governor. This distinguished gentleman ought perhaps to have suspected that a joke was being played upon his fears; but he was a landlord. A governor-general had been threatened seriously in Canada, why not he in the Antilles? He was as much agitated as Sancho himself. All these islands were and are entirely undefended save by a police which cannot be depended on to resist a serious invasion. They were called out. Rumour said that in half the rifles the cartridges were found afterwards inverted. The next day dispelled the alarm. The schooner was the creation of some Irish telegraph clerk, and the scare ended in laughter. But under the jest lies the wretched certainty that the Antilles have no protection except in their own population, and so little to thank England for that scarcely one of the inhabitants, except the officials, would lift a finger to save the connection.

Once more, I tell these stories not as if they were authenticated facts, but as evidence of the scornful feeling towards English authority. The current belief in them is a fact of a kind and a very serious one.

The confederation of the Leeward Islands may have been a convenience to the Colonial Office, and may have allowed a slight diminution in the cost of administration. The whole West Indies might be placed under a single governor with only good results if he were a real one like the Governor-General at Calcutta. But each single island has lost from the change, so far, more than it has gained. Each ship of war has a captain of its own and officers of its own trained specially for the service. If the Antilles are ever to thrive, each of them also should have some trained and skilful man at its head, unembarrassed by local elected assemblies. The whites have become so weak that they would welcome the abolition of such assemblies. The blacks do not care for politics, and would be pleased to see them swept away to-morrow if they were governed wisely and fairly. Of course, in that case it would be necessary to appoint governors who would command confidence and respect. But let governors be sent who would be governors indeed, like those who administer the Indian presidencies, and the white residents would gather heart again, and English and American capitalists would bring their money and their enterprise, and the blacks would grow upwards instead of downwards. Let us persist in the other line, let us use the West Indian governments as asylums for average worthy persons who have to be provided for, and force on them black parliamentary institutions as a remedy for such persons' inefficiency, and these beautiful countries will become like Hayti, with Obeah triumphant, and children offered to the devil and salted and eaten, till the conscience of mankind wakes again and the Americans sweep them all away.

I had an opportunity of seeing what can really be done in Dominica by an English gentleman who has gone the right way to work there. Dr. Nicholls came out a few years ago to Roseau as a medical officer. He was described to me as a man not only of high professional skill, but with considerable scientific attainments. Either by purchase or legacy (I think the latter) he had become possessed of a small estate on a hillside a mile or two from the town. He had built a house upon it. He was cultivating the soil on scientific principles, and had politely sent me an invitation to call on him and see what he was about. I was delighted to avail myself of such an opportunity.

I do not know the exact extent of the property which was under cultivation; perhaps it was twenty-five or thirty acres. The chief part of it was planted with lime trees, the limes which I saw growing being as large as moderate-sized lemons; most of the rest was covered with Liberian coffee, which does not object to the moist climate, and was growing with profuse luxuriance. Each tree, each plant had been personally attended to, pruned when it needed pruning, supported by bamboos if it was overgrowing its strength, while the ground about the house was consecrated to botanical experiments, and specimens were to be seen there of every tropical flower, shrub, or tree, which was either remarkable for its beauty or valuable for its chemical properties. His limes and coffee went principally to New York, where they had won a reputation, and were in special demand; but ingenuity tries other tracks besides the beaten one. Dr. Nicholls had a manufactory of citric acid which had been found equally excellent in Europe. Everything which he produced was turning to gold, except donkeys, seven or eight of which were feeding under his windows, and which multiplied so fast that he could not tell what to do with them.