Chasten your feeling of ultra superiority and do not put down every untidy-looking white man you meet in remote country districts for a tramp bent on gaining possession of your valuables. Important planters in country districts, away from busy centres, sometimes pay but little attention to outward appearances. Individual planters tire of much reiteration of advice from young and enthusiastic tourists; likewise they are not pleased to hear that you cannot understand how it is that in such a wonderful climate all the planters are not the richest men in the world. The Jamaican does not like the Englishman who imagines that Britain keeps Jamaica going by charitable bequests; it is not pleasant for a hard-working man to come across an individual who tells him to his face that he is little better than a pauper. Above all, let it be remembered that the inhabitants of Jamaica did not brew their 1903 cyclone with the idea of giving Englishmen a little shock in order that British philanthropists might send cheques to the West Indies. Everyday ideas on the politics of the island, on means by which the island’s finances might be put on a better plane, on new industries, and better conditions of labour, will occur to the bright young tripper. It is better for a young man not to give emphasis to these ideas until he has been in the country for several weeks.
THE CARIBBEAN GROUP
CHAPTER XXVI
THE CARIBBEAN GROUP
Because I have exhausted so much space on a description of Jamaica, and the people of Jamaica, it must not be imagined that the shadow of the Queen of the Antilles clouds all the other West Indian islands into insignificance. Trinidad, St. Lucia, Dominica, and the rest of the Caribbean group, have much to say in the history of the West Indies. The Jamaica I have described, the Jamaicans I have mentioned, may be taken as being typical of West India. The natives of the other islands are the brothers and sisters of Jamaicans; the roads, and plantations, and mountains of the other islands differ from those of Jamaica only in the matter of proper names. In the West Indies there are many Rio Cobra rivers, though only one of them is known by that name. The bamboos, the pine-trees, and the banana clumps are of the same species in all the different islands. So for the purposes of this book I thought it more convenient to describe Jamaica and mention the other places.
Barbadoes, the most windward of the group, is a densely populated island only twenty-one miles long. It is an important place and does a good trade in sugar. The West Indian Imperial Department of Agriculture has its headquarters in Bridgetown, the Barbadian capital, and the climate of the island is most salubrious. Barbadoes has been under the unbroken rule of the British for three centuries. Its history, in common with most West Indian histories, opens with long chapters containing the records of great prosperity, of a little island overflowing with riches; of millionaire planters, West Indian luxury, sumptuous mansions filled with gold and silver plate, rare carvings, European art treasures, and the choicest wines. Until very recently Barbadoes was the central market of all the West Indian islands. It was the shipping centre of the West. All the wealth of the Indies had to be landed on the Barbadian quays for transhipment to England, and much of the dust of the wealth remained. Sugar plantations flourished in the island; the planters had no grievances. Even when the decree of emancipation came, and all the slaves were freed, Barbadoes did not suffer. The country was too small to allow any of the freed negroes to cultivate food-plots on their own account; every acre of the island was tenanted and firmly held. So there was no industrial upheaval. The negro had to work or starve, and naturally he chose the former alternative. The prosperity of the planters continued, and the blacks easily settled down to their new condition of free labour. But the introduction of bounty-fed beet sugar completely altered the