We left Las Palmas on Saturday, May 10th; the trade wind was still with us, the weather delightful, and we did the distance to St. Vincent, Cape Verde Islands, in seven days. We had heard nothing but evil of it. “An impossible place;” “another Aden;” “a mere cinder-heap.” It was therefore a pleasant surprise to find ourselves in a most beautiful harbour. Rugged mountains of imposing height rise on three sides of the bay, Porto Grande, and the fourth is protected by the long high coast-line of the neighbouring island, San Antonio. Standing out in the entrance of the bay is the conical Birds’ Rock, looking as if designed by nature for the lighthouse it carries. The colouring is indescribable: all the nearer mountains are what can only be termed a glowing red, which, as distance increases, softens into heliotrope. On the edge of the bay and at the foot of the eastern hills lies the town of Mindello. A building law, made with the object of avoiding glare, forbids any house to be painted white, and the resulting colour-washes, red, yellow, and blue, if sometimes a little crude, tone on the whole well into the landscape.
If beauty of form and strange weird colouring are the first things which strike the new-comer to St. Vincent, the next, it must be admitted, is the marvellous bleakness of the place. Hillsides and mountains stand out bare and rugged, without showing, on a cursory inspection at any rate, the least sign of vegetation. One of the characteristics also of the place is the constant tearing wind. During the whole of our visit of some ten days we were never able to find a day when it was calm enough for Mrs. Taylor, the wife of the British Consul, to face the short passage from the harbour and visit Mana. This wind is purely local and a short distance off dies away. How, one is inclined to ask, can it be possible for English men and women to endure life in a tropical glare, with a perpetual wind without any trees, any grass, any green on which to rest the eye? And yet we found over and over again that, though the comer from greener worlds is at first unhappy and restless in St. Vincent, those who had been there some time found life pleasant and enjoyable and had no desire to exchange it.
There are several coaling and other English firms, and local society rejoices in as many as thirty English ladies. The cable company has over a hundred employees, of whom the greater number are English. The unmarried members of the staff live together in the station, each having a bed-sitting-room and dining in a common hall. There is an English chaplain, and also a Baptist minister, who is the proprietor of the principal shop. The chaplain had the experience, which everyone must have felt would happen some time to someone, of being carried off involuntarily on an ocean-going steamer. He was saying good-bye to friends, missed the warning bell, and before he knew was en route for a port in South America, to which he had duly to proceed. For recreation St. Vincent possesses a tennis-court and cricket-field: the last is in a particularly arid spot some distance from the town, which is however already planned out on paper by the authorities with streets and houses for prospective needs; in the design the pitch is left vacant and named in Portuguese “Game of Cricket,” the remainder of the field being filled in anticipation with a grove of trees.
Some of the residents have villas among the hills or by one of the scarce oases. We made an excursion to one of these last resorts which is a famed beauty-spot, and found it a narrow gulch between two mountains, with a little stream and a few unhappy vegetables and woebegone trees. It was difficult to imagine, while traversing the road along one hillside after another, each covered with nothing but rocks and rubble, on what the few animals subsisted; it was remarked that the milk could not need sterilising, as the cows fed only on stones. The rains occur in August, after which the hills are covered with a small green plant. We were told that some of the valleys higher up are comparatively fruitful, and certainly it is possible to obtain vegetables at a not unreasonable price. The women who live in the hills carry back quite usually, after a shopping expedition, loads of seventy to eighty pounds for a distance of perhaps three miles, with a rise of 900 feet, making the whole journey in two and a half hours.
The British Consul, Captain Taylor, R.N., has with much enterprise established a body of Boy Scouts among the youthful inhabitants. An attractive member of the corps, wearing a becoming and sensible uniform, accompanied us as guide on two occasions, when we made excursions on the island, giving the whole afternoon to us. He declined to accept any remuneration, as it was against the principles of his order to be paid for doing a good turn. Other youthful natives are less useful and more grasping. One small imp, with a swarthy complexion and head like an overgrown radish, became our constant follower. The acquaintance began one day when S. was carrying a large biscuit-tin from the post office, in which some goods had just arrived from England: he followed him down the pier, beseeching, “Oh, Captain Biscuit-Tin, give me one penny.” Every time after this, when S. went on shore for business or pleasure, “Biscuit-Tin,” as we in our turn named the boy, was there awaiting him. Once, in stepping out of the boat on to the rusty iron ladder of the jetty, his toe almost caught on a small round head as it emerged from the water uttering the cry, “Oh, Captain, where is that penny?” A crowd had surrounded the landing-stage, so the boy had dived into the water as the easiest way of approach. He expressed the desire to come with us to Buenos Aires, undeterred by the information which S. gravely gave him that “all the boys on board were beaten every day, with an extra beating on Saturday.” The avocation which he proposed to fill was that of cook’s boy, as he “would have much to eat.” He followed us for the whole of one expedition, eventually obtaining “that penny” as we shoved off from the pier for the last time, an hour before sailing. He clapped it into his cheek, as a monkey does a nut, and held out his hand to me for another; but I was already in the boat, and a coin was not forthcoming; so that the last which we saw of “Biscuit-Tin” he was still demanding “one penny.”
We brought away from St. Vincent a permanent addition to our party, a Portuguese negro of fine build, by name Bartolomeo Rosa. The rest of the crew accepted his companionship without hesitation and naturally christened him “Tony.” Later we found, with sympathy, that he was wearing goloshes, in a temperature when most of the party were only too happy to go shoeless, because Light, who had more particularly taken him under his wing, said “the sight of his black feet puts me off my food.” Rosa remained with us to the end of the voyage. He learnt English slowly, and would never have risen to the rank of A.B., but was always quiet, steady, and dependable. He drew but little of his wages, and had therefore a considerable sum standing to his credit when we returned to Southampton. He proposed, he said, to go back to his old mother at St. Vincent and there set up with his earnings as a trader. He would get a shop, stock it, and marry a wife, and she would attend to the customers, while he would sit outside the door on the head of a barrel and smoke. When it was suggested that such a course would inevitably end in drink, he added a boat to the programme, in which he would sometimes go out and catch fish.
We were detained at St. Vincent awaiting the arrival of a spare piece of machinery, and occupied the time by watering the yacht at the bay of Tarafel in the island of San Antonio. A stream from the high ground there finds its way to the sea, and supplies the water for the town of Mindello. The lower part of its banks are fertile, forming a beautiful, if small, spot of verdure amid the arid surroundings. Light, with the green hills of Devonshire in mind, remarked, “It is very nice, ma’am, what there is of it—only there is so little.”
When we brought up, the men went into the shallow water and shot the trammel in order to obtain some fresh fish. This brought on board an elderly gentleman, Señor Martinez, the official in charge of the place, who was not unnaturally indignant at what he imagined to be a foreign fishing vessel at work in territorial waters. We were able to explain matters, and were much interested in making his acquaintance. He had never visited England, but spoke English well, kept it up by means of magazines, and was greatly delighted with the gift of some literature. He welcomed us as the first English yacht which had been there since the visit of the Sunbeam in 1876, of which he spoke as if it had been yesterday.
Having got our package from England, we finally quitted the friendly harbour of Porto Grande on Thursday afternoon, May 29th, sailing forth once more, this time to cross the Atlantic, with the little shiver and thrill which it still gave some of us when we committed our bodies to the deep for a long and lonely voyage, even with every hope of a resurrection on the other side of the ocean. After we sighted St. Jago, the capital of the Cape Verde group, on the following day, we saw no trace of human life for thirteen days; so that if mischance occurred there was nothing and no one to help in all the blue sea and sky. The self-sufficiency needed by those who go down to the sea in ships is almost appalling.
Instead of making direct for Pernambuco, we steered first of all due south, carrying with us the north-east trade, in order to cross the Doldrums to the best advantage, and catch the south-east trade as soon as possible on the other side. The calm belt may be expected just north of the Equator, but its position varies with climatic conditions, and it was therefore a matter of excitement to know how long we should keep the wind. In the opinion of our authorities it might leave us on Sunday and could not be with us beyond Tuesday. The engineer, whose duty had so far been light, had been chaffingly warned by the rest of the crew that his turn would come in the tropics, when he would have to work below for twenty-four hours on end.