The demerits of the West Indies classified—The utter ruin of St. Pierre—The Empress Josephine—A transplanted brogue—Vampires—Lost in a virgin forest—Dictator-Presidents —Castro and Rosas—The mentality of a South American—"The Liberator"—The Basques and their national game—Love of English people for foreign words—Yellow fever—Life on an Argentine estancia—How cattle are worked—The lasso and the "bolas"—Ostriches—Venomous toads—The youthful rough-rider—His methods—Fuel difficulties—The vast plains—The wonderful bird-life.
Any one desirous of seeing an exceedingly beautiful, and comparatively unknown, corner of the world, should take the fortnightly Inter-colonial steamer from Trinidad, and make the voyage "up the islands." The Lesser Antilles are very lovely, but there is something rather melancholy about them, for they are obviously decaying in prosperity; the white planters are abandoning them, and as the coloured people take their place, externals all begin to assume a shabby, unkempt appearance. I am speaking of the conditions anterior to 1914; the great rise in the price of sugar since then may have resulted in a back-wash of prosperity affecting both the Windward and the Leeward Islands.
I should always myself classify the West India islands according to their liability to, or immunity from, the various local drawbacks. Thus Barbados, though within the hurricane zone, is outside the earthquake zone, and is free from poisonous snakes. Trinidad, only 200 miles away, is outside the hurricane area, but is most distinctly inside the earthquake zone, is prolific in venomous snakes and enjoys the further advantage of being the home of the blood-sucking vampire bat. Jamaica is liable to both hurricanes and earthquakes, but has no poisonous snakes. St. Vincent, St. Lucia and Martinique are really over-full of possibilities, for, in addition to a liability to earthquakes and hurricanes, they each possess an active volcano, and Martinique and St. Lucia are the habitat of the dreaded and deadly Fer-de-Lance snake.
The Administrator of St. Vincent had been good enough to ask me to dinner by telegram. The steamer reached St. Vincent after dark, and it was a curious experience landing on an unknown island in a tailcoat and white tie, driving for two miles, and then tumbling into a dinner-party of sixteen white people, not one of whom one had ever seen before, or was ever likely to meet again. It was as though one had been dropped by an aeroplane into an unknown land, and when the steamer sailed again before midnight, it was all as though it had never been. The orchids on that dinner-table were very remarkable, for orchid-growing was the Administrator's hobby. He grafted his orchids on to orange trees, and so obtained enormous growths. We measured some of the flower-sprays, the biggest being nine feet long. As they were brown and yellow Oncidiums, they were more curious than beautiful.
The appalling desolation of St. Pierre, in the French island of Martinique, cannot be imagined without having been seen. Of a very handsome city of 40,000 inhabitants there is absolutely nothing left except one gable of the cathedral. There is no trace of a town having ever existed here, for the poisonous manchineel tree has spread itself over the ruins, and it is difficult to realise that twenty years ago the pride of the French West Indies stood here. The rich merchants and planters of St. Pierre had all made their homes in the valley of the little river Roxelana. After the sides of Mont Pele had gaped apart and hurled their white-hot whirlwind of fire over the doomed town on that fatal May 8, 1902—a fiery whirlwind which calcined every human being and every building in the town in less than one minute—molten lava poured into the valley of the Roxelana until it filled it up entirely, burying houses, gardens and plantations alike. There is no trace even of a valley now, and the stream makes its way underground to the sea. Napoleon the Great's first wife, Josephine de la Pagerie, was a native of Martinique and retained all her life the curious indolence of the Creole. Her gross extravagance and her love of luxury may also have been due to her Creole blood. Her first husband, of course, had been the Vicomte de Beauharnais, and her daughter, Hortense de Beauharnais, married Napoleon's brother, Louis, King of Holland. This complicated relationships, for Queen Hortense's son, Louis Napoleon, afterwards Napoleon III., was thus at the same time nephew and step-grandson of Napoleon I. M. Filon, in his most interesting study of the Empress Eugenie, points out that Napoleon III. showed his Creole blood in his constant chilliness. He chose as his private apartments at the Tuileries a set of small rooms on the ground floor, as these could be more easily heated up to the temperature he liked. According to M. Filon, Napoleon III. shortened his life by persisting in remaining so much in what he describes as "those over-gilt, over-heated, air-tight little boxes."
The well-known greenhouse climbing plant lapageria, with its waxy white or crimson trumpets of flowers, owes its name to Josephine de la Pagerie, for on its first introduction into France it was called La Pageria in her honour, though with the English pronunciation of the name the connection is not at first obvious.
It is not so generally known that Madame de Maintenon, as Francoise d'Aubigne, spent all her girlhood in Martinique.
The coloured women of Martinique have apparently absorbed, thanks to their two hundred years' association with the French, something of that innate good taste which seems the birthright of most French people, and they show this in their very individual and becoming costumes. The Martinique negress is, as a rule, a handsome bronze-coloured creature, and she wears a full-skirted, flowing dress of flowered chintz or cretonne, with a fichu of some contrasting colour over her breast. She hides her woolly locks under an ample turban of two shades, one of which will exactly match her fichu, whilst the other will either correspond to or contrast with the colour of her chintz dress, thus producing what the French term "une gamme de couleur," most pleasing to the eye, and with never a false note in it. Beside these comely, amply breasted bronze statues, the British West Indian negress, with her absurd travesty of European fashions, and her grotesque hats, cuts, I am bound to say, a very poor figure indeed.
The flourishing little island of Montserrat has one peculiarity. The negroes all speak with the strongest of Irish brogues. Cromwell deported to Montserrat many of the "Malignants" from the West of Ireland, who acquired negro slaves to cultivate their sugar and cotton. These negroes naturally learnt English in the fashion in which their masters spoke it. The white men have gone; the brogue remains. I was much amused on going ashore in the Administrator's whaleboat, he being an old acquaintance from the Co. Tyrone, to hear his jet-black coxswain remark, "'Tis the lee side I will be going, sorr, the way your Honour will not be getting wet, for them back-seas are mighty throublesome." This in Montserrat was unexpected.
There is a curious uninhabited rock lying amongst the Virgin Islands.
It is quite square and box-like in shape, and is known as "The Dead
Man's Chest." Before seeing it I had always thought that the eternal
chant of the old pirate at the "Admiral Benbow," in Treasure Island: