Here, There and Everywhere

by Lord Frederic Hamilton

"Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest,
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"

referred literally to a seaman's chest, though reflection might have shown that one chest would afford rather scanty seating-ground for fifteen men.

At Nevis, the curious can see in Fig Tree Church the register attesting the marriage of "Horatio Nelson, Captain of H.M.S. Boreas, to Frances Nisbet, widow," on March 11, 1789. William IV., at that time Duke of Clarence, was Nelson's best man on that occasion.

Nevis possesses powerful hot mineral springs, and a hundred years ago and more was the great health resort of white people in the West Indies. Here the planters endeavoured to get their torpid livers into working order again, and the local boast was that for every pearl necklace and pair of diamond shoe-buckles to be seen at the English Bath, there were three to be seen in Nevis. To add to its attractions it was asserted that the drinking, gambling, and duelling in Nevis left Bath completely in the shade.

Though one was constantly hearing of diminishing trade in the Lesser Antilles, certain questions kept suggesting themselves to me. For instance, in islands abounding in water power, why ship copra in bulk to England or the United States, instead of crushing it locally and exporting the oil, which would occupy one-tenth of the cargo-space? Why, in an island producing both oranges and sugar, ship them separately to Europe to be made into marmalade, instead of manufacturing it on the spot? The invariable answer to these queries was "lack of capital"; no one seemed to guess that lack of enterprise might be a contributory cause as well.

I have alluded to the vampire bat of Trinidad. Six weeks before my arrival there, the Governor's aide-de-camp had most imprudently slept without lowering his mosquito curtains. He awoke to find himself drenched in blood, for a vampire bat had opened a vein, drunk his fill, and then flown off leaving the wound open. The doctor had to apply the actual cautery to stop the bleeding, and six weeks afterwards the unfortunate aide-de-camp was still as white as a sheet of paper from loss of blood. At Government House, Port-of-Spain, there is a very lofty entrance-hall, bright with electric light. The vampires constantly flew in here, to become helpless at once in the glare of light, when they could be easily killed with a stick. The vampire is a small, sooty-black bat with a perfectly diabolical little face. An ordinary mosquito net is quite sufficient protection against them, or, to persons who do not mind a light in their room, a lamp burning all night is an absolute safeguard against their attacks. Every stable in Trinidad has a lighted lamp burning all night in it, and those who can afford them, drop wire-gauze curtains over their horses' stalls as a protection against vampires.

The Trinidad negro being naturally an indolent creature, all the boatmen and cab-drivers in Port-of-Spain are Barbadians. As we know, the Badians have an inordinate opinion of themselves and of their island. Whilst I was in Trinidad, General Baden-Powell came there in the course of his world-tour inspection of Boy Scouts. On the day of General Baden-Powell's arrival, all the Badian boatmen and cab-drivers struck work, and the vampire-bitten aide-de-camp, who was in the town, met serried phalanxes of dark faces hurrying to the landing-stage. On asking a Badian what the excitement was about, the negro answered with infinite hauteur.

"You ask me dat, sir? You not know dat our great countryman General Badian-Powell arrive to-day, so we all go welcome him."

Charles Kingsley in At Last goes into rhapsodies over the "High Woods" of Trinidad. I confess that I was terribly disappointed in them. They are too trim and well-kept; the Forestry department has done its work too well. There are broad green rides cut through them, reminiscent of covers in an English park, but certainly not suggestive of a virgin forest. One almost expects to hear the beaters' sticks rattling in them, and I did not think that they could compare with the splendid virgin forests of Brazil.

I was in Brazil just thirty years ago with Patrick Lyon, brother of the present Lord Strathmore. We were staying at Petropolis, and Lyon, fired by my accounts of these virgin forests, declared that he must see one for himself. He had heard that the forests extended to within three miles of Petropolis, and at once went to hire two horses for us to ride out there. There were no horses to be had in the place, but so determined was Lyon to see these untrodden wilds, that he insisted on our doing the three miles on foot, then and there. It was the height of the Brazilian summer, and the heat was something appalling. We struggled over three miles of a glaring white shadeless road, grilled alive by the sun, but always comforting ourselves by dwelling on the cool shades awaiting us at the end of our journey. At length we reached the forest, and wandered into a green twilight under the dense canopy of leaves, which formed an unbroken roof a hundred feet over our heads. With "green twilight" the obvious epithet should be "cool"; that is exactly what it was not, for if the green canopy shut out the sun, it also shut out the air, and the heat in that natural leafy cathedral was absolutely overpowering. We wandered on and on, till I began to grow giddy and faint with the heat. I asked Lyon how he was feeling, and he owned that the heat had affected him too, so we sat down on a rock to recuperate.