Said an honest old Marshfield farmer, in 1776, who met the clergyman of the village very early in the opening day: "Ah, good mornin', Parson, another fine day," nodding significantly towards the sun just appearing above the cloudless horizon of Massachusetts Bay. "They do say the airth moves, and the sun stands still; but you and I, Parson, we git up airly and we see it rise!"
CHAPTER III.
English Island of Barbadoes.—Bridgetown the Capital.—The Manufacture of Rum.—A Geographical Expert.—Very English.—A Pest of Ants.—Exports.—The Ice House.—A Dense Population.—Educational.—Marine Hotel.—Habits of Gambling.—Hurricanes.—Curious Antiquities.—The Barbadoes Leg.—Wakeful Dreams.—Absence of Twilight.—Departure from the Island.
Bridgetown is the capital of Barbadoes, an English island which, unlike St. Thomas, is a highly cultivated sugar plantation from shore to shore. In natural beauty, however, it will not compare with Martinique. It is by no means picturesquely beautiful, like most of the West Indian islands, being quite devoid of their thick tropical verdure. Nature is here absolutely beaten out of the field by excessive cultivation. Thirty thousand acres of sugar-cane are cut annually, yielding, according to late statistics, about seventy thousand hogsheads of sugar. We are sorry to add that there are twenty-three rum distilleries on the island, which do pecuniarily a thriving business. "The poorest molasses makes the best rum," said an experienced manager to us. He might well have added that it is also the poorest use to which it could be put. This spirit, like all produced in the West Indies, is called Jamaica rum, and though a certain amount of it is still shipped to the coast of Africa, the return cargoes no longer consist of kidnapped negroes. The article known as New England rum, still manufactured in the neighborhood of Boston, has always disputed the African market, so to speak, with the product of these islands. Rum is the bane of Africa, just as opium is of China, the former thrust upon the native races by Americans, the latter upon the Chinese by English merchants, backed by the British government. Events follow each other so swiftly in modern times as to become half forgotten by contemporary people, but there are those among us who remember when China as a nation tried to stop the importation of the deadly drug yielded by the poppy fields of India, whereupon England forced the article upon her at the point of the bayonet.
Bridgetown is situated at the west end of the island on the open roadstead of Carlisle Bay, and has a population of over twenty-five thousand. Barbadoes lies about eighty miles to the windward of St. Vincent, its nearest neighbor, and is separated from Europe by four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean. It is comparatively removed from the chain formed by the Windward Isles, its situation being so isolated that it remained almost unnoticed until a century had passed after Columbus's first discovery in these waters. The area of the British possessions in the West Indies is about one seventh of the islands. It is often stated that Barbadoes is nearly as large as the Isle of Wight, but the fact is, it exceeds that island in superficial area, being a little over fifty-five miles in circumference. The reader will perhaps remember that it was here Addison laid the scene of his touching story of "Inkle and Yarico," published so many years ago in the "Spectator."
Though it is not particularly well laid out, Bridgetown makes a very pleasing picture, as a whole, when seen from the harbor. Here and there a busy windmill is mixed with tall and verdant tropical trees, backed by far-reaching fields of yellow sugar-cane, together with low, sloping hills. The buildings are mostly of stone, or coral rock, and the town follows the graceful curve of the bay. The streets are macadamized and lighted with gas, but are far too narrow for business purposes. The island is about twenty-one miles long and between fourteen and fifteen broad, the shores being nearly inclosed in a cordon of coral reefs, some of which extend for two or three miles seaward, demanding of navigators the greatest care on seeking a landing, though the course into the roads to a suitable anchorage is carefully buoyed.
Barbadoes was originally settled by the Portuguese, who here found the branches of a certain forest tree covered with hair-like hanging moss, from whence its somewhat peculiar name, Barbadoes, or the "bearded place," is supposed to have been derived. Probably this was the Indian fig-tree, still found here, and which lives for many centuries, growing to enormous proportions. In India, Ceylon, and elsewhere in Asia, it is held sacred. The author has seen one of these trees at Kandy, in the island of Ceylon, under which sacred rites have taken place constantly for a thousand years or more, and whose widespread branches could shelter five hundred people from the heat of the sun. It stands close by the famous old Buddhist temple wherein is preserved the tooth of the prophet, and before which devout Indians prostrate themselves daily, coming from long distances to do so. Indeed, Kandy is the Mecca of Ceylon.
A good share of even the reading public of England would be puzzled to tell an inquirer exactly where Barbadoes is situated, while most of those who have any idea about it have gained such knowledge as they possess from Captain Marryat's clever novel of "Peter Simple," where the account is, to be sure, meagre enough. Still later, those who have read Anthony Trollope's "West Indies and the Spanish Main" have got from the flippant pages of that book some idea of the island, though it is a very disagreeable example of Trollope's pedantic style.
"Barbadoes? Barbadoes?" said a society man to the writer of these pages, in all seriousness, just as he was about to sail from New York, "that's on the coast of Africa, is it not?" "Oh, no," was the reply, "it is one of the islands of the Lesser Antilles."