Cherubim of Hell
Reverend Morrill, the Whiz Bang’s fire-eating gospelite writer, is now touring the West Indies for this magazine. Remember the Martinique articles written after his recent tour to that sinful island for the Whiz Bang? His present trip presages some more hot sermons. In the April issue, Reverend Morrill’s story of Parisian life, “Midnight Madness,” will appear in the Whiz Bang. Later, during the summer months, he will deliver to our readers a carload of dynamite. Watch for his explosion!
BY REV. “GOLIGHTLY” MORRILL.
Pastor of the People’s Church, Minneapolis, Minn.
Helen never raised more hell in Troy than the island of St. Lucia did in the West Indies. It is some 250 square miles, is volcanic, and has been in constant war-like upheaval.
Our ship, the “Caraquet” has arrived here, where for 150 years the French and English have cut each others throats. From 1605, when English settlers landed in the “Oliph Blossome” from Barbadoes and were massacred in less than two months—others were smoked out by natives burning red pepper—to 1814, when the isle was finally ceded to Great Britain, St. Lucia has been seeded with hate and borne a harvest of death. In three years, from 1793 to 1796, England lost 80,000 soldiers, including 40,000 dead. This topped the loss of Wellington’s army from all causes during the Peninsular war. Add to this yellow fever, malaria, the deadly fer-de-lance snake, hurricanes, earthquakes, bush-bandits and runaway slaves the revolution set free (who kidnapped, ravished, maimed, burned and robbed) and St. Lucia’s cup of gall and gore is running over—as are the wasps, centipedes, tarantulas, mosquitoes and scorpions over the people.
This was a Pandora’s, not a Christmas box. I wonder that all the inhabitants are not like the mad woman who rushed out of the insane asylum howling at us as we entered Castries harbor. St. Lucia was a martyred maid in the time of Diocletian, and lost her money and her eyes. The island bearing her name has suffered outrage and martyrdom and may well invoke her as the patroness of the poor and blind, for its inhabitants are afflicted with poverty and eye disease.
The land-locked harbor is the military key to the West Indies. Morne and Vigie are striking fortifications, and historic hill-tops in the back-ground have been bathed in the blood of those climbing the Calvary of death. They were drenched in mist and rain when we docked. Coal and not carnage is the leading industry now. Instead of shambles, all is soot. Ships come for fuel, not to fight. As at Nagasaki, Jamaica, St. Thomas and Martinique, women do the coaling. In place of Kingley’s poem, “Men must work and women must weep,” it is, “women must work and men must sleep.”