Around the naval station clusters a poor village of perhaps fifteen hundred souls, the miserable remnant of the once splendid city of Port Royal, whose sudden fate I shall relate hereafter.
We rounded the point of the Palisades—which is marked by some unfortunate cocoanut trees, which, having vainly struggled with the sea breeze to maintain the elegant stateliness of their race, have long since given up the contest, and resigned themselves to being stunted and broken into the appearance of magnified splint brooms planted upside down—and found ourselves at last in our desired haven, Kingston harbor. It is a broad and sheltered basin, fully entitled, I understand, to the standard encomium of a harbor of the first rank, namely, that it will float the united navies of the world. Due provision has been made by three strong forts near the entrance that the navies aforesaid shall not enter until the time of such auspicious union. An intelligent correspondent of the Herald states his opinion that no ship and no number of ships could force an entrance under the converging fire of the forts, which bears upon the channel at a point where the least divergence would land a ship upon a dangerous shoal.
Kingston is on the inside of the harbor, six miles across from Port Royal. The city itself lies low, but as we approached it, just as the sun had set, the mountains which rise behind it, a few miles distant, to the height of three and five thousand feet, appeared to close around it in a sublime amphitheatre of massive verdure. High up on the side of the mountains we distinguished a white speck, which we were told was the military cantonment of Newcastle, situated 4,400 feet above the sea, chosen for the English soldiers on account of its salubrity. Formerly the annual mortality among European soldiers in the island was 130 in 1,000, but since the Government has been careful to quarter them as much as possible in these elevated sites, it has diminished to 34 in 1,000.
At last our vessel came to anchor at the wharf. We took a kind leave of the pleasant-tempered captain and crew, who had been shut up with us in the little craft during our seventeen days' tossing, and gave a farewell of especial warmth to the fatherly mate, whose rough exterior covered the warm heart of a seaman and the delicate feelings of a native gentleman.
When we landed, the short tropical twilight was fast fading into night, but light enough remained to show us into what a new world we had come. The gloomy, prisonlike warehouses, the long rows of verandas before the dwellings, the dusky throngs in the streets, the unintelligible patois that came to our ears on every side, occasional glimpses of strange vegetation, and, above all, the overpowering heat in December, all gave us to feel that we were at last in that tropical world, every aspect of which is so unlike our northern life.
After a hospitable reception from Mr. Whitehorne, the principal of the Nuco Institute, I went up to the rooms of the American Mission, and, ensconcing myself behind the mosquito curtains, proceeded to make critical observations upon the buzzings outside, to satisfy myself whether an insular range fed up these tormentors to the formidable vigor of their continental brethren. Concluding from their timid pipings that they were by no means an enemy so much to be dreaded—a conclusion which subsequent experience happily confirmed—I fell asleep.
CHAPTER II.
KINGSTON.
Having satisfied myself, by a sound night's rest, that the laws of my physical constitution had undergone no essential revolution by a change to the torrid zone, I began in the morning to look curiously around to note what the differences might be in the outer world. The quaint old lodging house itself first drew my attention, with its thick walls and heavy brick arches on the ground floor, built to guard against earthquakes, of which few years pass without several shocks, though none especially memorable have taken place since the dreadful one of 1692. Cracks in the walls here and there, however, show that it is not useless to make provision against them.
While I was seated at a most comfortable breakfast of bread and butter and the excellent fish which abound in Kingston harbor, flanked by huge oranges of enticing sweetness, a shrivelled old negro woman, who was on her knees giving the uncarpeted floor its morning application of wax, and rubbing it into a polish with a cocoanut shell, suddenly rose to her feet and kissed her hand to me with a grace worthy of a duchess. Somewhat startled at this unexpected salutation from the fairer, or the softer sex—I am in some doubt as to the proper adjective in this case—I gazed rather blankly at her without replying; but she dropped on her knees again and went on with her work, satisfied doubtless that she at least knew the proprieties. It is this submissive respectfulness of the blacks that makes it pleasant living among them, notwithstanding all their faults and vices. At home we are no better than our neighbors, but here, if we only have a white complexion, we belong to the undisputed aristocracy, and carry our credentials in our faces. It is that which has bewitched so many Northern people living at the South with slavery. But what is wanted is not a community of slaves, but only a community of blacks.