JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903

ISLAND PRODUCTS, SUGAR, BANANAS, COCOA-NUTS.

Frontispiece.

JAMAICA AS IT IS,
1903

BY
B. PULLEN-BURRY
AUTHOR OF “NOBLY WON,” “THE PURITAN’S CURSE,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1903

[All rights reserved.]

“There are two oriflammes; which shall we plant on the furthest islands?—the one that floats in heavenly fire, or that which hangs heavy with foul tissue of terrestrial gold?”

—Ruskin.

PREFACE.

In presenting this work to the British public it is proposed to bring before the notice of those unacquainted with the charms of tropical scenery some of the features which tend to make one of our oldest colonies, Jamaica, a delightful winter resort.

At present, it is visited mostly by Americans, because of its easy accessibility from New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Their unanimous verdict is that there is no lovelier spot under the sun than this gem of the Antilles set in the midst of the waters of the Caribbean Sea.

The historical interest is sufficient to attract the student, while the artistic sense is constantly charmed by the exquisite colouring of the tropical seas, the delicious green of the waving cane-fields, the lofty mountains with their ofttimes mist-wreathed summits.

The illustrations of island scenery are by Dr Witney of East Street, Kingston, Jamaica.

In compiling this book the writer is indebted to the courtesy of Mr Frank Cundall, who placed the old histories of the colony, which are kept in the Jamaica Institute, at her disposal; also to the Archbishop of the West Indies for the information His Grace was good enough to give her, concerning the Disestablishment of the Church of England in Jamaica.

B. PULLEN-BURRY.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Transcriber’s Note: Map is clickable for a larger version.

JAMAICA

Stanford’s Geographical Estabᵗ.

JAMAICA AS IT IS, 1903

CHAPTER I

MANDEVILLE—JAMAICA NOT NEAR THE VOLCANOES—BOOKS ON THE WEST INDIES

Mandeville, 1st January 1903.—“Our horizon is not limited by the things of time. The expectation we entertain of a future life tends to make us view things in their true proportion.”

These sentences were uttered last Sunday morning by the Assistant-Bishop of Jamaica at the Parish Church of the little inland town of Mandeville, of which he is also Rector.

The occasion which called forth his eloquent sermon upon the future life was the death of Dr Temple, the late Archbishop of Canterbury.

The choice and scholarly English spoken by the Bishop, together with the breadth of thought which characterised his views, riveted my attention. Looking round at the mixed congregation of whites and blacks, I noted that the preacher had equally gained the attention of the dusky worshippers.

I wondered how much they understood of what he said, and what they really looked for in the life to come, for the creed must be simple if these grown-up children are to learn and digest it. I am told that a place where golden crowns will be placed upon their heads, harps in their hands, if they behave properly, appeals to their imagination, as do white robes to their sense of what constitutes decorous clothing for so great an occasion. One can also imagine that the old-fashioned doctrine of hell-fire would not be without efficacy as a check upon the habits of the black when he inclines to revert to his former type.

Although the negro is naturally argumentative and litigious, it will be many years before his brain adapts itself to the study of the deep things of theological casuistry.

One could scarcely expect him to grapple with the subtleties of the thirty-nine Articles, or, as I have irreverently heard them called, “the forty stripes save one,” in his present evolutionary state of development.

My lot having fallen to me in a house overrun with Americans, the dignified language of that morning’s sermon, and the sonorous tones of the preacher, had come as balm to my afflicted ears.

If the virility, energy, and business capacities of our friends across the Atlantic are of world-wide fame, so, honesty compels me to say, are their bragging and their boasting. When one is the only Briton amongst a crowd of Yankees, the discordant nasal voices in which they discuss food and dollars from morning till night is apt to get on one’s nerves.

However, I did not come to Jamaica to write about Americans. I am glad they visit this island in search of health, and bring their much-prized dollars with them for the good of the Commonwealth.

Two months have scarcely passed since I left my native shores. Hosts of new experiences, fresh sensations and interests have filled up the intervening weeks.

I had intended to write a diary; instead, I have made some progress down that path which is said to be paved with good intentions. They say of the natives of these latitudes that “they were born tired, grew up tired, and have been tired ever since.” I cannot truthfully say that of myself, although the enervating climate tries the strongest when they feel tropical heat for the first time. Energies which were rampant in the temperate zone find the end of their tether very soon under Jamaican skies. Perhaps this is why the island is said to be beneficial to persons suffering from overdone nerves. They must rest in the middle of the day; the heat is too great for any real exertion. I have not had much time to take notes, but as I propose staying four weeks in this quiet spot, I intend to gather together the mental fragments at present lying scattered about in that organ, which, for want of better knowledge, I designate my brain-pan, and piece them together into something which may be of use to people contemplating a visit to Jamaica. And I cannot help thinking if it were more generally known in England how easy it is to take such a trip, and how much there is to reward one for the trouble, many persons would be only too desirous of becoming acquainted with this lovely island.

When I told friends that I intended to visit Jamaica this winter I was amused at the hazy notion prevailing, even amongst the well-educated, not only as to its geographical position, but regarding life in general as it is lived out here.

One lady said to me, “I call it flying in the face of Providence to go so near those horrid volcanoes.” I meekly explained that Jamaica lay several hundred miles away, but she went on to say, “Well! I read in the papers the other day that an American geologist says that the Pelée catastrophe is only the beginning of the end. Sooner or later all the West Indies will go.”

There is no doubt that this feeling exists in some circles in England, and I think the sooner accurate knowledge replaces panic-stricken ignorance the better will it be for the colonists here, and for English people obliged to escape from the rigours of a northern winter.

It is well to know what to see in this part of the world. Several persons have said to me, both in England and in Jamaica, that they could find no guide-book to tell them how to set about taking the trip to the West Indies. I felt this want myself, and enquired at Cook’s office if Herr Bædecker had found his way out here yet. He has not. Nor do I mean to forestall that conscientious and most useful Teuton. Still less do I intend to write a guide-book to Jamaica. All I propose doing is to enlighten intending visitors to these parts as to the best things to see. Very probably the greater part of them will belong to my sex. If they can have patience as I chat about persons, and tell my own experiences in my own way, they may learn things which may prove useful.

So far, I am charmed with the glorious vegetation of the tropics. There are places in this island more enchanting than any descriptions of fairyland ever penned.

Professor Haddon of Cambridge had told me before leaving England that the three most beautiful islands in the world were Java, Ceylon, and Jamaica. Having never been to the east, or nearer the tropics on land than Assouan in Egypt in the northern hemisphere, and Auckland in New Zealand in the southern, my first sight of the exuberance and prolific growth of tropical flora was like the opening of a new and attractive three-volume novel.

I am still at the first volume, and I shall only get to the end of the third when I have explored some of the Blue Mountain scenery, which, being admittedly the best thing in Jamaica, I am, in the spirit of the schoolboy who is promised cake after bread and butter, leaving to the last.

There is one small guide-book to the island which I have found out here, written by an American. It is entitled “Side Trips in Jamaica,” by Mary F. Bradford, Boston and New York, Sherwood Publishing Company, and is already in its third edition. The booklet certainly carries out the object for which it was compiled, namely, to supply the need of a practical guide for tourists. There are a series of trips given for those making only a short tour, and a brief account of the historical and physical features of the island, its agriculture and government. But what is even more useful, it contains reliable information regarding trains, hotels, boarding-houses, distances, and expenses in general.

The books most generally read by visitors to these islands are Kingsley’s “At Last,” and Froude’s “West Indies,” but people find them disappointing, and say the former greatly overrated the islands. Of course, unless one is a naturalist, or, as the Americans designate that calling, a “bug-hunter,” one can scarcely share the ecstasies of an expert in that branch of science. Again in these days of universal travel we cannot all visit at Government Houses, and have horses and carriages placed at our disposal. Here, one is more or less dependent upon one’s own efforts, for there have not been sufficient tourists to these islands to establish any system of coaches, and one must hire one’s own buggy and horse. Moreover, since the West Indies have fallen upon evil times, one hesitates before accepting proffered hospitality. Years ago things were not so; travellers were few and far between, the prosperity of the sugar-planter was proverbial, but the old order has changed owing to the decline of the sugar trade. The spirit may be, and is indeed willing, but the purse-strings are limited.

CHAPTER II

THE DIRECT LINE—THE LAZINESS OF THE NEGRO—FELLOW-PASSENGERS ON THE PORT ANTONIO

I have found during my short stay in Jamaica that it is not wise to pin too much faith to the gospel of the West Indies, according to J. A. Froude, nor is it discreet to quote it to the inhabitants thereof. His book was published in 1888, and the conclusions he arrived at upon colonial problems are called Froudisms. The moral is that there is another side to West Indian questions than that of government officialism, and that these two do not hunt in couples is apparent to the most casual observer.

I must, however, refrain from discussing the subject since I intend to devote this chapter to other topics. Having yielded to the conviction that it was my bounden duty to enlighten people at home as to the easy accessibility of Jamaica, as well as to inform them what they lose by not putting in six weeks at least of one winter in this charming island, for nowhere can one see tropical scenery better than in Jamaica, I pass on to tell them the best way to get here. This they can do most directly by the Elder, Dempster steamers, which run fortnightly between Avonmouth Dock, near Bristol, and Kingston, the chief town in Jamaica. Formerly the Royal Mail Service had the monopoly of the West Indian trade, but within the last two years Mr Chamberlain has arranged with the firm of Elder, Dempster to carry the mails directly to Jamaica, which is the largest of our island possessions in these waters. These ships are called the Fruit Boats, for they return with cargoes of bananas. I believe by contract they have to bring from Jamaica 25,000 bunches every fortnight. This is the reason of the recent cheapness of this particular fruit; one may often see them on costermongers’ barrows in London and elsewhere sold for a halfpenny each.

I left Avonmouth Dock 8th November 1902, in the Port Antonio, and a very comfortable ship I found her. Having paid a little extra, I was fortunate enough to secure a deck cabin to myself; this is quite worth the money, especially when one is approaching Jamaica. My first-class return ticket available for nine months cost £40, but there were good first-class cabins at £32. Very good stewardesses are carried on all these ships. Now the Royal Mail steamers go first to Barbadoes; at present, on account of an outbreak of small-pox last autumn, they go to Trinidad. Here they trans-ship passengers, cargo, and mails for the Leeward and Windward Islands into small inter-colonial steamers which ply between the islands, after which they proceed to Jamaica.

One avoids all this by taking the direct steamers, and, as I have said before, this island is more accessible than any I have so far visited. There are capital roads, good conveyances, and good saddle-horses, a central railway connecting the most important towns. In winter the climate is perfection, whereas nobody mentions Trinidad but to groan over their experience of the moist heat and the incessant tropical rain which makes travelling about that island too fatiguing for words, to say nothing of the risk of getting fever by not being able always to change your drenched clothing. Nor do any of the islands between Trinidad and the Danish island of St Thomas, which I have visited, possess facilities for tourist accommodation. In some of them roads practically do not exist beyond the outskirts of the little town where the mail steamers land passengers. If horses are wanted they have to be hired from the inhabitants. The hotels, such as they are, and still more, the food, one would hardly care to take the responsibility of recommending.

It was raining as I said good-bye to my friends on the Port Antonio, a steamer of about four thousand tons. In fact, for some three days previously a depression had been announced, and everybody prophesied we should come in for stormy weather. We could not have had worse. It was under lowering skies and heavy rain we steamed down the Bristol Channel. The next day, Sunday, scarcely a lady moved from her berth, and most of the men appeared only to show themselves, returning again to seek the privacy of their cabins. We rolled and pitched for seven consecutive days; it was not until we had been more than a week at sea that everybody sat down to meals. Fortunately I am a good sailor, but I never boast of my prowess in that respect, knowing, to my cost, that pride goes before a fall! Some years ago I went to New Zealand by the Cape of Good Hope, and returned by the Horn, thus circumnavigating the globe. I learnt to drink cocktails off Tierra del Fuego, came in for fever and fighting at Rio, and enlarged my stock of unparliamentary language at the Canaries, where we were not allowed to land, and, instead, had to endure the slow tortures of coaling. During the whole of that voyage I suffered the discomforts of sea-sickness exactly twenty minutes, the scene of my unhappy, though transitory illness being off Plymouth, as we steamed down channel. In a moment of unguarded weakness, some months after, I boasted of this to a desponding group of fellow-passengers. We were leaving Algiers, and the sea was as smooth as it could be, but it was in the days of my innocence. I know now what is to be expected of the Mediterranean, and by a cruel experience I also know what a gale in the Gulf of Lions means. On my arrival at Marseilles, I had broken all previous records, and for hours had endured the pains of the condemnable. My appearance was such that my fellow-passengers forbore to taunt me with my vain boasting of the day previous. How were the mighty fallen! “All the world wondered,” though they preserved a discreet and kindly silence.

Notwithstanding the rough weather we experienced in the “roaring forties,” I managed to obtain a good deal of amusement and some useful information during those days of discomfort. No less famous a writer than Plato says that to travel profitably one should be between fifty and sixty. I can scarcely lay claim to as many years, still, if the chief object in going abroad be, as Plato thinks, to converse with inspired men whom Providence scatters about the globe, and from whom alone wisdom can be learnt, I hope I have succeeded in gleaning some of that golden harvest which falls before the sickle of curious enquiry. We had several interesting people on board, and whiled away otherwise tedious hours by exchanging and comparing notes of lands we had or had not travelled in.

A retired colonel, whose chief aim in life was to return to Jamaica where he had seen twenty years of service, and grow pines for the English market, assured me quite gravely he had taken up the calling of a greengrocer. On further enquiry I learnt that he was enthusiastic about the future possibilities of fruit culture, and, said he, “when we get the steamers promised us by Elder, Dempster, which are to take only ten days between Kingston and Bristol, what a chance it will be for us pine-growers!” I met this gentleman five days after landing at Kingston, at a garden-party at King’s House. I thought he looked tired, and he explained that he had been working hard himself ever since he landed, planting his precious pines. I asked if he could not trust them to his gardener. “No,” said he; “the blacks are very good fellows, but if you tell them to put first a layer of sand and then manure, they are bound to do the opposite. It is easier to plant them yourself.” In saying this he just touched upon the sore spot in Jamaica, as I afterwards learnt. The labour question may be bad in England, but it is a very different thing in this island. Captain C——, of the Royal Mail Service, said to me one day, “We never overlook a fault amongst our black firemen; with a white man we can do so, for he will thank his stars the omission was not noticed, and will be careful not to repeat his fault, but the blacks have not sense enough for that, and we fine them one or two days’ pay, as the case may be.” An English lady, who had seen better days at home and has opened a boarding-house at Mandeville, said to me: “In England I used to say that I worked like a nigger. Now I say I work like an Englishwoman.” The laziness of the negro is proverbial in the West Indies, yet occasionally he makes a good servant. On another occasion I was told by an old gentleman that he had often watched hard-working coolies cultivating their little patch of garden. From a window looking out in an opposite direction he had seen lazy niggers asleep all day under trees. At night, when the coolies had departed, he had watched woolly heads creep along the low fence, and steal yams and anything they could lay their hands upon, which the industrious Hindoo had planted. At the same time, I am told on unquestionable authority that when sure of good treatment, the negroes on some estates are hard-working and reliable.

In most cases the West Indian black finds the labour of three days sufficient to keep him for a week, thus the property owners soon after the days of emancipation suffered greatly from the lack of labour. To supply this want the Government imported coolies from India, and it is interesting to compare the lithe, sinewy Hindoos with their intelligent dark eyes and black straight hair with the ofttimes lumbering gait of the woolly-haired, thick-lipped sons of Ham.

One of our most popular passengers was an American lady who had seen many lands, and last, but not least, had travelled from Japan viâ Vladivostock and the Russian Railway down to Pekin. She had been a guest at the headquarters of each of the allied forces, and it was interesting to hear her recount her adventures. She had, she said, met with unfailing courtesy from the Russian officials, and was loud in her praises of that nation. She declared that our Indian troops had been generally admitted to be the finest body of men in Pekin. “You English,” she said, “think a deal of your alliance with the Japs, but I guess that if it was to their advantage they would leave you in the lurch any day.” This enterprising lady had visited the royal palace, and had photographed her Imperial Majesty of China’s bed, together with other celestial furniture never before exposed to the impious gaze of foreign devils! Indeed she was a most entertaining person, and apparently had done everything there was to be done, as known to this generation.

One of our officers had been in Constantinople at the time of the Armenian atrocities. He had his tale to tell, and after one had heard from an eye-witness of the unspeakable cruelty of the Turk, but also of the utter unworthiness of the Armenian—who seems to have been as much of a mauvais sujet of the Porte as the Fenian was to us in years gone past—one felt glad that British blood had not been spilt in defence of so miserable a people as the Armenians. There were several persons who came out to Jamaica returning by the same steamer, and spending the four or five days in a hasty survey of the island. One couple were going on to Mexico and California. A Russian journalist, commissioned to send home articles upon Jamaica, and a majestic and venerable dame, known as the fair Delicia, were also fellow-passengers. The last-named lady is well known in fashionable circles of Kingston society. She is not far removed from that limit which is supposed to represent the average lease of life. Her amiability is not excessive, but her skittishness is phenomenal. She dances on all possible occasions, and waltzes generally with the youngest men present. She has a playful way of boasting that she cannot remember the persons with whom she has quarrelled, and reputations are at a discount when the fair Delicia engages in conversation.

CHAPTER III

THE KESWICK DELEGATES—MISS SARAH WALKER—HAYTIAN CANNIBALISM

There were two persons, however, whose arrival by the Port Antonio was looked for with feelings of great expectation by a certain class of people living in this island, and whose ministrations, I fancy, have since resulted in airing certain questions which perhaps required to see daylight. These were two delegates from the Keswick Conference. The latter, I believe, is a yearly gathering of Evangelicals at home, and is attended by nonconformists and a certain section of Low Churchmen. Possibly the preaching which one identifies with this particular school of thought, though it is not one which appeals to me, may be adapted to the black and coloured people who attend the numerous dissenting chapels which are to be found all over the West Indies. Indeed the negro is naturally pious, or, to put it in plain English, superstitious. I believe Professor Huxley has shown that this is invariably the case with savage or undeveloped races. Be it as it may, I am quite willing to concede that whatever agency has been at work to influence these people, who two or three centuries ago were offering up human sacrifices and practising the most hideous and revolting rites in the backwoods of West Africa, to say nothing of their semi-savagery when emancipated in 1834, has been a powerful influence for good. The negro is stupid, but his evolution is going on apace compared with the slow development of many races.

The court-house of Mandeville is visible from my window, and to-day the petty cases of a large surrounding district are being tried. I have enquired what are the offences which generally come before the magistrates on these occasions. I was told from trustworthy sources that murder is most rare amongst the blacks, the cases tried being mostly petty larceny, property, or commercial disputes. Local squabbles are often settled by a clergyman, or dissenting minister, before being brought into court.

I asked if there were many cases of matrimonial ill-treatment or quarrelling, and was met by the reply, “They don’t marry here.” Unfortunately this is largely a fact, and constitutes a great blemish on the character of the Jamaican black. When one hears, however, the question discussed, one can hardly blame a hard-working negro woman (and most of them are that) for refusing to marry if the practical result of marriage, as it affects her, is that sooner or later she will have to keep her husband as well as her children.

Persons who have had experience with these women tell me that the instinct of maternity is the strongest they have—to them childlessness is a reproach. When they do marry they are generally faithful, but the lot which a black woman dreads more than any other is that of being a deserted wife. “Me get tired of him, sah, and he get tired of me,” is a very natural excuse when the parson endeavours to legalise the bond. We know such things as husbands and wives getting tired of each other occur in our own land; the negress voices what many a white woman feels. In considering this subject—for, like the poor, it is ever with you in these parts—one must bear in mind that in slavery times the blacks were herded together like cattle on the estates. Enthusiastic reformers forget that it may take generations to eradicate their hereditary promiscuity of life.

Nobody who sees these women stride along, often walking twenty miles to the nearest market town, with baskets on their heads weighing occasionally upwards of a hundred pounds, could think them lazy, especially when one knows how poor are the weekly returns for their merchandise, which consists chiefly of home-grown yams, sweet potatoes, oranges and bananas.

An American told me he was going to Kingston by the electric tram. Beside him sat a well-dressed negro, wearing a silver watch and chain. A black woman, carrying an enormous basket heavily filled on her head, ran alongside the tram, which had slowed down. The two were talking, the man from the tram, she from the road.

“Is that your wife?” he asked the man in surprise.

“Yes, sah! dat my wife, sah,” replied he.

“You lazy fellow, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!” exclaimed the American indignantly. “Why don’t you let your wife ride and you walk?” he further blurted out.

“Please, sah, the women, sah, ’bout here be so kind, sah!” apologetically explained the negro in an injured voice.

This episode sufficiently illustrates the conditions of the division of labour amongst a large proportion of the emancipated Jamaican population. The Moravians have large settlements in the island as well as other dissenting bodies; but where all work together for the spiritual good of the race whom Providence has permitted to flourish and multiply in these islands it would be a work of supererogation for me to criticise their methods.

Speaking from the point of view of a fellow-passenger, one of the delegates sent out by the Keswick Convention was an interesting personality. His writings and undenominational services in South London are, I am told, well-known in nonconformist circles.

He is a tall, white-haired, venerable-looking man, and when I first caught sight of his face at Avonmouth Dock, I was forcibly reminded of a picture of the Pastor Oberlin who figured in one of my favourite story-books, when, as children, we had certain literature set apart for Sundays, other for week-days. I had several conversations with him, and I thought him to be both liberal-minded and sympathetic. He seemed to hold that the most important thing in life was not so much what one believed as what one did.

It was interesting to hear this evangelistic missioner tell how he had been brought up in the straightest and strictest school of thought, and how he had himself preached and held the most rigid doctrines as to who were to be saved and who were to be eternally damned. But travel, he said, had opened his eyes, and he now saw things from a far wider standpoint. It appears he had held many conversations with advanced and cultivated Hindoos, and he could not bring himself to believe that such beautiful souls and such refined intelligences could be doomed for ever, because they could not accept gospel truths. Personally, I have never been troubled by the teachings of such a harsh creed, but I can imagine the trial it must have been to a man of firm convictions to sever himself for ever from life-long beliefs, which, no doubt, he had preached and expounded time after time. He told me that he was going to hold meetings in different parts of Jamaica for a month. I have since read in the island papers that his sermons have been of the revivalistic order, and that the meetings have been well attended. His colleague, a clergyman of the Church of England, was by no means a persona grata on board ship. His religious views belonged to that exclusive and narrow school of thought in the Church of England, which happily does not find many adherents nowadays. In an extract from a sermon which he preached at Kingston, some weeks after his arrival, I read that he lamented how few people there were who would be saved! In these days of latitudinarianism and toleration there is no reason why peculiarly constituted temperaments should not cling to obsolete and effete doctrines if they like them, but it seems to me, whatever our creed may be, and however much we wish to benefit our fellows, without exercising tact, we shall do more harm than good.

This delegate from Keswick evidently thought his fellow-passengers were in a bad way, for he offered uninviting-looking religious literature to those who conversed with him; but an amusing incident in which he was chief actor quite enlivened the tediousness of the voyage. The charming American lady, of whom I have already spoken, was invited into the smoking-room one stormy afternoon by two gentlemen in order to tell their fortunes by means of palmistry. Probably this zealous clergyman had already mentally decided that she was a brand to be snatched from the burning. Although a non-smoker he confronted her, and with Hibernian eloquence harangued her as to the impropriety of her conduct in entering those precincts sacred to the cult of tobacco. It would perhaps be wiser to draw a veil over the sequel to his somewhat precipitate and uncalled-for interference. Needless to say, his own sex resented it in words which I decline to insert in these pages. At the same time one feels that it would be beneficial and a distinct gain to society at large if some of the well-meaning but indiscreet upholders of exclusive cults would consider the feelings of others and behave to those whose path crosses their own with, at least, that generous toleration and spontaneous kind-heartedness which characterises well-bred men and women of the world. The influence of a high-minded, genial Englishman who is too proud to stoop to meanness of any description, but who does not shun his fellows because their moral status is not up to his own level, is far greater than that of the narrow-minded but “superior” religionist who looks down upon a sinful generation from the pedestal of an assured salvation. It may be that the latter stands ready to reach out a hand to help up his less favoured brethren, that is, from his own standpoint, but often the out-stretched hand is a rough one, the face bending down towards the sinner is uninviting in its cold, harsh expression, and the soul that might have been helped plunges back into the strife of the waters of worldliness preferring them to a joyless, uncongenial sanctity.

These gentlemen sent out by the Keswick Convention have finished their mission, and, in justice to both, I have pleasure in saying that it is evident their meetings have been much appreciated. This very morning I held a long conversation with a lady of mahogany complexion, who spoke rapturously of their preaching in this place. She walked by my side quite half a mile during my matutinal walk before breakfast. Miss Sarah Walker—that was her name—informed me besides that she was unmarried, and lived with an aunt not very distant from Mandeville. I asked what her age might be.

“Thirty-one, mem,” she replied.

“How do you get your living?” I asked, smiling at the pride she evidently felt at being engaged in conversation with a white lady, evidenced by the consciousness of superiority she assumed over her black sisters, who were not so honoured, and who passed on either side of us, listening politely to our conversation.

“I sit in de market, mem, and sell cakes.”

“I think you all seem very well off round here,” I ventured.

“Oh no, mem; there are some very poor people round ’bout,” she assured me.

“But they all have coffee or oranges to sell?” I queried.

“Yes, mem; but all de summer dey get so little for der coffee, only trepence or twopence a pound, and only one and trepence for a large barrel of oranges, bery little indeed.” I had already learnt that agents from the United Fruit Company buy up all the produce of the smaller cultivators in this district.

“They are so poor, mem, dey can’t pay de taxes,” she proceeded to inform me.

“What happens then?” I enquired.

“Den dey goes to prison, mem, or sometimes get time given dem to make up what dey can’t pay.”

“I suppose you have to pay rent too,” I suggested.

“No, mem; we live in our own house and only pay taxes, twelve shillings and twopence ebbery year, six and a penny ebbery six munts; we go up and pay it at de Court House.”

I elicited from her that she and her family had always lived in Jamaica, that once or twice she had been to Kingston, but what amused me most was her conversation upon dress.

“Bery good stuff, mem,” said she, pointing to the gown which scarcely covered her knees. “I gave one and trepence a yard, and it cost four shillins for making. Last year it was Sunday frock, but when it wast it swinked up.”

“I see! You like a smart frock for Sundays?” I volunteered, having learnt that the first day of the week is special frock competition day amongst the negresses. This woman was very superior to some I met in my morning walks, who generally said, “Good morning, missus.” Probably she had at one time been a domestic servant and had learnt to say “mem” for “ma’am.”

“Oh yes, mem, dat’s our pride; we all dress ’spectable on Sunday to go to church. Work ebbery day, but live for Sunday.” She looked radiant at the mere thought of it.

On my return I was told that the desire to cut a fine figure every Sabbath day is the key to the labour question in Jamaica.

The negroes can live on yams, which grow in their gardens and require no trouble to cultivate, but they must work to buy the dresses good enough to wear on Sunday. On week-days they go barefoot. On Sunday they screw themselves into tight-fitting garments and into new, squeaking boots, which, if the way be long, they take off, and put on just before going into church or chapel. To be dressed smartly and go to church once a week is the highest aim of the black’s life.

The fact that any white woman can ride or walk in any part of the island, either by day or by night, in perfect safety, is in itself testimony of the highest worth to the civilising agencies at work, let them be Moravian, Wesleyan, Roman or Anglican. The black under British rule is not an unworthy subject of the Empire; but left to himself, and to the workings of his own sweet will, he might perhaps revert to a state of savagery. One has only to consider the condition of the island of Hayti to see the probability of such a contingency.

I had read Chevalier St John’s book on “The Black Republic,” in which he mentions the cannibalistic habits of these islanders, before I left home. On two separate occasions I have since been told that the killing and eating of small children is quite a common thing, although still denied by better-class Haytians. Each of my informers were officers of ships bound for Haytian ports. There they had seen human flesh exposed for sale in the public markets. The buyers of this horrible commodity significantly ask for “salt pork.” One man told me he had been taken by a Haytian of the better class to a spot at night, within forty yards of a grove, where children were being sacrificed according to the Voodhoo rites, which their ancestors practised centuries ago in the forest fastnesses of Western Africa. It was at the risk of his life. He had been unable to see the horrid rites which take place before the child was actually tomahawked, but he heard its shrieks when tortured. Great mystery surrounds the Voodhoo worship, and never, so far, has an European been known to be present at the ceremonies which take place before a human sacrifice. My informer told me that instead of dreading this fate for their children, the mothers were proud that their particular offspring should be chosen for the sacrifice.

In connection with the Haytian Voodhoo worship, I was lent an old French manuscript by an American. It had been written about one hundred and fifty years ago, and professed to be the confessions under compulsion of a Haytian negress as to the practice of the most degrading and loathsome black magic which then prevailed in the island. Whether this continues at present I am unable to say, but they still have the custom of smearing the blood of freshly-killed infants over the bodies of childless women to make them bear children. Every savage race, doubtless, at one particular stage of its development dabbled in mystic and bloody rites, just as every land, where prehistoric traces of man’s existence have been found, has had its Stone Age, its kitchen-middens, etc. There is a wonderful similarity in the doings in their infancy of the world’s different races, just in the same way as all children, black, brown, and white, learn to walk before they run; but to my mind it is an interesting study to see what two hundred years more or less of that which we call civilisation has produced upon a race very low down upon the evolutionary ladder. Possibly the Tierra del Fuegans and the Mincopies of the Andamans are upon the lowest rung, but I do not think an anthropologist would put the negroid races much higher up.

CHAPTER IV

THE BLACK UNDER BRITISH RULE—THE GOVERNOR OF JAMAICA AND SUITE

Without unduly congratulating ourselves as first-class colonists, I think we can fairly say that the black is at his best under British rule. He has learnt industrial arts. The best of his race are mechanics, policemen, soldiers, sailors, shopkeepers, and domestic servants. They may not be brilliant, but in this hot climate, where it is an impossibility for the European to do field labour, they serve their purpose. In Jamaica the trains and the electric trams in and round Kingston are driven by natives, your clothes are washed by negresses, and very well done too; occasionally you suffer from their excessive professional zeal, when they send home your stockings stiff with starch. The waiters, chambermaids, domestic servants, farm labourers, are all black. In the hotels it is noticeable how well they speak English.

The harmless, courteous country folk one meets in one’s drives over the island are, from all accounts, very different to their dusky brethren in the United States of America, where life is none too safe, and lynch law apparently a necessary evil.

GROUP OF NATIVES.

[To face p. 26.]

So far as I can see, their worst fault is laziness. It is a most irritating fault to the man who wants labour; but if the pay of three days’ work suffices to keep a negro in what he considers comfort, it is hard to see that he should be compelled to work six days out of seven to suit his employer’s crops. And if his or her highest ambition is to cut a fine figure on Sunday, I should be inclined, whilst inculcating thrift, to encourage that amiable weakness to the uttermost. One reads sometimes of the poor negro, but in a country like Jamaica, where anything once planted in the soil grows in the most prolific manner, and where such nourishing food as yams and sweet potatoes form the chief nutriment of the black, to say nothing of the beautiful climate necessitating only the very lightest of clothing, real poverty, such as we are unfortunately acquainted with in England, does not exist.

Probably in a few years’ time, the problem of an enormous black population will confront the government of these islands. We know that in the United States such is the case. Barbadoes, too, has an immense population. If one thinks seriously of it, what else can be expected of a people severed from their natural state, and placed in the happiest of circumstances, where the increase of population has no such checks operating upon it, as it must have had in the wild and pristine condition of savage life amongst African forests, where a thousand petty warfares thinned the ranks of the warriors, and where cannibalism and disease would probably account for quite half the yearly tribal babies. Now, Jamaica’s best crop is picaninnies. Nor are there epidemics severe enough, or earthquakes bad enough, to carry off the superfluous nigger babies.

A story which had its comical side was told me by a captain of the R.M.S. He knew a negro in Kingston who had long courted the lady of his affections. She had responded, but not to the degree demanded of her by her impassioned lover. In the captain’s presence he begged her on his knees to marry him, and “make an honest man” of him.

Strangers to the West Indies are often surprised at the use of slang and funny expressions by the natives. On landing at Trinidad, we wished to be driven up to the Queen’s Park Hotel for lunch. There were three of us, a lady and gentleman and myself. To our enquiry as to how much our driver would charge for taking us there, the ready answer came, “a bob each.” We preserved serious faces, the driver evidently being unconscious of having said anything out of the ordinary, and paid our shillings.

I was driving one day in Kingston, when my coachman turned a sharp corner at a furious rate. In so doing, a woman was nearly run over. “Out of de way, my lub, for God’s sake!” exclaimed he, not attempting to slacken his horse’s pace.

There were other passengers whose eccentricities afforded the passengers of the Port Antonio some amusement and much subject-matter for conversation. We had the Governor of Jamaica and, according to the London newspapers, “suite” on board. In what the “suite” consisted, I am still at a loss to divine. They were the last to come on board at Avonmouth Dock, and as the rest of us who had come by an earlier train watched the small steamer, which brought them alongside the Port Antonio, plunging and rolling in the heavy seas which even then were racing up the Bristol Channel, we congratulated ourselves that we had walked straight on to the vessel from the quay an hour before. When their Excellencies “and suite” came on board, the ship was standing out some distance from the shore. I counted five adults, three babies, and three women-servants. The party consisted of Sir Augustus and Lady Hemming, their secretary, a married daughter with her husband, a coffee planter in Jamaica, three small children belonging to the latter, two nurses and a maid.

The present Governor of Jamaica was formerly a clerk in the office of the Secretary of State for the Colonies. In 1884 he was sent as a delegate to the West African Conference at Berlin, and later, on special service to Paris in 1890, in connection with the delimitation of French and English possessions on the west coast of Africa. He became the Governor of British Guiana, 1896, and succeeded Sir Henry Norman as Governor of Jamaica in 1898. The term of office is for five years, and this is consequently his last year in Jamaica, unless a special application is made for an extension; but one can scarcely imagine that that will be the case with Sir Augustus and Lady Hemming. Not but what it is conceded on all hands that His Excellency is a most amiable man; if not brilliant, at least he has shown conspicuous talent in the fiscal department. Owing to his clever financial administration, the island budget for the first time this year shows a surplus, although the best that can be said of the condition of Jamaica is that which Mr Chamberlain declared in the House of Commons, to the effect that up to the present the local government had been able to do little more than bring about an equipoise between revenue and expenditure.

The social relations between the chief people in the island and the reigning lady at the gubernatorial residence did not strike me as being particularly happy or satisfactory. One felt sorry that striving colonists such as the Jamaicans should lack that sympathy and consideration which, whether they be white or coloured, they certainly have a right to expect from the wives of those officials who govern them in the King’s name, and who are paid very handsomely out of the island revenues for doing so.

An elderly lady who was present at a ball given last month at King’s House, which is situated in lovely grounds about three miles out of Kingston, remarked to me that it was unlike entertainments of the kind given in times past, in that it lacked “grace, dignity, and refinement.” I was sorry to miss this ball, but, being absent amongst the Windward Islands at the time it took place, I returned to find my invitation awaiting me at my hotel.

CHAPTER V

LAND SWALLOWS—TURKS ISLANDS—AN EARTHQUAKE SHOCK—CONSTANT SPRING HOTEL

We had delightful weather some days before our arrival at Kingston; the sunsets were magnificent, the beautiful colouring of the after-glow I shall never forget. I remember two nights before the end of our journey going to the forecastle of the ship to watch the fantastic shapes of the clouds on the southern horizon, intersected as the dark masses were with the most wonderful opalesque lines of pale green, blue, and yellow, the latter shading into deepest orange. In front of us was flying a little land swallow, heralding the approach of land. As Christopher Columbus neared the scene of his wonderful discoveries, he speaks of the little winged messenger of hope which, flying on ahead of his ship, warned his brave sailors of the approach of terra firma.

It was no less a world-explorer than the above who discovered Jamaica the 3rd of May, 1494. It was during his second voyage to the New World, and the Spaniards kept it till 1655, when it was surrendered to an English force. Oliver Cromwell, whose policy was that of to have and to hold, sent out a Commissioner to conduct the Civil Government, also 1000 troops. These were followed shortly after by 1500 settlers from Nevis, Bermuda, New England, and Barbadoes, and 1000 Irishmen, with as many young women. Ten years later the foundation of Jamaica’s wealth as a sugar-growing country was laid by the immigration into it of over 1000 inhabitants of Surinam, which had been given to the Dutch in exchange for New York, then known as New Amsterdam; these people industriously engaged in planting sugar in the western parts of the island where the country is flat. For many years nothing more momentous than occasional depredations of a piratical nature, or attacks from French cruisers, occurred to disturb the progress of this industry.

Later the history of the island consists of constant quarrelling, the Civil Government being repeatedly repealed, then restored. Finally, in 1884, a new constitution was given to Jamaica. The present Government consists of the Governor, who is President of the Legislative Assembly, the Senior Military Officer, the Colonial Secretary, the Attorney-General, and the Director of Public Works. In addition to these are five members appointed by the Crown, and nine elected by tax-payers of upwards of twenty shillings. There are fourteen electoral districts. Jamaica—which retains the old Indian name Xaymaca, “a land abounding in springs”—is divided into three political divisions called counties. They are known as Middlesex, Surrey, and Cornwall respectively. These are sub-divided into fourteen parishes, the affairs of each being managed by a Parochial Board.

The Jamaican legislation has the power to pass laws applying to the Turks and Caicos Islands; the Supreme Court of Jurisdiction extending to these islands in matrimonial and divorce cases.

It was at Turks Islands that we first saw land on approaching the West Indies. They are a group lying to the south-east of the Bahamas, and were so called from a peculiar kind of cactus which grows there, somewhat resembling a Turkish fez. The largest of them is 7 miles long, and 1½ miles broad. Salt is exported from them, about 1,500,000 bushels bring annually shipped to the United States. It was midnight when we stopped and made our presence known to the Postal and Telegraph Office on shore by signalling. I looked out of my port-hole and saw a long stretch of coast, slightly hilly, but it was too indistinct to see much. The distance we were from the shore I presumed to be not more than a mile. Presently I saw a small sailing boat come close to the big steamer, and in the dim light receive an emaciated-looking mail-bag, which we had surveyed previously, when brought up to be in readiness to hand over to the postal authorities. A precocious small boy, who was permitted to feel the sealed-up bag, declared there was only one letter inside.

A stay of twenty minutes sufficed to exchange mails and to receive the latest British telegrams. Everybody was then keen to know how the Education Bill was progressing at home.

The whole of the succeeding day we coasted along the northern shores of Hayti. Universal wonder was expressed that so exquisite a spot was permitted by Providence to become that which Ruskin said of Naples, “a paradise inhabited by devils.” As a nation we are suffering for the sins committed by our forefathers in bringing the “devils” away from their primeval forests. Yesterday an American lady said to me anent the negro, “He ought never to have been brought to these islands,” and went on to declare that we should not only pray to be delivered from evil, but quite as much from the consequences of other people’s evil, which generally fall upon the innocent more than the guilty, so I think we may profitably take thought for the morrow when we contemplate any particular course of action.

Many philanthropically-disposed persons consider that the blacks were better off under kind and considerate masters, before the days of emancipation, than in these days when each nigger does exactly as he pleases. The present situation, to my mind, seems precisely the same as that of a number of unruly schoolboys suddenly let loose from proper control and discipline.

It was the morning of Saturday, 22nd November, when we came in sight of Jamaica—but before the early hour at which everyone appeared dressed, so as not to lose the first sight of the beautiful mountainous outline—an event of some importance occurred. Bells were ringing long before daylight, and a great commotion was going on below amongst the main-deck cabins; I put on my dressing-gown, and, finding a stewardess with her arms full of soaked bedclothes, asked what on earth was the matter. Three of the cabins on the port side had been completely swamped, she told me. Since everybody had packed to be in readiness to land, it was more than awkward to have the clothes they were going to put on that morning simply saturated. One lady, whose berth lay immediately under the open port, said she had been rudely awakened by a volume of water streaming over her. Before she had recovered her breath another equally huge sea poured into the cabin; she had never been more alarmed in her life. The sea was so perfectly smooth, I could not understand it. The time was between the hours of three and four, and, so far as we knew, we were off Port Morant. However, an hour or so after, our wonder was set at rest, for the pilot who came on board to take us up Kingston Harbour advertised the fact that an earthquake shock had been felt that morning at Port Royal, and that there had not been so severe a one for thirty years. This, thought I, was a nice introduction to the volcanic sphere of action.

There is a narrow strip of land about 7 miles in length enclosing the harbour of Kingston to the southward, and Port Royal is situated at the western extremity of it. The town was, before the great earthquake of 1692, says Leslie in his Jamaican “History,” the finest town in the West Indies, and at that time the richest spot in the universe. It figured in the early colonial history of this island as the emporium of the ill-gotten riches of those raiders of the Spanish Main, the buccaneers, who squandered their gains in riotous living and gambling. The wealth poured into Port Royal by these pirates was enormous. They intercepted all vessels traversing those seas. Every Spanish ship was a rich prize. If outward bound to the Indies they were laden with the choicest products and manufactures of the home country, the glass of St Ildefonso, silks and serges from Valencia, porcelain of Alcora, cordage from Carthagena, Castille soap, Toledo cutlery, the fine wool of Spain’s merino sheep, with the wine and oil and almonds and raisins produced by Spain in common with Italy and the Greek islands. If they were returning home to Europe the Spanish galleons were loaded with ingots of gold and silver. The disposal of these prizes, which were numerous, made a golden harvest for the merchant; while the riot and revelry of the sailors, recklessly spending their share of the plunder, enriched the retailers; and the traffic of this far-famed mart laid the foundation of dowries for duchesses and endowments for earldoms. The Rector of Port Royal, at the time of the great earthquake, thus describes the awful occurrence: “Whole streets with their inhabitants were swallowed up by the opening of the earth, which, when shut upon them, squeezed the people to death, and in that manner several were left with their heads above ground, and others covered with dust and earth by the people who remained in the place. It was a sad sight to see the harbour covered with dead bodies of people of all conditions floating up and down without burial, for the burying-place was destroyed by the earthquake, which dashed to pieces tombs, and the sea washed the carcases of those who had been buried out of their graves.” The ruins of the old city are still to be seen in clear weather under the surface of the water, and divers occasionally find relics in their explorations. Attempts to rebuild the place were frustrated first by a great fire in 1703, and subsequently by a great storm in 1722, which swept many of the buildings into the sea, destroying much shipping and many lives. On that day fifty vessels were in the harbour: out of that number four men-of-war and two merchantmen alone succeeded in getting away.

At the present day Port Royal holds an important position as a naval station. It contains the official residence of the Commodore and Staff of H.M. ships serving on the North American and West Indian station; the dockyard is fully equipped with machinery and steam-engines to repair the warships and refit them after injuries sustained. There is also a fine naval hospital, which can be made to accommodate two hundred patients if required. The defences of Port Royal have latterly been much improved, new batteries having been added to the fortifications.

It was after the fire of 1703 that Kingston, the present capital of Jamaica, began to grow in importance, a law being passed declaring that henceforth Kingston was to be the chief seat of trade and head port of entry; but the place was unpopular, and Spanish Town, built originally by the Spaniards and the seat of government, remained practically the chief town in the island for many years.

There could be nothing more beautiful than the entry into Kingston Harbour as I saw it. The Blue Mountains in the background were free from the cloudy embrace which so often veils the peaks, a lower range of hills clad with verdant green up to their summits lay between us and them. On our right was the promontory of Port Royal, with its red tiled roofs, waving palms, green foliage and yellow sands. In front, like a watch-dog, lay stretched upon the shining waters the Urgent, the guardship of the naval station. To our left the coast presented a semi-circular sweep, and over the green of the mangrove swamps, on which trees oysters grow, one saw in the distance the churches and warehouses of Kingston. Shortly after passing the entrance of the harbour, which is but a mile in width, a gun was fired to announce the arrival of the Direct Mail from England. Everyone was attentively admiring the beautifully situated harbour as we slowly steamed up to the company’s wharf. J. T. Froude says: “The associations of the place no doubt added to the impression. Before the first hut was run up in Kingston, Port Royal was the rendezvous of all English ships which for spoil or commerce frequented the West Indian seas. Here the buccaneers sold their plunder and squandered their gains. Here in the later century of legitimate wars whole fleets were gathered to take in stores, or refit when shattered by engagements. Here Nelson had been, and Collingwood and Jervis, and all our naval heroes. Here prizes were brought in for adjudication, and pirates to be tried and hanged. In this spot more than in any other beyond Great Britain herself, the energy of the Empire was once throbbing.”

Such was the past, and if the everlasting hills had looked down upon scenes of glorious days in the annals of our monarchy, as well as upon the inglorious ones of privateering, of cruelty, of rapine and of avarice, who could tell what were the possibilities of the future? Whilst we had journeyed out from England the three years of Columbian internecine warfare had drawn to a conclusion. Now there is a chance—indeed certainty, since the Americans have taken it in hand—that the Panama Canal may become a reality in years to come, instead of the failure “of the greatest undertaking of our age.” When the Atlantic is united with the Pacific who can tell what future greatness lies before Kingston, being, as she is, the best harbour in the West Indies, and from her geographical situation the natural intermediate port for coaling. When this great watery highway is established, what new markets will be opened to West Indian industries!

Millions’ worth of rusty machinery, never yet unpacked, lies buried in the mud of Darien, sent out when money was more plentiful than brains, and when swindling ranked with the fine arts. Thousands of lives have been lost in the swamps and jungles of the tropics over the so-far futile project of M. de Lesseps. No worse spot in the world could be found where nature resists the invasion of science and the enterprise of the European. In the hot tropical jungle, deadly snakes, alligators, mosquitoes and centipedes abound.

The unfortunate blacks, who rushed to Darien as to an expectant gold-field, attracted thither by the dollars their fellows were earning, were stricken down with yellow fever, dysentery, and typhus in countless numbers.

For all this, it has rightly been believed by many that some day, sooner or later, the commercial progress of the world will demand the execution of this apparently impossible scheme. Now we confidently look to America to see it successfully completed.

To return to the world of actualities, I gazed interestedly down from the decks of the Port Antonio to the quay where we were to land. The mahogany-coloured occupants of numerous small boats shouted up to us, gesticulating and laughing as they showed their beautiful white teeth. Meanwhile, the great ship slowly approached her moorings. Then a detachment of a West Indian regiment, marching to the sound of a band, approached, and took up a position exactly in front of us.

Directly the gangway was accessible a troop of officials thronged up on deck to pay their respects to the Governor. The band struck up a popular air, the soldiers were inspected, and Sir Augustus Hemming with his friends passed out of sight. People came streaming on board to greet their home-returning relatives and friends, whilst every religious community seemed to be represented in the motley groups of black-coated men who had come to receive the delegates from Keswick.

“They are going to have a high old time,” irreverently remarked a stray black sheep amongst my fellow-passengers, speaking collectively of the black-garbed ecclesiastics. I found some friends waiting for me, who very kindly steered me and my belongings through the custom-house, which is quite close to the landing-stage, and proved to be no ordeal whatever, since I had no merchandise to account for. My trunks were given into the care of a porter from Constant Spring Hotel, and I had no farther trouble with them. My friends got a “bus,” as the buggies are called in Kingston, and we drove a very short distance, when I entered the electric tram which every twenty minutes runs between the town and the hotel, six miles away.

For the benefit of intending visitors to Jamaica I may here mention that Messrs Elder, Dempster & Co., who own the Direct Mail Service by which I travelled, and which some two years ago was called into existence by Mr Chamberlain in his efforts to help the West Indies, are also the proprietors of the two best hotels Jamaica possesses: Myrtle Bank in the town of Kingston, and Constant Spring, 6 miles off in the country.

My intention was to go first of all to the latter, especially as I heard how hot Kingston is in the daytime. I learnt, too, that a voucher from Constant Spring Hotel enabled you to take what meal you chose at their other hotel in town and vice versa. I had several purchases to make, so that if I were to be busy shopping in the heat of the day, so much the more advantageous would it be to ensure cool nights.

I cannot say that I admire Kingston; in fact I consider all West Indian towns best at a distance. The electric trams are a great boon, and an eminently satisfactory mode of transit. The American lady of smoking-room fame joined me en route for the hotel. She could not refrain, when she saw the sugar-cane as we passed the market, from buying some. She said it reminded her of her home in California, and, much to the amusement of the blacks opposite, she brought out a knife and insisted on teaching me how to eat cane. This was my first acquaintance with Jamaican blacks; but I still turn round to admire the country women striding along with Heaven only knows what in those heaped-up baskets on their heads, to which they seem to give not a thought. For the most part, they wear clean print gowns, short, fastened up below the waist behind, so as not to impede their gait—I have since read that no women in the world walk better or can poise such weights on their heads as they can. Very charming country houses with nice gardens line the road, when once one is out of the town right away to Constant Spring. We paid fourpence for our ride, and at the end of it, walked up a path sheltered with trellised arches, and covered with alamander, bougainvillia, scarlet hibiscus, with nicely laid-out gardens on each side of us, arriving in due course at the central entrance of the hotel. Having secured rooms adjoining, with verandahs looking out on to the garden, and beyond that the golf links, which we learnt, together with a new wing, were to be opened in a few days, we repaired to the spacious dining-room, which takes the whole breadth of the building, as indeed do all the sitting-rooms. Thus, with balconies on either side, one can always find a cool spot. My friend and I chose a table and ordered lunch. The fair Delicia swept ponderously past us.

“Oh! won’t you come and lunch with us?” asked my companion in the kindest manner.

“Thank you,” returned that important spinster in acrid accents; “I have my own table prepared for me,” and she followed the manager to another part of the room, where henceforth she was always to be seen alone in her grandeur.

“My goodness!” exclaimed the charming American, when her pomposity had betaken herself to a safe distance, “if I’d guessed she was that crabby I’d have saved my breath. She has put on empty-headed side since she struck this hotel!”

Several of our fellow-passengers found their way up to Constant Spring during the course of the afternoon. The little journalist made tracks for the fair Delicia.

We found some nice people staying at the hotel, amongst them the inevitable British matron, who was shocked at so many things that I wondered how it was she could stay in a land where so much human anatomy is in evidence, as it certainly is in this island.

For people who want a warm climate to winter in, pleasant society, and a comfortable hotel in which to stay, I consider Constant Spring Hotel a very charming resort. The building is large, and extends over a good deal of ground. You enter a large central hall, where small tables used for afternoon tea are scattered about, with most comfortable chairs and lounges. The staircases on either side lead to a gallery above, from which you look down upon the scene below. From this hall, on your right, you pass through the large drawing-room to the dining-room; on your left, you enter into the reading-room, which is nicely fitted up with half-a-dozen writing tables, whilst a table in the centre is covered with magazines and papers; this room is carpeted throughout, so that persons walking through do not disturb you when reading or writing. Passing through this room you come to the ping-pong and billiard-rooms. Another great advantage is that there is a first-rate swimming bath belonging to the hotel, and which is open to both ladies and gentlemen at certain hours. The expenses of a winter residence in this hotel would not be greater than at any similar one in the south of France, about fifteen shillings a day; but for a permanent stay, or visit of some weeks, advantageous terms could be made. I should advise people writing from England and engaging rooms to be careful to ask for them on the north side, which is the cool side, looking out towards the Blue Mountains. Visitors to Jamaica, coming out with introductions to a few residents, would soon find themselves in very pleasant society at Kingston, and during the winter months there are a good many garden-parties, dinners, and dances, both at the hotels and in the neighbourhood.

Besides the naval station at Port Royal there is a garrison at Newcastle which is situated some 4000 feet above sea-level; it appears that formerly our soldiers were quartered in mangrove swamps: the Government has of late years gone to the opposite extremes. Now their habitation is amongst the clouds. There is no doubt about the healthy situation of this eyrie in the mountains; but one pities the poor fellows condemned to an exile of two or three years in this isolated spot. The temperature in this elevated region never rises beyond 70° and never drops below 60°. The officers, although they can descend occasionally from the misty heights, must be bored beyond description. There is absolutely nothing to hunt, nothing to shoot; the mongoose has eaten up every partridge, as it has exterminated snakes, and driven the remaining rats into dwelling-houses.

CHAPTER VI

SUITABLE CLOTHING—PEDESTRIANS IN JAMAICA—SELF-HELP SOCIETY

Before I launch out into ecstasies over the tropical scenery, and the luxuriant multiplicity of the flora of this island, I intend to rid my memory of certain precautionary information with which I consider, at this juncture, it will be well to acquaint any reader who may be meditating a visit to this part of the world.

In the matter of dress I advise those who wish to see the island scenery to leave their heavy luggage at either of the hotels they choose to stay at when first landing. Since the interior parts of the island are in many places only accessible either on horseback, as to houses high up in the Blue Mountains, or as Mandeville, by long drives in buggies from the railway stations, it is advisable to carry only a limited amount of what one absolutely requires in bags, portmanteaus, or bundles tightly strapped in waterproof cases. I cannot do better than warn persons of the tropical rains which are so frequent in the West Indian islands. Do not time your visit either in May or October, for these are the rainy months, but you are always liable to sudden outpourings at other times of the year and in the finest weather. These rains drench you to the skin often before you can find shelter, and the danger of catching fever is great if you do not at once change your wet clothing. Personally, I consider the waterproof cloak which Messrs Elvery in Conduit Street, W., supply for tropical countries about the most suitable that I have seen. For everyday wear, washing skirts and blouses, the latter without lining, are by far the best; a light, fine serge dress will be useful for a sojourn amongst the mountains where fires are sometimes necessary in the evening, and blankets are slept under. The true test of the Jamaican climate is whether or not one can sleep under a woollen cover. Shady hats, and one or two silk dresses for evening or Sunday wear, are about as much as one wants for a tourist’s visit of six weeks to a couple of months.

If, however, you come out to spend the winter at Constant Spring Hotel and expect to go much into society, you cannot bring out too many smart gowns, or too much flummery in the shape of millinery, for the heat soon takes the freshness off your airiest confections. Let the gowns, however, be such as you would wear in the hottest summer in England, and you will then be fairly near the mark.

Whilst I am speaking on the subject of dress I may as well acquaint you with the fact that muslins and cottons are to be bought here as reasonably as they are in England. Some people say they are cheaper, and are made and exported especially for colonial use. This probably is a correct version, when it is taken into consideration that by law all the blacks have to provide themselves with decent clothing. With the women, this always takes the form of cotton, either as print, drill, piqué, or muslin. There are very fair dressmakers, who are certainly very moderate in their charges, to be found at Kingston. They are excellent copyists and clever machinists. Provided they have a good pattern they will turn out a well-made skirt for about six shillings, and a blouse for a little less. Many people coming out from England employ them, and there is this to be said in their favour, they do not keep you waiting long for your dresses, but generally send them to you in two or three days.

Another important item to be considered in a visit to Jamaica is boots. Some persons tell you to get a size larger, both in gloves and shoes, than your ordinary sizes for coming out here. At any rate, provide yourself with soft kid boots coming high up the leg, to protect your ankles from the insects which seem by preference to attack that particular part of your limbs. At Kingston the mosquitoes are virulent, here at Mandeville there are scarcely any. But far worse than these are the ticks which render it positively dangerous to walk in long grass, or to gather at random from the country hedges as you take your walks. These obnoxious insects are the curse of the island; they attack both man and beast. Years ago West Indians say they roamed as children about the hills and woods, gathering what wild flowers they liked, never thinking or troubling about these insects. Now the nurses have strict injunctions not to let the children wander in long grass for fear of the noisome little pests. The introduction of foreign cattle into Jamaica some twenty-five years ago accounts for their presence; since then they have increased and multiplied till they are a positive plague. In the Port Antonio we brought out a number of starlings sent by Sir Alfred Jones, who is the moving spirit of Elder, Dempster & Co., and who is most energetic in his attempts to benefit the island. This gentleman hopes they may acquire a taste for ticks in the same way the mongoose on its arrival in Jamaica devoted his attentions to the extermination of rats and snakes. It would indeed be a good thing if they could be got rid of. I hear that another gentleman having the same object in view has imported a lot of common hedge-sparrows. The poor starlings we brought out with us suffered terribly from sea-sickness, scarcely half of them surviving the journey. The timorous-hearted may be thankful that there is nothing in the animal or reptile world to be afraid of in country rambles. At home we have poisonous snakes, here there are none. There are lizards, but the natives eat them, and also the land crab. Scorpions are rarely met with, and are not considered so dangerous here as elsewhere. Ants and sand-flies are found in the low-lying lands. The most charming live things are the beautiful little humming-birds often seen trembling over sweet-smelling tree blossoms. I have often watched them flitting over flowering acacia bushes. There are twenty different sorts of these enumerated by a naturalist called Goese. Those I have generally seen have bright bodies of metallic shimmering peacock green, with black feathers on the head, tail and back.

To return to the subject of dress. Gentlemen will find their summer suits and flannels indispensable; they should also provide themselves with good macintoshes.

For an athlete, or indeed for anybody possessed of good walking powers, it is not impossible to take a walking trip over part of this island—especially as there are small weekly boats starting from Kingston every Tuesday, stopping at the various ports and harbours as they make the circuit of Jamaica. These call at each place for fruit on behalf of the American Fruit Company, whose boats run between Port Antonio and Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The chief harbours are Port Morant, Kingston, Old Harbour, Green Island, Montego Bay, Falmouth, Port Maria, St Ann’s Bay, Lucea, and Port Antonio; these boats stop at all these. The island of Jamaica itself is only 144 miles at its extreme length, and its greatest width is 49 miles. From Kingston to Annotto Bay on the north coast it is only 21½ miles. The roads are exceptionally good throughout, thanks to Sir H. A. Blake, and there is no reason why a good pedestrian should not fix upon Jamaica as a fitting spot to be done on shankses’ pony, provided always he be suitably dressed, and commences his peregrinations at sunrise, rests from 11 A.M. to 4 P.M., and takes up his journey then till dusk, or as far into the night as he pleases. The same applies to bicycling and to riding on horseback.

FRUIT STEAMER ON ITS WEEKLY ROUND.

[To face p. 50.]

There is this to be said to people who cannot accommodate themselves to somewhat primitive conditions of existence, or who are not in the enjoyment of at least moderately good health: they should not come to the West Indies at all. In the first place, the excessive heat in the middle of the day is decidedly trying; even the strongest take some time to become acclimatised. Then the food is not the same as English people are used to—that is, in the country lodging-houses and hotels. To this day I abstain from salt-fish and akee, a favourite West Indian breakfast dish; nor can I acquire a taste for the Avocado pear, which is eaten as a salad, but which to me seems identical with soft soap. Papaw too, which is handed round for dessert, I find as unpalatable as mangoes; both the latter are, however, considered delicious by West Indians notwithstanding the flavour of turpentine which characterises the latter. Yams are nice; they resemble potatoes. The garden egg and Cho Choes are also acceptable, the latter resembling greatly our vegetable marrow.

At Constant Spring Hotel I first became acquainted with Jamaican fruits, and the profusion and quantity of them, together with their cheapness, constitute one of the most agreeable features in the island housekeeping. Grape fruit, delicious tangerines, too ripe for export, juicy pines, cool water-melons, bananas ad lib., were always piled up in a big central dish on our breakfast table. Along the road-sides here, at Mandeville, from whence I am writing these pages, oranges and grape fruit fall off the trees, and nobody considers it worth their while to pick them up. The waste of ripe fruit seems enormous, where the means of transit are not present to convey it to a shipping port.

One of the most delicious things they give you at this hotel is guava jelly served with cocoa-nut cream. Indeed the table is unexceptionally good, also both at Myrtle Bank and Constant Spring.

The day following my arrival being Sunday I did not leave the hotel, but completed a somewhat large correspondence I wanted to send viâ America. Letters sent to England viâ the Atlas Steamship Company’s vessels to the States reach home in twelve days; you can also send them by the Direct Mail and the Royal Mail Service. There are innumerable places of worship, not only in Kingston but all over the island; in fact the Church of England, Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Wesleyans, Methodists, and Moravians, all do their best to keep the population in that narrow path where to convince them of sin seems to be the favourite doctrine. No doubt the attractions of the broad way which leads to destruction require pointing out vigorously to the semi-heathen intelligence; but from expositions I heard in nonconformist chapels, I wondered what form of amusement was left open to “believers.”

Once I was present at Cambridge when a venerable American bishop, since dead, but known as the “Apostle of the Indians,” uttered the following words, which I have never forgotten. The occasion was the centenary of a religious society. Preachers of different persuasions had spoken of the advance of the society in their own particular sectarian sphere. “Far be it from me to present to the heathen a divided Christianity!” I hear that the puzzled wits of the woolly-haired race do give way occasionally under the strain of theological pressure. I travelled with a poor black, afflicted with religious mania, from St Thomas to Antigua, and a doctor told me that there was a good deal of it amongst the natives.

As I had several purchases to make and to expedite by the Port Antonio on its homeward passage, I prepared myself for a long day’s shopping on Monday, and indeed I did very little else before going to the first official garden-party at King’s House on the Friday following my arrival.

The town of Kingston has been called in my hearing “a collection of shanties,” and although I will not give my assent quite to this appellation, I cannot honestly admire it. Fine buildings it certainly lacks. The chief street is Harbour Street, and having once found that, the other streets run either at right angles or parallel with it.

My first commission was to order a number of tortoiseshell articles, which are made here cheaply and well by a man called Andrews. Then it is a nice thing to know that you can send your friends a box containing a hundred oranges properly packed for the sum of twelve shillings, provided they do not live beyond a certain distance from London. Blue Mountain coffee is also an acceptable present. Experts declare that there is no better in the world; and whether it be true or not I cannot tell, but I learnt from apparently reliable authority that the Czar is supplied entirely with the product of one of these upland plantations. Guava jelly made in the island is delicious, and often sent home by request of those who have known it out here. Indeed I think many families with delicate-chested members might do worse than live, for a while at least, in Jamaica. House-rent in the upper part of the town is not dear, and the houses are well built, all of them being surrounded with gardens of varying size, where bougainvillia, hibiscus, palm-trees, and the crimson-leaved poin-settia are nearly always to be seen. The rents of these vary from £50 to £100, according to size. They have three postal deliveries per diem. Fruit, vegetables and fish are cheap, and prices generally most moderate; for instance, beef is sixpence a pound, pork, ninepence, bread, threepence, sugar, twopence, coffee, one shilling, fish, sixpence. The dearest articles of diet are ham, at eighteenpence, tea, three shillings, good butter, eighteenpence to two shillings, English cheese, eighteenpence. Fruit and vegetables are not worth mentioning; pines are to be had for twopence, and for a penny you can get a dozen bananas. The native produce is of course cheap, and you pay more in proportion for imported goods. A buggy to hold four persons costs, when new, about £40, and you can buy sufficiently good horses from £15 to £20, and even cheaper; but the town of Kingston and environs is so well served by the tramway service, and the hire of buggies within the urban limits so cheap, that it is quite possible to live comfortably in the suburbs without a conveyance. The streets are well lighted by gas, some of the hotels and public buildings by electricity. Labour is not a very dear item either; the working hours are from 6 A.M. to 5 P.M., with an hour off, between 11 and 12 o’clock. On Saturdays no work is done after 11 o’clock. Labourers are paid from eighteenpence to two shillings a day, women from ninepence to one shilling. Many of the domestic servants live away from the houses, coming early in the morning, and leaving about nine in the evening. In a great many households the mistress does not feed the women-servants. If there are several, they have a room to eat in, providing for themselves; and I should imagine this was by far the best way, for the nauseous compounds in their stock-pots, when they thus choose their own provender, are unsuitable to the stomach of any average English domestic servant. Salt-fish in an advanced stage of decay is a favourite dish with them, but nothing comes amiss, and all finds its way into the big pot.

There are not many curios to be bought in any of the West Indian islands, but for what few there are it is best to go to the Women’s Self-Help Society. Here you can get lamp-shades, doyleys, mats of all descriptions made from lace-bark, and ferns artistically arranged; long chains for the neck, or muff, made from native seeds dried and strung together. Those which are mostly bought are known locally as “Job’s Tears” and “Women’s Tongues.” There was a great run on these a week or two back when Dr Lunn’s tourist steamer, the Argonaut, put into Kingston Harbour, and its passengers, to the number of a hundred and thirty, spent £70 on the island curiosities. Great joy reigned amongst the lady promoters of the Society: such a windfall does not often happen to them.

This “Women’s Self-Help Society” was founded by Lady Musgrave, the wife of a former Governor, and was opened in 1879. Apparently there are a number of what some of our papers at home are pleased to designate as decayed gentlewomen in Jamaica, and the object of this industry is to find a sale for all kinds of work which they, when industriously inclined, are able to do. There is, however, an agency attached to it whereby distressed needlewomen can get orders to execute for ladies and gentlemen, and there is a stock of clothes always kept ready, suitable for servants and working people.

The latest Handbook of Jamaica says of this institution: “The Society has been a great boon to many people in reduced circumstances who have to work for their living, but find it difficult to get suitable employment. It also enables other women, who do not require the profit of their work for themselves, to earn something for charities and philanthropic objects, as well as to raise the standard of work by bringing to bear on it that cultivated taste and artistic grace which is the natural result of a refined education.” So much for this Society and its aims. I should mention that the seeds called “Women’s Tongues” are those which hang in long pods from a tree called ponciana. When the seeds are dry, and the wind blows the boughs of the trees, they rattle in the pods, hence the title. “Job’s Tears” are the seeds of a plant which bends by the water-edge, its melancholy attitude having given rise to the name.

CHAPTER VII

DOMINICA’S FLOURISHING CONDITION—SCOTCH DINNER—TROPICAL VEGETATION

Two or three days after my arrival at Constant Spring Hotel, I began to feel that my West Indian experiences would lack any degree of thoroughness if I did not include a journey to the Windward and Leeward Islands; how to get to them I had yet to learn.

I longed to set eyes on the volcanoes. Mont Pelée was said to be continually throwing up huge masses of incandescent lava, which, constantly rolling down her smoking sides, was altering her geographical shape, and choking up a contiguous river-bed.

The French Government had prohibited any landing at St Pierre, but a scientific expedition under Professor La Croix had the pluck to live in a temporarily constructed observatory at the base of the mountain; always, I learnt afterwards, in readiness to fly at the approach of danger. The undermining of the cone going on within the crater threatened further eruption, ashes ejected having a temperature of 100° Centigrade, after a week’s cooling. Eyewitnesses gave graphic descriptions of the abomination of desolation which La Soufrière had worked upon the fertile districts of the north part of St. Vincent as we sat in the spacious central hall of Constant Spring Hotel, whilst estate-owners of Jamaica indulged in jeremiads over the financial depression reigning here. They pointed in envy to the flourishing condition of the little island of Dominica, where it is apparent that a West Indian colony can get along without sugar. It was inspiriting to read how that beautiful and well-favoured possession of the Crown was forging ahead, in spite of the Royal Mail Steamship Company’s prohibitive freight charges, and the Sugar Bounties. Apparently people with moderate capital have been attracted there sufficiently to purchase Crown lands. This is exactly what Jamaica needs. The cry here for central sugar factories and new-fashioned plant instead of obsolete machinery is a loud cry, but that for capital and new blood is still louder. In Dominica men have had sufficient means to sit down quietly between the planting of their cocoa trees and its yielding remunerating returns, a matter of from five to six years.

One Jamaican paper says of this island: “Its happy condition is enough to make a Jamaican gasp with envy. The revenue in 1901 amounted nearly to £30,000, the highest ever realised in the island. There was no increase of taxation, the improvement being entirely due to the development of trade, and the increased purchasing power of the people. Although considerable sums were spent in the reconstruction and improvement of roads, and in other public works, the year closed with an accumulated surplus of nearly £6000. Of this amount £4000 have been invested as a reserve fund. Think of Jamaica with a reserve fund! How does Dominica manage it? So far as we can see, it has ceased to cultivate sugar. During the last decade it has cultivated cocoa, and produced lime-juice and its bye-products. The value of its cocoa exports has risen from £7000 to £24,000, while the shipment of lime-juice in 1901 was valued locally at £35,000. It has also gone in for rubber, vanilla, oranges, and other minor products.”

People who are to be believed tell me that the percentage of juice extracted from the cane is 50 per cent. below that attainable with modern machinery in many parts of the West Indies. It is obvious that until up-to-date appliances are substituted for the crude and obsolete methods of manufacture, the sugar industry has no prosperous outlook before it, nor can it hope to compete with beet sugar.

My intention to visit these islands soon shaped itself. I found a couple of fellow-passengers were going up to St Thomas in the Danish West Indies by the Royal Mail steamships, this being their coaling and repairing station, in reality the ultima thule of their inter-colonial voyages in these parts.

I arranged, therefore, to leave in a week’s time on the s.s. Para. In the meantime, I hoped to see something of the country round Kingston, leaving the rest of the island to be visited at the end of December.

The intervening days passed away very pleasantly at Constant Spring Hotel. There was a dance on the Monday evening; in fact, all through the winter season there is a weekly gathering of this description. Officers from the camp, and the principal residents to the number of about forty, were present on this occasion. Very good music was supplied by the four musicians who are engaged to play every afternoon in the hotel drawing-room, a pianist, a violincello player, and two violinists. Some pretty frocks were worn, many of the girls appearing in delicate muslin gowns, evidently locally made, but quite adequate to the occasion.

Another day a dinner was given to all the Scotchmen in Jamaica, in honour of their national saint. The ubiquitous Scot is to be found all over creation. There is a story going, that when some enterprising explorer finds his way to the North Pole, he will find a Scot warming himself at a fire there. About one hundred and fifty sat down to a veritable Scotch repast. The Governor was the guest of the evening. Visitors staying at the hotel sat in the verandah outside the dining-room, and listened with interest to the after-dinner speeches. Before they got to that stage, the national dish, the haggis, was duly honoured, being carried round in triumph, preceded by the bagpipes, played by a very stately-looking piper. This was greeted by the guests with exceeding enthusiasm. Some of the speeches were quite eloquent, notably so was that of Dr. Gordon, the Roman Catholic Bishop. He was called upon to answer to the toast to “bonnie Scotland.” One felt borne away in the spirit to the land of Burns and Rob Roy, as he led his hearers mentally at a canter over hill and dale, and across swiftly flowing burns fringed with mountain ash, and then plunged them into the gloom of mountain fastnesses and forest depths. It was time, however, to come back to the West Indies at last, and, when the Bishop sat down, his word-painting of highland scenery earned for him an enthusiastic ovation. After that a guest with a considerable flow of language alluded to the fact that “Governors come” and “Governors go,” but that they (the Jamaicans) “went on for ever.” Sir Augustus Hemming is certainly possessed of tact, and, whenever I have heard him speak, generally seems to say the correct thing. On this occasion, once or twice things were said which were not quite in good taste, but His Excellency adroitly skidded over risky topics, ignoring that which had been said, but which it would be better in such a gathering to have left unsaid.

I have not yet mentioned the impression I received on my first drives and walks in Jamaica. The colouring is superb. To an artistic mind, there is scarcely an hour in the day, when looking on to the hills at the back of the hotel, that a beautiful view is not to be obtained. Sometimes the mountain summits are veiled in white mists, but at sunset the colours are grand, and for that only are, to my mind, worth the journey to Jamaica. The foliage and the parasitical growth, the hanging festoons which drape from tree to tree, must be seen to be appreciated. Tropical vegetation is in all its glory here. Innumerable ferns and palm-trees wave in the air along the banks of the well-kept roads. Plantains and bananas rear their ragged leaves against the sky. Exquisitely green cedars (not those we know) are a beautiful feature of the landscape, with orange-trees bearing blossom and fruit simultaneously. Tamarinds and gums spring from rocky crags, shrubs and creepers are everywhere; the latter intertwine themselves in the most wonderful way over tree parasites, back again to the road bank, then you trace them twenty yards or so further on, embracing gigantic stems. Not a single tree seems familiar. One feels as if one were always walking in a botanical garden; the wealth of flowering plants, of edible fruit and vegetables, strikes one wherever one goes. How refreshing and how nourishing are the articles of food which Nature, in an open-handed generosity, not to be found in less favoured climes, scatters broadcast over these islands! If negroes have yams, bread-fruit, oranges, bananas, cocoa-nuts, growing at their back door without the trouble of cultivating them—for anything once stuck into the ground will grow—how can you expect them to work six days out of seven?

Yesterday I was talking to a coffee-planter, who owns a large property in this neighbourhood. I asked him how he got on with his blacks, for no two planters seem to me to agree in their opinions as to the capabilities of their work-people.

“I don’t have any trouble with them,” he replied. “I pay ’em well because I find it suits me best, but as to ever imagining they will make decent citizens, why, it’s out of the question! The fools might have bought us all out by this time, if they had any sense.”

“And made the island a second Hayti?” I suggested.

“Well, possibly! but when they do buy a bit of land they ruin it by bad cultivation,” said he.

“I wish they would not live crowded up together in those filthy one-roomed huts! I cannot get over my feeling of disgust at them in this respect!”

“They might take a bath sometimes!” he interrupted. “They have not any decent pride.” He went on to speak of their very sketchy covering at coffee harvesting time, and said he never let his women-folk go near them on those occasions.

This gentleman had been in Jamaica since 1876. Sugar, he said, had ruined his family. Coffee was the only crop he considered worth cultivating. There was no money in oranges—this conclusion I had arrived at myself.

It was about this time I paid my first visit to Hope Gardens. I went with a friend who knew one of the officials, and we were taken all over that interesting government establishment for the promotion of agriculture. Here plants are introduced, and, if suitable to the climate and soil, are propagated. The products of Jamaica being purely agricultural, the well-organised and scientifically-treated garden and plantations are of great help to students. Early last century yams, cocoas, maize, and plantains, etc., were first cultivated, so as to make the island less dependent upon American supplies; they are spoken of as valuable exotics. Indeed it is interesting to learn where Jamaica obtained her inexhaustible products. In Bryan Edward’s “History of the British West Indies,” vol. 1, p. 475, we are told that in 1782 the mango, akee, cinnamon, camphor, jack-tree, kola, date-palm, rose-apple, turmeric, and other valuable plants to the number of six hundred had been not only introduced, but acclimatised in Jamaica.

Spain furnished oranges, lemons, limes, and citrons. The prickly pear came from Mexico. The shaddock from China. Guinea-grass, which is most useful for cattle, was accidentally brought from the west coast of Africa. Sugar-cane was grown here by the Spaniards, but first cultivated by the English in 1660. Logwood came from Honduras; this is a famous dye-wood and has a beautiful blossom. The graceful bamboo was brought from Hispaniola. The scarlet flowering akee, eaten as a vegetable, came from West Africa in a slaver. Pimento is indigenous to the island; from this tree we get allspice. The fustic tree, from which khaki dye is produced, is common along the hedgerows; so is also aniseed, which is known medicinally in most of our English homes. The nutmeg tree is quite common in the West Indies. In Hope Gardens they have specimens of every plant grown in the island, and for those fond of botany, I can imagine nothing more enjoyable than to wander for hours amongst its trees and plants. Connected with this government institution the Jamaican Agricultural Society make special grants for lectures.

Practical demonstrations on bee-keeping have been made throughout the island, and Jamaica honey is considered one of the best which reaches the London market.

Personally, I consider the bread-fruit tree, the Jamaican cedar, the beautiful clumps of feathery bamboos, about the most beautiful of the trees generally met with in country drives. As one walks along the grass bordering the road, one may inadvertently step upon the sensitive plant, which curls up when touched; but one’s attention is incessantly aroused at the wonderful growth of cacti and orchids, and what the natives call “wild pines,” lining the boughs of the trees, and fixing themselves in great clumps in the forks of the branches. The Palma Christi, or castor-oil plant, grows wild.

Farming here is called pen-keeping, and in some districts there are very fine grazing lands. In fact, it seems to me that no more productive ground exists under Heaven. If the people had more energy as well as more capital, it ought to be a little Paradise, barring the ticks. A relative of mine described the state of Jamaica very aptly when he said, “The indifference of the blacks was only equalled by the apathy of the Europeans.”

CHAPTER VIII

SAVINGS BANKS—KESWICK VIEWS—SPANISH TOWN

I have been interrupted in my writing this morning by listening to a very entertaining conversation going on between two maid-servants, both pure negresses, as to whether pink or blue chiffon would look best in their Sunday hats. The latest fashion is to see smartly-dressed black ladies with well-powdered necks and faces, wearing huge knots of coloured ribbon on the left breast. Everything they can save goes to buy finery. Out of four shillings a week, three are spent on dress, the fourth feeds them. Much is done to induce them to put spare pence into savings banks, which were established as early as 1837, depositors receiving 4½ per cent.; but some years after, a panic ensued, when the secretary of a branch bank committed forgery, and was sentenced to fourteen years’ penal servitude.

In 1870 a Government savings bank supplanted the former; the interest depositors get now is only 2½ per cent. The married negress lawfully regards her deposits as her own special property. That this is a praiseworthy as well as useful institution is proved by the fact that there were on the 31st of March 1900 32,860 depositors, including charities, societies, clubs and public functionaries investing in their official capacities. To assist people to deposit smaller sums, there are now penny banks established in different parts of the island by influential persons and clergymen. In 1897 there were forty-three of these with 11,703 depositors. The currency is the same as in England, but there are nickel pennies in circulation and paper notes for sovereigns. I studiously avoid taking the latter, and insist on English gold: the dirty things are detestable. Yesterday I went into a store at Mandeville to buy some trifle, and I saw two black damsels trying the effect of transparent muslin over their dusky arms; that with the biggest pattern was chosen, it was “preetty fe trew,” they thought.

I am indebted to a Kingston clergyman for many amusing negro stories; having lived here over thirty years he has quite a fine collection. This is one. A negro stood chatting with the blacksmith in his shop. After a while he broke out, “Hi, me smell fire burn!” With a frightful exclamation he gave a jump, and found he had been standing on a piece of iron just out of the fire, but it had taken some time for the heat to penetrate the hoof!

A coloured man wrote thus to a clergyman:—

“Dear Minister,—My mother is dead, and expects to be buried this afternoon at four o’clock. Please come and administer over her remains.”

GARDEN AT MYRTLE BANK HOTEL.

[To face p. 69.]

Another story tells of an irreligious young clerk who often teased one of the head men about his piety and church-going. On Monday morning the chaff began as usual.

“You went to church again yesterday, you old rascal.”

“Yes, buckra,” replied he, “me go a church, sah! but de trange ting is me hear ’bout you, sah, during service.”

“Yes, you hear about me, eh!”

“Yes, sah, parson read de word, ‘De fool hat said in his heart dere is no god.’”

One day I read in the newspapers that the Keswick delegates were to give their last service at Kingston, before setting off on an evangelising tour throughout the island.

A fellow-passenger on the Port Antonio said he would like to hear them. We arranged to dine at Myrtle Bank Hotel, and go afterwards to the place of worship where the service was to take place. This hotel has an entrance into it from Harbour Street; the gardens on the other side of the building go down to the water’s edge, and are cool and inviting. Generally a breeze, known as “the doctor,” from the sea is blowing, which makes it deliciously refreshing.

We dined shortly after six, and were whirled in a “’bus” for sixpence to Coke Chapel, a large edifice furnished with galleries. Crowds were fighting to get in. Fortunately, the official black is still imbued with the idea of the superiority of the white people, but how long that will last if the social democrat is allowed to preach the equality of the black with the white, is a question a wiser head than mine may solve. On this occasion, my friend and I were shown with much respect to seats near the pulpit. There were mostly coloured people in our immediate vicinity; a little further away faces of ebony and mahogany made up the rest of the large congregation. All looked serious, expectant, prosperous, too, if one were justified in judging by the clothes they wore. The service began by a hymn, followed by extempore prayer. The singing was congregational and hearty. The blacks love singing hymns; one hears old familiar tunes hummed constantly wherever one goes.

But the addresses were what they all came for. The delegates from Keswick were both good speakers, and they fairly riveted the attention of their hearers. However, a more unpractical Christianity, a more uninviting picture of the religious life as laid down by these Evangelists, it has never been my lot to listen to. Calvin and Knox flourished over three centuries ago. Revivalists nowadays preach on gentler lines.

These childish, ignorant, irresponsible, but happy-hearted children of the South were told that smoking, drinking, card-playing, dancing-parties, love-making, novel-reading, society-going were incompatible with the Christian life. If they wanted to enjoy such things they were imperatively bidden to leave the church. In this instance, that meant membership of nonconformist bodies. I learnt from the local newspapers, which indiscriminately praised the work of the delegates, that they upheld a high standard of spiritual life. It may be so. But of what use is it to describe the unattainable and the impossible, seeing that negro human nature is limited in its perceptions and in its capabilities, and a white man would think twice before he made such wholesale renunciations! The young women present were enjoined to keep themselves to themselves; they were not to seek husbands, the Lord would provide them! What about English church-going spinsters? I wondered. Many of them had not chosen the better part.

That they should not desire to go into society was impressed upon them, since that often led to trouble. To exemplify this teaching the Old Testament story of Dinah as given in Genesis was taken as the text. I have since looked it up. It belongs to the unreadable stories of the Pentateuch, but the gist of it, as presented to the mixed assembly, was, that Dinah, said the preacher, probably like many in front of him, “wanted more society than home afforded, so she called to see the daughters of the land.” Just in the same way they might go to tea at different houses in Kingston. Harm came of it, for she met somebody who got her into trouble, and the end of it was her lover was killed. The moral of the story was obvious. Safety was only to be found in staying at home! Practical persons say the best teaching for these people is that of example. If they see English people live well-ordered lives, they will in time learn to copy them in the same way as they copy English dress. Many of them are really stupid; they seem unable to retain what they hear. A lady tells me that her servants can never repeat the text, nor give a reasonable account of what they have heard at church. She asked a girl who had that day been to Sunday School, it being Whit Sunday:

“Who is the Comforter you heard about?”

The lady who taught the class was the clergyman’s wife.

“Judas Iscariot, missus,” promptly and unabashed came the reply.

And this, she tells me, is a specimen of how they jumble up Bible names and stories. No doubt there is a physiological solution to this muddle-headedness, but it must be particularly trying for those who would like to really improve them.

The next day I went with several people from the hotel to a garden-party at King’s House. The afternoon was very hot; fortunately it became slightly cooler by 4.30: the reception was from half-past four to six o’clock. Their Excellencies received us at the entrance of the gardens. Guests to the number of about one hundred and fifty had arrived; very few government officials were present, and altogether, as a representative gathering of the best people in the island, I admit we did not think much of it. A lady resident told me the cause of so limited a number taking the trouble to come was of course the unpopularity of the lady who presides over the entertaining at King’s House. We chatted to those we knew, strolled about the grounds. The house, which is unpretentious, is situated in a hundred acres, containing some beautiful shrubs and rare plants. Refreshments were served under the trees. It grew dark. We sought our carriage, and returned to the hotel in time to dress for dinner. I was determined to take one expedition into the country before leaving for the islands, so on the Saturday I started from Constant Spring Hotel with a friend by a tram, leaving shortly after six to catch the first train to Spanish Town, from which place we intended to take a carriage to the Rio Cobre. This town, the capital of the Spaniards, was called San Jago de la Vega; it is not particularly interesting. The Governor’s residence was here till quite recently. In the banqueting-hall and ball-room one may picture the scenes which took place in the days of West Indian prosperity at the King’s House in Spanish Town. We found the most interesting object to be the cathedral, where lie interred many early Governors, their wives, and some of the first settlers of the island. The architecture is simple, though varied. The verger, who conducted us to the top of the tower and pointed out the principal objects, was interesting in the fact that he had been born there and evidently loved every stone of the place. He directed our gaze to one of the oldest epitaphs. It ran—

“Here lyeth the body of Dame Elizabeth, the Wife of Sir Thomas Modyfort, Baronet, Governor of his Majesty’s Island of Jamaica, who died the 12th of November 1668 being the 20th year of their happy wedded life.”

A marble statue of Queen Victoria stands in the public Square, and bears the inscription—

VICTORIA
of Great Britain and Ireland
Queen
Empress of India
and of Jamaica Supreme Lady
1837-1901.

We did not go to see the United Fruit Company’s plantation of bananas, oranges and pines, but I believe it well repays a visit, so does the Cayman sugar estate, where some of the best rum is made.

We preferred to take a drive up the Rio Cobre of about nine miles. This is really beautiful; the road winds along the course of the river, and the luxuriant growth on either bank is simply wonderful to a person fresh from home and new to tropical scenery. Huge banana-trees, enormous clumps of bamboo, meet one at every turn in the road. We extracted a good deal of information from our driver, although we could not always understand him. Bare-legged women with skirts tucked up passed us with the inevitable yam-laden basket on their heads, crowned with the hat which was to cover the woolly hair of the lady when she set down her load; one or two begged for quatties, an old Spanish word still used and representing one penny halfpenny in our money. It is not often the natives beg of you, although they will turn round and tell you how much they love you! We had a delightful but very hot day, and did not get back till quite late in the evening. There was one more event which I have to record before closing these pages for a time on Jamaica. This was the opening of a new wing added during the last year to the hotel.

Tourists, apparently, are beginning to make this island into a favourite winter resort, the consequence being that increased accommodation was needed. Elder, Dempster and Co., who own the hotel, were celebrating the event by giving a garden-party. Their agent, Mr Haggart, had arrived. The Governor was expected, and people were arriving in crowds, making a gay picture of the lawns in front of the hotel, where a West Indian band from one of the regiments was playing. It was nearly five o’clock when the gubernatorial party arrived. Their Excellencies were conducted over the new part of the building, afterwards to the new golf links, upon which Sir Augustus played the first round. The most important part of the programme consisted in his speech, in which he formally opened the new wing. He spoke ably, and congratulated the Company on their enterprising spirit, and hoped a new tide of success was about to float the island into a more prosperous condition. Her ladyship stood close by, as he spoke; so did the venerable, but tuft-hunting Delicia, so did the industrious Russian journalist, taking notes the while, but I looked in vain for persons of importance supporting their chief. I wondered where the influential residents, the representatives of the mercantile world, and government officials had betaken themselves to, and enquired of a well-known lady in Kingston the reason of their absence. It was the old story: they preferred to stay away. One felt sorry that things were so. However, the afternoon was very enjoyable. The hotel provided refreshments in the most generous and handsome way. Everyone present could only hope that Jamaica in the near future may be as flourishing as the most sanguine of her boomers could desire.

CHAPTER IX

THE ROYAL MAIL COMPANY—THE “MUMPISH MELANCHOLY” OF JAMAICA

It was on the 2nd of December, 1902, that I left Kingston for my trip to some of the islands in the Caribbean Sea, in company with a couple of fellow-passengers who had journeyed out with me from England in the Port Antonio. In answer to my enquiries, the only feasible thing, apparently, to do was to travel by the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company as far as Trinidad, there to be trans-shipped into a smaller steamer of that Company, which takes cargo and distributes the English mails fortnightly, in connection with the outcoming steamers from Southampton as far as the Danish island of St Thomas. To my disappointment, I learnt that I should have to return by the same route to Jamaica, instead of making a circuit and visiting Porto Rico, as I had hoped to do.

No regular communication exists between St Thomas and Jamaica excepting that of the Royal Mail Company, although I might have accomplished what I desired had I remained on at St Thomas, and taken the first chance steamer, sloop, or schooner, bound for Porto Rico, and so on to Jamaica. But I felt this was too indefinite and scarcely good enough, St Thomas being neither very remarkable nor possessing good accommodation. As it turned out, I was not sorry to revisit most of the islands, especially those of Martinique and St Vincent, Dominica and St Lucia, the two latter being by far the most beautiful; and I was glad to have a chance of seeing the volcanoes twice over to impress my memory with their awe-inspiring and fearful aspect.

It is well to know what to do and what not to do in the West Indies. Although many, like myself, would be naturally desirous to see Nature active in her volcanic haunts—for, apparently, as Jamaica is the natural habitat of the sugar-cane, so the Caribbean Sea is specially marked out for these fiery outpourings of Vulcan—I cannot recommend them to follow in my footsteps, if they value comfort in the smallest degree.

In my case it was Hobson’s choice. At the office of the Royal Mail Company at Kingston there was a vague talk of tourist ships, later on, being specially run to do this trip; but as no date could be given of their probable departure, or certainty entertained as to whether they would run at all, I resolved to travel by the s.s. Para. The cost of my ticket was £24; this was at the rate of £1 a day, for I expected to be in Jamaica again before the close of 1902. At the back of this ticket was written “with tourist privileges.” What those were I have yet to learn, for a more uncomfortable journey I never experienced than the fortnight I spent in this Company’s steamer, the E——. You are unfailingly reminded by its officers that the R.M.S. was incorporated by Royal Charter 1839, and since then has had the monopoly of trade with the West Indies, and you as often mentally wonder why they are letting such a good thing slip through incompetent management. The very mention, even, of the Direct Company’s name has, in some instances on board these steamers, been like a red rag to a bull.

Since, however, I made my journey to the volcanoes a new manager has come upon the scene. Things are changing, and one is glad to hear of a regular overhauling of both offices at home and ships at sea.

Personally, I never heard so much grumbling at sea in my life as I have from passengers travelling in these regions. Perhaps the heat makes them unwarrantably irritable. The prohibitive charges on freight have for years operated as the great hindrance to the development of the resources of the islands. Indeed, in the interests of the Company, it is well that things are being looked into.

The late manager of the Royal Mail Company was an admiral of the British navy, of whom many stories are afloat, showing that he was fearfully and wonderfully made to hold such an important post. Probably the man was an expert on shipbuilding and seamanship; most likely there his qualifications ended. For a purely mercantile undertaking, one cannot suppose a retired admiral would possess sufficient commercial experience to warrant his efficiency as manager. My own knowledge of naval men would incline me to the belief that they would rather laugh to scorn all suggestions of financial retrenchment.

There may be, however, some adventurous spirits, who, in the face of discomfort, will want once in their lives to visit these historical islands, and, however they go, they must trans-ship at Trinidad or Barbadoes, as I did, into the smaller ships of this Company. Of course they can go by Dr Lunn’s tourist parties, but everybody does not care to visit places in gangs.

The Para is a comfortable, steady ship, notwithstanding her venerable age. The Trent, with her sister-ship the Tagus, are very handsomely appointed vessels of modern construction, carrying good cooks.

We had a lovely run in the Para from Kingston to Trinidad; it took three days. We saw no land until we approached the Bocas, the two entrances into the Gulf of Paria, the Dragon’s Mouth, and the Serpent’s Mouth. This gulf is a shallow lake, and forms a harbour of enormous size, where ships of every nation, almost, ride at anchor.

We arrived at sunset, and the sky was a lovely rosy pink. The purple mountains of the island ranges, nearly two thousand feet high, divided the vast expanse of the heavens from the crimson waters of the harbour, lazily lapping the quay-sides of Port of Spain. Trinidad, discovered also by Columbus, is very hot and very prosperous. It belonged to the Spaniards till 1797, since which time it has belonged to us. Cocoa plantations flourish, and the Lake of Pitch is—and, I presume, will be for years to come—a magnificent source of never-failing wealth. From it large quantities of asphaltum are taken and exported.

Charles Kingsley raves over this home of tropical verdure, but I am not a naturalist, nor do I stay at Government Houses.

I found Trinidad the most trying place of any in the West Indies. The mosquitoes are positively unbearable; no part of your person is sacred from their nomadic and predatory excursions. Kickshaws, in the way of lace-trimmed parasols, will not suffice you for the sun, however festive the occasion may be to call forth dainty sunshades. Be advised in time: fling appearances to the four winds of heaven, sally forth in the largest of shady hats, carry the largest umbrella you can find, but go not into the streets shopping, or otherwise, without a waterproof, for the rains are characterised by a ferocity in their down-pouring unknown in other climes. Take also a fan to withstand the heat, which is ever present, and a never-ceasing hindrance to personal enjoyment.

Everybody drives the smallest distances, but there are times when, encumbered with these three indispensable articles in overpowering heat (you may perhaps have to traverse a hundred yards, as from the landing-quay to the Royal Mail Company’s Offices) when life is not worth living, unless you are a person of exceptionable amiability.

Most of the visitors to Port of Spain contented themselves with lolling round on “rockers” on the verandah of the largest hotel, called Queen’s Park Hotel, where the rooms are airy and spacious, but the food is not always to be trusted. It looks out on to the savannah, a circular, fairly level tract of grass, round which an electric tram whirls the inhabitants of an evening for a breath of fresh air.

What really interested me was the beautiful Botanical Garden, containing a library and fine herbarium. Here, indeed, the wonderful parasitical growth on leviathan trees is simply astounding. If you wish to obtain orchids and other rare botanical plants apply to the Superintendent. I went twice with friends to these gardens; each time I was quite fascinated in watching the “parasol” ants hurrying to and fro in countless well-worn tracks, sometimes crossing our path, sometimes alongside of us carrying pieces of green leaf, frequently as large as a shilling. It was quite a green procession; they each kept to their appointed side of the path, those who had deposited their green burdens returning on the other side in search of fresh “parasols.” Policemen regulating traffic in our London streets could not have done the thing in better style. If the hot, moist heat made us resemble the sluggard, we had not far to go to learn industry from these skurrying little insects, whose ways are past finding out. We were cautioned not to try to pursue their tracks, which wind incredibly long distances among the undergrowth on either side of the paths, scorpions being not infrequently met with.

On the voyage to Trinidad I met some Cambridge acquaintances, people who had been on the Para throughout the voyage from England. They had landed both at Cartagena and at Colon, on the coast of Central America, and gave graphic accounts of the horrors of the civil war which has raged in Columbia these three years past. They were at Colon before peace was concluded, and it was pitiable to hear of the condition of the soldiers, mostly boys of enfeebled physique and stunted growth, scarcely strong enough to carry the old-fashioned guns given them. All looked starved, with an expression of utter despair imprinted on their woebegone countenances. A lady told me she collected bread from the ships and handed it to them on the quay. The wretched youths fought over it as dogs for a bone; but a frozen sheep was given to them from one of the vessels lying alongside, which they tore into pieces amongst themselves, eating it raw.

Their women followed them to war; without their inciting them to fight, I am told, the Columbians would scarcely attempt to defend themselves. But when once roused, they fight like diminutive devils! The women too, on one occasion, rushed a bridge, and took it during the last war. The most horrible thing I heard about them was that they had no ambulance, and no doctors!

Whilst I was in the Caribbean Sea, Hayti was in a disturbed state, Cuba in a transitional condition, erupting volcanoes destroying whole cities, as at Martinique and in Guatemala. The Columbian Republic was resting out of sheer exhaustion from further civil warfare, whilst her neighbour Venezuela was in the throes of political revolution, figuratively torn in pieces by her rival presidents and her offended European debtors. Possibly times in the West Indies are bad for those who have put their trust in sugar, but life and property are safe under British rule. No one need starve unless he be irredeemably idle. If big fortunes are no longer attainable, still there is no need for the “mumpish melancholy,” so well described by the Hon. S. Ollivier, Acting-Governor of Jamaica. He says: “I have observed that, as a people, we have a habit of being rather sorry for ourselves. We have not the cheerfulness of the Barbadian. On the other hand, our depression makes us mumpish and melancholy rather than vicious and violent. We overdo our talk of depression, we overdo our talk of the extravagancies of the Government, of the superfluity of our public officials. Our visitors take for public gospel what we promulgate for private consumption.”

To return to my journey to Trinidad on the Para. About thirty-five persons belonging to an English Opera Company were journeying to Trinidad. They had previously been playing in Kingston, and had been not only to all our colonies, but recently had been touring up the western coast of South America. I gathered they had had splendid houses in most of the large towns, such as Valparaiso, Santiago, and Lima, though the artistes with whom I conversed declared that the heat and the indifferent food they had had put before them, though taken to the best hotels, had been most trying to their health. The poor things looked terribly worn, and evidently made the most of the rest of the three days’ sea-voyage before performing again at Port of Spain. They had about thirty plays in their repertoire, which included all the best known pieces and the most popular, such as The Geisha, The Shop Girl, etc. I met them on the return journey a fortnight later, returning viâ Kingston en route for Bermuda, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and St John’s, Newfoundland. I mention having met these strolling players, because I think that many of one’s friends in the British Isles would have no notion that the inhabitants of such distant countries had an opportunity of ever becoming acquainted with the well-known airs of Sullivan and other popular composers. Without belittling or depreciating our well-meaning but somewhat ignorant dwellers at home, it is well for us to wake up from insular habits of thinking, and to discover that outside our particular zone of influence civilised life is throbbing. In every sphere of labour men are searching for better methods, and, as in America, are not satisfied until they get them. We need to keep our eyes open if we would not lose our place in the world’s history! Conservatism such as ours does not reign in regions where dollars are plentiful, and where men are not fettered by the traditions of the past.

It was late on Friday night, 5th December, when we were trans-shipped into the inter-colonial boat, the E——.

I have previously stated that Barbadoes has hitherto been the meeting-place of the outcoming steamer and of the three smaller ships, whose mission it is to distribute the mails on three distinct routes.

The E—— was bound for the islands as far as St Thomas, the Solent for La Guayra on the Venezuelan Coast, whilst the third steamer was setting off for Grenada and Tobago.

CHAPTER X

THE CUISINE OF THE E——.—THE ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP OF DOMINICA

I do not intend to relate my experiences day by day from the time that I joined the Royal Mail Company’s steamship E——, but it behoves me to explain once more to those who would like to take this trip, that unless they can possess their souls in patience, and are in the best of health, they may find more discomfort than gain, more pain than profit in this so-called pleasure trip. Of course I may have had the ill-luck to strike a ship (please excuse the Yankeeism, but at Mandeville where I am writing, we are being invaded by Americans, whose object in life seems to me to be the erection of twenty-three storied sky-scrapers) where the captain, the purser, and the steward were suffering from a temporary loss of the sense of taste, either individually or collectively. The cook was a black, and from the culinary incapacity of the sons of Ham may I, in the future, mercifully be delivered! Of all the inappetising-looking viands, of all the nauseous compounds, the component parts of which you could not even guess at, ever set before defenceless travellers, favoured specially with tourists’ privileges, those we had would take the cake. The first few days the food was incredibly bad, the meat uneatable, sometimes putrid, the bread mouldy, the butter rancid, the bananas rotten, and the oranges unripe! This was whilst we were in port. Things improved somewhat when we were once away from Trinidad. We certainly had better fruit and delicious pines from Antigua, but the food was often sent away untouched, for the cooking was of the very vilest description possible. This, though bad enough, was not the only discomfort endured in that ever-memorable voyage.

Of course the heat and the mosquitoes were inevitable. Fortunately the cleanliness of one’s cabin was a feature to be noted; also the advantage of having it to oneself was a thing to be thankful for; but the memory of the hot, weary, sleepless nights I endured from the noise and rattling winches at work, hoisting up and taking on cargo, which went on at all the ports we touched on our way going up to St Thomas, haunts me yet. Other ships of a less obsolete type are providentially provided with hydraulic cranes to do this work, but I have yet to learn that this particular Company favours any but old-fashioned methods of working. This frightful noise went on over my head; outside my cabin door the niggers in the hold bawled to those working the hoisting or lowering apparatus, as the case might be, whilst the officers shouted down orders to them. There were three consecutive nights with more or less of this hideous din going on, when exhausted nature was demanding sleep. Anything more purgatorial could scarcely be conceived. I was ill for a week from these privileges. When we did have a night free from this pandemonium, the ship was being driven through the water at such a rate we were not allowed to have our port-holes open for fear of being semi-swamped—and this in the tropics! The stewardess was an enormously fat coloured woman of Barbadoes, much given to religion. She was a happy, good-natured body, but incapable of work. It was not pleasant to find yourself in a marble bath which apparently was never scrubbed out from one end of the year to the other.

A married couple, who had travelled to Jamaica on the Port Antonio and were also taking this trip, complained with just cause of the fare given us. In these islands fruit, at least, is cheap. On the evening of the 8th of December our dessert consisted of rotten oranges, ditto bananas, and nuts! I think the menu for breakfast on the 16th of December will remain a standing joke whenever we meet. The tempting dishes offered us were salt-fish, pork chops, and brains! I forget how the latter were served. After a sleepless night and in tropical heat, I need scarcely say that I did not partake of any. We went empty away mostly!

A lady passenger had also an experience which shows how very absurdly the regulations on these ships are adapted for tourists, or indeed for anybody wanting to see something of the islands we passed.

She was on deck at 7.30 A.M. one morning, when one of the ship’s officers approached her, and informed her it was one of the rules that ladies should not appear on deck till breakfast-time. The lady is a daughter of a well-known judge, and her answer was given on judicial lines, to the effect that no mention of such regulation was on her passage ticket, and since she came to see the scenery, she intended every morning when there was land in sight to come up as early as she chose. She said later on to me: “Fancy passing La Soufrière, or any other equally interesting place for which you were enduring stifling heat, mosquitoes, sleepless nights, and bad food, and not allowed to be on deck to see it!”

This was the only mention made of their famous regulation; we never enquired whether it was a printed one, or an unwritten tradition of the Company.

From the accounts I have since heard from people coming out to the West Indies by the Royal Mail Company’s tickets, advertised in the daily papers at £65 for sixty-five days, I am sure it is not generally understood that in these inter-colonial mail-boats passengers, whether tourists or persons having tickets with “tourist privileges” inscribed on them, like myself and Mr. and Mrs. S——, endure all the discomforts of cargo-boats, and, in addition, suffer from the restrictions of a mail service bound by contract to deliver and collect mails at certain times at certain places.

We never knew at what hour we should land at the different West Indian towns. It would have been an impossibility to order saddle horses, or carriages, to be in readiness for us had we desired them, nor could we ever ascertain with any degree of reliability how long we should stay at any given place until we got there; all was uncertain, indefinite. The mails, naturally, were the first consideration; what cargo to discharge, or to ship, was the next; and last of all, the convenience of the passengers. I give this as my own personal experience—I only hope other people have fared better! If there was any place like Martinique, for instance, which we particularly wanted to see, we invariably arrived when it was dark. Fortunately, on the return journey one was in some cases able to see towns one had missed in this way.

At the Royal Mail Company’s office at Kingston, when I made my arrangements to travel by their ships, I was informed in flowing language what a beautiful cruise it was to the islands, and that I should never regret it! It was beautiful, and if I shall never regret having made it, I certainly shall never forget it. I consider the journey from Trinidad up to St. Thomas a bad one if business compels one to make it; as a tourist trip, and therefore a pleasure trip, it is quite unworthy of the name, especially in these days when the latter are so skilfully and so ably arranged and conducted by people who really consider their clientèle. Having had the experience, I have not failed to warn people, especially those who are not strong, of its discomfort and disadvantages!

The best way for those who have time and leisure to see the northern group of islands is to stay at Dominica, where there are frequently very fair opportunities of visiting the contiguous islands. It is a lovely, mountainous, and picturesque island. There are, I was told by a gentleman who had stayed in them, very comfortable lodgings to be had, kept by an Englishwoman; and this, he said, was better than putting up at the small hotel, where the food was not so reliable. I have also met people who have stayed for weeks in this island and have never found it dull. For men there is shooting and fishing in the rivers. An introduction by a member of the club should be obtained, for there are golf links, and, as in all hot countries, plenty of tennis.

The chief charm of life in Dominica consists in the exquisite rides amongst the mountains where there are sulphur springs, a boiling lake, and waterfalls to be visited. I have on a previous page alluded to the very promising condition of things in Dominica, and I have also mentioned that limes and cocoa are its principal exports. I had time to take a lovely walk in the valley of the Roseau, just at the back of the town, and was much impressed by the loveliness of the scenery, as well as with the prosperous-looking plantations on either side of the road. At the end of the valley a turn in the road exposed the peak called Morne Diablotin to view; it is 4750 feet, and the mountains are the highest in the Lesser Antilles.

On my return journey from St. Thomas no less a person than the Roman Catholic Bishop of Dominica, with two or three attendant priests, came on board at St Kitts. He was introduced to me, and told me quite a number of interesting things about the islanders. Some few Caribs, he said, remained still. I asked if his Church had many adherents in Dominica. “Ninety per cent.,” he told me, adding that it had been a French possession longer than an English one.

The Bishop, who is a Belgian and not long consecrated, was a very chatty and amusing person; I admired his skilful tactics. Naturally he was somewhat prejudiced in favour of our late enemies, the Boers; but politics and religion he very wisely eschewed. I was amused at his ways. If he wanted his deck chair removed from one side of the deck to the other he always called his servant, or secretary—I could not tell in what capacity the man stood—to do it for him. Brother Boniface was the oddest-looking creature I ever saw. He was short, fair, and very much freckled, scant locks of sandy hair peeped out from under a very broad-brimmed black felt hat. His habit was black, and came to his boot tops, being confined round the middle of his shapeless body with a black shining belt. Between its irregular folds and the top of his boots, white stockings, which probably were knitted by a Belgian grandmother many years gone by, showed at intervals, their pristine whiteness being somewhat the worse for wear. A very large black stuff umbrella completed Brother Boniface’s toilet. He was continually smiling, and his very large mouth looked always ready for a good meal. As we approached Dominica the mountains were veiled in mists, and everything had to give way for the drenching torrential rain which poured on to the deck. I was standing close by the Bishop, and admired the artistic effects of the mist-wreathed mountainous coast.

“I prefer to have them so,” I said, pointing to the mountains. “There are some things which are best left undefined, indefinite, mysterious. Don’t you think so, Monseigneur?” I looked round at him.

He looked meaningly at me—I fancy he knew I was secretly thinking of the very definite statements of the Romish Church—and then said: “Do as you suggested the other day. Come and spend a month on the island.”