Then through the sleepy streets of hot old Puerto Cabello we wander to where a boat waits us by the rotting quay at the river’s mouth. Two darling faces find our wistful searchings as we near the ship, and four sweet arms accompanied by kisses fairly weigh us down as we reach the deck.
“Oh, Mother! Just think of it, we shook hands with President Castro!”
SMALL wonder indeed that the early explorers, the men to whom we owe the discovery of these island gems, gave them such charmingly poetical names. Small wonder that they named them as one would a necklace of deep-sea pearls, strung as they are one upon another in a circlet about the blue Caribbean Sea, the shadow of one velvety peak throwing its dark coolness fairly to the base of sister isles, some but a few hours distant, others perhaps a day, across seas as blue and green and limpid as the ether above. It seems incredible that from these peaceful waters rise the vast, cyclonic storms which frequently make such desolation on our coasts; and that within the green and softly moulded outlines of some of these mountainous islands there lie volcanic craters which still grumble and threaten; but, as there are times and seasons for all things, so there seems to be an ordering for the giant winds to rage, when the sun is dyed its deepest, and the earth pants for want of drink to moisten her quivering lips. But that time of unrest is far away now, and, as we leave Puerto Cabello and its quiet harbour, bound for Curaçao, and drop below the horizon the cocoanut-fringed shores of the Spanish Main, it seems as if it must ever be on unruffled seas and toward peaceful havens that the islanders voyage back and forth.
Surely it is not more than the turning once over in sleep before, with the morning breeze fresh in our nostrils, we are right upon the dear little Dutch city of Willemstad, the capital of the Dutch West Indies on the island of Curaçao; and, once ashore, we long to lodge indefinitely behind the spotless white curtains that peek out from under some snug little peaked roof, shifting scenes only when the impulse to go farther comes over us; and then sailing away in one of the little packet schooners which coast along from island to island, or possibly, taking passage in a mail steamer, or anything bound anywhere, just so it does not come blundering along before we are ready.
There should be no words for days and hours in the tropics. Time should be measured by enjoyments in changeful measure, slow and fast, as one’s mood demands. Rigid hours are obtrusive where the rustle of the cocoa-palm invites rest.
The little girls and I are hurrying into our hair ribbons and our white petticoats and white waists and white hats, just as fast as our fingers can tie or button, when Curaçao jumps into our cabin windows, or maybe our ship has jumped into Curaçao; or is it Holland we have dropped upon, or is it a new stage-setting for the latest al fresco production of “The Flying Dutchman?”
We no sooner have our first glimpse than, for a bit, all the dressing stops, and we crowd our three heads up to the port-holes in perfect delight. As our slim ship slowly winds herself into the river-like harbour, this West Indian Holland becomes more and more enchanting. The harbours in these islands have been an increasing wonder to us. On the Venezuelan coast Puerto Cabello (translated literally, “The Port of the Hair,” because there it was said a hair would hold a ship) is a perfect example of a harbour for small vessels. Deep, natural channels—like rivers—wind circuitously until they widen into land-locked basins where ships of all nations, and of all rigs, and for all purposes, from the grim war-ship to the native dugout, come unexpectedly into sight as the channel turns and broadens into the real harbour. There the ship is left by the native pilot.
This harbour of Curaçao is no exception. We enter by a narrow, deep way protected by rocky barriers, directly into a little inner bay, encircled by the quaint town. The houses gliding by, within easy hailing distance of our decks, are preëminently Dutch, of brilliant, striking colouring, noticeably yellow, and mathematically exact as to rows and heights and proportions—most un-West-Indian. The town is certainly just recovering from a fresh coat of kalsomine. It is bright as a top and clean as a whistle.
Across Ste. Anne Bay Harbour of Willemstad, Curaçao Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
Across Ste. Anne Bay
Harbour of Willemstad, Curaçao
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
We are but a stone’s throw from either dock, and it requires a lot of common sense, even downright logic, to persuade us that we are in the Caribbean Sea, and not far off on the other side of the globe coming out of the flat estuaries of the bleak North Sea into the Meuse or the Y.
A bit of Holland has been lost from out Mother Earth’s pocket, and has fallen by the way in this Western Hemisphere; and it has managed to get along without the big Dutch mother very well. It has grown up into full stature, following the instincts of its birth, almost wholly uninfluenced by tropical environment. Here it stands, a perfect little Dutchman, an exact reproduction of its staunch progenitors. Its forms and habits have followed the traditions of its ancestors, not those of its West Indian foster-mother. There is only one racial trait lacking in Curaçao,—we saw no windmills; all the rest is there. But, to our great relief, we are told that even the windmills appear on the country places farther inland.
The arrival of our ship awakens the Yellow City early in the morning, and, before our boats are lowered, the shore is white with crowds of Curaçaoans, big and little, pushing and jostling each other for a sight of us. Our breakfast is done with in short order. A hurried bit of fruit, a quick swallow of boiling coffee, a fresh roll, and up we scramble to the deck. So it is invariably, as we near a port. Each time we come upon an island more curious, more irresistible than any we have seen before. We may be sighting it first as we refresh our bodies with a bath of the clear salt water from without, warmed into the most delicious mildness by the eternal smile of the sun. Then comes a scramble to dress, then a bolt to the dining-room, where we eat and run. Now, in pops a big “if.” If we were only snoozing in a Dutch four-poster, with a frilled nightcap on, under a peaked roof in Willemstad, then we’d never need to hurry, for all we’d have to do would be to open our eyes and look around, and wait for the coffee to come with a rap at the door and a lifting of the curtain. But there is small comfort in listening to the endless schemes of that miscreant “if.” We’ll banish him in disgrace.
Some of Our Friends at Willemstad
Some of Our Friends at Willemstad
Where the Basket-Women Waited Willemstad, Curaçao
Where the Basket-Women Waited
Willemstad, Curaçao
Before we have time to readjust our impressions of one island to the anticipated pleasures of the one following, we are among a new people, speaking a strange tongue, living to us a new life,—to them a weather-worn old life; among people in densely populated cities, shut off from our world by weeks—at times by months—of silent isolation.
Then all at once a fleck of smoke lifts above the horizon, a steamer is sighted far out at sea, the pilot puts out in his little open boat, and the whole island throbs with new emotion, for a ship is coming!
From a poetical standpoint, I wish it were possible to believe that this emotion is a disinterested pleasure in welcoming strangers; in feeling once again the hand of man from the great world outside. Viewing the people, as we must, largely from an impersonal standpoint, it impressed us that the West Indian cares very little for the welcome or for the hand of man from the great continent; but that he is up early in the morning to devise new ways of reaching the pockets of the invaders, come they ever so peaceably.
The natives await the coming of strangers, as a pack of hungry wolves watch for the shorn lamb. I myself have been that shorn lamb on several occasions.
The Landing Willemstad, Curaçao
The Landing
Willemstad, Curaçao
Quite undaunted by the great crowd of Curaçaoans on shore, our jackies made a cable fast to the near-lying quay, by which means our big boats are pulled back and forth, to and from the ship. Those coming to us bring the sellers of baskets; and it is here, although forewarned and forearmed, that our basket mania again breaks forth in full force. First came the famous Curaçaoan nests of baskets, of which Charles Kingsley confesses to have been beguiled into buying; and, if so wise a man as he fell victim to the wiles of the Curaçaoan basket-woman, how much more readily would we weaker mortals become her prey? Then, ranged temptingly, along the dock stood rows of Curaçaoan hampers,—great, fine, coloured affairs, which we looked at, and looked at, and looked at, and didn’t buy. Then, beside the basket-women, were the men with fans and all sorts of straw weavings,—and then, oh! the work-boxes. Truly, you have seen them! Has not your grandmother stowed away in the dark attic somewhere an old mahogany box, inlaid with ivory and brass and coloured woods, with fascinating secret drawers and numerous lids for the hiding of her precious keepsakes and age-worn trinkets? Such a box is one of the chaste memories of my childhood,—Grandmother’s mahogany box, with the inlaid lid and the musty odour of bygone years. When we found these same dear old boxes away down in Curaçao, the worn, hingeless, forsaken chest in the attic arose into a new dignity—into the dignity of a noble family lineage. So I have found at last its habitat, and these bright and gleaming creations are great-great—and no end to great—grandchildren of my far-away, lonely relic in the attic. But sentiment has to give way to reason, and we shake our heads at the box-man and the hamper-woman, who, nevertheless, follow us up to the bridge from the Otra-Banda shore over the canal, whence they watch dejectedly while we pay bridge-toll and disappear across the canal into the narrow Dutch streets, where the high roofs seem ready to topple over upon us.
What a picture of Dutch colonial life comes to us in that short walk! The overreaching eaves all but touch. Old lanterns swing across the narrow way, wrought-iron sign-posts reach long arms out over our heads, the shop doors are wide open, and the keepers of the shops could readily shake hands across the way.
I wonder if there is any excuse at all for the fact that my preconceived ideas about Curaçao were wholly founded upon a very indistinct memory of a certain liquid of that name, said to be distilled upon this island from the wild sour orange? I expected to find this ambrosial nectar stacked in rows in every shop, in bottles, long and slim, chunky, dumpy, and round; in nice little flat bottles,—gifts for bachelor friends; in ornamented fancy bottles for envying housewives; in thick, pudgy, squatty bottles for gouty old uncles; in every conceivable shape and size I expected to find it.
Willemstad was not to be Willemstad—city, town, burg—it was to be an inhabited flask of curaçao, a kind of West Indian bubble blown from the lips of the Northeast Trades, sweet with the breath of wild orange. The man with the bottles was to be a more subtle tempter than the hamper-woman, and—but it didn’t happen that way at all. It turned out very differently.
I, for one, did not see a single bottle of any shape or form in the whole town, but the men must have found some, for just before sailing a box was brought in, labelled “Curaçao,” and I surmised it was liqueur, but I didn’t open the box. Truly I did not!
Some of us cynically argued that the liqueur was all sent in from somewhere else and palmed off as a native product; others clung to the home-production fancy, and yet neither one was altogether wrong, for the famous liqueur is made both in Holland and in this little Dutch colony away off in the New World; at any rate this is its birthplace and home.
But the gold filigree, for which the islanders are famous, was true to our expectations. We are drawn up the shut-in street by the magnetism of a crowd which is gathering about a shop-door, and filling the tiny place fairly to suffocation with eager buyers of gold rings and pins, and all sorts of trinkets.
We turn from the goldsmith and the seller of corals, and the shops, and make for the tram,—a little, two-seated bandbox on wheels, drawn by a two-penny mule on a tiny track through the clean white streets of Curaçao. We are told that there is a law against the painting of the houses white, on account of the blinding glare of the sun, and no wonder, for, even after a few short hours of wandering, our eyes ache with the strain and glare of so great light. The blue houses are an exquisite rest to the eye. The whole colour scheme of Curaçao is yellow and blue, and sometimes light green, with white used sparingly as decoration. Green, the green of trees and grass, you ask? No. I said nothing of the green of nature. It’s too thoroughly Dutch for that.
The bandbox car hitches along, threatening to topple over any minute on the toy donkey and stop,—at least until sundown, which would be most sensible. Let’s cover up the donkey and get out of the glare until night! But, no! He has his own ideas, and experience has taught us the futility of an attempt to change them, so we settle down to the succession of yellow houses and blue houses, and white pillars and clean flights of white steps, but hardly a peep of green, not a sprig of palm, or tamarind, or orange, not a vestige of the great fundamental nature-colour—except in a well-concealed little park—everything paved and finished and whitewashed—only a few prim and well-pruned shrubs carefully set in either corner of the tiny front yards, and our eyes ache for the sight of trees and grass. Where the wild orange grows, we failed to discover, for the town itself is almost entirely bare of trees or flowers. Of course, it must be remembered that our very short stay made any long excursion into the country out of the question. Let us come again; we must find the wild oranges!
Strange, is it not? No shade whatever in latitudes where the growing of great vegetation is but the matter of a few months. As far as we could see, there were no real trees in Willemstad; still, if palms do not grow in Holland, whatever would be the sense in having them here? They would spoil the likeness.
So we jerk our hats down, readjust the dark glasses, tuck our handkerchiefs under our collars, and start up a breeze with a Curaçaoan fan, and decide to play “Jack-in-the-box” and jump out; primarily, to make straight for our ship to escape the midday sun; secondarily, to take one very impressionable member of our party away from the alarming charms of a stunning Curaçaoan woman—a woman of that noble and grandly developed type which often appears in the descendants of the Dutch—whose comely form occupies a goodly share of the bandbox seat.
The streets in this residence part of the city are still and empty. The penny donkey and “we’uns” are the only live things visible. We are seized with a desire to pound on those eternally closed doorways to see if people really do live there. This seeing things on the outside is no fun. Let’s make a sensation of some kind! Upset the bandbox, roll the plump lady in a heap inside; put on the cover; stand the penny donkey on top; capture some Curaçaoan hampers, jump inside, pull down the lid and play forty thieves.
A Jolly Dutch Port Willemstad, Curaçao
A Jolly Dutch Port
Willemstad, Curaçao
But, no,—we are sworn foes to scenes, and our vain wish to pinch somebody dies unsatisfied; and finally, when the penny donkey comes to the end of the route down by the quay, we take the longest way around, through the narrow thoroughfares, following the curve of the shore, over bridges which span the canals leading from the main channel of the harbour, down past the basket-woman with her tempting wares on the Otra-Banda quay to our floating home, where the governor and all the prominent citizens of Willemstad have assembled in great numbers.
Well, we’ve found out one thing. The houses were empty sure enough. The people are all on our ship. What a good thing it was we left the bandbox right side up! There would have been no one to rescue the plump lady.
Our friends, Mr. and Mrs. U——, come toward us with a group of strangers—Curaçaoan—whose acquaintance happened just as the best things of life come to us—by the merest chance. They were driving about the city in company with the American consul, when, in passing one of the most attractive residences, their attention was drawn toward two young women who were standing out on the veranda, waving a great flag—our Stars and Stripes—in utter disregard of heat and sun; waving it forth in the yellow and white glare with all the love of country and home which motion could express. Their enthusiasm at once called forth a response on the part of the visitors; the carriage stopped and forthwith all the occupants of the house, following the two girls with the flag, came to welcome the strangers. The newcomers were bidden to enter and there was no limit to their hospitable entertainment.
The flag-bearers were two homesick Southern girls, married to the sons of a leading Dutch family. They had not visited their native land since their marriage, and, oh! how they longed to see the dear old South again! When their countrymen set foot at Curaçao, all of the slumbering mother-country love broke forth again, and the old flag came out, and they feasted the strangers, and did their utmost to honour the precious sentiment of loyalty to home. And, after the ices and cooling drinks and fruits and confections, they and their friends were invited aboard ship, where it was our pleasure to make their acquaintance.
We find here, as we have in all the other islands, that the leading families—the men in power—are comparatively pure representatives of the original colonising stock; that is, pure Dutch, Dane, Castilian, French, as the case may be; but that the people are a strange mixture of all nationalities, speaking languages for the most part unwritten, handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth, strangely intangible, and yet as fixed and well recognised among the people as is the old Common Law in the courts of Anglo-Saxon countries. Our friends in Curaçao tell us that the well-born natives speak Dutch, English, Spanish, and often French, with equal facility; added to this is another language which must be learned in order to deal with the common people.
This curious language—“Papaimiento,” it is called—has been reduced to a certain degree of form in order to facilitate its being taught in the schools. Children learn this language from their nurses, just as our Southern children acquire the negro dialect from the old “mammies.” The comparison cannot be carried out to its full extent for the reason that, while our negro dialect bears a close and intelligible likeness to English, Papaimiento is so unlike Dutch as to render its acquisition almost as difficult for a Dutchman as that of any other foreign language, but fortunately the Dutch are good linguists. It bears, of course, some likeness to Dutch in the fundamentals, but aside from that, it is a strange combination of speech—perhaps more Spanish than anything else—put together, it would seem, to meet the needs of as many people as possible. The meaning of the name Papaimiento is, in the dialect, “The talk we talk,” i. e., “our language.”
Curaçao lies some fifty miles off the coast of South America, and her favourable position between Venezuela and the Windward Islands has made her free port a most desirable one for the smugglers who wish to supply cheap goods to the South American ports. Thousands of flimsy tin-covered trunks ready for Venezuelan voyagers bear evidence of her popularity as a free and unquestioning port. Here, also, many steamers touch. But, above all, Curaçao is the haunt and refuge of the disappointed or temporarily exiled Spanish American politician or revolutionist.
Here, like puppets in a show, appear from time to time many noble patriots ready to fight for their undying principles and incidentally to absorb any loose property in the track of their conquering “armies;” and here hies the deposed “President,” or the lately conquered general, with his chests of treasure, waiting for a ship to his beloved Paris. Watch our own American newspapers for the warlike notes that Willemstad, Curaçao, ever feeling the pulse of northern South America, sends out to the world. Did she not give us the earliest news of Cervera’s mysterious fleet? Does she not thrill us with the momentous gymnastics of President Castro, and the blood-curdling intentions of General Matos, General Uribe-Uribe, General Santiago O’Flanigan et hoc genus omne?
The date of our visit to Curaçao is about the time of the little Queen of Holland’s wedding, so that Wilhelmina and her prospects, and all the gossip attending so charming a personage, becomes with us, as we sit chatting together on the deck, a lively topic of interest. Mrs. C—— tells us of a gold box which is to be sent the young queen as a bridal gift from her subjects in Curaçao; a box fashioned after the most perfect art of the native goldsmith, in filigree so rare that none but a queen were fit to open it. This box, perchance the size of Pandora’s once enchanted casket, is to be filled with the needlework of Curaçaoan women—work as far-famed as the lace of Maracaibo, the lace we expected to see everywhere in Caracas, while we were then so near the Maracaibo country, but which one can never find unless the open-sesame of the Spanish home is discovered, as impossible a task as the quest of the immortal Ponce de Leon. We did not see the Maracaibo lace, nor the Curaçaoan lace, and we are told that such a disappointment is not unusual; it is only for the elect—the Curaçaoan people themselves—that these wonderful specimens of the skill of patient women are visible.
I shall never forget hearing that unwritten page in the tragic history of Spain’s noble son, Admiral Cervera, as the Doctor in his quiet, low voice told how the great admiral touched first at Curaçao after his long and perilous voyage from Spain. It was the Doctor’s son who sent the cable message to the United States, telling that the Spanish fleet was in the offing. But it was the Doctor himself who went with the surgeons who had been sent ashore by Cervera on their humiliating errand, to all the pharmacies in Curaçao for surgical supplies. The fleet had been hurried from Spain unprepared, and in fact almost unseaworthy, with not so much as a single bandage aboard or the most ordinary necessities for the immediate succour of the wounded. They had absolutely nothing in the way of such medical and surgical equipment at hand, although they knew their imminent and terrible need for just such things. Doctor C——, with the true physician’s love for his fellow men, went from pharmacy to pharmacy with the surgeon, and bought up all the bandages and gauze and iodoform and other supplies which were to be found. Meantime detachments from the ships’ crews began to land—hungry and worn, sad with the shadow of the great coming tragedy—and they fell upon the island like a lot of starved wolves. They actually had not food enough aboard to keep body and soul together, for the corrupt and procrastinating government at Madrid had not even properly victualled this fleet of war-ships before sending them to their certain destruction. The market was cleaned of everything it could afford, and even then it was a mere drop in the bucket to that unhappy host. Later Doctor C—— went out to the flag-ship with the surgeon, and spoke with Cervera, who prophetically told him that he knew he was going to his doom—but it had to be! And the twisted skeletons of those noble ships which we later saw strewn from Santiago on along the southern Cuban coast was but the fulfilment of the miserable fate he then so clearly foresaw, but which, after his unavailing pleas to the Spanish government before sailing, the staunch old admiral, with a Spaniard’s pride and bravery, would not avoid. For so it was written! Is there not a strain of the Moor’s fatalism still traceable in the true Spaniard?
Thus as we chat with our new-found friends on topics grave and gay through the noon hour and on into mid-afternoon, the people of the city continue to crowd one another, row upon row, on the dock. A native band plays our national airs and Dutch national airs, and our decks are filled with visitors—the governor of the island and his suite and ladies, and fine little solemn-eyed and suspiciously dark-skinned Dutch children; and, in the midst of all the visiting and moving back and forth, some one asks Doctor W—— how the islanders feel about absorption by the United States—apparently a possibility now present in the mind of every West Indian; and the not surprising answer is made, that, for his part, he—a Dutchman, Holland-born—would favour annexation; and from the wild enthusiasm of the people ashore, as the bugle sounds the first warning of departure, one might readily believe that so favourable, so friendly, is the feeling for the United States, that the slightest advances toward peaceable annexation would be met with universal favour. And so the merchants also talked.
The houses begin to move,—no, it’s our boat herself, slowly, very slowly. We drop our shore-lines, and shout after shout rings after us. The populace moves in a mass along the quay, and the native band beats away its very loudest, and the bigger marine band aboard beats even louder, and it’s a jumble of national airs in different keys, and hurrahs, and the people following along the quay. We wave our handkerchiefs until our arms are tired. One black-faced, bandannaed, Dutch conglomerate in her enthusiasm whips off her bright skirt, and in a white petticoat and red chemise she waves the fluttering skirt in the breeze.
If the United States ever seriously contemplates the annexation of any of the West Indian islands, the surest way, and the quickest way, to bring it about would be to send ship-loads of pleasure-seeking Americans, for bimonthly visits, leave their mania for buying things unrestrained, and, before diplomacy has had time to put on its dress suit, the islanders would beg for annexation.
A Snug Harbour Willemstad, Curaçao
A Snug Harbour
Willemstad, Curaçao
Do not deceive yourself into the belief that you will find El Dorado in these islands, where the products of the country, food, and lodging, can be bought for a song; where one can get full value for money expended. On the contrary, values have become so distorted by the extravagance of some American tourists that to be recognised as an American is a signal for the most extortionate demands from the hotel-keeper to the market-woman. The system of extravagant feeing and still more our readiness to pay what is asked us instead of bargaining and haggling over prices as the natives do, and as is confidently expected of any sane human being, has so demoralised service and the native scale of prices that it is fairly impossible to obtain the ordinary necessities for which one expects to pay in the hotel bill, without giving needlessly large fees to the servants who happen to be in your attendance; or to find anything offered at a reasonable price in the markets.
At the sight of an American—and we are readily distinguished—the prices advance, and the unoffending tourist is obliged to suffer for the extravagance of those who have gone before him. This infection has spread through all the islands, and there has not been a port on our entire cruise wholly free from its effect. Perhaps, however, Willemstad was the pleasantest of all in this respect, for it is a free port, used to low prices and the ways of outsiders.
It might be possible to go through the islands at a reasonable expense, provided one spoke the language necessary at the various ports with ease, and had the time and patience to bargain and shop indefinitely; provided, also, one could beat against the tide which sweeps the American toward the “Gran Hotel.” Let him but once depart from his ancestral traditions of simple habits, let him but enter the portico of the “Gran Hotel,” and he at once becomes the prey of every known species of human vulture. It is the old story of Continental Europe over again.
“WAKE up! Wake up! If you want to see the Southern Cross, wake up and come on deck!” And we remember how long we had been waiting for those wonderful stars, and how Daddy, who many nights slept on deck, had told us that he often saw them, and how we had, night after night, vowed we would make the effort to awaken at two in the morning, and how, each night, we had slept along, too tired with the wonder days to move an inch until bugle-call.
But here comes this far-off voice again calling us from the Northland of dreams, and it seems to be saying, “This is your last chance. By to-morrow (whenever that uncertainty comes!) the stars will have rolled away, or you will have sailed along, and there will be no Southern Cross, and you may as well not have come away down here to the Spanish Main at all if you miss seeing it,”—and then we wake a bit more, and the figure in the doorway stands there with “come” on his face, and “wake up!” on his lips, and we try to think how sorry we shall be if we do not see the Southern Cross. And then the door closes with a rather contemptuous click, and we land in the middle of the floor, aroused by the disappearance of the figure in pajamas and by our somewhat reawakened sense of duty.
Throwing on light wrappers, the little girls stumble along after me to where our man stands leaning against the rail, his face turned skyward.
“There it is—see? Right in the south, directly opposite the Great Bear that sunk below the northern horizon two hours ago. One star down quite low, near the horizon, and one almost in a straight line above, and one at either side equal distances apart, like an old four-cornered kite. You must imagine the cross. But it’s hardly what it’s cracked up to be!” And we blink at the stars, and they blink at us, and we feel strangely unreal and turned about.
What in all the world has the Southern Cross to do with the nineteenth century? It belongs to Blackbeard, and the great procession of pirates and roving buccaneers who swept these seas in tall-sparred, black-hulled craft, some hundreds of years ago. One or the other of us is out of place. The only consistent part of the night is, that, while our eyes are searching for the four luminous dots in the Southern Cross, our ship is plunging on toward Jamaica, that one-time Mecca of the bandit rover of the sea. There he found safe harbour and friends in the same profession; there it was that the hoards of Spanish gold and plate and all conceivable sorts of plunder, taken from the hapless merchantmen, were bought and sold and gambled away. But, without the accompaniment of roystering pirates and swaggering buccaneers, the Southern Cross seems out of joint. Jamaica may do as she is, but, as we look out across the scurrying waters, there’s a malicious twinkle to the top star in the Southern Cross and that makes us all the more determined to give it an opportunity to renew old acquaintance. We’ll have a pirate—we must have a pirate, if not a real one, bloody and black and altogether fascinating, we must conjure one by magic! Pirates there must be! So, to pacify our insatiable desire to resuscitate the ghostly heroes of the long-dead past, the Spanish Student offers a yarn.
Four bells of the second night watch rings out, and “All’s well!” floats above our heads, and the witching hour of two in the morning brings the proper flavour to the story. We cuddle down on some stray ship chairs, and the story begins:
“Once upon a time—”
“Oh, dear! Is it to be a ‘once upon a time’ story, Dad? Then it won’t be real,” breaks in the Wee One.
“Yes, it is real, Chick; at least, so far as I know. But you must not interrupt me again. If you do, I might forget, and then the Cross up there would put out its lights and go to bed.”
“No, Dad, I’ll be good.”
“Well, once upon a time, there was a doughty old French Corsair, who was one of the most daring pirates on the Spanish Main. Morals were in a topsyturvy state in those days, and in none were they more wrong-side-to than in this famous old Frenchman. He had a long, low, topsail schooner, painted black, with sharp clipper stem, clean flush decks and tall and raking masts, and—”
“I know all about him, Dad. He had a black beard, and he used to braid it in lots of pigtails, and tie it with ribbons,” says Wee One, again.
“Now, Toddlekins, what did I say? I shall certainly bundle you off to bed. No, it wasn’t Blackbeard, but it was a pirate just as fierce and fully as bad mannered. This old fellow had been rampaging around here, there, and everywhere, all about this Caribbean Sea and along the Spanish Main, in search of ships and gold and prisoners, and occasionally even food, and in fact anything of value he might come across; when not very far from where we are now—yes, just about this latitude, it was, but a few leagues more to the west—by the light of the stars—yes, by the light of this very Southern Cross, he makes out the land, and soon after spies a tidy, prosperous little village handy to the shore of a palm-fringed inlet. Like the provident pirate that he was, he at once decides that he is both hungry and thirsty and that his lusty followers are short of rations. Here is a likely port from which to supply.
“So off goes a long-boat filled with his precious cutthroats, carrying a pressing invitation to the village priest and some of his friends to come aboard. The fat priest is routed out and escorted to the waiting boat; he understands his mission, he has seen such men before. So, taking along a few chosen friends, he makes the best of a bad business and is rowed off to the ship in short order. The citizens, meanwhile, are requisitioned for all sorts of food and drink, and the priest and his friends have a jolly time of it as hostages. But as his wit grows with the wine it occurs to our Corsair that, with a priest aboard, Holy Church should have due reverence, and roars out his imperative suggestion that mass would be in order. An altar is rigged up on the quarter-deck, holy vestments and vessels are quickly brought from the village church, and the ship’s crew are summoned to assemble and warned to take hearty part in the service. In place of music, broadsides are ordered fired from the pirate’s cannon after the Credo, after the Elevation, and after the Benediction. At the Elevation of the Host, the captain finds occasion to reprove a sailor for lack of reverence. But at a second offence from the same trifler, out comes his cutlass—a swift, shining circle follows the Corsair’s blade, and off flies the still grinning head and the blood spirts high from the jumping trunk. The poor priest is startled, but the captain reassures him with kind words, for, says he, it is only his duty and always his pleasure to protect the sanctity of holy things; he would do the same thing again—and a thousand times!—to any one who was disrespectful to the Holy Sacrament. For why is there a great God above and his Holy Church on earth except to be honoured? Then the service continues as if nothing had happened and again comes the whine of the Latin chants and the thunder of the reverent guns.
“After mass, the body is heaved overboard and no burial rites are said, for who shall try to save a heretic’s soul? The priest is put ashore with many a smile and oath and many a pious crossing, and our Corsair and his pack of thieves go their way, having paid their respects to Holy Church.”
“Oh, Dad!” says Toddlekins, “that was lovely; is it true? Tell us another! Just one more! Don’t you remember about Captain Kidd?
“‘My name was Captain Kidd, as I sailed, as I sailed,
My name was Robert Kidd, as I sailed.
My name was Robert Kidd,
God’s laws I did forbid,
And wickedly I did, as I sailed.’
“Don’t you remember the other verses? You used to sing them to us on the yacht before we ever thought of seeing the real Southern Cross.”
And just as the indulgent parent begins to waver, and the little girls are sure they have won another story, down—down—down—drops a big star, the foot of the Cross, millions of miles away, and the three lonely wanderers still hanging low in the heavens reach out their great shadowy arms in ghostly warning to those unthinking children of Adam who defy time and sleep and all things reasonable, just for the sake of a few old memories of a very questionable past.
Then those three deserted stars quiver and shiver and hide behind the wandering company of torch-bearers, and silently disappear, and a tired moon gives a vague uncertainty to sea and air.
In spite of the early morning mystery, all our efforts to reinstate the French Corsair, the black-hulled phantom, and the headless sailor, fail.
The decks of the ship are damp and empty and long. The ungainly deck chairs are locked together in gruesome lines like monstrous grasshoppers dying in winrows, and the great engines below beat and throb, and the water rolls past us in giant breathings, full of the sighs of dead men lying fathoms deep beneath our keel, and the stars sink lower and lower, and we are hurrying on toward the morning. Our eyes are still longing for sleep, and the little girls flutter down below, and we two after them. In the morning, after some strange dreams, we lie at anchor off the Blue Mountains of Jamaica.
HAD he not come aboard, it is doubtful if even the “kirk-ganging habit” inherited from a long line of devout ancestors could have dragged us to the service. But there was an unforgettable something in his face which compelled us, in spite of the intense heat, to leave ship by a shore-boat on Sunday morning and inquire the way to the Parish Church.
Kingston, Jamaica, from the Bay
Kingston, Jamaica, from the Bay
Shortly after we had dropped anchor in Kingston Harbour, early on Saturday, we saw the rector of the English Church being rowed through the crowd of fruit-boats, which were bobbing about us like so many brilliant birds; but it was with considerable difficulty that he was finally enabled to reach the ship, so strenuous were the black fruiterers to give their wares the best possible showing. They were well worth the showing, too, for such masses and varieties and colours were a marvel indeed, even in the tropics. The shaddocks were as big as melons, and the tangerines, measuring some fifteen inches in circumference, were dyed as deep a yellow as the colour sense could grasp, and piled in great, heaping baskets, were watched over by beflowered negresses, who sat motionless in the boats, except for their great rolling eyes.
The oranges of Mandeville, Jamaica, were well known to us through the accounts of former travellers, but no description had ever brought a suggestion of the true radiance of the Jamaican fruit as it shone forth that brilliant morning. After one look, the little girls ran down to the stateroom for the St. Thomas basket, to fill it to the very handle-tip with luscious tangerines. And while they scampered off with the basket brimful, the lid pressed back by piles of tender, yellow beauties, a strange boat-load of new passengers blocked the way once more for the good priest, and he leaned patiently back in his boat, as if he knew that to protest would be of no avail.
The newcomers were two enormous live sea-turtles which the fishermen hauled up the gangway by a stout cable. The turtles groaned and puffed and flapped, and the little girls wanted them turned on their legs just to see what would happen; it would be such fun to ride a-turtle-back. And Wee One says, “Why, Mother! They are just like ‘John the Baptist,’ our pet turtle at home, only lots and lots bigger. I wish they’d turn over.” But the sailors had evidently handled turtles before, for they were left on their backs and were—after having been duly wondered at—dragged down the deck out of sight, to reappear again in stew and fricassee, not in steak as the Jamaicans serve them. But Sister laments. She and Little Blue Ribbons wanted to see the turtles run. “Mother, if they had only been right side up we could have helped turn them on their backs just like the ‘Foreign Children’ Stevenson tells about,—
Rio Cobre, near Spanish Town Jamaica Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
Rio Cobre, near Spanish Town
Jamaica
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
Meanwhile, as the way clears, the priest reaches the ship, and is soon lost among the crowd of passengers who are waiting for the first boat ashore.
All of Saturday, we wandered about the dusty, uninteresting streets of Kingston, waiting for the great impression. But it didn’t come. We were ready and willing to admire the beautiful, but it did not appear. Kingston was even more unattractive than Port of Spain, Trinidad; dirtier, hotter, and in every way dull and uninteresting. Had it not been for the Blue Mountains, against which Kingston leans, and the glorious old Northeast Trades which fan her wayworn features, and for the sea at her feet, we could not have forgiven her frowsy appearance. The whole place had a “has been” air, with unkempt streets, and low, square, dumpy-looking houses, facing each other like tired old tramps.
In order to form a just estimate of the Englishman’s work and methods in Jamaica, one must leave Kingston, and take to the roads outside, for example that one along the Rio Cobre which winds in and out among the mountains in a most enchanting course. This particular drive of eleven miles, called the “Bog Walk Drive,” leads to a little settlement called “Bog Walk.” It is to be hoped that there was at one time some excuse for this name, but as bogs do not disappear in a day, it must have been in quite a distant past that the name had any real significance. We saw no suggestion of a Bog Walk, although actively on the alert for it. We had uncertain anticipations of having to scramble over wet and oozing turf, and one of us, without saying a word to any one else, tucked a pair of rubbers into a capacious basket. But the rubbers stayed right there, for there was no bog, nor any suggestion of one,—funny way these English have of naming things!
And speaking of names,—well, there never was a place—except other English colonial towns—where the good old British custom of naming houses is more rampant than in Kingston. Had the houses of some pretension been so labelled, it might not have seemed so strange; but, no, every little cottage had a name painted somewhere on its gate-post, and very grandiloquent ones they were, I assure you. No two-penny affairs for them! There was “Ivy Lodge” and “Myrtle Villa” and “Ferndale” and “Oakmere” and “The Hall,” tacked on to the wobblety fence-posts of the merest shanties. And yet, in spite of their apparent incongruity, there was a sort of pitiful fitness in those names. It was a holding-on, in a crude way, to some half-forgotten ideal of the old English life. It might have been a memory of the far-away mother country, left as the only legacy to a Creole generation; it might have been the last reaching for gentility; who can tell what “The Hall” meant to the inmates of that shambling roof. But for the “Bog Walk” there was no reason apparent, and we did not waste a bit of sympathy on the supposititious man who first sank to his armpits in what may have been a bog.
The Bog Walk road is wide enough for the passing of vehicles, and as solid as a rock. The English in the West Indies—as elsewhere—have ever been great road-builders. Now this bit of road—eleven miles long, as smooth as a floor, as firmly built as the ancient roads of Rome—is part of a great system of roads which extends for hundreds of miles throughout the island, and these roads have been constructed with so much care that, in spite of the torrents of tropical rain which must at times flood them, they remain as firm and enduring as the mountains themselves, seemingly the only man-made device in the West Indies which has been able to withstand the ravages of the tropical elements.
Jamaica is one hundred and forty-four miles long and fifty miles wide, and its entire area is a network of these wonderful roads. Roads which would grace a Roman Empire, here wind through vast lonely forests and plantations of coffee and cacao, past towns whose ramshackle houses are giving the last gasps of dissolution. Jamaica has evidently suffered under the affliction of road-making governors, whose single purpose has been to build roads though all else go untouched, and they have held to that ambition with bulldog pertinacity. No one can deny the wonder of the Jamaican highway. But whither, and to what, does it lead? Good roads are truly civilisers, and essential to the good of a country, but there must be a reason for their existence which is mightier than the way itself. Had there been half as many forest roads in Jamaica as there are now, and the money which has been buried in practically unused paths put into good schools and the encouragement of agriculture, Jamaica might to-day show a very different face. The most casual observation tells us of vast, unreasoning waste of money on the beautiful island, and one cannot but pity the patient blacks who have suffered so much from the poor administration of their white brothers.
A Native Hut Jamaica Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
A Native Hut
Jamaica
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
It was our pleasure to drive some distance on these hard turnpikes, and in miles we met but one conveyance of any kind, and that was a rickety old box on wheels, carrying a family of coolies to Spanish Town.
This place out-Spanished any Spanish town we had ever seen in filth and general dilapidation. It was simply a lot of rambling old shacks, huddled together under the long-suffering palms—dirty, forlorn, forsaken, never good for much when young, and beyond redemption in its puerile old age. Down through these haunts of the half-naked blacks, there sweeps a road fit for a chariot and four. Diamond necklaces are queenly prerogatives, and the proper setting for a royal feast; but, thrown about the neck of a starving child, they are, to say the least, out of place. Nothing can be more entrancing, when perfect of its kind, than either diamonds or children, but they do not belong together. It may be, that, when the child is grown, circumstances will make the wearing of such a necklace a graceful adornment, but, until that time does come, the child’s belongings should be those of simple necessity, all else being sacrificed to the normal growth of body and mind; let this be once well under way and adornments may follow. Jamaica has given her children a diamond necklace, and, although magnificent and wonderful, it is out of place, and the worst of it is, the children have had to pay dearly for it.
What Jamaica would have been under wise and prudent management, and with a different racial problem, no one can say. She has certainly never been lacking in resources, nor has she lacked amenable—though not always desirable—subjects. But there is a hitch somewhere, and to find that hitch would take a long unravelling of a torn and broken skein, the kind of work few care to undertake; but it is the work which must be done if Jamaica is ever to have a future.
The Bog Walk Road, near Spanish Town Jamaica
The Bog Walk Road, near Spanish Town
Jamaica
Dusty and hot and still wondering where the “Bog Walk” would appear, we left the carriages for an inn which stood close to the road. It was somewhat—no, I should say much—above the average Jamaican house, passably clean, just passably, and in a way rather inviting to the traveller who is glad enough to go anywhere, where he can be satisfied, if he is hungry and tired. But the house was not what I wanted to tell you about; it was the grande dame within, who played the indifferent hostess. We did not see her as we ran up-stairs to the upper balcony; it was well after we had sipped our rum and lemonade—for we did sip it; we not only sipped it, but we drank it, and it was fine, and we felt so comfortable that, when she—la grande dame—appeared, it never occurred to us to express our disappointment over the Bog Walk; we just agreed with her in everything she said, and felt beatific. I think we would have agreed with her even without the rum and lemonade, for she had an air about her that made one feel acquiescent. She was tall and angular. Her features were as clean-cut as though chiselled in marble; she was clearly Caucasian in type. Her lips were thin, her nose was aquiline, and her mouth had a haughty, indifferent curve, suggesting a race of masters, not slaves. But her skin was like a smoke-browned pipe, and her hair was glossy, and waved in quick little curves in spite of the tightly drawn coil at the back of her stately neck. She was dressed in the fashion of long ago, with a full flounced skirt and a silk shawl. She sent her menials to wait upon us, although I noticed that, in spite of herself, she was taking an interest in the strangers.
The Madame went before, and we followed, through the ever-open door of the West Indian home. The Madame’s skirts swept over the uneven threshold, over the bare, creaky floors, and her noiseless feet led the way into a past, rich in romance and disaster. The Madame had little to say; she just glided on before us like a black memory. Here on the bare, untidy floors were the Madame’s treasures; treasures she used daily, for the table was spread (the Madame served dinner there just the hour before). Here was a table of Dominican mahogany with carved legs and oval top, and there on the sideboard was rare old plate, and quaintest pieces of Dresden china and Italian glass glistened as it once had done near the lips of its lordly master. The side-table of mahogany gave out a dull, rich lustre of venerable age, and there was a punch-bowl—silver, and much used—and curious candlesticks with glass shades. Ah! The Madame was rich. What a place, I thought, for a lover of the antique!
In her bedroom hard-by, a massive four-poster reached to the ceiling, and off in a dark corner there was an old chest, richly ornamented with brass. In every room there were chairs and davenports in quaintest fashion, all dull and worn and beautiful, while the billiard-room outside was well filled by a massive old-fashioned rosewood billiard-table whose woodwork, undermined by the extensive ravages of ants, was fast falling in pieces. “Where has it come from?” we ask; and she replies, with a lofty air, that her grandfather brought all these over from England long, long ago. No doubt the Madame would have sold any and all of it, and we caught ourselves wondering how we could get one of those old pieces home. It really seemed as if we ought to buy something, for the black Madame, towering above us, certainly expected to make a sale. But we didn’t buy; we just admired it all, and particularly the Madame, and then we began again to try and think out the dreary tangle.
There was just one thing the Madame had which she would not sell, and that was the one thing we wanted most: the story of that grandfather. She was the grande dame; his history was sealed behind those unfathomable eyes. She admitted only the patrician in her blood, not the savage. The grandfather had left his stamp upon that face, but there was that other stamp! Alas, the Englishman has sold his birthright in Jamaica; he is selling it to-day, and what more hopeless future could rest over a people than does this day over the island of Jamaica?
And now we are back in Kingston, the city. “How would it be for us to leave Daddy here—he wants to be measured at the military tailor’s for some khaki suits—and run off down the street on the shady side, to what seems to be a ‘Woman’s Exchange?’” The little girls, always ready for a new expedition, take the lead, and for once we found a sign which was not misleading. It proved to be a veritable Woman’s Exchange, filled with no end of curious specimens of native workmanship which had been brought there for sale. Among the natural curios—to us the most wonderful—was a branch of what is known as the lacebark-tree. The botanist will have to tell you its real unpronounceable name. For us “lacebark” answers very well, because we don’t know the other, and have no way of finding it out just now. Who ever thought of carrying an encyclopedia in a steamer-trunk? I am sadly conscious that we even forgot the pocket-dictionary. Please forgive us this time! But it was the tree that interested us, not its name. Its fibrous inner bark (much like the bark of our Northern moosewood) is made of endless layers of lacelike network, which can be opened and stretched a great width, even in the bark of a bit of wood an inch and a half in diameter. These layers of lace are separated and opened into flowerlike cups, with rim upon rim of lacy edge, all coming from the one solid stick of wood, or carefully unrolled into filmy sheets of net-like tissue. The native whips are made by taking long branches of this tree, scraping off the brittle outer bark, opening the inner fibrous bark, and braiding the ends into a tapering lash as long as one wishes. Hats are trimmed with scarfs of this dainty woodland lace, and even dresses are said to be made from this cloth of the forest, which rivals in loveliness the fairest weaving of Penelope.
The gracious woman in charge told us that, while the Exchange was self-supporting, it owed its existence to the liberality of an American girl, who had many years ago married an English nobleman. And it made me glad to think that our glorious American women had, with all their foolish love for titles, a generous hand for woman the world over, and that, wherever they wandered, their ways could be followed by the light of their liberality. In a way, the Exchange—founded by an American woman—made us forgive much in Kingston; so, when we took the street up to the Myrtle Bank Hotel, expecting from its name to find a sweet, delicious caravansary, embowered in myrtle green and magnolia, and found the “Myrtle Bank” an arid sand beach, with a large, self-sufficient modern hotel built therein, we still forgave, because we said we would for the sake of that dear American girl who couldn’t quite forget.
And then, too, the Doctor met us straight in the doorway; not the newly made Philadelphia doctor. No, not that one; it was the other one, the Northeast Trade, the million-year-old West Indian Doctor. Do you suppose he is as old as that? Yes, even older. But, for all that, he’s as faithful to his trust as though but yesterday he had slipped from out the wrangling of chaos. So we kiss the Doctor, and run up after him into the big, spacious parlour of the Myrtle Bank Hotel, drop down into a delightful rocker, and think it all over.
Here we are in Kingston, owned by the English, governed by the English, bullyragged by the English,—but where is he, the Englishman, where the Englishwoman? To be sure, we found some white faces in the shops, and we remembered seeing a few fair-haired, sallow little girls. And we saw on the street, just as we left the Exchange, an Englishman with a golf-bag on his shoulder; but these were the landmarks only—the exception. The people we saw were of all shades of a negro admixture, and some very black ones at that.
But the Myrtle Bank Hotel was not the place for such reflections. At least, so the good Doctor seemed to think, for he had no sooner brought us under the magic of his presence, than we were carried into the most affable state of contentment with all things visible, and it was not until the next morning that the question fully dawned upon us in its true significance.
Where We Landed Kingston, Jamaica Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
Where We Landed
Kingston, Jamaica
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
I suppose we might have walked from the boat-landing to the Parish Church embowered in its palms a few blocks away, but even that short distance was exaggerated by the early hot glare of the sun. The Northeast Trade was taking his morning nap, and the air was utterly motionless. So Daddy hails a cab, and we rumble off in the direction of some ringing bells. The town, as we drove along, had the dead look of an English Sunday morning; there were few people visible, and those we saw were evidently following the bells, as we were. Back of our desire to go where the face of the priest was leading us, there was a hope that, in attending an English church, presided over by a white, English priest, we should there see the representative people of Kingston, the white owners of the island. This church was one of the few beautiful sights in Kingston. Truly, some good priest of the olden time must have planned with lingering touch the graceful garden which so lovingly enshrined the venerable spot. An avenue of palms, singing their silvery song all the long day, skirted on either side the wide stone walk to the entrance, and bent their long, waving arms very close to our heads as we stepped within the doorway. The church, as an ancient tablet indicated, was built in the latter part of the seventeenth century. It followed the sweet lines of the English cathedral, built from time to time, as one could readily observe from the varying indications of age in the structure itself.
We were early for the service, for the second bell had not rung. The priest met us at the door. He was a man of ripe years, with close-cut whitening hair, and a face that one would always remember. It was framed in strength and moulded by the love of God. There was in it that indefinable beauty which comes from a sacrificial life, from a life breathed upon by the spirit of holiness and quiet. There were no lines of unrest there; the poise of divine equilibrium was his living benediction, and we followed him down the stone aisle, over the memorial slabs of the departed great buried beneath, to a seat just the other side of a massive white pillar, midway between open windows on one side and an open door on the other, where the grateful breeze, now faintly rustling the palms without, swept in upon us in delicious waves.
We were placed quite well in front of the transept, and as we waited there in the quiet old building, I began to make a mental estimate of just where the different classes of Jamaican society would find themselves. Here, where we were, would be the whites, and back beyond the transept, the negroes, and in the choir, of course, the fair-haired English boys. Then the old bell began to ring again, and a few of our fellow voyagers came in and took seats in front of us,—notably Mr. and Mrs. F——, who had been the guests of the priest the day before. The church was filling. The owners of the seat in which the priest had placed us arrived, and we were requested by a silent language, which speaks more forcibly than words, to move along and make room. In the meantime, the pew was also filled from the other side, and in the same dumb language we were requested to move back the other way. Thus we were wedged in closely between the two respective owners of the seat. And they were not white owners,—they were black, brown, yellow—but not white. The church filled rapidly. It filled to the uttermost. Mr. and Mrs. F——, in front of us, were obliged to separate, for, when the owners of their seat arrived, they simply stood there until Mr. F—— was forced to leave his wife and crowd in somewhere else. The pew-owners were the rightful possessors, and the white man or the stranger apparently of little consequence. There was every conceivable shade of the African mixture. The choir was made up partially of black negresses, partially of yellow girls, with men of all hues besides, and the whole congregation in this Church of England was similarly mixed, with the black blood strongly predominant. I saw, outside of our party, only one Englishwoman and one Englishman, and a few about whom I was doubtful, and those were all. The blacks were very far from being the true type of African. In some cases, there would be the negro face in all its characteristics, with one exception, and that would be the oblique eyes of the Chinese. There were Japanese negroes, and Chinese negroes, and English and French negroes. It was a horrible mixture of negro with every other people found in the island, with the negro in the ascendant.
I saw no marks of deference paid to the white strangers; they were placed in the same position in which a negro would find himself in a Mississippi gathering of white people. If you have ever witnessed the enthusiasm with which the negro is welcomed in such places, you can understand our position that day in Jamaica. We had been told of the contempt in which the white man is held in Haïti, and, not having experienced it, were disinclined to believe such an abnormal state of things. But, here in Jamaica, without ever having been informed of the state of society, we felt it as plainly as if it had been emblazoned on the sign-boards. We were not welcome and we felt it. We were out of our element.
El Morro, Entrance to Harbour Santiago de Cuba Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
El Morro, Entrance to Harbour
Santiago de Cuba
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
The people were all well clothed,—many in elegance. The most of them in white and black; court mourning for the queen.
And then the grand old service began,—that wonderful world-encircling service of our old English Mother Church—always the same and always sufficient—and it was all so strange,—the feeling I had about that word “we.” There was a slow dawning in my soul that never before had the word “humanity” meant anything but a white humanity to me—a universal love for black, yellow, chocolate, brown, saffron humanity had never come fully into my consciousness. And, while I sat there in that vast, black assemblage, the long, terrible past of Jamaica arose before me, and, too, the doubtful future loomed up in gloomy outlines, and I wondered what would be the outcome of it all. Where would the Englishman be in another century in Jamaica? Would Jamaica revert back to the Haïtien type, or is some hand coming to uphold the island? It is far from my intention to touch upon the political situation in Jamaica,—especially as I don’t know anything about it. I can only tell you what I saw, and you can draw your own conclusions. All I can say is, where is the white man in Jamaica? What is his position, and what has brought him into his present deplorable condition? Has the white blood after all so little potency?
One needs but to glance at James Anthony Froude’s masterful book, “The English in the West Indies,” in order to see the why and wherefore of it all. His words have greater force to-day than even at the time of his writing, for the course of events has more than justified his predictions.
Our opinions of the situation were wholly unbiased, for we did not read Froude’s account until long after, so that our sensations, our surprises, at the Jamaican English Church service, were wholly original.
The Plaza Cienfuegos, Cuba
The Plaza
Cienfuegos, Cuba
The service proceeded through the prayers—our prayers—and then came the sermon. I shall never forget the text. It was taken from that masterpiece of Biblical literature, the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”
The priest had been there for over thirty years, and he began:
“Beloved in the Lord, my children!” And we, white and black, were all his children. We were in a strangely reversed situation, for even the good priest had the tawny hue of Africa faintly shining in his fine face. No mention of colour distinction was made: but which of us was to have the charity? Did it not seem that he pleaded for the white man—that the stronger black should have more charity? Or was it for us as well? And it seemed to me I realised for the first time the position of our well-bred Southerner; and everything was jumbled and queer in my mind as the priest spoke. And his beautiful strong face shone over the people, and his voice quivered with a deep love, touching the raiment of one who said, “Come unto me all ye”—all—all—all! The white arches echoed back the pleadings, the commands, the love, while in quiet eloquence he told of One who set his face steadfastly toward Jerusalem.
The church emptied itself, and we were left with the priest, and the old sunken tombs, and the sleeping organ, and the white light streaming through the windows. And we wondered if we had yet learned what the Master meant when he said:
The Grave of Cervera’s Fleet West of Santiago de Cuba
The Grave of Cervera’s Fleet
West of Santiago de Cuba