At Antigua we anchored and took a steam launch to see the town, where
we visited a very fine sugar-cane factory, watching the whole process
from the cane-field to the market.
We did not land at Guadeloupe, the hour not being favorable and the
stay being too brief to compensate for the effort involved. But this
morning at eight we approached Dominica, the largest of the Leeward
group, the loftiest of the Lesser Antilles, and the loveliest--if one
could or ought to make comparison--the loveliest of the West Indian
Isles. The guidebook calls it "The Caribbean Wonderland," and Dolly
and I were not disposed to quarrel with the phrase, after hanging over
the deck-rail for an hour before breakfast and marveling at the beauty
of the view. Mountains shimmered in the distance like visions seen in
dreams, mountains like towering emeralds springing from a sapphire
sea! We passed tiny hamlets, half-hidden in lime orchards, and
cocoa-groves with yellow patches of cane gleaming here and there
against a background of forest. As we drew nearer we could see white
torrents dashing tempestuously down through green valleys, for
Dominica has a too plenteous water-supply, since in some districts
three hundred inches a year is the average rainfall. It rained seven
times in the three hours that we passed on shore, but the showers were
gentle ones, and we found generous shelter in the wonderful Botanical
Garden, where we spent most of our time.
Nature is sometimes a kindly mother; often she wears a tragic mask,
and now and then she indulges in melodrama; but I never conceived the
possibility of her having a sense of humor until we witnessed her
freakish mood in the Dominica garden. There were the usual varieties
of magnificent palms and brilliant flowering shrubs; but the joy of
joys was the Sausage-Tree, around which we walked in helpless mirth at
the incredible veracity of the imitation. It reached a goodly height,
and had a splendid girth and circumference of shade; but no factory in
Bologna or Frankfort, or any other possible birthplace of the real
article, could rival this amazing, this funny, tree in fertility. Its
product was just a trifle large, save for the omnivorous lover of
sausage; but in other respects it was a faithful copy of the
original--unless, indeed, the first sausage-maker borrowed the idea
from the tree, instead of the other way about. These vegetable
sausages hung in hundreds of strings and festoons and clusters from
the topmost to the lowest branches. Because of the way they hung, the
way they were strung, their shape and color, and the very manner in
which the skin was neatly drawn over each one and fastened, no one
possessing a sense of the ridiculous but would sit down under the tree
and laugh at the joke. Oddly enough we could find no pictorial
postcard of this phenomenon to bring home for the enlivening of winter
evenings, though we bought a capital one of the Cannon-Ball Tree, just
as unique in its way but not so absurd.
Dorothea was enchanted with Dominica, and kept exclaiming every few
minutes: "Oh, if only Great Britain would sell us this island! I think
I'd choose to live in Dominica, because if I had a sausage-tree in my
garden I should laugh every day, and the children wouldn't need any
playthings."
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