Viewed from the bay, under the green shadow of the hills overlooking it,
Frederiksted has the appearance of a beautiful Spanish town, with its
Romanesque piazzas, churches, many arched buildings peeping through
breaks in a line of mahogany, bread-fruit, mango, tamarind, and palm
trees,--an irregular mass of at least fifty different tints, from a
fiery emerald to a sombre bluish-green. But on entering the streets the
illusion of beauty passes: you find yourself in a crumbling, decaying
town, with buildings only two stories high. The lower part, of arched
Spanish design, is usually of lava rock or of brick, painted a light,
warm yellow; the upper stories are most commonly left unpainted, and are
rudely constructed of light timber. There are many heavy arcades and
courts opening on the streets with large archways. Lava blocks have been
used in paving as well as in building; and more than one of the narrow
streets, as it slopes up the hill through the great light, is seen to
cut its way through craggy masses of volcanic stone.
[Illustration 07: CHARLOTTE AMALIE, ST. THOMAS
_All red and white against the green hillside; reflected
as in a mirror by the azure sea._]
But all the buildings look dilapidated; the stucco and paint are falling
or peeling everywhere; there are fissures in the walls, crumbling
façades, tumbling roofs. The first stories, built with solidity worthy
of an earthquake region, seem extravagantly heavy by contrast with the
frail wooden superstructures. One reason may be that the city was burned
and sacked during a negro revolt in 1878;--the Spanish basements
resisted the fire well, and it was found necessary to rebuild only the
second stories of the buildings; but the work was done cheaply and
flimsily, not massively and enduringly, as by the first colonial
builders.
There is great wealth of verdure. Cabbage and cocoa-palms overlook all
the streets, bending above almost every structure, whether hut or public
building;--everywhere you see the splitted green of banana leaves. In
the court-yards you may occasionally catch sight of some splendid palm
with silver-gray stem so barred as to look jointed, like the body of an
annelid.
In the market-place--a broad paved square, crossed by two rows of
tamarind-trees, and bounded on one side by a Spanish piazza--you can
study a spectacle of savage picturesqueness. There are no benches, no
stalls, no booths; the dealers stand, sit, or squat upon the ground
under the sun, or upon the steps of the neighboring arcade. Their wares
are piled up at their feet, for the most part. Some few have little
tables, but as a rule the eatables are simply laid on the dusty ground
or heaped upon the steps of the piazza--reddish-yellow mangoes, that
look like great apples squeezed out of shape, bunches of bananas,
pyramids of bright-green cocoanuts, immense golden-green oranges, and
various other fruits and vegetables totally unfamiliar to Northern
eyes.... It is no use to ask questions--the black dealers speak no
dialect comprehensible outside of the Antilles: it is a negro-English
that sounds like some African tongue,--a rolling current of vowels and
consonants, pouring so rapidly that the inexperienced ear cannot detach
one intelligible word. A friendly white coming up enabled me to learn
one phrase: "Massa, youwancocknerfoobuy?" (Master, do you want to buy a
cocoanut?)
The market is quite crowded,--full of bright color under the tremendous
noon light. Buyers and dealers are generally black;--very few yellow or
brown people are visible in the gathering. The greater number present
are women; they are very simply, almost savagely, garbed--only a skirt
or petticoat, over which is worn a sort of calico short dress, which
scarcely descends two inches below the hips, and is confined about the
waist with a belt or a string. The skirt bells out like the skirt of a
dancer, leaving the feet and bare legs well exposed; and the head is
covered with a white handkerchief, twisted so as to look like a turban.
Multitudes of these barelegged black women are walking past
us,--carrying bundles or baskets upon their heads, and smoking very long
cigars.
They are generally short and thick-set, and walk with surprising
erectness, and with long, firm steps, carrying the bosom well forward.
Their limbs are strong and finely rounded. Whether walking or standing,
their poise is admirable,--might be called graceful, were it not for the
absence of real grace of form in such compact, powerful little figures.
All wear brightly colored cottonade stuffs, and the general effect of
the costume in a large gathering is very agreeable, the dominant hues
being pink, white, and blue. Half the women are smoking. All chatter
loudly, speaking their English jargon with a pitch of voice totally
unlike the English timbre: it sometimes sounds as if they were trying to
pronounce English rapidly according to French pronunciation and pitch of
voice.
These green oranges have a delicious scent and amazing juiciness.
Feeling one of them is sufficient to perfume the skin of the hands for
the rest of the day, however often one may use soap and water.... We
smoke Porto Rico cigars, and drink West Indian lemonades, strongly
flavored with rum. The tobacco has a rich, sweet taste; the rum is
velvety, sugary, with a pleasant, soothing effect: both have a rich
aroma. There is a wholesome originality about the flavor of these
products, a uniqueness which certifies to their _naïf_ purity:
something as opulent and frank as the juices and odors of tropical
fruits and flowers.
The streets leading from the plaza glare violently in the strong
sunlight;--the ground, almost dead-white, dazzles the eyes.... There are
few comely faces visible,--in the streets all are black who pass. But
through open shop-doors one occasionally catches glimpses of a pretty
quadroon face,--with immense black eyes,--a face yellow like a ripe
banana.
... It is now after mid-day. Looking up to the hills, or along sloping
streets towards the shore, wonderful variations of foliage-color meet
the eye: gold-greens, sap-greens, bluish and metallic greens of many
tints, reddish-greens, yellowish-greens. The cane-fields are broad
sheets of beautiful gold-green; and nearly as bright are the masses of
_pomme-cannelle_ frondescence, the groves of lemon and orange; while
tamarind and mahoganies are heavily sombre. Everywhere palm-crests soar
above the wood-lines, and tremble with a metallic shimmering in the blue
light. Up through a ponderous thickness of tamarind arises the spire of
the church; a skeleton of open stone-work, without glasses or lattices
or shutters of any sort for its naked apertures: it is all open to the
winds of heaven; it seems to be gasping with all its granite mouths for
breath--panting in this azure heat. In the bay the water looks greener
than ever: it is so clear that the light passes under every boat and
ship to the very bottom; the vessels cast only very thin green
shadows,--so transparent that fish can be distinctly seen passing
through from sunlight to sunlight.
The sunset offers a splendid spectacle of pure color; there is only an
immense yellow glow in the west,--a lemon-colored blaze; but when it
melts into the blue there is an exquisite green fight.... We leave
to-morrow.
... Morning: the green hills are looming in a bluish vapor: the long
faint-yellow slope of beach to the left of the town, under the mangoes
and tamarinds, is already thronged with bathers,--all men or boys, and
all naked: black, brown, yellow, and white. The white bathers are Danish
soldiers from the barracks; the Northern brightness of their skins forms
an almost startling contrast with the deep colors of the nature about
them, and with the dark complexions of the natives. Some very slender,
graceful brown lads are bathing with them,--lightly built as deer: these
are probably creoles. Some of the black bathers are clumsy-looking, and
have astonishingly long legs.... Then little boys come down, leading
horses;--they strip, leap naked on the animals' backs, and ride into the
sea,--yelling, screaming, splashing, in the morning light. Some are a
fine brown color, like old bronze. Nothing could be more statuesque than
the unconscious attitudes of these bronze bodies in leaping, wrestling,
running, pitching shells. Their simple grace is in admirable harmony
with that of Nature's green creations about them,--rhymes faultlessly
with the perfect self-balance of the palms that poise along the
shore....
Boom! and a thunder-rolling of echoes. We move slowly out of the harbor,
then swiftly towards the southeast.... The island seems to turn slowly
half round; then to retreat from us. Across our way appears a long band
of green light, reaching over the sea like a thin protraction of color
from the extended spur of verdure in which the western wind of the
island terminates. That is a sunken reef, and a dangerous one. Lying
high upon it, in very sharp relief against the blue light, is a wrecked
vessel on her beam-ends,--the carcass of a brig. Her decks have been
broken in; the roofs of her cabins are gone; her masts are splintered
off short; her empty hold yawns naked to the sun; all her upper parts
have taken a yellowish-white color,--the color of sun-bleached bone.
Behind us the mountains still float back. Their shining green has
changed to a less vivid hue; they are taking bluish tones here and
there; but their outlines are still sharp, and along their high soft
slopes there are white specklings, which are villages and towns. These
white specks diminish swiftly,--dwindle to the dimensions of
salt-grains,--finally vanish. Then the island grows uniformly bluish; it
becomes cloudy, vague as a dream of mountains;--it turns at last gray as
smoke, and then melts into the horizon-light like a mirage.
Another yellow sunset, made weird by extraordinary black, dense,
fantastic shapes of cloud. Night darkens, and again the Southern Cross
glimmers before our prow, and the two Milky Ways reveal
themselves,--that of the Cosmos and that ghostlier one which stretches
over the black deep behind us. This alternately broadens and narrows at
regular intervals, concomitantly with the rhythmical swing of the
steamer. Before us the bows spout fire; behind us there is a flaming and
roaring as of Phlegethon; and the voices of wind and sea become so loud
that we cannot talk to one another,--cannot make our words heard even by
shouting.