MY VISIT TO A PEN—ARAWAK REMAINS—LEGEND OF THE COTTON-TREE
Kingston, _March 1903_.—After passing Kendal, a place well known for
its yearly agricultural shows, I stopped at a station called Balaclava,
where my friend in her buggy met me. A drive of about two miles through
very hilly country and across one or two bridges spanning one of the
many rivers, or springs, which abound in this island, brought me to
their property. A gate stood open, and we drove over a grassy track
up to the house, which is one of the oldest in Jamaica, and called a
“storm-house,” because it was built after the great hurricane of 1722.
I was afterwards introduced to an ancient black lady of some eighty
summers, who remembered slave times. She had been on the estate, and
had never lived elsewhere. The house, she said, had always been “just
de same, missus,” when she was a “picaninny and lived in de big niggah
houses ovar dar,” pointing towards the wooded hills which lay on my
right. My hostess, Mrs M——, said their property had been bought some
years before from a coloured family, a death having caused the estate to
be sold. It comprised 1600 acres, and besides coffee, which was chiefly
grown, logwood, pimento and bananas were cultivated. A river ran through
it, and they had on the estate a very interesting cave, about a mile in
length, if I cared to visit it. I naturally accepted the latter proposal,
and as we could not drive anywhere the next day, the horses and carriage
having been promised to some friends for the purposes of a funeral, it
was arranged we should visit the cave. Mrs M—— I found to be a most
charming hostess, desirous that I should see all there was to be seen in
the neighbourhood.
The house reminded me very much of some old-fashioned houses I had seen
in Spain the previous spring. It was a square one-storied building with
a low, wide verandah running round two sides of it. The ground floor
was taken up with storage-rooms, an overseer’s room, and a school-room.
Passages were built between thick stone walls for shelter in case of
violent storms or hurricanes. A small portion of grass was fenced round
about the house to prevent the turkeys, chickens, sheep and pigs from
entering the enclosure. On passing through the wicket-gate of this I
was conducted up a stone staircase across the piazza or verandah into
the drawing-room which, with a sitting-room, ran the whole length of
the front of the building. An open doorway, draped with lace curtains,
led into a large dining-room, which occupied the central portion of the
house. The bedrooms were built on either side, and the kitchen ran along
the back of the house. This central high-roofed, cool, windowless room
is the characteristic feature of most West Indian houses built in times
past. The floors, generally of island cedar-wood, are polished to a
nicety by the black servants, who sing as they work at them.
The family, which consisted of Mr and Mrs M——, their three sons and
daughter, a girl of nine, with her governess, a tall, dark West Indian
girl, the daughter of a neighbouring clergyman, sat down to dinner
about six o’clock the evening of my arrival. We were waited on by two
neatly-dressed maids, whose faces reminded one of Nubian blacking; they
wore caps on their woolly hair and slippers on their feet.
Mrs M——, who is a clergyman’s daughter, and her husband, the son of a
British naval commander, belonging to a good old Cornish family, told me
that they insisted upon their servants appearing suitably dressed in the
house, however smartly they chose to attire themselves out-of-doors. They
interested me very much in their conversation about the condition of the
island and the amusing ways of the blacks.
Jamaica, they said, had certainly taken a turn for the better; and it
is commonly said amongst business-men out here, that the island can
never return to the state of depression caused by the failure of sugar.
Fortunes are perhaps not to be made, but that a living is to be earned
if people are industrious and ordinarily intelligent is conceded on all
hands, and was a feature to be noted in the Archbishop’s address to his
people for the New Year.
That Dr Nuttall, who is known far and wide as a man of clear-sighted
ability, both as an energetic organiser and able administrator, is also
an admirable judge of economic and financial problems in these latitudes
no better evidence is forthcoming than a study of the methods by which
he has guided the barque of the Anglican Church through the stormy
waters of Disestablishment. In spite of almost overwhelming difficulties
and penury, he has established it on a far surer foundation than it
ever boasted of before, for it has its roots now in the hearts of the
people. It represents to-day the chosen religious expression of the most
enlightened and educated classes in this island.
But although I cannot refrain from speaking of the conspicuous ability
which has retrieved the position of Anglicanism during the last two
decades, it is not because one depreciates, or would wish to undervalue,
the self-denying labours of Wesleyan and other nonconformist ministers.
Pitying the condition of “poor slaves” they came to Jamaica in the
eighteenth century, and commenced their labours when the clergy of the
Established Church were steeped in avarice, or in apathy. Here they live
and labour on the merest pittances. I heard recently of a nonconformist
minister whose income, all told, was not over £40 a year.
Since I intend to devote other pages to this subject, I will shorten my
reflections on religious phases in Jamaica, and will only mention the way
in which my friends were able to get a church built in this neighbourhood.
Mr M——, adding some practical training he had had in his youth to
certain handy-man qualities, inherited perhaps from a sailor ancestry,
superintended the whole of the undertaking when once the spot of ground
was selected, whereon to build. He was both architect and builder.
Many of the contributors, who could not give money, gave their labour
and time. The ladies of the country-side devoted their energies to the
cause, inciting and encouraging their black sisters to aid them. Appeals
to their friends in England for help met with generous response, and a
bazaar, or rather country _fête_, brought in a very satisfactory sum
total. The cost of the erection of the church to which I was taken
probably represents the smallest amount in Jamaica, for one of its size.
It is difficult for us at home with our various secular interests
improving, or otherwise, to realise how, in the life of the country
people of our colonies, removed from all these, religion, whether sham or
real, plays an all-important part. Only by living in these out-of-the-way
places does one at all appreciate this side of colonial life, and, having
seen it, one feels that if the want of solid teaching is felt amongst the
educated laity, it should be met by the best possible attainable. So far
as my own powers of observation go, I incline to think that the emotional
side of religion is not what is needed in Jamaica; they have had plenty
of that sort of thing. What they ask for is a broad-minded, literary,
practical theology, which can hold its own with the advancing science and
democratic faddisms of these days, and this it is the duty of the English
Church, to, my mind, to provide.
An interesting visitor to the house whilst I stayed at N—— was a local
doctor, with antiquarian and artistic tastes. I learnt from him that
there had been several finds in the island of prehistoric remains,
consisting of kitchen-middens, refuse-heaps, or shell-mounds, near
which various objects such as aboriginal pottery, fish-bones, and those
of the Indian coney had been discovered. The locations of these having
generally been near the sea-coasts, and in some cases extending over
quite large areas on both sides of the island; the numerous limestone
caves have provided many skulls and relics of Indian origin. A series
of rock-carvings with deep incisions representing human figures and
heads, also rude outlines of lizards, birds, and turtles, have been
found in the parish of St Catherine, possessing analogous features to
similar finds in various West Indian islands. Implements too, such
as chisels, axes, celts, mealing-stones, flaked flints, chalcedony
beads, perforated ornamental shells, have been unearthed in different
localities. Columbus spoke of the idols worshipped by the Indians of
Jamaica, and it is interesting to learn that two stone images, probably
examples of their gods, were sent home for exhibition by the Hon. D.
Campbell; others, perforated behind for suspension, were found in a
shell-heap, and probably were worn as amulets. In speaking of the Indians
as the aborigines, it must be understood that this was a generic name
applied indiscriminately to all the inhabitants of the lands discovered
by Columbus, but the Arawak tribe is distinct from the man-eating Caribs
who lived near the regions of the Orinoco. In Mr im-Thurn’s work, “Among
the Indians of Guiana,” he compares these prehistoric Jamaican objects
with those of other West Indian islands, and the mainland of America, and
finds that there are more notes of resemblance between them and those
of the Indians, both ancient and modern, of British Guiana. With this
last-named race, the former inhabitants of Jamaica, as well as many of
the aborigines of other islands, are supposed to be most closely related.
It was one of these limestone caverns, where Indian remains had been
found, that I visited, for it was in such hiding-places the poor Arawaks
took refuge from the tender mercies of their Spanish conquerors, who, at
the most moderate computation, accounted for some 60,000 of them before
the English occupation under Cromwell. The entrance was up a path leading
from the main road, and was by no means conspicuous, but once inside,
the cave was spacious and lofty; the stalactites hanging from the roof
were of a very curious formation. Two of Mrs M——’s children accompanied
me, and an overseer, with two attendant “boys,” carried torches. It was
very rough walking and fearfully hot, slippery and wet here and there.
In one place, which the children called the banqueting-hall, from its
vast proportions and high roof, we startled thousands of rat-bats, who
had taken up their habitation in the deep recesses of the stalactites
which hung over our heads. Two were knocked over, and I secured one;
they have bat’s wings attached to a mouse-like body. At last we came to
a full stop, an unscaleable barrier of rock barred our way; the other
side, they told me, was one of those underground rivers so common in the
Cockpit Country, of which I shall speak further on; they run through the
interstices between the limestone rocks. However, we contented ourselves
with what we had seen, and were glad enough to breathe fresh air after
nearly an hour’s subterranean exploration.
The West Indian way of living, especially on these pens, strikes one as
being the most suitable to the climate. We rose before 7 A.M., coffee
was ready on the verandah at 7.30. The mistress of the house fed her
poultry, and looked after household matters till 11. I made my excursion
to the cave, walked or sketched until that hour, when the household
retired to their bedrooms, where baths had been prepared; we then made
our toilet for the day. Breakfast, which was similar to our luncheon,
was served at mid-day; tea about 3.30, before we went for a drive;
dinner, being a moveable feast, according to whatever constituted the
afternoon programme, was at any hour between 5 and 7. On this particular
day the buggy had been lent for a funeral. The difficulties of providing
for sudden emergencies of this nature in a hot country, in a hilly and
sparsely-inhabited region, struck me forcibly. The seats and cover were
removed from the carriage, upon which wooden planks were laid so as to
make a kind of platform; on this the coffin rested. “There are some
gruesome things connected with funerals in these parts, where a coffin,
or ‘box’ has to be put together in a few hours,” Mr M—— said. Often,
when death seemed a certainty, they had to send out “boys” to collect
the necessary deals for the coffin, and set about making it before the
breath was out of a man’s body. Unless the gravediggers were well primed
with rum, said he, they would not dig the grave, “for fear of duppy
springing up, buckra.” But the corpse expectant may recover occasionally,
and the coffin then is calmly kept for use at a future date. Having seen
some graves on the estate, neatly bricked over and cemented, in one of my
walks, I asked if they belonged to the family who had formerly lived at
N——, when Mrs M—— explained to me that it was the custom, if a bereaved
widower thought fit to take a second wife into his hut, to make a brick
erection, firmly cemented together, over that part of his compound where
the former partner of his life had been laid to rest, or at any rate over
the spot where he thought he had buried her, for fear of being disturbed
by her ghostly wanderings. She had once enquired of a negro, who was hard
at work on his wife’s grave, why he was taking so much trouble with it;
he told her it was to “keep down duppy, missus.”
A beautiful drive one afternoon to the Maggoty Falls on the Black River
was one of the most exquisite I had in Jamaica. The falls were 13 miles
away; part of the road lay over a savannah, where deadly poison lurked
in morass and swamp, and no white man dared live too near to these
breeding-places of the malarial mosquito. The exquisite peacock-green
hues of the Black River water must be seen to be appreciated. On either
bank profuse parasitical growth obscured the most majestic trees;
tropical foliage was to be seen here at its very best.
The heat was most oppressive; it rained as we returned. The suffocating
atmosphere in the lowlands made us glad to climb the steep hills which
lay between us and my friend’s estate.
The Black River is the only navigable one in the island; lighters bring
their cargoes up a considerable distance into the interior of it. In
this neighbourhood I remarked again the size of the cotton-tree, with
the wonderful spurs it sends out from its roots. This is not the red
silk cotton-tree of India and of Java, known as the Simal tree from
the seed-vessel containing red silk cotton; the cotton-tree of Jamaica
has seed-vessels containing white silk cotton. The Arawaks attached a
religious importance to this tree, and at the present day the son of Ham
regards it as the haunt and home of “duppies.” The aboriginal idea was
that “after the earth was made the Supreme Being, our Father, our Maker,”
made His throne in the cotton-tree. The legend of this Arawak belief is
worthy of note, and I quote it as given by Bret:
“Still no life was in the land,
No sweet birds sang songs of love,
O’er the plain and through the grove,
Nothing then was seen to move.
From that bright green throne His hand
Scattered twigs and bark around,
Some in air and some on land,
Some the sparkling waters found.
Soon He saw with life abound
Water, air, and solid ground;
Those which fell upon the stream
Found a pleasant shelter there.
Shining fishes dart and gleam
Where those woody fragments were;
Others sported through the air
Bright with wings and feathers fair.”