The Spanish Main--Its real meaning--A detestable region--Tarpon and
sharks--The isthmus--The story of the great pearl "La Pelegrina"--The
Irishman and the Peruvian--The vagaries of the Southern Cross--The
great Kingston earthquake--Point of view of small boys--Some
earthquake incidents--"Flesh-coloured" stockings--Negro hysteria--A
family incident, and the unfortunate Archbishop--Port Royal--A sugar
estate--A scene from a boy's book in real life--Cocoa-nuts--
Reef-fishing--Two young men of great promise.
With so firm a hold had Jamaica captured me that January 3, 1907,
found me again starting for that delightful island, this time
accompanied by a very favourite nephew, who, poor lad, was destined to
fall in Belgium in the very early days of the war.
We purposely chose the longer route by Barbados, Trinidad, and the
Spanish Main, in order to be able to visit the Panama Canal Works,
then only in their semi-final stage.
A curious misapprehension seems to exist about that term "Spanish
Main," which somehow suggests to me infinite romance; conquistadores,
treasure-ships, gentlemen-adventurers, and bold buccaneers. It is
merely a shortened way of writing Spanish Main_land_, and refers
not to the sea, but to the land; the _terra firma_, as opposed to
the Antilles; the continent, in distinction to the islands. By a
natural process the term came to be applied to the sea washing the
Spanish Mainland, but "main" does _not_ mean sea, and never did.
It is only in the last hundred years that poets have begun to use
"main" as synonymous with sea, probably because there are so many more
rhymes to the former than to the latter, and it sounds a fine dashing
sort of term, but I can find no trace of a warrant for the use of the
word in this sense before 1810. "Main" refers to the land, not to the
water.
I can imagine no more detestable spot anywhere than this Spanish Main,
in spite of the distant view of the mighty Cordilleras, around whose
summits perpetual thunderstorms seem to play, and from which fierce
gales swoop down on the sea. Clammy, suffocating heat, fever-dealing
swamps, decaying towns, with an effete population and a huge rainfall,
do not constitute an attractive whole. Owing to the intense humidity,
even the gales bring no refreshing coolness in their train.
It is easy to understand the importance the old Spanish conquistadores
attached to the Isthmus of Panama, for all the gold brought from Peru
had to be carried across it on mule-back to the Atlantic coast, before
it could be shipped to Spain. Even Columbus, who did not know of the
existence of the Pacific, founded a short-lived settlement at Porto
Bello, or Nombre de Dios, in 1502, and Martin de Enciso established
another at Darien in 1502, but the combined effects of the deadly
climate and of hostile Indians exterminated the settlers. After Vasco
Nunez de Balboa had discovered the Pacific on September 26, 1513, the
strategic importance of the Isthmus became obvious, so Cartagena on
the Caribbean, and Panama on the Pacific were founded. The ill-advised
and ill-fated enterprise of the Scotsman William Patterson came much
later, in 1698. The Scottish settlement of Darien, from which such
marvellous results were expected, lasted barely two years. In 1700 the
few survivors of the adventurers from Scotland were expelled by the
Spaniards, ruined alike in health and pocket. The fever-stricken
coasts of the Spanish Main needed but little defence of forts and
guns, to protect them against the aggressive efforts of other European
nations.
At our first calling-place after leaving England, we heard of the
total destruction of Kingston, our destination, by the great
earthquake of January 14, but it was too late to turn back, so on we
went, past breezy Barbados, and sweltering Trinidad, to the Spanish
Main. The curious little nautilus, or Portuguese man-of-war, is very
common in these waters, and can be seen in quantities sailing along
the surface with their crude-magenta membranes extended to the breeze.
Cartagena de Indias, a city of narrow streets, high houses and massive
ramparts, is a curious piece of seventeenth-century Spain to find
transplanted to the Tropics. I imagine that all its inhabitants, by
the law of the survival of the fittest, must be immune from fever,
which is certainly not the case in that most unattractive spot Colon.
It may interest any prospective visitors to Colon to learn that there
is excellent tarpon fishing in Colon Harbour itself. My nephew, having
provided himself with a tarpon rod, hooked a splendid fish from the
deck of the mail-steamer, the bait being a "cavalle," a local white
fish of some 3 lbs. My nephew played the tarpon for nearly two hours;
the fish fought splendidly, shooting continuously into the air, a
curved glittering bar of silver, 180 lbs. of giant gleaming herring,
when the line (a stout piano wire) suddenly snapped as he was being
reeled in. A tarpon fisherman has a leathern "bucket" strapped in
front of him, in which to rest the butt of his rod, otherwise the
strain would be too great. Whilst my nephew was playing his tarpon, I
was fortunate enough to hook a large shark, and there was little fear
of my line parting, for it was a light chain of solid steel. I was
surprised that the brute showed so little fight, he let me tow him
about where I liked. We fixed a running noose to the wire rope of a
derrick, and after a few attempts succeeded in dropping it over the
shark's head, and in tautening it behind his fins; the steam-derrick
did the rest. I could see distinctly six or seven pilot-fish playing
round the shark. They were of about a pound weight, and were marked
exactly like our fresh-water perch, except that their stripes were
bright blue on a golden ground. As the shark is rather stupid, and has
but poor eyesight, the function of the pilot-fish is to ascertain
where food is to be found, and then to show their master the way to
it, after which, like the sycophants they are, they live on the crumbs
that fall from his mouth. The pilot-fish only deserted their master
when the derrick hauled him out of the water, and at the same time
some dozen remoras, or sucking-fish, looking like disgusted bloated
leeches, let go their hold on the shark and dropped back into the sea.
No human being would voluntarily pay a second visit to Colon, a dirty,
mean collection of shanties, with inhabitants worthy of it. The
principal article of commerce seemed to be black-calico "funeral
suits," a sartorial novelty to me.
Since the Americans took command of the Canal Zone they have achieved
wonders in the way of sanitation, and have practically extirpated
yellow fever. The credit for this is principally due to Colonel
Goethals, but no amount of sanitation can transform a belt of swamps
with an annual rainfall of 150 inches into a health-resort. The
yellow-lined faces of the American engineers told their own tale,
although they had no longer to contend with the fearful mortality from
yellow fever which, together with venality and corruption, effectually
wrecked Ferdinand de Lesseps' attempt to pierce the Isthmus in 1889.
The railway between Colon and Panama was opened as far back as 1855,
and is supposed to have cost a life for every sleeper laid. Neglected
little cemeteries stretch beside the track almost from ocean to ocean.
Before the American Government took over the railway there was one
class and one fare between Colon and Panama, for which the modest sum
of $25 gold was demanded, or 5 pounds for forty-seven miles, which
makes even our existing railway fares seem moderate. People had perforce
to use the railway, for there were no other means of communication.
For forty-seven miles the track runs through rank, steamy swamps,
devoid of beauty, the monotony only broken by the endless cemeteries
and an occasional alligator dozing on a bank of black slime.
Panama is the oldest city on the American Continent, and has just four
hundred and one years of history behind it. It has unquestionably a
strong element of the picturesque about it. It is curious to see in
America so venerable a church as that of Santa Ana, built in 1560.
From the immensely solid ramparts, built in the actual Pacific, the
Pearl Islands are dimly visible. These islands had a personal interest
for me. Balboa was the first European to set eyes on the Pacific on
September 29, 1513. He had with him one hundred and ninety Spaniards,
amongst whom was the famous Pizarro. A few days after, he crossed over
to the Pearl Islands, which he found in a state of great commotion,
for a slave had just found the largest pear-shaped pearl ever seen.
Balboa, with great presence of mind, at once annexed the great pearl,
and gave the slave his freedom.
Having fallen out of favour with Ferdinand V. of Spain (Isabella had
died in 1504), Balboa endeavoured to propitiate the king by sending
home an envoy with gifts for him, and amongst these presents was the
great pearl. The beauty of the jewel was at once recognised; it was
named "La Pelegrina," and took its place amongst the treasures of the
Spanish Crown. After Ferdinand V.'s death, the great pearl with the
other Crown jewels came into the possession of his grandson, the
Hapsburg Emperor Charles V., and from Charles "La Pelegrina" descended
to his son, Philip II. of Spain. When Philip married Queen Mary Tudor
of England, he gave her "La Pelegrina" as a wedding present. The
portrait of Queen Mary in the Prado at Madrid, shows her wearing this
pearl, so does another one at Hampton Court, and a small portrait in
Winchester Cathedral, where her marriage with Philip took place. After
Mary's death "La Pelegrina" returned to Spain, and was handed down
from sovereign to sovereign until Napoleon in 1808 placed his brother
Joseph on the throne of Spain. It was a somewhat unsteady throne, and
after many vicissitudes, Joseph fled from Spain in the Spring of 1813.
Anticipating some such enforced retirement, Joseph, like a prudent
man, had had some of the smaller and more valuable pictures from the
Spanish palaces packed in wagons and despatched towards the frontier.
These pictures fell into the hands of Wellington's troops at the
Battle of Vittoria, and are hanging at this moment in Apsley House,
Piccadilly, for Ferdinand VII., on his restoration to the throne,
presented them to the Duke of Wellington; or rather, to be quite
accurate, "lent" them to the Duke of Wellington and to his successors.
Joseph Bonaparte also thoughtfully placed some of the Spanish Crown
jewels, including "La Pelegrina," in his pockets, and got away safely
with them. Joseph died, and left the great pearl to his nephew, Prince
Louis Napoleon, afterwards Napoleon III. When Prince Louis came to
London in exile, he brought "La Pelegrina" with him. Prince Louis
Napoleon was a close friend of my father's and had been his "Esquire"
at the famous Eglinton tournament. The Prince came to see my father
one day and confided to him that he was in great pecuniary
difficulties. He asked my father to recommend him an honest jeweller
who would pay him the price he wanted for "La Pelegrina." He named the
price, and drew the great pearl out of his pocket. My father, after
examining the jewel and noticing its flawless shape and lustre,
silently opened a drawer, drew a cheque, and handed it to Prince Louis
without a word. That afternoon my father presented my mother with "La
Pelegrina." To my mother it was an unceasing source of anxiety. The
pearl had never been bored, and was so heavy that it was constantly
falling from its setting. Three times she lost it; three times she
found it again. Once at a ball at Buckingham Palace, on putting her
hand to her neck, she found that the great pearl had gone. She was
much distressed, knowing how upset my father would be. On going into
supper, she saw "La Pelegrina" gleaming at her from the folds of the
velvet train of the lady immediately in front of her. Again she lost
it at Windsor Castle, and it was found in the upholstery of a sofa. As
a child, on the rare occasions when "La Pelegrina" came out of its
safe, I loved to stroke and smooth its sleek, satin-like sheen. The
great pearl somehow fascinated me. When it came into my brother's
possession after my father's death, he had "La Pelegrina" bored,
though it impaired its value, so my sister-in-law was able to wear the
great jewel as often as she wished without running the constant danger
of losing it. I liked that distant glimpse of the Pearl Islands, for
they were the birthplace of the jewel which had attracted me so
curiously as a child.
We returned from Panama by a train after dark. As the night-air from
the swamps has the reputation of being deadly, every window in the car
was shut. I noticed a dark-skinned citizen of either Peru or Ecuador
in some difficulties with the conductor, owing to his lack of
knowledge of English. The Peruvian pulled up a window (_up_ on
the American Continent, not _down_ as with us) and sat in the
full draught of the night-air. A pleasant young Irishman named Martin,
a near relative of the Miss Martin who collaborated with Miss
Somerville in the inimitable _Experiences of an Irish R.M._ noticed
this. "By Gad! that fellow will get fever if he sits in the draught
from the swamps. I'll go and warn him." I told Martin that the South
American spoke no English. "That's all right," cried Martin. "I speak a
little Spanish myself." Taking a seat by the Peruvian, Martin tapped
him on the shoulder to secure his attention, pointed a warning finger
at the open window, and said slowly but impressively, in a strong Co.
Galway accent, "Swamp--o, mustn't-sit-in-draught--o; sit-in-draught--o,
get-chill--o; get-chill--o, catch-fever--o; catch-fever--o, damned-ill
--o; damned-ill--o, die--o." He repeated this twice, and upon the
Peruvian turning a blank look of incomprehension at him, returned to
his place saying, "I don't believe that fellow understands one single
word of Spanish," so I went myself and warned the Peruvian in Spanish
of the risk he was running, and he closed the window. I do not know
whether he suffered for his imprudence, but Martin was down next day
with a sharp bout of fever.
Martin next announced that the Southern Cross had gone stark, staring
mad, and had moved round by mistake to the North. We were travelling
from the Pacific to the Atlantic, therefore presumably going from West
to East, and there, through the window, sure enough was that
much-overrated constellation, the Southern Cross, shining away gaily
in the North. Upon reflexion, it seemed unreasonable to suppose that
the Southern Cross could have so far forgotten its appointed place in
the heavens, the points of the compass, and the very obligations its
name imposed upon it, as to establish itself deliberately in the
North: there must be some mistake somewhere. So we got a map, and
discovered, to our amazement, that, though Colon is on the Atlantic
and Panama on the Pacific, yet Colon is _West_ of Panama, owing
to the kink in the Isthmus at this point. The railway from the Pacific
runs _North-west_ to the Atlantic, though at this particular part
of the line we were travelling due West, so the Southern Cross was
right after all, and we were wrong.
The track from ocean to ocean seemed to be lined with one continuous
street of wooden stores, eating-houses, and dance-halls, all erected
for the benefit of the workers on the canal, and all alike blazing
with paraffin lamps. It was like one continuous fair, but the kindly
night masked the endless cemeteries.
We bought in Colon a little book of verse entitled _Panama Patchwork_.
It was the work of an American, James Stanley Gilbert, who had lived
for six years on the Isthmus, and had seen most of his friends die
there. Gilbert's lines have, therefore, a certain excusable tinge of
morbidity, as, for example:
"Beyond the Chagres River
Are paths that lead to death:
To fever's deadly breezes,
To malaria's poisonous breath."
I refrain from quoting others which are really too gruesome to
reproduce, but I like his welcome to the Trade wind, the boisterous
advent of which announces the end of the very unhealthy wet season,
and a brief spell of dry weather. It must be remembered that the
author was unused to the pen:
"Blow thou brave old Trade wind, blow!
Send the mighty billows flashing
In the radiant sunlight, dashing
O'er the reef, like thunder crashing,
Blow thou brave old Trade wind, blow!"
One can almost hear the great seas thundering on the coral reefs in
reading these lines, and can see in imagination the nodding cocoanut
palms bending their pliant green heads to the life-giving Trades.
It is curious the different terms used for these continuous winds: we
call them "Trade winds"; the French, "Vents alizes"; the Germans,
"Passatwinde"; the Spanish "Vientos generates." All quite different.
As my nephew and I drove out of the dock enclosure at Kingston, we
were appalled at the scene of desolation that met our eyes. Kingston
was one heap of ruins; there was not a house intact. Neither of us had
imagined the possibility of a town being so completely destroyed, for
this was in 1907, not 1915, and twenty brief seconds had sufficed to
wreck a prosperous city of 40,000 inhabitants. The streets had been
partially cleared, but the telephone and the electric-light wires were
all down, as were the overhead wires for the trolly-cars. We traversed
three miles of shapeless heaps of bricks and stones. Some trim
well-kept villas in the suburbs which I remembered well, were either
shaken down, or gaped on the road through broad fissures in their
frontages, great piles of debris announcing that the building was
only, so to speak, standing on sufferance, and would have to be
entirely reconstructed. On arriving at King's House, we found the main
building still standing, but so damaged that it might collapse at any
moment, and therefore uninhabitable. The handsome ballroom, which
formed a separate wing, was nothing but a pile of rubbish, a formless
mass of bricks and plaster. The dining-room, making the corresponding
wing, was built entirely of wood, and had consequently escaped injury.
This dining-room was a very lofty hall, paved with marble and entirely
surrounded by arches open to the air. It had previously reminded me of
the interiors seen in Italian pictures of sacred subjects, with its
bareness, spacious whiteness, its columns and arches. Here the
Governor, Lady Swettenham and her sister were living, in little
encampments formed by screens. Two splendid chandeliers of Spanish
bronze, originally looted from Havannah in the eighteenth century, had
been dismantled by the Governor's orders, in view of the possibility
of further shocks. The verandah outside formed the living-room for
every one. My nephew and I were very comfortably lodged in a little
wooden shed, formerly the laundry. I had noticed as we drove through
the town that the great Edinburgh reservoirs were apparently quite
uninjured, and here at King's House the fountain was splashing in its
basin as gaily as ever, the building containing the big swimming-bath
was undamaged, and the spring which fed the bath still gurgled
cheerfully into it. Wherever there was water, the shock seemed to have
been neutralised, for I imagine that the water acted as a cushion to
deaden the earth-wave. Neither the electric lighting nor the
telephones were working.
A tropical night is seldom quiet, what with the croaking of frogs, the
chirping of the cicadas, and some bird, insect, or reptile that
imitates the winding in of a fishing-reel for hours together, but
really the noise of the Jamaican nights after the earthquake was quite
unbearable. Negroes are very hysterical, and some black preachers had
utilised the earthquake to start a series of revival meetings, and
these were held just outside the grounds of King's House. Right
through the night they lasted, with continual hymn-singing, varied
with loud cries and groans. "Abide with me" is a beautiful hymn, but
really its beauties began to pall when it had been sung through from
beginning to end nine times running. Neither my nephew nor I could get
any sleep that first night owing to the blatant devotional exercises
of the overwrought negroes.
Both Sir Alexander and Lady Swettenham were really wonderful. He,
though an old man, only allowed himself five hours' sleep, and spent
his days at Headquarters House trying to bring the affairs of the
ruined city into some kind of order, and to start the every-day
machinery of ordinary civilised life again, for there were no shops,
no butchers or bakers, no clothing, no groceries--everything had been
destroyed, and had to be reconstructed. We had noticed the previous
afternoon a very rough newly erected shanty. It was barely finished,
but already jets of steam were puffing from its roof, and a large sign
proclaimed it a steam-bakery. That was the only source of bread-supply
in Kingston. Is it necessary to specify the nationality of a firm so
prompt to rise to an emergency, or to add that the names over the door
were two Scottish ones? Lady Swettenham was equally indefatigable, and
sat on endless committees: for sheltering the destitute, for helping
the homeless with food, money and clothing, for providing for the
widows and orphans.
It was estimated that twelve hundred people lost their lives on that
fatal afternoon of January 14, 1907, though even this pales before the
terrific catastrophe of St. Pierre in Martinique, on May 8, 1902, when
forty thousand people and one of the finest towns in the West Indies
were blotted out of existence in one minute by a fiery blast from the
volcano Mont Pele.
Lady Swettenham was driving into Kingston with Lady Dudley at 2.30
p.m. on the day of the earthquake. Some ten minutes later they felt
the carriage suddenly rise, and then fall again. The horses stopped,
and the coachman looked back in vain for the tree he thought he must
have run over, until, on turning the next corner, they came upon a
house in ruins. Then Lady Swettenham knew. Both ladies worked all
night in the hospital, attending to the hundreds of injured. The
hospital dispensary had been wrecked, and, sad to say, the supply of
chloroform became exhausted, so amputations had to be performed
without anaesthetics. Most fortunately there was to have been a great
ball at King's House that very evening, so Lady Swettenham was able to
provide the hospital with unlimited soup, jellies, and cold chickens;
otherwise it would have been impossible to provide the sufferers with
any food at all.
As we all know, points of view differ. After the trolley-car service
had been re-established, my nephew and I had occasion to go into
Kingston daily towards noon. On the front bench of the car there was
always seated a little white boy, about nine years old, with a pile of
school-books. He was a well-mannered, friendly little fellow and soon
entered into conversation. Waxing confidential, he observed to us,
"Isn't this earthquake awfully jolly? Our school is all 'mashed up' so
we get out at half-past eleven instead of at one."
"And how about your own house, Charlie? Is that all right?"
"Oh no, it's all 'mashed up' too, so is Daddy's store. We're living on
the lawn in tents, like Robinson Crusoe. It's most awfully jolly!"
Incidentally I may remark that Charlie's father had been completely
ruined by the earthquake, his store not being insured, but the small
boy only saw things from his own point of view.
A certain London West-End church, with which I am connected, has a
Resident Choir School attached to it. As the choir-boys' dormitory is
at the top of the building, every time that there was an air-raid
during the war, they were routed out of bed and sent down to the
coal-cellar. The boys were told to write an account of one peculiarly
severe raid as part of their school-work. One small urchin described
it as follows: "The Vicar woke us up and told us there was an
air-raid, and that we were to go down into the coal-cellar in our
pyjamas with our blankets. It was awfully jolly down in the cellar. In
our blankets we looked like robbers in a cave, or like a lot of Red
Indians. The Vicar told us stories, and we had buns and cocoa and sang
songs. It was all so awfully jolly that all the chaps hope that there
will be plenty more air-raids."
Here again the small boy's point of view differs materially from that
of the adult.
To go back to Jamaica, an acquaintance had returned early from his
office, and was having a cup of coffee on his verandah at 2.30.
Suddenly he saw the trees at the end of his garden rise up some eight
feet. A quick brain-wave suggested an earthquake to him at once, and
half-unconsciously he jumped from the verandah for all he was worth.
As he alighted on the lawn, his house crashed down behind him.
There were some further milder shocks. I was engaged in shaving early
one morning in our little wooden house, when I felt myself pushed
violently against the dressing-table, almost removing my chin with the
razor at the same time. I suspected my nephew of a practical joke, and
called out angrily to him. In an aggrieved voice he protested that he
had not touched me, but had himself been hurled by an unseen agency
against the wardrobe. Then came a perfect cannonade of nuts from an
overhanging tree on to the wooden roof of our modest temporary abode,
and still we did not understand. I had at that time an English valet,
the most stolid man I have ever come across. He entered the hut with a
pair of brown shoes in one hand, a pair of white ones in the other.
In the most matter-of-fact way he observed, "There's been an
earthquake, so perhaps you would like to wear your brown shoes to-day,
instead of the white ones." By what process of reasoning he judged
brown shoes more fitted to earthquake conditions than white ones,
rather escaped me.
Appalling tragedy though the earthquake was, like most tragedies it
had its occasional lighter side. A certain leading lady of the island
had been in the habit of wearing short skirts, long before the
dictates of fashion imposed the present unbecoming skimpy garments.
She did this on account of the numerous insect pests with which
Jamaica unfortunately abounds. For the same reason she adopted
light-coloured stockings, so that any creeping intruder could be
easily seen and brushed off. Her wardrobe being destroyed in the
earthquake, she took the train into Spanish Town in an endeavour to
replenish it. In a large drapery store the black forewoman at once
recognised the lady, and came forward, all bows and smiles, to greet
so important a customer.
"Please, what can I hab de pleasure of showing Madam?"
"I want some silk stockings, either pink or flesh-colour, if you have
any!"
"Very sorry, Madam, we hab no pink silk stockings, but we hab plenty
of flesh-coloured ones," taking down as she spoke a great bundle of
_black_ silk stockings. Of course, if one thinks over it for a moment,
it would be so.
The religious hysteria amongst the negroes showed no signs of abating.
A black "prophet," a full-blooded negro named Bedward, made his
appearance, and gained a great following. Bedward, dressed in a
discarded British naval uniform, and attended by a neurotic bodyguard
of screaming, hysterical negresses, made continual triumphal parades
through the streets of Kingston. As far as I could ascertain the most
important item in his religious crusade was the baptism of his
converts in the Hope River, at a uniform charge of half-a-crown per
head.
With regard to baptism, a curious incident occurred long before I was
born. A sister of mine, the late Duchess of Buccleuch, was so frail
and delicate at her birth that it was thought that she could not
possibly survive. She was accordingly baptised privately two days
after her birth. She rallied, and grew into a big sturdy girl. When
she was four years old, my father had her received into the Church by
the Archbishop of Canterbury, at the Chapel Royal, St. James's Palace.
During the service the Archbishop became inarticulate, and many of
those present feared that he had sustained a stroke, or had been
suddenly afflicted with aphasia. What had happened was this: As my
sister was inclined to be fidgetty and troublesome, my mother had,
perhaps unwisely, given her a packet of sugar-almonds to keep her
quiet. The child was actually sucking one of these when she arrived at
the Chapel Royal, but was, of course, made to remove it. Unseen by any
one, she managed to place another in her mouth. When the Archbishop
took her in his arms, the child, seeing his mouth so close to hers,
with the kindest intentions in the world, took the sugar-almond from
her own mouth and popped it into the Archbishop's. Never had a Primate
been in a more embarrassing situation! Having both his arms occupied
in holding the child, he could not remove the offending almond with
his fingers. It would be quite superfluous on my part to point out how
highly indecorous it would be for an Archbishop to--shall we say to
expel anything from his mouth--in church; and even after the sugar had
been dissolved, an almond must be crunched before it can be disposed
of, another wholly inadmissible contingency. So the poor Archbishop
had perforce to remain inarticulate; let us only hope that you and I
may never find ourselves in so difficult a situation.
Many people in Jamaica were in 1907 in quite as difficult a situation.
I found the wife of the Chief Justice, an old acquaintance of mine in
the Far East, living in the emptied swimming-bath of what had been her
home. The officers of the West India Regiment at Up Park Camp were all
under canvas on the cricket-ground. The officers' quarters at Up Park
Barracks were exceedingly well designed for the climate, being raised
on arcades. They were shattered, but the wooden shingle roofs had
fallen intact and unbroken, and lay on the ground in pieces about 100
feet long, a most curious spectacle. Students of _Tom Cringle_ will
remember the gruesome description of his dinner at the Mess at Up
Park Camp, during an epidemic of yellow fever, when one officer after
another got up and left the room, pinching the regimental doctor on
the shoulder as he did so, as an intimation that he, too, had been
claimed by the yellow death. The military authorities acted unwisely
in selecting Up Park as a site for barracks. It certainly stands high,
but is shut off from the sea breeze by the hill known as Long
Mountain, and has, in addition, a dangerous swamp to windward of it,
two drawbacks which might have been foreseen.
I noticed that brick houses suffered more than stone ones. This was
attributed to the inferior mortar used by Jamaican masons, for which
there can be no excuse, for the island abounds in lime. Wooden houses
escaped scatheless. Every statue in the Public Gardens was thrown
down, except that of Queen Victoria. The superstitious negroes were
much impressed by this fact, though the earthquake had, curiously
enough, twisted the statue entirely round. Instead of facing the sea,
as she formerly did, the Queen now turned her back on it, otherwise
the statue was uninjured. The clock on the shattered Parish Church
recorded the fatal hour when it had stopped in the general ruin: 2.42
p.m. As far as I could learn, the earthquake had not taken the form of
a trembling motion, but the solid ground had twice risen and fallen
eight feet, a sort of land-wave, which apparently was confined to the
light sandy Liguanea plain, for where the mountains began no shock had
been felt. The fine old church of St. Andrew had been originally built
in 1635, but had been demolished by the earthquake of 1692 and rebuilt
in 1700, as the inscription at the west end testified. Here the words
"Anna Regina," surrounded by a mass of florid carving, showed that
Jamaica is no land of yesterday. The earthquake of 1907 shook down the
tower, but did not injure the collection of very fine seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century monuments the church contains. The inscription on
one of these, opposite the Governor's pew, pleased me by its
originality. After a detailed list of the many admirable qualities of
the lady it commemorates, it goes on to say that "in the yeare 1685
she passed through the spotted veil of the smallpox to her God."
We accompanied the Governor to Port Royal to take stock of the damage
there. Previous to 1692, Port Royal was reputed the richest and the
wickedest spot on earth, for it was the headquarters of the
Buccaneers; here they divided their ill-gotten gains, and here they
strutted about bedizened in their tawdry finery, drinking and
gambling. I should be inclined to distrust the local legend that in
the many taverns the wine was all served in jewelled golden cups, for,
given the character of the customers, one would imagine that the gold
cups would be apt to leave the taverns with the customers. Then came
the earthquake of 1692, and half of Port Royal was swallowed by the
sea. A pillar has been erected at Green Bay, opposite to a Huguenot
refugee, one Lewis Galdy, who had a wonderful escape. According to the
inscription on it, "Mr. Lewis Galdy was swallowed by the earthquake,
and, by the providence of God, thrown by another shock into the sea,
and lived many years afterwards in great reputation."
Port Royal cannot be called a fortunate spot, for in 1703 it was again
entirely destroyed by fire, and in 1722 it was swept away by a
hurricane.
It is, in spite of its historic past, a mean, squalid, decaying little
place. Being built almost entirely of wood, the town had sustained but
little injury, but the massive concrete fort at the end of the
peninsula had slid bodily into the sea, six-inch guns and all. Some
twenty cocoa-nut palms it had taken with it were standing in the
water, their brown withered tops just peering above the surface,
giving a curious effect of desolation. A tramway used for conveying
ammunition bore witness to the violence of the earth-waves, for it
stood in places some ten feet up in the air, resting on nothing at
all; looking for all the world like a switchback railway at Earl's
Court. So many charges are levelled at the Royal Engineers that it is
pleasant to be able to testify that every building erected by this
much-abused corps at Port Royal had resisted the earthquake and was
standing intact. Port Royal, notwithstanding its situation at the end
of a peninsula, had in old days a terrible reputation for
unhealthiness, only surpassed by that of Fort Augusta across the bay,
the latter a veritable charnel-house. The neighbourhood of the
poisonous swamps of the Rio Cobre was in both cases responsible for
the loss of tens of thousands of British soldiers' lives in these two
ill-fated spots. They were both hot-beds of yellow fever.
My nephew and I, being able to do no good there, were anxious to
escape from ruined Kingston, and made arrangements to stay as paying
guests with one or two planters, in order to see something of their
daily life. After a second drive through the exquisitely beautiful Bog
Walk and over Monte Diavolo, we found ourselves on the sugar estate of
a widow, a lady of pure white blood. There were abundant indications
of the former prosperity of the place, and even more apparent signs
that at present the wolf was very close to the door. The verandah was
paved with marble, there was some fine mahogany carving in the central
hall, the dessert-service was of George II. silver-gilt, and the china
beautiful old Spode. Everything else about the place told its own
story of desperate financial conditions. Our hostess declared that it
was impossible for a woman to manage a sugar estate, as she could not
always be about amongst the canes and in the boiler-house, and her
sons were not yet old enough to help her. No one who has not
experienced it can picture the heat of a Jamaican sugar-factory; I
should imagine the temperature to be about 120 degrees. Most people, I
think, take a rather childish pleasure in watching the first stages of
the manufacture of familiar products. I confess to feeling interested
on
being told that the stream of muddy liquid issuing from the crushed
canes and trickling gaily down its wooden gutters, would ultimately
figure as the lump-sugar of our breakfast-tables. There is also a
peculiarly fascinating apparatus known as a vacuum-pan, peeping into
which, through a little tale window, a species of brown porridge
transforms itself into crystallised sugar of the sort known to
housekeepers as "Demerara" under your very eyes; and another equally
attractive, rapidly revolving machine in which the molasses, by
centrifugal force, detaches itself from the sugar, and runs of its own
accord down its appointed channels to the rum distillery, where
Alice's Dormouse would have had the gratification of seeing a real
treacle-well. In this latter place, where the smell of the fermenting
molasses is awful, only East Indian coolies can be employed, a West
Indian negro being unable to withstand its alcoholic temptations.
After seeing all the lions of the island, we drifted as paying guests
to a school for little white boys on the north coast.
The surroundings of this school were ideally beautiful. It stood on a
promontory jutting into the sea, with a coral reef in front of it, but
shut in as it was by the hills, the heat of the place was unbearable,
and the little white boys all looked pathetically pale and "peaky."
My nephew pointed out to me that a little cove near the school must be
the identical place we had both read of hundreds of times, and he
justly remarked what an ideal spot it would be in which to be
shipwrecked. All the traditional accessories were there. The coral
reef with the breakers thundering on it; the placid lagoon inshore; a
little cove whose dazzling white coral beach was fringed with
cocoa-nut palms down to the very water's edge; a crystal-clear spring
trickling down the cliff and tumbling into a rocky basin; the hill
behind clothed with a dense jungle of bread-fruit trees and wild
plantains, whose sea of greenery was starred with the golden balls of
innumerable orange trees; the whole place must really have been lifted
bodily out of some boy's book, and put here to prove that writers of
fiction occasionally tell the truth, for it seemed perfectly familiar
to both of us. Certainly, the oranges were of the bitter Seville
variety and were uneatable, and wild plantains are but an indifferent
article of diet; still, they satisfied the eye, and fulfilled their
purpose as indispensable accessories to the castaway's new home. It
would be impossible to conceive of more orthodox surroundings in which
to be shipwrecked, for our vessel would be, of course, piled up on the
reef within convenient distance, and we would presuppose a current
setting into the cove. We should also have to assume that the ship was
loaded with a general cargo, including such unlikely items as
tool-chests and cases of vegetable seeds, all of which would be washed
ashore undamaged precisely when wanted. It is quite obvious that a
cargo of, say, type-writers, or railway metals, would prove of
doubtful utility to any castaways, nor would there be much probability
of either of these articles floating ashore. My nephew, a slave to
tradition, wished at once to construct a hut of palm branches close to
the clear spring, as is always done in the books; he was also
positively yearning to light a fire in the manner customary amongst
orthodox castaways, by using my spectacles as a burning-glass. With
regard to the necessary commissariat arrangements, he pointed out that
there were abundant Avocado pear trees in the vicinity, which would
furnish "Midshipman's butter," whilst the bread-fruit tree would
satisfactorily replace the baker, and the Aki fruit form an excellent
substitute for eggs. He enlarged on the innumerable other vegetable
conveniences of the island, and declared that it was almost flying in
the face of Providence for a sea-captain to neglect to lose his ship
in so ideal a spot.
Whilst watching the little boys playing football in a temperature of
90 degrees, we noticed an unusual adjunct to a football field. A great
pile of unripe, green cocoa-nuts (called "water-cocoa-nuts" in Jamaica)
lay in one corner, with a negro boy standing guard over them. Up would
trot a dripping little white urchin, and pant out, "Please open me a
nut, Arthur," and with one stroke of his machete the young negro would
decapitate a nut, which the little fellow would drain thirstily and
then rush back to his game. The schoolmaster told me that he always
gave his boys cocoa-nut water at their dinner, as it never causes a
chill, and as there were thousands of trees growing round the school,
it was an inexpensive luxury. One of the duties of Arthur, the negro
boy, was to supply the school with nuts, and I saw him going up the
trees like a monkey, with the aid of a sling of rope round his leg.
I and my nephew went out fishing on the reef at dawn, before the
breeze sprang up. The water was like glass, and we could see the
bottom quite clearly at nine fathoms. It was like fishing in an
aquarium. The most impossible marine monsters! Turquoise-blue fish;
grey and pink fish; some green and scarlet, others as yellow as
canaries. We could follow our lines right down to the bottom, and see
the fish hook themselves amongst the jagged coral, till the
bottom-boards of the boat looked like a rainbow with our victims. As
the breeze sprang up, the surf started at once, and fishing became
impossible. We had been warned that many of the reef fish were
uneatable, and that the yellow ones were actively poisonous. We were
quite proud of our Joseph's-coat-like catch, but our henchman, the
negro lad Arthur, assured us that every fish we had caught was
poisonous. We had reason later to doubt this assertion, as we saw him
walking home with a splendid parti-coloured string of fish, probably
chuckling over the white man's credulity.
The natural surroundings of that school were lovely, but the little
white boys, who had lived all their lives in Jamaica, most likely took
it all for granted, and thought it quite natural to have their
bathing-place surrounded by cocoa-nut palms, their playground fringed
with hibiscus and scarlet poinsettias, and the garden a riot of
mangoes, bread-fruits, nutmeg and cinnamon trees.
No doubt they thought their school and its grounds dull and
hideous. On a subsequent voyage home from Jamaica, there was on board
a very small boy from this identical school, on his way to a school in
Scotland. He seemed about eight; a little, sturdy figure in white
cotton shorts. He was really much older, and it was curious to hear a
deep bass voice (with a strong Scottish accent) issuing from so small
a frame. He was a very independent little Scot, wanting no help, and
quite able to take care of himself. We arrived at Bristol in bitterly
cold weather, and the boy, who had been five years in Jamaica, had
only his tropical clothing. We left him on the platform of Bristol
station, a forlorn little figure, shivering in his inadequate white
cotton shorts, and blue with the unaccustomed cold, to commence his
battle with the world alone, but still declining any assistance in
reaching his destination. That boy had a brief, but most distinguished
career. He passed second out of Sandhurst, sweeping the board of
prizes, including the King's Prize, Lord Roberts' Prize, the Sword of
Honour, and the riding and shooting prizes. He chose the Indian Army,
and the 9th Goorkhas as his regiment, a choice he had made, as he told
me afterwards, since his earliest boyhood, when Rudyard Kipling's
books had first opened his eyes to a new world. That lad proved to
have the most extraordinary natural gift for Oriental languages.
Within two years of his first arrival in India he had passed in higher
Urdu, in higher Hindi, in Punjabi, and in Pushtoo. Norman Kemp had; in
addition, some curious intuitive faculty for understanding the
Oriental mind, and was a born leader of men. He was a wonderful
all-round sportsman, and promised to be one of the finest
soldier-jockeys India has ever turned out, for here his light weight
and very diminutive size were assets. He came to France with the first
Indian contingent, went through eighteen months' heavy fighting there,
and then took part in the relief of Kut, where he won the M.C. for
conspicuous valour on the field, and afterwards gained the D.S.O. I
have heard him conversing in five different languages with the wounded
Indian soldiers in the Pavilion Hospital at Brighton (with the
Scottish accent underlying them all), and noted the thorough
understanding there was between him and the men. Young as he was, he
had managed to get inside the Oriental mind. He was killed in a paltry
frontier affray, six months after the Armistice. I am convinced that
Norman Kemp would have made a great name for himself had he lived. He
had the peculiar faculty of gaining the confidence of the Oriental,
and I think that he would have eventually drifted from the Military to
the Political or Administrative side in India. He was a splendid
little fellow.
Nearly twenty-five years earlier, I had known another very similar
type of young man. He was a subaltern in the Norfolk Regiment, and a
great school-friend of a nephew of mine. Chafing at the monotony of
regimental life, he got seconded, and went out to the Nigerian
Frontier Field Force. Here that young fellow of twenty-two, who had
hitherto confined his energies to playing football and boxing, proved
himself not only a natural leader of men, but a born administrator as
well. He quickly gained the confidence of his Haussa troops, and then
set to work to improve the sanitary conditions of Jebba, where he was
stationed. He equipped the town with a good water-supply, as well as
with a system of drainage, and planted large vegetable gardens, so
that the European residents need no longer be entirely dependent on
tinned foods. It was Ronald Buxton, too, who first had the idea of
building houses on tripods of railway metals, to raise them above the
deadly ground-mists. Thanks to him, the place became reasonably
healthy, and his powers of organisation being quickly recognised, he
was transferred from the Military to the Administrative side. His
whole heart was in his work. Like young Kemp, Buxton always stayed in
my house when on leave. Though the most tempting invitations to shoot
and to hunt rained in on him whilst in England, he was always fretting
and chafing to be back at work in his pestilential West African swamp,
where he lived on a perpetual diet of bully beef and yams in a leaky
native grass-built hut. Like young Kemp, he was absolutely indifferent
to the ordinary comforts of life, and appeared really to enjoy
hardships, and they were both quite insensible to the attractions of
money. He was killed in the South African War, or would, I am sure,
have had a most distinguished Colonial career. These two young men
seemed created to be pioneers in rough lands. As far as my own
experience goes, it is only these Islands that produce young men of
the precise stamp of Norman Kemp and Ronald Buxton.