colors--gray volcanic rocks, dry yellow turf and green patches of trees.
Then contours became traceable, smooth rounded shoulders of hills frayed
out into jagged strata, with the close-shaven fur of bushes and shrubs,
and occasional tall slender palms reminding one of single hydroids on
the sargasso fronds. A thread of smoke drifting free from a palm grove
was the first sign of life, and after a few minutes of twisting and
turning, the steamer nosed out her circuitous channel, and from the very
heart of the island the great crater harbor opened before us.
The beautiful hills rolled up and upward, and to their feet Charlotte
Amalie, crowned with Bluebeard's castle, clung obliquely, her streets
climbing with astonishing steepness. The little town was newly roofed,
all the picturesque old red ones having been ripped off in the last
hurricane. The houses were as flat, quite as like cardboard theatrical
scenery as ever.
At the sight of a distant flag I endeavored to thrill patriotically at
the thought that this island was now a part of the United States. I
would have been more successful, however, if I could have recalled the
vision of some fellow countryman in far distant time, landing on these
slopes and taking possession by right of discovery. Even if some burly,
semi-piratical American adventurer had annexed it for his president by
feat of arms, my blood would have flowed less calmly than it did at the
thought of so many millions of dollars paid as _droit de possession_.
However, a tropic bird flew past and put the lesser matter out of mind.
As always, near the wharf thrived the same little open bar-room, with
its floral-bedecked mirrors, selling good beer and vile soda. Aside from
a flag here and there, the only sign of the change of nationality was
several motorcycles with side cars which American soldiers drove like
Jehu through the narrow streets, hustling natives and their tiny carts
and ponies to one side, and leaving enduring trains of gasoline-scented
dust. A few minutes' walk up one of the steep streets and all was quiet
and unhurried, and the sense of a yet undigested possession, of
embarrassing novelty of purchase, slipped aside and we knew that St.
Thomas was still the unspoiled little island which the slow mellowing
growth of West Indian evolution had made it. We climbed slowly up the
steep road toward Mafolie, and behind us the glory of this wonderful
island unfolded and spread, the roofs of the town shifting into strange
geometric figures, and the harbor circle widening. We passed pleasant
sunburned Danes and negroes driving tiny burros laden with small fagots
and with grass. At one turn a tamarind tree was in full blossom, and
here were gathered all the hummingbirds and butterflies of the island,
or so it seemed. At last we reached a ravine, dry as everything else at
this season on the island, and walked slowly up it, catching
butterflies. They were in great numbers and gayly colored. The strangest
sight was hundreds of large, brown millipedes clinging to the stems of
bushes and small trees, apparently finding more moisture in the steady
tradewinds than in the soil, which even under large stones, was parched
and dry: dragonflies were abundant, but the dominant forms of insect
life were butterflies and spiders.
The road wound over the top of the ridge and from its summit we looked
down on the other half of the island. No house or trace of cultivation
was visible and the beauty of the view was beyond adequate description.
Rolling, comfortably undulating hills were below us, and in front a
taller, rounded one like the head of some wearied tropical giant. Beyond
this, a long curved arm of richest green had been stretched carelessly
out into the sea, inclosing a bay, which from our height, looked like a
small pool, but such a pool as would grace a Dunsany tale. It was
limpid, its surface like glass and of the most exquisite turquoise. Its
inner rim was of pure white sand, a winding line bounding turquoise
water and the rich, dark green of the sloping land in a flattened figure
three. I never knew before that turquoise had a hundred tints and
shades, but here the film nearest the sand was unbelievably pale and
translucent, then a deeper sheen overlaid the surface, while the center
of the pool was shaded with the indescribable pigment of sheer depth. In
a great frame of shifting emerald and cobalt, set a shining blue wing of
a morpho butterfly and you can visualize this wonder scene.
Outside the encircling green arm, the water of ocean glowed ultramarine
in the slanting sunlight, and stretched on and on to the curving horizon
of Atlantis. The scene seemed the essence of peace, and to the casual
glance hardly a cloud moved. I sat for a long time and let every part
of my retina absorb the glory of colors. Soon motion and life became
apparent. Shadows shifted softly across the surface, bringing hues of
delicate purplish blue, memory tints of open ocean, and against these
darkened tones a thousand specks of white glowed and inter-weaved like a
maze of motes in a shaft of sunlight. In imagination we could enlarge
them to a swarm of silvery bees, and then my glasses resolved them into
gannets--great sea birds with wings six feet from tip to tip--an
astounding hint of the actual distance and depth below me of this
pool-like bay. An hour later the sunlight left the turquoise surface,
and its blueness darkened and strengthened and became opaque, although
it was a long time before sunset, and the ocean beyond kept all its
brilliance.
My eye was drawn to two tiny dots on the sandy rim. I could just make
out that they were moving and guessed them to be dogs or chickens. The
glasses made magic again and split up each group into a triumvirate of
little burros which trotted along, and presently turned into an
invisible side trail. Perhaps the most fascinating discovery of motion
was that of the water's edge. To the eye there were neither waves nor
ripples, but careful scrutiny through the strong prisms showed a
rhythmical approach and receding, a gentle breathlike pulsation which
regularly darkened and uncovered a thread of sand. I forgot the busy
little town on the other side of the island, the commerce and coaling
and the distant echo of war, and giving a last look at the tarnished
turquoise pool, the resentment of financial acquisition of such beauty
softened, and I felt glad that I had indirectly some small tithe of
ownership, as well as the complete memory monopoly of the glories of
this passing day.
As I made my way down the ravine, the fascinating island lizards
scrambled about or watched me knowingly from rock or tree-trunk. As
usual I wrecked my net in striving to sweep them into it, and bruised my
fingers in vain efforts to seize their slender forms. Rarely I
succeeded; usually I found but a bit of tail in my fingers, or a handful
of loose bark, while, just out of reach, they would halt and look me
over derisively with their bright intelligent eyes. At the roadside I
came suddenly upon a little Danish girl of about twelve years, dancing
excitedly with a lizard dangling from the end of a slender grass stem.
Her blue eyes flashed with excitement, her yellow pigtail flew wildly
about as she danced and backed away, fearful of touching the little
lizard, and yet too fascinated to drop it and allow it to escape. I took
it up and found it had been captured with a neat slip noose. She said it
was easy to catch them and showed me how, and before I reached the wharf
I had a dozen of the interesting little chaps stored in various pockets.
Thus after years of effort a little Danish school girl solved my problem
for me. Acting on this hint I tried fine hair wire, but nothing proved
as effective as the thin, pliant but strong stems of grass.
It is surprising how difficult it is to touch these little reptiles and
yet how easy to noose them. At the approach of hand or net they are off
faster than the eye can follow, yet they are merely interested in the
waving grass. Even when by an awkward motion one flicks their nose, they
merely shake their heads or shift a step or two. They detect no
connection between the moving grass and the more distant hand that
wields it.
Bound to the ground by their short scales and four limbs, these small
lizards are yet remarkably birdlike in their vivacity and their
enthusiastic playing of their little game of life. Every motion is
registered by quick wrenlike movements and by the changing play of
colors over their scales, while when particularly excited, they puff out
a comical dewlap of yellow and orange skin beneath their throat. Thanks
to my flapper acquaintance I am now on more equal terms with the little
scaly people of the islands, and can study their puzzling color problems
at close range.
Looking back at Bluebeard's and Blackbeard's castles from the deck of
our vessel as we slowly steamed from the harbor, some one asked when the
last pirate plied his trade. I looked ashore at the fort and guns, I
listened to the warning bugle, I watched the scattered lights vanish,
leaving all of the town in darkness, I saw our own darkened portholes
and shaded lights. As my mind went to the submarines which inspired all
these precautions, as I recalled the sinister swirl in the Atlantic
which had threatened us more than once on my return from the
battle-front, I could answer truly that Bluebeard and his ilk were
worthily represented at the present day. Indeed, of the two enemies, I
found much more to condone in the ignorance and the frank primitive
brutality of the pirate of past centuries, than in the prostituted
science and camouflaged kultur of the teutonic ishmaelite of today.
ST. KITTS, A PLUNGE, EXPLORATION AND MONKEYS.--I came on deck at
daybreak and found the sea like a mirror. Even the clouds were
undisturbed, resting quietly in the mountain valleys of St. Eustatius,
and on the upper slopes of St. Kitts in the distance. The tropical
morning was a lazy one, and the engines seemed to throb in a
half-somnolent manner. I folded up into a deck chair and idly watched
the beautiful profile of the island astern.
Suddenly the sea became alive with virile beings--curving steel-gray
bodies which shot forth like torpedoes from some mighty battery. I
thrilled in every fiber and the sloth of the tropics fell from me as if
by a galvanic shock: the dolphins had come! Usually they appear in their
haunts between Dominica and Martinique or off the latter island, but
here they were in dozens, leaping for breath with the regularity of
machinery. Now and then the spirit of play would possess one and he
vaulted high in air, ten feet above the surface, twisted and fell
broadside with a slap which could be heard a half-mile away. Then
several simultaneously did the same thing. A school would come close
alongside, slacken speed to that of the vessel, and now and then dive
beneath and appear off the opposite quarter. Another trick was for one
or two to station themselves just ahead of the bow and remain
motionless, urged on by the pressure of the water from behind. It was
very unexpected and very splendid to have this battalion of magnificent
cetaceans, bursting with vital energy and fullness of life, injected
without warning into the calm quiet of this tropical sea.
We anchored off Basseterre and waited in vain for the doctor. There
seemed no chance of landing for some time, so several of us dived off
and swam about the ship for an hour. The joy of this tropical water is
something which can be communicated only by experience. It was so
transparent that in diving one hardly knew the moment he would enter
it. Paddling along just beneath the surface, there was a constant
temptation to reach down and grasp the waving seaferns and bits of coral
which seemed only just out of reach, whereas they were a good thirty
feet beneath. Whether floating idly or barging clumsily along in the
only fashion possible to us terrestrial humans, we longed for the
sinuous power of the dolphins, whose easy sculling imparts such
astounding impetus. Now and then we saw a deep swimming fish, but the
line of envious fellow voyagers along the ship's rail were denied all
this joy by reason of their fear of sharks. They had read in many books
and they had listened to many tales, and they do not know what we shared
with the little nigger boys who dive for pennies--the knowledge that the
chance of an attack from a shark is about equal to that of having your
ears sewed up by devil's darning needles. Over all the world I have swum
among sharks; from Ceylon to the Spanish Main I have talked intimately
with scores of native captains and sailors and learned the difference
between what they tell to the credulous tourist and what they believe in
their hearts.
In time the St. Kitts doctor arrived, and, as he rowed past, looked at
us critically as if he suspected us of infecting the waters of the sea
with some of those mysteriously terrible diseases which he is always
hoping for on the ship's papers, but never seems to find.
Walking hastily through the town, we reached the first of the great
sugar-cane fields, and skirting these diagonally came ever nearer the
sloping base of the high land. Ravines are always interesting for they
cannot be cultivated, and it was up one of these lava and water-worn
gullies that we began to climb Monkey Hill. We went slowly, for there
were many absorbing things on the way. Palm swifts swooped about, while
noisy kingbirds gleaned as industriously but with shorter flights.
Heavy-billed anis _whaleeped_ and fluttered clumsily ahead of us; honey
creepers squeaked and small black finches watched us anxiously. From a
marshy pool half a dozen migrating sandpipers flew up and circled down
to the shore. Every shrubby field was alive with butterflies of many
kinds and the vigorous shaking of each bush yielded excellent harvests
of strange insects which fell into the open umbrella held beneath. In a
grove of wild mango and acacias were hosts of green filigree
butterflies, dropping and swirling from the foliage like falling leaves,
the comparison being heightened by the brown spots, like fungus
blotches, which were etched upon their wings.
Leaving the ravine we climbed over great lateral shoulders of the
mountain, grassy slopes with bold outjutting rocks, and rarely a clump
of small shrubs, bringing to mind the lower foothills of Garhwal and
Kashmir. Higher still came dense shrubby growths, much of it thorny,
seamed by our narrow trail, and threaded here and there by glowing
fronds of golden shower orchids. Ground doves perched on low branches
and an occasional big pigeon whistled past. From the summit a wonderful
view stretched out--the long, sloping green cane-fields, the clustered
roofs, and beyond the curving beaches, the blue water with our vessel
resting at anchor. Now came a search for monkeys, regardless of thorns
and rough stones, for, strange though it sounds, St. Kitts possesses
many of these animals. Whatever the accident of their arrival, they are
firmly established and work much havoc in the small hours, among
gardens and sugar-cane. Our efforts were in vain. We heard the scolding
chatter of one of the small simians, and were preparing to surround him,
when a warning blast from the ship summoned us and we packed up our
collection of insects and flowers, munched our last piece of chocolate
and began to clamber down the great sun-drenched slopes.
MARTINIQUE, OR A NEW USE FOR AN EIGHT OF HEARTS.--Columbus thought that
this island was inhabited only by women, and to this day the market
place bears out the idea. It is a place apart from all the rest of the
city. In early morning, before the gaudy shutters were taken down, the
streets were quiet--the callous soles of the passersby made the merest
velvet shuffling and only an occasional cry of the vendor of some
strange fruit or cakes broke the stillness. When yet half a block away
from the market one became aurally aware of it. The air was filled with
a subdued hum, an indefinite murmur which might as well be the sound of
tumbling waters as of human voices. It was a communal tongue, lacking
individual words, accent and grammar, and yet containing the essence of
a hundred little arguments, soliloquies, pleadings, offers and
refusals. After the aural came the olfactory zone, and none may describe
this, so intermingled that fish and vegetables, spice and onions were
only to be detected when one approached their respective booths.
The details of market life hold the possibilities of epic description;
the transactions of a stock exchange pale into mediocrity when compared
with the noise and excitement when a sixpence changes hands between
Martinique negresses.
All the sales in the market were of the smallest quantities; little
silver was seen, pennies, ha'pennies and sous composing all the piles of
coppers. The colors of the fruits were like flowers, melons white with a
delicate fretwork of green; brilliant touches of red peppers like
scarlet passion flowers; tiny bits of garlic lilac-tinted. The fish had
the hues of sunsets on their scales, and the most beautiful, the
angelfish, were three for a penny, while the uglier, more edible ones,
were sixpence each. Beauty was rated at inverse value here.
Around and around the iron fence which bounded the market place, paced a
pitiful pair--a tiny black mite who could not have passed three
summers, leading by the hem of an ample black skirt an old blind woman.
After several halting steps they would hesitate and the gaunt hand would
be thrust through the bars begging for market refuse. Once the gods were
kind and a bit of melon and a spotted mango were given, but more often
alms was asked of an empty stall, or within sight only of a tethered
duck or chicken. Some of the gifts were no better than the garbage over
which the pair stepped.
We sat in chairs in a tiny pharmacist shop--the artist and I--and were
at once the center of a chattering, staring throng, a kaleidoscope of
shifting colors. We shoved and dismissed to no avail, then the owner of
the shop with a gentle "permitte-moi" threw a pailful of "not-too-clean"
water over the crowd, including the artist and myself. The mob scattered
shrieking and for a short time the surrounding space was open. Soon a
larger crowd gathered, with the still dripping units of the first
assemblage smiling expectantly in the offing, hovering at a safe
distance. The second dispersal had a legal origin; the market policeman
stole quietly along the wall of the shop and hurled himself like a
catapult, butting goatlike into the heart of the crowd. A half-dozen fat
negresses toppled over, and cassava, tin cups and stray fishes flew
about. Even those who lost all their purchases showed no resentment but
only a roaring appreciation of the joke. In this rush we were almost
upset with the crowd, and we began to look forward with dread to any
more strenuous defense of our comfort.
The little French mulatto pharmacist who was responsible for the
occasional joyful outbursts of eau, seemed to profit by our presence,
for a number of interested onlookers who had pushed into the shop to
watch us from behind, when cornered and hailed by the irate owner,
stammeringly asked for some small thing, by the purchase of which they
bought their liberty. The regular business of this little shop alone was
worthy one's whole attention. A prescription was being pounded up in a
mortar and when the clerk reached out for a scoop and for something to
scrape the sides clean, an eight of hearts was the nearest and with this
the chemicals were mixed. Within the next fifteen minutes eight or ten
different prescriptions, powders and crystals were measured, shaken,
mixed and scraped by the same eight of hearts, and the combination of
ingredients which the last purchaser obtained must surely have had some
radical effect on his system--salubrious or otherwise.
Then came the unusual one--the super person who is always to be
discovered sooner or later. Externally she was indistinguishable from
the host of her sisters. She was garbed in a wrapper, flowing and
reaching the ground, purple, and pocked with large white spots. A
diminutive turban of yellow and red madras was surmounted by an ancient
and crownless straw hat, but at the first word she was revealed. A
British subject, she was here at the eruption fifteen years ago. That
day she and one of her daughters happened to be far away from St.
Pierre. When the explosion came, she was outside the danger zone, but
her husband, son and other daughter were burned to death. She regretted
the impoliteness of the French here and apologized for them for crowding
us. Later she brought a gift of rose bananas to Mary Hammond, saying
that Americans had given her food and clothes when she lost everything.
The crowd was curious, thoughtless, selfish, with the dominant hope of
a laugh at some one's expense. Here was one who sought us out, who left
unguarded her little tray of bananas and garlic to speak a word of
thanks, to present a handful of fruit which in her station was a
munificent gift, and who was satisfied and grateful with our sincere
appreciation. She has sisters in graciousness over all the world, but
they are rare and widely scattered, like the Akawai Indian squaw who
gave me her last cassava, like the wrinkled Japanese crone who persuaded
her son to become one of my best servants, like the wife of the headman
of an isolated village in Yunnan, who from among her sodden, beastlike
neighbors came forth and offered fowls and vegetables with a courteous
spirit worthy of any station in life.
ST. LUCIA, A STUDY IN CONTRASTS.--Each time I have visited Castries it
has seemed more somber and less pleasant. It is colorless because it is
full of coal and no change of weather brings amelioration. When the sun
fills the air with a blinding glare and palpitating heat waves (as it
occasionally does), each step raises a cloud of coal dust, and when the
tropical rain falls in a steady downpour (as it usually does), the
whole world seems covered with coal mud, as if about to dissolve into
some carboniferous slime.
This is an important military and coaling station, which perhaps
explains much. Military exigency compelled me to procure a special pass
from the Chief of Police to paddle about its dreary streets, and which
strictly forbade my climbing the comparatively clean and attractive
mountains beyond these streets. As a coaling station I am sure of its
success and popularity, for the coal carriers who comprise most of the
natives, have apparently no time to wash between steamers. So intensive
was the grime that the original dark hue of their skins offered no
camouflage to the anthracite palimpsest which overlaid it. Such huge
negro women, such muscles, such sense of power, I had never before
sensed. I should dislike, were I an official of St. Lucia, to take any
decided stand on an anti-feminine platform. So saturated are the people
in coal, such is their lack of proper perspective of this material, they
seem actually to be unconscious of its presence. Returning on board, one
passes the Seaview Hotel, about which coal is piled to a much greater
height than the roof. Such abstraction is worthy of mention at least.
Amid the memory of all the dirt and damp, dull sadness, two things were
unforgetable, as untouched diamonds glisten in their matrix of wet blue
clay. Amid sodden clothes, unwashed hands and bestial faces, a trayful
of rainbow fishes gleamed opalwise--coral, parrot and angelfish, all
awaiting some unsavory purchaser. Then came the little French negress,
selling fans, out of the ruck of sexless bearers of coal. When we
answered her appeal with a "_Non merci_," her face lighted up at the
courtesy of the words; "_Voyons!_" said she, "_comme c'est gracieusement
refuse!_" No mortal could have resisted buying her wares after such
delicate sentiment.