cultivator. I have often, during our excursions up the lovely lonely
valleys within an easy drive of Port of Spain, watched the process,
which seemed very primitive. The clearing appeared to entail far the
most labour, in spite of as much burning as was compatible with the
lush-green foliage. Banana-suckers were the first things planted round
the hole which held the young cocoa plant, to shade it; next came
small trees of the _madre di cocoa_, or _bois immortel_, which are
indispensable to a cocoa plantation. This tree is at all stages of its
growth a very straggling one, and can give but little shade. I suspect
it is chiefly valuable from its draining properties, for the fact
remains that cocoa steadily declines to flourish anywhere without its
_madre_.
Anything so beautiful as the hills towards San Fernando in the very
earliest spring when the dense woods of _bois immortel_ are in full
blossom cannot be imagined. At sunset the whole country-side glows
with a radiance which looks like enchantment, and the green effect
of this beautiful tropic island then merges over those low hills
into a vivid scarlet, melting away into the indigo shadows of the
quick-falling dusk. Cocoa is a most beautiful crop, for the broad
glossy leaves do not at all conceal the large brilliant pod, which
grows in an independent manner, in twos and threes, right out of the
stem or the thickest branches. At no time of year are the trees quite
bare of pods, which are of various colours. I have often seen a pale
green pod, a scarlet one, and a rich dark crimson or brilliant yellow
pod growing quite happily side by side; of course they were all in
different stages of ripeness, but that did not seem to matter at all,
and cocoa-picking appeared always going on.
Those drives up the valleys were always delightful, and we found that
different patois seemed to be spoken in places half a mile apart and
with only a low ridge between. Up one valley a sort of spurious Spanish
would be heard, up another Creole French, whilst a hybrid Hindustani
was the language of a third cleft in the hills. We made great friends,
however, with the different races, and the children always rushed out
to greet us.
An especial beauty of those valleys were the fire-flies and what are
locally called the fire-beetles—large hard-backed creatures with eyes
like gig lamps and a third light beneath, which only shows when
they fly. My ardent desire all the time I was in Trinidad was to get
a specimen of a rare fire-beetle, which is said to have a luminous
proboscis. I did want that beetle dreadfully, and offered frantic
rewards all up the valleys for a specimen. Needless to say I was
regarded more or less as a lunatic, and the carriage was often stopped
either by children waving an ordinary beetle snapping violently in
its efforts to escape, or by a grinning policeman who saluted and
tendered me a common fire-beetle tied up in a corner of his blue
pocket-handkerchief. I once tracked with infinite pains and trouble a
specimen to its owner, but, alas! it was dead and half-eaten by ants.
By the first week in January the fire-flies disappear, and are not
to be seen again before the heavy May rains have fallen. Then they
come forth in full beauty, and it certainly is a wonderful sight as
one drives home in the short gloaming, for every blade of grass holds
many tiny sparkles, winking in and out with a bewildering effect. The
fire-beetles chiefly haunt the lower branches of the cocoa groves,
where they look like small lamps swinging among the trees. Indeed
the magnifying effect of the damp atmosphere beneath these bushes is
so powerful that I often found it difficult to believe that some one
carrying a lantern was not stepping down the bank towards us. I once
kept some of these beetles, fed them with sugar-cane, and sprinkled
them with water every day; but they soon lost their brilliancy, and I
felt it so cruel to retain them in a dark prison, that I emptied them
on the _Thunbergia_ outside the verandah railing. One of my prettiest
girl-guests used often to wear a dagger in her hair made of these
fire-beetles, ingeniously harnessed together with black thread, and
they showed brilliantly amid her dark braids, even beneath the ballroom
chandeliers.
Nor did any winter visitor ever see the wonderful mass and succession
of flowering trees, for they do not cover themselves with sheets
of brilliant blossom until after the rainy season begins. I was
disappointed in the actual flowers to be found in the Gardens. Even
the imported ones do not manage much of a blossom, and bulbs, &c.,
have to wage an incessant warfare against the all-devouring ant. It is
for this reason I suspect that the flowers confine themselves to high
trees, where they are safe from the ants, for they certainly make but a
languid attempt to grow in the ground. In vain I steeped the seeds of
my particular favourites in a strong solution of quassia. That was all
very well for the actual seed, but the ants only deferred their meal
until my poor little plants were a couple of inches high.
I will not dwell here on my private sentiments regarding the
cockroaches, for I feel that I should pass the grounds of permissible
invective if I attempted to describe my feelings towards the creatures
who devoured or defaced the bindings of all my favourite books. Nothing
daunts them or keeps them away; they seem to thrive and fatten on all
the destructive powders of which I used to lay in large stores for
their undoing. They would take the poison and the cover of my book as
well, and ask for more! How can you deal with creatures who fly in at
the window and run, literally, like “greased lightning”? Their fiendish
cleverness must be seen to be believed; how they will dart to a knot of
exactly their own colour in the polished wooden floor, and lie still as
death under your eyes!
Next to the cockroaches might be ranked as irrepressible torments the
mole-crickets, who would not allow of a lawn anywhere. There were some
beautiful grass tennis courts in these Botanical Gardens, costing an
appalling sum to keep in tolerable order—thanks to the crickets which
burrow like moles and devour like locusts and hatch out in myriads. I
used often to see a small army-corps of little black boys on the tennis
grounds headed by tall coolies with watering-pots of strong soapsuds
which they poured on the ground. This _douche_ brought the mole-cricket
out of his hall door in a great hurry, to be snapped up and flung into
a bucket of water by the attendant imp. But it was very difficult to
keep them down, even by these means, and the lawns had to be dug
up and replanted constantly. It is impossible to keep the rapacious
insect-world in order in a climate which, for certainly half the year,
resembles an orchid-house watered and shut up for the night.
The Harlequin beetle is, no doubt, quite as destructive as his less
gaudy brethren, but one forgives him a good deal, partly because of his
brilliant beauty, and partly because his depredations are carried on
chiefly underground. Then the shady places are always made glorious by
large slow-moving butterflies of gorgeous colouring and quaint conceit,
such as transparent round windows let in, as it were, amid their
brilliant markings.
Any one who fears bats should not visit “Iëre, or the home of the
humming-bird” (as the Indians told Sir Walter Raleigh Trinidad was
called), for all sorts and conditions of bats abound. The fruit-eating
variety is greatly attracted to the Botanical Gardens by the star-apple
trees growing there. I always feared lest sentence should be passed
against these beautiful trees with their copper-beech-like foliage,
on account of the bats, who, by the way, don’t seem ever to eat the
fruit where it grows, but always carry it off and devour it in another
tree. The Vampire bat is a great deal bigger than the ordinary bat,
but mosquito netting is quite sufficient protection in a house, and
the stables are generally guarded by galvanised wire netting, and
if ordinary care is taken about not leaving stable-doors open after
sundown, the horses do not suffer; but when did a negro groom ever
think of a detail of that sort?
It was very amusing to watch the native bees going back to their hive
at dusk. I don’t know how they had been persuaded to take up their
abode in a box fastened against the wall of the Superintendent’s office
in the Botanical Gardens; but the colony was in a very flourishing
condition when I was taken to view it at sundown, and it had evidently
established Responsible Government. The bees themselves were small and
shabby, regarded _as_ bees, and did not trouble to make more honey than
enough for their daily needs; they scouted the idea of storing it, for
there were lots of flowers all the year round, and no wintry weather
to provide against. Their chief anxiety seemed to be to keep their
hall-door shut, and they were very particular on that point. When I was
watching them, the great mass of the bees had already gone into the
hive, and only an occasional loiterer was to be seen creeping in at a
very small hole.
“Now here comes the last bee,” said my companion. “Look carefully at
him.” So I did, and saw that the little creature was carrying a pellet
of mud nearly as big as himself. It was too big to go in at the hole,
so he had to break bits off; but he twice picked up some of the
fragments which had fallen down, and stuffed them also into the hole.
Then he went in himself, and the Superintendent opened a sliding panel
commanding a view of this hall-door, at which three or four bees were
busily working, blocking it up with the mud pellets.
“They do that every night,” I was told, “and open it the first thing
in the morning.” I wanted very much to know what would happen if any
belated bee turned up afterwards, but the story did not say.
English bees were introduced into the island many years ago, but they
have lost most of their thrifty ways, and become demoralised by the
flower wealth all the year round. They also decline to be confined in
hives, which I dare say they find too hot, and so they build wherever
they like. An enormous colony had settled years and years before,
evidently, under the flooring of one of the cool north verandahs of
Government House. As long as they went in and out from outside it did
not matter, but latterly they took to pervading the verandah inside and
violently assaulting the passers-by. This was too much to bear often,
so the house-carpenter and his assistants were set to work to prise up
the boards of the verandah. They chose a cloudy day when the bees would
be out, taking advantage of the comparative coolness, but they soon
found that many boards had to come up, for the comb was thickly formed
everywhere. At last all the verandah floor was up, and I certainly
never saw such a sight. Yards and yards of comb! Most of it black and
useless, nearly all quite empty of honey (that was for fear of the
ants), and hardly any bee-bread even. When the men went away to their
breakfast the orioles, who must have been watching the proceedings with
deep interest, came down from the _Flamboyant_ outside the window, and
had a sumptuous breakfast off the immature bees. There was a terrible
revenge, however, when the bees returned later, and the workmen had to
retreat hastily. I found upon that occasion that silver quarter-dollars
made the best salve for bee-stings.
When we first went to Trinidad our evening drives often led us past
fields of sugar-cane, which seemed even then fast falling out of
cultivation, and long before we left—in 1896—they had been replaced by
plantations of Guinea grass, which appeared to thrive extremely well,
and for which there was an excellent market in and near Port of Spain.
The land was evidently worn out for sugar-cane, but answered capitally
for this tall grass, on which all four-footed beasts seem to thrive.
Much has been written and preached about the terrible fondness of
the West Indian negro for smart clothes; but if he had not that
passion—with which surely the modern fine lady can well sympathise—it
would be extremely difficult to get him or her to work. Why should he,
in a climate where bodily exertion is very undesirable, and where food
and shelter grow, so to speak, by the roadside?
They expend vast sums on their wedding festivities, at which the guests
are expected to appear in perfectly new garments. I once offered a
comely young black housemaid leave of absence to go to her brother’s
marriage, but she declined on the score of expense. Now I had seen
this girl, a week or two before, very smartly dressed for a friend’s
wedding, so I said:—
“But surely you have still got that beautiful hat and frock you wore at
Florinda’s marriage the other day?”
Aurelia gave me a shocked glance as she answered:—
“Oh, lady, me can’t wear _that_!”
“Why not?” I asked.
“All peoples very much offended if I wear same dress to their wedding;
must be quite new every things.”
And nothing I could urge had the least effect in shaking her resolution
not to disgrace her family by appearing in garments which had done duty
before on a similar occasion. I always noticed at the cathedral that
every female member of the very large and devout coloured congregation
had on her head a hat which must have cost a good deal more than my own
bonnet. From a picturesque point of view the effect of the coloured
women’s spotlessly clean white dresses and brilliantly flowered and
ribboned hats was excellent, though doubtless the political economist
would have sighed. I once asked a friend where and how these smart
damsels obtained their patterns, for nothing could be more correct or
up-to-date than their skirts and their sleeves.
“Oh, the washerwomen set the fashions here, especially yours. It is
very simple: when you send a blouse or a muslin or cotton dress to
the wash—and these women wash beautifully—the laundress calls in
her friends and neighbours, and they carefully study and copy that
garment before you see it again; and the same thing happens with the
gentlemen’s tennis flannels, and other garments.”
But the most amusing, and absolutely true, story I heard was this one:—
Our house steward told me that, when he was superintending the moving
of our numerous boxes and packages on the return from our short annual
visit to England, he noticed on the wharf one of the young black men
employed who was unusually active in dealing with the luggage. Nothing
could be a greater contrast to the ordinary sleepy loafer, who used to
smoke and talk a good deal more than he worked. This youth was strong
and smiling, and made nothing of handling any big boxes which came in
his way, so most travellers rewarded his good-humoured exertions by an
extra sixpence for himself.
A couple of years later Mark was missing from the landing jetty. No
one knew what had become of him, nor could the most anxious inquiries
elicit any information. At last one day, when my informant was in one
of the principal “Stores,” as the excellent and comprehensive shops
of Port of Spain are called, there suddenly entered his friend Mark,
smiling as ever, and still dressed in his primitive working garments of
three old sacks—two for his “divided skirts,” and one with a hole cut
in it for his head to go through, and worn as a sleeveless smock-frock.
Before any questions could be asked, Mark took one of the assistants
aside, and began to choose, very carefully and deliberately, an entire
outfit of black cloth clothes. He evidently knew exactly what he
wanted, and paid for each article, as he selected it, from a roll of
five-dollar notes, which, for want of a pocket, he carried in his hand.
The broad-cloth suit was followed by other indispensable garments, and
finally a pair of lavender gloves, shining boots, a tall hat, a slender
umbrella, and even a showy gilt watch-chain were purchased, and the
happy possessor of a complete rig-out of “Europe clothes” left the
store with only a few cents to put in his new and numerous pockets. He
was often seen afterwards in this fine suit of clothes walking about
the Gardens when the band was playing, but, so far as any one knows, he
has never done a stroke of work since!
XIII
RODRIGUES
“The deaf, cold official Ear” used to be a favourite phrase in the
Crown Colonies in my day, and referred, of course, to the Ear of
Downing Street; but even then it seemed to me a very undeserved
reproach, for, so far as my own experience went, or rather the
experience of my dear husband, it was only necessary to bring a
grievance—small or large—before that much-abused department for at
least an attempt to be made to remedy it directly.
Take the case of Rodrigues as an example. It had been for many years a
“most distressful” _dépendance_ of Mauritius. Once upon a time—early
in the nineteenth century—it was a favourite sanatorium of the East
Indian squadron, and ships were constantly calling there to leave sick
or wounded sailors and take away the convalescents. For, until 1814
brought peace and the Treaty of Paris, a good deal of fighting went on
in that part of the Indian Ocean, Bourbon and L’Ile de France being the
prizes of the victor.
Apropos of those same prizes, I have always heard that L’Ile de France,
as Mauritius used to be called in those days, was only captured by
stratagem, and that its protecting circle of reefs, quite as effectual
as a chain of torpedoes, had kept the British frigates cruising outside
for many a weary day. There was no reliable chart, and, naturally,
no pilot was forthcoming. At last, very early one morning, a pirogue
was sighted, and a smart man-of-war’s boat intercepted it before the
shelter of the coral girdle could be gained. Its solitary occupant was
a young fisherman, who was directly taken to the admiral’s ship, and,
with great difficulty and with the aid of what was to him an enormous
bribe, persuaded to guide the landing-party’s boats through difficult
passages to a suitable and unexpected landing-place. The choice lay
between that and death, and the lad chose life and wealth. But I was
assured that from that day to this the poor man and his descendants had
been regarded as outcasts, with whom no one in the conquered island
would have any dealings.
Then, as to Bourbon, the story goes that it was given back to the
French by that same Treaty of Paris owing to a mistaken idea at our
own Colonial Office that it was a West Indian island, instead of lying
only a hundred miles south of Mauritius. So ever since 1814 poor little
Rodrigues has been deserted by her naval visitors, and Port Mathurin
had welcomed only two men-of-war in the sixty-five years which had
passed before our visit.
The real bad times, however, set in with the abolition of slavery,
for it is the sort of climate where one need not work, or only work
very little, to live. The sugar and coffee estates soon fell out of
cultivation, as did the cotton and even the vanilla bean, which grows
so easily, and the island seems to have come in for more than its fair
share of hurricanes. Then the want of communication and a market for
exports completed the tale of its trouble; and when an unusually dry
season killed the rice crops, something very like a famine set in. This
had happened several times before our day, and relief for the moment
had, of course, been sent.
But when, one day in the middle of the hurricane season of 1881, a
wretched little open boat struggled across the 350 miles of Indian
Ocean, bringing the island pilot and another sailor with a piteous
tale sent by the magistrate in charge, of the hunger and distress
which prevailed in Rodrigues, the Lieutenant-Governor of Mauritius
felt that nothing but a personal visit and inquiry into the cause of
the constantly recurring evil would satisfy his Government. So an
application was made at once through the Colonial Office for the loan
of a man-of-war to visit the afflicted little island. There was no
telegraph nearer than Aden twenty-three years ago, so, although the
matter was taken in hand at once in Downing Street, it was early
in June of the same year before it could be finally arranged. A
small gunboat was all that had been asked for, and lo! the flagship
herself—the stately _Euryalus_—was put at the Lieutenant-Governor’s
disposal through the courtesy of the admiral of the East Indian
station, who made an official visit of his own to Madagascar fit in
with the date of the proposed trip to Rodrigues.
I have felt this little explanation to be necessary of how we came to
be standing on the poop of H.M.S. _Euryalus_ that lovely afternoon of
June—the best mid-winter month. Our party had been kept as small as
possible, for there was only the accommodation reserved for the admiral
and his flag-lieutenant vacant, and our good bishop had begged to come
to look after the spiritual needs of his small flock in that distant
part of his diocese.
The scene is still vividly before me; the profound calm of everything
after the noise and bustle of our reception on board were over, of
which the only trace was the smoke of the saluting cannon still curling
over the calm water. _We_ seemed to be stationary, and the lovely
hills, with their deep purple shadows, their glistening waterfalls, and
the vivid green of the fields of sugar-cane in the valleys, appeared to
be slowly gliding away under the most exquisite sunset sky. But all too
soon the _Euryalus_ had made her way through the crowded harbour of
Port Louis to what seemed a gate in the wall of coral reef, and headed,
a few moments later, out to sea. A sea beautiful to behold, indeed, but
of so rough-and-tumble a nature that the dinner-party that evening was
but small. In fact few of our party showed up much during the three
days of alternate rolling and pitching across that rough bit of water,
with a strong head-wind from south-east. We had really been making
the best of our way all the time because the captain was very anxious
to get in early on the 28th to celebrate her Majesty’s coronation. No
sooner, therefore, had we dropped anchor in the open roadstead opposite
Port Mathurin than the royal standard flew out from our main, and
the gallant old ship was, in a moment, dressed from stern to bow in
gay flags. At noon a royal salute pealed out over the water—but this
is anticipating a little, for long before noon every available boat
was crowding round the _Euryalus_. The magistrate had come on board
directly; so had two very agreeable Roman Catholic priests. Every one
concerned in the matter was soon deep in the arrangement of details
connected with our official landing.
As I had nothing to do except to put on my best bonnet at the proper
time, I had plenty of leisure to admire the tiny island, which, with
no other land to dwarf it, looked quite imposing from the deck of the
_Euryalus_. It was difficult to believe that the highest hill I could
see was only 1800 feet above the sea-level, for the beautiful clear
atmosphere seemed to magnify everything, as if one were looking at it
through water. And there were ravines plainly marked, each with its
little tumbling cascade, and a great deal of bright green foreground,
which we afterwards found was not the inevitable sugar-cane, but a
coarse, rather rank grass, affording excellent grazing for cattle.
Indeed, Rodrigues could supply Mauritius entirely with beef if only
there were proper communication, but as matters then stood our supply
used to come chiefly from Madagascar by weekly steamer.
It was really like an English April day, even to the bite in the
air whenever the sun was absent during the constant scudding
squalls—squalls which kept the poor reception committee in a state of
anguish and anxiety not to be described. Most of them had come on board
to arrange details, and were condemned to watch their beautiful arches
and masts and flags being most roughly handled by the sou’-wester.
I did my best to comfort any one who came my way by predictions of
a fine afternoon, and to assure them that business—stern, serious
business—was the real object of the visit. The heart-breaking part of
it all, however, was to find that the entire population of Rodrigues
insisted on regarding the gaily-dressed ship, the royal salute, even
the royal standard, as all being part and parcel of the show, and in
the Lieutenant-Governor’s honour. I never can forget the horrified
faces both of poor dear F. and the flag-captain of the _Euryalus_ when
this fact dawned on them. They were quite tragic over it, and thought
me most heartless for laughing at the mistake.