“LITTLE ENGLAND”
The “Ancient and Loyal Colony of Barbados” lies so far out to sea that
it requires a real ocean voyage to reach it. Low and uninteresting at
first glance, compared to many of the West Indies, it is by no means so
flat as most descriptions lead one to suppose. Seen from the sea it
stretches up to a fairly lofty central ridge that is regular from end to
end, except for being a trifle serrated or ragged in the center of the
island. Dutch looking windmills, the only survivors of the cane-crushers
that have fallen into disuse and left only the vine-grown ruins of their
stone towers in all the rest of the Lesser Antilles, are slowly turning
here and there on the even sky-line. Though the island is entirely of
coral and limestone formation, glaringly yellow-white under the blazing
sunshine at close range, there is a suggestion of England in the velvety
slopes of its varied-green fields as seen from far out in the bay. First
settled by the English in 1624, it boasts itself the oldest British
colony that has remained unceasingly loyal to the crown and accepts with
pride the pseudonym of “Little England.”
Barbados has come nearer than any other land to solving the vexing
“negro problem.” Cultivated in all its extent, with a population of
140,000 negroes and 20,000 whites on a little patch of earth twenty-one
miles long and fifteen wide, or 1200 human beings to the square mile,
without an acre of “bush” on which the liberated slaves could squat, the
struggle for existence is so intense that the black man displays here an
energy and initiative unusual to his race. The traveler hears rumours of
the Barbadian’s un-African activity long before he reaches the island;
he sees evidences of it before his ship comes to anchor in Carlisle Bay.
Not only is the harbor more active, more crowded with shipping than any
other in the Lesser Antilles, but it has every air of a place that is
“up on its toes.” All the languor, the don’t-care-whether-I-work-or-not
of nature’s favored spots are here replaced by a feverish anxiety to
please, an eager energy to snap up any job that promises to turn a
nimble shilling. Scores of rowboats surround the steamer in a clamoring
multitude, their occupants holding aloft boards on which are printed the
names of their craft—unromantic, unimaginative names compared to those
of the islands that were once or are still French, such as “Maggie,”
“Bridget,” “Lillie White,” “Daisy,” “Tiger.” In face of the fierce
competition the boatmen strive their utmost to win a promise from a
passenger leaning over the rail, to impress the name of their craft on
his memory so that he will call for it when he descends the gangway, to
win his good-will by flattery, by some crude witticism,—“Remember the
‘Maggie,’ mistress; Captain Snowball”; “The ‘Lillie White,’ my lady;
upholstered in and out!” “The ‘Daisy,’ my gentleman; rowboat
extraordinary to His Majesty!” Meanwhile the divers for pennies, a few
girls among them, are besieging the passengers from their curious little
flat-bottomed boats of double wedge shape to toss their odd coins into
the water and “see the human porpoises” display their prowess. Yet,
unlike the pandemonium in the other islands, there is no scramble of
venders and beggars up the gangway to the discomfiture of descending
passengers; no crowding of boatmen about it fighting with one another
for each possible fare, to the not infrequent disaster of the latter. A
bull-voiced negro police sergeant, in a uniform that suggests he has
been loaned from the cast of “Pinafore,” keeps perfect order from the
top of the gangway, permitting boats to draw near only when they are
called by name and ruling the clamoring situation with an iron hand. For
there is this difference between the harbor police of Barbados and those
of all the other ports, that they speak to be obeyed, permit no
argument, and if they are not respected, they are at least duly feared.
Bridgetown was static. The entire population was massed about the inner
harbor; beyond the bridge that gives the town its name stood an immense
new arch with the words “Welcome to Barbados” emblazoned upon it. We
thought it very kind of them to give us such unexpected attention, until
we discovered they were not waiting for us at all, but for one whom some
loyal but not too well schooled Barbadian had named in chalk on a nearby
wall the “Prints of Whales.” This was the first time in half a century,
it seems, that a member of the royal family to which the “ancient and
loyal” little colony has shown unbroken allegiance had come to visit it.
The black multitude was agog with poorly suppressed excitement; white
natives were squirming nervously; even the few Englishmen in the crowd
were so thawed by the “epoch-making event” that they actually spoke to
strangers. The harbor officer was so eager to lose none of it that he
let us pass without examination; an enterprising black youth won a
sixpence by finding us a place on a crowded barge a few yards from the
royal landing-stage. The tramways had been stopped; black troops lined
the vacant expanse of white main street that stretched away toward the
government house. Nelson’s one-armed statue in Trafalgar Square had been
given an oil bath; buildings were half hidden behind the fluttering
flags of all the Allies—the Stars and Stripes rarest among them. Even
nature had contributed to the occasion by sending an unexpected little
shower to lay the white limestone dust that habitually rouses the ire of
new arrivals. The island newspaper announced a special holiday in honor
of “the Prince, who will confer upon the loyal inhabitants of this
ancient colony the privilege of receiving a message from his august
father”; it still carried the advertisements of the closed shops,
imploring the citizens not only to buy flags and decorations but to “get
new clothes in honor of our royal visitor.”
He landed twenty minutes after us. A salvo of twenty-two guns from his
battleship in the bay sent as many gasps of excitement and delight
through the eager multitude. The subconscious thought came to us that it
might be better to pay outstanding war debts than to squander so much
powder and coal, but it ill behooves an American of these days to
criticize our neighbors for squandering public funds. Besides, it is no
easy matter to keep up this loyalty-to-the-king business nowadays,
though England, surely, need have no fear of changes. Then a white
launch dashed up the cheering inner harbor, a curiously boyish-faced
young man in a gleaming white helmet stepped briskly out on the
landing-stage into a group of black policemen in speckless girlish
sailor suits, who seemed to lack an ostrich feather on their round white
straw hats, the governor in full-dress uniform and the lord mayor in
purple and red robes bowed low over the hand that was proffered, and the
prince and his suite were whisked away.
Black as it was, we were struck by the orderliness of the throng—what a
pandemonium such an event would have caused in the temperamental French
islands!—and its politeness, compared to the other British West Indies.
But if the excitement was suppressed with British sternness, it was not
voiceless. The brief glimpse of the fêted youth had aroused a thousand
exclamations like that of the ragged old negro woman behind us, “Oh, my
God! Dat’s he himself! Oh Christ!” On the outskirts of the crowd another
who had been so far away as to have caught, at best, a glimpse of the
top of the royal helmet was still confiding to her surroundings, “My
Jesus, but him good lookin’!” An old negro in a battered derby through
which his whitening wool peered here and there elbowed his way through
the dispersing crowd mumbling to himself, “No use talkin’, it’s de
British flag _nowadays_!” Farther on a breathless market-woman was
asking with the anxious tone of a master of ceremonies who had missed
his train and feared the worst, “Has my gentleman landed yet?” But the
enthusiasm was not unanimous, for still another woman, who fell in with
us down the street, asserted, “Even if de prince landing, it all de same
for we workin’ people. De Prince Albert him landed fifty year ago, an’
de school-girls dat fall wid de grandstand still hobblin’ about on dey
broken legs.”
The prince spent a whole day in the ancient and loyal colony before
continuing his journey to Australia, most of it in the isolation of the
governor’s residence, but if he carried away an imperfect picture of
this isolated fragment of the empire, he could at least report to his
“august father” that it still retains its extraordinary loyalty to the
crown.
* * * * *
Bridgetown is very English, despite its complexion and dazzling
sunshine. Broken bottles embedded in the tops of plaster walls, which
everywhere shut in private property, shows that this, too, is an
overcrowded country where the few who have must take stern precautions
against the many who have not. The streets bear such ultra-English names
as “Cheapside,” “Philadelphia Lane,” “Literary Row,” “Lightfoot’s
Passage,” “Whitepark Road.” The very signboards carry the mind back to
England—“Grog Shop—The Rose of Devon,” “Coals for Sale,” “Try Ward’s
Influenza Rum—Best Tonic”; the tin placard of some “Assurance Company”
decorates every other façade. Even the little shingle shacks in the far
outskirts bear some unromantic name painted above their doors;
shopkeepers are as insistent in giving their full qualifications as the
clamoring boatmen in the bay. “O. B. Lawless—American Tailor—Late of
Panama” announces a tiny one-room hovel. There is a British orderliness
of public demeanor even among the naturally disorderly negroes; the
women have neither the color sense nor the dignified carriage of their
sisters of Martinique, rather the gracelessness of the English women of
the lower classes. Yet in one thing Barbados is not English. It is
hospitable, quite ready to enter into conversation even with strangers.
When it is not silent and deserted under the spell of a holiday or its
deadly Sabbath, Bridgetown pulsates with life. Its wharves are as busy
as all those of the rest of the Lesser Antilles put together, as busy as
our St. Thomas was before Barbados became the focal point of the eastern
Caribbean. Bales and bundles and barrels and boatloads of produce pour
into it as continuously as if every one of its 160,000 were wealthy
consumers of everything the world has to offer. Its own product is
constantly being trundled down to waiting lighters—great hogsheads of
sugar or molasses carried on specially designed iron frames on wheels,
each operated by three negroes who have not lost the amusing
childishness of their race for all their competition-bred industry, for
they invariably take turns in riding the contrivance back to the
warehouse, though the clinging to it must require far more physical
exertion than walking. Steamers, schooners, lighters, rowboats,
mule-trucks, auto-“lorries” are incessantly carrying the world’s goods
to and fro. Innumerable horse-carriages, scores of automobiles, ply for
hire. Excellent electric-lights banish the darkness from all but the
poorer class of houses. Yet despite the constant struggle for
livelihood,—or perhaps because of it,—Bridgetown has little of the
insolence of the other British West Indies. Applicants for odd jobs
swarm and beggars are plentiful, but the latter are unoffensive and the
former approach each possible client with a “Do you want me, my
gentleman?” so courteous that one feels inclined to think up some
imaginary errand on which to send them. They seem to recognize that
politeness is an important asset in their constant battle against
hunger, which gives them also a responsibility, a reliability in any
task assigned them, and a moderation in their demands that is attained
by few other West Indians.
Barbados has a tramway and a railroad, the only ones between Porto Rico
and Trinidad. True, they are modest little affairs, the tramcars being
drawn by mules. Yet the latter step along so lively, the employees and
most of the passengers are so courteous, and overcrowding is so sternly
forbidden that one comes to like them, especially those lines which
rumble along the edge of the sea in the never-failing breeze, above all
in the delightfully soft air of morning or evening. It would be
difficult in these modern days of indifferent labor to find more
courtesy, more earnest efficiency, and stricter living up to the rules
than among Bridgetown’s tram-drivers and conductors, yet their highest
wage is sixty-four cents a day. But for the war, the system would long
since have been electrified; the new rails have already arrived. There
is no real reason, except civic pride, however, that the mule-cars
should be abolished. They are more reliable than many an electric-line
in larger cities; they are a pleasant change to the speed-weary
traveler; and the perfection with which their extra mule is hitched on
at the bottom of the one hill in town and unhitched again at its summit
without the loss of a single trot is a never-ending source of amusement.
Sojourners in Barbados are certain to make the acquaintance of at least
the long tram-line to St. Lawrence. There are plenty of hotels in the
town proper, but they are habitually crowded with gentlemen of color.
White visitors dwell out Hastings way, some two miles from Trafalgar
Square. Unlike the French and Spanish towns of tropical America, the
downtown section of the Barbadian capital is almost wholly given over to
business—and negroes. The numerous white inhabitants and most of the
darker ones of any standing dwell in the outskirts. There one may find
parks shaded by mahogany and palm-trees, splendid avenues lined by one
or both of these species, comfortable residences ranging all the way
from tiny “villas” draped with an ivy-like vine or gorgeous masses of
the bougainvillea to luxurious estates in their own private parks. Even
the poorer classes in another stratum still farther from the center of
town dwell in neat little toy-houses of real comfort, compared with the
huts of the masses of Haiti or Porto Rico. For miles along the sea
beside this longest tram-line one passes a constant succession of
comfortable, light-colored houses with boxed verandas, wooden shutters
that raise from the bottom, and a sort of cap visor over the windows. In
many cases these boast tropically unnecessary panes of glass through
which one can make out of an evening interiors of perfect neatness,
homelike, well lighted, furnished and decorated in taste, with none of
the gaudy and crowded bric-a-brac to be seen behind Spanish _rejas_ in
the larger islands.
The night life of Bridgetown is worth a ride behind the now weary mules,
if only to see a negro urchin diligently striving to light a candle in a
tin box on the end of his soap-box cart, lest he be hauled up for
violation of the ordinance forbidding vehicles to circulate after dark
without lamps. Promptly at sunset the black policemen have changed their
white helmets and jackets for German looking caps and capes. On the way
downtown one passes half a dozen wide-open churches and chapels in which
black preachers are vociferously exhorting their nightly congregations
to “walk in de way of de Lard”; one is certain to rumble past the
shrieking hubbub of a Salvation Army meeting or two. There are crowds of
loafers on many a corner—jolly, inoffensive, black idlers with the
spirit of rollicking fun in their ebony faces, bursting into howls of
laughter at the slightest incident that seems comical to their primitive
minds. The filthy street-habits of the French and Spanish islands are
little in evidence, for the police of Barbados are as vigilant as they
are heavy-handed.
Downtown the activities of the day have departed. The larger stores have
closed at four, the small shops at sundown. Only a scattered score of
negro women squat in Trafalgar Square before their little trays of
peanuts, bananas, and home-made sweets, a wick torch burning on a corner
of them whether they are deposited on the ground or are seeking lack of
competition elsewhere on top of their owners’ heads. There is no theater
in Bridgetown; the cinema is as sad a parody on amusement as it is
everywhere, but the audience is worth seeing, once. The negroes sit in
the “pit,” the élite, chiefly yellow of tint, in a kind of church
gallery. Shouts, screams, roof-raising roars of primitive laughter,
deafening applause whenever the frock-coated villain is undone, mark the
unwinding of the film from beginning to end; it is a scene far different
from the comparative dignity of a black French audience. In the French
and Spanish West Indies the cinemas begin after nine and end around
midnight; in Barbados they start sharply at seven and terminate at ten
with a rush for the last mule-cars, with all but the swift out of luck,
and Bridgetown settles down to deathly Sunday stillness while the weary
mules are still crawling toward the end of their laborious day.
Or, if the visitor does not care to break up his evening by descending
into town, there are few more ideal spots in which to hear a band
concert than the little park known as Hastings Rocks, on the very edge
of the sea, especially under a full moon. I am an inveterate
concert-goer; one naturally becomes so in tropical America, where other
music is so rare, and I must confess a preference for the
Spanish-American type of concert over the Anglo-Saxon, for the gay
throngs of promenaders about the sometimes not too successful attempts
to render a classical program over the staid gatherings that listen
motionless to an uproar of “popular” music. But even this serves to
while away an evening and seldom fails to offer a touch of local color.
Thus in negro-teeming Barbados there is scarcely a suggestion of African
parentage to be seen at this stately entertainment on Hastings Rocks. It
is partly the sixpence admission that keeps the negroes outside, but not
entirely. Struck by the fact that there was only one mulatto boy and two
light-yellow girls, all very staid and quiet, on the seaside benches, I
sought information of the negro gatekeeper. Yes, indeed, he refused
admittance to most of those of his own color, and to some white people,
too.
“You see,” he explained, “it is like this. Perhaps last night you might
go with a girl downtown, and then you come here to-night with your wife;
and if that girl allowed to come in here she might want to get familiar
and gossip with you. Or she might giggle at you. We can’t have _that_,”
he added, in a tone that reminded one that the Briton, even when his
skin is black, is first cousin to Mrs. Grundy. The English sense of
dignified orderliness and the negro’s natural gaiety, his tendency to
“giggle” at inopportune moments, do not mix well, and the Hasting Rocks
concert is one of those places where African hilarity must be ruthlessly
suppressed.
* * * * *
Besides Bridgetown, with its 35,000 or more inhabitants, Barbados has a
number of what might best be called large collections of houses, such as
Speightstown, Holetown—popularly known as “the Hole”—and the like, but
its population, surpassed in density, if at all, only by China, a
density compared to which that of Porto Rico seems slight indeed, is
spread so evenly over all the island that it is hard to tell where a
town begins or ends. The island is one of the most remarkable instances
of coral formation. Comparatively flat, when likened to most of the West
Indies, it consists of a number of stages or platforms that have been
built one after the other as the island rose slowly and gradually from
the sea to a height, at one point, of nearly 1200 feet. When first
discovered it was surrounded by mangrove swamps and tangled, rotting
vegetation, but all this has since turned to solid ground. The coral of
which it is built contains some ninety per cent. of lime, so that almost
the whole island might be reduced to powder in a lime-kiln. The rest of
it consists of a species of sandstone known as “Scotland rock,” which
comes to the surface in the northwestern part of the island.
Thanks to its geological formation, the close network of roads which
reaches every corner of Barbados, as well as all its bare open spaces,
are glaringly white and hard on the eyes, especially, if one may judge
by the prevalence of glasses among them, those of the white and “high
yellow” inhabitants. Yet, for the same reason, it is perhaps the most
healthful of the West Indies. It has no swamps to breed malaria; the
trade winds from the open ocean sweep incessantly across it. Once it was
troubled with typhoid, but the establishment of a single unpolluted
water supply for the whole island has done away with this danger. There
is great equability of temperature day or night the year round. The wet
season, from June to October, is less so than in most tropical lands;
though visitors and European inhabitants complain of the midday heat,
except in December and January, it is always cool compared to midsummer
in the United States. Fresh, dry, and constantly laden with ocean ozone,
it is a climate that makes little demand upon the strength and vital
powers. All indications point to the fact, however, that it is no place
for white women as permanent residents, for virtually without exception
they grow scrawny, nervous, and weak-eyed, their pasty complexions
sprayed with freckles under their veils.
All roads lead to Bridgetown, but to follow them in the opposite
direction to any chosen point is not so simple a matter. Signboards are
almost unknown, no doubt being considered a superfluity in so small and
crowded a community. The country people, though willing enough, are
often too stupid to give intelligible directions, though they make up
for this by a persistency in showing one the way in person which no
amount of protest can overcome. Ask a question or give them any other
slightest excuse to do so, and they will cling to the white pedestrian’s
heels for miles in the hope of picking up a penny or a “bit,” always
taking their leave with, “I beg you for a cent, sir.” Indeed, that is
the constant refrain everywhere along the dazzling but excellent
highways. Women and men shout it from the doors of their little cabins;
children scamper after one, the black babies are egged on by their
elders as soon as they can toddle, each shrieking the invariable demand
in a tone of voice which suggests that refusal is impossible. They seem
to fancy that white strangers cross the island for no other purpose than
to distribute a cartload of English coppers along the way. Almost as
incessant are the demands upon the kodak-carrier to “Make me photo,
sir,” or, “Draw me portrait, master.”
[Illustration: The Prince of Wales lands in Barbados]
[Illustration: The principal street of Bridgetown, decorated in honor of
its royal visitor]
[Illustration: Barbadian porters loading hogsheads of sugar always take
turns riding back to the warehouse]
[Illustration: There is an Anglican Church of this style in each of the
eleven parishes of Barbados]
On week-days the highways of Barbados are as crowded as city streets.
Heavy draft horses and mules, auto-trucks large and small, are
constantly descending to Bridgetown with the cumbersome hogsheads of
sugar and molasses, or returning with supplies for the estates. There is
an endless procession of almost toy-like carts, each drawn by a single
small donkey, the two wheels habitually wobbly, the name, address, and
license number of the owner in crude letters on the front of the
diminutive box. The donkey is the invariable beast of burden of the
Barbadian of the masses. He carries to town the products of little
gardens; he brings the supplies of the innumerable small shops
throughout the island; the country youth takes his “girl” riding in his
donkey-cart; in later years the whole ebony family packs into it for a
jolt across the country. Unlike the rest of tropical America, Barbados
does not ride its donkeys or use them as pack-animals; nor, to all
appearances, are they abused. Centuries of British training seems to
have given the black islanders a compassion rare among their neighbors.
Horsemen and pack-mules are likewise unknown along the white highways;
oxen are rare; pedestrians are much less numerous than one would expect
in so populous a community, while bicycles are as widely in use as in
England.
There is a curiously English homelikeness about the landscape, which, if
it is seldom rugged, is by no means monotonous. Every acre of ground is
utilized; forbidding stone-and-mud walls topped by spikes or broken
glass line the roads for long distances; villages, or at least houses,
are so continuous that one is almost never out of human sight or sound.
Coral is so abundant and wood so expensive that immense limestone steps
often lead up to tiny wooden shacks, as out of proportion to their
foundations as statues to their pedestals. The majority of the rather
well-kept little negro cabins, however, are simply set up on small
blocks of coral at the four corners. More than one band of hilarious
sailors from visiting battleships have amused themselves by removing one
of these props and tumbling a Barbadian family out of their beds in the
small hours of the night.
Shopkeeping might almost be called the favorite sport of the “Badeyan”;
the lack of jobs enough to go round has led so many to adopt this means
of winning a possible livelihood that the island has been called
“Over-shopped Barbados.” Everywhere wayside shanties bear the familiar
black sign with white letters, varying only in name and number:
“Percival Brathwaite—Licensed Seller of Liquors—No. 765.” Inside,
perhaps behind a counter contrived from a single precious board, are a
few crude shelves stocked mainly with bottles of rum or with cheap “soft
drinks,” a few shillings’ worth of uninviting foodstuffs flanking them.
The Barbadians have long been known as the “Yankees of the West Indies.”
They are far more diligent merchants than most natives of tropical
America, so much so that neither the Chinese, Jews, Portuguese, nor
Syrians, so numerous in the other islands, can compete with them to
advantage. But their knowledge of book-keeping is scanty, and it is
often only the visible end of his light resources that convinces the
petty shopkeeper that he is losing, rather than gaining at the popular
pastime.
Every little way along the island roads other shanties bear the sign of
this or that “Friendly Society.” These are a species of local insurance
company or mutual benefit association. The negroes pay into them from
three pence to a shilling a week,—some of the poorer neighbors nothing
at all,—and receive in return sickness or accident benefits, or have
their funeral expenses paid in case of death. But they are typically
tropical or African in their indifference to a more distant to-morrow,
for at the end of each year the remaining funds are divided among those
members who have not drawn out more than they paid in, and with perhaps
as much as five dollars each in their pockets the society indulges in a
hilarious “blow-out.” Equally numerous are the signboards of “agents” of
the undertakers of Bridgetown. They do not believe in waiting for the
sickle of Father Time, those deathbed functionaries of the capital, but
drum up trade with Barbadian energy. The island’s newspaper habitually
carries their enticing pleas for clients:
“OUR DEAD MUST BE BURIED,” begins one of these appeals. “In the SAD HOUR
why trouble yourself over the Dead when you can see E. T. ARCHER
GITTENS, the up-to-date and experienced UNDERTAKER face to face? Look
for the Hearse with the GOLDEN ANGEL!” There follows a “poem” of
twenty-four verses setting forth the advantages of being buried by
Gittens and ending with the touching appeal:
Just take a ride to Tweedside Stable
And you’ll see that this is no Fable.
Phone 281 night or day
And you’ll hear what Gittens has to say.
He and his staff are always on hand
To accommodate any class of man.
“All orders will be promptly executed at MODERATE PRICES.
A TRIAL WILL CONVINCE.”
No doubt it would.
* * * * *
The Barbados government railway—one could not call it a rail_road_ in so
English a community—is an amusing little thing twenty years old and some
two hours long, though that does not mean as much in miles as one might
expect. On week-days its passenger-train sometimes makes a one-way
journey, at a cost of four shillings and sixpence for first and two
shillings for second-class travelers, but on Sundays it indulges in the
whole round trip. From the station near the famous bridge from which the
capital takes its name, the little train tears away as if excited at its
own importance, through slightly rolling cane-fields, rocky white coral
gullies, past frequent Dutchy windmills flailing their shadows on the
ground. Vistas as broad as if it were crossing a continent instead of a
tiny parcel of land flung far out into the ocean, spread on either hand,
that to the right flat and almost desertlike in its aridity, the north
broken in rugged low ridges, with many scattered villages and gray heaps
of sugar-mills on their crests. The soil is so thin one marvels that it
will grow anything, yet every acre of it shows signs of constant
cultivation, the long expanses of cane broken here and there by small
patches of corn, cassava, yams, and the sweet potatoes on which the mass
of the population depends for nourishment. Every few minutes the train
halts at a station seething with cheerful black faces; everywhere it
crosses white coral roads, some of them cut deep down through the
limestone ridges. Trees are almost plentiful, but they all show evidence
of having been planted. The Spanish discoverers, it is said, gave the
island its present name because its forests were bearded (_barbudos_)
with what is known in our southern states as “Spanish moss,” but this,
like the original woods, has long since disappeared.
Sunday is as dead as it can only be in a British community. The cattle
and mules stand in the corrals eating dry cane-tops; the square brick
chimneys of the boiling-houses emit not a fleck of smoke. Only in rare
cases even are the windmills allowed to work, though for some reason
nature does not shut off the bracing trade-wind. This is so constant
that it forces all the branches of the trees to the southwest, until
even the royal palms seem to be wearing their hair on one side. Fields
brown with cut cane-tops contrast with the pale green of those still
unharvested; the general sun-flooded whiteness of the landscape is
painful to the eyes. Here and there is a patch of blackish soil, but it
has the vigorless air of having long been overworked, a looseness as of
volcanic lava.
In less than an hour the Atlantic spreads out on the horizon ahead.
Rusty limestone cliffs, a jagged coral coast against which the sea
dashes itself as if angry at the first resistance it encounters since
passing the Cape Verde Islands many hundred miles away, stretch out to
the north and south. We come out to the edge of it, fifty feet above,
then descend to a track so close to the surf that the right of way must
be braced up with old rails. It is a dreary, barren-dry, brown-yellow
coast, yet of a beauty all its own, with its chaotic jumble of huge
rocks among which hundreds of negroes are bathing stark naked and
spouting holes out of which the thundering surf dashes high into the
air. Farther north the landscape grows almost mountainous, but we have
already reached Bathsheba, where Sunday travelers habitually disembark,
leaving the train to crawl on alone to a few tiny oil-wells around the
next rugged promontory.
I climbed the sheer cliff a thousand feet high above Bathsheba, its face
covered with brown grasses, ferns, creeping plants, and the smaller
species of palm that cling to each projecting rock as if their available
nourishment were as scanty and precious as that of the teeming human
population. The view from the summit forever banishes the notion that
Barbados is flat. All “Scotland,” as the northern end of the island is
called, is laid out before you, broken and pitched and jumbled until it
resembles the Andes in miniature. White ribbons of roads and a network
of trails are carelessly strewn away across it, hundreds of huts are
scattered over its chaotic surface, and an immense building stands forth
on the summit of its highest hill. Jagged, gray-black sandstone boulders
of gigantic size contrast with the white limestone to give the tumbled
scene the aspect of having been left unfinished by the Builder of the
western hemisphere in his hurry to cross the Atlantic. Below, this scene
spreads away to infinity, its scalloped, foam-lashed shore clear-cut in
the dry, luminous atmosphere as far as the eye can see in either
direction. Behind, the picture is tamer, though by no means level.
Rolling cane-fields, with here and there a royal palm, numerous clusters
of huts, and the ubiquitous chimneys and windmills of sugar-factories
breaking the sky-line, stretch endlessly away to the yellow-brown
horizon.
I returned to Bridgetown on foot—he who still fancies the island is
level and tiny should walk across it on a blazing Sunday
afternoon—passing not more than a score of travelers on the way. Once I
paused to chat with a group of “poor whites,” as they call themselves,
or what their black neighbors refer to as “poor buckras” or “red legs.”
These reminders of our own “crackers” are numerous in Barbados,
especially in the “Scotland” district. They are descendants of the
convicts or prisoners taken in the civil wars of England during the
Commonwealth or the Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion. Chiefly Scotch and
Irish, some of them royalists of the nobility, they were sent to the
island by Cromwell between 1650 and 1660 and sold to the planters for
1500 pounds of sugar a head. It is doubtful whether any of them would be
worth that now. Branded and mutilated to prevent their escape, treated
more brutally than the blacks by whom they are held in contempt to this
day, they steadily declined in health and spirits until their present
descendants, with the exception of the few who rose to be planters, are
listless and poverty-stricken, degenerate victims of the hookworm and of
intermarriage. The original prisoners wore kilts; hence the tropical sun
soon won them the nickname of “red legs,” which has persisted to this
day, perhaps because their bare feet have still a distinctly ruddy
tinge. But their faces are corpse-like in color and their bodies thin
and anemic. Of the adults in this group, not one had more than a half
dozen crumbling fangs in the way of teeth.
Yet they seemed moderately well-informed and of far quicker intelligence
than the sturdier blacks who so despise them. Their air of honest
simplicity acquitted them of any suggestion of boasting when they
asserted that the “poor whites” never steal cane and other growing
crops, the theft of which by the negroes, despite heavy penalties, is
one of the curses of the island. The chief topic of conversation,
nevertheless, was that inevitable post-war one the world over, the high
cost of food. Coffee, their principal nourishment, they took nowadays
without sugar, and though it had sold at sixteen cents a pound when the
war ended, it was now forty. Rice, sweet potatoes, meal, even
breadfruit, “the staff of Barbados,” had trebled in price. Their
“spots,” as they call their gardens, were constantly being robbed by the
negroes. It was no use trying to keep a goat or a sheep; some black
thief was sure to carry it off.
I succeeded at length in bringing up the matter of education. They sent
their boys to the public schools, but it was not safe to send the girls.
There were elementary schools in every parish, where each pupil paid a
penny a week. The teachers were nearly all men and all were colored. In
the higher public schools, which an average tuition of $72 a year put
out of reach for most of them, the teachers were usually Englishmen; but
the color-line was drawn only in the private schools, of which there
were plenty for those who could afford them. While they talked I noted
that the enmity between the two races was camouflaged under an outward
friendliness; the greetings between the group of “red legs” and the
black passers-by had a heartiness of tone that might easily have
deceived an unenquiring observer.
One of the sights of Barbados is the large, old, gray stone Anglican
church in each of the eleven parishes. Their erection was decreed way
back in the days when the Earl of Carlisle, having a superior “pull”
with the King of England, ousted Sir William Courteen as founder of the
colony. They are as English in their sturdy bulkiness, with their heavy
crenelated stone towers and the replica of an English country churchyard
about each of them, despite the difficulty of digging graves in hard
limestone, as the English sparrows which flock about the neighboring
cane-fields. The Anglicans, having gotten in on the ground floor, have
almost a monopoly in the island, though other denominations have no
great difficulty in establishing their claims to endowments. The
Catholics, of whom there are barely a thousand, have only one small
church. Even the shouting sects seem to have less popularity among the
Barbadians than in most negro communities. Religion is reputed the true
bulwark of the social order in Barbados, but it is rather because the
long established churches serve to maintain the class distinctions on
which this is based than because they succeed in holding the negroes up
to any particularly high standard of morals. Mrs. Grundy is strongly
entrenched in all the British West Indies, but her influence is rather
superficial among the black masses, who have a considerable amount of
what other races call the “hypocrisy” of the Anglo-Saxon.
* * * * *
But Sunday is no time to see Barbados. I walked entirely across the
island without meeting one donkey-cart, so numerous on week-days. There
was scarcely a wheeled vehicle in all the long white vista of highways,
except a rare bicycle and the occasional automobile of a party of
American tourists. Pedestrians were as rare; the people were everywhere
shut in behind their tight-closed wooden shutters, a few of them singing
hymns, most of them sleeping in their air-tight cabins. The few I
roused, out of mere curiosity, treated the annoyance as something
bordering on the sacrilegious. Nowhere was there a group under the
trees; never a picnic party; not a sign of any one enjoying life.
Bridgetown itself, compared to the swarming uproar of the “prince’s
day,” was as a graveyard to carnival time.
With the dawn of Monday, however, the island awakens again to its
feverish activity, and one may easily catch an auto-truck across the
floor-flat, dusty plain stretching some five miles inland from the
capital and drop off on the breezy higher shelves of the island.
Something of interest is sure to turn up within the next mile or two.
The Barbadian, for instance, digs his wells not to get water, but to get
rid of it. They are to be found everywhere, often at the very edge of
the highway and always open and unprotected. They are big round holes
cut far down into the jagged coral rock, splendid places, it would seem,
into which to throw something or somebody for which one has no use. This
is exactly their purpose, for they are designed to carry off the floods
of the rainy season. Barbados has no rivers and no lakes, or rather,
these are all underground, some of them in immense caverns. In former
days the mass of the population depended for its water supply on
shallow, intermittent ponds, the better class on private arrangements.
Now two central pumping stations and more than a hundred miles of
underground pipe furnish the entire island with excellent, if lukewarm,
water from the unseen rivers. Instead of the roadside shrines of the
French islands, the limestone embankments of Barbadian highways have
faucets at frequent intervals. Water is free to those who fetch it from
these. The better class residents are everywhere supplied by private
pipes at a nominal sum per house. Business places pay thirty cents per
thousand gallons, which is considered so expensive that only one estate
on the island is irrigated though drought is frequently disastrous in
the west and south.
The stodgy windmills everywhere fanning the air are used exclusively for
the grinding of cane. It is a rare patch of landscape that does not show
at least half a dozen of these toiling away six days of the week. The
fact that they have survived in Barbados, of all the West Indies, may be
as much due to its unfailing trade wind as to the crowded conditions
which make the innovation of labor-saving devices so unpopular. Methods
long since abandoned elsewhere are still in vogue in Barbadian
sugar-mills. The cane is passed by hand between the iron rollers in the
stone windmill tower. The big hilltop yard about this is covered with
drying _bagasse_, or cane pulp, which is finally heaped up about the
boiling-house in which it serves as fuel. The juice runs in open troughs
from the windmill to this latter building, where it is strained and left
to settle until the scum rises to the surface. Then, this being skimmed
off, it is boiled in open copper kettles. A negro watches each of them,
dipping out the froth now and then with a huge soup-ladle and tossing
the boiling liquid into the air when it shows signs of burning. Toward
the end of the process the “sugar-master” is constantly trying the syrup
between a finger and thumb, in order to tell when the crystals are
forming and when to “strike” the contents of the kettle, which must be
done at the right moment if the sugar is to be worth shipping. From
beginning to end the work is done by hand, and a Barbadian sugar-mill
has little resemblance, except in its pungently sweet odor, to the
immense _centrals_ of Cuba.
In the early days the sugar-men had much trouble in transporting their
product because of the deep gullies and bad roads. Once upon a time
camels were used, but though they answered the purpose splendidly, being
very sure-footed and capable of carrying the price of a “red leg” each,
they died for lack of a proper diet. To this day Barbadian sugar or
molasses is shipped in the cumbersome 110–gallon hogsheads which were
adopted in the days of camels, though the hauling is now done on mule or
auto-trucks.
With an unlimited supply of cheap labor, it is natural that the
Barbadian planters should cling to the old processes. Indeed, the estate
owner who attempts to bring in new machinery is heartily criticized by
his competitors, while the establishment of new mills is out of the
question, there being already too many factories for the available
acreage. The sugar planters, nine out of ten of whom are as white as the
Anglo-Saxon can be after many generations of tropical residence, hold
all Barbados, leaving only the steeper hillsides and the less fertile
patches as “spots” on which the “red legs” and the negroes plant their
yams, arrow-root, sweet potatoes, and cassava. They live in luxurious
old manor houses, usually on high knolls overlooking their not
particularly broad acres, half-hidden in groves of mahogany-trees, which
are protected by law from destruction. With few exceptions they are the
descendants of English colonists, and still keep the British qualities
their ancestors brought with them, keep them so tenaciously that in some
ways they are more English than the modern Englishman himself. There are
suggestions that they are as short-sighted as most conservatives in
taking the last ounce of advantage of the crowded conditions to keep the
laboring masses at ludicrously low wages. Molasses, which the Barbadians
call “syrup,” has advanced from seven cents to a dollar a gallon in the
past few years, yet the planters are still paying about a shilling per
hundred “holes” of cane, making it impossible for the hardest workers to
earn more than “two and six” a day, though the prices, even of the
foodstuffs grown on the island, have nearly all trebled. The pessimists
foresee trouble and cite the continual presence of a battleship in
Barbadian waters as proof that even the government fears it. But though
they constitute only one eighth of the population and the percentage is
steadily decreasing, the whites have always ruled in Barbados. As early
as 1649 the slaves planned to kill them all off, and kept the secret of
the conspiracy so well that it would probably have succeeded but for a
servant who gave the planters warning on the eve of the attack. In 1816
there came another fierce negro rebellion, which was put down with an
iron hand. Since then the blacks have been given little real voice in
the government, despite their overwhelming majority, and the traveler of
to-day finds Barbados the one island of the British West Indies in which
the negroes are not beginning to “feel their oats.”
Some attribute the patent difference between the Barbadian and other
negroes of the western hemisphere to his origin in Sierra Leone, while
the rest came from the Kru or the Slave Coast, but there is little
historical evidence to support this contention. Still others credit his
superior energy and initiative to the absence of malaria in the island.
Most observers see in those qualities merely a proof that the negro
develops most nearly into a creditable member of society under physical
conditions which require him either to work or starve. Whoever is right,
the fact remains that Barbados is one of the few places where
emancipation was not disastrous, and that the Barbadians are probably,
on the whole, the most pleasant mannered people in the West Indies, if
not in the western hemisphere. Except for rare cases of rowdyism, they
are always courteous, yet without cringing. Even those in positions
bringing them into official contact with the public are, as is too often
the reverse in many another country, extremely obliging, cheerful, yet
never patronizing, rarely brusk, yet efficient and prompt, fairly true
to their promises, for a tropical country, and have little of that
aggressive insolence which is becoming so wide-spread among the negroes
in our own country and the other British West Indies. The crowded
condition of the country evidently makes the constant meeting of people
a reason to cut down friction to the minimum, while the necessity of
earning a livelihood where work is scarce leads them to be careful not
to antagonize any one.
That they are amusing goes without saying. The magnificent black “bobby”
in his white blouse and helmet, for instance, does not reply to your
query about the next tramway with, “Goin’ to Hastings? Better geta move
on then,” but with a mellifluous, “Ah, your destination is Hastings?
Then you will be obliged to proceed very rapidly; otherwise you are in
danger of being detained a half-hour until the next car departs.” Yet
they are not a people that grows upon one. As with all negroes, there is
a shallowness back of their politeness, a something which reminds you
every now and then that they have no history, no traditions, no ancient
culture—such as that which is apparent, for instance, in the most ragged
Hindu coolie—behind them.
Small as it is, there are many more points of interest in Barbados.
There is Speightstown, for example, where whaling is still sometimes
carried on; Holetown, with its monument to the first English colonists;
a marvelous view of all the ragged Atlantic coast from the parish
churchyard of St. John’s, in which lies buried a descendant of the Greek
emperors who was long its sexton; Mt. Hillaby, the highest point of the
island, from which one may look down upon all the chaotic jumble of
hills in St. Andrew’s Parish, better known as “Scotland,” or in the
south the broad, parched flatlands of Christ Church, the only one of the
eleven parishes not named for some saint of the Anglican calendar. Or
there is amusement, at least, among the huts tucked away into every
jagged coral ravine, in noting the curious subterfuges adopted to wrest
a livelihood from an overburdened and rather unwilling soil. Every acre
of the island being under cultivation, there is, of course, no hunting;
wild animals are unknown, except for a few monkeys in Turner’s Woods.
These are rarely seen, for so human have they become in their own
struggle for existence that they post a guard whenever they engage in
their forays and flee at his first intimation of danger. Negro boys earn
a penny or two a day for keeping the monkeys off the cane-fields. There
being no streams or lakes, the island has no disciples of Isaac Walton,
but the Barbadians are inveterate fishermen, for all that. Time was when
the little boats which are constantly pushing out to sea in water so
clear that one may see every crevice of the coral bottom sixty feet
below brought back more fish than the island could consume. Then one
might buy a hundred flying-fish for a penny; to-day these favorites of
the Barbadian table cost as high as two pence each, while the equally
familiar dolphins cost twice that a pound. “Sea eggs,” which are nothing
more or less than the sea-urchin of northern waters, are a standard dish
in this crowded community, for the same reason, perhaps, that the French
have discovered the edible qualities of snails.
* * * * *
Barbados is the only foreign land ever visited by the father of our
country. In the winter of 1751–52, nearly a quarter of a century before
the Revolution, Captain George Washington, then adjutant general of
Virginia at one hundred and fifty pounds a year, accompanied his brother
on a journey in quest of his health. Major Lawrence Washington of the
British army, owner of Mt. Vernon, fourteen years older than George, had
been suffering from consumption since he served in the expedition
against Cartagena in South America. They sailed direct to Barbados, then
a famous health resort, by schooner. The skipper must have been weak on
navigation, for, says George’s journal, “We were awakened one morning by
a cry of land, when by our reckonings there should have been none within
150 leagues of us. If we had been a bit to one side or the other we
would never have noticed the island and would have run on down to ——”,
the future father of our country does not seem to have a very clear idea
just where. In fact, schoolmarms who have been holding up the
hatchet-wielder as a model for their pupils—unless some millionaire
movie hero has taken his place in the hearts of our young countrymen
nowadays—will no doubt be horrified to learn that George was not only
weak in geography, but even in spelling. He frequently speaks of “fields
of cain,” for instance, and sometimes calls his distressing means of
conveyance a “scooner,” or a “chooner.” But let him speak for himself:
Nov. 4, 1751—This morning received a card from Major Clark welcoming
us to Barbados, with an invitation to breakfast and dine with him.
We went—myself with some reluctance, as the small pox was in the
family. Mrs. Clark was so much _indisposed_ [the italics are mine]
by it that we had not the pleasure of her company. Spent next few
days writ^g letters to be carried by the Chooner Fredericksburg to
Virginia.
Thursday 8th. Came Capt^n Crofton with his proposals which tho
extravagantly dear my Brother was obliged to give. £15 pr Month is
his charge exclusive of Liquors & washings which we find. In the
evening we remov’d some of our things up and ourselves; it’s
pleasantly situated pretty near the sea and ab^t a mile from the
Town, the prospective agreable by Land and pleasant by Sea as we
command the prospect of Carlyle Bay & all the shipping in such a
manner that none can go in or out with out being open to our view.
The Washingtons evidently lived near the same spot now inhabited by
American tourists, any two of whom would be only too happy nowadays to
pay forty-three dollars a month for board and lodging, “Liquor” or no
liquor. Capt. Crofton, the rascally profiteer, must have made a small
fortune out of his “paying guests,” for they were always being invited
out to meals at the “Beefstake & Tripe Club” or elsewhere. Church
members, however, will be glad to see the next entry, despite of that
unhappy break about the “Liquor”:
Sunday 11th. Dressed in order for Church but got to Town too Late.
[What man ever kept his sense of time in the tropics?] Went to
Evening Service.
Thursday 15th. Was treated with a play ticket to see the Tragedy of
George Barnwell acted. [George, you see, was no money-strewing
tourist. But then, he was not an American in those days.]
Saturday 17th. Was strongly attacked with the small Pox sent for Dr.
Lanahan whose attendance was very constant till my recovery and
going out which was not ’till thursday the 12th December.
December 12th. Went to Town visited Maj. Clarke (who kindly visited
me in my illness and contributed all he cou’d in send’g me the
necessary’s required by ye disorder).
Kind of him, surely, after his other little contribution to “ye
disorder” in the shape of that first invitation. The only real result of
the Washingtons’ trip to Barbados was that our first President was
pockmarked for life, for Lawrence got no good out of the trip. George
went back to Virginia and Lawrence to Bermuda, where he grew steadily
worse, and finally went home to die at Mt. Vernon the following summer
bequeathing the estate to his younger brother.
Washington speaks constantly in his journal of the hospitality of
Barbados. That characteristic remains to this day, where it is carried
to an extreme unknown in England and rarely in the United States. Of all
the Lesser Antilles, one leaves Barbados, perhaps, with most regret.