CHAPTER XVII

AFRICAN JAMAICA

It may be that our affection for Jamaica is tempered by the difficulties

we had in reaching it. Lying well inside the curve described by the

other West Indies, the scarcity of shipping caused by the World War has

left it almost unattainable from any of the other islands and hardly to

be reached, except directly from New York or Panama. We first attempted

to visit it from Santiago de Cuba, early in our journey. But as this

would have meant spending an interminable twenty-four hours, and perhaps

much more, on a little coasting-steamer not even fit for the “slave

traffic” in which it is chiefly engaged, at a fare equal to that from

St. Thomas to Barbados in an ocean liner, the depositing of an equal

amount to pay the expenses of a very probable quarantine of a week

because of a few scattered cases of smallpox in Cuba, and the unwinding

of a formidable mesh of red tape, we decided to defer our call and pick

up the island on the way home. That surely would be easy, we concluded,

for traffic certainly should be frequent between the two largest of the

British West Indies. Arrived in Trinidad, however, we found that island

as completely cut off from Jamaica as if they belonged to two enemy

powers. We at length succeeded in coaxing the captain of a British

freighter—the most pleasant craft, by the way, of all our

journey—touching at every port on the north coast of South America and

spending three weeks on the way, to carry us to Panama, whence another

steamer bore us back again to several Columbian ports and eventually

landed us in Jamaica seven weeks after leaving Trinidad. Had we not set

our hearts on making our tour of the West Indies complete, we should

have long since invited the principal British island to withdraw to a

sphere where the temperature is reputed to be more than tropical.

The first view of Jamaica and of its capital is pleasing. A mountainous

mass, gradually developing on the horizon, grows into a series of ranges

which promise to rival the beauty of Porto Rico. Beyond a long, low,

narrow, sand-reef lies an immense harbor, on the further shore of which

Kingston is suspected, rather than seen, only a few wharves and one

domed building rising above the wooded plain on which the low city

stands. The hills behind it tumble into a disordered heap culminating in

the cloud-swathed peak of what are most fittingly called the Blue

Mountains. On this strip of sand, known as the Palisadoes, lies buried

the famous buccaneer, Sir Henry Morgan, once governor of Jamaica, and at

the extreme end of it stands the remnant of the old capital, Port Royal.

In the good old days of pirates, who made it their headquarters, the

depository of their loot, and the scene of their debauchery, this was

the most important town in the West Indies, some say the richest and

most wicked spot on earth. One must be chary, however, of too hastily

granting such superlatives. An earthquake befell it one day, sinking all

but a fragment of the town beneath the sea, and a new capital, named

Kingston, was founded on what promised to be safer ground across the

bay. A later century brought regret that a still more distant site had

not been chosen. To-day Port Royal consists of a quarantine station and

a small village so isolated from the mainland that servant women brought

from it to the capital have been known to shriek with dismay at sight of

their first cow. Ships circling the reef on their way in or out of the

harbor sail over the very spot where pirates once held their revels, and

negro boatmen still assert that on stormy evenings one may hear the

tolling of Port Royal’s cathedral bell, lying fathoms deep beneath the

waves.

One’s first impression of the Jamaicans, as they lounge about the wharf

eyeing each trunk or bundle several minutes before summoning up the

energy to tackle it, is that they are far less courageous in the face of

work than their cousins, the Barbadians. This is closely followed by the

discovery that Kingston is the most disappointing town in the West

Indies. With the exception of a few bright yellow public buildings and a

scattered block or two of new business houses, it is a negro slum,

spreading for miles over a dusty plain. Scarcely a street has even the

pretense of a pavement; the few sidewalks that exist are blocked by

stairways, posts, and the trash of a disorderly population, or

degenerate every few yards into stretches of loose stones and earth. The

only building worth crossing the street to see is that domed structure

sighted from the bay, the Catholic cathedral. To be sure, the earthquake

wrought great havoc, but that was thirteen years ago, time enough,

surely, in which to have made a much farther advance toward recovery.

The insolence of nearly all the British West Indies reaches its zenith

in Kingston. Even in the main street clamoring black urchins and no

small number of adults trail the white visitor, heaping upon him

foul-mouthed taunts, all but snatching his possessions out of his hands

in broad daylight; diseased beggars plod beside him in bare feet that

seem never to have known the luxury of a scrubbing, scattering their

germs in a fine gray limestone dust that swirls in blinding clouds which

envelop everything in a yellowish veil whenever a breath of wind stirs

or a street-car sweeps past. Loose-mannered black females ply their

trade with perfect impunity, shrieking worse than indecencies at

unresponsive passers-by; assaults and robbery are frequent even by day.

One must be vaccinated and often quarantined before entering Jamaica,

yet it is doubtful whether any island of the West Indies has more

evidence of disease than Kingston itself. Those who carry firearms must

deposit them at the custom house, yet with the possible exception of

Hispaniola, a revolver is more often needed in the Jamaican capital than

anywhere in the Caribbean, as several harmless Chinese merchants learned

to their sorrow during our brief stay there. The town is dismal,

disagreeable, and unsafe for self-respecting white women at any hour; by

night it is virtually abandoned to the lawless black hordes that infest

it. Weak gas-lights give it scarcely a suggestion of illumination;

swarms of negroes shuffle through the hot dust, cackling their silly

laughter, shouting their obscenity, heckling, if not attacking, the rare

white men who venture abroad, love-making in perfect indifference to the

proximity of other human beings, while the pompous black policemen look

on without the slightest attempt to quell the disorder.

The white residents of Kingston seem to live in fear of the black

multitude that make up the great bulk of the population. When hoodlums

and rowdies jostle them on the street, they shift aside with a slinking

air; even when black hooligans cling to the outside of street-cars

pouring out obscene language, the white men do not shield their wives

and daughters beside them by so much as raising their voices in protest.

When cursing, filthy market women pile their baskets and unwashed

produce in upon them and crowd their own women out of their places, they

bear it all with humble resignation, as if they were the last survivors

of the civilized race wholly disheartened by an invasion of barbarian

tribes. The visitor who flees all this and retires is lucky to catch

half an hour of unbroken sleep amid the endless uproar of shouting

negroes, the barking of innumerable dogs, and the crowing of more cocks

than even a Latin-American city can muster. It would be difficult,

indeed, to say anything bad enough of Kingston to give the full, hot,

dusty, insolent, half-ruined picture. The traveler will see all he wants

and more of the capital in the time he is forced to remain there on the

way to or from his ship without including a stay in his itinerary. Port

au Prince is clean and gentlemanly in comparison.

The electric street-cars, manned by ill-mannered crews and rocking like

ships in a storm over the earthquake-undulated ground, run far out of

town. They must, in order to reach anywhere worth going. Beyond Half Way

Tree the sloping Liguanea plain grows green and the rain that seems

never to descend to Kingston gives the vegetation a fresher coat, yet

the way is still lined for a long distance by negro shacks. Only when

one reaches the open meadows of Constant Spring or the residence section

served by another branch of the line does anything approaching comfort,

cleanliness, and peace appear. Yet even the boasted Hope Gardens, set

far back at the base of the Blue Mountain range, have little of the

open, breezy beauty of the Queen’s Park in Trinidad. Until he has

drifted farther afield, the stranger will not cease to wonder what

charms bring Jamaica its large colony of winter tourists. Even then he

must conclude that the prevalence of a tongue closely enough resembling

English to be sometimes comprehensible and the legal existence of John

Barleycorn give the island its handicap over Porto Rico.

* * * * *

Unlike the other British West Indies, Jamaica clings to the English

monetary system. The two colonial banks issue pound notes and higher,

which are easily mistaken for those in dollars from the other islands,

as more than one new cashier has discovered too late to rescue his first

month’s salary. The word “dollar” is frequently heard, but it is merely

a popular euphonism for four shillings. Then there are local pennies and

half-pennies of nickel alloy that are not readily distinguished from the

English shilling and two-shilling pieces. Jamaica belongs to the postal

union, but, unlike the other colonies of the empire, she does not

subscribe to the British postal convention with the United States, with

the result that visitors commonly find their letters taxed three pence

extra postage, to the continual advantage of the local government.

This latter gives the impression of being both backward and clumsy. A

governor and a privy council of not more than eight members are

appointed by the crown. The legislative body is presided over by the

former and consists of five of the latter, ten other crown appointees,

and a _custos_, elected by the people, from each of the fourteen

parishes. British male subjects of twenty-one who occupy house property

and pay taxes of thirty shillings, or who receive a nominal salary of

fifty shillings a year, are qualified voters. A recent enactment gives

the few women possessing certain qualifications a limited right to vote.

Parish boards can recommend legislation, but only the high colonial

officials can actually make laws or pay out money. No bills involving

questions of finance are passed if opposed by nine elective members, yet

those same _custodes_ cannot initiate legislation. Moreover, the king

may disallow any law within two years of its passing. The result is a

division of responsibility from power and frequent deadlocks that make

the apparent autonomy of the island a continual process of “standing

pat.”

The few white officials are slow, antiquated, precedence-ridden, in

striking contrast to the young and bustling, if sometimes poorly

informed rulers of our own dependencies. Indeed, a journey to the West

Indies is apt to cause the American to rearrange his notions of the

relative efficiency of the English, and the French or ourselves, as

colonizers. We are sadly in need of a Colonial Office and a corps of

trained officials to administer what we dislike to call our colonies,

but even our deserving Democrats, or Republicans, as the case may be,

scarcely hamper the development of our dependencies as thoroughly as do

its medieval-minded rulers that of Jamaica. An example or two will

suffice to illustrate the point. The government railway was lifted out

of its slough of despond and rehabilitated by an experienced

administrator. When he found, however, that his £1000 a year did not

suffice to keep him in shoes, the insular powers let him go rather than

increase his pittance. Back in the Middle Ages that was a generous

stipend for railway managers. By a recent law the Government of Jamaica

has decided to take over the making, and later the distribution, of rum.

At the time of our departure it was advertising for “an experienced

superintendent” at the breath-taking salary of £2000 a year! No doubt

there was a rush of managers of Cuban sugar _centrals_ contending for

this noble prize.

It may be of interest to know that Jamaica is livid with fear that she,

too, may be struck by prohibition, and is hastily erecting all manner of

protective lightning-rods. Her newspapers carry columns of arguments pro

and con, most of them clinched with quotations from the Bible, as if

that had anything to do with the case. Reading the impassioned

utterances of the “wets,” one might suppose that the United States is in

the act of organizing a great army of grape-juicers to descend upon

Jamaica and wrest from her all bottled joy in life, while the casual

observer gets the impression that the great majority of the islanders

would rather die at the doors of their rum distilleries and liquor shops

than suffer that ignominious fate.

With the exception of Barbados, where special conditions exist, Jamaica

has remained a possession of the British crown longer than any other

land, and the influence of the English on the African race can perhaps

nowhere be better studied. It is not particularly flattering. The

Jamaican has all the faults of his rulers and his own negro

delinquencies to boot. He is slow-witted, inhospitable, arrogant when he

dares to be, cringing when he feels that to be to his advantage. The

illegitimate birth-rate is exceedingly high, sexual morality extremely

shaky among the masses. Though the country people are sometimes pleasing

in their simplicity, they quickly take on the unpleasant characteristics

of the town dwellers when they come in contact with them, the most

conspicuous being an unbridled insolence and a constant desire to annoy

what may quite justly be called their betters. Part of this rudeness is

due, no doubt, to the same cause as that of our laboring classes—a

misguided attempt to prove their equality by scorning the amenities of

social intercourse. A large percentage of it, however, is easily

recognizable as native African barbarism, which increases by leaps and

bounds as the suppression of former days weakens. If he is working for

you or selling you something, the Jamaican can be softly courteous; when

he has no such reasons to repress his natural brutality his impudence is

colossal.

Even more than in the other British islands the masses of Jamaica have

been “spoiled” by the war. Official reports credit the “B. W. I.”

regiments with “excelling in many acts of bravery”; private information,

even from some of the very men who dictated the official reports, has a

different tenor. According to this they were useless in actual warfare,

not a man of them having died facing the enemy; even as labor battalions

they were not worth their keep, and their conduct was such that both the

French and the Italians protested against their being stationed within

reach of the civil population. Whichever of these reports is more

trustworthy, there is no doubt that the hospitality shown these

crude-minded blacks by a certain class of European women, and the fuss

made over them upon their return, have given their rulers a problem

which will scarcely be solved during the present generation.

Those who have spent their lives with the Jamaica negro—and to a certain

extent he is typical of his race in all the British West Indies—agree in

the main with the casual observer in the summing up of his

characteristics. He is apt to take little pride in his work and to meet

any criticism with “Cho, too much boderation; can’t do better.” He sees

little immorality in lying, and the man who expects truth from him

according to the Anglo-Saxon standard will be grievously disappointed.

Exactness in such matters as age, distance, names, and the like means

nothing to him. His answer to a roadside inquiry is almost certain to be

“not too far,” and his age may change by ten years or more within the

space of two sentences. He has the child’s tendency to exaggeration and

the building up of stories out of whole cloth, yet he can scarcely plead

the same excuse as the child, for his imagination is, at best, in a

comatose state. Gratitude seems to have been completely left out of his

make-up. He dearly loves a bargain or a dispute; the shop-keeper who has

only one price arouses his hostility, and to appear in court either as

plaintiff, defendant, or witness is one of his favorite forms of

amusement.

“Like the Irish,” as one English Jamaican puts it, “he does himself more

credit abroad than at home; like them he is quite ready to emigrate and

goes where the dollar calls, rather than aping the Englishman, who

prefers a competency under the Union Jack to possible riches under

another flag. If there is one thing he dislikes more than another,”

continues this authority, “it is sarcasm. He will stand any amount of

‘cussing,’ but he keenly resents ridicule of any kind.” What this critic

does not add is that the sarcasm must be extremely broad if the average

Jamaican is to recognize it as such.

The lower classes are much given to “teefing” small articles,

particularly food. One might almost say that the chief curse of the

island is “praedial larceny,” as they still spell it in Jamaica, which

means the stealing of growing crops. Newspapers, public reports, and

private conversations contain constant references to this crime,

prosecutions for which nearly doubled in the year following the war.

Many people no longer take the trouble to plant a crop of ground

provisions, knowing that they will almost certainly be stolen by black

loafers before the owners themselves can gather them. The main faults of

the masses,—insolence, lying, illegitimacy, slackness in work, and

thieving,—can scarcely be laid to drink; for though Jamaica rum is

famous and drunkenness is on the increase, the women, who drink

comparatively little, are as bad as the men in all these matters.

Prisons and penal institutions are more in evidence in Jamaica than

schools. While the latter are small and inconspicuous, the prison in

Kingston is larger than Sing Sing, in Spanish Town there is another

almost as large, and many more scattered throughout the island. The

police, who are virtually all jet black, are poorly disciplined and much

inclined to look misdemeanors, indecency, and even crime in the face

without being moved to action. Pompously proud and inclined to

insolence, also, they seldom fail to take advantage of their power over

white men whenever it seems safe to do so. For there is little

color-line in legal matters, and not only can whites be arrested by

black officers, but they run a splendid chance of being tried by colored

magistrates. The tendency to give the higher positions of responsibility

in the police force to young Englishmen who have been decorated in the

war or who have influential friends, yet who are more noted for their

card playing and dancing than for ability or diligence in their new

calling, has enhanced a situation which the better class of Jamaicans

view with alarm. There are one hundred and sixteen constabulary stations

on the island and a force of a thousand regular constables, supplemented

by almost as many district deputies, yet Jamaica is by no means so well

policed as Porto Rico with its insular force of scarcely eight hundred.

Even the friendly critic already quoted finds little to praise in the

Jamaican except his cheerfulness, his loyalty, within limits, to those

he serves, and his kindness to his own people, and he admits that the

first of these qualities is often based on lack of ambition, “though it

is nevertheless pleasant to live with.” On the other hand, lack of equal

opportunity is not without its effect on the negro character. Jamaica

suffers from the same big estate and primogeniture troubles that hamper

the masses in England. Slightly larger than Porto Rico, with five

hundred thousand acres still held by the crown and with only half of the

remainder under cultivation, the rest being wooded or “ruinate,” as they

call it in Jamaica, the island is principally in the hands of the

whites. These strive to keep their estates intact and hold the negro in

economic subjection.

“Negroes who come back from Panama or Cuba with in some cases hundreds

of pounds are seldom able to buy property,” complained one of their

sponsors. “It is only when the white man becomes very poor or the negro

very rich that he can get a chunk of some big estate. The big owners too

often pasture, rather than plant, their best land and rent out the worst

to the small peasants, at one pound an acre a year. If the rented land

turns out to be too stony or otherwise useless, that is the peasant’s

loss and the owner’s gain.” One difficulty in bettering this condition,

however, is the disinclination of the peasantry to pay regularly. On the

whole, the planters show little generosity toward their laborers,

thereby increasing the feeling between the two races.

Though it is the most populous of the British West Indies, and the

largest, unless one follows the English habit of including British

Guiana, Jamaica is much less densely inhabited than Porto Rico, for it

is natural that two islands so nearly alike in size, situation, and

formation should constantly suggest comparison. When the British took

Jamaica from the Spaniards in 1655, it had but 4200 inhabitants. Half a

century later the population was more than two thirds negro. In 1842,

four years after the abolition of slavery, the first shipload of

indentured East Indians arrived, but this practice had almost ceased

long before the Indian Government recently put a legal end to it. The

Chinese coolies were tried for a time, but only in small numbers, and

their descendants now confine themselves almost entirely to keeping what

we would call “grocery stores.” Both the Hindus and the Chinese, and for

that matter the native whites, speak the slovenly Jamaican dialect, and

there remains little of the Oriental garb and racial mixture so

conspicuous in Trinidad.

“On my arrival in Jamaica in 1795,” says one of its governors, “I found

a vast assembly of French emigrants of all ranks, qualities and colors,

who had fled from the horrors of Santo Domingo”—by which, of course, he

meant Haiti. Many Cubans came also when their island was under Spanish

rule. But all these elements scarcely moderate Jamaica’s distinctly

African complexion. The visitor is apt to be astounded by the blackness

of the great bulk of the population. The percentage of full blacks is in

striking contrast to the mulatto majority in the French islands, where

the mixture of races is not very sternly frowned upon, and still more so

to the Spanish-American tropics, where miscegenation is so common that

nearly everyone is a “colored person.” By her last census, which is

nearly ten years old, Jamaica claims 831,383 inhabitants, of whom 15,605

were white, 17,380 Hindus, and 2,111 Chinese. The fact that she has

barely two hundred to the square mile, as compared to twelve hundred in

Barbados, is probably not without its bearing in the visible difference

of energy between the two islands.

* * * * *

The color-line in Jamaica, and it is more or less typical of that in all

the British West Indies, falls somewhere between our own and the rather

hazy one in vogue in the French islands.

“I think the English individually,” said a Jamaican _sambo_, that is a

three fourths negro, who had worked on the Canal Zone, “like us black

people still less than you Americans do; but governmentally they treat

us as equals, and you do not. Yet in some ways I prefer the American

system. An Englishman says you are his equal, but you had better not act

as if you were. The American says, ‘You’re a damned nigger and you know

it,’ and there is no hypocrisy in the matter.”

Strictly speaking, there are two color-lines in the British West Indies.

Unlike the United States, where “black” and “colored” are synonymous

terms when applied to the negro race, there is a middle class of

“colored people,” as there are Eurasians in India, though actual

membership in it implies a certain degree of education, culture, wealth,

or influence. There are “colored” men who rank themselves and are ranked

as negroes, working shoulder to shoulder with them in the fields; there

are others who sit side by side with their white brethren on the

judicial bench and reach high rank in church, politics, medicine, law,

and commerce. Color may almost be said to be no bar to promotion in

official life, within limits. This middle set is extremely assertive in

its pride and, on the whole, is more disliked by the negroes than are

the whites themselves.

On a Jamaican train one day I fell into conversation with an octoroon

school-teacher. He was a forcible fellow who had evidently retained most

of the qualities of his white ancestors. For some time I avoided any

reference to the matter of human complexions, having no desire to offend

him. Before long, however, he began to expatiate on the necessity of

keeping the “niggers” in their place.

“Hoho,” said I to myself, “so you consider yourself a white man?”

But he did not, for soon he began to explain the position of “us colored

people.” He often met fellow-teachers who were negroes, he said, but no

negro ever entered his house, nor had he ever introduced his daughter to

one of them.

“The nigger,” he went on, “always gets cocky when he is given either

authority or encouragement. If I invite a negro to my house, the next

thing I know he is proposing to my daughter and I have to kick him out,

for in Jamaica the colored girl forever loses caste by marrying a black

man. I would rather die than marry a negro woman, yet I would no sooner

marry a white woman, because it would be hell in a few years. At the

same time I know that a white man would have the same fear, if I were

his guest. So I do not go to his house, even if I am asked, for he would

be patronizing; and I do not invite a white man to my house because I

know he would feel he was doing me a favor and an honor.

“By the way,” he asked later, “how would I get on in the United States?

How did you know I am colored? My hair is pretty good.” He smiled rather

pathetically, passing a hand over it.

It was straight as my own, and his skin was no darker than that of many

a Spaniard. Yet, though he might not have been suspected in Paris, or

possibly even in London, any American would have recognized him as a

negro at a glance. I told him so frankly, and he accepted the statement

with consummate good sense. Thanks to the point of view he had

expressed, there is little further mixture of races going on in the

British West Indies, with the possible exception of Trinidad, and the

three castes will probably remain intact and will each have to work out

its own destiny.

Included in the government of Jamaica are the Turks and Caicos Islands,

which belong geographically to the Bahamas, as they once did officially.

Transportation between them and the mother island is worse than

uncertain, and they depend chiefly on their salt beds and emigration for

their livelihood. There are a few small islands scattered close along

the coast of Jamaica, but none of them is of any importance.

The Jamaica Government Railway is one of the oldest in the world, having

been first opened to traffic in 1845. It is almost two hundred miles

long, running diagonally across the island from Kingston to Montego Bay,

and north and eastward to Port Antonio, with two small branches. The

fares are high, being about seven cents a mile first-class and half as

much for second. The latter is really third-class in all but name, with

hard wooden benches and scanty accommodations, and carries virtually all

the traveling population. In it one will find the poorer whites, such as

ministers with their thin, hungry-looking wives, and other

poverty-stricken mortals, contrasting strongly with the “husky,”

broad-shouldered negroes with their velvety black skins, beautiful as

mere types of the animal kingdom. Here and there, perhaps, sits a young

Chinaman, inscrutable, seeing and thinking of it all, no doubt, yet

never giving a hint of his thoughts, a Celestial still though born on

the island. Then there is a scattering of all grades of yellow, some of

them so much so that they try to smile one into the belief that they are

white. In a corner of one of these coaches is a negro in a wire cage,

the railway post-office. First-class consists of a little eight-seat

compartment in the end of one, or at most two, coaches, stiff-backed,

hot, dusty, commonly filled with tobacco-smoke and scarcely a fit place

for a white woman. Occasionally it is crowded with Chinese shopkeepers

and the bundles of wares they would not find room for in the other

class, but more often it, too, is distinctly African in tinge. For like

the island, the “J. G. R.” is overwhelmingly negro. All the trainmen are

full blacks, as are virtually all the passengers. The “trainboy” is a

haughty negro woman in near-silk garb, enormous earrings, and a white,

nurse-like cap, who sells chiefly beer and never calls out her wares. In

the island dialect a local train is a “walkin’ train,” and all Jamaican

trains fall into this category, as do all those in the West Indies

except in Cuba and, to a slight degree, Trinidad. There are no train

manners. In a Spanish country if you put so much as a cane in a seat

your possession of it is assured and respected to the end of the

journey. Put all your baggage, and your coat and hat in addition, into a

Jamaican train-seat and you will probably come back to find your

possessions tossed on the floor and some impudent black wench occupying

your place. Why the “J. G. R.” is so ungodly as to run Sunday trains on

its Port Antonio branch, I do not know. They are about the only things

that do move in the British West Indies on the Sabbath.

From Kingston the train jolts away through the swirling dust across a

flat, Arizona-like plain studded with cactus, though moderately green.

Soon come broad stretches of banana fields, bananas planted in endless

rows down which one can look as through archways, many of the plants

heavy with their bunches nearing maturity, others showing little more

than the big purple flower shaped like a swollen, unhusked ear of corn,

along the stem of which a miniature bunch is just starting. Between

these are other fields, with trees girdled and blackened where some

forest is being killed to make way for more bananas. Negro women with

oval market baskets on their heads tramp energetically along the white

highway; now and then the refined features of a Hindu break the monotony

of brutal negro faces, though he has lost his distinctive garb. Then

comes the prison farm of St. Catherine’s Parish, with its green gardens,

its irrigation ditches filled with clear water, and its horde of prison

laborers. But the train is already coming to a screeching halt in the

former capital of the island, twelve miles from Kingston.

As in Trinidad the Spaniards preferred an inland site for their

principal city, and this Villa de la Vega was founded by Columbus’s son

Diego after they had abandoned their first capital of Sevilla Nueva on

the north coast. The English, being a maritime people before all else,

first set up their government in Port Royal, but even they could not

endure a capital that had sunk beneath the sea, and returned to the old

Spanish headquarters. This had come to be called St. Jago de la Vega, a

name still to be found on ancient mile-posts along the roads of the

vicinity, but that was too much of an effort for the thick negro tongues

and the place was rechristened Spanish Town. It remained the capital of

the island until 1870, and still retains the records’ office. Set in a

flat plain half covered with bushy trees, it is but a very trifle cooler

and not much more pleasant than Kingston. There are still many Spanish

names and features in Spanish Town, but only one family which speaks

that language, and very few Catholics. An old red brick cathedral

recently restored is said to be the oldest in the British colonies,

Anglican now, of course, and open only during services. Spanish Town has

scarcely ten thousand inhabitants, though it disputes with Montego Bay

and Port Antonio the second place among towns of the island. In its

center is still a kind of Spanish plaza, with only its grass and trees

left, and surrounded by old yellow brick government buildings—all of

which, one learns with surprise, were built by the English. Under the

portico of one of these is a statue of Rodney, who raised the Union Jack

over the French in the West Indies, dressed in that glorified undershirt

or incomplete Roman toga worn no doubt by all British admirals in those

heated days. The old capital has an open market which is a trifle better

dressed, though more bestial and insolent than those of Haiti, and its

only hotel is a negro joint overrun with plate-licking cats and setting

hens, which masquerades under the name of “Marble Hall.”

Though it was for a century and a half under Spanish rule, Jamaica shows

few signs of Iberian influence, except in its geographical names. Some

of these remain pure, but the majority of them have been corrupted by

the thick-tongued negroes into something only faintly resembling the

original. Thus Managua has become Moneague, Agua Alta is now Wag Water,

a place once noted for its _manteca_, or lard, is Montego Bay, and Boca

del Agua has adopted the alias of Bog Walk. When England wrested Jamaica

from Spain the property which the Spaniards could not take with them

they largely destroyed, so that no real Spanish building has remained

intact. Unlike Trinidad the Spanish tongue is almost never heard in

Jamaica.

The train continues across the flat plain, everywhere thinly covered

with big bushy trees. Indeed one of the stations is called Bushy Park,

where an old brick aqueduct which looks Spanish, though it probably is

not, still carries water across the cane-fields. Muscular negro youths

in rags, either without the possibility or the desire to earn better

garments, swarm about the stations and into the cars, pouncing upon the

luggage of any traveler who shows the slightest sign of descending. An

hour and a half from Kingston, beyond the station for Old Harbour, the

land begins slowly and gradually to rise, and one is soon overlooking a

vast tree-bushy rather than forested country. Broad fields of

_henequen_, jute sisal, or rope-cactus, as you choose to call it, are

planted in rows on rather arid looking ground completely covered with

high brown grass. The first suggestion of beauty in the landscape

appears near May Pen. A “pen” in the Jamaica dialect means a grassy

field or a pasture, and “pen keeping” is the local term for breeding and

raising cattle. Here and there the inevitable old square brick chimneys

of sugar-mills dot the ever descending plain, which at length begins to

be hidden by low foothills. Sapling-like forests spring up along the

way, and the logwood that grows in scattered quantities all over the

island lies piled at the railway stations, the outer layer of wood

roughly hacked away, leaving only the reddish heart. Schooners carry

north many cargoes of these crooked logs and the still more awkward

stumps, while several mills on the island turn it into an extract that

is shipped in barrels to color our garments dark-blue or black. Jamaica

produces also a certain amount of fustic, a smooth, straight tree which

gives a khaki color.

Soon the soil, or “sile,” as they call it in Jamaica, turns reddish and

clearings and habitations become rare. By this time we were the only

white persons on the train and shortly after that the only passengers in

the first-class coach. A larger engine took us in tow and we climbed 865

feet in the next six miles. Dense, almost unpopulated forests, like some

sections of eastern Cuba, covered the ever more rugged landscape; but if

the scenery flanking Jamaica’s railway is more striking than that

visible from the trains in Porto Rico, it is because it passes through

rather than around the island, for on the whole our own West Indian

colony is more beautiful. The train continues to climb until it attains

an altitude of 1680 feet at Green Vale, then descends steadily past

several villages of no great importance, through numerous “tubes,” as

Jamaicans call a tunnel, now and then past long stretches of bananas,

otherwise through almost a wilderness broken only by tiny corn or

cane-fields about the rare negro shacks. At Catadupa it breaks out upon

a vast vista of wooded valley, and sinks at length into a square mile of

sugar-cane beyond which lies Montego Bay on the northern coast.

[Illustration: As I passed this group on a Jamaican highway, the woman

reading the Bible was saying, “So I ax de Lard what I shall do”]

[Illustration: “Draw me portrait please, sir.” The load consists of

school books and a pair of hobnail shoes]

[Illustration: A very frequent sight along the roads of Jamaica]

[Illustration: Our baggage following us ashore in one of the French

islands]

* * * * *

But we had long since left it, to drive by “buggy”—our American term for

a country carriage has somehow become acclimated in Jamaica—into the

Manchester hills. The trip from Kingston to Mandeville, 2200 feet above

the sea, is like one from downtown New York to the Berkshires in July.

Indeed the visitor to Manchester Parish might almost fancy himself in

Connecticut, in spite of the prevalence of negroes. The gray stone

fences, with big horses ankle-deep in the grassy pastures behind them,

the rolling stretches of corn, the very birds bear out the illusion.

Even the clumps of bamboo seem to be growing on Connecticut hillsides;

the orchids and tree-ferns contrast strangely with a weather and

landscape of the temperate zone; Mandeville itself, long famous as a

health resort for the residents of the sweltering coast lands, has that

air of calm repose of some old New England village.

Carriage driving has more nearly survived modern invention in Jamaica

than in any other of the West Indies, perhaps for the double reason of

the high price of “gas” and the existence of good horses. The Jamaican

horses are famed throughout the Caribbean for their size and

endurance—also for their hard gait as riding animals. They are not

handsome, being usually lank and goose-rumped, but they are so docile

they may sometimes be driven without being broken and they retain the

size of their English ancestors instead of degenerating into the runts

of most tropical America, and they are unusually free from disease.

Breeders claim that they remain so sound in spite of the enervating

climate largely because of the limestone formation of the island and the

recuperative effects of its high altitudes. At any rate there are few

places where a negro-driven buggy and pair cannot be had on short

notice. Many splendid draft mules are also bred on the island.

I preferred, however, to set out on foot from Mandeville for a jaunt

diagonally across the island. Walking is not a favorite recreation among

either the white or the “colored” castes, though there is no good reason

other than inertia why it should not be in the temperate highlands.

Jamaica has more than two thousand miles of good roads, far outdoing

those of Porto Rico in extent, though they are narrower and sometimes

poorly kept, partly because many of them are parochial roads, unknown in

the neighboring island. “Finger-boards” point the way everywhere. The

high altitudes of Manchester, as of several other parishes, lack only

the shade-grown tobacco fields and the variegated tints of intensive

cultivation to rival in beauty our own West Indian colony. Birds are

always singing, scattered little white houses speckle the immense green

hillsides, the road banks are often carpeted with “wandering Jew” enough

to make the fortune of an American florist, or they are hung with

tapestries of what look like daisies, while other flowers bloom on every

hand. In a climate pleasant even at noonday one would scarcely recognize

the Berkshire landscape as tropical but for a banana, a giant fern, or a

palm tree here and there in the foreground.

Little stone and brick coffee floors, called “barbecues” in Jamaica,

frequently flank the roadway. Manchester parish grows much coffee,

though it rarely reaches the American market, for England consumes all

the island produces. Here the bushes are usually unshaded, protecting

trees being unnecessary, if not harmful, at such an altitude. Instead of

the little toy donkey-carts of Barbados there are big rattling mule

wagons. Donkeys are sometimes ridden, occasionally used as pack-animals.

The peasants have little of the insolence of the towns, but greet the

traveler with a kind of military salute and a gentle “Good day, sah.”

Most of them wear caps, as in Barbados, though the similar headgear of

the women in that island is here replaced by bandannas, usually red and

never topped off with a hat as in Haiti. The men, and many of the women,

smoke home-made pipes with long curved stems, buying their tobacco in

long coils called “jackass rope,” which the war forced to the painful

price of a shilling a yard, though it was once but two pence. Fully

developed girls of twelve eye the passer-by with crudely coquettish

airs. Information as to distance is given in “chains” if at all, the

customary answer being a non-committal “not too far, sah.” The great

bulk of the country population is jet black, though in the towns there

are all grades of yellow, from the impudent slight-cast down to

mulattoes.

It was in the cabin of one of the latter that I took shelter from the

afternoon shower, in a region rejoicing in the name of Split Virgin. He

was perhaps two thirds Irish and one third negro, but always referred to

his black neighbors as “niggers.” On the walls of his unpainted board

parlor hung framed chromo portraits of his white ancestors. The

inevitable topic of conversation of course was the high cost of

living—where can one escape it? A “head” of sugar had advanced from a

“gill” (three farthings) to six pence; corn cost more than the chickens

to which it was fed increased in worth; wild nuts were more expensive

than the flesh they added to his hogs. Calico, put in his wife, all

cloth in fact, was getting impossible. Soon they would have to go

naked—which reminded me that one never sees naked children in Jamaica,

unlike most of the Caribbean islands. A man could not even grow his own

food any more; three fourths of his yam holes were robbed at night by

the thieving “niggers.” The war and the travel and experience that went

with it had debauched even the better class of them, until they were

slothful, proud, insolent, and wasteful.

I stopped that night in a mulatto house that took in lodgers, the only

point of interest being the dug-out log that served as bath-tub. The

invariable Jamaican question in making new acquaintances is “Please,

sah, who you is; y’u’ name, please sah?” Once they know your name they

seem to feel that everything is all right. But you must have a name,

with a mister in front of it. You never say your name is Smith. Your

name is _Mr._ Smith. I tremble to think what might befall a stranger in

rural Jamaica who did not happen to have a name, and a mister to prefix

to it.

Over the top of the island range at Coleyville, with its wireless

station, I passed a Jamaica sugar-mill with a daily capacity of one

gross “heads.” It consisted of two upright wooden rollers turned by a

donkey, an oval iron kettle set into the top of a mud furnace, and a

score of little tin cups in which are hardened the one-pound dark-brown

lumps of crude sugar that are called “heads” and which form a principal

article of diet among the country people. Long-tailed humming-birds

shimmered among the flowers at the roadside. Broad green vistas of

banana plants, their broad leaves whipped to ribbons by the trade wind,

filled many a valley, sometimes climbing part way up the surrounding

slopes. Road gangs, usually of two men, were frequent; negro women young

and old, sometimes in long groups, sometimes quite alone, were to be

found in every mile, sitting on stone piles and wielding their hammers.

They are paid a shilling a “box” for breaking up the stones, which they

must hunt for in the fields and carry to the roadside, earning an

average, if they told the truth, of nine pence a day. It was planting

time for ginger, which grows in little patches on the steep red

hillsides. The plant, which is pulled in February or March, somewhat

resembles a currant-bush and only the root is valuable, the bushes being

broken up and used in the following May or June as seed. With good luck

a Jamaica peasant may get 2000 pounds of cured ginger to the acre. Wages

varied in this region from “one and six” to “two and six,” one of the

workmen told me, adding regretfully “de cultivators in de hills can’t

afford de dollar” (four shillings) “dat am payin’ now de sugar estates.”

Shingle and wood houses were the rule here, and they were better than

the rural hovels of Porto Rico, perhaps because the material is more

plentiful.

Each morning I met flocks of black children, carrying their slates and

their few books on their heads, hurrying to school, usually in the

church, from which a chorus of hymns invariably arose as soon as the

pupils were gathered. In the early days the government of Jamaica did

little toward educating the populace, but left it to the denominational

schools. Only a few years ago was the penny a week, still required of

pupils in most of the British West Indies, abolished, and though there

are public schools now in every parish, the Moravians, Anglicans,

Catholics, Presbyterians, the Church of Scotland, the Baptists, the

Wesleyans, and the Church of Jamaica get government subsidies for

educational purposes. England’s school record in Jamaica is as low as

our own in Porto Rico. Slightly more than half the children of school

age are enrolled, and the attendance of these is fitful. There is

compulsory attendance only in Kingston and two or three other towns.

Only three out of every hundred pupils reach the sixth grade, and in all

the island fewer than three thousand continue in school after the age of

fourteen. School inspectors play an important part in the social life,

each having about seventy schools in his charge, which he must visit

twice a year. The Jamaica government has often been warned against the

danger of teaching her democracy to read unless she also taught it to

think, but the warning has never been taken very seriously.

The country churches of Jamaica are small and unimposing compared with

those of Barbados, though they are more numerous and often conspicuous

in their prominent settings on the green hillsides. The sects seem to

run in streaks. In this ginger region—most fittingly perhaps—the Church

of Scotland holds sway, the ministers receiving their stipends and their

instructions from the land of heather. Farther on the Baptists

prevailed, and every little negro urchin I questioned announced himself

a faithful follower of that sect. On a high hilltop they had built a

stone church as high as the eaves, then suddenly abandoned it,

apparently because it had occurred to them that there was no water

available at that height. The Jamaicans are much given to religious

expression. It is nothing rare to hear them “callin’ on de Lawd” as they

tramp along the roads, and their antics sometimes reach the height of

religious insanity. Such seemed to be the case of a ragged old woman I

passed during my second day’s tramp, or else she was pretending the

power of prophecy for the benefit of the score of wide-eyed negroes

squatting on the ground about her as she marched back and forth

preaching with all the inflections of a negro minister and ending each

exhortation with a “Bless de Lawd, Oh, mah soul!” which echoed back from

the neighboring hills. Tombstones are less numerous in Jamaican

churchyards than one would expect, perhaps because of the custom of

burying people on their own property. One often comes upon a little

cluster of graves in a lonely bit of woods, or beside a country hut,

some of them dating from the slave days. Most of them are covered by a

mound of stone and cement, without crosses or other upright monument,

some are large vaults, all are well kept and usually freshly

whitewashed. Strangely enough the negroes do not seem to be in any way

superstitious about them.

Annotto and pimento are two important products of the Jamaican hills

that are sure to draw the pedestrian’s attention. The former is a

reddish berry in a kind of chestnut-burr pod, which grows on a spreading

bush and, being boiled, gives an oily extract that is used as a dye.

Pimento is what we know as allspice, and is the only Jamaican export

indigenous to the island. The tree grows some thirty feet high and its

greenish-gray bark and glossy green leaves cause it to stand out

conspicuously from the surrounding forest. When crushed in the hand the

leaves emit a strong aromatic odor, but they have no commercial value.

The berry, of the size of a currant, grows in clusters, is glossy black

when ripe and very pleasant to the taste. But it must be gathered before

that, and has then a peppery, astringent quality. They are picked by

sending a small boy up the tree to break off the ends of all the

branches he can reach and throw them to the ground, where the berries

are gathered by women and children and carried to the “barbecues,” where

they are dried like coffee.

Irish potatoes can be grown in the highlands of Jamaica; there are some

nutmegs; the oranges are green in color and of poor quality; there are

_sapotes_ (which are here called naseberries, a corruption of the West

Indian Spanish _níspero_), grapefruit, shadducks (a pear-shaped

grapefruit with a reddish pulp), the _chocho_, and a dozen other purely

tropical fruits and vegetables. But with the single exception of the

pimento all these products have been imported, though many of them have

fervently adopted their new home. In 1793, for instance, when a famine

was ravaging the island, William Bligh brought the breadfruit tree from

the South Seas, and to-day it is as familiar a sight as African faces.

* * * * *

A furzy, almost treeless, red soil region surrounded me on my second

afternoon. I was flanking the famous cockpit country, made up of

numerous basins in close proximity and densely wooded from top to

bottom, wilder forms of what are known in Minnesota as “sink-holes.” In

these the Maroons took refuge in their wars with the English. The

Maroons (an abbreviation of cimaroon, said to be derived from the

Spanish _cima_, or mountain top) were originally slaves of the Spanish,

who took to the cockpit country after England captured Jamaica, where

they were joined from time to time by runaway slaves of the newcomers.

England won her title to the island almost without a struggle, but it

took two regiments to keep the Maroons from recapturing it. For nearly

two hundred years they lived in wild freedom in the mountain recesses,

frequently descending to harry the lowlands and carry off the cattle.

The government at length entered into a treaty with them, granting them

2500 acres of land, and getting in turn their assistance in quelling

uprisings of the slaves or repelling foreign invasion. They were a bold,

hardy lot of men, holding the servile peasant population in great

contempt, knowing every inch of the hills and forests, and were great

hunters, either of human or four-footed game. In warfare they dressed

themselves in green leaves which caused them to blend invisibly into the

landscape. It has always been the policy of the Government to keep the

Maroons at odds with the rest of the population, England’s familiar old

scheme for dominion, like the accentuation of caste lines in India.

To-day, though there are several so-called Maroon towns in the cockpit

country and another in the northeastern parish, there are said to be

almost no “pure blooded” Maroons left. They still exist in name,

however, and have their own chiefs, churches, and schools, and once a

year they are paid an official visit by the _custos_ of the parish, when

they “dress up in leaves and similar rubbish and go through a lot of

childish hocuspocus.” In theory at least they are more independent than

the other negroes—which is strong language indeed—but though every

little while some black countryman bullies his neighbors by claiming to

be a Maroon, there is nothing by which to distinguish the present

descendants of the warlike slaves from those whose ancestors peacefully

awaited emancipation.

Wayside shops are somewhat less numerous in Jamaica than in Barbados,

and it is significant of a larger American influence here that they are

called stores. The best of them, virtually all the provision shops in

fact, are kept by Chinamen, unknown in “Little England.” Even in the

most remote corners of the mountainous interior one comes upon

Celestials plying their chosen trade, most of them of the younger

generation, born in Jamaica and speaking the same slovenly tongue as

their negro clients, yet retaining all their native attributes,

sphinx-like, taciturn, unflaggingly diligent, apparently wholly devoid

of curiosity, only rarely succumbing to the native influence to the

extent of mumbling an indifferent “Where y’u go?” or “What y’u name?” In

striking contrast to Barbados, too, are the stocks of imported canned

and salt fish, even in stores on the edge of the sea. Every scattered

collection of huts has its post office, always bearing the blue sign

“Quinine for Sale.” Single pills of the febrifuge are sold in printed

envelopes at a farthing each, though there are few coins of that size in

circulation, and he who buys a penny-worth gets his four pills in as

many separate envelopes. The favorite native occupation seems to be the

patching of shoes. It is a rare mile that does not have at least one

“shoemaker” seated in the door of his tiny shanty or single room,

striving to make both ends meet with a few scraps of leather and a

handful of nails. Almost the only native manufacture, however, is the

weaving of “jippi jappa” hats, a very coarse, poor imitation of the

Panama, though the country people make all shapes and sizes of baskets.

The language of Jamaica is at best curious; that spoken in the hills

seems almost a foreign dialect, and the stranger must listen attentively

and usually have phrases repeated before he understands them. He is

unlikely to catch more than the general drift of a conversation between

the natives. Yet few African words remain; what seem such to the

stranger turn out upon inquiry to be mutilated forms of English. “No,

please” and “Oh, yes, please, sah” are the habitual negative and

affirmative of the rural districts when addressing white persons. Now

and then the greeting of the older people is “Good mawnin’, dear massa,”

or “I tell you good evenin’, mistress.” It is always “I couldn’t tell

you,” never “I don’t know.” A white baby is a “bukra pickney” to the

country people; smile at any of their childish antics and they are

flattered into confiding to one another “De bukra him laugh.” African

languages consist largely of gesture. With the learning of English from

the stolid Anglo-Saxon this has in great measure disappeared. It is much

more prevalent in the country than in the towns, and much more marked

when they are talking to one another than when addressing a white man.

The negro-English of the masses is no more intelligible to the newcomer

than real English is to the rural population, and most planters save

themselves time and trouble by addressing their laborers in their own

dialect. The Jamaican negro is much given to talking things over with

himself, his brain evidently refusing to work silently, and it is the

rule rather than the exception to hear those one meets along the roads

engaged in a soliloquy. In slavery days queer terms were used for money

and they are still heard in the rural districts and in town markets. I

found a Chinaman spending his spare time between customers in wrapping

up tiny packages of sugar and asked him if they were a penny-worth,

which seemed small enough indeed at present prices. No, they are sold at

a “gill,” or three farthings. Two “gills,” or three “ha’p’nnies,” is a

“quattie.” A shilling used to be a “macaroni,” three pence was for some

reason called “fippence,” and to this day one occasionally hears the

equivalent of thirty West Indian cents referred to as “a mac an’

fippence.” The ejaculatory “I mean to say” is as frequent in the speech

of even the peasants as it is in England.

What may be called proverbs for lack of a more exact name are numerous

among the masses of Jamaica. Let me quote a few, leaving the reader to

catch what meaning he can out of them:

“Better fe water trow ’way dan gourd fe bruck.”

“Black man tief, him tief half a bit; bukra tief, him tief whole a

estate.”

“Cock crow ’trongest ’pon him own dung’ll.”

“Cedar board laugh after dead man.”

“Don’ cry oveh milk wha’ trow ’way a’ready.”

“Dog hab too much owner him sleep widout supper.”

“Ebery dog tink himself lion in him massa yard.”

“Ebery John Crow tink him pickney white.”

“Ebery man know where him house a leak.”

“Follow fashin mek monkey cut him tail.”

“Get a quattie better dan a kick.”

“Larn te dance a home befo’ y’u go outside.”

“Man no done grow mus’n laugh afteh short man.”

“Man get in trouble pickney breeches fit he.”

“Runnin’ ’bout too much de ruin ob woman an’ fowl.”

“Same ting sweet mout’ hu’t belly.”

“Sometime high standin’ collar stan’ top a empty belly.”

“Too much cousin broke shop.”

“When y’u hab bad husban’ don’ mek y’u sweethea’t ca’ y’u half way.”

“Man run too fast run two time.”

“Ebery jackass tink him pickney a race horse.”

Folk lore shows evidence of English and African mixture. Here is a story

as it was told by our son’s Jamaican nursemaid, without the inimitable

pronunciation:

“One day a gentleman and lady have two girl. And they sent them out to

look for them granny. When them got in the thick wood and them meet with

a _orangootang_. The orangootang axed them where are them going to. ‘I

am going to look for my granny.’ And said, ‘Here is my granny.’ And them

said, ‘No, you is not my granny. My granny got a mark right on her

mout’.’ And he went in the thick wood took a knife scrape off his mout’

and come out and said, ‘Here is your granny now.’ And he took dem and

carry dem in his house and just half cook de food dat carry for dem

granny. And when night come him eat off de middle of de biggest one and

lef’ only de hand and de head and de feet. And de little one said,

‘Granny, let I go outside.’ And he said go and de smallest one run home

and can’t talk till three days. And de father get twelve men and gone

look for de orangootang. And when he going six mont’ he catch de

orangootang and put him into de cage and when six mont’ come he throw

kerosene oil on him and light him a fire.”

Tenses mean nothing to the uneducated Jamaican, and the subjective and

objective pronouns are more likely to be reversed than not. Between the

plural and singular of either verb or noun he shows an engaging

impartiality, while the double negative is to him a form of emphasis.

Beyond Ulster Spring, a scattered town in a kind of cockpit so full of

mist in the early morning as to seem a lake, my road dropped rapidly

down a beautiful narrow valley, the high, ragged hills on both sides

tree-clothed in all but the barest white sheer spots. Little wooden

houses were pitched on wooded knolls and jutting places that seemed

almost inaccessible. Here and there the ancient stone road-parapet had

fallen away, giving splendid opportunities for far swifter descent on a

dark night. Through the canyon echoed the voice of a negro woman,

singing hymns as she walked. Birds sang continually; from the

inaccessible little houses came the occasional bleating of goats. Dry

River Lake, evidently in the bottom of a prehistoric crater, shimmered

far below me, surrounded by the densest vegetation, and utter silence.

Jamaica has many rivers that disappear and reappear at random throughout

their course. Negro men on their way to work on the jungled hillsides

carried their machetes in one hand and a smouldering block of wood in

the other, to smoke out the mosquitos. Some bore in addition a blackened

five-gallon oil tin of water on their heads. The day did not grow

unpleasantly warm until I had passed Sawyer’s Market and entered a long

fertile plain, completely uncultivated, almost uninhabited, studded with

great clumps of bamboo. Dolphin Head, the highest peak in western

Jamaica, peered above the landscape to the left. Then bit by bit the

negroes grew numerous and impudent again, and I knew that the

sugar-bearing coastlands were at hand.

Negroes so black and ox-like that they seemed scarcely human plodded

past, never giving greeting as in the hills, though sometimes shouting

an obscene jest. Children ran at sight of me, as those of Italy, for

instance, do at sight of a negro. Ragged old women were hoeing cane in

the fields. They earned five shillings a week; the strongest men three a

day, at “task-work,” laboring from Monday to Friday. Here and there was

an old-fashioned rum-mill, recognizable by its stench as well as by its

old brick chimney and the heaps of rotting cane-pulp about it. The

cane-carts were hauled by three or four pairs of oxen, a dozen men

shrieking about them to urge them up the slopes of the soft fields. Like

most of those in Jamaica they were crosses between English and East

Indian cattle, particularly the Mysore breed. Though inferior from the

butcher’s point of view, these cross-breeds are noted for their

quickness and endurance under the yoke, and they have a black,

sun-resistant skin even when outwardly light-colored or white. Once I

passed a ruined old windmill tower, capped with ivy, but they are rare

in Jamaica. The thick, hot air hung motionless after the afternoon

shower. Rocky, bush-grown hills intruded again where one expected flat,

fertile coastlands, sugar-cane died out once more, and with it the

negroes.

Then suddenly the Caribbean appeared through a break in the hills, so

high and dark-blue that it seemed at first a new mountain range, and on

the edge of it I caught a glimpse of Falmouth, not to be seen again

until I was treading its very streets. Many old stone ruins, especially

the foundations and steps of what had evidently been big plantation

houses, peered forth from the bush. There were other signs that large

estates had once flourished where all was not “ruinate.” Dreary, silent,

dismal, swarming with mosquitoes, the last few miles led through an

unbroken mangrove swamp. Myriads of land-crabs of all sizes and colors,

some huge as small turtles, others no larger than flies, with green,

red, cream-colored, and multi-colored backs, scuttled into their holes

as I passed. Falmouth had little to recommend it, either as a place of

abode or of sojourn. Sweltering even at midnight, its streets impudent

with lounging negroes, it recalled by contrast the cool and simple

little villages in the hills. I found lodging in a room strewn with the

greasy paraphernalia of a negro dentist and which had not known the

luxury of a broom or a dust-cloth in weeks, though the mulatto

house-owner complained that she “can’t get no work to do.” A Salvation

Army street meeting which erupted a few doors away was the nearest

replica of a Central African tomtom dance, with clothes on and smeared

with a thin English veneer, that it has ever been my luck to behold in

an ostensibly civilized country.

I had not intended to walk the twenty-two miles along the coast from

Falmouth to Montego Bay, but as the mail bus left at three in the

morning and private automobiles demanded three shillings a mile, I

changed my plans. Groups of ragged negro women came down out of the

hills singing, their dinner in a rag or a pail on their heads, and fell

to work in newly cleared cane-fields. Pedestrians were constantly

beating off the mosquitoes with leafy branches. Once there had been big

stone houses here also, now there were only miserable negro shacks

scattered among the cocoanut groves. The sea breeze was nearly always

cut off by these or mangrove jungles. The only noise except occasional

shrieking negroes was the cry of mourning doves and the equally mournful

“sough” of the slow breakers on the reefs far out from shore. Fishermen

were rare. Now and then the swamps disappeared and the road plodded

endlessly onward at the very edge of the unruffled inner lagoons. I

passed only one shop on the journey, kept of course by a Jamaica-born

Chinaman. Drinking water was not to be had; the June sun beat down like

a red-hot ingot; the incredibly stupid watchmen, most of whom were

females, could not be induced to sell a single one of the green

cocoanuts under their charge. I adopted the Jamaican custom of praedial

larceny and, picking a plump green nut now and then from the low young

trees, jabbed a hole in it on a sharp fencepost and quenched a raging

thirst that returned again within a half mile. Noisome carrion crows,

with red heads instead of black, unlike those of Trinidad, and called

“johncrow” by the natives, moved lazily aside as I advanced.

Midway between the two towns I passed a three-story mansion set somewhat

back from the sea on what was once one of the finest estates in Jamaica.

To-day it is closed and abandoned, yet needs no watchman, for the

negroes are convinced that it is haunted. Rose Hall it is called, and

its story has long been familiar throughout Jamaica. Here, runs the

yarn, lived a pretty Mrs. Palmer, who was so eccentric that she caused

the house to be built according to the divisions of time,—365 windows,

52 doors, 24 rooms, 12 of this, 7 of that, and so on. But eccentricity

seems to have been the least of her faults, for in this very house, the

tale goes on, she killed four husbands and was on the point of sending

the fifth to join them when he turned the tables.

At length the featureless road swung inland along the edge of an immense

bay, across which stood forth the wooded hills of Hanover parish. Its

waters were glass-smooth, but the sea-wall smashed for long distances

recalled that the Caribbean does not always lie so peaceful and

enticing. Cottages with bathing-suits hung over the veranda rails began

to appear, then white men, of whom I had seen but one in three days, and

he with a negro wife. Montego Bay aspires to be a tourists’ winter

paradise, but unfortunately the town lies around behind a hill that cuts

off that life-saving trade wind which Jamaicans call “the doctor” and in

its place comes only the fitful land breeze known as “the undertaker.”

Then, too, it is short of water. Most of Jamaica is, for unlike

Barbados, which has not a tithe as many sources of supply, the island

depends chiefly on what it can catch from the rains. The result is

frequently to deprive the perspiring visitor of his bath. Tourist

literature would have us believe that “the band of the Montego Bay

Citizens’ Association performs in the Parade”—most Jamaican towns have a

dusty central square known by that name—“in the evenings, and greatly

adds to the pleasure of the visitor.” “Perform” it does indeed, and none

can deny that it adds to the risibility of nations; but let no music

lover be misled by this particular abuse of the maltreated word

“pleasure.”

Of the many other beauties of Jamaica space precludes anything more than

brief mention. There are the cane-fields of Westmoreland parish, for

instance, the tobacco growing hills of St. Elizabeth, the journey up the

gorge to Bog Walk, St. Ann’s parish with its newly born lake of

Moneague, its many pimento trees, its beguiling Fern Gully, where are to

be found innumerable species of the plants that give the ravine its

name, from the maidenhair to the tree-fern, known locally as the

“rattadrum.” Here, too, are Roaring River Falls and the scene of

Columbus’ longest residence in the West Indies, for he lay a

twelve-month with his worm-eaten vessels in what is now called Dry

Harbor.

But it would never do to leave Jamaica without getting a “close-up” of

her banana industry, and to do this to best advantage one should go to

Port Antonio. Above Bog Walk on the way there is Natural Bridge, where

the river cuts a great archway through the rocky hills, the highway

crossing it far above, recalling famous Rumichaca on the boundary of

Colombia and Ecuador, to say nothing of one of our own scenic beauties.

Here is a splendid place to end a Sunday stroll, for there is a

magnificent bath awaiting one amid the boulders over which the river

pours with a constant subway roar and, if one can elude the gaping

negroes who are otherwise sure to follow, no other observers than the

hundreds of little swallows always flitting in and out of their nests in

the rock cliffs. Then when the sun has lost its youthful ardor one may

climb again to the village and catch the afternoon train over the

mountains to the north coast. The region about Highgate almost rivals

the beauty of Porto Rico. Cacao, cocoanuts, clumps of bamboo, the

spreading breadfruit-trees, whole valleys full of bananas, some of which

climb far up the surrounding slopes, decorate the rugged landscape. One

looks almost in vain, however, as in all Jamaica, for the queen of

tropical vegetation, the royal—or, as the English unimaginatively call

it, the cabbage-palm. Then the train descends quickly through tunnels

and across lofty viaducts to Anotta Bay, a large collection of wooden

shanties noted for its mosquitoes, but with the blue Caribbean

stretching away beyond it to the horizon.

Along the edge of this the railway squirms through a wide fringe of

cocoanuts for two hours more. The frequent stations swarm with female

negro food-venders. Hindus are somewhat more numerous and though even

the women nearly all wear Jamaican dress their Aryan features and

unobtrusive manner distinguish them as quickly as their nose-rings and

massive necklaces from the African bulk of the population. At length

comes Port Antonio, with its twin harbors, embowered in hills half

wooded with cocoanuts, an unexpectedly delightful place to the traveler

who has known other Jamaican coast towns. Here the trade wind, unknown

in Kingston, blows unceasingly, and that alone doubles the worth of any

West Indian spot. Irregular and more compact than the two rivals it has

probably outdistanced since the last census, Port Antonio has a more

thriving, sanitary, comfort-loving air, thanks perhaps to the American

influence of its banana trade.

Jamaica claims advantages over all the rest of the world for banana

cultivation. The vast tracts of virgin land in Central America and

Colombia are two days farther from the principal market. Costa Rica is

hampered by frequent droughts at the very season when the fruit most

needs rain; for the great game in banana growing is to have them ready

to cut at the time when other fruit is scarce in the north. Cuba is a

trifle too near the north pole, it is wedded to its sugar industry, and

its labor is several times more expensive than that of Jamaica. Bananas

demand heat, moisture, and a good fat soil, and all these may be had in

the largest of the British West Indies, particularly in the northeastern

parish of Portland, for the Blue Mountains which deny Kingston and its

vicinity the rainfall it needs precipitate most of it here. What was

then a little known fruit in American markets was first planted on a

large scale in this very parish a half century ago. By 1894 it had

become the most important export of the island, out-distancing both

products of the sugarcane, and twenty years later it constituted sixty

per cent. of Jamaica’s contribution to the world’s larder. The war,

abetted by three consecutive hurricanes, the banana’s greatest enemy,

reversed this condition, but the sugar-men themselves do not long hope

to hold their new lead.

I chanced to reach Port Antonio at the very height of a banana war. The

two powerful older companies had determined to annihilate a new one by

that simple little method of starving it to death. Before the World War

a bunch of bananas seldom sold for more than two shillings and six pence

in Jamaica, but the competition of the newcomers had gradually forced

this up to four shillings. In the single day of my visit it advanced

hourly by leaps and bounds,—five shillings, five shillings and three

pence commission, six shillings, six and six, seven shillings, with a

six pence commission if need be, and free transportation to the port—as

often as the interlopers covered their bids the imperturbable managers

of the powerful companies sent out new inducements over their private

telephone system, until the joyful planters of some sections were

pocketing eleven shillings for every bunch of bananas they could lay

down at the roadside bordering their fields. The fruit poured into Port

Antonio in an endless stream, by motor-truck, by wagon, pack-donkey, on

the heads of men and women, for even the negroes who had but a single

bunch worth cutting hastened to part with it at this unprecedented

price.

But let us watch the process from the ground up, for the benefit of

those who know the banana only as it appears on the fruit-seller’s

stand. We have only to catch one of the mammoth trucks thundering away

empty into the hills in the direction of Mooretown, once a settlement of

Maroons. Every little while along the way, jolly, muscular negro

laborers swing up over the tail-board until by the time we have reached

Golden Vale, said to be the oldest export banana farm in the world,

there are enough of them to load the truck in a bare twenty minutes. It

is scarcely necessary to say, I suppose, that bananas grow on a species

of mammoth weed rather than a tree, that each produces a single bunch,

that this grows “upside down” from our fruit-stand point of view, and

that they must be cut before they are ripe. Golden Vale looks like an

immense green lake surrounded by mountains, up the lower slopes of which

the bananas climb for a considerable distance. Close overhead sits Blue

Mountain Peak, coiffed in blue-black clouds. Hindu men, whom the

overseers invariably address as “Babu,” do most of the cutting, while

the more powerful but less careful negroes do the handling. The “Babus”

wander in and out through the green archways, giving a glance at each

hanging bunch. When they see one which has reached the proper stage of

development, they grasp it by the protruding stem, to which the big blue

flower usually still clings, and pull down “tree” and all with a savage

jerk. A machete, called a cutlass in Jamaica, flashes, a negro catches

the bunch as it falls, another slash severs the flower-bearing stem a

few inches from the topmost bananas, a third leaves the “tree” a mere

stump, shoulder-high, and the cutters continue their search. Days later,

when its sap has run back into the roots, the stump is cut off at the

ground and a new shoot springs up to produce next year’s bunch. The

bunches that have been gathered are wrapped in dry brown banana leaves,

and carried to the roadside, along which other brown heaps lie

everywhere as we hurry down to the port, the loaders dropping off one by

one at their shanties or the frequent rum-shops along the way. Quick

handling is an absolute requisite in the banana business, and many a

planter has come to grief by not giving sufficient attention to the

question of transportation.

Arrived at the wharves the truck is as quickly unloaded, and an endless

chain of negroes, nearly all women, take up the task of distribution,

according to size and destination. For there are “English” and

“American” bananas, grown in the same field and differing not at all in

species but by about ten days in their cutting time, so that the former

are lean and the latter fat. Moreover, a bunch is not by any means

always a bunch in the language of the banana companies. In the first

place they are more often called “stems,” and a “stem” must have at

least nine “hands” of fruit (the latter average a dozen bananas each) if

it is to be paid for as a full bunch. If it has more than that well and

good; that is the company’s gain and no one’s loss. But if there are but

eight “hands” it is rated two thirds of a “stem,” if seven, one half, if

six, one fourth, if less than that the planter might better have fed it

to his hogs or his laborers, for the buyers will have none of it. This

rating is less unjust than it appears, for the fewer the “hands” the

smaller and fewer are the bananas.

The slouching negroes who make up the endless chain, are not required to

tax their minds with these problems of size and nationality. They use

their heads, to be sure, but only in the manner that seems best fitted

to the race—as common carriers. Two men snatch up the bunches one by

one, casting aside the brown leaf wrappers, and lay each one flat on a

passing head, the owner of which shuffles away as if it were burdened

with nothing but a hat instead of an average weight of eighty pounds. At

the edge of the shed in which the bananas are piled to await prompt

shipment stands a high desk with three men, usually quadroons or

lighter, standing about it. The oldest, most intelligent, and most

experienced looking of these casts what seems to be a careless glance at

each “stem” and mumbles in a weary monotone, “English, eight,”

“American, nine,” “English, seven,” or some other of the combinations;

his most youthful companion makes a pencil mark on the ledger before

him, the least lively looking of the trio hands a metal or cardboard

disk to the carrier, who drops it into a pocket and slouches on to the

particular pile to which her burden has been assigned. On the way she

passes a negro armed with a cutlass, who lops off the protruding ends of

the stem in front of her nose and behind her ears as she walks without

so much as arousing a flicker of her drowsy, black eyelids.

[Illustration: Private graveyards are to be found all over Jamaica]

[Illustration: A street of Basse Terre, capital of Guadeloupe]

[Illustration: A woman of Guadeloupe]

[Illustration: The town criers of Pointe à Pitre]

When the ship comes in, which must be that night or at latest next day,

a similar endless chain of negroes, more nearly male in sex, carry the

bananas on board, a tally-clerk ringing the bell of an automatic counter

in his hand as each “stem” passes. In some ports a wide leather belt

takes the place of this human chain. But a large gang is required for

all that, and when the last pile has disappeared from the wharf the

carriers strew themselves about it and sleep soundly on the hard planks

until the next load arrives. Its quota supplied, the steamer’s hatches

are quickly battened down, icy air is turned in upon the perishable

cargo, and the vessel rushes full speed ahead for the United States or

England, where the fruit begins to rattle away in other trucks before

the mere human passengers have leave to descend the gangway. Not until

it has reached the retailer does it take on that golden yellow hue that

is familiar to the ultimate consumer.

* * * * *

I dropped off at Buff Bay station on the return journey for a jaunt over

the Blue Mountain range. The “finger-boards” announced the distance to

Kingston as forty-three miles, but there are many shortcuts and an

average pedestrian can make the journey in a single day. It is a

pleasant walk despite the fact that the first sixteen miles impose a

climb of 4080 feet to Hardware Gap. For the foothills begin at once, and

the road, narrow and grass-grown from disuse except near the coast,

climbs in almost constant shade along the bank of Buff Bay river, and

the trade wind sweeps incessantly up the valley. Jamaica is noted for

its birds, of which there are said to be more than forty varieties

peculiar to the island, and the majority of them seem to make this

region their chief rendezvous. Perpendicular banana fields cover the

hillsides here and there as high as they can endure the altitude. Masses

of bamboos lend a needed touch of daintiness to the dense greenery, as a

red-brown tree now and then speckling the steep slopes adds contrast to

what would be an almost monotonous color. Then there are the akee-trees,

numerous throughout Jamaica, with their bright red, pear-shaped fruit, a

favorite food among the negroes, though it is deadly poison except at

certain stages of its growth, and even then is reputed the cause of the

vomiting sickness that is prevalent among the masses.

Higher up every turn of the road brings to view a new waterfall,

standing out against the greenery in flashing whiteness. No wonder the

aborigines called the island Xamayca, the land of springs and water; and

how one regrets that those same red men do not inhabit it still, if only

to give relief from the monotony of black, brutal faces that in time

grow almost intolerable to the traveler in the West Indies, until there

come moments when he would give all he possesses to see these gems of

the Caribbean as they were before they became mere hives of African

slovenliness. But the only Arawaks left in the Jamaica of to-day are

those which uphold the arms of the colony on its shield. Here indeed the

ancient saying that “every prospect pleases and only man is vile”

reaches its full meaning.

I grew weary at length of the incessant negro impudence along the way,

which ranged from foul-mouthed shouts to more or less innocent demands

of “Heh, bukra, what you sell?” It is a ridiculous failing, no doubt,

but I detest being taken for a peddler. I took to shouting back, “I am

selling something to make niggers white. Want some?” But, alas, sarcasm

seldom penetrates the African skull. Far from resenting my rudeness, the

simple-minded souls greeted it with roars of laughter or took it

seriously, more often the latter. Dozens called after me to know the

price of this desirable remedy; several followed me up the road offering

to purchase; one old woman pursued me for nearly half a mile; one group

sent a boy running after me, clamoring to know the cost of my wares. “A

thousand pounds,” I called back over my shoulder, which being duly

reported in all solemnity to the group, brought forth a chorus of

giggles and a regretful-toned, “Ah, him humbug we!”

The last two hours, from Jiggerfoot Market to the summit, was a

laborious climb, but unlike many such it was lightened by frequent

streams of clear, cold water. Then all at once I found myself at the

gap, or _abra_, as the Spaniards would call it, and upon me burst a view

worth many times the exertion. All the Liguanea plain from St. Thomas

parish to Spanish Town and beyond, far beyond, into the farthermost

hills of St. Catherine’s lay spread out like a colored map on a

draughtsman’s table, Kingston in full sight from the scattered rocks far

outside its harbor, with the sea breaking white upon them, to its last

suburbs among the foothills, the sand reef called the Palisadoes curving

like a fishhook about the harbor, the remnants of what once boasted

itself the most wicked town on earth at its point, the water about it so

clear that one might easily have fancied he saw the sunken city of the

buccaneers. There is spring water at the very edge of the gap and if one

has thought to bring a pocket lunch there is nothing to hinder a long

contemplation of this marvelous panorama, except the gradually

penetrating cold of the mountains, which seems indeed an anachronism

within plain sight of sweltering Kingston.

This sent me striding downward again sooner than I had expected. A hill

covered with an abandoned cluster of big barracks soon cut off Kingston

and most of the plain, and left the eyes to contemplate a nearer scene.

Ahead, the road, leisurely and still grassy, had clawed itself a

foothold in the rocky hillside, sheer and wooded with scrub growth

everywhere except where landslides had scratched a white line down its

face. Birds sang lustily, as if tuning up their voices for a later

public appearance; human kind was pleasantly conspicuous by its absence.

Beyond, on the steep flank of Catherine’s Peak, the soldier town of

Newcastle, where British “Tommies” live in an agreeable climate and

still keep an eye on Kingston, went down like a giant’s stairway into

the gorge, an immense gorge always at my very feet, with little strings

of roads winding in and out along its bottom as if in vain quest of an

exit. And though the plain below had been faintly hazy and there were

banks of clouds in the sky high above, the twin peaks of Blue Mountain

range, 7360 higher than the sea, stood out as plainly as though one

might have thrown a stone over them.

Five miles constantly downward by a mountain trail, though it is twice

that by the highway, brings one from Newcastle to Gordontown, a

somnolent hamlet closely shut in by high hills and noisy with the little

river which furnishes Kingston its water. Down the bank of this I

hurried on to the plain of Liguanea, where rocking street-cars carry one

quickly into the insolent capital, for the mangoes were already ripening

and it was high time we sailed away from the island Columbus called

Santa Gloria.

THE FRENCH WEST INDIES AND THE OTHERS