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GARDENS OF THE CARIBBEES
VOLUME II.
Travel Lovers' Library
[Illustration]
_Each in two volumes profusely illustrated_
Florence
By GRANT ALLEN
Romance and Teutonic Switzerland
By W. D. MCCRACKAN
Old World Memories
By EDWARD LOWE TEMPLE
Paris
By GRANT ALLEN
Feudal and Modern Japan
By ARTHUR MAY KNAPP
The Unchanging East
By ROBERT BARR
Venice
By GRANT ALLEN
Gardens of the Caribbees
By IDA M. H. STARR
Belgium: Its Cities
By GRANT ALLEN
[Illustration]
L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY
Publishers
200 Summer Street, Boston, Mass.
[Illustration: FROM OUR BALCONY
CARACAS, VENEZUELA.]
GARDENS OF
THE CARIBBEES
Sketches of a Cruise to the West
Indies and the Spanish Main
By
Ida M. H. Starr
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II.
_ILLUSTRATED_
[Illustration: colophon]
Boston
L. C. Page & Company
_MDCCCCIV_
_Copyright, 1903_
By L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_All rights reserved_
Published July, 1903
Colonial Press
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. ISLAND OF TRINIDAD. "IERE" 11
II. ISLAND OF TRINIDAD. LA BREA 35
III. THE SPANISH MAIN 64
IV. IN VENEZUELA. CARACAS 101
V. IN VENEZUELA. CARACAS TO PUERTO CABELLO 125
VI. CURAÇAO. CITY OF WILLEMSTAD 153
VII. THE SOUTHERN CROSS 189
VIII. KINGSTON, JAMAICA 198
IX. "CUANDO SALIDE LA HABANA" 239
X. A MEMORY OF MARTINIQUE 247
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME II.
PAGE
FROM OUR BALCONY, CARACAS, VENEZUELA _Frontispiece_
THE BARRACKS, THROUGH LIVE-OAKS AND MAHOGANY-TREES, TRINIDAD 17
GOVERNOR'S PALACE AND PUBLIC GARDENS, PORT OF SPAIN, TRINIDAD 21
ON THE WAY TO THE SAVANNAH, PORT OF SPAIN, TRINIDAD 31
THE BEACH OF LA BREA, TRINIDAD 39
ASPHALT FOR NORTHERN PAVEMENTS, PITCH LAKE, TRINIDAD 47
LOADING CARS, PITCH LAKE, TRINIDAD 53
A NATIVE WASHERWOMAN ON THE PITCH LAKE, TRINIDAD 57
WHERE THE MOUNTAINS MEET THE SEA, LA GUAYRA, VENEZUELA 65
CARACAS AND THE MOUNTAINS, VENEZUELA 75
EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF BOLIVAR, THE LIBERATOR, CARACAS, VENEZUELA 85
AN INTERIOR COURT, CARACAS, VENEZUELA 91
CATHEDRAL AND PLAZA, CARACAS, VENEZUELA 111
A HOUSE BESIDE THE SEA, PUERTO CABELLO, VENEZUELA 127
A SOUTH AMERICAN STREET, PUERTO CABELLO, VENEZUELA 149
ACROSS STE. ANNE BAY, HARBOUR OF WILLEMSTAD, CURAÇAO 157
SOME OF OUR FRIENDS AT WILLEMSTAD.--WHERE THE BASKET-WOMEN WAITED,
WILLEMSTAD, CURAÇAO 161
THE LANDING, WILLEMSTAD, CURAÇAO 165
A Jolly Dutch Port, Willemstad, Curaçao 173
A SNUG HARBOUR, WILLEMSTAD, CURAÇAO 185
KINGSTON, JAMAICA, FROM THE BAY 199
RIO COBRE, NEAR SPANISH TOWN, JAMAICA 203
A NATIVE HUT, JAMAICA 209
THE BOG WALK ROAD, NEAR SPANISH TOWN, JAMAICA 213
WHERE WE LANDED, KINGSTON, JAMAICA 223
EL MORRO, ENTRANCE TO HARBOUR, SANTIAGO DE CUBA 229
THE PLAZA, CIENFUEGOS, CUBA 233
THE GRAVE OF CERVERA'S FLEET, WEST OF SANTIAGO DE CUBA 237
THE WRECK OF THE MAINE, HAVANA HARBOUR, CUBA 241
CABAÑAS, LA PUNTA, AND HARBOUR ENTRANCE, HAVANA, CUBA 245
ST. PIERRE AND MT. PELÉE BEFORE THE ERUPTION, MARTINIQUE 249
ST. PIERRE AND MT. PELÉE AFTER THE ERUPTION, MARTINIQUE 253
RUE VICTOR HUGO BEFORE THE ERUPTION, ST. PIERRE, MARTINIQUE 257
RUE VICTOR HUGO AFTER THE ERUPTION, ST. 267
Gardens of the Caribbees
CHAPTER I.
ISLAND OF TRINIDAD, "IERE"
I.
Had we known just a little more about Trinidad, it would have made a
great difference in that luncheon, but it all came out wrong because
some of us didn't know. Too late to influence us in the least, we read
in the _Daily Gleaner_, of Jamaica, that the beef sold in Trinidad is
exported alive from Venezuela. To be sure, we were aware that Venezuela
occupies a large part of the northern coast of South America, and were
conscious that Trinidad lies enclosed in a great bay of that coast,
called the Gulf of Paria, off the delta of the Orinoco River; also, in a
hazy way, we knew that the Spanish Main is a name applied somewhat
vaguely to that same South American coast--a relic of the days of
pirates, buccaneers, and freebooting English admirals; but we no more
expected to be served a roast of beef from the Spanish Main than a dish
of Boston baked beans from our castles in Spain. The two dimly
intangible names had ever borne a close comradeship in our minds, a
poetic association affiliated them in closest bonds. The same sun kissed
into rose tints the turrets of our castles in Spain and the lofty
summits of the Spanish Main. The same romance lifted them both away from
reality into that land just bordering upon the Islands of the Blest, and
much as we longed to materialise our dreams, and make the Spanish Main a
usable fact, when the opportunity came for us to do so, it slipped away
from us before we were conscious of its existence.
Unaware that the illuminated postal-card _menu_ on the table at the
Queen's Park Hotel, Port of Spain, could in any sense lift the veil from
our enchantments, we read the following bill of fare:
Mayonnaise of Fish, with Lettuce
Oysters _en Poulet_
Scrambled Eggs with Asparagus Tips
Irish Stew
Haricot of Oxtail
Brain Fritters
Curry of Veal _à l'Indien_
Boiled Turkey and Rice
Ham and Spinach
Fried Sausages and Potatoes
Salad
Assorted Cold Meats
String Beans Rice Mashed Potatoes
Macaroni _au Gratin_
Chocolate Ice-cream Cakes
Cheese
Eight of us sat down at a table on the veranda, white-walled,
white-ceilinged, and white pillared. A white-gravelled walk led out into
the white sun, through a stiff, boxed-in, English garden, stuffed with
plants in green tubs, and redeemed only by those natural things that
will grow and be beautiful in spite of all conventions. Thirsting for
cool ices and delectable fruits, looking wistfully for our vanishing
fancies of West Indian ambrosia, we turn in a listless, disappointed way
to that bill of fare, where ham and spinach and Irish stew and fried
sausages send our hopes a-scampering off like a lot of frightened
children.
What man in his sane mind would order an haricot of ox-tail in the
tropics, when he needs but lift his hand for the food of Paradise; what
man, with any sense of the fitness of things, would eat curried veal,
when, for the asking, he might sup a libation fit for the gods? Alas!
The asking never brought it, and we--that is, one, at least--settled
down to scrambled eggs, and felt and looked unutterable scorn upon the
one next at table who began at mayonnaise of fish, and took every course
to cheese. Ah! friends, this was a case where the one who didn't know
fared ill. She lost her first opportunity of paying her respects to the
Spanish Main.
Hungry and disillusioned, the one and the only thing to do is to forget
those steaming sausages and the Irish stew as quickly as possible. We
shall not stay here a moment longer. Hotels are makeshifts at the best.
Let us leave these unromantic, unscrupulous venders of ham and spinach!
There, over yonder on the other side of the savannah, there is a
delicious retreat where we can make good our escape.
II.
We shall never again see anything which can compare in beauty, of its
kind, with the _Jardin des Plantes_ of Martinique. No, we never
shall--still, we must be just to all. Trinidad's Botanical Garden is
beautiful in its own way, and we were impressed with the idea that it
possessed some features which that of Martinique lacked. However, that
might have been owing to the fact that we did not view the Martinique
Garden in its entirety. Had we done so, we might have found the same
species in both places.
From casual observation there seemed to me to be one distinctive
characteristic of tropical vegetation; the trees did not appear to grow
so much in great social orders as do those of temperate zones. In the
North, vast families of the same species of trees gather together and
keep together with as rigid a pertinacity as any Scotch clan; the beech,
birch, oak, maple, pine, hemlock, walnut, hickory, all have their pet
homes and their own relations, and no amount of coddling or persuasion
will ever induce them to a wide change of _habitat_; but in the far
South, the tropical trees seem willing to settle anywhere in this land
of endless summer. Of course, one finds that certain trees love the
swamps, and others prefer the high lands; and some will grow in greater
magnificence in some places where the conditions are absolutely
congenial, than in other places where they are not so. There is the
mangrove; it loves the wet and the mire--the mosquito-ridden, miasmatic
river borders--and wherever, on these coasts, you find a swamp, whether
in the very hottest spots, or in others only moderately so, there you'll
find the mangrove sending out ærial roots, reaching down into the muck
for new strength, forming--banyan-like--a family of new trunks, all
under one leafy canopy, quite content if only it has the water about its
roots and a certain degree of heat.
Away up there in Haïti, we find the ceiba, and down here in Trinidad it
is equally at home. These conditions make the formation of a botanical
garden, representing the world-growth of sunlit vegetation, peculiarly
favourable. Trinidad is said to possess the most superb collection of
tropical plants in existence; and though gathered from all lands,
growing not as strangers or even stepchildren, but as rightful heirs to
the immeasurable vital force which pours forth from a rich soil warmed
by a blazing sun the year around.
[Illustration: THE BARRACKS, THROUGH LIVE-OAKS AND MAHOGANY-TREES
Trinidad]
The garden once entered, we pass a great, squarely built mansion, the
governor's residence, and are in the midst of a wonderful vegetation
from the first step. At the very entrance, we are greeted with, perhaps,
the most unique tree in these latitudes.
After all, there is something stupefying in the effort to describe
tropical wonders. When they are passing before one's eyes, each has a
feature distinct to itself, which, in a way, is its own manner of
description. Each has its peculiar wonder, its own glory,--no two
alike--and yet, when one sits down to think it over, there is the same
old alphabet from which to draw new pictures, new miracles; and how to
make each different with the same letters is a question indeed.
If I could only tell you the name of this particular tree which stands
at the entrance to the garden, you might some day hunt it up yourself,
but as I know neither its family nor home, we will let that all go, and
just tell you how it is dressed.
It is a heavily, glossily leafed, symmetrical, low tree, just about the
size of those dear old cherry-trees we used to climb, oh, so long,--so
long ago! From the tip of every branch there drops a cord-like fibre
about a foot and a half long, and at the end of this little brown string
there hangs a cluster of delicate pink flowers. These are suspended in
almost exact length in rows from the lowest to the highest branch, and
it really seems as if Nature were experimenting to see what wonderful
living garlands she could create for a canopy above our heads.
III.
The character of the garden is defined at once upon entrance. It is a
botanical garden, pure and simple, a place for strange plants from far
away, a sort of orphan asylum for everybody's vegetable baby. It is not,
like Martinique, an enchanted forest with cascades and glens fit for
nymphs and dryads; it is matter-of-fact, orderly, prim, and
businesslike. Aside from its unique trees, there is little to attract
one, so we decide for once it would be wise to engage a guide who can
tell us something about the inhabitants of the place, which otherwise
promises to be rather dull.
[Illustration: GOVERNOR'S PALACE AND PUBLIC GARDENS
Port of Spain, Trinidad]
So we hunt up a crooked, stump-legged Portuguese gardener, by name
Manuel, who takes our heavy baskets, we following down a little glen
which grows at once quite dark and sweet and silent.
Through long, freshly cut bamboo poles, streams of water are being
carried hither and thither to special spots in the garden, and we stop
to watch the trickling, and dip our hands down into its pleasant
coolness. Away up through the dark leafage, a mighty royal palm with
stern aristocratic grace swings and rattles its great, dead, brown
arms--the skeleton of its last year's growth--beneath the luxuriant
crown of this year's green plumes.
In the thicket, we find the nutmegs, hiding among the delicate foliage
of a low-branching tree. Sister reaches among the leaves and pulls off
some of the fragrant fruit, and gathers many from the ground. A sense of
rare luxuriance comes over us. This gathering of the spices of life from
the very ground upon which we tread is intoxicating, and we just begin
to understand the causes back of those dark pages of West Indian
history, when man first partook of this delirium.
These large-leafed, upright little trees are the Madagascar coffee, and
the smaller and more graceful ones, the Java coffee--how they take us
back to those happy days and months among the coffee plantations, long
ago!--and near by is the friendly banana, so common an object that we
pass its torn, drooping leaves with scarcely a thought, but it is worth
more than a passing glance, for there is no plant in all the tropics
more useful than the banana. It has not only delicious fruit of many
sizes and varieties, but it is also cooked as a vegetable, and forms one
of the chief sources of the native diet. It is planted, on account of
its heavy shade and quick growth, to shade the coffee, while trees of
slower growth and more permanent shade are maturing, thus forming a
necessary and temporary protection; it is also used for the same purpose
among the cacao trees. It is a sort of foster-mother to the cacao, to
care for the tender shrub until its real mother, "_La Madre del Cacao_,"
can assume permanent care of its charge. The banana takes so little
vitality from the ground that, as protection to the coffee and cacao, it
is indispensable. We had some very delicious, green-skinned bananas at
several places, and found the small apple banana everywhere.
Manuel leads us on, and stops under a spindling, tall tree, flowering
with dainty, pink buds of a delicious odour, and there's one branch just
low enough for Little Blue Ribbons to reach on tiptoe. Does it seem
possible that the little brown cloves, rattling in my spice-box at home,
could ever have been so fresh and soft and pink? Poor little mummies!
And just see what we are coming to! Did you ever imagine there could be
such shade? It's a tree from the Philippines. We stoop to get under the
black leaves, and there the shade is absolutely impenetrable. What an
adjustment of things there is in this grand old earth of ours!
My thoughts fly back to our Northern woods. I see the sinuously graceful
elms, with the sunlight streaming through their wide open branches upon
an earth longing for warmth; and long shafts of white noonday shooting
through the interstices of basswood, maple, and ash; the woods are not
black and sunless; they are translucently green, quivering with light
and needed warmth. But here, where the sun is a ball of redundant flame
the year around, Nature bequeaths to her children a shaded forest,
rigidly trunked, stolidly formed, thick-leafed, which no blazing sun can
penetrate or sweeping hurricane desolate.
IV.
Quite as one strokes the head of a favourite animal, Manuel leads us to
an insignificant-looking tree, takes a branch caressingly in his hand,
brings out his clumsy knife, selects just the right spot, cuts off a
bit, and hands us a piece of camphor wood.
Into the dear St. Thomas basket it goes, with the leaves of coffee, the
pink and white clove blossoms, and a long spray of _araucaria_ from the
Norfolk Islands,--a strange company, indeed!
Yonder long yellow avenues are cinnamon and spice groves with
reddish-yellow bark, smooth as wax, casting slender shadows in the
golden light. Here is the shaddock, entirely weaned from its Malayan
home, and farther on a clump of low bushes, in among the nutmeg trees
and coffee, with small satin-like leaf, brings us to the herb that
"cheers but does not inebriate,"--the tea.
Just see those glorious great lemons, glowing in the ever-splendid
sunlight, which transmits to every living object a radiance, a dazzling
brilliancy, in which life progresses and finally dissolves out of sheer
exhaustion from the exuberance of vitality.
Oh, to our starved eyes of the North; to our senses benumbed by dreary
days of darkened sky, hearts chilled by bitterness of wind and gray,
unyielding frost, this never-ending, unspeakable sunlight, filtering
through the yellow vistas of clove and cinnamon, comes like the actual
presence of Apollo, the Shining One! We may, in unguarded moments, in
ungrateful moments, maybe, consider his embrace too positive, and we may
raise the white umbrella, but we never quite lose our rejuvenated love
for his golden glory.
Manuel, but half-clad, looks as if he would dismember at any moment. His
trousers are hitched by a couple of old leathers, and his shirt looks
as if it wished it "didn't have to," and his old hat is only there on
sufferance, and his shoes--old flippety-flops--have dragged their
ill-shaped existence through many a weary mile. But Manuel doesn't care;
he loves his garden, and the sunshine and the luscious fruit, all his
children so well behaved and so obedient to his voice. He takes a bamboo
pole and gives one of the big, juicy lemons a rap, and down it falls on
Wee One's head with such a thump! Then Manuel is very sorry, and he
apologises for his child's misdemeanour in his funny, mixed-up
Portuguese-English-Spanish and the rest, and we understand and don't
mind a bit; in fact, we wouldn't care if more would fall in the same
way.
Once upon a time, in the far-off golden days, when the Divine in
Creation had not been quite forgot, there came to this shore a band of
men,--not faultless, no, not faultless--but great men "for a' that,"
who, with glittering cross aloft, christened this fair land after the
blessed Trinity. But this was not her first sacrament. Deep in the
eternal silence of the forest, the dweller in the High Wood had sought
expression of the divine through beauty, and chose a name from out the
radiant wilderness which would tell for ever of its wonderment: "Iere,"
the land of the humming-bird, they called her--those dusky children of
the High Wood--and to this day she clings lovingly to her maiden name.
We look about us. Where are the birds once peopling these forests, like
myriads of rainbows? Oh, sisters! members of Humane Societies! Hunt up
your old bonnets and see the poor little stuffed carcasses ornamenting
your cast-off finery! So Trinidad has been bereft of her wonderful
birds, and now there is but a name, a sad-sounding, meaningless
name--Iere--to tell of days which knew not the pride and cruelty of
women.
Think of it!--at one time, there averaged twenty thousand humming-birds
a year exported from Trinidad to England alone!
And now, well--there are none left to export. We must find new islands
to denude, to ravage, to desolate, for our adornment. But it's too
unpleasant,--this seeing things as they are; we'll hide the poor little
innocent card which the black woman gave us at the hotel; we'll cover up
the word "Iere" with these coffee leaves. There, now the spray of
_araucaria_, now the stick of camphor, and I think the lemon will fit
right in among the nutmegs.
Come along, Manuel, we are ready; and we follow through the birdless
paths, down where the _Nux Vomica_ grows, and the pepper, and the lime
and the calabash, and the orange and breadfruit, and tamarind, and
pineapple; and we go on and wake up the comical lizards who scurry away
like brown flashes of whip-cord. What ridiculous creatures they are, and
how desperately frightened! Why, surely they must be fifteen inches
long, and fully four inches high, and what funny, nimble legs! They
start off in the same spasm-like way as do the toy lizards we buy for
the youngsters.
Manuel brings us to the plant house where the great forest wonders of
the Far East are babied and loved into strength, and I could not but
think of Daudet's dear old _Tartarin of Tarascon_, dreaming by the
homesick little baobab-tree, which grew in his window-garden; and of the
long nights under the mellow moon of sunny France; and how he fought
great beasts and achieved great fame in the land of sweet illusion.
[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO THE SAVANNAH
Port of Spain, Trinidad
Copyright. 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.]
Dream on, Tartarin, wherever you may be! The time will come when it will
all be true, and you, too, will rest under the yellow splendour of the
golden trees; and the earth, the great Mother Earth, will open her heart
to you and breathe upon you the spirit of limitless possibilities!
Good-bye, Manuel! The basket is heavy to carry with its spoils of fruit
and flowers; and we take "turn about" across the savannah.
The races are on, and horses are dashing around the grassy turf, and the
Trinidadians are yelling, the cricket games are going, and the picnic
parties are gathering up their baskets for home; and the Hindoo girls
clamour to carry our basket, and we gladly give over the load to a tough
little head; and the merry-go-round wheezes out its squeaking tunes, and
we pass through the black crowd, and narrowly escape taking a cab, for
the way to the quay looks long, and we waver and weaken, and are just
about to give in, when up comes a tinkling tram, and we jump in, with a
penny to the Hindoo girl, and rumble away.
The man with the two monkeys, and the man with the green and blue
parrot, and the boy with the shells, are still waiting.
Alackaday! Where is the woman with the baskets?