THE WEST INDIES
_By the same Artist._
MOROCCO
containing 74 full-page reproductions
in colour of MR. A. S. FORREST’S
pictures.
TEXT BY S. L. BENSUSAN.
_Price 20s. Net._
[Illustration: COMING FROM MASS, ST. LUCIA
THE WEST INDIES
PAINTED BY A. S. FORREST
DESCRIBED BY JOHN
HENDERSON · PUBLISHED
BY ADAM AND CHARLES
BLACK · LONDON · MCMV
[Illustration]
Contents
CHAP. PAGE
I. HISTORICAL 1
II. JAMAICA 11
III. THE TOWN OF KINGSTON 27
IV. THE PEOPLE OF JAMAICA 41
V. THE PHILOSOPHY OF A JAMAICAN GAMIN 57
VI. THE DEVOTION OF THE JAMAICAN NEGRO 65
VII. TURTLE FISHING 73
VIII. THE WOMEN OF WILD MAN STREET 81
IX. THE WEST INDIAN ARMY 89
X. A WEST INDIAN COURT HOUSE 99
XI. THE MILITARY CAMP AT NEWCASTLE 107
XII. THE RECREATIONS OF THE BLACK MAN 115
XIII. THE DANDY AND THE COQUETTE 127
XIV. BOG WALK 135
XV. THE POLITICS OF A JAMAICAN NEGRO 143
XVI. THE WHITE MAN’S POLITICS 155
XVII. THE RAILWAY IN JAMAICA 163
XVIII. ALLIGATOR SHOOTING IN A WEST INDIAN SWAMP 171
XIX. COMMERCIAL JAMAICA 181
XX. THE FLORA OF JAMAICA 193
XXI. A WEST INDIAN RACE-COURSE 201
XXII. THE HILL STATIONS 211
XXIII. A FRAGMENT 219
XXIV. MATTERS OF INTEREST TO TOURISTS 227
XXV. CERTAIN THINGS THE WEST INDIAN TOURIST MUST NOT DO 237
XXVI. THE CARIBBEAN GROUP 243
XXVII. HAYTI 257
XXVIII. IN CONCLUSION 265
List of Illustrations
1. Coming from Mass, St. Lucia _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
2. Lightermen, off Barbadoes 4
3. Sunrise over the Hills, Jamaica 8
4. Castries Bay, St. Lucia 12
5. Kingston Harbour and Port Henderson 16
6. Constant Spring, Jamaica 18
7. A Negro 22
8. A Street in Kingston, Jamaica 26
9. An Old Gateway, Kingston 30
10. A Fruit-Seller on a Side-Walk, Kingston 34
11. The Tobacco Market, Kingston 38
12. A Market Woman, Jamaica 40
13. An Old Woman 44
14. Cocoanut Palms, Falmouth, Jamaica 46
15. A Milkmaid, Barbadoes 48
16. Waiting Maids 52
17. Diving Boys, Kingston 56
18. Diving Boys, off Barbadoes 60
19. Going to Church 64
20. A Gingerbread-seller, St. Lucia 70
21. The Turtle Wharf, Kingston, Jamaica 72
22. Boats off Dominica 76
23. Night, Anotta Bay, Jamaica 80
24. A Coloured Girl 84
25. A Soldier of the West Indian Regiment 88
26. A Tropical Landscape near Castleton 92
27. Outside a West Indian Court House 98
28. A Negro Nurse with Chinese Children, Jamaica 104
29. Tropical Rain 106
30. A House on the Hills 110
31. Going to Work, Barbadoes 114
32. Rosie, a Jamaican Negress 120
33. Countrywoman going to Market, Barbadoes 124
34. A Martinique Lady 126
35. On the Road to Market, Jamaica 132
36. A House near the Bog Walk, Jamaica 134
37. Dry Harbour, Jamaica 138
38. Sunset, North Coast, Jamaica 144
39. On the Beach, Barbadoes 148
40. Off Trinidad 150
41. Steamers unloading, Barbadoes 154
42. An Evening Party, St. Thomas 160
43. A Roadside Market, Jamaica 162
44. The Arrival of the Royal Mail Steamer, Dominica 166
45. A Quay, St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica 170
46. Outhouses on a Plantation, Jamaica 174
47. Mid-day Heat, Jamaica 178
48. A Fruit-seller, Barbadoes 180
49. A Waiter 184
50. The Market-place, Barbadoes 188
51. A Terrace Garden on the Hills, Jamaica 192
52. Hut on a Plantation, Jamaica 196
53. A Jockey at Cumberland Pen, Jamaica 200
54. A Coloured Lady on a Race-course, Jamaica 204
55. A Bungalow on the Hills, Jamaica 208
56. The Market, Mandeville 210
57. Stalls outside the Market, Mandeville 214
58. A Road in Mandeville 216
59. Sunset over the Hills 218
60. Huts, St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica 222
61. The Cathedral at Spanish Town, Jamaica 226
62. A Garden Terrace, Jamaica 230
63. Resting by the Way, Jamaica 234
64. Outhouses near Kingston, Jamaica 236
65. The Capital of St. Thomas 240
66. Black River, Jamaica 242
67. Roseau, the Capital of Dominica 246
68. Mont Pelée, Martinique 248
69. An Old Man, St. Thomas 250
70. Nevis 252
71. A Guadeloupe Lady 256
72. Huts on a Country Road, Jamaica 260
73. Passengers embarking from a Quay, St. Ann’s Bay 264
74. Evening after Rain, Jamaica 268
_The illustrations in this volume were engraved in England by the
Hentschel Colourtype Process._
[Illustration]
HISTORICAL
CHAPTER I
HISTORICAL
In Britain we have lost the art of correct perspective. We see distant
things through jaundiced eyes; as a nation we are too prone to regard
over-sea lands and peoples with compassion tempered with contempt, or
with envy and timidity. To ensure our respect and sympathy a country
must be successful; we have no room in our Empire for failures. America,
because of her commercial genius and industrial enterprise, we respect
and revere and imitate. We exaggerate the successes of the States and
credit the American with commercial omnipotence. The word American
stands in the unprinted national dictionary as meaning efficient,
successful, up-to-date. I have heard that English tradesmen have
labelled English-made goods “American” in order that a quick sale might
be ensured in Britain’s capital. We refuse to believe that America has
ceased to be related to us by ties of kinship; to the Englishmen of the
homeland Americans are first cousins. And so it is, conversely, with
England and the West Indies.
At home we are apt to think of the West Indies as a scattered group of
poverty-stricken islands, barren of riches, planted somewhere in some
tropical sea, and periodically reduced to absolute desolation by
hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanoes. The poverty of the Western
Indies is proverbial. Occasionally Imperial Parliament brings forward
some measure, which, in the opinion of some individual, might tend to
relieve the distress and commercial poverty of our West Indian
possessions; at other times a fund is started at the Mansion-House to
help the West Indian victims of some fearful tornado or earthquake. That
is all that is generally known of the great islands of the Caribbean
Sea. In our dreams of Empire we prefer to think of Canada, Africa, and
strenuous Australasia. Commercially and politically our West Indies are,
according to the general idea, more than half derelict, and wholly
without the attractions of wealth and promise. We forget that these
Western islands were at one time the richest of England’s possessions;
we do not realise how rich they, some day, will again become. If Britain
only understood aright she would know that it is only through her own
neglect, through her half-hearted, penurious West Indian policy, that
our Caribbean Empire is not in the front rank of her richest possessions
to-day. The riches of the West Indies played a large part in the
formation of Britain’s greatness. We swept the islands clear of all
their surface wealth at a period when England was most in need of gold.
And because to-day we cannot send ships from Plymouth with empty
[Illustration: LIGHTERMEN, OFF BARBADOES]
holds and crowded quarter-decks, to return from a six months’ voyage in
the Indies crowded with treasure and glory, we count the islands barren.
We forget that West Indian wealth was invested in Britain’s greatness
years before we had an empire. We forget that Britain’s navy was founded
by men who were trained to war and seamanship among those islands of the
West. More than once have these islands seen the pride and glory of
England hanging in the balance, and once, at least, the Indies knew
before the homeland that a blow, which had threatened the very
foundations of British greatness, had been hurled in vain.
That was in the time of Burke and Fox and Rodney. Spain and France and
Holland had combined, and in one great battle threatened to crush the
power of England, and to wrest from her the supremacy of the seas.
England trembled, and the popular party advocated surrender and peace.
France and Spain wanted the Indies. Rodney sailed from England to uphold
the power and dominion of his race. He sailed amidst the sullen silence
of a people whose power he was to uphold. A few weeks after his sailing
a message was despatched from Parliament commanding him not to fight. He
was to strike his colours and surrender the Indies. But the message
arrived too late. Rodney had already fought and won when the craven
message reached him. The battle had happened off Dominica, and the flag
of England remained triumphant in the Caribbean Sea. The English ships
were victorious, and Rodney had saved his country against his country’s
will. And since that day no one has challenged England’s supremacy in
the islands of the West.
The history of the West Indies is filled with chapters as strong even as
this; in no corner of the world have so many brave deeds been done for
“England, home, and beauty.” Stories of mighty Spanish galleons sunk by
British ships of war; of pillage and bloodshed and treasure; of the
battles of France and Spain and England; of the wealth of the Spanish
main, intercepted among these islands, and stored in some West Indian
port for convenience of British merchant adventure houses, are
encountered at every step on our journey through the records of the
Caribbean group. We read of buccaneers and filibusters; of Morgan, the
last of the tribe, knighted and made Vice-Governor of Jamaica; of the
doings of the redoubtable Kidd; of the bloodiness of Blackbeard; of the
countless list of names, some high-sounding, which at last were painted
in crimson splashes on the gallows slip at Port Royal headland. Port
Royal itself deserves a niche in the temple of fame. The richest and the
most vicious town the world ever knew; so it was before the clean ocean
washed away its vice and corruption, and buried it deep in the pure
water of the blue Caribbean. When Morgan knew it, when the prizes of
Kidd and the others were moored alongside its treasure-laden wharves,
the strip of land contained the richest city in the world.
Bearded seamen, bronzed and weather-stained, but decked with priceless
jewellery and the finest silks of the Orient, swaggered along its quays,
and gambled with heavy golden coins whose value no one cared to
estimate. The drinking shops were filled with cups of gold and silver,
embellished with flashing gems. Each house was a treasure store. The
place was a gilded hell, and mammon held sovereign sway over its people.
Such wealth and vice and debauchery had never been dreamed of. Common
seamen bathed in the richest wine, and hung their ears with heavy gold
rings studded with the costliest gems. Dagger thrusts were as common as
brawls, and the body of a murdered man would remain in a dancing-room
until the dancing was over. Gold and precious stones were cheap, but
life was cheaper. And every man in that crowd of pirates lived beneath
the shadow of the gallows.
Finer it is to remember the Western voyages of Drake and Hawkins and all
the old sea-dogs who first proclaimed the might of British seamen.
Picture them, scurvy-stricken, reduced by disease and famine, resting
and recruiting in the wide bays of any West Indian isle. Imagine their
joy at finding luscious fruits and sweet, health-giving water. Then see
them in their tiny ships darting from behind the cover of some wooded
neck of land, surprising a galleon ten times their weight, scuttling the
little vessel and manning the Spanish leviathan with British seamen. How
many little English barques lie beneath the dark blue waters of the Gulf
of Mexico! Having found their prize and tasted the joy of victory, the
British captains thirst for more. They sail the Spanish seas in a
Spanish ship, and sack the coast towns, levying heavy toll; they fight
great battles and pound the deeply laden treasure ships with Spanish
cannon trimmed by British gunners. They select the richest spoil and
fling the rest to the waves. How many bars of gold and silver, how many
crates of silks, and iron boxes filled with gems; how many sacks of
doubloons have sunk in these Western waters, and lie there now, buried
amidst the skeleton of a rotting vessel!
All these things were done in these seas by Englishmen in the days of
old, done for greed of gain and the lust of bloodshed. Done also in the
name of religion, and because two sects, worshipping the same God,
quarrelled in regard to ritual; and because one sect put a sword at the
throat of the other and said, Do as we do, or die. Just as the
Inquisition proved to be the undoing of the might and wealth of Spain,
so did the Inquisition, indirectly, give the West Indies to the English.
The West Indian waters formed the training school of Drake and
Frobisher, Hawkins and Raleigh; and these men founded the navy. In later
days Rodney revived the Caribbean school, and there Nelson learned how
to outwit the French in ocean battles. Because of these things, but not
only because of these things, do we owe a great debt to these Antillean
islands.
So far as we are concerned the history of the Indies is a medley of
romance, the romance of British greatness. There we laid the foundation
of our Empire; the Caribbean Sea is the font of the temple of our
greatness.
But, for the islands themselves, there is little record
[Illustration: SUNRISE OVER THE HILLS, JAMAICA]
of history save where their existence first influenced the politics of
Europe. The Spaniards were the first white men to tread their fragrant
shores and bring destruction to a race of wild red men whose first
instinct was that of fear. Columbus, the Genoese mariner, first and
greatest of all explorers, anchored his tiny vessels in Morant Bay,
Jamaica, on his second voyage to America. The beauty of the place
bewildered him, and when his patron, the King of Spain, asked for a
description of the island, the artistic Genoese crumpled a piece of
paper, and presented that as a picture of the rugged formation of the
Queen of the Antilles. Four times did Columbus journey to the Indies,
which were annexed by him to the Spanish Crown. The horrors of the early
Spanish rule can only be imagined. Millions of the gentle Caribs were
transported to the mainland, and worked to death in the Spanish gold
mines. Those that were permitted to remain were, if they survived the
Inquisition, pressed into slavery.
So the Spaniards ruled for a century and a half; for one hundred and
sixty years they claimed the bulk of the West Indian islands as their
own. This claim was uncontested by the powers of Europe, but the
Spaniards were harassed always by the buccaneers, French and English,
whose ships swept the main in search of prey. Whether England was at war
with Spain or not, the English sea-dogs were always at the throats of
Spaniards in the western hemisphere.
The Protector Cromwell essayed to break the Western power of Spain, and
sent Penn and Venables to crush them out of the Indies. In an
engagement off Domingo the British were defeated, but the doughty
English captains retired on to Jamaica, which they annexed to England.
Then the French filibusters drove the Spaniards out of Hayti, and gave
it to the crown of France. The French had held the smaller
Antilles--Martinique, St. Lucia, Grenada, St. Vincent, and Antigua. In
times of war with France, Britain had taken these islands, but they had
been retaken by the French. It was in Rodney’s time that they all came
permanently under the English flag. Nowadays the British hold all the
larger islands, the French retain the smaller lands of Martinique,
Guadaloupe, Deserva, Marie Galante, Les Saints, St. Bartholomew, and
part of St. Martin, the Dutch hold five, the Danish three, and Spain
still holds three. One or two are part of the Venezuelan Republic,
Puerto Rico belongs to the U.S.A., and several are independent.
JAMAICA
[Illustration: CASTRIES BAY, ST. LUCIA]