THE MILITARY CAMP AT NEWCASTLE
In the streets of Kingston I had frequently seen companies of one or
other of the brilliant West Indian Regiments swinging along to the music
of their drums, and on dance and dinner nights I had noticed Artillery
officers lounging about the terraces of my hotel. I had seen a couple of
Service Corps men trying their polo ponies, and afar off, among a
sparkling group of bejewelled women, I once caught sight of a glittering
aide-de-camp. But of our friend Tommy of the line I had seen nothing. A
friendly Artilleryman assured me that some of the British Line were on
the island. I met him in the Kingston High Street, and he pointed
towards the mountain chain which overhangs the town. “They’re up there,”
he said. Following his direction, I saw a few white specks faintly
showing through the summit haze of a mountain peak. The white specks, I
discovered, were the cantonments of Newcastle, the military hill station
of Jamaica.
The next morning we started at nine, and drove along shaded lanes and
dusty, open roads, flanked by gardens and plantations, banana trees,
pines, and cocoanuts. Around us the air was transparently clear, above
us a sky of the deepest blue, and everywhere--above, below and
around--we felt the sun. For two miles we had the level road, and then
we reached the mountains.
A rushing mountain torrent crashing through a deep chasm filled almost
to the brim with giant boulders, on which trees and plants and creeping
flowers had found abundant soil; a road twisting like a tangled thread
up and along the face of the mountain, and then lost in the mists of the
summit; a heavy scent of tropical flowers; a vast sea of flashing
colour--these things marked the beginning of the mountains. Slowly we
crawled along a road just wide enough to contain our buggy. On one side
the mountain walled us in; on the other a precipice deepened as we
ascended. The valley below and the walls around were clothed in yellow
grass and thickly set with trees; cotton and pine and cocoanut, banana,
orange, and a hundred others grew in clumps and groves and lines, just
as their father-seed had fallen or casual native had chanced to plant.
Sometimes we passed a mile or so of level stretch, and there we found
plantations and nigger huts. Below us we could see coffee mills and
sugar estates; halfway up another peak a little church appeared amidst a
tiny hamlet; but far above we made out Newcastle and the upper heights,
bare and frowning amidst the gloom of the mountain mists. Soon the
climate changed. In place of fruit and flowers, we found brown scrub and
English gorse. Rainbows became common as trees. Then the sun
disappeared,
[Illustration: A HOUSE ON THE HILLS]
and we found the clammy rain-mist. Somehow we had slipped away from
joyous sun-kissed Jamaica and found Newcastle.
If I were a soldier I should pray all day long that I might never see
the military station at Newcastle. Imagine a small parade-ground,
levelled by spade work; a straggling collection of huts, built on
never-ending steps; a few cottages for the officers; a very obvious
burial-ground, well stocked with tombstones streaked with names, planted
among the huts just outside the reading-room, and you have the
cantonments of Newcastle. On the parade-ground, half a yard from the
face of a step of rock thirty feet high, a couple of posts and a tape
enable the sporting Tommy to practise goal shooting from dawn till
sunset. Failing this he has half-a-dozen six-week old English newspapers
in the reading-room, and a magnificent view of Kingston always to be
seen through the mists and rain which seem for ever to bedim this eerie
camp. The officers, I believe, have a tennis-court; but for Tommy it is
shooting the goal, the newspapers, or the view, if he wishes to avoid
the cells. Otherwise----
I heard the story from Tommy himself. He showed us the camp; first the
burial-ground, and then--“Well there ain’t much more to see ’ere. That’s
the parade-ground, and that’s the sergeants’ mess. We sleeps over there,
and bein’ Sunday, the canteen don’t open to-day till six. We usually
shoots the goal, and smokes, and sometimes we rags the blacks. See that
nigger ’ut? Well, we goes there sometimes--of course, it’s out’er
bounds--and takes the beer and rags the blacks. Once we chucked three
or four of ’em over the gully because they set on one of ours. There’s
one or two in cells now for molestin’ the natives. Then some of us
deserts, you know. Goes off down to the coast, ships as firemen and gets
to the States. I ’aven’t done that yet. Don’t know why we come up ’ere;
there ain’t no fever nowhere now....” It was a long and interesting
description he gave us. I gathered that in spite of the parade-ground
and kicking the goal; in spite of the reading-room, with its platform
and soldier-painted scenery; in spite even of the tiny billiard-table
and the picturesque cemetery, the life of Tommy in garrison at Newcastle
is not a jolly one. Tired of doing the things he is allowed to do, and
without the means to appreciate expensive joys of the canteen, the
youthful, full-blooded soldier sallies forth on mischief bent. Then he
experiences a salutary change of scenery in the confines of the cells.
Sometimes, as our friend remarked, he deserts.
Every year for many weary months a few hundred Tommies do these things
in Newcastle. Kingston and the plains are peopled by tourists in search
of health and pleasure; the climate of the island is entirely
salubrious; Jamaica is a recognised sanatorium; but the Government says
that the British soldier must live in the Hill station so many months of
the year. It is a ridiculous story, something in the nature of a
repetition of the blunders of fifty years ago. Then the British
regiments were sent to garrison Fort Augusta, a camp delightfully
situated in the midst of a deadly swamp. From Fort Augusta the military
authorities jumped to Newcastle. Fifty years hence these gentlemen may
realise that the plains of Jamaica are perfectly healthy, and that
Newcastle is really a little dull; until then--poor Tommy.
Newcastle is not unhealthy: it is merely a little damp and a little
dull. From the point of view of the tourist it is magnificent. The
romantic grandeur of the giant mountain chains stretching east and west;
the wonderful view of town and harbour; the marvellous colour effects;
the cathedral-like solemnity of the place--all these things are
delightful in the extreme. But I turned my back on the place without
regret. For I remembered that far below the valleys were bathed in light
and warmth and colour. I knew that halfway down the mountain I should
find the orange, the passion flower, and the scented air of the tropics.
And I was glad when the horses bumped us along the path which zigzagged
downwards through the clouds to the land of sunshine.
[Illustration: GOING TO WORK, BARBADOES]
THE RECREATIONS OF THE BLACK MAN