THE RAILWAY IN JAMAICA
In Jamaica there is a railway which carries passengers of the first and
second class in carriages that would not necessarily disgrace even the
London, Chatham, and Dover line in England. The upholstery of the
carriages is of heavy stuffed leather; the fitments are of polished
yellow wood; and the result infinitely more suitable for an Arctic clime
than for merry sweltering Jamaica. There are, as I have stated, two
classes; to these I must add the soda-water compartment, which is a sort
of betwixt and between of both classes. A place where the men (sometimes
the ladies also) foregather to sit on empty soda water boxes and consume
mineral waters and eat fruit. This is the saloon of the railway--the
drawing-room of travelling Jamaica. Here the guard sits always, and with
him the coloured lady who sells the mineral water at a truly reasonable
rate. The carriages are reserved for the uninitiated, or the
respectable, of both classes. The soda-water room is always full of
scandal talk; a half hour’s ride in this compartment of any train will
teach any tourist the inner history of Jamaican society in a manner
quite incapable of repetition or reproduction. The lady who sells the
ginger beer is conversant with the character, the salary, the
peculiarities and home life, of every person living in the island. She
is the natural historian of the country. In three sentences she can
destroy the reputation of a mansion; half an hour suffices for the moral
destruction of a town. One day, even half a day, among the empty
ginger-beer boxes kills every desire, no matter how ambitious one may
have been, to enter the ranks of the upper ten of the society in the
Queen of the Antilles. The reason for all this is the heat and
discomfort of railway travelling in the tropics. The dust and sweat of
travel jaundice a man’s outlook on life; and in the railway train a
white face looks dull yellow. So it is with the cleanest reputation. And
fortunately the soda-water gossip is forgotten even before one’s hair
has ceased to smell of cinders.
The journey inland over the steel rails should only be undertaken at
great provocation. It is not a desirable thing to do, although it is the
quickest, the cheapest, and the most usual way of covering long
distances. For perhaps eight hours you sit _vis-à-vis_ with a person
whom you have not met before, and whom you wish never to meet
again,--for eight hours or twenty minutes, just according to the
distance you desire to travel. You pass the time of day with the
stranger, read all the printed matter available, and then solemnly gaze
through the grimy window, and heavy cloud of dust, at the fields and
rivers and fair plantations
[Illustration: THE ARRIVAL OF THE ROYAL MAIL STEAMER, DOMINICA]
rushing towards the place you have just left behind.
Jamaica is proud of its railway. The people of the country, remembering
the difficulties of its building, and the frequent weaknesses of its
finances, are glad the line is complete, and that it is possible to
travel at good speed from one end of the island to another. In truth the
history of the line from its beginning in 1845 to the present day is not
lacking in interest. Parts of the track have been built by official and
parts by private enterprise. The Government, I believe, started the
building, and an American syndicate carried it forward. The American
syndicate failed, and so the railway fell into the hands of the
Government again, and there it has remained ever since. The carriages
are miniature editions of the American saloons, and, in my opinion, are
capable of vast improvement. Otherwise the stock is excellent, and the
lines and curves and bridges everything that could be desired.
Starting from Kingston, you can travel over a hundred miles of looped,
single-track line to Montego Bay, or over thirty miles to Ewarton or
seventy miles to Port Antonio. These are the three routes; the track to
either of the places named is, of course, strewed with wayside stations.
No matter which way you travel you will pass through most marvellous
country. You will rattle across iron bridges, spanning rushing streams
or wide romantic rivers. You will skirt great lagoons, half overgrown
with mangrove and other swamp-land trees. You will steam across great
yellow-green guinea-grass pastures, and then, by way of wonderful
gradients, you will climb mountain chains and, from the dizzy height of
your carriage window, look down at distant valleys half-screened by the
green foliage of impenetrable forests. You will pass smoothly through
delightfully cool forests, and wonder at the prodigality of nature when
you cut through prairie land ablaze with the blooms of rare plants. You
will in addition smell all the smells of the Indies, and you will be
half-choked by the smoke and dust of the engine.
Natives will grin at you from the hedgerows, and labourers will cease
work in the plantations to stare open-mouthed at the incomprehensible
railway train. You will pass homesteads and sugar mills, fruit farms and
stockyards. Large-hatted planters will ride along roads skirting the
railway track, and they will play with their ponies and give exhibitions
of their horsemanship for the sake of any lady passenger who may or may
not be your companion. The black guard, or conductor, will come and
examine your ticket at every other station; and at most stopping places
a little crowd of negroes will stare at you through the carriage window.
The railway journey will enable you to see agricultural Jamaica. The
plantations, great and small, skirt the railway track, and the traveller
can note the varied beauties and interests of the fruits of the Indies.
He will see full-grown banana clumps, heavy with fruit; and he will also
see newly-planted banana striplings. The fields of pine-apples, which
resemble fields of English bulrushes tinted dull red and gold, will
charm him, and the pimento groves will remind him of English orchards.
When the bamboo forests and the straggling palms come in view, he will
remember with great contentment that he is in the tropics indeed. The
birds and the butterflies are shy of the noise and mess of the
locomotive, but still the traveller may see enough of the beauty of the
fluttering insects to teach him something of the loveliness which is
born beneath the shelter of tropical foliage. If he is fortunate enough
to see a tiny humming bird sipping from the cup of a scented blossom, he
will have seen that which will persuade him to sit in a flower-spangled
hedgerow for hours in order that he may witness the picture again.
It is said, and I have put it on record, that Columbus crumpled a piece
of paper in order to give his patron a correct impression of the
appearance of the island. It is the crumpled, irregular, casual Jamaica
that the railroad traveller sees. The valleys, the plateaus, the hills,
the mountains, rivers and ravines, pass along the carriage window in
bewildering succession; the views one sees are beautiful and mystical
beyond comprehension--like the tints in a stormy sunset.
One thing at least the intelligent traveller will learn on his railway
journey; he will realise that the beauty of the tropics can never be
comprehended by the finite mind of man. He will thank God for the beauty
he has seen, and if he is a wise man, there he will allow the matter to
rest. To attempt to catalogue the beauties of Jamaica is a task too
infinitely foolish: as well essay an analysis of a moonbeam.
[Illustration: A QUAY, ST. ANN’S BAY, JAMAICA]
ALLIGATOR SHOOTING IN A WEST INDIAN SWAMP