The first thing notable, on landing in Port of Spain at the low quay
which has been just reclaimed from the mud of the gulf, is the
multitude of people who are doing nothing. It is not that they have
taken an hour's holiday to see the packet come in. You will find
them, or their brown duplicates, in the same places to-morrow and
next day. They stand idle in the marketplace, not because they have
not been hired, but because they do not want to be hired; being able
to live like the Lazzaroni of Naples, on 'Midshipman's half-pay--
nothing a day, and find yourself.' You are told that there are 8000
human beings in Port of Spain alone without visible means of
subsistence, and you congratulate Port of Spain on being such an
Elysium that people can live there--not without eating, for every
child and most women you pass are eating something or other all day
long--but without working. The fact is, that though they will eat
as much and more than a European, if they can get it, they can do
well without food; and feed, as do the Lazzaroni, on mere heat and
light. The best substitute for a dinner is a sleep under a south
wall in the blazing sun; and there are plenty of south walls in Port
of Spain. In the French islands, I am told, such Lazzaroni are
caught up and set to Government work, as 'strong rogues and
masterless men,' after the ancient English fashion. But is such a
course fair? If a poor man neither steals, begs, nor rebels (and
these people do not do the two latter), has he not as much right to
be idle as a rich man? To say that neither has a right to be idle
is, of course, sheer socialism, and a heresy not to be tolerated.
Next, the stranger will remark, here as at Grenada, that every one
he passes looks strong, healthy, and well-fed. One meets few or
none of those figures and faces, small, scrofulous, squinny, and
haggard, which disgrace the so-called civilisation of a British
city. Nowhere in Port of Spain will you see such human beings as in
certain streets of London, Liverpool, or Glasgow. Every one,
plainly, can live and thrive if they choose; and very pleasant it is
to know that.
The road leads on past the Custom-house; and past, I am sorry to
say, evil smells, which are too common still in Port of Spain,
though fresh water is laid on from the mountains. I have no wish to
complain, especially on first landing, of these kind and hospitable
citizens. But as long as Port of Spain--the suburbs especially--
smells as it does after sundown every evening, so long will an
occasional outbreak of cholera or yellow fever hint that there are
laws of cleanliness and decency which are both able and ready to
avenge themselves. You cross the pretty 'Marine Square,' with its
fountain and flowering trees, and beyond them on the right the Roman
Catholic Cathedral, a stately building, with Palmistes standing as
tall sentries round; soon you go up a straight street, with a
glimpse of a large English church, which must have been still more
handsome than now before its tall steeple was shaken down by an
earthquake. The then authorities, I have been told, applied to the
Colonial Office for money to rebuild it: but the request was
refused; on the ground, it may be presumed, that whatever ills
Downing Street might have inflicted on the West Indies, it had not,
as yet, gone so far as to play the part of Poseidon Ennosigaeus.
Next comes a glimpse, too, of large--even too large--Government
buildings, brick-built, pretentious, without beauty of form. But,
however ugly in itself a building may be in Trinidad, it is certain,
at least after a few years, to look beautiful, because embowered
among noble flowering timber trees, like those that fill 'Brunswick
Square,' and surround the great church on its south side.
Under cool porticoes and through tall doorways are seen dark
'stores,' filled with all manner of good things from Britain or from
the United States. These older-fashioned houses, built, I presume,
on the Spanish model, are not without a certain stateliness, from
the depth and breadth of their chiaroscuro. Their doors and windows
reach almost to the ceiling, and ought to be plain proofs, in the
eyes of certain discoverers of the 'giant cities of Bashan,' that
the old Spanish and French colonists were nine or ten feet high
apiece. On the doorsteps sit Negresses in gaudy print dresses, with
stiff turbans (which are, according to this year's fashion, of
chocolate and yellow silk plaid, painted with thick yellow paint,
and cost in all some four dollars), all aiding in the general work
of doing nothing: save where here and there a hugely fat Negress,
possibly with her 'head tied across' in a white turban (sign of
mourning), sells, or tries to sell, abominable sweetmeats, strange
fruits, and junks of sugar-cane, to be gnawed by the dawdlers in
mid-street, while they carry on their heads everything and anything,
from half a barrow-load of yams to a saucer or a beer-bottle. We
never, however, saw, as Tom Cringle did, a Negro carrying a burden
on his chin.
I fear that a stranger would feel a shock--and that not a slight
one--at the first sight of the average negro women of Port of Spain,
especially the younger. Their masculine figures, their ungainly
gestures, their loud and sudden laughter, even when walking alone,
and their general coarseness, shocks, and must shock. It must be
remembered that this is a seaport town; and one in which the licence
usual in such places on both sides of the Atlantic is aggravated by
the superabundant animal vigour and the perfect independence of the
younger women. It is a painful subject. I shall touch it in these
pages as seldom and as lightly as I can. There is, I verily
believe, a large class of Negresses in Port of Spain and in the
country, both Catholic and Protestant, who try their best to be
respectable, after their standard: but unfortunately, here, as
elsewhere over the world, the scum rises naturally to the top, and
intrudes itself on the eye. The men are civil fellows enough, if
you will, as in duty bound, be civil to them. If you are not, ugly
capacities will flash out fast enough, and too fast. If any one
says of the Negro, as of the Russian, 'He is but a savage polished
over: you have only to scratch him, and the barbarian shows
underneath:' the only answer to be made is--Then do not scratch him.
It will be better for you, and for him.
When you have ceased looking--even staring--at the black women and
their ways, you become aware of the strange variety of races which
people the city. Here passes an old Coolie Hindoo, with nothing on
but his lungee round his loins, and a scarf over his head; a white-
bearded, delicate-featured old gentleman, with probably some caste-
mark of red paint on his forehead; his thin limbs, and small hands
and feet, contrasting strangely with the brawny Negroes round.
There comes a bright-eyed young lady, probably his daughter-in-law,
hung all over with bangles, in a white muslin petticoat, crimson
cotton-velvet jacket, and green gauze veil, with her naked brown
baby astride on her hip: a clever, smiling, delicate little woman,
who is quite aware of the brightness of her own eyes. And who are
these three boys in dark blue coatees and trousers, one of whom
carries, hanging at one end of a long bamboo, a couple of sweet
potatoes; at the other, possibly, a pebble to balance them? As they
approach, their doleful visage betrays them. Chinese they are,
without a doubt: but whether old or young, men or women, you cannot
tell, till the initiated point out that the women have chignons and
no hats, the men hats with their pigtails coiled up under them.
Beyond this distinction, I know none visible. Certainly none in
those sad visages--'Offas, non facies,' as old Ammianus Marcellinus
has it.
But why do Chinese never smile? Why do they look as if some one had
sat upon their noses as soon as they were born, and they had been
weeping bitterly over the calamity ever since? They, too, must have
their moments of relaxation: but when? Once, and once only, in
Port of Spain, we saw a Chinese woman, nursing her baby, burst into
an audible laugh: and we looked at each other, as much astonished
as if our horses had begun to talk.
There again is a group of coloured men of all ranks, talking
eagerly, business, or even politics; some of them as well dressed as
if they were fresh from Europe; some of them, too, six feet high,
and broad in proportion; as fine a race, physically, as one would
wish to look upon; and with no want of shrewdness either, or
determination, in their faces: a race who ought, if they will be
wise and virtuous, to have before them a great future. Here come
home from the convent school two coloured young ladies, probably
pretty, possibly lovely, certainly gentle, modest, and well-dressed
according to the fashions of Paris or New York; and here comes the
unmistakable Englishman, tall, fair, close-shaven, arm-in-arm with
another man, whose more delicate features, more sallow complexion,
and little moustache mark him as some Frenchman or Spaniard of old
family. Both are dressed as if they were going to walk up Pall Mall
or the Rue de Rivoli; for 'go-to-meeting clothes' are somewhat too
much de rigueur here; a shooting-jacket and wide-awake betrays the
newly-landed Englishman. Both take off their hats with a grand air
to a lady in a carriage; for they are very fine gentlemen indeed,
and intend to remain such: and well that is for the civilisation of
the island; for it is from such men as these, and from their
families, that the good manners for which West Indians are, or ought
to be, famous, have permeated down, slowly but surely, through all
classes of society save the very lowest.
The straight and level street, swarming with dogs, vultures,
chickens, and goats, passes now out of the old into the newer part
of the city; and the type of the houses changes at once. Some are
mere wooden sheds of one or two rooms, comfortable enough in that
climate, where a sleeping-place is all that is needed--if the
occupiers would but keep them clean. Other houses, wooden too,
belong to well-to-do folk. Over high walls you catch sight of
jalousies and verandahs, inside which must be most delightful
darkness and coolness. Indeed, one cannot fancy more pleasant nests
than some of the little gaily-painted wooden houses, standing on
stilts to let the air under the floors, and all embowered in trees
and flowers, which line the roads in the suburbs; and which are
inhabited, we are told, by people engaged in business.
But what would--or at least ought to--strike the newcomer's eye with
most pleasurable surprise, and make him realise into what a new
world he has been suddenly translated--even more than the Negroes,
and the black vultures sitting on roof-ridges, or stalking about in
mid-street--are the flowers which show over the walls on each side
of the street. In that little garden, not thirty feet broad, what
treasures there are! A tall palm--whether Palmiste or Oil-palm--has
its smooth trunk hung all over with orchids, tied on with wire.
Close to it stands a purple Dracaena, such as are put on English
dinner-tables in pots: but this one is twenty feet high; and next
to it is that strange tree the Clavija, of which the Creoles are
justly fond. A single straight stem, fifteen feet high, carries
huge oblong-leaves atop, and beneath them, growing out of the stem
itself, delicate panicles of little white flowers, fragrant
exceedingly. A double blue pea {74} and a purple Bignonia are
scrambling over shrubs and walls. And what is this which hangs over
into the road, some fifteen feet in height--long, bare, curving
sticks, carrying each at its end a flat blaze of scarlet? What but
the Poinsettia, paltry scions of which, like the Dracaena, adorn our
hothouses and dinner-tables. The street is on fire with it all the
way up, now in mid-winter; while at the street end opens out a green
park, fringed with noble trees all in full leaf; underneath them
more pleasant little suburban villas; and behind all, again, a
background of steep wooded mountain a thousand feet in height. That
is the Savannah, the public park and race-ground; such as neither
London nor Paris can boast.
One may be allowed to regret that the exuberant loyalty of the
citizens of Port of Spain has somewhat defaced one end at least of
their Savannah; for in expectation of a visit from the Duke of
Edinburgh, they erected for his reception a pile of brick, of which
the best that can be said is that it holds a really large and
stately ballroom, and the best that can be hoped is that the
authorities will hide it as quickly as possible with a ring of
Palmistes, Casuarinas, Sandboxes, and every quick-growing tree.
Meanwhile, as His Royal Highness did not come the citizens wisely
thought that they might as well enjoy their new building themselves.
So there, on set high days, the Governor and the Lady of the
Governor hold their court. There, when the squadron comes in,
officers in uniform dance at desperate sailors' pace with delicate
Creoles; some of them, coloured as well as white, so beautiful in
face and figure that one could almost pardon the jolly tars if they
enacted a second Mutiny of the Bounty, and refused one and all to
leave the island and the fair dames thereof. And all the while the
warm night wind rushes in through the high open windows; and the
fireflies flicker up and down, in and out, and you slip away on to
the balcony to enjoy--for after all it is very hot--the purple star-
spangled night; and see aloft the saw of the mountain ridges against
the black-blue sky; and below--what a contrast!--the crowd of white
eyeballs and white teeth--Negroes, Coolies, Chinese--all grinning
and peeping upward against the railing, in the hope of seeing--
through the walls--the 'buccra quality' enjoy themselves.
An even pleasanter sight we saw once in that large room, a sort of
agricultural and horticultural show, which augured well for the
future of the colony. The flowers were not remarkable, save for the
taste shown in their arrangement, till one recollected that they
were not brought from hothouses, but grown in mid-winter in the open
air. The roses, of which West Indians are very fond, as they are of
all 'home,' i.e. European, flowers, were not as good as those of
Europe. The rose in Trinidad, though it flowers three times a year,
yet, from the great heat and moisture, runs too much to wood. But
the roots, especially the different varieties of yam, were very
curious; and their size proved the wonderful food-producing powers
of the land when properly cultivated. The poultry, too, were worthy
of an English show. Indeed, the fowl seems to take to tropical
America as the horse has to Australia, as to a second native-land;
and Trinidad alone might send an endless supply to the fowl-market
of the Northern States, even if that should not be quite true which
some one said, that you might turn an old cock loose in the bush,
and he, without further help, would lay more eggs, and bring up more
chickens, than you could either eat or sell.
But the most interesting element of that exhibition was the coconut
fibre products of Messrs. Uhrich and Gerold, of which more in
another place. In them lies a source of further wealth to the
colony, which may stand her in good stead when Port of Spain
becomes, as it must become, one of the great emporiums of the West.
Since our visit the great ballroom has seen--even now is seeing--
strange vicissitudes. For the new Royal College, having as yet no
buildings of its own, now keeps school, it is said, therein--alas
for the inkstains on that beautiful floor! And by last advices, a
'troupe of artistes' from Martinique, there being no theatre in Port
of Spain, have been doing their play-acting in it; and Terpsichore
and Thalia (Melpomene, I fear, haunts not the stage of Martinique)
have been hustling all the other Muses downstairs at sunset, and
joining their jinglings to the chorus of tom-toms and chac-chacs
which resounds across the Savannah, at least till 10 p.m., from all
the suburbs.
The road--and all the roads round Port of Spain, thanks to Sir Ralph
Woodford, are as good as English roads--runs between the Savannah
and the mountain spurs, and past the Botanic Gardens, which are a
credit, in more senses than one, to the Governors of the island.
For in them, amid trees from every quarter of the globe, and gardens
kept up in the English fashion, with fountains, too, so necessary in
this tropical clime, stood a large 'Government House.' This house
was some years ago destroyed; and the then Governor took refuge in a
cottage just outside the garden. A sum of money was voted to
rebuild the big house: but the Governors, to their honour, have
preferred living in the cottage, adding to it from time to time what
was necessary for mere comfort; and have given the old gardens to
the city, as a public pleasure-ground, kept up at Government
expense.
This Paradise--for such it is--is somewhat too far from the city;
and one passes in it few people, save an occasional brown nurse.
But when Port of Spain becomes, as it surely will, a great
commercial city, and the slopes of Laventille, Belmont, and St.
Ann's, just above the gardens, are studded, as they surely will be,
with the villas of rich merchants, then will the generous gift of
English Governors be appreciated and used; and the Botanic Gardens
will become a Tropic Garden of the Tuileries, alive, at five o'clock
every evening, with human flowers of every hue with human