CHAPTER X: NAPARIMA AND MONTSERRAT

I had a few days of pleasant wandering in the centre of the island,

about the districts which bear the names of Naparima and Montserrat;

a country of such extraordinary fertility, as well as beauty, that

it must surely hereafter become the seat of a high civilisation.

The soil seems inexhaustibly rich. I say inexhaustibly; for as fast

as the upper layer is impoverished, it will be swept over by the

tropic rains, to mingle with the vegas, or alluvial flats below, and

thus enriched again, while a fresh layer of virgin soil is exposed

above. I have seen, cresting the highest ridges of Montserrat, ten

feet at least of fat earth, falling clod by clod right and left upon

the gardens below. There are, doubtless, comparatively barren

tracts of gravel toward the northern mountains; there are poor sandy

lands, likewise, at the southern part of the island, which are said,

nevertheless, to be specially fitted for the growth of cotton: but

from San Fernando on the west coast to Manzanilla on the east,

stretches a band of soil which seems to be capable of yielding any

conceivable return to labour and capital, not omitting common sense.

How long it has taken to prepare this natural garden for man is one

of those questions of geological time which have been well called of

late 'appalling.' How long was it since the 'older Parian' rocks

(said to belong to the Neocomian, or green-sand, era) of Point a

Pierre were laid down at the bottom of the sea? How long since a

still unknown thickness of tertiary strata in the Nariva district

laid down on them? How long since not less than six thousand feet

of still later tertiary strata laid down on them again? What vast,

though probably slow, processes changed that sea-bottom from one

salt enough to carry corals and limestones, to one brackish enough

to carry abundant remains of plants, deposited probably by the

Orinoco, or by some river which then did duty for it? Three such

periods of disturbance have been distinguished, the net result of

which is, that the strata (comparatively recent in geological time)

have been fractured, tilted, even set upright on end, over the whole

lowland. Trinidad seems to have had its full share of those later

disturbances of the earth-crust, which carried tertiary strata up

along the shoulders of the Alps; which upheaved the chalk of the

Isle of Wight, setting the tertiary beds of Alum Bay upright against

it; which even, after the Age of Ice, thrust up the Isle of Moen in

Denmark and the Isle of Ely in Cambridgeshire, entangling the

boulder clay among the chalk--how long ago? Long enough ago, in

Trinidad at least, to allow water--probably the estuary waters of

the Orinoco--to saw all the upheaved layers off at the top into one

flat sea-bottom once more, leaving as projections certain harder

knots of rock, such as the limestones of Mount Tamana; and, it may

be, the curious knoll of hard clay rock under which nestles the town

of San Fernando. Long enough ago, also, to allow that whole sea-

bottom to be lifted up once more, to the height, in one spot, of a

thousand feet, as the lowland which occupies six-sevenths of the

Isle of Trinidad. Long enough ago, again, to allow that lowland to

be sawn out into hills and valleys, ridges and gulleys, which are

due to the action of Colonel George Greenwood's geologic panacea,

'Rain and Rivers,' and to nothing else. Long enough ago, once more,

for a period of subsidence, as I suspect, to follow the period of

upheaval; a period at the commencement of which Trinidad was perhaps

several times as large as it is now, and has gradually been eaten

away by the surf, as fresh pieces of the soft cliffs have been

brought, by the sinking of the land, face to face with its slow but

sure destroyer.

And how long ago began the epoch--the very latest which this globe

has seen, which has been long enough for all this? The human

imagination can no more grasp that time than it can grasp the space

between us and the nearest star.

Such thoughts were forced upon me as the steamer stopped off San

Fernando; and I saw, some quarter of a mile out at sea, a single

stack of rock, which is said to have been joined to the mainland in

the memory of the fathers of this generation; and on shore,

composed, I am told, of the same rock, that hill of San Fernando

which forms a beacon by sea and land for many a mile around. An

isolated boss of the older Parian, composed of hardened clay which

has escaped destruction, it rises, though not a mile long and a

third of a mile broad, steeply to a height of nearly six hundred

feet, carrying on its cliffs the remains of a once magnificent

vegetation. Now its sides are quarried for the only road-stone met

with for miles around; cultivated for pasture, in which the round-

headed mango-trees grow about like oaks at home; or terraced for

villas and gardens, the charm of which cannot be told in words. All

round it, rich sugar estates spread out, with the noble Palmistes

left standing here and there along the roads and terraces; and

everywhere is activity and high cultivation, under the

superintendence of gentlemen who are prospering, because they

deserve to prosper.

Between the cliff and the shore nestles the gay and growing little

town, which was, when we took the island in 1795, only a group of

huts. In it I noted only one thing which looked unpleasant. The

negro houses, however roomy and comfortable, and however rich the

gardens which surrounded them, were mostly patched together out of

the most heterogeneous and wretched scraps of wood; and on inquiry I

found that the materials were, in most cases, stolen; that when a

Negro wanted to build a house, instead of buying the materials, he

pilfered a board here, a stick there, a nail somewhere else, a lock

or a clamp in a fourth place, about the sugar-estates, regardless of

the serious injury which he caused to working buildings; and when he

had gathered a sufficient pile, hidden safely away behind his

neighbour's house, the new hut rose as if by magic. This continual

pilfering, I was assured, was a serious tax on the cultivation of

the estates around. But I was told, too, frankly enough, by the

very gentleman who complained, that this habit was simply an

heirloom from the bad days of slavery, when the pilfering of the

slaves from other estates was connived at by their own masters, on

the ground that if A's Negroes robbed B, B's Negroes robbed C, and

so all round the alphabet; one more evil instance of the

demoralising effect of a state of things which, wrong in itself, was

sure to be the parent of a hundred other wrongs.

Being, happily for me, in the Governor's suite, I had opportunities

of seeing the interior of the island which an average traveller

could not have; and I looked forward with interest to visiting new

settlements in the forests of the interior, which very few

inhabitants of the island, and certainly no strangers, had as yet

seen. Our journey began by landing on a good new jetty, and being

transferred at once to the tramway which adjoined it. A truck, with

chairs on it, as usual here, carried us off at a good mule-trot; and

we ran in the fast-fading light through a rolling hummocky country,

very like the lowlands of Aberdeenshire, or the neighbourhood of

Waterloo, save that, as night came on, the fireflies flickered

everywhere among the canes, and here and there the palms and Ceibas

stood up, black and gaunt, against the sky. At last we escaped from

our truck, and found horses waiting, on which we floundered, through

mud and moonlight, to a certain hospitable house, and found a hungry

party, who had been long waiting for a dinner worth the waiting.

It was not till next morning that I found into what a charming place

I had entered overnight. Around were books, pictures, china, vases

of flowers, works of art, and all appliances of European taste, even

luxury; but in a house utterly un-European. The living rooms, all

on the first floor, opened into each other by doorless doorways, and

the walls were of cedar and other valuable woods, which good taste

had left still unpapered. Windowless bay windows, like great port-

holes, opened from each of them into a gallery which ran round the

house, sheltered by broad sloping eaves. The deep shade of the

eaves contrasted brilliantly with the bright light outside; and

contrasted too with the wooden pillars which held up the roof, and

which seemed on their southern sides white-hot in the blazing

sunshine.

What a field was there for native art; for richest ornamentation of

these pillars and those beams. Surely Trinidad, and the whole of

northern South America, ought to become some day the paradise of

wood carvers, who, copying even a few of the numberless vegetable

and animal forms around, may far surpass the old wood-carving

schools of Burmah and Hindostan. And I sat dreaming of the lianes

which might be made to wreathe the pillars; the flowers, fruits,

birds, butterflies, monkeys, kinkajous, and what not, which might

cluster about the capitals, or swing along the beams. Let men who

have such materials, and such models, proscribe all tawdry and poor

European art--most of it a bad imitation of bad Greek, or worse

Renaissance--and trust to Nature and the facts which lie nearest

them. But when will a time come for the West Indies when there will

be wealth and civilisation enough to make such an art possible?

Soon, if all the employers of labour were like the gentleman at

whose house we were that day, and like some others in the same

island.

And through the windows and between the pillars of the gallery, what

a blaze of colour and light. The ground-floor was hedged in, a few

feet from the walls, with high shrubs, which would have caused

unwholesome damp in England, but were needed here for shade.

Foreign Crotons, Dracaenas, Cereuses, and a dozen more curious

shapes--among them a 'cup-tree,' with concave leaves, each of which

would hold water. It was said to come from the East, and was

unknown to me. Among them, and over the door, flowering creepers

tangled and tossed, rich with flowers; and beyond them a circular-

lawn (rare in the West Indies), just like an English one, save that

the shrubs and trees which bounded it were hothouse plants. A few

Carat-palms {184} spread their huge fan-leaves among the curious

flowering trees; other foreign palms, some of them very rare, beside

them; and on the lawn opposite my bedroom window stood a young

Palmiste, which had been planted barely eight years, and was now

thirty-eight feet in height, and more than six feet in girth at the

butt. Over the roofs of the outhouses rose scarlet Bois

immortelles, and tall clumps of Bamboo reflecting blue light from

their leaves even under a cloud; and beyond them and below them to

the right, a park just like an English one carried stately trees

scattered on the turf, and a sheet of artificial water. Coolies, in

red or yellow waistcloths, and Coolie children, too, with nothing

save a string round their stomachs (the smaller ones at least), were

fishing in the shade. To the left, again, began at once the rich

cultivation of the rolling cane-fields, among which the Squire had

left standing, somewhat against the public opinion of his less

tasteful neighbours, tall Carats, carrying their heads of fan-leaves

on smooth stalks from fifty to eighty feet high, and Ceibas--some of

them the hugest I had ever seen. Below in the valley were the

sugar-works; and beyond this half-natural, half-artificial scene

rose, some mile off, the lowering wall of the yet untouched forest.

It had taken only fifteen years, but fifteen years of hard work, to

create this paradise. And only the summer before, all had been

well-nigh swept away again. During the great drought the fire had

raged about the woods. Estate after estate around had been reduced

to ashes. And one day our host's turn came. The fire burst out of

the woods at three different points. All worked with a will to stop

it by cutting traces. But the wind was wild; burning masses from

the tree-tops were hurled far among the canes, and all was lost.

The canes burnt like shavings, exploding with a perpetual crackle at

each joint. In a few hours the whole estate--works, coolie

barracks, negro huts--was black ash; and the house only, by extreme

exertion, saved. But the ground had scarcely cooled when replanting

and rebuilding commenced; and now the canes were from ten to twelve

feet high, the works nearly ready for the coming crop-time, and no

sign of the fire was left, save a few leafless trees, which we

found, on riding up to them, to be charred at the base.

And yet men say that the Englishman loses his energy in a tropic

climate.

We had a charming Sunday there, amid charming society, down even to

the dogs and cats; and not the least charming object among many was

little Franky, the Coolie butler's child, who ran in and out with

the dogs, gay in his little cotton shirt, and melon-shaped cap, and

silver bracelets, and climbed on the Squire's knee, and nestled in

his bosom, and played with his seals; and looked up trustingly into

our faces with great soft eyes, like a little brown guazu-pita fawn

out of the forest. A happy child, and in a happy place.

Then to church at Savanna Grande, riding of course; for the mud was

abysmal, and it was often safer to ride in the ditch than on the

road. The village, with a tramway through it, stood high and

healthy. The best houses were those of the Chinese. The poorer

Chinese find peddling employments and trade about the villages,

rather than hard work on the estates; while they cultivate on

ridges, with minute care, their favourite sweet potato. Round San

Fernando, a Chinese will rent from a sugar-planter a bit of land

which seems hopelessly infested with weeds, even of the worst of all

sorts--the creeping Para grass {186}--which was introduced a

generation since, with some trouble, as food for cattle, and was

supposed at first to be so great a boon that the gentleman who

brought it in received public thanks and a valuable testimonial.

The Chinaman will take the land for a single year, at a rent, I

believe, as high as a pound an acre, grow on it his sweet potato

crop, and return it to the owner, cleared, for the time being, of

every weed. The richer shopkeepers have each a store: but they

disdain to live at it. Near by each you see a comfortable low

house, with verandahs, green jalousies, and often pretty flowers in

pots; and catch glimpses inside of papered walls, prints, and smart

moderator-lamps, which seem to be fashionable among the Celestials.

But for one fashion of theirs, I confess, I was not prepared.

We went to church--a large, airy, clean, wooden one--which ought to

have had a verandah round to keep off the intolerable sunlight, and

which might, too, have had another pulpit. For in getting up to

preach in a sort of pill-box on a long stalk, I found the said stalk

surging and nodding so under my weight, that I had to assume an

attitude of most dignified repose, and to beware of 'beating the

drum ecclesiastic,' or 'clanging the Bible to shreds,' for fear of

toppling into the pews of the very smart, and really very attentive,

brown ladies below. A crowded congregation it was, clean, gay,

respectable and respectful, and spoke well both for the people and

for their clergyman. But--happily not till the end of the sermon--I

became aware, just in front of me, of a row of smartest Paris

bonnets, net-lace shawls, brocades, and satins, fit for duchesses;

and as the centre of each blaze of finery--'offam non faciem,' as

old Ammianus Marcellinus has it--the unmistakable visage of a

Chinese woman. Whether they understood one word; what they thought

of it all; whether they were there for any purpose save to see and

be seen, were questions to which I tried in vain, after service, to

get an answer. All that could be told was, that the richer Chinese

take delight in thus bedizening their wives on high days and

holidays; not with tawdry cheap finery, but with things really

expensive, and worth what they cost, especially the silks and

brocades; and then in sending them, whether for fashion or for

loyalty's sake, to an English church. Be that as it may, there they

were, ladies from the ancient and incomprehensible Mowery Land, like

fossil bones of an old world sticking out amid the vegetation of the

new; and we will charitably hope that they were the better for being

there.

After church we wandered about the estate to see huge trees. One

Ceiba, left standing in a cane-piece, was very grand, from the

multitude and mass of its parasites and its huge tresses of lianes;

and grand also from its form. The prickly board-wall spurs were at

least fifteen feet high, some of them, where they entered the trunk;

and at the summit of the trunk, which could not have been less than

seventy or eighty feet, one enormous limb (itself a tree) stuck out

quite horizontally, and gave a marvellous notion of strength. It

seemed as if its length must have snapped it off, years since, where

it joined the trunk; or as if the leverage of its weight must have

toppled the whole tree over. But the great vegetable had known its

own business best, and had built itself up right cannily; and stood,

and will stand for many a year, perhaps for many a century, if the

Matapalos do not squeeze out its life. I found, by the by, in

groping my way to that tree through canes twelve feet high, that one

must be careful, at least with some varieties of cane, not to get

cut. The leaf-edges are finely serrated; and more, the sheaths of

the leaves are covered with prickly hairs, which give the Coolies

sore shins if they work bare-legged. The soil here, as everywhere,

was exceedingly rich, and sawn out into rolling mounds and steep

gullies--sometimes almost too steep for cane-cultivation--by the

tropic rains. If, as cannot be doubted, denudation by rain has gone

on here, for thousands of years, at the same pace at which it goes

on now, the amount of soil removed must be very great; so great,

that the Naparimas may have been, when they were first uplifted out

of the Gulf, hundreds of feet higher than they are now.

Another tree we went to see in the home park, of which I would have

gladly obtained a photograph. A Poix doux, {187a} some said it was;

others that it was a Figuier. {187b} I incline to the former

belief, as the leaves seemed to me pinnated: but the doubt was

pardonable enough. There was not a leaf on the tree which was not

nigh one hundred feet over our heads. For size of spurs and wealth

of parasites the tree was almost as remarkable as the Ceiba I

mentioned just now. But the curiosity of the tree was a Carat-palm

which had started between its very roots; had run its straight and

slender stem up parallel with the bole of its companion, and had

then pierced through the head of the tree, and all its wilderness of

lianes, till it spread its huge flat crown of fans among the highest

branches, more than a hundred feet aloft. The contrast between the

two forms of vegetation, each so grand, but as utterly different in

every line as they are in botanical affinities, and yet both living

together in such close embrace, was very noteworthy; a good example

of the rule, that while competition is most severe between forms

most closely allied, forms extremely wide apart may not compete at

all, because each needs something which the other does not.

On our return I was introduced to the 'Uncle Tom' of the

neighbourhood, who had come down to spend Sunday at the Squire's

house. He was a middle-sized Negro, in cast of features not above

the average, and Isaac by name. He told me how he had been born in

Baltimore, a slave to a Quaker master; how he and his wife Mary,

during the second American war, ran away, and after hiding three

days in the bush, got on board a British ship of war, and so became

free. He then enlisted into one of the East Indian regiments, and

served some years; as a reward for which he had given him his five

acres of land in Trinidad, like others of his corps. These Negro

yeomen-veterans, let it be said in passing, are among the ablest and

steadiest of the coloured population. Military service has given

them just enough of those habits of obedience of which slavery gives

too much--if the obedience of a mere slave, depending not on the

independent will, but on brute fear, is to be called obedience at

all.

Would that in this respect, as in some others, the white subject of

the British crown were as well off as the black one. Would that

during the last fifty years we had followed the wise policy of the

Romans, and by settling our soldiers on our colonial frontiers,

established there communities of loyal, able, and valiant citizens.

Is it too late to begin now? Is there no colony left as yet not

delivered over to a self-government which actually means, more and

more--according to the statements of those who visit the colonies--

government by an Irish faction; and which will offer a field for

settling our soldiers when they have served their appointed time; so

strengthening ourselves, while we reward a class of men who are far

more respectable, and far more deserving, than most of those on whom

we lavish our philanthropy?

Surely such men would prove as good subjects as old Isaac and his

comrades. For fifty-three years, I was told, he had lived and

worked in Trinidad, always independent; so independent, indeed, that

the very last year, when all but starving, like many of the coloured

people, from the long drought which lasted nearly eighteen months,

he refused all charity, and came down to this very estate to work

for three months in the stifling cane-fields, earning--or fancying

that he earned--his own livelihood. A simple, kindly, brave

Christian man he seemed, and all who knew him spoke of him as such.

The most curious fact, however, which I gleaned from him was his

recollection of his own 'conversion.' His Mary, of whom all spoke

as a woman of a higher intellect than he, had 'been in the Gospel'

several years before him, and used to read and talk to him; but, he

said, without effect. At last he had a severe fever; and when he

fancied himself dying, had a vision. He saw a grating in the floor,

close by his bed, and through it the torments of the lost. Two

souls he remembered specially; one 'like a singed hog,' the other

'all over black like a charcoal spade.' He looked in fear, and

heard a voice cry, 'Behold your sins.' He prayed; promised, if he

recovered, to try and do better: and felt himself forgiven at once.

This was his story, which I have set down word for word; and of

which I can only say, that its imagery is no more gross, its

confusion between the objective and subjective no more

unphilosophical, than the speech on similar matters of many whom we

are taught to call divines, theologians, and saints.

At all events, this crisis in his life produced, according to his

own statement, not merely a religious, but a moral change. He

became a better man henceforth. He had the reputation, among those

who knew him well, of being altogether a good man. If so, it

matters little what cause he assigned for the improvement. Wisdom

is justified of all her children; and, I doubt not, of old black

Isaac among the rest.

In 1864 he had a great sorrow. Old Mary, trying to smoke the

mosquitoes out of her house with a charcoal-pan, set fire, in her

shortsightedness, to the place; and everything was burned--the

savings of years, the precious Bible among the rest. The Squire

took her down to his house, and nursed her: but she died in two

days of cold and fright; and Isaac had to begin life again alone.

Kind folks built up his ajoupa, and started him afresh; and, to

their astonishment, Isaac grew young again, and set to work for

himself. He had depended too much for many years on his wife's

superior intellect: now he had to act for himself; and he acted.

But he spoke of her, like any knight of old, as of a guardian

goddess--his guardian still in the other world, as she had been in

this.

He was happy enough, he said: but I was told that he had to endure

much vexation from the neighbouring Negroes, who were Baptists,

narrow and conceited; and who--just as the Baptists of the lower

class in England would be but too apt to do--tormented him by

telling him that he was not sure of heaven, because he went to

church instead of joining their body. But he, though he went to

chapel in wet weather, clung to his own creed like an old soldier;

and came down to Massa's house to spend the Sunday whenever there

was a Communion, walking some five miles thither, and as much back

again.

So much I learnt concerning old Isaac. And when in the afternoon he

toddled away, and back into the forest, what wonder if I felt like

Wordsworth after his talk with the old leech-gatherer?--

'And when he ended,

I could have laughed myself to scorn to find

In that decrepit man so firm a mind;

God, said I, be my help and stay secure,

I'll think of thee, leech-gatherer, on the lonely moor.'

On the Monday morning there was a great parade. All the Coolies

were to come up to see the Governor; and after breakfast a long line

of dark people arrived up the lawn, the women in their gaudiest

muslins, and some of them in cotton velvet jackets of the richest

colours. The Oriental instinct for harmonious hues, and those at

once rich and sober, such as may be seen in Indian shawls, is very

observable even in these Coolies, low-caste as most of them are.

There were bangles and jewels among them in plenty; and as it was a

high day and a holiday, the women had taken out the little gold or

silver stoppers in their pierced nostrils, and put in their place

the great gold ring which hangs down over the mouth, and is

considered by them, as learned men tell us it was by Rebekah at the

well, a special ornament. The men stood by themselves; the women by

themselves; the children grouped in front; and a merrier, healthier,

shrewder looking party I have seldom seen. Complaints there were

none. All seemed to look on the Squire as a father, and each face

brightened when he spoke to them by name. But the great ceremony

was the distributing by the Governor of red and yellow sweetmeats to

the children out of a huge dish held up by the Hindoo butler, while

Franky, in a long night-shirt of crimson cotton velvet, acted as

aide-de-camp, and took his perquisites freely. Each of the little

brown darlings got its share, the boys putting them into the flap of

their waistcloths, the girls into the front of their veils; and some

of the married women seemed ready enough to follow the children's

example; some of them, indeed, were little more than children

themselves. The pleasure of the men at the whole ceremony was very

noticeable, and very pleasant. Well fed, well cared for, well

taught (when they will allow themselves to be so), and with a local

medical man appointed for their special benefit, Coolies under such

a master ought to be, and are, prosperous and happy. Exceptions

there are, and must be. Are there none among the workmen of English

manufacturers and farmers? Abuses may spring up, and do. Do none

spring up in London and elsewhere? But the Government has the power

to interfere, and uses that power. These poor people are

sufficiently protected by law from their white employers; what they

need most is protection for the newcomers against the usury, or

swindling, by people of their own race, especially Hindoos of the

middle class, who are covetous and ill-disposed, and who use their

experience of the island for their own selfish advantage. But that

evil also Government is doing its best to put down. Already the

Coolies have a far larger amount of money in the savings' banks of

the island than the Negroes; and their prosperity can be safely

trusted to wise and benevolent laws, enforced by men who can afford

to stand above public opinion, as well as above private interest. I

speak, of course, only of Trinidad, because only Trinidad I have

seen. But what I say I know intimately to be true.

The parade over--and a pleasant sight it was, and one not easily to

be forgotten--we were away to see the Salse, or 'mud-volcano,' near

Monkey Town, in the forest to the south-east. The cross-roads were

deep in mud, all the worse because it was beginning to dry on the

surface, forming a tough crust above the hasty-pudding which, if

broken through, held the horse's leg suspended as in a vice, and

would have thrown him down, if it were possible to throw down a

West-Indian horse. We passed in one place a quaint little relic of

the older world; a small sugar-press, rather than mill, under a roof

of palm-leaf, which was worked by hand, or a donkey, just as a

Spanish settler would have worked it three hundred years ago. Then

on through plenty of garden cultivation, with all the people at

their doors as we passed, fat and grinning: then up to a good high-

road, and a school for Coolies, kept by a Presbyterian clergyman,

Mr. Morton--I must be allowed to mention his name--who, like a

sensible man, wore a white coat instead of the absurd regulation

black one, too much affected by all well-to-do folk, lay as well as

clerical, in the West Indies. The school seemed good enough in all

ways. A senior class of young men--including one who had had his

head nearly cut off last year by misapplication of that formidable

weapon the cutlass, which every coloured man and woman carries in

the West Indies--could read pretty well; and the smaller children--

with as much clothing on as they could be persuaded to wear--were a

sight pleasant to see. Among them, by the by, was a little lady who

excited my astonishment. She was, I was told, twelve years old.

She sat summing away on her slate, bedizened out in gauze petticoat,

velvet jacket--between which and the petticoat, of course, the waist

showed just as nature had made it--gauze veil, bangles, necklace,

nose-jewel; for she was a married woman, and her Papa (Anglice,

husband) wished her to look her best on so important an occasion.

This over-early marriage among the Coolies is a very serious evil,

but one which they have brought with them from their own land. The

girls are practically sold by their fathers while yet children,

often to wealthy men much older than they. Love is out of the

question. But what if the poor child, as she grows up, sees some

one, among that overplus of men, to whom she, for the first time in

her life, takes a fancy? Then comes a scandal; and one which is

often ended swiftly enough by the cutlass. Wife-murder is but too

common among these Hindoos, and they cannot be made to see that it

is wrong. 'I kill my own wife. Why not? I kill no other man's

wife,' was said by as pretty, gentle, graceful a lad of two-and-

twenty as one need see; a convict performing, and perfectly, the

office of housemaid in a friend's house. There is murder of wives,

or quasi-wives now and then, among the baser sort of Coolies--murder

because a poor girl will not give her ill-earned gains to the

ruffian who considers her as his property. But there is also law in

Trinidad, and such offences do not go unpunished.

Then on through Savanna Grande and village again, and past more

sugar estates, and past beautiful bits of forest, left, like English

woods, standing in the cultivated fields. One batch of a few acres

on the side of a dell was very lovely. Huge Figuiers and Huras were

mingled with palms and rich undergrowth, and lighted up here and

there with purple creepers.

So we went on, and on, and into the thick forest, and what was, till

Sir Ralph Woodford taught the islanders what an European road was

like, one of the pattern royal roads of the island. Originally an

Indian trace, it had been widened by the Spaniards, and transformed

from a line of mud six feet broad to one of thirty. The only

pleasant reminiscence which I have about it was the finding in

flower a beautiful parasite, undescribed by Griesbach; {192} a 'wild

pine' with a branching spike of crimson flowers, purple tipped,

which shone in the darkness of the bush like a great bunch of

rosebuds growing among lily-leaves.

The present Governor, like Sir Ralph Woodford before him, has been

fully aware of the old saying--which the Romans knew well, and which

the English did not know, and only rediscovered some century since--

that the 'first step in civilisation is to make roads; the second,

to make more roads; and the third, to make more roads still.'

Through this very district (aided by men whose talents he had the

talent to discover and employ) he has run wide, level, and sound

roads, either already completed or in progress, through all parts of

the island which I visited, save the precipitous glens of the

northern shore.

Of such roads we saw more than one in the next few days. That day

we had to commit ourselves, when we turned off the royal road, to

one of the old Spanish-Indian jungle tracks. And here is a recipe

for making one:--Take a railway embankment of average steepness,

strew it freely with wreck, rigging and all, to imitate the fallen

timber, roots, and lianes--a few flagstones and boulders here and

there will be quite in place; plant the whole with the thickest

pheasant-cover; set a field of huntsmen to find their way through it

at the points of least resistance three times a week during a wet

winter; and if you dare follow their footsteps, you will find a very

accurate imitation of a forest-track in the wet season.

At one place we seemed to be fairly stopped. We plunged and slid

down into a muddy brook, luckily with a gravel bar on which the

horses could stand, at least one by one; and found opposite us a

bank of smooth clay, bound with slippery roots, some ten feet high.

We stood and looked at it, and the longer we looked--in hunting

phrase--the less we liked it. But there was no alternative. Some

one jumped off, and scrambled up on his hands and knees; his horse

was driven up the bank to him--on its knees, likewise, more than

once--and caught staggering among boughs and mud; and by the time

the whole cavalcade was over, horses and men looked as if they had

been brickmaking for a week.

But here again the cunning of these horses surprised me. On one

very steep pitch, for instance, I saw before me two logs across the

path, two feet and more in diameter, and what was worse, not two

feet apart. How the brown cob meant to get over I could not guess;

but as he seemed not to falter or turn tail, as an English horse

would have done, I laid the reins on his neck and watched his legs.

To my astonishment, he lifted a fore-leg out of the abyss of mud,

put it between the logs, where I expected to hear it snap; clawed in

front, and shuffled behind; put the other over the second log, the

mud and water splashing into my face, and then brought the first

freely out from between the logs, and--horrible to see--put a hind

one in. Thus did he fairly walk through the whole; stopped a moment

to get his breath; and then staggered and scrambled upward again, as

if he had done nothing remarkable. Coming back, by the by, those

two logs lay heavy on my heart for a mile ere I neared them. He

might get up over them; but how would he get down again? And I was

not surprised to hear more than one behind me say, 'I think I shall

lead over.' But being in front, if I fell, I could only fall into

the mud, and not on the top of a friend. So I let the brown cob do

what he would, determined to see how far a tropic horse's legs could

keep him up; and, to my great amusement, he quietly leapt the whole,

descending five or six feet into a pool of mud, which shot out over

him and me, half blinding us for the moment; then slid away on his

haunches downward; picked himself up; and went on as usual, solemn,

patient, and seemingly stupid as any donkey.

We had some difficulty in finding our quest, the Salse, or mud-

volcano. But at last, out of a hut half buried in verdure on the

edge of a little clearing, there tumbled the quaintest little old

black man, cutlass in hand, and, without being asked, went on ahead

as our guide. Crook-backed, round-shouldered, his only dress a

ragged shirt and ragged pair of drawers, he had evidently thriven

upon the forest life for many a year. He did not walk nor run, but

tumbled along in front of us, his bare feet plashing from log to log

and mud-heap to mud-heap, his gray woolly head wagging right and

left, and his cutlass brushing almost instinctively at every bough

he passed, while he turned round every moment to jabber something,

usually in Creole French, which, of course, I could not understand.

He led us well, up and down, and at last over a flat of rich muddy

ground, full of huge trees, and of their roots likewise, where there

was no path at all. The solitude was awful; so was the darkness of

the shade; so was the stifling heat; and right glad we were when we

saw an opening in the trees, and the little man quickened his pace,

and stopped with an air of triumph not unmixed with awe on the edge

of a circular pool of mud and water some two or three acres in

extent.

'Dere de debbil's woodyard,' said he, with somewhat bated breath.

And no wonder; for a more doleful, uncanny, half-made spot I never

saw. The sad forest ringed it round with a green wall, feathered

down to the ugly mud, on which, partly perhaps from its saltness,

partly from the changeableness of the surface, no plant would grow,

save a few herbs and creepers which love the brackish water. Only

here and there an Echites had crawled out of the wood and lay along

the ground, its long shoots gay with large cream-coloured flowers

and pairs of glossy leaves; and on it, and on some dead brushwood,

grew a lovely little parasitic Orchis, an Oncidium, with tiny fans

of leaves, and flowers like swarms of yellow butterflies.

There was no track of man, not even a hunter's footprint; but

instead, tracks of beasts in plenty. Deer, quenco, {194a} and lapo,

{194b} with smaller animals, had been treading up and down, probably

attracted by the salt water. They were safe enough, the old man

said. No hunter dare approach the spot. There were 'too much

jumbies' here; and when one of the party expressed a wish to lie out

there some night, in the hope of good shooting, the Negro shook his

head. He would 'not do that for all the world. De debbil come out

here at night, and walk about;' and he was much scandalised when the

young gentleman rejoined that the chance of such a sight would be an

additional reason for bivouacking there.

So we walked out upon the mud, which was mostly hard enough, past

shallow pools of brackish water, smelling of asphalt, toward a group

of little mud-volcanoes on the farther side. These curious openings

into the nether-world are not permanent. They choke up after a

while, and fresh ones appear in another part of the area, thus

keeping the whole clear of plants.

They are each some two or three feet high, of the very finest mud,

which leaves no feeling of grit on the fingers or tongue, and dries,

of course, rapidly in the sun. On the top, or near the top, of each

is a round hole, a finger's breadth, polished to exceeding

smoothness, and running down through the cone as far as we could

dig. From each oozes perpetually, with a clicking noise of gas-

bubbles, water and mud; and now and then, losing their temper, they

spirt out their dirt to a considerable height; a feat which we did

not see performed, but which is so common that we were in something

like fear and trembling while we opened a cone with our cutlasses.

For though we could hardly have been made dirtier than we were, an

explosion in our faces of mud with 'a faint bituminous smell,' and

impregnated with 'common salt, a notable proportion of iodine, and a

trace of carbonate of soda and carbonate of lime,' {195} would have

been both unpleasant and humiliating. But the most puzzling thing

about the place is, that out of the mud comes up--not jumbies, but--

a multitude of small stones, like no stones in the neighbourhood; we

found concretions of iron sand, and scales which seemed to have

peeled off them; and pebbles, quartzose, or jasper, or like in

appearance to flint; but all evidently long rolled on a sea-beach.

Messrs. Wall and Sawkins mention pyrites and gypsum as being found:

but we saw none, as far as I recollect. All these must have been

carried up from a considerable depth by the force of the same gases

which make the little mud-volcanoes.

Now and then this 'Salse,' so quiet when we saw it, is said to be

seized with a violent paroxysm. Explosions are heard, and large

discharges of mud, and even flame, are said to appear. Some

seventeen years ago (according to Messrs. Wall and Sawkins) such an

explosion was heard six miles off; and next morning the surface was

found quite altered, and trees had disappeared, or been thrown down.

But--as they wisely say--the reports of the inhabitants must be

received with extreme caution. In the autumn of last year, some

such explosion is said to have taken place at the Cedros Salse, a

place so remote, unfortunately, that I could not visit it. The

Negroes and Coolies, the story goes, came running to the overseer at

the noise, assuring him that something terrible had happened; and

when he, in defiance of their fears, went off to the Salse, he found

that many tons of mud--I was told thousands--had been thrown out.

How true this may be, I cannot say. But Messrs. Wall and Sawkins

saw with their own eyes, in 1856, about two miles from this Cedros

Salse, the results of an explosion which had happened only two

months before, and of which they give a drawing. A surface two

hundred feet round had been upheaved fifteen feet, throwing the

trees in every direction; and the sham earthquake had shaken the

ground for two hundred or three hundred yards round, till the

natives fancied that their huts were going to fall.

There is a third Salse near Poole River, on the Upper Ortoire, which

is extinct, or at least quiescent; but this, also, I could not

visit. It is about seventeen miles from the sea, and about two

hundred feet above it. As for the causes of these Salses, I fear

the reader must be content, for the present, with a somewhat muddy

explanation of the muddy mystery. Messrs. Wall and Sawkins are

inclined to connect it with asphalt springs and pitch lakes. 'There

is,' they say, 'easy gradation from the smaller Salses to the

ordinary naphtha or petroleum springs.' It is certain that in the

production of asphalt, carbonic acid, carburetted hydrogen, and

water are given off. 'May not,' they ask, 'these orifices be the

vents by which such gases escape? And in forcing their way to the

surface, is it not natural that the liquid asphalt and slimy water

should be drawn up and expelled?' They point out the fact, that

wherever such volcanoes exist, asphalt or petroleum is found hard

by. The mud volcanoes of Turbaco, in New Granada, famous from

Humboldt's description of them, lie in an asphaltic country. They

are much larger than those of Trinidad, the cones being, some of

them, twenty feet high. When Humboldt visited them in 1801, they

gave off hardly anything save nitrogen gas. But in the year 1850, a

'bituminous odour' had begun to be diffused; asphaltic oil swam on

the surface of the small openings; and the gas issuing from any of

the cones could be ignited. Dr. Daubeny found the mud-volcanoes of

Macaluba giving out bitumen, and bubbles of carbonic acid and

carburetted hydrogen. The mud-volcano of Saman, in the Western

Caucasus, gives off, with a continual stream of thick mud, ignited

gases, accompanied with mimic earthquakes like those of the Trinidad

Salses; and this out of a soil said to be full of bituminous

springs, and where (as in Trinidad) the tertiary strata carry veins

of asphalt, or are saturated with naphtha. At the famous sacred

Fire wells of Baku, in the Eastern Caucasus, the ejections of mud

and inflammable gas are so mixed with asphaltic products that

Eichwald says 'they should be rather called naphtha volcanoes than

mud-volcanoes, as the eruptions always terminate in a large emission

of naphtha.'

It is reasonable enough, then, to suppose a similar connection in

Trinidad. But whence come, either in Trinidad or at Turbaco, the

sea-salts and the iodine? Certainly not from the sea itself, which

is distant, in the case of the Trinidad Salses, from two to

seventeen miles. It must exist already in the strata below. And

the ejected pebbles, which are evidently sea-worn, must form part of

a tertiary sea-beach, covered by sands, and covering, perhaps, in

its turn, vegetable debris which, as it is converted into asphalt,

thrusts the pebbles up to the surface.

We had to hurry away from the strange place; for night was falling

fast, or rather ready to fall, as always here, in a moment, without

twilight, and we were scarce out of the forest before it was dark.

The wild game were already moving, and a deer crossed our line of

march, close before one of the horses. However, we were not

benighted; for the sun was hardly down ere the moon rose, bright and

full; and we floundered home through the mud, to start again next

morning into mud again. Through rich rolling land covered with

cane; past large sugar-works, where crop-time and all its bustle was

just beginning; along a tramway, which made an excellent horse-road,

and then along one of the new roads, which are opening up the yet

untouched riches of this island. In this district alone, thirty-six

miles of good road and thirty bridges have been made, where formerly

there were only two abominable bridle-paths. It was a solid

pleasure to see good engineering round the hillsides; gullies, which

but a year or two before were break-neck scrambles into fords often

impassable after all, bridged with baulks of incorruptible timber,

on piers sunk, to give a hold in that sea of hasty pudding, sixteen

feet below the river-bed; and side supports sunk as far into the

banks; a solid pleasure to congratulate the warden (who had joined

us) on his triumphs, and to hear how he had sought for miles around

in the hasty-pudding sea, ere he could find either gravel or stone

for road metal, and had found it after all; or how in places,

finding no stone at all, he had been forced to metal the way with

burnt clay, which, as I can testify, is an excellent substitute; or

how again he had coaxed and patted the too-comfortable natives into

being well paid for doing the very road-making which, if they had

any notion of their own interests, they would combine to do for

themselves. And so we rode on chatting,

'While all the land,

Beneath a broad and equal-blowing breeze,

Smelt of the coming summer;'

for it was winter then, and only 80 degrees in the shade, till the

road entered the virgin forest, through which it has been driven, on

the American principle of making land valuable by beginning with a

road, and expecting settlers to follow it. Some such settlers we

found, clearing right and left; among them a most satisfactory

sight; namely, more than one Coolie family, who had served their

apprenticeship, saved money, bought Government land, and set up as

yeomen; the foundation, it is to be hoped, of a class of intelligent

and civilised peasant proprietors. These men, as soon as they have

cleared as much land as their wives and children, with their help,

can keep in order, go off, usually, in gangs of ten to fifteen, to

work, in many instances, on the estates from which they originally

came. This fact practically refutes the opinion which was at first

held by some attorneys and managers of sugar-estates, that the

settling of free Indian immigrants would materially affect the

labour supply of the colony. I must express an earnest hope that

neither will any planters be short-sighted enough to urge such a

theory on the present Governor, nor will the present Governor give

ear to it. The colony at large must gain by the settlement of Crown

lands by civilised people like the Hindoos, if it be only through

the increased exports and imports; while the sugar-estates will

become more and more sure of a constant supply of labour, without

the heavy expense of importing fresh immigrants. I am assured that

the only expense to the colony is the fee for survey, amounting to

eighteen dollars for a ten-acre allotment, as the Coolie prefers the

thinly-wooded and comparatively poor lands, from the greater

facility of clearing them; and these lands are quite unsaleable to

other customers. Therefore, for less than 4 pounds, an acclimatised

Indian labourer with his family (and it must be remembered that,

while the Negro families increase very slowly, the Coolies increase

very rapidly, being more kind and careful parents) are permanently

settled in the colony, the man to work five days a week on sugar-

estates, the family to grow provisions for the market, instead of

being shipped back to India at a cost, including gratuities and

etceteras, of not less than 50 pounds.

One clearing we reached--were I five-and-twenty I should like to

make just such another next to it--of a higher class still. A

cultivated Scotchman, now no longer young, but hale and mighty, had

taken up three hundred acres, and already cleared a hundred and

fifty; and there he intended to pass the rest of a busy life, not

under his own vine and fig-tree, but under his own castor-oil and

cacao-tree. We were welcomed by as noble a Scot's face as I ever

saw, and as keen a Scot's eye; and taken in and fed, horses and men,

even too sumptuously, in a palm and timber house. Then we wandered

out to see the site of his intended mansion, with the rich wooded

hills of the Latagual to the north, and all around the unbroken

forest, where, he told us, the howling monkeys shouted defiance

morning and evening at him who did

'Invade their ancient solitary reign.'

Then we went down to see the Coolie barracks, where the folk seemed

as happy and well cared for as they were certain to be under such a

master; then down a rocky pool in the river, jammed with bare white

logs (as in some North American forest), which had been stopped in

flood by one enormous trunk across the stream; then back past the

site of the ajoupa which had been our host's first shelter, and

which had disappeared by a cause strange enough to English ears. An

enormous silk-cotton near by was felled, in spite of the Negroes'

fears. Its boughs, when it fell, did not reach the ajoupa by twenty

feet or more; but the wind of its fall did, and blew the hut clean

away. This may sound like a story out of Munchausen: but there was

no doubt of the fact; and to us who saw the size of the tree which

did the deed it seemed probable enough.

We rode away again, and into the 'Morichal,' the hills where Moriche

palms are found; to see certain springs and a certain tree; and well

worth seeing they were. Out of the base of a limestone hill, amid

delicate ferns, under the shade of enormous trees, a clear pool

bubbled up and ran away, a stream from its very birth, as is the

wont of limestone springs. It was a spot fit for a Greek nymph; at

least for an Indian damsel: but the nymph who came to draw water in

a tin bucket, and stared stupidly and saucily at us, was anything

but Greek, or even Indian, either in costume or manners. Be it so.

White men are responsible for her being there; so white men must not

complain. Then we went in search of the tree. We had passed, as we

rode up, some Huras (Sandbox-trees) which would have been considered

giants in England; and I had been laughed at more than once for

asking, 'Is that the tree, or that?' I soon knew why. We scrambled

up a steep bank of broken limestone, through ferns and Balisiers,

for perhaps a hundred feet; and then were suddenly aware of a bole

which justified the saying of one of our party--that, when surveying

for a road he had come suddenly on it, he 'felt as if he had run

against a church tower.' It was a Hura, seemingly healthy,

undecayed, and growing vigorously. Its girth--we measured it

carefully--was forty-four feet, six feet from the ground, and as I

laid my face against it and looked up, I seemed to be looking up a

ship's side. It was perfectly cylindrical, branchless, and smooth,

save, of course, the tiny prickles which beset the bark, for a

height at which we could not guess, but which we luckily had an

opportunity of measuring. A wild pine grew in the lowest fork, and

had kindly let down an air-root into the soil. We tightened the

root, set it perpendicular, cut it off exactly where it touched the

ground, and then pulled carefully till we brought the plant and half

a dozen more strange vegetables down on our heads. The length of

the air-root was just seventy-five feet. Some twenty feet or more

above that first fork was a second fork; and then the tree began.

Where its head was we could not see. We could only, by laying our

faces against the bole and looking up, discern a wilderness of

boughs carrying a green cloud of leaves, most of them too high for

us to discern their shape without the glasses. We walked up the

slope, and round about, in hopes of seeing the head of the tree

clear enough to guess at its total height: but in vain. It was

only when we had ridden some half mile up the hill that we could

discern its masses rising, a bright green mound, above the darker

foliage of the forest. It looked of any height, from one hundred

and fifty to two hundred feet; less it could hardly be. 'It made,'

says a note by one of our party, 'other huge trees look like

shrubs.' I am not surprised that my friend Mr. St. Luce D'Abadie,

who measured the tree since my departure, found it to be one hundred

and ninety-two feet in height.

I was assured that there were still larger trees in the island. A

certain Locust-tree and a Ceiba were mentioned. The Moras, too, of

the southern hills, were said to be far taller. And I can well

believe it; for if huge trees were as shrubs beside that Sandbox, it

would be a shrub by the side of those Locusts figured by Spix and

Martius, which fifteen Indians with outstretched arms could just

embrace. At the bottom they were eighty-four feet round, and sixty

where the boles became cylindrical. By counting the rings of such

parts as could be reached, they arrived at the conclusion that they

were of the age of Homer, and 332 years old in the days of

Pythagoras. One estimate, indeed, reduced their antiquity to 2052

years old; while another (counting, I presume, two rings of fresh

wood for every year) carried it up to 4104.

So we rode on and up the hills, by green and flowery paths, with

here and there a cottage and a garden, and groups of enormous

Palmistes towering over the tree-tops in every glen, talking over

that wondrous weed, whose head we saw still far below. For weed it

is, and nothing more. The wood is soft and almost useless, save for

firing; and the tree itself, botanists tell us, is neither more nor

less than a gigantic Spurge, the cousin-german of the milky garden

weeds with which boys burn away their warts. But if the modern

theory be true, that when we speak (as we are forced to speak) of

the relationships of plants, we use no metaphor, but state an actual

fact; that the groups into which we are forced to arrange them

indicate not merely similarity of type, but community of descent--

then how wonderful is the kindred between the Spurge and the Hura--

indeed, between all the members of the Euphorbiaceous group, so

fantastically various in outward form; so abundant, often huge, in

the Tropics, while in our remote northern island their only

representatives are a few weedy Spurges, two Dog's Mercuries--weeds

likewise--and the Box. Wonderful it is if only these last have had

the same parentage--still more if they have had the same parentage,

too, with forms so utterly different from them as the prickly-

stemmed scarlet-flowered Euphorbia common in our hothouses; as the

huge succulent cactus-like Euphorbia of the Canary Islands; as the

gale-like Phyllanthus; the many-formed Crotons, which in the West

Indies alone comprise, according to Griesbach, at least twelve

genera and thirty species; the hemp-like Maniocs, Physic-nuts,

Castor-oils; the scarlet Poinsettia which adorns dinner-tables in

winter; the pretty little pink and yellow Dalechampia, now common in

hothouses; the Manchineel, with its glossy poplar-like leaves; and

this very Hura, with leaves still more like a poplar, and a fruit

which differs from most of its family in having not three but many

divisions, usually a multiple of three up to fifteen; a fruit which

it is difficult to obtain, even where the tree is plentiful: for

hanging at the end of long branches, it bursts when ripe with a

crack like a pistol, scattering its seeds far and wide: from whence

its name of Hura crepitans.

But what if all these forms are the descendants of one original

form? Would that be one whit more wonderful, more inexplicable,

than the theory that they were each and all, with their minute and

often imaginary shades of difference, created separately and at

once? But if it be--which I cannot allow--what can the theologian

say, save that God's works are even more wonderful than we always

believed them to be? As for the theory being impossible: who are

we, that we should limit the power of God? 'Is anything too hard

for the Lord?' asked the prophet of old; and we have a right to ask

it as long as time shall last. If it be said that natural selection

is too simple a cause to produce such fantastic variety: we always

knew that God works by very simple, or seemingly simple, means; that

the universe, as far as we could discern it, was one organisation of

the most simple means; it was wonderful (or ought to have been) in

our eyes, that a shower of rain should make the grass grow, and that

the grass should become flesh, and the flesh food for the thinking

brain of man; it was (or ought to have been) yet more wonderful in

our eyes, that a child should resemble its parents, or even a

butterfly resemble--if not always, still usually--its parents

likewise. Ought God to appear less or more august in our eyes if we

discover that His means are even simpler than we supposed? We hold

Him to be almighty and allwise. Are we to reverence Him less or

more if we find that His might is greater, His wisdom deeper, than

we had ever dreamed? We believed that His care was over all His

works; that His providence watched perpetually over the universe.

We were taught, some of us at least, by Holy Scripture, to believe

that the whole history of the universe was made up of special

providences: if, then, that should be true which Mr. Darwin says--

'It may be metaphorically said that natural selection is daily and

hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the

slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all

that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever

opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in

relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life,'--if this,

I say, were proved to be true, ought God's care, God's providence,

to seem less or more magnificent in our eyes? Of old it was said by

Him without whom nothing is made--'My Father worketh hitherto, and I

work.' Shall we quarrel with physical science, if she gives us

evidence that these words are true? And if it should be proven that

the gigantic Hura and the lowly Spurge sprang from one common

ancestor, what would the orthodox theologian have to say to it,

saving--'I always knew that God was great: and I am not surprised

to find Him greater than I thought Him'?

So much for the giant weed of the Morichal, from which we rode on

and up through rolling country growing lovelier at every step, and

turned out of our way to see wild pine-apples in a sandy spot, or

'Arenal' in a valley beneath. The meeting of the stiff marl and the

fine sand was abrupt, and well marked by the vegetation. On one

side of the ravine the tall fan-leaved Carats marked the rich soil;

on the other, the sand and gravel loving Cocorites appeared at once,

crowding their ostrich plumes together. Most of them were the

common species of the island {202a} in which the pinnae of the

leaves grow in fours and fives, and at different angles from the

leaf-stalk, giving the whole a brushy appearance, which takes off

somewhat from the perfectness of its beauty. But among them we saw-

-for the first and last time in the forest--a few of a far more

beautiful species, {202b} common on the mainland. In it, the pinnae

are set on all at the same distance apart, and all in the same

plane, in opposite sides of the stalk, giving to the whole foliage a

grand simplicity; and producing, when the curving leaf-points toss

in the breeze, that curious appearance, which I mentioned in an

earlier chapter, of green glass wheels with rapidly revolving

spokes. At their feet grew the pine-apples, only in flower or

unripe fruit, so that we could not quench our thirst with them, and

only looked with curiosity at the small wild type of so famous a

plant. But close by, and happily nearly ripe, we found a fair

substitute for pine-apples in the fruit of the Karatas. This form

of Bromelia, closely allied to the Pinguin of which hedges are made,

bears a straggling plume of prickly leaves, six or eight feet long

each, close to the ground. The forester looks for a plant in which

the leaves droop outwards--a sign that the fruit is ripe. After

beating it cautiously (for snakes are very fond of coiling under its

shade) he opens the centre, and finds, close to the ground, a group

of whitish fruits, nearly two inches long; peels carefully off the

skin, which is beset with innumerable sharp hairs, and eats the

sour-sweet refreshing pulp: but not too often, for there are always

hairs enough left to make the tongue bleed if more than one or two

are eaten.

With lips somewhat less parched, we rode away again to see the sight

of the day; and a right pleasant sight it was. These Montserrat

hills had been, within the last three years, almost the most lawless

and neglected part of the island. Principally by the energy and

tact of one man, the wild inhabitants had been conciliated, brought

under law, and made to pay their light taxes, in return for a safety

and comfort enjoyed perhaps by no other peasants on earth.

A few words on the excellent system, which bids fair to establish in

this colony a thriving and loyal peasant proprietary. Up to 1847

Crown lands were seldom alienated. In that year a price was set

upon them, and persons in illegal occupation ordered to petition for

their holdings. Unfortunately, though a time was fixed for

petitioning, no time was fixed for paying; and consequently the vast

majority of petitioners never took any further steps in the matter.

Unfortunately, too, the price fixed--2 pounds per acre--was too

high; and squatting went on much as before.

It appeared to the late Governor that this evil would best be dealt

with experimentally and locally; and he accordingly erected the

chief squatting district, Montserrat, into a ward, giving the warden

large discretionary powers as Commissioner of Crown lands. The

price of Crown lands was reduced, in 1869, to 1 pounds per acre; and

the Montserrat system extended, as far as possible, to other wards;

a movement which the results fully justified.

In 1867 there were in Montserrat 400 squatters, holding lands of

from 3 to 120 acres, planted with cacao, coffee, or provisions.

Some of the cacao plantations were valued at 1000 pounds. These

people lived without paying taxes, and almost without law or

religion. The Crown woods had been, of course, sadly plundered by

squatters, and by others who should have known better. At every

turn magnificent cedars might have been seen levelled by the axe,

only a few feet of the trunk being used to make boards and shingles,

while the greater part was left to rot or burn. These

irregularities have been now almost stopped; and 266 persons, in

Montserrat alone, have taken out grants of land, some of 400 acres.

But this by no means represents the number of purchasers, as nearly

an equal number have paid for their estates, though they have not

yet received their grants, and nearly 500 more have made

application. Two villages have been formed; one of which is that

where we rested, containing the church. The other contains the

warden's residence and office, the police-station, and a numerously

attended school.

The squatters are of many races, and of many hues of black and

brown. The half-breeds from the neighbouring coast of Venezuela, a

mixture, probably, of Spanish, Negro, and Indian, are among the most

industrious; and their cacao plantations, in some cases, hold 8000

to 10,000 trees. The south-west corner of Montserrat {204} is

almost entirely settled by Africans of various tribes--Mandingos,

Foulahs, Homas, Yarribas, Ashantees, and Congos. The last occupy

the lowest position in the social scale. They lead, for the most

part, a semi-barbarous life, dwelling in miserable huts, and

subsisting on the produce of an acre or two of badly cultivated

land, eked out with the pay of an occasional day's labour on some

neighbouring estate. The social position of some of the Yarribas

forms a marked contrast to that of the Congos. They inhabit houses

of cedar, or other substantial materials. Their gardens are, for

the most part, well stocked and kept. They raise crops of yam,

cassava, Indian corn, etc.; and some of them subscribe to a fund on

which they may draw in case of illness or misfortune. They are,

however (as is to be expected from superior intellect while still

uncivilised), more difficult to manage than the Congos, and highly

impatient of control.

These Africans, Mr. Mitchell says, all belong nominally to some

denomination of Christianity; but their lives are more influenced by

their belief in Obeah. While the precepts of religion are little

regarded, they stand in mortal dread of those who practise this

mischievous imposture. Well might the Commissioner say, in 1867,

that several years must elapse before the chaos which reigned could

be reduced to order. The wonder is, that in three years so much has

been done. It was very difficult, at first, even to find the

whereabouts of many of the squatters. The Commissioner had to work

by compass through the pathless forest. Getting little or no food

but cassava cakes and 'guango' of maize, and now and then a little

coffee and salt fish, without time to hunt the game which passed

him, and continually wet through, he stumbled in suddenly on one

squatting after another, to the astonishment of its owner, who could

not conceive how he had been found out, and had never before seen a

white man alone in the forest. Sometimes he was in considerable

danger of a rough reception from people who could not at first

understand what they had to gain by getting legal titles, and buying

the lands the fruit of which they had enjoyed either for nothing, or

for payment of a small annual assessment for the cultivated portion.

In another quarter--Toco--a notoriously lawless squatter had

expressed his intention of shooting the Government official. The

white gentleman walked straight up to the little forest fortress

hidden in bush, and confronted the Negro, who had gun in hand.

'I could have shot you if I had liked, buccra.'

'No, you could not. I should have cut you down first: so don't

play the fool,' answered the official quietly, hand on cutlass.

The wild man gave in; paid his rates; received the Crown title for

his land; and became (as have all these sons of the forest) fast

friends with one whom they have learnt at once to love and fear.

But among the Montserrat hills, the Governor had struck on a spot so

fit for a new settlement, that he determined to found one forthwith.

The quick-eyed Jesuits had founded a mission on the same spot many

years before. But all had lapsed again into forest. A group of

enormous Palmistes stands on a plateau, flat, and yet lofty and

healthy. The soil is exceeding fertile. There are wells and brooks

of pure water all around. The land slopes down for hundreds of feet

in wooded gorges, full of cedar and other admirable timber, with

Palmistes towering over them everywhere. Far away lies the lowland;

and every breeze of heaven sweeps over the crests of the hills. So

one peculiarly tall palm was chosen for a central landmark, an

ornament to the town square such as no capital in Europe can boast.

Traces were cut, streets laid out, lots of Crown lands put up for

sale, and settlers invited in the name of the Government.

Scarcely eighteen months had passed since then, and already there

Mitchell Street, Violin Street, Duboulay Street, Farfan Street, had

each its new houses built of cedar and thatched with palm. Two

Chinese shops had Celestials with pigtails and thick-soled shoes

grinning behind cedar counters, among stores of Bryant's safety

matches, Huntley and Palmers' biscuits, and Allsopp's pale ale. A

church had been built, the shell at least, and partly floored, with

a very simple, but not tasteless, altar; the Abbe had a good house,

with a gallery, jalousies, and white china handles to the doors.

The mighty palm in the centre of Gordon Square had a neat railing

round it, as befitted the Palladium of the village. Behind the

houses, among the stumps of huge trees, maize and cassava, pigeon-

peas and sweet potatoes, fattened in the sun, on ground which till

then had been shrouded by vegetation a hundred feet thick; and as we

sat at the head man's house, with French and English prints upon the

walls, and drank beer from a Chinese shop, and looked out upon the

loyal, thriving little settlement, I envied the two young men who

could say, 'At least, we have not lived in vain; for we have made

this out of the primeval forest.' Then on again. 'We mounted' (I

quote now from the notes of one to whom the existence of the

settlement was due) 'to the crest of the hills, and had a noble view

southwards, looking over the rich mass of dark wood, flecked here

and there with a scarlet stain of Bois Immortelle, to the great sea

of bright green sugar cultivation in the Naparimas, studded by white

works and villages, and backed far off by a hazy line of forest, out

of which rose the peaks of the Moruga Mountains. More to the west

lay San Fernando hill, the calm gulf, and the coast toward La Brea

and Cedros melting into mist. M--- thought we should get a better

view of the northern mountains by riding up to old Nicano's house;

so we went thither, under the cacao rich with yellow and purple

pods. The view was fine: but the northern range, though visible,

was rather too indistinct, and the mainland was not to be seen at

all.'

Nevertheless, the panorama from the top of Montserrat is at once the

most vast, and the most lovely, which I have ever seen. And

whosoever chooses to go and live there may buy any reasonable

quantity of the richest soil at 1 pounds per acre.

Then down off the ridge, toward the northern lowland, lay a headlong

old Indian path, by which we travelled, at last, across a rocky

brook, and into a fresh paradise.

I must be excused for using this word so often: but I use it in the

original Persian sense, as a place in which natural beauty has been

helped by art. An English park or garden would have been called of

old a paradise; and the enceinte of a West Indian house, even in its

present half-wild condition, well deserves the same title. That Art

can help Nature there can be no doubt. 'The perfection of Nature'

exists only in the minds of sentimentalists, and of certain well-

meaning persons, who assert the perfection of Nature when they wish

to controvert science, and deny it when they wish to prove this

earth fallen and accursed. Mr. Nesfield can make landscapes, by

obedience to certain laws which Nature is apt to disregard in the

struggle for existence, more beautiful than they are already by

Nature; and that without introducing foreign forms of vegetation.

But if foreign forms, wisely chosen for their shapes and colours, be

added, the beauty may be indefinitely increased. For the plants

most capable of beautifying any given spot do not always grow

therein, simply because they have not yet arrived there; as may be

seen by comparing any wood planted with Rhododendrons and Azaleas

with the neighbouring wood in its native state. Thus may be

obtained somewhat of that variety and richness which is wanting

everywhere, more or less, in the vegetation of our northern zone,

only just recovering slowly from the destructive catastrophe of the

glacial epoch; a richness which, small as it is, vanishes as we

travel northward, till the drear landscape is sheeted more and more

with monotonous multitudes of heather, grass, fir, or other social

plants.

But even in the Tropics the virgin forest, beautiful as it is, is

without doubt much less beautiful, both in form and colours, than it

might be made. Without doubt, also, a mere clearing, after a few

years, is a more beautiful place than the forest; because by it

distance is given, and you are enabled to see the sky, and the

forest itself beside; because new plants, and some of them very

handsome ones, are introduced by cultivation, or spring up in the

rastrajo; and lastly, but not least, because the forest on the edge

of the clearing is able to feather down to the ground, and change

what is at first a bare tangle of stems and boughs into a softly

rounded bank of verdure and flowers. When, in some future

civilisation, the art which has produced, not merely a Chatsworth or

a Dropmore, but an average English shrubbery or park, is brought to

bear on tropic vegetation, then Nature, always willing to obey when

conquered by fair means, will produce such effects of form and

colour around tropic estates and cities as we cannot fancy for

ourselves.

Mr. Wallace laments (and rightly) the absence in the tropic forests

of such grand masses of colour as are supplied by a heather moor, a

furze or broom-croft, a field of yellow charlock, blue bugloss, or

scarlet poppy. Tropic landscape gardening will supply that defect;

and a hundred plants of yellow Allamanda, or purple Dolichos, or

blue Clitoria, or crimson Norantea, set side by side, as we might

use a hundred Calceolarias or Geraniums, will carry up the forest

walls, and over the tree-tops, not square yards, but I had almost

said square acres of richest positive colour. I can conceive no

limit to the effects--always heightened by the intense sunlight and

the peculiar tenderness of the distances--which landscape gardening

will produce when once it is brought to bear on such material as it

has never yet attempted to touch, at least in the West Indies, save

in the Botanic Garden at Port of Spain.

And thus the little paradise at Tortuga to which we descended to

sleep, though cleared out without any regard to art, was far more

beautiful than the forest out of which it had been hewn three years

before. The two first settlers regretted the days when the house

was a mere palm-thatched hut, where they sat on stumps which would

not balance, and ate potted meat with their pocket knives. But it

had grown now into a grand place, fit to receive ladies: such a

house, or rather shed, as those South Sea Island ones which may be

seen in Hodges' illustrations to Cook's Voyages, save that a couple

of bedrooms have been boarded off at the back, a little office on

one side, and a bulwark, like that of a ship, put round the gallery.

And as we looked down through the purple gorges, and up at the

mountain woods, over which the stars were flashing out blight and

fast, and listened to the soft strange notes of the forest birds

going to roost, again the thought came over me--Why should not

gentlemen and ladies come to such spots as these to live 'the Gentle

Life'?

We slept that night, some in beds, some in hammocks, some on the

floor, with the rich warm night wind rushing down through all the

house; and then were up once more in the darkness of the dawn, to go

down and bathe at a little cascade, where a feeble stream dribbled

under ferns and balisiers over soft square limestone rocks like the

artificial rocks of the Serpentine, and those--copied probably from

the rocks of Fontainebleau--which one sees in old French landscapes.

But a bathe was hardly necessary. So drenched was the vegetation

with night dew, that if one had taken off one's clothes at the

house, and simply walked under the bananas, and through the tanias

and maize which grew among them, one would have been well washed ere

one reached the stream. As it was, the bathers came back with their

clothes wet through. No matter. The sun was up, and half an hour

would dry all again.

One object, on the edge of the forest, was worth noticing, and was

watched long through the glasses; namely, two or three large trees,

from which dangled a multitude of the pendant nests of the Merles:

{209} birds of the size of a jackdaw, brown and yellow, and mocking-

birds, too, of no small ability. The pouches, two feet long and

more, swayed in the breeze, fastened to the end of the boughs with a

few threads. Each had, about half-way down, an opening into the

round sac below, in and out of which the Merles crept and fluttered,

talking all the while in twenty different notes. Most tropic birds

hide their nests carefully in the bush: the Merles hang theirs

fearlessly in the most exposed situations. They find, I presume,

that they are protected enough from monkeys, wild cats, and gato-

melaos (a sort of ferret) by being hung at the extremity of the

bough. So thinks M. Leotaud, the accomplished describer of the

birds of Trinidad. But he adds with good reason: 'I do not,

however, understand how birds can protect their nestlings against

ants; for so large is the number of these insects in our climes,

that it would seem as if everything would become their prey.'

And so everything will, unless the bird murder be stopped. Already

the parasol-ants have formed a warren close to Port of Spain, in

what was forty years ago highly cultivated ground, from which they

devastate at night the northern gardens. The forests seem as empty

of birds as the neighbourhood of the city; and a sad answer will

soon have to be given to M. Leotaud's question:--

'The insectivorous tribes are the true representatives of our

ornithology. There are so many which feed on insects and their

larvae, that it may be asked with much reason, What would become of

our vegetation, of ourselves, should these insect destroyers

disappear? Everywhere may be seen' (M. L. speaks, I presume, of

five-and-twenty years ago: my experience would make me substitute

for his words, 'Hardly anywhere can be seen') 'one of these

insectivora in pursuit or seizure of its prey, either on the wing or

on the trunks of trees, in the coverts of thickets or in the calices

of flowers. Whenever called to witness one of those frequent

migrations from one point to another, so often practised by ants,

not only can the Dendrocolaptes (connected with our Creepers) be

seen following the moving trail, and preying on the ants and the

eggs themselves, but even the black Tanager abandons his usual

fruits for this more tempting delicacy. Our frugivorous and

baccivorous genera are also pretty numerous, and most of them are so

fond of insect food that they unite, as occasion offers, with the

insectivorous tribes.'

So it was once. Now a traveller, accustomed to the swarms of birds

which, not counting the game, inhabit an average English cover,

would be surprised and pained by the scarcity of birds in the

forests of this island.

We rode down toward the northern lowland, along a broad new road of

last year's making, terraced, with great labour, along the hill, and

stopped to visit one of those excellent Government schools which do

honour, first to that wise legislator, Lord Harris, and next to the

late Governor. Here, in the depths of the forest, where never

policeman or schoolmaster had been before, was a house of satin-wood

and cedar not two years old, used at once as police-station and

school, with a shrewd Spanish-speaking schoolmaster, and fifty-two

decent little brown children on the school-books, and getting, when

their lazy parents will send them, as good an education as they

would get in England. I shall have more to say on the education

system of Trinidad. All it seems to me to want, with its late

modifications, is compulsory attendance.

Soon turning down an old Indian path, we saw the Gulf once more, and

between us and it the sheet of cane cultivation, of which one estate

ran up to our feet, 'like a bright green bay entered by a narrow

strait among the dark forest.' Just before we came to it we passed

another pleasant sight: more Coolie settlers, who had had lands

granted them in lieu of the return passage to which they were

entitled, were all busily felling wood, putting up bamboo and palm-

leaf cabins, and settling themselves down, each one his own master,

yet near enough to the sugar-estates below to get remunerative work

whenever needful.

Then on, over slow miles (you must not trot beneath the burning mid-

day sun) of sandy stifling flat, between high canes, till we saw

with joy, through long vistas of straight traces, the mangrove

shrubbery which marked the sea. We turned into large sugar-works,

to be cooled with sherry and ice by a hospitable manager, whose

rooms were hung with good prints, and stored with good books and

knick-knacks from Europe, showing the signs of a lady's hand. And

here our party broke up. The rest carried their mud back to Port of

Spain; I in the opposite direction back to San Fernando, down a

little creek which served as a port to the estate.

Plastered up to the middle like the rest of the party, besides

splashes over face and hat, I could get no dirtier than I was

already. I got without compunction into a canoe some three feet

wide; and was shoved by three Negroes down a long winding ditch of

mingled mud, water, and mangrove-roots. To keep one's self and

one's luggage from falling out during the journey was no easy

matter; at one moment, indeed, it threatened to become impossible.

For where the mangroves opened on the sea, the creek itself turned

sharply northward along shore, leaving (as usual) a bed of mud

between it and the sea some quarter of a mile broad; across which we

had to pass as a short cut to the boat, which lay far out. The

difficulty was, of course, to get the canoe out of the creek up the

steep mud-bank. To that end she was turned on her side, with me on

board. I could just manage, by jamming my luggage under my knees,

and myself against the two gunwales, to keep in, holding on chiefly

by my heels and the back of my neck. But it befell, that in the

very agony of the steepest slope, when the Negroes (who worked like

really good fellows) were nigh waist-deep in mud, my eye fell, for

the first time in my life, on a party of Calling Crabs, who had been

down to the water to fish, and were now scuttling up to their

burrows among the mangrove-roots; and at the sight of the pairs of

long-stalked eyes, standing upright like a pair of opera-glasses,

and the long single arms which each brandished, with frightful

menaces, as of infuriated Nelsons, I burst into such a fit of

laughter that I nearly fell out into the mud. The Negroes thought

for the instant that the 'buccra parson' had gone mad: but when I

pointed with my head (I dare not move a finger) to the crabs, off

they went in a true Negro guffaw, which, when once begun, goes on

and on, like thunder echoing round the mountains, and can no more

stop itself than a Blackcap's song. So all the way across the mud

the jolly fellows, working meanwhile like horses, laughed for the

mere pleasure of laughing; and when we got to the boat the Negro in

charge of her saw us laughing, and laughed too for company, without

waiting to hear the joke; and as two of them took the canoe home, we

could hear them laughing still in the distance, till the lonely

loathsome place rang again. I plead guilty to having given the men,

as payment, not only for their work but for their jollity, just

twice what they asked, which, after all, was very little.

But what are Calling Crabs? I must ask the reader to conceive a

moderate-sized crab, the front of whose carapace is very broad and

almost straight, with a channel along it, in which lie, right and

left, his two eyes, each on a footstalk half as long as the breadth

of his body; so that the crab, when at rest, carries his eyes as

epaulettes, and peeps out at the joint of each shoulder. But when

business is to be done, the eye-stalks jump bolt upright side by

side, like a pair of little lighthouses, and survey the field of

battle in a fashion utterly ludicrous. Moreover, as if he were not

ridiculous enough even thus, he is (as Mr. Wood well puts it) like a

small man gifted with one arm of Hercules, and another of Tom Thumb.

One of his claw arms, generally the left, has dwindled to a mere

nothing, and is not seen; while along the whole front of his shell

lies folded one mighty right arm, on which he trusts; and with that

arm, when danger appears, he beckons the enemy to come on, with such

wild defiance, that he has gained therefrom the name of Gelasimus

Vocans ('The Calling Laughable'); and it were well if all scientific

names were as well fitted. He is, as might be guessed, a shrewd

fighter, and uses the true old 'Bristol guard' in boxing, holding

his long arm across his body, and fencing and biting therewith

swiftly and sharply enough. Moreover, he is a respectable animal,

and has a wife, and takes care of her; and to see him in his glory,

it is said, he should be watched sitting in the mouth of his

'burrow, his spouse packed safe behind him inside, while he beckons

and brandishes, proclaiming to all passers-by the treasure which he

protects, while he defies them to touch it.

Such is the 'Calling Crab,' of whom I must say, that if he was not

made on purpose to be laughed at, then I should be induced to

suspect that nothing was made for any purpose whatsoever.

After which sight, and weary of waiting, not without some fear that-

-as the Negroes would have put it--'If I tap da wan momant ma, I

catch da confection,' while, of course, a bucket or two of hot water

was emptied on us out of a passing cloud, I got on board the

steamer, and away to San Fernando, to wash away dirt and forget

fatigue, amid the hospitality of educated and high-minded men, and

of even more charming women.