ST. KITTS AND THE GORGEOUS ISLE
Despite all their interest, neither Statia nor Saba held aught that
linked them with the buccaneers,—indeed, I doubt if these adventurers
ever visited either,—and so, dipping our colors to old Fort Orange in
memory of the salute the ancient guns gave the Andrew Doria, we bore on
to Basseterre, the port and capital of St. Kitts.
To one who has seen only the more northern islands, St. Kitts is a
revelation,—a fascinating sight,—and even after one has viewed the more
southerly isles with their overpowering grandeur of mile-high mountains
and wondrous forests, St. Kitts still holds its own, for it possesses
charms unlike those of any other of the Caribbees.
From the cloud-draped summit of Mount Misery—dark and sinister, four
thousand feet above the sea—to the beaches rimmed with creaming foam,
St. Kitts is a glorious mass of green,—green of a thousand shades and
tints, from that of ripening cane to that of the deep, shadowy ravines
of its mountain forests. Upward from the sandy beaches and rugged
bluffs sweep the broad cane-fields, undulating over hill and dale and
reminding one so strongly of the downs of Sussex that one no longer
marvels that the homesick English settlers, weary of the long and
tedious voyage, gazed with brimming eyes upon this smiling, sun-bright
isle. Vividly, tenderly green are the fields of young canes, golden or
russet the others, sienna-red the plowed acres between, but all are
drenched with tropic sunshine, and all, from a distance, seem as well
tended and as regularly laid out as a great garden.
And everywhere are the palms. As far as eye can see, the swaying
coco-palms line the shores above the tumbling surf. Against the sky the
plume-topped cabbage-palms show their sharp silhouettes above the
lesser trees upon the mountain sides. For miles along the winding,
perfect roads the towering royal palms form avenues of great columnar
trunks and drooping, feathery fronds. They cluster above the lowly
negro huts or shade the great plantation homes without discrimination
and with equal beauty, and they nod like giant feather dusters above
the roof-tops of the town.
Massive, majestic, and mountainous is the northern portion of St.
Kitts, and it takes no very vivid imagination to see in towering Mount
Misery the likeness of St. Christopher bearing the infant Jesus on his
shoulder which caused Columbus to name the island after his own patron
saint. But to the south the mountains with their dense, forest-clad
slopes give way to hills covered with endless acres of cane, until at
Basseterre the island is almost flat, and only isolated rounded Monkey
Hill breaks the rolling, down-like land.
Basseterre is a fittingly pretty town for this lovely island, with its
red roofs and its pastel-tinted houses shaded by palms above the
wonderfully colored sea, on whose calm surface ride gaily painted
sloops and schooners and bevies of rowboats of every color of the
rainbow.
But it must be admitted that there is very little of interest here.
There is a fairly attractive public garden; flowering shrubs and trees
are everywhere; there are pretty embowered residences, and the people
are friendly and hospitable. But there is nothing distinctive about the
place: it might be any one of a score of dolce-far-niente tropical
towns, and it is by no means either prosperous or over-clean. Time was
when St. Kitts was a well-to-do island; its planters lived like princes
or feudal lords, fleets of ships rode to anchor in its harbor, and
thousands of toiling blacks planted and cultivated and garnered the
golden canes which sent a steady flow of molasses and sugar from the
isle and brought an equally steady flow of golden sovereigns back to
the Kittefonians’ pockets. But the omnipresent and lowly beet spelled
St. Kitts’s doom, as it spelled the doom of many another
sugar-producing land, and though the island is by no means
poverty-stricken, and during the late war became prosperous for a time,
the golden days of the past will never return.
Efforts have been made to win back prosperity with sea-island cotton,
citrous fruits, and other tropical products; but it is a hard matter
indeed to wean a sugar-planter from canes; and even those who have
taken up the cultivation of other things have not been over-successful.
As a winter resort, St. Kitts is delightful, for it boasts a good
climate and a healthful one; its scenery is magnificent; it possesses
splendid motor-roads that completely encircle the island; it offers
excellent fishing and hunting, plenty of outdoor sports, and an active
volcano, Mount Misery, with a wonderful climb through the virgin
tropical forests to its crater.
The island has, like its fellows, had a checkered career, but it can
boast of being the first of the British West Indies to be settled by
the English, who established themselves here in 1623. However, they did
not succeed in holding it in undisputed possession, and what with the
Caribs, the pirates, and the French, those earlier colonists had a
mighty hard time of it. More than once St. Kitts came wholly under the
sway of France. At other times the two nations buried the hatchet
temporarily, and while the English confined themselves to the northern
half of the isle, with their headquarters at Sandy Point, the French
were content with the other half, with Basseterre as their port; yet
there was constant friction, and not until 1782 was St. Kitts
definitely turned over to the British.
Except in the name of the capital, there are few if any traces of
French occupancy, but at Brimstone Hill, close to Sandy Point, are the
massive ruins of extensive fortifications built by the British. Here,
on an isolated, precipitous mass of rock, for all the world like a
young mountain gone astray, is a solid mass of loopholed and
battlemented masonry completely covering every available portion of the
eight-hundred-foot hill. It is an impressive and redoubtable
fortification, well-nigh impregnable in the days of muzzle-loading
cannon and black powder, and complete with sally-ports, moats, and
drawbridges. But it is quite deserted and useless, the abode of
countless monkeys—descendants of apes brought from Gibraltar as pets,
by the garrison—which are eagerly hunted and esteemed by the
Kittefonians as a great delicacy.
Looking upon this stupendous work of defense, one marvels that any
enemy ever dared attack or even approach St. Kitts, but, to tell the
truth, it never saw battle, for it was not built until 1793, ten years
after France and England ceased quarreling over the island and its
neighbors, and all too late to be of any value whatsoever to its
builders.
As an imposing ruin it is well worth a visit, but its historical
attractions are nil. Indeed, St. Kitts seems strangely lacking in
anything connecting its present with its rather turbulent and not at
all bloodless past. I do not think there is even the customary tale of
buried treasure on the island; at least I have never heard one. The
people do not claim to have found pirates’ hoards in their cane-fields
or caverns; and they do not even associate the name of any great pirate
chieftain with their delightful home.
Nevertheless, St. Kitts was at one time a resort of pirates—or, rather,
buccaneers—who were attacked by the Spaniards in 1629 and driven from
the island. Many of these, of French blood, made their way to Tortuga,
off the coast of Haiti, and there formed the nucleus of that famous
headquarters of the Brethren of the Main. As far as records go there is
nothing to show that the freebooters ever returned in large numbers or
for an extended stay, and, according to a most interesting document
which I was so fortunate as to acquire in St. Kitts, when they did
appear they were met with so warm a welcome that it is not at all
surprising they gave the lovely island a wide berth.
The faded and crumpled bit of worm-eaten parchment, which I value even
more than the ancient coins so opportunely acquired at Anegada, is a
fragment of the court records of St. Kitts in the good old days, and
its scarcely legible writing relates the following:
An assize and generall Gaole delivrie held at St. Christophers
Colonie from ye nineteenthe daye of Maye to ye 22n. daye off ye
same Monthe 1701 Captaine Josias Pendringhame Magustrate &C. The
Jurye of our Soveraigne Lord the Kinge Doe presente Antonio Mendoza
of Hispaniola and a subjecte of ye Kinge of Spain for that ye said
on or about ye 11 Daye of Apryl 1701 feloneousely delibyrately and
malliciousley and encontrarye to ye laws off Almightie God and our
Soveraigne Lord the Kinge did in his cuppes saucely and arrogantyly
speak of the Governour and our Lord the Kinge and bye force and
armes into ye tavernne of John Wilkes Esq. did entre and there did
Horrible sware and cursse and did felonoslye use theattenninge
words and did strike and cutte most murtherouslye severalle
subjects of our Soveraigne Lord the Kinge. Of w’h Indictment he
pleadeth not Guiltie butte onne presente Master Samuel Dunscombe
mariner did sware that said Antonio Mendoza was of his knowenge a
Bloodthirste piratte and Guiltie of diabolicalle practises & ye
Grande Inquest findinge yt a trewe bill to be tryd by God and ye
Countrye w’h beinge a Jurie of 12 men sworne finde him Guiltie &
for the same he be adjuged to be carryd to ye Fort Prison to haave
both his earres cutt close by his head and be burnet throughe ye
tongee with an Hot iron and to be caste chained in ye Dungon to
awaitte ye plesyure of God and Our Soveraigne Lord the Kinge.
We cannot but pity the luckless Spaniard who under the spell of
Kittefonian rum, or possibly palm toddy, did “Horrible sware and
cursse” and who may very likely have been quite innocent of any
piratical or “diabolicalle” past, for the British had no love for the
Dons and even when nominally at peace with Spain thought little of
putting an end to any subject of the Spanish king who came their way.
No doubt the very fact that the prisoner was a Spaniard was his
undoing; and that worthy mariner Samuel Dunscombe probably perjured
himself for the satisfaction of seeing a Don tortured. At any rate, it
seems as though having both ears “cutt close” and having one’s “tongee”
perforated with a red-hot iron was pretty severe punishment for the
alleged crimes. But it only goes to prove how times have changed, and
how little we can judge, by present-day standards, of what in those
days was cruelty or inhumanity.
Also in St. Kitts, though on another visit, I came into possession of
an equally interesting souvenir of olden times—a remarkable little
volume bearing the rather cumbersome title of: “The True Travels,
Adventures and Observations of Captain John Smith, in Europe, Asia,
Africa and America from Anno Domini 1593 to 1629; his accidents and sea
fights in the straits; his service and stratagems of war in Hungaria,
Transylvania, Wallachi, and Moldavia, against the Turks and Tartars;
his description of the Tartars, their strange manners and customs of
religions, diets, buildings, wars, feasts, ceremonies, and living; how
he slew the Bashaw of Malbritz in Cambria, and escaped from the Turks
and the Tartars; together with a continuation of his General History of
Virginia, Summer Isles, New England and their proceedings since 1624 to
this present 1629, published in Anno Domini 1630.”
From all of which it will be gathered that our hero of Pocahontas fame
was an adventurer of many parts in divers lands, and that his
activities in Virginia were but minor incidents in his romantic career.
In fact, for a space, Smith was something of a pirate himself, judged
by our standards at least, and his accounts of sea battles and prizes
taken are fascinatingly quaint. Of St. Kitts, too, he has much to say,
and he gives us more of an insight into the troubles and tribulations
of the first settlers on this “fayre islant” than any other writer.
Aside from raids by the man-eating Caribs, being harassed by pirates,
and constant quarrels with the French, the early English settlers seem
to have had a most unfortunate experience with hurricanes, which Smith
naïvely explains are “overgrowne and most monstrous stormes.” Indeed,
the very year of its settlement by the English, 1623, a hurricane swept
the island and wiped out the settlers’ gardens, their tobacco-fields,
their houses, and their fort. Hardly had they recovered from this when,
in September, 1625, another hurricane hurled itself upon the island.
This was even worse than its predecessor of two years before, and Smith
states that, in addition to blowing down all the houses, the tobacco,
and “two drums into the air we know not wither,” it also “drove two
ships on shore, that were both split.” He adds: “All our provisions
thus lost we were very miserable, living only on what we could get in
the wild woods.... Thus we continued till near June that the Tortels
came in, 1627.” Six months later the colonists were once more made
homeless through a hurricane, and until the end of the narrative
hurricane followed hurricane. [5]
To-day, however, St. Kitts is by no means noted for its “overgrowne
stormes,” which may be of interest meteorologically as tending to show
that hurricanes are not so frequent in the Antilles as formerly and
may, in centuries to come, cease altogether.
Another interesting fact brought out by Smith is that St. Kitts was
largely populated by malefactors and convicts bought at so much a head
from British prisons, shipped to the West Indies like cattle, in the
stinking holds of small ships, and auctioned off as slaves among the
planters. When we stop to think of such things, of the unspeakable
atrocities practised by the masters or owners of these unfortunates
upon their own countrymen (whom they branded with red-hot irons and
mutilated or tortured on the least provocation), to say nothing of
compelling white men, women, and children to labor half naked from
sunrise to sunset in the cane- and tobacco-fields, under a broiling sun
and urged on by the cruel lash, the buccaneers seem tender-hearted
gentlemen by comparison.
South of this emerald isle, plainly visible from Basseterre and
separated from St. Kitts merely by a narrow strait, lies Nevis. In a
gigantic, absolutely symmetrical cone of green the massive volcano of
Nevis rises against the sky, its brow crowned with a perpetual diadem
of drifting fleecy clouds and at its feet the undulating green fields
sloping to the sea.
Once the Mecca of the wealth and fashion of Europe and the Antilles,
the world’s most famous watering-place, a spot so thronged with
notables, so gay with great balls, state receptions, and palatial
gambling-resorts, so ablaze with silks, satins, and jewels, so flooded
with gold and riches that it became known as “The Gorgeous Isle,” Nevis
to-day is almost as dead as its volcano’s crater. And yet it is as
charming, its climate is as salubrious, its thermal springs and mineral
waters as life-giving, its fields and forests as alluring as in those
days when its harbor was thronged with stately ships and its streets
and hostelries rang to the song and laughter of satin-clad, bewigged
gentlemen, and ladies with powdered hair; and liveried negro
link-bearers lit the way for sedan-chairs ablaze with gilded scrolls
and cupids. But the vast estates, the palatial mansions, the great
Bath-House, and the marvelously appointed casinos are but
memories—crumbling ruins forlorn and overgrown. Nevis is but a ghost of
the “Gorgeous Isle” of the eighteenth century, though a very beautiful
ghost.
Aside from its one-time fame as a spa, Nevis is mainly noted as the
birthplace of Alexander Hamilton and the place where Admiral Lord
Nelson was married. The house wherein our statesman was born still
stands on a hill near the town, though in a badly ruined state, and in
the ancient but well-preserved “Fig Tree Church” there is still the
thumbed and faded marriage register wherein one may read, under the
entries for the year 1787: “March 11, Horatio Nelson Esq., Captain of
H. M. S. Boreas, to Frances Herbert Nisbet, widow.” What a
matter-of-fact record of the mighty, one-armed old sea-fighter’s love
romance!
But to my mind the most interesting thing in Nevis is the submerged
ancient capital of Jamestown, which in 1680 was destroyed by a severe
earthquake. Then, as though Nature wished to hide the ruin she had
wrought, the town with its tumble-down buildings, many of its
inhabitants, and—so it is said—vast wealth, sank bodily below the sea.
To-day, in calm weather, one may gaze downward through the
crystal-clear water and trace the faint outlines of coral-incrusted
walls of buildings that mark the resting-place of the drowned city.
History, unfortunately, has little information to give us concerning
Jamestown and its destruction, or of the events of that awful day. One
of the few survivors was a noted freebooter, a Captain
Greaves,—otherwise known as “Red Legs,”—who, having seen the error of
his ways, had abandoned his piratical career and had settled down in
Nevis to a life of peace in the guise of a well-to-do planter. But the
reformed pirate, being recognized and denounced by a former victim, was
arrested and cast into an underground dungeon, only to be miraculously
saved by the earthquake, which destroyed his prison and heaved him up
quite unharmed. Finding himself floating upon the sea with the remains
of the town fathoms deep beneath him, the ex-pirate clung to a piece of
wreckage, and after numerous adventures safely reached another island,
where he once more essayed a respectable existence, and lived and died
a highly honored citizen.
This was but one incident in the romantic career of Greaves, or “Red
Legs,”—which is a far more appropriate name for a freebooter,—who was a
unique and fascinating character. Sold as a slave in Barbados, as were
thousands of Scotch and Irish prisoners taken in the days of Cromwell,
Greaves, in an effort to escape from a cruel master, sought refuge on a
Dutch ship in the harbor. By some mischance, he swam in the darkness to
the wrong vessel and found himself upon a pirate craft. Fate having
thus taken a hand in shaping his destiny, the erstwhile slave boy took
to the buccaneers’ life as a duck takes to water. As all his
unfortunate fellows were known in the islands as “red legs,”—as their
descendants are to-day,—this new recruit of the pirates at once
received the nickname, which stuck to him through all his years of
buccaneering. While he was famous for his reckless daring, his almost
uncanny luck in piratical undertakings, yet he was never dreaded as
were many of his fellows. For Red Legs, despite his handicap, was a
gallant and chivalrous gentleman at heart, and though he scuttled ships
and sacked towns without end, yet he earned the reputation of never
harming women or putting prisoners to death or torture. He was, in
fact, that incredible paradox, a moral pirate, and in his declining
years he devoted large sums—whether honestly earned from his plantation
or loot from his piratical ventures is unknown—to charity and churches.
The island of Nevis can boast of association with one other pirate, who
in a way was even more remarkable than Red Legs and accomplished the
most noteworthy feat in all the annals of buccaneering. This was no
less a personage than Bartholomew Sharp, who, after what was probably
the greatest adventure experienced by any of those most adventurous men
the buccaneers, sailed into Nevis, back in 1682, and, having decided to
abandon the sea and rest on his laurels, departed thence to England.