BARBADOS.
Barbados is a very respectable little island, and it makes a great
deal of sugar. It is not picturesquely beautiful, as are almost
all the other Antilles, and therefore has but few attractions for
strangers.
But this very absence of scenic beauty has saved it from the fate of
its neighbours. A country that is broken into landscapes, that boasts
of its mountains, woods, and waterfalls, that is regarded for its
wild loveliness, is seldom propitious to agriculture. A portion of
the surface in all such regions defies the improving farmer. But,
beyond this, such ground under the tropics offers every inducement to
the negro squatter. In Jamaica, Dominica, St. Lucia, and Grenada, the
negro, when emancipated, could squat and make himself happy; but in
Barbados there was not an inch for him.
When emancipation came there was no squatting ground for the poor
Barbadian. He had still to work and make sugar--work quite as hard
as he had done while yet a slave. He had to do that or to starve.
Consequently, labour has been abundant in this island, and in this
island only; and in all the West Indian troubles it has kept its
head above water, and made sugar respectably--not, indeed, showing
much sugar genius, or going ahead in the way of improvements, but
paying twenty shillings in the pound, supporting itself, and earning
its bread decently by the sweat of its brow. The pity is that the
Barbadians themselves should think so much of their own achievements.
The story runs, that when Europe was convulsed by revolutions and
wars--when continental sovereigns were flying hither and thither, and
there was so strong a rumour that Napoleon was going to eat us--the
great Napoleon I mean--that then, I say, the Barbadians sent word
over to poor King George the Third, bidding him fear nothing. If
England could not protect him, Barbados would. Let him come to them,
if things looked really blue on his side of the channel It was a
fine, spirited message, but perhaps a little self glorious. That,
I should say, is the character of the island in general.
As to its appearance, it is, as I have said, totally different from
any of the other islands, and to an English eye much less attractive
in its character. But for the heat its appearance would not strike
with any surprise an Englishman accustomed to an ordinary but ugly
agricultural country. It has not the thick tropical foliage which is
so abundant in the other islands, nor the wild, grassy dells. Happily
for the Barbadians every inch of it will produce canes; and, to the
credit of the Barbadians, every inch of it does so. A Barbadian
has a right to be proud of this, but it does not make the island
interesting. It is the waste land of the world that makes it
picturesque. But there is not a rood of waste land in Barbados. It
certainly is not the country for a gipsy immigration. Indeed, I doubt
whether there is even room for a picnic.
The island is something over twenty miles long, and something over
twelve broad. The roads are excellent, but so white that they sadly
hurt the eye of a stranger. The authorities have been very particular
about their milestones, and the inhabitants talk much about their
journeys. I found myself constantly being impressed with ideas of
distance, till I was impelled to suggest a rather extended system of
railroads--a proposition which was taken in very good part. I was
informed that the population was larger than that of China, but my
informant of course meant by the square foot. He could hardly have
counted by the square mile in Barbados.
And thus I was irresistibly made to think of the frog that would blow
itself out and look as large as an ox.
Bridgetown, the metropolis of the island, is much like a second or
third rate English town. It has none of the general peculiarities of
the West Indies, except the heat. The streets are narrow, irregular,
and crooked, so that at first a stranger is apt to miss his way.
They all, however, converge at Trafalgar Square, a spot which, in
Barbados, is presumed to compete with the open space at Charing Cross
bearing the same name. They have this resemblance, that each contains
a statue of Nelson. The Barbadian Trafalgar Square contains also a
tree, which is more than can be said for its namesake. It can make
also this boast, that no attempt has been made within it which has
failed so grievously as our picture gallery. In saying this, however,
I speak of the building only--by no means of the pictures.
There are good shops in Bridgetown--good, respectable, well-to-do
shops, that sell everything, from a candle down to a coffin,
including wedding-rings, corals, and widows' caps. But they are hot,
fusty, crowded places, as are such places in third-rate English
towns. But then the question of heat here is of such vital moment! A
purchase of a pair of gloves in Barbados drives one at once into the
ice-house.
And here it may be well to explain this very peculiar, delightful,
but too dangerous West Indian institution. By-the-by, I do not know
that there was any ice-house in Kingston, Jamaica. If there be one
there, my friends were peculiarly backward, for I certainly was not
made acquainted with it. But everywhere else--at Demerara, Trinidad,
Barbados, and St. Thomas--I was duly introduced to the ice-house.
There is something cool and mild in the name, which makes one fancy
that ladies would delight to frequent it. But, alas! a West Indian
ice house is but a drinking-shop--a place where one goes to liquor,
as the Americans call it, without the knowledge of the feminine
creation. It is a drinking-shop, at which the draughts are all cool,
are all iced, but at which, alas! they are also all strong. The
brandy, I fear, is as essential as the ice. A man may, it is true,
drink iced soda-water without any concomitant, or he may simply
have a few drops of raspberry vinegar to flavour it. No doubt many
an easy-tempered wife so imagines. But if so, I fear that they
are deceived. Now the ice-house in Bridgetown seemed to me to be
peculiarly well attended. I look upon this as the effect of the white
streets and the fusty shops.
Barbados claims, I believe--but then it claims everything--to have a
lower thermometer than any other West Indian island--to be, in fact,
cooler than any of her sisters. As far as the thermometer goes, it
may be possible; but as regards the human body, it is not the fact.
Let any man walk from his hotel to morning church and back, and then
judge.
There is a mystery about hotels in the British West Indies. They
are always kept by fat, middle-aged coloured ladies, who have no
husbands. I never found an exception except at Berbice, where my
friend Paris Brittain keeps open doors in the city of the sleepers.
These ladies are generally called Miss So-and-So; Miss Jenny This,
or Miss Jessy That; but they invariably seemed to have a knowledge
of the world, especially of the male hotel-frequenting world, hardly
compatible with a retiring maiden state of life. I only mention this.
I cannot solve the riddle. "Davus sum, non Oedipus." But it did
strike me as singular that the profession should always be in the
hands of these ladies, and that they should never get husbands.
As a rule, there is not much to be said against these hotels, though
they will not come up to the ideas of a traveller who has been used
to the inns of Switzerland. The table is always plentifully supplied,
and the viands generally good. Of that at Barbados I can make no
complaint, except this; that the people over the way kept a gray
parrot which never ceased screaming day or night. I was deep in my
Jamaica theory of races, and this wretched bird nearly drove me wild.
"Can anything be done to stop it, James?"
"No, massa."
"Nothing? Wouldn't they hang a cloth over it for a shilling?"
"No, massa; him only make him scream de more to speak to him."
I took this as final, though whether the "him" was the man or the
parrot, I did not know. But such a bird I never heard before, and
the street was no more than twelve feet broad. He was, in fact,
just under my window. Thrice had I to put aside my theory of races.
Otherwise than on this score, Miss Caroline Lee's hotel at Barbados
is very fair. And as for hot pickles--she is the very queen of them.
Whether or no my informant was right in saying that the population
of Barbados is more dense than that of China, I cannot say; but
undoubtedly it is very great; and hence, as the negroes cannot get
their living without working, has come the prosperity of the island.
The inhabitants are, I believe, very nearly 150,000 in number.
This is a greater population than that of the whole of Guiana. The
consequence is, that the cane-pieces are cultivated very closely, and
that all is done that manual labour can do.
The negroes here differ much, I think, from those in the other
islands, not only in manner, but even in form and physiognomy.
They are of heavier build, broader in the face, and higher in the
forehead. They are also certainly less good-humoured, and more
inclined to insolence; so that if anything be gained in intelligence
it is lost in conduct. On the whole, I do think that the Barbados
negroes are more intelligent than others that I have met. It is
probable that this may come from more continual occupation.
But if the black people differ from their brethren of the other
islands, so certainly do the white people. One soon learns to know
a--Bim. That is the name in which they themselves delight, and
therefore, though there is a sound of slang about it, I give it
here. One certainly soon learns to know a Bim. The most peculiar
distinction is in his voice. There is always a nasal twang about it,
but quite distinct from the nasality of a Yankee. The Yankee's word
rings sharp through his nose; not so that of the first-class Bim.
There is a soft drawl about it, and the sound is seldom completely
formed. The effect on the ear is the same as that on the hand when a
man gives you his to shake, and instead of shaking yours, holds his
own still. When a man does so to me I always wish to kick him.
I had never any wish to kick the Barbadian, more especially as they
are all stout men; but I cannot but think that if he were well shaken
a more perfect ring would come out of him.
The Bims, as I have said, are generally stout fellows. As a rule they
are larger and fairer than other West Indian Creoles, less delicate
in their limbs, and more clumsy in their gait. The male graces are
not much studied in Barbados. But it is not only by their form or
voice that you may know them--not only by the voice, but by the
words. No people ever praised themselves so constantly; no set of
men were ever so assured that they and their occupations are the
main pegs on which the world hangs. Their general law to men would
be this: "Thou shalt make sugar in the sweat of thy brow, and make
it as it is made in Barbados." Any deviation from that law would be
a deviation from the highest duty of man.
Of many of his sister colonies a Barbadian can speak with temper.
When Jamaica is mentioned philanthropic compassion lights up his
face, and he tells you how much he feels for the poor wretches there
who call themselves planters. St. Lucia also he pities, and Grenada;
and of St. Vincent he has some hope. Their little efforts he says are
praiseworthy; only, alas! they are so little! He does not think much
of Antigua; and turns up his nose at Nevis and St. Kitts, which in a
small way are doing a fair stroke of business. The French islands he
does not love, but that is probably patriotism: as the French islands
are successful sugar growers such patriotism is natural. But do not
speak to him of Trinadad; that subject is very sore. And as for
Guiana--! One knows what to expect if one holds a red rag up to a
bull. Praise Guiana sugar-making in Bridgetown, and you will be
holding up a red rag to a dozen bulls, no one of which will refuse
the challenge. And thus you may always know a Bim.
When I have met four or five together, I have not dared to try this
experiment, for they are wrathy men, and have rough sides to their
tongues; but I have so encountered two at a time.
"Yes," I have said; "the superiority of Barbados cannot be doubted.
We all grant that. But which colony is second in the race?"
"It is impossible to say," said A. "They are none of them well
circumstanced."
"None of them have got any labour," said B.
"They can't make returns," said A.
"Just look at their clearances," said B; "and then look at ours."
"Jamaica sugar is paying now," I remarked.
"Jamaica, sir, has been destroyed root and branch," said A, well
pleased; for they delight to talk of Jamaica. "And no one can lament
it more than I do," said B. "Jamaica is a fine island, only utterly
ruined."
"Magnificent! such scenery!" I replied.
"But it can't make sugar," said B.
"What of Trinidad?" I asked.
"Trinidad, sir, is a fine wild island; and perhaps some day we may
get our coal there."
"But Demerara makes a little sugar," I ventured to remark.
"It makes deuced little money, I know," said A.
"Every inch of it is mortgaged," said B.
"But their steam-engines," said I.
"Look at their clearances," said A.
"They have none," said B.
"At any rate, they have got beyond windmills," I remarked, with
considerable courage.
"Because they have got no wind," said A.
"A low bank of mud below the sea-level," said B.
"But a fine country for sugar," said I.
"They don't know what sugar is," said A.
"Look at their vacuum pans," said I.
"All my eye," said B.
"And their filtering-bags," said I.
"Filtering-bags be d----," said A.
"Centrifugal machines," said I, now nearly exhausted.
"We've tried them, and abandoned them long ago," said B, only now
coming well on to the fight.
"Their sugar is nearly white," said I; "and yours is a dirty brown."
"Their sugar don't pay," said A, "and ours does."
"Look at the price of our land," said B.
"Yes, and the extent of it," said I.
"Our clearances, sir! The clearances, sir, are the thing," said A.
"The year's income," said B.
"A hogshead to the acre," said I; "and that only got from guano."
This was my last shot at them. They both came at me open-mouthed
together, and I confess that I retired, vanquished, from the field.
It is certainly the fact that they do make their sugar in a very
old-fashioned way in Barbados, using wind-mills instead of steam, and
that you see less here of the improved machinery for the manufacture
than in Demerara, or Cuba, or Trinidad, or even in Jamaica. The great
answer given to objections is that the old system pays best. It may
perhaps do so for the present moment, though I should doubt even
that. But I am certain that it cannot continue to do so. No trade,
and no agriculture can afford to dispense with the improvements of
science.
I found some here who acknowledged that the mere produce of the cane
from the land had been pressed too far by means of guano. A great
crop is thus procured, but it appears that the soil is injured, and
that the sugar is injured also. The canes, moreover, will not ratoon
as they used to do, and as they still do in other parts of the West
Indies. The cane is planted, and when ripe is cut. If allowed,
another cane will grow from the same plant, and that is a ratoon; and
again a third will grow, giving a third crop from the same plant; and
in many soils a fourth; and in some few many more; and one hears of
canes ratooning for twenty years.
If the same amount and quality of sugar be produced, of course the
system of ratooning must be by far the cheapest and most profitable.
In I believe most of our colonies the second crop is as good as the
first, and I understand that it used to be so in Barbados. But it
is not so now. The ratoon almost always looks poor, and the second
ratoons appear to be hardly worth cutting. I believe that this is so
much the case that many Barbados planters now look to get but one
crop only from each planting. This falling off in the real fertility
of the soil is I think owing to the use of artificial manure, such as
guano.
There is a system all through these sugar-growing countries of
burning the magass, or trash; this is the stalk of the cane, or
remnant of the stalk after it comes through the mill. What would be
said of an English agriculturist who burnt his straw? It is I believe
one of the soundest laws of agriculture that the refuse of the crop
should return to the ground which gave it.
To this it will be answered that the English agriculturist is not
called on by the necessity of his position to burn his straw. He
has not to boil his wheat, nor yet his beef and mutton; whereas the
Barbados farmer is obliged to boil his crop. At the present moment
the Barbados farmer is under this obligation; but he is not obliged
to do it with the refuse produce of his fields. He cannot perhaps use
coals immediately under his boilers, but he can heat them with steam
which comes pretty much to the same thing.
All this applies not to Barbados only, but to Guiana, Jamaica, and
the other islands also. At all of them the magass or trash is burnt.
But at none of them is manure so much needed as at Barbados. They
cannot there take into cultivation new fresh virgin soil when they
wish it, as they can in Guiana.
And then one is tempted to ask the question, whether every owner of
land is obliged to undertake all the complete duties which now are
joined together at a sugar estate? It certainly is the case, that no
single individual could successfully set himself against the system.
But I do not see why a collection of individuals should not do so.
A farmer in England does not grow the wheat, then grind it, and then
make the bread. The growing is enough for him. Then comes the miller,
and the baker. But on a sugar estate, one and the same man grows the
cane, makes the sugar, and distils the rum; thus altogether opposing
the salutary principle of the division of labour. I cannot see why
the grower should not sell his canes to a sugar manufacturer. There
can, I believe, be no doubt of this, that sugar can be made better
and cheaper in large quantities than in small.
But the clearance, sir; that is the question. How would this affect
the clearance? The sugar manufacturer would want his profit. Of
course he would, as do the miller and the baker.
They complain greatly at Barbados, as they do indeed elsewhere, that
they are compelled to make bad sugar by the differential duty. The
duty on good sugar is so much higher than that on bad sugar, that the
bad or coarse sugar pays them best. This is the excuse they give for
not making a finer article, and I believe that the excuse is true.
I made one or two excursions in the island, and was allowed the
privilege of attending an agricultural breakfast, at which there were
some twenty or thirty planters. It seems that a certain number of
gentlemen living in the same locality had formed themselves into
a society, with the object of inspecting each other's estates. A
committee of three was named in each case by the president; and this
committee, after surveying the estate in question, and looking at the
works and stock, drew up a paper, either laudatory or the reverse,
which paper was afterwards read to the society. These readings took
place after the breakfast, and the breakfast was held monthly. To the
planter probably the reading of the documents was the main object. It
may not be surprising that I gave the preference to the breakfast,
which of its kind was good.
But this was not the only breakfast of the sort at which I was
allowed to be a guest. The society has always its one great monthly
breakfast; but the absolute inspection gives occasions for further
breakfasts. I was also at one of these, and assisted in inspecting
the estate. There were, however, too many Barbadians present to
permit of my producing my individual views respecting the Guiana
improvements.
The report is made at the time of the inspection, but it is read in
public at the monthly meeting. The effect no doubt is good, and the
publicity of the approval or disapproval stimulates the planter.
But I was amused with the true Barbadian firmness with which the
gentlemen criticised declared that they would not the less take
their own way, and declined to follow the advice offered to them in
the report. I heard two such reports read, and in both cases this
occurred.
All this took place at Hookleton cliff, which the Barbadians regard
as the finest point for scenery in the island. The breakfast I own
was good, and the discourse useful and argumentative. But as regards
the scenery, there is little to be said for it, considering that I
had seen Jamaica, and was going to see Trinidad.
Even in Barbados, numerous as are the negroes, they certainly live an
easier life than that of an English labourer, earn their money with
more facility, and are more independent of their masters. A gentleman
having one hundred and fifty families living on his property would
not expect to obtain from them the labour of above ninety men at
the usual rate of pay, and that for not more than five days a week.
They live in great comfort, and in some things are beyond measure
extravagant.
"Do you observe," said a lady to me, "that the women when they walk
never hold up their dresses?"
"I certainly have," I answered. "Probably they are but ill shod, and
do not care to show their feet."
"Not at all. Their feet have nothing to do with it. But they think it
economical to hold up their petticoats. It betokens a stingy, saving
disposition, and they prefer to show that they do not regard a few
yards of muslin more or less."
This is perfectly true of them. As the shopman in Jamaica said
to me--In this part of the world we must never think of little
economies. The very negroes are ashamed to do so.
Of the coloured people I saw nothing, except that the shops are
generally attended by them. They seemed not to be so numerous as they
are elsewhere, and are, I think, never met with in the society of
white people. In no instance did I meet one, and I am told that in
Barbados there is a very rigid adherence to this rule. Indeed, one
never seems to have the alternative of seeing them; whereas in
Jamaica one has not the alternative of avoiding them. As regards
myself, I would much rather have been thrown among them.
I think that in all probability the white settlers in Barbados have
kept themselves more distinct from the negro race, and have not at
any time been themselves so burdened with coloured children as is
the case elsewhere. If this be so, they certainly deserve credit for
their prudence.
Here also there is a King, Lords, and Commons, or a governor, a
council, and an assembly. The council consists of twelve, and are
either chosen by the Crown, or enjoy their seat by virtue of office
held by appointment from the Crown. The Governor in person sits in
the council. The assembly consists of twenty-two, who are annually
elected by the parishes. None but white men do vote at these
elections, though no doubt a black man could vote, if a black man
were allowed to obtain a freehold. Of course, therefore, none but
white men can be elected. How it is decided whether a man be white
or not, that I did not hear. The greater part of the legislative
business of the island is done by committees, who are chosen from
these bodies.
Here, as elsewhere through the West Indies, one meets with unbounded
hospitality. A man who dines out on Monday will receive probably
three invitations for Tuesday, and six for Wednesday. And they
entertain very well. That haunch of mutton and turkey which are now
the bugbear of the English dinner-giver do not seem to trouble the
minds or haunt the tables of West Indian hosts.
And after all, Barbados--little England as it delights to call
itself--is and should be respected among islands. It owes no man
anything, pays its own way, and never makes a poor mouth. Let us say
what we will, self-respect is a fine quality, and the Barbadians
certainly enjoy that. It is a very fine quality, and generally leads
to respect from others. They who have nothing to say for themselves
will seldom find others to say much for them. I therefore repeat what
I said at first. Barbados is a very respectable little island, and
considering the limited extent of its acreage, it does make a great
deal of sugar.