ST. THOMAS.
All persons travelling in the West Indies have so much to do with the
island of St. Thomas, that I must devote a short chapter to it. My
circumstances with reference to it were such that I was compelled to
remain there a longer time, putting all my visits together, than in
any other of the islands except Jamaica.
The place belongs to the Danes, who possess also the larger and much
more valuable island of Santa Cruz, as they do also the small island
of St. Martin. These all lie among the Virgin Islands, and are
considered as belonging to that thick cluster. As St. Thomas at
present exists, it is of considerable importance. It is an emporium,
not only for many of the islands, but for many also of the places on
the coast of South and Central America. Guiana, Venezuela, and New
Granada, deal there largely. It is a depôt for cigars, light dresses,
brandy, boots, and Eau de Cologne. Many men therefore of many nations
go thither to make money, and they do make it. These are men,
generally not of the tenderest class, or who have probably been
nursed in much early refinement. Few men will select St. Thomas as a
place of residence from mere unbiassed choice and love of the locale.
A wine merchant in London, doing a good trade there, would hardly
give up that business with the object of personally opening an
establishment in this island: nor would a well-to-do milliner leave
Paris with the same object. Men who settle at St. Thomas have most
probably roughed it elsewhere unsuccessfully.
These St. Thomas tradesmen do make money I believe, and it is
certainly due to them that they should do so. Things ought not, if
possible, to be all bad with any man; and I cannot imagine what good
can accrue to a man at St. Thomas if it be not the good of amassing
money. It is one of the hottest and one of the most unhealthy spots
among all these hot and unhealthy regions. I do not know whether I
should not be justified in saying that of all such spots it is the
most hot and the most unhealthy.
I have said in a previous chapter that the people one meets there may
be described as an Hispano-Dano-Niggery-Yankee-doodle population. In
this I referred not only to the settlers, but to those also who are
constantly passing through it. In the shops and stores, and at the
hotels, one meets the same mixture. The Spanish element is of course
strong, for Venezuela, New Granada, Central America, and Mexico
are all Spanish, as also is Cuba. The people of these lands speak
Spanish, and hereabouts are called Spaniards. To the Danes the island
belongs. The soldiers, officials, and custom-house people are Danes.
They do not, however, mix much with their customers. They affect,
I believe, to say that the island is overrun and destroyed by these
strange comers, and that they would as lief be without such visitors.
If they are altogether indifferent to money making, such may be the
case. The labouring people are all black--if these blacks can be
called a labouring people. They do coal the vessels at about a dollar
a day each--that is, when they are so circumstanced as to require a
dollar. As to the American element, that is by no means the slightest
or most retiring. Dollars are going there, and therefore it is of
course natural that Americans should be going also. I saw the other
day a map, "The United States as they now are, and in prospective;"
and it included all these places--Mexico, Central America, Cuba, St.
Domingo, and even poor Jamaica. It may be that the man who made the
map understood the destiny of his country; at any rate, he understood
the tastes of his countrymen.
All these people are assembled together at St. Thomas, because St.
Thomas is the meeting-place and central depôt of the West Indian
steam-packets. That reason can be given easily enough; but why St.
Thomas should be the meeting-place of these packets,--I do not know
who can give me the reason for that arrangement. Tortola and Virgin
Gorda, two of the Virgin islands, both belong to ourselves, and are
situated equally well for the required purpose as is St. Thomas. I
am told also, that at any rate one, probably at both, good harbour
accommodation is to be found. It is certain that in other respects
they are preferable. They are not unhealthy, as is St. Thomas; and,
as I have said above, they belong to ourselves. My own opinion is
that Jamaica should be the head-quarters of these packets; but the
question is one which will not probably be interesting to the reader
of these pages.
"They cannot understand at home why we dislike the inter-colonial
work so much," said the captain of one of the steam-ships to me. By
inter-colonial work he meant the different branch services from St.
Thomas. "They do not comprehend at home what it is for a man to be
burying one young officer after another; to have them sent out, and
then to see them mown down in that accursed hole of a harbour by
yellow fever. Such a work is not a very pleasant one."
Indeed this was true. The life cannot be a very pleasant one.
These captains themselves and their senior officers are doubtless
acclimated. The yellow fever may reach them, but their chance of
escape is tolerably good; but the young lads who join the service,
and who do so at an early age, have at the first commencement of
their career to make St. Thomas their residence, as far as they have
any residence. They live of course on board their ships; but the
peculiarity of St. Thomas is this; that the harbour is ten times
more fatal than the town. It is that hole, up by the coaling wharves,
which sends so many English lads to the grave. If this be so, this
alone, I think, constitutes a strong reason why St. Thomas should not
be so favoured. These vessels now form a considerable fleet, and some
of them spend nearly a third of their time at this place. The number
of Englishmen so collected and endangered is sufficient to warrant us
in regarding this as a great drawback on any utility which the island
may have--if such utility there be.
But we must give even the devil his due. Seen from the water St.
Thomas is very pretty. It is not so much the scenery of the island
that pleases as the aspect of the town itself. It stands on three
hills or mounts, with higher hills, green to their summit, rising
behind them. Each mount is topped by a pleasant, cleanly edifice, and
pretty-looking houses stretch down the sides to the water's edge. The
buildings do look pretty and nice, and as though chance had arranged
them for a picture. Indeed, as seen from the harbour, the town looks
like a panorama exquisitely painted. The air is thin and transparent,
and every line shows itself clearly. As so seen the town of St.
Thomas is certainly attractive. But it is like the Dead Sea fruit;
all the charm is gone when it is tasted. Land there, and the beauty
vanishes.
The hotel at St. Thomas is quite a thing of itself. There is no fair
ground for complaint as regards the accommodation, considering where
one is, and that people do not visit St. Thomas for pleasure; but
the people that one meets there form as strange a collection as may
perhaps be found anywhere. In the first place, all languages seem
alike to them. One hears English, French, German, and Spanish spoken
all around one, and apparently it is indifferent which. The waiters
seem to speak them all.
The most of these guests I take it--certainly a large proportion of
them--are residents of the place, who board at the inn. I have been
there for a week at a time, and it seemed that all then around me
were so. There were ladies among them, who always came punctually to
their meals, and went through the long course of breakfast and long
course of dinner with admirable perseverance. I never saw eating to
equal that eating. When I was there the house was always full; but
the landlord told me that he found it very hard to make money, and
I can believe it.
A hot climate, it is generally thought, interferes with the appetite,
affects the gastric juices with lassitude, gives to the stomach some
of the apathy of the body, and lessens at any rate the consumption
of animal food. That charge cannot be made against the air of St.
Thomas. To whatever sudden changes the health may be subject, no
lingering disinclination for food affects it. Men eat there as though
it were the only solace of their life, and women also. Probably it is
so.
They never talk at meals. A man and his wife may interchange a word
or two as to the dishes; or men coming from the same store may
whisper a syllable as to their culinary desires; but in an ordinary
way there is no talking. I myself generally am not a mute person at
my meals; and having dined at sundry tables d'hôte, have got over in
a great degree that disinclination to speak to my neighbour which is
attributed--I believe wrongly--to Englishmen. But at St. Thomas I
took it into my head to wait till I was spoken to, and for a week
I sat, twice daily, between the same persons without receiving or
speaking a single word.
I shall not soon forget the stout lady who sat opposite to me, and
who was married to a little hooked-nosed Jew, who always accompanied
her. Soup, fish, and then meat is the ordinary rule at such banquets;
but here the fashion is for the guests, having curried favour with
the waiters, to get their plates of food brought in and put round
before them in little circles; so that a man while taking his soup
may contemplate his fish and his roast beef, his wing of fowl, his
allotment of salad, his peas and potatoes, his pudding, pie, and
custard, and whatever other good things a benevolent and well-fee'd
waiter may be able to collect for him. This somewhat crowds the
table, and occasionally it becomes necessary for the guest to guard
his treasures with an eagle's eye;--hers also with an eagle's eye,
and sometimes with an eagle's talon.
This stout lady was great on such occasions. "A bit of that," she
would exclaim, with head half turned round, as a man would pass
behind her with a dish, while she was in the very act of unloading
within her throat a whole knifeful charged to the hilt. The efforts
which at first affected me as almost ridiculous advanced to the
sublime as dinner went on. There was no shirking, no half measures,
no slackened pace as the breath became short. The work was daily done
to the final half-pound of cheese.
Cheese and jelly, guava jelly, were always eaten together. This I
found to be the general fashion of St. Thomas. Some men dipped their
cheese in jelly; some ate a bit of jelly and then a bit of cheese;
some topped up with jelly and some topped up with cheese, all having
it on their plates together. But this lady--she must have spent years
in acquiring the exercise--had a knack of involving her cheese in
jelly, covering up by a rapid twirl of her knife a bit about an inch
thick, so that no cheesy surface should touch her palate, and then
depositing the parcel, oh, ever so far down, without dropping above a
globule or two of the covering on her bosom.
Her lord, the Israelite, used to fight hard too; but the battle was
always over with him long before the lady showed even a sign of
distress. He was one of those flashy weedy animals that make good
running for a few yards and are then choked off. She was game up to
the winning-post. There were many animals running at those races,
but she might have given all the others the odds of a pound of solid
food, and yet have beaten them.
But then, to see her rise from the table! Well; pace and extra weight
together will distress the best horse that ever was shod!
Over and above this I found nothing of any general interest at St.
Thomas.