First sight of Barbadoes--Origin of the name--Pere Labat--Bridgetown
two hundred years ago--Slavery and Christianity--Economic
crisis--Sugar bounties--Aspect of the streets--Government House and
its occupants--Duties of a governor of Barbadoes.
England was covered with snow when we left it on December 30. At sunrise
on January 12 we were anchored in the roadstead at Bridgetown, and the
island of Barbadoes lay before us shining in the haze of a hot summer
morning. It is about the size of the Isle of Wight, cultivated so far as
eye could see with the completeness of a garden; no mountains in it,
scarcely even high hills, but a surface pleasantly undulating, the
prevailing colour a vivid green from the cane fields; houses in town and
country white from the coral rock of which they are built, but the glare
from them relieved by heavy clumps of trees. What the trees were I had
yet to discover. You could see at a glance that the island was as
thickly peopled as an ant-hill. Not an inch of soil seemed to be allowed
to run to waste. Two hundred thousand is, I believe, the present number
of Barbadians, of whom nine-tenths are blacks. They refuse to emigrate.
They cling to their home with innocent vanity as though it was the
finest country in the world, and multiply at a rate so rapid that no one
likes to think about it. Labour at any rate is abundant and cheap. In
Barbadoes the negro is willing enough to work, for he has no other means
of living. Little land is here allowed him to grow his yams upon. Almost
the whole of it is still held by the whites in large estates, cultivated
by labourers on the old system, and, it is to be admitted, cultivated
most admirably. If the West Indies are going to ruin, Barbadoes, at any
rate, is being ruined with a smiling face. The roadstead was crowded
with shipping--large barques, steamers, and brigs, schooners of all
shapes and sorts. The training squadron had come into the bay for a day
or two on their way to Trinidad, four fine ships, conspicuous by their
white ensigns, a squareness of yards, and generally imposing presence.
Boats were flying to and fro under sail or with oars, officials coming
off in white calico dress, with awnings over the stern sheets and
chattering crews of negroes. Notwithstanding these exotic symptoms, it
was all thoroughly English; we were under the guns of our own
men-of-war. The language of the Anglo-Barbadians was pure English, the
voices without the smallest transatlantic intonation. On no one of our
foreign possessions is the print of England's foot more strongly
impressed than on Barbadoes. It has been ours for two centuries and
three-quarters, and was organised from the first on English traditional
lines, with its constitution, its parishes and parish churches and
churchwardens, and schools and parsons, all on the old model; which the
unprogressive inhabitants have been wise enough to leave undisturbed.
Little is known of the island before we took possession of it--so little
that the origin of the name is still uncertain. Barbadoes, if not a
corruption of some older word, is Spanish or Portuguese, and means
'bearded.' The local opinion is that the word refers to a banyan or fig
tree which is common there, and which sends down from its branches long
hairs or fibres supposed to resemble beards. I disbelieve in this
derivation. Every Spaniard whom I have consulted confirms my own
impression that 'barbados' standing alone could no more refer to trees
than 'barbati' standing alone could refer to trees in Latin. The name is
a century older than the English occupation, for I have seen it in a
Spanish chart of 1525. The question is of some interest, since it
perhaps implies that at the first discovery there was a race of bearded
Caribs there. However this may be, Barbadoes, after we became masters of
the island, enjoyed a period of unbroken prosperity for two hundred
years. Before the conquest of Jamaica, it was the principal mart of our
West Indian trade; and even after that conquest, when all Europe drew
its new luxury of sugar from these islands, the wealth and splendour of
the English residents at Bridgetown astonished and stirred the envy of
every passing visitor. Absenteeism as yet was not. The owners lived on
their estates, governed the island as magistrates unpaid for their
services, and equally unpaid, took on themselves the defences of the
island. Pere Labat, a French missionary, paid a visit to Barbadoes at
the beginning of the eighteenth century. He was a clever, sarcastic kind
of man, with fine literary skill, and describes what he saw with a
jealous appreciation which he intended to act upon his own countrymen.
The island, according to him, was running over with wealth, and was very
imperfectly fortified. The jewellers' and silversmiths' shops in
Bridgetown were brilliant as on the Paris boulevards. The port was full
of ships, the wharves and warehouses crammed with merchandise from all
parts of the globe. The streets were handsome, and thronged with men of
business, who were piling up fortunes. To the Father these sumptuous
gentlemen were all most civil. The governor, an English milor, asked him
to dinner, and talked such excellent French that Labat forgave him his
nationality. The governor, he said, resided in a fine palace. He had a
well-furnished library, was dignified, courteous, intelligent, and
lived in state like a prince. A review was held for the French priest's
special entertainment, of the Bridgetown cavalry. Five hundred gentlemen
turned out from this one district admirably mounted and armed.
Altogether in the island he says that there were 3,000 horse and 2,000
foot, every one of them of course white and English. The officers struck
him particularly. He met one who had been five years a prisoner in the
Bastille, and had spent his time there in learning mathematics. The
planters opened their houses to him. Dinners then as now were the
received form of English hospitality. They lived well, Labat says. They
had all the luxuries of the tropics, and they had imported the
partridges which they were so fond of from England. They had the
costliest and choicest wines, and knew how to enjoy them. They dined at
two o'clock, and their dinner lasted four hours. Their mansions were
superbly furnished, and gold and silver plate, he observed with an eye
to business, was so abundant that the plunder of it would pay the cost
of an expedition for the reduction of the island.
There was another side to all this magnificence which also might be
turned to account by an enterprising enemy. There were some thousands of
wretched Irish, who had been transplanted thither after the last
rebellion, and were bound under articles to labour. These might be
counted on to rise if an invading force appeared; and there were 60,000
slaves, who would rebel also if they saw a hope of success. They were
ill fed and hard driven. On the least symptom of insubordination they
were killed without mercy: sometimes they were burnt alive, or were hung
up in iron cages to die.[3] In the French and Spanish islands care was
taken of the souls of the poor creatures. They were taught their
catechism, they were baptised, and attended mass regularly. The Anglican
clergy, Labat said with professional malice, neither baptised them nor
taught them anything, but regarded them as mere animals. To keep
Christians in slavery they held would be wrong and indefensible, and
they therefore met the difficulty by not making their slaves into
Christians. That baptism made any essential difference, however, he does
not insist. By the side of Christianity, in the Catholic islands, devil
worship and witchcraft went on among the same persons. No instance had
ever come to his knowledge of a converted black who returned to his
country who did not throw away his Christianity just as he would throw
away his clothes; and as to cruelty and immorality, he admits that the
English at Barbadoes were no worse than his own people at Martinique.
In the collapse of West Indian prosperity which followed on
emancipation, Barbadoes escaped the misfortunes of the other islands.
The black population being so dense, and the place itself being so
small, the squatting system could not be tried; there was plenty of
labour always, and the planters being relieved of the charge of their
workmen when they were sick or worn out, had rather gained than lost by
the change. Barbadoes, however, was not to escape for ever, and was now
having its share of misfortunes. It is dangerous for any country to
commit its fortunes to an exclusive occupation. Sugar was the most
immediately lucrative of all the West Indian productions. Barbadoes is
exceptionally well suited to sugar-growing. It has no mountains and no
forests. The soil is clean and has been carefully attended to for two
hundred and fifty years. It had been owned during the present century by
gentlemen who for the most part lived in England on the profits of their
properties, and left them to be managed by agents and attorneys. The
method of management was expensive. Their own habits were expensive.
Their incomes, to which they had lived up, had been cut short lately by
a series of bad seasons. Money had been borrowed at high interest year
after year to keep the estates and their owners going. On the top of
this came the beetroot competition backed up by a bounty, and the
Barbadian sugar interest, I was told, had gone over a precipice. Even
the unencumbered resident proprietors could barely keep their heads
above water. The returns on three-quarters of the properties on the
island no longer sufficed to pay the expenses of cultivation and the
interest of the loans which had been raised upon them. There was
impending a general bankruptcy which might break up entirely the present
system and leave the negroes for a time without the wages which were the
sole dependence.
A very dark picture had thus been drawn to me of the prospects of the
poor little island which had been once so brilliant. Nothing could be
less like it than the bright sunny landscape which we saw from the deck
of our vessel. The town, the shipping, the pretty villas, the woods, and
the wide green sea of waving cane had no suggestion of ruin about them.
If the ruin was coming, clearly enough it had not yet come. After
breakfast we went on shore in a boat with a white awning over it, rowed
by a crew of black boatmen, large, fleshy, shining on the skin with
ample feeding and shining in the face with innocent happiness. They
rowed well. They were amusing. There was a fixed tariff, and they were
not extortionate. The temperature seemed to rise ten degrees when we
landed. The roads were blinding white from the coral dust, the houses
were white, the sun scorching. The streets were not the streets
described by Labat; no splendid magazines or jewellers' shops like those
in Paris or London; but there were lighters at the quays loading or
unloading, carts dashing along with mule teams and making walking
dangerous; signs in plenty of life and business; few white faces, but
blacks and mulattoes swarming. The houses were substantial, though in
want of paint. The public buildings, law courts, hall of assembly &c.
were solid and handsome, nowhere out of repair, though with something to
be desired in point of smartness. The market square would have been well
enough but for a statue of Lord Nelson which stands there, very like,
but small and insignificant, and for some extraordinary reason they
have painted it a bright pea-green.
We crept along in the shade of trees and warehouses till we reached the
principal street. Here my friends brought me to the Icehouse, a sort of
club, with reading rooms and dining rooms, and sleeping accommodation
for members from a distance who do not like colonial hotels. Before
anything else could be thought of I was introduced to cocktail, with
which I had to make closer acquaintance afterwards, cocktail being the
established corrective of West Indian languor, without which life is
impossible. It is a compound of rum, sugar, lime juice, Angostura
bitters, and what else I know not, frisked into effervescence by a
stick, highly agreeable to the taste and effective for its immediate
purpose. Cocktail over, and walking in the heat being a thing not to be
thought of, I sat for two hours in a balcony watching the people, who
were thick as bees in swarming time. Nine-tenths of them were pure
black; you rarely saw a white face, but still less would you see a
discontented one, imperturbable good humour and self-satisfaction being
written on the features of every one. The women struck me especially.
They were smartly dressed in white calico, scrupulously clean, and
tricked out with ribands and feathers; but their figures were so good,
and they carried themselves so well and gracefully, that, although they
might make themselves absurd, they could not look vulgar. Like the old
Greek and Etruscan women, they are trained from childhood to carry heavy
weights on their heads. They are thus perfectly upright, and plant their
feet firmly and naturally on the ground. They might serve for sculptors'
models, and are well aware of it. There were no signs of poverty. Old
and young seemed well-fed. Some had brought in baskets of fruit,
bananas, oranges, pine apples, and sticks of sugar cane; others had yams
and sweet potatoes from their bits of garden in the country. The men
were active enough driving carts, wheeling barrows, or selling flying
fish, which are caught off the island in shoals and are cheaper than
herrings in Yarmouth. They chattered like a flock of jackdaws, but there
was no quarrelling; not a drunken man was to be seen, and all was
merriment and good humour. My poor downtrodden black brothers and
sisters, so far as I could judge from this first introduction, looked to
me a very fortunate class of fellow-creatures.
Government House, where we went to luncheon, is a large airy building
shaded by heavy trees with a garden at the back of it. West Indian
houses, I found afterwards, are all constructed on the same pattern, the
object being to keep the sun out and let in the wind. Long verandahs or
galleries run round them protected by green Venetian blinds which can be
opened or closed at pleasure; the rooms within with polished floors,
little or no carpet, and contrivances of all kinds to keep the air in
continual circulation. In the subdued green light, human figures lose
their solidity and look as if they were creatures of air also.
Sir Charles Lees and his lady were all that was polite and hospitable.
They invited me to make their house my home during my stay, and more
charming host and hostess it would have been impossible to find or wish
for. There was not the state which Labat described, but there was the
perfection of courtesy, a courtesy which must have belonged to their
natures, or it would have been overstrained long since by the demands
made upon it. Those who have looked on at a skating ring will have
observed an orange or some such object in the centre round which the
evolutions are described, the ice artist sweeping out from it in long
curves to the extreme circumference, returning on interior arcs till he
gains the orange again, and then off once more on a fresh departure.
Barbadoes to the West Indian steam navigation is like the skater's
orange. All mails, all passengers from Europe, arrive at Barbadoes
first. There the subsidiary steamers catch them up, bear them north or
south to the Windward or Leeward Isles, and on their return bring them
back to Carlisle Bay. Every vessel brings some person or persons to whom
the Governor is called on to show hospitality. He must give dinners to
the officials and gentry of the island, he must give balls and concerts
for their ladies, he must entertain the officers of the garrison. When
the West Indian squadron or the training squadron drop into the
roadstead, admirals, commodores, captains must all be invited. Foreign
ships of war go and come continually, Americans, French, Spaniards, or
Portuguese. Presidents of South American republics, engineers from
Darien, all sorts and conditions of men who go to Europe in the English
mail vessels, take their departure from Carlisle Bay, and if they are
neglected regard it as a national affront. Cataracts of champagne must
flow if the British name is not to be discredited. The expense is
unavoidable and is enormous, while the Governor's very moderate salary
is found too large by economic politicians, and there is a cry for
reduction of it.
I was of course most grateful for Sir Charles's invitation to myself.
From him, better perhaps than from anyone, I could learn how far the
passionate complaints which I had heard about the state of the islands
were to be listened to as accounts of actual fact. I found, however,
that I must postpone both this particular pleasure and my stay in
Barbadoes itself till a later opportunity. My purpose had been to remain
there till I had given it all the time which I could spare, thence to go
on to Jamaica, and from Jamaica to return at leisure round the Antilles.
But it had been ascertained that in Jamaica there was small-pox. I
suppose that there generally is small-pox there, or typhus fever, or
other infectious disorder. But spasms of anxiety assail periodically the
souls of local authorities. Vessels coming from Jamaica had been
quarantined in all the islands, and I found that if I proceeded thither
as I proposed, I should be refused permission to land afterwards in any
one of the other colonies. In my perplexity my Trinidad friends invited
me to accompany them at once to Port of Spain. Trinidad was the most
thriving, or was at all events the least dissatisfied, of all the
British possessions. I could have a glance at the Windward Islands on
the way. I could afterwards return to Barbadoes, where Sir Charles
assured me that I should still find a room waiting for me. The steamer
to Trinidad sailed the same afternoon. I had to decide in haste, and I
decided to go. Our luncheon over, we had time to look over the pretty
gardens at Government House. There were great cabbage palms, cannon-ball
trees, mahogany trees, almond trees, and many more which were wholly new
acquaintances. There was a grotto made by climbing plants and creepers,
with a fountain playing in the middle of it, where orchids hanging on
wires threw out their clusters of flowers for the moths to fertilize,
ferns waved their long fronds in the dripping showers, humming birds
cooled their wings in the spray, and flashed in and out like rubies and
emeralds. Gladly would I have lingered there, at least for a cigar, but
it could not be; we had to call on the Commander of the Forces, Sir C.
Pearson, the hero of Ekowe in the Zulu war. Him, too, I was to see
again, and hear interesting stories from about our tragic enterprise in
the Transvaal. For the moment my mind was filled sufficiently with new
impressions. One reads books about places, but the images which they
create are always unlike the real object. All that I had seen was
absolutely new and unexpected. I was glad of an opportunity to readjust
the information which I had brought with me. We joined our new vessel
before sunset, and we steamed away into the twilight.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Labat seems to say that they were hung up alive in these cages, and
left to die there. He says elsewhere, and it may be hoped that the
explanation is the truer one, that the recently imported negroes often
destroyed themselves, in the belief that when dead they would return to
their own country. In the French islands as well as the English, the
bodies of suicides were exposed in these cages, from which they could
not be stolen, to convince the poor people of their mistake by their own
eyes. He says that the contrivance was successful, and that after this
the slaves did not destroy themselves any more.