West Indian politeness--Negro morals and felicity--Island of St.
Vincent--Grenada--The harbour--Disappearance of the whites--An
island of black freeholders--Tobago--Dramatic art--A promising
incident.
West Indian civilisation is old-fashioned, and has none of the pushing
manners which belong to younger and perhaps more thriving communities.
The West Indians themselves, though they may be deficient in energy, are
uniformly ladies and gentlemen, and all their arrangements take their
complexion from the general tone of society. There is a refinement
visible at once in the subsidiary vessels of the mail service which ply
among the islands. They are almost as large as those which cross the
Atlantic, and never on any line in the world have I met with officers so
courteous and cultivated. The cabins were spacious and as cool as a
temperature of 80 deg., gradually rising as we went south, would permit.
Punkahs waved over us at dinner. In our berths a single sheet was all
that was provided for us, and this was one more than we needed. A sea
was running when we cleared out from under the land. Among the cabin
passengers was a coloured family in good circumstances moving about with
nurses and children. The little things, who had never been at sea
before, sat on the floor, staring out of their large helpless black
eyes, not knowing what was the matter with them. Forward there were
perhaps two or three hundred coloured people going from one island to
another, singing, dancing, and chattering all night long, as radiant and
happy as carelessness and content could make them. Sick or not sick made
no difference. Nothing could disturb the imperturbable good humour and
good spirits.
It was too hot to sleep; we sat several of us smoking on deck, and I
learnt the first authentic particulars of the present manner of life of
these much misunderstood people. Evidently they belonged to a race far
inferior to the Zulus and Caffres, whom I had known in South Africa.
They were more coarsely formed in limb and feature. They would have been
slaves in their own country if they had not been brought to ours, and at
the worst had lost nothing by the change. They were good-natured,
innocent, harmless, lazy perhaps, but not more lazy than is perfectly
natural when even Europeans must be roused to activity by cocktail.
In the Antilles generally, Barbadoes being the only exception, negro
families have each their cabin, their garden ground, their grazing for a
cow. They live surrounded by most of the fruits which grew in Adam's
paradise--oranges and plantains, bread-fruit, and cocoa-nuts, though not
apples. Their yams and cassava grow without effort, for the soil is
easily worked and inexhaustibly fertile. The curse is taken off from
nature, and like Adam again they are under the covenant of innocence.
Morals in the technical sense they have none, but they cannot be said to
sin, because they have no knowledge of a law, and therefore they can
commit no breach of the law. They are naked and not ashamed. They are
_married_ as they call it, but not _parsoned_. The woman prefers a
looser tie that she may be able to leave a man if he treats her
unkindly. Yet they are not licentious. I never saw an immodest look in
one their faces, and never heard of any venal profligacy. The system is
strange, but it answers. A missionary told me that a connection rarely
turns out well which begins with a legal marriage. The children scramble
up anyhow, and shift for themselves like chickens as soon as they are
able to peck. Many die in this way by eating unwholesome food, but also
many live, and those who do live grow up exactly like their parents. It
is a very peculiar state of things, not to be understood, as priest and
missionary agree, without long acquaintance. There is immorality, but an
immorality which is not demoralising. There is sin, but it is the sin of
animals, without shame, because there is no sense of doing wrong. They
eat the forbidden fruit, but it brings with it no knowledge of the
difference between good and evil. They steal, but as a tradition of the
time when they were themselves chattels, and the laws of property did
not apply to them. They are honest about money, more honest perhaps than
a good many whites. But food or articles of use they take freely, as
they were allowed to do when slaves, in pure innocence of heart. In fact
these poor children of darkness have escaped the consequences of the
Fall, and must come of another stock after all.
Meanwhile they are perfectly happy. In no part of the globe is there any
peasantry whose every want is so completely satisfied as her Majesty's
black subjects in these West Indian islands. They have no aspirations to
make them restless. They have no guilt upon their consciences. They have
food for the picking up. Clothes they need not, and lodging in such a
climate need not be elaborate. They have perfect liberty, and are safe
from dangers, to which if left to themselves they would be exposed, for
the English rule prevents the strong from oppressing the weak. In their
own country they would have remained slaves to more warlike races. In
the West Indies their fathers underwent a bondage of a century or two,
lighter at its worst than the easiest form of it in Africa; their
descendants in return have nothing now to do save to laugh and sing and
enjoy existence. Their quarrels, if they have any, begin and end in
words. If happiness is the be all and end all of life, and those who
have most of it have most completely attained the object of their being,
the 'nigger' who now basks among the ruins of the West Indian
plantations is the supremest specimen of present humanity.
We retired to our berths at last. At waking we were at anchor off St.
Vincent, an island of volcanic mountains robed in forest from shore to
crest. Till late in the last century it was the headquarters of the
Caribs, who kept up a savage independence there, recruited by runaway
slaves from Barbadoes or elsewhere. Brandy and Sir Ralph Abercrombie
reduced them to obedience in 1796, and St. Vincent throve tolerably down
to the days of free trade. Even now when I saw it, Kingston, the
principal town, looked pretty and well to do, reminding me, strange to
say, of towns in Norway, the houses stretching along the shore painted
in the same tints of blue or yellow or pink, with the same red-tiled
roofs, the trees coming down the hill sides to the water's edge, villas
of modest pretensions shining through the foliage, with the patches of
cane fields, the equivalent in the landscape of the brilliant Norwegian
grass. The prosperity has for the last forty years waned and waned.
There are now two thousand white people there, and forty thousand
coloured people, and proportions alter annually to our disadvantage. The
usual remedies have been tried. The constitution has been altered a
dozen times. Just now I believe the Crown is trying to do without one,
having found the results of the elective principle not encouraging, but
we shall perhaps revert to it before long; any way, the tables show that
each year the trade of the island decreases, and will continue to
decrease while the expenditure increases and will increase.
I did not land, for the time was short, and as a beautiful picture the
island was best seen from the deck. The characteristics of the people
are the same in all the Antilles, and could be studied elsewhere. The
bustle and confusion in the ship, the crowd of boats round the ladder,
the clamour of negro men's tongues, and the blaze of colours from the
negro women's dresses, made up together a scene sufficiently
entertaining for the hour which we remained. In the middle of it the
Governor, Mr. S----, came on board with another official. They were
going on in the steamer to Tobago, which formed part of his dominions.
Leaving St. Vincent, we were all the forenoon passing the Grenadines, a
string of small islands fitting into their proper place in the Antilles
semicircle, but as if Nature had forgotten to put them together or else
had broken some large island to pieces and scattered them along the
line. Some were large enough to have once carried sugar plantations, and
are now made over wholly to the blacks; others were fishing stations,
droves of whales during certain months frequenting these waters; others
were mere rocks, amidst which the white-sailed American coasting
schooners were beating up against the north-east trade. There was a
stiff breeze, and the sea was white with short curling waves, but we
were running before it and the wind kept the deck fresh. At Grenada, the
next island, we were to go on shore.
Grenada was, like St. Vincent, the home for centuries of man-eating
Caribs, French for a century and a half, and finally, after many
desperate struggles for it, was ceded to England at the peace of
Versailles. It is larger than St. Vincent, though in its main features
it has the same character. There are lakes in the hills, and a volcanic
crater not wholly quiescent; but the especial value of Grenada, which
made us fight so hardly to win it, is the deep and landlocked harbour,
the finest in all the Antilles.
Pere Labat, to whose countrymen it belonged at the time of his own
visit there, says that 'if Barbadoes had such a harbour as Grenada it
would be an island without a rival in the world. If Grenada belonged to
the English, who knew how to turn to profit natural advantages, it would
be a rich and powerful colony. In itself it was all that man could
desire. To live there was to live in paradise.' Labat found the island
occupied by countrymen of his own, '_paisans aisez_', he calls them,
growing their tobacco, their indigo and scarlet rocou, their pigs and
their poultry, and contented to be without sugar, without slaves, and
without trade. The change of hands from which he expected so much had
actually come about. Grenada did belong to the English, and had belonged
to us ever since Rodney's peace. I was anxious to see how far Labat's
prophecy had been fulfilled.
St. George's, the 'capital,' stands on the neck of a peninsula a mile in
length, which forms one side of the harbour. Of the houses, some look
out to sea, some inwards upon the _carenage_, as the harbour is called.
At the point there was a fort, apparently of some strength, on which the
British flag was flying. We signalled that we had the Governor on board,
and the fort replied with a puff of smoke. Sound there was none or next
to none, but we presumed that it had come from a gun of some kind. We
anchored outside. Mr. S---- landed in an official boat with two flags, a
missionary in another, which had only one. The crews of a dozen other
boats then clambered up the gangway to dispute possession of the rest of
us, shouting, swearing, lying, tearing us this way and that way as if we
were carcases and they wild beasts wanting to dine upon us. We engaged a
boat for ourselves as we supposed; we had no sooner entered it than the
scandalous boatman proceeded to take in as many more passengers as it
would hold. Remonstrance being vain, we settled the matter by stepping
into the boat next adjoining, and amidst howls and execrations we were
borne triumphantly off and were pulled in to the land.
Labat had not exaggerated the beauty of the landlocked basin into which
we entered on rounding the point. On three sides wooded hills rose high
till they passed into mountains; on the fourth was the castle with its
slopes and batteries, the church and town beyond it, and everywhere
luxuriant tropical forest trees overhanging the violet-coloured water. I
could well understand the Frenchman's delight when he saw it, and also
the satisfaction with which he would now acknowledge that he had been a
shortsighted prophet. The English had obtained Grenada, and this is what
they had made of it. The forts which had been erected by his countrymen
had been deserted and dismantled; the castle on which we had seen our
flag flying was a ruin; the walls were crumbling and in many places had
fallen down. One solitary gun was left, but that was honeycombed and
could be fired only with half a charge to salute with. It was true that
the forts had ceased to be of use, but that was because there was
nothing left to defend. The harbour is, as I said, the best in the West
Indies. There was not a vessel in it, nor so much as a boat-yard that I
could see where a spar could be replaced or a broken rivet mended. Once
there had been a line of wharves, but the piles had been eaten by worms
and the platforms had fallen through. Round us when we landed were
unroofed warehouses, weed-choked courtyards, doors gone, and window
frames fallen in or out. Such a scene of desolation and desertion I
never saw in my life save once, a few weeks later at Jamaica. An English
lady with her children had come to the landing place to meet my friends.
They, too, were more like wandering ghosts than human beings with warm
blood in them. All their thoughts were on going home--home out of so
miserable an exile.[4]
Nature and the dark race had been simply allowed by us to resume
possession of the island. Here, where the cannon had roared, and ships
and armies had fought, and the enterprising English had entered into
occupancy, under whom, as we are proud to fancy, the waste places of the
earth grow green, and industry and civilisation follow as an inevitable
fruit, all was now silence. And this was an English Crown colony, as
rich in resources as any area of soil of equal size in the world.
England had demanded and seized the responsibility of managing it--this
was the result.
A gentleman who for some purpose was a passing resident in the island,
had asked us to dine with him. His house was three or four miles inland.
A good road remained as a legacy from other times, and a pair of horses
and a phaeton carried us swiftly to his door. The town of St. George's
had once been populous, and even now there seemed no want of people, if
mere numbers sufficed. We passed for half a mile through a straggling
street, where the houses were evidently occupied though unconscious for
many a year of paint or repair. They were squalid and dilapidated, but
the luxuriant bananas and orange trees in the gardens relieved the
ugliness of their appearance. The road when we left the town was
overshadowed with gigantic mangoes planted long ago, with almond trees
and cedar trees, no relations of our almonds or our cedars, but the most
splendid ornaments of the West Indian forest. The valley up which we
drove was beautiful, and the house, when we reached it, showed taste and
culture. Mr. ---- had rare trees, rare flowers, and was taking advantage
of his temporary residence in the tropics to make experiments in
horticulture. He had been brought there, I believe, by some necessities
of business. He told us that Grenada was now the ideal country of modern
social reformers. It had become an island of pure peasant proprietors.
The settlers, who had once been a thriving and wealthy community, had
almost melted away. Some thirty English estates remained which could
still be cultivated, and were being cultivated with remarkable success.
But the rest had sold their estates for anything which they could get.
The free blacks had bought them, and about 8,000 negro families, say
40,000 black souls in all, now shared three-fourths of the soil between
them. Each family lived independently, growing coffee and cocoa and
oranges, and all were doing very well. The possession of property had
brought a sense of its rights with it. They were as litigious as Irish
peasants; everyone was at law with his neighbour, and the island was a
gold mine to the Attorney-General; otherwise they were quiet harmless
fellows, and if the politicians would only let them alone, they would be
perfectly contented, and might eventually, if wisely managed, come to
some good. To set up a constitution in such a place was a ridiculous
mockery, and would only be another name for swindling and jobbery. Black
the island was, and black it would remain. The conditions were never
likely to arise which would bring back a European population; but a
governor who was a sensible man, who would reside and use his natural
influence, could manage it with perfect ease. The island belonged to
England; we were responsible for what we made of it, and for the
blacks' own sakes we ought not to try experiments upon them. They knew
their own deficiencies and would infinitely prefer a wise English ruler
to any constitution which could be offered them. If left entirely to
themselves, they would in a generation or two relapse into savages;
there were but two alternatives before not Grenada only, but all the
English West Indies--either an English administration pure and simple,
like the East Indian, or a falling eventually into a state like that of
Hayti, where they eat the babies, and no white man can own a yard of
land.
It was dark night when we drove back to the port. The houses along the
road, which had looked so miserable on the outside, were now lighted
with paraffin lamps. I could see into them, and was astonished to
observe signs of comfort and even signs of taste--arm-chairs, sofas,
sideboards with cut glass upon them, engravings and coloured prints upon
the walls. The old state of things is gone, but a new state of things is
rising which may have a worth of its own. The plant of civilisation as
yet has taken but feeble root, and is only beginning to grow. It may
thrive yet if those who have troubled all the earth will consent for
another century to take their industry elsewhere.
The ship's galley was waiting at the wharf when we reached it. The
captain also had been dining with a friend on shore, and we had to wait
for him. The off-shore night breeze had not yet risen. The harbour was
smooth as a looking glass, and the stars shone double in the sky and on
the water. The silence was only broken by the whistle of the lizards or
the cry of some far-off marsh frog. The air was warmer than we ever feel
it in the depth of an English summer, yet pure and delicious and charged
with the perfume of a thousand flowers. One felt it strange that with so
beautiful a possession lying at our doors, we should have allowed it to
slide out of our hands. I could say for myself, like Pere Labat, the
island was all that man could desire. 'En un mot, la vie y est
delicieuse.'
The anchor was got up immediately that we were on board. In the morning
we were to find ourselves at Port of Spain. Mr. S----, the Windward
Island governor, who had joined us at St. Vincent, was, as I said, going
to Tobago. De Foe took the human part of his Robinson Crusoe from the
story of Juan Fernandez. The locality is supposed to have been Tobago,
and Trinidad the island from which the cannibal savages came. We are
continually shuffling the cards, in a hope that a better game may be
played with them. Tobago is now-annexed to Trinidad. Last year it was a
part of Mr. S----'s dominions which he periodically visited. I fell in
with him again on his return, and he told us an incident which befell
him there, illustrating the unexpected shapes in which the schoolmaster
is appearing among the blacks. An intimation was brought to him on his
arrival that, as the Athenian journeymen had played Pyramus and Thisbe
at the nuptials of Theseus and Hippolyta, so a party of villagers from
the interior of Tobago would like to act before his Excellency. Of
course he consented. They came, and went through their performance. To
Mr. S----'s, and probably to the reader's astonishment, the play which
they had selected was the 'Merchant of Venice.' Of the rest of it he
perhaps thought, like the queen of the Amazons, that it was 'sorry
stuff;' but Shylock's representative, he said, showed real appreciation.
With freedom and a peasant proprietary, the money lender is a necessary
phenomenon, and the actor's imagination may have been assisted by
personal recollections.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] I have been told that this picture is overdrawn, that Grenada is the
most prosperous of the Antilles, that its exports are increasing, that
English owners are making large profits again, that the blacks are
thriving beyond example, that there are twenty guns in the Fort, that
the wharves and Quay are in perfect condition, that there are no
roofless warehouses, that in my description of St. George's I must have
been asleep or dreaming. I can only repeat and insist upon what I myself
saw. I know very well that in parts of the island a few energetic
English gentlemen are cultivating their land with remarkable success.
Any enterprising Englishman with capital and intelligence might do the
same. I know also that in no part of the West Indies are the blacks
happier or better off. But notwithstanding the English interest in the
Island has sunk to relatively nothing. Once Englishmen owned the whole
of it. Now there are only thirty English estates. There are five
thousand peasant freeholds, owned almost entirely by coloured men, and
the effect of the change is written upon the features of the harbour.
Not a vessel of any kind was to be seen in it. The great wooden jetty
where cargoes used to be landed, or taken on board, was a wreck, the
piles eaten through, the platform broken. On the Quay there was no sign
of life, or of business, the houses along the side mean and
insignificant, while several large and once important buildings,
warehouses, custom houses, dwelling houses, or whatever they had been,
were lying in ruins, tropical trees growing in the courtyards, and
tropical creepers climbing over the masonry showing how long the decay
had been going on. These buildings had once belonged to English
merchants, and were evidence of English energy and enterprise, which
once had been and now had ceased to be. As to the guns in the fort, I
cannot say how much old iron may be left there. But I was informed that
only one gun could be fired and that with but half a charge.
This is of little consequence or none, but unless the English population
can be reinforced, Grenada in another generation will cease to be
English at all, while the prosperity, the progress, even the continued
civilisation of the blacks depends on the maintenance there of English
influence and authority.