The English in the West Indies; Or, The Bow of Ulysses

It was like the gloaming of a June night in England, the daylight in the open spots not entirely gone, and mixing softly with the light of moon and planet and the flashing of the fireflies. I plodded on mile after mile, and Cherry Garden still receded to one mile farther. We came to a gate of some consequence. The outline of a large mansion was visible with gardens round it. I concluded that we had arrived, and was feeling for the latch when the forms of a lady and gentleman appeared against the sky who were strolling in the grounds. They directed me still upwards, with the mile which never diminished still to be travelled. Like myself, our weary animal had gathered hopes from the sight of the gate. He had again to drag on as he could. His owner was subdued and silent, and obeyed whatever order I gave him. The trees now closed over us so thick that I could see nothing. Vainly I repented of my unnecessary philanthropy which had been the cause of the mischief; what had I to do with black women, or white either for that matter? I had to feel the way with my feet and a stick. I came to a place where the lane again divided. I tried the nearest turn. I found a trench across it three feet deep, which had been cut by a torrent. This was altogether beyond the capacity of our unfortunate animal, so I took the other boldly, prepared if it proved wrong to bivouac till morning with my 'nigger,' and go on with my argument. Happily there was no need; we came again on a gate which led into a field. There was a drive across it and wire fences. Finally lights began to glimmer and dogs to bark: we were at the real Cherry Garden at last, and found the whole household alarmed for what had become of us. I could not punish my misleader by stinting his fare, for I knew that I had only myself to blame. He was an honest fellow after all. In the disturbance of my mind I left a rather valuable umbrella in his buggy. He discovered it after he had gone, and had grace enough to see that it was returned to me.

My entertainers were much amused at the cause of the misadventure, perhaps unique of its kind; to address homilies to the black people on the treatment of their wives not being the fashion in these parts.

If there are no more Aaron Bangs in Jamaica, there are very charming people; as I found when I turned this new leaf in my West Indian experience. Mr. M – could not have taken more pains with me if I had been his earliest friend. The chief luxury which he allowed himself in his simple life was a good supply of excellent horses. His business took him every day to Kingston, but he left me in charge of his family, and I had 'a good time,' as the Americans say. The house was large, with fine airy rooms, a draught so constantly blowing through it that the candles had to be covered with bell glasses; but the draughts in these countries are the very breath of life. It had been too dark when I arrived to see anything of the surroundings, and the next morning I strolled out to see what the place was like. It lies just at the foot of the Blue Mountains, where the gradual slope from the sea begins to become steep. The plain of Kingston lay stretched before me, with its woods and cornfields and villas, the long straggling town, the ships at anchor in the harbour, the steamers passing in and out with their long trails of smoke, the sand-spit like a thin grey line lying upon the water, as the natural breakwater by which the harbour is formed, and beyond it the broad blue expanse of the Caribbean Sea. The foreground was like an English park, studded over with handsome forest trees and broken by the rains into picturesque ravines. Some acres were planted with oranges of the choicer sorts, as an experiment to show what Jamaica could do, but they were as yet young and had not come into bearing. Round the house were gardens where the treasures of our hot-houses were carelessly and lavishly scattered. Stephanotis trailed along the railing or climbed over the trellis. Oleanders white and pink waved over marble basins, and were sprinkled by the spray from spouting fountains. Crotons stood about in tubs, not small plants as we know them, but large shrubs; great purple or parti-coloured bushes. They have a fancy for crotons in the West Indies; I suppose as a change from the monotony of green. I cannot share it. A red leaf, except in autumn before it falls, is a kind of monster, and I am glad that Nature has made so few of them. In the shade of the trees behind the house was a collection of orchids, the most perfect, I believe, in the island.

And here Gordon had lived. Here he had been arrested and carried away to his death; his crime being that he had dreamt of regenerating the negro race by baptising them in the Jordan of English Radicalism. He would have brought about nothing but confusion, and have precipitated Jamaica prematurely into the black anarchy into which perhaps it is still destined to fall. But to hang him was an extreme measure, and, in the present state of public opinion, a dangerous one.

One does not associate the sons of darkness with keen perceptions of the beautiful. Yet no mortal ever selected a lovelier spot for a residence than did Gordon in choosing Cherry Garden. How often had his round dark eyes wandered over the scenes at which I was gazing, watched the early rays of the sun slanting upwards to the high peaks of the Blue Mountains, or the last as he sank in gold and crimson behind the hills at Mandeville; watched the great steamers entering or leaving Port Royal, and at night the gleam of the lighthouse from among the palm trees on the spit. Poor fellow! one felt very sorry for him, and sorry for Mr. Eyre, too. The only good that came of it all was the surrender of the constitution and the return to Crown government, and this our wonderful statesmen are beginning to undo.

No one understood better than Mr. M – the troubles and dangers of the colony, but he was inclined, perhaps by temperament, perhaps by knowledge, to take a cheerful view of things. For the present at least he did not think that there was anything serious to be feared. The finances, of which he had the best means of judging, were in tolerable condition. The debt was considerable, but more than half of it was represented by a railway. If sugar was languishing, the fruit trade with the United States was growing with the liveliest rapidity. Planters and merchants were not making fortunes, but business went on. The shares in the Colonial Bank were not at a high quotation, but the securities were sound, the shareholders got good dividends, and eight and ten per cent. was the interest charged on loans. High interest might be a good sign or a bad one. Anyway Mr. M – could not see that there was much to be afraid of in Jamaica. There had been bad times before, and they had survived notwithstanding. He was a man of business, and talked himself little about politics. As it had been, so it would be again.

In his absence at his work I found friends in the neighbourhood who were all attention and politeness. One took me to see my acquaintances at the camp again. Another drove me about, showed me the house where Scott had lived, the author of 'Tom Cringle.' One round in particular left a distinct impression. It was through a forest which had once been a flourishing sugar estate. Deep among the trees were the ruins of an aqueduct which had brought water to the mill, now overgrown and crumbling. The time had not been long as we count time in the history of nations, but there had been enough for the arches to fall in, the stream to return to its native bed, the tropical vegetation to spring up in its wild luxuriance and bury in shade the ruins of a past civilisation.

I fell in with interesting persons who talked metaphysics and theology with me, though one would not have expected it in Jamaica. In this strange age of ours the spiritual atmosphere is more confused than at any period during the last eighteen hundred years. Men's hearts are failing them for fear, not knowing any longer where to rest. We look this way and that way, and catch at one another like drowning men. Go where you will, you find the same phenomena. Science grows, and observers are adding daily to our knowledge of the nature and structure of the material universe, but they tell us nothing, and can tell us nothing, of what we most want to know. They cannot tell us what our own nature is. They cannot tell us what God is, or what duty is. We had a belief once, in which, as in a boat, we floated safely on the unknown ocean; but the philosophers and critics have been boring holes in the timbers to examine the texture of the wood, and now it leaks at every one of them. We have to help ourselves in the best way that we can. Some strike out new ideas for themselves, others go back to the seven sages, and lay again for themselves the old eggs, which, after laborious incubation, will be addled as they were addled before. To my metaphysical friends in Jamaica the 'Light of Asia' had been shining amidst German dreams, and the moonlight of the Vedas had been illuminating the pessimism of Schopenhauer. So it is all round. Mr. – goes to Mount Carmel to listen for communications from Elijah; fashionable countesses to the shrine of Our Lady at Lourdes. 'Are you a Buddhist?' lisps the young lady in Mayfair to the partner with whom she is sitting out at a ball. 'It is so nice,' said a gentleman to me who has been since promoted to high office in an unfortunate colony, 'it is so nice to talk of such things to pretty girls, and it always ends in one way, you know.' Conversations on theology, at least between persons of opposite sex, ought to be interdicted by law for everyone under forty. But there are questions on which old people may be permitted to ask one another what they think, if it only be for mutual comfort in the general vacancy. We are born alone, we pass alone into the great darkness. When the curtain falls is the play over? or is a new act to commence? Are we to start again in a new sphere, carrying with us what we have gained in the discipline of our earthly trials? Are we to become again as we were before we came into this world, when eternity had not yet splintered into time, or the universal being dissolved into individual existences? For myself, I have long ceased to speculate on these subjects, being convinced that they have no bottom which can be reasoned out by the intellect. We are in a world where much can be learnt which affects our own and others' earthly welfare, and we had better leave the rest alone. Yet one listens and cannot choose but sympathise when anxious souls open out to you what is going on within them. A Spanish legend, showing with whom these inquiries began and with what result, is not without its value.

Jupiter, having made the world, proceeded to make animals to live in it. The ass was the earliest created. He looked about him. He looked at himself; and, as the habit of asses is, he asked himself what it all meant; what it was to be an ass, where did he come from, and what he was for? Not being able to discover, he applied to his maker. Jupiter told him that he was made to be the slave of another animal to be called Man. He was to carry men on his back, drag loads for them, and be their drudge. He was to live on thistles and straw, and to be beaten continually with sticks and ropes'-ends. The ass complained. He said that he had done nothing to deserve so hard a fate. He had not asked to be born, and he would rather not have been born. He inquired how long this life, or whatever it was, had to continue. Jupiter said it had to last thirty years. The poor ass was in consternation. If Jupiter would reduce the thirty to ten he undertook to be patient, to be a good servant, and to do his work patiently. Jupiter reflected and consented, and the ass retired grateful and happy.

The dog, who had been born meanwhile, heard what had passed. He, too, went to Jupiter with the same question. He learnt that he also was a slave to men. In the day he was to catch their game for them, but was not to eat it himself. At night he was to be chained by a ring and to lie awake to guard their houses. His food was to be bones and refuse. Like the ass he was to have had thirty years of it, but on petition they were similarly exchanged for ten.

The monkey came next. His function, he was told, was to mimic humanity, to be led about by a string, and grimace and dance for men's amusement. He also remonstrated at the length of time, and obtained the same favour.

Last came the man himself. Conscious of boundless desires and, as he imagined, of boundless capabilities, he did not inquire what he was, or what he was to do. Those questions had been already answered by his vanity. He did not come to ask for anything, but to thank Jupiter for having created so glorious a being and to ascertain for how many ages he might expect to endure. The god replied that thirty years was the term allotted to all personal existences.

'Only thirty years!' he exclaimed. 'Only thirty years for such capacities as mine. Thirty years will be gone like a dream. Extend them! oh, extend them, gracious Jupiter, that I may have leisure to use the intellect which thou hast given me, search into the secrets of nature, do great and glorious actions, and serve and praise thee, O my creator! longer and more worthily.'

The lip of the god curled lightly, and again he acquiesced. 'I have some spare years to dispose of,' he said, 'of which others of my creatures have begged to be relieved. You shall have thirty years of your own. From thirty to fifty you shall have the ass's years, and labour and sweat for your support. From fifty to seventy you shall have the dog's years, and take care of the stuff, and snarl and growl at what younger men are doing. From seventy to ninety you shall have the monkey's years, and smirk and grin and make yourself ridiculous. After that you may depart.'

I was going on to Cuba. The commodore had insisted on my spending my last days with him at Port Royal. He undertook to see me on board the steamer as it passed out of the harbour. I have already described his quarters. The naval station has no colonial character except the climate, and is English entirely. The officers are the servants of the Admiralty, not of the colonial government. Their interests are in their profession. They look to promotion in other parts of the world, and their functions are on the ocean and not on the land. The commodore is captain of the guardship; but he has a commander under him and he resides on shore. Everyone employed in the dockyard, even down to his own household, is rated on the ship's books, consequently they are all men. There is not a woman servant about the place, save his lady's ladies'-maid. His daughters learn to take care of themselves, and are not brought up to find everything done for them. His boys are about the world in active service growing into useful and honourable manhood.

Thus the whole life tastes of the element to which it belongs, and is salt and healthy as the ocean itself. It was not without its entertainments. The officers of the garrison were to give a ball. The young ladies of Kingston are not afraid of the water, cross the harbour in the steam launches, dance till the small hours, return in the dark, drive their eight or ten miles home, and think nothing of it. In that climate, night is pleasanter to be abroad in than day. I could not stay to be present, but I was in the midst of the preparations, and one afternoon there was a prospect of a brilliant addition to the party. A yacht steamed inside the Point – long, narrow, and swift as a torpedo boat. She carried American colours, and we heard that she was the famous vessel of the yet more famous Mr. Vanderbilt, who was on board with his family. Here was an excitement! The commodore was ordered to call the instant that she was anchored. Invitations were prepared – all was eagerness. Alas! she did not anchor at all. She learnt from the pilot that, the small-pox being in Jamaica, if any of her people landed there she would be quarantined in the other islands, and to the disappointment of everyone, even of myself, who would gladly have seen the great millionaire, she turned about and went off again to sea.

I was very happy at the commodore's – low spirits not being allowed in that wholesome element. Decks were washed every morning as if at sea, i.e. every floor was scrubbed and scoured. It was an eternal washing day, lines of linen flying in the brisk sea breeze. The commodore was always busy making work if none had been found for him. He took me one day to see the rock spring where Rodney watered his fleet, as the great admiral describes in one of his letters, and from which Port Royal now draws its supply. The spring itself bursts full and clear out of the limestone rock close to the shore, four or five miles from Kingston. There is a natural basin, slightly improved by art, from which the old conduit pipes carry the stream to the sea. The tug comes daily, fills its tanks, and returns. The commodore has tidied up the place, planted shrubs, and cleared away the bush; but half the water at least, is still allowed to leak away, and turns the hollow below into an unwholesome swamp. It may be a necessity, but it is also a misfortune, that the officers at distant stations hold their appointments for so short a term. By the time that they have learnt what can or ought to be done, they are sent elsewhere, and their successor has to begin over again. The water in this spring, part of which is now worse than wasted and the rest carried laboriously in a vessel to Port Royal to be sold by measure to the people there, might be all conducted thither by pipes at small cost and trouble, were the commodore to remain a few years longer at the Jamaica Station.

He is his own boatman, and we had some fine sails about the lagoon – the breeze always fresh and the surface always smooth. The shallow bays swarm with small fish, and it was a pretty thing to watch the pelicans devouring them. They gather in flocks, sweep and wheel in the air, and when they plunge they strike the water with a violence which one would expect would break their wings. They do not dive, but seize their prey with their long, broad bills, and seem never to miss.

Between the ships and the barracks, there are many single men in Port Royal, for whom amusement has to be found if they are to be kept from drink. A canteen is provided for them, with bowling alley, tennis court, beer in moderation, and a reading room, for such as like it, with reviews and magazines and newspapers They can fish if they want sport, and there are sharks in plenty a cable's length from shore; but the schoolmaster has been abroad, and tastes run in more refined directions. The blacks of Tobago acted 'The Merchant of Venice' before Governor S – . The ships' companies of the gunboats at Port Royal gave a concert while I was there. The officers took no part, and left the men to manage it as they pleased. The commodore brought his party; the garrison, the crews of the other ships, and stray visitors came, and the large room at the canteen was completely full. The taste of the audience was curious. Dibdin was off the boards altogether, and favour was divided between the London popular comic song and the sentimental – no longer with any flavour of salt about it, but the sentimental spoony and sickly. 'She wore a wreath of roses' called out the highest enthusiasm. One of the performers recited a long poem of his own about Mary Stuart, 'the lovely and unfortunate.' Then followed the buffoonery; and this was at least genuine rough and tumble if there was little wit in it. A lad capered about on a tournament horse which flung him every other moment. Various persons pretended to be drunk, and talked and staggered as drunken men do. Then there was a farce, how conceived and by what kind of author I was puzzled to make out. A connoisseur of art is looking for Greek antiques. He has heard that a statue has recently been discovered of 'Ajax quarrelling with his mother-in-law.' What Ajax was quarrelling about or who his mother-in-law might be does not appear. A couple of rogues, each unknown to the other, practise on the connoisseur's credulity. Each promises him the statue; each dresses up a confederate on a pedestal with a modern soldier's helmet and a blanket to represent a Greek hero. The two figures are shown to him. One of them, I forget how, contrived to pass as Ajax; the other had turned into Hercules doing something to the Stymphalides. At last they get tired of standing to be looked at, jump down, and together knock over the connoisseur. Ajax then turns on Hercules, who, of course, is ready for a row. They fight till they are tired, and then make it up over a whisky bottle.

So entirely new an aspect of the British tar took me by surprise, and I speculated whether the inventors and performers of this astonishing drama were an advance on the Ben Bunting type. I was, of course, inclined to say no, but my tendency is to dislike changes, and I allow for it. The commodore said that in certain respects there really was an advance. The seamen fell into few scrapes, and they did not get drunk so often. This was a hardy assertion of the commodore, as a good many of them were drunk at that moment. I could see myself that they were better educated. If Ben Bunting had been asked who Ajax and Hercules were, he would have taken them to be three-deckers which were so named, and his knowledge would have gone no farther. Whether these tars of the new era are better sailors and braver and truer men is another question. They understand their rights much better, if that does any good to them. The officers used to be treated with respect at all times and seasons. This is now qualified. When they are on duty, the men are as respectful as they used to be; when they are off duty, the commodore himself is only old H – .

We returned to the dockyard in a boat under a full moon, the guardship gleaming white in the blue midnight and the phosphorescent water flashing under the oars. The 'Dee,' which was to take me to Havana, was off Port Royal on the following morning. The commodore put me on board in his gig, with the white ensign floating over the stern. I took leave of him with warm thanks for his own and his family's hospitable entertainment of me. The screw went round – we steamed away out of the harbour, and Jamaica and the kind friends whom I had found there faded out of sight. Jamaica was the last of the English West India Islands which I visited. I was to see it again, but I will here set down the impressions which had been left upon me by what I had seen there and seen in the Antilles.

CHAPTER XVII

Present state of Jamaica – Test of progress – Resources of the island – Political alternatives – Black supremacy and probable consequences – The West Indian problem.

As I was stepping into the boat at Port Royal, a pamphlet was thrust into my hand, which I was entreated to read at my leisure. It was by some discontented white of the island – no rare phenomenon, and the subject of it was the precipitate decline in the value of property there. The writer, unlike the planters, insisted that the people were taxed in proportion to their industry. There were taxes on mules, on carts, on donkeys, all bearing on the small black proprietors, whose ability to cultivate was thus checked, and who were thus deliberately encouraged in idleness. He might have added, although he did not, that while both in Jamaica and Trinidad everyone is clamouring against the beetroot bounty which artificially lowers the price of sugar, the local councils in these two islands try to counteract the effect and artificially raise the price of sugar by an export duty on their own produce – a singular method of doing it which, I presume, admits of explanation. My pamphleteer was persuaded that all the world were fools, and that he and his friends were the only wise ones: again a not uncommon occurrence in pamphleteers. He demanded the suppression of absenteeism; he demanded free trade. In exchange for the customs duties, which were to be abolished, he demanded a land tax – the very mention of which, I had been told by others, drove the black proprietors whom he wished to benefit into madness. He wanted Home Rule. He wanted fifty things besides which I have forgotten, but his grand want of all was a new currency. Mankind, he thought, had been very mad at all periods of their history. The most significant illustration of their madness had been the selection of gold and silver as the medium of exchange. The true base of the currency was the land. The Government of Jamaica was to lend to every freeholder up to the mortgage value of his land in paper notes, at 5 per cent. interest, the current rate being at present 8 per cent. The notes so issued, having the land as their security, would be in no danger of depreciation, and they would flow over the sugar estates like an irrigating stream. On the produce of sugar the fate of the island depended.