At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies

So all the game which we saw was a lovely white Egret, 217 its back covered with those stiff pinnated plumes which young ladies—when they can obtain them—are only too happy to wear in their hats.  He, after being civil enough to wait on a bough till one of us got a sitting shot at him, heard the cap snap, thought it as well not to wait till a fresh one was put on, and flapped away.  He need not have troubled himself.  The Negroes—but too apt to forget something or other—had forgotten to bring a spare supply; and the gun was useless.

As we descended, the left bank of the river was entirely occupied with cocos; and the contrast between them and the mangroves on the right was made all the more striking by the afternoon sun, which, as it sank behind the forest, left the mangrove wall in black shadow, while it bathed the palm-groves opposite with yellow light.  In one of these palm-groves we landed, for we were right thirsty; and to drink lagoon water would be to drink cholera or fever.  But there was plenty of pure water in the coco-trees, and we soon had our fill.  A Negro walked—not climbed—up a stem like a four-footed animal, his legs and arms straight, his feet pressed flat against it, his hands clinging round it—a feat impossible, as far as I have seen, to an European—tossed us down plenty of green nuts; and our feast began.

Two or three blows with the cutlass, at the small end of the nut, cut off not only the pith-coat, but the point of the shell; and disclose—the nut being held carefully upright meanwhile—a cavity full of perfectly clear water, slightly sweet, and so cold (the pith-coat being a good non-conductor of heat) that you are advised, for fear of cholera, to flavour it with a little brandy.  After draining this natural cup, you are presented with a natural spoon of rind, green outside and white within, and told to scoop out and eat the cream which lines the inside of the shell, a very delicious food in the opinion of Creoles.  After which, if you are as curious as some of us were, you will sit down under the amber shade, and examine at leisure the construction and germination of these famous and royal nuts.  Let me explain it, even at the risk of prolixity.  The coat of white pith outside, with its green skin, will gradually develop and harden into that brown fibre of which matting is made.  The clear water inside will gradually harden into that sweetmeat which little boys eat off stalls and barrows in the street; the first delicate deposit of which is the cream in the green nut.  This is albumen, intended to nourish the young palm till it has grown leaves enough to feed on the air, and roots enough to feed on the soil; and the birth of that young palm is in itself a mystery and a miracle, well worth considering.  Much has been written on it, of which I, unfortunately, have read very little; but I can at least tell what I have seen with my own eyes.

If you search among the cream-layer at the larger end of the nut, you will find, gradually separating itself from the mass, a little white lump, like the stalk of a very young mushroom.  That is the ovule.  In that lies the life, the ‘forma formativa,’ of the future tree.  How that life works, according to its kind, who can tell?  What it does, is this: it is locked up inside a hard woody shell, and outside that shell are several inches of tough tangled fibre.  How can it get out, as soft and seemingly helpless as a baby’s finger?

All know that there are three eyes in the monkey’s face, as the children call it, at the butt of the nut.  Two of these eyes are blind, and filled up with hard wood.  They are rudiments—hints—that the nut ought to have, perhaps had uncounted ages since, not one ovule, but three, the type-number in palms.  One ovule alone is left; and that is opposite the one eye which is less blind than the rest; the eye which a schoolboy feels for with his knife, when he wants to get out the milk.

As the nut lies upon the sand, in shade, and rain, and heat, that baby’s finger begins boring its way, with unerring aim, out of the weakest eye.  Soft itself, yet with immense wedging power, from the gradual accretion of tiny cells, it pierces the wood, and then rends right and left the tough fibrous coat.  Just so may be seen—I have seen—a large flagstone lifted in a night by a crop of tiny soft toadstools which have suddenly blossomed up beneath it.  The baby’s finger protrudes at last, and curves upward toward the light, to commence the campaign of life: but it has meanwhile established, like a good strategist, a safe base of operations in its rear, from which it intends to draw supplies.  Into the albuminous cream which lines the shell, and into the cavity where the milk once was, it throws out white fibrous vessels, which eat up the albumen for it, and at last line the whole inside of the shell with a white pith.  The albumen gives it food wherewith to grow, upward and downward.  Upward, the white plumule hardens into what will be a stem; the one white cotyledon which sheaths it develops into a flat, ribbed, forked, green leaf, sheathing it still; and above it fresh leaves, sheathing always at their bases, begin to form a tiny crown; and assume each, more and more, the pinnate form of the usual coco-leaf.  But long ere this, from the butt of the white plumule, just outside the nut, white threads of root have struck down into the sand; and so the nut lies, chained to the ground by a bridge-like chord, which drains its albumen, through the monkey’s eye, into the young plant.  After a while—a few months, I believe—the draining of the nut is complete; the chord dries up—I know not how, for I had neither microscope nor time wherewith to examine—and parts; and the little plant, having got all it can out of its poor wet-nurse, casts her ungratefully off to wither on the sand; while it grows up into a stately tree, which will begin to bear fruit in six or seven years, and thenceforth continue, flowering and fruiting the whole year round without a pause, for sixty years and more.

I think I have described this—to me—‘miraculum’ simply enough to be understood by the non-scientific reader, if only he or she have first learned the undoubted fact—known, I find, to very few ‘educated’ English people—that the coco-palm which produces coir-rope, and coconuts, and a hundred other useful things, is not the same plant as the cacao-bush which produces chocolate, nor anything like it.  I am sorry to have to insist upon this fact: but till Professor Huxley’s dream—and mine—is fulfilled, and our schools deign to teach, in the intervals of Latin and Greek, some slight knowledge of this planet, and of those of its productions which are most commonly in use, even this fact may need to be re-stated more than once.

We re-embarked again, and rowed down to the river-mouth to pick up shells, and drink in the rich roaring trade breeze, after the choking atmosphere of the lagoon; and then rowed up home, tired, and infinitely amused, though neither Manati nor Boa-constrictor had been seen; and then we fell to siesta; during which—with Mr. Tennyson’s forgiveness—I read myself to sleep with one of his best poems; and then went to dinner, not without a little anxiety.

For M– (the civiliser of Montserrat) had gone off early, with mule, cutlass, and haversack, back over the Doubloon and into the wilds of Manzanilla, to settle certain disputed squatter claims, and otherwise enforce the law; and now the night had fallen, and he was not yet home.  However, he rode up at last, dead beat, with a strong touch of his old swamp-fever, and having had an adventure, which had like to have proved his last.  For as he rode through the Doubloon at low tide in the morning, he espied in the surf that river-god, or Jumby, of which I spoke just now; namely, the gray back-fin of a shark; and his mule espied it too, and laid back her ears, knowing well what it was.  M– rode close up to the brute.  He seemed full seven feet long, and eyed him surlily, disinclined to move off; so they parted, and M– went on his way.  But his business detained him longer than he expected; when he got back to the river-mouth it was quite dark, and the tide was full high.  He must either sleep on the sands, which with fever upon him would not have been over-safe, or try the passage.  So he stripped, swam the mule over, tied her up, and then went back, up to his shoulders in surf; and cutlass in hand too, for that same shark might be within two yards of him.  But on his second journey he had to pile on his head, first his saddle, and then his clothes and other goods; few indeed, but enough to require both hands to steady them: and so walked helpless through the surf, expecting every moment to be accosted by a set of teeth, from which he would hardly have escaped with life.  To have faced such a danger, alone and in the dark, and thoroughly well aware, as an experienced man, of its extremity, was good proof (if any had been needed) of the indomitable Scots courage of the man.  Nevertheless, he said, he never felt so cold down his back as he did during that last wade.  By God’s blessing the shark was not there, or did not see him; and he got safe home, thankful for dinner and quinine.

Going back the next morning at low tide, we kept a good look-out for M–’s shark, spreading out, walkers and riders, in hopes of surrounding him and cutting him up.  There were half a dozen weapons among us, of which my heavy bowie-knife was not the worst; and we should have given good account of him had we met him, and got between him and the deep water.  But our valour was superfluous.  The enemy was nowhere to be seen; and we rode on, looking back wistfully, but in vain, for a gray fin among the ripples.

So we rode back, along the Cocal and along that wonderful green glade, where I, staring at Noranteas in tree-tops, instead of at the ground beneath my horse’s feet, had the pleasure of being swallowed up—my horse’s hindquarters at least—in the very same slough which had engulfed M–’s mule three days before, and got a roll in much soft mud.  Then up to –’s camp, where we expected breakfast, not with greediness, though we had been nigh six hours in the saddle, but with curiosity.  For he had promised to send out the hunters for all game that could be found, and give us a true forest meal; and we were curious to taste what lapo, quenco, guazupita-deer, and other strange meats might be like.  Nay, some of us agreed, that if the hunters had but brought in a tender young red monkey, 218 we would surely eat him too, if it were but to say that we had done it.  But the hunters had had no luck.  They had brought in only a Pajui, 219 an excellent game bird; an Ant-eater, 220 and a great Cachicame, or nine-banded Armadillo.  The ant-eater the foolish fellows had eaten themselves—I would have given them what they asked for his skeleton; but the Armadillo was cut up and hashed for us, and was eaten, to the last scrap, being about the best game I ever tasted.  I fear he is a foul feeder at times, who by no means confines himself to roots, or even worms.  If what I was told be true, there is but too much probability for Captain Mayne Reid’s statement, that he will eat his way into the soft parts of a dead horse, and stay there until he has eaten his way out again.  But, to do him justice, I never heard him accused, like the giant Armadillo 221 of the Main, of digging dead bodies out of their graves, as he is doing in a very clever drawing in Mr. Wood’s Homes without Hands.  Be that as it may, the Armadillo, whatever he feeds on, has the power of transmuting it into most delicate and wholesome flesh.

Meanwhile—and hereby hangs a tale—I was interested, not merely in the Armadillo, but in the excellent taste with which it, and everything else, was cooked in a little open shed over a few stones and firesticks.  And complimenting my host thereon, I found that he had, there in the primeval forest, an admirable French cook, to whom I begged to be introduced at once.  Poor fellow!  A little lithe Parisian, not thirty years old, he had got thither by a wild road.  Cook to some good bourgeois family in Paris, he had fallen in love with his master’s daughter, and she with him.  And when their love was hopeless, and discovered, the two young foolish things, not having—as is too common in France—the fear of God before their eyes, could think of no better resource than to shut themselves up with a pan of lighted charcoal, and so go they knew not-whither.  The poor girl went—and was found dead.  But the boy recovered; and was punished with twenty years of Cayenne; and here he was now, on a sort of ticket-of-leave, cooking for his livelihood.  I talked a while with him, cheered him with some compliments about the Parisians, and so forth, dear to the Frenchman’s heart—what else was there to say?—and so left him, not without the fancy that, if he had had but such an education as the middle classes in Paris have not, there were the makings of a man in that keen eye, large jaw, sharp chin.  ‘The very fellow,’ said some one, ‘to have been a first-rate Zouave.’  Well: perhaps he was a better man, even as he was, than as a Zouave.

And so we rode away again, and through Valencia, and through San Josef, weary and happy, back to Port of Spain.

I would gladly, had I been able, have gone farther due westward into the forests which hide the river Oropuche, that I might have visited the scene of a certain two years’ Idyll, which was enacted in them some forty years and more ago.

In 1827 cacao fell to so low a price (two dollars per cwt.) that it was no longer worth cultivating; and the head of the F– family, leaving his slaves to live at ease on his estates, retreated, with a household of twelve persons, to a small property of his own, which was buried in the primeval forests of Oropuche.  With them went his second son, Monsignor F–, then and afterwards curé of San Josef, who died shortly before my visit to the island.  I always heard him spoken of as a gentleman and a scholar, a saintly and cultivated priest of the old French School, respected and beloved by men of all denominations.  His church of San Josef, though still unfinished, had been taxed, as well as all the Roman Catholic churches of the island, to build the Roman Catholic Cathedral at Port of Spain; and he, refusing to obey an order which he considered unjust, threw up his curé, and retreated with the rest of the family to the palm-leaf ajoupas in the forest.

M. F– chose three of his finest Negroes as companions.  Melchior was to go out every day to shoot wild pigeons, coming every morning to ask how many were needed, so as not to squander powder and shot.  The number ordered were always punctually brought in, besides sometimes a wild turkey—Pajui—or other fine birds.  Alejos, who is now a cacao proprietor, and owner of a house in Arima, was chosen to go out every day, except Sundays, with the dogs; and scarcely ever failed to bring in a lapp or quenco.  Aristobal was chosen for the fishing, and brought in good loads of river fish, some sixteen pounds weight: and thus the little party of cultivated gentlemen and ladies were able to live, though in poverty, yet sumptuously.

The Bishop had given Monsignor F– permission to perform service on any of his father’s estates.  So a little chapel was built; the family and servants attended every Sunday, and many days in the week; and the country folk from great distances found their way through the woods to hear Mass in the palm-thatched sanctuary of ‘El Riposo.’

So did that happy family live ‘the gentle life’ for some two years; till cacao rose again in price, the tax on the churches was taken off, and the F–s returned again to the world: but not to civilisation and Christianity.  Those they had carried with them into the wilderness; and those they brought back with them unstained.

CHAPTER XIV: THE ‘EDUCATION QUESTION’ IN TRINIDAD

When I arrived in Trinidad, the little island was somewhat excited about changes in the system of education, which ended in a compromise like that at home, though starting from almost the opposite point.

Among the many good deeds which Lord Harris did for the colony was the establishment throughout it of secular elementary ward schools, helped by Government grants, on a system which had, I think, but two defects.  First, that attendance was not compulsory; and next, that it was too advanced for the state of society in the island.

In an ideal system, secular and religious education ought, I believe, to be strictly separate, and given, as far as possible, by different classes of men.  The first is the business of scientific men and their pupils; the second, of the clergy and their pupils: and the less either invades the domain of the other, the better for the community.  But, like all ideals, it requires not only first-rate workmen, but first-rate material to work on; an intelligent and high-minded populace, who can and will think for themselves upon religious questions; and who have, moreover, a thirst for truth and knowledge of every kind.  With such a populace, secular and religious education can be safely parted.  But can they be safely parted in the case of a populace either degraded or still savage; given up to the ‘lusts of the flesh’; with no desire for improvement, and ignorant of that ‘moral ideal,’ without the influence of which, as my friend Professor Huxley well says, there can be no true education?  It is well if such a people can be made to submit to one system of education.  Is it wise to try to burden them with two at once?  But if one system is to give way to the other, which is the more important: to teach them the elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic; or the elements of duty and morals?  And how these latter can be taught without religion is a problem as yet unsolved.

So argued some of the Protestant and the whole of the Roman Catholic clergy of Trinidad, and withdrew their support from the Government schools, to such an extent that at least three-fourths of the children, I understand, went to no school at all.

The Roman Catholic clergy had, certainly, much to urge on their own behalf.  The great majority of the coloured population of the island, besides a large proportion of the white, belonged to their creed.  Their influence was the chief (I had almost said the only) civilising and Christianising influence at work on the lower orders of their own coloured people.  They knew, none so well, how much the Negro required, not merely to be instructed, but to be reclaimed from gross and ruinous vices.  It was not a question in Port of Spain, any more than it is in Martinique, of whether the Negroes should be able to read and write, but of whether they should exist on the earth at all for a few generations longer.  I say this openly and deliberately; and clergymen and police magistrates know but too well what I mean.  The priesthood were, and are, doing their best to save the Negro; and they naturally wished to do their work, on behalf of society and of the colony, in their own way; and to subordinate all teaching to that of religion, which includes, with them, morality and decency.  They therefore opposed the Government schools; because they tended, it was thought, to withdraw the Negro from his priest’s influence.

I am not likely, I presume, to be suspected of any leaning toward Romanism.  But I think a Roman Catholic priest would have a right to a fair and respectful hearing, if he said:—

‘You have set these people free, without letting them go through that intermediate stage of feudalism, by which, and by which alone, the white races of Europe were educated into true freedom.  I do not blame you.  You could do no otherwise.  But will you hinder their passing through that process of religious education under a priesthood, by which, and by which alone, the white races of Europe were educated up to something like obedience, virtue, and purity?

‘These last, you know, we teach in the interest of the State, as well as of the Negro: and if we should ask the State for aid, in order that we may teach them, over and above a little reading and writing—which will not be taught save by us, for we only shall be listened to—are we asking too much, or anything which the State will not be wise in granting us?  We can have no temptation to abuse our power for political purposes.  It would not suit us—to put the matter on its lowest ground—to become demagogues.  For our congregations include persons of every rank and occupation; and therefore it is our interest, as much as that of the British Government, that all classes should be loyal, peaceable, and wealthy.

‘As for our peculiar creed, with its vivid appeals to the senses: is it not a question whether the utterly unimaginative and illogical Negro can be taught the facts of Christianity, or indeed any religion at all, save through his senses?  Is it not a question whether we do not, on the whole, give him a juster and clearer notion of the very truths which you hold in common with us, than an average Protestant missionary does?

‘Your Church of England’—it must be understood that the relations between the Anglican and the Romish clergy in Trinidad are, as far as I have seen, friendly and tolerant—‘ does good work among its coloured members.  But it does so by speaking, as we speak, with authority.  It, too, finds it prudent to keep up in its services somewhat at least of that dignity, even pomp, which is as necessary for the Negro as it was for the half-savage European of the early Middle Age, if he is to be raised above his mere natural dread of spells, witches, and other harmful powers, to somewhat of admiration and reverence.

‘As for the merely dogmatic teaching of the Dissenters: we do not believe that the mere Negro really comprehends one of those propositions, whether true or false, Catholic or Calvinist, which have been elaborated by the intellect and the emotions of races who have gone through a training unknown to the Negro.  With all respect for those who disseminate such books, we think that the Negro can no more conceive the true meaning of an average Dissenting Hymn-book, than a Sclavonian of the German Marches a thousand years ago could have conceived the meaning of St. Augustine’s Confessions.  For what we see is this—that when the personal influence of the white missionary is withdrawn, and the Negro left to perpetuate his sect on democratic principles, his creed merely feeds his inordinate natural vanity with the notion that everybody who differs from him is going to hell, while he is going to heaven whatever his morals may be.’

If a Roman Catholic priest should say all this, he would at least have a right, I believe, to a respectful hearing.

Nay, more.  If he were to say, ‘You are afraid of our having too much to do with the education of the Negro, because we use the Confessional as an instrument of education.  Now how far the Confessional is needful, or useful, or prudent, in a highly civilised and generally virtuous community, may be an open matter.  But in spite of all your English dislike of it, hear our side of the question, as far as Negroes and races in a similar condition are concerned.  Do you know why and how the Confessional arose?  Have you looked, for instance, into the old middle-age Penitentials?  If so, you must be aware that it arose in an age of coarseness, which seems now inconceivable; in those barbarous times when the lower classes of Europe, slaves or serfs, especially in remote country districts, lived lives little better than those of the monkeys in the forest, and committed habitually the most fearful crimes, without any clear notion that they were doing wrong: while the upper classes, to judge from the literature which they have left, were so coarse, and often so profligate, in spite of nobler instincts and a higher sense of duty, that the purest and justest spirits among them had again and again to flee from their own class into the cloister or the hermit’s cell.

‘In those days, it was found necessary to ask Christian people perpetually—Have you been doing this, or that?  For if you have, you are not only unfit to be called a Christian; you are unfit to be called a decent human being.  And this, because there was every reason to suppose that they had been doing it; and that they would not tell of themselves, if they could possibly avoid it.  So the Confessional arose, as a necessary element for educating savages into common morality and decency.  And for the same reasons we employ it among the Negroes of Trinidad.  Have no fears lest we should corrupt the minds of the young.  They see and hear more harm daily than we could ever teach them, were we so devilishly minded.  There is vice now, rampant and notorious, in Port of Spain, which eludes even our Confessional.  Let us alone to do our best.  God knows we are trying to do it, according to our light.’