This book was digitized by Microsoft Corporation in cooperation with Cornell University Libraries, 2007. You may use and print this copy in limited quantity for your personal purposes, but may not distribute or provide access fo it (or modified or partial versions of if) for revenue-generating or other commercial purposes. Digitized by Microsoft® THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP Digitized by Microsoft® fAll rights reserved] Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® A PLANTER’S HOUSE, BARBADOS. A circle of Cabbage Palms. Frontispiece, Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP AN ACCOUNT OF A VOYAGE TO THE WEST INDIES BY SIR FREDERICK TREVES, Bart. G.C.V.O., C.B., LL.D. SERJEANT SURGEON TO H.M, THE KING SURGEON IN ORDINARY TO H.M. QUEEN ALEXANDRA e WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR, AND MAPS NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY cpp Digitized by Microsoft® i / ef! tfeedl First Epition (Smith, Elder & Co.) ans Sixth Impression .. .. ae eee Reprinted (John Murray) .. Reprinted .. «2 ee se oe oe Reprinted .. «2 «se «6 «e ef =a s oie Printed in Great Britain at Tue BALLANTYNE PRESS SporTiswoopDE, BALLANTYNE & Co. Lrp. Colchester, London & Eton MAY 2 Oo TL AAW s Digitized by Microsoft® awd - (o0% t fee) ‘ at i .» May, 1908 September, 1913 September, 1920 March, 1925 ® April, 1928 “yy Se PREFACE. THAT fervent spirit of adventure and romance which set aglow the heart of every lad in every sea town of England, when Elizabeth was queen, found both its source and its end among the West Indies and by the Spanish Main. The palm-covered island, the secret creek, the white-walled Spanish town formed the scene of ever-inspiring dreams. The boy from the grandmotherly coaster, who found his way into Plymouth Sound, would sit on a bollard on the quay and listen to sun- browned men talking of Indians and sea fights, of Plate ships and pieces of eight, until his soul so burned within him that he turned upon his own homely craft, and shipped as powder-boy on the first galliasse making for the heroic West. In these fair islands were gold and pearls, they said, as well as birds and beasts beyond the imagination of man. Here under the steaming sun of the tropics the pirate harried the sea, and here, in blood, smoke, and cutlass hacks his tale was writ. In coves among the islands he careened his ship and hid his treasure, in blue sea alleys he watched for Spanish merchantmen, and in fever-stricken jungles he rotted and died. For over a century the famous Buccaneers were the terror of the Spanish Main, while tc every sturdy British lad, for all these years, the call of the sea rover was as the call of the wild. [he very first glimpse of the New World that met the gaze of Columbus was a glimpse of a West Indian island. For some three centuries after his coming, the coasts the great navigator tracked out were the scene of a sea life whose common round was one of Digitized by Microsoft® vi THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. ever desperate adventure. For three centuries ships poured west- ward from nearly every port in Europe, laden with arms and men, searching for strange riches and for a sight of the marvels of the new earth. Through the island channels lay the passage to El Dorado, to Manoa, the city of the lake, where the streets were paved with gold, and down these sea-ways, radiant with hope, sailed Raleigh, the dreamer, on his road to fortune. It was among these islands and along the Main that there came to Drake the strength and craft that crushed, in fulness of time, the Spanish Armada. Here was served the apprenticeship of Dampier, of Frobisher, of Hawkins, and of a host of mighty sailormen who have made the ocean memorable. It was to the West Indies that Nelson took his first voyage, a voyage from which the puny lad “returned a practical seaman.” It was here that he held his first command. It was here that he learnt from the quarter-deck of his little brig the elements of war. In the seclusion of these gorgeous islands, indeed, the long sea story of England was begun. The West Indies became the nursery of the British Navy, the school where the thews were hardened and the sea lessons learned. Here was fostered and fed that soul of adventure and reckless daring which inspired the early colonist and made invincible the man with the boarding pike. Here grew, from puny beginnings, the germ of the great Sea Power of the World. In the proud romance of the sea, in the ocean songs and epics, in the sea stories which have been told and retold to generations of British lads, in the breeding of stout-hearted men and the framing of far-venturing ships, the islands have been no less than the Cradle of the Deep. Thatched House Lodge, Richmond Park, Kingston-on-Thames. March 1908. Digitized by Microsoft® II. III. VI. VIL. VIII. Ix. XI. XII. XIII. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. CONTENTS. PAGE FROM THE CITY OF FOG TO AN ISLAND OF ETERNAL SUMMER... 4 @ © © % ww 8 w SEVENTY YEARS AGO. . «6 © «© «© «© «4 3 BARBADOS .. « «© ® «© & © ® @ @® a 9 THE INLAND CLIFF AND THE SEA BEACHES . .. 1 GEORGE WASHINGTON AND ANOTHER AT BARBADOS 24 THE ISLANDERS . . . . . « + ee = 8 THE PLANTERS AND THE POOR WHITES . . . 37 THE DAY WHEN THE SUN STOOD STILL. . .. 43 A MYSTERIOUS SHIP. . « » «© + «© «© « 49 TRINIDAD. . . . 2. «© «© « 6 8 ew 56 HOLY ISLAND AND THE FORT IN THE WOOD . .. 62 OT. JOSEP 2 wR OA eR em EL DORADO eee we THE HIGH WOODS . . . . . «© «. « « 98 THE FIRST WEST INDIAN TOURIST . . . . .. 82 THE PITCH LAKE. . . . . . « «© «@ « 89 THE BOCAS « «© & 8 Bo Sw G al = loa THE FIVE ISLANDS . . . . . . «© « « 98 A GLANCE AT THE MAP . . we stes—:sSCTCOD GRENADA. . ... el. Wg Gh SR! Sed. 2 Fe 106 THE FAIR HELEN OF THE WEST INDIES . . . 109 CUL DE SAC BAY. . . . «© «© «© «© «© « 44 THE MORNE FORTUNE . . . » © © «© «© ID Digitized by Microsoft® XXVII. XXVIII. XXIX. XXX. XXXI. XXXII. XXXIII. XXXIV. XXXV. XXXVI. XXXVII. XXXVIII. XXXIX. XL. XLI. XLII. XLIII. XLIV. XLV. XLVI. XLVII. XLVIII. XLIX. L. LI. LIT. LIII. LIV. THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. CASTRIES AND ITS PEOPLE bo oe THE SONG OF CASIMIR DELAVIGNE . . MARTINIQUE “NO FLINT” GREY AND THE STONE SHIP THE CITY THAT WAS THE LAST NIGHT IN ST. PIERRE. . THE SHADOW OF THE MOUNTAIN. . DOMINICA. «4 § © & w © & % VICTORINE AND HER FOREFATHERS THE BATTLE OF THE SAINTS PASSAGE. Sr MITTS 4 wo & A Sw & ST. KITTS IN ALL ITS GLORY . ... STRANGE WARES THE LITTLE CAPTAIN OF THE “BOREAS” THE ENVIRONS OF ST. KITTS . . SABA THE ASTONISHING . . . . ST. THOMAS MEMOIRS OF EDWARD TEACH, MARINER . A HARBOUR ENTRY THE MAN WITH A GLOVE IN HIS HAT. THE SAN JUAN OF TO-DAY. . . . THE WHITE HOUSE . . ... . MONA THE PROTESTANT . . . ,. THE ISLAND OF MISRULE . . . . A CITY OUT AT ELBOWS .. . ., THE TOMB OF COLUMBUS . . .. DRAKE AT SAN DOMINGO . . .. . THE BUCCANEERS. . . . . . . “QUR WELL BELOVED” . . . . ON THE WAY TO JAMAICA . . . SPANISH TOWN. . . . . . . Digitized by Microsoft® PAGE 123 130 137 143 148 154 158 162 168 175 177 183 189 193 196 201 204 208 215 223 227 230 236. 238 244 249 251 257 263 267 273 LV. LVI. LVII. LVIII. LIX. LX. LXI. LXII. LXIII. LXIV. LXV. LXVI. LXVII. LXVIII. LXIX. LXX. LXXI. LXXII. LXXIII. LY XIV. CONTENTS. KINGSTON IN RUINS . . . * A RECORD OF TEN SECONDS. . ADMIRAL JOHN BENBOW . . . PORT ROYAL AS IT WAS . . . PORT ROYAL AS IT IS - 08 TOM BOWLING’S CHANTRY . oe COLON . . . . . . THE GOLD ROAD . . . . . ° SOME WHO FOLLOWED THE GOLD ROAD . OVER THE ISTHMUS TO PANAMA . MORGAN’S RAID . . . . ° OLD PANAMA . e ‘ e , . ‘**GROG’S” VICTORY. . . . HOW DRAKE WRESTLED WITH THE SHADOW CARTAGENA HARBOUR . . . THE CITY OF CARTAGENA . . . OFF TO THE FRONT . . . ° THE SARGASSO SEA . . THE VANISHING ISLAND AND THE DIED TWICE “THE SOUGH OF AN OLD SONG” INDEX 5 . 2 . ' ' e Digitized by Microsoft® GIANT ix PAGE 279 285 280 293 298 303 307 310 316 325 330 334 340 343 348 355 359 363 366 372 375 XXVII. XXVIII. XXIX. XXX. XXXI. XXXII. XXXIII. XXXIV. XXXV. XXXVI. XXXVIL. XXXVIII. XXXIX, XL. XLI. XLII. XLII. XLIV. XLV. XLVI. XLVIL. XLVIII. XLIX. L. LI. LIL. LITI. LIV. THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. CASTRIES AND ITS PEOPLE a a THE SONG OF CASIMIR DELAVIGNE . . MARTINIQUE “NO FLINT” GREY AND THE STONE SHIP THE CITY THAT WAS THE LAST NIGHT IN ST. PIERRE. . . THE SHADOW OF THE MOUNTAIN. . DOMINICA . . . . 2 wn VICTORINE AND HER FOREFATHERS . THE BATTLE OF THE SAINTS PASSAGE. St Rites oe. xb 4. ae Be SB ST. KITTS IN ALL ITS GLORY . . . STRANGE WARES THE LITTLE CAPTAIN OF THE “BOREAS” THE ENVIRONS OF ST. KITTS . . SABA THE ASTONISHING . . . . . ST. THOMAS MEMOIRS OF EDWARD TEACH, MARINER . A HARBOUR ENTRY THE MAN WITH A GLOVE IN HIS HAT . THE SAN JUAN OF TO-DAY. . . . THE WHITE HOUSE . .... . MONA THE PROTESTANT . . . . THE ISLAND OF MISRULE . . . . A CITY OUT AT ELBOWS . . THE TOMB OF COLUMBUS DRAKE AT SAN DOMINGO . . . . THE BUCCANEERS. . . . . . . “QUR WELL BELOVED” . . . . ON THE WAY TO JAMAICA... SPANISH TOWN. . . . 4. . Digitized by Microsoft® PAGE 123 130 137 143 148 154 158 162 168 175 177 183 189 193 196 201 204 208 215 223 227 230 236 238 244 249 251 257 263 267 273 LV. LVI. LVIIL. LNITI. LIX. LX. LXI. LXII. UXIII. LXIV. LXV. LXVI. LXVII. LXVIII. LXIX. LXXI. LXXII. LXXIII. L¥ XEV. CONTENTS. KINGSTON IN RUINS . . . A RECORD OF TEN SECONDS . ADMIRAL JOHN BENBOW . . PORT ROYAL AS IT WAS. . PORT ROYAL AS IT IS sf TOM BOWLING’S CHANTRY . e COLON . . . . THE GOLD ROAD . . . . SOME WHO FOLLOWED THE GOLD ROAD . OVER THE ISTHMUS TO PANAMA MORGAN’S RAID . . . . OLD PANAMA . . . e : **GROG’S ” VICTORY HOW DRAKE WRESTLED WITH THE SHADOW CARTAGENA HARBOUR THE CITY OF CARTAGENA . . OFF TO THE FRONT . . . THE SARGASSO SEA : . THE VANISHING ISLAND AND THE GIANT DIED TWICE “THE SOUGH OF AN OLD SONG” INDEX . 2 o ’ ' Digitized by Microsoft® 1x PAGE 279 285 289 293 298 303 307 310 316 325 330 334 340 343 348 355 359 363 366 372 375 Digitized by Microsoft® De Oe Nes 8. Io. II. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. ILLUSTRATIONS. A PLANTER’S HOUSE, BARBADOS. A CIRCLE OF CABBAGE PALMS . . . « . « « Frontispiece BARBADOS HARBOUR.» se we) ; MANCHINEEL GROVE, BARBADOS . . t eae VIEW FROM ST. JOHN’S CHURCH, BARBADOS . } ” I2 NEGRO HUTS, BARBADOS . ‘ . . MAIN STREET, HOLE TOWN, BARBADOS . . » «20 LANDING PLACE OF THE ‘OLIVE BLOSSOME,” BARBADOS . : 7 . . » «22 A WEST INDIAN GRAVEYARD, "BARBADOS. THE SILK COTTON TREE PLANTER’S HOUSE, SHOWING THE HURRICANE WING . . . ° . . A JUNGLE STREAM, TRINIDAD . . . . ST. JOSEPH, TRINIDAD I TRASH HUTS ON THE EDGE OF THE HIGH oe 4° WOODS 5 4 : . 3 - ‘ . . » 78 THE PITCHLAKE . 2. « «© «© «© «6 » 92 STREET INGRENADA. . 2. «© «© « ‘| — MARKET SQUARE, GRENADA. . . . . CASTRIES, ST. LUCIA .. Si gs Seo ce GRAVEYARD, MORNE FORTUNE eo wi wi Ss See SOUFRIERE, ST. LUCIA = 4: a », 126 THE QUAY, ST, PIERRE, MARTINIQUE . ns 8 » 154 THE MAIN STREET, ST. PIERRE, MARTINIQUE . » 160 ROSEAU VALLEY, DOMINICA. . . . . », 166 BRIMSTONE HILL, ST. KITTS . .« «. « . » 180 SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO a tir: Fen ie FORT SAN CRISTOBAL, SAN JUAN . ae ar as RIVER FRONT, SAN DOMINGO. . . «. e 1 246 TOMB OF COLUMBUS, SAN DOMINGO » 250 Digitized by Microsoft® xii THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. 26. KING'S HOUSE, SPANISH TOWN . . . . } To face p.274 27. STREET IN SPANISH TOWN . . . . . 28. RODNEY’S MONUMENT, SPANISH TOWN... » 276 29. EFFECTS OF EARTHQUAKE, KINGSTON. .. . +» 286 30. THE QUEEN’S STATUE, KINGSTON . . . 266 3r. PARISH CHURCH, KINGSTON . . . . . = 32. PORT ROYAL . . . . «© «© «4 — 33. FORT CHARLES, PORT ROYAL. . . . . * 34. NELSON’S QUARTERS, PORT ROYAL . .. . 300, 35. THE GOLD ROAD, PANAMA ¢ 8 8 we os » 314 36. A SQUARE IN PANAMA CITY. . . . . » 326 37. ACHURCH IN PANAMA CITY . . . . . » 328 38. THE BRIDGE, OLD PANAMA . . ... . 39. THE SEA WALL, OLD PANAMA. . . . me aS 40. OLD PANAMA . . . . eae as 41. HARBOUR OF OLD PANAMA . . . 4 » 338 42. CARTAGENA HARBOUR . . . . . . 43. FORT SAN LAZAR, CARTAGENA a 4 348 44. ASTREET IN CARTAGENA . . 2... » 356 MAPS = WEST INDIES AND SPANISH MAIN. . . . . Tofacep. 1 CASTRIES, ST.LUCIA .. . . 2 ew 1» «II2 MARTINIQUE S.A Oe ge CY ue. oR. CR » 143 CARTAGENA ‘ e e * i ° . . . os «352 Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® 5 py T sone mM Arowg, s 104, Pooeind os <— queour, = sopeqieg 450 BINT 3S enbiuijieyy eas ebiui0g V J S N V d abvssvg suing ay “) pag aqunjp9 aravy® ednojepeny? pdAdasJUOW eS endiuy 4 Qo ‘s} 9 @ 29 49 094 s09ln9" +, é Digitized by Microsoft® THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. I, FROM THE CITY OF FOG TO AN ISLAND OF ETERNAL SUMMER. LONDON in mid-December, on the eve of the departure of the mail steamer for the West Indies, was a disconsolate place. The least woeful spot, perhaps, was Regent Street at high noon. The road was covered with a sour, chocolate-coloured mud which spat viciously from under the Juggernaut wheels of motor omnibuses. Above there was no suggestion of either atmosphere or sky, but merely a pall of fog as cheerless as a poor-house blanket. The street began in mist and ended in mist, while into the same gelid shadow the carriages vanished. Things were seen as through a glass darkly, so that the housetops looked like distant battlements. There was a smell abroad as of mildew, seasoned by the stench of petrol and the acrid filth of the street. The shop windows were steamed over by a clammy sweat. Within were half-suffocated lights, for the day showed no distinctions of morn, afternoon or eventide. The people who walked the pavements kept their eyes upon the slimy stones. They seemed narcotised by a cold, the shrewd- ness of which no thermometer could register. The only sounds that cheered them were the hissing of wheels, the hammering of hoofs, and the occasional jingle of hansom-cab bells. The only patch of colour I can remember in this last walk in London was derived from a yellow and red poster dealing Digitized by Microsoft® 2 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. with Christmas festivities. It was carried by a damp, sepia- tinted man, and the gaudy colours were reflected in the pool of liquid mud over which he stood stupefied. There was also a barrow filled with holly—a pile of shining leaves and scarlet berries—but beyond these the houses, the vehicles, and the people were all chilled down to the general grey of cellar mould. Then came an indefinite sea journey, in no way unlike so many others, marked by recollections of a fading port, the thud of engines, the scud of the wave under the ship’s bow, the landing from a boat on a hot, white quay crowded with negroes. As the last association with any land was concerned with a walk along Regent Street, so the next took the form of swimming in a pool within the coral reef at Barbados. It was again high noon. The rays of the tropical sun were keen as a hot sword-blade. The sea was sensuously warm. On the shore, on the edge of a coral cliff some twelve feet high, was a bathing-hut of brown wood with warped sun-shutters, and a flight of blistering steps leading to the water. The little cliff was hollowed out into caverns by the tide, while over its brink hung creepers in long festoons. The cabin was shaded by the leaves of a sea-grape tree. A clump of bananas, a hibiscus bush covered with crimson flowers, and some acacias kept company with the hut. As I floated in the pool I could watch a humming-bird busy with the blossoms of the sea-grape, and could follow the flight of many dragon-flies. The sky above was the deepest blue, the sea beyond the reef was the colour of a pansy, while upon the reef itself the surf broke in a line of white. The sea within the reef was a wondrous green, and so clear was the water and so white the sand that in swimming one’s shadow could be seen on the weedless bottom. In the distance, where the small cliff ended, there came a beach, curved like a sickle, with palms and impenetrable trees along the rim of the strand. The air was heavy with the smell of the sea, while upon the ear there fell no sound except that of the surf on the reef. Digitized by Microsoft® IL. SEVENTY YEARS AGO. A JOURNEY to Barbados in a mail steamer of 6000 tons provides little to comment upon unless it be the grumbling of the passengers. There are always many to find fault. Some will complain that the ship goes too fast, or not fast enough. Others are aggrieved because the electric fan in their cabin hums like a giant bee, or because the grand piano is out of tune, or because quails are not cooked in a manner they approve of. Those who are most ready with grievances may perhaps be appeased by an account of the journey from England to Barbados by mail ship as it was accomplished only seventy years ago. In 1836 one William Lloyd,! doctor of medicine, started for Barbados with three male friends. They were simple tourists, travelling for pleasure, and, incidentally, for that improvement of the mind which was regarded as desirable in those days. The departure was from Falmouth, and the ship was the mail barque Skylark, Captain Ladd. She was lying in the bay, ready to start. It must be stated that the doctor himself commenced to grumble from the beginning. He complained that “the demand of the boatmen was half-a-guinea each—an excessive charge, allowed by the rules of the port.” It cost the tourists, therefore, 2/. to get on board! The bulwarks of the ship were “ forbiddingly high,” so that it was impossible to look over. Those who desired to gaze upon the sea had to hang over the gunwale, like boys over an orchard wall. The poop was not safe for tourists, “having no defence at the sides.” \ Letters from the West Indies. 3 B Digitized by Microsoft® 4 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. There was one general cabin in the Skylark for all the passengers—to live in, dine in, and sleep in. It was so low that it was impossible to stand upright in it; moreover, it was dark. This was due at the moment to the fact that “the top of the cabin lights was covered with meat in a recently slaughtered state.” No doubt, when the mail barque got away to sea the joints were removed and the blood-smeared panes of glass were cleaned. The tourists noticed also that “joints were hung around in various parts of the vessel, interspersed with cauliflowers, cabbages and turnips.” Now, in this low-roofed cabin, with the blood-dimmed skylight, there were only twelve berths provided. The number of passengers, on the other hand, was eighteen—v7z. fifteen gentlemen and three ladies. Six of the party had, therefore, to shift as best they could during the month the voyage lasted. When the ship was well in the tropics the doctor makes the following note: “Our nights are sad from the skylights being closed, the passengers who sleep on the table, on the benches and on the floor being afraid of cold from the night air.” That cabin must have been little less than a torture-chamber. A fetid oil- lamp, swinging to and fro as the ship rolled, would reveal the sleepers on the table. The heat would be suffocating and the air thick with the fumes of the last meal, of stale wine, of tobacco, of damp clothes, and of eighteen perspiring human beings. Above the creaking of the bulkheads there would, no doubt, be heard the sigh of the tired woman who could not sleep, the gasp of the fevered man who wanted air, and the snoring of the heavy people on the floor. The passengers must have hated this too familiar, ever-frowsy “ black hole,” for it is needless to say, that in the mail barque of 1836 there was no smoking-room, no library, no music room, and, of course, no bath-room. When the weather was unfavourable there was nothing for the fifteen gentlemen and the three ladies to do but to sit below in the gloom, and like St. Paul, “hope for the day.” The doctor found the meals particularly trying. Upon this topic he writes as follows: “It is a trial to be long at dinner when Digitized by Microsoft® SEVENTY YEARS AGO. 5 one is panting for breath; the right plan would be to dine off one dish and then away, whereas we have soup, then a wait for fish, then a long wait for a course of meat, then a tedious wait for acourse of pastry, then a tiresome wait for the dessert, and long before that is finished we are wiping our foreheads.” One thing is clear—there was no stinting in the matter of food on the good ship Skylark, The order of the day was as follows: coffee, 6 A.M.; breakfast, 8 A.M.; lunch, 12; dinner, 4 P.M., with coffee after; tea, 7 P.M.; and supper, 9 P.M. The doctor remarks—and the remark is true to this day— “there is some temptation to eat and drink. too much at sea.” There was undoubtedly too much wine consumed on board the Skylark ; so much, indeed, that it led to “headache and other feverish symptoms.” William Lloyd, however, although in common with his fellows he panted for breath whenever he found himself in that awful cabin, was disposed to make the best of things. The passage from Falmouth to Barbados occupied twenty-six days, from which it may be inferred that the Sky/ark was a good sailing vessel and had a strong N.E. trade wind behind her all the way. “We had a pleasant voyage,” writes the cheerful doctor, “though our captain quarrelled three successive days with his sailing-master, who was at last put in arrest.” Captain Ladd seems to have had quite an ample idea of his position. At Falmouth he made his appearance before the passengers with a theatrical effect worthy of a leading actor. The barque was ready to sail, the last package was on board, the sailing-master was striding to and fro on the poop, all] the passengers, eager to be away, were watching the shore for a sign of the great man who was to lead them westward. Just at the critical moment “the captain arrived in his cocked hat and uniform with the mails ”—his Majesty’s mails, no less. The Skylark reached Barbados after sundown on the twenty-sixth day. At 10.30 PM. “Captain Ladd, with his cocked hat and sword, hastened to pay his devoirs to the captain of the Belvidere frigate then in the harbour.” The Digitized by Microsoft® 6 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. eighteen passengers having witnessed the first act of this impressive ceremony retired to the loathsome cabin “for a last stewing,” as the doctor puts it. While they were “ endeavouring to woo a little hot sleep” Captain Ladd clanks on board again and arouses everybody with the news that “a fever was raging at Bridgetown.” This choice information was probably yelled down the hatchway in a husky voice scented with rum. The captain having dropped this bomb into the sweltering hole where the tourists lay, and having made them thereby perspire the more, no doubt divested himself of his sword and cocked hat and sank into sleep, with the happy sense of * something attempted, something done.” Digitized by Microsoft® II. BARBADOS. THE Royal Mail steamer reaches Barbados at daybreak. On the present occasion of her coming the sun had just risen, yet there was still a full moon shining, like a disc of steel, in the grey. The steamer crept to her buoy in Carlisle Bay, and by the growing light there could be seen an island of low pale-green downs, fringed at the water's edge by a belt of trees, with red-roofed, white-walled houses dotted between them. The green uplands were brakes of sugar-cane. There was no indication of a definite town; no evident landing-place. But for a few palms and casuarina trees, negroes in boats, and a number of bright-hulled schooners from “down the islands,” the place might have been a bay in England. As seen from the ship it did not fulfil the florid conception of the tropics nor the idea of a coral island. Barbados is about the size of the Isle of Wight, and at the commencement of the seventeenth century it represented—with the exception of Newfoundland—the sole colonial possession of England. Indeed, in 1605, it could have been said that the empire of Great Britain beyond the seas was constituted only by a vague line of half-frozen coast and this tropical Isle of Wight, for the two represented England’s insignificant share in the New World. Barbados is the only West Indian island which has been English from the days of its beginning until now. The manner in which it became a part of the empire is curious. In 1605 a certain Sir Oliver Leigh, of Kent, incited by tales of rich lands in the West, equipped a ship called the Olive Blossome, and sent her across the seas. In due course 7 Digitized by Microsoft® 8 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. the lumbering craft came in sight of Barbados, and the sailors, attracted by a sandy cove and shady trees, rowed ashore and landed on the beach. “Finding no opposition,” these good men from Ramsgate, Deal and Dover took possession of the island in the name of their country. The ceremony attending the annexation was unaffected. On the beach they put up a cross, to give the function a religious tone, while one of their number carved on the bark of a tree the inscription, “James K. of E. and of this island.” The cross was probably made from the staves of a beer-barrel, and the graving on the tree, no doubt, was done by a dagger sharpened on a leather jerkin. It may be imagined that when the ritual was over these pioneers of empire bathed—for the sandy shore would have reminded them of Thanet—chased the land crabs, or threw stones at the monkeys who still haunt this corner of the island. They then jumped into their boat, each with a handful of strange flowers, pushed off to the Olive Blossome and sailed away, for they were bound for the Main. The annexation ceremony took place near to the spot on which Hole Town now stands (page 22), and compared with the pomp and glamour observed by the Spaniards on like occasions, the proceeding was little more than a schoolboy affair, a frolic of a party of Deal boatmen. It may be said by some that Trinidad holds precedence of Barbados in the matter of annexation, for in 1595 “the Honorable Robert Duddely, Leiftenante of all Her Majestie’s fortes and forces beyonde the seas,” took possession of that island, with infinite solemnity, in the name-ef his Queen. He nailed to a tree “a peece of lead” inscribed with the Queen’s arms, and an announcement in the Latin tongue. He caused, moreover, trumpets to be blown and a “drome” to be beaten. Unfor- tunately, the island was at that time in the possession of Spain, and in spite of the “ peece of lead” continued a colony of that Digitized by Microsoft® BARBADOS HARBOUR. MANCHINEEL GROVE, BARBADOS, To face p. 8. Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® BARBADOS, 9 State for long years after. Robert Duddely’s affair was indeed little more than a common act of trespass, in which he was fortunately not detected. It was some twenty years after the coming of the Olive Blossome that the first settlers made their home and built their log huts in Barbados. They sailed from England in a vessel named the William and John, belonging to Sir William Courteen. They made for the same sandy bay—by that time almost legendary—found the place of the cross and the writing on the tree. Ina clearing in a forest near by they began the first town, Hole Town, erected a fort and made themselves masters of at least the west coast of the island. Things, however, in Barbados were neither quiet nor well established for many years after Courteen’s settlers founded their little city. For it happened in 1627 that King Charles, in a moment of incoherent liberality, granted all the Caribbee Islands (twenty-two in number including Barbados) to the Earl of Carlisle. Now, few of these islands were in the King’s gift, and he might as well have presented the Earl at the same time with the Atlantic Ocean, the Equator, and the North and South Poles. However, in July 1628, a confident body of settlers landed on the south of the island, under the protection of the Earl of Carlisle, and established another town, which they called Bridge- town, because they found there a bridge which the Indians had built across a creek of the sea. The bay in which they beached their boats is called Carlisle Bay to this present time. As may be supposed, Courteen’s settlers—being the old and original inhabitants of the island—thought so ill of this counter- enterprise, that they fell upon Carlisle’s men and beat them grievously. Later on it transpired that the King, when in a previous island-scattering mood, had already promised Barbados to the Earl of Marlborough. Lord Carlisle thereupon approached the Lord of Marlborough and found that peer (who probably had vague ideas as to what and where Barbados was) most ready to forego all claims to the property in consideration of a sum of 3004, sterling paid in cash annually. Digitized by Microsoft® 10 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. It may be conjectured that one party to this bargain sauntered down St. James’s chuckling over the solid gold coin he had obtained for an estate as shadowy as Prospero’s island, while the other hurried to his ship-master to assure him that at last—and for the paltry sum of 300/—Barbados was his. Yet scarcely had the money been counted out upon the Earl of Marlborough’s table when Sir William Courteen forced himself into the lordly presence and pointed out, possibly with some emphasis and heat, that Barbados was fs, and that he was possessed of it prior to 1627, at which time the generous King gave it away, with adjacent parts of the globe, as if it had been a mere Jonbonniére. Thus began squabbles to which the cudgel play in the environs of Bridgetown and “The Hole”—as the scoffers called the metropolis of Barbados—was a small thing. Barbados is very densely populated. Its inhabitants number some 200,000, nearly all of whom are negroes.! The patriotism of the Barbadians is unbounded, and in these unsentimental days, is pleasant to contemplate. “ They cling to their home,” as Froude remarks, “with innocent vanity, as though it was the finest country in the world.” If they do leave it, it is only for a time. Many of these loyalists have been attracted recently to the Canal enterprise at Panama by the high wages which obtain there. But the stay of the exiles on the Isthmus is short. They go thither in order that they may enjoy Barbados the better. The heavy toil and the hard climate are forgotten when they return to the island and can indulge—if only for one day— in the supreme luxury of driving through the town in a buggy, in a black coat and bowler hat, lit up by a necktie of fulminating golours. There will be then so wide a grin on the ct-devant navvy’s face that the rows of white teeth can hardly hold the penny cigar. The anticipation of this one triumphal progress through familiar streets will have kept alive for months the germ of hope in many a labourer’s breast at Colon, * The population of the Isle of Wight is, by comparison, 82,418. Digitized by Microsoft® BARBADOS. Il Barbados, too, is intensely and seriously English. “It was organised,” writes Froude, “from the. first on English traditional lines, with its constitution, its parishes, and parish churches and churchwardens, the schools and parsons, all on the old model, which the unprogressive inhabitants have been wise enough to leave undisturbed.” In the heart of the capital is Trafalgar Square, and in the centre of that square (just as in the Mother Country) is a statue to Nelson. London, indeed, may be said to have imitated Bridge- town in this particular, for the monument in Barbados was the first erected to the hero of Trafalgar. In defence of the English metropolis, however, it must be stated—and it is to be hoped with- out jealousy—that this rival statue is not impressive, while the famous mariner is made to look bored and jaundiced, although he is no longer “ pea green” as he was when Froude saw him. The city of Bridgetown is full of bustle, dust and mule teams, but it is not attractive. The suburbs, on the other hand, are beautiful—beautiful as only the outskirts of a town in the tropics can be. There are villas lost in ample gardens, avenues of palms, white roads barred by black shadows and made glorious by mahogany and banyan trees, by the cordia with its orange- coloured blossoms, by the scarlet hibiscus, by walls buried under blue convolvulus flowers, by over-stretching boughs from which hang magenta festoons of Bougainvillea. Here can be seen that most stately of all palms, the palmiste or cabbage palm, with such trees as the tamarind, the mango, the shaddock, and the curious frangipani, looking as bare as a plucked bird. On the outskirts of the town, and indeed all over the island will be found in rows, in clumps, in halting lines, or in infrequent dots the dwellings of the negroes. These are tiny huts of pewter-grey wood, raised from the ground on a few rough stones and covered bya roof of dark shingles. They are as simple as the houses a child draws on a slate—a thing of two rooms, with two windows and one door. The windows have sun shutters in the place of glass; there is no chimney, for the housewife does her cooking out of doors in the cool of the evening, Digitized by Microsoft® 12 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. Such is the original Uncle Tom’s Cabin, scarcely changed these two hundred years. More picturesque little toy houses can hardly be imagined, but it makes one gasp to think how many human beings crowd into these tiny rooms after sundown, for the negro sleeps with firmly closed doors and shutters to keep out “jumbies” and ghosts, which are both numerous and trying in the West Indies, centipedes, which are ten inches long, snakes, vampire bats, and other horrors of the tropical night. These fragile huts are those which are referred to in descriptions of hurricanes in which it is said that “over 3000 houses have been blown down, six villages have been levelled with the earth, and 10,000 people are homeless.” It is not uncommon to meet a house on the highway in the act of being “removed.” It is placed on a cart flat-wise, like a puzzle taken to pieces, the four walls being laid one above the other as if they were pieces of scenery from a theatre. The roof is indistinguishable as such, the tiles are in the bottom of the cart, and while the owner of the residence will carry the front door on his head, other kind friends will assist with the window shutters, the doorstep and the fowlhouse. About each tiny pewter-grey house will be the comfortable green of bananas and guinea-corn, a clump of rustling cane, with possibly a papaw or a bread-fruit tree to shade the threshold. In what may be called the policies are half-naked children, some fowls, a pig tied by the neck, or a goat tethered in like fashion. The climate of Barbados in the winter is healthy and agreeable. The little island lies far out to sea in the very heart of the trade wind. That genial breeze blows steadily from November to May. To sit in a draught in scant attire so that a strong east wind may play upon the sitter like a douche is one of the chief objects of life in Barbados. The thermometer varies from about 76° to 82° F. There are no sudden lapses of temperature, none of that mean chill at sundown which falls like a footpad upon the sojourner in the Riviera. It is possible to be out and about all day. There is no need of any sun-helmet. The straw hat of the river Thames is all the head-covering required in this or any other West Indian Digitized by Microsoft® ‘CLF avs OF "SOdVduNVd ‘SLNH OYDAN “SOdVaNvVd ‘HOUNHO S,NHOf ‘Ls Woua MATA Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® BARBADOS. 13 island. The badge of the raw tourist is a white helmet and a mosquito-bitten face. The one is as superfluous as the other when the management of mosquito-curtains has been learnt As a matter of fact, mosquitos and insects generally give very little trouble in Barbados. The climate, as a whole, may be judged by the circumstance that the medical men of Bridgetown cling all the year round to the black frock coat and tall hat, which are the delight of the profession in Great Britain. The air is comparatively dry. The roads throughout the island are excellent, while the sea-bathing cannot be surpassed. The sky in the dry season is now and then clouded over, and there is occasional rain, two features which will be appreciated by those who have been wearied by the unfailing sunshine of the “cold weather” in India. The island has an excellent water supply, while both malaria and yellow fever are practically unknown. Barbados has had no experience of earthquake, it possesses no volcano, and the hurricane season is limited to the months of summer and autumn. The island, therefore, presents an admirable climate for those who cannot, or will not, winter in northern latitudes. While on the subject of health matters, it may be noted that the West Indian islands still suffer—in spite of every care and of ceaseless investigation—very seriously from leprosy. The disease is limited to the “coloured” sections of the creole population, being rare in the white creole. At Barbados is an excellent lazaretto, maintained by the Government. It is a model institution of its kind, and reflects great credit upon its medical chief, Dr. Archer. The lazar-house is situated by the sea, in a pleasant garden facing to the west. Around the garden is a very high and woeful wall, like the wall of a convent or a prison. Those who are within the garden are captives for life. All have had forced upon them a vow never to look upon the world again, for there is no way out to the high road except through the gate that leads to the burial-ground, It is a garden that sees only the setting of the sun. All who walk its weary paths are condemned to die. There Digitized by Microsoft® 14 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. is no ray of hope in the lepers’ pleasance. The shipwrecked man on a raft may search, day after day, for the gleam of a sail, but on the horizon of these poor castaways there will be never a speck to be seen. The days are horrible in their mockery for they are nearly always sunny; the trees are bright with blossoms and alive with birds. The birds are free to come and go, are busy with their mating and the building of their nests. The men and women who hobble and sigh and curse in the shadow of the trees have no one thing to look forward to but a lingering death. If the days are hideous the nights at least bring forgetfulness and peace. “ How sweet to sleep and so get nearer death,” must be the cry of each one of these lamentable outcasts, If all were old and had lived their lives the fate would not be so tragic, but in this garden of Gethsemane there are budding maidens and sturdy lads. Among the newcomers I saw a girl of seventeen. She had all the freshness of perfect health, but certain loathly spots had appeared upon her skin, and then had come—the inquisition, the wrenching from home, the banishment to the house in the garden. She had, a week or so ago, such a life before her asis dreamed of bya girl of seventeen. She had a lover, perhaps, but now the iron gate of her Paradise has shut with a clang behind her and she is doomed to a slow rotting of the body, inch by inch. She can see in the lazar-house, depicted with brutal candour, the future of her days. Her fingers will slough off like the hands of this poor woman who looks at her with such compassion. Her face will become hideous with toad-skin growths until she will be as little human looking as the dulled, distorted creature who sits on a bench waiting for the laggard end. She will change to a thing as repulsive and gargoyle-like as that horror in the corner of the ward whose sightless eyes can happily no longer see the vileness of her own deformity. The fresh young face will become the Medusa’s head. She is looking at her forecast as if it were shadowed in a wizard’s mirror—and she is but seventeen. In the road beyond the garden wall can be heard the laughter Digitized by Microsoft® BARBADOS. 15 of those who pass by to the town, while within is being dragged out, act by act, one of the saddest tragedies of human life. It was a relief to pass from the lazaretto to even such a haven for the helpless as the lunatic asylum. This is a new, admirably administered building under the competent charge of Dr. Manning. The best remembered feature in the asylum is an open quad- rangle covered with grass. Around each side of it runs a low shed or verandah upon which open the barred windows of many rooms. In this strange caravanserai are gathered a great number of insane folk, mostly negroes. In the centre of the quadrangle a grey-headed mulatto is kneeling in the sun and praying with breathless eagerness. He is a religious monomaniac. A comparatively young man, sweating with excitement, and puffing out his cheeks like a dog who dreams in his sleep, is calling out that he is Lord Nelson, and that he wants boots, Lying senseless in the shade is aman recovering from a fit. Drooping on benches are listless melancholics, while among them is a man who sits bolt upright and for ever pats his hand to the moaning of some fragment of asong. A very cheerful being, squatted on the ground, is professing to make a hat out of grass roots collected with infinite assiduity. There are, besides, idiots and dotards and the absolutely mindless. One figure amidst this nightmare crowd attracted my atten- tion. He was a white man of about forty, with long fair hair. He was clad simply in a shirt and trousers. His feet were bare. He never ceased to walk round and round the shaded alley, per- sistently, laboriously. His lips were compressed, while there was a look of forlorn determination in his eyes. He had been in the asylum seven years. He was a Scotsman, and was reputed to be a sailor from Aberdeen. He had been left behind sick, and apparently dying, by a ship whose master had never called at the island again. Every effort to trace the man’s friends had failed. Since he had been in the asylum he had never uttered a word, nor had he once replied to the persistent questions put to him. For seven years he had kept silence. For seven years he had tramped, day after day, round this walled quadrangle, picking his Digitized by Microsoft® 16 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. way through the mumbling crowd. To what far-away goal he was travelling, along what endless road, amidst what horrors and under what crushing vow, who could say? Here he was, a derelict; one of the “missing,” one of those who had gone under. In some Highland village they may still tell how “ Jamie ” went to sea and was never heard of again, or how he was put ashore ill on a West Indian island and died there. He must have died, his mother will say, or he would have written or come home. He has never written; he will never come home, but will tramp, a lonely man, round and 1ound this circle of purgatory until his foot falters and he stumbles into the dark, Digitized by Microsoft® IV. THE INLAND CLIFF AND THE SEA BEACHES, BARBADOS is a coral island. A coral reef encircles the greater part of its homely girth, its roads are made of coral of the whitest, while much of the stone of its houses has been fashioned by the coral polyp. Those who know only the land around Bridgetown will say that the country is flat and monotonous, and that it consists merely of blinding highways toiling through tiresome tracts of cane and cotton, of cotton and cane. It is true that the trees are limited to the wilds, to the villages, and to the planters’ settlements, but there are downs of golden- green grass as well as hollows dappled with yams, sweet potatoes, and maize. Moreover, a hundred acres of rustling sugar-canes thrown into waves and eddies by the rollicking trade wind is no mean sight, while a field of sea-island cotton in bloom is, from afar, not unlike a thicket of Gloire de Dijon roses. Towards the north of the island are hills, some of which rise to the height of 1100 feet. They are part of a great upland which is cleft, as by a hatchet, along its eastern side so as to leave a raw inland cliff, whose precipitous wall faces the Atlantic for many a mile. From any point on the brink of the escarpment a marvellous view extends. The most perfect prospect is from a spot called Hackelston’s Cliff. Here, from a height of nearly 1000 feet, one looks down suddenly upon an immense leafy plain stretching away to the sea, upon a green under-world submerged fathoms deep in a blue haze. 17 Digitized by Microsoft® 18 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. The view is like a view from a balloon. On the flat are squares of pale green to mark the cane brakes, glistening splashes of holly- leaf green to show the bread-fruit trees, a waving patch of banana fans, dots of grey where are negro cabins, and now and then the curve of a white road shaded by palms. Beyond is the beach where the great purple combers from the ocean roll in to break upon the reef with a noise like the crack of a gun. This little world lying at one’s feet is shut in towards the north by miniature mountains, a range of dwarfed Scottish Highlands made up of diminutive peaks and ridges, of cols and valleys all glorious with every tint that grass in shadow and in the sun can give. From the crest of Farley Hill it is possible to look down upon this tumbled country as upon a contour map, and to imagine Ben Nevis and Lochnagar ex modéle, with the tracks of tarns, the clefts of summit passes, and the cups of mountain lakes. Near by Hackelston’s Cliff I came upon a grinning negro lad who enjoyed an office most boys would have taken much to heart. He might have been called the “ warden of the monkeys.” At the foot of the precipice, in one of the few shreds left of the primeval forest, dwell a number of apes who creep up the cliff on occasion and make desperate raids among the bananas and sweet potatoes. It was the warden’s duty to watch for the marauders, to spy them out as they peered over the brim of the cliff, to let them advance almost to the fields, and then to fall upon them with shrieks and stones and drive them over the precipice in jabbering disorder. It was with sincere feeling that the warden said “he liked his work.” Not far from Hackelston’s Point is St. John’s Church, one of the oldest churches of the island. It is a solid English-looking building, with a square tower, battlements and heavy buttresses, It stands on the very brink of the cliff, over-looking the same far- away flat and the same long lines of beach and reef. About it is a graveyard, facing seawards, full of ancient tombs, many of which belong to two centuries ago. More than one monument testifies to the deadly climate of times gone by, and tells of wives who died “in a moment” and “in the bloom of youth.” Digitized by Microsoft® THE INLAND CLIFF AND THE SEA BEACHES. 19 One tablet bears the following unusual inscription : HERE LYETH YE Bopy OF FERDINANDO PALEOLOGUS DESCENDED FROM YE IMPERIAL LYNE OF YE LAST CHRISTIAN EMPERORS OF GREECE. CHURCHWARDEN OF THIS PARISH, 1655-1656. VESTRYMAN 20 YEARS. DIED OCT. 3RD, 1678. This imperial vestryman should sleep soundly, for the church- yard in which he rests is passing beautiful. Here fall the shadows of royal palms, of lofty crotons, of swaying casuarinas, of hibiscus bushes aflame with crimson blossoms. By the church wall stand Eucharis lilies, over the rusted railings fall jessamine and stephanotis, while between the gravestones are ferns and grasses and an uninvited company of homely flowers. During the church service, when all is still, there can be ever heard—borne by the trade wind—the muffled roar of the surf. Far away to the north of the island, fifteen miles from the town, and on the flat between the inland cliff and the sea, is a dell full of trees. What lies hidden in this quiet oasis no stranger could guess. It can hardly shelter a planter’s house as no sugar- mill chimney is in sight. There is no church spire to be seen nor is there, indeed, even a glimpse of a roof. The visitor who follows the road into the wood finds himself in an avenue of palms. This avenue skirts a lawn and such a lake as may be found in many an English park. So far there is little that is amazing, but, sauntering in the drive, are some youths in college caps and gowns. As unexpected are these undergraduates as would be cocoanut trees in Oxford. At the end of the walk is a solemn edifice of dull stone, severely academic, and not to be distinguished from the buildings familiar to an English university town. The place is, indeed, Codrington College (a college of the University of Durham), which was founded as long ago as 1710. Opening upon the avenue is a stone cloister, through the pillared arches of which can be seen the Atlantic and the waves Cc Digitized by Microsoft® 20 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. breaking on the coral reef. In the shadow of the arcade is an English girl in white talking to a small parrot perched on her finger, and exciting by such speech the jealousy of a yapping dachshund at her feet. This lady of the porch is the principal's daughter. It would seem as if there had been transported to this far-away West Indian island a corner of a cathedral close, and when the organ in the chapel pours forth a hymn of the old country the impression is made magical. The college chapel is exquisite—for its walls are lined with mahogany and cedar wood, while its benches are of that old type which recall the village church of bygone days. The marble floor has been cracked and scarred by the hurricane of 1831, which tore off the chapel roof and filled its aisles with wreckage. The library is stored with books of a kind one would hardly expect to meet with on a coral island—works on theology and conic sections, together with the writings of Sallust and Cicero, of AEschylus and Euripides. A pleasant sanctuary this for the budding scholar who will recall in after life that he first read the Odes of Horace under West Indian palms, and was disturbed in his imaginings of ancient Rome by the vagaries of humming- birds. The college gardens are the most beautiful in the island, are vivid with the tints of tropical flowers, and hide, moreover, in their depths a swimming pool which is as the shadow of a rock in a weary land. Hard by the college is the principal’s lodge, the original Codrington mansion, which was built in 1660 and has seen and survived some famous hurricanes. It is a picturesque building of weather-worn stone with, in front of it, a stately loggia whose arches and columns are overgrown with ferns, woodbine, jessamine and stephanotis. Within is a doorway, flanked on either side by classic pillars worthy of an abbey, upon whose stones the sun and the rain of two hundred and fifty years have wrought tints of warm brown, while weeds have picked out the joints of the masonry with many a splash of green. The slaves who built this place may well have wondered at the magnificence of it. Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® BARBADOS. HOLE TOWN, MAIN STREET, To face p. 20. Digitized by Microsoft® THE INLAND CLIFF AND THE SEA BEACHES. 21 The founder of the college, Christopher Codrington, was “Captain-General of the Leeward Caribbee Islands.” It was his wish that the school should be devoted to “the study and practice of divinity, physic, and chirurgery.” In 1742 the original college was opened, and in 1875 was affiliated to the University of Durham. It has done admirable work, can boast a long list of distinguished alumni, and under the present able principal, Archdeacon Bindley, flourishes with persistent vigour.’ The shore scenery of Barbados shows great variety. On the north and east of the island the coast is wizen and rugged. Here are low cliffs of coral rock wrought inte fantastic capes and hollows by the sea, or so gnawed at that a great gap in the bank has been in places bitten out. At Crane comes such a gap wherein is a gusty beach edged about with cocoanut palms and nearly filled with bushes of the sea-grape or with sprawling masses of creepers. Here, as elsewhere, the sea assumes strange and unexpected tints ; it may be violet, purple or maroon, with streaks of lettuce- green or forget-me-not blue, or may show a stretch of brilliant lustre such as shines ona beetle’s back, or may shimmer into a lake of lapis lazuli. In calm days the water over the reef will be lilac- or even claret-coloured, or may take the hue of the nether side of a mushroom, while within the reef is that vivid green which can be looked down into from the stern of a steamer among the coiling eddies thrown up by the screw. It is indeed in these West Indian islands that The rainbow lives in the curve of the sand. At Bathsheba immense curiously shaped rocks fringe the beach, so that the whole coast in this romantic part of the island is as the coast of Cornwall in miniature. Along the south and west borders of the island winds a quiet strand, with many a creek and cove. Certain of the curving bays are shaded by thickets of trees which crowd to the very margin of the shore. Some are 'See Article by the Venerable Archdeacon Bindley, D.D., in Macmillan’s Magazine, December 1892. Digitized by Microsoft® 22 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. inviting, modest-looking trees, which call to mind the orchard trees in England. They bear, moreover, a small green fruit, an apple, which might tempt a thirsty man. Woe to him if he yields, if even the temptress be Eve! For these are the manchineel, the poison trees; the shade they offer is tainted; their leaves will blister the skin; their fruit will turn to worse than ashes in the mouth; their innocence is feigned, for the orchard by the sea is an upas grove, shunned by every living thing except the land crab. Nelson, in his early days, was made very ill by drinking from a pool into which some branches of manchineel had been thrown. In the opinion of some his health ‘received thereby a severe and lasting injury.” On the west coast is Hole Town, the most inviting little settlement in the island. It was once the capital of Barbados (page 9). It is now a lovable town of two tiny streets, sleeping out its life in a bower of leaves by the shore. A shop, a post- office, and a worn jetty represent the public buildings in this most unambitious hamlet. The two small streets open on the sea, on a smooth cove of biscuit-coloured sand. Trees line the whole sweep of the bay from cape to cape. They hide the half-forgotten town although it lies so near the water that when the west wind blows the spray will scud along the child-like boulevard. The beach is such an one as the sea seems to love, for each wave as it comes, lingers over it, fondles it, sweeping slowly up the smooth slope and dropping reluctantly back again. An air of great leisure settles upon this lotus-eater’s town. But few of its folk are to be seen. In the shade of the trees, at the edge of the shore, a solitary man is building a boat. There is such simplicity in his methods, and such scantiness in his clothing, that he might be Robinson Crusoe fashioning his canoe on the famous island. On this very beach landed the inquisitive crew of the Olive Blossome just 300 years ago (page 8), and as the cove was then so it is now, the same inviting curve of tree-encircled sand, the same listless solitude. On just such a tree as stands Digitized by Microsoft® ‘Ce “fF aovs OL ,» AHL dO AOVTId ONIGNVI ‘sodvduva ,,“aNOSSOTd AAIIO, ers FEE TESTE 3 ee is d by Microsoft® ize t igi Digitized by Microsoft® THE INLAND CLIFF AND THE SEA BEACHES. 23 there yet the famous legend was writ, while here, within a halo of green, is a place well fitted for the wooden cross. Beyond the nodding town are low downs, so like some uplands in Kent that they may well have enticed the Englishmen to make a landing. By the side of the high road a recently erected obelisk records the coming ashore of the boat and the annexation of the island ; while on one of the postage stamps of the colony is a picture of the gallant Olive Blossome herself, with all her sails set and with the flag of England aloft on her poop. Digitized by Microsoft® V. GEORGE WASHINGTON AND ANOTHER AT BARBADOS. Z GEORGE WASHINGTON visited Barbados in 1751, when he was a lad of nineteen. He came over from Virginia with his brother Lawrence, who had developed a lung trouble, for which he was advised to try the West Indies. The journey across the Gulf of Mexico and along the Caribbean Sea occupied them a little more than a month. The two brothers stayed at a house overlooking Carlisle Bay, about a mile from Bridgetown, and owned by a Captain Crofton, the commandant of Fort James. They had not been in the island more than fourteen days when George was laid low with the smallpox. The attack was not severe; but he bore the marks of the disease upon his face ta the end of his days. It was at Barbados that George Washington, for the first time in his life, visited a theatre. It pleased him. The play he saw acted was the austere tragedy of “George Barnwell.” This drama was supposed to be of a very improving nature, and especially suited to young men. It pointed a moral boisterously and with as much directness as is employed in driving a pile into the solid earth. George Barnwell was an idle apprentice who, after robbing his master, passed through the various Hogarthian stages of vice, and finally committed murder, for which crime he was hanged. His last moments were peculiarly embittered by the reflection that his sweetheart was to be hanged at the same time, he having—as an item of his wickedness—led her astray, During his sojourn in the island George Washington enjoyed the hospitality of the “Beefsteak and Tripe Club.” He was introduced to this exclusive company by the judge of the High Court of Barbados, The members of the club met every 24 Digitized by Microsoft® GEORGE WASHINGTON AT BARBADOS. 25 Saturday at one or other of their respective houses. Over the beefsteaks and the tripe the future statesman made the acquaintance of “the first people of the place.” There seems to have been no meanness about the members of the club, and no stint in the matter of food or drink. George Washington, indeed, went away rather distressed by the spendthrift habits of his hosts, and by their luxuriant mode of living. A heavy dinner of beefsteaks, tripe and rum, held at three of the clock on a tropical afternoon, was a luxury for which the simple Virginian had little taste. Barbados has welcomed many other illustrious persons besides George Washington. Nelson was for a period stationed in Carlisle Bay. His stay there was very irksome, for he was at the time in love with the pretty widow at Nevis. He chafed because he was kept so far away from her presence, and exclaims wearily in his letters, “ Upwards of a month from Nevis! ”—as if a month were a lifetime. He blamed the little colony for holding him from the arms of his Fanny, and took a sarcastic pleasure in heading some of his love letters “ Barbarous Island.” Not a few of the natives of Barbados have attained to various positions of eminence, but among those who can only claim to have become notable, prominence must be given to Major Stede Bonnet. The major was among “the first people of the place.” He was a gentleman by birth who had had the advantage of a liberal education. He was rich—being, indeed, “the master of a plentiful fortune.” Naturally, he was much respected in the island, where he enjoyed all the privileges of a prominent citizen. Although the records are silent upon the subject, it is conceivable that he was one of the pillars of the little church at Bridgetown. Some time in the year 1716 Major Stede Bonnet began to act strangely. He incontinently purchased a sloop, fitted her with ten guns at his own expense, and engaged a crew of no less than seventy men. This was very surprising to his friends as the gallant officer had no knowledge of the sea, while yachting was not then an accepted diversion for people of quality. It Digitized by Microsoft® 26 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. was hardly to be supposed that a gentleman occupying the major’s position would condescend to engage in commerce, and still more curious was it that, at this particular moment, England did not chance to be at war. To all inquiries as to his intent the major merely answered “Wait.” The mystery of the sloop was not lessened when the shipwrights began to paint her new name under the stern. Everybody went down to the careenage to spell it out, letter by letter, as it developed. The name was the Revenge. By the time that the members of the Beefsteak and Tripe Club were talking of nothing else but the major and his vessel, the Revenge slipped out of Carlisle Bay, one very dark night, and disappeared into space. The sloop became the theme of the quay-side. Barbados had much to say about vanishing ships, while sympathetic neighbours who called upon the forlorn Mrs. Stede Bonnet had more questions to ask that lady than she was disposed to reply to. The more astute females of Bridgetown whispered that Mrs. Stede Bonnet had something on her mind. She had. In a few months the awful truth reached the island. Major Stede Bonnet, the wealthy landowner, the respected and polished soldier, ‘had become a pirate. The Revenge was cruising off America, taking prizes right and left. She had become the terror of New York and Philadelphia, for the major had the boldness to make Gardner’s Islet, off Long Island, his occasional headquarters. . “This humour of going a-pyrating,” writes Johnson in his “History of the Pyrates,” “it was believed proceeded from a disorder of the mind, which is said to have been occasioned by some discomforts to be found in the married state.” Things were beginning to be explained. The respectable matrons of Barbados gathered up their skirts and fell away from Mrs. Stede Bonnet when they met her in the streets of Bridgetown. They could not drink a dish of tea with a pirate’s wife! They could hardly be constrained to sit in church under the same roof as the associate of corsairs, There were many friends of bygone days who now Digitized by Microsoft® MAJOR STEDE BONNET. 27 owned that “ they had never quite liked her,” that they had always thought “there was something curious about her.” Those among them who were of the sect of the Pharisees audibly thanked God that ¢key had not driven their husbands “to go a-pyrating.” There is no doubt but that the home of the Bonnets was broken up for ever. The major’s grievances must have been very deep to have led him to give to his ship such a name as the Revenge. In the meantime the soldier-pirate was not happy. He fell in with one Edward Teach, who is allowed by all connoisseurs to have been the greatest scoundrel who ever flourished in the buccaneering profession. Mr. Teach not only took the poor major into partner- ship against his will, but practically absorbed him, ship, crew and all. He concluded the distasteful alliance by robbing him of the more substantial of his possessions. This, as the Stede Bonnet biographer asserts, “made him melancholy.” The melancholia would appear to have marred the major’s efficiency as a practical pirate, for he was captured off Carolina in 1718. He was taken ashore, but managed to escape in a canoe. So highly was he valued, however, that 70/, was offered for his arrest. He was finally seized on Swillivant’s Island on the sixth day of November in the year named. He was tried at Charles- ton four days later, was sentenced to death and promptly hanged at a prominent place called White Point. It was Judge Trot who passed sentence on him, and it seems clear that this gentleman added great unrest to the major’s last hours, for before disposing of the culprit he treated him to an address of such length that it occupies six closely crammed pages of print. In this discourse the learned judge improved the occasion by quoting very liberally from the Scriptures, and by giving fluent advice as to the leading of the Higher Life, of which same advice the major was to be so shortly prevented from availing himself. In this harangue, which is said to have been most impressive, Judge Trot made no allusion to that “disorder of the mind,” or to those “discomforts in the married state” which led the major to seek refuge in the distrac- tions of buccaneering, and which may have been advanced in some palliation of his offence. Digitized by Microsoft® VIL THE ISLANDERS. THE negro population of Barbados have learnt stern lessons on such subjects as the survival of the fittest, the effects of a generous birth-rate and the limitations of an island. They have crowded the fatherland to its brink, have grubbed up and tilled every yard of its surface, and have only left it when they have been practically pushed into the sea. They have become, by force of circumstances and against their natural inclination, both a hard-working and a frugal folk. They have learnt that patriotism and a clinging to home may mean both an empty stomach and a bare back, Only of late years has the Barbadian accepted the inevitable, and reluctantly sought life elsewhere. There is now scarcely a quay on a West Indian island where the grinning Barbadian face will not be met with. They have migrated to America and have turned in thousands to Panama, whereby it has come to pass that labour is now not too plentiful in the colony, and the English housewife has begun to experience that dearth of good servants which has long been acute in England. The negro in Barbados—as in other islands of the West Indies —is the descendant of slaves brought over from the adjacent coast of Africa. The days of their bondage are not so long ago, for slavery was abolished in English colonies as recently as 1834. Traces of old days are constantly to be come upon. Certain of the substantial little houses built for the “blacks” are yet to be found, while on all sides the products of slave labour are in evidence. 28 Digitized by Microsoft® THE ISLANDERS. 29 Turning over old island newspapers, one meets with such an announcement as this : “58 Negro Slaves and 24 Head of Cattle for Sale,” ' in the reading of which it is impossible not to be struck with the delicacy which places the slaves before the cattle. In the “Barbadian” for December 17, 1824, I noticed the following paragraph, which is bracketed with one dealing with the sale of “A Handsome Horse”: “For SALE! “A young Negro Woman, a good house-servant, with her infant child, two months old.” If the infant ever reached the age of seventy he would have been living in 1894, and, should he have had a child, the same might be flourishing on the island at this moment, possibly as a waiter or a chambermaid at the hotel. If he or she talked of “grandmother,” it would be of this same young negro woman who was so good a house-servant, and who was offered for sale with the handsome horse. The subjoined item from the “ Barbados Mercury ” of the date of August 4, 1787, is also of interest : “Run away from the subscriber, a tall black man named ‘Willy’: whoever will deliver him to the subscriber shall receive one moidore reward.” Now I take the moidore to be equivalent to the sum of twenty- seven shillings, therefore, Willy, in spite of his tallness, would have been little more in value than a pet dog. Indeed, I have seen the reward of two pounds offered for a runaway cat. It is much to be hoped that Willy never came back to the subscriber, but that he hid his pound and a half’s worth of flesh in the jungle by the Inland Cliff and there ended his days in peace. When slavery was abolished, Parliament voted a sum of money to be paid to owners as compensation for setting their slaves at liberty. The total sum thus expended in the salvation of men was nearly nineteen millions sterling. The number of slaves set free was no less than 770,280. Digitized by Microsoft® 30 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. They were probably the only human beings who ever came to know precisely what they were worth, or what was their value in the eyes of others, for in the carrying out of the Act the value of each type of slave had to be defined with great exactness. A first-class field hand was priced at £94, a domestic servant at £82. It may be imagined that many a dignified black butler, who appraised himself at, at least, £800, must have been hurt by this low figure. The vexation of the handsome negress who found that she was valued at some £2 less than her ill-looking co-worker must have been peculiarly bitter. Children under six fetched £13 17s. 4a. on an average. “Aged, diseased, and otherwise non-effective adults” were lumped together, like soiled goods at a sale, and priced at £10 8s. 54d. each. In this estimate of the value of a marred human life there is a lamentable pathos about the farthing. Although the Barbadian blacks must have been compounded at the outset from different African tribes, it is remarkable that, by reason of their exclusiveness, they have developed into a definite race, with an easily recognised physiognomy and dialect. A head that is large and round and that is associated with an “open countenance ” constitutes the “ Barbadian head” ; while the English the people affect to speak is the most curious phase that tongue can ever have assumed. To untrained British ears it is not intelligible, while even the cry of the children, who hold out their hands and grin “gimme a pension,” needs to be explained as a demand for a penny. The Barbadian negro is a fine specimen of humanity. The man may not be noteworthy, but the woman is a model ot anatomical comeliness. She has well-moulded limbs, perfect teeth and the eyes of the “ox-eyed Juno.” Her neck and shoulders belong to the women of heroic days, while the carriage of her head and the swing of her arms as she walks along the road are worthy of the gait of queens. She is as talkative as a parrot, her smile is that of a child at a pantomime, and without her the West Indian island would lose half of its picturesqueness. She is the life of the gaudy market square, while her black face may appear Digitized by Microsoft® THE ISLANDERS. 31 almost beautiful when seen against the pale green background of a thicket of cane. She works hard and is strong. Her disposi- tion is to carry everything, great or little, upon her head. Thus I have met an old woman bearing aloft on her skull a full-sized chest of drawers and not far behind her a young housewife with a slice of green melon on the black mat of her hair—an offering to her husband in the fields. The normal costume of the negress is a frock of white, stiffened with cassava, and a white scarf or kerchief bound turban- wise about her forehead. Her woolly hair is covered by the linen cap, and as her white teeth are always gleaming——for she needs must smile—she forms a graceful figure sketched boldly in black and white. It is curious to see in these dark faces classic types of woman- hood which custom has made the European to associate only with a fair skin. Here, for instance, sitting on a cabin step, crooning over her baby, is a rapt Madonna in ebony. Leaning over a railing and swinging a scarlet hibiscus blossom before her lover’s face is a coal-black Juliet, in an ecstasy of fondness. In the market place, in a vortex of violent speech, is a terrible virago with the seams of her features cut out of jet, urging her husband, a timid Macbeth, to avenge certain wrongs incident to the selling of yams. Unhappily, the negress of Barbados is discarding her own charming costume in order to assume, with great seriousness, the attire of Europe. The result is deplorable, for so eager is the blackamoor to be done with the past that she becomes, in a sense, almost too European. Unconsciously she intensifies every feature of northern dress, making each item ridiculous. She caricatures the lady of the London parks, so that any who wish to see their faults displayed through the medium of exaggeration can have the distorting mirror held up to them in Barbados. The coloured lady omits nothing. She holds her skirts in the manner of the moment, but, as the mincing mode is apt to be overdone and as clothing in the tropics is thin, the effect is often curious. Although accustomed to a blazing sun the whole year Digitized by Microsoft® 32 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. through, and although her race comes from near the “line,” the modern negress cannot be seen on Sunday without a sunshade which she will hold up even if the sky be grey. She must not fail to wear a veil, though no exposure to the eye of day can spoil her complexion or add a deeper tint to the shadows of her skin. The chief difficulties in the way of perfect mimicry are anatomical, being dependent upon the waist, hair and feet. The European waist has been trained for centuries to follow certain lines of deformity, but the waist of the negress is that of the Venus of Milo and it resents the disfigurement very stoutly. The hair problem is much more grave, and is indeed almost insurmountable. The astrachan-like wool on the black lady’s head can be changed by no known art into anything that could be coiled or braided. The fight with the woolliness of wool in Barbados is desperate and discouraging. A young girl’s hair is worked out into little tags which hang about her worried skull like black curl papers. These are intended to represent tresses, but although they could not deceive an infant they are diligently toiled at by ambitious mothers. By a bolder display and higher flight of art a bow is fixed somehow to the nape of the neck, to foster the delusion that it ties up raven locks. Some ingenious women have cut or carved out of the solid wool on their heads the figures of braided coils, just as a pattern is clipped out of a poodle’s back. These carvings are made realistic by the addition of many combs which suggest that they prevent the “coming down” of hair which would not be ruffled by a hurricane nor disturbed by the thickest bramble bush. There is an article of the European coiffure called a “slide,” a species of brooch used to keep in order any wayward hairs about the nape of the neck. No self-respecting negress is without one of these controllers of stray locks, although in her case it is the hair that keeps the slide in place and not the slide the hair. Indeed there is more suggestion, more pretence, more fancy about the head adorning of a negress than about a Japanese garden. The skull of the mulatto shows varying grades between wool and hair, and as the difference widens so does the brown woman Digitized by Microsoft® THE ISLANDERS. 33 attain nearer to the standard of perfection. She becomes an object of envy, since a higher walk in life and a loftier social status may be reached by even three inches of reasonably straight hair. To the Barbadian, indeed, combs are more than coronets and lanky locks than Norman blood. The foot problem is also serious. The negro having found no need for boots has wisely worn none, but as bare feet are de ¢rop in Park Lane so they must not tread the coral paths of Barbados. There is no affectation about the feet of a negress, no pretence that they may be mistaken for “little mice stealing in and out beneath her petticoat.” They are practical feet of serviceable size, but by some means or another, groans or no groans, they must be forced into cheap American shoes, and the graceful elastic walk must degenerate into the mechanical-toy mode of progress affected by the higher civilisation. This attempt to be up to date involves such general suffering that it is not considered a@émodé with the smart set for a lady, when returning from a gymkhana, to take off her shoes and open- work stockings and carry them in her hands. I am told that in courts of law the manner in which evidence is given is apt to be affected by boots; so that an uneasy witness is often invited by the Bench to remove her foot-gear. If a bride faints at the altar, as is not uncommon, a sympathetic whisper runs through the assembly, not to “give her air” or “unloosen her dress,” but to “take off her boots ”; and when the operation has been carried out in the vestry the nuptials can proceed, although the young wife may never recover from the degradation of having been married in stockings. If the negress must wear boots, she should wear them on the top of her well-balanced head. A pair of crimson satin shoes with gilded heels would look never so well as on the cushion of her woolly hair. The black man has less wide fields for display than has the black woman. He is, however, strong in the matter of neckties, scarf pins and finger rings. He is strong, too, in waistcoats, which are at times so violent in colour as to be almost explosive. He Digitized by Microsoft® 34 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. bases his model in dress upon a blending of Margate sands with the racecourse at Epsom. He cannot appear without a cigarette, nor without a cane which he carries like a Guardsman. The West Indian negroes generally are a healthy, cheerful and sober people. Professional beggars are unknown among them, as also are “slum children” and the counterpart of the Whitechapel woman. The white folk who live in their midst are prone to say that the more you know of the negro the less you like him. He has certain estimable child-like qualities, it is true, but he is un- trustworthy and idle, while his misconceptions of honesty and truth are inconvenient. If left to himself he tends to degenerate, for the spirit of the wild has not yet died out of him. In up-country districts in any of the islands the black man is respectful to strangers, but in the seaport towns he is apt to be insolent when the opportunity offers. At Roseau in Dominica, for example, the quayside nigger would appear to have lapsed into savagery if the experience of certain ladies who recently landed there can be taken as an instance. An accofint of the islanders would scarcely be complete with- out mention of certain other living things which serve to give character to the colony. Conspicuous among these are the black birds—the Barbadian crows. The full and proper title of these fowls is Quiscalus Fortirostris. They go about in companies, being very sociable. They are jet black and have white eyes. Their neatness and trimness are immaculate. They look like a number of dapper little serving-men in black liveries, or may be compared to smart vivacious widows with indecorous high spirits. Their curiosity and fussiness can only be matched by their unceasing energy. There is nothing that goes on in the streets or by the roadside which fails to interest them, while every detail of their lives appears to evoke an endless chattering. The Barbados sparrow is another very sociable and pushing bird. He is greenish-grey in tint, but what he lacks in brilliancy of plumage he makes up in impudence. He comes to the early breakfast in the bedroom, hops on to the table or a chair-back, and if he is not served at once with sugar or banana will call out Digitized by Microsoft® THE ISLANDERS. 35 petulantly like an old man at a club who is kept waiting for his lunch. He is a thief by conviction, and steals for the mere pleasure of stealing. The sugar-bird is not so common as either of these two. Archdeacon Bindley, however, tells of his habits and of his ability ' to make himself at home. He drops on to the breakfast table as if he had been invited, and after he has helped himself out of the sugar-basin will, as likely as not, proceed to take a bath in his host’s finger-bowl.! Another flying thing is the flying-fish, which is as common in the fish market at Bridgetown as is the herring at Yarmouth The visitor will eat him with curiosity at first, but when it becomes evident that no meal in the island is complete without flying-fish, under some guise or another, the novelty abates. Finally, Barbados would appear to be that West Indian island which is favoured above all others by the land crab. His burrows are to be seen not only along the shore but by the side of every road that skirts the habitations of man. He takes up his abode in the garden, digs his tunnels in the environs of the house, and has turned more than one graveyard into a miniature rabbit warren. He is an unclean beast, his habits are nasty, and any contemplation of his precise mode of living is of a kind that makes the flesh creep, He appears occasionally upon the dinner table as an article of diet. I have eaten him under these circumstances, and the memory of this indiscretion is the only blot in my West Indian experiences. I feel that I have lost all right to criticise people who eat raw fish, snails, snakes and lizards. The land crab, when he is fully grown, is about the size of the palm of the hand. In Barbados he is usually of a cherry-red colour, a tint which compels the impression that he is distended to bursting with unwholesome blood. He is shy—more shy than he was when Amyas Leigh and Salvation Yeo landed at Barbados on their journey westward. At that time he and his tribe “sat in their house-doors and brandished their fists in defiance at the invaders.” He is agile, his legs are long and like stilts of tin ' The Pilot, October 5, 1901. D Digitized by Microsoft® 36 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. When he walks he moves with a parched, scratching sound that is horrible to hear, and that suggests the fumbling about of a witch’s nails. I canimagine no more awful awakening than that which would befall the exhausted man who, having dropped asleep by the roadside or on the shore, woke to find these dry, crackling, carrion- eaters crawling about him as if he had been long dead. Digitized by Microsoft® VIT. THE PLANTERS AND THE POOR WHITES. [Tt is in Barbados that will be found the most substantial relics of the old West Indian aristocracy, of the planter prince who, in the days of slavery and dear sugar, held court in the island with all the pomp and circumstance of a feudal lord. Here, still clinging to the same broad acres, are those whose ancestors were among the early landowners in the colony. Such are Alleyne of Porters, Drax of Drax Hall, Carrington of Carrington. The son is educated at Eton and Oxford, as were his father and grand- father before him, and in the fulness of time takes up his abode in the old house—with a less princely income, perhaps, and with longer absences in the old country--but still as the hereditary head of an estate which has been associated with the name of his family for generations. Most of these possessions date back to the time of the great Civil War, when squires who were loyal to the Stuart cause left England to seek peace, or to found a new home in place of the shattered hall and the wasted meads confiscated to the Commonwealth. Those were spacious times when the lord of the great house would go to church in a coach and four attended by an escort of slaves in stiff-necked liveries, and when the lady would walk abroad through the estate with one black lacquey to carry her lap-dog and another her fan, while a third bore respectfully her case of simples if it was her pleasure to visit an ancient Uncle Tom or a sick Aunt Chloé. A French missionary, one Pére Labat, when he visited Barbados at the beginning of the eighteenth century, found the 37 Digitized by Microsoft® 38 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. island overflowing with wealth, the harbour full of ships, and the warehouses crammed with goods from all parts of the world. To his thinking the jewellers’ and the silversmiths’ shops in Bridgetown were as brilliant as those of the Paris boulevards. He noted at the same time, as a hint apparently to his ever- watchful nation, that the island was imperfectly fortified. There are traces left of the ancient days in certain fine old mansions which, with no little architectural pretence, show as strong a leaning to the type of the English country house as the tropics will allow. One has gone to such servility in imitation as to possess fireplaces in its sitting-rooms. Some even are built of stone from England brought over as the ballast of brigs and barques that sailed from Plymouth. A few contain pieces of the heavily carved furniture of bygone days, huge presses, sombre four-post bedsteads, ample wine-coolers, semi-rezal plate, with possibly old family portraits of staid men whose faces are wrinkled by many seasons of heat or seamed by the maws of irreverent worms. The present-day planter’s house is a solid building of plaster and stone hidden among trees and approached by an avenue of cabbage palms, of which the owner is proud. Around the house is an ample stone colonnade, or modern verandah, where on a table lies the favourite pipe. There is nowhere a stinting of space. The staircase is wide and easy of ascent; the inner walls are not all carried up to the ceiling, but the space is filled in with lattice-work to allow a free passage for the breeze. Every window is jealously sheltered by wooden blinds. The rooms are consequently dark, for the sun is an abhorred thing. Carpets are rare because creeping things are common. The sideboards are liberally wide because the West Indian planter is the most hospitable of men. The floors are polished like glass and as slippery. Everywhere are there reminiscences of home. Here on the table are ancient magazines with curled-up leaves and torn covers. They have been read and re-read, but no one has the heart to throw them away or hand them over to be pawed by aliens, for they are sacred things. On a wall, stained by the Digitized by Microsoft® THE PLANTERS AND THE POOR WHITES. 39 last hurricane of rain, is an insect-mottled drawing of the old house in England, a place with gables, a walled garden and a yew hedge. Below hangs a photograph of a college “eight,’ with the planter himself among them as he was in the days of his youth, but the group is so faded that the lusty under- graduates have become mere spectral smudges, while the only thing that lives is the college shield, in still defiant colours. Of the portraits of the father and mother very little is left but the dots for the sitter’s eyes put in in paint by a photographer who was given to realistic “ touching up.” The dim room is, indeed, a room of ghosts. The cushions, the curtains, the coverings of the chairs are so wan and colour- less, while the human occupants are so unsubstantial in the dull light that if the full flood of the sun were to pour into the room one can believe that its contents would vanish, leaving only the black butler in his white tunic grinning at the door. The house and the piazza are covered with creepers; the grounds about them are rich with flowers of every tint. The kitchen garden is a jungle compared with the prim, brick-walled enclosure in England. In it flourish bananas and pumpkins, eddoes and peppers, pigeon peas, yams, ginger, chalots and sweet potatoes. There will be in a corner a few English herbs, despised by the natives, and possibly, if the owner be luxuriant, a patch of cabbages. The orchard boasts of mangoes and guavas, of avocado pears and golden apples, of shaddocks, sour-sop, and bread-fruit, of sapodillas, oranges and limes. If there be a lady in the planter’s house there is sure to be an English garden within sight of the windows of her room, where, tended with affectionate care, will be roses, nasturtiums and violets, or such other simple flowers as can survive the languor of the tropics. For this corner of the garden the negro has neither sympathy nor understanding, since he fails to conceive the object of growing anything that cannot be eaten or made into building stuff. I remember one such pleasance beloved above all by the lady of the place. The gardener was an ancient white man who, having been born on the island, had no opinion of the nonsense Digitized by Microsoft® 40 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. talked about England, nor of the puny plants that came from that dim Mecca. Although he had lived with the family all his days he persisted in classing the cherished spot and all that grew within it as “bush.” He declined to look after it. The violets and roses were affected weeds unworthy of an honest man’s notice. His faith was in yams and in fruits as big as his head. To his mistress the meek little plot was a garden of memories, of “things from home”; to him it was mere scrub, a patch of wasted ground. It was not for the man of yams to know that the parent of the rose was still climbing over a familiar porch in Sussex, or that the violets had grown in a wood visited by a sorrowing couple the day before their ship set sail from England. One addition to the planter’s house remains to be noticed, and that is the hurricane wing. In the older buildings it takes the form of a strong round tower of two floors communicating with the dwelling-house. It has the massive walls and beams of a fort, the narrow windows and stout doors of a dungeon and the roof of a gun casemate. Here, when the terror comes, crouch the women and children, while the wind hisses by like an arrow flight of invisible steel, slashing away the palms and trees as with a cutlass, tearing off the house roof and hurling it, with furniture, fencing, huts and plantation litter into the void. The women press their hands over their ears as the thunder bursts with a crash “as if the whole vault of heaven had been made of glass and had been shivered at a blow.” The screaming children, who have dragged their toys with them, are blinded and silenced by the lightning which flashes through the window slits, and are then fascinated by the rain, which, pouring down as a weir, makes of the road a river and of the garden a whirlpool of mud. Possibly the most interesting and remarkable of the islanders are certain dismal folk known as the “ poor whites.” It may be surmised that the “ poor whites” are colonists who have fallen upon evil days through the common channels of disaster, drunkenness and sloth. There are such, no doubt, on the island, but they are not the “poor whites” of Barbados. These peculiar people are Digitized by Microsoft® A WEST INDIAN GRAVEYARD, BARBADOS. The Silk Cotton Tree. PLANTER'’S HOUSE, SHOWING (ON THE RIGHT) THE HURRICANE WING. To face p. 40. Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® THE PLANTERS AND THE POOR WHITES. 41 descendants of some of the earlier settlers, of men who were colonists by compulsion, and who for centuries have enjoyed nothing but a heritage of woe. They came to the island in the holds of unsavoury ships, a company of condemned men and women upon whom had been passed the sentence of exile for life. For some the period of banishment had been short, for they had died in the dark under the festering planks of the convict-brig, and were handed up from out of the stench by their friends to be dropped into the wholesome sea. Some were prisoners who were taken by Cromwell from the wilds of Ireland when he suppressed the rebellion in that gallant country. Others were the victims of the Civil War, who had been dragged from their villages by plumed and belaced cavaliers to fight, as they were told, for the King. The larger number, it would seem, were yokels who had taken part in Monmouth’s rebellion, who had shouted for him on his landing at Lyme Regis, or had fought for him at Sedgemoor. They had passed through the Bloody Assize alive, had faced Judge Jeffreys from the dock, had heard his curses and had shuddered under the malignant venom of his eyes. In the West Indian island the banished men had fared ill. Unfitted for work in the fields under a tropical sun, they had become dependents, loafers, doers of odd jobs and in the end mere squatters of the most dejected type. Pitied by the planter, held in contempt by the negro, without aim or object in the world, they had yet kept alive, with some rustic pride, the memory that they were white men. They married only among themselves, held aloof from the blackamoor and went their own way, such as it was, Their number now is few, but they are a most distinctive people. Long intermarriage, long living in the tropics, long centuries of purposeless existence have left them utterly degenerate, anzmic in mind and body, sapless and nerveless, mere shadows of once sturdy men. The Briton in the West Indies clamours that he must go home from time to time or languish in health. These have never been home since the day when they were thrown out Digitized by Microsoft® 42 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. upon the scorching beach to fare as they liked. They have withered and faded and, like a painted missal which has been bleached of all colour by years of sun, the writing that told who they were has become well-nigh illegible. The poor whites are to be found mostly about Bathsheba, a joyless company of pariahs, housed in wretched huts and making a flabby pretence at living as fishermen. They own to names which are still familiar in Ireland and in the west of England. Some have marked Irish faces, and the doctor in whose district they live tells me that among not a few of the poor whites there still survives the pleasant brogue of Ireland. Those who are descended from Monmouth’s men are the off- spring of ruddy-faced peasants who tended sheep upon the Dorset downs, or turned up with their ploughs the good brown earth of Devon. One can imagine how for years their talk would be of the hamlets they had left, of the cool trout streams, the shady spinnies and the old grey church whose bells they could hear in their dreams. It is certain that when each December came round they would babble—in spite of the never-flagging heat—of Christmas time, of the holly, of the snow on the uplands, of the carol singers and the squire’s baron of beef. The stories would come down to the sickly grandchild, to the still more listless great-grandson until at last the telling of such things as the keen English wind, the bare trees, the sheep fair and carrier's cart would become unintelligible and meaningless, while the names of Lyme, of Taunton, of Bridgewater, where the battle was fought, of Dorchester, where the assize was held, would be as the names of places that were not. What was once seen grows what is now described, Then talked of, told about, a tinge the less In every fresh transmission ; till it melts, Trickles in silent orange or wan grey Across the memory, dies and leaves all dark, Digitized by Microsoft® VIII. THE DAY WHEN THE SUN STOOD STILL. THE most terrible day in the annals of Barbados was a certain Sunday of May in the year 1812. The night had been intensely dark, no star had been visible, while those who were unable to sleep heard mysterious sounds as of distant thunder or of the firing of cannon. The many who were restless or apprehensive that night were consoled by the thought that at six the sun would rise, and that with the daylight all uneasiness would vanish. The clocks at last struck six but there was not a sign of dawn. The sky was still as black as a pall. The darkness was impene- trable. The white man crept out of his house and the negro out of his hut, full of fear and anxiously curious, yet hugging the thought that the clocks must be wrong, that it was really about midnight and that they would go back to bed again and laugh over the escapade in the morning. The village street, however, was soon full of people feeling their way about in the gloom, moving nervously from cabin to cabin. When one man stumbled against another he would clutch at him and ask in a whisper what all this meant. Neighbours called by name to those they knew should be near, but in subdued voices. The white man groped his way to the verandah and down the steps into the garden, where, with arms outstretched, he felt about for familiar trees, stooping forward like a blindfolded man. The children were early awake and crying. The women lit candles in their cabins, but the glimmer made the murk more awful. The goat and the pig, that from habit had been let loose at six, crept into the welcome light and hid in the shadows of the small room. 43 Digitized by Microsoft® 44 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. Seven o’clock came but there was no sign of the sun. A sickening panic fell upon the distracted folk in the road. They had become aware that two other hideous things were added to the mysterious darkness, The trade wind—which never failed —had ceased to blow. There was a blank calm, a breathless stillness. The sound, too, of the surf on the reef had ceased as if awed into silence. More than that, something dreadful was falling out of the air. It fell without sound, a fine soft dust, that was already so thick upon the ground as to make the road unfamiliar to the bare foot, while the patter of men’s steps sounded as if far away. It fell invisibly upon the outstretched hand, upon the woolly head ; it clung to the brow; it dried the clammy lips ; it clogged the staring eyes. A man, silly with dread, began to joke aloud and to ask why they had all taken to getting up at midnight? Had they come to see the old year out? Before the poor gibe had died upon the fool’s lips the meaning of the unutterable horror was realised. The jester had supplied the clue. To see the old year out? Was not this the last moment of all the years, the end of time, the last day? Men no longer spoke in whispers. The silence was too unbearable. A woman’s scream rent the air, “Oh God! Have mercy upon us.” All restraint vanished. All now knew what the signs in the heavens meant. The end of all things had come. The sun would never rise again. This was the lull before the awful opening of the Day of Judgment. In a moment the sky would crack apart, there would be the brazen blast of the last trump, and God and his avenging angels would appear in the dome of heaven. There came back to many the words of the hymn, Lo ! He comes with clouds descending, Robed in dreadful majesty. Here were the very clouds crushing down upon them. The sky touched the earth. They could feel the weight of it. Had not the Bible said, too, “ He shall come as a thief in the night ”? Digitized by Microsoft® THE DAY WHEN THE SUN STOOD STILL. 45 Men and women rushed to and fro without purpose or control. The highway was filled with shrieking, crazy folk. They wrung their hands. They clung to one another aimlessly. They threw themselves down upon their knees and prayed. In the quaint language of the negro, in bursts and sobs, in yells and screams of terror, supplications were hurled against the sullen heaven. The black man is superstitious, he is emotional and excitable. His religion is very rugged, and daubed on his mind in crude colours. He called out to God as he would to the overseer standing above him with a whip. He was a sinner. He was to be scourged and damned. The flames of Hell were in sight. The appalling pictures of the Judgment Seat shown at the Sunday-school came to his mind. The devil with his horns and his pronged fork was waiting for him. He yelled, he clamoured, he whined for mercy. Women broke out into fragments of hymns, and sung as sick folk sing in their delirium. Men dropped face downwards in the dust of the road gasping, “I amasinner! I amasinner! Have pity! Have pity!” Others, standing erect, held up their hands to the black cloud, and, as the tears made streaks of mud down their faces, called to God to spare them. How they abased them- selves and grovelled! How they promised never to do wrong again! How they simpered and wept and howled! The coward husband clung to the wife, believing that she would be saved, and that if he held on to her he might escape Hell when the sheep came to be parted from the goats. One silent man was creeping towards the beach. He had stolen a knife some weeks ago. He held it in his hand. It must be thrown into the sea. It must not be found upon him when the Great Judge came. An old woman was feeling her way to the graveyard. She reached the dust-clogged gate, opened it and went in. She sat down to wait. She knew that in a while the graves would open and that the earth would give up its dead. She was speechless with expectation, for all she held dear lay within these silent Digitized by Microsoft® 46 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. walls. She would see her husband again, face to face, and her sons and her little girl. She thought over the many things she had to say to them all. With the greater number the impulse was to hide, to run away, to be lost. They called upon the hills to cover them. They rushed into the thickets of cane, and casting themselves headlong among the great stalks put their fingers into their ears to keep out the sound of the trumpet call, all the while muttering prayers with their lips to the earth. The velvety powder continued to fall. Many began to feel that they were being suffocated. There was no air. The dust stifled them. They tore the raiment from their throats and rushed about gasping, fighting with their hands the deepening cloud as drowning men battle with the waves. Now and then there was a crash that made every heart stop and for a moment silenced every scream. It was a branch of a tree falling that had been bent to breaking by the weight of dust upon it. Worse than that, dreadful birds flew by in the dark, and almost touched the shrinking crowd with their wings. Were these awful shapes portends and heralds of the Coming? They were great sea-birds whose wings and backs were so laden with dust that they could scarcely flutter. They had come in from over the sea, moving ever more and more languidly until their pinions were as pinions of lead. The hours as they passed were struck upon the clock, but the tones were becoming huskier for the bells were covered deep with dust. There was still the same impenetrable night, the same dead atmosphere, the pitiless silence, the falling film, the slowly-moving wearied birds. At last, about the hour of one, those who looked towards the south saw a faint glow in the sky. It widened into a blood-red gap of light that stained the sea with blood and lit the clouds as smoke is illumined by flame. The horror, intensified by the rack of suspense, became inexpressible. The sky was opening | Digitized by Microsoft® THE DAY WHEN THE SUN STOOD STILL. 47 The dread Appearance was at hand! Ina moment the blast of the trumpet would shake the heavens and herald the Last Judgment. Those who saw the awful sight fled or hid their faces in the dust. Whether they ran or whether they fell where they stood, they pressed their hands over their ears in expectation of the coming sound. But the silence remained unbroken. The crimson glare melted into kindly light. The darkness gathered itself up into a black cloud that hung suspended, like a clot, over the fields it almost touched. Ina while it faded intoa disc of grey and then vanished, leaving the island once more flooded by the sunlight of a summer afternoon. The trade wind blew again from out of the east, while upon the ear there fell once more the sound of The league-long roller thundering on the reef. The island was changed. The whole country was covered, to the depth of one and a half inches, by a soft grey powder, some of which can be seen to this day in the museum of Codrington College. A like dust lay thick upon leaf and bough, upon palm branch and cabin roof, upon the terrace of the great house and the deck of the brig in the haven. The sun had set over an island of green, it had risen on a land of ashes. The people looked at one another shyly at first. Some laughed, since all their heads were grey and their faces powdered. Those who had hidden among the canes crept out and swaggered along the road to the village as if they were returning from a morning stroll. Some ventured to say how amused they had been, forgetting that the marks of tears were fresh upon their cheeks. Others were thankful that they had not made fools of themselves, until they caught sight of the patches of mud upon their knees and the weeds of the ditch in their hair. The man who had thrown the knife into the sea repented of the act and resolved to dive for it at his leisure. The old woman hobbled back stiffly from the graveyard with the sense of a grievance in her mind and some mutterings of disappointment on her lips. The sea-birds—after eluding the cudgels of shouting Digitized by Microsoft® 48 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEFP. boys who were still hoarse with prayer—sailed away across the water with cries of thankfulness. In the course of time a schooner cast anchor in Carlisle Bay bringing the news that on the day the sun stood still over Barbados there had been an unparalleled eruption of Mount Soufriére on the island of St. Vincent. Now, Barbados is ninety- five miles to the windward of St. Vincent, yet thousands of tons of dust had been carried noiselessly all that distance and had been dropped upon the palpitating colony. The dust produced two effects—a temporary religious revival, and a permanent improvement in the soil of the fields, because it is said to have had good fertilising qualities. Digitized by Microsoft® IX. A MYSTERIOUS SHIP. FoR many and many a year in Barbados the cry of “A sail in sight” would send a thrill through the settlement. It was a cry which emptied the little school-house of its boys, impelled the shopkeeper to clap on his wig and hasten to the beach, and led the planter among the canes to stop and turn his pony’s head homewards. If it was on a Sunday when the cry came it drew folk out of church, one by one, and hurried the droning sermon to a close. Every ship, whether great or small, brought news, but it was often the smallest which carried the most weighty tidings—tidings of a French fleet bearing westward, of a sea fight off St. Lucia, of a derelict with dead men awash on her deck and the name Mary of Barbados under her stern. Every item of public news that ever reached Bridgetown had been bawled over the gunwale of some sea-weary craft to upturned faces in boats, while the anchor splashed into the bay and the cable rattled through the hawse-pipe. In this wise came the tidings, “The Queen is dead” ; “ All has been lost at Worcester”; “Nelson has blown them to blazes at Trafalgar.” So long as the sails of the formless ship were as a light in the haze she brought with her the very message that everyone hoped for and waited for. She brought money to the castaway, forgive- ness to the prodigal, promotion to the war-tanned captain, and a summons home to the fretting subaltern whose heart had been left behind in a green rectory in Devon. From the Governor to the lounger on the quay there was a period of anxious suspense until the watchman made out the 49 Digitized by Microsoft® 50 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEFP. rig and cut of the on-coming craft. To the Governor it might mean advancement or recall, to the lounger the landing of a King’s officer in search of a pirate who had turned wharfinger for a time. On January 28, 1682, a ship was observed to be approaching Barbados from the south. She was apparently heading for Bridgetown, and was romping along with the trade wind on her starboard quarter. Curiously enough she did not seem to be in any hurry, for her lee sheets were handsomely eased off. Anyone who stood on the little cliff at St. Lawrence would have had a good view of her as she drew near to the reef. Her flag, in spite of rents and dirt, showed the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew. It was to be inferred, therefore, that she was British. She flew also another flag, a blood-red burgee decked with a bunch of white and green ribbons, which was a mystery to all beholders. The ship was so wan, so weather-stained, so old as to be almost spectral. She may have been a ghost ship come to look into Carlisle Bay for the fleet of Columbus. The paint on her sides was ash-coloured. The tar had cracked away in blisters leaving bare the planks which were as yellow asa faded leaf. Her bottom, as she heeled over to the breeze, was green with weed and crackling with barnacles. Her sails, patched and ragged, hung about her masts like cerecloths, while many of her spars were splintered and “fished.” She looked as if she had passed through a century of sun, wind and rain. She creaked like an old basket. She was a galleon of some 400 tons, with the lines of a Spanish man-of-war, but the great house on the poop and all the carved work about the stern had been uncouthly hacked away, giving her the aspect of a ruin. She showed no guns along her sides, but there were ports for cannon on two decks, which ports had been closed and daubed over as if to conceal their existence. Across her stern, in letters of faded gilt, was her name. It was in Spanish and was a curious name— The Most Blessed Trinity. If any could have seen her closer they would have noticed that the timbers about her rudder-post were charred. Someone had evidently tried to set her on fire. Her sides and bulwarks showed Digitized by Microsoft® A MYSTERIOUS SHIP. 51 many shot holes. She was leaking pretty freely, for a couple of men were cursing at the pump. The water that came out of her stank of rum, stale hides and sour wine. There were cutlass hacks along her gunwale, especially by the rigging, as if men had boarded her. The cabin door had evidently been burst in by a bloody shoulder for there was still a mark on the cracked panel. There was a trickle of dry and faded blood down the stair, and in the corner of the cabin, on the skirting-board, was a horrible glue-like daub with black hair sticking to it where a man, whose brains had been blown out, had fallen and died. The craft held on her course until she ‘ opened” Carlisle Bay. People on shore were hurrying down to the careenage to get the first look at this ancient, mysterious and weather-worn ship, which might have hailed from Cathay. The moment, however, that the ghostly vessel reached the mouth of the inlet she suddenly shifted her helm, and, with the tiller hard-a-weather, swung to leeward and sailed away towards the north. In a few hours she had vanished. It would seem as if the captain of the gruesome ship had seen something in Carlisle Bay that had frightened him. But the naven was asleep in the sun. A few traders were lying along the quay near Bridgetown, while at anchor in the pool was a large frigate, H.M.S. Richmond. The captain of The Most Blessed Trinity was no other than Bartholomew Sharp,' an acrid-looking villain whose scarred face had been tanned to the colour of old brandy, whose shaggy brows were black with gunpowder and whose long hair, half singed off in a recent fight, was tied up in a nun’s wimple. He was dressed in the long, embroidered coat of a Spanish grandee, and as there was a bullet hole in the back of the garment it may be surmised that the previous owner had come to a violent end. His hose of white silk were as dirty as the deck; his shoe buckles were of dull silver. This was the companion of Dampier, Ringrose and Wafer, the hero of the “Dangerous Voyage and Bold Attempts of Captain ' Dampier’s Voyages; The Buccaneers of America, by John Esquemeling, London, 1893; Ox the Spanish Main, by John Masefield, London, 1906. E Digitized by Microsoft® 52 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. Bartholomew Sharp.” His admirers wrote of him as “that sea artist and valliant commander,” but the captain of H.M.’s frigate Richmond knew him as a desperate and unconscionable pirate with a price on his head. Sharp, with 330 buccaneers, had left the West Indies in April 1680. They landed on the mainland, and crossing the Isthmus, made for Panama. Having secured canoes, they attacked the Spanish fleet lying at Perico, an island off Panama city, and after one of the most desperate fights ever recorded in the annals of the sea they took all the ships, including The Most Blessed Trinity. Then followed a long record of successful pirating, of battle, murder and sudden death, of mutinies and quarrels. In the end some of the desperadoes returned “home” across the Isthmus; but Sharp, in the 77inzty, determined to keep to the ship, to sail the whole length of South America, to weather the Horn and to reach the West Indies by way of the sea. This was the “ dangerous voyage ” which had occupied eighteen months of unparalleled adventure, peril and hardship. Barbados was the first point of “home” they had reached, so that any who saw the gaunt ship on that day in January saw the end of a cruise the like of which had never been. But for the glimpse of H.M.S. Richmond in Carlisle Bay, Sharp and _ his comrades would have been filling the taverns of Bridgetown with boisterous oaths, strange tales, and the fumes of rum. A warrant was out against Bartholomew, so he had to be circum- spect. The log of the “dangerous voyage” affords reading as lurid as the “ Newgate Calendar.” It records how they landed and took towns, how they filled the little market square with corpses, how they pillaged the church, ransacked every house, and then com- mitted the trembling place to the flames. It tells how they tortured frenzied men until, in their agony, they told of hiding places where gold was buried ; how they spent an unholy Christ- mas at Juan Fernandez; how, in a little island cove, they fished with a greasy lead for golden pieces which Drake is believed to have thrown overboard for want of carrying room. It gives Digitized by Microsoft® A MYSTERIOUS SHIP. 53 account of a cargo of sugar and wine, of tallow and hides, of bars of silver and pieces of eight, of altar chalices and ladies’ trinkets, of scented laces, and of rings torn from the clenched and still warm fingers of the dead. The “valliant commander” had lost many of his company on the dangerous voyage. Some had died in battle; others had mumbled out their lives in the delirium of fever, sunstroke or drink ; certain poor souls, with racked joints and bleeding backs, were crouching in Spanish prisons ; while one had been left behind on a desert island in the Southern Pacific. When The Most Blessed Trinity started on her journey south she had on board two English surgeons. These gentlemen were, no doubt, kept well employed. They went ashore with the boats at Arica when the pirates made the attempt to seize and sack that town. As civilians they would take no part in the actual gun and cutlass business. The fighting on this occasion being much protracted the two surgeons took advantage of their enforced leisure to become intoxicated. When the pirates were compelled to retreat—for they were utterly routed—the two representatives of the healing art were bawling out the latest London songs on the floor of a deserted tavern. They were rudely sobered when they found their hands tied behind their backs and a Spanish fist screwing at their collars. Of all the prisoners taken these two learned men alone escaped being murdered; for it was believed that they might, when sober, be a comfort to the sick of Arica. Captain Sharp, although the leader of so many “ bold attempts,” had not himself been free from certain domestic troubles during the voyage. They were mostly due to religion, or rather to the fervour of a religious revival among the ship’s company. The crew became at one time so repelled by Sharp’s lax morals, indifferent piety and utter disregard for the Sabbath that they could stand it no longer; so they seized him, put him in irons and dropped him down on to the ballast. In his stead they elected one John Watling, an old and blood- thirsty buccaneer. He at once began Sunday services on board the 7rinzty, to the great comfort of the men. Bartholomew Sharp, Digitized by Microsoft® 54 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. as he sat in the dark, on the damp stones with which the bilge was ballasted, could hear the music of familiar hymns rendered by hearty throats, a little husky, perhaps, from too much liquor. He could hear, too, and this would pain him most in his solitude, the fog-horn voice of the pious Watling “leading in prayer,” or expounding select passages from the Holy Scriptures. Unfortunately, John Watling the revivalist was killed a few days later by a bullet through his liver, so his career as a Scripture reader was short. During Watling’s captaincy, Sharp, as soon as he had been lifted up from the ballast, did his best to appear before the company as a just man made perfect. Among some prisoners taken about this time was an aged Indian. He was questioned as to Arica, the town Watling was proposing to attack. His answers were judged to be false, whereupon the godly Watling, without further parleying, ordered him to be shot to death, “ which was accordingly done.” This sentence was too much for ex-captain Sharp, who seems to have found grace while sitting on the stones in the bilge. He protested against the cold-blooded murder of the poor, untutored savage. Was he not a man and a brother? The voice of the tender-hearted Bartholomew faltered as he talked of the old man’s little home, of his aged wife, of his devoted sons. The pleadings of this high-principled gentleman fell unfortunately upon deaf ears, Finding his counsel of no avail, Sharp drew himself up to his full height on the sunlit deck, and in a voice trembling with dignity and emotion, called for a basin of water. It was an unusual request, and as basins are apt to get broken on pirate ships the water was probably brought him in a battered salver stolen from a Spanish altar. Sharp at once proceeded to perform a rarely witnessed act. As a blear-eyed ruffian of a steward held the basin before him, he deliberately washed his hands in the not over clean water. Then, as he wiped his fingers on the lappels of his coat, he said solemnly, and with his eyes turned heavenwards, “Gentlemen, I am clear of the blood of this old man.” It was a great and impressive ceremony—Bartholomew Sharp in the Digitized by Microsoft® A MYSTERIOUS SHIP. 55 character of Pontius Pilate—but it did not save the life of the wretched Indian. It only remains to be said that Zhe Most Blessed Trinity, after the alarm at Barbados, sailed wearily away to Antigua. Here some fourteen of the pirates landed, including Esquemeling, the historian of the “dangerous voyage.” They secured a passage to England in the Lisbon Merchant, and reached the peaceful town of Dartmouth in March 1682. Sharp, however, did not feel quite easy at Antigua. He was getting a little anxious about himself, and if he read Shakespeare must have often repeated the reflections of the boy in “ Henry V.” who said to Pistol, “Would I were in an alehouse in London; I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety.” Sharp, therefore, moved on to the remoter colony of Nevis. In the little shy harbour of that island the poor, battered, friendless ship came to an anchor at last. Bartholomew was sick of the sight of her, so he handed her over to the piteous remnant of his crew, who had gambled all their loot and savings away and had not a penny to offer for their passage home. As the “ sea artist,” in his gayest clothes, sailed out of Nevis on a homeward-bound merchantman he would have passed the Trinity lying at her anchor, dead-beat. He would have noticed her shot-riddled hull, her ragged sails, her rotting and too familiar decks. The warm breeze would have brought him a whiff from her open hold—a whiff of stale rum and staler bilge water. The odour would have reminded him of the days when he lay in irons below decks, listening to hymns. It may be that he waved his lace-ruffled hand to the poor, shirtless, unshaven gamblers who hung over her gunwale and who watched, through the tears in their eyes, the last of their comrades starting on their way to England and home. Digitized by Microsoft® Xs TRINIDAD. AFTER a fortnight at Barbados the visitor would do well to fullow the mail route again to the next port of call, Trinidad. The journey, which occupies some ten hours, is generally made at night, so that by the time the sun is well up the steamer is in the Gulf of Paria. Trinidad is the most southerly of the West Indies, the island nearest of all to the Equator. It lies close to the mainland, being indeed but a detached fragment of Venezuela. The Gulf of Paria is the little sea shut in between the continent of South America and the wayward island, which same dissevered land seems to be stretching out its arms towards the mother country. Within those arms is the famous gulf. Trinidad is not only a very beautiful island, but it is typical of the tropics and of the West Indies generally. It is a place, therefore, for a prolonged sojourn, especially as its roads are excellent, and the means of communication both by train and coast steamer are ample and convenient. There is just one drawback to the island, which even the generous hospitality and ready kindness of the inhabitants cannot make quite imperceptible, and that is the climate. It is hot, damp, and enervating, while the insects of the colony are rather overwhelming in their attentions to newcomers, Seen across the gulf, Trinidad is an island of a thousand hills, of incessant peaks and ridges, and of a maze of winding valleys. From the sea margin to the sky line it is one blaze of green, the green not of grass but of trees. Trees cover it from the deepest gorge to the broken-glass edge of the highest peak. It is the 56 Digitized by Microsoft® TRINIDAD. 57 island of Lincoln green. Viewed from a long way off it would seem to be covered uniformly with green astrachan. Seen nearer one wonders if there can be a level road in the place, or indeed any road at all, and if the inhabitants can ever find their way out of the woods, so as to get a glimpse of the sky. Here, at last, is the green of a West Indian island, a hoard, a pyramid, a piled-up cairn of green, rising aloft from an iris-blue sea. Here is a very revel of green, clamorous and unrestrained, a “bravery” of green as the ancients would call it,a green that deepens into blue and purple, or that brightens into tints of old gold and primrose yellow. Here are the dull green of wet moss, the clear green of the parrot’s wing, the green tints of old copper, of malachite, of the wild apple, the bronze-green of the beetle’s back, the dead green of the autumn Nile. From the Gulf of Paria can be seen the coast of the Spanish Main, and those pale mountains beyond whose heights lay El Dorado and the city of gold. The water of the gulf is dull. It is sullied by the great Orinoco river, for the mud that clouds it is washed from off the slopes of the Andes. On a wide open flat, at the foot of the thousand hills, where the land has come out to breathe, is a cluster of buildings. This is Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad. The town is not noteworthy. It has been many times burnt down, in which various fires the old Spanish houses and the rambling lanes have vanished, while out of the ashes has arisen a more and more precise city, laid out in mathematical lines, like a chess-board, with every street straight. No two houses are, however, alike. Some are of brick, a few of stone, some are of concrete and iron, while a multitude are mere shanties of wood. The main thoroughfares are made up largely of wooden shops of two stories, scorched and warped out of shape by the sun, tinted with more or less decolorised paint and richly endowed with corrugated iron. The space of the street is encroached upon by arcades, by latticed balconies, by sloping sun-shutters, shop signs, palms and telegraph poles. Many of the buildings in the business quarter look as if they were only temporary structures and had no Digitized by Microsoft® 58 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. claim to belong to an abiding city. The streets are glaring and steamy as well as a-rattle with electric trams, the overheard wires of which hiss, as if red hot, when the cars rumble by. There are trench-like gullies on either side of the road ready to be turned into torrents by the tropical rains. No dogs in the world are so indefinite in the matter of breed as are the street dogs of Trinidad. They have lost all the characteristics of species, belong to no determined class and are simply “dogs.” Among the many curious objects in the streets of the place are certain loathsome birds called “ Johnny Crows.” They are greasy looking vultures with bare indiarubber necks, the cringing walk of Uriah Heep, Jewish beaks and a general air of nastiness. They dabble about the gutters in search of offal. When they are gorged they flap away to a housetop where they brood filthily. Ifa septic germ could be metamorphosed into a thing with wings it would take the form of a “Johnny Crow.” Although these mean fowls are so disgusting to look at when they are limping about a midden-heap they are almost angel-like when they are seen high up in the blue heavens, wheeling in great circles round and round the city, as if with watchful tenderness, The town folk of Trinidad appear to live mainly in the streets and to spend their days leaning out of windows or over balconies, for the climate is unfavourable to movement. So many nationalities are represented in the highways and byways of Port of Spain that it might have been on this island that the Tower of Babel was erected. There are negroes, mulattoes and “coloured” people of every known shade, French, Spaniards and English folk, East Indians in great multitude, Tamils, Americans, Venezuelans, Germans, a Chinaman or two, and a few anomalous beings who are of as uncertain species as the dogs and who would be classified simply as “men.” Although Trinidad has been British since the year 1797 it has by no means lost the evidences of its earlier occupation. Someof the chief families and landowners on the island are Spanish or French. To the same nationalities belong many of the most prominent Digitized by Microsoft® TRINIDAD. 59 citizens. Spanish names abound over shop-doors and over many a gaudy tavern, while on the map of Trinidad it is the Spanish name that everywhere predominates. After the Spaniards the French made a struggle for a place on the map. They came with their Bate Blanchisseuse, Pointe Sans Souct and [ét Saut d@ Eau. Finally some worthy Irishman managed to make his mark at one spot on the atlas with Evin Point and Erin Hill; but with these exceptions British names are very few. The black nursemaids, who chatter for ever on the seats in the park, talk in French, while in the streets Spanish will be heard nearly as often as English. The residential parts of Port of Spain and the suburbs generally are most delightful. On the outskirts of the town isa wide stretch of green, the Savannah, the delight and pride of Trinidad. This “level mead” is surrounded on one side by a semi-circle of many-peaked hills which are covered with trees to their summits. It is as if behind the open plain of Hyde Park there rose, as a background, the foot hills of the Himalayas. Casual paths wander across this great stretch of green, just as in any urban pleasure-ground, but there are features in the Savannah which would look curious in a London park. Among such are a clump of palms standing alone, the palings and grand-stand of a race-course, and, above all, a curious little old-world cemetery within a high wall. The enclosure for the dead is hushed by the shade of many trees, so that when the Savannah is made riotous by horse-racing or polo matches the cattle creep under the old walls and so find peace. In a circle round the Savannah are brilliant villas standing in still more brilliant gardens where are the blood-coloured poin- settia, the blue convolvulus, the fan palm, lavish creepers of every tint, strange cacti like candelabra, and a very thicket of flowering trees. It is in these pleasant places at sundown that the fire-flies are to be seen—curious little specks of light wandering in the shadows. There is a languor about their movement, a listless uncertainty in their flight, as if they were tired gnomes with lanterns searching for something that was never to be found. As Digitized by Microsoft® 60 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. the amber yellow spark moves up through the purple it vanishes disappointed. It comes towards you through the grass, and when so near that you dare not breathe it dies away. The light-carrier seems to weary so soon, while the light, as if weakened by centuries of searching, seems hard to keep aglow. The East Indians of Port of Spain congregate in an untidy suburb called Coolie-town. Here, surrounded by palms, bare earth, kerosine tins, goats, children and fowls, are lines of huts, some of mud and wattle, some of wood, some of corrugated iron, They are all of the packing-case or fowl-house type of construc- tion. There are among them sickly-looking shops as well as companies of women bright with bracelets and rings who squat on the ground before baskets full of yams, bananas, oranges and salt fish. The place is as little like an Indian bazaar as China-town in San Francisco is like the alleys of Canton, but it is as full of strong colours and strong smells. Everywhere about the suburbs will be seen the solemn tick bird, a black bird with a heavy hooked beak, a long tail and—as its name implies—useful habits. Everywhere, too, can be heard an irrepressible yellow-brown bird who spends its life in calling out, “Qu’est-ce qu'il dit?” Never in this world has a question been asked so often. The inquirer always lays great emphasis on the word “dit,” sometimes adopting a querulous tone and sometimes a suggestion of remonstrance. The purity of the French varies with the individual fowl, but it seems to be generally spoken with an American accent. If a person were lying seriously ill in Trinidad I should imagine that the first care would be not to put straw down before the open window but to drive the “Qu’est-ce qu'il dit?” birds out of hearing. The flying things, however, for which the island is most famous are the humming-birds. They were to be seen, at the time of my stay, in great numbers in the beautiful garden by Government House. They elected to come there between 7 and 7.30 in the morning. It was about this hour that the sun fell upon a certain bed of scarlet flowers to which they seemed to be devoted. They came from all sides, tiny winged wonders of blue, Digitized by Microsoft® TRINIDAD. 6) green and gold, that for a moment one took to be great bees. They were so capricious, so alert, so quick ds to be hard to follow. They sucked the honey from each flower while on the wing. They hung before the scarlet calyx in an ecstasy of worship, each little suppliant a whirl of green and gold. The vibrating wings could not be seen. There was merely a poised palpitating body with a dizzy halo on either side of it. Nothing could exceed the intenseness, the fervour, the exaltation of these little flower worshippers. It was not until they rested, with shut wings, on a spray near by that they turned to birds again. Thus, so long as the good sun shone each seemed to live A loving little life of sweet small works. Digitized by Microsoft® XI. HOLY ISLAND AND THE FORT IN THE WOOD. IT was on July 31, 1498, that the island of Lincoln green was discovered. The adventurer was Columbus who, with three ships, was making for the south on his third and most fateful voyage. He came, as heretofore, eager in the search for treasure. He followed that same will-o’-the-wisp whose light was ever to him a gleam of gold, and who led him all his days. There was in his mind the belief that as he neared the Equator he would drift into a belt of great heat, where would be a burnt-up land, natives the colour of jet, and gold and precious stones in much abundance. He had pictured it all—the arid shore, the crackling scrub, the amazed black folk, the sparkle of gold in the scorching rocks, the glow of rubies among the pebbles. There had been some foretaste already of this fiery land, for on the way he had glided into a windless calm where the sea was as polished metal, with only a shark’s fin here and there to tell that it was not solid, where the bewildered ships hung motionless with their prows turned different ways, where his men fell faint with the heat and blind with the whiteness of the light, and where the seams of the vessels gaped as the timbers shrunk inthe sun. The water in the casks was nearly spent, while from the stifling hatch came up, like an evil steam, the reek of rotting meat. The voyage had been the subject of many prayers, of many portents, of many vows, for to the treasure-seeker groping in the dark there was no hand to guide but that from heaven. The _ venture had been undertaken in the name of the Most Blessed Trinity, to whom was to be modestly ascribed whatever glory might befall its endeavour. 62 Digitized by Microsoft® HOLY ISLAND AND THE FORT IN THE WOOD. 63 It seems to have been about the hour of noon when a servant, climbing to the mast-head for the fiftieth time, saw land to the west and yelled the news down to the deck. In a while the gazers from the poop saw rise out of the sea three mountain peaks united at their bases into one. Here, in this vision of the three in one, was a wondrous miracle, an answer to months of prayer, an evidence that all the way the Holy Three had stood by the side of the unconscious helmsman. Thus it came about that the island was named La Trinidad. At once all hands were called on deck for prayers and for the singing together of the hymn “Salve Regina.” To many of the bareheaded crew this kind of chant was unfamiliar, for they were the sweepings of the jails of Castile. Still, with some heartiness the harsh song rose—together with the smell of putrid meat— into the blue of a tropical afternoon. The three peaks were the “Three Sisters” which stand by the sea in the south-east corner of the island. As the shore was approached another wonder appeared. In the place of the arid uplands of the admiral’s surmise was a wealth of soft, delicious verdure beyond all imagining. Columbus cruised along the south coast of the promised land until he came to Cape Icacos, where he turned north through the “Serpent’s Mouth” into the Gulf of Paria. While the ships were anchored in the entry of the channel by Cape Icacos, a great tidal wave bore down upon them with much foaming and roaring. Two of the ships dragged their anchors from the bottom, but the cable of the third ship parted so that the anchor was lost. In 1877, three centuries and more after this episode, an ancient anchor was dredged up off this very cape. It stands now in the garden of the Victoria Institute in Port of Spain, and there are those who have the boldness to state that it is the identical anchor lost that day in 1498, for it bears, without any apparent embarrass- ment, the title “ Columbus’ Anchor.” It was not until a day or so after making the land that any natives were encountered. They were found to be of even fairer complexion than those met with on previous voyages. Columbus Digitized by Microsoft® 64 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. had apparently formed an idea of fascinating the savage by means of music, after the manner of the snake-charmer. He had on board for this purpose a band of musicians. They came from the Spanish seaport, and, as exponents of their art, might be repre- sented at the present day by strolling fiddlers from the Yarmouth sands. The first natives who appeared were in a canoe, and seemed disposed to be very offensive. At once the artists were called on deck to put forth their charm. They commenced to play. The piece would, no doubt, have been the latest music-hall song of the time. The natives listened; seemed puzzled ; stared at one another, and then with one accord discharged a full flight of arrows at the would-be sirens. The experiment had failed. Many wonderful things happened on this voyage, but the most wonderful of all was this. On entering the Gulf of Paria some low insignificant land was seen on the south-west. Columbus, no doubt, scanned it steadfastly enough. He was gazing for the first time in his travels upon the coast of the great continent of America, but he knew it not.1 He believed that the land he saw was an island—an insignificant island. He called it Isla Sancta. Thus it came about that the earliest name of America was Holy Island. A little later he caught sight of peaks on the mainland at Paria. He considered that they belonged to another island, whereupon, being in a soft religious mood, he named it the Island of Grace. The three ships cruised round the gulf skirting the mainland. A party went on shore to formally take possession of the Island of Grace, otherwise America, in the names of Ferdinand and Isabella. Columbus never landed. Although only forty-seven years of age he was already an old man, and was at the moment much reduced by gout and a painful disorder of the eyes. So he stayed within his cabin and while he lay in his berth watching the ripples of the sunlit sea reflected on the deck above him he fell a-thinking. He was an imaginative man whose mind was alive with fancies, so he soon peopled the mean cabin with dazzling dreams. He had no thought of mere continents, no thought even ! America was first sighted by John Cabot in 1497. 1g y 7 Digitized by Microsoft® HOLY ISLAND AND THE FORT IN THE WOOD. 65 of a continent greater than any yet known to the civilised world. His dream was more wonderful than all that. From certain signs and from subtle calculations he was convinced that in this very Gulf of Paria he had discovered the Garden of Eden. While he lay a-thinking, with his aching eyes closed, a smile would come over his face as he composed the phrases of that despatch which would announce to the pious queen that he had found the Earthly Paradise. His only idea now was to press on to Espafiola so that he might send the great news post-haste to Spain. One effect of the despatch, when it did arrive, was to cause an old comrade of Columbus, one Alonso de Ojeda, to start at once for Paria. He sailed thither, not with any hallowed wish to see the Tree of Life, but simply with the determination to make money, for the admiral had said that pearls were to be found on this shore as well as mementos of our first parents. With Ojeda went the Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, whom Filson Young speaks of as the “meat contractor.”1 They came upon a placid bay where the natives had built their huts on piles in the water. The little village reminded the Italian of Venice, so the place was called Venezuela, or Little Venice, which name it holds to this day. Another curious outcome of this voyage was the circumstance that the vast continent itself come to be called America after this same Amerigo, the “ meat contractor.” It was not until near about the year 1532 that the Spaniards undertook the colonisation of Trinidad. They succeeded so in- differently that the welfare of the island came in time to depend mainly upon certain energetic French settlers who landed at La Trinidad two centuries later. In due course the inevitable British made their unwelcome appearance. It wasin 1797. They arrived one day in February to the number of 8000 strong. Their ships blustered through the Bocas, jostling one another as they swarmed down the gap on the whirlpool of a tide. The Spanish governor was Don Josef Maria Chacon, a gallant man enough, but his garrison was so reduced by yellow fever, disaffection and long inactivity that he was unable to 4 Christopher Columbus, by Filson Young, vol. ii. page 91 ; London, 1906. Digitized by Microsoft® 66 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. oppose the eager host. So he set fire to his ships, sat himself down on the quayside and wept over his lost island. The English, under Abercromby, landed near Port of Spain and pushing towards the place took it with the loss of but one single man. A few shots were exchanged some two miles outside the town, but with this exception there was no resistance. On Laventille Hill there is even now to be seen an interesting relic of this day when the British captured Trinidad. The green hill commands the town. It is steep of ascent, yet houses and gardens climb up nearly to the top of it, clinging on to any helpful ledge by the side of the unkempt road. On the apex of the height is a pale church, looking seawards, and near it a school- bouse where the droning sing-song of negro children seems to offer a sleepy answer to the brisk ever-repeated question of the “Qu’est-ce qu'il dit ?” bird. On this hilltop and entirely hidden by jungle is an old Spanish fort, the taking of which gave Trinidad to Britain. It capped the last height to be cleared, it marks the spot where the last surly man threw down his arms, it was the last fort to surrender. It represents the final hold that the failing fingers of Spain ever had upon the island of the Trinity. Here, in this little stone redoubt, came to an end a tenancy which had lasted just upon three hundred years. The fort is hard to find, for the jungle has crept too zealously around it. It lies in the eternal shadow of green trees, while so overgrown is it with brambles that it might be a barbican of the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty. Like a secret rendezvous in a wood it is approached by a path known to few. This last strong- hold of Spain, this redoubt of the dead, is a sturdy little place of grey stone, well and solemnly built. Its walls are of astounding thickness ; its paved court, that once echoed with the clang of arms, is now a wild garden, a mere tangle of green, a court whose silence is broken only by the patter of rain and the song of birds. It is interesting to think that this leaf-embowered fort was known to Picton, and must have been often and often visited by Digitized by Microsoft® HOLY ISLAND AND THE FORT IN THE WOOD. 67 him. Picton landed with Abercromby when he took Trinidad. He was left behind as governor with 1000 men. This was the heroic Picton who was Wellington’s right hand in the Penin- sular war, who conducted the siege of Badajoz, who was wounded at Quatre Bras (but told no one of his hurt), and who, two days later, was killed at Waterloo by a bullet through the brain, while charging at the head of his men. His portrait, in the National Portrait Gallery, is that of a grey-haired man, strong and alert, clean-shaven, with determined lips and most wondrous piercing eyes. If any were to seek a face which might be taken as a type of the British soldier it can be found in this portrait of Picton. Picton left his mark in Trinidad. Even the road that leads down from the bramble-covered fort is called Picton’s Road. He was a great and virile administrator who, like many others of his metal, was worried out of office by petty interference from home. Indeed, in 1803, he was arrested on a charge of cruelty perpetrated during his governorship. He was accused of torturing a miserable creature named Luise Calderon, in order to extort from her a confession respecting the robbing of her master. The trial of this woman had been conducted according to Spanish law, and the alcaide had begged the governor to allow him to have recourse to the “picket.” Picton gave his permission. The “ picket” consisted in making the prisoner stand on one leg on a flat-headed stake or picket driven into the ground for any time not exceeding one hour. Under this ordeal Luise confessed. Picton was tried in England in 1806 and found guilty. Anew trial was claimed, at the conclusion of which Picton was found to have acted without malice, but no judgment was delivered. In this bald way the incident ended. The people of Trinidad sub- scribed 4000/. towards the popular governor’s law expenses, but a fire having broken out in Port of Spain a short while after, Picton sent all the money back to help those who had suffered in the disaster. Such is the man with whom the little stone fort on the top of Laventille Hill must be for ever associated. Digitized by Microsoft® XII. ST. JOSEPH. SOME seven miles from Port of Spain is the village of St. Joseph— as picturesque a little townlet as is to be found in the West Indies. It stands at the foot of the northern heights, just where they step out into the plain, so that it has behind it, ridge above ridge, the guardian hills, while in front is a rueful flat, the Caroni swamp, stretching away to the sea. St. Joseph stands on a small green hill of its own, placed at the mouth of a gorge from out of whose shadows bursts the St. Joseph river. The two streets which compose the village climb up the mound from two points, meet at the top, linger about a village green, a slumbering convent and a church, and then tumble untidily down on the other side. The town itself is nearly buried among trees and lost among gardens. Here is a white-walled, brown-shuttered villa in a jungle of green, with nothing but a fragile paling to keep the bushes from straying into the road. Here is a cottage covered up to its red roof by a yellow creeper, then come a grove of bananas, a lean ascetic cactus, a merry clump of whispering acacias, more white villas, a few thatched huts, a solitary palm. There are shops in one street, but if the sun be upon them the shopkeeper and his dog will be both asleep, and if they be in the shade, well, then a counter is a comfortable thing to loll across and talk. Life is not taken seriously in St. Joseph; there is ever present the conceit that its merchants are merely playing at shopkeeping, so that one would not be surprised to see Peter Pan and Wendy counting out oranges in one of the bright-coloured “ stores,” 68 Digitized by Microsoft® pitt ST. JOSEPH, TRINIDAD. To face p. 68. Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® ST. JOSEPH. 69 It is always summer at St. Joseph, at this little “love-in-a- cottage” town. The villas, one might suppose, are occupied by happy couples who came here on their honeymoon and have never had the heart to go back to the world again. Kingsley thought that if only there was a telegraph cable to the island “then would San Josef be about the most delectable spot he had ever seen for a cultivated and civilised man to live and work and think and die in.” The town may be small, yet the sense it gives of unbounded leisure is very vast; it may be lowly, yet the depths of its peaceful- ness are magnificent. It lies curled up on the top of its little hill like a purring cat in the sun. It may look up and stretch itself now and then on a gala day, but it will soon cuddle back into quietude again. This sleepy-head village, this happy-go-lucky town, this most lovable little garden city is no mere bucolic hamlet. It is called St. Joseph, but its right name and title is no less than San José de Oruna, the one-time capital of Trinidad. It was founded by the Spaniards as long ago as the end of the sixteenth century. From this tiny hill the entire island was governed. From hence thundered forth commands at which the whole settlement trembled. From hence came all the news of the world beyond the seas. It was a place that held its head very high, for upon the summit of the castle flew the proud banner of Spain. In the streets of the town, too, there once walked, clad in full armour and deep in thought, the romantic figure of Sir Walter Raleigh. All the restless glory has long since passed away. San José de Oruna, the Versailles of Trinidad, has done with pomp and the burdens of authority. The twitter of birds and the rustle of leaves have replaced the trumpet blast, the tramp of armed men, the shuffle of obsequious feet. San José takes its old age very prettily and its retirement with idyllic grace. It is content to be the village of the love story, the place of the hushed garden, the city that was. It has no concern with the whirl of progress. Port of Spain is now the capital. There will be found plate-glass windows, electric tramways, rattling cars, yelling newsvendors, Digitized by Microsoft® 70 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. telephones and tourists. San José is satisfied to doze in the warmth. Its past is unsighed for and its future unconsidered. It takes its motto from Sancho Panza: There is still sun on the wall. The village green of St. Joseph is a small open space on the slope of the hill, where it is shaded by a cluster of glorious trees. It would be called a savannah if it were not so petty and so very child-like. In the centre of this diminutive common are three stone graves, surrounded by iron railings. One is uninscribed, but the other two bear the names of officers of the 14th Regiment of Foot, who died respectively in 1802 and the year after. This calls to mind the fact that the English established a garrison at St. Joseph, and that the barracks, long since demolished, were by the side of this quaint, unambitious green. There is a certain hideous memory associated with the military post of St. Joseph. In 1837 a number of the negro troops broke out into mutiny. They were led by a giant named Daaga, a savage of superhuman strength and the ferocity of a tiger. It was on the night of June 17 that the inhabitants of the town were awakened from sleep by a sound like the roar of wild beasts. It was the war cry of some two hundred and eighty desperate helots. As men barricaded their doors, and women hid in cellars, they could see through the cracks of the shutters the red glare of burning barracks, and could hear the rattle of musketry and the rushing by of many feet. The trouble was soon over. D&aga was taken, but not until a host of his followers had been shot down by disciplined troops. Daaga and two others of the ringleaders were condemned to death. Their execution remains a dreadful nightmare in the long daydream of this gentle town. It was on a morning in August that they died. On the hillside, close to the children’s common, three graves had been dug in the red earth. The narrow pits faced to the east so that the morning sun fell aslant into them On three sides of a hollow square stood the men of the 89th Regiment. On the fourth side were the graves, Digitized by Microsoft® ST. JOSEPH. 71 The scene beyond the awful square was as enchanting as any in the world. The absolute silence was at last broken by the sound of men advancing to the music of the “ Dead March.” At the head of the procession three coffins were carried, then came the three mutineers in a line, with the giant Daaga in their midst, still scowling, still defiant, still spluttering curses. The three were clad from neck to foot in robes of white trimmed with a deep border of black. In marching they kept step instinctively with the muffled drums. The sun threw long and ghastly shadows of them on the gorgeous green across which the white figures moved. Behind the three came the firing party. Then, in a silence that was full of horror, the sentence of death was read. The chaplain stammered a prayer. Over the face of each mutineer a cap was drawn, but D4aaga pushed his up with an oath, and with the fury of a beast at bay. “Was hea child? Did he fear death or the thrice accursed English? No. He would die uncovered so that they could see to the last the hate in his eyes!” Men held their breath as the marshal’s sharp words of command rang forth, “Ready! Present! Fire!” With the volley came the sound of three dull thuds on the earth, and then the rattle of the muskets was echoed back faintly from the smiling woods and the sunlit hills. Awed groups who stood expectant in the distant streets shuddered as though the echo had come from the nether world. Digitized by Microsoft® XIII. EL DORADO. From the summit of the hill of St. Joseph is a very wide view of the sea, and of the far mountains of South America. Seen through the haze of a cloudless noon, these mountains are pearl grey, unsubstantial and mysterious. Many have, no doubt, been fascinated by the prospect, but there was one Englishman, long years ago, who was absolutely transfigured by the contemplation of the scene. It would not be unreasonable to suppose that Raleigh obtained his first clear survey of these mountains from the hill of St. Joseph. He had come from very far to see them; he had pictured them in his brain a thousand times as he brooded in his study at Sher- borne. These were the uplands of El Dorado. Somewhere beyond the heights was the city of unfathomed wealth. It was all to be his and his Queen’s. He knew whereabouts the city lay, for he had studied many descriptions of it. He was learned in the fabulous geography of the land. He doubted nothing that he had read, and little that he had heard. He was as certain of the existence of the golden town as he was of the locality of Paris. He was as sure of its streets of gold as he was of the golden plain of buttercups in the meadows by Sherborne. If the imaginative Raleigh could have seen into the future, as he gazed westwards, he would have beheld, in place of the spires of the wondrous city, a headsman’s block in the clouds, for this very vision was to lead him to his ruin. He was lured once again to this fateful coast, but with his second coming his earthly voyagings ended. His sailing days were over. He had hoped. 72 Digitized by Microsoft® EL DORADO. 73 when he turned homewards, to have laid the wealth of the world at his sovereign’s feet, but his only welcome was from the crowd who waited in Old Palace Yard to see him die. E] Dorado was a daring fiction of the sixteenth century. The country was situated, so the fable said, in Guiana, between the rivers Amazon and Orinoco. It was rich in all kinds of precious metals, and ablaze with priceless gems. Its chief city was Manoa, a place of great size and magnificence, reared upon the banks of Lake Parima. This mythical inland sea was 200 leagues long. So engrafted was the figment of E] Dorado upon the minds of men that the great lake Parima found a place on all sober maps up to the time of Humboldt. The houses in Manoa were covered with plates of gold. Temples and palaces were there of dazzling splendour, together with immense statues and thrones of solid gold. Indeed this metal seems to have been even too abundant in the city, for billets of gold were reported to be lying about in heaps in the byways, like faggots of wood stacked for the winter fire. There was also near the town a superb garden of pleasure, wherein was every imagined delight. Numerous expeditions had been made to this surprising country before the time of Raleigh’s coming, but, lamentable to say, they had all failed with more or less hideous disaster. One enthusiast of the name of Philip von Hutten believed that he had caught a sight of the golden city. If he did it was only in the delirium of fever, yet the fancy led on further hordes of stumbling men, who pressed forward to the phantom city until they fell dead by the way of arrow wounds, starvation or disease. The chief authority on El Dorado was a Spaniard known as Juan Martinez, who declared that in 1534 he had spent seven months in Manoa with considerable enjoyment. Martinez was quite a simple man, a mere “master of the munition,” yet his name will live for ever as that of the most fertile liar the world has known. He was conducted, he said, from Manoa to the Spanish frontier, blindfolded, but laden with treasure of every kind. Of this wealth he was robbed before he reached the coast. He had, therefore, no souvenirs of Manoa to show to his friends and Digitized by Microsoft® 74 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. no precise knowledge to give them of the route to the city. On his way home he reached as far as San Juan in the island of Puerto Rico. Here in a hushed chamber he died, surrounded by all the comforts of religion. It was when he was on his deathbed and “without hope of life” that he gave to the holy men about him his account of Manoa. This wonderful story fell from his failing lips after he had received the sacrament. Possibly the monks added a little to the tale; possibly it was wholly their invention ; possibly they misconstrued the mutterings of the dying man altogether, as he babbled of a city of pure gold, of “a wall great and high” that was built of jasper, of streets that “had no need of the sun,” of the river of life clear as crystal. It may be that the last half- whispered words uttered, when the world had already faded from his tired eyes, were such as these— the fifth, sardonyx ; the sixth, sardius ; the seventh, chrysolyte ; the eighth » It matters little upon whom the mantle of Ananias may have fallen at Puerto Rico; the story, as it came to Sir Walter Raleigh, was after this fashion. About the year 1534 an expedition of 630 men set out to discover E] Dorado under the leadership of Diego Ordas. In this company was Martinez the wonder-teller. The enterprise ended in rueful failure; Ordas was murdered and nothing—not even a nugget of gold—was discovered. During the unhappy journey Martinez incurred the wrath of his leader to such a degree that Ordas turned him adrift in a canoe to sink or starve as he liked. Martinez, as he glided down stream in the empty boat, was captured by Indians in a manner approved of in every tale for boys. The natives took him to Manoa as a curious creature they had caught in the woods. He seems to have been exhibited as a freak, as if he had been a bearded woman or a two-headed ox. Whether he was shown in a booth sitting on those gold billets which were so common in the town, or whether he was invited to parties and bazaars to amuse the smart people of Manoa matters little. He saw all there was to be seen and treasured every astonishing item in his mind. He seems, as a man of taste, to have had a curious concep- Digitized by Microsoft® EL DORADO. 75 tion of what constitutes “the height of luxury.” This realisation of supreme bliss was to be witnessed whenever Manoa was honoured by a state banquet. On such occasion, says the soldier of fortune, “all those that pledge the Emperor are first stripped naked and their bodies anointed all over with a kind of white balsam. When they were anointed all over, certain servants of the Emperor, having prepared gold made into fine powder, blow it through hollow canes upon their naked bodies, until they be all shining from the foot to the head; and in this sort they sit drinking by twenties and hundreds, and continue in drunkenness sometimes six or seven days together.” There are still people who regard the prospect of being drunk for a week as the consummation of happiness, the Nirvana of their ambition, but they are people of the baser sort. These gilded youths and men of Manoa who rolled about the palace for a week, giggling and hiccoughing, and leaving greasy dabs of gold on the marble as they lurched from court to court, were generals and governors, privy councillors and ministers of state. It is a quaint idea of an earthly paradise—the nakedness of the Garden of Eden, gold dust and grease as at once a concession to modesty and a token of magnificence, the unlimited drink, the presence of the king. The only reasonable feature in the picture is the severe simplicity of the court dress. Raleigh left England with five ships in February 1595 to discover this pleasant country of Juan Martinez. The year before he had dispatched a respectable pirate, one Captain Whiddon, “a man most honest and valiant,” to Trinidad to collect informa- tion. Raleigh, on his arrival, after examining the shores of the green islet and visiting the Pitch Lake, anchored off San José de Oruna. He determined to take that town and to capture Berreo, the governor of the island. His excuses for the assault were the following: In the first place Berreo had treacherously captured eight of Whiddon’s men; secondly, he had treated the natives with vile cruelty, had loaded certain princes with chains, and then tortured them by dropping boiling fat upon their bare shoulders. The third reason, however, was the real one. Berreo Digitized by Microsoft® 76 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. had already led an expedition into Guiana, and would no doubt be full of useful knowledge. Sir Walter therefore went ashore one dark night, crept up the Caroni river, and took San José at the break of day, just as the humming-birds were busying themselves in the governor's garden. He found five melancholy princes chained together in a row and nearly dead from famine, while on their royal backs were the remains of the last application of hot fat. He set fire to the little town, and went down the hill happy and chuckling to himself, for he had Berreo with him, alive and communicative. Raleigh left his ships at Trinidad and crossing to the main- land in small boats proceeded to ascend the mighty Orinoco. There was never a more romantic river voyage ; never a more rapturous wild-goose chase. Raleigh was infinitely gullible. He believed every word the romance-loving Spaniards told him, as if he had been a gaping schoolboy. He trusted Juan Martinez as a modern traveller trusts Baedeker. He gathered inspiration and assurance from any dull-witted Indian who nodded “ yes” to the unintelligible questions of his interpreter. Every sign was a happy omen. He toiled up the fetid, pestilential river radiant with delight. His men died of starva- tion and fatigue, but Manoa was ever just beyond the next bend of the stream. Ten more strokes and the first golden water-gate would be in view. His boats were rotting, yet he could hear every night the bells ringing in the spires of the gorgeous city. Whatever he came upon was delightful. “I never saw,” he writes, “a more beautiful country ... every stone that we stooped to take up promised either gold or silver.” The birds that flew over the dismal stream were the most lovely he had ever known : “ birds of all colours, some carnation, orange tawny,! purple, green, watchet,? and of all other sorts both simple and mixed.” He met with no kind of encouragement, and yet the smile of delight never left his face. Once they came upon a kindly chief who entertained them in his village; upon which happy occasion “some of our captains garoused of his wine till ' Orange tawny was Raleigh’s own colour. ? Pale blue. Digitized by Microsoft® EL DORADO. ! 77 they were reasonable pleasant.” This was the best time they had experience of. At last even Raleigh could go no further. His men were listless with the heat, parched with fever, and so utterly weary that even the prospect of lying arunk for a week in a tavern of gold failed to stir their jaded muscles. They could not pull another stroke in this lukewarm river. They could scarcely sit upright on the scorching thwarts, and would have given the whole land of El Dorado for one hour of a keen: north-east wind blowing over the downs of Dorset. Raleigh owned to no failure. When he reached home he spoke of Manoa as if he had seen it. He writes that the country would yield to the Queen “so many hundred thousand pounds yearly as should both defend all enemies abroad and defray all expenses at home.” He implores his “Lady of Ladies” to put forth her hand and grasp this land of untold riches. He even ventured to assert, with the precision of an auctioneer, that one of the famous statues in Manoa could not be worth less than 100,0007. When he turned back on the river it was with no sense of lack of success. Writing cheerily, and in his same pretty manner, he merely says, “It is time to leave Guiana to the sun and steer away towards the north.” Poor self-befooled Raleigh, he left more gold in this miserable country than he ever brought away from it, for he gave to any loquacious chief who would listen to his babblings an honest English sovereign—a piece of “the new money of twenty shillings with her Majesty’s picture.” It would have indeed been well for the gallant dreamer if he had left Guiana for ever to the sun. Digitized by Microsoft® XIV THE HIGH WOODS. SO prodigal in the tropics is the growth of all things green that if the good folk of Port of Spain were to march out of their town on acertain day and not come back again until five years had passed they would find the place lost in jungle, the familiar streets blocked with undergrowth, the tram-lines faint streaks in the moss, and the church hidden beneath creepers. A drift of luxuriant green, some fathoms deep, covers the whole island, silting up the valleys, making level the ravines, and bridging over each smaller river so that it creeps through the shadows like a snake. This wealth of green pours down from the hills into the town, “a waterfall of leaf and glowing flower.” It penetrates everywhere, through the outskirts, like a lava stream, It trickles into the very streets. It is hard to keep it at bay. Let a road be closed and in a while it becomes a meadow of weeds. Let a garden be deserted and it at once relapses into the savagery of a tangled wood. There are no bare places in the tropics. Even the rock that stands up like a bleached bone will find some kindly leaf to cover it. The country around Port of Spain is eminently beautiful, a wonder of valley and peak, of purple shadows, of soft gullies full of blue haze, of splashes of brilliant colour. Looked down upon from a height it is the country of an epic, the land of the primeval romance, majestic, solemn, unconfined. Here is an unclimbable crag covered with trees to its summit, not with lean pines or starving larches, but with the pampered trees of a summer wood. On its height should be one of those precipice-walled, many-turreted castles that Gustave Doré loved to draw. Here is a valley, like the Maraval valley, where the road roams through 78 Digitized by Microsoft® "8L-g aans or ‘GVGININL ‘SGOOM HDIH AHL dO ada HHL NO SLOH HSVUL Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® x THE HIGH WOODS. 79 a tunnel of bamboos, where the path is strewn with flowers as if a procession of gallants had just passed by, where the stream by the wayside is so domed with foliage that the noise of its water on the pebbles seems to come from underground. There is many a mountain pass in Trinidad. Of the view from the summit of one of these Kingsley has written in this wise: “We were aware, between the tree-stems, of a green misty gulf beneath our very feet, which seemed at the first glance boundless, but which gradually resolved itself into mile after mile of forest, rushing down into the sea. The hues of the distant woodlands, twenty miles away, seen through a veil of ultramarine, mingled with the pale greens and blues of the water, and they again with the pale sky, till the eye could hardly discern where land and sea parted from each other.”' By the sea is often a windy beach along whose sands a line of lanky cocoanut trees will stretch away for miles. They ever wave their arms in the breeze as if signalling to someone at sea. In a stifling bay, where the water is still, and where the very shadows are stagnant, is a mangrove swamp. The roots of the tree are as the meshes of some cunning net, its tentacles grope seawards like the arms of an octopus. From the mud it spreads in will bubble up a fetid gas with a sound like the gurgle of drowning men, while the sludge it covers is alive with slimy things. There are still in Trinidad wide tracks of uncultivated land where flourishes “the forest primeval.” This is the country as it met the eyes of the first adventurers, the pathless jungle which so fascinated Charles Kingsley that he writes reverently of his first visit to the High Woods (as these forests are called) “I have seen them at last”! It was near Sangre Grande, under the kindly guidance of Mr. Lickfold, that I made my acquaintance with the High Woods. The world-old jungle is almost impenetrable. Those who would traverse its perplexing depths must follow the method of the early explorer, and hack a way through with a cutlass. So compact is the undergrowth that no trace of the ground is to be seen. For 1 At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies: London, 1871. Digitized by Microsoft® 80 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. all one could tell the mass of verdure may, like a sand-drift, cover the ruins of cities. Out of the tangle of green rise huge spectral trunks, struggling to reach the sky to breathe, struggling to rid themselves of the web of creepers, vines and parasites which cling to them and drag them down, as the snakes did Laocoén. Ropes forty feet long dangle from the topmost boughs, and it only needs Jack-o’-the-Beanstalk to climb them and tell of the wonders to be seen upon the sunny side of the great canopy of leaves that shuts the daylight from the world. There are church-like aisles hung with festoons of lianas as if with rags of votive banners which had fluttered there a century. Aerial bridges of creeper-stems swing up aloft from bough to bough over chasms laced and wreathed with an entanglement of green. There are violet-black gaps in the palisade of trees which reveal unimagined depths. In many a dark arbour in the bush some West Indian Merlin may have lived, while the golden auriole that darts out of the shadow might be the spirit of the dead magician. In this drowsy land the air is hot, heavy and _ stifling, “breeding,” as Raleigh says, “great faintness.” Were it not for the brilliant butterflies and moths that glide to and fro one would imagine it was too dense with damp for winged things to fly in. The dim green light is as that of moonlight. The sounds in the woods are strange, for the leaves are strange and their rustling is unlike that heard in any English spinney. The cords that are dropped from the skies, like the strings of an AZolian harp, must utter still more unwonted notes whenever a wind finds its way into these steamy shades. Through the dancing haze, through the languorous vapour that fills the forest as with the smoke of incense, through the fume of dead leaves there comes ever a strange hum of life, the drone of insects, the rustle of the darting lizard, the flutter of hurrying wings. The vegetation of the tropics is profligate and extravagant. A West Indian jungle shows to what excess the libertinage of leaf and stem may reach. Everything in this spendthrift forest is immoderate and exaggerated. The undergrowth is to a man Digitized by Microsoft® THE HIGH WOODS. 81 what a plot of weeds is to a hiding mouse, or what the woods of Brobdingnag were to Gulliver. Here is a creeper that covers half an acre. Here is a plant like a violet in its form, but it would shelter a child. Here is a geranium leaf, but it is shining and stiff and measures two feet across. This bush might be made of parsley were it not so magnified that it rises to the height of many feet. This thicket suggests a clump of bracken, yet such is the size of every fern-like fan that it would hide a dozen horsemen. These woods of Munchausen, these gardens of the megalomaniac are very wonderful, but they are wearisome by their persistent in- temperance and parade. I think that the most beautiful tree in this part of the world is the Bots Immortel, Jt is found in the cacao plantations, where it shades and shelters the cacao bushes. Hence its name “ Madre de Cacao.” In the cool weather the Immortel becomes bare of leaves—a rare occurrence in the tropics. Its stem and boughs being grey they look, as they stand out of the green thicket, wintry and dead. Suddenly, so it seems, the whole crown of the tree becomes covered with marvellous: blossoms, with delicate flowers of coral red or ruddy orange. This mass of palpitating colour lifted aloft in the sun against the blue sky is a marvel to see. The name is not to be wondered at. The skeleton tree rises from the verdant earth like a figure of death, and when it seems utterly withered, a blush of radiant petals covers its barrenness and so it breaks into life again. Before leaving the High Woods I am reminded that a lady of Sangre Grande showed me much of that beautiful country and, amongst other things, a new cemetery of which the village folk were proud. She told me that the first body buried in this ground was that of a coolie baby whose parents had adopted Christianity. Coffins being costly the dead child had been placed in a deal box in which tinned milk had been shipped to the island from Europe. As the sorrowing relatives shuffled round the grave, the lady noticed that there was an inscription upon the lid of the would- be coffin. On looking closer she observed that it read, in heavily stencilled letters, as follows: ‘‘ Stow away from boilers.” Digitized by Microsoft® XV. THE FIRST WEST INDIAN TOURIST. THE first British tourist to the West Indies was undoubtedly Robert Duddeley, Earl of Warwick and Leicester, Duke of Northumberland, Knight of the Garter and, in a general way, “Leiftenante of all her Majestie’s fortes and forces beyonde the seas.” | He went like other tourists primarily to enjoy himself and to see new lands. Incidentally he did a little pirating on the way, but only as an amateur. He indulged in piracy in a proper tourist spirit, and not with any idea of making money by the pursuit. He no doubt felt that on this particular trip it was the right thing to do, just as the winter visitor to Norway feels compelled to take to ski-running. In the same mood the tripper in Egypt wears a tarboosh and allows himself to be shaken into a jelly on the back of a Bank Holiday camel. It may be said at once that Robert Duddeley, as a pirate, had little sport. The only Spanish vessel he fell in with on the voyage out hoisted English colours, and escaping into shallow water jeered at the tourist ship and taunted the crew with mockery and depraved language. “The which,” writes Captain Wyatt, who commanded the pikemen, “ our generall toke mightelie offensive.” The pirate duke had every reason to be annoyed with these coarse, low men, for his grace was proud and very dignified and ceremonious. For example, when his ship approached a strange vessel to do battle Wyatt says that they always “caused the collers? of our countrey and of our generall to be advansed in the topps, ‘ From the admirable reprints of the Hakluyt Society. 2 Colours. 82 Digitized by Microsoft® THE FIRST WEST INDIAN TOURIST. 83 poope and shrowdes of our shipp.” More than that the “trumpetts”” took up their place “on the top of the master’s cabbin.” Anyone looking down from the poop would have seen “every gunner standinge by his peece.” On the poop would be the noble duke himself, in his best armour, with the ribbon of the Garter across his chest, a baton in his mailed hand and plumes in his helmet. After all this parade it is no wonder that his grace considered it mightily offensive of the Spaniard to get out of harm’s way and then grin over his bulwarks at him and indulge in contemptuous laughter and obscenely expressed chaff. Robert Duddeley, like the present-day tourist, started from Southampton at the commencement of the holiday season—viz. in November. This was in the year 1594. On November 6, according to Captain Wyatt, “hee caused his shippinge to disanker from the Rode afore Hampton.” The “shippinge” consisted of the Bear, the Bear's Whelp and two small pinnaces named the Frisking and the Zarwig. On the return journey, by the bye, they did not make their port with the precision of a mail steamer, for they “fell by reason of most extreme mistie weather in with a fisher towne called St. Jiues in Cornwall.” The Bear reached Trinidad on January 31, 1595, and dropped anchor in Cedros Bay, some distance south of the Pitch Lake. The experiences of the tourists during the first four days of their sojourn in the island are worthy of record. On February 1, a Saturday, they sent a boat ashore to confer with the natives. The conference was satisfactory, for “the daie followinge, being Sondaie, in the morninge came the salvages with two canowes aborde us.” They amiably bartered food for beads and fish hooks and no doubt for hawk’s bells. Now it so happened that one “salvage” could speak Spanish. It was unfortunate, for it led to trouble. The mischief began when the accomplished native told the duke of a gold mine along the coast. Although it was Sunday the general must needs send Captain Jobson and others ashore to see this property. After trudging eight weary miles in the sun Jobson came upon the ore and brought some of it G Digitized by Microsoft® 84 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. back in his pocket. The mineral was bronze-yellow in colour, and the duke, after he had eagerly handled it, pronounced it to be fine gold. Their fortunes were made. It may here be stated that the nugget the happy tourist gloated over and locked away in his velvet-lined cabinet was a specimen of marcasite, a form of iron pyrites about as valueless as road metal. After a sleepless night, devoted to the contemplation of the high calling of a millionaire, Robert the tourist resolved to take possession of this gold mine which Providence and the “ salvage” had placed in his hand. He did this, as he did all things, with the utmost ceremony. On Monday morning he landed in full armour with all his soldiers. As he placed his ducal foot upon the beach the men drawn up along the shore fired “a vallew of small shot,” to which the Bear in the offing respectfully answered “with ten peeces of the great ordenance.” The troops were then paraded and inspected, as is still the custom when royal personages land upon strange soil. The march to the mine commenced. It was a solemn procession. The duke in person led the way. With him was, no doubt, that “salvage” who had the gift of tongues, and who was probably secured by a rope round his neck. Unfortunately, the route was by the margin of the sea, through very soft sand. It was a march to be remembered; a tramp along a furnace-hot beach which gave way under each step, with the noonday sun of the tropics overhead and not a scrap of shade as wide as a man’s hand to temper the glare. One can see the staggering figure of the leader, clad in glistening mail too warm to touch, with a helmet on his head, and in his heart a pride so great that he dared not lift the casque from his shoulders. He must have dripped like a leaky iron tank as he stumbled along, and if prickly heat seized upon him while he dragged one heavy foot after the other out of the sand he cannot but have felt that the way of millionaires is hard. The journey was little better than a penance, although they trudged along cheered by “ the noyse of trumpetts and drome.” Digitized by Microsoft® THE FIRST WEST INDIAN TOURIST. 85 At length, writes Wyatt, “having marched VIII longe miles through the deepe sandes and in a most extreame hott daie, our Generall, unaccustomed, God he knows, to walke on foote, leading the march, wee at length came unto the place wheare this ore was, and havinge placed our courte of garde in a convenient place and sett forth our centronells, all the rest were appointed to the gatheringe of ore.” That gathering of ore must have been a sight worth seeing. They may in after years have thought of it as wool-gathering, but, for the moment, the wool was the Golden Fleece. Purple-faced men, who had been talking of flagons of beer all the way, forgot their thirst, forgot even to mop their streaming faces, forgot to shake the sand out of their shoes, and falling down upon their knees proceeded to stuff their pockets with this paltry stone. To the envy of the “centronells,” who stood motionless in sight, they would hide lumps of the yellow rock in their doublets, drop pieces down their necks, slip fragments up their sleeves, until they must have rattled like a boy’s bag of marbles. Every piece was an item in a fortune. This lump would buy for one pimply soldier the village alehouse and the cider orchard. This handsome lad, who had jammed a particularly fine piece of rock into his breeches, felt assured that it would enable him to marry Dolly when he landed at Hampton, where he and she could live happily ever after. One fragment of stone was to make an old mother comfortable, another was to pay for a boy’s apprenticeship, a third would buy a comrade out of prison, while every nugget meant some comfort and ease for the rest of each man’s journeying. What a day of dreams! What a building of castles in the air! A crowd of crawling, scrambling men all grubbing up happiness with their hands, all finding in the dirt their heart’s desire, all radiant that the world was well with ther at last. Poor perspiring, finger-sore simpletons, they would have been better engaged if they had been picking up lumps of coal. Still, the joy kept with them until they reached their homes. Then came a drama, grim and oft-repeated, the tragedy of the gold- Digitized by Microsoft® 86 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. smith’s shop, the nugget dragged proudly out of the much-handled pouch, the smiling sweetheart on her lover’s arm, with visions of a happiness beyond imagining, the guffaw of the goldsmith who would give a groat for a cartload, the weeping girl at the closed gate of Paradise, and the cursing soldier hurling a yellow stone into the stream. In the meanwhile things were not quite comfortable at the gold mine. The tide had come up and covered the track, so there was nothing to do but wait for the ebb. “Our generall,” says Wyatt, “peceavinge a most filthie miste to fall, caused an armefull of boughes to be cutt and laide on the grownde, wheraeon he himself lay downe; over whome Ancient! Barrow helde his collers,? and Wyatt made his stande rownde about him.” Lord Duddeley must have been grateful for this rest, as well as for the opportunity of removing his armour so as to rid himself of those insects which still trouble visitors to Trinidad. It must have been a picture to impress the “salvage”: the peer recumbent in the silent forest with his stockinged feet projecting from under his cloak, with the family banner held over his head by a yawning ensign, while the guard stood around, their figures bulging at every point with blocks of iron pyrites. The distinguished tourist had not been long asleep when the “ centronells” raised an alarm, and in a moment all was confusion. The valiant general sprang to his feet, and “with xx shott” rushed into the treacherous woods to seek the cause of this dis- quietude and panic. It proved to be due toa firefly. Wyatt thus explains the position, it being only necessary to add that the fire- arm in those days was discharged by a glowing match or fuse: “For theare is a certain flie which in the night time appeareth like unto a fire, and I have seene at the least two or three score togeather in the woods, the which make resemblance as if they weare soe manie light matches, the which I perswade myselfe gave occasion of some soden feare unto the centronells which gave the alarum.” Probably there was no more sleep for anyone after this, for 1 Ensign. ? Colours, Digitized by Microsoft® THE FIRST WEST INDIAN TOURIST. 87 when the tide went down the party marched back to the ship in the cool of the dawn. Nothing now remained but to take formal possession of the mine. This was accomplished on the very Tuesday on which the gold seekers returned to the ship. Robert Duddeley did not undertake this duty in person. He had had enough exercise for the moment. Another walk, in the sun, of sixteen miles in full armour through soft sand was almost more than any gold mine was worth. So he stayed on the vessel, and no doubt had his breakfast in bed. He did not, however, spare either his officers or his men, as Captain Wyatt’s account of the solemn function will show. “This morninge, beinge Twsedaie, our Generall caused our Queenes armes to be drawne on a peece of lead and this inscription written underneath, the which was sett upon a tree neare adjoyinge unto the place wheare this myne of gold ore was discovered.” The inscription sets forth in Latin and at great length that “Robertus Duddeleius, Anglus, filius illustrissimi comitis Leicestrencis,” etc., had descended upon the island and had taken it in the name of that most serene princess Queen Elizabeth. The General entrusted the carrying out of the ceremony to old Captain Wyatt. Furthermore, he handed to the captain his own sword, as a sign that that officer had authority to act in his general’s behalf, “joyninge with him in commission Mr. Wright and Mr. Vincent.” These three gentlemen, full of bustle and importance, landed once more on the blazing beach, and taking with them a formidable body of troops, started again on the purgatorial journey of sixteen miles. “Marchinge forth in good order,” writes the cheerful Wyatt, “wee came unto the place wheare this our service was to be accomplished, the which wee finished after this sorte: first wee caused the trumpetts to sownde solemlie three severall times, our companie troopinge rownde; in the midst marched Wyatt, bearinge the Queenes armes wrapped in a white silke scarfe edged with a deepe silver lace, accompanied with Mr. Wright and Mr. Vincent, each of us with our armes, havinge the generall’s collers Digitized by Microsoft® 88 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. displaid, both with the trumpetts and the drome before us, after the chiefest of the troopes, then the whole troope, thus marchinge up unto the top of the mounte unto a tree the which grew away from all the rest, wheare wee made a stande. And after a generall silence Wyatt red it unto the troope, first as it was written in Latin, then in English ; after kissinge it hee fixed it on the tree and havinge a carpender placed alofte with hammer and nailes readie to make it faste, fastned it unto the tree. After wee pro- nounced thease wordes that ‘The Honorable Robert Duddeley sonn and heyre unto the Right Honorable Robert Earle ot Leicester, etc., etc., doth sweare, God favoringe his intent, to make good against anie knight in the whole world.” No knight having responded to this challenge the proceedings concluded by more sounding of the trumpets and the drum and a general yelling of “God save our Queene Elizabeth.” There is no doubt that it was an imposing function, made especially brilliant by the sunlight of the tropics. The men, I suppose, were in some such costume as is preserved in the present uniform of the Yeomen of the Guard. Captain Wyatt and his colleagues, Mr. Wright and Mr. Vincent, would be in shining armour, while it is sure that “the collers,” as they waved in the breeze, made a bravery against the azure sky. There would be many flies buzzing in the air, the land crabs would come to the mouths of their holes and stand there in amazement, while the pelicans in the bay, unnerved by the sound of the trumpets and drum, would cease from their fishing. It may be surmised that the “salvages” who peeped out of the woods were much interested in the purple-faced “carpender” who, hanging over a bough head downwards with his mouth full of nails, was doing such strange things with the “peece of lead.” I expect that some agile “salvage” took down that piece of lead as soon as Duddeley’s ships were out of sight and sold it to the first pirate who was looking about for something to melt into bullets, Digitized by Microsoft® XVI. THE PITCH LAKE. THERE are some things the traveller finds it hard to avoid. Among them is the Pitch Lake at Trinidad. This spot has been described as one of the “wonders of the world”; it was visited by Sir Walter Raleigh, who caulked his ships from its strange depths, while it is supposed to realise some features of those infernal regions of which so much has been written in proportion to what is known. It happens, therefore, that any traveller who, having landed at Trinidad, fails to see the Pitch Lake, must be prepared to be for ever assured that he has missed the one thing worth seeing in the New World. Froude is among the few who have boldly defied the temptation to look upon this spot. He has declared in writing, and with evident pride, that he “resisted all exhortations to visit it.” The lake is situated near La Brea, a poor village on the west coast of Trinidad, some thirty-six miles from Port of Spain. The journey thither is, under ordinary conditions, tedious, being effected partly by train, partly by steamer and partly on foot. My visit to the lake was rendered both agreeable and interesting ‘through the kindness of Mr. Bartlett, the manager of the company which is at present in possession of the wondrous pool. Starting in a launch from Port of Spain we landed at Brighton, where is a pier from which the asphalt is shipped. The land thereabouts is low and commonplace, the beach a narrow line of sand, the bay alive with pelicans. There are curious things on the shore, in the form of boulders of pitch which have oozed up through the sand from the mysterious abyss, as if they were the “casts” of some awful worm. They have been polished by the 89 Digitized by Microsoft® 90 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. sea into shining globules of jet, some of which are fringed with green weed—the strangest rocks to be seen upon any coast. One associates asphalt with city streets and tramways, so it is strange to see lumps of it among the common objects of the seashore, and providing a resting-place for pelicans. Everything about this quaint seaport has some community with pitch. The piles of the pier are caked with pitch. the pavements are of pitch, as is the solitary highway, the black child sitting on a pitch boulder is nursing a doll made of pitch. The lake is about a mile from the shore on slightly raised ground, surrounded by scanty jungle and a number of Moriche palms. The first impression of the visitor when he looks down upon the famous pool must be a little influenced by the accounts he may have read of it. So many authors insist upon comparing the place with the Hades of the ancients. Even Kingsley speaks of it as “an inferno,” as a “Stygian pool,” as “the fountain of Styx,” and “thinks it well for the human mind that the pitch lake was still unknown when Dante wrote his hideous poem.” There are writers who tell vaguely of smoke and flames, as well as of sulphurous smells. It is little to be doubted that the name of the place is in some measure answerable for these impressions. It recalls the lake “which burneth with fire and brimstone” on the one hand, while boiling pitch has always held a prominent place in the diabolical menage. If the locality had been called “the asphalt flat” it is probable that none of these fancies would have fluttered into the minds of men. There is nothing Dantesque about asphalt; indeed, the spot, if less unfortunately named, would no more have suggested the inferno than would a lake of Portland cement. The visitor to La Brea will see neither flames nor smoke, nor anything boiling, nor will he be helped in other ways to realise the awfulness of the stream by Charon’s ferry. The place is by no means terrible nor awe-inspiring. It is as bare of the poetic afflatus as is a coal-merchant’s yard. The poet of Florence might have gazed upon it unmoved, although Kingsley believes that it would have suggested to him “ the torments of lost beings sinking Digitized by Microsoft® THE PITCH LAKE. gl slowly in the black Bolge beneath the baking rays of the tropic sun.” As a matter of fact, people can only sink in the lake with difficulty and with infinite patience. A man who attempted suicide by this process would die of starvation and boredom before he had sunk much above his knees, and to get even so far ‘he would have to be pertinacious. When I saw the lake there was but a solitary man upon it, near about its centre. He was a coolie squatting on the pitch on his hams, washing clothes in one of the many little puddles on the lake’s surface. If a Londoner would realise the Pitch Lake, he must imagine the pond in St. James’s Park emptied of water, its bottom filled with asphalt, pools left in places, and some tropical vegetation disposed about the margin of the depression. Such a landscape would only inspire in the susceptible conceptions of the scenery of Hell. The Pitch Lake, when I first caught sight of it, had exactly the appearance of the ultimate creek of an estuary at low tide. I saw a wide flat of a hundred acres, wherein were runnels of water which may have been left by the ebb, large stretches of what appeared to be mud dried by the sun, and a few small islands covered with brush. The mud was pitch, the water was rainwater, the islands were genuine. When the brink of the lake was reached there was no suggestion of the bank of that river where shuddering souls must wait for a crossing. It looked more like the edge of a pond near a great city which had been frozen over, but the ice of which had been dulled by the dirt from many boots. I stepped from the grass on to this surface with just as much caution as one would employ in placing a foot on suspicious ice. It might have been slippery but it was not. In a few moments, after jumping across some waterways, I was in the middle of the lake walking on the asphalt of commerce valued at so much per ton. The sensation that walking upon this substance gave was no other than that of treading upon the flank of some immense Digitized by Microsoft® g2 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. beast, some Titanic mammoth lying prostrate in a swamp. The surface was black, it was dry and minutely wrinkled like an elephant’s skin, it was blood-warm, it was soft and yielded to the tread precisely as one would suppose that an acre of solid flesh would yield. The general impression was heightened by certain surface creases where the hide seemed to be turned in as it is in the folds behind an elephant’s ears. These skin furrows were filled with water as if the collapsed animal were perspiring. The heat of the air was great, the light was almost blinding, while the shimmer upon the baked surface, added to the swaying of one’s feet in soft places, gave rise to the idea that the mighty beast was still breathing, and that its many-acred flank actually moved. I am told that the full extent of the pitch-bearing area is 110 acres, and that its exact depth is unknown. The asphalt is not bailed out as the readers of some guide-books might suppose, nor is it dug up. It is hooked out in junks with a pick, each piece separating from the mass with a dry bright fracture like that of a blue flint. The lump so delved from the “Stygian pool ” is lifted up with the hands and thrown ignominiously into a truck. These trucks run on rails and sleepers across the lake. The rails and sleepers of the “ permanent way” sink slowly into the solid pitch, so that once in every three days they have both to be raised up and readjusted on the surface. On each side of the trackway there will be a trough or trench produced by the labours of the men with the picks. This trough rapidly fills again level and solid, is again dug out only to close in once more. It thus comes about that although the asphalt is being removed at the rate of 100,000 tons a year, the lines of rail need never to be altered in direction. The lake, like the Burning Bush, is not consumed ; the furrow remains ever unfinished ; the task is as hopeless as the ploughing of sand, and is one that might well have wearied even Sisyphus, the roller of the ever-slipping stone. Day by day, month by month, year by year, the lake presents the same strange picture of Digitized by Microsoft® ‘26 °F aov{ OL, “GVdININL ‘EVI HOLId AHL d by Microsoft® ize t igi Digitized by Microsoft® THE PITCH LAKE. 93 men toiling at a trench which as they pass along only closes up behind them. As they leave their work at sundown they look back at a gully cut across the black morass, but when they come to the brim of the lake at dawn they find that all is level again, and that the ditch, the labour of a day, has vanished. It is said that many women, when inquiring as to the origin of a product, will be satisfied with the answer that it is “made by machinery”; so there are many people who are ready to believe that any terrestrial phenomenon is to be explained by “ volcanic action.” To“ volcanic action” the formation of the Pitch Lake has been ascribed, but, unhappily for this conclusion, there is no trace of volcanic energy in the Island of Trinidad. The origin of the asphalt is identical with that of mineral oil. Indeed, pitch would appear to be no other than oil which, owing to a peculiar geological disposition, has become inspissated in a convenient basin or evaporating dish. There are subtle movements in this unrippled pool; the islands wander aimlessly from shore to shore like undecided ghosts; the trunk of a tree will rise out of the phlegmatic lake and after pointing for a while skywards, as if it were a warning finger, will withdraw into the black depths again. These movements, and the curiously inturned creases on the lake’s surface are explained by convection currents and not by subterranean influences. To the same commonplace cause is ascribed the filling of that heartless trench which no spade can empty. Digitized by Microsoft® XVII THE BOCAS. WHO has not heard of the famous Bocas of Trinidad, of those wild sea-passes which lead into the Gulf of Paria? One gate- way guards the approach by the north, another that by the south. It was by the southern Boca, the Serpent’s Mouth, that Columbus came, but it is not notably picturesque. The northern passage, on the other hand, the Boca del Drago or Dragon’s Mouth, is magnificent to behold. At this end of the bay Trinidad comes nearest to the mainland, while the strait is further narrowed by three islands which stretch in a line across the dividing sea. The belt of water is thus broken into four channels; that to the west is the Boca Grande, then come the Boca de Navios (the Way of Ships), the Boca de Huevos or Egg Passage, and finally the Boca de Monos or Monkey’s Channel. Of these the Boca de Monos is the most imposing. It is a narrow, echoing channel, some three cables wide, hemmed in between forbidding precipices, which rise on one side to the height of a thousand feet. Down this ocean defile a great tide rushes, circling in mad eddies. The mighty flood as it lifts itself over a hidden reef shows a huge curved back above the stream as if it were some glistening sea monster. A grey rock witha dead tree on it stands alone in the fairway, where the rollers fall upon it with the force of a battering-ram. The Boca de Monos is best seen from the open sea about the time of sun-down. The cliffs, sheer and ominous, are then in shade. They stand upon either side of the defile, flanking it like pylons at the entrance to a temple avenue. It is a solemn and majestic portal, and the 94 Digitized by Microsoft® THE BOCAS. 95 first trembling ship that was whirled down the pass might well have wondered if beyond was the Sea of Death. It was through this Boca that Columbus went out when he sailed away from Trinidad. The pass is a place for baffling winds, but his ungainly, unmanageable ships were hurried through, like driftwood, rolling to this side and that, the sails flapping, the yards swinging until the braces snapped, the helmsmen powerless, and each man crossing himself and muttering prayers. Many and many a buccaneer has crept through this sea alley, hoping to find a fat merchantman dozing in the sun in the bay. Many a tempest-chased craft has been swept through this channel as helpless as a child’s boat in a mill sluice, to be dashed to pieces on the rocks, or to find peace in the land-locked gulf beyond. Through the southern Boca came Raleigh in the small boats which were to carry him to E] Dorado; he in an old galley with benches to row upon, the others in two wherries, a barge and a ship’s boat—one hundred men all told. Of the many remarkable craft that have passed through the Dragon’s Mouth the most remarkable appeared off the entrance to the channel on June 7, 1805. It was no small company that hove in sight that day, for it was made up of thirteen battleships— viz. ten sail of the line and three frigates. They approached the Boca with every stitch of sail set. It was evident that they were in hot haste. At every masthead flew the British flag. Most curious, however, was the fact that every ship was cleared for action, every gunner was standing by his piece, the magazines were open and piles of arms for boarding were heaped upon the decks. This was the more strange because the Gulf of Paria, save for a few fishing boats, a trader or two and many pelicans, was empty and the picture of confiding peace. The first ship to pass the Boca had on her stern the name Victory and on her quarter-deck a British admiral, a spare man of middle age who had but one arm and one eye—Horatio Nelson. Never did any adventurer show such an eagerness as he did to get a glimpse of the shipping in the Gulf of Paria; never was a man so disappointed when he found the great haven empty. Digitized by Microsoft® 96 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. The tale of that surprising voyage, told already many times, may be told again, for it is never to be forgotten. In the spring of 1805 Nelson had been long watching the French fleet around the southern coasts of Europe. On March 31 the entire French squadron under Admiral Villeneuve slipped out of Toulon harbour and vanished. Nelson, although much hampered by bad weather, searched every bay on the French and Spanish seaboard, and scoured the Mediterranean from one end to the other. Early in May the conviction seized him that the French had gone to the West Indies. On May 11 he set off on the chase. Villeneuve had forty days’ start of him. He reached Madeira in four bustling days—no news. With every sail drawing he pressed on to Barbados, made Carlisle Bay on June 4, only to hear that the French were at Trinidad. Away he flew to the south. The scent was hot. He would catch them in the Gulf of Paria. No better place could be wished for: the battle that was ever in his mind would be the battle of Port of Spain. It was in this spirit that, three days later, he came foaming through the Bocas, cleared for action. He found the anchorage deserted. A despatch boat sent into the harbour of the town came back with the news that the fleet was at Grenada. Round swung the English ships in a twinkling and before the town folk had ceased to marvel they were through the Bocas again, heading north and leaving the quiet gulf once more to the fisher- men and the pelicans. Grenada was sighted on the 9th and every eye was strained to catch a glimpse of the crowd of masts. The roads were empty, but the news bellowed from the quay was good —the French were off to Antigua. A fierce English cheer rang through the little harbour and Nelson, like a hound who had met a check, was away again and heading for Antigua; for Antigua was near to Nevis where he first met his wife and where, indeed, he was married. Breathless and savage the ships luffed up off the island on June 12, but Villeneuve was not there. He had gone to Europe, so the people at the port told the pursuers. Digitized by Microsoft® THE BOCAS 97 Never for a moment had the chase flagged, yet never so far had the sea-dogs a sight of their quarry. Hot-foot they had come from Europe to the West Indies; now they were on their way back to Europe again; eight thousand good sea miles, out and home, and a heavy pressure of canvas all the way. Nelson left Antigua on June 13. On June 21 he writes in his diary : “Saw three planks which, I think, came from the French fleet.” On July 19 the Victory and her companions dropped anchor in the harbour of Gibraltar. On July 20 there is this entry in the admiral’s book: “I went on shore for the first time since June 16, 1803, and from having my foot out of the Victory two years wanting two days.” The chase that commenced on May 11 ended on October 21 off Cape Trafalgar, where the great battle, that had been for half a year in Nelson’s thoughts, was won. So the chase ended well. The honour of England was upheld and the weary sea-rover was at last “home from the sea.” The Victory is still afloat in Portsmouth Harbour, the very same Victory that came roaring through the Boca on that day in June. There in the simple cabin are the windows from which Nelson took his last look of England, lying dim in the wake of his ship. There is the deck he paced for so many harassing days. Over these very bulwarks he leaned, looking out for the hunted fleet. There, last of all, is the dingy corner in the cockpit where, propped up against the good old vessel’s beams, the most gallant of British admirals drifted out into the Unruffled Haven. Digitized by Microsoft® XVIII. THE FIVE ISLANDS. ONE of the most pleasant ways of seeing the northern Bocas is by means of the steamer which plies between Port of Spain and Chacachacare, the outermost of the three islands which form the channels. On the passage the vessel calls at the Five Islands. These dots of land form one of the most picturesque groups to be met with in this world of islands. They are all very small, all very green, all have grey, tide-worn cliffs, while on each is a fascinating villa with a red, or striped, roof and white walls. One little isle is so minute that it is entirely taken up by the house that crowns it—a Venice within the circuit of a child’s garden. The settlement is given up wholly to enjoyment. It is a sea sanctuary for the hot days of summer. It is the idler’s archipelago. The islands are those of the nursery tale, and of the Willow Pattern Plate. Send a boy there with a boat, a fishing-rod and a bathing-dress, and he would believe that he had found the Hesperides of his classical studies. He will find tiny coves and dark caves where he can “go a-pyrating,” miniature beaches, six paces wide, to land his treasure, a jungle the size of his school- room, and a cape that he can sit astride of. His sister will be enamoured of the arbour by the sea, of the stone stairs leading up from the landing-place, of the doll’s-house terrace, and of the blue pool so close below her window that she can almost touch the water. Beyond the Five Islands and near to the Boca de Monos is the island of Gaspar Grande. On the point of it are the remains of the Spanish fort which the British had set their hearts upon 98 Digitized by Microsoft® THE FIVE ISLANDS. 99 taking when Harvey and Abercromby anchored off the island on February 16, 1797 (see page 65). The fort is at the opening into Chaguaramas Bay, a bay of entrancing loveliness. Here, on the day named, four Spanish line-of-battle ships were lying, together with a gun brig. The English were busy all night making preparations for the taking of the fort and the capture of the ships. At two in the morning the tree-covered cliffs around the bay were illuminated by a wild column of flames. The Spaniards had set fire to their vessels, and in the glare the water was seen to be dotted with boats all rowing for the shore. Out of the five men-of-war the English saved but one, the Sax Damasco. The rest were burned to the water’s edge. When the daylight came the fort on Gaspar Grande was found to be deserted. To any who may be interested in pelicans the Five Islands and the bay that saw the burning of the ships may be commended. These pelicans are curiously ungainly birds who, although puffed up with self-satisfied wisdom, have an aspect of extreme and shabby old age. Apparently overlooked in the progress of evolution they have become so obsolete as to be ridiculous, for they ought long ago to have retired into the fossil state. To be consistent with their environment they should be hovering over a lagoon full of saurians or should be watching from a swamp the dull movements of palzolithic man. They fish and with surprising success, but in the most uncouth and primitive manner. They flap to and fro over the sea with an assumption of boredom, then suddenly drop into the water and come up with a struggling fish. There is no suggestion of diving, no pretence to the graceful art of the gannet. They simply tumble into the sea, with their wings open, like an untidy parcel. That they reach the water head first seems to be purely an accident. ‘ The well-known legend of the pelican and her indiscreet method of feeding her young in times of stress was in ancient days often employed to point a moral lesson to the young. The modern schoolboy or girl remains unmoved by the recital of the pelican’s H Digitized by Microsoft® 100 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. virtues. John Sparke, in his account of Hawkins’ second voyage, thus describes the devotion of the bird and adds some criticism upon the appearance of the misguided fowl which is in accord with the average mariner’s estimate of female qualities. “I noted,” he says, “the pelican, which is feigned to be the lovingest bird that is, which, rather than that her young should want, will spare her heart’s blood out of her belly ; but for all this lovingness she is very deformed to behold.” Digitized by Microsoft® XIX. A GLANCE AT THE MAP. FRoM Trinidad, twice in the year, a special steamer starts for a cruise among the West Indian islands. Before embarking upon such a voyage it is well to take a glance at the map, in order to appreciate the remarkable disposition of land and sea in this part of the globe. A crowd of islands, arranged in the form of a sickle, extends from the point of Florida to the north-east of Venezuela. They are of every size, ranging from an island larger than Ireland toa mere rock an acre in extent. They form a series of stepping- stones between North and South America, the summits of a submarine causeway joining the two continents, and the founda- tions of a breakwater which, if complete, would make an inland sea of the American Mediterranean. This immense stretch of water, formed by the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, is, even now, nearly land-locked. To cross it at its greatest length would compel a journey further than that from Liverpool to New York, while the voyager who followed its sea borders would skirt the coasts of Florida, Texas and Mexico, the length of Central America, the northern shores of the southern continent and the whole sweep of islands from Trinidad to the Bahamas. At his journey’s end he would have travelled 12,000 miles. On the west this Mediterranean ocean is closed by solid land —closed until the Panama Canal is completed—but on the east there are many gaps in the sea wall, as well as four wide ways that lead out into the open Atlantic—viz. by the Anegada channel, by the Mona and Windward Passages, and by the Straits of 1Iot Digitized by Microsoft® 102 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. Yucatan. Through these waterways, through every chink in the colossal masonry, through every runnel between the Titanic stones pours the Gulf Stream on its way to the north. Between Jupiter Inlet on the coast of Florida and Memory Rock in the Bahamas the stream is at its narrowest, but even here “it represents a moving mass equal to about three hundred thousand Mississippi rivers,” + Those who are learned in the tale of the days when the earth was young, say that a tract of mountainous land did once stretch all the way from Florida to Venezuela, and that the islands became islands partly by a sinking of the land and partly through the upheaving of volcanoes. They say also that there was a time when a man could walk from Jamaica to the mainland and find himself at Cape Gracias a Dios, for even now there are shoals along that way, such as “Pedro Bank,” “Seranilla Bank” and “Thunder Knoll,” as well as rocks and cays upon which the sea breaks in heavy weather. These rocks which mount out of the sea, as they once lifted themselves up into the clouds, are the needle points of everlasting hills, so that a little cay with only a poor tuft of samphire on it might be the pinnacle of a submerged Matterhorn. Many of these shallows, by the way, have names that provoke great curiosity. Who, for instance, was the lady made immortal by the “Rosalind Bank”? Was she a sea-rover’s wife who, although she may lie in a forgotten churchyard by the English Channel, will yet live so long as there is a chart of the Caribbean Sea? Who, too, was “Old Isaacs” after whom an unpleasant shoal near the Grand Cayman was named? Was he the shuffling old man who waited on the captain and who was the butt of the ship, or was he a troublesome money-lender at some such easy- going spot as Port Royal? The Grand Cayman, it may here be said, is a small, low-lying, tree-covered island belonging to Great Britain. It does a trade in turtles and cocoanuts, rears cattle, and boasts of a prison and other evidences of civilisation. It is a colony perched on the ' Cuba and Porto Rico, by Robert T. Hill, page 10: New York, 1903. Digitized by Microsoft® A GLANCE AT THE MAP. 103 pinnacle of an isolated submarine mountain whose northern slope is 10,662 feet high, while on the south the depth from the streets of its little town to the solid earth is 20,568 feet, or nearly four miles. If the sea were to drain away, as did the snow from around Baron Munchausen’s church steeple, then would George Town, the capital of the Grand Cayman, appear on the very apex of a mountain which (viewed from its southern valley) would be nearly a mile higher than Mont Blanc. There are deep seas in this part of the world. In crossing a pool to the north of Puerto Rico, for instance, a ship would have 27,366 feet of water beneath her, so that if a coin were dropped overboard it would have to travel more than five miles before it reached the bottom. Of the individual islands it is only necessary to say that the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Jamaica, San Domingo, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Archipelago) rest on a common submarine bed and are fragments of a continent through which runs, from west to east, a mountain chain. These are the Leeward Islands properly so called, the “ Islas soto viento” of the Spanish because the north-east trade wind blows so constantly from the eastward throughout the year and because they lie, in relation to the other groups, to the west. The Windward Islands stand away towards the rising sun and are known most usually as the Lesser Antilles or Caribbee Islands.’ Finally there is a group of islands called the Coast Islands. They were included by the Spanish in the “Islas soto viento,” and are to be regarded merely as detached portions of the coast of South America. They extend from Tobago to Oruba.’ The islands which are most closely concerned with the present ! The height of Mt. Everest is, for comparison, 29,002 feet. 2 Unfortunately the Caribbee Islands are divided, for purely administrative purposes, into two groups, Windward and Leeward, which terms have no reference to the direction of the prevailing wind. ‘3 The chief of the Coast Islands are Tobago, Trinidad, Margarita, Tortuga, and Curagoa. Among them, too, is “the pleasant Isle of Aves beside the Spanish Main,” sung of by Kingsley in his Lay of the Last Buccaneer. Digitized by Microsoft® 104 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. voyage are the Caribbee Islands. They form a regular crescent from Sombrero, or the Spanish Hat, in the north, to Grenada in the south. Along a part of the crescent they range themselves into two lines—an outer and an inner chain—one facing the Atlantic, the other the Caribbean Sea. The outer row of islands! are built up of white limestone or coral rock and are all com- paratively low-lying, no point that they can boast of reaching 1400 feet. With the exception of Antigua none of these islands show evidence of volcanic action. The inner or main line of islands? are the most interesting and picturesque in the archipelago. They are all of volcanic origin, are all crater heaps. Even the little Grenadines represent “the scattered fragments of a great volcano disrupted during some tremendous outburst in late Tertiary times.”* They are precipitous, rising almost vertically out of the sea, and mount to great heights. The highest point, that of some 5000 feet, is attained by Morne Diablotin in Dominica. Some are mere crater cones, as are the islands of Saba, St. Eustatius and Nevis. Others present stately peaks and dim ravines, towering mornes and winding valleys. In these islands, so weird and so fantastic, the land has been rent and torn by awful forces, has been shaken by convulsions which must have sent a shudder through the great world, has been kneaded and moulded by terrific hands. The soil is dark for it is made up of ashes, of poured out lava, of piled up cinders and rocks. The rains of the tropics have gouged out river beds and gullies, have made in one place a rich plain and in another a stagnant swamp. There are here no smooth, whale-back downs covered with gorse, no be-flowered water meadows, no white cliffs. In their place are mountain peaks hammered out upon the world’s anvil into the form of prongs and pikes, together with ragged chines where the cup of the crater would seem to have cracked with fervent heat. ' These are Sombrero, Anguilla, St. Martin, St. Bartholomew, Barbuda, Antigua, Desirade and Marie Galante. ? These are Saba, St. Eustatius, St. Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat, Guadaloupe, Dominica, Martinique, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, the Grenadines and Grenada. 5 Keane, Central and South America, vol. ii. page 279: London, 1go1. Digitized by Microsoft® A GLANCE AT THE MAP. 105 The very soil which is so fertile has been hurled up from the great furnace in the vaults of the globe. All these islands are covered with luxuriant vegetation from the wall of green at the water’s edge to their mist-enticing summits. Their “woods are perpetually green as the plumage of a green parrot.”! Their seas are ever a pansy-blue. “ Their days have such an azure expansion, so enormous a luminosity that it does not seem to be our sky above, but the heaven of some larger world . . . lit by the light of a white sun.” ? In the days when the islands were fashioned this corner of the world must have been the scene'of an appalling spectacle. A curved line of volcanoes rising out of the sea, belching fire and smoke and cascades of ashes into the lowering skies. Each island a mouth coming up to breathe from the inner fire,a vent of the vast furnace thrust up through the deep. For long after the blaze had died away each round of land would be a mere black cinder cone. Then would come, borne by the birds and the winds, the germs of vegetation and the blush of green. Ferns and bushes would cover the harsh scars. Woods would climb to the very edge of the smoking crater. Fluttering wings would fill the solitudes with life. One night, among the trees around some quiet beach, a light would be seen and the red reflection of it would fall upon the water in the lonely bay. Then it would be known that man had come, 1 Lafcadio Hearn, Life and Letters, page 424. 3 Jbtd. pages 412 and 416, Digitized by Microsoft® XX, GRENADA. GRENADA is the first island reached from Trinidad. The steamer finds its way into a small almost land-locked harbour which is one of the most beautiful in the West Indies. It is said to be the crater of an ancient volcano the seaward wall of which has been blown away, so that the water has poured in and filled the basin. It is through the breach that the ship steams to her moorings. Anyhow it is a homely haven, cosy and well sheltered from the sea. A curving bank of green hills covered with trees and gardens makes an amphitheatre, the arena of which is such a pool of blue water as can only be seen in these latitudes. On one side of the pool is the town of St. George’s. The houses which compose it have white or grey walls and rust-red roofs. They clamber up the slope among the palms and balance themselves on the summit of the ridge, where, too, is a church with a square tower standing up against the sky. Beyond the town, on a spit of high land making for the sea is an old stolid grey fort. It was built by the French just two hundred years ago. Although long deserted it has still an aspect of great solemnity and im- portance, still the look of the grim watch-dog. There are now paths around its ponderous walls, and it is evident that children come here to play. They even put stones into the cannons’ mouths as if they were teasing a giant of the soundness of whose sleep they were well assured. The town creeps down to the water’s edge, to a foreign-looking quay with such warehouses and buildings on it as are seen along the wharf side of a French seaport. This is no matter for wonder since the place has been French for the greater part of its life. 106 Digitized by Microsoft® ‘9OL *f aovs oF ‘VOVNaUND ‘auvnds LAU “‘V€VNAND NI LaAauYLS ft® Microso tized by gi i Digitized by Microsoft® GRENADA. 107 With the waterside houses are mixed up, in some strange way, the masts and rigging of white-hulled schooners and of trading sloops. From a further acquaintance with St. George’s it appears that the town sits astride of the ridge as a rider sits on a saddle, and that the real capital is on that side of the slope which is away from the harbour. The road from the quay to the market-place is therefore over a bank so steep that some years ago the governor of the time drove a tunnel through the base of the ridge to the great comfort of the inhabitants and of their horses and mules. The town is picturesque and French. It possesses many old and dignified houses with ample roofs, great dormer windows and liberal sun-shutters. The central square, or market-place, might belong to any modest French town were it not for the black folk, the blaze of colour and light, the strange trees and the still stranger wares exposed for sale. The country inland is singularly fascinating. Its surface is that of the crumpled handkerchief of which Columbus spoke to his Queen, an extravagant jumble of verdant hiils and valleys. It is wilder than Trinidad if, possibly, less luxuriant. Some call Grenada the Spice Island because of its nutmegs and other spices. It may as well be named the Island of Ferns by reason of the damp banks of moss and fern which line its tortuous roads. A good idea of the island, of its peaks and glens, and of some fragment of its coast line, can be gained by a journey to the Grand Etang, a large pool on the summit of a hill some 1740 feet above the sea level. The lake is distant from St. George’s seven miles, and out of these steamy miles are six which are persistently uphill and as tedious as a road in Purgatory. The lake lies sunken in a deep hollow among the woods, which hollow is no other than the basin of an ancient crater. It may be Sleepy Hollow from its quietness. The crater is now a crater of leaves for its steep sides, which were once a slope of cinders, are lined by rushes and palms and a closely standing company of sedate trees. The water is two and a half miles round and is impressive mainly by reason of the great tankard it fills and of the utter solitude in which it sleeps. The negro, with an exercise of imagination Digitized by Microsoft® 108 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. which he rarely displays, calls the pool “ The Home of the Mother of the Rains.” There is on the northern coast a height named Le Morne des Sauteurs. It is said that the French, when they came to Grenada, ill-used and robbed the Caribs whom they found on this island of spices. Through many a sordid year they hunted them down until, in the end, the few who remained were hounded to the top of this hill. There the harried, starving band of islanders made a stand. The French closed in upon them. The cruel circle narrowed until the way back even to the burnt cabins was cut off. Nearer and nearer the bushes rustled as they were bent aside by the shoulders of advancing men. Here was a hand pushing a branch out of the way; here the gleam of a cutlass, Murder was creeping upon them like a creeping fire. Before them was the kindly sea, blue, tranquil and limitless. The time of farewell had come, so from the top of the precipice—as from the jutting brink of the world—they leapt into the air and in such wise the last of the race found peace. Digitized by Microsoft® XXL THE FAIR HELEN OF THE WEST INDIES. No island in these waters will be approached with greater interest and expectancy than the island of St. Lucia. This is not on account of its winsome beauty, although there are many who hold it to be the loveliest spot in this gorgeous crescent. It is not by reason of its size, for it covers an area less than that of the county of Middlesex. It has no natural features to make it remarkable, unless they be certain sulphur springs and the towering rocks known as the Pitons. Yet for centuries little St. Lucia was the most important island in the West Indies. As such it looms majestically in the history of these troubled seas. To the many who strove to find a footing in the archipelago, St. Lucia was ever the key to the attainment. In every fresh scheme of conquest the little island was the goal to be reached, the guerdon of the con- queror. Hold St. Lucia, and the rest may perish! There can hardly be a spot that, for its size, has played a more stirring part in the history of arms or in the chronicles of the British navy and army. There is no dot of land that has been so desperately fought over, so savagely wrangled for, as this too fair island. St. Lucia is the Helen of the West Indies, and has been the cause of more blood-shedding than was ever provoked by Helen of Troy. Seven times was it held by the English, and seven times by the French. For no less than one hundred and fifty years it was the arena of the most bitter and deadly strife. Whenever war broke out between England and France, the call that at once rang out in the west was ever the same: “To St. Lucia! To St. Lucia!” 109 Digitized by Microsoft® 110 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. The panic-ridden town of Castries has seen more of the storming of heights, of the rushing of trenches and of the battering of forts, than any town across the seas. It has witnessed gladia- torial combats that would have thrilled the Colosseum at Rome. Here at St. Lucia is that spit of land, La Vigie, the look-out, where the watchman, whether French or English, never slumbered nor slept. Here are Gros Islet and Pigeon Island, made memor- able by Rodney as the scenes of his dashing sea-story. Here, too, is that ever famous hill, the Morne Fortuné, which for a century or more was the height around which every battle raged. Whoever held the Morne Fortuné, the Lucky Hill, held the island. It would be hard to tell how many times it was stormed, how often the English took it, and how often the French. Assuredly can it be said that within no like ring of ground do the grass and the brambles cover a greater company of British dead. It hides the French dead also. Every patriotic Frenchman is proud of the Morne, for the soldiers of that gallant country made the hill as renowned for deeds of valour as did the men they fought with. How many memories, cherished in the hearts of mothers, wives and sweethearts, must have clung about this “green hill far away”! Even yet there must be, hidden away in old bureaus, letters with the faded heading, “Morne Fortuné.” Some of these would narrate, with all the glee of a lad, how the boats landed, how the slopes were rushed, and how, to the cheering of his company, the famous Morne was taken. Lucky Hill! Other papers in more formal writing would tell how the lad had sickened and grown silent, how he had longed for little more than news from home and an end to his miseries, and how, at last, his company had carried him away and buried him on the side of the Lucky Hill. As the steamer is nearing the harbour it may be well to scan, in the briefest summary, the remarkable chronicles of this island. In 1605 some English colonists landed out of the Ofve Blossome, which had recently been advancing the empire in simple fashion at Barbados (page 7). In less than two months these enterprising folk were massacred by the Caribs. Digitized by Microsoft® THE FAIR HELEN OF THE WEST INDIES. 111 In 1635 the king of France generously granted to Messieurs Latine and Du Plessis “a the unoccupied lands in America.” They modestly selected Martinique, leaving St. Lucia for the time to the unappeasable natives. In 1639 the English again attempted to establish a colony on the comely island, but the adventurers were promptly massacred or scattered by the Caribs. In 1642 the king of France ceded St. Lucia and other islands to the French West Indian Company. The company being composed of needy speculators effected little ; although in 1650 they succeeded in selling St. Lucia and Grenada to Messieurs Houel and Du Parquet for 1660/, obtaining in this way some desirable ready money. Du Parquet in the following year erected a fort and in spite of angry opposition from the natives founded an uneasy settlement of forty colonists. In 1660 the French and English conspired together to wheedle the island from the now confiding Caribs. This noble work accom- plished, they fell out between themselves and began that struggle for the possession of the island which lasted for one hundred and fifty years. In 1664 a party of English from Barbados landed at Anse du Choc and wrested the island from the French. In 1667 by the treaty of Breda it was restored to France again. In 1722 George I., apparently out of bravado, granted St. Lucia to John, Duke of Montagu. It was an unkind gift. That nobleman tried to possess himself of his property but failed very lamentably. In 1728 both the British and the French held such strong positions on the place that, in order to save further bloodshed, they agreed to regard St. Lucia as neutral. By the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle it was formally made neutral, but in spite of agreements and treaties the fighting never ceased. In 1756, on an outbreak of war with France, St. Lucia was captured by the English. In 1763, by the treaty of Paris, it was restored to France. The French now put the island in order and moved the chief fort from La Vigie to the hill which was destined to become so famous as the Morne Fortuné. Digitized by Microsoft® 112 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. In 1778, England being again at war with France, the two fleets made for St. Lucia with all press of sail. The British arrived first, The Morne Fortuné was stormed and St. Lucia was once more in the hands of the English. In 1781 the great French fleet under De Grasse bore down upon this unhappy settlement with no less than “twenty-five sail of the line.” They landed at Gros Islet and made a desperate attempt to seize the island, but the enterprise failed. In 1783, by the treaty of Versailles, St. Lucia was handed back once more to the French. In 1794 the English, under General Grey, landing at various spots, took the Morne Fortuné at the point of the bayonet. The British flag was planted on the summit by the Duke of Kent, the father of Queen Victoria. Late in the same year Goyrand made a sudden onslaught and seized St. Lucia for the French, gaining all but two forts. In the following year the English were ignominiously driven out of the island by Victor Hugues, the friend of Robespierre. In their flight they left their women and children behind. These unhappy people were, however, sent to Martinique by the French under a flag of truce. In 1796 a large British force under Sir Ralph Abercromby and Sir John Moore stormed the Morne Fortuné and, after much desperate fighting, captured it. In 1802, by the treaty of Amiens, St. Lucia was again given back to France. It will be noticed that, throughout these many changes, the English had the better of the fighting and the French of the diplomacy. Finally in 1803 Commodore Hood came in hot haste to St. Lucia and anchored in Anse du Choc Bay. The island was held at the time by General Nogués. La Vigie and Castries were easily taken by the British, whereupon the French general retired to the Morne Fortuné and refused to surrender. The Morne was stormed at 4 A.M. on June 22 and in less than an hour the works were carried at the point of the bayonet with small loss to the attacking force. With the storming-party was the gallant Sir Thomas Picton, the hero of Badajoz. Digitized by Microsoft® 61° | CASTRIES, ST. LUCIA English. Miles t ° % 2 Pigeon I. gor A Gros Islet |f* Ly du Choe Foureur tes Labrellotte Pt. Masson Pt.&, Gros Islet Bay cs Digitized by Microsoft® Emery Walker = Digitized by Microsoft® THE FAIR HELEN OF THE WEST INDIES. 113 In 1814 the fair and fickle St. Lucia was finally ceded to Great Britain. St. Lucia as approached from the sea is as dainty and beautiful an island as the heart could wish. Softly wooded to its highest peaks, there is nothing to suggest that it has been the firebrand of the West Indies, the island of strife, whose glades have been reddened with blood and whose slopes are riddled with the graves of valiant men. At the end of a verdant fiord, which would tempt any lazy holiday-maker, is Castries. This town receives its name from Marshal de Castries, who in 1785 was the French Minister of the Colonies. To the right of the entrance into the harbour of Castries is Cul de Sac Bay where the British fleet hid, in the famous attack of 1778, to the undoing of the French (page 115). Castries itself is quite at the water’s edge, a squat, shy place, crouching at the feet of the circle of great hills which shuts in the far end of the inlet. The hill ahead is the Morne Duchazeau. It has a saddle-shaped summit with two faint peaks, one representing the pommel and the other the cantle of a rough-rider’s saddle. It was to the top of this height that Abercromby dragged his guns— with what labour heaven knows—when he made his attempt on the Morne Fortuné in 1796. The peak to the left is Morne Chabot, taken by Moore at the time of the same desperate assault. The hill to the right is the most beautiful of the three, as well as the nearest tothe town. It is very green, for it is covered with trees to the sky line, with plantain and cocoanut, with mango and bread-fruit. This is the never-to-be-forgotten Morne Fortuné. Digitized by Microsoft® XXII. CUL DE SAC BAY. CASTRIES harbour with its many capes and bays is protected on the north side by a spit of bare land which ends seawards in a hillock, shaped like the bowl of an inverted spoon. This is La Vigie, the look-out. Across this promontory is the bay called Anse du Choc, where eager armed men in crowding boats made so often a landing. Cul de Sac Bay, to the south, is a sheltered and pleasant inlet at the foot of the southern slopes of the Morne Fortuné, It is a deep-water bay where the lead-line sinks to from ten to twenty fathoms. The haven was made memorable during the attack on the island in 1778. War had broken out between England and France, and with one accord the French and British fleets made all haste for St. Lucia. The English under General Grant had the good fortune to reach the island first, as has been already stated. Grant landed his men, to the number of 5000, in Cul de Sac Bay, and there he anchored his ships. As the French garrison was very small, the Morne Fortuné and other forts were taken next day with practically no resistance. The French fleet carrying 9000 men, under Count D’Estaing, hove in sight a few days later, bearing for Castries under a cloud of canvas. D’Estaing was very happy. The island was so still, so peaceful, so unconscious that the signs of war were already in the skies. He would himself bring the news and with it good cheer to his long-banished comrades. He and his 9000 men would make the good old Morne impregnable, so that when the English came they would have a reception not easy to be 114 Digitized by Microsoft® CUL DE SAC BAY. 115 forgotten, for he would cover the slopes of the hill with British red-coats. He could see that there were no ships in Castries harbour; the well-beloved flag of France was flying at the point as well as on the mount. Unhappily he could not see into Cul de Sac Bay. One may be sure that the Frenchmen cheered as they came sailing into the harbour mouth. No sooner, however, were they within the shelter of the island than—with a puff of smoke and a thrust of flame—a clap of thunder broke out from La Vigie. It was a cannon shot. In a moment every gun in the fort was ablaze. It was no feu de joie, for deck houses were being shattered and bulwarks cut to splinters, while men, with a cheer for the French flag on their lips, were falling dead. D’Estaing found that he was ina trap. How had these accursed English got here? With much confusion, jostling, and yelling, the ships were put about, and escaped from the net of the fowler to the open sea. As D’Estaing moved southwards he took a look into Cul de Sac Bay. There they were, snug enough, curse them! Those were their hateful shouts that echoed back mockingly from the cliffs of the haven. D’Estaing vowed he would sink them at their anchors, for in this land-locked cove they lay at his mercy—or at least so he thought. He made a desperate attack upon the jeering ships from the sea, but they showed no disposition to sink at their anchors. More than that, these men who cheered so heartily actually drove him off. He tried again to crush them, but in the second venture he fared even worse. He determined then to land and to drive these obstinate trespassers from the island. With this intent he sailed north to Gros Islet Bay where he anchored and landed his troops on the ample beach. He marched his men towards Castries, resolving to take La Vigie and to bayonet the wretches who had manned those infernal guns. La Vigie was held by General Meadows with only 1300 men. Across the neck of land which joins the promontory with the mainland was a line of substantial entrenchments, The French advanced upon the trenches in three columns, a formidable body Digitized by Microsoft® 116 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. of men. They came within musket range of the earthworks, but not a shot was fired by the English. In a silence which would have daunted the bravest they neared the still barricade. The defenders made no sign. It was not until the French were actually in the very ditch that the British responded. They made answer with a heavy fire which poured down like a sudden hail upon the crowd of men in the fosse. The results were disastrous. The French, however, were not to be denied. As soon as they had reformed they charged the bank with fixed bayonets, but the British fire drove them back. They hurled themselves once more against the wall of gabions and piled-up earth. Once more they were beaten off. A third time, with angry shouts, they rushed upon the earthworks, helmetless, maddened, stung with wounds, every bayonet gripped with desperation. A third time they fell away under the murderous fire of the British. They retired out of musket range, halted, hesitated, and then, while bleeding men were crawling back out of the ditch, the bugle sounded the retreat. This gallant attempt upon La Vigie cost the French no less than 400 killed and 1100 wounded. D’Estaing had had enough. In ten days’ time he had buried his dead, had got his wounded on board, and had sailed away out of sight. Digitized by Microsoft® XXIII. THE MORNE FORTUNE. A WINDING road ascends from Castries to the summit of the Morne Fortuné. It is a road made gracious by many trees, by cocoanut palms, by a dell or a thicket here and there, and by glimpses of the sea. All who mount this steep way will find that, step by step, they are carried back into the past. It is a Via Dolorosa, a road of ghosts, a place more full of memories of a kind than are the heights by the Alma or the Ridge at Delhi. How many hundreds of men, French and English, have climbed this hillside with such ardour and breathless determina- tion and with such fervent light in their eyes that one would suppose they thought to find at the top some beatific vision! If the wealth of the world had been there they could not have stormed the slope with more passionate eagerness. Yet there was nothing on the height but a mast from which hung a faded flag. The summit of the Morne is flat and of wide extent. There are still many old trees standing against whose trunks soldiers, French and British, must have leaned while they smoked rare pipes and talked of the time when they would be home again, and of “cakes and ale.” No traces are now left of the English cottages, of the green clipped hedges and smooth grass plats, about which Breen wrote some sixty years ago.! So far as J am aware the famous “iron barracks” are now no more. These buildings were fearfully and wonderfully made in the year 1827, St. Lucia, by H. H. Breen: London, 1844. 117 Digitized by Microsoft® 118 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. and were designed to resist hurricanes. To what extent they succeeded in defying the elements the records are silent. I can only find an account of extensive damage done to them by the earthquake of 1839. The Morne is now very largely occupied by immense barracks and storehouses of quite recent construction. They belong to that class of “Government building” in which the struggle to attain to primeval plainness and a surpassing monotony has been crowned with success. Defiant in their unblushing ugliness they remain as a monument of the time when the British Government determined to establish a naval and military station at St. Lucia. The huge brick structures which crowd both the Morne and La Vigie were promptly put in hand and were erected at a cost stated to be not less than two million pounds sterling. The precious buildings have never been occupied, nor indeed were they ever quite completed, for the Government, having expended the sum above named, changed its mind and decided, in its wisdom, that St. Lucia was not to be a military station at all. So the mighty pieces of ordnance sent out to further adorn the hill were at infinite cost and labour carried back again. The proceed- ing seems to have been inspired by an attempt to imitate that Duke of York who is credited in song with having marched a body of men to the top ofa hill for the simple pleasure of seeing them march down again. Still, however, on the Morne are a few venerable buildings which belong to the old fighting days. Here, for example, is an ancient magazine constructed stoutly of stone, once white it may be, but now black with age. Its roof is covered with weeds, its walls and its ponderous buttresses with moss and ferns. It squats there like an old veteran of many wars, wrinkled, scarred and shaky with the weight of years. If its stones could speak they would be very garrulous no doubt, as is the habit of the senile, and would mutter of bygone days as well in French as in English. Probably the British were the first to use the magazine, yet it must have been a French soldier who rushed through the door for a last armful of ammunition. Here, too, is the old well with its Digitized by Microsoft® CASTRIES, ST. LUCIA. The hill to the right is the Morne Fortuné ; the saddle-topped hill on its left is the Morne Duchazeau GRAVEYARD ON MORNE FORTUNE, ST. LUCIA. To face p. 118. Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® THE MORNE FORTUNE. 119 Memories of blazing heat and thirsty men. There is a cannon with the date 1818, but it would have arrived long after all the fighting was over. By far the most interesting object on the summit of the Morne Fortuné is the ancient fort which commands its south-eastern face. This is the side immediately opposite to Morne Duchazeau. There can be little doubt but that it is the identical “fléche” which played so conspicuous a part in Abercromby’s attack upon the hill. The details of the venture are as follows: Sir Ralph Abercromby landed in Anse du Choc with 12,000 men on April 26, 1796. With him was that Sir John Moore who thirteen years after was shot dead at Corunna at the moment of victory. At Corunna he was buried amidst surroundings which are made familiar by Wolfe’s famous poem “The Burial of Sir John Moore.” His portrait in the National Portrait Gallery shows a clean-shaven man with a face so good-humoured and hearty that he seems as if he must break into laughter. Moore first of all took Morne Chabot and then Morne Duchazeau—two out of the three hills which surround Castries. This he effected with the loss of only seventy men. Morne Duchazeau is the saddle-topped hill already described (page 113). It is 890 feet high, is steep and well-covered with trees and bushes. It commands the Morne Fortuné which has an altitude of only 845 feet. Batteries were constructed on the summit of Duchazeau and then with fearful toil guns were dragged up the mountain side to the emplacements. It must have been a labour of Hercules Imagine the hauling, pulling and pushing, the skyward-pointing guns, the creaking ropes that swung them from bending tree trunks, the shower of stones when the carriage skidded, the red- faced perspiring men in clammy shirts, the shouts and the oaths, and around all the atmosphere of steam and flies! It was a slow business as well as a hot one, but at daybreak on May 24 Duchazeau opened fire on the Morne Fortuné. The guns did well. In due course Moore at the head of the 27th Regiment “ stormed a fl&che! which formed the principal outwork of the Morne 1 A fléche is defined as ‘* the simplest form of field fortification.” Digitized by Microsoft® 120 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. Fortuné towards the East.”! He captured it and held it against two desperate attempts of the enemy to retake the position. By sundown the hill was practically in the hands of the English, and on the following morning the garrison of 2000 men laid down their arms. The 27th lost in this strenuous attack eight officers and eighty men. The old fort or fléche stands alone at the very edge of the hill, immediately facing Morne Duchazeau. In the col between the two heights is a connecting ridge along which Moore came at the head of the 27th Regiment. The fort is well built of stone, but is now so overgrown with grass and bushes that only in a few places can the masonry be seen. The works are in two tiers with a ravelin on one side. It must have been a desperate place to have reached, as any may judge who will descend to the foot ot the slope and then climb up to the fléche again. This quiet, gentle, green mound and ditch are grandly placed, and even now it needs no imagination to tell that he who led the assault upon such an eagle’s aerie must have had a stout heart. It is, to-day, an utter solitude, hushed in eternal silence. Probably the last stirring sound that echoed round its walls was on that very day in May when, at sundown, the dirt-stained bugler of the 27th Regiment blew the call “ Cease firing.” The view from the summit of the Morne Fortuné is a delight to the eye. Inland is a superb country of steep, soft hills, of black ravines and of valleys that lead far away into bays of purple mist. Directly below, over the tree tops, are the roofs. of Castries and the blue harbour. Beyond is the spit of land, La Vigie, lying on the sea as a model in clay would lie on a sheet of violet glass, Then comes a stretch of sea coast so enchanting that it might be the shore of a happier world. It ends in the famous bay of Gros Islet where Rodney anchored his fleet before the great fight of April 12, 1782. In the far haze is Pigeon Island, a pale, conical rock standing out of the sea. This is the little island that Rodney fortified to the great discomfort of the French, as well as the perch from which ' Fortescue’s History of the British Army, vol. iv: London, 1906, Digitized by Microsoft® THE MORNE FORTUNE. 121 he watched, with such good effect, the movements of the enemy. Yet it is a place only three-quarters of a mile long and much less than that in width. It once had barracks for six officers and one hundred men, or for as many of the hundred as had survived death from yellow fever. A little way down the side of the Morne Fortuné is the officers’ cemetery. The road leading to it, which was once so well worn, is now overgrown with grass. Round about the cluster of graves is a thicket of sand-box trees, while beyond the trees is a home- suggesting stretch of open sea. This ever silent gathering place of the British is the most beautiful spot on the side of the hill. A number of the graves are blackened with age. Some are of stone, others of weather-worn brick. Most of them tell the same story— the roll-call of the Yellow Death, the major of this regiment or the lieutenant of that, and so many of them mere lads. The loss of life among the British troops in the West Indies and notably in St. Lucia, was in those days appalling. The majority of the deaths was due to yellow fever. After Sir Ralph Abercromby’s attack on the Morne in 1796 Sir John Moore was left in command of the island with a garrison of 4000 men. This was in June. When November came the force had been reduced by yellow fever to 1000 fit for duty and 1500 sick.1 When the English were compelled to leave St. Lucia in 1795 among the total force of 1400 there were no less than 600 sick, nearly one- half, while on the very day of embarkation one officer and seven men died. : The whole campaign, lasting from 1793 to 1796, resulted in “the total of 80,000 soldiers lost to the service, including 40,000 actually dead; the latter number exceeding the total losses of Wellington’s army from death, discharges, desertion and all causes from the beginning to the end of the Peninsular War.” ? It was during the year 1794 that the mortality was the highest. Men were dying in numbers every day, in Guadaloupe at the rate of 300 a month. Of General Grey’s original force of 7000 men at least 5000 perished in the course of this one year.’ Taking the 1 Fortescue’s History of the British Army, vol. iv. 2 [bid 5 [bid Digitized by Microsoft® 122 THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP. army, navy and transport together, writes Fortescue, “it is probably beneath the mark to say that 12,000 Englishmen were buried in the West Indies in 1794.” The soldiers were badly housed and badly fed. Many were in rags. There was a lack of clothing, especially of boots ; a lack, not only of comforts, but of the simple necessaries of life. The Home Government remained unmoved and unmovable. Either from indifference or incompetence the Secretary of State did nothing. Grey wrote letter after letter, but without avail. At last he sends home a message with this pitiable sentence, “ You seem to have forgotten us.” In 1780 four newly raised regiments were ordered to Jamaica. They stopped on their way at St. Lucia, where they contracted yellow fever. By the time the transports reached Kingston Harbour they had lost 168 men by death, and had 780 on the sick list. During the course of the first five months, after the survivors had been stationed at Jamaica, 1100 more had died of the fever and of other diseases. It was then that Dalling, the Governor, ventured to place the matter before the Secretary of State in a way that he thought would appeal to his intelligence. He writes as follows: “Considered only as an article of commerce these 1100 men have cost 22,000/, a sum which, if laid out above ground, might have saved half their lives.” It is, and always will be, a gruesome and discreditable story. If ever, on some silent tropical night, there should be heard again on the Morne Fortuné the tramp of the sentry by the barrack wall and the challenge of the guard at the outpost, and if ever the stir of human life should waken among these blackened graves, the voice that would call from the summit of the hill would utter those reproachful words, “ You seem to have forgotten us.” Digitized by Microsoft® XXIV. CASTRIES AND ITS PEOPLE. CASTRIES, in spite of its chequered and unrestful history, is not interesting. It sprawls upon a flat at the foot of the hills, a poor meagre place, quite out of keeping with its superb surroundings. The houses are mostly of wood. Those who built them would appear to have been dissatisfied with the world, and to have had little heart to make their homes either comely or long-abiding. The quay, although gloomy with the coal-dust of half a century, can claim to provide a good background for the women folk of Castries who, when in their gala dress, are as gorgeous as red and blue macaws. There is a dejected square in the centre of the town which looks as if it were up for sale. {t has around it, however, some “ornamental trees” planted by Sir Dudley Hill about 1834, which help to cover its nakedness. Even now it would need a very unscrupulous estate agent to make it appear that Castries was a place of “desirable residence.” In days not long gone by it was famous for its reckless death-rate. Its insalubrity was due to many things, to swamps which bred malaria, to yellow fever, to a contempt for drainage, and to the cheapness of a fiery drink called “ white rum.” The ill repute of the town was, according to Breen,! once made use of to dispose of an inconvenient guest. The historian of St. Lucia states that, early in the ‘thirties, the bishop of the diocese, in the course of his tour, reached Castries. He was naturally asked to dine at Government House. The hour for dinner would probably have been about four in the afternoon. The Governor then in residence was a mean man who had many 1 St. Lucia, by H. H. Breen: London, 1844. 123 Digitized by Microsoft® 124 THE CRADLE OF THE “DEEP. reasons for not wishing to take the bishop and his suite into Government House. Apart from the mere question of economy the Governor’s wife and family were in England and the establishment had been reduced to the barest possible compass. After dinner the Governor essayed to show the bishop over the building and in the course of the survey treated him, it may be imagined, to some such converse as the following: “This is the best bedroom, bishop. It was here that my predecessor died of yellow fever. You will remember him—a most genial man. Look out for this step in the passage! We found it a very awkward corner for a coffin. This next room has a charming view of the sea; the bedstead is a specimen of creole work. Poor old Colonel Smithson had _ his worst fit on that bed ; took two men to hold him; poor dear man, he has now been paralysed three years. This third bedroom we call the red room: it gets the morning sun. I hope you admire the curtains, they came from England. Here poor Morris, my secretary, died. He seems to have got typhoid fever in the house, although we are mos¢ careful. A short illness, poor fellow! I bought his horse, that roan you saw at the door. Now you must come upstairs and see the blue room and the fine outlook over the town. It was where poor Major Jones died when he was here on a visit. Abscess of the liver, you will recollect. Dreadful case! You could hear his groans down in the smoking-room.” But the bishop did not want to see any more nor to hear any more. Heordered his horse and rode down into the town, reflecting as he went on the uncertainty of life—at least, in Government House. After he had gone the one man-servant probably found the Governor alone in the smoking-room chuckling to himself about “ a house with a reputation.” At set seasons Castries was liable to be raided by hurricanes, or to be paralysed by earthquakes. The householder in this peculiarly unquiet town was prepared at any time to see his roof torn away by a tornado, or his windows shaken like dust into the road by an earthquake, or a coffin carried into his door by callous men who “had come for the body.” It is no wonder if the citizens became neurotic. “The slightest shock (of earthquake),” Digitized by Microsoft® CASTRIES AND ITS PEOPLE 125 writes Breen, “drives the people into the streets, throwing the gentlemen out of their windows and their wits, and the ladies into holes and hysterics.” Never, indeed, could one find Calm and deep peace on this high wold. A body of looting soldiers in the streets duly heated with white rum, a rising of the negroes bent on arson and murder, or the bombardment of the Morne were events to be expected only from time to time, but never was there immunity from the snakes, the centipedes, the scorpions, the tarantulas, the mosquitoes and the wasps with which the island was overrun in Breen’s time. St. Lucia will always be notable in books on natural history as the favourite haunt of that “abominable reptile” the Fer-de-Lance, or yellow viper, the “Death of the Woods.” Of all venomous snakes this execrable creature is the fiercest, most aggressive and most deadly. The very name the “ Yellow Viper” would seem to be as loathsome a title as could be invented for a living thing, and if a tenth of the stories told about it be true it deserves any ignominy. It has a low, flat head, triangular in shape. Its skin affects the yellow-brown tint of decomposition. “The iris of the eye is orange, with red flashes: it glows at night like burning charcoal. In a walk through the woods at any moment a seeming branch, a knot of lianas, a pink or gray root, a clump of pendent yellow fruit, may suddenly take life, writhe, stretch, spring, strike.”} Castries is still distinctly a French town in spite of its long occupation by the British. The negroes talk a fearful patois, “a jargon of lop-sided French and maimed English, flavoured with the Ethiopian twang.”