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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA; 
 
Digitized by tine Internet Archive 
 
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 littp://www.arcliive.org/details/englisliinwestindOOfrouricli 
 
THE ENGLISH 
 
 IN 
 
 THE WEST INDIES 
 
 OR 
 
 THE BO'W OF ULYSSES 
 
 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS ENGRAVED ON WOOD BY G. PEARSON 
 AFTER DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 LONDON 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 1888 
 
 Ail rights reserved 
 
PRESERVATION 
 
 COPY ADDED 
 
 ORKSJNAL TO BE 
 
 RETAINED ^i(pl 
 
 yAN2 1 1993 <i 
 
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 7 6 (^ 3 3 GOETHB. 
 
PREFACE TTfrM EDITION. 
 
 My purpose in writing this book is so fully explained 
 in the book itself that a Preface is unnecessary. I 
 visited the West India Islands in order to increase my 
 acquaintance with the condition of the British Colonies. 
 I have related what I saw and what I heard, with 
 the general impressions which I was led to form. 
 
 In a few instances, when opinions were conveyed 
 to me which were important in themselves, but which 
 it might be undesirable to assign to the persons from 
 whom I heard them, I have altered initials and dis- 
 guised localities and circumstances. 
 
 The illustrations are from sketches of my own, 
 which, except so far as they are tolerably like the 
 scenes which they represent, are without value. They 
 have been made producible by the skill and care of 
 the engraver, Mr. Pearson, to whom my warmest 
 thanks are due. 
 
 J. A. F. 
 
 Onslow Gardens: November 15, 1887. ' 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTEK I. PAQB 
 
 Colonial policy — Union or separation — Self-government — Varieties of 
 condition — The Pacific colonies — The West Indies — Proposals 
 for a "West Indian federation— Nature of the population — 
 American union and British plantations — Original conquest of 
 the "West Indies 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 In the train for Southampton — Morning papers — The ne^vr ' Locksley 
 Hall ' — Past and present — The ' Moselle ' — Heavy weather — The 
 Petrel — The Azores 10 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The tropics — Passengers on board — Account of the Darien canal — 
 Planters' complaints — West Indian history — The Spanish con- 
 quest — Drake and Hawkins — The buccaneers — The pirates — 
 French and English — Rodney — Battle of April 12 — Peace with 
 honour — Doers and talkers 20 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 First sight of Barbadoes — Origin of the name — Pere Labat — Bridge- 
 town two hundred years ago — Slavery and Christianity — 
 Economic crisis — Sugar bounties — Aspect of the streets — Govern- 
 ment House and its occupants — Duties of a governor of Bar- 
 badoes 32 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 West Indian politeness — Negro morals and felicity — Island of St. 
 Vincent — Grenada — The harbour — Disappearance of the whites 
 — An island of black freeholders — Tobago — Dramatic art — A 
 promising incident .41 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Charles Kingsley at Trinidad — 'Lay of the Last Buccaneer' — A 
 'French, forban — Adventure at Aves — Mass on board a pirate ship 
 — Port of Spain— A house in the tropics — ^A political meeting — 
 Government House — The Botanical Gardens — Kingsley's rooms 
 — Sugar estates and coolies .51 
 
vi CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter vii. pagi 
 
 A coolie village — Negro freeholds — Waterworks — Snakes — Slavery — 
 Evidence of Lord Eodney — Future of the negroes — Necessity of 
 English rule — The Blue Basin — Black boy and crayfish . . 66 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Home Rule in Trinidad — Political aspirations — Nature of the problem 
 — Crown administration— Colonial governors — A Russian apo- 
 logue — Dinner at Government House — ' The Three Fishers ' — 
 Charles Warner — Alternative futures of the colony . . .75 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Barbadoes again — Social condition of the island — Political constitu- 
 tion — Effects of the sugar bounties — Dangers of general bank- 
 ruptcy — The Hall of Assembly — Sir Charles Pearson — Society 
 in Bridgetown — A morning drive — Church of St. John's — Sir 
 Graham Briggs — An old planter's palace — The Chief Justice of 
 Barbadoes . ^ 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Leeward and Windward Islands — The Caribs of Dominica — Visit of 
 Pere Labat — St. Lucia — The Pitons — The harbour ac Castries — 
 Intended coaling station — Visit to the administrator — The old 
 fort and barracks — Conversation with an American — Constitution 
 of Dominica — Land at Roseau , . . , . . .113 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Curiosities in Dominica — Nights in the tropics — English and Catholic 
 churches — The market place at Roseau — Fishing extraordinary 
 — A storm — Dominican boatmen — Morning walks — Effects of the 
 Leeward Islands Confederation — An estate cultivated as it ought 
 to be — A mountain ride — Leave the island — Reflections , . 132 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The Darien canal — Jamaican mail packet — Captain W. — Retrospect 
 of Jamaican history — Waterspout at sea — Hayti — Jacmel — A 
 walk through the town — A Jamaican planter — First sight of the 
 Blue Mountains — Port Royal — Kingston — The Colonial Secre- 
 tary — Gordon riots — Changes in the Jamaican constitution , . 155 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The English mails — Irish agitation — Two kinds of colonies — Indian 
 administration — How far applicable in the West Indies — Land at 
 Kingston — Government Housa — Dinner party — Interesting 
 officer — Majuba Hill — Mountain station — Engston curiosities — 
 
 ' Tobacco — Valley in the Blue Mountains 180 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Vll 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. PAGE 
 
 Visit to Port Royal — Dockyard — Town — Church — Fort Augusta — 
 The eyrie in the mountains — Ride to Newcastle — Society in 
 Jamaica — Religious bodies — Liberty and authority . , . 195 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The Church of England in Jamaica — Drive to Castleton — Botanical 
 Gardens — Picnic by the river — Black women — Ball at Govern- 
 ment House — iMandeville — Miss Roy — Country society — Manners 
 — American visitors — A Moravian missionary — The modern 
 Radical creed 208 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Jamaican hospitality — Cherry Garden — George William Gordon — 
 The Gordon riots — Governor Eyre — A dispute and its conse- 
 quences — Jamaican country-house society — Modern speculation — 
 A Spanish fable — Port Royal — The commodore — Naval theatri- 
 cals — The modern sailor 224 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Present state of Jamaica — Test of progress — Resources of the island 
 — Political alternatives — Black supremacy and probable conse- 
 quences — The West Indian problem 243 
 
 CHAPTER XVni. 
 
 Passage to Cuba — A Canadian commissioner — Havana — The Moro^ 
 The city and harbour — Cuban money — American visitors — The 
 cathedral — Tomb of Columbus — New friends — The late rebellion 
 — Slave emancipation — Spain and progress — A bull fight . , 253 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Hotels in Havana — Sights in the city — Cigar manufactories — West 
 Indian industries — The Captain-General — The Jesuit college — 
 Father Vinez — Clubs in Havana — Spanish aristocracy — Sea 
 lodging house , . 272 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Return to Havana — The Spaniards in Cuba — Prospects — American 
 influence — Future of the West Indies — English rumours — Leave 
 Cuba— The harbour at night — The Bahama Channel — Hayti — 
 Port au Prince — The black republic — West Indian history . 291 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. PAGK 
 
 Eeturn to Jamaica — Cherry Grarden again — Black servants — Social 
 conditions — Sir Henry Norman — King's House once more — Negro 
 suffrage — The will of the people — The Irish python — Conditions 
 of colonial union — Oratory and statesmanship .... 308 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Groing home — Retrospect — Alternative courses — Future of the Empire 
 — Sovereignty of the sea — The Greeks — The rights of man — Plato 
 — The voice of the people — Imperial federation — Hereditary 
 colonial policy — New Irelands — Effects of party government , 318 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Mountain Crater, DomIxMca 
 
 Silk Cotton Tree, Jamaica . 
 
 Blue Basin, Trinidad , . 
 
 Morning Walk, Dominica . 
 
 Port Royal, Jamaica « » 
 
 Valley in the Blue Mountains, Jamaica . 
 
 Kingston and Harbour, prom Cherry Garden 
 
 Havana, from tub Quarries , . « 
 
 Port au Prince, Hayti , • • • 
 
 I 
 
 FT07itispiece 
 
 • 
 
 Title page 
 
 To face 'page 72 
 
 ■i» 
 
 „ 136 
 
 
 ,, 171 
 
 
 „ 194 
 
 
 ,, 234 
 
 
 „ 258 
 
 
 „ 288 
 
THE 
 
 ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Colonial policy — Union or sep?.ration — Self-government — Varieties of con- 
 dition — The Pacific colonies — The West Indies — Proposals for a West 
 Indian federation —Nature of the population — American union and 
 British plantations — Original conquest of the West Indies. 
 
 The Colonial Exhibition has come and gone. Delegates from 
 our great self-governed dependencies have met and consulted 
 together, and have determined upon a common course of 
 action for Imperial defence. The British race dispersed over 
 the world have celebrated the Jubilee of the Queen with an 
 enthusiasm evidently intended to bear a special and peculiar 
 meaning. The people of these islands and their sons and 
 brothers and friends and kinsfolk in Canada, in Australia, 
 and in New Zealand have declared with a general voice, 
 scarcely disturbed by a discord, that they are fellow-subjects 
 of a single sovereign, that they are united in feeling, united 
 in loyalty, united in interest, and that they wish and mean 
 to preserve unbroken the integrity of the British Empire. 
 This is the answer which the democracy has given to the 
 advocates of the doctrine of separation. The desire for union 
 while it lasts is its own realisation. As long as we have no 
 wish to part we shall not part, and the wish can never rise 
 if when there is occasion we can meet and deliberate together 
 with the same regard for each other's welfare which has been 
 shown in the late conference in London. 
 
2 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 Events mock at human foresight, and nothing is certain but 
 the unforeseen. Constitutional government and an independ- 
 ent executive were conferred upon our larger colonies, with 
 the express and scarcely veiled intention that at the earliest 
 moment they were to relieve the mother country of reponsi- 
 bility for them. They were regarded as fledgelings who are 
 fed only by the parent birds till their feathers are grown, and 
 are then expected to shift for themselves. They were pro- 
 vided with the full plumage of parliamentary institutions on 
 the home pattern and model, and the expectation of ex- 
 perienced pohticians was that they would each at the earliest 
 moment go off on their separate accounts, and would bid us 
 a friendly farewell. The irony of fate has turned to folly the 
 wisdom of the wise. The wise themselves, the same political 
 party which were most anxious twenty years ago to see the 
 colonies independent, and contrived constitutions for them 
 which they conceived must inevitably lead to separation, ap- 
 peal now to the effect of those very constitutions in drawing 
 the Empire closer together, as a reason why a similar method 
 should be immediately adopted to heal the differences between 
 Great Britain and Ireland. New converts to any belief, 
 political or theological, are proverbially zealous, and perhaps 
 in this instance they are over-hasty. It does not follow that 
 because people of the same race and character are 
 drawn together by equality and liberty, people of diffe- 
 rent races and different characters, who have quarrelled 
 for centuries, will be similarly attracted to one another. 
 Yet so far as our own colonies are concerned it is clear 
 that the abandonment by the mother country of all pre- 
 tence to interfere in their internal management has removed 
 the only cause which could possibly have created a desire for 
 independence. We cannot, even if we wish it ourselves, 
 shake off connections who cost us nothing and themselves re- 
 fuse to be divided. Politicians may quarrel ; the democracies 
 have refused to quarrel ; and the result of the wide extension 
 of the suffrage throughout the Empire has been to show that 
 being one the British people everywhere intend to remain one. 
 
COLONIAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 3 
 
 With the same blood, the same language, the same habits, the 
 same traditions, they do not mean to be shattered into dis- 
 honoured fragments. All of us, wherever we are, can best 
 manage our own affairs within our own limits; yet local 
 spheres of self-management can revolve round a common cen- 
 tre while there is a centripetal power sufficient to hold them ; 
 and so long as England 'to herself is true' and continues 
 worthy of her ancient reputation, there are no causes working 
 visibly above the political horizon which are likely to induce 
 our self-governed colonies to take wing and leave us. The 
 strain will come with the next great war. During peace these 
 colonies have only experienced the advantage of union with 
 us. They will then have to share our dangers, and may ask why 
 they are to be involved in quarrels which are not of their own 
 making. How they will act then only experience can tell; 
 and that there is any doubt about it is a sufficient answer to 
 those rapid statesmen who would rush at once into the appli- 
 cation of the same principle to countries whose continuance 
 with us is vital to our own safety, whom we cannot part with 
 though they were to demand it at the cannon's mouth. 
 
 But the result of the experiment is an encouragement as far 
 as it has gone to those who would extend self-government 
 through the whole of our colonial system. It seems to lead 
 as a direct road into the * Imperial Federation' which has 
 fascinated the general imagination. It removes friction. We 
 relieve ourselves of responsibihties. If federation is to come 
 about at all as a definite and effective organisation, the 
 spontaneous action of the different members of the Empire 
 in a position in which they are free to stay with us or to leave 
 us as they please, appears the readiest and perhaps the only 
 means by which it can be brought to pass. So plausible is the 
 theory, so obviously right would it be were the problem as 
 simple and the population of all our colonies as homogeneous 
 as in Australia, that one cannot wonder at the ambition of 
 politicians, to win themselves a name and achieve a great 
 result by the immediate adoption of it. Great results 
 generally imply effort and sacrifice. Here effort is un- 
 
4 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 necessary and sacrifice is not demanded. Everybody is to 
 have what he wishes, and the effect is to come about of itself. 
 When we think of India, when we think of Ireland, prudence 
 tells us to hesitate. Steps once taken in this direction cannot 
 be undone, even if found to lead to the wrong place. But 
 undoubtedly, wherever it is possible, the principle of self- 
 government ought to be applied in our colonies and will be 
 applied, and the danger now is that it will be tried in haste in 
 countries either as yet unripe for it or from the nature of 
 things unfit for it. The liberties which we grant freely to 
 those whom we trust and who do not require to be restrained, 
 we bring into disrepute if we concede them as readily to 
 perversity or disaffection or to those who, like most Asiatics, 
 do not desire liberty, and prosper best when they are led 
 and guided. 
 
 In this complex empire of ours the problem presents itself 
 in many shapes, and each must be studied and dealt with 
 according to its character. There is the broad distinction 
 between colonies and conquered countries. Colonists are 
 part of ourselves. Foreigners attached by force to our 
 dominions may submit to be ruled by us, but will not always 
 consent to rule themselves in accordance with our views or 
 interests, or remain attached to us if we enable them to leave 
 us when they please. The Crown, therefore, as in India, 
 rules directly by the police and the army. And there are 
 colonies which are neither one nor the other, where our own 
 people have been settled and have been granted the land in 
 possession with the control of an insubordinate population, 
 themselves claiming political privileges which had to be 
 refused to the rest. This was the position of Ireland, and 
 the result of meddling theoretically with it ought to have 
 taught us caution. Again, there are colonies like the West 
 Indies, either occupied originally by ourselves, as Barbadoes, 
 or taken by force from France or Spain, where the mass of 
 the population were slaves who have been since made free, 
 but where the extent to which the coloured people can be 
 admitted to share in the administration is still an unsettled 
 
VARIETIES IN COLONIAL CHARACTER 5 
 
 question. To throw countries so variously circumstanced 
 under an identical system would be a wild experiment. 
 Whether we ought to try such an experiment at all, or even 
 wish to try it and prepare the way for it, depends perhaps 
 on whether we have determined that under all circumstances 
 the retention of them under our own flag is indispensable to 
 our safety. 
 
 I had visited our great Pacific colonies. Circumstances 
 led me afterwards to attend more particularly to the West 
 Indies. They were the earliest, and once the most prized, of 
 all our distant possessions. They had been won by the most 
 desperate struggles, and had been the scene of our greatest 
 naval glories. It the recent discussion on the possibility of an 
 organised colonial federation, various schemes came under my 
 notice, in every one of which the union of the West Indian 
 Islands under a free parliamentary constitution was regarded 
 as a necessary preliminary. I was reminded of a conversation 
 which I had held seventeen years ago with a high colonial 
 official specially connected with the West Indian department, 
 in which the federation of the islands under such a con- 
 stitution was spoken of as a measure already determined on, 
 though with a view to an end exactly the opposite of that 
 which was now desired. The colonies universally were then 
 regarded in such quarters as a burden upon our resources, of 
 which we were to relieve ourselves at the earliest moment. 
 They were no longer of special value to us ; the whole world 
 had become our market ; and whether they were nominally 
 attached to the Empire, or were independent, or joined them- 
 selves to some other power, was of no commercial moment to 
 us. It was felt, however, that as long as any tie remained, we 
 should be obliged to defend them in time of war ; while they, 
 in consequence of their connection, would be liable to attack. 
 The sooner, therefore, the connection was ended, the belter 
 for them and for us. 
 
 By the constitutions which had been conferred upon them, 
 Australia and Canada, New Zealand and the Cape, were 
 assumed to be practically gone. The same measures were to 
 
6 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 be taken with the West Indies. They were not prosperous. 
 They formed no outlet for British emigration; the white 
 population was diminishing ; they were dissatisfied ; they lay 
 close to the great American republic, to which geographically 
 they more properly belonged. Representative assemblies 
 under the Crown had failed to produce the content expected 
 from them or to give an impulse to industry. The free 
 negroes could not long be excluded from the franchise. The 
 black and white races had not amalgamated and were not 
 inclining to amalgamate. The then recent Gordon riots had 
 been followed by the suicide of the old Jamaican constitution. 
 The government of Jamaica had been flung back upon the 
 Crown, and the Crown was impatient of the addition to its 
 obligations. The official of whom I speak informed me that a 
 decision had been irrevocably taken. The troops were to be 
 withdrawn from the islands, and Jamaica, Trinidad, and the 
 English Antilles were to be masters of their own destiny, 
 either to form into free communities like the Spanish American 
 republics, or to join the United States, or to do what they 
 pleased, with the sole understanding that we were to have no 
 more responsibilities. 
 
 I do not know how far the scheme was matured. To 
 an outside spectator it seemed too hazardous to have been 
 seriously meditated. Yet 1 was told that it had not been 
 meditated only but positively determined upon, and that 
 further discussion of a settled question would be fruitless and 
 needlessly irritating. 
 
 Politicians with a favourite scheme are naturally sanguine. 
 It seemed to me that in a West Indian Federation the black 
 race would necessarily be admitted to their full rights as 
 citizens. Their numbers enormously preponderated, and the 
 late scenes in Jamaica were signs that the two colours would 
 not blend into one, that there might be, and even inevitably 
 would be, collisions between them which would lead to actions 
 which we could not tolerate. The white residents and the 
 negroes had not been drawn together by the abolition of 
 slavery, but were further apart than ever. The whites, if by 
 
VARIETIES IN COLONIAL CHARACTER 7 
 
 superior intelligence they could gain the upper hand, would 
 not be allowed to keep it. As little would they submit to 
 be ruled by a race whom they despised; and I thought it 
 quite certain that something would happen which would 
 compel the British Government to interfere again, whether 
 we liked it or not. Liberty in Hayti had been followed 
 by a massacre of the French inhabitants, and the French 
 settlers had done no worse than we had done to deserve the 
 ill will of their slaves. Fortunately opinion changed in Eng- 
 land before the experiment could be tried. The colonial 
 policy of the doctrinaire statesmen was no sooner understood 
 than it was universally condemned, and they could not press 
 proposals on the West Indies which the West Indians showed 
 so httle readiness to meet. 
 
 So things drifted on, remaining to appearance as they were. 
 The troops were not recalled. A minor confederation was 
 formed in the Leeward Antilles. The Windward group 
 was placed under Barbadoes, and islands which before had 
 governors of their own passed under subordinate adminis- 
 trators. Local councils continued under various conditions, 
 the popular element being cautiously and silently introduced. 
 The blacks settled into a condition of easy-going peasant 
 proprietors. But so far as the v/hite or English interest was 
 concerned, two causes which undermined West Indian pros- 
 perity continued to operate. So long as sugar maintained its 
 price the planters with the help of coolie labour were able to 
 struggle on ; but the beetroot bounties came to cut from 
 under them the industry in which they had placed their main 
 dependence ; the reports were continually darker of distress 
 and rapidly approaching ruin ; petitions for protection were 
 not or could not be granted. They were losing heart — the 
 worst loss of all; while the Home Government, no longer with 
 a view to separation, but with the hope that it might produce 
 the same effect which it produced elsewhere, were still looking 
 to their old remedy of the extension of the principle of self- 
 government. One serious step was taken very recently towards 
 the re-establishment of a constitution in Jamaica. It was 
 
8 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 assumed that it had failed before because the blacks were not 
 properly represented. The council was again made partially 
 elective, and the black vote was admitted on the widest basis. 
 A power was retained by the Crown of increasing in case of 
 necessity the nominated official members to a number which 
 would counterbalance the elected members ; but the power 
 had not been acted on and was not perhaps designed to 
 continue, and a restless hope was said to have revived among 
 the negroes that the day was not far off when Jamaica would 
 be as Hayti and they would have the island to themselves. 
 
 To a person like myself, to whom the preservation of the 
 British Empire appeared to be the only public cause in which 
 just now it was possible to feel concern, the problem was 
 extremely interesting. I had no prejudice against self-govern- 
 ment. 1 had seen the Australian colonies growing under it in 
 health and strength with a rapidity which rivalled the progress 
 of the American Union itself. I had observed in South Africa 
 that the confusions and perplexities there diminished exactly 
 in proportion as the Home Government ceased to interfere. I 
 could not hope that as an outsider I could see my way through 
 difficulties where practised eyes were at a loss. But it was 
 clear that the West Indies were suffering, be the cause what it 
 might. I learnt that a party had risen there at last which was 
 actually in favour of a union with America, and I wished to 
 find an answer to a question which I had long asked myself to 
 no purpose. My old friend Mr. Motley was once speaking to 
 me of the probable accession of Canada to the American 
 republic. I asked him if he was sure that Canada would like 
 it. ' Like it ? ' he replied. ' Would I like the house of Baring 
 to take me into partnership ? ' To be a partner in the British 
 Empire appeared to me to be at least as great a thing as 
 to be a State under the stars and stripes. What was it that 
 Canada, what was it that any other colony, would gain by ex- 
 changing British citizenship for American citizenship ? What 
 did America offer to those who joined her which we refused 
 to give or neglected to give ? Was it that Great Britain did 
 not take her colonies into partnership at all ? was it that while 
 
EARLY HISTORY 9 
 
 in the United States the blood circulated freely fiom the heart 
 to the extremities, so that *if one member suffered all the 
 body suffered with it,' our colonies were simply (as they used 
 to be called) * plantations,' offshoots from the old stock set 
 down as circumstances had dictated in various parts of the 
 globe, but vitally detached and left to grow or to wither 
 according to their own inherent strength ? 
 
 At one time the West Indian colonies had been more to 
 us than such casual seedlings. They had been regarded as 
 precious jewels, which hundreds of thousands of EngHsh 
 lives had been sacrificed to tear from France and Spain. 
 The Caribbean Sea was the cradle of the Naval Empire of 
 Great Britain. There Drake and Hawkins intercepted the 
 golden stream which flowed from Panama into the exchequer 
 at Madrid, and furnished Philip with the means to carry on 
 his war with the Reformation. The Pope had claimed to 
 be lord of the new world as well as of the old, and had de- 
 clared that Spaniards, and only Spaniards, should own terri- 
 tory or carry on trade there within the tropics. The seamen 
 of England took up the challenge and replied with cannon 
 shot. It was not the Crown, it was not the Government, 
 which fought that battle: it was the people of England who 
 fought it with their own hands and their own resources. Ad- 
 venturers, buccaneers, corsairs, privateers, call them by what 
 name v/e will, stand as extraordinary, but characteristic figures 
 on the stage of history, disowned or acknowledged by their 
 sovereign as suited diplomatic convenience. The outlawed 
 pirate of one year was promoted the next to be a governor 
 and his country's representative. In those waters, the men 
 were formed and trained who drove the Armada through the 
 Channel into wreck and ruin. In those waters, in the cen- 
 turies which followed, France and England fought for the 
 ocean empire, and England won it — won it on the day when 
 her own politicians' hearts had failed them, and all the powers 
 of the world had combined to humiliate her, and Rodney 
 shattered the French fleet, saved Gibraltar, and avenged York 
 Town. If ever the naval exploits of this cpuntry are done 
 
 >^ OF THB r 
 
lo THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 into an epic poem — and since the Iliad there has been no 
 subject better fitted for such treatment or better deserving 
 it — the West Indies will be the scene of the most brilliant 
 cantos. For England to allow them to drift away from her 
 because they have no immediate marketable value would be 
 a sign that she had lost the feelings with which great nations 
 always treasure the heroic traditions of their fathers. When 
 those traditions come to be regarded as something which 
 concerns them no longer, their greatness is already on the 
 wane. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 In the train for Southampton — Morning papers — The new ' Locksley Hall ' 
 — Past and present — The ' Moselle ' — Heavy weather — The petrel — 
 The Azores. 
 
 The last week in December, when the year 1886 was waning 
 to its close, I left Waterloo station to join a West Indian mail 
 steamer at Southampton. The air was frosty ; the fog lay thick 
 over city and river ; the Houses of Parliament themselves 
 were scarcely visible as I drove across Westminster Bridge in 
 the heavy London vapour — a symbol of the cloud which was 
 hanging over the immediate political future. The morning 
 papers were occupied with Lord Tennyson's new ' Locksley 
 Hair and Mr. Gladstone's remarks upon it. I had read 
 neither ; but from the criticisms it appeared that Lord Tenny- 
 son fancied himself to have seen a change pass over England 
 since his boyhood, and a change which was not to his mind. 
 The fruit of the new ideas which were then rising from the 
 ground had ripened, and the taste was disagreeable to him. 
 The day which had followed that ' august sunrise ' had not 
 been ' august ' at all ; and ' the beautiful bold brow of Freedom ' 
 had proved to have something of brass upon it. The ' use 
 and wont ' England, the England out of which had risen the 
 men who had won her great position for her, was losing its old 
 characteristics. Things which in his eager youth Lord Tenny- 
 
PAST AND PRESENT ' 1 1 
 
 son had despised he saw now that he had been mistaken in 
 despising; and the new notions which were to remake the 
 world were not remaking it in a shape that pleased him. Like 
 Goethe, perhaps he felt that he was stumbling over the roots of 
 the tree which he had helped to plant. 
 
 The contrast in Mr. Gladstone's article was certainly remark- 
 able. Lord Tennyson saw in institutions which were passing 
 away the decay of what in its time had been great and noble, 
 and he saw Httle rising in the place of them which humanly 
 could be called improvement. To Mr. Gladstone these 
 revolutionary years had been years of the sweeping off of long 
 intolerable abuses, and of awaking to higher and truer percep- 
 tions of duty. Never, according to him, in any period of her 
 history had England made more glorious progress, never had 
 stood higher than at the present moment in material power 
 and moral excellence. How could it be otherwise when they 
 were the years of his own ascendency ? 
 
 Metaphysicians tell us that we do not know anything as it 
 really is. What we call outward objects are but impressions 
 generated upon our sense by forces of the actual nature of 
 which we are totally ignorant. We imagine that we hear a 
 sound, and that the sound is something real which is outside 
 us ; but, the sound is in the ear and is made by the ear, and 
 the thing outside is but a vibration of air. If no animal 
 existed with organs of hearing, the vibrations might be as 
 before, but there would be no such thing as sound ; and all 
 our opinions on all subjects whatsoever are equally subjective. 
 Lord Tennyson's opinions and Mr. Gladstone's opinions 
 reveal to us only the nature and texture of their own minds, 
 which have been affected in this way or that way. The scale 
 has not been made in which we can weigh the periods in a 
 nation's Hfe, or measure them one against the other. The past 
 is gone, and nothing but the bones of it can be recalled. We 
 but half understand the present, for each age is a chrysalis, and 
 we are ignorant into what it may develop. We do not even 
 try to understand it honestly, for we shut our eyes against what 
 we do not wish to see. I will not despond with Lord Tenny- 
 
12 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 son. To take a gloomy view of things will not mend them, 
 and modern enlightenment may have excellent gifts in store 
 for us which will come by-and-by. But I will not say that they 
 have come as yet. I will not say that public life is improved 
 when party spirit has degenerated into an organised civil war, 
 and a civil war which can never end, for it renews its life like 
 the giant of fable at every fresh election. I will not say that 
 men are more honest and more law-abiding when debts are 
 repudiated and law is defied in half the country, and Mr. 
 Gladstone himself applauds or refuses to condemn acts of open 
 dishonesty. We are to congratulate ourselves that duelling 
 has ceased, but I do not know that men act more honourably 
 because they can be called less sharply to account. * Smug- 
 gling,' we are told, has disappeared also, but the wrecker scuttles 
 his ship or runs it ashore to cheat the insurance office. The 
 Church may perhaps be improved in the arrangement of the 
 services and in the professional demonstrativeness of the clergy, 
 but I am not sure that the clergy have more influence over 
 the minds of men than they had fifty years ago, or that the 
 doctrines which the Church teaches are more powerful over 
 public opinion. One would not gather that our morality was 
 so superior from the reports which we see in the newspapers, 
 and girls now talk over novels which the ladies' maids, of their 
 grandmothers might have read in secret but would have blushed 
 while reading. Each age would do better if it studied its own 
 faults and endeavoured to mend them, instead of comparing 
 itself with others to its own advantage. 
 
 This only was clear to me in thinking over what Mr. Glad- 
 stone was reported to have said, and in thinking of his own 
 achievements and career, that there are two classes of men who 
 have played and still play a prominent part in the world — 
 those who accomplish great things, and those who talk and 
 make speeches about them. The doers of things are for the 
 most part silent. Those who build up empires or discover 
 secrets of science, those who paint great pictures or write great 
 poems, are not often to be found spouting upon platforms. 
 The silent men do the work. The talking men cry out at what 
 
ORATORICAL STATESMEN 13 
 
 is done because it is not done as they would have had it, and 
 afterwards take possession of it as if it was their own property. 
 Warren Hastings wins India for us ; the eloquent Burke desires 
 and passionately tries to hang him for it. At the supreme 
 crisis in our history when America had revolted and Ireland 
 was defiant, when the great powers of Europe had coalesced to 
 crush us, and we were staggering under the disaster at York 
 Town, Rodney struck a blow in the West Indies which sounded 
 over the world and saved for Britain her ocean sceptre. Just 
 in time, for the popular leaders had persuaded the House of 
 Commons that Rodney ought to be recalled and peace made 
 on any terms. Even in politics the names of oratorical states- 
 men are rarely associated with the organic growth of enduring 
 institutions. The most distinguished of them have been con- 
 spicuous only as instruments of destruction. Institutions are 
 the slow growths of centuries. The orator cuts them down in 
 a day. The tree falls, and the hand that wields the axe is 
 admired and applauded. The speeches of Demosthenes and 
 Cicero pass into literature, and are studied as models of 
 language. But Demosthenes and Cicero did not understand 
 the facts of their time ; their language might be beautiful, and 
 their sentiments noble, but with their fine words and senti- 
 ments they only misled their countrymen. The periods where 
 the orator is supreme are marked always by confusion and 
 disintegration. Goethe could say of Luther that he had 
 thrown back for centuries the spiritual cultivation of mankind, 
 by calling the passions of the multitude to judge of matters 
 which should have been left to the thinkers. We ourselves 
 are just now in one of those uneasy .periods, and we have 
 decided that orators are the fittest people to rule over us. The 
 constituencies choose their members according to the fluency 
 of their tongues. Can he make a speech ? is the one test of 
 competency for a legislator, and the most persuasive of the 
 whole we make prime minister. We admire the man for his 
 gifts, and we accept what he says for the manner in which it is 
 uttered. He may contradict to-day what he asserted yesterday. 
 No matter. He can persuade others wherever he is persuaded 
 
14 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 himself. And such is the nature of him that he can convince 
 himself of anything which it is his interest to believe. These 
 are the persons who are now regarded as our wisest. It was 
 not always so. It is not so now with nations who are in a 
 sound state of health. The Americans, when they choose a 
 President or a Secretary of State or any functionary from 
 whom they require wise action, do not select these famous 
 speech-makers. Such periods do not last, for the condition 
 which they bring about becomes always intolerable. I do not 
 believe in the degeneracy of our race. I beUeve the present 
 generation of Englishmen to be capable of all that their 
 fathers were and possibly of more ; but we are just now in a 
 moulting state, and are sick while the process is going on. Or 
 to take another metaphor. The bow of Ulysses is unstrung. 
 The worms have not eaten into the horn or the moths injured 
 the string, but the owner of the house is away and the suitors 
 of Penelope Britannia consume her substance, rivals one of 
 another, each caring only for himself, but with a common 
 heart in evil. They cannot string the bow. Only the true 
 lord and master can string it, and in due time he comes, and 
 the cord is stretched once more upon the notch, singing to the 
 touch of the finger with the sharp note of the swallow ; and 
 the arrows fly to their mark in the breasts of the pretenders, 
 while Pallas Athene looks on approving from her coign of 
 vantage. 
 
 Random meditations of this kind were sent flying through 
 me by the newspaper articles on Tennyson and Mr. Glad- 
 stone. The air cleared, and my mind also, as we ran beyond 
 the smoke. The fields were covered deep with snow; a white 
 vapour clung along the ground, the winter sky shining through 
 it soft and blue. The ponds and canals were hard frozen, and 
 men were skating and boys were sliding, and all was brilliant 
 and beautiful. The ladies of the forest, the birch trees beside 
 the line about Farnborough, were hung with jewels of ice, and 
 glittered like a fretwork of purple and silver. It was like 
 escaping out of a nightmare into happy healthy England once 
 more. In the carriage with me were several gentlemen; 
 
THE USE OF TRAVELLING 15 
 
 officers going out to join their regiments ; planters who had 
 been at home on business ; young sportsmen with rifles and 
 cartridge cases who were hoping to shoot aUigators, &c., all 
 bound like myself for the West Indian mail steamer. The 
 elders talked of sugar and of bounties, and of the financial ruin 
 of the islands. 1 had heard of this before I started, and I 
 learnt little from them which I had not known already ; but I 
 had misgivings whether I was not wandering oif after all on a 
 fool's errand. I did not want to shoot alligators, I did not 
 understand cane growing or want to understand it, nor was I 
 likely to find a remedy for encumbered and bankrupt land- 
 owners. I was at an age too when men grow unfit for roaming, 
 and are expected to stay quietly at home. Plato says that to 
 travel to any profit one should go between fifty and sixty ; not 
 sooner because one has one's duties to attend to as a citizen ; 
 not after because the mind becomes hebetated. The chief 
 object of going abroad, in Plato's opinion, is to converse with 
 OCioi dvdpeg, inspired men, whom Providence scatters about 
 the globe, and from whom alone wisdom can be learnt. And 
 I, alas ! was long past the limit, and Oeloi dvdpes are not to be 
 met with in these times. But if not with inspired men, I 
 might fall in at any rate with sensible men who would talk on 
 things which I wanted to know. Winter and spring in a warm 
 climate were pleasanter than a winter and spring at home ; and 
 as there is compensation in all things, old people can see some 
 objects more clearly than young people can see them. They 
 have no interest of their own to mislead their perception. 
 They have lived too long to believe in any formulas or 
 theories. ' Old age,' the Greek poet says, * is not wholly a 
 misfortune. Experience teaches things which the young know 
 not.' ^ Old men at any rate like to think so. 
 
 The ' Moselle,' in which I had taken my passage, was a 
 large steamer of 4,000 tons, one of the best where all are good 
 
 * u/ tUvov, ovx UTTavra toj yrjpq, kuku' 
 t] 'efiirtipia 
 «X«t Tt \k^ai rdv viojv ao(pwTfpov. 
 
i6 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 — on the West Indian mail line. Her long straight sides and 
 rounded bottom promised that she would roll, and I may say 
 that the promise was faithfully kept; but except to the 
 stomachs of the inexperienced rolUng is no disadvantage. A 
 vessel takes less water on board in a beam sea when she yields 
 to the wave than when she stands up stiff and straight against 
 it. The deck when I went on board was slippery with ice. 
 There was the usual crowd and confusion before departure, 
 those who were going out being undistinguishable, till the bell 
 rang to clear the ship, from the friends who had accompa- 
 nied them to take leave. I discovered, however, to my satis- 
 faction that our party in the cabin would not be a large one. 
 The West Indians who had come over for the Colonial 
 Exhibition were most of them already gone. They, along 
 with the rest, had taken back with them a consciousness that 
 their visit had not been wholly in vain, and that the interest of 
 the old country in her distant possessions seemed quickening 
 into life once more. The commissioners from all our depend- 
 encies had been feted in the great towns, and the people had 
 come to Kensington in millions to admire the productions 
 which bore ttness to the boundless resources of British 
 territory. Had it been only a passing emotion of wonder and 
 pride, or was it a prelude to a more energetic policy and 
 active resolution ? Anyway it was something to be glad of. 
 Receptions and public dinners and loyal speeches will not 
 solve political problems, but they create the feeling of good 
 will which underlies the useful consideration of them. The 
 Exhibition had served the purpose which it was intended for. 
 The conference of delegates grew out of it which has discussed 
 in the happiest temper the elements of our future relations. 
 
 But the Exhibition doors were now closed, and the multi- 
 tude of admirers or contributors were dispersed or dispersing 
 to their homes. In the 'Moselle' we had only the latest 
 lingerers or the ordinary passengers who went to and fro 
 on business or pleasure. I observed them with the curiosity 
 with which one studies persons with whom one is to be 
 shut up for weeks in involuntary intimacy. One young 
 
THE 'MOSELLE 17 
 
 Demerara planter attracted my notice, as he had with him 
 a newly married and beautiful wife whose fresh complexion 
 would so soon fade, as it always does in those lands where 
 nature is brilliant with colour and English cheeks grow 
 pale. I found also to my surprise and pleasure a daughter 
 of one of my oldest and dearest friends, who was going out 
 to join her husband in Trinidad. This was a happy accident 
 to start with. An announcement printed in Spanish in large 
 letters in a conspicuous position intimated that I must be 
 prepared for habits in some of our companions of a less 
 agreeable kind. 
 
 * Se suplica a los seiiores pasajeros de no escupir sobre la 
 cubierta de popa.' 
 
 I may as well leave the words untranslated, but the * suppli- 
 cation ' is not unnecessary. The Spanish colonists, like their 
 countrymen at home, smoke everywhere with the usual conse- 
 quences. The captain of one of our mail boats found it 
 necessary to read one of them who disregarded it a lesson 
 which he would remember. He sent for the quartermaster 
 with a bucket and a mop, and ordered him to stay by this 
 gentleman and clean up till he had done. 
 
 The wind when we started was light and keen from the 
 north. The afternoon sky was clear and fros 7. Southamp- 
 ton Water was still as oil, and the sun went down crimson 
 behind the brown woods of the New Forest. Of the * Mo- 
 selle's ' speed we had instant evidence, for a fast Government 
 launch raced us for a mile or two, and off Netley gave up the 
 chase. We went leisurely along, doing thirteen knots without 
 effort, swept by Calshot into the Solent, and had cleared the 
 Needles before the last daylight had left us. In a few days 
 the ice would be gone, and we should lie in the soft air of 
 perennial summer. 
 
 Singula de nobis anni prsedantur euntes : 
 Eripuere jocos, Venerem, convivia, ludum — 
 
 But the flying years had not stolen from me the delight of 
 fmding myself once more upon the seaj th^ sea which is 
 
1 8 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 eternally young, and gives one back one's own youth and 
 buoyancy. 
 
 Down the Channel the north wind still blew, and the water 
 was still smooth. We set our canvas at the Needles, and 
 flew on for three days straight upon our course with a steady 
 breeze. We crossed * the Bay' without the fiddles on the 
 dinner table j we were congratulating ourselves that, mid-winter 
 as it was, we should reach the tropics and never need them. 
 I meanwhile made acquaintances among my West Indian 
 fellow-passengers, and listened to their tale of grievances. 
 The Exhibition had been well enough in its way, but Exhibi- 
 tions would not fill an empty exchequer or restore ruined 
 plantations. The mother country I found was still regarded 
 as a stepmother, and from more than one quarter I heard a 
 more than muttered wish that they could be ' taken into part- 
 nership ' by the Americans. They were wasting away under 
 Free Trade and the sugar bounties. The mother country 
 gave them fine words, but words were all. If they belonged 
 to the United States they would have the benefit of a close 
 market in a country where there were 60,000,000 sugar 
 drinkers. Energetic Americans would come among them and 
 establish new industries, and would control the unmanageable 
 negroes. From the most loyal I heard the despairing cry of 
 the Britons, * the barbarians drive us into the sea and the sea 
 drives us back upon the barbarians.' They could bear Free 
 Trade which was fair all round, but not Free Trade which was 
 made into a mockery by bounties. And it seemed that their 
 masters in Downing Street answered them as the Romans 
 answered our forefathers. ' We have many colonies, and we 
 shall not miss Britain. Britain is far off, and must take care 
 of herself. She brings us responsibility, and she brings us no 
 revenue; we cannot tax Italy for the sake of Britons. We 
 have given them our arms and our civilisation. We have 
 done enough. Let them do now what they can or please.' 
 Virtually this is what England says to the West Indians, or 
 would say if despair made them actively troublesome, notwith- 
 standing Exhibitions and expansive sentiments. The answer 
 
A STORM AT SEA 19 
 
 from Rome we can now see was the voice of dying greatness, 
 which was no longer worthy of the place in the world which it 
 had made for itself in the days of its strength ; but it 
 doubtless seemed reasonable enough at the time, and indeed 
 was the only answer which the Rome of Honorius could 
 give. 
 
 A change in the weather cut short our conversations, and 
 drove half the company to their berths. On the fourth morn- 
 ing the wind chopped back to the north-west. A beam sea set 
 in, and the * Moselle ' justified my conjectures about her. She 
 rolled gunwale under, rolled at least forty degrees each way, 
 and unshipped a boat out of her davits to windward. The 
 waves were not as high as I have known the Atlantic produce 
 when in the humour for it, but they were short, steep, and 
 curling. Tons of water poured over the deck. The few of us 
 who ventured below to dinner were hit by the dumb waiters 
 which swung over our heads ; and the living waiters staggered 
 about with the dishes and upset the soup into our laps. Every- 
 body was grumbling and miserable. Driven to my cabin I 
 was dozing on a sofa when I was jerked off and dropped upon 
 the floor. The noise down below on these occasions is con- 
 siderable. The steering chains clank, unfastened doors slam to 
 and fro, plates and dishes and glass fall crashing at some lurch 
 which is heavier than usual, with the roar of the sea under- 
 neath as a constant accompaniment. 
 
 When a wave strikes the ship full on the quarter and she 
 staggers from stem to stern, one wonders how any construc- 
 tion of wood and iron can endure such blows without being 
 shattered to fragments. And it would be shattered, as I 
 heard an engineer once say, if the sea was not such a gentle 
 creature after all. I crept up to the deck house to watch 
 through the lee door the wild magnificence of the storm. 
 Down came a great green wave, rushed in a flood over every- 
 thing, and swept me drenched to the skin down the stairs into 
 the cabin. I crawled to bed to escape cold, and slid up and 
 down my berth like a shuttle at every roll of the ship till I fell 
 into the unconsciousness which is a substitute for sleep, slept 
 
20 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 at last really, and woke at seven in the morning to find the 
 sun shining, and the surface of the ocean still undulating but 
 glassy calm. The only signs left of the tempest were the 
 swallow-like petrels skimming to and fro in our wake, picking 
 up the scraps of food and the plate washings which the cook's 
 mate had thrown overboard ; smallest and beautifuUest of all 
 the gull tribe, called petrel by our ancestors, who went to their 
 Bibles more often than we do for their images, in memory of 
 St. Peter, because they seem for a moment to stand upon the 
 water when they stoop upon any floating object.^ In the after- 
 noon we passed the Azores, rising blue and fairy-Uke out of the 
 ocean; unconscious they of the bloody battles which once 
 went on under their shadows. There it was that Grenville, in 
 the * Revenge,' fought through a long summer day alone 
 against a host of enemies, and died there and won immortal 
 honour. The Azores themselves are Grenville's monument, 
 and in the memory of Englishmen are associated for ever with 
 his glorious story. Behind these islands, too, lay Grenville's 
 comrades, the English privateers, year after year waiting for 
 Philip's plate fleet. Behind these islands lay French squadrons 
 waiting for the English sugar ships. They are calm and silent 
 now, and are never likely to echo any more to battle thunder. 
 Men come and go and play out their little dramas, epic or 
 tragic, and it matters nothing to nature. Their wild pranks 
 leave no scars, and the decks are swept clean for the next 
 comers. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The tropics — Passengers on board — Account of the Darien Canal — Planters' 
 complaints — West Indian history — The Spanish conquest — Drake and 
 Hawkins — The buccaneers — The pirates — French and English — Rodney 
 —Battle of April 12 — Peace with honour — Doers and talkers. 
 
 Another two days and we were in the tropics. The north- 
 east trade blew behind us, and our own speed being taken off 
 
 J- This is the explanation of the name which is given by Dampier. 
 
FELL W-PA SSENGERS 1 1 
 
 from the speed of the wind there was scarcely air enough to 
 fill our sails. The waves went down and the ports were opened, 
 and we had passed suddenly from winter into perpetual sum- 
 mer, as Jean Paul says it will be with us in death. Sleep came 
 back ?oft and sweet, and the water was warm in our morning 
 bath, and the worries and annoyances of life vanished in these 
 sweet surroundings like nightmares when we wake. How well 
 the Greeks understood the spiritual beauty of the sea ! Qakacoa 
 kKvIu Tcavra TavOputTTiav Kaicdj says Euripides. * The sea washes 
 off all the woes of men.' The passengers lay about the decks 
 in their chairs reading story books. The young ones played 
 Bull. The officers flirted mildly with the pretty young ladies. 
 For a brief interval care and anxiety had spread their wings 
 and flown away, and existence itself became delightful. 
 
 There was a young scientific man on board who interested 
 me much. He had been sent out from Kew to take charge of 
 the Botanical Gardens in Jamaica — was quiet, modest, and 
 unaffected, understood his own subjects well, and could make 
 others understand them ; with him I had much agreeable con- 
 versation. And there was another singular person who at- 
 tracted me even more. I took him at first for an American. 
 He was a Dane I found, an engineer by profession, and was 
 on his way to some South American republic. He was a long 
 lean man with grey eyes, red hair, and a laugh as if he . so 
 enjoyed the thing that amused him that he wished to keep it 
 all to himself, laughing inwardly till he choked and shook with 
 it. His chief amusement seemed to have lain in watching the 
 performances of Liberal politicians in various parts of the 
 world. He told me of an opposition leader in some parlia- 
 ment whom his rival in office had disposed of by shutting him 
 up in the caboose. * In the caboose,' he repeated, screaming 
 with enjoyment at the thought of it, and evidently wishing that 
 all the parliamentary orators on the globe were in the same 
 place. In his wanderings he had been lately at the Darien 
 Canal, and gave me a wonderful account of the condition of 
 things there. The original estimate of the probable cost had 
 been twenty-six millions of our (English) money. All these 
 
22 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 millions had been spent already, and only a fifth of the whole 
 had as yet been executed. The entire cost would not be less, 
 under the existing management, than one hundred millions, 
 and he evidently doubted whether the canal would ever be 
 completed at all, though professionally he would not confess 
 to such an opinion. The waste and plunder had been incal- 
 culable. The works and the gold that were set moving by 
 them made a feast for unclean harpies of both sexes from 
 every nation in the four continents. I liked everything about 
 
 Mr. . Tom Cringle's Obed might have been something 
 
 like him, had not Obed's evil genius driven him into more 
 dangerous ways. 
 
 There was a small black boy among us, evidently of pure 
 blood, for his hair was wool and his colour black as ink. His 
 parents must have been well-to-do, for the boy had been in 
 Europe to be educated. The officers on board and some of 
 the ladies played with him as they would play with a monkey. 
 He had little more sense than a monkey, perhaps less, and the 
 gestures of him grinning behind gratings and pushing out his 
 long thin arms between the bars were curiously suggestive of 
 the original from whom we are told now that all of us came. 
 The worst of it was that, being Hfted above his own people, he 
 had been taught to despise them. He was spoilt as a black 
 and could not be made into a white, and this I found after- 
 wards was the invariable and dangerous consequence whenever 
 a superior negro contrived to raise himself. He might do well 
 enough himself, but his family feel their blood as a degrada- 
 tion. His children will not marry among their own people, 
 and not only will no white girl marry a negro, but hardly any 
 dowry can be large enough to tempt a West Indian white to 
 make a wife of a black lady. This is one of the most sinister 
 features in the present state of social life there. 
 
 Small personalities cropped up now and then. We had 
 representatives of all professions among us except the Church 
 of England clergy. Of them we had not one. The captain, 
 as usual, read us the service on Sundays on a cushion for a 
 desk, with the union jack spread over it. On board ship the 
 
FELLOW-PASSENGERS 23 
 
 captain, like a sovereign, is supreme, and in spiritual matters 
 as in secular. Drake was the first commander who carried 
 the theory into practice when he excommunicated his chaplain. 
 It is the law now, and the tradition has gone on unbroken. 
 In default of clergy we had a missionary, who for the most 
 part kept his lips closed. He did open them once, and at my 
 expense. Apropos of nothing he said to me, * I wonder, sir, 
 whether you ever read the remarks upon you in the news- 
 papers. If all the attacks upon your writings which I have 
 seen were collected together they would make an interesting 
 volume.' This was all. He had delivered his soul and relapsed 
 into silence. 
 
 From a Puerto Rico merchant I learnt that, if the English 
 colonies were in a bad way, the Spanish colonies were in a 
 worse. His own island, he said, was a nest of squalor, misery, 
 vice, and disease. Blacks and whites were equally immoral ; 
 and so far as habits went, the whites were the filthier of the 
 two. The complaints of the English West Indians were less 
 sweeping, and, as to immorality between whites and blacks, 
 neither from my companions in the * Moselle ' nor anywhere 
 afterward did I hear or see a sign of it. The profligacy of 
 planter Hfe passed away with slavery, and the changed con- 
 dition of the two races makes impossible any return to the old 
 habits. But they had wrongs of their own, and were eloquent 
 in their exposition of them. We had taken the islands from 
 France and Spain at an enormous expense, and we were throw- 
 ing them aside like a worn-out child's toy. We did nothing for 
 them. We allowed them no advantage as British subjects, and 
 when they tried to do -something for themselves, we interposed 
 with an Imperial veto. The United States, seeing the West 
 Indian trade gravitating towards New York, had offered them 
 a commercial treaty, being willing to admit their sugar duty 
 free, in consideration of the islands admitting in return their 
 salt fish and flour and notions. A treaty was in process of 
 negotiation between the United States and the Spanish islands. 
 A similar treaty had been freely offered to them, which might 
 have saved them from ruin, and the Imperial Government had 
 
24 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 disallowed it. How, under such treatment, could we expect 
 them to be loyal to the British connection ? 
 
 It was a reUef to turn back from these lamentations to the 
 brilliant period of past West Indian history. With the planters 
 of the present it was all sugar — sugar and the lazy blacks who 
 were England's darlings and would not work for them. The 
 handbooks were equally barren. In them I found nothing 
 but modern statistics pointing to dreary conclusions, and in 
 the place of any human interest, long stories of constitutions, 
 suffrages, representative assemblies, powers of elected members, 
 and powers reserved to the Crown. Such things, important 
 as they might be, did not touch my imagination ; and to an 
 Englishman, proud of his country, the West Indies had a far 
 higher interest. Strange scenes streamed across my memory, 
 and a shadowy procession of great figures who have printed 
 their names in history. Columbus and Cortez, Vasco Nunez, 
 and Las Casas ; the millions of innocent Indians who, ac- 
 cording to Las Casas, were destroyed out of the islands, the 
 Spanish grinding them to death in their gold mines ; the black 
 swarms who were poured in to take their place, and the 
 frightful story of the slave trade. Behind it all was the 
 European drama of the sixteenth century — Charles V. and 
 Philip fighting against the genius of the new era, and feeding 
 their armies with the ingots of the new world. The convul- 
 sion spread across the Atlantic. The English Protestants and 
 the French Huguenots took to sea hke water dogs, and chal- 
 lenged their enemies in their own special domair^. To the 
 popes and the Spaniards the new world was the property of 
 the Church and of those who had discovered it. A papal bull 
 bestowed on Spain all the countries which lay within the tropics 
 west of the Atlantic — a form of Monroe doctrine, not unreason- 
 able as long as there was force to maintain it, but the force 
 was indispensable, and the Protestant adventurers tried the 
 question with them at the cannon's mouth. They were of the 
 reformed faith all of them, these sea rovers of the early days, 
 and, like their enemies, they were of a very mixed complexion. 
 The Spaniards, gorged with plunder and wading in blood, were 
 
f^^ OPTHK ^^'X 
 
 f UNIVERSITY 1 
 
 THE CORSAIRS^**'^^'^^^^^ 25 
 
 at the same time, and in their own eyes, crusading soldiers of 
 the faith, missionaries of the Holy Church, and defenders of 
 the doctrines which were impiously assailed in Europe. The 
 privateers from Plymouth and Rochelle paid also for the cost 
 of their expeditions with the pillage of ships and towns and the 
 profits of the slave trade ; and they too were the unlicensed 
 champions of spiritual freedom in their own estimate of them- 
 selves. The gold which was meant for Alva's troops in 
 Flanders found its way into the treasure houses of the London 
 companies. The logs of the voyages of the Elizabethan navi- 
 gators represent them faithfully as they were, freebooters of 
 the ocean in one aspect of them ; in another, the sea warriors 
 of the Reformation — uncommissioned, unrecognised, fighting 
 on their own responsibility, Hable to be disowned when they 
 failed, while the Queen herself would privately be a share- 
 holder in the adventure. It was a wild anarchic scene, fit 
 cradle of the spiritual freedom of a new age, when the nations 
 of the earth were breaking the chains in which king and priest 
 had bound them. 
 
 To the Spaniards, Drake and his comrades were corsarios, 
 robbers, enemies of the human race, to be treated to a short 
 shrift whenever found and caught. British seamen who fell 
 into their hands were carried before the Inquisition at Lima 
 or Carthagena and burnt at the stake as heretics. Four of 
 Drake's crew were unfortunately taken once at Vera Cruz. 
 Drake sent a message to the governor-general that if a hair of 
 their heads was singed he would hang ten Spaniards for each 
 one of them. (This curious note is at Simancas, where I saw 
 it.) So great an object of terror at Madrid was El Draque that 
 he was looked on as an incarnation of the old serpent, and 
 when he failed in his last enterprise and news came that he was 
 dead, Lope de Vega sang a hymn of triumph in an epic poem 
 which he called the ' Dragontea.' 
 
 When Elizabeth died and peace was made with Spain, the 
 adventurers lost something of the indirect countenance which 
 had so far been extended to them ; the execution of Raleigh 
 being one among other marks of the change of mind. But 
 
26 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 they continued under other names, and no active effort was 
 made to suppress them. The Spanish Government did in 
 1627 agree to leave England in possession of Barbadoes, but 
 the pretensions to an exclusive right to trade continued to be 
 maintained, and the English and French refused to recognise 
 it. The French privateers seized Tortuga, an island off St. 
 Domingo, and they and their English friends swarmed in the 
 Caribbean Sea as buccaneers or flibustiers. They exchanged 
 names, perhaps as a symbol of their alliance. ' Flibustier ' 
 was English and a corruption of freebooter. * Buccaneer ' 
 came from the boucan, or dried beef, of the wild cattle which 
 the French hunters shot in Espafiola, and which formed the 
 chief of their sea stores. Boucan became a French verb, and, 
 according to Labat, was itself the Carib name for the cashew 
 nut. 
 
 War breaking out again in Cromwell's time, Penn and 
 Venables took Jamaica. The flibustiers from the Tortugas 
 drove the Spaniards out of Hayti, which was annexed to the 
 French crown. The comradeship in religious enthusiasm 
 which had originally drawn the two nations together cooled by 
 degrees, as French Catholics as well as Protestants took to 
 the trade. Port Royal became the headquarters of the 
 English buccaneers — the last and greatest of them being 
 Henry Morgan, who took and plundered Panama, was knighted 
 for his services, and was afterwards made vice-governor of 
 Jamaica. From the time when the Spaniards threw open 
 their trade, and English seamen ceased to be delivered over 
 to the Inquisition, the English buccaneers ceased to be respect- 
 able characters and gradually drifted into the pirates of later 
 history, when under their new conditions they produced their 
 more questionable heroes, the Kidds and Blackbeards. The 
 French flibustiers continued long after — far into the eighteenth 
 century — some of them with commissions as privateers, others 
 as forbans or unlicensed rovers, but still connived at in 
 Martinique. 
 
 Adventurers, buccaneers, pirates pass across the stage — 
 the curtain falls on them, and rises on a more glorious scene. 
 
THE ANTILLES 27 
 
 Jamaica had become the depot of the trade of England with 
 the western world, and golden streams had poured into Port 
 Royal. Barbadoes was unoccupied when England took pos- 
 session of it, and never passed out of our hands ; but the 
 Antilles — the Anterior Isles — which stand like a string of eme- 
 ralds round the neck of the Caribbean Sea, had been most of 
 them colonised and occupied by the French, and during the 
 wars of the last century were the objects of a never ceasing 
 conflict between their fleets and ours. The French had 
 planted their language there, they had planted their religion 
 there, and the blacks of these islands generally still speak the 
 French patois and call themselves Catholics ; but it was 
 deemed essential to our interests that the Antilles should 
 be not French but EngUsh, and Antigua, Martinique, St. 
 Lucia, St. Vincent, and Grenada were taken and retaken and 
 taken again in a struggle perpetually renewed. When the 
 American colonies revolted, the West Indies became involved 
 in the revolutionary hurricane. France, Spain, and Holland 
 — our three ocean rivals — combined in a supreme eflbrt to 
 tear from us our Imperial power. The opportunity was seized 
 by Irish patriots to clamour for Irish nationality, and by the 
 English Radicals to demand liberty and the rights of man. 
 It was the most critical moment in later English history. If 
 we had yielded to peace on the terms which our enemies 
 ofi'ered, and the English Liberals wished us to accept, the star 
 of Great Britain would have set for ever. 
 
 The West Indies were then under the charge of Rodney, 
 whose brilliant successes had already made his name famous. 
 He had done his country more than yeoman's service. He 
 had torn the Leeward Islands from the French. He had 
 punished the Hollanders for joining the coalition by taking 
 the island of St. Eustachius and three millions' worth of stores 
 and money. The patriot party at home led by Fox and Burke 
 were ill pleased with these victories, for they wished us to be 
 driven into surrender. Burke denounced Rodney as he 
 denounced Warren Hastings, and Rodney was called home to 
 answer for himself. In his absence Demerara, the Leeward 
 
28 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 Islands, St. Eustachius itself, were captured or recovered by 
 the enemy. The French fleet, now supreme in the western 
 waters, blockaded Lord Cornwallis at York Town and forced 
 him to capitulate. The Spaniards had fitted out a fleet at 
 Havannah, and the Count de Grasse, the French admiral, 
 fresh from the victorious thunder of the American cannon, 
 hastened back to refurnish himself at Martinique, intending to 
 join the Spaniards, tear Jamaica from us, and drive us finally 
 and completely out of the West Indies. One chance re- 
 mained. Rodney was ordered back to his station, and he 
 went at his best speed, taking all the ships with him which 
 could then be spared. It was mid- winter. He forced his 
 way to Barbadoes in five weeks spite of equinoctial storms. 
 The Whig orators were indignant. They insisted that we 
 were beaten ; there had been bloodshed enough, and we must 
 sit down in our humiliation. The Government yielded, and a 
 peremptory order followed on Rodney's track, * Strike your 
 flag and come home.' Had that fatal command reached him 
 Gibraltar would have fallen and Hastings's Indian Empire 
 would have melted into air. But Rodney knew that his time 
 was short, and he had been prompt to use it. Before the 
 order came, the severest naval battle in English annals had 
 been fought and won. De Grasse was a prisoner, and the 
 French fleet was scattered into wreck and ruin. 
 
 De Grasse had refitted in the Martinique dockyards. He 
 himself and every officer in the fleet was confident that 
 England was at last done for, and that nothing was left but to 
 gather the fruits of the victory which was theirs already. Not 
 Xerxes, when he broke through Thermopylae and watched 
 from the shore his thousand galleys streaming down to the 
 Gulf of Salamis, was more assured that his prize was in his 
 hands than De Grasse on the deck of the 'Ville de Paris,' 
 the finest ship then floating on the seas, when he heard that 
 Rodney was at St. Lucia and intended to engage him. He 
 did not even believe that the English after so many reverses 
 would ventuie to meddle with a fleet superior in force and 
 inspirited with victory. All the Antilles except St. Lucia 
 
BATTLE OF THE TWELFTH OF APRIL 29 
 
 were his own. Tobago, Grenada, the Grenadines, St. Vincent, 
 Martinique, Dominica, Guadaloupe, Montserrat, Nevis, An- 
 tigua, and St. Kitts, he held them all in proud possession, a 
 string of gems, each island large as or larger than the Isle of 
 Man, rising up with high volcanic peaks clothed from base to 
 crest with forest, carved into deep ravines, and fringed with 
 luxuriant plains. In St. Lucia alone, lying between St. 
 Vincent and Dominica, the English flag still flew, and Rodney 
 lay there in the harbour at Castries. On April 8, 1782, the 
 signal came from the north end of the island that the French 
 fleet had sailed. Martinique is in sight of St. Lucia, and the 
 rock is still shown from which Rodney had watched day by 
 day for signs that they were moving. They were out at last, 
 and he instantly weighed and followed. The air was light, 
 and De Grasse was under the high lands of Dominica before 
 Rodney came up with him. Both fleets were becalmed, and 
 the English were scattered and divided by a current which 
 runs between the islands. A breeze at last blew off" the land. 
 The French were the first to feel it, and were able to attack at 
 advantage the leading English division. Had De Grasse 
 *come down as he ought,' Rodney thought that the conse- 
 quences might have been serious. In careless imagination of 
 superiority they let the chance go by. They kept at a 
 distance, firing long shots, which as it was did considerable 
 damage. The two following days the fleets manoeuvred in 
 sight of each other. On the night of the eleventh Rodney 
 made signal for the whole fleet to go south under press of 
 sail. The French thought he was flying. He tacked at two 
 in the morning, and at daybreak found himself where he 
 wished to be, with the French fleet on his lee quarter. The 
 French looking for nothing but again a distant cannonade, 
 continued leisurely along under the north highlands of Dom- 
 inica towards the channel which separates that island from 
 Guadaloupe. In number of ships the fleets were equal; in 
 size and complement of crew the French were immensely 
 superior ; and besides the ordinary ships' companies they had 
 twenty thousand soldiers on board who were to be used in the 
 
30 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 conquest of Jamaica. Knowing well that a defeat at that 
 moment would be to England irreparable ruin, they did not 
 dream that Rodney would be allowed, even if he wished it, to 
 risk a close and decisive engagement. The English admiral 
 was aware also that his country's fate was in his hands. It 
 was one of those supreme moments which great men dare to 
 use and small men tremble at. He had the advantage of the 
 wind, and could force a battle or decHne it, as he pleased. 
 With clear daylight the signal to engage was flying from the 
 masthead of the ' Formidable,' Rodney's ship. At seven in 
 the morning, April 12, 1782, the whole fleet bore down 
 obliquely on the French line, cutting it directly in two. 
 Rodney led in person. Having passed through and broken 
 up their order he tacked again, still keeping the wind. The 
 French, thrown into confusion, were unable to reform, and 
 the battle resolved itself into a number of separate engage- 
 ments in which the English had the choice of position. 
 
 Rodney in passing through the enemy's Unes the first time 
 had exchanged broadsides with the ' Glorieux,' a seventy- 
 four, at close range. He had shot away her masts and bow- 
 sprit, and left her a bare hull ; her flag, however, still flying, 
 being nailed to a sphntered spar. So he left her unable 
 to stir; and after he had gone about came himself yard- 
 arm to yardarm with the superb * Ville de Paris,' the pride of 
 France, the largest ship in the then world, where De Grasse 
 commanded in person. All day long the cannon roared. 
 Rodney had on board a favourite bantam cock, which stood 
 perched upon the poop of the * Formidable ' through the 
 whole action, its shriU voice heard crowing through the thun- 
 der of the broadsides. One by one the French ships struck 
 their flags or fought on till they foundered and went down. 
 The carnage on board them was terrible, crowded as they were 
 with the troops for Jamaica. Fourteen thousand were reckoned 
 to have been killed, besides the prisoners. The * Ville de 
 Paris' surrendered last, fighting desperately after hope was 
 gone till her masts were so shattered that they could not bear 
 a sail, and her decks oh'^^e and below were littered over with 
 
LORD RODNEY'S VICTORY 31 
 
 mangled limbs. De Grasse gave up his sword to Rodney on 
 the * Formidable's ' quarter-deck. The gallant 'Glorieux,' 
 unable to fly, and seeing the battle lost, hauled down her flag, 
 but not till the undisabled remnants of her crew were too few 
 to throw the dead into the sea. Other ships took fire and blew 
 up. Half the French fleet were either taken or sunk ; the rest 
 crawled away for the time, most of them to be picked up after- 
 wards like crippled birds. 
 
 So on that memorable day was the English Empire saved. 
 Peace followed, but it was * peace with honour.' The Ameri- 
 can colonies were lost ; but England kept her West Indies ; her 
 flag still floated over Gibraltar ; the hostile strength of Europe 
 all combined had failed to twist Britannia's ocean sceptre 
 from her : she sat down maimed and bleeding, but the wreath 
 had not been torn from her brow, she was still sovereign of the 
 seas. 
 
 The bow of Ulysses was strung in those days. The order 
 of recall arrived when the work was done. It was proudly 
 obeyed ; and even the great Burke admitted that no honour 
 could be bestowed upon Rodney which he had not deserved at 
 his country's hands. If the British Empire is still to have a 
 prolonged career before it, the men who make empires are the 
 men who can hold them together. Oratorical reformers can 
 overthrow what deserves to be overthrown. Institutions, even 
 the best of them, wear out, and must give place to others, and 
 the fine political speakers are the instruments of their over- 
 throw. But the fine speakers produce nothing of their own, 
 and as constructive statesmen their paths are strewed with 
 failures. The worthies of England are the men who cleared 
 and tilled her fields, formed her laws, built her colleges and 
 cathedrals, founded her colonies, fought her battles, covered 
 the ocean with commerce, and spread our race over the planet 
 to leave a mark upon it which time will not efface. These men 
 are seen in their work, and are not heard of in Parliament. 
 When the account is wound up, where by the side of them will 
 stand our famous orators ? What will any one of these have 
 left behind him save the wreck of in' ntions which had done 
 
32 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 their work and had ceased to serve a useful purpose ? That 
 was their business in this world, and they did it and do it ; but 
 it is no very glorious work, not a work over which it is possible 
 to feel any 'fine enthusiasm.' To chop down a tree is easier 
 than to make it grow. When the business of destruction is 
 once completed, they and their fame and glory will disappear 
 together. Our true great ones will again be visible, and thence- 
 forward will be visible alone. 
 
 Is there a single instance in our own or any other history of 
 a great political speaker who has added anything to human 
 knowledge or to human worth ? Lord Chatham may stand as 
 a lonely exception. But except Chatham who is there ? Not 
 one that I know of. Oratory is the spendthrift sister of the 
 arts, which decks itself like a strumpet with the tags and orna- 
 ments which it steals from real superiority. The object of it 
 is not truth, but anything which it can make appear truth ; 
 anything which it can persuade people to believe by calling in 
 their passions to obscure their intelligence. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 First sight of Barbadoes — Origin of the name — Fere Labat — Bridgetown 
 two hundred years ago — Slavery and Christianity — Economic crisis — 
 Sugar bounties — Aspect of the streets — Government House and its occu- 
 pants — Duties of a governor of Barbadoes. 
 
 England was covered with snow when we left it on December 
 30. At sunrise on January 12 we were anchored in the road- 
 stead at Bridgetown, and the island of Barbadoes lay before us 
 shining in the haze of a hot summer morning. It is about the 
 size of the Isle of Wight, cultivated so far as eye could see 
 with the completeness of a garden; no mountains in it, scarcely 
 even high hills, but a surface pleasantly undulating, the pre- 
 vailing colour a vivid green from the cane fields ; houses in 
 town and country white from the coral rock of which they are 
 built, but the glare from them relieved by heavy clumps of 
 
FIRST SIGHT OF BARBADOES 33 
 
 trees. What the trees were I had yet to discover. You could 
 see at a glance that the island was as thickly peopled as an ant- 
 hill. Not an inch of soil seemed to be allowed to run to 
 waste. Two hundred thousand is, I believe, the present num- 
 ber of Barbadians, of whom nine-tenths are blacks. They re- 
 fuse to emigrate. They cling to their home with innocent 
 vanity as though it was the finest country in the world, and 
 multiply at a rate so rapid that no one Hkes to think about it. 
 Labour at any rate is abundant and cheap. In Barbadoes the 
 negro is willing enough to work, for he has no other means of 
 living. Little land is here allowed him to grow his yams upon. 
 Almost the whole of it is still held by the whites in large 
 estates, cultivated by labourers on the old system, and, it is to 
 be admitted, cultivated most admirably. If the West Indies 
 are going to ruin, Barbadoes, at any rate, is being ruined with 
 a smiling face. The roadstead was crowded with shipping — 
 large barques, steamers, and brigs, schooners of all shapes and 
 sorts. The training squadron had come into the bay for a day 
 or two on their way to Trinidad, four fine ships, conspicuous 
 by their white ensigns, a squareness of yards, and generally 
 imposing presence. Boats were flying to and fro under sail or 
 with oars, officials coming oif in white calico dress, with awn- 
 ings over the stern sheets and chattering crews of negroes. 
 Notwithstanding these exotic symptoms, it was all thoroughly 
 English ; we were under the guns of our own men-of-war. 
 The language of the Anglo-Barbadians was pure English, the 
 voices without the smallest transatlantic intonation. On no 
 one of our foreign possessions is the print of England's foot 
 more strongly impressed than on Barbadoes. It has been 
 ours for two centuries and three-quarters, and was organised 
 from the first on English traditional Hnes, with its constitution, 
 its parishes and parish churches and churchwardens, and schools 
 and parsons, all on the old model ; which the unprogressive 
 inhabitants have been wise enough to leave undisturbed. 
 
 Little is known of the island before we took possession 
 of it — so little that the origin of the name is still uncertain. 
 Barbadoes, if not a corruption of some older word, is Spanish 
 
34 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 or Portuguese, and means ' bearded.' The local opinion is that 
 the word refers to a banyan or fig tree which is common there, 
 and which sends down from its branches long hairs or fibres 
 supposed to resemble beards. I disbelieve in this derivation. 
 Every Spaniard whom I have consulted confirms my own im- 
 pression that \ barbados ' standing alone could no more refer 
 to trees than ' barbati ' standing alone could refer to trees in 
 Latin. The name is a century older than the English occupa- 
 tion, for I have seen it in a Spanish chart of 1525. The 
 question is of some interest, since it perhaps imphes that at 
 the first discovery there was a race of bearded Caribs there. 
 However this may be, Barbadoes, after we became masters of 
 the island, enjoyed a period of unbroken prosperity for two 
 hundred years. Before the conquest of Jamaica, it was the 
 principal mart of our West Indian trade ; and even after that 
 conquest, when all Europe drew its new luxury of sugar from 
 these islands, the wealth and splendour of the EngHsh residents 
 at Bridgetown astonished and stirred the envy of every passing 
 visitor. Absenteeism as yet was not. The owners lived on 
 their estates, governed the island as magistrates unpaid for 
 their services, and equally unpaid, took on themselves the 
 defences of the island. Pere Labat, a French missionary, paid 
 a visit to Barbadoes at the beginning of the eighteenth century. 
 He was a clever, sarcastic kind of man, with fine literary skill, 
 and describes what he saw with a jealous appreciation which 
 he intended to act upon his own countrymen. The island, 
 according to him, was running over with wealth, and was very 
 imperfectly fortified. The jewellers' and silversmiths' shops 
 in Bridgetown were brilliant as on the Paris boulevards. The 
 port was full of ships, the wharves and warehouses crammed 
 with merchandise from all parts of the globe. The streets 
 were handsome, and thronged with men of business, who were 
 piling up fortunes. To the Father these sumptuous gentlemen 
 were all most civil. The governor, an English milor, asked 
 him to dinner, and talked such excellent French that Labat 
 forgave him his nationality. The governor, he said, resided 
 in a fine palace. He had a well-furnished library, was dignified, 
 
BARBADOES AS IT WAS 35 
 
 courteous, intelligent, and lived in state like a prince. A 
 review was held for the French priest's special entertainment, 
 of the Bridgetown cavalry. Five hundred gentlemen turned 
 out from this one district admirably mounted and armed. 
 Altogether in the island he says that there were 3,000 horse 
 and 2,000 foot, every one of them of course white and English. 
 The officers struck him particularly. He met one who had 
 been five years a prisoner in the Bastille, and had spent his 
 time there in learning mathematics. The planters opened 
 their houses to him. Dinners then as now were the received 
 form of English hospitality. They lived well, Labat says. 
 They had all the luxuries of the tropics, and they had imported 
 the partridges which they were so fond of from England. 
 They had the costliest and choicest wines, and knew how to 
 enjoy them. They dined at two o'clock, and their dinner 
 lasted four hours. Their mansions were superbly furnished, 
 and gold and silver plate, he observed with an eye 'to business, 
 was so abundant that the plunder of it would pay the cost of 
 an expedition for the reduction of the island. 
 
 There was another side to all this magnificence which also 
 might be turned to account by an enterprising enemy. There 
 were some thousands of wretched Irish, who had been trans- 
 planted thither after the last rebellion, and were bound under 
 articles to labour. These might be counted on to rise if an 
 invading force appeared ; and there were 6o_,ooo slaves, who 
 would rebel also if they saw a hope of success. They were ill 
 fed and hard driven. On the least symptom of insubordination 
 they were killed without mercy ; sometimes they were burnt 
 alive, or were hung up in iron cages to die.^ In the French and 
 
 ^ Labat seems to say that they were hung up alive in these cages, and 
 left to die there. He says elsewhere, and it may be hoped that the explana- 
 tion is the truer one, that the recently imported negroes often destroyed 
 themselves, in the belief that when dead they would return to their own 
 country. In the French islands as well as the English, the bodies of suicides 
 were exposed in these cages, from which they could not be stolen, to convince 
 the poor people of their mistake by their own eyes. He says that the con- 
 trivance was successful, and that after this the slaves did not destroy them- 
 selves any more. 
 
 3—3 
 
36 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 Spanish islands care was taken of the souls of the poor creatures. 
 They were taught their catechism, they were baptised, and at- 
 tended mass regularly. The Anglican clergy, Labat said with 
 professional malice, neither baptised them nor taught them 
 anything, but regarded them as mere animals. To keep Chris- 
 tians in slavery they held would be wrong and indefensible, 
 and they therefore met the difficulty by not making their slaves 
 into Christians. That baptism made any essential difference, 
 however, he does not insist. By the side of Christianity, in the 
 Catholic islands, devil worship and witchcraft went on among 
 the same persons. No instance had ever come to his know- 
 ledge of a converted black who returned to his country who 
 did not throw away his Christianity just as he would throw 
 away his clothes ; and as to cruelty and immorality, he admits 
 that the Enghsh at Barbadoes were no worse than his own 
 people at Martinique. 
 
 In the collapse of West Indian prosperity which followed 
 on emancipation, Barbadoes escaped the misfortunes of the 
 other islands. The black population being so dense, and the 
 place itself being so small, the squatting system could not be 
 tried ; there was plenty of labour always, and the planters 
 being relieved of the charge of their workmen when they were 
 sick or worn out, had rather gained than lost by the change. 
 Barbadoes, however, was not to escape for ever, and was now 
 having its share of misfortunes. It is dangerous for any 
 country to commit its fortunes to an exclusive occupation. 
 Sugar was the most immediately lucrative of all the West 
 Indian productions. Barbadoes is exceptionally well suited 
 to sugar-growing. It has no mountains and no forests. The 
 soil is clean and has been carefully attended to for two hundred 
 and fifty years. It had been owned during the present century 
 by gentlemen who for the most part lived in England on the 
 profits of their properties, and left them to be managed by 
 agents and attorneys. The method of management was 
 expensive. Their own habits were expensive. Their incomes, 
 to which they had lived up, had been cut short lately by a 
 series of bad seasons. Money had been borrowed at high 
 
PRESENT PROSPECTS 37 
 
 interest year after year to keep the estates and their owners 
 going. On the top of this came the beetroot competition 
 backed up by a bounty, and the Barbadian sugar interest, I 
 was told, had gone over a precipice. Even the unencumbered 
 resident proprietors could barely keep their heads above water. 
 The returns on three-quarters of the properties on the island 
 no longer sufficed to pay the expenses of cultivation and the 
 interest of the loans which had been raised upon them. There 
 was impending a general bankruptcy which might break up 
 entirely the present system and leave the negroes for a time 
 without the wages which were the sole dependence. 
 
 A very dark picture had thus been drawn to me of the pros- 
 pects of the poor little island which had been once so brilliant. 
 Nothing could be less like it than the bright sunny landscape 
 which we saw from the deck of our vessel. The town, the 
 shipping, the pretty villas, the woods, and the wide green sea 
 of waving cane had no suggestion of ruin about them. If the 
 ruin was coming, clearly enough it had not yet come. After 
 breakfast we went on shore in a boat with a white awning over 
 it, rowed by a crew of black boatmen, large, fleshy, shining on 
 the skin with ample feeding and shining in the face with 
 innocent happiness. They rowed well. They were amusing. 
 There was a fixed tariff, and they were not extortionate. The 
 temperature seemed to rise ten degrees when we landed. 
 The roads were blinding white from the coral dust, the houses 
 were white, the sun scorching. The streets were not the streets 
 described by Labat ; no splendid magazines or jewellers' shops 
 like those in Paris or London ; but there were hghters at the 
 quays loading or unloading, carts dashing along with mule 
 teams and making walking dangerous ; signs in plenty of life 
 and business ; few white faces, but blacks and mulattoes 
 swarming. The houses were substantial, though in want of 
 paint. The public buildings, law courts, hall of assembly &c. 
 were solid and handsome, nowhere out of repair, though with 
 something to be desired in point of smartness. The market 
 square would have been well enough but for a statue of Lord 
 Nelson which stands there, very like, but small and insignifi- 
 
38 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 cant, and for some extraordinary reason they have painted it a 
 bright pea-green. 
 
 We crept along in the shade of trees and warehouses till we 
 reached the principal street. Here my friends brought me to 
 the Icehouse, a sort of club, with reading rooms and dining 
 rooms, and sleeping accommodation for members from a 
 distance who do not like colonial hotels. Before anything 
 else could be thought of I was introduced to cocktail, with 
 which I had to make closer acquaintance afterwards, cocktail 
 being the established corrective of West Indian languor, with- 
 out which life is impossible. It is a compound of rum, sugar, 
 lime juice, Angostura bitters, and what else I know not, 
 frisked into effervescence by a stick, highly agreeable to the 
 taste and effective for its immediate purpose. Cocktail over, 
 and walking in the heat being a thing not to be thought of, I 
 sat for two hours in a balcony watching the people, who were 
 thick as bees in swarming time. Nine-tenths of them were 
 pure black ; you rarely saw a white face, but still less would 
 you see a discontented one, imperturbable good humour and 
 self-satisfaction being written on the features of every one. The 
 women struck me especially. They were smartly dressed in 
 white calico, scrupulously clean, and tricked out with ribands 
 and feathers ; but their figures were so good, and they carried 
 themselves so well and gracefully, that, although they might 
 make themselves absurd, they could not look vulgar. Like the 
 old Greek and Etruscan women, they are trained from child- 
 hood to carry heavy weights on their heads. They are thus 
 perfectly upright, and plant their feet firmly and naturally on 
 the ground. They might serve for sculptors' models, and are 
 well aware of it. There were no signs of poverty. Old and 
 young seemed well-fed. Some had brought in baskets of fruit, 
 bananas, oranges, pine apples, and sticks of sugar cane ; others 
 had yams and sweet potatoes from their bits of garden in the 
 country. The men were active enough driving carts, wheeling 
 barrows, or selling flying fish, which are caught off the island 
 in shoals and are cheaper than herrings in Yarmouth. They 
 chattered like a flock of jackdaws, but there was no quarrel- 
 
GO VERNMENT HO USE 39 
 
 ling ; not a drunken man was to be seen, and all was merriment 
 and good humour. My poor downtrodden black brothers and 
 sisters, so far as I could judge from this first introduction, 
 looked to me a very fortunate class of fellow-creatures. 
 
 Government House, where we went to luncheon, is a large 
 airy building shaded by heavy trees with a garden at the back 
 of it. West Indian houses, I found afterwards, are all con- 
 structed on the same pattern, the object being to keep the 
 sun out and let in the wind. Long verandahs or galleries run 
 round them protected by green Venetian blinds which can be 
 opened or closed at pleasure ; the rooms within with poHshed 
 floors, httle or no carpet, and contrivances of all kinds to keep 
 the air in continual circulation. In the subdued green light, 
 human figures lose their soUdity and look as if they were 
 creatures of air also. 
 
 Sir Charles Lees and his lady were all that was polite and 
 hospitable. They invited me to make their house my home 
 during my stay, and more charming host and hostess it would 
 have been impossible to find or wish for. There was not the 
 state which Labat described, but there was the perfection of 
 courtesy, a courtesy which must have belonged to their 
 natures, or it would have been overstrained long since by the 
 demands made upon it. Those who have looked on at a 
 skating ring will have observed an orange or some such object 
 in the centre round which the evolutions are described, the 
 ice artist sweeping out from it in long curves to the extreme 
 circumference, returning on interior arcs till he gains the 
 orange again, and then off once more on a fresh departure. 
 Barbadoes to the West Indian steam navigation is like the 
 skater's orange. All mails, all passengers from Europe, arrive 
 at Barbadoes first. There the subsidiary steamers catch them 
 up, bear them north or south to the Windward or Leeward 
 Isles, and on their return bring them back to Carlisle Bay. 
 Every vessel brings some person or persons to whom the 
 Governor is called on to show hospitality. He must give 
 dinners to the officials and gentry of the island, he must give 
 balls and concerts for their ladies, he must entertain the 
 
40 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 officers of the garrison. When the West Indian squadron or 
 the training squadron drop into the roadstead, admirals, com- 
 modores, captains must all be invited. Foreign ships of war 
 go and come continually, Americans, French, Spaniards, or 
 Portuguese. Presidents of South American republics, engi- 
 neers from Darien, all sorts and conditions of men who go to 
 Europe in the English mail vessels, take their departure from 
 Carhsle Bay, and if they are neglected regard it as a national 
 affront. Cataracts of champagne must flow if the British name 
 is not to be discredited. The expense is unavoidable and is 
 enormous, while the Governor's very moderate salary is found 
 too large by economic politicians, and there is a cry for 
 reduction of it. 
 
 I was of course most grateful for Sir Charles's invitation to 
 myself. From him, better perhaps than from anyone, I could 
 learn how far the passionate complaints which I had heard 
 about the state of the islands were to be listened to as accounts 
 of actual fact. I found, however, that I must postpone both 
 this particular pleasure and my stay in Barbadoes itself till a 
 later opportunity. My purpose had been to remain there till 
 I had given it all the time which I could spare, thence to go 
 on to Jamaica, and from Jamaica to return at leisure round 
 the Antilles. But it had been ascertained that in Jamaica 
 there was small-pox. I suppose that there generally is small- 
 pox there, or typhus fever, or other infectious disorder. But 
 spasms of anxiety assail periodically the souls of local autho- 
 rities. Vessels coming from Jamaica had been quarantined in 
 all the islands, and I found that if I proceeded thither as I 
 proposed, I should be refused permission to land afterwards 
 in any one of the other colonies. In my perplexity my Trini- 
 dad friends invited me to accompany them at once to Port of 
 Spain. Trinidad was the most thriving, or was at all events 
 the least dissatisfied, of all the British possessions. I could 
 have a glance at the Windward Islands on the way. I could 
 afterwards return to Barbadoes, where Sir Charles assured me 
 that I should still find a room waiting for me. The steamer 
 to Trinidad sailed the same afternoon. I had to decide in 
 
IVEST INDIAN MANNERS 41 
 
 haste, and I decided to go. Our luncheon over, we had time 
 to look over the pretty gardens at Government House. There 
 were great cabbage palms, cannon-ball trees, mahogany trees, 
 almond trees, and many more which were wholly new acquaint- 
 ances. There was a grotto made by climbing plants and creep- 
 ers, with a fountain playing in the middle of it, where orchids 
 hanging on wires threw out their clusters of flowers for the 
 moths to fertihze, ferns waved their long fronds in the dripping 
 showers, humming birds cooled their wings in the spray, and 
 flashed in and out like rubies and emeralds. Gladly would I 
 have lingered there, at least for a cigar, but it could not be; we 
 had to call on the Commander of the Forces, Sir C. Pearson, 
 the hero of Ekowe in the Zulu war. Him, too, I was to see 
 again, and hear interesting stories from about our tragic enter- 
 prise in the Transvaal. For the moment my mind was filled 
 sufficiently with new impressions. One reads books about 
 places, but the images which they create are always unlike the 
 real object. All that I had seen was absolutely new and unex- 
 pected. I was glad of an opportunity to readjust the informa- 
 tion which I had brought with me. We joined our new vessel 
 before sunset, and we steamed away into the twilight. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 West Indian politeness — N'egro morals and felicity — Island of St. Vincent — 
 Grenada — The harbour — Disappearance of the whites — An island of black 
 freeholders — Tobago — Dramatic art — A promising incident. 
 
 West Indian civilisation is old-fashioned, and has none of the 
 pushing manners which belong to younger and perhaps more 
 thriving communities. The West Indians themselves, though 
 they may be deficient in energy, are uniformly ladies and 
 gentlemen, and all their arrangements take their complexion 
 from the general tone of society. There is a refinement 
 visible at once in the subsidiary vessels of the mail service 
 which ply among the islands. They are almost as large as 
 
42 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 those which cross the Atlantic, and never on any line in the 
 world have I met with officers so courteous and cultivated. 
 The cabins were spacious and as cool as a temperature of 80°, 
 gradually rising as we went south, would permit. Punkahs 
 waved over us at dinner. In our berths a single sheet Avas all 
 that was provided for us, and this was one more than we 
 needed. A sea was running when we cleared out from under 
 the land. Among the cabin passengers was a coloured family 
 in good circumstances moving about with nurses and children. 
 The little things, who had never been at sea before, sat on 
 the floor, staring out of their large helpless black eyes, not 
 knowing what was the matter with them. Forward there were 
 perhaps two or three hundred coloured people going from 
 one island to another, singing, dancing, and chattering all 
 night long, as radiant and happy as carelessness and content 
 could make them. Sick or not sick made no difference. 
 Nothing could disturb the imperturbable good humour and 
 good spirits. 
 
 It was too hot to sleep ; we sat several of us smoking on 
 deck, and I learnt the first authentic particulars of the present 
 manner of life of these much misunderstood people. Evi- 
 dently they belonged to a race far inferior to the Zulus and 
 Caffres, whom I had known in South Africa. They were 
 more coarsely formed in limb and feature. They would have 
 been slaves in their own country if they had not been brought 
 to ours, and at the worst had lost nothing by the change. 
 They were good-natured, innocent, harmless, lazy perhaps, but 
 not more lazy than is perfectly natural when even Europeans 
 must be roused to activity by cocktail. 
 
 In the Antilles generally, Barbadoes being the only excep- 
 tion, negro families have each their cabin, their garden 
 ground, their grazing for a cow. They live surrounded by 
 most of the fruits which grew in Adam's paradise — oranges 
 and plantains, bread-fruit, and cocoa-nuts, though not apples. 
 Their yams and cassava grow without effort, for the soil is 
 easily worked and inexhaustibly fertile. The curse is taken 
 oif from nature, and like Adam again they are under the 
 
NEGRO MORALS 43 
 
 covenant of innocence. Morals in the technical sense they 
 have none, but they cannot be said to sin, because they have 
 no knowledge of a law, and therefore they can commit no 
 breach of the law. They are naked and not ashamed. They 
 are married as they call it, but not parsoned. The woman 
 prefers a looser tie that she may be able to leave a man if he 
 treats her unkindly. Yet they are not licentious. I never 
 saw an immodest look in one their faces, and never heard of 
 any venal profligacy. The system is strange, but it answers. 
 A missionary told me that a connection rarely turns out well 
 which begins with a legal marriage. The children scramble 
 up anyhow, and shift for themselves like chickens as soon as 
 they are able to peck. Many die in this way by eating 
 unwholesome food, but also many live, and those who do live 
 grow up exactly like their parents. It is a very peculiar state 
 of things, not to be understood, as priest and missionary 
 agree, without long acquaintance. There is immorality, but an 
 immorality which is not demoralising. There is sin, but it is 
 the sin of animals, without shame, because there is no sense of 
 doing wrong. They eat the forbidden fruit, but it brings with it 
 no knowledge of the difference between good and evil. They 
 steal, but as a tradition of the time when they were themselves 
 chattels, and the laws of property did not apply to them. 
 They are honest about money, more honest perhaps than a 
 good many whites. But food or articles of use they take 
 freely, as they were allowed to do when slaves, in pure 
 innocence of heart. In fact these poor children of darkness 
 have escaped the consequences of the Fall, and must come of 
 another stock after all. 
 
 Meanwhile they are perfectly happy. In no part of the 
 globe is there any peasantry whose every want is so completely 
 satisfied as her Majesty's black subjects in these West Indian 
 islands. They have no aspirations to make them restless. 
 They have no guilt upon their consciences. They have food 
 for the picking up. Clothes they need not, and lodging in 
 such a climate need not be elaborate. They have perfect 
 liberty, and are safe from dangers, to which if left to them- 
 
44 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 selves they would be exposed, for the English rule prevents 
 the strong from oppressing the weak. In their own country 
 they would have remained slaves to more warlike races. In 
 the West Indies their fathers underwent a bondage of a 
 century or two, lighter at its worst than the easiest form of it 
 in Africa ; their descendants in return have nothing now to do 
 save to laugh and sing and enjoy existence. Their quarrels, 
 if they have any, begin and end in words. If happiness is the 
 be all and end all of life, and those who have most of it have 
 most completely attained the object of their being, the 
 'nigger' who now basks among the ruins of the West 
 Indian plantations is the supremest specimen of present 
 humanity. 
 
 We retired to our berths at last. At waking we were at 
 anchor off St. Vincent, an island of volcanic mountains robed 
 in forest from shore to crest. Till late in the last century it 
 was the headquarters of the Caribs, who kept up a savage 
 independence there, recruited by runaway slaves from Barba- 
 does or elsewhere. Brandy and Sir Ralph Abercrombie 
 reduced them to obedience in 1796, and St. Vincent throve 
 tolerably down to the days of free trade. Even now when I 
 saw it, Kingston, the principal town, looked pretty and well to 
 do, reminding me, strange to say, of towns in Norway, the 
 houses stretching along the shore painted in' the same tints of 
 blue or yellow or pink, with the same red-tiled roofs, the trees 
 coming down the hill sides to the water's edge, villas of 
 modest pretensions shining through the foliage, with the 
 patches of cane fields, the equivalent in the landscape of the 
 brilliant Norwegian grass. The prosperity has for the last 
 forty years waned and waned. There are now two thousand 
 white people there, and forty thousand coloured people, and 
 proportions alter annually to our disadvantage. The usual 
 remedies have been tried. The constitution has been altered 
 a dozen times. Just now I believe the Crown is trying to do 
 without one, having found the results of the elective principle 
 not encouraging, but we shall perhaps revert to it before long ; 
 any way, the tables show that each year the trade of the island 
 
THE WINDWARD ISLANDS 45 
 
 decreases, and will continue to decrease while the expenditure 
 increases and will increase. 
 
 I did not land, for the time was short, and as a beautiful 
 picture the island was best seen from the deck. The charac- 
 teristics of the people are the same in all the Antilles, and 
 could be studied elsewhere. The bustle and confusion in the 
 ship, the crowd of boats round the ladder, the clamour of 
 negro men's tongues, and the blaze of colours from the negro 
 women's dresses, made up together a scene sufficiently enter- 
 taining for the hour which we remained. In the middle of it 
 
 the Governor, Mr. S , came on board with another official. 
 
 They were going on in the steamer to Tobago, which formed 
 part of his dominions. 
 
 Leaving St. Vincent, we were all the forenoon passing the 
 Grenadines, a string of small islands fitting into their proper 
 place in the Antilles semicircle, but as if Nature had forgotten 
 to put them together or else had broken some large island to 
 pieces and scattered them along the line. Some were large 
 enough to have once carried sugar plantations, and are now 
 made over wholly to the blacks ; others were fishing stations, 
 droves of whales during certain months frequenting these 
 waters ; others were mere rocks, amidst which the white-sailed 
 American coasting schooners were beating up against the 
 north-east trade. There was a stiff breeze, and the sea v^as 
 white with short curling waves, but we were running before it 
 and the wind kept the deck fresh. At Grenada, the next 
 island, we were to go on shore. 
 
 Grenada was, like St. Vincent, the home for centuries of 
 man-eating Caribs, French for a century and a half, and 
 finally, after many desperate struggles for it, was ceded to 
 England at the peace of Versailles. It is larger than St. 
 Vincent, though in its main features it has the same character. 
 There are lakes in the hills, and a volcanic crater not wholly 
 quiescent ; but the especial value of Grenada, which made us 
 fight so hardly to win it, is the deep and landlocked harbour, 
 the finest in all the Antilles. 
 
 Pere Labat, to whose countrymen it belonged at the time 
 
46 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 of his own visit there, says that *if Barbadoes had such a 
 harbour as Grenada it would be an island without a rival in 
 the world. If Grenada belonged to the English, who knew 
 how to turn to profit natural advantages, it would be a rich and 
 powerful colony. In itself it was all that man could desire. 
 To live there was to live in paradise.' Labat found the island 
 occupied by countrymen of his own, ^ paisa?is aisez^^ he calls 
 them, growing their tobacco, their indigo and scarlet rocou, 
 their pigs and their poultry, and contented to be without 
 sugar, without slaves, and without trade. The change of 
 hands from which he expected so much had actually come 
 about. Grenada did belong to the English, and had belonged 
 to us ever since Rodney's peace. I was anxious to see how 
 far Labat's prophecy had been fulfilled. 
 
 St. George's, the 'capital,' stands on the neck of a peninsula 
 a mile in length, which forms one side of the harbour. Of the 
 houses, some look out to sea, some inwards upon the carenage, 
 as the harbour is called. At the point there was a fort, ap^ 
 parently of some strength, on which the British flag was flying. 
 We signalled that we had the Governor on board, and the fort 
 replied with a puff of smoke. Sound there was none or next 
 to none, but we presumed that it had come from a gun of 
 
 some kind. We anchored outside. Mr. S landed in an 
 
 official boat with two flags, a missionary in another, which had 
 only one. The crews of a dozen other boats then clambered 
 up the gangway to dispute possession of the rest of us, shout- 
 ing, swearing, lying, tearing us this way and that way as if we 
 were carcases and they wild beasts wanting to dine upon us. 
 We engaged a boat for ourselves as we supposed ; we had no 
 sooner entered it than the scandalous boatman proceeded to 
 take in as many more passengers as it would hold. Remon- 
 strance being vain, we settled the matter by stepping into the 
 boat next adjoining, and amidst howls and execrations we 
 were borne triumphantly off and were pulled in to the land. 
 
 Labat had not exaggerated the beauty of the landlocked 
 basin into which we entered on rounding the point. On three 
 sides wooded hills rose high till they passed into mountains; 
 
GRENADA 47 
 
 on the fourth was the castle with its slopes and batteries, the 
 church and town beyond it, and everywhere luxuriant tropical 
 forest trees overhanging the violet-coloured water, 1 could 
 well understand the Frenchman's delight when he saw it, and 
 also the satisfaction with which he would now acknowledge 
 that he had been a shortsighted prophet. The English had 
 obtained Grenada, and this is what they had made of it. The 
 forts which had been erected by his countrymen had been 
 deserted and dismantled; the castle on which we had seen 
 our flag flying was a ruin ; the walls were crumbling and in 
 many places had fallen down. One solitary gun was left, but 
 that was honeycombed and could be fired only with half a 
 charge to salute with. It was true that the forts had ceased 
 to be of use, but that was because there was nothing left to 
 defend. The harbour is, as I said, the best in the West Indies. 
 There was not a vessel in it, nor so much as a boat-yard that I 
 could see where a spar could be replaced or a broken rivet 
 mended. Once there had been a line of wharves, but the piles 
 had been eaten by worms and the platforms had fallen through. 
 Round us when we landed were unroofed warehouses, weed- 
 choked courtyards, doors gone, and window frames fallen in 
 or out. Such a scene of desolation and desertion I never saw 
 in my life save once, a few weeks later at Jamaica. An English 
 lady with her children had come to the landing place to meet 
 my friends. They, too, were more like wandering ghosts than 
 human beings with warm blood in them. All their thoughts 
 were on going home — home out of so miserable an exile.^ 
 
 ' I have been told that this picture is overdrawn, that Grenada is the 
 most prosperous of the Antilles, that its exports are increasing, that English 
 owners are making large profits again, that the blacks are thriving beyond 
 example, that there are twenty guns in the Fort, that the wharves and Quay 
 are in perfect condition, that there are no roofless warehouses, that in my 
 description of St, George's I must have been asleep or dreaming. I can 
 only repeat and insist upon what I myself saw. I know very well that in 
 parts of the island a few energetic English gentlemen are cultivating their 
 land with remarkable success. Any enterprising Englishman with capital 
 and intelligence might do the same. I know also that in no part of the 
 West Indies are the blacks happier or better off. But notwithstanding the 
 
48 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 Nature and the dark race had been simply allowed by us to 
 resume possession of the island. Here, where the cannon had 
 roared, and ships and armies had fought, and the enterprising 
 English had entered into occupancy, under whom, as we are 
 proud to fancy, the waste places of the earth grow green, and 
 industry and civilisation follow as an inevitable fruit, all was 
 now silence. And this was an English Crown colony, as rich 
 in resources as any area of soil of equal size in the world. 
 England had demanded and seized the responsibility of 
 managing it — this was the result. 
 
 A gentleman who for some purpose was a passing resident 
 in the island, had asked us to dine with him. His house was 
 three or four miles inland. A good road remained as a legacy 
 from other times, and a pair of horses and a phaeton carried 
 us swiftly to his door. The town of St. George's had once 
 been populous, and even now there seemed no want of people, 
 if mere numbers sufficed. We passed for half a mile through 
 a straggling street, where the houses were evidently occupied 
 
 English interest in the Island has sunk to relatively nothing. Once English- 
 men owned the whole of it. Now there are only thirty English estates. 
 There are five thousand peasant freeholds, owned almost entirely by 
 coloured men, and the effect of the change is written upon the features of 
 the harbour. Not a vessel of any kind was to be seen in it. The great 
 wooden jetty where cargoes used to be landed, or taken on board, was a 
 wreck, the piles eaten through, the platform broken. On the Quay there 
 was no sign of Hfe, or of business, the houses along the side mean and 
 insignificant, while several large and once important buildings, warehouses, 
 custom houses, dwelling houses, or whatever they had been, were lying 
 in ruins, tropical trees growing in the court-yards, and tropical creepers 
 climbing over the masonry showing how long the decay had been going 
 on. These buildings had once belonged to English merchants, and were 
 evidence of English energy and enterprise, which once had been and 
 now had ceased to be. As to the guns in the fort, I cannot say how much 
 old iron may be left there. But I was informed that only one gun could 
 be fired and that with but half a charge. 
 
 This is of little consequence or none, but unless the English population 
 can be reinforced, Grenada in another generation will cease to be English 
 at all, while the prosperity, the progress, even the continued civilisation 
 of the blacks depends on the maintenance there of English influence and ' 
 authority. 
 
PEASANT PROPRIETORS 49 
 
 though unconscious for many a year of paint or repair. They 
 were squalid and dilapidated, but the luxuriant bananas and 
 orange trees in the gardens relieved the ugliness of their appear- 
 ance. The road when we left the town was overshadowed 
 with gigantic mangoes planted long ago, with almond trees and 
 cedar trees, no relations of our almonds or our cedars, but the 
 most splendid ornaments of the West Indian forest. The 
 valley up which we drove was beautiful, and the house, when 
 
 we reached it, showed taste and culture. Mr. had rare 
 
 trees, rare flowers, and was taking advantage of his temporary 
 residence in the tropics to make experiments in horticulture. 
 He had been brought there, I believe, by some necessities 
 of business. He told us that Grenada was now the ideal 
 country of modern social reformers. It had become an island 
 of pure peasant proprietors. The settlers, who had once been 
 a thriving and wealthy community, had almost melted away. 
 Some thirty English estates remained which could still be 
 cultivated, and were being cultivated with remarkable success. 
 But the rest had sold their estates for anything which they 
 could get. The free blacks had bought them, and about 
 8,000 negro families, say 40,000 black souls in all, now shared 
 three-fourths of the soil between them. Each family lived 
 independently, growing coffee and cocoa and oranges, and all 
 were doing very well. The possession of property had brought 
 a sense of its rights with it. They were as litigious as Irish 
 peasants ; everyone was at law with his neighbour, and the 
 island was a gold mine to the Attorney-General ; otherwise 
 they were quiet harmless fellows, and if the politicians would 
 only let them alone, they would be perfectly contented, and 
 might eventually, if wisely managed, come to some good. To 
 set up a constitution in such a place was a ridiculous mockery, 
 and would only be another name for swindling and jobbery. 
 Black the island was, and black it would remain. The con- 
 ditions were never likely to arise which would bring back a 
 European population; but a governor who was a sensible 
 man, who would reside and use his natural influence, could 
 manage it with perfect ease. The island belonged to England ; 
 
50 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 we were responsible for what we made of it, and for the blacks' 
 own sakes we ought not to try experiments upon them. They 
 knew their own deficiencies and would infinitely prefer a wise 
 English ruler to any constitution which could be offered them. 
 If left entirely to themselves, they would in a generation or 
 two relapse into savages ; there were but two alternatives 
 before not Grenada only, but all the English West Indies — 
 either an English administration pure and simple, like the 
 East Indian, or a faUing eventually into a state like that 
 of Hayti, where they eat the babies, and no white man can 
 own a yard of land. 
 
 It was dark night when we drove back to the port. The 
 houses along the road, which had looked so miserable on the 
 outside, were now lighted with paraffin lamps. I could see 
 into them, and was astonished to observe signs of comfort 
 and even signs of taste — arm-chairs, sofas, sideboards with cut 
 glass upon them, engravings and coloured prints upon the 
 walls. The old state of things is gone, but a new state of 
 things is rising which may have a worth of its own. The plant 
 of civilisation as yet has taken but feeble root, and is only 
 beginning to grow. It may thrive yet if those who have 
 troubled all the earth will consent for another century to take 
 their industry elsewhere. 
 
 The ship's galley was waiting at the wharf when we reached 
 it. The captain also had been dining with a friend on shore, 
 and we had to wait for him. The offshore night breeze had 
 not yet risen. The harbour was smooth as a looking glass, 
 and the stars shone double in the sky and on the water. The 
 silence was only broken by the whistle of the lizards or the cry 
 of some far-off marsh frog. The air was warmer than we ever 
 feel it in the depth of an English summer, yet pure and 
 delicious and charged v/ith the perfume of a thousand flowers. 
 One felt it strange that with so beautiful a possession lying at 
 our doors, we should have allowed it to slide out of our 
 hands. I could say for myself, like Pere Labat, the island 
 was all that man could desire. * En un mot, la vie y est 
 delicieuse.' 
 
DRAMATIC ART EXTRAORDINARY 57 
 
 The anchor was got up immediately that we were on board. 
 In the morning we were to find ourselves at Port of Spain. 
 
 Mr. S , the Windward Island governor, who had joined us 
 
 at St. Vincent, was, as I said, going to Tobago. De Foe took 
 the human part of his Robinson Crusoe from the story of 
 Juan Fernandez. The locaUty is supposed to have been 
 Tobago, and Trinidad the island from which the cannibal 
 savages came. We are continually shuffling the cards, in a 
 hope that a better game may be played with them. Tobago 
 is now annexed to Trinidad. Last year it was a part of 
 
 Mr. S 's dominions which he periodically visited. I fell 
 
 in with him again on his return, and he told us an incident 
 which befell him there, illustrating the unexpected shapes in 
 which the schoolmaster is appearing among the blacks. An 
 intimation was brought to him on his arrival that, as the 
 Athenian journeymen had played Pyramus and Thisbe at the 
 nuptials of Theseus and Hippolyta, so a party of villagers from 
 the interior of Tobago would like to act before his Excellency. 
 Of course he consented. They came, and went through their 
 
 performance. To Mr. S 's, and probably to the reader's 
 
 astonishment, the play which they had selected was the ' Mer- 
 chant of Venice.' Of the rest of it he perhaps thought, like 
 the queen of the Amazons, that it was * sorry stuff;' but 
 Shylock's representative, he said, showed real appreciation. 
 With freedom and a peasant proprietary, the money lender is 
 a necessary phenomenon, and the actor's imagination may 
 have been assisted by personal recollections. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Charles King^sley at Trinidad — ' Lay of the Last Buccaneer' — A French 
 forban — Adventure at Aves — Mass on board a pirate ship — Port of 
 Spain — A house in the tropics — Apolitical meeting — Government House 
 — The Botanical Gardens' — Kingsley's rooms — Sugar estates and coolies. 
 
 I MIGHT spare myself a description of Trinidad, for the 
 natural features of the place, its forests and gardens, its 
 
 4—2 
 
52 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 exquisite flora, the loveliness of its birds and insects, have 
 been described already, with a grace of touch and a fullness of 
 knowledge which I could not rival if I tried, by my dear 
 friend Charles Kingsley. He was a naturalist by instinct, and 
 the West Indies and all belonging to them had been the 
 passion of his Ufe. He had followed the logs and journals of 
 the Elizabethan adventurers till he had made their genius part 
 of himself. In Amyas Leigh, the hero of * Westward Ho,' 
 he produced a figure more completely representative of that 
 extraordinary set of men than any other novelist, except 
 Sir Walter, has ever done for an age remote from his 
 own. He followed them down into their latest developments, 
 and sang their swan song in his * Lay of the Last Buccaneer/ 
 So characteristic is this poem of the transformation of the 
 West Indies of romance and adventure into the West Indies 
 of sugar and legitimate trade, that I steal it to ornament my 
 own prosaic pages. 
 
 THE LAY OF THE LAST BUCCANEER. 
 
 Oh ! England is a pleasant place for them that's rich and high, 
 
 But England is a cruel place for such poor folks as I ; 
 
 And such a port for mariners I'll never see again 
 
 As the pleasant Isle of Aves beside the Spanish main. 
 
 There were forty craft in Aves that were both swift and stout, 
 All furnished well with small arms and cannon all about ; 
 And a thousand men in Aves made laws so fair and free 
 To choose their valiant captains and obey them loyally. 
 
 Then we sailed against the Spaniard with his hoards of plate and gold, 
 Which he wrung with cruel tortures from Indian folks of old; 
 Likewise the merchant captains, with hearts as hard as stone, 
 Who flog men and keelhaul them and starve them to the bone. 
 
 Oh ! pa'ras grew high in Aves, and fruits that shone like gold, 
 And the colibris and parrots they were gorgeous to behold. 
 And the negro maids to Aves from bondage fast did flee 
 To welcome gallant sailors a sweeping in from sea. 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY 53 
 
 Oh ! sweet it was in Aves to hear the landward breeze, 
 
 A swing with good tobacco in a net between the trees, 
 
 With a negro lass to fan you while you listened to the roar 
 
 Of the breakers on the reef outside which never touched the shore. 
 
 But Scripture saith an ending to all fine things must be, 
 So the king's ships sailed on Aves and quite put down were we. 
 All day we fought like bull dogs, but the)' burnt the booms at night, 
 And I fled in a piragua sore wounded from the fight. 
 
 Nine days I floated starving, and a negro lass beside, 
 
 Till for all I tried to cheer her the poor young thing she died. 
 
 But as I lay a gasping a Bristol sail came by, 
 
 And brought me home to England here to beg until I die. 
 
 And now I'm old and going : I'm sure I can't tell where. 
 One comfort is, this world's so hard I can't be worse off there. 
 If I might but be a sea dove, I'd fly across the main 
 To the pleasant Isle of Aves to look at it once again. 
 
 By the side of this imaginative picture of a poor English 
 sea rover, let me place another, an authentic one, of a French 
 forban or pirate in the same seas. Kingsiey's Aves, or Isle of 
 Birds, is down on the American coast. There is another 
 island of the same name, which was occasionally frequented 
 by the same gentry, about a hundred miles south of Dominica. 
 Pere Labat going once from Martinique to Guadaloupe had 
 taken a berth with Captain Daniel, one of the most noted of 
 the French corsairs of the day, for better security. People 
 were not scrupulous in those times, and Labat and Daniel had 
 been long good friends. They were caught in a gale off 
 Dominica, blown away, and carried to Aves, where they found 
 an English merchant ship lying a wreck. Two English ladies 
 from Barbadoes and a dozen other people had escaped on 
 shore. They had sent for help, and a large vessel came for 
 them the day after Daniel's arrival. Of course he made a 
 prize of it. Labat said prayers on board for him before the 
 engagement, and the vessel surrendered after the first shot. 
 The good humour of the party was not disturbed by this 
 incident. The pirates, their prisoners, and tJifiJadies^ayed 
 
.54 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 together for a fortnight at Aves, catching turtles and boucan- 
 ning them, picnicking, and enjoying themselves. Daniel 
 treated the ladies with the utmost politeness, carried them 
 afterwards to St. Thomas's, dismissed them unransomed, sold 
 his prizes, and wound up the whole affair to the satisfaction of 
 every one. Labat relates all this with wonderful humour, and 
 tells, among other things, the following story of Daniel. On 
 some expedition, when he was not so fortunate as to have a 
 priest on board, he was in want of provisions. Being an out- 
 law he could not furnish himself in an open port. One night 
 he put into the harbour of a small island, called Los Santos, 
 not far from Dominica, where only a few families resided. He 
 sent a boat on shore in the darkness, took the priest and two 
 or three of the chief inhabitants out of their beds, and carried 
 them on board, where he held them as hostages, and then 
 under pretence of compulsion requisitioned the island to send 
 him what he wanted. The priest and his companions were 
 treated meanwhile as guests of distinction. No violence was 
 necessary, for all parties understood one another. While the 
 stores were being collected, Daniel suggested that there was a 
 good opportunity for his crew to hear mass. The priest of 
 Los Santos agreed to say it for them. The sacred vessels &c. 
 were sent for from the church on shore. An awning was 
 rigged over the forecastle, and an altar set up under it. The 
 men chanted the prayers. The cannon answered the purpose 
 of music. Broadsides were fired at the first sentence, at the 
 Exaudiat, at the Elevation^ at the Benedictiofi^ and a fifth at 
 the prayer for the king. The service was wound up by a Vive 
 le Roi ! A single small accident only had disturbed the 
 ceremony. One of the pirates, at the Elevation^ being of 
 a profane mind, made an indecent gesture. Daniel rebuked 
 him, and, as the offence was repeated, drew a pistol and blew 
 the man's brains out, saying he would do the same to any one 
 who was disrespectful to the Holy Sacrament. The priest 
 being a little startled, Daniel begged him not to be alarmed ; 
 he was only chastising a rascal to teach him his duty. At any 
 rate, as Labat observed, he had effectually prevented the 
 
TRINIDAD 55 
 
 rascal from doing anything of the same kind again. Mass 
 being over, the body was thrown overboard, and priest and 
 congregation went their several ways. 
 
 Kingsley's ' At Last ' gave Trinidad an additional interest to 
 me, but even he had not prepared me completely for the place 
 which I was to see. It is only when one has seen any object 
 with one's own eyes, that the accounts given by others become 
 recognisable and instructive. 
 
 Trinidad is the largest, after Jamaica, of the British West 
 Indian Islands, and the hottest absolutely after none of them. 
 It is square-shaped, and, I suppose, was once a part of South 
 America. The Orinoco river and the ocean currents between 
 them have cut a channel between it and the mainland, which 
 has expanded into a vast shallow lake known as the Gulf of 
 Paria. The two entrances by which the gulf is approached are 
 narrow and are called bocas or mouths — one the Dragon's 
 Mouth, the other the Serpent's. When the Orinoco is in flood, 
 the water is brackish, and the brilliant violet blue of the 
 Caribbean Sea is changed to a dirty yellow ; but the harbour 
 which is so formed would hold all the commercial navies of 
 the world, and seems formed by nature to be the depot one 
 day of an enormous trade. 
 
 Trinidad has had its period of romance. Columbus was 
 the first discoverer of it. Raleigh was there afterwards on his 
 expedition in search of his gold mine, and tarred his vessels 
 with pitch out of the famous lake. The island was alternately 
 Spanish and French till Picton took it in 1797, since which 
 time it has remained English. The Carib part of the population 
 has long vanished. The rest of it is a medley of English, 
 French, Spaniards, negroes, and coolies. The English, chiefly 
 migratory, go there to make money and go home with it. The 
 old colonial families have few representatives left, but the 
 island prospers, trade increases, coolies increase, cocoa and 
 coffee plantations and indigo plantations increase. Port of 
 Spain, the capital, grows annually ; and even sugar holds its 
 own in spite of low prices, for there is money at the back of 
 it, and a set of people who, being speculative and commercial, 
 
56 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 are better on a level with the times than the old-fashioned 
 planter aristocracy of the other islands. The soil is of extreme 
 fertiUty, about a fourth of it under cultivation, the rest natural 
 forest and unappropriated Crown land. 
 
 We passed the ' Dragon's Jaws ' before daylight. The sun 
 had just risen when we anchored off Port of Spain. We saw 
 before us the usual long line of green hills with mountains 
 behind them ; between the hills and the sea was a low, broad, 
 alluvial plain, deposited by an arm of the Orinoco and by the 
 other rivers which run into the gulf. The cocoa-nut palms 
 thrive best on the water's edge. They stretched for miles on 
 either side of us as a fringe to the shore. Where the water 
 was shoal, there were vast swamps of mangrove, the lower 
 branches covered with oysters. 
 
 However depressed sugar might be, business could not be 
 stagnant. Ships of all nations lay round us taking in or 
 discharging cargo. I myself formed for the time being part 
 
 of the cargo of my friend and host Mr. G , who had 
 
 brought me to Trinidad, the accomplished son of a brilliant 
 mother, himself a distinguished lawyer and member of the 
 executive council of the island, a charming companion, an in- 
 valuable public servant, but with the temperament of a man of 
 genius, half humorous, half melancholy, which does not find 
 itself entirely at home in West Indian surroundings. 
 
 On landing we found ourselves in a large foreign-looking 
 town, ' Port of Spain ' having been built by French and 
 Spaniards according to their national tendencies, and especially 
 with a view to the temperature, which is that of a forcing house 
 and rarely falls below 80°. The streets are broad and are 
 planted with trees for shade, each house where room permits 
 having a garden of its own, with palms and mangoes and 
 coffee plants and creepers. Of sanitary arrangements there 
 seemed to be none. There is abundance of rain, and the 
 gutters which run down by the footway are flushed almost 
 every day. But they are all open. Dirt of every kind lies 
 about freely, to be washed into them or left to putrefy as fate 
 shall direct. The smell would not be pleasant without the 
 
PORT OF SPAIN 57 
 
 help of that natural scavenger the Johnny crow, a black 
 vulture who roosts on the trees and feeds in the middle of the 
 streets. We passed a dozen of these unclean but useful birds 
 in a fashionable thoroughfare gobbling up chicken entrails and 
 refusing to be disturbed. When gorged they perch in rows 
 upon the roofs. On the ground they are the nastiest to look 
 at of all winged creatures ; yet on windy days they presume to 
 soar like their kindred, and when far up might be taken for 
 eagles. 
 
 The town has between thirty and forty thousand people 
 living in it, and the rain and Johnny crows between them keep 
 off pestilence. Outside is a large savannah or park, where the 
 villas are of the successful men of business. One of these 
 belonged to my host, a cool airy habitation with open doors 
 and windows, overhanging portico, and rooms into which all the 
 winds might enter, but not the sun. A garden in front was 
 shut off from the savannah by a fence of bananas. At the 
 gate stood as sentinel a cabbage palm a hundred feet high ; on 
 the lawn mangoes, oranges, papaws, and bread-fruit trees, 
 strange to look at, but luxuriantly shady. Before the door was 
 a tree of good dimensions, whose name I have forgotten, the 
 stem and branches of which were hung with orchids which 
 
 G had collected in the woods. The borders were blazing 
 
 with varieties of the single hibiscus, crimson, pink, and fawn 
 colour, the largest that I had ever seen. The average diameter 
 of each single flower was from seven to eight inches. Wind 
 streamed freely through the long sitting room, loaded with the 
 perfume of orange trees ; on table and in bookcase the hand 
 and mind visible of a gifted and cultivated man. The particu- 
 lar room assigned to myself would have been equally delight- 
 ful but that my possession of it was disputed even in daylight 
 by mosquitoes, who for bloodthirsty ferocity had a bad pre- 
 eminence over the worst that I had ever met with elsewhere. 
 I killed one who was at work upon me, and examined him 
 through a glass. Bewick, with the inspiration of genius, had 
 drawn his exact likeness as the devil — a long black stroke for 
 a body, a nick for neck, horns on the head, and a beak for a 
 
58 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 mouth, spindle arms, and longer spindle legs, two pointed 
 wings, and a tail. Line for line there the figure was before me 
 which in the unforgetable tailpiece is driving the thief under 
 the gallows, and I had a melancholy satisfaction in identifying 
 him. I had been warned to be on the look-out for scorpions, 
 centipedes, jiggers, and land crabs, who would bite me if I 
 walked slipperless over the floor in the dark. Of these I met 
 with none, either there or anywhere, but the mosquito of 
 Trinidad is enough by himself. For malice, mockery, and 
 venom of tooth and trumpet, he is without a match in the 
 world. 
 
 From mosquitoes, however, one could seek safety in tobacco 
 smoke, or hide behind the lace curtains with which every bed 
 is provided. Otherwise I found every provision to make life 
 pass deliciously. To walk is difficult in a damp steamy 
 temperature hotter during daylight than the hottest forcing 
 house in Kew. T was warned not to exert myself and to take 
 cocktail freely. In the evening I might venture out with the 
 bats and take a drive if I wished in the twilight. Languidly 
 charming as it all was, I could not help asking myself of what 
 use such a possession could be either to England or the 
 English nation. We could not colonise it, could not cultivate 
 it, could not draw a revenue from it. If it prospered com- 
 mercially the prosperity would be of French and Spaniards, 
 mulattoes and blacks, but scarcely, if at all, of my own 
 countrymen. For here too, as elsewhere, they were growing 
 fewer daily, and those who remained were looking forward to 
 the day when they could be released. If it were not for the 
 honour of the thing, as the Irishman said after being carried 
 in a sedan chair which had no bottom, we might have spared 
 ourselves so unnecessary a conquest. 
 
 Beautiful, however, it was beyond dispute. Before sunset a 
 carriage took us round the savannah. Tropical human beings, 
 like tropical birds, are fond of fine colours, especially black 
 human beings, and the park was as brilliant as Kensington 
 Gardens on a Sunday. At nightfall the scene became yet more 
 wonderful ; air, grass, and trees being alight with fireflies, each 
 
POLITICAL ASPIRATIONS 59 
 
 as brilliant as an English glowworm. The palm tree at our 
 own gate stood like a ghostly sentinel clear against the starry- 
 sky, a single long dead frond hanging from below the coronet 
 of leaves and clashing against the stem as it was blown to and 
 fro by the night wind, while long-winged bats swept and 
 whistled over our heads. 
 
 The commonplace intrudes upon the imaginative. At mo- 
 ments one can fancy that the world is an enchanted place after 
 all, but then comes generally an absurd awakening. On the 
 first night of my arrival, before we went to bed there came an 
 invitation to me to attend a political meeting which was to be 
 held in a few days on the savannah. Trinidad is a purely 
 Crown colony, and has escaped hitherto the introduction of 
 the election virus. The newspapers and certain busy gentle- 
 men in * Port of Spain ' had discovered that they were living 
 under 'a degrading tyranny,' and they demanded a 'constitu- 
 tion.' They did not complain that their affairs had been ill 
 managed. On the contrary, they insisted that they were the 
 most prosperous of the West Indian colonies, and alone had a 
 surplus in their treasury. If this was so, it seemed to me that 
 they had better let well alone. The population, all told, was 
 but 170,000, less by thirty thousand than that of Barbadoes. 
 They were a mixed and motley assemblage of all races and 
 colours, busy each with their own affairs, and never hitherto 
 troubling themselves about poUtics. But it had pleased the 
 Home Government to set up the beginning of a constitution 
 again in Jamaica, no one knew why, but so it was, and Trini- 
 dad did not choose to be behindhand. The official appoint- 
 ments were valuable, and had been hitherto given away by the 
 Crown. The local popularities very naturally wished to have 
 them for themselves. This was the reality in the thing so far 
 as there was a reality. It was dressed up in the phrases 
 borrowed from the great English masters of the art, about 
 privileges of manhood, moral dignity, the elevating influence 
 of the suffrage, «&c., intended for home consumption among 
 the believers in the orthodox Radical faith. 
 
 For myself I could but reply to the gentlemen who had sent 
 
6o THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 the invitation, that I was greatly obliged by the compliment, 
 but that I knew too little of their affairs to make my presence 
 of any value to them. As they were doing so well, I did not 
 see myself why they wanted an alteration. Political changes 
 were generally little more than turns of a kaleidoscope ; you 
 got a new pattern, but it was made of the same pieces, and 
 things went on much as before. If they wanted political 
 liberty I did not doubt that they would get it if they were 
 loud and persistent enough. Only they must understand that 
 at home we were now a democracy. Any constitution which 
 was granted them would be on the widest basis. The blacks 
 and coolies outnumbered the Europeans by four to one, and 
 perhaps when they had what they asked for they might be less 
 pleased than they expected. 
 
 You rise early in the tropics. The first two hours of day- 
 light are the best of the day. My friend drove me round the 
 town in his buggy the next morning. My second duty was to 
 pay my respects to the Governor, Sir William Robinson, who 
 had kindly offered me hospitality, and for which I must pre- 
 sent myself to thank him. In Sir William I found one of 
 those happy men whose constitution is superior to climate, 
 who can do a long day's work in his office, play cricket or 
 lawn tennis in the afternoon, and entertain his miscellaneous 
 subjects in the evening with sumptuous hospitality — a vigor- 
 ous, effective, perhaps ambitious gentleman, with a clear eye 
 to the views of his employers at home on whom his promotion 
 depends — certain to make himself agreeable to them, likely to 
 leave his mark to useful purpose on the colonies over which he 
 presides or may preside hereafter. Here in Trinidad he was 
 learning Spanish in addition to his other linguistic accom- 
 plishments, that he might show proper courtesies to Spanish 
 residents and to visitors from South America. 
 
 The ' Residence ' stands in a fine situation, in large grounds 
 of its own at the foot of the mountains. It has been lately 
 built regardless of expense, for the colony is rich, and likes to 
 do things handsomely. On the lawn, under the windows, 
 stood a tree which was entirely new to me, an enormous ceiba 
 
PUBLIC GARDENS 6i 
 
 or silk cotton tree, umbrella shaped, fifty yards in diameter, 
 the huge and buttressed trunk throwing out branches so 
 massive that one wondered how any woody fibre could bear 
 the strain of their weight, the boughs twisting in and out till 
 they made a roof over one's head, which was hung with every 
 fantastic variety of parasites. 
 
 Vast as the ceibas were which I saw afterwards in other 
 parts of the West Indies, this was the largest. The ceiba is 
 the sacred tree of the negro, the temple of Jumbi the proper 
 home of Obeah. To cut one down is impious. No black in 
 his right mind would wound even the bark. A Jamaica police 
 officer told me that if a ceiba had to be removed, the men who 
 used the axe were well dosed with rum to give them courage 
 to defy the devil. 
 
 From Government House we strolled into the adjoining 
 Botanical Gardens. I had long heard of the wonders of these. 
 The reality went beyond description. Plants with which I 
 was familiar as shrubs in English conservatories were here 
 expanded into forest giants, with hundreds of others of which 
 we cannot raise even Lilliputian imitations. Let man be what 
 he will, nature in the tropics is always grand. Palms were 
 growing in the greatest luxuriance, of every known species, 
 from the cabbage towering up into the sky to the fan palm 
 of the desert whose fronds are reservoirs of water. Of exo- 
 genous trees, the majority were leguminous in some shape or 
 other, forming flowers hke a pea or vetch and hanging their 
 seed in pods ; yet in shape and foliage they distanced far the 
 most splendid ornaments of an English park. They had Old 
 World names with characters wholly different : cedars which 
 were not conifers, almonds which were no relations to peaches, 
 and gum trees as unlike eucalypti as one tree can be unlike 
 another. Again, you saw forms which you seemed to recog- 
 nise till some unexpected anomaly startled you out of your 
 mistake. A gigantic Portugal laurel, or what I took for such, 
 was throwing out a flower direct from the stem like a cactus. 
 Grandest among them all, and happily in full bloom, was the 
 sacred tree of Burmah, the Amherstia nobilis^ at a distance 
 
62 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 like a splendid horse-chestnut, with crimson blossoms in pen- 
 dant bunches, each separate flower in the convolution of its 
 parts exactly counterfeiting a large orchid, with which it has 
 not the faintest affinity, the Amherstia being leguminous like 
 the rest. 
 
 Underneath, and dispersed among the imperial beauties, 
 were spice trees, orange trees, coffee plants and cocoa, or 
 again, shrubs with special virtues or vices. We had to be 
 careful what we were about, for fruits of fairest appearance 
 were tempting us all round. My companion was preparing 
 to eat something to encourage me to do the same. A gardener 
 stopped him in time. It was nux vomica. I was straying 
 along a less frequented path, conscious of a heavy vaporous 
 odour, in which I might have fainted had I remained exposed 
 to it. I was close to a manchineel tree. 
 
 Prettiest and freshest were the nutmegs, which had a glen 
 all to themselves and perfumed the surrounding air. In Trini- 
 dad and in Grenada I believe the nutmegs are the largest that 
 are known, being from thirty to forty feet high ; leaves brilliant 
 green, something like the leaves of an orange, but extremely 
 delicate and thin, folded one over the other, the lowest 
 branches sweeping to the ground till the whole tree forms a 
 natural bower, which is proof against a tropical shower. The 
 fragrance attracts moths and flies ; not mosquitoes, who pre- 
 fer a ranker atmosphere. I saw a pair of butterflies the match 
 of which I do not remember even in any museum, dark blue 
 shot with green like a peacock's neck, and the size of English 
 bats. I asked a black boy to catch me one. * That sort no let 
 catchee, mass^' he said ; and I was penitently glad to hear it. 
 
 Among the wonders of the gardens are the vines as they 
 call them, that is, the creepers of various kinds that climb 
 about the other trees. Standing in an open space there was 
 what once had been a mighty 'cedar.' It was now dead, 
 only the trunk and dead branches remaining, and had been 
 murdered by a * fig ' vine which had started from the root, 
 twined itself like a python round the stem, strangled out the 
 natural life, and spreading out in all directions had covered 
 
PUBLIC GARDENS 63 
 
 boughs and twigs with a foHage not their own. So far the ' vine ' 
 had done no worse than ivy does at home, but there was one 
 feature about it which puzzled me altogether. The lowest of 
 the original branches of the cedar were about twenty feet above 
 our heads. From these in four or five places the parasite had 
 let fall shoots, perhaps an inch in diameter, which descended 
 to within a foot of the ground and then suddenly, without 
 touching that or anything, formed a bight like a rope, went 
 straight up again, caught hold of the branch from which they 
 started, and so hung suspended exactly as an ordinary swing. 
 In three distinctly perfect instances the * vine ' had executed 
 this singular evolution, while at the extremity of one of the 
 longest and tallest branches high up in the air it had made a 
 clean leap of fifteen feet without visible help and had caught 
 hold of another tree adjoining on the same level. These per- 
 formances were so inexplicable that I conceived that they 
 must have been a freak of the gardener's. I was mistaken. 
 He said that at particular times in the year the fig vine threw 
 out fine tendrils which hung downwards like strings. The 
 strongest among them would lay hold of two or three others 
 and cHmb up upon them, the rest would die and drop off, 
 while the successful one, having found support for itself above, 
 would remain swinging in the air and thicken and prosper. 
 The leap he explained by the wind. I retained a suspicion 
 that the wind had been assisted by some aspiring energy in 
 the plant itself, so bold it was and so ambitious. 
 
 But the wonders of the garden were thrown into the shade 
 by the cottage at the extreme angle of it (the old Government 
 House before the present fabric had been erected), where 
 Kingsley had been the guest of Sir Arthur Gordon. It is a 
 long straggling wooden building with deep verandahs lying in a 
 hollow overshadov/ed by trees, with views opening out into the 
 savannah through arches formed by clumps of tall bamboos, 
 the canes growing thick in circular masses and shooting up a 
 hundred feet into the air, where they meet and form frames 
 for the landscape, peculiar and even picturesque when there 
 are not too many of them. These bamboos were Kingsley's 
 
64 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 special delight, as he had never seen the like of them else- 
 where. The room in which he wrote is still shown, and the 
 gallery where he walked up and down with his long pipe. His 
 memory is cherished in the island as of some singular and 
 beautiful presence which still hovers about the scenes which so 
 delighted him in the closing evening of his own life. 
 
 It was the dry season, midwinter, yet raining every day for 
 two or three hours, and when it rains in these countries it 
 means business. When the sky cleared the sun was intolerably 
 hot, and distant expeditions under such conditions suited 
 neither my age nor my health. With cocktail I might have 
 ventured, but to cocktail I could never heartily reconcile 
 myself. Trinidad has one wonder in it, a lake of bitumen 
 some ninety acres in extent, which all travellers are expected 
 to visit, and which few residents care to visit. A black lake is 
 not so beautiful as an ordinary lake. I had no doubt that it 
 existed, for the testimony was unimpeachable. Indeed I was 
 shown an actual specimen of the crystallised pitch itself. I 
 could believe without seeing and without undertaking a tedious 
 journey. I rather sympathised with a noble lord who came to 
 Port of Spain in his yacht, and like myself had the lake im- 
 pressed upon him. As a middle course between going thither 
 and appearing to slight his friends' recommendations, he said 
 that he would send his steward. 
 
 In Trinidad, as everywhere else, my own chief desire was to 
 see the human inhabitants, to learn what they were doing, how 
 they were living, and what they were thinking about, and this 
 could best be done by drives about the town and neighbour- 
 hood. The cultivated land is a mere fringe round the edges 
 of the forest. Three-fourths of the soil are untouched. The 
 rivers running out of the mountains have carved out the usual 
 long deep valleys, and spread the bottoms with rich alluvial 
 soil. Here among the wooded slopes are the country houses 
 of the merchants. Here are the cabins of the black peasantry 
 with their cocoa and coffee and orange plantations, which as in 
 Grenada they hold largely as freeholds, reproducing as near as 
 possible the life in Paradise of our first parents, without the 
 
THE COOLIES 65 
 
 consciousness of a want which they are unable to gratify, not 
 compelled to work, for the earth of her own self bears for them 
 all that they need, and ignorant that there is any difference 
 between moral good and evil. 
 
 Large sugar estates, of course, there still are, and as the 
 owners have not succeeded in bringing the negroes to work 
 regularly for them,^ they have introduced a few thousand 
 Coohes under indentures for five years. These Asiatic impor- 
 tations are very happy in Trinidad; they save money, and 
 many of them do not return home when their time is out, but 
 stay where they are, buy land, or go into trade. They are 
 proud, however, and will not intermarry with the Africans. 
 Few bring their families with them ; and women being scanty 
 among them, there arise inconveniences and sometimes serious 
 crimes. 
 
 It were to be wished that there was more prospect of the 
 Coolie race becoming permanent than I fear there is. They 
 work excellently. They are picturesque additions to the land- 
 scape, as they keep to the bright colours and graceful drapery 
 of India. The grave dignity of their faces contrasts remarkably 
 with the broad, good-humoured, but common features of the 
 African. The black women look with envy at the straight hair 
 of Asia, and twist their unhappy wool into knots and ropes in 
 the vain hope of being mistaken for the purer race ; but this is 
 all. The African and the Asiatic will not mix, and the African 
 being the stronger will and must prevail in Trinidad as else- 
 where in the West Indies. Out of a total population of 
 170,000, there are 25,000 whites and mulattoes, 10,000 coolies, 
 the rest negroes. The English part of the Europeans shows 
 no tendency to increase. The English come as birds of 
 passage, and depart when they have made their fortunes. 
 The French and Spaniards may hold on to Trinidad as a home. 
 Our people do not make homes there, and must be looked on 
 as a transient element. 
 
 1 The negroes in the interior are beginning to cultivate sugar cane in 
 small patches, with common mills to break it up. If the experiment suc- 
 ceeds it may extend. 
 
 5 
 
66 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A Coolie village — Negro freeholds — Waterworks — Pythons — Slavery — 
 Evidence of Lord Rodney — Future of the negroes — Necessity of English 
 rule — The Blue £asin — Black boy and cray fish. 
 
 The second morning after my arrival, my host took me to a 
 Coolie village three miles beyond the town. The drive was 
 between spreading cane fields, beneath the shade of bamboos, 
 or under rows of cocoa-nut palms, between the stems of which 
 the sea was gleaming. 
 
 Human dwelling places are rarely interesting in the tropics. 
 A roof which will keep the rain out is all that is needed. The 
 more free the passage given to the air under the floor and 
 through the side, the more healthy the habitation ; and the 
 houses, when we came among them, seemed merely enlarged 
 packing cases loosely nailed together and raised on stones a 
 foot or two from the ground. The rest of the scene was pic- 
 turesque enough. The Indian jewellers were sitting cross- 
 legged before their charcoal pans, making silver bracelets and 
 earrings. Brilliant garments, crimson and blue and orange, 
 were hanging to dry on clothes lines. Men were going out to 
 their work, women cooking, children (not many) playing or 
 munching sugar cane, while great mango trees and ceibas 
 spread a cool green roof over all. Like Rachel, the CooUes 
 had brought their gods to their new home. In the centre of 
 the village was a Hindoo temple, made up rudely out of 
 boards with a verandah running round it. The doors were 
 locked. An old man who had charge told us we could not 
 enter ; a crowd, suspicious and sullen, gathered about us as we 
 tried to prevail upon him ; so we had to content ourselves 
 with the outside, which was gaudily and not unskilfully painted 
 in Indian fashion. There were gods and goddesses in various 
 attitudes ; Vishnu fighting with the monkey god, Vishnu with 
 cutlass and shield, the monkey with his tail round one tree 
 while he brandished two others, one in each hand, as clubs. I 
 
A COOLIE VILLAGE 67 
 
 suppose that we ^miled, for our curiosity was resented, and we 
 found it prudent to withdraw. 
 
 The Coolies are useful creatures. Without them sugar culti- 
 vation in Trinidad and Demerara would cease altogether. 
 They are useful and they are singularly ornamental. Unfortu- 
 nately they have not the best character with the police. There 
 is little crime among the negroes, who quarrel furiously with 
 their tongues only. The Coolies have the fiercer passions of 
 their Eastern blood. Their women being few are tempted 
 occasionally into infidelities, and would be tempted more often 
 but that a lapse in virtue is so fearfully avenged. A Coolie re- 
 gards his wife as his property, and if she is unfaithful to him 
 he kills her without the least hesitation. One of the judges 
 told me that he had tried a case of this kind, and could not 
 make the man understand that he had done anything wrong. 
 It is a pity that a closer intermixture between them and the 
 negroes seems so hopeless, for it would solve many difficulties. 
 There is no jealousy. The negro does not regard the 
 CooHe as a competitor and interloper who has come to 
 lower his wages. The Coolie comes to work. The negro 
 does not want to work, and both are satisfied. But if there is 
 no jealousy there is no friendship. The two races are more 
 absolutely apart than the white and the black. The Asiatic 
 insists the more on his superiority in the fear perhaps that if 
 he did not the white might forget it. 
 
 Among the sights in the neighbourhood of Port of Spain are 
 the waterworks, extensive basins and reservoirs a few miles off 
 in the hills. We chose a cool afternoon, when the tempera- 
 ture in the shade was not above 86°, and went to look at them. 
 It was my first sight of the interior of the island, and my first 
 distinct acquaintance with the change which had come over 
 the West Indies. Trinidad is not one of our oldest posses- 
 sions, but we had held it long enough for the old planter 
 civilisation to take root and grow, and our road led us 
 through jungles of flowering shrubs which were running wild 
 over what had been once cultivated estates. Stranger still (for 
 one associates colonial life instinctively with what is new and 
 
 S— 2 
 
68 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 modern), we came at one place on an avenue of vast trees, at 
 the end of which stood the ruins of a mansion of some great 
 man of the departed order. Great man he must have been, 
 for there was a gateway half crumbled away on which were his 
 crest and shield in stone, with supporters on either side, like 
 the Baron of Bradwardine's Bears ; fallen now like them, but 
 unlike them never, I fear, to be set up again. The Anglo-West 
 Indians, like the English gentry in Ireland, were a fine race of 
 men in their day, and perhaps the improving them off the earth 
 has been a less beneficial process in either case than we are in 
 the habit of supposing. 
 
 Entering among the hills we came on their successors. In 
 Trinidad there are 18,000 freeholders, most of them negroes 
 and representatives of the old slaves. Their cabins are spread 
 along the road on either side, overhung with bread-fruit trees, 
 tamarinds, calabash trees, out of which they make their cups 
 and water jugs. The luscious granadilla climbs among the 
 branches; plantains throw their cool shade over the doors; 
 oranges and limes and citrons perfume the air, and droop their 
 boughs under the weight of their golden burdens. There were 
 yams in the gardens and cows in the paddocks, and cocoa 
 bushes loaded with purple or yellow pods. Children played 
 about in swarms, in happy idleness and abundance, with 
 schools, too, at intervals, and an occasional Catholic chapel, for 
 the old religion prevails in Trinidad, never having been dis- 
 turbed. What form could human life assume more charming 
 than that which we were now looking on ? Once more, the 
 earth does not contain any peasantry so well off, so well cared 
 for, so happy, so sleek and contented as the sons and daugh- 
 ters of the emancipated slaves in the English West Indian 
 Islands. Sugar may fail the planter, but cocoa, which each 
 peasant can grow with small effort for himself, does not fail 
 and will not. He may * better his condition,' if he has any 
 such ambition, v/ithout stirring beyond his own ground, and so 
 far, perhaps, his ambition may extend, if it is not turned off 
 upon politics. Even the necessary evils of the tropics are not 
 many or serious. His skin is proof against mosquitoes. 
 
THE WATERWORKS 69 
 
 There are snakes in Trinidad as there were snakes in Eden. 
 * Plenty snakes,' said one of them who was at work in his 
 garden, Aplenty snakes, but no bitee/ As to costume, he 
 would prefer the costume of innocence if he was allowed. 
 Clothes in such a climate are superfluous for warmth, and to 
 the minds of the negroes, unconscious as they are of shame, 
 superfluous for decency. European prejudice, however, still 
 passes for something ; the women have a love for finery, which 
 would prevent a complete return to African simplicity ; and in 
 the islands which are still French, and in those like Trinidad, 
 which the French originally colonised, they dress themselves 
 with real taste. They hide their wool in red or yellow hand- 
 kerchiefs, gracefully twisted ; or perhaps it is not only to con- 
 ceal the wool. Columbus found the Carib women of the 
 island dressing their hair in the same fashion.^ 
 
 The waterworks, when we reached them, were even more 
 beautiful than we had been taught to expect. A dam has been 
 driven across a perfectly limpid mountain stream ; a wide open 
 area has been cleared, levelled, strengthened with masonry, and 
 divided into deep basins and reservoirs, through which the cur- 
 rent continually flows. Hedges of hibiscus shine with crimson 
 blossoms. Innumerable humming birds glance to and fro 
 among the trees and shrubs, and gardens and ponds are over- 
 hung by magnificent bamboos, which so astonished me by 
 their size that I inquired if their height had been measured. 
 One of them, I was told, had lately fallen, and was found to be 
 130 feet long. A single drawback only there was to this en- 
 chanting spot, and it was again the snakes. There are huge 
 pythons in Trinidad which are supposed to have crossed the 
 straits from the continent. The cool water pools attract them, 
 and they are seen occasionally coiled among the branches of 
 the bamboos. Some washerwomen at work in the stream had 
 been disturbed a few days before our visit by one of these 
 monsters, who had come down to see what they were about. 
 They are harmless, but trying to the nerves. One of the 
 
 ^ Traen las cabezas atadas con unos panuelos labrados hermosos que 
 parecen de lejos de seda y almazarrones. 
 
JO THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 men about the place shot this one, and he told me that 
 he had shot another a short time before asleep in a tree. The 
 keeper of the works was a retired soldier, an Irish-Scot from 
 Limerick, hale, vigorous, and happy as the blacks them- 
 selves. He had married one of them — a remarkable excep- 
 tion to an almost universal rule. He did not introduce us, 
 but the dark lady passed by us in gorgeous costume, just 
 noticing our presence with a sweep which would have done 
 credit to a duchess. 
 
 We made several similar small expeditions into the settled 
 parts of the neighbourhood, seeing always (whatever else we 
 saw) the boundless happiness of the black race. Under the 
 rule of England in these islands the two million of these poor 
 brothers-in-law of ours are the most perfectly contented speci- 
 mens of the human race to be found upon the planet. Even 
 Schopenhauer, could he have known them, would have ad- 
 mitted that there were some of us who were not hopelessly 
 wretched. If happiness be the satisfaction of every conscious 
 desire, theirs is a condition which admits of no improvement : 
 were they independent, they might quarrel among themselves, 
 and the weaker become the bondmen of the stronger ; under 
 the beneficent despotism of the English Government, which 
 knows no difference of colour and permits no oppression, 
 they can sleep, lounge, and laugh away their lives as they 
 please, fearing no danger. If they want money, work and 
 wages are waiting for them. No one can say what may be 
 before them hereafter. The powers which envy human beings 
 too perfect felicity may find ways one day of disturbing the 
 West Indian negro ; but so long as the English rule continues, 
 he may be assured of the same tranquil existence. 
 
 As life goes he has been a lucky mortal. He was taken 
 away from Dahomey and Ashantee — to be a slave indeed, but 
 a slave to a less cruel master than he would have found at 
 home. He had a bad time of it occasionally, and the 
 plantation whip and the branding irons are not all dreams, yet 
 his owner cared for him at least as much as he cared for his 
 cows and his horses. Kind usage to animals is more eco- 
 
CONDITION OF THE BLACK RACE 71 
 
 nomical than barbarity, and Englishmen in the West Indies 
 were rarely inhuman. Lord Rodney says : 
 
 * I have been often in all the West India Islands, and I have 
 often made my observations on the treatment of the negro slaves, 
 and can aver that I never knew the least cruelty inflicted on them, 
 but that in general they lived better than the honest day-labour- 
 ing man in England, without doing a fourth part of his work 
 in a day, and I am fully convinced that the negroes in our islands 
 are better provided for and live better than when in Guinea.' 
 
 Rodney, it is true, was a man of facts and was defective in 
 sentiment. Let us suppose him wrong, let us believe the 
 worst horrors of the slave trade or slave usage as fluent 
 tongue of missionary or demagogue has described them, yet 
 nevertheless, when we consider what the lot of common 
 humanity has been and is, we shall be dishonest if we deny 
 that the balance has been more than redressed ; and the 
 negroes who were taken away out of Africa, as compared with 
 those who were left at home, were as the * elect to salvation,' 
 who after a brief purgatory are secured an eternity of blessed- 
 ness. The one condition is the maintenance of the authority 
 of the English crown. The whites of the islands cannot 
 equitably rule them. They have not shaken off the old 
 traditions. If, for the sake of theory or to shirk responsibiHty, 
 we force them to govern themselves, the state of Hayti stands 
 as a ghastly example of the condition into which they will 
 then inevitably fall. If we persist, we shall be sinning against 
 light — the clearest light that was ever given in such affairs. 
 The most hardened believers in the regenerating effects of 
 political liberty cannot be completely blind to the ruin which 
 the infliction of it would necessarily bring upon the race for 
 whose interests they pretend particularly to care. 
 
 The Pitch Lake I resisted all exhortations to visit, but the 
 days in the forest were delightful — pre-eminently a day which 
 we spent at the * Blue Basin,' a pool scooped out in the course 
 of ages by a river falling through a mountain gorge ; blue, not 
 from any colour in the water, which is purely transparent, but 
 from a peculiar effect of sky reflection through an opening in 
 
72 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 the overhanging trees. As it was far off, we had to start early 
 and encounter the noonday heat. We had to close the 
 curtains of the carriage to escape the sun, and in losing the 
 sun we shut out the wind. All was well, however, when we 
 turned into the hills. Thenceforward the road followed the 
 bottom of a densely wooded ravine ; impenetrable foliage 
 spreading over our heads, and a limxpid river flashing along in 
 which our horses cooled their feet and lips as we crossed 
 it again and again. There were the usual cabins and gardens 
 on either side of us, sometimes single, sometimes clustering 
 into villages, and high above them the rocks stood out, 
 broken into precipices or jutting out into projecting crags, 
 with huge trees starting from the crevices, dead trunks with 
 branching arms clothed scantily with creepers, or living giants 
 with blue or orange-coloured flowers. Mangoes scented the 
 valley with their blossom. Bananas waved their long broad 
 leaves — some flat and unbroken as we know them in conser- 
 vatories, some split into palm-like fronds which quivered in the 
 breeze. The cocoa pods were ripe or ripening, those which 
 had been gathered being left on the ground in heaps as we see 
 apples in autumn in an English orchard. 
 
 We passed a lady on the way who was making sketches and 
 daring the mosquitoes, that were feeding at leisure upon her 
 face and arms. The road failed us at last. We alighted with 
 our waterproofs and luncheon basket. A couple of half-naked 
 boys sprang forward to act as guides and porters — nice little 
 fellows, speaking a French patois for their natural language, 
 but with English enough to earn shillings and amuse the 
 British tourist. With their help we scrambled along a steep 
 slippery path, the river roaring below, till we came to a spot 
 where, the rock being soft, a waterfall had cut out in the 
 course of ages a natural hollow, of which the trees formed the 
 roof, and of which the floor was the pool we had come in 
 search of. The fall itself was perpendicular, and fifty or 
 sixty feet high, the water issuing at the top out of a dark 
 green tunnel among overhanging branches. The sides of the 
 basin were draped with the fronds of gigantic ferns and wild 
 
BLUB BASIN, TRINIDAD. 
 
^ OF THB 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 £LcaliforH\^- 
 
'rry^ 
 
 THE BLUE Z?^5/.'\rS44^CALIF0R^^>^3 
 
 plantains, all in wild luxuriance and dripping with the spray. 
 In clefts above the rocks, large cedars or gum trees had struck 
 their roots and flung out their gnarled and twisted branches, 
 which were hung with ferns ; while at the lower end of the pool, 
 where the river left it again, there grew out from among the 
 rocks near the water's edge tall and exquisitely grouped 
 acacias with crimson flowers for leaves. 
 
 The place broke on us suddenly as we scrambled round 
 a corner from below. Three young blacks were bathing in the 
 pool, and as we had a lady with us, they were induced, 
 though sullenly and with some difficulty, to return into 
 their scanty garments and depart. Never certainly was there 
 a more inviting spot to swim in, the more so from exciting 
 possibilities of adventure. An English gentleman went to 
 bathe there shortly before our coming. He was on a rock, 
 swaying his body for a plunge, when something caught his eye 
 among the shadows at the bottom. It proved to be a large 
 dead python. 
 
 We had not the luck ourselves of falling in with so interest- 
 ing a beast. Great butterflies and perhaps a humming bird or 
 two were flitting among the leaves as we came up ; other signs 
 of life there were none, unless we call life the motion of the 
 plantain leaves, waving in the draughts of air which were 
 eddying round the waterfall. We sat down on stones, or on 
 the trunk of a fallen tree, the mosquitoes mercifully sparing 
 us. We sketched a little, talked a little, ate our sandwiches, 
 
 and the male part of us lighted our cigars. G then, to 
 
 my surprise, produced a fly rod. In the streams in the 
 AntiUes, which run out of the mountains, there is a fish in 
 great abundance which they caU mullet^ an inferior trout, but a 
 good substitute where the real thing is not. He runs some- 
 times to five pounds weight, will take the fly, and is much 
 sought after by those who try to preserve in the tropics 
 
 the amusements and habits of home. G had caught 
 
 many of them in Dominica. If in Dominica, why not in 
 Trinidad ? 
 
 He put his tackle together, tied up a cast of trout flies, and 
 
74 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 commenced work. He tried the still water at the lower end 
 of the basin. He crept round the rock and dropped his hne 
 into the foam at the foot of the fall. No mullet rose, nor fish 
 of any kind. One of our small boys had looked on with 
 evident impatience. He cried out at last, * No mullet, but 
 plenty crayfish,' -pointing down into the water; and there, 
 following the direction of his finger, we beheld strange grey 
 creatures like cuttle-fish, moving about on the points of their 
 toes, the size of small lobsters. The flies were dismounted, a 
 bare hook was fitted on a fine gut trace, with a split shot or 
 two to sink the line, all trim and excellent. A fresh-water 
 
 shrimp was caught under a stone for a bait. G went to 
 
 work, and the strange things took hold and let themselves be 
 lifted halfway to the surface. But then, somehow, they let go 
 and disappeared. 
 
 Our small boy said nothing ; but I saw a scornful smile upon 
 his lips. He picked up a thin dry cane, found some twine in 
 the luncheon basket which had tied up our sandwiches, found 
 a pin there also, and bent it, and put a shrimp on it. With a 
 pebble stone for a sinker he started in competition, and in a 
 minute he had brought out upon the rock the strangest thing 
 in the shape of a fish which I had ever seen in fresh water or 
 salt. It was a true * crayfish,' ecrgvtsse, eight inches long, 
 formed regularly with the thick powerful tail, the sharp serrated 
 snout, the long antennae, and the spider-like legs of the lobster 
 tribe. As in a crayfish, the claws were represented by the 
 correctly shaped but diminutive substitutes. 
 
 When we had done wondering at the prize, we could admire 
 the smile of conscious superiority in the face of the captor. 
 The fine tackle had been beaten, as usual, by the proverbial 
 string and crooked pin, backed by knowledge in the head of a 
 small nigger boy. 
 
HOME RULE IN TRINIDAD 75 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Home Eule in Trinidad — Political aspirations — Nature of the problem — 
 Crown administration — Colonial governors — A Russian apologue — 
 Dinner at Government House — * The Three Fishers ' — Charles Warner 
 — Alternative futures of the colony. 
 
 The political demonstration to which I had been invited came 
 off the next day on the savannah. The scene was pretty 
 enough. Black coats and white trousers, bright-coloured 
 dresses and pink parasols, look the same at a distance whether 
 the wearer has a black face or a white one, and the broad 
 meadow was covered over with sparkling groups. Several 
 thousand persons must have attended, not all to hear the 
 oratory, for the occasion had been taken when the Governor 
 was to play close by in a cricket match, and half the crowd 
 had probably collected to see His Excellency at the wicket. 
 Placards had been posted about the town, setting out the pur- 
 pose of the meeting. Trinidad, as I said, is at present a Crown 
 colony, the executive council and the legislature being equally 
 nominated by the authorities. The popular orators, the news- 
 paper writers, and some of the leading merchants in Port of 
 Spain had discovered, as I said, that they were living under 
 what they called * a degrading tyranny.' They had no griev- 
 ances, or none that they alleged, beyond the general one that 
 they had no control over the finance. They very naturally 
 desired that the lucrative Government appointments for which 
 the colony paid should be distributed among themselves. The 
 elective principle had been reintroduced in Jamaica, evidently 
 as a step towards the restoration of the full constitution which 
 had been surrendered and suppressed after the Gordon riots. 
 Trinidad was almost as large as Jamaica, in proportion to the 
 population wealthier and more prosperous, and the people were 
 invited to come together in overwhelming numbers to insist 
 that the * tyranny ' should end. The Home Government in 
 their action about Jamaica had shown a spontaneous readiness 
 
76 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 to transfer responsibility from themselves to the inhabitants. 
 The promoters of the meeting at Port of Spain may have 
 thought that a little pressure on their part might not be un- 
 welcome as an excuse for further concessions of the same kind. 
 Whether this was so I do not know. At any rate they showed 
 that they were as yet novices in the art of agitation. The 
 language of the placard of invitation was so violent that, in the 
 opinion of the legal authorities, the printer might have been 
 indicted for high treason. The speakers did their best to 
 imitate the fine phrases of the apostles of liberty in Europe, 
 but they succeeded only in caricaturing their absurdities. The 
 proceedings were described at length in the rival newspapers. 
 One gentleman's speech was said to have been so briUiant that 
 every sentence was a 'gem of oratory,' the gem of gems being 
 when he told his hearers that, * if they went into the thing at 
 all, they should go the entire animal.' All went off good- 
 humouredly. In the Liberal journal the event of the day was 
 spoken of as the most magnificent demonstration in favour of 
 human freedom which had ever been seen in the West Indian 
 Islands. In the Conservative journal it was called a ridiculous 
 fiasco^ and the people were said to have come together only to 
 admire the Governor's batting, and to laugh at the nonsense 
 which was coming from the platform. Finally, the same journal 
 assured us that, beyond a handful of people who were interested 
 in getting hold of the anticipated spoils of office, no one in 
 the island cared about the matter. 
 
 The result, I believe, was some petition or other which 
 would go home and pass as evidence, to minds eager to 
 believe, that Trinidad was rapidly ripening for responsible 
 government, promising reUef to an overburdened Secretary 
 for the Colonies, who has more to do than he can attend to, 
 and is pleased with opportunities of gratifying popular senti- 
 ment, or of showing off in Parliament the development of 
 colonial institutions. He knows nothing, can know nothing, 
 of the special conditions of our hundred dependencies. He 
 accepts what his representatives in the several colonies choose 
 to tell him; and his representatives, being birds of passage 
 
HOME RULE IN TRINIDAD 77 
 
 responsible only to their employers at home, and depending 
 for their promotion on making themselves agreeable, are 
 under irresistible temptations to report what it will please 
 the Secretary of State to hear. 
 
 For the Secretary of State, too, is a bird of passage as they 
 are, passing through the Colonial Office on his way to other 
 departments, or holding the seals as part of an administration 
 whose tenure of office grows every year more precarious, 
 which exists only upon popular sentiment, and cannot, and 
 does not try to look forward beyond at furthest the next 
 session of Parliament. 
 
 But why, it may be asked, should not Trinidad govern 
 itself as well as Tasmania or New Zealand ? Why not 
 Jamaica, why not all the West Indian Islands ? I will answer 
 by another question. Do we wish these islands to remain as 
 part of the British Empire ? Are they of any use to us, or 
 have we responsibilities connected with them of which we are 
 not entitled to divest ourselves ? A government elected by 
 the majority of the people (and no one would think of setting 
 up constitutions on any other basis) reflects from the nature 
 of things the character of the electors. All these islands tend 
 to become partitioned into black peasant proprietaries. In 
 Grenada the process is almost complete. In Trinidad it is 
 rapidly advancing. No one can stop it. No one ought to wish 
 to stop it. But the ownership of freeholds is one thing, and 
 political power is another. The blacks depend for the pro- 
 gress which they may be capable of making on the presence 
 of a white community among them; and although it is 
 undesirable or impossible for the blacks to be ruled by the 
 minority of the white residents, it is equally undesirable and 
 equally impossible that the whites should be ruled by them. 
 The relative numbers of the two races being what they are, 
 responsible government in Trinidad means government by a 
 black parliament and a black ministry. The negro voters 
 might elect, to begin with, their half-caste attorneys or such 
 whites (the most disreputable of their colour) as would court 
 their suffrages. But the black does not love the mulatto, and 
 
78 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 despises the white man who consents to be his servant. He 
 has no grievances. He is not naturally a politician, and if 
 left alone with his own patch of land, will never trouble 
 himself to look further. But he knows what has happened in 
 St. Domingo. He has heard that his race is already in full 
 possession of the finest of all the islands. If he has any 
 thought or any hopes about the matter, it is that it may be 
 with the rest of them as it has been with St. Domingo, and if 
 you force the power into his hands, you must expect him to 
 use it. Under the constitution which you would set up, 
 whites and blacks may be nominally equal; but from the 
 enormous preponderance of numbers the equality would be 
 only in name, and such English people, at least, as would be 
 really of any value, would refuse to remain in a false and 
 intolerable position. Already the English population of 
 Trinidad is dwindling away under the uncertainties of their 
 future position. Complete the work, set up a constitution 
 with a black prime minister and a black legislature, and they 
 will withdraw of themselves before they are compelled to go. 
 Spaniards and French might be tempted by advantages of 
 trade to remain in Port of Spain, as a few are still to be found 
 in Hayti. They, it is possible, might in time recover and 
 reassert their supremacy. Englishmen have the world open 
 to them, and will prefer lands where they can live under less 
 degrading conditions. In Hayti the black republic allows 
 no white man to hold land in freehold. The blacks else- 
 where with the same opportunities will develop the same 
 aspirations. 
 
 Do we, or do we not, intend to retain our West Indian 
 Islands under the sovereignty of the Queen ? If we are 
 willing to let them go, the question is settled. But we ought 
 to face the alternative. There is but one form of government 
 under which we can retain these colonies with honour and 
 security to ourselves and with advantage to the negroes 
 whom we have placed there — the mode of government 
 which succeeds with us so admirably that it is the world's 
 wonder in the Easi Indies, a success so unique and so extra- 
 
HOME RULE IN TRINIDAD 79 
 
 ordinary that it seems the last from which we are willing to 
 take example. 
 
 In Natal, where the circumstances are analogous, and 
 where report says that efforts are being also made to force 
 on constitutional independence, I remember suggesting a few 
 years ago that the governor should be allowed to form his own 
 council, and that in selecting the members of it he should go 
 round the colony, observe the farms where the land was well 
 inclosed, the fields clean, the farm buildings substantial and in 
 good repair ; that he should call on the owners of these to be 
 his advisers and assistants. In all Natal he might find a 
 dozen such. They would be unwilHng to leave their own 
 business for so thankless a purpose ; but they might be 
 induced by good feeling to grant him a few weeks of their 
 time. Under such an administration I imagine Natal would 
 have a happier future before it than it will experience with the 
 boon which is designed for it. 
 
 In the West Indies there is mdefinite wealth waiting to be 
 developed by intelligence and capital ; and men with such 
 resources, both English and American, might be tempted still 
 to settle there, and lead the blacks along with them into more 
 settled manners and higher forms of civiUsation. But the 
 future of the blacks, and our own influence over them for 
 good, depend on their being protected from themselves and 
 from the schemers who would take advantage of them. How- 
 ever little may be the share to which the mass of a population 
 be admitted in the government of their country, they are 
 never found hard to manage where they prosper and are 
 justly dealt with. The children of darkness are even easier 
 of control than the children of light. Under an administration 
 formed on the model of that of our Eastern Empire these 
 islands would be peopled in a generation or two with dusky 
 citizens, as proud as the rest of us of the flag under which 
 they will have thriven, and as willing to defend it against any 
 invading enemy as they are now unquestionably indifferent. 
 Partially elected councils, local elected boards, &c., serve only 
 as contrivances to foster discontent and encourage jobbery. 
 
So THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 They open a rift which time will widen, and which will create 
 for us, on a smaller scale, the conditions which have so 
 troubled us in Ireland, where each concession of popular de- 
 mands makes the maintenance of the connection more difficult. 
 In the Pacific colonies self-government is a natural right ; the 
 colonists are part of ourselves, and have as complete a claim 
 to the management of their own affairs as we have to the 
 management of ours. The less we interfere with them the 
 more heartily they identify themselves with us. But if we 
 choose besides to indulge our ambition with an empire, if we 
 determine to keep attached to our dominion countries which, 
 like the East Indies, have been conquered by the sword, 
 countries, like the West Indies, which, however acquired, are 
 occupied by races enormously outnumbering us, many of 
 whom do not speak our language, are not connected with us 
 by sentiment, and not visibly connected by interest, with 
 whom our own people will not intermarry or hold social inter- 
 course, but keep aloof from, as superior from inferior — to 
 impose on such countries forms of self-government at which 
 we have ourselves but lately arrived, to put it in the power of 
 these overwhelming numbers to shake us off if they please, 
 and to assume that when our real motive has been only to 
 save ourselves trouble they will be warmed into active loyalty 
 by gratitude for the confidence which we pretend to place 
 in them, is to try an experiment which we have not the 
 slightest right to expect to be successful, and which if it fails 
 is fatal. 
 
 Once more, if we mean to keep the blacks as British sub- 
 jects, we are bound to govern them, and to govern them well. 
 If we cannot do it, we had better let them go altogether. And 
 here is the real difficulty. It is not that men competent for 
 such a task cannot be found. Among the public servants of 
 Great Britain there are persons always to be found fit and 
 willing for posts of honour and difficulty if a sincere effort be 
 made to find them. Alas I in times past we have sent persons 
 to rule our Baratarias to whom Sancho Panza was a sage — 
 troublesome members of Parliament, younger brothers of 
 
APPOINTMENT OF GOVERNORS 8i 
 
 powerful families, impecunious peers ; favourites, with back- 
 stairs influence, for whom a provision was to be found j colonial 
 clerks, bred in the office, who had been obsequious and useful. 
 
 One had hoped that in the new zeal for the colonial connec- 
 tion such appointments would have become impossible for the 
 future, yet a recent incident at the Mauritius has proved that 
 the colonial authorities are still unregenerate. The unfit are 
 still maintained in their places ; and then, to prevent the 
 colonies from suffering too severely under their incapacity, we 
 set up the local councils, nominated or elected, to do the work, 
 while the Queen's representative enjoys his salary. Instances 
 of glaring impropriety like that to which I have alluded are of 
 course rare, and among colonial governors there are men of 
 quahty so high that we would desire only to see their power 
 equal to it. But so limited is the patronage, on the. other 
 hand, which remains to the home administrations, and so heavy 
 the pressure brought to bear upon them, that there are persons 
 also in these situations of whom it may be said that the less 
 they do, and the less they are enabled to do, the better for the 
 colony over which they preside. 
 
 The West Indies have been sufferers from another cause. 
 In the absence of other use for them they have been made to 
 serve as places where governors try their 'prentice hand and 
 learn their business before promotion to more important situa- 
 tions. Whether a man has done well or done ill makes, it 
 seems, very little difference .unless he has offended prejudices 
 or interests at home : once in the service he acquires a vested 
 right to continue in it. A governor who had been suspended 
 for conduct which is not denied to have been most improper, 
 is replaced with the explanation that if he was not sent back 
 to his old post it would have been necessary to provide a 
 situation for him elsewhere. Why would it ? Has a captain 
 of a man-of-war whose ship is taken fiom him for misconduct 
 an immediate claim to have another ? Unfortunate colonies ! 
 It is not their interest which is considered under this system. 
 But the subject is so delicate that I must say no more about 
 it,. I will recommend only to the atteiition of the British 
 
 6 
 
82 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 democracy, who are now the parties that in the last instance 
 are responsible, because they are the real masters of the 
 Empire, the following apologue. 
 
 In the time of the Emperor Nicholas the censors of the 
 press seized a volume which had been published by the poet 
 Kriloff, on the ground that it contained treasonable matter. 
 Nicholas sent for Kriloff. The censor produced the incrimin- 
 ated passage, and Kriloff was made to read it aloud. It was 
 a fable. A governor of a Russian province was represented 
 as arriving in the other world, and as being brought up before 
 Rhadamanthus. He was accused, not of any crime, but of 
 having been simply a nonentity — of having received his salary 
 and spent it, and nothing more. Rhadamanthus listened, and 
 when the accusing angel had done sentenced the prisoner into 
 Paradise. * Into Paradise ! ' said the angel, 'why, he has done 
 nothing ! ' * True,' said Rhadamanthus, ' but how would it have 
 been if he had done anything ? ' 
 
 * Write away, old fellow,' said Nicholas to Kriloff. 
 
 Has it never happened that British colonial officials who 
 have similarly done nothing have been sent into the Paradise 
 of promotion because they have kept things smooth and have 
 given no trouble to their employers at home ? 
 
 In the evening of the day of the poUtical meeting we dined 
 at Government House. There was a large representative 
 party, English, French, Spaniards, Corsicans — ladies and 
 gentlemen each speaking his or her own language. There 
 were the mayors of the two chief towns of Trinidad — Port of 
 Spain and San Fernando — both enthusiastic for a constitution. 
 The latter was my neighbour at dinner, and insisted much on 
 the fine qualities of the leading persons in the island and the 
 splendid things to be expected when responsible government 
 should be conceded. The training squadron had arrived from 
 Barbadoes, and the commodore and two or three officers were 
 present in their uniforms. There was interesting talk about 
 Trinidad's troublesome neighbour, Guzman Blanco, the Pre- 
 sident of Venezuela. It seems that Sir Walter Raleigh's 
 Eldorado has turned out to be a fact after all. On the higher 
 
DINNER AT GO VERNMENT HO USE 83 
 
 waters of the Orinoco actual gold mines do exist, and the 
 discovery has quickened into life a long unsettled dispute 
 about boundaries between British Guiana and the republic. 
 Don Guzman had been encroaching, so it was alleged, and in 
 other ways had been offensive and impertinent. Ships were 
 going — had been actually ordered to La Guyra, to pull his 
 nose for him, and to tell him to behave himself. The time is 
 past when we flew our hawks at game birds. The opinion of 
 most of the party was that Don Guzman knew it, and that his 
 nose would not be pulled. He would regard our frigates as 
 picturesque ornaments to his harbour, give the officers in com- 
 mand the politest reception, evade their demands, offer good 
 words in plenty, and nofhing else but worcjs, and in the end 
 would have the benefit of our indifference.^ 
 
 In the late evening we had music. Our host sang well, our 
 hostess was an accomplished artist. They had duets together, 
 Italian and English, and the lady then sang * The Three . 
 Fishers,' Kingsley being looked on as the personal property of 
 Trinidad and as one of themselves. She sang it very well, as 
 well as any one could do who had no direct acquaintance with 
 an English sea-coast people. Her voice was beautiful, and she 
 showed genuine feeling. The silence when she ended was 
 more complimentary than the loudest applause. It was broken 
 by a stupid member of council, who said to me, * Is it not 
 strange that a poet with such a gift of words as Mr. Kingsley 
 should have ended that song with so weak a line ? " The 
 sooner it's over the sooner to sleep" is nothing but prose.' 
 He did not see that the fault which he thought he had dis- 
 covered is no more than the intentional * dying away ' of the 
 emotion created by the story in the common lot of poor 
 humanity. We drove back across the savannah in a blaze of 
 fireflies. It is not till midnight that they put their lights out 
 and go to sleep with the rest of the world. 
 
 One duty remained to me before I left the island. The 
 
 ' A squadron did go while I was in the West Indies. I have not heard 
 that any advance has been made in consequence towards the settlement of 
 the Border. 
 
 6—2 
 
84" THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 Warners are among the oldest of West Indian families, distin- 
 guished through many generations, not the least in their then 
 living chief and representative, Charles Warner, who in the 
 highest ministerial offices had steered Trinidad through the 
 trying times which followed the abolition of slavery. I had 
 myself in early Hfe been brought into relations with other 
 members of his family. He himself was a very old man on 
 the edge of the grave ; but hearing that I was in Port of 
 Spain, he had expressed a wish to see me. I found him in 
 his drawing room, shrunk in stature, pale, bent double by 
 weight of years, and but feebly able to lift his head to speak. 
 I thought, and I judged rightly, that he could have but a few 
 weeks, perhaps but a few days, to Hve. 
 
 There is something peculiarly solemn in being brought to 
 speak with a supremely eminent man, who is already struggling 
 with the moment which is to launch him into a new existence. 
 He raised himself in his chair. He gave me his withered 
 hand. His eyes still gleamed with the Hght of an untouched 
 intelligence. All else of him seemed dead. The soul, un- 
 touched by the decay of the frame which had been its earthly 
 tenement, burnt bright as ever on the edge of its release. 
 
 When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain, 
 And they breathe truth who breathe their words in pain. 
 
 He roused himself to talk, and he talked sadly, for all things 
 at home and everywhere were travelling on the road which he 
 well knew could lead to no good end. No statesman had 
 done better practical work than he, or work which had borne 
 better fruit, could it be allowed to ripen. But for him Trini- 
 dad would have been a wilderness, savage as when Columbus 
 found the Caribs there. He belonged to the race who make 
 empires, as the orators lose them, who do things and do not 
 talk about them, who build and do not cast down, who rever- 
 ence ancient habits and institutions as the organic functions of 
 corporate national character; a Tory of the Tories, who 
 nevertheless recognised that Toryism itself was passing away 
 
CHARLES WARNER 85 
 
 under the universal solvent, and had ceased to be a faith which 
 could be believed in as a guide to conduct. 
 
 He no more than any one could tell what it was now wisest 
 or even possible to do. He spoke like some ancient scer^ 
 whose eyes looked beyond the present time and the present 
 world, and saw politics and progress and the wild whirlwind of 
 change as the play of atoms dancing to and fro in the sun- 
 beams of eternity. Yet he wished well to our poor earth, and 
 to us who were still struggling upon it. He was sorry for the 
 courses on which he saw mankind to be travelling. Spite of 
 all the newspapers and the blowing of the trumpets, he well 
 understood whither all that was tending. He spoke with 
 horror and even loathing of the sinister leader who was drawing 
 England into the fatal whirlpool. He could still hope, for he 
 knew the power of the race. He knew that the English heart 
 was unaffected, that we were suffering only from delirium of 
 the brain. The day would yet come, he thought, when we 
 should struggle back into sanity again with such wreck of our 
 past greatness as might still be left to us, torn and shattered, 
 but clothed and in our right mind, and cured for centuries of 
 our illusions. 
 
 My forebodings of the nearness of the end were too well 
 founded. A month later I heard that Charles Warner was 
 dead. To have seen and spoken with such a man was worth 
 a voyage round the globe. 
 
 On the prospects of Trinidad I have a few more words to 
 add. The tendency of the island is to become what Grenada 
 has become already — a community of negro freeholders, each 
 living on his own homestead, and raising or gathering off the 
 ground what his own family will consume. They will multiply, 
 for there is ample room. Three-quarters of the soil are still 
 unoccupied. The 140,000 blacks will rapidly grow into a half- 
 million, and the half-million, as long as we are on the spot to 
 keep the peace, will speedily double itself again. The English 
 inhabitants will and must be crowded out. The geographical 
 advantages of the Gulf of Paria will secure a certain amount of 
 trade. There will be merchants and bankers in the town as 
 
S6 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 floating passage birds, and there will be mulatto lawyers and 
 shopkeepers and newspaper writers. But the blacks hate the 
 mulattoes, and the mulatto breed will not maintain itself, as 
 with the independence of the blacks the intimacy between 
 blacks and whites diminishes and must diminish. The English 
 peasant immigration which enthusiasts have believed in is a 
 dream, a dream which passed through the ivory gate, a dream 
 which will never turn to a waking reality ; and unless under 
 the Indian system, which our rulers will never try unless the 
 democracy orders them to adopt it, the EngUsh interest will 
 come to an end. 
 
 The English have proved in India that they can play a great 
 and useful part as rulers over recognised inferiors. Even in 
 the West Indies the planters were a real something. Like the 
 English in Ireland, they produced a remarkable breed of men : 
 the Codringtons, the Warners, and many illustrious names 
 besides. They governed cheaply on their own resources, and 
 the islands under their rule were so profitable that we fought 
 for them as if our Empire was at stake. All that is gone* 
 The days of ruling races are supposed to be numbered. Trade 
 drifts away to the nearest market — to New York or New 
 Orleans — and in a money point of view the value of such pos- 
 sessions as Trinidad will soon be less than nothing to us. 
 
 As long as the present system holds, there will be an appre- 
 ciable addition to the sum of human (coloured human) happi- 
 ness. Lighter-hearted creatures do not exist on the globe. 
 But the continuance of it depends on the continuance of the 
 English rule. The peace and order which they benefit by is 
 not of their own creation. In spite of schools and missionaries, 
 the dark connection still maintains itself with Satan's invisible 
 world, and modern education contends in vain with Obeah 
 worship. As it has been in Hayti, so it must be in Trinidad 
 if the English leave the blacks to be their own masters. 
 
 Scene after scene passes by on the magic slide. The man- 
 eating Caribs first, then Columbus and his Spaniards, the 
 French conquest, the English occupation, but they have left 
 behind them no self-quickening seed of healthy civiUsation, 
 
FUTURE OF THE NEGROES 87 
 
 and the prospect darkens once more. It is a pity, for there- is 
 no real necessity that it should darken. The West Indian 
 negro is conscious of his own defects, and responds more 
 willingly than most to a guiding hand. He is faithful and 
 affectionate to those who are just and kind to him, and with a 
 century or two of wise administration he might prove that his 
 inferiority is not inherent, and that with the same chances as 
 the white he may rise to the same level. I cannot part with 
 the hope that the English people may yet insist that the chance 
 shall not be denied to him, and that they may yet give their 
 officials to understand that they must not, shall not, shake off 
 their responsibilities for this unfortunate people, by flinging 
 them back upon themselves * to manage their own affairs,' now 
 that we have no further use for them. 
 
 I was told that the keener-witted Trinidad blacks are watch- 
 ing as eagerly as we do the development of thj Irish problem. 
 They see the identity of the situation. They see that if the 
 Radical view prevails, and in every country the majority are to 
 rule, Trinidad will be theirs and the government of the English 
 will be at an end. I, for myself, look upon Trinidad and the 
 West Indies generally as an opportunity for the further exten- 
 sion of the influence of the English race in their special 
 capacity of leaders and governors of men. We cannot with 
 honour divest ourselves of our responsibility for the blacks, or 
 after the eloquence we have poured out and the self-laudation 
 which we have allowed ourselves for the suppression of slavery, 
 leave them now to relapse into a state from which slavery itself 
 was the first step of emancipation. Our world-wide dominion 
 will not be of any long endurance if we consider that we have 
 discharged our full duty to our fellow-subjects when we have 
 set them free to follow their own devices. If that is to be all, 
 the sooner it vanishes into history the better for us and for the 
 world 
 
88 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Barbadoes again — Social condition of the island — Political constitution — 
 Effects of the sugar bounties — Dangers of general bankruptcy — The 
 Hall of Assembly — Sir Charles Pearson — Society in Bridgetown — A 
 morning drive — Church of St. John's — Sir Graham Briggs — An old 
 planter's palace — The Chief Justice of Barbadoes, 
 
 Again at sea, and on the way back to Barbadoes. The com- 
 modore of the training squadron had offered me a berth to 
 St. Vincent, but he intended to work up under sail against the 
 north-east trade, which had risen to half a gale, and I preferred 
 the security and speed of the mail boat. Among the pas- 
 sengers was Miss , the lady whom I had seen sketching 
 
 on the way to the Blue Basin. She showed me her drawings, 
 which were excellent. She showed me in her mosquito-bitten 
 arms what she had endured to make them, alid I admired her 
 fortitude. She was English, and was on her way to join her 
 father at Codrington College. 
 
 We had a wild night, but those long vessels care little 
 for winds and waves. By morning we had fought our way 
 back to Grenada. In the St. Vincent roadstead, which we 
 reached the same day, the ship was stormed by boatloads of 
 people who were to go on with us ; boys on their way to 
 school at Barbadoes, ladies young and old, white, black, and 
 mixed, who were bound I know not where. The night fell 
 dark as pitch, the storm continued, and we were no sooner 
 beyond the shelter of the land than every one save 
 
 Miss and myself was prostrate. The vessel ploughed on 
 
 upon her way indifferent to us and to them. We were at 
 Bridgetown by breakfast time, and I was now to have an op- 
 portunity of studying more at leisure the earliest of our West 
 Indian colonies. 
 
 Barbadoes is as unlike in appearance as it is in social con- 
 dition to Trinidad or the Antilles. There are no mountains 
 in it, no forests, no rivers, and as yet no small freeholders. 
 
BARBADOES AGAIN 89 
 
 The blacks, who number nearly 200,000 in an island not 
 larger than the Isle of Wight, are labourers, working for wages 
 on the estates of large proprietors. Land of their own they 
 have none, for there is none for them. Work they must, for 
 they cannot live otherwise. Thus every square yard of soil is 
 cultivated, and turn your eyes where you will you see houses, 
 sugar canes, and sweet potatoes. Two hundred and fifty 
 years of occupation have imprinted strongly an English char- 
 acter; parish churches solid and respectable, the English 
 language, the English police and parochial system. However 
 it may be in the other islands, England in Barbadoes is still a 
 solid fact. The headquarters of the West Indian troops 
 are there. There is a commander-in-chief residing in a 
 'Queen's House,' so called. There is a savannah where there 
 are English barracks under avenues of almond and mahogany. 
 Red coats are scattered about the grass. Oificers canter about 
 playing polo, and naval and military uniforms glitter at the 
 side of carriages, and horsemen and horsewomen take their 
 evening rides, as well mounted and as well dressed as you can 
 see in Rotten Row. Barbadoes is thus in pleasing contrast 
 with the conquered islands which we have not taken the 
 trouble to assimilate. In them remain the wrecks of the 
 French civilisation which we superseded, while we have 
 planted nothing of our own. Barbadoes, the European aspect 
 of it at any rate, is English throughout. 
 
 The harbour, when we arrived, was even more brilliant 
 than we had left it a fortnight before. The training squadron 
 had gone, but in the place of it the West Indian fleet was 
 there, and there were also three American frigates, old wooden 
 vessels out merely on a cruise, but heavily sparred, smart 
 and well set up, with the stars and stripes floating carelessly at 
 their sterns, as if in these western seas, be the nominal 
 dominion British, French, or Spanish, the American has a 
 voice also and intends to be heard. 
 
 We had no sooner anchored than a well-appointed boat 
 \\as alongside with an awning and an ensign at the stern. 
 Colonel — •— , the chief of the police, to whom it belonged, 
 
90 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 came on bD-rd in search of Miss , who was to be his 
 
 guest in Bridgetown. She introduced me to him. He insisted 
 on my accompanying him home to breakfast, and, as he was a 
 person in authority, I had nothing to do but obey. Colonel 
 
 , to whose politeness then and afterwards I was in many 
 
 ways indebted, had seen life in various forms. He had been 
 in the navy. He had been m the army. He had been called 
 to the bar. He was now the head of the Barbadoes police, 
 with this anomalous addition to his other duties, that in default 
 of a chaplain he read the Church service on Sundays in the 
 barracks. He had even a license from the bishop to preach 
 sermons, and being a man of fine character and original sense 
 he discharged this last function, I was told, remarkably well. 
 His house was in the heart of the town, but shaded with 
 tropical trees. The rooms were protected by deep outside 
 galleries, which were overrun with Bougainvillier creepers. 
 He was himself the kindest of entertainers, his Irish lady ihe 
 kindest of hostesses, with the humorous high breeding of 
 the old Sligo aristocracy, to whom she belonged. I found 
 that I had been acquainted with some of her kindred there 
 long ago, in the days when the Anglo-Irish rule had not 
 been discovered to be a upas tree, and cultivated human life 
 was still possible in Connaught. Of the breakfast, which 
 consisted of all the West Indian dainties I had ever heard 
 or read of, I can say nothing, nor of the pleasant talk which 
 
 followed. I was to see more of Colonel -, for he offered 
 
 to drive me some day across the island, a promise which 
 he punctually fulfilled. My stay with him for the present 
 could be but brief, as I was expected at Government House. 
 
 I have met with exceptional hospitality from the governors 
 of British colonies in many parts of the world. They are 
 not chosen like the Roman proconsuls from the ranks of 
 trained statesmen who have held high administrative offices at 
 home. They are appointed, as I said just now, from various 
 motives, sometimes with a careful regard to fitness for their 
 post, sometimes with a regard merely to routine or con- 
 venience or to personal influence brought to bear in their 
 
POLITICAL CONSTITUTION 91 
 
 favour. I have myself seen some for whom I should have 
 thought other employment would have been more suitable ; 
 but always and everywhere those that I have fallen in with 
 have been men of honour and integrity above reproach or 
 suspicion, and I have met with one or two gentlemen in these 
 situations whose admirable qualities it is impossible to praise 
 too highly, who in their complicated responsibilities — respon- 
 sibilities to the colonies and responsibilities to the authorities 
 at home — have considered conscience and duty to be their 
 safest guides, have cared only to do what they believed to be 
 right to the best of their ability, and have left their interests 
 to take care of themselves. 
 
 The Governor of Barbadoes is not despotic. He controls 
 the administration, but there is a constitution as old as the 
 Stuarts ; an Assembly of thirty-three members, nine of whom 
 the Crown nominates, the rest are elected. The friction is 
 not so violent as when the number of the nominated and 
 elected members is equal, and as long as a property qualifica- 
 tion was required for the franchise, the system may have 
 worked tolerably without producing any violent mischief. 
 There have been recent modifications, however, pointing in 
 the same direction as those which have been made in Jamaica. 
 By an ordinance from home the suffrage has been widely ex- 
 tended, obviously as a step to larger intended changes. 
 
 Under such conditions and with an uncertain future a 
 governor can do little save lead and influence, entertain 
 visitors, discharge the necessary courtesies to all classes of his 
 subjects, and keep his eyes open. These duties at least Sir 
 Charles Lee discharges to perfection, the entertaining part of 
 them on a scale so liberal that if P^re Labat came back he 
 would suppose that the two hundred years which have gone 
 by since his visit was a dream, and that Government House 
 at least was still as he left it. In an establishment which had 
 so many demands upon it, and where so many visitors of all 
 kinds were going and coming, I had no claim to be admitted. 
 I felt that I should be an intruder, and had I been allowed 
 would have taken myself elsewhere, but Sir Charles's peremp- 
 
92 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 tory generosity admitted of no refusal. As a subject I was 
 bound to submit to the Queen's representative. I cannot say I 
 was sorry to be compelled. In Government House I should see 
 and hear what I could neither have seen nor heard elsewhere. 
 I should meet people who could tell me what I most wanted 
 to know. I had understood already that owing to the sugar 
 depression the state of the island was critical. Officials were 
 alarmed. Bankers were alarmed. No one could see beyond 
 the next year what was likely to happen. Sir Charles himself 
 would have most to say. He was evidently anxious. Perhaps 
 if he had a fault, he was over anxious ; but with the possibiUty 
 of social confusion before him, with nearly 200,000 peasant 
 subjects, who in a few months might be out of work and so 
 out of food, with the inflammable negro nature, and a suspi- 
 cious and easily excited public opinion at home, the position of 
 a Governor of Barbadoes is not an enviable one. The Govern- 
 ment at home, no doubt with the best intentions, has aggra- 
 vated any peril which there may be by enlarging the suffrage. 
 The experience of Governor Eyre in Jamaica has taught the 
 danger of being too active, but to be too inactive may be 
 dangerous also. If there is a stir again in any part of these 
 islands, and violence and massacre come of it, as it came in 
 St. Domingo, the responsibility is with the governor, and the 
 account will be strictly exacted of him. 
 
 I must describe more particularly the reasons which there 
 are for uneasiness. On the day on which I landed I saw an 
 article in a Bridgetown paper in which my coming there was 
 spoken of as perhaps the last straw which would break the 
 overburdened back. I know not why I should be thought 
 likely to add anything to the load of Barbadian afflictions. I 
 should be a worse friend to the colonies than I have tried to 
 be if I was one of those who would quench the smoking flax 
 of loyalty in any West Indian heart. But loyalty, 1 very well 
 know, is sorely tried just now. The position is painfully 
 simple. The great prosperity of the island ended with 
 emancipation. Barbadoes suffered less than Jamaica or the 
 Antilles because the population was large and the land limited, 
 
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 93 
 
 and the blacks were obliged to work to keep themselves alive. 
 The abolition of the sugar duties was the next blow. The 
 price of sugar fell, and the estates yielded little more than the 
 expense of cultivation. Owners of properties who were their 
 own managers, and had sense and energy, continued to keep 
 themselves afloat ; but absenteeism had become the fashion. 
 The brilliant society which is described by Labat had been 
 melting for more than a century. More and more the old West 
 Indian famihes removed to England, farmed their lands 
 through agents and overseers, or sold them to speculating 
 capitalists. The personal influence of the white man over the 
 black, which might have been brought about by a friendly 
 intercourse after slavery was abolished, was never so much as 
 attempted. The higher class of gentry found the colony more 
 and more distasteful to them, and they left the arrangement 
 of the labour question to persons to whom the blacks were 
 nothing, emancipated thoujh they might be, except instruments 
 of production. A negro can be attached to his employer at least 
 as easily as a horse or a dog. The horse or dog requires kind 
 treatment, or he becomes indifferent or sullen ; so it is with 
 the negro. But the forced equality of the races before the 
 law made more difficult the growth of any kindly feeling. To 
 the overseer on a plantation the black labourer was a machine 
 out of which the problem was to get the maximum of work 
 with the minimum of pay. In the slavery times the horse and 
 dog relation was a real thing. The master and mistress 
 joked and laughed with their dark bondsmen, knew Caesar 
 from Pompey, knew how many children each had, gave them 
 small presents, cared for them when they were sick, and 
 maintained them when they were old and past work. All this 
 ended wiih emancipation. Between whites and blacks no 
 relations remained save that of employer and employed. They 
 lived apart. They had no longer, save in exceptional instances, 
 any personal communication with each other. The law refusing 
 to recognise a difference, the social Hne was drawn the harder^ 
 which the law was unable to reach. 
 
 In the Antilles the plantations broke up as I had seen in 
 
94 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 Grenada. The whites went away, and the land was divided 
 among the negroes. In Barbadoes, the estates were kept 
 together. The EngHsh character and the EngUsh habits were 
 stamped deeper there, and were not so easily obliterated. But 
 the stars in their courses have fought against the old system. 
 Once the West Indies had a monopoly of the sugar trade. 
 Steam and progress have given them a hundred natural com- 
 petitors; and on the back of these came the unnatural 
 bounty-fed beetroot sugar competition. Meanwhile the ex- 
 pense of living increased in the days of inflated hope and 
 * unexampled prosperity.' Free trade, whatever its immediate 
 consequences, was to make everyone rich in the end. When 
 the income of an estate fell short one year, it was to rise in the 
 next, and the money was borrowed to make ends meet ; when 
 it didn't rise, more money was borrowed ; and there is now 
 hardly a property in the island which is not loaded to the 
 sinking point. Tied to sugar-growing, Barbadoes has no 
 second industry to fall back upon. The blacks, who are heed- 
 less and light-hearted, increase and multiply. They will not 
 emigrate, they are so much attached to their homes ; and the 
 not distant prospect is of a general bankruptcy, which may 
 throw the land for the moment out of cultivation, with a 
 hungry unemployed multitude to feed without means of 
 feeding them, and to control without the personal acquain- 
 tance and influence which alone can make control possible. 
 
 At home there is a general knowledge that things are not 
 going on well out there. But, true to our own ways of 
 thinking, we regard it as their affair and not as ours. If cheap 
 sugar ruins the planters, it benefits the English workman. 
 The planters had their innings ; it is now the consumer's turn. 
 What are the West Indies to us ? On the map they appear 
 to belong more to the United States than to us. Let the 
 United States take them and welcome. So thinks, perhaps,- 
 the average Englishman; and, analogous to him, the West 
 Indian proprietor reflects that, if admitted into the Union, he 
 would have the benefit of J;he American market, which would 
 set him on his feet again ; and that the Americans, probably 
 
AMERICAN INFLUENCE 95 
 
 finding that they, if not we, could make some profit out of the 
 islands, would be likely to settle the black question for him in 
 a more satisfactory manner. 
 
 That such a feeUng as this should exist is natural and par- 
 donable ; and it would have gone deeper than it has gone if it 
 were not that there are two parties to every bargain, and those 
 in favour of such a union have met hitherto with no encourage- 
 ment. The Americans are wise in their generation. They 
 looked at Cuba ; they looked at St. Domingo. They might 
 have had both on easy terms, but they tell you that their con- 
 stitution does not allow them to hold dependent states. What 
 they annex they absorb, and they did not wish to absorb 
 another million and a half of blacks and as many Roman 
 Catholics, having enough already of both. Our English islands 
 may be more tempting, but there too the black cloud hangs 
 thick and grows yearly thicker, and through English indulgence 
 is more charged with dangerous elements. Already, they say, 
 they have every advantage which the islands can give them. 
 They exercise a general protectorate, and would probably 
 interfere if France or England were to attempt again to 
 extend their dominions in that quarter; but they prefer to 
 leave to the present owners the responsibility of managing and 
 feeding the cow, while they are to have the milking of it. 
 
 Thus the proposal of annexation, which has never gone 
 beyond wishes and talk, has so far been coldly received ; but 
 the Americans did make their offer a short time since, at 
 which the drowning Barbadians grasped as at a floating plank. 
 England would give them no hand to save them from the 
 efiects of the beetroot bounties. The Americans were willing 
 to relax their own sugar duties to admit West Indian sugar 
 duty free, and give them the benefit of their own high prices. 
 The colonies being unable to make treaties for themselves, the 
 proposal was referred home and was rejected. The Board of 
 Trade had, no doubt, excellent reasons for objecting to ari 
 arrangement which would have flung our whole commerce 
 with the West Indies into American hands, and might have 
 •formed a prelude to a closer attachment. It would have been 
 
96 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 a violation also of those free-trade principles which are the 
 English political gospel. Moreover, our attitude towards our 
 colonies has changed in the last twenty years ; we now wish to 
 preserve the attachment of communities whom a generation 
 back we should have told to do as they liked, and have bidden 
 them God speed on their way ; and this treaty may have been 
 regarded as a step towards separation. But the unfortunate 
 Barbadians found themselves, with the harbour in sight, driven 
 out again into the free-trade hurricane. We would not help 
 them ourselves ; we declined to let the Americans help them ; 
 and help themselves they could not. They dare not resent 
 our indifference to their interests, which, if they were stronger, 
 would have been more visibly displayed. They must wait 
 now for what the future will bring with as much composure as 
 they can command, but I did hear outcries of impatience to 
 which it was unpleasant to listen. Nay, it was even suggested 
 as a means of inducing the Americans to forego their reluc- 
 tance to take them into the Union, that we might relinquish 
 such rights as we possessed in Canada if the Americans would 
 relieve us of the West Indies, for which we appeared to care 
 so little. 
 
 If Barbadoes is driven into bankruptcy, the estates will have 
 to be sold, and will probably be broken up as they have been 
 in the Antilles. The first difficulty will thus be got over. But 
 the change cannot be carried out in a day. If wages suddenly 
 cease the negroes will starve, and will not take their starvation 
 patiently. At the worst, however, means will probably be 
 found to keep the land from falling out of cultivation. 
 The Barbadians see their condition in the light of their 
 grievances, and make the worst of it. The continental 
 powers may tire of the bounty system, or something else 
 may happen to make sugar rise. The prospect is not a bright 
 one, but what actually happens in this world is generally the 
 unexpected. 
 
 As a visit my stay at Government House was made simply 
 delightful to me. I remained there (with interruptions) for a 
 fortnight, and Lady L^— did not only permit, but she insisted. 
 
LIFE IN THE WEST INDIES 97 
 
 that I should be as if in an hotel, and come and go as I liked. 
 The climate of Barbadoes, so far as I can speak of it, is as 
 sparkling and invigorating as champagne. Cocktail may be 
 wanted in Trinidad. In Barbadoes the air is all one asks for, 
 and between night breezes and sea breezes one has plenty of 
 it. Day begins with daylight, as it ought to do. You have 
 slept without knowing anything about it. There are no 
 venomous crawling creatures. Cockroaches are the worst, 
 but they scuttle out of the way so alarmed and ashamed of 
 themselves if you happen to see them, that I never could 
 bring myself to hurt one. You spring out of bed as if the 
 process of getting up were actually pleasant. Well-appointed 
 West Indian houses are generally provided with a fresh-water 
 swimming bath. Though cold by courtesy the water seldom 
 falls below 65^, and you float luxuriously upon it without 
 dread of chilL The early coffee follows the bath, and then 
 the stroll under the big trees, among strange flowers, or in the 
 grotto with the ferns and humming birds. If it were part of 
 one's regular life, I suppose that one would want something 
 to do. Sir Charles was the most active of men, and had been 
 busy in his office for an hour before I had come down to 
 lounge. But for myself I discovered that it was possible, at 
 least for an interval, to be perfectly idle and perfectly happy, 
 surrounded by the daintiest beauties of an English hothouse, 
 with palm trees waving like fans to cool one, and with sensitive 
 plants, which are common as daisies, strewing themselves 
 under one's feet to be trodden upon. 
 
 After breakfast the heat would be considerable, but with an 
 umbrella I could walk about the town and see what was to be 
 seen. Alas ! here one has something to desire. Where Pere 
 Labat saw a display of splendour which reminded him of Paris 
 and London, you now find only stores on the American pat- 
 tern, for the most part American goods, bad in quality and 
 extravagantly dear. Treaty or no treaty, it is to America that 
 the trade is drifting, and we might as well concede with a 
 good grace what must soon come of itself whether we like it 
 or not. The streets are relieved from ugliness by the trees 
 
98 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 and by occasional handsome buildings. Often I stood to 
 admire the pea-green Nelson. Once I went into the Assembly 
 where the legislature was discussing more or less unquietly the 
 prospects of the island. The question of the hour was economy. 
 In the opinion of patriot Barbadians, sore at the refusal of the 
 treaty, the readiest way to reduce expenditure was to diminish 
 the salaries of officials from the governor downwards. The 
 officials, knowing that they were very moderately paid already, 
 naturally demurred. The most interesting part of the thing 
 to me was the hall in which the proceedings were going on. 
 It is handsome in itself, and has a series of painted windows 
 representing the English sovereigns from James I. to Queen 
 Victoria. Among them in his proper place stood Oliver 
 Cromwell, the only formal recognition of the great Protector 
 that I know of in any part of the English dominions. Bar- 
 badoes had been Cavalier in its general sympathies, but has 
 taken an independent view of things, and here too has had an 
 opinion of its own. 
 
 HospitaHty was always a West Indian characteristic. There 
 were luncheons and dinners, and distinguished persons to be 
 met and talked to. Among these I had the special good for- 
 tune of making acquaintance with Sir Charles Pearson, now 
 commanding-in-chief in those parts. Even in these days, 
 crowded as they are by small incidents made large by news- 
 papers, we have not yet forgotten the defence of a fort in the 
 interior of Zululand where Sir Charles Pearson and his small 
 garrison were cut off from their communications with Natal. 
 For a week or two he was the chief object of interest in every 
 English house. In obedience to orders which it was not his 
 busmess to question, he had assisted Sir T. Shepstone in the 
 memorable annexation of the Transvaal. He had seen also to 
 what that annexation led, and, being a truth-speaking man, he 
 did not attempt to conceal the completeness of our defeat. 
 Our military establishment in the West Indies is of modest 
 dimensions; but a strong English soldier, who says little and 
 does his duty, and never told a He in his life or could tell one, 
 is a comforting figure to fall in with. One feels that there will 
 
BARBADIAN SOCIETY 99 
 
 be something to retire upon when parliamentary oratory has 
 finished its work of disintegration. 
 
 The pleasantest incident of the day was the evening drive 
 
 with Lady L . She would take me out shortly before 
 
 sunset, and bring me back again when the tropical stars were 
 showing faintly and the fireflies had begun to sparkle about 
 the bushes, and the bats were flitting to and fro after the night 
 moths like spirits of darkness chasing human souls. 
 
 The neighbourhood of Bridgetown has little natural beauty; 
 but the roads are excellent, the savannah picturesque with riding 
 parties and polo players and lounging red jackets, every one 
 being eager to pay his or her respect to the gracious lady of 
 the Queen's representative. We called at pretty villas where 
 there would be evening teas and lawn tennis in the cool. The 
 society is not extensive, and here would be collected most of 
 it that was worth meeting. At one of these parties I fell in 
 with the ofiicers of the iVmerican squadron, the commodore a 
 very interesting and courteous gentleman whom I should have 
 taken for a fellow-countryman. There are many diamonds, 
 and diamonds of the first water, among the Americans as among 
 ourselves ; but the cutting and setting is different. Commo- 
 dore D was cut and set like an Englishman. He intro- 
 duced me to one of his brother officers who had been in Hayti. 
 Spite of Sir Spenser St. John, spite of all the confirmatory 
 evidence which I had heard, I was still incredulous about the 
 alleged cannibalism there. To my inquiries this gentleman 
 had only the same answer to give. The fact was beyond question. 
 He had himself known instances of it. 
 
 The commodore had a grievance against us illustrating West 
 Indian manners. These islands are as nervous about their 
 health as so many old ladies. The yellow flags float on ship 
 after ship in the Bridgetown roadstead, and crews, passengers, 
 and cargoes are sternly interdicted from the land. Jamaica 
 was in ill name from small-pox, and, as Cuba will not drop its 
 intercourse with Jamaica, Cuba falls also under the ban. The 
 commodore had directed a case of cigars from Havana to meet 
 him at Barbadoes. They arrived, but might not be transferred 
 
 7—2 
 
loo THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 from the steamer which brought them, even on board his own 
 frigate, lest he might bring infection on shore in his pocket. 
 They went on to England, to reach him perhaps eventually in 
 New York. 
 
 Colonel 's duties, as chief of the police, obliged him to 
 
 make occasional rounds to visit his stations. He recollected 
 his promise, and he irxvited me one morning to accompany him. 
 We were to breakfast at his house on our return, so I antici- 
 pated an excursion of a few miles at the utmost. He called 
 for me soon after sunrise with a light carriage and a brisk pair 
 of horses. We were rapidly clear of the town. The roads were 
 better than the best I have seen out of England, the only fault 
 in them being the white coral dust which dazzles and blinds the 
 eyes. Everywhere there were signs of age and of long occu- 
 pation. The stone steps leading up out of the road to the 
 doors of the houses had been worn by human feet for hundreds 
 of years. The houses themselves were old, and as if suffering 
 from the universal depression — gates broken, gardens dis- 
 ordered, and woodwork black and bUstered for want of paint. 
 But if the habitations were neglected, there was no neglect in 
 the fields. Sugar cane alternated with sweet potatoes and yams 
 and other strange things the names of which I beard and for- 
 got; but there was not a weed to be seen or broken fence 
 where fence was needed. The soil was clean every inch of it, 
 as well hoed and trenched as in a Middlesex market garden. 
 Salt fish and flour, which is the chief food of the blacks, is 
 imported ; but vegetables enough are raised in Barbadoes to 
 keep the cost of living incredibly low ; and, to my uninstructed 
 eyes, it seemed that even if sugar and wages did fail there 
 could be no danger of any sudden famine. The people were 
 thick as rabbits in a warren ; women with loaded baskets on their 
 heads laughing and chirruping, men driving donkey carts, four 
 donkeys abreast, smoking their early pipes as if they had not a 
 care in the world, as, indeed, they have not. 
 
 On we went, the Colonel's horses stepping out twelve miles 
 an hour, and I wondered privately what was to become of our 
 breakfast. We were striking right across the island, along the 
 
A MORNING DRIVE loi 
 
 coral ridge which forms the backbone of it. We found our- 
 selves at length in a grove of orange trees and shaddocks, at 
 the old church of St. John's, which stands upon a perpendi- 
 cular cliff; Codrington College on the level under our feet, 
 and beyond us the open Atlantic and the everlasting breakers 
 from the trade winds fringing the shore with foam. Far out 
 were the white sails of the fishing smacks. The Barbadians 
 are careless of weather, and the best of boat sailors. It was 
 very pretty in the bright morning, and the church itself was not 
 the least interesting part of the scene. The door was wide 
 open. We went in, and I seemed to be in a parish church in 
 England as parish churches used to be when I was a child. 
 There were the old-fashioned seats, the old unadorned com- 
 munion table, the old pulpit and reading desk and the clerk's 
 desk below, with the lion and the unicorn conspicuous above 
 the chancel arch. The white tablets on the wall bore familiar 
 names dating back into the last century. On the floor were 
 flagstones still older with armorial bearings and letters cut in 
 stone, half effaced by the feet of the generations who had 
 trodden up the same aisles till they, too, lay down and rested 
 there. And there was this, too, to be remembered — that these 
 Barbadian churches, old as they might seem, had belonged 
 always to the Anglican communion. No mass had ever been 
 said at that altar. It was a milestone on the high road of time, 
 and was venerable to me at once for its antiquity and for ^e 
 era at which it had begun to exist. 
 
 At the porch was an ancient slab on which was a coat of 
 arms, a crest with a hand and sword, and a motto, ' Sic nos, 
 sic nostra tue??turJ The inscription said that it was in 
 memory of Michael Mahon, *of the kingdom of Ireland,' 
 erected by his children and grandchildren. Who was Michael 
 Mahon ? Some expatriated, so-called rebel, I suppose, whose 
 sword could not defend him from being Barbados'd with so 
 many other poor wretches who were sent the same road — 
 victims of the tragi-comedy of the English government of 
 Ireland. There were plenty of them wandering about in 
 Labat's time, ready, as Labat observes, to lend a help to the 
 
I02 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 French, should they take a fancy to land a force in the 
 island. 
 
 The churchyard was scarcely so home-like. The graves 
 were planted with tropical shrubs and flowers. Palms waved 
 over the square stone monuments — stephanotis and jessamine 
 crept about the iron railings. The primroses and hyacinths 
 and violets, with which we dress the mounds under which our 
 friends are sleeping, will not grow in the tropics. In the place 
 of them are the exotics of our hot-houses. We too are, 
 perhaps, exotics of another kind in these islands, and may 
 not, after all, have a long abiding place in them. 
 
 Colonel , who with his secular duties combined serious 
 
 and spiritual feeling, was a friend of the clergyman of St. 
 John's, and hoped to introduce me to him. This gentleman, 
 however, was absent from home. Our round was still but half 
 completed ; we had to mount again and go another seven 
 miles to inspect a police station. The police themselves were, 
 of course, blacks — well-grown fine men, in a high state of 
 discipline. Our visit was not expected, but all was as it should 
 be j the rooms well swept and airy, the horses in good con- 
 dition, stables clean, harness and arms polished and ready for 
 use. Serious as might be the trials of the Barbadians and 
 decrepit the financial condition, there were no symptoms of 
 neglect either on the farms or in the social machinery. 
 
 Altogether we drove between thirty and forty miles that 
 morning. We were in time for breakfast after all, and I had 
 seen half the island. It is like the Isle of Thanet, or the 
 country between Calais and Boulogne. One characteristic 
 feature must not be forgotten : there are no rivers and no 
 waterpower ; steam engines have been introduced, but the 
 chief motive agent is still the never-ceasing trade wind. You 
 see windmills everywhere, as it was in the time of Labat. 
 The planters are reproached as being behind the age ; they 
 are told that with the latest improvements they might still 
 defy their beetroot enemy. It may be so, but a wind which 
 never rests is force which costs little, and it is possible that 
 they understand their own business best. 
 
SIR GRAHAM BRIGGS 103 
 
 Another morning excursion showed me the rest of the 
 country, and introduced me to scenes and persons still more 
 interesting. Sir Graham Briggs ^ is perhaps the most dis- 
 tinguished representative of the old Barbadian families. He 
 is, or was, a man of large fortune, with vast estates in this 
 and other islands. A few years ago, when prospects were 
 brighter, he was an advocate of the constitutional development 
 so much recommended from England. The West Indian 
 Islands were to be confederated into a dominion like that of 
 Canada, to take over the responsibilities of government, and 
 to learn to stand alone. The decline in the value of property, 
 the general decay of the white interest in the islands, and the 
 rapid increase of the blacks, taught those who at one time 
 were ready for the change what the real nature of it would be. 
 They have paused to consider ; and the longer they consider 
 the less they like it. 
 
 Sir Graham had called upon me at Government House, 
 and had spoken fully and freely about the offered American 
 sugar treaty. As a severe sufferer he was naturally irritated at 
 the rejection of it ; and in the mood in which I found him, I 
 should think it possible that if the Americans would hold their 
 hands out with an offer of admission into the Union, he and a 
 good many other gentlemen would meet them halfway. He 
 did not say so — I conjecture only from natural probabilities, 
 and from what I should feel myself if I were in their position. 
 Happily the temptation cannot fall in their way. An American 
 official laconically summed up the situation to me : * As satel- 
 lites, sir, as much as you please ; but as parts of the primary — no, 
 sir.' The Americans will not take them into the Union ; 
 they must remain, therefore, with their English primary and 
 make the best of it ; neither as satellites, for they have no 
 proper motion of their own, nor as incorporated in the British 
 Empire, for they derive no benefit from their connection with 
 it, but as poor relations distantly acknowledged. I did not 
 
 ^ As I correct the proofs I learn, to my great sorrow, that Sir Graham 
 is dead. I have lost in him a lately made but valued friend ; and the 
 colony has lost the ablest of its legislators. 
 
I04 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 expect that Sir Graham would have more to say to me than he 
 had said already : but he was a cultivated and noteworthy 
 person, his house was said to be the most splendid of the old 
 Barbadian merchant palaces, and I gratefully accepted an 
 invitation to pay him a short visit. 
 
 I started as before in the early morning, before the sun was 
 above the trees. The road followed the Hne of the shore. 
 Originally, I believe, Barbadoes was Hke the Antilles, covered 
 with forest. In the interior little remains save cabbage palms 
 and detached clumps of mangy-looking mahogany trees. The 
 forest is gone, and human beings have taken the place of it. 
 For ten miles I was driving through a string of straggling 
 villages, each cottage or cabin having its small vegetable 
 garden and clump of plantains. Being on the western or 
 sheltered side of the island, the sea was smooth and edged 
 with mangrove, through which at occasional openings we saw 
 the shining water and the white coral beach, and fishing 
 boats either drawn up upon it or anchored outside with their 
 sails up. Trees had been planted for shade among the houses. 
 There were village greens with great silk-cotton trees, banyans 
 and acacias, mangoes and oranges, and shaddocks with their 
 large fruit glowing among the leaves Hke great golden melons. 
 The people swarmed, children tumbling about half naked, so 
 like each other that one wondered whether their mothers 
 knew their own from their neighbours' ; the fishermen's wives 
 selling flying fish, of which there are infinite numbers. It was 
 an innocent, pretty scene. One missed green fields with cows 
 upon them. Guinea grass, which is all that they have, makes 
 excellent fodder, but is ugly to look at ; and is cut and carried, 
 not eaten where it grows. Of animal life there were innumer- 
 able donkeys — no black man will walk if he can find a donkey 
 to carry him — infinite poultry, and pigs, familiar enough, but 
 not allowed a free entry into the cabins as in Ireland. Of 
 birds there was not any great variety. The humming birds 
 preferred less populated quarters. There were small varieties 
 of finches and sparrows and buntings, winged atoms without 
 beauty of form or colour j there were a few wild pigeons ; 
 
NEGRO WOMEN 105 
 
 but the prevailing figure was the Barbadian crow, a little fellow 
 no bigger than a blackbird, a diminutive jackdaw, who gets his 
 living upon worms and insects and parasites, and so tame that 
 he would perch upon a boy's head if he saw a chance of 
 finding anything eatable there. The women dress ill in 
 Barbadoes, for they imitate English ladies ; but no dress can 
 conceal the grace of their forms when they are young. It 
 struck Pere Labat two centuries ago, and time and their 
 supposed sufferings as slaves have made no difference. They 
 work harder than the men, and are used as beasts of burden 
 to fetch and carry, but they carry their loads on their heads, 
 and thus from childhood have to stand upright with the neck 
 straight and firm. They do not spoil their shapes with stays, 
 or their walk with high-heeled" shoes. They plant their feet 
 firmly on the ground. Every movement is elastic and rounded, 
 and the grace of body gives, or seems to give, grace also to 
 the eyes and expression. Poor things ! it cannot compensate 
 for their colour, which now when they are free is harder 
 to bear than when they were slaves. Their prettiness, such as 
 it is, is short-lived. They grow old early, and an old negress 
 is always hideous. 
 
 After keeping by the sea for an hour we turned inland, and 
 at the foot of a steep hiil we met my host, who transferred me 
 to his own carriage. We had still four or five miles to go 
 through cane fields and among sugar mills. At the end of 
 them we came to a grand avenue of cabbage palms, a hundred 
 or a hundred and twenty feet high. How their slim stems 
 with their dense coronet of leaves survive a hurricane is one 
 qf the West Indian marvels. They escape destruction by the 
 elasticity with which they yield to it. The branches, which in 
 a calm stand out symmetrically, forming a circle of which the 
 stem is the exact centre, bend round before a violent wind, 
 are pressed close together, and stream out horizontally like a 
 horse's tail. 
 
 The avenue led up to Sir Graham's house, which stands 800 
 feet above the sea. The garden, once the wonder of the 
 island, was running wild, though rare trees and shrubs survived 
 
io6 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 from its ancient splendour. Among them were two Welling- 
 tonias as tall as the palms, but bent out of shape by the trade 
 winds. Passing through a hall, among a litter of Carib curi- 
 osities, we entered the drawing-room, a magnificent saloon ex- 
 tending with various compartments over the greater part of 
 the ground-floor story. It was filled with rare and curious 
 things, gathered in the days when sugar was a horn of plenty, 
 and selected with the finest taste ; pictures, engravings, gems, 
 antiquarian relics, books, maps, and manuscripts. There had 
 been fine culture in the West Indies when all these treasures 
 were collected. The English settlers there, like the English 
 in Ireland, had the tastes of a grand race, and by-and-by we 
 shall miss, both of them when they are overwhelmed, as they 
 are likely to be, in the revolutionary tide. Sir Graham was 
 stemming it to the best of his ability, and if he was to go 
 under would go under like a gentleman. A dining room almost 
 as large had once been the scene of hospitalities like those 
 which are celebrated by Tom Cringle. A broad staircase led 
 up from the hall to long galleries, out of which bedrooms 
 opened; with cool deep balconies and the universal green 
 blinds. It was a palace with which Aladdin himself might 
 have been satisfied, one of those which had stirred the envy- 
 ing admiration of foreign travellers in the last century, one of 
 many then, now probably the last surviving representative of 
 Anglo-West Indian civilisation. Like other forms of human 
 life, it has had its day and could not last for ever. Something 
 better may grow in the place of it, but also something worse 
 may grow. The example of Hayti ought to suggest misgivings 
 to the most ardent philo-negro enthusiast. 
 
 West Indian cookery was famous over the world. Pere 
 Labat devotes at least a thousand pages to the dishes com- 
 pounded of the spices and fruits of the islands, and their fish 
 and fowl. Carib tradition was developed by artists from 
 London and Paris. The Caribs, according to Labat, only ate 
 one another for ceremony and on state occasions ; their 
 common diet was as excellent as it was innocent ; and they 
 had ascertained by careful experience the culinary and medi- 
 
A MERCHANT PALACE 107 
 
 cinal virtues of every animal and plant around them. Tom 
 Cringle is eloquent on the same subject, but with less scientific 
 knowledge. My own unfortunately is less than his, and I can 
 do no justice at all to Sir Graham's entertainment of me; I 
 can but say that he treated me to a West Indian banquet of 
 the old sort, infinite in variety, and with subtle differences of 
 flavour for which no language provides names. The wine — 
 laid up consule Planco^ when Pitt was prime minister, and the 
 days of liberty as yet were not — was as admirable as the dishes, 
 and the fruit more exquisite than either. Such pineapples, 
 such shaddocks, I had never tasted before, and shall never taste 
 again. 
 
 Hospitable, generous, splendid as was Sir Graham's reception 
 of me, it was nevertheless easy to see that the prospects of the 
 island sat heavy upon him. We had a long conversation when 
 breakfast was over, which, if it added nothing new to what I 
 had heard before, deepened and widened the impression of it. 
 
 The English West Indies, like other parts of the world, are 
 going through a silent revolution. Elsewhere the revolution, 
 as we hope, is a transition state, a new birth ; a passing away 
 of what is old and worn out, that a fresh and healthier 
 order may rise in its place. In the West Indies the most 
 sanguine of mortals will find it difficult to entertain any such 
 hope at all. We have been a ruling power there for two 
 hundred and fifty years ; the whites whom we planted as oui 
 representatives are drifting into helplessness, and they regard 
 England and England's policy as the principal cause of it. 
 The blacks whom, in a fit of virtuous benevolence, we eman- 
 cipated, do not feel that they are particularly obliged to us. 
 They think, if they think at all, that they were ill treated 
 originally, and have received no more than was due to them, 
 and that perhaps it was not benevolence at all on our part, 
 but a desire to free ourselves from the reproach of slavehold- 
 ing. At any rate, the tendencies now in operation are loosen- 
 ing the hold which we possess on the islands, and the longer 
 they last the looser that hold will become. French influence 
 is in no danger of dying out in Martinique and Guadaloupe. 
 
lo8 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 The Spanish race is not dying in Cuba and Puerto Rico. 
 England will soon be no more than a name in Barbadoes 
 and the Antilles. Having acquitted our conscience by eman- 
 cipation, we have left our West Indian interest to sink or 
 swim. Our principle has been to leave each part of our 
 empire (except the East Indies) to take care of itself : we give 
 the various inhabitants liberty, and what we understand by fair 
 play ; that we have any further moral responsibilities towards 
 them we do not imagine, even in our dreams, when they have 
 ceased to be of commercial importance to us ; and we assume 
 that the honour of being British subjects will suffice to secure 
 their allegiance. It will not suffice, as we shall eventually dis- 
 cover. We have decided that if the West Indies are to 
 become again prosperous they must recover by their own 
 energy. Our other colonies can do without help; why not 
 they ? We ought to remember that they are not like the other 
 colonies. We occupied them at a time when slavery was con- 
 sidered a, lawful institution, profitable to ourselves and useful 
 to the souls of the negroes, who were brought by it within 
 reach of salvation.^ We became ourselves the chief slave 
 dealers in the world. We peopled our islands with a popula- 
 tion of blacks more dense by far in proportion to the whites 
 than France or Spain ever ventured to do. We did not re- 
 cognise, as the French and Spaniards did, that if our western 
 colonies were permanently to belong to us, we must occupy 
 them ourselves. We thought only of the immediate profit 
 
 ' It was on this ground alone that slavery was permitted in the French 
 islands. Labat says : 
 
 C'est une loi trfes-ancienne que les terres soumises aux rois de France 
 rendent libres tous ceux qui s'y peuvent retirer. C'est ce qui fit que le roi 
 Louis XIII, de glorieuse mdmoire, aussi pieux qu'il dtoit sage, eut toutes-les 
 peines du monde k consentir que les premiers habitants des isles eussent 
 des esclaves : et ne se rendit enfin qu'aux pressantes sollicitations qu'on luy 
 faisoit de leur octroyer cette permission que parce qu'on lui remontra que 
 c'dtoit un moyen infaillible et I'unique qu'il y eut pour inspirer le culte du 
 vrai Dieu aux Africains, les retirer de I'idolatrie, et les faire persdvdrer jusqu'a 
 la mort dans la religion chretienne qu'on leur feroit embrasser. — Vol. iv. 
 p. 14. 
 
PROBABLE RESULTS OF CONSTITUTIONAL GOVT. 109 
 
 which was to be gathered out of the slave gangs ; and the dis- 
 proportion of the two races — always dangerously large — has 
 increased with ever-gathering velocity since the emancipation. 
 It is now beyond control on the old lines. The scanty whites 
 are told that they must work out their own salvation on equal 
 terms with their old servants. The relation is an impossible 
 one. The independent energy which we may fairly look for 
 in Australia and New Zealand is not to be looked for in Jamaica 
 and Barbadoes; and the problem must have a new solution. 
 
 Confederation is to be the remedy, we are told. Let the 
 islands be combined under a constitution. The whites collec- 
 tively will then be a considerable body, and can assert them- 
 selves successfully. Confederation is, as I said before of the 
 movement in Trinidad, but a turn of the kaleidoscope, the 
 same pieces with a new pattern. A West Indian self-governed 
 Dominion is possible only with a full negro vote. If the 
 whites are to combine, so will the blacks. It will be a 
 rule by the blacks and for the blacks. Let a generation 
 or two pass by and carry away with them the old traditions, 
 and an English governor-general will be found presiding over 
 a black council, delivering the speeches made for him by a 
 black prime minister; and how long could this endure? No 
 English gentleman would consent to occupy so absurd a situa- 
 tion. The two races are not equal and will not blend. If the 
 white people do not depart of themselves, black legislation 
 will make it impossible for any of them to stay who would not 
 be better out of the way. The Anglo-Irish Protestants will 
 leave Ireland if there is an Irish Catholic parliament in College 
 Green ; the whites, for the same reason, will leave the West 
 Indies ; and in one and the other the connection with the 
 British Empire will disappear along with them. It must be 
 so ; only politicians whose horizon does not extend beyond 
 their personal future, and whose ambition is only to secure the 
 immediate triumph of their party, can expect anything else. - 
 
 Before my stay at Barbadoes ended, I had an opportunity 
 of meeting at dinner a negro of pure blood who has risen to 
 eminence by his own talent and character. He has held the 
 
no THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 office of attorney-general. He is now chief justice of the 
 island. Exceptions are supposed proverbially to prove nothing, 
 or to prove the opposite of what they appear to prove. When 
 a particular phenomenon occurs rarely, the probabilities are 
 strong against the recurrence of it. Having heard the cranio- 
 logical and other objections to the supposed identity of the 
 negro and white races, I came to the opinion long ago in 
 Africa, and I have seen no reason to change it, that whether 
 they are of one race or not there is no original or congenital 
 difference of capacity between them, any more than there is 
 between a black horse and a black dog and a white horse and 
 a white dog. With the same chances and with the same treat- 
 ment, I believe that distinguished men would be produced 
 
 equally from both races, and Mr. 's well-earned success is 
 
 an additional evidence of it. But it does not follow that what 
 can be done eventually can be done immediately, and the gulf 
 which divides the colours is no arbitrary prejudice, but has 
 been opened by the centuries of training and discipline which 
 have given us the start in the race. We set it down to slavery. 
 It would be far truer to set it down to freedom. The African 
 blacks have been free enough for thousands, perhaps for lens 
 of thousands of years, and it has been the absence of restraint 
 which has prevented them from becoming civilised. Genera- 
 tion has followed generation, and the children are as like their 
 father as the successive generations of apes. The whites, it is 
 likely enough, succeeded one another with the same similarity 
 for a long series of ages. It is now supposed that the human 
 race has been upon the planet for a hundred thousand years 
 at least, and the first traces of civilisation cannot be thrown 
 back at farthest beyond six thousand. During all those ages 
 mankind v/ent on treading in the same steps, century after 
 century making no more advance than the birds and beasts. 
 In Egypt or in India or one knows not where, accident or 
 natural development quickened into life our moral and intel- 
 lectual faculties ; and these faculties have grown into what we 
 now experience, not in the freedom in which the modern takes 
 delight, but under the sharp rule of the strong over the weak, 
 
THE CHIEF JUS TJCE OF BARBADOES 1 1 1 
 
 of the wise over the unwise. Our own Anglo-Norman race 
 has become capable of self-government only after a thousand 
 years of civil and spiritual authority. European government, 
 European instruction, continued steadily till his natural ten- 
 dencies are superseded by a higher instinct, may shorten the 
 probation period of the negro. Individual blacks of excep- 
 tional quality, like Frederick Douglas in America, or the Chief 
 Justice of Barbadoes, will avail themselves of opportunities to 
 rise, and the freest opportunities ought to be offered them. 
 But it is as certain as any future event can be that if we give 
 the negroes as a body the political powers which we claim for 
 ourselves, they will use them only to their own injury. They 
 will slide back into their old condition, and the chance will be 
 gone of lifting them to the level to which we have no right to 
 say that they are incapable of rising. 
 
 Chief Justice R owes his elevation to his English en- 
 vironment and his English legal training. He would not 
 pretend that he could have made himself what he is in Hayti 
 or in Dahomey. Let English authority die away, and the 
 average black nature, such as it now is, be left free to assert 
 itself, and there will be no more negroes like him in Barbadoes 
 or anywhere. 
 
 Naturally, I found him profoundly interested in the late 
 revelations of the state of Hayti. Sir Spenser St. John, an 
 English official, after residing for twelve years in Port au 
 Prince, had in a published narrative with many details and 
 particulars, declared that the republic of Toussaint I'Ouverture, 
 the idol of all believers in the new gospel of liberty, had, after 
 ninety years of independence, become a land where cannibal- 
 ism could be practised with impunity. The African Obeah, 
 the worship of serpents and trees and stones, after smouldering 
 in all the West Indies in the form of witchcraft and poisoning, 
 had broken out in Hayti in all its old hideousness. Children 
 were sacrificed as in the old days of Moloch and were de- 
 voured with horrid ceremony, salted limbs being preserved and 
 sold for the benefit of those who were unable to attend the 
 full solemnities. 
 
112 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 That a man in the position of a British resident should have 
 ventured on a statement which, if untrue, would be ruinous to 
 himself, appeared in a high degree improbable. Yet one had 
 to set one incredibility against another. Notwithstanding the 
 character of the evidence, when I went out to the West Indies 
 I was still unbelieving. I could not bring myself to credit that 
 in an island nominally Catholic, where the French language 
 was spoken, and there were cathedrals and churches and priests 
 and missionaries, so horrid a revival of devil-worship could 
 have been really possible. All the inquiries which I had been 
 able to make, from American and other officers who had been in 
 Hayti, confirmed Sir S. St. John's story. I had hardly found 
 a person who entertained a doubt of it. I was perplexed and 
 uncertain, when the Chief Justice opened the subject and 
 asked me what I thought. Had I been convinced I should 
 have turned the conversation, but I was not convinced and I 
 was not afraid to say so. I reminded him of the universal 
 conviction through Europe that the Jews were habitually 
 guilty of sacrificing children also. There had been detailed 
 instances. Alleged offenders had been brought before courts 
 of justice at any time for the last six hundred years. Witnesses 
 had been found to swear to facts which had been accepted as 
 conclusive. Wretched creatures in Henry III.'s time had 
 been dragged by dozens at horses' tails through the streets of 
 London, broken on the wheel, or torn to pieces by infuriated 
 mobs. Even within the last two years, the same accusation 
 had been brought forward in Russia and Germany, and had 
 been established apparently by adequate proof. So far as 
 popular conviction of the guilt of the Jews was an evidence 
 against them, nothing could be stronger; and no charge could 
 be without foundation on ordinary principles of evidence which 
 revived so often and in so many places. And yet many per- 
 sons, I said, and myself among them, believed that although 
 the accusers were perfectly sincere, the guilt of the Jews was 
 from end to end an hallucination of hatred. I had looked into 
 the particulars of some of the trials. They were Hke the trials 
 for witchcraft. The belief had created the fact, and accusa- 
 
STATE OF HAYTI 113 
 
 tion was itself evidence. I was prepared to find these stories 
 of child murder in Hayti were bred similarly of anti-negro 
 prejudice. 
 
 Had the Chief Justice caught at my suggestion with any 
 eagerness I should have suspected it myself. His grave diffi- 
 dence and continued hesitation in offering an opinion con- 
 firmed me in my own. I told him that I was going to Hayti 
 to learn what I could on the spot. I could not expect that I, 
 on a flying visit, could see deeper into the truth than Sir 
 Spenser St. John had seen, but at least I should not take with 
 me a mind already made up, and I was not given to credulity. 
 He took leave of me with an expression of passionate anxiety 
 that it might be found possible to remove so black a stain from 
 his unfortunate race. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Leeward and Windward Islands — The Caribs of Dominica — Visit of P6ie 
 Labat — St. Lucia — The Pitons — The harbour at Castries — Intended 
 coaling station — Visit to the administrator — The old fort and barracks 
 — Conversation with an American— Constitution of Dominica — Land at 
 Roseau. 
 
 Beyond all the West Indian Islands I had been curious to see 
 Dominica.* It was the scene of Rodney's great fight on April 
 12. It was the most beautiful of the Antilles and the least 
 known. A tribe of aboriginal Caribs still lingered in the 
 forests retaining the old look and the old language, and, except 
 that they no longer ate their prisoners, retaining their old 
 habits. They were skilful fishermen, skilful basket makers, 
 skilful in many curious arts. 
 
 The island lies between Martinique and Guadaloupe, and is 
 one of the group now called Leeward Islands, as distinguished 
 
 ^ Not to be confounded with St. Domingo, which is called after St. 
 Domenic, where the Spaniards first settled, and is now divided into the 
 two black republics of St. Domingo and Hayti. Dominica lies in the 
 chain of the Antilles between Martinique and Guadaloupe, and was so 
 named by Columbus because he discovered it on a Sunday. 
 
 S 
 
114 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 from St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Grenada, &c., which form the 
 Windward. The early geographers drew the line differently 
 and more rationally. The main direct-ion of the trade winds 
 is from east to west. To them the Windward Islands were the 
 whole chain of the Antilles, which form the eastern side of the 
 Caribbean Sea. The Leeward were the great islands on the 
 west of it — Cuba, St. Domingo, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica. 
 The modern division corresponds to no natural phenomenon. 
 The drift of the trades is rather from the north-east than from 
 the south-east, and the names serve only now to describe our 
 own not very successful political groupings. 
 
 Dominica cuts in two the French West Indian possessions. 
 The French took it originally from the Spaniards, occupied it, 
 colonised it, planted in it their religioi and their language, 
 and fmight desperately to maintain their possession. Lord 
 Rodney, to whom we owe our own position in the West Indies, 
 insisted that Dominica must belong to us to hold the French 
 m check, and regarded it as the most important of all our sta- 
 tions there. Rodney made it English, and English it has ever 
 since remained in spite of the furious efforts which France 
 made to recover an island which she so highly valued during 
 the Napoleon wars. I was anxious to learn what we had made 
 of a place which we had fought so hard for. 
 
 Though Dominica is the most mountainous of all the An- 
 tilles, it is split into many valleys of exquisite fertiUty. Through 
 each there runs a full and ample river, swarming with fish, and 
 yielding waterpower enough to drive all the mills which industry 
 could build. In these valleys and on the rich levels along the 
 shore the French had once their cane fields and orange gar- 
 dens, their pineapple beds and indigo plantations. 
 
 Labat, who travelled through the island at the close of the 
 seventeenth century, found it at that time chiefly occupied by 
 Caribs. With his hungry appetite for knowledge, he was a 
 guest in their villages, acquainted himself with their characters 
 and habits, and bribed out of them by lavish presents of brandy 
 the secrets of their medicines and poisons. The P^re was a 
 clever, curious man, with a genial human sympathy about him, 
 
PERE LAB A T AT DOMINICA 1 1 5 
 
 and v,'as indulgent to the faults which the poor coloured sinners 
 fell into from never having known better. He tried to make 
 Christians of them. They were willing to be baptised as often 
 as he liked for a glass of brandy. But he was not very angry 
 when he found that the Christianity went no deeper. Moral 
 virtues, he concluded charitably, could no more be expected 
 out of a Carib than reason and good sense out of a woman. 
 
 At Roseau, the capital, he fell in with the then queen of 
 Dominica, a Madame Ouvernard, a Carib of pure blood, who 
 in her time of youth and beauty had been the mistress of an 
 English governor of St. Kitts. When Labat saw her she was 
 a hundred years old with a family of children and grand- 
 children. She was a grand old lady, unclothed almost abso- 
 lutely, bent double, so that under ordinary circumstances 
 nothing of her face could be seen. Labat, however, presented 
 her with a couple of bottles of eau de vie, under the influence 
 of which she lifted up to him a pair of still brilliant eyes and a 
 fair mouthful of teeth. They did very well together, and on 
 parting they exchanged presents in Homeric fashion, she load- 
 ing him with baskets of fruit, he giving a box in return full of 
 pins and needles, knives and scissors. 
 
 Labat was a student of languages before philology had 
 become a science. He discovered from the language of the 
 Caribs that they were North American Indians. They called 
 themselves Banari^ which meant ' come from over sea.' 
 Their dialect was almost identical with what he had heard 
 spoken in Florida. They were cannibals, but- of a peculiar 
 kind. Human flesh was not their ordinary food; but they 
 * boucanned ' or dried the limbs of distinguished enemies 
 whom they had killed in battle, and handed them round to 
 be gnawed at special festivals. They were a light-hearted, 
 pleasant race, capital shots with bows and arrows, and ready 
 to do anything he asked in return for brandy. They killed a 
 hammer shark for his amusement by diving under the monster 
 and stabbing him with knives. As to their religion, they had 
 no objection to anything. But their real belief was in a sort 
 of devil. 
 
 8—2 
 
Ii6 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 Soon after Labat's visit the French came in, drove the 
 Caribs into the mountains, introduced negro slaves, and an 
 ordered form of society. Madame Ouvernard and her court 
 went to their own place. Canes were planted, and indigo and 
 coffee. A cathedral was built at Roseau, and parish churches 
 were scattered about the island. There were convents of 
 nuns and houses of friars, and a fort at the port with a garrison 
 in it. The French might have been there till now had not we 
 turned them out some ninety years ago ; English enterprise 
 then setting in that direction under the impulse of Rodney's 
 victories. I was myself about to see the improvements 
 which we had introduced into an acquisition which had cost 
 us so dear. 
 
 I was to be dropped at Roseau by the mail steamer from 
 Barbadoes to St. Thomas's. On our way we touched at 
 St. Lucia, another once famous possession of ours. This 
 island was once French also. Rodney took it in 1778. It 
 was the only one of the Antilles which was left to us in the 
 reverses which followed the capitulation of York Town. It 
 was in the harbour at Castries, the chief port, that Rodney 
 collected the fleet which fought and won the great battle with 
 the Count de Grasse. At the peace of Versailles, St. Lucia 
 was restored to France; but was retaken in 1796 by Sir 
 Ralph Abercrombie, and, like Dominica, has ever since 
 belonged to England. This, too, is' a beautiful mountainous 
 island, twice as large as Barbadoes, in which even at this 
 late day we have suddenly discovered that we have an 
 interest. The threatened Darien canal has awakened us to 
 a sense that we require a fortified coaling station in those 
 quarters. St. Lucia has the greatest natural advantages for 
 such a purpose, and works are already in progress there, 
 and the long-deserted forts and barracks which had been 
 made over to snakes and lizards, are again to be occupied 
 by English troops. 
 
 We sailed one evening from Barbadoes. In the grey of 
 the next morning we were in the passage between St. Lucia 
 and St. Vincent just under the 'Pitons,' which were soaring 
 
THE PJTONS OF ST, LUCIA 117 
 
 grandly above us in the twilight. The Pitons are two conical 
 mountains rising straight out of the sea at the southern end of 
 St. Lucia, one of them 3,000 feet high, the other a few feet 
 lower, symmetrical in shape like sugar loaves, and so steep as 
 to be inaccessible to any one but a member of the Alpine 
 Club. Tradition says that four English seamen, belonging to 
 the fleet, did once set out to climb the loftier of the two. 
 They were watched in their ascent through a telescope. 
 When halfway up one of them was seen to drop, while three 
 went on ; a few hundred feet higher a second dropped, and 
 afterwards a third ; one had almost reached the summit, when 
 he fell also. No account of what had befallen them ever 
 reached their ship. They were supposed to have been bitten 
 by the fer de lance, the deadliest snake in St. Lucia and 
 perhaps in the world, who had resented and punished their 
 intrusion into regions where they had no business. Such 
 is the local legend, born probably out of the terror of a 
 reptile which is no legend at all, but a living and very 
 active reality. 
 
 I had gone on deck on hearing where we were, and saw 
 the twin grey peaks high above me in the sky, the last stars 
 glimmering over their tops and the waves washing against 
 the black precipices at their base. The night had been 
 rough, and a considerable sea was running, which changed, 
 however, to an absolute calm when we had passed the Pitons 
 and were under the lee of the island. I could then observe 
 the peculiar blue of the water which I was told that I should 
 fmd at St. Lucia and Dominica. I have seen the sea of 
 very beautiful colours in several parts of the world, but I 
 never saw any which equalled this. I do not know the cause. 
 The depth is very great even close to the shore. The islands 
 are merely volcanic mountains with sides extremely steep. 
 The coral insect has made anchorages in the bays and inlets ; 
 elsewhere you are out of soundings almost immediately. 
 As to St. Lucia itself, if I had not seen Grenada, if I had not 
 known what I was about to see in Dominica, I should have 
 thought it the most exquisite place which nature had ever 
 
n8 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 made, so perfect were the forms of the forest-clothed hills, 
 the glens dividing them and the high mountain ranges in the 
 interior still draped in the white mist of morning. Here and 
 there along the shore there were bright green spots which 
 meant cane fields. Sugar cane in these countries is always 
 called for brevity cane. 
 
 Here, as elsewhere, the population is almost entirely negro, 
 forty thousand blacks and a few hundred whites, the ratio 
 altering every year to white disadvantage. The old system 
 has not, however, disappeared as completely as in other 
 places. There are still white planters with large estates, 
 which are not encumbered as in Barbadoes. They are 
 struggling along, discontented of course, but not wholly 
 despondent. The chief complaint is the somewhat weary 
 one of the laziness of the blacks, who they say will work only 
 when they please, and are never fully awake except at dinner 
 time. I do not know that they have a right to expect any- 
 thing else from poor creatures whom the law calls human, 
 but who to them are only mechanical tools, not so manage- 
 able as tools ought to be, with whom they have no acquaint- 
 ap'^^e and no human relations, whose wages are but twopence 
 an hour and are diminished by fines at the arbitrary pleasure 
 of the overseer. 
 
 Life and hope and energy are the qualities most needed. 
 When the troops return there will be a change, and spirit 
 may be put into them again. Castries, the old French town, 
 lies at the head of a deep inlet which runs in among the 
 mountains like a fiord. This is to be the future coaling 
 station. The mouth of the bay is narrow with a high pro- 
 jecting * head ' on either side of it, and can be easily and 
 cheaply fortified. There is little or no tide in these seas. 
 There is depth of water sufficient in the greater part of the 
 harbour for line-of-battle ships to anchor and turn, and the 
 few coral shoals which would be in the way are being torn 
 up with dredging machines. The island has borrowed 
 seventy thousand pounds on Government security to prepare 
 for the dignity which awaits it and for the prosperity which 
 
CASTRIES HARBOUR 119 
 
 is to follow. There was real work actively going on, a rare 
 and perhaps unexampled phenomenon in the English West 
 Indies. 
 
 We brought up alongside of a wharf to take in coal. It was 
 a strange scene ; cocoa-nut palms growing incongruously out 
 of coal stores, and gorgeous flowering creepers climbing over 
 the workmen's sheds. Volumes of smoke rose out of the 
 dredging engines and hovered over the town. We had come 
 back to French costume again ; we had left the white dresses 
 behind at Barbadoes, and the people at Castries were bright as 
 parrots in crimsons and blues and greens ; but fine colours 
 looked oddly out of place by the side of the grimy reproduc- 
 tion of England. 
 
 I went on shore and fell in with the engineer of the works, 
 v/ho kindly showed me his plans of the harbour, and explained 
 what was to be done. He showed me also some beautiful 
 large bivalves which had been brought up in the scrapers 
 out of the coral. They were new to me and new to him, 
 though they may be familiar enough to more experienced 
 naturalists. Among other curiosities he had a fer de lance, 
 lately killed and preserved in spirits, a rat-tailed, reddish, 
 powerful-looking brute, about four feet long and as thick 
 as a child's wrist. Even when dead I looked at him respect- 
 fully, for his bite is fatal and the effect almost instantaneous. 
 He is fearless, and will not, like most snakes, get out of your 
 way if he hears you coming, but leaves you to get out of his. 
 He has a bad habit, too, of taking his walks at night ; he 
 prefers a path or a road to the grass, and your house or your 
 garden to the forest; while if you step upon him you will 
 never do it again. They have introduced the mongoose, who 
 has cleared the snakes out of Jamaica, to deal with him ; but 
 the mongoose knows the creature that he has to encounter, 
 and as yet has made little progress in extirpating him. 
 
 St. Lucia is under the jurisdiction of Barbadoes. It has no 
 governor of its own, but only an administrator indifferently 
 paid. The elective principle has not yet been introduced into 
 the legislature, and perhaps will not be introduced since we 
 
I20 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 have discovered the island to be of consequence to us, unless 
 as part of some general confederation. The present adminis- 
 trator — Mr. Laborde, a gentleman, I suppose, of French 
 descent — is an elderly official, and resides in the old quarters 
 of the general of the forces, 900 feet above the sea. He 
 has large responsibilities, and, having had large experience 
 also, seems fully equal to the duties which attach to him. He 
 cannot have the authority of a complete governor, or under- 
 take independent enterprises for the benefit of the island, 
 as a Rajah Brooke might do, but he walks steadily on in 
 the lines assigned to him. St. Lucia is better off in this 
 respect than most of the Antilles, and may revive perhaps 
 into something Uke prosperity when the coaling station is 
 finished and under the command of some eminent engineer 
 officer. 
 
 Mr. Laborde had invited us to lunch with him. Horses were 
 waiting for us, and we rode up the old winding track which 
 led from the town to the barracks. The heat below was 
 oppressive, but the air cooled as we rose. The road is so 
 steep that resting places had been provided at intervals, where 
 the soldiers could recover breath or shelter themselves from 
 the tropical cataracts of rain which fall without notice, as 
 if the string had been pulled of some celestial shower bath. 
 The trees branched thickly over it, making an impenetrable 
 shade, till we emerged on the plateau at the top, where we were 
 on comparatively level ground, with the harbour immediately at 
 our feet. The situation had been chosen by the French when 
 St. Lucia was theirs. The general's house, now Mr. Laborde's 
 residence, is a long airy building with a deep colonnade, 
 the drawing and dining rooms occupying the entire breadth of 
 the ground floor, with doors and windows on both sides for 
 coolness and air. The western front overlooked the sea. 
 Behind were wooded hills, green valleys, a mountain range in 
 the background, and the Pitons blue in the distance. As we 
 were before our time, Mr. Laborde walked me out to see the 
 old barracks, magazines, and water tanks. They looked neg- 
 lected and dilapidated, the signs of decay being partly hid 
 
VISIT TO THE ADMINISTRATOR 121 
 
 by the creepers with which the walls were overgrown. The 
 soldiers' quarters were occupied for the time by a resident 
 gentleman, who attended to the essential repairs and pre- 
 vented the snakes from taking possession as they were inclined 
 to do. I forget how many of the fer de lance sort he told me 
 he had killed in the rooms since he had lived in them. 
 
 In the war time we had maintained a large establishment in 
 St. Lucia ; with what consequences to the health of the troops 
 I could not clearly make out. One informant told me that 
 they had died like flies of yellow fever, and that the fields 
 adjoining were as full of bodies as the Brompton cemetery; 
 another that yellow fever had never been known there or 
 any dangerous disorder; and that if we wanted a sanitary 
 station this was the spot for it. Many thousands of pounds 
 will have to be spent there before the troops can return ; 
 but that is our way with the colonies — to change our minds 
 every ten years, to do and undo, and do again, according to 
 parliamentary humours, while John Bull pays the bill patiently 
 for his own irresolution. 
 
 The fortress, once very strong, is now in ruins, but, I 
 suppose, will be repaired and rearmed unless we are to trust 
 to the Yankees, who are supposed to have established a Fax 
 Dei in these waters and will permit no aggressive action there 
 either by us or against us. We walked round the walls ; we 
 saw the hill a mile off from which Abercrombie had battered 
 out the French, having dragged his guns through a roadless 
 forest to a spot to which there seemed no access except on 
 wings. The word * impossible ' was not known in those days. 
 What Englishmen did once they may do again perhaps if 
 stormy days come back. The ruins themselves were silently 
 impressive. One could hear the note of the old bugles as 
 they sounded the reveille and the roaring of the feu de joie 
 when the shattered prizes were brought in from the French 
 fleet. The signs of what once had been were still visible 
 in the parade ground, in the large mangoes which the soldiers 
 had planted, in the English grass which they had introduced 
 and on which cattle were now grazing. TherejKas-a^ctotip of 
 
 X^ OF THB ' '^ 
 
 TTTVTTTTTPTD OTTTV 
 
122 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 guavas, hitherto only known to me in preserves. I gathered 
 a blossom as a remembrance, white Uke a large myrtle flower, 
 but heavily scented — too heavily, with an odour of death 
 about it. 
 
 Mr. Laborde's conversation was instructive. His enter- 
 tainment of us was all which our acquired West Indian 
 fastidiousness could desire. The inevitable cigars followed, 
 and Mr. L. gave me a beating at billiards. There were some 
 lively young ladies in the party, and two or three of the ship's 
 officers. The young ones played lawn tennis, and we old 
 ones looked on and wished the years off our shoulders. So 
 passed the day. The sun was setting when we mounted to 
 ride down. So short is the twilight in these latitudes, that it 
 was dark night when we reached the town, and we required 
 the light of the stars to find our boat. 
 
 When the coaling process was finished, the ship had been 
 washed down in our absence and was anchored off beyond the 
 reach of the dirt ; but the ports were shut ; the windsails had 
 been taken down ; the air in the cabins was stifling ; so I 
 stayed on deck till midnight with a clever young American, 
 who was among our fellow-passengers, talking of many things. 
 He was ardent, confident, self-asserting, but not disagreeably 
 either one or the other. It was rather a pleasure to hear a man 
 speak in these flabby uncertain days as if he were sure of any- 
 thing, and I had to notice again, as I had often noticed 
 before, how well informed casual American travellers are on 
 public affairs, and how sensibly they can talk of them. He had 
 been much in the West Indies and seemed to know them well. 
 He said that all the whites in the islands wished at the bottom 
 of their hearts to be taken into the Union ; but the Union 
 Government was too wise to meddle with them. The trade 
 would fall to America of itself. The responsibihty and trouble 
 might remain where it was. I asked him about the Canadian 
 fishery dispute. He thought it would settle itself in time, and 
 that nothing serious would come of it. *The Washington 
 Cabinet had been a Httle hard on England,' he admitted ; ' but 
 it was six of one and half a dozen of the other ' * Honours 
 
DIAMOND ROCK 123 
 
 were easy ; neither party could score.' * We had been equally 
 hard on them about Alaska.' 
 
 He was less satisfied about Ireland. The telegraph had 
 brought the news of Mr. Goschen's defeat at Liverpool, and 
 Home Rule, which had seemed to have been disposed of, 
 was again within the range of probabilities. He was watching 
 with pitying amusement, like most of his countrymen, the 
 weakness of will with which England allowed herself to be 
 worried by so contemptible a business ; but he did seem to 
 fear, and I have heard others of his countrymen say the same, 
 that if we let it go on much longer the Americans may become 
 involved in the thing one way or another, and trouble may 
 rise about it between the two countries. 
 
 We weighed ; and I went to bed and to sleep, and so missed 
 Pigeon Island, where Rodney's fleet lay before the action, and 
 the rock from which, through his telescope, he watched De 
 Grasse come out of Martinique, and gave his own signal to 
 chase. We rolled as usual between the islands. At daylight 
 we were again in shelter under Martinique, and again in classic 
 regions ; for close to us was Diamond Rock — once his 
 Majesty's ship ' Diamond,' commissioned with crew and officers 
 — one of those curious true incidents, out of which a legend 
 might have grown in other times, that ship and mariners had 
 been turned to stone. The rock, a lonely pyramid six hundred 
 feet high, commanded the entrance to Port Royal in Mar- 
 tinique. Lord Howe took possession of it, sent guns up in 
 slings to the top, and left a midshipman with a handful of men 
 in charge. The gallant little fellow held his fortress for several 
 months, peppered away at the French, and sent three of their 
 ships of war to the bottom. He was blockaded at last by an 
 overwhelming force. No relief could be spared for him. 
 Escape was impossible, as he had not so much as a boat, and 
 he capitulated to famine. 
 
 We stayed two hours under Martinique. I did not land. 
 It has been for centuries a special object of care on the part of 
 the French Government. It is well looked after, and, con- 
 sidering the times, prosperous. It has a fine garrison, and a 
 
124 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 dockyard well furnished, with frigates in the harbours ready for 
 action should occasion arise. I should infer from what I heard 
 that in the event of war breaking out between England and 
 France, Martinique, in the present state of preparation on both 
 sides, might take possession of the rest of the Antilles with 
 little difficulty. Three times we took it, and we gave it back 
 again. In turn, it may one day, perhaps, take us, and the 
 English of the West Indies become a tradition like the 
 buccaneers. 
 
 The mountains of Dominica are full in sight from Marti- 
 nique. The channel which separates them is but thirty miles 
 across, and the view of Dominica as you approach it is 
 extremely grand. Grenada, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Marti- 
 nique are all volcanic, with lofty peaks and ridges ; but 
 Dominica was at the centre of the force which lifted the 
 Antilles out of the ocean, and the features which are common 
 to all are there in a magnified form. The mountains range 
 from four to five thousand feet in height. Mount Diablot, 
 the highest of them, rises to between five and six thousand 
 feet. The mountains being the tallest in all the group, the 
 rains are also the most violent, and the ravines torn out by 
 the torrents are the wildest and most magnificent. The vol- 
 canic forces are still active there. There are sulphur springs 
 and boiling water fountains, and in a central crater there is a 
 boiling lake. There are strange creatures there besides : great 
 snakes — harmless, but ugly to look at; the diablot — from 
 which the mountain takes its name — a great bird, black as 
 charcoal, half raven, half parrot, which nests in holes in the 
 ground as puffins do, spends all the day in them, and flies 
 down to the sea at night to fish for its food. There were once 
 great numbers of these creatures, and it was a favourite amuse- 
 ment to hunt and drag them out of their hiding places. 
 Labat says that they were excellent eating. They are con- 
 fined now in reduced numbers to the inaccessible crags about 
 the peak which bears their name. 
 
 Martinique has two fine harbours. Dominica has none. 
 At the north end of the island there is a bay, named after Prince 
 
ROSEAU 125 
 
 Rupert, where there is shelter from all winds but the south, 
 but neither there nor anywhere is there an anchorage which 
 can be depended upon in dangerous weather. 
 
 Roseau, the principal or only town, stands midway along the 
 western shore. The roadstead is open, but as the prevailing 
 winds are from the east the island itself forms a breakwater. 
 Except on the rarest occasions there is neither surf nor swell 
 there. The land shelves off rapidly, and a gunshot from shore 
 no cable can find the bottom, but there is an anchorage in 
 front of the town, and coasting smacks, American schooners, 
 passing steamers bring up close under the rocks or alongside of 
 the jetties which are built out from the beach upon piles. 
 
 The situation of Roseau is exceedingly beautiful. The sea 
 is, if possible, a deeper azure even than at St. Lucia ; the air 
 more transparent ; the forests of a lovelier green than I ever 
 saw in any other country. Even the rain, which falls in such 
 abundance, falls often out of a clear sky as if not to interrupt 
 the sunshine, and a rainbow almost perpetually hangs its arch 
 over the island. Roseau itself stands on a shallow promon- 
 tory. A long terrace of tolerable-looking houses faces the 
 landing place. At right angles to the terrace, straight streets 
 strike backwards at intervals, palms and bananas breaking the 
 lines of roof. At a little distance, you see the towers of the 
 old French Catholic cathedral, a smaller but not ungraceful- 
 looking Anglican church, and to the right a fort, or the ruins 
 of one, now used as a police barrack, over which flies the 
 English flag as the symbol of our titular dominion. Beyond 
 the fort is a public garden with pretty trees in it along the 
 brow of a precipitous cliff, at the foot of which, when we 
 landed, lay at anchor a couple of smart Yankee schooners and 
 half a dozen coasting cutters, while rounding inwards behind 
 was a long shallow bay dotted over with the sails of fishing 
 boats. White negro villages gleamed among the palms along 
 the shore, and wooded mountains rose immediately above them. 
 It seemed an attractive, innocent, sunny sort of place, very 
 pleasant to spend a few days in, if the inner side of things 
 corresponded to the appearance. To a looker-on at that calm 
 
126 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 scene it was not easy to realise the desperate battles which had 
 been fought for the possession of it, the gallant lives which had 
 been laid down under the walls of that crumbling castle. 
 These cliffs had echoed the roar of Rodney's guns on the day 
 which saved the British Empire, and the island I was gazing 
 at was England's Salamis. 
 
 The organisation of the place, too, seemed, so far as I could 
 gather from official books, to have been carefully attended to. 
 The constitution had been touched and retouched by the home 
 authorities as if no pains could be too great to make it worthy 
 of a spot so sacred. There is an administrator, which is a 
 longer word than governor. There is an executive council, a 
 colonial secretary, an attorney-general, an auditor-general, and 
 other such 'generals of great charge.' There is a legislative 
 assembly of fourteen members, seven nominated by the Crown 
 and seven elected by the people. And there are revenue 
 officers and excise officers, inspectors of roads, and civil 
 engineers, and school boards, and medical officers, and regis- 
 trars, and magistrates. Where would political perfection be 
 found if not here with such elaborate machinery ? 
 
 The results of it all, in the official reports, seemed equally 
 satisfactory till you looked closely into them. The tariff of 
 articles on which duties were levied, and the list of articles raised 
 and exported, seemed to show that Dominica must be a beehive 
 of industry and productiveness. The revenue, indeed, was a 
 little startling as the result of this army of officials. Eighteen 
 thousand pounds was the whole of it, scarcely enough to pay 
 their salaries. The population, too, on whose good government 
 so much thought had been expended, was only 30,000 ; of 
 these 30,000 only a hundred were English. The remaining 
 whites, and those in scanty numbers, were French and principally 
 Catholics. The soil was as rich as the richest in the world. 
 The cultivation was growing annually less. The inspector of 
 roads was likely to have an easy task, for except close to the 
 town there were no roads at all on which anything with wheels 
 could travel, the old roads made by the French having dropped 
 into horse tracks, and the horse tracks into the beds of torrents. 
 
CONSTITUTION OF DOMINICA 127 
 
 Why in an island where the resources of modern statesmanship 
 had been applied so lavishly and with the latest discoveries in 
 political science, the effect should have so ill corresponded to 
 the means employed, was a problem into which it would be 
 curious to inquire. 
 
 The steamer set me down upon the pier and went on upon 
 its way. At the end of a fortnight it would return and pick 
 me up again. Meanwhile, I was to make the best of my 
 time. I had been warned beforehand that there was no hotel 
 in Roseau where an Englishman with a susceptible skin and 
 palate could survive more than a week; and as I had two weeks 
 to provide for, I was uncertain what to do with myself. I was 
 spared the trial of the hotels by the liberality of her Majesty's 
 representative in the colony. Captain Churchill, the administra- 
 tor of the island, had heard that I was coming there,and I was met 
 on the landing stage by a message from him inviting me to be his 
 guest during my stay. Two tall handsome black girls seized 
 my bags, tossed them on their heads, and strode off with alight 
 step in front of me, cutting jokes with their friends ; I follow- 
 ing, and my mind misgiving me that I was myself the object 
 of their wit. 
 
 I was anxious to see Captain Churchill, for I had heard much 
 of him. The warmest affection had been expressed for him 
 personally, and concern for the position in which he was placed. 
 Notwithstanding *the latest discoveries of political science,' 
 the constitution was still imperfect. The administrator, to 
 begin with, is allowed a salary of only 500/. a year. That is not 
 much for the chief of such an army of officials ; and the hospi- 
 talities and social civilities which smooth the way in such 
 situations are beyond his means. His business is to preside at 
 the council, where, the ofBcial and the elected members being 
 equally balanced and almost invariably dividing one against 
 the other, his duty is to give the casting vote. He cannot give 
 it against his own officers, and thus the machine is contrived 
 to create the largest amount of friction, and to insure the highest 
 amount of unpopularity to the administrator. His situation is 
 the more difficult because the European element in Roseau. 
 
128 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 small as it is at best, is more French than English. The 
 priests, the sisterhoods, are French or French-speaking. A 
 French patois is the language of the blacks. They are almost 
 to a man Catholics, and to the French they look as their natural 
 leaders. England has done nothing, absolutely nothing, to 
 introduce her own civilisation ; and thus Dominica is English 
 only in name. Should war come, a boatload of soldiers from 
 Martinique would suffice to recover it. Not a black in the 
 whole island would draw a trigger in defence of English 
 authority, and, except the Crown officials, not half a dozen 
 Europeans. The administrator can do nothing to improve 
 this state of things. He is too poor to open Government 
 House to the Roseau shopkeepers and to bid for social popu- 
 larity. He is no one. He goes in and out unnoticed, and 
 flits about like a bat in the twilight. He can do no good, and 
 from the nature of the system on the construction of which so 
 much care was expended, no one else can do any good. The 
 maximum of expense, the minimum of benefit to the island, is 
 all that has come of it. 
 
 Meanwhile the island drifts along, without credit to borrow 
 money and therefore escaping bankruptcy. The blacks there, 
 as everywhere, are happy with their yams, and cocoa nuts and 
 land crabs. They desire nothing better than they have, and 
 do not imagine that they have any rulers unless agitated by the 
 elected members. These gentlemen would like the official 
 situations for themselves as in Trinidad, and they occasionally 
 attempt a stir with partial success ; otherwise the island goes 
 on in a state of torpid content. Captain Churchill, quiet and 
 gentlemanlike, gives no personal offence, but popularity he 
 cannot hope for, having no means of recommending himself. 
 The only really powerful Europeans are the Catholic bishop 
 and the priests and sisterhoods. They are looked up to with 
 genuine respect. They are reaping the harvest of the long and 
 honourable efforts of the French clergy in all their West Indian 
 possessions to make the blacks into Catholic Christians. In 
 the Christian part of it they have succeeded but moderately ; 
 but such religion as exists in the island is mainly what they have 
 
THE RESIDENCE— DOMINICA 129 
 
 introduced and taught, and they have a distinct influence which 
 we ourselves have not tried to rival 
 
 But we have been too long toiling up the paved road to 
 Captain Churchill's house. My girl-porter guides led me past 
 the fort, where they exchanged shots with the lounging black 
 police, past the English church, which stood buried in trees, 
 the churchyard prettily planted with tiopical flowers. The 
 sun was dazzling, the heat was intense, and the path which 
 led through it, if not apparently much used, looked shady and 
 cool. 
 
 A few more steps brought us to the gate of the Residence, 
 where Captain Churchill had his quarters in the absence of the 
 Governor-in-Chief of the Leeward Isl^ands, whose visits were 
 few and brief. In the event of the Governor's arrival he 
 removed to a cottage in the hills. The house was handsome, 
 the gardens well kept ; a broad walk led up to the door, a hedge 
 of lime trees closely dipt on one side of it, on the other a lawn 
 with orange trees, oleanders, and hibiscus, palms of all varieties 
 and almond trees, which in Dominica grow into giants, their 
 broad leaves turning crimson before they fall, like the Virginia 
 creeper. We reached the entrance of the house by wide stone 
 steps, where countless lizards were lazily basking. Through 
 the bars of the railings on each side of them there were inter- 
 twined the runners of the largest and most powerfully scented 
 stephanotis which I have ever seen. Captain Churchill (one of 
 the Marlborough Churchills) received me with more than 
 cordiaUty. Society is not abundant in his Barataria, and 
 perhaps as coming from England I was welcome to him in his 
 solitude. His wife, an English Creole — that is, of pure English 
 blood, but born in the island — was as hospitable as her husband. 
 They would not let me feel that I was a stranger, and set me 
 at my ease in a moment with a warmth which was evidently 
 unassumed. Captain C. was lame, having hurt his foot. In a 
 day or two he hoped to be able to mount his horse again, when 
 we were to ride together and see the curiosities. Meanwhile, 
 he talked sorrowfully enough of his own situation and the 
 general helplessness of it. A man whose feet are chained and 
 
 9 
 
130 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 whose hands are in manacles is not to be found fault with if he 
 cannot use either. He is not intended to use either. The 
 duty of an administrator of Dominica, it appears, is to sit still 
 and do nothing, and to watch the flickering in the socket of 
 the last remains of English influence and authority. Individu- 
 ally he was on good terms with everyone, with the Catholic 
 bishop especially, who, to his regret and mine, was absent at 
 the time of my visit. 
 
 His establishment was remarkable ; it consisted of two black 
 girls — a cook and a parlourmaid — who ' did everything ; ' and 
 ' everything,' I am bound to say, was done well enough to 
 please the most fastidious nicety. The cooking was excellent. 
 The rooms, which were .handsomely furnished, were kept as 
 well and in as good order as in the Churchills' ancestral palace 
 at Blenheim. Dominica has a bad name for vermin. I had 
 been threatened with centipedes and scorpions in my bedroom. 
 I had been warned there, as everywhere in the West Indies, 
 never to walk across the floor with bare feet, lest a land crab 
 should lay hold of my toe or a jigger should bite a hole in it, 
 lay its eggs there, and bring me into the hands of the surgeon. 
 Never while I was Captain C.'s guest did I see either centi- 
 pede, or scorpion, or jigger, or any other unclean beast in any 
 room of which these girls had charge. Even mosquitoes did 
 not trouble me, so skilfully and carefully they arranged the 
 curtains. They were dressed in the fashion of the French 
 islands, something like the Moorish slaves whom one sees in 
 pictures of Eastern palaces. They flitted about silent on their 
 shoeless feet, never stumbled, or upset chairs or plates or dishes, 
 but waited noiselessly like a pair of elves, and were always in 
 their place when wanted. One had heard much of the idle- 
 ness and carelessness of negro servants. In no part of the globe 
 have I ever seen household work done so well by two pairs of 
 hands. Of their morals I know nothing. It is usually said 
 that negro girls have none. They appeared to me to be per- 
 fectly modest and innocent. I asked in wonder what wages 
 were paid to these black fairies, believing that at no price at all 
 could the match of them be found in England. I was informed 
 
THE RESIDENCE— DOMINICA I3f 
 
 that they had three shillings a week each, and ' found them- 
 selves/ i.e. found their own food and clothes. And this was 
 above the usual rate, as Government House was expected to 
 be liberal. The scale of wages may have something to do 
 with the difficulty of obtaining labour in the West Indies. I 
 could easily believe the truth of what I had been often told, 
 that free labour is more economical to the employer than slave 
 labour. 
 
 The views from the drawing room windows were enchant- 
 ingly beautiful. It is not the form only in these West Indian 
 landscapes, or the colour only, but form and colour seen 
 through an atmosphere of very peculiar transparency. On 
 one side we looked up a mountain gorge, the slopes covered 
 with forest; a bold lofty crag jutting out from them brown 
 and bare, and the mountain ridge behind half buried in mist. 
 From the other window we had the Botanical Gardens, the 
 bay beyond them sparkling in the sunshine, and on the farther 
 side of it, a few miles off, an island fortress which the Marquis 
 de Bouille, of Revolution notoriety, took from the English in 
 1778. The sea stretched out blue and lovely under the fringe of 
 sand, box trees, and almonds which grew along the edge of the 
 cliff. The air was perfumed by white acacia flowers sweeter 
 than orange blossom. 
 
 Captain C. limped down with me into the gardens for a 
 fuller look at the scene. Dusky fishermen were busy with 
 their nets catching things like herrings, which come in daily 
 to the shore to escape the monsters which prey upon them. 
 Canoes on the old Carib pattern were slipping along outside, 
 trailing lines for kingfish and bonitcs. Others were setting 
 baskets, like enormous lobster pots or hoop nets — such as we 
 use to catch tench in English ponds — these, too, a legacy from 
 the Caribs, made of strong tough cane. • At the foot of the 
 cliff were the smart American schooners which I had seen on 
 landing — broad-beamed, shallow, low in the water with heavy 
 spars, which bring Yankee * notions ' to the islands and carry 
 back to New York bananas and limes and pineapples. There 
 they were, models of Tom Cringle's * Wave/ airy as English 
 
 9-2 
 
132 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 yachts, and equal to anything from a smuggling cruise to a 
 race for a cup. I could have gazed for ever, so beautiful, so 
 new, so like a dream it was, had I not been brought back 
 swiftly to prose and reality. Suddenly out of a clear sky, 
 without notice, and without provocation, first a few drops of 
 rain fell, and then a deluge which set the gutters running. 
 We had to scuttle home under our umbrellas. I was told, 
 and I discovered afterwards by fuller experience, that this 
 was the way in Dominica, and that if I went out anywhere I 
 must be prepared for it. In our retreat we encountered a 
 distinguished-looking abbd with a collar and a gold cross, who 
 bowed to my companion. I would gladly have been introduced 
 to him, but neither he nor we had leisure for courtesijes in the 
 torrent which was falling upon us. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Curiosities in Dominica — Nights in the tropics — English and Catholic 
 churches — The market place at Roseau — Fishing extraordinary — A 
 storm — Dominican boatmen — Morning walks — Effects of the Leeward 
 Islands Confederation — An estate cultivated as it ought to be — A moun- 
 tain ride — Leave the island — Reflections. 
 
 There was much to be seen in Dominica of the sort which 
 travellers go in search of. There was the hot sulphur spring 
 in the mountains ; there was the hot lake ; there was another 
 volcanic crater, a hollow in the centre of the island now filled 
 with water and surrounded with forest ; there were the Caribs, 
 some thirty families of them living among thickets, through 
 which paths must be cut before we could reach them. We 
 could undertake nothing till Captain C. could ride again. 
 Distant expeditions can only be attempted on horses. They 
 are bred to the work. They climb like cats, and step out 
 safely where a fall or a twisted ankle would be the probable 
 consequence of attempting to go on foot. Meanwhile, Roseau 
 itself was to be seen and the immediate neighbourhood, and 
 this I could manage for myself. 
 
NIGHTS IN THE TROPICS 133 
 
 My first night was disturbed by unfamiliar noises and strange 
 imaginations. I escaped mosquitoes through the care of the 
 black fairies. But mosquito curtains will not keep out sounds, 
 and when the fireflies had put out their lights there began the 
 singular chorus of tropical midnight. Frogs, lizards, bats, 
 croaked, sang, and whistled with no intermission, careless 
 whether they were in discord or harmony. The palm branches 
 outside my window swayed in the land breeze, and the dry 
 branches rustled crisply, as if they were plates of silver. At 
 intervals came cataracts of rain, and above all the rest the 
 deep boom of the cathedral bell tolling out the hours like a 
 note of the Old World. The Catholic clergy had brought the 
 bells with them as they had brought their faith into these new 
 lands. It was pathetic, it was ominous music ; for what had 
 we done and what were we doing to set beside it in the century 
 for which the island had been ours? Towards morning I 
 heard the tinkle of the bell of the convent adjoining the garden 
 calHng the nuns to matins. Happily in the tropics hot nights 
 do not imply an early dawn. The darkness lingers late, sleep 
 comes at last and drowns our fancies in forgetfulness. 
 
 The swimming bath was immediately under my room. I 
 ventured into it with some trepidation. The basement story 
 in most West Indian houses is open, to allow the air free 
 passage under them. The space thus left vacant is used for 
 lumber and rubbish, and, if scorpions or snakes are in the 
 neighbourhood, is the place where one would look for them. 
 There the bath was. I had been advised to be careful, and as 
 it was dark this was not easy. The fear, however, was worse 
 than the reality. Awkward encounters do happen if one is 
 long in these countries ; but they are rare, and seldom befall 
 the accidental visitor ; and the plunge into fresh water is so 
 delicious that one is willing to risk the chance. 
 
 I wandered out as soon as the sun was over the horizon. 
 The cool of the morning is the time to see the people. The 
 market girls were streaming into the town with their baskets 
 of vegetables on their heads. The fishing boats were out 
 again on the bay. Our Anglican church had its bell too as 
 
134 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 well as the cathedral. The door was open, and I went in and 
 found a decent-looking clergyman preparing a flock of seveii 
 pr eight blacks and mulattoes for the Communion. He' was 
 taking them through their catechism, explaining very properly 
 that religion meant doing one's duty, and that it was not 
 enough to profess ' particular opinions. Dominica being 
 ■Roman Catholic, and Roman Catholics not generally appre^ 
 ciating or understanding the claims of Anglicans to the 
 PQSse.ssion of the sacraments, he pointed out where the dif- 
 fe^QCe.lay.' He insisted that we had priests as well as they ; 
 wo. ha,d confession ; we had absolution; only our priests did 
 not claim, as the Catholics did, a direct power in themselves 
 to forgive sins. Their office was to tell sinners that if they 
 truly and sincerely repented and amended their lives God 
 . would forgive them. What he said was absolutely true ; but 
 I could not see in the dim faces of the catechumens that 
 the distinction was particularly intelligible to them. If they 
 thought at all, they probably reflected that no divinely consti- 
 tuted successor of the Apostles \vas needed to communicate 
 a truism which every sensible person was equally able and 
 entitled to tell them. Still the good earnest man meant well, 
 and I wished him more success in his missionary enterprise 
 than he was likely to find. 
 
 From the Church of England to the great rival estabhshment 
 was but a few minutes' walk. The cathedral was five times as 
 large, at least, as the building which I had just left — old in 
 age, old in appearance, with the usual indifferent pictures or 
 coloured prints, with the usual decorated altar, but otherwise 
 simple and venerable. There was no service going on, for it 
 was a week-day ; a few old men and women only were silently 
 saying their prayers. On Sundays I was told that it was over- 
 flowing. The negro morals are as emancipated in Dominica 
 as in the rest of the West Indies. Obeah is not forgotten ; 
 and along with the Catholic religion goes on an active beUef 
 in magic and witchcraft. But their religion is not necessarily 
 a sham to them ; it was the same in Europe in the ages of 
 faith. Even in enlightened Protestant countries people calling 
 
SCENES IN ROSEA U 135 
 
 themselves Christians beUeve that the spirits of the dead can 
 be called up to amuse an evening party. The blacks in this 
 respect are no worse than their white kinsmen. The priests 
 have a genuine human hold upon them ; they baptize the 
 children ; they commit the dead to the cemetery with the 
 promise of immortality; they are personally loved and re- 
 spected ; and when a young couple marry, as they seldom but 
 occasionally do, it is to the priest that they apply to tie them 
 together. 
 
 From the cathedral I wandered through the streets of 
 Roseau ; they had been well laid out ; the streets themselves, 
 and the roads leading to them from the country, had been 
 carefully paved, and spoke of a time when the town had been 
 full of life and vigour. But the' grass was growing between the 
 stones, and the houses generally were dilapidated and dirty. 
 A few massive stone buildings there were, on which time and 
 rain had made no impression ; but these probably were all 
 French — built long ago, perhaps in the days of Labat and 
 Madame Ouvernard. The English hand had struck the island 
 with paralysis. The British flag was flying over the fort, but 
 for once I had no pride in looking at it. The fort itself was 
 falling to pieces, like the fort at Grenada. The stones on the 
 slope on which it stands had run with the blood which we 
 spilt in the winning of it. Dominica had then been regarded 
 as the choicest jewel in the necklace of the Antilles. For the 
 last half-century we have left it to desolation, as a child leaves 
 a plaything that it is tired of. 
 
 In Roseau, as in most other towns, the most interesting 
 spot is the market. There you see the produce of the soil \ 
 there you see the people that produce it ; and you see them, 
 not on show, as in church on Sundays, but in their active 
 working condition. The market place at Roseau is a large 
 square court close to the sea, well paved, surrounded by ware- 
 houses, and luxuriantly shaded by large overhanging trees. 
 Under these trees were hundreds of black women, young and 
 old, with their fish and fowls, and fruit and bread, their yams 
 and sweet potatoes, their oranges and limes and plantains. 
 
136 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 They had walked in from the country five or ten miles before 
 sunrise with their loaded baskets on their heads. They would 
 walk back at night with flour or salt fish, or oil, or whatever 
 they happened to want. I did not see a single sullen face 
 among them. Their figures were unconscious of lacing, and 
 their feet of the monstrosities which we call shoes. They 
 moved with the lightness and elasticity of leopards. I thought 
 that I had never seen in any drawing room in London so 
 many perfectly graceful forms. They could not mend their 
 faces, but even in some of these there was a swarthy beauty. 
 The hair was hopeless, and they knew it, but they turn the 
 defect into an ornament by the coloured handkerchief wiiich 
 they twist about their heads, leaving the ends flowing. They 
 chattered like jackdaws about a church tower. Two or three 
 of the best looking, seeing that I admired them a little, used 
 their eyes and made some laughing remarks. They spoke in 
 their French patois^ clipping off the first and last syllables of 
 the words. I but half understood them, and could not return 
 their bits of wit. I can only say that if their habits were as 
 loose as white people say they are, I did not see a single 
 licentious expression either in face or manner. They seemed 
 to me lighthearted, merry, innocent young women, as free 
 from any thought of evil as the peasant girls in Brittany. 
 
 Two middle-aged dames were in a state of violent excite- 
 ment about some subject on which they differed in opinion. 
 A ring gathered about them, and they declaimed at one 
 another with fiery volubility. It did not go beyond words ; 
 but both were natural orators, throwing their heads back, 
 waving their arms, limbs and chest quivering with emotion. 
 There was no personal abuse, or disposition to claw each other. 
 On both sides it was a rhetorical outpouring of emotional 
 argument. One of them, a tall pure blood negress, black as if 
 she had just landed from Guinea, began at last to get the best 
 of it. Her gesticulations became more imposing. She shook 
 her finger. Mandez this, she said, and mandez that, till she 
 bore her antagonist down and sent her flying. The audience 
 then melted away, and I left the conqueror standing alone 
 
FISHING EXTRAORDINARY 137 
 
 shooting a last volley at the retreating enemy and making 
 passionate appeals to the universe. The subject of the dis- 
 cussion was a curious one. It was on the merits of race. The 
 defeated champion had a taint of white blood in her. The 
 black woman insisted that blacks were of pure breed, and 
 whites were of pure breed. Mulattoes were mongrels, not 
 creatures of God at all, but creatures of human wickedness. 
 I do not suppose that the mulatto was convinced, but she 
 accepted her defeat. The conqueror, it was quite clear, was 
 satisfied that she had the best of the discussion, and that the 
 hearers were of the same opinion. 
 
 From the market I stepped back upon the quay, where I 
 had the luck to witness a novel form of fishing, the most 
 singular I have ever fallen in with. I have mentioned the 
 herring-sized white fish which come in upon the shores of the 
 island. They travel, as most small fish do, in enormous shoals, 
 and keep, I suppose, in the shallow waters to avoid the kingfish 
 and bonitos, who are good judges in their way, and find these 
 small creatures exceptionally excellent. The wooden pier ran 
 out perhaps a hundred and fifty feet into the sea. It was a 
 platform standing on piles, with openings in several places 
 from which stairs led down to landing stages. The depth at 
 the extremity was about five fathoms. There is little or no 
 tide, the difference between high water and low being not more 
 than a couple of feet. Looking down the staircases, I saw 
 among the piles in the brilliantly clear water unnumbered thou- 
 sands of the fish which I have described. The fishermen had 
 carried a long net round the pier from shore to shore, com- 
 pletely inclosing it. The fish were shut in, and had no means 
 of escape except at the shore end, where boys were busy 
 driving them back with stones ; but how the net was to be 
 drawn among the piles, or what was to be done next, I was 
 curious to learn. I was not left long to conjecture. A circular 
 bag net was produced, made of fine strong thread, coloured a 
 light green, and almost invisible in the sea. When it was 
 spread, one side could be left open and could be closed at will 
 by a running line from above. This net was let carefully down 
 
138 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 between the piles, and was immediately swollen out by the cur- 
 rent which runs along the coast into a deep bag. Two young 
 blacks then dived ; one saw them swimming about under 
 water like sharks, hunting the fish before them as a dog would 
 hunt a flock of sheep. Their companions, who were watching 
 from the platform, waited till they saw as many driven into the 
 purse of the inner net as they could trust the meshes to bear 
 the weight of. The cord was then drawn. The net was 
 closed. Net and all that it contained were hoisted into a boat, 
 carried ashore and emptied. The net itself was then brought 
 back and spread again for a fresh haul. In this way I saw as 
 many fish caught as would have filled a large cart. The con- 
 trivance, I believe, is one more inheritance from the Caribs, 
 whom Labat describes as doing something of a similar kind. 
 
 Another small incident happened a day or two after, which 
 showed the capital stuff of which the Dominican boatmen and 
 fishermen are made. They build their own vessels large and 
 small, and sail them themselves, not afraid of the wildest 
 weather, and doing the local trade with Martinique and 
 Guadaloupe. Four of these smacks, cutter rigged, from ten to 
 twenty tons burden, I had seen lying at anchor one evening 
 with an American schooner under the gardens. In the night, 
 the off-shore wind rose into one of those short violent tropical 
 storms which if they lasted longer would be called hurricanes, 
 but in these winter months are soon over. It came on at mid- 
 night, and lasted for two hours. The noise woke me, for the 
 house shook, and the roar was like Niagara. It was too dark, 
 however, to see anything. The tempest died away at last, and I 
 slept till daybreak. My first thought on waking was for the 
 smacks and the schooner Had they sunk at their moorings ? 
 Had they broken loose, or what had become of them ? I got up 
 and went down to the cliff to see. The damage to the trees had 
 been less than I expected. A few torn branches lay on the lawn 
 and the leaves were cast about, but the anchorage was empty. 
 Every vessel of every sort and size was gone. There was still 
 a moderate gale blowing. As the wind was off-shore the sea was 
 tolerably smooth for a mile or two, but outside the waves were 
 
A BLACK SAILOR BOY 139 
 
 breaking violently, and the foam scuds were whirling off their 
 crests. The schooner was about four miles off, beating back 
 under storm canvas, making good weather of it and promising 
 in a tack or two to recover the moorings. The smacks, being 
 less powerful vessels, had been driven farther out to sea. 
 Three of them I saw labouring heavily in the offing. The 
 fourth I thought at first had disappeared altogether, but finally 
 I made out a white speck on the horizon which I supposed to 
 be the missing cutter. • One of the first three presently 
 dropped away to leeward, and I lost sight of her. The rest 
 made their way back in good time. Towards the afternoon 
 when the wind had gone down the two that remained came in 
 after them, and before night they were all in their places again. 
 
 The gale had struck them at about midnight. Their cables 
 had parted, and they had been blown away to sea. The crews 
 of the schooner and of three of the cutters were all on board. 
 They got their vessels under command, and had been in no 
 serious danger. In the fourth there was no one but a small 
 black boy of the island. He had been asleep, and woke to find 
 himself driving before the wind. In an hour or two he would 
 have been beyond the shelter of the land, and in the high seas 
 which were then running must have been inevitably swamped. 
 The little fellow contrived in the darkness — no one could tell 
 how— to set a scrap of his mainsail, get his staysail up, and in 
 this condition to lie head to the wind. So handled, small cut- 
 ters, if they have a deck over them, can ride out an ordinary 
 gale in tolerable security. They drift, of course ; in a hurri- 
 cane the only safety is in yielding to it ; but they make fair 
 resistance, and the speed is checked. The most practical 
 seaman could have done no better than this boy. He had to 
 wait for help in the morning. He was not strong enough to 
 set his canvas properly, and work his boat home. He would 
 have been driven out at last, and as he had neither food nor 
 water would have been starved had he escaped drowning. But 
 his three consorts saw him. They knew how it was, and one 
 of them went back to his assistance. 
 
 I have known the fishing boys of the English Channel all 
 
I40 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 my life ; they are generally skilful, ready, and daring beyond 
 their years ; but I never knew one lad not more than thirteen 
 or fourteen years old who, if woke out of his sleep by a hurri- 
 cane in a dark night and alone, would have understood so well 
 what to do, or have it done so effectually. There are plenty 
 more of such black boys in Dominica, and they deserve a 
 better fate than to be sent drifting before constitutional 
 whirlwinds back into barbarism, because we, on whom their 
 fate depends, are too ignorant or too careless to provide them 
 with a tolerable government. 
 
 The kind Captain Churchill, finding himself tied to his 
 chair, and wishing to give me every assistance towards seeing 
 the island, had invited a Creole gentleman from the other side 
 
 of it to stay a few days with us. Mr. F , a man about 
 
 thirty, was one of the few survivors from among the planters ; 
 he had never been out of the West Indies, but was a man of 
 honesty and intelligence, could use his eyes, and form sound 
 judgments on subjects which immediately concerned him. I 
 had studied Roseau for myself. With Mr. F for a com- 
 panion, I made acquaintance with the environs. We started 
 for our walks at daybreak, in the cool of the morning. We 
 climbed cliffs, we rambled on the rich levels about the river, 
 once amply cultivated, and even now the soil is luxuriant in 
 neglect ; a few canefields still survive, but most of them are 
 turned to other uses, and you pass wherever you go the ruins 
 of old mills, the massive foundations of ancient warehouses, 
 huge hewn stones built and mortared well together, telling what 
 once had been ; the mango trees, which the owners had 
 planted, waving green over the wrecks of their forgotten in- 
 dustry. Such industry as is now to be found is, as elsewhere 
 in general, the industry of the black peasantry. It is the same 
 as in Grenada : the whites, or the English part of them, have 
 lost heart, and cease to struggle against the stream. A state 
 of things more helplessly provoking was never seen. Skill and 
 capital and labour have only to be brought to bear together, 
 and the land might be a Garden of Eden. All precious fruits, 
 and precious spices, and gums, and plants of rarest medicinal 
 
MORNING WALK 141 
 
 virtues will spring and grow and flourish for the asking. The 
 limes are as large as lemons, and in the markets of the United 
 States are considered the best in the world. 
 
 As to natural beauty, the West Indian Islands are like 
 Scott's novels, where we admire most the one which we have 
 read the last. But Dominica bears the palm away from all of 
 
 them. One morning Mr. F took me a walk up the Roseau 
 
 river, an ample stream even in what is called the dry season, 
 with deep pools full of eels and mullet. We entered among 
 the hills which were rising steep above us. The valley grew 
 deeper, or rather there were a series of valleys, gorges dense 
 with forest, which had been torn out by the cataracts. The 
 path was Hke the mule tracts of the Alps, cut in other days 
 along the sides of the precipices with remnants of old conduits 
 which suppUed water to the mills below. Rich odorous 
 acacias bent over us. The flowers, the trees, the birds, the 
 insects, were a maze of perfume and loveliness. Occasionally 
 some valley opposite the sun would be spanned by a rainbow 
 as the rays shone through a morning shower out of the blue 
 sky. We wandered on and on, wading through tributary 
 brooks, stopping every minute to examine some new fern or 
 plant, peasant women and children meeting us at intervals on 
 their way into the town. There were trees to take shelter 
 under when indispensable, which even the rain of Dominica 
 could not penetrate. The levels at the bottom of the valleys 
 and the lower slopes, where the soil was favourable, were care- 
 lessly planted with limes which were in full bearing. Small 
 black boys and girls went about under the trees, gathering the 
 large lemon-shaped fruit which lay on the ground thick as 
 apples in a West of England orchard. Here was all this 
 profusion of nature, lavish beyond example, and the enter- 
 prising youth of England were neglecting a colony which might 
 yield them wealth beyond the treasures of the old sugar 
 planters, going to Florida, to Texas, to South America, taking 
 their energy and their capital to the land of the foreigner, 
 leaving Dominica, which might be the garden of the world, a 
 precious emerald set in the ring of their own Antilles, enriched 
 
142 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 by the sacred memories of glorious English achievements, as 
 if such a place had no existence. Dominica would surrender 
 herself to-morrow with a light heart to Fiance, to America, to 
 any country which would accept the charge of her destinies. 
 Why should she care any more for England, which has so 
 little care for her? Beauties conscious of their charms do 
 not like to be so thrown aside. There is no dislike to us 
 among the blacks ; they are indiiTerent, but even their indiffer- 
 ence would be changed into loyalty if we made the slightest 
 effort to recover it. The poor black was a faithful servant as 
 long as he was a slave. As a freeman he is conscious of his 
 inferiority at the bottom of his heart, and would attach him- 
 self to a rational white employer with at least as much fidelity 
 as a spaniel. Like the spaniel, too, if he is denied the chance 
 of developing under guidance the better qualities which are in 
 him, he will drift back into a mangy cur. 
 
 In no country ought a government to exist for which 
 respect is impossible, and English rule as it exists in Dominica 
 is a subject fot a comedy. The Governor-Gerteral of the 
 Leeward Islands resides in Antigua, and in theory ought to go 
 on progress and visit in turn his subordinate dominions. His 
 visits are rare as those of angels. The eminent person, who 
 at present holds that high office, has been once in Nevis ; and 
 thrice in Dominica, but only for the briefest stay there. 
 Perhaps he has held aloof in consequence of an adventure 
 which befell a visiting governor some time ago on one of these 
 occasions. When there is a constitution there is an opposition. 
 If there are no grievances the opposition manufacture them, 
 and the inhabitants of Roseau were persuaded that they were 
 an oppressed people and required fuller liberties. I was 
 informed that His Excellency had no sooner landed and taken 
 possession of the Government House, than a mob of men and 
 women gzlthered in the market place under the leadership of 
 their elected representative. The girls that I had admired very 
 likely made a part of it. They swarmed up into the gardens," 
 they demonstrated under the windows, laughing, shouting, and' 
 petitioning. His Excellency first barricaded the doors, thed 
 
ADVENTURES OF A GOVERNOR 143 
 
 opened them and tried a speech, telling the dear creatures how 
 much he loved and respected them. Probably they did not 
 understand him, as few of them speak English. Producing no 
 effect, he retreated again, barred the door once more, slipped 
 out at a back entrance down a lane to the port, took refuge on 
 board his steamer, and disappeared. So the story was told 
 me — not by the administrator, who was not a man to turn 
 English authority into ridicule — but by some one on the spot, 
 who repeated the current report of the adventure. It may be 
 exaggerated in some features, but it represents, at any rate, 
 the feeling of the place towards the head representative of the 
 existing government. 
 
 I will mention another incident, said to have occurred still 
 more recently to one of these great persons, very like what 
 befell Sancho Panza in Barataria. This, too, may have been 
 wickedly turned, but it was the subject of general talk and 
 general amusement on board the steamers which make the 
 round of the Antilles. Universal belief is a fact of its kind, 
 and though it tends to shape itself in dramatic form more 
 completely than the facts justify, there is usually some truth 
 at the bottom of it. The telegrams to the West Indies pass 
 through New York, and often pick up something on the way. 
 A warning message reached a certain colony that a Yankee- 
 Irish schooner with a Fenian crew was coming down to annex 
 the island, or at least to kidnap the governor. This distin- 
 guished gentleman ought perhaps to have suspected that a 
 joke was being played upon his fears ; but he was a landlord. 
 A governor-general had been threatened seriously in Canada, 
 why not he in the Antilles ? He was as much agitated as 
 Sancho himself. All these islands were and are entirely un- 
 defended save by a police which cannot be depended on to 
 resist a serious invasion. They were called out. Rumour 
 said that in half the rifles the cartridges were found afterwards 
 inverted. The next day dispelled the alarm. The schooner 
 was the creation of some Irish telegraph clerk, and the scare 
 ended in laughter. But under the jest lies the wretched 
 certainty that the Antilles have no protection except in their 
 
144 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 own population, and so little to thank England for that 
 scarcely one of the inhabitants, except the officials, would lift 
 a finger to save the connection. 
 
 Once more, I tell these stories not as if they were authenti- 
 cated facts, but as evidence of the scornful feeling towards 
 English authority. The current belief in them is a fact of a 
 kind and a very serious one. 
 
 The confederation of the Leeward Islands may have been a 
 convenience to the Colonial Office, and may have allowed a 
 slight diminution in the cost of administration. The whole 
 West Indies might be placed under a single governor with only 
 good results if he were a real one like the Governor-General at 
 Calcutta. But each single island has lost from the change, so 
 far, more than it has gained. Each ship of war has a captain 
 of its own and officers of its own trained specially for the 
 service. If the Antilles are ever to thrive, each of them also 
 should have some trained and skilful man at its head, unem- 
 barrassed by local elected assemblies. The whites have become 
 so weak that they would welcome the abolition of such assem- 
 blies. The blacks do not care for politics, and would be 
 pleased to see them swept away to-morrow if they were 
 governed wisely and fairly. Of course, in that case it would be 
 necessary to appoint governors who would command confidence 
 and respect. But let governors be sent who would be governors 
 indeed, like those who administer the Indian presidencies, and 
 the white residents would gather heart again, and English and 
 American capitalists would bring their money and their enter- 
 prise, and the blafcks would grow upwards instead of down- 
 wards. Let us persist in the other line, let us use the West 
 Indian governments as asylums for average worthy persons 
 who have to be provided for, and force on them black parlia- 
 mentary institutionsias a remedy for such persons' inefficiency, 
 and these beautiful countries will become like Hayti, with 
 Obeah triumphant, and children offered to the devil and salted 
 and eaten, till the conscience of mankind wakes again and the 
 Americans sweep them all away. 
 
 I had an opportunity of seeing what can really be done in 
 
A DOMINICAN PLANTATION- 145 
 
 Dominica by an English gentleman who has gone the right way 
 to work there. Dr. Nicholls came out a few years ago to 
 Roseau as a medical officer. He was described to me as a man 
 not only of high professional skill, but with considerable 
 scientific attainments. Either by purchase or legacy (I think 
 the latter) he had become possessed of a small estate on a hill- 
 side a mile or two from the town. He had built a house upon 
 it. He was cultivating the soil on scientific principles, and had 
 politely sent me an invitation to call on him and see what he 
 was about. I was delighted to avail myself of such an oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 I do not know the exact extent of the property which was 
 under cultivation ; perhaps it was twenty-five or thirty acres. 
 The chief part of it was planted with lime trees, the limes which 
 I saw growing being as large as moderate-sized lemons ; most 
 of the rest was covered with Liberian coffee, which does not 
 object to the moist climate, and was growing with profuse 
 luxuriance. Each tree, each plant had been personally at- 
 tended to, pruned when it needed pruning, supported by bam- 
 boos if it was overgrowing its strength, while the ground about 
 the house was consecrated to botanical experiments, and 
 specimens were to be seen there of every tropical flower, shrub, 
 or tree, which was either remarkable for its beauty or valuable 
 for its chemical properties. His limes and coffee went princi- 
 pally to New York, where they had won a reputation, and were 
 in special demand ; but ingenuity tries other tracks besides the 
 beaten one. Dr. Nicholls had a manufactory of citric acid 
 which had been found equally excellent in Europe. Every^ 
 thing which he produced was turning to gold, except donkeys, 
 seven or eight of which were feeding under his windows, and 
 which multiplied so fast that he could not tell what to do with 
 them. 
 
 Industries so various and so active required labour, and I 
 saw many of the blacks at work on the grounds. In apparent 
 contradiction to the general West Indian experience, he told me 
 that he had never found a difficulty about it. He paid them 
 fair wages, and paid them regularly without the overseer's fines 
 
 10 
 
146 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 and drawbacks. He knew one from the other personally 
 could call each by his name, remembered where he came from, 
 where he lived, and how, and could joke with him about his 
 wife or mistress. They in consequence clung to him with an 
 innocent affection, stayed with him all the week without asking 
 for holidays, and worked with interest and goodwill. Four 
 years only had elapsed since Dr. Nicholls commenced his 
 undertakings, and he already saw his way to clearing a thousand 
 pounds a year on that one small patch of acres. I may 
 mention that, being the only man in the island of really superior 
 attainments, he had tried in vain to win one of the seats in the 
 elective part of the legislature. 
 
 There was nothing particularly favourable in the situation of 
 his land. All parts of Dominica would respond as willingly to 
 similar treatment. What could be the reason, Dr. Nicholls 
 asked me, why young Englishmen went planting to so many 
 other countries, went even to Ceylon and Borneo, while com- 
 paratively at their own doors, within a fortnight's sail of Ply- 
 mouth, there was this island immeasurably more fertile than 
 either ? The explanation, I suppose, is the misgiving that the 
 West Indies are consigned by the tendencies of English policy 
 to the black population, and that a local government created 
 by representatives of the negro vote would make a residence 
 there for an energetic and self-respecting European less toler- 
 able than in any other part of the globe. The republic of 
 Hayti not only excludes a white man from any share of the 
 administration, but forbids his acquisition or possession of real 
 property in any form. Far short of such extreme provisions, 
 the most prosperous industry might be blighted by taxation. 
 Self-government is a beautiful subject for oratorical declama- 
 tion. If the fact corresponded to the theory and if the pos- 
 session of a vote produced the elevating effects upon the 
 character which are so noisily insisted upon, it would be the 
 welcome panacea for political and social disorder. Unfortu- 
 nately the fact does not correspond to the theory. The 
 possession of a vote never improved the character of any 
 human being and never will. 
 
A SUGGESTED EXPERIMENT 147 
 
 There are many islands in the West Indies, and an experi- 
 ment might be ventured without any serious risk. Let the 
 suffrage principle be applied in its fullness where the condition 
 of the people seems best to promise success. In some one of 
 them — Dominica would do as well as any other — let a man of 
 ability and character with an ambition to distinguish himself be 
 sent to govern with a free hand. Let him choose his own 
 advisers, let him be untrammelled, unless he falls into fatal and 
 inexcusable errors, with interference from home. Let him 
 have time to carry out any plans which he may form, without 
 fear of recall at the end of the normal period. After ten or 
 fifteen years, let the results of the two systems be compared 
 side by side. I imagine the objection to such a trial would be 
 the same which was once made in my hearing by an Irish 
 friend of mine, who was urging on an English statesman the 
 conversion of Ireland into a Crown colony. * You dare not 
 try it,' he said, 'for if you did, in twenty years we would be the 
 most prosperous island of the two, and you would be wanting 
 to follow our example.' 
 
 We had exhausted the neighbourhood of Roseau. After a 
 few days Captain C. was again able to ride, and we could 
 undertake more extended expeditions. He provided me with 
 a horse or pony or something between both, a creature that 
 would climb a stone staircase at an angle of forty-five, or slide 
 down a clay slope soaked by a tropical shower, with the same 
 indifference with which it would canter along a meadow. In 
 the slave times cultivation had been carried up into the 
 mountains. There were the old tracks through the forest 
 engineered along the edges of precipices, torrents roaring far 
 down below, and tall green tiees standing in hollows under- 
 neath, whose top branches were on a level with our eyes. We 
 had to ride with mackintosh and umbrella, prepared at any 
 moment to have the floods descend upon us. The best costume 
 would be none at all. While the sun is above the horizon the 
 island seems to lie under the arches of perpetual rainbows. 
 One gets wet and one dries again, and one is none the worse 
 for the adventure. I had heard that it was dangerous. It did 
 
 10 — 2 
 
148 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 no harm to me. A very particular object was to reach the crest 
 of the mountain ridge which divides Dominica down the 
 middle. We saw the peaks high above us, but it was useless to 
 try the ascent if one could see nothing when one arrived, and 
 mists and clouds hung about so persistently that we had to put 
 off our expedition day after day. 
 
 A tolerable morning came at last. We started early. A 
 faithful black youth ran alongside of the horses to pick us up 
 if we fell, and to carry the indispensable luncheon basket. 
 We rode through the town, over the bridge and by the foot 
 of Dr. Nicholls's plantations. We passed through lime and 
 banana gardens rising slowly along the side of a glen above 
 the river. The road had been made by the French long ago, 
 and went right across the island. It had once been carefully 
 paved, but wet and neglect had loosened the stones and 
 tumbled them out of their places. Trees had driven their 
 roots through the middle of the track. Mountain streams had 
 taken advantage of convenient cuttings and scooped them into 
 waterways. The road comniissioner on the official staff seemed 
 a merely ornamental functionary. We could only travel at a 
 foot pace and in single file. Happily our horses were used to 
 it. Along this road in 1805 Sir George Prevost retreated with 
 the English garrison of Roseau, when attacked in force from 
 Martinique ; saved his men and saved the other part of the 
 island till relief came and the invaders were driven out again. 
 That was the last of the fighting, and we have been left since 
 in undisturbed possession. Dominica was then sacred as the 
 scene of Rodney's glories. Now I suppose, if the French 
 came again, we should calculate the mercantile value of the 
 place to us, and having found it to be nothing at all, might 
 conclude that it would be better to let them keep it. 
 
 We went up and up, winding round projecting spurs of 
 mountain, here and there coming on plateaus where pioneering 
 blacks were clearing patches of forest for their yams and coffee. 
 We skirted the edge of a valley several miles across, on the 
 far side of which we saw the steaming of the sulphur springs, 
 and beyond and above it a mountain peak four thousand feet 
 
A RIDE IN THE FOREST 149 
 
 high and clothed with timber to the summit. In most countries 
 the vegetation grows thin as you rise into the higher altitudes. 
 Here the bush only seems to grow denser, the trees grander 
 and more self-asserting, the orchids and parasites on the 
 boughs more variously brilliant. There were tree ferns less 
 splendid than those in New Zealand and Australia, but larger 
 than any one can see in English hothouses, wild oranges bend- 
 ing under the weight of ripe fruit which was glowing on their 
 branches, wild pines, wild begonias scattered along the banks, 
 and a singularly brilliant plant which they call the wild plan- 
 tain, but it is not a plantain at all, with large broad pointed 
 leaves radiating out from a centre like an aloe's, and a crimson 
 flower stem rising up straight in the middle. It was startling 
 to see such insolent beauty displaying itself indifferently in the 
 heart of the wilderness with no human eye to look at it unless 
 of some passing black or wandering Carib. 
 
 The track had been carried across hot streams fresh from 
 boiling springs, and along the edge of chasms where there was 
 scarcely foothold for the horses. At length we found ourselves 
 on what was apparently the highest point of the pass. We 
 could not see where we were for the trees and bushes which 
 surrounded us, but the path began to descend on the other 
 side. Near the summit was a lake formed in an old volcanic 
 crater which we had come specially to look at. We descended 
 a few hundred feet into a hollow among the hills where the 
 lake was said to be. Where was it, then ? I asked the guide, 
 for I could discover nothing that suggested a lake or anything 
 like one. He pointed into the bush where it was thicker with 
 tropical undergrowth than a wheatfield with ears of corn. If 
 I cared to creep below the branches for two hundred yards at 
 the risk of meeting snakes, scorpions, and other such charming 
 creatures, I should find myself on the water's edge. 
 
 To ride up a mountain three thousand feet high, to be near 
 a wonder which I could not see after all, was not what I had 
 proposed to myself. There was a traveller's rest at the point 
 where we halted, a cool damp grotto carved into the sand- 
 stone. We picketed our horses, cutting leafy boughs off the 
 
150'' THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 trees for them, and making cushions for ourselves out of the 
 ferns. We were told that if we walked on for half a mile we 
 should see the other side of the island, and if we were lucky 
 we might catch a glimpse of the lake. Meanwhile clouds 
 rolled down off the mountains, filled the hollow where we 
 stood, and so wrapped us in mist, that the question seemed 
 rather how we were to return than whether we should venture 
 farther. 
 
 While we were considering what, to do, we heard steps 
 approaching through the fog, and a party of blacks came up 
 on their way to Roseau with a sick companion whom they 
 were carrying in a pa-lanquin. We were eating our luncheon 
 in the grotto, and they stopped to talk to our guide and stare 
 at us. Two of them, a lad and a girl, came up closer to me 
 than good manners would have allowed if they had possessed 
 such things ; the * I am as good as you, and you will be good 
 enough to know it,' sort of tone which belongs to these demo- 
 cratic days showing itself rather notably in the rising generation 
 in parts of these islands. I defended myself with producing a 
 sketch book and proceeding to take their likenesses, on which 
 they fled precipitately. 
 
 Our sandwiches finished, we were pensively consuming our 
 cigars, I speculating on Sir George Prevost and his party of 
 redcoats who must have bivouacked on that very spot, when 
 the clouds broke and the sun came out. The interval was 
 likely to be a short one, so we hurried to our feet, walked 
 rapidly on, and at a turn of the path where a hurricane had 
 torn a passage through the trees, we caught a sight of our lake 
 as we had been told that perhaps we might do. It lay a couple 
 of hundred feet beneath us deep and still, winding away round 
 a promontory under the crags and woods of the opposite hills : 
 they call it a crater, and I suppose it may have been one, for 
 the whole island shows traces of violent volcanic disturbance, 
 but in general a crater is a bowl, and this was like a reach of 
 a river, which lost itself before one could see where it ended. 
 They told us that in old times, when troops were in the fort, 
 and the white men of the island went about and enjoyed 
 
A RIDE IN THE FOREST 151 
 
 themselves, there were boats on this lake, and parties came up 
 and fished there. Now it was Hke the pool in the gardens of 
 the palace of the sleeping princess, guarded by impenetrable 
 thickets, and whether there are fish there, or enchanted 
 princesses, or the huts of some tribe of Caribs, hiding in 
 those fastnesses from negroes whom they hate, or from white 
 men whom they do not love, no one knows or cares to know. 
 I made a hurried pencil sketch, and we went on. 
 
 A Httle farther and we were out of the bush, at a rocky 
 terrace on the rim of the great valley which carries the rainfall 
 on the eastern side of the mountains down into the Atlantic. 
 We were 3,000 feet above the sea. Far away the ocean 
 stretched out before us, the horizon line where sky met water 
 so far distant that both had melted into mist at the point 
 where they touched. Mount Diablot, where Labat spent a 
 night catching the devil birds, soared up on our left hand. Be- 
 low, above, around us, it was forest everywhere ; forest, and 
 only forest, a land fertile as Adam's paradise, still waiting for 
 the day when * the barren woman shall bear children.' Of 
 course it was beautiful, if that be of any consequence — moun- 
 tain peaks and crags and falling waters, and the dark green of 
 the trees in the foreground, dissolving from tint to tint to grey, 
 violet, and blue in the far-off distance. Even at the height '' 
 where we' stood, the temperature must have been 70°. But 
 the steaming damp of the woods was gone, the air was clear 
 and exhilarating as champagne. What a land ! And what 
 were we doing with it ? This fair inheritance, won by English 
 hearts and hands for the use of the working men of England, 
 and the English working men lying squalid in the grimy alleys 
 of crowded towns, and the inheritance turned into a wilder- 
 ness. Visions began to rise of what might be, but visions 
 which were taken from me before they could shape themselves. 
 The curtain of vapour fell down over us again, and all was 
 gone, and of that glorious picture nothing was left but our own 
 two selves and the few yards of red rock and soil on which we 
 were standing. 
 
 There was no need for haste now. We returned slowly to' 
 
152 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 our horses, and our horses carried us home by the way that 
 we had come. Captain C. went carelessly in front through 
 the fog, over boulders and watercourses and roots of fallen 
 trees. I followed as I could, expecting every moment to find 
 myself flying over my horse's head; stumbling, plunging, 
 sliding, but getting through with it somehow. The creature 
 had never seen me before, but was as careful of my safety as 
 if I had been an old acquaintance and friend. Only one mis- 
 adventure befell me, if misadventure it may be called. Shaken, 
 and damp with heat, I was riding under a wild orange tree, 
 the fruit within reach of my hand. I picked an orange and 
 plunged my teeth into the skin, and I had to remember my 
 rashness for days. The oil in the rind, pungent as aromatic 
 salts, rushed on my palate, and spurted on my face and eyes. 
 The smart for the moment half blinded me. I bethought me, 
 however, that oranges with such a flavour would be worth 
 something, and a box of them which was sent home for me 
 was converted into marmalade with a finer flavour than ever 
 came from Seville. 
 
 What more can I say of Dominica ? I stayed with the 
 hospitable C.'s for a fortnight. At the appointed time the 
 returning steamer called for me. I left Capt. C. with a warm 
 hope that he might not be consigned for ever to a post which 
 an English gentleman ought not to be condemned to occupy ; 
 that if matters could not be mended for him where he stood, 
 he might find a situation where his courage and his under- 
 standing might be turned to useful purpose. I can never 
 forget the kindness both of himself and his clever, good, 
 graceful lady. I cannot forget either the two dusky damsels 
 who waited upon me like spirits in a fairy tale. It was night 
 when I left. The packet came alongside the wharf. We took 
 leave by the gleaming of her lights. The whistle screamed, 
 and Dominica, and all that I had seen, faded into a memory. 
 All that I had seen, but not all that I had thought. That 
 island was the scene of the most glorious of England's many 
 famous actions. It had been won for us again and again by 
 the gallantry of our seamen and soldiers. It had been secured 
 
ENGLISH INFLUENCE IN DOMINICA 153 
 
 at last to the Crown by the genius of the greatest of our 
 admirals. It was once prosperous. It might be prosperous 
 again, for the resources of the soil are untouched and in- 
 exhaustible. The black population are exceptionally worthy. 
 They are excellent boatmen, excellent fishermen, excellent 
 mechanics, ready to undertake any work if treated with 
 courtesy and kindness. Yet in our hands it is falling into 
 ruin. The influence of England there is gone. It is nothing. 
 Indifl'erence has bred indifference in turn as a necessary 
 consequence. Something must be wrong when among 30,000 
 of our fellow-subjects not one could be found to lift a hand 
 for us if the island were invaded, when a boat's crew from 
 Martinique might take possession of it without a show of 
 resistance. 
 
 If I am asked the question, What use is Dominica to us ? 
 I decline to measure it by present or possible marketable 
 value ; I answer simply that it is part of the dominions of the 
 Queen. If we pinch a finger, the smart is felt in the brain. If we 
 neglect a wound in the least important part of our persons, it 
 may poison the system. Unless the blood of an organised body 
 circulates freely through the extremities, the extremities mortify 
 and drop off, and the dropping off of any colony of ours will 
 not be to our honour and may be to our shame. Dominica 
 seems but a small thing, but our larger colonies are observing 
 us, and the world is observing us, and what we do or fail to do 
 works beyond the limits of its immediate operation. The 
 mode of management which produces the state of things which 
 I have described cannot possibly be a right one. We have 
 thought it wise, with a perfectly honest intention, to leave our 
 dependencies generally to work out their own salvation. We 
 have excepted India, for with India we dare not run the risk. 
 But we have refused to consider that others among our 
 possessions may be in a condition analogous to India, and we 
 have allowed them to drift on as they could. It was certainly 
 excusable, and it may have been prudent, to try popular 
 methods first, but we have no right to persist in the face of a 
 failure so complete. We are obliged to keep these islands, 
 
154 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 for it seems that no one will relieve us of them ; and if they 
 are to remain ours, we are bound so to govern them that our 
 name shall be respected and our sovereignty shall not be a 
 mockery. Am I asked what shall be done ? I have answered 
 already. Among the silent thousands whose quiet work keeps 
 the Empire alive, find a Rajah Brooke if you can, or a Mr. 
 Smith of Scilly. If none of these are attainable, even a 
 Sancho Panza would do. Send him out with no more in- 
 structions than the knight of La Mancha gave Sancho — to 
 fear God and do his duty. Put him on his mettle. Promise 
 him the respect and praise of all good men if he does well ; 
 and if he calls to his help intelligent persons who understand 
 the cultivation of soils and the management of men, in half a 
 score of years Dominica would be the brightest gem of the 
 Antilles. From America, from England, from all parts of the 
 world, admiring tourists would be flocking there to see what 
 Government could do, and curious politicians with jealous 
 eyes admitting reluctantly unwelcome conclusions. 
 
 Woman ! no mortal o'er the widespread earth 
 
 Can find a fault in thee ; thy good report 
 
 Doth reach the widespread heaven, as of some prince 
 
 Who, in the likeness of a god, doth rule 
 
 O'er subjects stout of heart and strong of hand; 
 
 And men speak greatly of him, and his land 
 
 Bears wheat and r3^e, his orchards bend with fruit, 
 
 His flocks breed surely, the sea yields her fish. 
 
 Because he guides his folk with wisdom. And they grow 
 
 In grace and manly virtue.^ 
 
 Because *He guides with wisdom.' That is the whole 
 secret. The leading of the wise few, the willing obedience of 
 
 ^ w yvvai, ovK av tlq <te (SporoJv Itt' airiipova yaXav 
 veiKEOi • i] yap crev kXeoq ovpavbv ivpvv 'iKavti ' 
 uiOTf Tsv fj (SamXriuQ duvfxovoQ, oare OtovSiqg 
 
 dvSpdaiv kv TToXKolai Kal i^Oifioicnv dvdaa(i>v, 
 
 ivSiKiag dvexv^^i- ' 'p^pv^'' ^^ yaui /xkXaiva 
 TTvpovg Kal KpiOdg, jSpiQ^ai dk SsvSpea Kap7r<p, 
 TiKTU d' tfXTreda jjiTjXa, QdXaaaa dk Trapkxti ix^vg, 
 l^ (vrjyeairjg ' dptTuxTi dt Xaol vtt uvtov. — Odyssfy, x\x. 107. 
 
THE DARIEN CANAL 155 
 
 the many, is the beginning and the end of all right action. 
 Secure this, and you secure everything. Fail to secure it, and 
 be your liberties as wide as you can make them, no success is 
 possible. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The Darien canal — Jamaica mail packet — Captain W. — Retrospect of 
 Jamaican history — Waterspout at sea — Hayti — Jacmel — A walk 
 through the town — A Jamaican planter — First sight of the Blue 
 Mountains — Port Royal — Kingston — The Colonial Secretary — Gordon 
 riots — Changes in the Jamaican constitution. 
 
 Once more to Barbadoes, but merely to change there from 
 steamer to steamer. My course was now across the Carib- 
 bean Sea to the great islands at the bottom of it. The 
 English mail, after calling and throwing off its lateral branches 
 at Bridgetown, pursues its direct course to Hayti and Jamaica, 
 and so on to Vera Cruz and the Darien canal. This wonder- 
 ful enterprise of M. Lesseps has set moving the loose negro 
 population of the Antilles and Jamaica. Unwilling to work 
 as they are supposed to be, they have swarmed down to the 
 isthmus, and are still swarming thither in tens of thousands, 
 tempted by the dollar or dollar and a half a day which M. 
 Lesseps is furnishing. The vessel which called for us at 
 Dominica was crowded with them, and we picked up more as 
 we went on. Their average stay is for a year. At the end of 
 a year half of them have gone to the other world. Half go 
 home, made easy for life with money enough to buy a few 
 acres of land and * live happy ever after.' Heedless as school- 
 boys they plunge into the enterprise, thinking of nothing but 
 the harvest of dollars. They might earn as much or more at 
 their own doors if there were any one to employ them, but 
 quiet industry is out of joint, and Darien has seized their 
 imaginations as an Eldorado. 
 
 If half the reports which reached me are correct, in all 
 the world there is not perhaps now concentrated in any 
 sing'e spot so much foul disease, such a hideous dungheap of 
 
156 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 moral and physical abomination, as in the scene of this far- 
 famed undertaking of nineteenth-century engineering. By the 
 scheme, as it was first propounded, six-and- twenty millions of 
 English money were to unite the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, 
 to form a highway for the commerce of the globe, and enrich 
 with untold wealth the happy owners of original shares. The 
 thrifty French peasantry were tempted by the golden bait, and 
 poured their savings into M. Lesseps's lottery box. All that 
 money and more besides, I was told, had been already spent, 
 and only a fifth of the work was done. Meanwhile the human 
 vultures have gathered to the spoil. Speculators, adventurers, 
 card sharpers, hell keepers, and doubtful ladies have carried 
 their charms to this delightful market. The scene of opera- 
 tions is a dam.p tropical jungle, intensely hot, swarming with 
 mosquitoes, snakes, alligators, scorpions, and centipedes; the 
 home, even as nature made it, of yellow fever, typhus, and 
 dysentery, and now made immeasurably more deadly by the 
 multitudes of people who have crowded thither. Half buried 
 in mud lie about the wrecks of costly machinery, consuming 
 by rust, sent out under lavish orders, and found unfit for the 
 work for which they were intended. Unburied altogether lie 
 also skeletons of the human machines which have broken 
 down there.^ Everything which imagination can conceive that 
 is ghastly and loathsome seems to be gathered into that 
 locaHty just now. I was pressed to go on and look at the 
 moral surroundings of ' the greatest undertaking of our age,' 
 but my curiosity was less strong than my disgust. I did not 
 see the place and the description which I have given is proba- 
 bly too highly coloured. The accounts which reached me, 
 however, were uniform and consistent. Not one person whom 
 I met and who could speak from personal knowledge had any 
 other story to tell. 
 
 1 This has been angrily denied. A gentleman whose veracity I cannot 
 doubt assured me that he had himself seen a dead body lying unburied 
 among some bushes. When he returned to the place a month after it was 
 still there. The frightful mortality among the labourers, at least in the 
 early years of the undertaking, is too notorious to be called in question. 
 
A WEST JNDJAN CAPTAIN 157 
 
 We looked again into St. Lucia on our way. The training 
 squadron was lying outside, and the harbour was covered with 
 boats full of blue-jackets. The big ships were rolling heavily. 
 They could have eaten up Rodney's fleet. The great ' Ville 
 de Paris ' would have been a mouthful to the smallest of them. 
 Man for man, officers and crew were as good as Rodney ever 
 commanded. Yet, somehow, they produce small effect on the 
 imagination of the colonists. The impression is that they 
 are meant more for show than for serious use. Alas ! the stars 
 and stripes on a Yankee trader have more to say in the 
 West Indies than the white ensigns of a fleet of British iron- 
 clads. 
 
 At Barbadoes there was nothing more for me to do or see. 
 The English mail was on the point of sailing, and I hastened 
 on board. One does not realise distance on maps. Jamaica 
 belongs to the West Indies, and the West Indies are a collec- 
 tive entity. Yet it is removed from the Antilles by the 
 diameter of the Caribbean Sea, and is farther off" than Gib- 
 raltar from Southampton. Thus it was a voyage of several 
 days, and I looked about to see who were to be my com- 
 panions. There were several Spaniards, one or two English 
 tourists, and some ladies who never left their cabins. The 
 captain was the most remarkable figure : an elderly man with 
 one eye lost or injured, the other as peremptory as I have 
 often seen in a human face ; rough and prickly on the outside 
 as a pineapple, internally very much resembling the same fruit, 
 for at the bottom he was true, genuine, and kindly hearted, very 
 amusing, and intimately known to all travellers on the West 
 Indian line, in the service of which he had passed forty years of 
 his life. In his own ship he was sovereign and recognised no 
 superior. Bishops, colonial governors, presidents of South 
 American republics were, so far as their office went, no more 
 to him than other people, and as long as they were on board 
 were chattels of which he had temporary charge. Peer and 
 peasant were alike under his orders, which were absolute as 
 the laws of Medes and Persians. On the other hand, his eye 
 was quick to see if there was any personal merit in a man, and 
 
158 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 if you deserved his respect you would have it. One particular 
 merit he had which I greatly approved. He kept his cabin to 
 himself, and did not turn it into a smoking room, as I have 
 known captains do a great deal too often. 
 
 All my own thoughts were fixed upon Jamaica. I had 
 read so much about it, that my memory was full of persons 
 and scenes and adventures of which Jamaica was the stage or 
 subject. Penn and Venables and the Puritan conquest, and 
 Morgan and the buccaneers; Port Royal crowded with 
 Spanish prizes ; its busy dockyards, and English frigates 
 and privateers fitting out there for glorious or desperate 
 enterprises. The name of Jamaica brought them crowding 
 up with incident on incident ; and behind the history came 
 Tom Cringle and the wild and reckless, yet wholesome and 
 hearty, planter's life in Kingston ; the dark figures of the 
 pirates swinging above the mangroves at Gallows Point; the 
 balls and parties and the beautiful quadroons, and the laugh- 
 ing, merry innocent children of darkness, with the tricks of 
 the middies upon them. There was the tragic side of it, too, 
 in slavery, the last ugly flash out of the cloud being not two 
 decades distant in the Eyre and Gordon time. Interest 
 enough there was about Jamaica, and things would be 
 strangely changed in Kingston if nothing remained of the 
 society which was once so brilliant. There, if anywhere, 
 England and English rule were not yet a vanished quantity. 
 There was a dockyard still, and a commodore in command, 
 and a guardship and gunboats, and English regiments and 
 West Indian regiments with English officers. Some repre- 
 sentatives, too, I knew were to be found of the old Anglo- 
 West Indians, men whose fathers and grandfathers were born 
 in the island, and whose fortunes were bound up in it. 
 Aaron Bang ! what would not one have given to meet Aaron? 
 The real Aaron had been gathered to his fathers, and nature 
 does not make two such as he was ; but I might fall in with 
 something that would remind me of him. Paul Gelid and 
 Pepperpot Wagtail, and Peter Mangrove, better than either 
 of them— the likeness of these might be surviving, and 
 
VOYAGE TO JAMAICA 159 
 
 it would be delightful to meet and talk to them. They 
 would give fresh flavour to the hnmortal *Log.' Even 
 another Tom was not impossible ; some middy to develop 
 hereafter into a frigate captain and to sail again into Port 
 Royal with his prizes in tow. 
 
 Nature at all events could not be changed. The white- 
 rollers would still be breaking on the coral reefs. The palms 
 would still be waving on the sand ridge which forms the harbour, 
 and the amber mist would be floating round the peaks of the 
 Blue Mountains. There were English soldiers and sailors and 
 English people. The English language was spoken there by 
 blacks as well as whites. The religion was English. Our 
 country went for something, and there would be some 
 persons, at least, to whom the old land was more than a 
 stepmother, and who were not sighing in their hearts for 
 annexation to the American Union. The governor, Sir 
 Henry Norman, of Indian fame, I was sorry to learn, was 
 still absent ; he had gone home on some legal business. 
 Sir Henry had an Imperial reputation. He had been spoken 
 of to me in Barbadoes as able, if he were allowed a chance, 
 to act as Viceroy of all the islands, and to set them on their 
 feet again. I could well believe that a man of less than 
 Sir Henry's reputed power could do it — for in the thing 
 itself there was no great difficulty — if only we at home were 
 once disenchanted ; though all the ability in the world would 
 be thrown away as long as the enchantment continued. I 
 did see Sir Henry, as it turned out, but only for a few hours. 
 
 Our voyage was without remarkable incident; as voyages 
 are apt to be in these days of powerful steamboats. One 
 morning there was a tropical rain storm which was worth 
 seeing. We had a strong awning over the quarter-deck, so 
 I could stand and watch it. An ink-black cloud came 
 suddenly up from the north which seemed to hang into the 
 sea, the surface of the water below being violently agitated. 
 According to popular belief, the cloud on these occasions is 
 drawing up water which it afterwards discharges. Were 
 this so the water discharged would be salt, which it never 
 
166 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 is. The cause of the agitation is a cyclonic rotation of air 
 or local whirlwind. The most noticeable feature was the 
 blackness of the cloud itself It became so dark that it 
 would have been difficult to read any ordinary print. The 
 rain, when it burst, fell not in drops but in torrents. The 
 deck was flooded, and the scuttle-holes ran like jets from a 
 pump. The awning was ceasing to be a shelter, for the water 
 was driven bodily through it ; but the downpour passed off 
 as suddenly as it had risen. There was no lightning and 
 no wind. The sea under our side was glassy smooth, and 
 was dashed into millions of holes by the plunging of the 
 rain pellets. 
 
 The captain in his journeys to and fro had become ac- 
 quainted with the present black President of Hayti, Mr. 
 Salomon. I had heard of this gentleman as an absolute 
 person, who knew how to make himself obeyed, and who 
 treated opposition to his authority in a very summary 
 manner. He seemed to be a favourite of the captain's. 
 He had been educated in France, had met with many 
 changes of fortune, and after an exile in Jamaica had 
 become quasi-king of the black republic. I much wished 
 to see this paradise of negro liberty ; we were to touch at 
 Jacmel, which is one of the principal ports, to leave the 
 
 mails, and Captain W was good enough to say that, if I 
 
 liked, I might go ashore for an hour or two with the officer 
 in charge. 
 
 Hayti, as everyone knows who has studied the black 
 problem, is the western portion of Columbus's Espanola, or 
 St. Domingo, the largest after Cuba and the most fertile in 
 natural resources of all the islands of the Caribbean Sea. It 
 was the earliest of the Spanish settlements in the New World. 
 The Spaniards found there a million or two of mild and inno- 
 cent Indians, whom in their first enthusiasm they intended 
 to convert to Christianity, and to offer as the first fruits of 
 their discovery to the Virgin Mary and St. Domenic. The 
 saint gave his name to the island, and his temperament to 
 the conquerors. In carrying out their pious design, they 
 
FRANCE AND HA YTI i6i 
 
 converted the Indians off the face of the earth, working 
 them to death in their mines and plantations. They filled 
 their places with blacks from Africa, who proved of tougher 
 constitution. They colonised, they built cities ; they throve 
 and prospered for nearly two hundred years ; when Hayti, the 
 most valuable half of the island, was taken from them by 
 the buccaneers and made into a French province. The rest 
 which keeps the title of St. Domingo, continued Spanish, 
 and is Spanish still — a thinly inhabited, miserable, Spanish 
 republic. Hayti became afterwards the theatre of the exploits 
 of the ever-glorious Toussaint I'Ouverture. When the French 
 Revolution broke out, and Liberty and the Rights of Man 
 became the new gospel, slavery could not be allowed to 
 continue in the French dominions. The blacks of the colony 
 were emancipated and were received into the national brother- 
 hood. In sympathy with the Jacobins of France, who burnt 
 the chateaux of the nobles and guillotined the owners of 
 them, the liberated slaves rose as soon as they were free, and 
 massacred the whole French population, man,^woman, and 
 child. Napoleon sent an army to punish the murderers and 
 recover the colony. Toussaint, who had no share in the 
 atrocities, and whose fault was only that he had been caught 
 by the prevailing political epidemic and believed in the 
 evangel of freedom, surrendered and was carried to France, 
 where he died or else was made an end of. The yellow fever 
 avenged him, and secured for his countrymen the opportunity 
 of trying out to the uttermost the experiment of negro 
 self-government. The French troops perished in tens of 
 thousands. They were reinforced again and again, but it was 
 like pouring water into a sieve. The climate won a victory 
 to the black man which he could not win for himself They 
 abandoned their enterprise at last, and Hayti was free. We 
 English tried our hand to recover it afterwards, but we failed 
 also, and for the same reason. 
 
 Hayti has thus for nearly a century been a black independent 
 state. The negro race have had it to themselves and have not 
 been interfered with. They were equipped when they started 
 
i62 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 on their career of freedom with the Catholic religion, a civilised 
 language, European laws and manners, and the knowledge of 
 various arts and occupations which they had learnt while they 
 were slaves. They speak French still; they are nominally 
 Catholics still; and the tags and rags of the gold lace of 
 French civiHsation continue to cling about their institutions. 
 But in the heart of them has revived the old idolatry of the 
 Gold Coast, and in the villages of the interior, where they are 
 out of sight and can follow their instincts, they sacrifice chil- 
 dren in the serpent's honour after the manner of their fore- 
 fathers. Perhaps nothing better could be expected from a 
 liberty which was inaugurated by assassination and plunder. 
 Political changes which prove successful do not begin in that 
 way. 
 
 The Bight of Leogane is a deep bay carved in the side of 
 the island, one arm of which is a narrow ridge of high moun- 
 tains a hundred and fifty miles long and from thirty to forty 
 wide. At the head of this bay, to the north of the ridge, is 
 Port au Prince, the capital of this remarkable community. 
 On the south, on the immediately opposite side of the moun- 
 tains and facing the Caribbean Sea, is Jacmel, the town next 
 in importance. We arrived off it shortly after daybreak. The 
 houses, which are white, looked cheerful in the sunlight. 
 Harbour there was none, but an open roadstead into which the 
 swell of the sea sets heavily, curling over a long coral reef which 
 forms a partial shelter. The mountain range rose behind, 
 sloping off into rounded woody hills. Here were the feeding 
 grounds of the herds of wild cattle which tempted the buc- 
 caneers into the island, and from which they took their name. 
 The shore was abrupt ; the land broke off in cliffs of coral rock 
 tinted brilliantly with various colours. One rather striking 
 white cliff, a ship's officer assured me, was chalk ; adding flint 
 when I looked incredulous. His geological education was im- 
 perfect. We brought up a mile outside the black city. The 
 boat was lowered. None of the other passengers volunteered 
 to go with me; the English are out of favour in Hayti just 
 now ; the captain discouraged landings out of mere curiosity ; 
 
J AC MEL 163 
 
 and, indeed, the officer with the mails had to reassure himself 
 
 of Captain W 's consent before he would take me. The 
 
 presence of Europeans in any form is barely tolerated. A few 
 only are allowed to remain about the ports, just as the Irish 
 say they let a few Danes remain in Dublin and Waterford after 
 the battle of Clontarf, to attend to the ignoble business of 
 trade. 
 
 The country after the green of the Antilles looked brown 
 and parched. In the large islands the winter months are dry. 
 As we approached the reef we saw the long hills of water turn 
 to emerald as they rolled up the shoal, then combing and 
 breaking in cataracts of snow-white foam. The officer in 
 charge took me within oar's length of the rock to try my 
 nerves, and the sea, he did not fail to tell me, swarmed with 
 sharks of the worst propensities. Two steamers were lying 
 inside, one of which, belonging to an English company, had 
 * happened a misfortune,' and was breaking up as a deserted 
 wreck. A Yankee clipper schooner had just come in with salt 
 fish and crackers — a singularly beautiful vessel, with immense 
 beam, which would have startled the builders of the Cowes 
 racers. It was precisely like the schooner which Tom Cringle 
 commanded before the dockyard martinets had improved her 
 into ugliness, built on the lines of the old pirate craft of the 
 islands, when the lives and fortunes of men hung on the extra 
 speed, or the point which they could lie closer to the wind. 
 Her return cargo would be coffee and bananas. 
 
 Englishmen move about in Jacmel as if they were ashamed 
 of themselves among their dusky lords and masters. I ob- 
 served the Yankee skipper paddling himself off in a canoe 
 with his broad straw hat and his cigar in his mouth, looking as 
 if all the world belonged to him, and as if all the world, and 
 the Hayti blacks in particular, were aware of the fact. The 
 Yankee, whether we like it or not, is the acknowledged sove- 
 reign in these waters. 
 
 The landing place was, or had been, a jetty built on piles 
 and boarded over. Half the piles were broken ; the planks 
 had rotted and fallen through. The swell was rolling home, 
 
 II — t 
 
i64 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 and we had to step out quickly as the boat rose on the crest of 
 the wave. A tattered crowd of negroes were loafing about 
 variously dressed, none, however, entirely without clothes of 
 some kind. One of them did kindly give me a hand, observ- 
 ing that I was less light of foot than once I might have been. 
 The agent's office was close by. I asked the head clerk — a 
 Frenchman — to find me a guide through the town. He called 
 one of the bystanders whom he knew, and we started together, 
 I and my black companion, to see as much as I could in the 
 hour which was allowed me. The language was less hopeless 
 than at Dominica. We found that we could understand each 
 other — he, me, tolerably ; I, him, in fragments, for his tongue 
 went as fast as a shuttle. Though it was still barely eight o'clock 
 the sun was scalding. The streets were filthy and the stench 
 abominable. The houses were of white stone, and of some 
 pretensions, but ragged and uninviting — paint nowhere, and the 
 woodwork of the windows and verandahs mouldy and worm- 
 eaten. The inhabitants swarmed as in a St. Giles's rookery. I 
 suppose they were all out of doors. If any were left at home 
 Jacmel must have been as populous as an African ants' nest. 
 As I had looked for nothing better than a Kaffir kraal, the 
 degree of civilisation was more than I expected. I expressed 
 my admiration of the buildings ; my guide was gratified, and 
 pointed out to me with evident pride a new hotel or boarding 
 house kept by a Madame Somebody who was the great lady of 
 the place. Madame Ellememe was sitting in a shady balcony 
 outside the first-floor windows. She was a large menacing- 
 looking mulatto, like some ogress of the ' Arabian Nights,' 
 capable of devouring, if she found them palatable, any number 
 of salt babies. I took off my hat to this formidable dame, 
 which she did not condescend to notice, and we passed on. A 
 few houses in the outskirts stood in gardens with inclosures 
 about them. There is some trade in the place, and there were 
 evidently families, negro or European, who lived in less squalid 
 style than the generality. There was a governor there, my guide 
 informed me — an ornamental personage, much respected. To 
 my (question whether he had any soldiers, I was answered 
 
• JACMEL 165 
 
 * No/ the Haytians didn't like soldiers. I was to understand, 
 however, that they were not common blacks. They aspired to 
 be a commonwealth with public rights and alliances. Hayti a 
 republic, France a republic : France and Hayti good friends 
 now. They had a French bishop and French priests and a 
 French currency. In spite of their land laws, they were proud 
 of their afiEinity with the great nation ; and I heard afterwards, 
 though not from my Jacmel companion, that the better part 
 of the Haytians would welcome back the French dominion if 
 they were not afraid that the Yankees would disapprove. 
 
 My guide persisted in leading me outside the town, and 
 as my time was limited, I tried in various ways to induce him 
 to take me back into it. He maintained, however, that he had 
 been told to show me whatever was most interesting, and I 
 found that I was to see an American windmill-pump which 
 had been just erected to supply Jacmel with fresh water. It 
 was the first that had been seen in the island, and was a wonder 
 of wonders. Doubtless it implied ' progress,' and would assist 
 in the much-needed ablution of the streets and kennels. I 
 looked at it and admired, and having thus done homage, I 
 was allowed my own way. 
 
 It was market day. The Yankee cargo had been unloaded, 
 and a great open space in front of the cathedral was covered 
 with stalls or else blankets stretched on poles to keep the sun 
 off, where hundreds of Haytian dames were sitting or standing 
 disposing of their wares — piles of salt fish, piles of coloured 
 calicoes, knives, scissors, combs, and brushes. Of home pro- 
 duce there were great baskets of loaves, fruit, vegetables, and 
 butcher's meat on slabs. I looked inquisitively at these last ; 
 but I acknowledge that I saw no joints of suspicious appear- 
 ance. Children were running about in thousands, not the least 
 as if they were in fear of being sacrificed, and babies hung upon 
 their mothers as if natural affection existed in Jacmel as much 
 as in other places. I asked no compromising questions, not 
 wishing to be torn in pieces. Sir Spenser St. John's book has 
 been heard of in Hayti, and the anger about it is considerable. 
 The scene was interesting enough, but the smell was unendur- 
 
1 66 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 able. The wild African black is n.ot filthy in his natural state. 
 He washes much, as wild animals do, and at least tries to keep 
 himself clear of vermin. The blacks in Jacmel appeared (like 
 the same animals as soon as they are domesticated) to lose the 
 sense which belongs to them in their wild condition. My 
 prejudices, if I have any, had not blinded me to the good 
 quahties of the men and women in Dominica. I do not think 
 it was prejudice wholly which made me think the faces which 
 I saw in Hayti the most repulsive which I had ever seen in the 
 world, or Jacmel itself, taken for all in all, the foulest, dirtiest, 
 and nastiest of human habitations. The dirt, however, I will 
 do them the justice to say did not seem to extend to their 
 churches. The cathedral stood at the upper end of the 
 market place. I went in. It was airy, cool, and decent-look- 
 ing. Some priests were saying mass, and there was a fairly 
 large congregation. I wished to get a nearer sight of the altar 
 and the images and pictures, imagining that in Hayti the sacred 
 persons might assume a darker colour than in Europe; but I 
 could not reach the chancel without disturbing people who were 
 saying their prayers, and, to the disappointment of my com- 
 panion, who beckoned me on, and would have cleared a way 
 for me, I controlled my curiosity and withdrew. 
 
 My hour's leave of absence was expired. I made my way 
 back to the landing place, where the mail steamer's boat was 
 waiting for me. On the steamer herself the passengers were 
 waiting impatiently for breakfast, which had been put off on 
 our account. We hurried on board at our best speed ; but 
 before breakfast could be thought of, or any other thing, I had 
 to strip and plunge into a bath and wash away the odour of 
 the great negro republic of the West which clung to my clothes 
 and skin. 
 
 Leaving Jacmel and its associations, we ran all day along 
 the land, skirting a range of splendid mountains between seven 
 and eight thousand feet high; past the Isle k Vache; past the 
 bay of Cayes, once famous as the haunt of the sea-rovers ; 
 past Cape Tubiron, the Cape of Sharks. At evening we were 
 in the channel which divides St. Domingo from Jamaica. 
 
A JAMAICAN PLANTER 167 
 
 Captain insisted to me that this was the scene of Rod- 
 ney's action, and he pointed out to me the headland under 
 which the British fleet had been lying. He was probably 
 right in saying that it was the scene of some action of 
 Rodney's, for there is hardly a corner of the West Indies 
 where he did not leave behind him the print of his cannon 
 shot ; but it was not the scene of the great fight which saved 
 the British Empire. That was below the cHffs of Dominica ; 
 and Captain W , as many others have done, was confound- 
 ing Dominica with St. Domingo. 
 
 The next morning we were to anchor at Port Royal. We 
 had a Jamaica gentleman of some consequence on board. I 
 had failed so far to make acquaintance with him, but on this 
 last evening he joined me on deck, and I gladly used the 
 opportunity to learn something of the present condition of 
 things. I was mistaken in expecting to find a more vigorous 
 or more sanguine tone of feeling than I had left at the Antilles. 
 There was the same despondency, the same sense that their 
 state was hopeless, and that nothing which they could them- 
 selves do would mend it. He himself, for instance, was the 
 owner of a large sugar estate which a few years ago was worth 
 60,000/. It was not encumbered. He was his own manager, 
 and had spared no cost in providing the newest machinery. 
 Yet, with the present prices and with the refusal of the 
 American Commercial Treaty, it would not pay the expense 
 of cultivation. He held on, for it was all that he could do. 
 To sell was impossible, for no one would buy even at the price 
 of the stock on the land. It was the same story which I had 
 heard everywhere. The expenses of the administration, this 
 gentleman said, were out of all proportion to the resources of 
 the island, and were yearly increasing. The planters had 
 governed in the old days as the English landlords had governed 
 Ireland. They had governed cheaply and on their own re- 
 sources. They had authority; they were respected; their 
 word was law. Now their power had been taken from them, 
 and made over to paid officials, and the expense was double 
 what it used to be. Between the demands made on them in 
 
i68 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 the form of taxation and the fall in the value of their produce 
 their backs were breaking, and the ' landed interest ' would 
 come to an end. I asked him, as I had asked many persons 
 without getting a satisfactory answer, what he thought that the 
 Imperial Government could do to mend matters. He seemed 
 to think that it was too late to do anything. The blacks were 
 increasing so fast, and the white influence was diminishing so 
 fast, that Jamaica in a few years would be another Hayti. 
 
 In this gentleman, too, I found to my sorrow that there was 
 the same longing for admission to the American Union which 
 I had left behind me at the Antilles. In spite of soldiers and 
 the naval station, the old country was still looked upon as a 
 stepmother, and of genuine loyalty there was, according to him, 
 little or nothing. If the West Indies were ever to become 
 prosperous again, it could only be when they were annexed to 
 the United States. For the present, at least, he admitted 
 that annexation was impossible. Not on account of any 
 possible objection on the part of the British Government ; for 
 it seems to be assumed by every one that the British Govern- 
 ment cares nothing what they do ; nor wholly on account of 
 the objections of the Americans, though he admitted that the 
 Americans were unwilling to receive them ; but because in the 
 existing state of feeling such a change could not be carried out 
 without civil war. In Jamaica, at least, the blacks and mulattoes 
 would resist. There were nearly 700,000 of them, while of the 
 whites there were but 15,000, and the relative numbers were 
 every year becoming more unfavourable. The blacks kneW 
 that under England they had nothing to fear. They would 
 have everything more and more their own way, and in a short 
 time they expected to have the island to themselves. They 
 might collect arms ; they might do what they pleased, and no 
 English officer dared to use rough measures with them ; while, 
 if they belonged to the Union, the whites would recover 
 authority one way or another. The Americans were ready 
 with their rifles on occasions of disorder, and their own 
 countrymen did not call them to account for it as we did. 
 The blacks, therefore, preferred the liberty which they had 
 
A JAMAICAN PLANTER 169 
 
 and the prospects to which they looked forward, and they and 
 the mulattoes also would fight, and fight desperately, before 
 they would allow themselves to be made American citizens. 
 
 The prospect which Mr. laid before me was not a 
 
 beautiful one, and was coming a step nearer at each advance 
 that was made in the direction of constitutional self-govern- 
 ment ; for, like every other person with whom I spoke on the 
 subject, he said emphatically that Europeans would not remain 
 to be ruled under a black representative system ; nor would 
 they take any part in it when they would be so overwhelmingly 
 outvoted and outnumbered. They would sooner forfeit all 
 that they had in the world and go away. An effective and 
 economical administration on the Indian pattern might have 
 saved all a few years ago. It was too late now, and Jamaica 
 was past recovery. At this rate it was a sadly altered Jamaica 
 since Tom Cringle's time, though his friend Aaron even then 
 had seen what was probably coming. But I could not accept 
 
 entirely all that Mr. had been saying, and had to discount 
 
 the natural irritation of a man who sees his fortune sliding out 
 of his hands. Moreover, for myself, I never Hsten much to a 
 desponding person. Even when a cause is lost utterly, and no 
 rational hope remains, I would still go down, if it had to be so, 
 
 with my spirit unbroken and my face to the enemy. Mr. 
 
 perhaps would recover heart if the price of sugar mended a 
 little. For my own part, I do not care much whether it mends 
 or not. The economics of the islands ought not to depend 
 exclusively on any single article of produce, I believe, too, 
 in spite of gloomy prognostics, that a loyal and prosperous 
 Jamaica is still among the possibilities of the future, if we will 
 
 but study in earnest the character of the problem. Mr. , 
 
 however, did most really convey to me the convictions of a 
 large and influential body of West Indians — convictions on 
 which they are already acting, and will act more and more. 
 With Hayti so close, and with opinion in England indifferent 
 to what becomes of them, they will clear out while they have 
 something left to lose, and will not wait till ruin is upon them 
 or till they are ordered off the land by a black legislature. 
 
I70 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 There is a saying in Hayti that the white man has no rights 
 which the blacks are bound to recognise. 
 
 I walked forward after we had done talking. We had five 
 hundred of the poor creatures on board on their way to the 
 Darien pandemonium. The vessel was rolling with a heavy 
 beam sea. I found the whole mass of them reduced into the 
 condition of the pigs who used to occupy the foredeck in the 
 Cork and Bristol packets. They were lying in a confused heap 
 together, helpless, miserable, without consciousness apparently, 
 save a sense in each that he was wretched. Unfortunate 
 brothers-in-law ! following the laws of political economy, and 
 carrying their labour to the dearest market, where, before a 
 year was out, half of them were to die. They had souls, too, 
 some of them, and honest and kindly hearts. I observed one 
 man who was suffering less than the rest reading aloud to a 
 prostrate group a chapter of the New Testament ; another was 
 reading to himself a French Catholic book of devotion. 
 
 The dawn was breaking in the east when I came on deck in 
 the morning. The Blue Mountains were hanging over us on 
 our right hand, the peaks buried in white mist which the unrisen 
 sun was faintly tinting with orange. We had passed Morant 
 Bay, the scene of Gordon's rash attempt to imitate Toussaint 
 rOuverture. As so often in the Antilles, a level plain 
 stretched between the sea and the base of the hills, formed by 
 the debris washed down by the rivers in the rainy season. 
 Among cane fields and cocoa-nut groves we saw houses and 
 the chimneys of the sugar factories ; and, as we came nearer, 
 we saw men and horses going to their early work. Presently 
 Kingston itself came in sight, and Up Park Camp, and the 
 white barracks high up on the mountain side, of which one had 
 read and heard so much. Here was actually Tom Cringle's 
 Kingston, and between us and the town was the long sand spit 
 which incloses the lagoon at the head of which Kingston is built. 
 How this natural breakwater had been deposited I could find no 
 one to tell me. It is eight miles long, rising but a few feet above 
 the water-line, in places not more than thirty yards across — 
 nowhere, except at the extremity, more than sixty or a hundred. 
 
APPROACH TO KINGSTON 171 
 
 The thundering swell of the Caribbean Sea breaks upon it 
 from year's end to year's end, and never washes it any thinner. 
 Where the sand is dry, beyond the reach of the waves, it is 
 planted thickly all along with palms, and appears from the sea 
 a soft green line, over which appear the masts and spars of the 
 vessels at anchor in the harbour, and the higher houses of 
 Kingston itself. To reach the opening into the lagoon you 
 have to run on to the end of the sandbank, where there is a 
 peninsula on which is built the Port Royal so famous in West 
 Indian story. Halfway down among the palms the lighthouse 
 stands, from which a gun was fired as we passed, to give notice 
 that the English mail was coming in. Treacherous coral reefs 
 rise out of the deep water for several miles, some under water 
 and visible only by the breakers over them, others forming into 
 low wooded islands. Only local pilots can take a ship safely 
 through these powerful natural defence works. There are but 
 two channels through which the lagoon can be approached. 
 The eastern passage, along which we were steaming, runs so near 
 the shore that an enemy's ship would be destroyed by the 
 batteries among the sandhills long before it could reach the 
 mouth. The western passage is less intricate, but that also is 
 commanded by powerful forts. In old times Kingston was 
 unattackable, so strong had the position been made by nature 
 and art combined. It could be shelled now over the spit from 
 the open sea. It might be destroyed, but even so could not 
 easily be taken. 
 
 I do not know that I have ever seen any scene more inter- 
 esting than that which broke upon my eyes as we rounded the 
 point, and the lagoon opened out before me. Kingston, which 
 we had passed half an hour before, lay six miles off at the head 
 of the bay, now inside the sand ridge, blue and hazy in the dis- 
 tance. At the back were the mountains. The mist had melted 
 off, standing in shadowy grey masses with the sun rising behind 
 them. Immediately in front were the dockyards, forts, and 
 towers of Port Royal, with the guardship, gunboats, and tenders, 
 with street and terrace, roof and turret and glistening vane, all 
 clearly and sharply defined in the exquisite transparency of the 
 
172 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 air. The associations of the place no doubt added to the im- 
 pression. Before the first hut was run up in Kingston, Port 
 Royal was the rendezvous of all English ships which, for spoil 
 or commerce, frequented the West Indian seas. Here the 
 buccaneers sold their plunder and squandered their gains in 
 gambling and riot. Here in the later century of legitimate 
 wars, whole fleets were gathered to take in stores, or refit when 
 shattered by engagements. Here Nelson had been, and 
 CoUingwood and Jervis, and all our other naval heroes. Here 
 prizes were brought in for adjudication, and pirates to be tried 
 and hanged. In this spot more than in any other, beyond 
 Great Britain herself, the energy of the Empire once was 
 throbbing. The ' Urgent,' an old two-decker, and three gun- 
 boats were all that were now floating in the once crowded water ; 
 the * Urgent,' no longer equipped for active service, imperfectly 
 armed, inadequately manned, but still flaunting the broad white 
 ensign, and as if grandly watching over the houses which lay 
 behind her. There were batteries at the point, and batteries 
 on the opposite shore. The morning bugle rang out clear and 
 inspiriting from the town, and white coats and gold and silver 
 lace glanced in and out as men and officers were passing to 
 parade. Here, at any rate, England was still alive. 
 
 The channel at the entrance is a mile in width. The 
 lagoon (the open part of it) may be seven or eight miles long 
 and half as many broad. It forms the mouth of the Cobre 
 river, one of the largest in Jamaica, on which, ten miles up, 
 stands the original seat of government established by the 
 Spaniards, and called after them Spanish Town. The fashion 
 of past times, as old as the times of Thucydides, and continued 
 on till the end of the last century, was to choose the sites for 
 important towns in estuaries, at a distance from the sea, to be 
 out of the reach of pirates. The Cobre, running down from 
 Spanish Town, turns the plain through which it flows into a 
 swamp. The swamp covers itself with mangroves, and the 
 mangroves fringe the shore of the lagoon itself for two-thirds 
 of its circuit. As Jamaica grew in wealth and population the 
 trade was carried from Port Royal deeper into the bay. 
 
KINGSTON HARBOUR 173 
 
 Another town sprang up there, called King's Town, or shortly 
 * Kingston/ The administration was removed thither for 
 convenience, and though fallen away from its old consequence, 
 Kingston, with its extended suburbs, its churches and ware- 
 houses, and large mansions overhung with trees, looks at a 
 distance like a place of consideration. Many ships lay along 
 the wharves, or anchored a few cables' distance off. Among 
 them were a couple of Spanish frigates, which remain there in 
 permanence on the watch for refugees from Cuba. On the 
 slopes behind the town, as far as eye could see, were the once 
 splendid estates of the sugar princes of the last century. One 
 of them was pointed out to me as the West Indian home of 
 the author of * Tom Cringle.' 
 
 We had to stop for a few minutes as the officer of the port 
 came alongside for the mails. We then went on at reduced 
 speed. The lagoon is generally shoal. A deep water channel 
 runs along the side of it which is farthest from the sea ; made, 
 I suppose, by the river, for as usual there is little tide or none. 
 Halfway up we passed under the walls of Fort Augusta, now 
 a ruin and almost deserted, but once mounting a hundred 
 guns. The money which we spent on the defence of Jamaica 
 in the old times was not always laid out wisely, as will be seen 
 in an account which I shall have to give of this remarkable 
 structure ; but, at any rate, we were lavish of it. 
 
 Of the sharks with which the water used to swarm we saw 
 none. Port Royal Jack and his kindred are said to have 
 disappeared, driven or frightened out by the screws of the 
 steamers. But it is not a place which I should choose for 
 a swim. Nor did the nigger boys seem as anxious as I had 
 seen them in other spots to dive for sixpences under the 
 ship's side. 
 
 No account is made of days when you come into port after 
 a voyage. Cargoes have to be landed, or coal has to be taken 
 in. The donkey engines are at work, hoisting packing cases 
 and luggage out of the hold. Stewards run to and fro, and 
 state-room doors are opened, and busy figures are seen through 
 each, stuffing their portmanteaus and preparing for departure. 
 
174 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 The church bells at Kingston, ringing for early service, 
 reminded me that it was Sunday. We brought up at a jetty, 
 and I cannot say that, close at hand, the town was as 
 attractive as it had appeared when first I saw it. The 
 enchantment was gone. The blue haze of distance gave place 
 to reality. The water was so fetid under the ship's side that 
 it could not be pumped into the baths. Odours, not Arabian, 
 from open drains reminded me of Jacmel. The streets, up 
 which I could see from the afterdeck, looked dirty and the 
 houses shabby. Docks and wharves, however, are never the 
 brightest part of any town, English or foreign. There were 
 people enough at any rate, and white faces enough among 
 them. Gangways were rigged from the ship to the shore, and 
 ladies and gentlemen rushed on board to meet their friends. 
 The companies' agents appeared in the captain's cabin, 
 Porters were scrambling for luggage ; pushing, shoving, and 
 swearing. Passengers who had come out with us, and had 
 never missed attendance at the breakfast table, were hurrying 
 home unbreakfasted to their wives and families. My own 
 plans were uncertain. I had no friends, not even an acquaint- 
 ance. I knew nothing of the hotels and lodging houses, save 
 that they had generally a doubtful reputation. I had brought 
 with me a letter of introduction to Sir H. Norman, the 
 governor, but Sir Henry had gone to England. On the 
 whole, I thought it best to inclose the letter to Mr. Walker, 
 the Colonial Secretary, who I understood was in Kingston, 
 with a note asking for advice. This I sent by a messenger. 
 Meanwhile I stayed on board to look about me from the deck. 
 The ship was to go on the next morning to the canal works at 
 Darien. Time was precious. Immediately on arriving she 
 had begun to take in coal, Sunday though it might be, and a 
 singular spectacle it was. The coal yard was close by, and 
 some hundreds of negroes, women and men, but women in 
 four times the number, were hard at work. The entire process 
 was by hand and basket, each basket holding from eighty to a 
 hundred pounds weight. Two planks were laid down at a 
 steep incline from the ship's deck to the yard. Swinging their 
 
KINGSTON 175 
 
 loads on their heads, erect as statues, and with a step elastic 
 as a racehorse's, they marched up one of the planks, emptied 
 their baskets into the coal bunkers, and ran down the other. 
 Round and round they went under the blazing sun all the 
 morning through, and round and round they would continue 
 to go all the afternoon. The men took it comparatively easy. 
 The women flew along, laughing, and clamouring, as if not 
 knowing what weariness was — willing beasts of burden, for they 
 had the care upon them of their children; the men disclaiming 
 all responsibilities on that score, after the babies have been 
 once brought into the world. The poor women are content 
 with the arrangement, which they prefer to what they would 
 regard as legal bondage. They earn at this coaling work 
 seven or eight shillings a day. If they were wives, their 
 husbands would take it from them and spend it in rum. The 
 companion who is not a wife can refuse and keep her earnings 
 for her Httle ones. If black suffrage is to be the rule in 
 Jamaica, I would take it away from the men and would give 
 it to the superior sex. The women are the working bees of 
 the hive. They would make a tolerable nation of black 
 amazons, and the babies would not be offered to Jumbi. 
 
 When I had finished my meditations on the coaling women, 
 there were other black creatures to wonder at : great boobies 
 or pelicans, old acquaintances of the Zoological Gardens, who 
 act as scavengers in these waters. We had perhaps a couple 
 of dozen of them round us as large as vultures, ponderous and 
 sleepy to look at when squatting on rocks or piles, over- 
 weighted by their enormous bills. On the wing they were 
 astonishingly swift, wheeling in circles, till they could fix their 
 prey with their eyes, then pouncing upon it with a violent 
 slanting plunge. I suppose their beaks might be broken if 
 they struck directly, but I never saw one miss its aim. Nor 
 do they ever go below the surface, but seize always what is 
 close to it. I was told — I do not know how truly — that like the 
 diablots in Dominica, they nest in the mountains and only 
 come down to the sea to feed. 
 
 Hearing that I was in search of quarters, a Miss Burton, 
 
176 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 a handsome mulatto woman, came up and introduced herself 
 to me. Hotels in the English West Indies are generally 
 detestable. This dame had set up a boarding house on im- 
 proved principles, or rather two boarding houses, between 
 which she invited me to take my choice, one in the suburbs of 
 Kingston, one on the bank of a river in a rocky gorge in the Blue 
 Mountains. In either of these she promised that she would 
 make me happy, and I do not doubt that she would have suc- 
 ceeded, for her fame had spread through all Jamaica, and her 
 face was as merry as it was honest. As it turned out I was 
 provided for elsewhere, and I lost the chance of makmg an 
 acquaintance which I should have valued. When she spoke 
 to me she seemed a very model of vigour and health. She 
 died suddenly while I was in the island. 
 
 The day was still early. When the vessel was in some order 
 again, and those who were going on shore had disappeared, the 
 rest of us were called down to breakfast to taste some of those 
 Jamaica delicacies on which Paul Gehd was so eloquent. The 
 fruit was the chief attraction : pineapples, of which one can 
 eat as much as one likes in these countries with immunity from 
 after suffering; oranges, more excellent than even those of 
 Grenada and Dominica ; shaddocks, admirable as that memor- 
 able one which seduced Adam ; and for the first time man- 
 goes, the famous Number Eleven of which I had heard such • 
 high report, and was now to taste. The English gardeners can 
 do much, but they cannot ripen a Number Eleven, and it is 
 too delicate to bear carriage. It must be eaten in the tropics 
 or nowhere. The mango is the size and shape of a swan's 
 egg, of a ruddy yellow colour when ripe, and in flavour like an 
 exceptionally good apricot, with a very slight intimation of resin. 
 The stone is disproportionately large. The flesh adheres to 
 it, and one abandons as hopeless the attempt to eat mangoes 
 with clean lips and fingers. The epicures insist that they 
 should be eaten only in a bath. 
 
 The heat was considerable, and the feast of fruit was the 
 more welcome. Soon after the Colonial Secretary politely 
 answered my note in person. In the absence of the governor 
 
JAMAICAN PROSPECTS 177 
 
 of a colony, the colonial secretary, as a rule, takes his place. 
 In Jamaica, and wherever we have a garrison, the commander 
 of the forces becomes acting governor ; I suppose because it 
 is not convenient to place an officer of high military rank 
 under the orders of a civilian who is not the direct representa- 
 tive of the sovereign. In the gentleman who now called on 
 me I found an old acquaintance whom I had known as a boy 
 many years ago. He told me that, if I had made no other 
 
 arrangements. Colonel J , who was the present chief, was 
 
 expecting me to be his guest at the * King's House ' during 
 my stay in Jamaica. My reluctance to trespass on the hospi- 
 tality of an entire stranger was not to be allowed. Soldiers 
 who have distinguished themselves are, next to lawyers, the 
 most agreeable people to be met with, and when I was con- 
 vinced that I should really be welcome, I had no other objec- 
 tion. An aide-de-camp, I was told, would call for me in the 
 afternoon. Meanwhile the secretary stayed with me for an 
 hour or two, and I was able to learn something authentic from 
 him as to the general condition of things. I had not given 
 entire credit to the representations of my planter friend of the 
 evening before. Mr. Walker took a more cheerful view, and, 
 although the prospects were not as bright as they might be, he 
 saw no reason for despondency. Sugar was down of course. 
 The public debt had increased, and taxation was heavy. Many 
 gentlemen in Jamaica, as in the Antilles, were selling, or trying 
 to sell, their estates and go out of it. On the other hand, ex- 
 penses of government were being reduced, and the revenue 
 showed a surplus. The fruit trade with the United States 
 was growing, and promised to grow still further. American 
 capitalists had come into the island, and were experimenting 
 on various industries. The sugar treaty with America would 
 naturally have been welcome ; but Jamaica was less dependent 
 on its sugar crop, and the action of the British Government 
 was less keenly resented. In the Antilles, the Colonial Secre- 
 tary admitted, there might be a desire for annexation to the 
 United States, and Jamaican landowners had certainly expressed 
 the same wish to myself. Mr. Walker, however, assured me 
 
 12 
 
178 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 that, while the blacks would oppose it unanimously, the feel- 
 ing, if it existed at all among the whites, was confined as yet 
 to a very few persons. They had been English for 230 years, 
 and the large majority of them wished to remain English. 
 There had been suffering among them ; but there had been 
 suffering in other places besides Jamaica. Better times might 
 perhaps be coming with the opening of the Darien canal, when 
 Kingston might hope to become again the centre of a trade. 
 Of the negroes, both men and women, Mr. Walker spoke ex- 
 tremely favourably. They were far less indolent than they 
 were supposed to be ; they were settling on the waste lands, 
 acquiring property, growing yams and oranges, and harming no 
 one ; they had no grievance left ; they knew it, and were per- 
 fectly contented. 
 
 As Mr. Walker was an official, I did not ask him about the 
 working of the recent changes in the constitution ; nor could 
 he have properly answered me if I had. The state of things 
 is briefly this : Jamaica, after the first settlement, received a 
 parliamentary form of government, modelled on that of Ire- 
 land, the colonial Hberties being restricted by a law analogous 
 to Poynings' Act. The legislature, so constructed, of course 
 represented the white interest only and was entirely composed 
 of whites. It remained substantially unaltered till 1853, when 
 modifications were made which admitted coloured men to the 
 suffrage, though with so high a franchise as to be almost ex- 
 clusive. It became generally felt that the franchise would 
 have to be extended. A popular movement, led by Mr. 
 Gordon, who was a member of the legislature, developed into 
 a riot, into bloodshed and panic. Gordon was hanged by a 
 court-martial, and the assembly, aware that, if allowed to exist 
 any longer, it could exist only with the broad admission of the 
 negro vote, pronounced its own dissolution, surrendered its 
 powers to the Crown, and represented formally ' that nothing 
 but a strong government could prevent the island from lapsing 
 into the condition of Hayti.' 
 
 The surrender was accepted. Jamaica was administered till 
 within the last four years by a governor, officials, and council 
 
POLITICAL CONSTITUTION 179 
 
 all nominated by the Queen. No dissatisfaction had been ex- 
 pressed, and the blacks at least had enjoyed a prosperity and 
 tranquillity which had been unbroken by a single disturbance. 
 If the island has suffered, it has suffered from causes with 
 which political dissatisfaction has had nothing to do, and 
 which, therefore, political changes cannot remove. In 1884 
 Mr. Gladstone's Government, for reasons which I have not 
 been able to ascertain, revived suddenly the representative 
 system ; constructed a council composed equally of nominated 
 and of elected members, and placed the franchise so low as to 
 include practically every negro peasant who possessed a hut 
 and a garden. So long as the Crown retains and exercises its 
 power of nomination, no worse results can ensue than the in- 
 evitable discontent when the votes of the elected members 
 are disregarded or overborne. But to have ventured so im- 
 portant an alteration with the intention of leaving it without 
 further extension would have been an act of gratuitous folly, 
 of which it would be impossible to imagine an English cabinet 
 to have been capable. It is therefore assumed and understood 
 to have been no more than an initial step towards passing over 
 the management of Jamaica to the black constituencies. It 
 has been so construed in the other islands, and was the occa- 
 sion of the agitation in Trinidad which I observed when I was 
 there. 
 
 My own opinion as to the wisdom of such an experiment 
 matters little : but I have a right to say that neither blacks 
 nor whites have asked for it ; that no one who knows anything 
 of the West Indies and wishes them to remain English sincerely 
 asked for it ; that no one has agitated for it save a few news- 
 paper writers and politicians whom it would raise into conse- 
 quence. If tried at all, it will be tried either with a deliberate 
 intention of cutting Jamaica free from us altogether, or else in 
 deference to English political superstitions, which attribute 
 supernatural virtues to the exercise of the franchise, and assume 
 that a form of self-government which suits us tolerably at 
 home will be equally beneficial in all countries and under 
 all conditions. 
 
 12—2 
 
i8o THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The English mails — Irish agitation — Two kinds of colonies-- Indian ad- 
 ministration — How far applicable in the West Indies — Land at Kingston 
 — Government House — Dinner party — Interesting officer — Majuba Hill 
 — Mountain station — Kingston curiosities — Tobacco — Valley in the Blue 
 Mountains. 
 
 I AM reminded as I write of an adventure which befell 
 Archbishop Whately soon after his promotion to the see of 
 Dublin. On arriving in Ireland he saw that the people were 
 miserable. The cause, in his mind, was their ignorance of 
 political economy, of which he had himself written what he 
 regarded as an excellent manual. An Irish translation of this 
 manual he conceived would be the best possible medicine, and 
 he commissioned a native Scripture reader to make one. To 
 insure correctness he required the reader to retranslate to him 
 what he had written line by line. He observed that the man 
 as he read turned sometimes two pages at a time. The text 
 went on correctly, but his quick eye perceived that something 
 was written on the intervening leaves. He insisted on know- 
 ing what it was, and at last extorted an explanation, 'Your 
 Grace, me and my comrade conceived that it was mighty dry 
 reading, so we have just interposed now and then a bit of a 
 pawem, to help it forward, your Grace.' I am myself imitating 
 the translators, and making sandwiches out of politics and 
 local descriptions. 
 
 We had brought the English mails with us. There were 
 letters to read which had been in the ship with us, though out 
 of our reach. There were the newspapers to read. They 
 told me nothing but the weary round of Irish outrages and the 
 rival remedies of Tory or Radical politicians who cared for 
 Ireland less than I did, and considered only how to trim their 
 sails to keep in office or to get it. How sick one is of all that ! 
 Half-a-dozen times at least in Anglo-Irish history things have 
 come to the same point. * All Ireland cannot govern the Earl 
 
LIBERAL THEORY OF GOVERNMENT i8i 
 
 of Kildare,' said someone in Henry VIII. 's privy council. 
 Then answered Wolsey, in the tone of Mr. Gladstone, * Let 
 the Earl of Kildare govern all Ireland/ Elizabeth wished to 
 conciliate. Shan O'Neil, Desmond, Tyrone promised in turn 
 to rule Ireland in loyal union with England under Irish ideas. 
 Lord Grey, who was for * a Mahometan conquest,' was cen- 
 sured and ' girded at : ' yet the end was always broken heads. 
 From 1641 to 1649 an Irish parliament sat at Kilkenny, and 
 Charles I. and the Tories dreamt of an alliance between Irish 
 popery and English loyalism. Charles lost his head, and 
 Cromwell had to make an end of Irish self-government at 
 Drogheda and Wexford. Tyrconnell and James 11. were to 
 repeal the Act of Settlement and restore the forfeited lands to 
 the old owners. The end of that came at the Boyne and at 
 Aghrim. Grattan would remake the Irish nation. The Eng- 
 lish Liberals sent Lord Fitzwilliam to help him, and the Saxon 
 mastiff and the Celtic wolf were to live as brothers evermore. 
 The result has been always the same ; the wretched country 
 inflated with a dream of independence, and then trampled into 
 mud again. So it has been. So it will be again. Ireland 
 cannot be independent, for England is stronger than she, and 
 cannot permit it. Yet nothing less will satisfy her. And so 
 there has been always a weary round of fruitless concessions 
 leading to demands which cannot be gratified, and in the end 
 we are driven back upon force, which the miserable people 
 lack the courage to encounter like men. Mr. Gladstone's 
 experiment differs only from its antecedents because in the 
 past the English friends of Irish liberty had a real hope that a 
 reconciliation was possible. They believed in what they were 
 trying to do. The present enterprise is the creation of parlia- 
 mentary faction. I have never met any person acquainted 
 with the minds and motives of the public men of the day who 
 would not confess to me that, if it had suited the interests of 
 the leaders of the present Radical party to adopt the Irish 
 policy of the Long Parliament, their energy and their eloquence 
 would have been equally at the service of the Protestant as- 
 cendency, which they have now denounced as a upas tree. 
 
1 82 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 They even ask you with wide eyes what else you would 
 expect ? 
 
 Mr. Sexton says that if England means to govern Ireland 
 she must keep an army there as large as she keeps in India. 
 England could govern Ireland in perfect peace, without an 
 army at all, if there was no faction in the House of Commons. 
 The spirit of party will either destroy the British Empire, or 
 the British nation will make an end of party government on 
 its present lines. There are sounds in the air like the cracking 
 of the ice of the Neva at the incoming of spring, as if a nobler 
 purpose was at last awaking in us. In a few more years there 
 may be no more Radicals and no more Conservatives, and the 
 nation will be all in all. 
 
 Here is the answer to the question so often asked. What is 
 the use of the colonies to us ? The colonies are a hundred- 
 fold multiplication of the area of our own limited islands. In 
 taking possession of so large a portion of the globe, we have 
 enabled ourselves to spread and increase, and carry our persons, 
 our language and our liberties, into all climates and continents. 
 We overflow at home ; there are too many of us here already ; 
 and if no lands belonged to us but Great Britain and Ireland, 
 we should become a small insignificant power beside the 
 mighty nations which are forming around us. There is space 
 for hundreds of millions of us in the territories of which we 
 and our fathers have possessed ourselves. In Canada, Aus- 
 tralia, New Zealand we add to our numbers and our resources. 
 There are so many more Englishmen in the world able to hold 
 their own against the mightiest of their rivals. And we have 
 another function, such as the Romans had. The sections of 
 men on this globe are unequally gifted. Some are strong and 
 can govern themselves ; some are weak and are the prey of 
 foreign invaders or internal anarchy ; and freedom, which all 
 desire, is only attainable by weak nations when they are sub- 
 ject to the rule of others who are at once powerful and just. 
 This was the duty which fell to the Latin race two thousand 
 years ago. In these modern times it has fallen to ours, and 
 in the discharge of it the highest features in the English 
 
EAST INDIES AND WEST 183 
 
 character have displayed themselves. Circumstances forced 
 on us the conquest of India ; we have given India in return 
 internal peace undisturbed by tribal quarrels or the ambitions 
 of dangerous neighbours, with a law which deals out right to 
 high and low among 250,000,000 human beings. 
 
 Never have rulers been less self-seeking than we have been 
 in our Asiatic empire. No ' lex de repetundis ' has been 
 needed to punish avaricious proconsuls who had fattened on 
 the provinces. In such positions the English show at their 
 best, and do their best. India has been the training school 
 of our greatest soldiers and greatest administrators. Strike off 
 the Anglo-Indian names from the roll of famous Englishmen, 
 and we shall lose the most illustrious of them all. 
 
 In India the rule of England has been an unexampled 
 success, glorious to ourselves and of infinite benefit to our 
 subjects, because we have been upright and disinterested, and 
 have tried sincerely and honourably to do our duty. In other 
 countries belonging to us, where with the same methods we 
 might have produced the same results, we have applied them 
 with a hesitating and less clean hand. We planted Ireland as 
 a colony with our own people, we gave them a parliament of 
 their own, and set them to govern the native Irish for us 
 instead of doing it ourselves, to save appearances and to save 
 trouble. We have not failed altogether. All the good that - 
 has been done at all in that poor island has been done by the 
 Anglo-Irish landlords. But it has not been much, as the 
 present condition of things shows. In the West Indies 
 similarly the first settlers carried with them their English 
 institutions. They were themselves a handful. The bulk of 
 the population were slaves, and as long as slavery continued 
 those institutions continued to work tolerably in the interest 
 of the white race. When the slaves were emancipated, the 
 distinction of colour done away with, and the black multitude 
 and their white employers made equal before the law and 
 equally privileged, constitutional government became no longer 
 adapted to the new conditions. The white minority could 
 not be trusted with the exclusive possession of political power. 
 
1 84 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 The blacks could not be trusted with the equally dangerous 
 supremacy which their numbers would insure them. Our 
 duty, if we did not and do not mean to abandon them 
 altogether, has been to govern both with the same equity with 
 which we govern at Calcutta. If you choose to take a race 
 like the Irish or like the negroes whom you have forced into 
 an unwilling subjection and have not treated when in that 
 condition with perfect justice — if you take such a race, strike 
 the fetters off them, and arm them at once with all the powers 
 and privileges of loyal citizens, you ought not to be surprised if 
 they attribute your concessions to fear, and if they turn again 
 and rend you. When we are brought in contact with races of 
 men who are not strong enough or brave enough to defend 
 their own independence, and whom our own safety cannot 
 allow to fall under any other power, our right and our duty is 
 to govern such races and to govern them well, or they will 
 have a right in turn to cut our throats. This is our mission. 
 When we have dared to act up to it we have succeeded 
 magnificently ; we have failed when we have paltered and 
 trifled ; and we shall fail again, and the great empire on which 
 the sun never sets will be shattered to atoms, if we refuse to 
 look facts in the face. 
 
 From these meditations, suggested by the batch of news- 
 papers which I had been studying, I was roused by the arrival 
 of the promised aide-de-camp, a good-looking and good- 
 humoured young officer in white uniform (they all wear white 
 in the tropics), who had brought the governor's carriage for 
 me. Government House, or King's House, as it is called, 
 answering to a * Queen's House ' in Barbadoes, is five miles 
 from Kingston, on the slope which gradually ascends from the 
 sea to the mountains. We drove through the town, which did 
 not improve on closer acquaintance. The houses which front 
 towards the streets are generally insignificant. The better 
 sort, being behind walls or overhung with trees, were imperfectly 
 visible. The roads were deep in white dust, which flies every- 
 where in whirling clouds from the unceasing wind. It was the 
 dry season. The rains are not constant in Jamaica, as they 
 
fV- OFTHK ^>^A 
 
 f UNIVERSITY j 
 
 KINGS HOUSE'^'^L^^^^iZ^ 
 
 are in the Antilles. The fields and the sides of the mountains 
 were bare and brown and parched. The blacks, however, 
 were about in crowds in their Sunday finery. Being in a 
 British island, we had got back into the white calicoes and 
 ostrich plumes, and I missed the grace of the women at 
 Dominica ; but men and women seemed as if they had not a 
 care in the world. We passed Up Park Camp and the 
 cantonments of the West India regiments, and then through a 
 * scrub' of dwarf acacia and blue flowered lignum vitse. 
 Handsome villas were spread along the road with lawns and 
 gardens, and the road itself was as excellent as those in 
 Barbadoes. Half an hour's drive brought us to the lodge, and 
 through the park to the King's House itself, which stands 
 among groups of fine trees four hundred feat above the sea. 
 
 All the large houses in Jamaica — and this was one of the 
 largest of them — are like those in Barbadoes, with the type 
 more completely developed, generally square, built of stone, 
 standing on blocks, hollow underneath for circulation of air, 
 and approached by a broad flight of steps. On the three sides 
 which the sun touches, deep verandahs or balconies are thrown 
 out on the first and second floors, closed in front by green 
 bhnds, which can be shut either completely or partially, so 
 that at a distance they look like houses of cards or great green 
 boxes, made pretty by the trees which shelter them or the 
 creepers which climb over them. Behind the blinds run long 
 airy darkened galleries, and into these the sitting rooms open 
 which are of course still darker with a subdued green light, in 
 which, till you are used to it, you can hardly read. The floors 
 are black, smooth, and polished, with loose mats for carpets. 
 The reader of *Tom Cringle' will remember Tom's mis- 
 adventure when he blundered into a party of pretty laughing 
 girls, slipped on one of these floors with a retrospective mis- 
 adventure, and could not rise till his Creole cousin slipped 
 a petticoat over his head. All the arrangements are made to 
 shut out heat and light. The galleries have sofas to lounge 
 upon — everybody smokes, and smokes where he pleases ; the 
 draught sweeping away all residuary traces. At the King's 
 
1 86 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 House to increase the accommodation a large separate dining 
 saloon has been thrown out on the north side, to which you 
 descend from the drawing room by stairs, and thence along 
 a covered passage. Among the mango trees behind there is a 
 separate suite of rooms for the aides de-camp, and a superb 
 swimming bath sixty feet long and eight feet deep. Altogether 
 it was a sumptuous sort of palace where a governor with 
 7,000/. a year might spend his term of office with consider- 
 able comfort were it not haunted by recollections of poor 
 Eyre. He, it seems, lived in the 'King's House,' and two 
 miles off, within sight of his windows, lived Gordon. 
 
 I had a more than gracious welcome from Colonel J 
 
 and his family. In him I found a high-bred soldier, who had 
 served with distinction in India, who had been at the storm of 
 Delhi, and who was close by when Nicholson was shot. No 
 one could have looked fitter for the post which he now tem- 
 porarily occupied. I felt uncomfortable at being thus thrust 
 upon his hospitality. I had letters of introduction with me to 
 
 the various governors of the islands, but on Colonel J I 
 
 had no claim at all. I was not even aware of his existence, 
 or he, very likely, of mine. If not he, at any rate the ladies 
 of his establishment, might reasonably look upon me as a 
 bore, and if I had been allowed I should simply have paid my 
 respects and have gone on to my mulatto. But they would 
 not hear of it. They were so evidently hearty in their invita- 
 tion to me that I could only submit and do my best not to be 
 a bore, the one sin for which there is no forgiveness. 
 
 In the circle into which I was thrown I was unlikely to hear 
 
 much of West Indian poHtics or problems. Colonel J 
 
 was acting as governor by accident, and for a few months only. 
 He had his professional duties to look after ; his term of ser- 
 vice in Jamaica had nearly expired ; and he could not trouble 
 himself with possibilities and tendencies with which he would 
 have no personal concern. As a spectator he considered 
 probably that we were not making much of the West Indies, 
 and were not on the way to make much. He confirmed 
 the complaint which I had heard so often, that the blacks 
 
A DINNER PARTY 187 
 
 would not work for wages more than three days in the week, 
 or regularly upon those, preferring to cultivate their own 
 yams and sweet potatoes ; but as it was admitted that they 
 did work one way or another at home, I could not see that 
 there was much to complain of. The blacks were only doing 
 as we do. We, too, only work as much as we like or as we 
 must, and we prefer working for ourselves to working for 
 others. 
 
 On his special subjects the Colonel was as interesting as he 
 could not help being. He talked of the army and of the 
 recent changes in it without insisting that it was going to the 
 devil. He talked of India and the Russians, and for a wonder 
 he had no Russophobia. He thought that England and 
 Russia might as easily be friends as enemies, and that it 
 would be better for the world if they were. As this had been 
 my own fixed opinion for the last thirty years, I thought him 
 a very sensible man. In the evening there was a small dinner 
 party, made up chiefly of officers from the West Indian regi- 
 ments at Kingston. The English troops are in the mountains 
 at Newcastle, four or five thousand feet up and beyond com- 
 mon visiting distance. Among those whom I met on this 
 occasion was an officer who struck me particularly. There 
 was a mystery about his origin. He had risen from the ranks, 
 but was evidently a genj:leman by birth ; he had seen service 
 all over the world ; he had been in Chili, and, among his 
 other accomphshments, spoke Spanish fluently; he entered 
 the English army as a private, had been in the war in the 
 Transvaal, and was the only survivor of the regiment which 
 was surprised and shot down by the Boers in an intricate pass 
 where they could neither retreat nor defend themselves. On 
 that occasion he had escaped and saved the colours, for which 
 he was rewarded by a commission. He was acquainted with 
 many of my friends there who had been in the thick of the 
 campaign ; knew Sir Owen Lanyon, Sir Morrison Barlow, and 
 CoUey. He had surveyed the plateau on Majuba Hill after 
 the action, and had gathered the rumours which were flying 
 many coloured about Colley's death. Friend and foe alike 
 
1 88 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 loved Colley, and his already legendary fame is an unconscious 
 tribute to his memory. By whose hand he fell can never be 
 
 known. We believe as we wish or as we fancy. Mr. was 
 
 so fine an officer, so clever a man, and so reserved about his 
 personal affairs, that about him too ' myths * were growing. He 
 was credited in the mess room with being the then unknown 
 author of ' Solomon's Mines.' Mr. Haggard will forgive a 
 
 mistake which, if he knows Mr. , he will feel to be a 
 
 compliment. 
 
 From general conversation I gathered that the sanguine 
 views of the Colonial Secretary were not widely shared. The 
 English interest was still something in Jamaica ; but the phe- 
 nomena of the Antilles were present there also, if in a less 
 extreme form. There were 700,000 coloured people in the 
 island, with but 15,000 or 16,000 whites ; and the blacks there 
 also were increasing rapidly, and the whites were stationary if 
 not declining. There was the same uneasy social jealousy, 
 and the absence of any social relation between the two races. 
 There were mulattoes in the island of wealth and consequence, 
 and at Government House there are no distinctions ; but the 
 English residents of pure colonial blood would not associate 
 with them, social exclusiveness increasing with political equality. 
 The blacks disliked the mulattoes ; the mulattoes despised the 
 blacks, and would not intermarry with them. The impression 
 was that the mulatto would die out, that the tendency of the 
 whites and blacks was to a constantly sharpening separation, 
 and that if things went on as they were going for another 
 generation, it was easy to see which of the two colours would 
 then be in the ascendant. The blacks were growing saucy, 
 too ; with much else of the same kind. I could but Hsten 
 and wait to judge for myself. 
 
 Meanwhile my quarters were unexceptionable, my kind 
 entertainers leaving nothing undone to make my stay with 
 them agreeable. In hot climates one sleeps lightly ; but light 
 sleep is all that one wants, and one wakes early. The swim- 
 ming bath was waiting for me underneath my window. After 
 a plunge in the clear cold water came coffee, grown and dried 
 
A DRIVE TO KINGSTON 189 
 
 and roasted on the spot, and ' made ' as such coffee ought to 
 be. Then came the early walk. One missed the tropical 
 luxuriance of Trinidad and Dominica, for the winter months 
 in Jamaica are almost rainless ; but it would have been beauti- 
 ful anywhere else, and the mango trees were in their glory. 
 There was a corner given to orchids, which were hung in 
 baskets and just coming into flower. Lizards swarmed in the 
 sunshine, running up the tree trunks, or basking on the garden 
 seats. Snakes there are none; the mongoose has cleared 
 them all away so completely that there is nothing left for him 
 to eat but the poultry, in which he makes havoc, and, having 
 been introduced to exterminate the vermin, has become a 
 vermin himself. 
 
 To drive, to ride, to visit was the employment of the days. 
 I saw the country. I saw what people were doing, and heard 
 what they had to say. 
 
 The details are mostly only worth forgetting. The senior 
 
 aide-de-camp. Captain C , an officer in the Artillery, was a 
 
 man of ability and observation. He, too, like the Colonel, was 
 mainly interested in his profession, to which he was anxious to 
 return; but he was watching, too, with serious interest the waning 
 fortunes of the West Indies. He superintended the social part 
 of the governor's business to perfection. Anything which I 
 wished for had only to be mentioned to be provided. He gave 
 me the benefit, though less often than I could have wished, of 
 his shrewd, and not ungenial, observations. He drove me one 
 morning into Kingston. I had passed through it hastily on 
 the day of my landing. There were libraries, museums, public 
 offices, and such like to be seen, besides the town itself. High 
 up on the mountain side, more often in the clouds than out of 
 them, the cantonments of the English regiments were visible 
 from the park at Government House. The slope where they 
 had been placed was so steep that one wondered how they 
 held on. They looked like tablecloths stretched out to dry. 
 I was to ride up there one day. Meanwhile, as we were 
 driving through the park and saw the white spots shining up 
 above us, I asked the aide-de-camp what the privates found to 
 
I90 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 do in such a place. The ground was too steep for athletics ; 
 no cricket could be possible there, no lawn tennis, no quoits, 
 no anything. There were no neighbours. Sports there were 
 none. The mongoose had destroyed the winged game, and 
 there was neither hare nor rabbit, pig nor deer; not a wild 
 animal to be hunted and killed. With nothing to do, no one 
 to speak to, and nothing to kill, what could become of them ? 
 Did they drink ? Well, yes. They drank rum occasionally ; 
 but there were no public houses. They could only get it at 
 the canteen, and the daily allowance was moderate. As to 
 beer, it was out of reach altogether. At the foot of the moun- 
 tains it was double the price which it was in England. At 
 Newcastle the price was doubled again by the cost of carriage 
 to the camp. I inquired if they did not occasionally hang 
 themselves. * Perhaps they would,' he said, ' if they had no 
 choice, but they preferred to desert, and this they did in large 
 numbers. They slipped down the back of the range, made 
 their way to the sea, and escaped to the United States.' The 
 officers — what became of them ? The officers ! Oh/ well ! 
 they gardened ! Did they like it ? Some did and some 
 didn't. They were not so ill off as the men, as occasionally 
 they could come down on leave. 
 
 One wondered what the process had been which had led the 
 authorities to select such a situation. Of course it was for the 
 health of the troops, but the hill country in Jamaica is wide ; 
 there were many other places available, less utterly detestable, 
 and ennui and discontent are as mischievous as fever. 
 
 General , a short time ago, went up to hold an inquiry 
 
 into the desertions, and expressed his wonder how such things 
 could be. With such air, such scenery, such views far and 
 wide over the island, what could human creatures wish for 
 more ? * You would desert yourself, general,' said another 
 officer, * if you were obliged to stay there a month.' 
 
 Captain C undertook that I should go up myself in a 
 
 day or two. He promised to write and make arrangements. 
 Meanwhile we went on to Kingston. It was not beautiful. 
 There was Rodney's statue. Rodneys is venerated in Jamaica, 
 
IVEST INDIAN ADMINISTRATION 191 
 
 as he ought to be ; but for him it would have been a Spanish 
 colony again. But there is nothing grand about the buildings, 
 nothing even handsome, nothing even specially characteristic 
 of England or the English mind. They were once perhaps 
 business-like, and business having slackened they are now 
 dingy. Shops, houses, wharves, want brightness and colour. 
 We called at the office of the Colonial Secretary, the central 
 point of the administration. It was an old mansion, plain, 
 unambitious, sufficient perhaps for its purpose, but lifeless and 
 dark. If it represented economy there would be no objection. 
 The public debt has doubled since Jamaica became a Crown 
 colony. In 1876 it was half a million. It is now more than a 
 million and a half. The explanation is the extension of the 
 railway system, and there has been no culpable extravagance. 
 I do not suppose that the re-establishment of a constitution 
 would mend matters. Democracies are always extravagant. 
 The majority, who have little property or none, regulate 
 the expenditure. They lay the taxes on the minority, who 
 have to find the money, and have no interest in sparing 
 them. 
 
 Ireland when it was governed by the landowners, Jamaica in 
 the days of slavery, were administered at a cost which seems 
 now incredibly small. The authority of the landowners and 
 of the planters was undisputed. They were feared and obeyed, 
 and magistrates unpaid and local constables sufficed to main- 
 tain tolerable order. Their authority is gone. Their functions 
 are transferred to the police, and every service has to be paid 
 for. There may be fewer serious crimes, but the subordination 
 is immeasurably less, the expense of administration is im- 
 measurably greater. I declined to be taken over sugar mills, 
 or to be shown the latest improvements. I was too ignorant 
 to understand in what the improvements consisted, and could 
 take them upon trust. The public bakery was more interesting. 
 In tropical climates a hot oven in a small house makes an 
 inconvenient addition to the temperature. The bread for 
 Kingston, and for many miles around it, is manufactured at 
 night by a single company and is distributed in carts in the 
 
192 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 morning. We saw the museum and public library. There 
 were the usual specimens of island antiquities — of local fish, 
 birds, insects, reptiles, plants, geological formations, and such 
 like. In the library were old editions of curious books at the 
 West Indies, some of them unique, ready to yield ampler 
 pictures of the romance of the old life there than we at present 
 possess. I had but leisure to glance at title-pages and en- 
 gravings. The most noticeable relic preserved there, if it be 
 only genuine, is the identical bauble which Cromwell ordered 
 to be taken away from the Speaker's table in the House of 
 Commons. Explanations are given of the manner in which it 
 came to Jamaica. The evidence, so far as I could understand 
 it, did not appear conclusive. 
 
 Among the new industries in the island in the place of sugar 
 was, or ought to be, tobacco. A few years ago I asked Sir J. 
 Hooker, the chief living authority in such matters, why Cuba 
 was allowed the monopoly of delicate cigar tobacco — whether 
 there were no other countries where it could be grown equally 
 good. He said that at the very moment cigars, as fine as the 
 finest Havanas, were being produced in Jamaica. He gave 
 me an excellent specimen with the address of the house which 
 supplied it ; and for a year or two I was able to buy from it 
 what, if not perfect, was more than tolerable. The house 
 acquired a reputation ; and then, for some reason or other, 
 perhaps from weariness of the same flavour, perhaps from a 
 falling off in the character of the cigars, I, and possibly others, 
 began to be less satisfied. Here on the spot I wished to make 
 
 another experiment. Captain C introduced me to a 
 
 famous manufacturer, a Spaniard, with a Spanish manager 
 under him who had been trained at Havana. I bespoke his 
 good will by adjuring him in his own tongue not to disappoint 
 me ; and I beUeve that he gave me the best that he had. But, 
 alas ! it is with tobacco as with most other things. Democracy 
 is king ; and the greatest happiness of the greatest number is 
 the rule of modern Hfe. The average of everything is higher 
 than it used to be ; the high quality which rises above medioc- 
 rity is rare or is non-existent. We are swept away by the 
 
VALLEY OF THE HOPE RIVER 193 
 
 genius of the age, and must be content with such other 
 blessings as it has been pleased to bring with it. 
 
 Why should I murmur thus and vainly moan ? 
 The Gods will have it so — their will be done.* 
 
 The earth is patient also, and allows the successive genera- 
 tions of human creatures to play their parts upon her surface as 
 they please. She spins on upon her own course ; and seas 
 and skies, and crags and forests, are spiritual and beautiful as 
 ever. 
 
 Gordon's Town is a straggling village in the Blue Range 
 
 underneath Newcastle. Colonel J had a villa there, and 
 
 one afternoon he took me over to see it. You pass abruptly 
 from the open country into the mountains. The way to 
 Gordon's Town was by the side of the Hope river, which cuts its 
 way out of them in a narrow deep ravine. The stream was 
 now trickling faintly among the stones ; the enormous boulders 
 in the bed were round as cannon balls, and, weighing hundreds 
 of tons, show what its power must be in the coming down of 
 the floods. Within the limits of the torrent, which must rise 
 at such times thirty feet above its winter level, the rocks were 
 bare and stern, no green thing being able to grow there. 
 Above the line the tropical vegetation was in all its glory:, 
 ferns and plantains waving in the moist air ; cedars, tamarinds, 
 gum trees, orange trees striking their roots among the clefts 
 of the crags, and hanging out over the abysses below them. 
 Aloes flung up their tall spiral stems; flowering shrubs and 
 creepers covered bank and slope with green and blue and 
 white and yellow, and above and over our heads, as we drove 
 along, frowned the great limestone blocks which thunder 
 down when loosened by the rain. Farther up the hill sides, 
 where the slopes are less precipitous, the forest has been burnt 
 off by the unthrifty blacks, who use fire to clear the ground 
 for their yam gardens, and destroy the timber over a dozen 
 acres when they intend to cultivate but a single one. The 
 landscape sufl"ers less than the soil. The efl"ect to the eye is 
 
 ' Euripides. 
 
 13 
 
194 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 merely that the mountains in Jamaica, as in temperate climates, 
 become bare at a moderate altitude, and their outlines are 
 marked more sharply against the sky. 
 
 Introduced among scenery of this kind, we followed the 
 river two or three miles, when it was crossed by a bridge, 
 above which stood my friend Miss Burton's lodging house, 
 where she had designed entertaining me. . At Gordon's Town, 
 which is again a mile farther on, the valley widens out, and 
 there are cocoa and coffee plantations. Through an opening 
 we saw far above our heads, like specks of snow against the 
 mountain side, the homes or prisons of our unfortunate troops. 
 Overlooking the village through which we were passing, and 
 three hundred feet above it, was perched the Colonel's villa 
 on a projecting spur where a tributary of the Hope river has 
 carved out a second ravine. We drove to the door up a steep 
 winding lane among coffee bushes, which scented the air with 
 their jessamine-like blossom, and wild oranges on which the 
 fruit hung untouched, glowing like balls of gold. We were now 
 eleven hundred feet above the sea. The air was already many 
 degrees cooler than at Kingston. The ground in front of the 
 house was levelled for a garden. Ivy was growing about the 
 trellis work, and scarlet geraniums and sweet violets and roses 
 which cannot be cultivated in the lower regions, were here in 
 full bloom. Elsewhere in the grounds there was a lawn 
 tennis court to tempt the officers down from their eyrie in the 
 clouds. The house was empty, in charge of servants. From 
 the balcony in front of the drawing room we saw peak rising 
 behind peak, till the highest, four thousand feet above us, was 
 lost in the white mist. Below was the valley of the Hope 
 AVer with its gardens and trees and scattered huts, with build- 
 ings here and there of higher pretensions. On the other side 
 the tributary stream rushed down its own ravine, while the 
 breeze among the trees and the sound of the falling waters 
 swayed up to us in intermittent pulsations. 
 
 The place had been made, I believe, in the days of planta- 
 tion prosperity. What would become of it all, if Jamaica 
 drifted after her sisters in the Antilles, as some persons 
 
VAI^LEY IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS, JAMAICA. 
 
TO BE OR NOT TO BE 195 
 
 thought that she was drifting, and became, like Grenada, an 
 island of small black proprietors? Was such a fate really 
 hanging over her ? Not necessarily, not by any law of nature. 
 If it came, it would come from the dispiritment, the lack of 
 energy and hope in the languid representatives of the English 
 colonists ; for the land even in the mountains will grow what 
 it is asked to grow, and men do not live by sugar alone ; and 
 my friend Dr. Nicholl in Dominica and Colonel Duncan in 
 Grenada itself were showing what English energy could do if 
 it was alive and vigorous. The pale complaining beings of 
 whom I saw too many, seemed as if they could not be of the 
 same race as the men who ruled in the days of the slave trade. 
 The question to be asked m every colony is, what sort of men 
 is it rearing? If that cannot be answered satisfactorily, the 
 rest is not worth caring for. The blacks do not deserve the 
 
 ill that is spoken of them. Colonel J 's house is twelve 
 
 miles from Kingston. He told me that a woman would walk in 
 with a load for him, and return on the same day with another, 
 for a shilling. With such material of labour wisely directed, 
 whites and blacks might live and prosper together ; but even 
 the poor negro will not work when he is regarded only as a 
 machine to bring grist to his master's mill. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Visit to Port Royal — Dockyard — Town — Church — Fort Augusta — The 
 eyrie in the mountains — Ride to Newcastle — Society in Jamaica — Re- 
 ligious bodies — Liberty and authority. 
 
 A NEW FORT was being built at the mouth of the harbour. 
 New batteries were being armed on the sandbanks at Port 
 
 Royal. Colonel J had to inspect what was going on, and 
 
 he allowed me to go with him. We were to lunch with the 
 commodore of the station at the Port Royal dockyard. I 
 •could then see the town — or what was left of it, for the story 
 \vent that half of it had been swallowed up by an earthquake. 
 
 13—2 
 
196 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 We ran out in a steam launch from Kingston, passing under the 
 sterns of the Spanish frigates. I was told that there were always 
 one or more Spanish ships of war stationed there, but no one 
 knew anything about them except generally that they were on 
 the look-out for Cuban conspirators. There was no exchange 
 of courtesies between their officers and ours, nor even official 
 communication beyond what was formally necessary. I 
 thought it strange, but it was no business of mine. My sur- 
 prise, however, was admitted to be natural. As the launch 
 drew little water, we had no occasion to follow the circuitous 
 channel, but went straight over the shoals. We passed close 
 by Gallows Point, where the Johnny crows used to pick the 
 pirates' bones. In the mangrove swamp adjoining, it was said 
 that there was an old Spanish cemetery ; but the swamp was 
 poisonous, and no one had ever seen it. At the dockyard 
 pier the commodore was waiting for us. I found that he was 
 an old acquaintance whom I had met ten years before at the 
 Cape. He was a brisk, smart officer, quiet and sailor-like in 
 his manners, but with plenty of talent and cultivation. He 
 showed us his stores and his machinery, large engines, and 
 engineers to work them, ready for any work which might be 
 wanted, but apparently with none to do. We went over the 
 hospital, airy and clean, with scarcely a single occupant, so 
 healthy has now been made a spot which was once a nest of 
 yellow fever. Naval stores soon become antiquated; and 
 parts of the great square were paved with the old cannon balls 
 which had become useless on the introduction of rifled guns. 
 The fortifications were antiquated also, but new works were 
 being thrown up armed with the modern monster cannon. 
 One difficulty struck me ; Port Royal stood upon a sandbank. 
 In such a place no spring of fresh water could be looked for. 
 On the large acreage of roofs there were no shoots to catch 
 the rain and carry it into cisterns. WJience did the water 
 come for the people in the town ? How were the fleets sup- 
 plied which used to ride there ? How was it in the old times 
 when Port Royal was crowded with revelling crews of buc- 
 caneers ? I found that every drop which is consumed in the 
 
PORT ROYAL 197 
 
 place, or which is taken on board either of merchant ship or 
 man-of-war, is brought in a steam tug from a spring ten miles 
 off upon the coast. Before steam came in, it was fetched in 
 barges rowed by hand. Nothing could be easier than to save 
 the rain which falls in abundance. Nothing could be easier 
 than to lay pipes along the sand-spit to the spring. But the 
 tug plies daily to and fro, and no one thinks more about the 
 matter. 
 
 A West Indian regiment is stationed at Port Royal. After 
 the dockyard we went through the soldiers' quarters and then 
 walked through the streets of the once famous station. It is 
 now a mere hamlet of boatmen and fishermen, squalid and 
 wretched, without and within. Half-naked children stared 
 at us from the doors with their dark, round eyes. I found it 
 hard to call up the scenes of riot, and confusion, and wild 
 excitement which are alleged to have been witnessed there. 
 The story that it once covered a far larger area has been, 
 perhaps, invented to account for the incongruity. Old plans 
 exist which seem to show that the end of the spit could never 
 have been of any larger dimensions than it is at present. 
 There is proof enough, however, that in the sand there lie the 
 remains of many thousand English soldiers and seamen, who 
 ended their lives there for one cause or other. The bones lie 
 so close that they are turned up as in a country churchyard 
 when a fresh grave is dug. The walls of the old church are 
 inlaid thickly with monuments and monumental tablets to the 
 memory of officers of either service, young and old ; some 
 killed by fever, some by accidents of war or sea ; some 
 decorated with the honours which they had won in a hundred 
 fights, some carried off before they had gathered the first 
 flower of fame. The costliness of many of these memorials 
 was an affecting indication how precious to their famiUes 
 those now resting there once had been. One in high relief 
 struck me as a characteristic specimen of Rubillac's workman- 
 ship. It was to a young lieutenant who had been killed by 
 the bursting of a gun. Flame and vapour were rushing out of 
 the breech. The youth himself was faUing backwards, with 
 
198 777^ ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 his arms spread out, and a vast preternatural face — death, 
 judgment, eternity, or whatever it was meant to be — was 
 glaring at him through the smoke. Bad art, though the 
 execution was remarkable ; but better, ' perhaps, than the 
 weeping angels now grown common among ourselves. 
 
 After luncheon the commodore showed us his curiosities, 
 especially his garden, which, considering the state of his 
 water supply, he had created under unfavourable conditions. 
 He had a very respectable collection of tropical ferns and 
 flowers, with palms and plantains to shade and shelter them. 
 He was an artist besides, within the lines of his own pro- 
 fession. Drawings of ships and boats of all sorts and in all 
 attitudes by his own brush or pencil were hanging on the 
 walls of his working room. He was good enough to ask me 
 to spend a day or two with him at Port Royal before I left 
 the island, and I looked forward with special pleasure to 
 becoming closer acquainted with such a genuine piece of 
 fine-grained British oak. 
 
 There were the usual ceremonies to be attended to. The 
 officers of the guardship and gunboats had to be called on. 
 The forts constructed, or in the course of construction, were 
 duly inspected. I believe that there is a real serious intention 
 to strengthen Port Royal in view of the changes which may 
 come about through the opening, if that event ever takes 
 place, of the Darien canal. 
 
 Our last visit was to a fort deserted, or all but deserted — 
 the once too celebrated Fort Augusta, which deserves par- 
 ticular description. It stands on the inner side of the lagoon 
 commanding the deep-water channel at the point of the great 
 mangrove swamp at the mouth of the Cobre river. For the 
 purpose for which it was intended no better situation could 
 have been chosen, had there been nothing else to be con- 
 sidered except the defence of the harbour, for a vessel trying 
 to reach Kingston had to pass close in front of its hundred 
 guns. It was constructed on a scale becoming its importance, 
 with accommodation for two or three regiments, and the 
 regiments were sent thither, and they perished, regiment after 
 
FORT AUGUSTA 199 
 
 regiment, officers and men, from the malarious exhalations of 
 the morass. Whole battalions were swept away. The ranks 
 were filled up by reinforcements from home, and these, too, 
 went the same road. Of one regiment the only survivors, 
 according to the traditions of the place, were a quartermaster 
 and a corporal. Finally it occurred to the authorities at the 
 Horse Guards that a regiment of Hussars would be a useful 
 addition to the garrison. It v/as not easy to see what Hussars 
 were to do there. There is not a spot where the horses could 
 stand twenty yards beyond the lines ; nor could they reach 
 Fort Augusta at all except in barges. However, it was 
 perhaps well that they were sent. Horses and men went the 
 way of the rest. The loss of the men might have been 
 supplied, but horses were costly, and the loss of them was 
 more serious. Fort Augusta was gradually abandoned, and 
 is now used only as a powder magazine. A guard is kept 
 there of twenty blacks from the West Indian force, but even 
 these are changed every ten days — so deadly the vapour of 
 that malarious jungle is now understood to be. 
 
 I never saw so spectral a scene as met my eyes when we 
 steamed up to the landmg place — ramparts broken down, and 
 dismantled cannon lying at the foot of the wall overgrown by 
 jungle. The sentinel who presented arms was like a corpse 
 in uniform. He was not pale, for he was a negro — he was 
 green, and he looked like some ghoul or afrite in a ghastly 
 cemetery. The roofs of the barracks and storehouses had 
 fallen in, the rafters being left standing with the light shining 
 between them as through the bones of skeletons. Great piles 
 of shot lay rusting, as not worth removal j among them 
 conical shot, so recently had this fatal charnel house been 
 regarded as a fit location for British artillerymen. 
 
 I breathed more freely as we turned our backs upon the 
 hideous memorial of parhamentary administration, and 
 steamed away into a purer air. My conservative instincts 
 had undergone a shock. As we look back into the past, 
 the brighter features stand out conspicuously. The mistakes 
 and miseries have sunk in the shade and are forgotten. In 
 
200 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 the present faults and merits are visible alike. The faults 
 attract chief notice that they may be mended ; and as there 
 seem so many of them, the impulse is to conclude that the 
 past was better. It is well to be sometimes reminded what 
 
 the past really was. In Colonel J I found a strong 
 
 advocate of the late army reforms. Thanks to recovering 
 energy and more distinct conscientiousness, thanks to the all- 
 seeing eye of the Press, such an experiment as that of Fort 
 Augusta could hardly be tried again, or if tried could not be 
 persisted in. Extravagance and absurdities, however, remain, 
 and I was next to witness an instance of them. 
 
 Having ceased to quarter our regiments in mangrove swamps, 
 we now build a camp for them among the clouds. I mentioned 
 that Captain C had undertaken that I should see New- 
 castle. He had written to a friend there to say that I was 
 coming up, and the junior aide-de-camp kindly lent his ser- 
 vices as a guide. As far as Gordon's Town we drove along 
 the same road which we had followed before. There, at a 
 small wayside inn, we found horses waiting which were ac- 
 customed to the mountain. Suspicious mists were hanging 
 about aloft, but the landlord, after a glance at them, promised 
 us a fine day, and we mounted and set off. My animal's 
 merits were not in his appearance, but he had been up and 
 down a hundred times, and might be trusted to accomplish 
 his hundred and first without misfortune. For the first mile 
 or so the road was tolerably level, following the bank of the 
 river under the shade of the forest. It then narrowed into a 
 horse path and zigzagged upwards at the side of a torrent into 
 the deep pools of which we occasionally looked down over 
 the edges of uncomfortable precipices. Then again there 
 was a level, with a village and coffee plantations and oranges 
 and bananas. After this the vegetation changed. We issued 
 out upon open mountain, with English grass, English clover, 
 English gorse, and other famiUar acquaintances introduced to 
 make the isolation less intolerable. The track was so rough 
 and narrow that we could ride only in single file, and was 
 often no better than a watercourse ; yet by this and no othei 
 
NEWCASTLE 201 
 
 way every article had to be carried on donkeys' backs or 
 human heads which was required for the consumption of 300 
 infantry and 100 artillerymen. Artillerymen might seem to 
 imply artillery, but they have only a single small field gun. 
 They are there for health's sake only, and to be fit for work if 
 wanted below. An hour's ride brought us to the lowest range 
 of houses, which were 4,000 feet above the sea. From thence 
 they rose, tier above tier, for 500 feet more. The weather so 
 far had held up, and the views had been glorious, but we 
 passed now into a cloud, through which we saw, dimly, groups 
 of figures listlessly lounging. The hillside was bare, and the 
 slope so steep that there was no standing on it, save where it 
 had been flattened by the spade ; and here in this extra- 
 ordinary place were 400 young Englishmen of the common 
 type of which soldiers are made, with nothing to do and 
 nothing to enjoy — remaining, unless they desert or die of 
 ennui, for one, two, or three years, as their chance may be. 
 Every other day they can see nothing, save each other's forms 
 and faces in the fog ; for, fine and bright as the air may be 
 below, the moisture in the air is condensed into cloud by the 
 chill rock and soil of the high ranges. The officers come down 
 now and then on furlough or on duty ; the men rarely and 
 
 hardly at all, and soldiers, in spite of General , cannot 
 
 always be made happy by the picturesque. They are not 
 educated enough to find employment for their minds, and of 
 amusement there is none. 
 
 We continued our way up, the track if anything growing 
 steeper, till we reached the highest point of the camp, and 
 found ourselves before a pretty cottage with creepers climbing 
 about it belonging to the major in command. A few yards off 
 was the officers' mess room. They expected us. They knew 
 my companion, and visitors from the under-world were 
 naturally welcome. The major was an active clever man, with 
 a bright laughing Irish wife, whose relations in the old country 
 were friends of my own. The American consul and his lady 
 happened to have ridden up also the same day ; so, in spite 
 of fog, which grew thicker every moment, we had a good time. 
 
202 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 As to seeing, we could see nothing ; but then there was no- 
 thing to see except views ; and panoramic views from moun- 
 tain tops, extolled as they may be, do not particularly interest 
 me. The officers, so far as I could learn, are less ill off than 
 the privates. Those who are married have their wives with 
 them; they can read, they can draw, they can ride; they have 
 gardens about their houses where they can grow English 
 flowers and vegetables and try experiments. Science can be 
 
 followed anywhere, and is everywhere a resource. Major 
 
 told me that he had never known what it was to find the day 
 too long. Healthy the camp is at any rate. The temperature 
 never rises above 70^* nor sinks often below 60°. They re- 
 quire charcoal fires to keep the damp out and blankets to 
 sleep under ; and when they see the sun it is an agreeable 
 change and something to talk about. There are no large 
 incidents, but small ones do instead. While I was there a 
 man came to report that he had slipped by accident and set a 
 stone rolling ; the stone had cut a water pipe in two, and it 
 had to be mended, and was an afternoon's work for somebody. 
 Such officers as have no resources in themselves are, of course, 
 bored to extinction. There is neither furred game to hunt nor 
 feathered game to shoot ; the mongoose has eaten up the 
 partridges. I suggested that they should import two or three 
 couple of bears from Norway ; they would fatten and multiply 
 among the roots and sugar canes, with a black piccaninny now 
 and then for a special delicacy. One of the party extemporised 
 us a speech which would be made on the occasion in Exeter 
 Hall. 
 
 We had not seen the worst of the weather. As we mounted 
 to ride back the fog changed to rain, and the rain to a deluge. 
 The track became a torrent. Macintoshes were a vanity, for 
 the water rushed down one's neck, and every crease made 
 itself into a conduit carrying the stream among one's inner 
 garments. Dominica itself had not prepared me for the 
 violence of these Jamaican downpourings. False had proved 
 our prophet down below. There was no help for it but to go 
 on j and we knew by experience that one does not melt on 
 
HOSPITALITIES 203 
 
 these occasions. At a turn of the road we met another group 
 
 of riders, among them Lady N , who, during her husband's 
 
 absence in England, was living at a country house in the hills. 
 She politely stopped and would have spoken, but it was not 
 weather to stand talking in ; the torrent washed us apart. 
 
 And now comes the strangest part of the story. A thousand 
 feet down we passed out below the clouds into clear bright 
 sunshine. Above us it was still black as ever. The vapour 
 clung about the peaks and did not leave them. Underneath 
 us and round us it was a lovely summer's day. The farther 
 we descended the fewer the signs that any rain had fallen. 
 When we reached the stables at Gordon's Town, the dust was 
 on the road as we left it, and the horsekeeper congratulated us 
 on the correctness of his forecast. Clothes soon dry in that 
 country, and we drove down home none the worse for our 
 wetting. I was glad to have seen a place of which I had heard 
 so much. On the whole, I hoped that perhaps by-and-by the 
 authorities may discover some camping jground for our poor 
 soldiers halfway between the Inferno of Fort Augusta and the 
 Caucasian cliffs to which they are chained like Prometheus. 
 Malice did say that Newcastle was the property of a certain 
 
 Sir y a high official of a past generation, who wished to 
 
 part with it, and found a convenient purchaser in the Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 The hospitalities at Government House were well maintained 
 
 under the J administration. The Colonel was gracious, 
 
 the lady beautiful and brilliant. There were lawn parties and 
 evening parties, when all that was best in the island was 
 collected ; the old Jamaican aristocracy, army and navy 
 officers, civilians, eminent lawyers, a few men among them 
 of high intelligence. The tone was old-fashioned and cour- 
 teous, with Uttle, perhaps too little, of the go-a-headisi7i of 
 younger colonies, but not the less agreeable on that account. 
 As to prospects, or the present condition of things in the 
 island, there were wide differences of opinion. If there was 
 unanimity about anything, it was about the consequences 
 likely to arise from an extension of the principle of self-govern- 
 
204 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 ment. There, at all events, lay the right road to the wrong 
 place. The blacks had nothing to complain of, and the wrong 
 at present was on the other side. The taxation fell heavily 
 on the articles consumed by the upper classes. The duty on 
 tea, for instance, was a shilling a pound, and the duties on 
 other luxuries in the same proportion. It scarcely touched 
 the negroes at all. They were acquiring land, and some 
 thought that there ought to be a land tax. They would pro- 
 bably object and resist, and trouble would come if it was 
 proposed, for the blacks object to taxes. As long as there are 
 white men to pay them, they will be satisfied to get the benefit 
 of the expenditure ; but let not their English friends suppose 
 that when they have the island for their own they will tax 
 themselves for police or schools, or for any other of those 
 educational institutions from which the believers in progress 
 anticipate such glorious results. 
 
 As to the planters, it seemed agreed that when an estate 
 was unencumbered and the owner resided upon it and managed 
 it himself, he could still keep afloat. It was agreed also that 
 when the owner was an absentee the cost of management con- 
 sumed all the profits, and thus the same impulse to sell which 
 had gone so far in the Antilles was showing itself more and 
 more in Jamaica also. Fine properties all about the island 
 were in the market for any price which purchasers could be 
 found to give. Too many even of the old English families 
 were tired of the struggle, and were longing to be out of it at 
 any cost. 
 
 At one time we heard much of the colonial Church and 
 the power which it was acquiring, and as it seems unlikely 
 that the political authority of the white race will be allowed 
 to reassert itself, it must be through their minds and through 
 those other qualities which religion addresses that the black race 
 will be influenced by the white, if it is ever to be influenced 
 at all. 
 
 I had marked the respect with which the Catholic clergy 
 were treated in Dominica, and even the Hayti Republic still 
 maintains the French episcopate and priesthood. But I could 
 
SPIRITUAL PROSPECTS 205 
 
 not find that the Church of England in Jamaica either was at 
 present or had ever been more than the Church of the EngUsh 
 in Jamaica, respected as long as the English gentry were a 
 dominant power there, but with no independent charm to work 
 on imagination or on superstition. Labat says, as I noted 
 above, that the EngUsh clergy in his time did not baptise the 
 black babies, on the curious ground that Christians could not 
 lawfully be held as slaves, and the slaves therefore were not to 
 be made Christians. A Jesuit Father whom I met at Govern- 
 ment House told me that even now the clergy refuse to baptise 
 the illegitimate children, and as, according to the official re- 
 turns, nearly two-thirds of the children that are born in Jamaica 
 come into the world thus irregularly, they are not likely to be- 
 come more popular than they used to be. Perhaps Father 
 
 was doing what a good many other people do, making a general 
 practice out of a few instances. Perhaps the blacks themselves 
 who wish their children to be Christians carry them to the 
 minister whom they prefer, and that minister may not be the 
 Anglican clergyman. Of Catholics there are not many in 
 Jamaica ; of the Moravians I heard on all sides the warmest 
 praise. They, above all the religious bodies in the island, are 
 admitted to have a practical power for good over the limited 
 number of people which belong to them. But the Moravians 
 are but a few. They do not rush to make converts in the 
 highways and hedges, and my observations in Dominica almost 
 led me to wish that, in the absence of other forms of spiritual 
 authority, the Catholics might become more numerous than 
 they are. The priests in Dominica were the only Europeans 
 who, for their own sakes and on independent grounds, were 
 looked up to with fear and respect. 
 
 The religion of the future ! That is the problem of problems 
 that rises before us at the close of this waning century. The 
 future of the West Indies is a small matter. Yet that, too, like 
 all else, depends on the spiritual beliefs which are to rise out 
 of the present confusion. Men will act well and wisely, or ill 
 and foolishly, according to the form and force of their concep- 
 tions of duty. Once before, under the Roman Empire, the 
 
2o6 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 conditions were not wholly dissimilar. The inherited creed 
 had become unbelievable, and the scientific intellect was turn- 
 ing materialist. Christianity rose out of the chaos, confounding 
 statesmen and philosophers, and became the controlling power 
 among mankind for i,8oo years. But Christianity found a soil 
 prepared for the seed. The masses of the inhabitants of the 
 Roman world were not materialist. The masses of the people 
 believed already in the supernatural and in penal retribution 
 after death for their sins. Lucretius complains of the misery 
 produced upon them by the terrors of the anticipated Tartarus. 
 Serious and good men were rather turning away from atheism 
 than welcoming it; and if they doubted the divinity of the 
 Olympian gods, it was not because they doubted whether gods 
 existed at all, but because the immoraHties attributed to them 
 were unworthy of the exalted nature of the Divine Being. 
 The phenomena are different now. Who is now made wretched 
 by the fear of hell? The tendency of popular thought is 
 against the supernatural in any shape. Far into space as the 
 telescope can search, deep as analysis can penetrate into mind 
 and consciousness or the forces which govern natural things, 
 popular thought finds only uniformity and connection of cause 
 and effect — no sign anywhere of a personal will which is influ- 
 enced by prayer or moral motive. When a subject is still 
 obscure we are confident that it admits of scientific explana- 
 tion j we no longer refer * ad Deum,' whom we regard as a 
 constitutional monarch taking no direct part at all. The new 
 creed, however, not having crystallised as yet into a shape 
 which can be openly professed, and as without any creed at 
 all the flesh and the devil might become too powerful, we 
 maintain the old names and forms, as we maintain the 
 monarchy. We surround both with reverence and majesty, 
 and the reverence, being confined to feeling, continues to 
 exercise a vague but wholesome influence. We row in one 
 way while we look another. In the presence of the marked 
 decay of Protestantism as a positive creed, the Protestant 
 powers of Europe may, perhaps, patch up some kind of recon- 
 ciliation with the old spiritual organisation which was shattered 
 
THE SLA VE TRADE 207 
 
 in the sixteenth century, and has since shown no unwillingness 
 to adapt itself to modern forms of thought. The Olympian 
 gods survived for seven centuries after Aristophanes with the 
 help of allegory and ' economy.' The Church of Rome may 
 survive as long after Calvin and Luther. Carlyle mocked at 
 the possibility when I ventured to say so to him. Yet Carlyle 
 seemed to think that the mass was the only form of faith in 
 Europe which had any sincerity remaining in it. 
 
 A religion, at any rate, which will keep the West Indian 
 blacks from falling into devil worship is still to seek. Consti- 
 tutions and belief in progress may satisfy Europe, but will not 
 answer in Jamaica. In spite of the priests, child murder and 
 cannibalism have reappeared in Hayti ; but without them 
 things might have been worse than they are, and the preserva- 
 tion of white authority and influence in any form at all may be 
 better than none. 
 
 White authority and white influence may, however, still be 
 preserved in a nobler and better way. Slavery was a survival 
 from a social order which had passed away, and slavery could 
 not be continued. It does not follow that/^r se it was a crime. 
 The negroes who were sold to the dealers in the African factories 
 were most of them either slaves already to worse masters or were 
 servi^ servants in the old meaning of the word, prisoners of war, 
 or else criminals, servati or reserved from death. They would 
 otherwise have been kifled ; and since the slave trade has been 
 abolished are again killed in the too celebrated 'customs.' 
 The slave trade was a crime when the chiefs made war on each 
 other for the sake of captives whom they could turn into 
 money. In many instances, perhaps in most, it was innocent 
 and even beneficent. Nature has made us unequal, and Acts 
 of Parliament cannot make us equal. Some must lead and 
 some must follow, and the question is only of degree and kind. 
 For myself, I would rather be the slave of a Shakespeare or a 
 Burghley than the slave of a majority in the House of Commons 
 or the slave of my own folly. Slavery is gone, with all that 
 belonged to it ; but it will be an ill day for mankind if no one 
 is to be compelled any more to obey those who are wiser than 
 
2o8 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 himself, and each of us is to do only what is right in our own 
 eyes. There may be authority, yet not slavery : a soldier is 
 not a slave, a sailor is not a slave, a child is not a slave, a wife 
 is not a slave ; yet they may not live by their own wills or 
 emancipate themselves at their own pleasure from positions in 
 which nature has placed them, or into which they have them- 
 selves voluntarily entered. The negroes of the West Indies 
 are children, and not yet disobedient children. They have 
 their dreams, but for the present they are dreams only. If you 
 enforce self-government upon them when they are not asking 
 for it, you may turn the dream into a reality, and wilfully drive 
 them back into the condition of their ancestors, from which the 
 slave trade was the beginning of their emancipation. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The Church of England in Jamaica — Drive to Castleton — Botanical Gardens 
 — Picnic by the river — Black women — Ball at Government House — • 
 Mandeville — Miss Roy — Country society — Manners — American visitors 
 — A Moravian missionary — The modern Radical creed. 
 
 If I have spoken without enthusiasm of the working of the 
 Church of England among the negroes, I have not meant to be 
 disrespectful. As I lay awake at daybreak on the Sunday 
 morning after my arrival, I heard the sound of church bells, 
 not Catholic bells as at Dominica, but good old English chimes. 
 The Church is disestabHshed so far as law can disestablish it, 
 but, as in Barbadoes, the royal arms still stand over the arches 
 of the chancel. Introduced with the English conquest, it has 
 been identified with the ruling order of English gentry, respect- 
 able, harmless, and useful, to those immediately connected 
 with it. 
 
 The parochial system, as in Barbadoes also, was spread over 
 the island. Each parish had its church, its parsonage and its 
 school, its fonts where the white children were baptised — in 
 spite of my Jesuit, I shall hope not whites only; and its 
 
S UN DA Y AT KINGS TON 209 
 
 graveyard, where in time they were laid to rest. With their 
 quiet Sunday services or the old type the country districts were 
 exact reproductions of English country villages. The church 
 whose bells I had heard was of the more fashionable suburban 
 type, standing in a central situation halfway to Kingston. The 
 service was at the old English hour of eleven. We drove to it 
 in the orthodox fashion, with our prayer books and Sunday 
 costumes, the Colonel in uniform. The gentry of the neigh- 
 bourhood are antiquated in their habits, and to go to church 
 on Sunday is still regarded as a simple duty. A dozen 
 carriages stood under the shade at the doors. The congrega- 
 tion was upper middle-class English of the best sort, and was 
 large, though almost wholly white. White tablets as at Port 
 Royal covered the walls, with familiar English names upon 
 them. But for the heat I could have imagined myself at home. 
 There were no Aaron Bangs to be seen, or Paul Gelids, with 
 the rough sense, the vigour, the energy, and roystering light- 
 heartedness of our grandfathers. The faces of the men were 
 serious and thoughtful, with the shadow resting on them of an 
 uncertain future. They are good Churchmen still, and walk 
 on in the old paths, wherever those paths may lead. They are 
 old-fashioned and slow to change, and are perhaps belated in 
 an eddy of the great stream of progress ; but they were pleasant 
 to see and pleasant to talk to. After service there were the 
 usual shakings of hands among friends outside ; arrangements 
 were made for amusements and expeditions in which I was 
 invited to join — which were got up, perhaps, for my own 
 entertainment. I was to be taken to the sights of the neigh- 
 bourhood ; I was to see this ; I was to see that ; above all, I 
 must see the Peak of the Blue Mountains. The peak itself I 
 could see better from below, for there it stood, never moving, 
 between seven and eight thousand feet high. But I had had 
 mountain riding enough, and was allowed to plead my age and 
 mfirmities. It was arranged finally that I should be driven the 
 next day to Castleton, seventeen miles off over a mountain 
 pass, to see the Botanical Gardens. 
 
 Accordingly early on the following morning we set off; two 
 
 14 
 
2IO THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 carriages full of us ; Mr. M , a new friend lately made, but 
 
 I hope long to be preserved, on the box of his four-in-hand. 
 The road was as good as all roads are in Jamaica and 
 Barbadoes, and more cannot be said in their favour. Forest 
 trees made a roof over our heads as we climbed to the crest of 
 the ridge. Thence we descended the side of a long valley, a 
 stream running below us which gradually grew into a river. 
 We passed through all varieties of cultivation. On the high 
 ground there was a large sugar plantation, worked by coolies, 
 the first whom I had seen in Jamaica. In the alluvial meadows 
 on the river-side were tobacco fields, cleanly and carefully kept, 
 belonging to my Spanish friend in Kingston, and only too rich 
 in leaves. There were sago too, and ginger, and tamarinds, and 
 cocoa, and coffee, and cocoa-nut palms. On the hill-sides were 
 the garden farms of the blacks, which were something to see 
 and remember. They receive from the Government at an 
 almost nominal quit rent an acre or two of uncleared forest. 
 To this as the first step they set light ; at twenty different 
 spots we saw their fires blazing. To clear an acre they waste 
 the timber on half a dozen or a dozen. They plant their yams 
 and sweet potatoes among the ashes and grow crops there till 
 the soil is exhausted. Then they move on to another, which 
 they treat with the same recklessness, leaving the first to go 
 back to scrub. Since the Chinaman burnt his house to roast 
 his pig, such waste was never seen. The male proprietors were 
 lounging about smoking. Their wives, as it was market day, were 
 tramping into Kingston with their baskets on their head. We 
 met them literally in thousands, all merry and light-hearted, 
 their little ones with Httle baskets trudging at their side. Of 
 the lords of the creation we saw, perhaps, one to each hundred 
 women, and he would be riding on mule or donkey, pipe in 
 mouth and carrying nothing. He would be generally sulky 
 too, while the ladies, young and old, had all a civil word 
 for us and curtsied under their loads. Decidedly if there 
 . is to be a. black constitution I would give the votes only to 
 the women. 
 
 We reached Castleton at last. It was in a hot damp valley, 
 
CASTLETON 211 
 
 said to be a nest of yellow fever. The gardens slightly dis- 
 appointed me ; my expectations had been too much raised by 
 Trinidad. There were lovely flowers of course, and curious 
 plants and trees. Every known palm is growing there. They 
 try hard to grow roses, and they say that they succeed. The 
 roses were not in flower, and I could not judge. But the 
 familiar names were all there, and others which were not 
 famihar, the newest importations called after the great ladies 
 of the day. I saw one labelled Mabel Morrison. To find 
 the daughter of an ancient college friend and contemporary 
 giving name to a plant in the New World makes one feel 
 dreadfully old ; but I expected to find, and I did not find, 
 some useful practical horticulture going on. They ought, for 
 instance, to have been trying experiments with orange trees. 
 The orange in Jamaica is left to nature. They plant the seeds, 
 and leave the result to chance. They neither bud nor graft, 
 and go upon the hypothesis that as the seed is, so will be the 
 tree which comes of it. Yet even thus, so favourable is the 
 soil and climate that the oranges of Jamaica are prized above 
 all others which are sold in the American market. With skill 
 and knowledge and good selection they might produce the 
 finest in the world. ' There are dollars in that island, sir,' as 
 an American gentleman said to me, * if they look for them in 
 the right way.' Nothing of this kind was going on at Castleton ; 
 so much the worse, but perhaps things will mend by-and-by. 
 I was consoled partly by another specimen of the A7nherstia 
 nohilis. It was not so large as those which I had seen at 
 Trinidad, but it was in splendid bloom, and certainly is the 
 most gorgeous flowering tree which the world contains. 
 
 Wild nature also was luxuriantly beautiful. We picnicked 
 by the river, which here is a full rushing stream with pools that 
 would have held a salmon, and did hold abundant mullet. 
 We found a bower formed by a twisted vine, so thick that 
 neither sun nor rain could penetrate the roof. The floor was 
 of shining shingle, and the air breathed cool from off" the 
 water. It was a spot which nymph or naiad may haunt here- 
 after, when nymphs are born again in the new era. The creatures 
 
 14—2 
 
212 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 of imagination have fled away from modern enlightenment. But 
 we were a pleasant party of human beings, lying about under 
 the shade upon the pebbles. We had brought a blanket of ice 
 with us, and the champagne was manufactured into cup by 
 choicest West Indian skill. Figures fall unconsciously at such 
 moments into attitudes which would satisfy a painter, and the 
 scenes remain upon the memory like some fine finished work 
 of art. We had done with the gardens, and I remember no 
 more of them except that I saw a mongoose stalking a flock of 
 turkeys. The young ones and their mother gathered together 
 and showed fight. The old cock, after the manner of the 
 male animal, seemed chiefly anxious for his own skin, though 
 a little ashamed at the same time, as if conscious that more 
 was expected of him. On the way back we met the returning 
 stream of women and children, loaded heavily as before and 
 with the same elastic step. In spite of all that is incorrect 
 about them, the women are the material to work upon ; and if 
 they saw that we were in earnest, they would lend their help 
 to make their husbands bestir themselves. A Dutch gentle- 
 man once boasted to me of the wonderful prosperity of Java, 
 where everybody was well off and everybody was industrious. 
 He so insisted upon the industry that I ask him how it was 
 brought about. Were the people slaves ? ' Oh,' he cried, as 
 if shocked, * God forbid that a Christian nation should be so 
 wicked as to keep slaves ! ' ' Do they never wish to be idle ? ' 
 I asked. * Never, never,' he said ; ' no, no : we do not permit 
 anyone to be idle.' 
 
 My stay with Colonel J was drawing to a close ; one 
 
 great festivity was impending, which I wished to avoid ; but the 
 gracious lady insisted that I must remain. There was to be a 
 ball, and all the neighbourhood was invited. Pretty it was sure 
 to be. Windows and doors, galleries and passages, would be 
 all open. The gardens would be lighted up, and the guests 
 could spread as they pleased. Brilliant it all was; more 
 briUiant than you would see in our larger colonies. A ball in 
 Sydney or Melbourne is like a ball in the north of England or 
 in New York. There are the young men in black coats, and 
 
BALL AT KINGS HOUSE 213 
 
 there are brightly dressed young ladies for them to dance with. 
 The chaperons sit along the walls; the elderly gentlemen 
 withdraw to the card room. Here all was difterent. The 
 black coats in the ball at Jamaica were on the backs of old or 
 middle-aged men, and, except Government officials, there was 
 hardly a young man present in civilian dress. The rooms 
 glittered with scarlet and white and blue and gold lace. The 
 officers were there from the garrison and the fleet ; but of men 
 of business, of professional men, merchants, planters, lawyers, 
 &c. there were only those v/ho had grown up to middle age in 
 the island, whose fortunes, bad or good, were bound up with it. 
 When these were gone, it seemed as if there would be no one 
 to succeed them. The coveted heirs of great estates were no 
 longer to be found for mothers to angle after. The trades and 
 professions in Kingston had ceased to offer the prospect of an 
 income to younger brothers who had to make their own way. 
 For 250 years generations of Englishmen had followed one 
 upon another, but we seemed to have come to the last. Of 
 gentlemen unconnected with the public service, under thirty- 
 five or forty, there were few to be seen , they were seeking 
 their fortunes elsewhere. The English interest in Jamaica is 
 still a considerable thing. The English flag flies over Govern- 
 ment House, and no one so far wishes to remove it. But the 
 British population is scanty and refuses to grow. Ships and 
 regiments come and go, and officers and State employes make 
 what appears to be a brilliant society. But it is in appearance 
 only. The station is no longer a favourite one. They are 
 gone, those pleasant gentry whose country houses were the 
 paradise of middies sixty years ago. All is changed, even to 
 the officers themselves. The drawling ensign of our boyhood, 
 brave as a lion in the field, and in the mess room or the 
 drawing room an idiot, appears also to be dead as the 
 dodo. Those that one meets now are intelligent and superior 
 men — no trace of the frivolous sort left. Is it the effect of 
 the abolition of purchase, and competitive examinations ? Is 
 it that the times themselves are growing serious, and even the 
 most empty-headed feel that this is no season for levity ? 
 
2T4 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 I had seen what Jamaican life was like in the upper spheres, 
 and I had heard the opinions that were current in them ; but 
 I wished to see other parts of the country. I wished to see a 
 class of people who were farther from headquarters, and who 
 might not all sing to the same note. I determined to start oif 
 on an independent cruise of my own. In the centre of the 
 island, two thousand feet above the sea, it was reported to me 
 that I should find a delightful village called Mandeville, after 
 some Duke of Manchester who governed Jamaica a hundred 
 years ago. The scenery was said to have a special charm of 
 its own, the air to be exquisitely pure, the land to be well cul- 
 tivated. Village manners were to be found there of the old- 
 fashioned sort, and a lodging house and landlady of unequalled 
 merit. There was a railway for the first fifty miles. The line 
 at starting crosses the mangrove swamps at the mouth of the 
 Cobre river. You see the trees standing in the water on each 
 side of the road. Rising slowly, it hardens into level grazing 
 ground, stocked with cattle and studded with mangoes and 
 cedars. You pass Spanish Town, of which only the roofs of 
 the old State buildings are visible from the carriages. Sugar 
 estates follow, some of which are still in cultivation, while 
 ruined mills and fallen aqueducts show where others once had 
 been. The scenery becomes more broken as you begin to 
 ascend into the hills. River beds, dry when I saw them, but 
 powerful torrents in the rainy season, are crossed by picturesque 
 bridges. You come to the forest, where the squatters were at 
 their usual work, burning out their yam patches. Columns of 
 white smoke were rising all about us, yet so abundant the 
 timber and so rapid the work of restoration when the devas- 
 tating swarm has passed, that in this direction they have as yet 
 made no marked impression, and the forest stretches as far as 
 eye can reach. The glens grew more narrow and the trees 
 grander as the train proceeded. After two hours we arrived 
 at the present terminus, an inland town with the singular 
 name of Porus. No explanation is given of it in the local 
 handbooks ; but I find a Porus among the companions of 
 Columbus, and it is probably an interesting relic of the first 
 
MANDEVILLE 215 
 
 Spanish occupation. The raihvay had brought business. 
 Mule carts were going about, and waggons ; omnibuses stood 
 in the yards, and there were stores of various kinds. But it 
 was all black. There was not a white face to be seen after 
 we left the station. One of my companions in the train was a 
 Cuban engineer, now employed upon the line; a refugee, I 
 conjectured, belonging to the beaten party in the late rebel- 
 lion, from the bitterness with which he spoke of the Spanish 
 administration. 
 
 Porus is many hundred feet above the sea, in a hollow 
 where three valleys meet. Mandeville, to which I was bound, 
 was ten miles farther on, the road ascending all the way. A 
 carriage was waiting for me, but too small for my luggage. A 
 black boy offered to carry up a heavy bag for a shilling, a feat 
 which he faithfully and expeditiously performed. After climb- 
 ing a steep hill, we came out upon a rich undulating plateau, 
 long cleared and cultivated ; green fields with cows feeding on 
 them ; pretty houses standing in gardens ; a Wesleyan station ; 
 a Moravian station, with chapels and parsonages. The red 
 soil was mixed with crumbling lumps of white coral, a ready- 
 made and inexhaustible supply of manure. Great silk-cotton 
 trees towered up in lonely magnificence, the home of the 
 dreaded Jumbi — woe to the wretch who strikes an axe into 
 those sacred stems 1 Almonds, cedars, mangoes, gum trees 
 spread their shade over the road. Orange trees were every- 
 where; sometimes in orchards, sometimes growing at their 
 own wild will in hedges and copse and thicket. Finally, at 
 the outskirts of a perfectly English village, we brought up at 
 the door of the lodging house kept by the justly celebrated 
 Miss Roy. The house, or cottage, stood at the roadside, at 
 the top of a steep flight of steps ; a rambling one-story building, 
 from which rooms, creeper-covered, had been thrown out as 
 they were wanted. There was the universal green verandah 
 into which they all opened ; and the windows looked out on 
 a large common, used of old, and perhaps now, as a race- 
 course ; on wooded slopes, with sunny mansions dropped here 
 and there in openings among the woods ; on farm buildings at 
 
2i6 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 intervals in the distance, surrounded by clumps of palms ; and 
 beyond them ranges of mountains almost as blue as the sky 
 against which they were faintly visible. Miss Roy, the lady 
 and mistress of the establishment, came out to meet me : 
 middle-aged, with a touch of the black blood, but with a face 
 in which one places instant and sure dependence, shrewd, 
 quiet, sensible, and entirely good-humoured. A white-haired 
 brother, somewhat infirm and older than she, glided behind 
 her as her shadow. She attends to the business. His pride 
 is in his garden, where he has gathered a collection of rare 
 plants in admired disorder ; the night-blowing cereus hanging 
 carelessly over a broken paling, and a palm, unique of its kind, 
 waving behind it. At the back were orange trees and plan- 
 tains and coffee bushes, with long-tailed humming birds flitting 
 about their nests among the branches. All kinds of delicacies, 
 from fruit and preserves to coffee, Miss Roy grows for her 
 visitors on her own soil, and prepares from the first stage to 
 the last with her own cunning hands. 
 
 Having made acquaintance with the mistress, I strolled out 
 to look about me. After walking up the road for a quarter of 
 a mile, I found myself in an exact reproduction of a Warwick- 
 shire hamlet before the days of railways and brick chimneys. 
 There were no elms to be sure — there were silk cotton-trees 
 and mangoes where the elms should have been ; but there 
 were the boys playing cricket, and a market house, and a 
 modest inn, and a shop or two, and a blacksmith's forge with 
 a shed where horses were standing waiting iheir turn to be 
 shod. Across the green was the parish church, with its three 
 aisles and low square tower, in which hung an old peal of bells. 
 Parish stocks I did not observe, though, perliaps, I might have 
 Iiad I looked for them ; but there was a schoolhouse and par- 
 sonage, and, withdrawn at a distance as of superior dignity, 
 what had once perhaps been the squire's mansion, when squire 
 and such-like had been the natural growth of the country. It 
 was as if a branch of the old tree had been carried over and 
 planted there ages ago, and as if it had taken root and become 
 an exact resemblance of the parent stock. The people had 
 
MANDEVJLLE 217 
 
 black faces ; but even they, too, had shaped their manners on 
 the old English models. The men touched their hats respect- 
 fully (as they eminently did not in Kingston and its environs). 
 The women smiled and curtsied, and the children looked shy 
 when one spoke to them. The name of slavery is a horror to 
 us ; but there must have been something human and kindly 
 about it, too, when it left upon the character the marks of 
 courtesy and good breeding. I wish I could say as much for 
 the effect of modern ideas. The negroes in Mandeville were, 
 perhaps, as happy in their old condition as they have been 
 since their glorious emancipation, and some of them to this 
 day speak regretfully of a time when children did not die of 
 neglect ; when the sick and the aged were taken care of, and 
 the strong and healthy were, at least, as well looked after as 
 their owner's cattle. 
 
 Slavery could not last ; but neither can the condition last 
 which has followed it. The equality between black and white 
 is a forced equality and not a real one, and nature in the long 
 run has her way, and readjusts in their proper relations what 
 theorists and philanthropists have disturbed. 
 
 I was not Miss Roy's only guest. An American lady and 
 gentleman were staying there ; he, I believe, for his health, as 
 the climate of Mandeville is celebrated. Americans, whatever 
 may be their faults, are always unaffected ; and so are easy to 
 get on with. We dined together, and talked of the place and 
 its inhabitants. They had been struck like myself with the 
 manners of the peasants, which were something entirely new 
 to them. The lady said, and without expressing the least 
 disapproval, that she had fallen in with an old slave who told 
 her that, thanks to God, he had seen good times. ' He was 
 bred in a good home, with a master and mistress belonging to 
 him. What the master and mistress had the slaves had, and 
 there was no difference ; and his master used to visit at King's 
 House, and his men were all proud of him. Yes, glory be to 
 God, he had seen good times.' 
 
 In the evening we sat out in the verandah in the soft sweet 
 air, the husband and I smoking our cigars, and the lady not 
 
2i8 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 minding it. They had come to Mandeville, as we go to Italy, 
 to escape the New England winter. They had meant to stay 
 but a few days ; they found it so charming that they had stayed 
 for many weeks. We talked on till twilight became night, and 
 then appeared a show of natural pyrotechnics which beat any- 
 thing of the kind which I had ever seen or read of: fireflies as 
 large as cockchafers flitting round us among the leaves of the 
 creepers, with two long antennae, at the point of each of which 
 hangs out a blazing lanthorn. The unimaginative colonists call 
 them gig-lamps. Had Shakespeare ever heard of them, they 
 would have played round Ferdinand and Miranda in Prospero's 
 cave, and would have borne a fairer name. The light is bluish- 
 green, like a glowworm's, but immeasurably brighter ; and we 
 could trace them far away glancing like spirits over the 
 meadows. 
 
 I could not wonder that my new friends had been charmed 
 with the place. The air was exquisitely pure ; the temperature 
 ten degrees below that of Kingston, never oppressively hot and 
 never cold \ the forest scenery as beautiful as at Arden ; and 
 Miss Roy's provision for us, rooms, beds, breakfasts, dinners, 
 absolutely without fault. If ever there was an inspired coffee 
 maker, Miss Roy was that person. The glory of Mandeville 
 is in its oranges. The worst orange I ate in Jamaica was 
 better than the best I ever ate in Europe, and the best oranges 
 of Jamaica are the oranges of Mandeville. New York has 
 found out their merits. One gentleman alone sent twenty 
 thousand boxes to New York last year, clearing a dollar on 
 each box ; and this, as I said just now, when Nature is left to 
 produce what she pleases, and art has not begun to help her. 
 Fortunes larger than were ever made by sugar wait for any 
 man, and the blessings of the world along with it, who will set 
 himself to work at orange growing with skill and science in a 
 place where heat will not wither the trees, nor frosts, as in 
 Florida, bite off the blossoms. Yellow fever was never heard 
 of there, nor any dangerous epidemic, nor snake nor other 
 poisonous reptile. The droughts which parch the lowlands 
 are unknown, for an even rain falls all the year and the soil is 
 
MANDEVILLE 219 
 
 always moist. I inquired with wonder why the unfortunate 
 soldiers who were perched among the crags at Newcastle were 
 not at Mandeville instead. I was told that water was the 
 difficulty; that there was no river or running stream there, and 
 that it had to be drawn from wells or collected into cisterns. 
 One must applaud the caution which the authorities have at 
 last displayed ; but cattle thrive at Mandeville, and sheep, and 
 black men and women in luxuriant abundance. One would 
 like to know that the general who sold the Newcastle estate to 
 the Government was not the same person who was allowed to 
 report as to the capabilities of a spot which, to the common 
 observer, would seem as perfectly adapted for the purpose as 
 the other is detestable. 
 
 A few English families were scattered about the neighbour- 
 hood, among whom I made a passing acquaintance. They 
 had a lawn-tennis club in the village, which met once a week ; 
 they drove in with their pony carriages ; a lady made tea 
 under the trees ; they had amusements and pleasant society 
 which cost nothing. They were not rich ; but they were 
 courteous, simple, frank, and cordial. 
 
 Mandeville is the centre of a district which all resembles it in 
 character and extends for many miles. It is famous for its 
 cattle as well as for its fruit, and has excellent grazing grounds. 
 
 Mr. ^ an officer of police, took me round with him one 
 
 morning. It was the old story. Though there were still a 
 few white proprietors left, they were growing fewer, and the 
 blacks were multiplying upon them. The smoke of their 
 clearances showed where they were at work. Many of them 
 are becoming well-to-do. We met them on the roads with 
 their carts and mules ; the young ones armed, too, in some 
 instances with good double-barrelled muzzle-loaders. There 
 is no game to shoot, but to have a gun raises them in their 
 own estimation, and they like to be prepared for contingencies. 
 
 Mr. had a troublesome place of it. The negro peasantry 
 
 were good-humoured, he said, but not universally honest. 
 They stole cattle, and would not give evidence against each 
 other. If brought into court, they held a pebble in their 
 
220 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 mouths, being under the impression that when they were so 
 provided perjury did not count. Their education was only 
 skin-deep, and the schools which the Government provided 
 
 had not touched their characters at all. Mr. 's duties 
 
 brought him in contact with the unfavourable specimens. I 
 received a far pleasanter impression from a Moravian minister, 
 who called on me with a friend who had lately taken a farm. 
 I was particularly glad to see this gentleman, for of the 
 Moravians everyone had spoken well to me. He was not the 
 least enthusiastic about his poor black sheep, but he said that, 
 if they were not better than the average English labourers, he 
 did not think them worse. They were called idle. They 
 would work well enough if they had fair wages, and if the 
 wages were paid regularly ; but what could be expected when 
 women servants had but three shillings a week and ' found 
 themselves,' when the men had but a shilling a day and the 
 pay was kept in arrear, in order that, if they came late to work, 
 or if they came irregularly, it might be kept back or cut down 
 to what the employer chose to give ? Under such conditions 
 any man of any colour would prefer to work for himself if he 
 had a garden, or would be idle if he had none. * Living ' costs 
 next to nothing either to them or their families. But the 
 minister said, and his friend confirmed it by his own experience, 
 that these same fellows would work regularly and faithfully for 
 any master whom they personally knew and could rely upon, 
 and no Englishman coming to settle there need be afraid of 
 failing for want of labour, if he had sense and energy, and did 
 not prefer to lie down and groan. The blacks, my friends said, 
 were kindly hearted, respectful, and well-disposed, but they 
 were children ; easily excited, easily tempted, easily misled, 
 and totally unfit for self-government. If we wished to ruin 
 them altogether, we should persevere in the course to which, 
 they were sorry to hear, we were so inclined. The real want 
 in the island was of intelligent Englishmen to employ and 
 direct them, and Englishmen were going away so fast that 
 they feared there would soon be none of them left. This 
 was the opinion of two moderate and excellent men, whose 
 
AN AMERICAN SPECULA TOR 22 1 
 
 natural and professional prejudices were all on the black man's 
 side. 
 
 It was confirmed both in its favourable and unfavourable 
 aspects by another impartial authority. My first American 
 acquaintances had gone, but their rooms were occupied by 
 another of their countrymen, a specimen of a class of whom 
 more will be heard in Jamaica if the fates are kind. The 
 English in the island cast in their lot with sugar, and if sugar 
 is depressed they lose heart. Americans keep their * eyes 
 skinned,' as they call it, to look out for other openings. They 
 have discovered, as I said, * that there are dollars in Jamaica,' 
 and one has come, and has set up a trade in plantains, in 
 which he is making a fortune ; and this gentleman has per- 
 ceived that there were * dollars in the bamboo,' and for 
 bamboos there was no place in the world like the West Indies. 
 He came to Jamaica, brought machines to clear the fibre, tried 
 to make ropes of it, to make canvas, paper, and I know not 
 what. I think he told me that he had spent a quarter of a 
 million dollars, instead of finding any, before he hit upon a 
 paying use for it. The bamboo fibre has certain elastic 
 incompressible properties in which it is without a rival. He 
 forms it into ' packing ' for the boxes of the wheels of railway 
 carriages, where it holds oil like a sponge, never hardens, and 
 never wears out. He sends the packing over the world, and 
 the demand grows as it is tried. He has set up a factory, 
 thirty miles from Mandeville, in the valley of the Black River. 
 He has a large body of the negroes working for him who are 
 said to be so unmanageable. He, like Dr. Nicholls in 
 Dominica, does not find them unmanageable at all. They 
 never leave him; they work for him from year to year as 
 regularly as if they were slaves. They have their small 
 faults, but he does not magnify them into vices. They are 
 attached to him with the old-fashioned affection which good 
 labourers always feel for employers whom they respect, and 
 dismissal is dreaded as the severest of punishments. In 
 the course of time he thought that they might become 
 fit for political i)rivileges. To confer such privileges on 
 
222 THE ENGLISH IN THE V/EST INDIES 
 
 them at present would fling Jamaica back into absolute 
 barbarism. 
 
 I said I wished that more of his countrymen would come 
 and settle in Jamaica as he had done and a few others already. 
 American energy would be like new blood in the veins of the 
 poor island. He answered that many would probably come 
 if they could be satisfied that there would be no more political 
 experimenting ; but they would not ilsk their capital if there 
 was a chance of a black parliament. 
 
 If we choose^ to make Jamaica into a Hayti, we need npt 
 look for Americans down that way. 
 
 Let us hope that enthusiasm for constitutions will for once 
 mojderate its ardour. The black race has suffered enough at our 
 hands. They have been sacrificed to slavery ; are they to be 
 sacrificed again to a dream or a doctrine ? There has a new 
 creed risen, while the old creed is failing. It has its priests 
 and its prophets, its formulas and its articles of belief. 
 
 Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary 
 that he hold the Radical faith. 
 
 And the Radical faith is this : all men are equal, and the 
 voice of one is as the voice of another. 
 
 And whereas one man is wise and another foolish, and one 
 is upright and another crooked, yet in this suffrage none is 
 greater or less than another. The vote is equal, the dignity 
 co-eternal. 
 
 Truth is one and right is one ; yet right is right because the 
 majority so declare it, and justice is justice because the 
 majority so declare it. 
 
 And if the majority afffrm one thing to-day, that is right ; 
 and if the majority affirm the opposite to-morrow, that is 
 right. 
 
 Because the will of the majority is the ground of right and 
 there is rio other, &c. &c. &c. 
 
 This is the Radical faith, which, except every man do keep 
 whole and undefiled, he is a Tory and an enemy of the State, 
 and without doubt shall perish everlastingly. 
 
THE RADICAL FAITH 223 
 
 Once the Radical was a Liberal and went for toleration and 
 freedom of opinion. He has become a believer now. He is 
 right and you are wrong, and if you do not agree with him you 
 are a fool, and you are wicked besides. Voltaire says that 
 atheism and superstition are the two poles of intellectual 
 disease. Superstition he thinks the worse of the two. The 
 atheist is merely mistaken, and can be cured if you show him 
 that he is wrong. The fanatic can never be cured. Yet each 
 alike, if he prevails, will destroy human society. What would 
 Voltaire have expected for poor mankind had he seen both 
 the precious qualities combined in this new Symbolum 
 Fideii 
 
 A creed is not a reasoned judgment based upon experience 
 and insight. It is a child of imagination and passion. Like 
 an organised thing, it has its appointed period and then dies. 
 You cannot argue it out of existence. It works for good ; it 
 works for evil ; but work it will while the life is in it. Faith, 
 we are told, is not contradictory to reason, but is above reason. 
 Whether reason or faith sees truer, events will prove. 
 
 One more observation this American gentleman made to me. 
 He was speaking of the want of spirit and of the despondency of 
 the West Indian whites. ' I never knew, sir,' he said, ' any 
 good come of desponding men. If you intend to strike a 
 mark, you had better believe that you can strike it. No one 
 ever hit anything if he thought that he was most Hkely to miss 
 it. You must take a cheerful view of things, or you will 
 have no success in this world.' 
 
 * Tyne heart tyne a',' the Scotch proverb says. The Anglo- 
 West Indians are tyning heart, and that is the worst feature 
 about them. They can get no help except in themselves, and 
 they can help themselves after all if we allow them fair play. 
 The Americans will not touch them politically, but they will 
 trade with them ; they will bring their capital and their skill 
 and knowledge among them, and make the islands richer and 
 more prosperous than ever they were — on one condition: 
 they will risk nothing in such enterprises as long as the shadow 
 hangs over them of a possible government by a black majority, 
 
224 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 Let it suffice to have created one Ireland without deUbcrately 
 manufacturing a second. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Jamaican hospitality — Cherry Garden — George William Gordon — The 
 Gordon riots — Governor Eyre — A dispute and its consequences — 
 Jamaican country-house society — Modern speculation — A Spanish 
 fable — Port Koyal — The commodore — Naval theatricals — The modern 
 sailor. 
 
 The surviving representatives of the Jamaican gentry are as 
 hospitable as their fathers and grandfathers used to be. An 
 English visitor who wishes to see the island is not allowed to 
 to take his chance at hotels — where, indeed, his chance would 
 be a bad one. A single acquaintance is enough to start with. 
 He is sent on with letters of introduction from one house to 
 another, and is assured of a favourable reception. I was 
 treated as kindly as any stranger would be, and that was as 
 kindly as possible. But friends do not ask us to stay with 
 them that their portraits may be drawn m the traveller's 
 journals ; and I mention no one who was thus good to me, un- 
 less some general interest attaches either to himself or his 
 residence. Such interest does, however, attach to a spot 
 where, after leaving Mandeville, I passed a few days. The 
 present owner of it was the chief manager of the Kingston 
 branch of the Colonial Bank : a clever accomplished man of 
 business, who understood the financial condition of the West 
 Indies better perhaps than any other man living. He was a 
 botanist besides; he had a fine collection of curious plants 
 which were famous in the island ; and was otherwise a gentle- 
 man of the highest standing and reputation. His lady was 
 one of the old island aristocracy — high-bred, cultivated, an ac- 
 complished artist \ a person who would have shone anywhere 
 and in any circle, and was, therefore, contented to be herself, 
 and indifferent whether she shone or not. A visit in such 
 a family was likely to be instructive, and was sure to be agree- 
 
THE GORDON RJOTS 225 
 
 able; and on these grounds alone I should have accepted 
 gratefully the opportunity of knowing them better which they 
 kindly made for me by an invitation to stay with them. But 
 their place, which was called Cherry Garden, and which I had 
 seen from the grounds at Government House, had a further 
 importance of its own in having been the home of the unfor- 
 tunate George William Gordon. 
 
 The disturbances with which Mr. Gordon was connected, 
 and for his share in which he was executed, are so recent and 
 so notorious that I need give no detailed account of them, 
 though, of course, I looked into the history again and listened 
 to all that I could hear about it. Though I had taken no 
 part in Mr. Eyre's defence, I was one of those who thought 
 from the first that Mr. Eyre had been unworthily sacrificed to 
 public clamour. Had the agitation in Jamaica spread, and 
 taken the form which it easily might have taken, he would 
 have been blamed as keenly by one half the world if he had 
 done nothmg to check it as he was blamed, in fact, by the 
 other for too much energy. Carlyle used to say that it was as 
 if, when a ship had been on fire, and the captain by skill and 
 promptitude had put the fire out, his owner were to say to 
 him, * Sir, you poured too much water down the hold and 
 damaged the cargo.' The captain would answer, *Yes, sir, 
 but I have saved your ship.' This was the view which I car- 
 ried with me to Jamaica, and I have brought it back with me 
 the same in essentials, though qualified by clearer perceptions 
 of the real nature of the situation. 
 
 Something of a very similar kind had happened in Natal 
 just before I visited that colony in 1874. I had seen the 
 whites there hardly recovering from a panic in which a 
 common police case had been magnified by fear into the 
 beginning of an insurrection. Langalibalele, a Caffre chief 
 within the British dominions, had been insubordinate. He 
 had been sent for to Maritzberg, and had invented excuses 
 for disobedience to a lawful order. The whites believed at 
 once that there was to be a general Caffre rebellion in which 
 they would all be murdered. They resolved to be beforehand 
 
 IS 
 
226 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 with it. They carried fire and sword through two considerable 
 tribes. At first they thought that they had covered themselves 
 with glory ; calmer reflection taught many of them that 
 perhaps they had been too hasty, and that Langalibalele had 
 never intended to rebel at all. The Jamaican disturbance 
 was ot a similar kind. Mr. Gordon had given less provoca- 
 tion than the Caffre chief, but the circumstances were 
 analogous, and the actual danger was probably greater. 
 Jamaica had then constitutional, though not what is called 
 responsible, government. The executive power remained 
 with the Crown. There had been differences of opinion' 
 between the governor and the Assembly. Gordon, a man of 
 colour, was a prominent member of the opposition. He had 
 called public meetings of the blacks in a distant part of 
 the island, and was endeavouring to bring the pressure of 
 public opinion on the opposition side. Imprudent as such a 
 step might have been among an ignorant and excitable popu- 
 lation, where whites and blacks were so unequal in numbers, 
 and where they knew so little of each other, Mr. Gordon 
 was not going beyond what in constitutional theory he was 
 legally entitled to do; nor was his language on the platform, 
 though violent and inflammatory, any more so than what 
 we listen to patiently at home. Under a popular constitution 
 the people are sovereign; the members of the assemblies 
 are popular delegates ; and when there is a diversion of 
 opinion any man has a right to call the constituencies to 
 express their sentiments. If stones were thrown at the police 
 and seditious cries were raised, it was no more than might 
 be reasonably expected. 
 
 We at home can be calm on such occasions because we 
 know that there is no real danger, and that the law is strong 
 enough to assert itself. In Jamaica a few thousand white 
 people were living in the middle of negroes forty times their 
 number — once their slaves, now raised to be their political 
 equals — each regarding the other on the least provocation 
 with resentment and suspicion. ' In England the massacre 
 in Hayti is a half-forgotten story. Not one person in a 
 
THE GORDON RIOTS 227 
 
 thousand of those who clamoured for the prosecution of 
 Governor Eyre had probably ever heard of it. In Jamaica it is 
 ever present in the minds of the Europeans as a frightful 
 evidence of what the negroes are capable when roused to 
 frenzy. The French planters had done nothing particularly 
 cruel to deserve their animosity, and were as well regarded 
 by their slaves as ever we had been in the English islands. 
 Yet in a fever of political excitement, and as a reward for the 
 decree of the Paris Revolutionary Government, which de- 
 clared them free, they allowed the liberty which was to have 
 elevated them to the white mans level to turn them into 
 devils ; and they massacred the whole of the French inhabit- 
 ants. It was inevitable that when the volcano in Jamaica be- 
 gan to show symptoms of similar activity the whites residing 
 there should be unable to look on with the calmness which we, 
 from thousands of miles away, unreasonably expected of 
 them. They imagined their houses in flames, and themselves 
 and their families at the mercy of a furious mob. No 
 personal relation between the two races has grown up to take 
 the place of slavery. The white gentry have blacks for 
 labourers, blacks for domestic servants, yet as a rule (though, 
 of course, there are exceptions) they have no interest in each 
 other, no esteem nor confidence : therefore any symptom of 
 agitation is certain to produce a panic, and panic is always 
 violent. 
 
 The blacks who attended Gordon's meetings came armed 
 with guns and cutlasses ; a party of white volunteers went in 
 consequence to watch them, and to keep order if they showed 
 signs of meaning insurrection. Stones were thrown ; the Riot 
 Act was read, more stones followed, and then the volunteers 
 fired, and several persons were killed. Of course there was 
 fury. The black mob then actually did rise. They marched 
 about that particular district destroying plantations and burn- 
 ing houses. That they did so little, and that the flame did not 
 spread, was a proof that there was no premeditation of rebel- 
 lion, no prepared plan of action, no previous communication 
 t)etween the difierent parts of the island with a view to any 
 
228 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 common movement. There was no proof, and there was no 
 reason to suppose, that Gordon had intended an armed out- 
 break. He would have been a fool if he had, when constitu- 
 tional agitation and the weight of numbers at his back would 
 have secured him all that he wanted. When inflammable ma- 
 terials are brought together, and sparks are flying, you cannot 
 equitably distribute the blame or the punishment. Eyre 
 was responsible for the safety of the island. He was not a 
 Jamaican. The rule in the colonial service is that a governor 
 remains in any colony only long enough to begin to under- 
 stand it. He is then removed to another of which he knows 
 nothing. He is therefore absolutely dependent in any diffi- 
 culty upon local advice. When the riots began every white 
 man in Jamaica was of one opinion, that unless the fire was 
 stamped out promptly they would all be murdered. Being 
 without experience himself, it was very difficult for Mr. Eyre 
 to disregard so complete a unanimity. I suppose that a per- 
 fectly calm and determined man would have seen in the 
 unanimity itself the evidence of alarm and imagination. He 
 ought perhaps to have relied entirely on the police and the 
 regular troops, and to have called in the volunteers. But here 
 again was a difficulty; for the police were black, and the 
 West India regiments were black, and the Sepoy rebel- 
 lion was fresh in everybody's memory. He had no time 
 to deliberate. He had to act, and to act promptly; and 
 if, relying on his own judgment, he had disregarded what 
 everyone round him insisted upon, and if mischief had after- 
 wards come of it, the censure which would have fallen upon 
 him would have been as severe as it would have been deserved. 
 He assumed that the English colonists were right and that a 
 general rebellion had begun. They all armed. They formed 
 into companies. The disturbed district was placed under 
 martial law, and these extemporised regiments, too few in 
 number to be merciful, saw safety only in striking terror into 
 the poor wretches. It was in Jamaica as it was in Natal after- 
 wards ; but we must allow for human nature and not be hasty 
 to blame. If the rising at Morarit Bay was but the boiling 
 
THE GORDON RIOTS 229 
 
 over of a pot from the orator of an excited patriot, there was 
 deplorable cruelty and violence. But, again, it was all too 
 natural. Men do not bear easily to see their late servants on 
 their way to become their political masters, and they believe 
 the worst of them because they are afraid. A model governor 
 would have rather restrained their ardour than encouraged it ; 
 but all that can be said against Mr. Eyre (so far as regarded 
 the general suppression of the insurgents) is that he acted as 
 nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand would 
 have acted in his place, and more ought not to be expected of 
 average colonial governors. 
 
 His treatment of Gordon, the original cause of the disturb- 
 ance, was more questionable. Gordon had returned to his 
 own house, the house where I was going, within sight of Eyre's 
 windows. It would have been fair, and perhaps right, to 
 arrest him, and right also to bring him to trial, if he had com- 
 mitted any offence for which he could be legally punished. 
 So strong was the feehng against him that, if every white man 
 in Kingston had been empannelled, there would have been a 
 unanimous verdict, and they would not have looked too closely 
 into niceties of legal construction. Unfortunately it was 
 doubtful whether Gordon had done anything which could be 
 construed into a capital crime. He had a right to call public 
 meetings together. He had a right to appeal to political pas- 
 sions, and to indulge as freely as he pleased in the patriotic 
 commonplaces of platforms, provided he did not himself 
 advise or encourage a breach of the peace, and this it could 
 not be easily proved that he had done. He was, however, the 
 leader of the opposition to the Government. The opposition 
 had broken into a riot, and Gordon was guilty of having ex- 
 cited the feelings which led to it. The leader could not be 
 allowed to escape unpunished while his followers were being 
 shot and flogged. The Kingston district where he resided 
 was under the ordinary law. Eyre sent him into the district 
 which was under martial law, tried him by a military court and 
 hanged him. 
 
 The Cabinet at home at first thanked their representative 
 
230 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 for having saved the island. A clamour rose, and they sent 
 out a commission to examine into what had happened. The 
 commission reported unfavourably, and Eyre was dismissed 
 and ruined. In Jamaica I never heard anyone express a 
 doubt on the full propriety of his action. He carried away 
 with him the affection and esteem of the whole of the English 
 colonists, who believe that he saved them from destruction. 
 In my own opinion the fault was not in Mr. Eyre, and was 
 not in the unfortunate Gordon, but in those who had insisted 
 on applying a constitutional form of government to a country 
 where the population is so unfavourably divided. If the 
 numbers of white and black were more nearly equal, the 
 objection would be less, for the natural superiority of the white 
 would then assert itself without difficulty, and there would be 
 no panics. Where the disproportion is so enormous as it is in 
 Jamaica, where intelligence and property are in a miserable 
 minority, and a half-reclaimed race of savages, cannibals not 
 long ago, and capable, as the state of Hayti shows, of revert- 
 ing to cannibahsm again, are living beside them as their 
 political equals, such panics arise from the nature of things, 
 and will themselves cause the catastrophe from the dread of 
 which they spring. Mutual fear and mistrust can lead to 
 nothing in the end but violent collisions. The theory of con- 
 stitutional government is that the majority shall rule the 
 minority, and as long as the qualities, moral and mental, of 
 the parties are not grossly dissimilar, such an arrangement 
 forms a tolerable modus vivendi. Where in character, in 
 mental force, in energy, in cultivation, there is no equality at 
 all, but an inequality which has existed for thousands of years, 
 and is as plain to-day as it was in the Egypt of the Pharaohs, 
 to expect that the intelligent few will submit to the unintelli- 
 gent many is to expect what has never been found and what 
 never ought to be found. The whites cannot be trusted to 
 rule the blacks, but for the blacks to rule the whites is a yet 
 grosser anomaly. Weie England out of the way, there would 
 be a war of extermination between them. England prohibits 
 it, and holds the balance in forced equality. England, there- 
 
CHERRY GARDEN 231 
 
 fore, so long as the West Indies are English, must herself rule, 
 and rule impartially, and so acquit herself of her self- chosen 
 responsibilities. Let the colonies which are occupied by our 
 own race rule themselves as we rule ourselves. The English 
 constituencies have no rights over the constituencies of 
 Canada and Australia, for the Canadians and Australians are 
 as well able to manage their own affairs as we are to manage 
 ours. If they prefer even to elect governors of their own, let 
 them do as they please. The link between us is community 
 of blood and interest, and will not part over details of admin- 
 istration. But in these other colonies which are our own we 
 must accept the facts as they are. Those who will not recog- 
 nise realities are always beaten in the end. 
 
 The train from Porus brought us back to Kingston an hour 
 before sunset. The evening was lovely, even for Jamaica. 
 The sea breeze had fallen. The land breeze had not risen, 
 and the dust lay harmless on road and hedge. Cherry Garden, 
 to which I was bound, was but seven miles distant by the 
 direct road, so I calculated on a delightful drive which would 
 bring me to my destination before dark. So I calculated ; 
 but alas ! for human expectation. I engaged a * buggy ' at 
 the station, with a decent-looking conductor, who assured me 
 that he knew the way to Cherry Garden as well as to his own 
 door. His horse looked starved and miserable. He insisted 
 that there was not another in Kingston that was more than a 
 match for it. We set out, and for the first two or three miles 
 we went on well enough, conversing amicably upon things in 
 general. But it so happened that it was again market day. 
 The road was thronged as before with women plodding along 
 with their baskets on their heads, a single male on a donkey 
 to each detachment of them, carrying nothing, like an officer 
 with a company of soldiers. Foolish indignation rose in me, 
 and I asked my friend if he was not ashamed of seeing the 
 poor creatures toiling so cruelly, while their lords and masters 
 amused themselves. I appealed to his feelings as a man, as 
 if it was likely that he had got any. The wretch only laughed. 
 * Ah, massa,' he said, with his tongue in his cheek, * women do 
 
232 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 women's work, men do men's work — all right' * And what is 
 men's work ? ' I asked. Instead of answering he went on, 
 
 * Look at they women, massa — how they laugh — how happy 
 they be ! Nobody more happy than black woman, massa.' 
 I would not let him off. I pricked into him, till he got excited 
 too, and we argued and contradicted each other, till at last the 
 horse, finding he was not attended to, went his own way and 
 that was a wrong one. Between Kingston and our destination 
 there is a deep sandy flat, overgrown with bush and penetrated 
 in all directions with labyrinthine lanes. Into this we had 
 wandered in our quarrels, and neither of us knew where we 
 were. The sand was loose ; our miserable beast was above his 
 fetlocks in it, and was visibly dropping under his efforts to 
 drag us along even at a walk. The sun went down. The 
 tropic twilight is short. The evening star shone out in the 
 west, and the crescent moon over our heads. My man said this 
 and said that ; every word was a lie, for he had lost his way and 
 would not allow it. We saw a light through some trees. I 
 sent him to inquire. We were directed one way and another 
 way, every way except the right one. We emerged at last 
 upon a hard road of some kind. The stars told me the 
 general direction. We came to cottages where the name of 
 Cherry Garden was known, and we were told that it was two 
 miles off; but alas ! again there were two roads to it; a short 
 and good one, and a long and bad one, and they sent us by 
 the last. There was a steep hill to cHmb, for the house is 800 
 feet above the sea. The horse could hardly crawl, and my 
 
 * nigger ' went to work to flog him to let off his own ill humour. 
 I had to stop that by force, and at last, as it grew too dark to 
 see the road under the trees, I got out and walked, leaving 
 him to follow at a foot's pace. The night was lovely. I began 
 to think that we should have to camp out after all, and that it 
 would be no great hardship. 
 
 It was like the gloaming of a June night in England, the 
 daylight in the open spots not entirely gone, and mixing softly 
 with the light of moon and planet and the flashing of the 
 fireflies. I plodded on mile after mile, and Cherry Garden 
 
AN EVENING DRIVE 233 
 
 still receded to one mile farther. We came to a gate of some 
 consequence. The outline of a large mansion was visible with 
 gardens round it. I concluded that we had arrived, and was 
 feeling for the latch when the forms of a lady and gentleman 
 appeared against the sky who were strolling in the grounds. 
 They directed me still upwards, with the mile which never 
 diminished still to be travelled. Like myself, our weary 
 animal had gathered hopes from the sight of the gate. He 
 had again to drag on as he could. His owner was subdued 
 and silent, and obeyed whatever order I gave him. The trees 
 now closed over us so thick that I could see nothing. Vainly 
 I repented of my unnecessary philanthropy which had been 
 the cause of the mischief ; what had I to do with black 
 women, or white either for that matter ? I had to feel the 
 way with my feet and a stick. I came to a place where the 
 lane again divided. I tried the nearest turn. I found a 
 trench across it three feet deep, which had been cut by a 
 torrent. This was altogether beyond the capacity of our 
 unfortunate animal, so I took the other boldly, prepared if it 
 proved wrong to bivouac till morning with my ' nigger,' and 
 go on with my argument. Happily there was no need j we 
 came again on a gate which led into a field. There was a 
 drive across it and wire fences. Finally lights began to 
 glimmer and dogs to bark : we were at the real Cherry Garden 
 at last, and found the whole household alarmed for what had 
 become of us. I could not punish my misleader by stinting 
 his fare, for I knew that I had only myself to blame. He was 
 an honest fellow after all. In the disturbance of my mind 
 I left a rather valuable umbrella in his buggy. He discovered 
 it after he had gone, and had grace enough to see that it was 
 returned to me. 
 
 My entertainers were much amused at the cause of the mis- 
 adventure, perhaps unique of its kind ; to address homilies to 
 the black people on the treatment of their wives not being the 
 fashion in these parts. 
 
 If there are no more Aaron Bangs in Jamaica, there are very 
 charming people ; as I found when I turned thk npvvjt^pf in 
 
 ^^ OP THB ^K 
 
234 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 my West Indian experience. Mr. M could not have 
 
 taken more pains with me if I had been his earliest friend. 
 The chief luxury which he allowed him.self in his simple life 
 was a good supply of excellent horses. His business took him 
 every day to Kingston, but he left me in charge of his family, 
 and I had 'a good time,' as the Americans say. The house 
 was large, with fine airy rooms, a draught so constantly blowing 
 through it that the candles had to be covered with bell glasses ; 
 but the draughts in these countries are the very breath of life. 
 It had been too dark when I arrived to see anything of the 
 surroundings, and the next morning I strolled out to see what 
 the place was like. It lies just at the foot of the Blue Moun- 
 tains, where the gradual slope from the sea begins to become 
 steep. The plain of Kingston lay stretched before me, with 
 its woods and cornfields and villas, the long straggling town, 
 the ships at anchor in the harbour, the steamers passing in and 
 out with their long trails of smoke, the sand-spit like a thin grey 
 line lying upon the water, as the natural breakwater by which 
 the harbour is formed, and beyond it the broad blue expanse 
 of the Caribbean Sea. The foreground was like an English 
 park, studded over with handsome forest trees and broken by 
 the rains into picturesque ravines. Some acres were planted 
 with oranges of the choicer sorts, as an experiment to show 
 what Jamaica could do, but they were as yet young and had 
 not come into bearing. Round the house were gardens where 
 the treasures of our hot-houses were carelessly and lavishly 
 scattered. Stephanotis trailed along the railing or climbed 
 over the trellis. Oleanders white and pink waved over marble 
 basins, and were sprinkled by the spray from spouting fountains. 
 Crotons stood about in tubs, not small plants as we know 
 them, but large shrubs ; great purple or parti-coloured bushes. 
 They have a fancy for crotons in the West Indies ; I suppose 
 as a change from the monotony of green. I cannot share it. 
 A red leaf, except in antumn before it falls, is a kind of 
 monster, and I am glad that Nature has made so few of them. 
 In the shade of the trees behind the house was a collection of 
 orchids, the most perfect, I believe, in the island. 
 
CHERRY GARDEN 235 
 
 And here Gordon had lived. Here he had been arrested 
 and carried away to his death ; his crime being that he had 
 dreamt of regenerating the negro race by baptising them in 
 the Jordan of English Radicalism. He would have brought 
 about nothing but confusion, and have precipitated Jamaica 
 prematurely into the black anarchy into which perhaps it 
 is still destined to fall. But to hang him was an extreme 
 measure, and, in the present state of public opinion, a 
 dangerous one. 
 
 One does not associate the sons of darkness with keen 
 perceptions of the beautiful. Yet no mortal ever selected a 
 lovelier spot for a residence than did Gordon in choosing 
 Cherry Garden. How often had his ^etffld' dark eyes wan- 
 dered over the scenes at which I was gazing, watched the 
 early rays of the sun slanting upwards to the high peaks of 
 the Blue Mountains, or the last as he sank in gold and 
 crimson behind the hills at Mandeville; watched the great 
 steamers entering or leaving Port Royal, and at night the 
 gleam of the lighthouse from among the palm trees on the 
 spit. Poor fellow ! one felt very sorry for him, and sorry 
 for Mr. Eyre, too. The only good that came of it all was 
 the surrender of the constitution and the return to Crown 
 government, and this our wonderful statesmen are beginning 
 to undo. 
 
 No one understood better than Mr. M the troubles 
 
 and dangers of the colony, but he was inclined, perhaps by 
 temperament, perhaps by knowledge, to take a cheerful view 
 of things. For the present at least he did not think that 
 there was anything serious to be feared. The finances, of 
 which he had the best means of judging, were in tolerable 
 condition. The debt was considerable, but more than half 
 of it was represented by a railway. If sugar was languishing, 
 the fruit trade with the United States was growing with the 
 liveliest rapidity. Planters and merchants were not making 
 fortunes, but business went on. The shares in the Colonial 
 Bank were not at a high quotation, but the securities were 
 sound, the shareholders got good dividends, and eight and 
 
236 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 ten per cent, was the interest charged on loans. High 
 interest might be a good sign or a bad one. Anyway Mr. 
 
 M could not see that there was much to be afraid of 
 
 in Jamaica. There had been bad times before, and they 
 had survived notwithstanding. He was a man of business, 
 and talked himself little about politics. As it had been, so it 
 would be again. 
 
 In his absence at his work I found friends in the neigh- 
 bourhood who were all attention and politeness. One took 
 me to see my acquaintances at the camp again. Another 
 drove me about, showed me the house where Scott had 
 lived, the author of *Tom Cringle.' One round in particular 
 left a distinct impression. It was through a forest which 
 had once been a flourishing sugar estate. Deep among the 
 trees were the ruins of an aqueduct which had brought water 
 to the mill, now overgrown and crumbling. The time had 
 not been long as we count time in the history of nations, but 
 there had been enough for the arches to fall in, the stream to 
 return to its native bed, the tropical vegetation to spring up in 
 its wild luxuriance and bury in shade the ruins of a past 
 civilisation. 
 
 I fell in with interesting persons who talked metaphysics 
 and theology with me, though one would not have expected 
 it in Jamaica. In this strange age of ours the spiritual 
 atmosphere is more confused than at any period during the 
 last eighteen hundred years. Men's hearts are failing them 
 for fear, not knowing any longer where to rest. We look this 
 way and that way, and catch at one another like drowning 
 men. Go where you will, you find the same phenomena. 
 Science grows, and observers are adding daily to our know- 
 ledge of the nature and structure of the material universe, 
 but they tell us nothing, and can tell us nothing, of what we 
 most want to know. They cannot tell us what our own, 
 nature is. They cannot tell us what God is, or what duty is. 
 We had a belief once, in which, as in a boat, we floated safely 
 on the unknown ocean ; but the philosophers and critics 
 have been boring holes in the timbers to examine the texture 
 
CHERRY GARDEN 237 
 
 of the wood, and now it leaks at every one of them. We 
 have to help ourselves in the best way that we can. Some 
 strike out new ideas for themselves, others go back to the 
 seven sages, and lay again for themselves the old eggs, which, 
 after laborious incubation, will be addled as they were addled 
 before. To my metaphysical friends in Jamaica the * Light 
 of Asia' had been shining amidst German dreams, and the 
 moonlight of the Vedas had been illuminating the pessimism 
 
 of Schopenhauer. So it is all round. Mr. goes to 
 
 Mount Carmel to listen for communications from Elijah ; 
 fashionable countesses to the shrine of Our Lady at Lourdes. 
 * Are you a Buddhist ? ' lisps the young lady in Mayfair to 
 the partner with whom she is sitting out at a ball. * It is so 
 nice,' said a gentleman to me who has been since promoted 
 to high office in an unfortunate colony, * it is so nice to talk 
 of such things to pretty girls, and it always ends in one way, 
 you know.' Conversations on theology, at least between 
 persons of opposite sex, ought to be interdicted by law for 
 everyone under forty. But there are questions on which old 
 people may be permitted to ask one another what they think, 
 if it only be for mutual comfort in the general vacancy. We 
 are born alone, we pass alone into the great darkness. When 
 the curtain falls is the play over? or is a new act to com- 
 mence? Are we to start again in a new sphere, carrying 
 with us what we have gained in the discipline of our earthly 
 trials ? Are we to become again as we were before we came 
 into this world, when eternity had not yet spUntered into 
 time, or the universal being dissolved into individual exist- 
 ences ? For myself, I have long ceased to speculate on these 
 subjects, being convinced that they have no bottom which 
 can be reasoned out by the intellect. We are in a world 
 where much can be learnt which affects our own and others' 
 earthly welfare, and we had better leave the rest alone. Yet 
 one listens and cannot choose but sympathise when anxious 
 souls open out to you what is going on within them. A 
 Spanish legend, showing with whom these inquiries began and 
 with what result, is not without its value. 
 
238 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 Jupiter, having made the world, proceeded to make animals 
 to live in it. The ass was the earliest created. He looked 
 about him. He looked at himself; and, as the habit of asses 
 is, he asked himself what it all meant j what it was to be an 
 ass, where did he come from, and what he was for? Not 
 being able to discover, he applied to his maker. Jupiter told 
 him that he was made to be the slave of another animal to be 
 called Man. He was to carry men on his back, drag loads 
 for them, and be their drudge. He was to live on thistles 
 and straw, and to be beaten continually with sticks and ropes'-- 
 ends. The ass complained. He said that he had done 
 nothing to deserve so hard a fate. He had not asked to be 
 born, and he would rather not have been born. He inquired 
 how long this life, or whatever it was, had to continue. 
 Jupiter said it had to last thirty years. The poor ass was in 
 consternation. If Jupiter would reduce the thirty to ten he 
 undertook to be patient, to be a good servant, and to do his 
 work patiently. Jupiter reflected and consented, and the ass 
 retired grateful and happy. 
 
 The dog, who had been born meanwhile, heard what had 
 passed. He, too, went to Jupiter with the same question. 
 He learnt that he also was a slave to men. In the day he was 
 to catch their game for them, but was not to eat it himself. 
 At night he was to be chained by a ring and to lie awake to 
 guard their houses. His food was to be bones and refuse. 
 Like the ass he was to have had thirty years of it, but on petition 
 they were similarly exchanged for ten. 
 
 The monkey came next. His function, he was told, was 
 to mimic humanity, to be led about by a string, and 
 grimace and dance for men's amusement. He also 
 remonstrated at the length of time, and obtained the same 
 favour. 
 
 Last came the man himself. Conscious of boundless desires 
 and, as he imagined, of boundless capabilities, he did not 
 inquire what he was, or what he was to do. Those questions 
 had been already answered by his vanity. He did not come 
 to ask for anything, but to thank Jupiter for having created sp 
 
A SPANISH FABLE 239 
 
 glorious a being and to ascertain for how many ages he might 
 expect to endure. The god repHed that thirty years was the 
 term allotted to all personal existences. 
 
 ' Only thirty years ! ' he exclaimed. * Only thirty years for 
 such capacities as mine. Thirty years will be gone like a dream. 
 Extend them ! oh, extend them, gracious Jupiter, that I may 
 have leisure to use the intellect which thou hast given me, 
 search into the secrets of nature, do great and glorious actions, 
 and serve and praise thee, O my creator ! longer and more 
 worthily.' 
 
 The lip of the god curled lightly, and again he acquiesced. 
 *I have some spare years to dispose of,' he said, 'of which 
 others of my creatures have begged to be relieved. You shall 
 have thirty years of your own. From thirty to fifty you shall 
 have the ass's years, and labour and sweat for your support. 
 From fifty to seventy you shall have the dog's years, and take 
 care of the stuff, and snarl and growl at what younger men are 
 doing. From seventy to ninety you shall have the monkey's 
 years, and smirk and grin and make yourself ridiculous. After 
 that you may depart.' 
 
 I was going on to Cuba. The commodore had insisted on 
 my spending my last days with him at Port Royal. He under- 
 took to see me on board the steamer as it passed out of the 
 harbour. I have already described his quarters. The naval 
 station has no colonial character except the climate, and is 
 English entirely. The officers are the servants of the 
 Admiralty, not of the colonial government. Their interests 
 are in their profession. They look to promotion in other 
 parts of the world, and their functions are on the ocean and 
 not on the land. The commodore is captain of the guardship ; 
 but he has a commander under him and he resides on shore. 
 Everyone employed in the dockyard, even down to his own 
 household, is rated on the ship's books, consequently they are all 
 men. There is not a woman servant about the place, save his 
 lady's ladies'-maid. His daughters learn to take care of them- 
 selves, and are not brought up to find everything done for 
 
240 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 them. His boys are about the world in active service growing 
 into useful and honourable manhood. 
 
 Thus the whole life tastes of the element to which it belongs, 
 and is salt and healthy as the ocean itself. It was not without 
 its entertainments. The officers of the garrison were to give 
 a ball. The young ladies of Kingston are not afraid of the 
 water, cross the harbour in the steam launches, dance till the 
 small hours, return in the dark, drive their eight or ten miles 
 home, and think nothing of it. In that climate, night is 
 pleasanter to be abroad in than day. I could not stay to be 
 present, but I was in the midst of the preparations, and one 
 afternoon there was a prospect of a brilliant addition to the 
 party. A yacht steamed inside the Point — long, narrow, 
 and swift as a torpedo boat. She carried American colours, 
 and we heard that she was the famous vessel of the yet more 
 famous Mr. Vanderbilt, who was on board with his family. 
 Here was an excitement ! The commodore was ordered to 
 call the instant that she was anchored. Invitations were pre- 
 pared — all was eagerness. Alas ! she did not anchor at all. 
 She learnt from the pilot that, the smallpox being in Jamaica, 
 if any of her people landed there she would be quarantined in 
 the other islands, and to the disappointment of everyone, even 
 of myself, who would gladly have seen the great millionaire, 
 she turned about and went off again to sea. 
 
 I was very happy at the commodore's — low spirits not being 
 allowed in that wholesome element. Decks were washed every 
 morning as if at sea, i.e. every floor was scrubbed and scoured. 
 It was an eternal washing day, lines of linen flying in the brisk * 
 sea breeze. The commodore was always busy making work if 
 none had been found for him. He took me one day to see 
 the rock spring where Rodney watered his fleet, as the great 
 admiral describes in one of his letters, and from which Port 
 Royal now draws its supply. The spring itself bursts full and 
 clear out of the limestone rock close to the shore, four or five 
 miles from Kingston. There is a natural basin, slightly 
 improved by art, from which the old conduit pipes carry the 
 stream to the sea. The tug comes daily, fills its tanks, and 
 
PORT ROYAL 241 
 
 returns. The commodore has tidied up the place, planted 
 shrubs, and cleared away the bush ; but half the water at least, 
 is still allowed to leak away, and turns the hollow below into an 
 unwholesome swamp. It may be a necessity, but it is also a 
 misfortune, that the officers at distant stations hold their 
 appointments for so short a term. By the time that they have 
 learnt what can or ought to be done, they are sent elsewhere, 
 and their successor has to begin over again. The water in this 
 spring, part of which is now worse than wasted and the rest 
 carried laboriously in a vessel to Port Royal to be sold by 
 measure to the people there, might be all conducted thither by 
 pipes at small cost and trouble, were the commodore to remain 
 a few years longer at the Jamaica Station. 
 
 He is his own boatman, and we had some fine sails 
 about the lagoon — the breeze always fresh and the surface 
 always smooth. The shallow bays swarm with small fish, and 
 it was a pretty thing to watch the pelicans devouring them. 
 They gather in flocks, sweep and wheel in the air, and when 
 they plunge they strike the water with a violence which one 
 would expect would break their wings. They do not dive, 
 but seize their prey with their long, broad bills, and seem 
 never to miss. 
 
 Between the ships and the barracks, there are many single 
 men in Port Royal, for whom amusement has to be found if 
 they are to be kept from drink. A canteen is provided for 
 them, with bowHng alley, tennis court, beer in moderation, and 
 a reading room, for such as like it, with reviews and magazines 
 and newspapers They can fish if they want sport, and there 
 are sharks in plenty a cable's length from shore; but the 
 schoolmaster has been abroad, and tastes run in more refined 
 directions. The blacks of Tobago acted * The Merchant of 
 
 Venice ' before Governor S . The ships' companies of the 
 
 gunboats at Port Royal gave a concert while I was there. The 
 officers took no part, and left the men to manage it as they 
 pleased. The commodore brought his party; the garrison, 
 the crews of the other ships, and stray visitors came, and the 
 large room at the canteen was completely full. The taste of 
 
 16 
 
242 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 the audience was curious. Dibdin was off the boards altogether, 
 and favour was divided between the London popular comic song 
 and the sentimental — no longer with any flavour of salt about it, 
 but the sentimental spoony and sickly. ' She wore a wreath of 
 roses ' called out the highest enthusiasm. One of the per- 
 formers recited a long poem of his own about Mary Stuart, 
 * the lovely and unfortunate.' Then followed the buffoonery ; 
 and this was at least genuine rough and tumble if there was 
 little wit in it. A lad capered about on a tournament horse 
 which flung him every other moment. Various persons pre- 
 tended to be drunk, and talked and staggered as drunken men 
 do. Then there was a farce, how conceived and by what kind 
 of author I was puzzled to make out. A connoisseur of art 
 is looking for Greek antiques. He has heard that a statue 
 has recently been discovered of *Ajax quarrelling with his 
 mother-in-law.' What Ajax was quarrelling about or who his 
 mother-in-law might be does not appear. A couple of rogues, 
 each unknown to the other, practise on the connoisseur's 
 credulity. Each promises him the statue ; each dresses up a 
 confederate on a pedestal with a modern soldier's helmet and 
 a blanket to represent a Greek hero. The two figures are 
 shown to him. One of them, I forget how, contrived to pass 
 as Ajax ; the other had turned into Hercules doing something 
 to the Stymphalides. At last they get tired of standing to be 
 looked at, jump down, and together knock over the connoisseur. 
 Ajax then turns on Hercules, who, of course, is ready for a 
 row. They fight till they are tired, and then make it up over 
 a whisky bottle. 
 
 So entirely new an aspect of the British tar took rae by 
 surprise, and I speculated whether the inventors and per- 
 formers of this astonishing drama were an advance on the 
 Ben Bunting type. I was, of course, inclined to say no, but 
 my tendency is to dislike changes, and I allow for it. The 
 commodore said that in certain respects there really was an 
 advance. The seamen fell into few scrapes, and they did not 
 get drunk so often. This was a hardy assertion of the com- 
 modore, as a good many of them were drunk at that moment. 
 
MODERN SAILORS 243 
 
 I could see myself that they were better educated. If Ben 
 Bunting had been asked who Ajax and Hercules were, he 
 would have taken them to be three-deckers which were so 
 named, and his knowledge would have gone no farther. 
 Whether these tars of the new era are better sailors and braver 
 and truer men is another question. They understand their 
 rights much better, if that does any good to them. The 
 officers used to be treated with respect at all times and 
 seasons. This is now qualified. When they are on duty, the 
 men are as respectful as they used to be ; when they are off 
 
 duty, the commodore himself is only old H . 
 
 We returned to the dockyard in a boat under a full moon, 
 the guardship gleaming white in the blue midnight and the 
 phosphorescent water flashing under the oars. The * Dee,' 
 which was to take me to Havana, was off Port Royal on 
 the following miorning. The commodore put me on board 
 in his gig, with the white ensign floating over the stern. I 
 took leave of him with warm thanks for his own and his family's 
 hospitable entertainment of me. The screw went round — we 
 steamed away out of the harbour, and Jamaica and the kind 
 friends whom I had found there faded out of sight. Jamaica 
 was the last of the English West India Islands which I visited. 
 I was to see it again, but I will here set down the impressions 
 which had been left upon me by what I had seen there and 
 seen in the Antilles. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Present state of Jamaica — Test of progress — Resources of the island — 
 Political alternatives — Black supremacy and probable consequences — 
 The West Indian problem. 
 
 As I was stepping into the boat at Port Royal, a pamphlet 
 was thrust into my hand, which I was entreated to read at my 
 leisure. It was by some discontented white of the island — 
 no rare phenomenon, and the subject of it was the precipitate 
 decline in the value of property there. The writer, unlike the 
 
 16 - 2 
 
244 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 planters, insisted that the people were taxed in proportion 
 to their industry. There were taxes on mules, on carts, on 
 donkeys, all bearing on the small black proprietors, whose 
 ability to cultivate was thus checked, and who were thus 
 deliberately encouraged in idleness. He might have added, 
 although he did not, that while both in Jamaica and Trinidad 
 everyone is clamouring against the beetroot bounty which 
 artificially lowers the price of sugar, the local councils in these 
 two islands try to counteract the effect and artificially raise 
 the price of sugar by an export duty on their own produce — a 
 singular method of doing it which, I presume, admits of 
 explanation. My pamphleteer was persuaded that all the 
 world were fools, and that he and his friends were the only 
 wise ones : again a not uncommon occurrence in pamphleteers. 
 He demanded the suppression of absenteeism ] he demanded 
 free trade. In exchange for the customs duties, which were 
 to be abolished, he demanded a land tax — the very mention 
 of which, I had been told by others, drove the black proprietors 
 whom he wished to benefit into madness. He wanted Home 
 Rule. He wanted fifty things besides which I have forgotten, 
 but his grand want of all was a new currency. Mankind, he 
 thought, had been very mad at all periods of their history. 
 The most significant illustration of their madness had been 
 the selection of gold and silver as the medium of exchange. 
 The true base of the currency was the land. The Govern- 
 ment of Jamaica was to lend to every freeholder up to the 
 mortgage value of his land in paper notes, at 5 per cent, 
 interest, the current rate being at present 8 per cent. The 
 notes so issued, having the land as their security, would be in 
 no danger of depreciation, and they would flow over the sugar 
 estates like an irrigating stream. On the produce of sugar the 
 fate of the island depended. 
 
 On the produce of sugar ? And why not on the produce of 
 a fine race of men ? The prospects of Jamaica, the prospects 
 of all countries, depend not on sugar or on any form or degree 
 of material wealth, but on the characters of the men and 
 women whom they are breeding and rearing. Where ther^ 
 
THE COLONIAL PROBLEM 245 
 
 are men and women of a noble nature, the rest will go well of 
 itself; where these are not, there will be no true prosperity 
 though the sugar hogsheads be raised from thousands into 
 milHons. The colonies are interesting only as offering homes 
 where English people can increase and multiply ; EngUsh of 
 the old type with simple habits, who do not need imported 
 luxuries. There is room even in the West Indies for hun- 
 dreds of thousands of them if they can be contented to lead 
 human lives, and do not go there to make fortunes which they 
 are to carry home with them. The time may not be far off 
 when men will be sick of making fortunes, sick of being ground 
 to pattern in the commonplace mill-wheel of modern society ; 
 sick of a state of things which bHghts and kills simple and 
 original feeling, which makes us think and speak and act 
 under the tyranny of general opinion, which masquerades as 
 liberty and means only submission to the newspapers. I can 
 conceive some modern men may weary of all this, and retire 
 from it like the old ascetics, not as they did into the wilder- 
 ness, but behind their own walls and hedges, shutting out the 
 world and its noises, to inquire whether after all they have 
 really immortal souls, and, if they have, what ought to be done 
 about them. The West India Islands, with their inimitable 
 climate and soil and prickly pears ad libitu?n to make fences 
 with, would be fine places for such recluses. Failing these 
 ideal personages, there is work enough of the common sort to 
 create wholesome prosperity. There are oranges to be grown, 
 and pines and plantains, and coffee and cocoa, and rice and 
 indigo and tobacco, not to speak of the dollars which my 
 American friend found in the bamboos, and of the further 
 dollars which other Americans will find in the untested qualities 
 of thousands of other productions. Here are opportunities for 
 innocent industrious famiHes, where children can be brought 
 up to be manly and simple and true and brave as their fathers 
 were brought up, or as their fathers expressed it * in the nurture 
 and admonition of the Lord ; ' while such neighbours as their 
 dark brothers-in-law might have a chance of a rise in life, in 
 the only sense in which a * rise ' can be of real benefit to them. 
 
246 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 These are the objects which statesmen who have the care and 
 conduct of a nation's welfare ought to set before themselves, 
 and unfortunately they are the last which are remembered in 
 countries which are popularly governed. There is a clamour 
 for education in such countries, but education means to them 
 only the sharpening of the faculties for the competitive race 
 which is called progress. In democracies no one man is his 
 brother's keeper. Each lives and struggles to make his own 
 way and his own position. All that is insisted on is that there 
 shall be a fair stage and that every lad shall learn the use of 
 the weapons which will enable him to fight his own way. 
 'AptTth * manliness/ the most essential of all acquisitions and 
 the hardest to cultivate, as Aristotle observed long ago, is 
 assumed in democracies as a matter of course. Of aptH) a 
 moderate quantity {biroaovoiiv) would do, and in Aristotle's 
 opinion this was the rock on which the Greek republics 
 foundered. Their apirri did not come as a matter of course, * 
 and they lost it, and the Macedonians and the Romans ate 
 them up. 
 
 From this point of view political problems, and the West 
 Indian among them, present unusual aspects. Looking to the 
 West Indies only, we took possession of those islands when 
 they were of supreme importance in our great wrestle with 
 Spain and France. We were fighting then for the liberties of 
 the human race. The Spaniards had destroyed the original Carib 
 and Indian inhabitants. We induced thousands of our own 
 fellow-countrymen to venture life and fortune in the occupa- 
 tion of our then vital conquests. For two centuries we furnished 
 them with black servants whom we purchased on the African 
 coast and carried over and sold there, making our own profits 
 out of the trade, and the colonists prospered themselves and 
 poured wealth and strength into the empire of which they 
 were then an integral part. A change passed over the spirit 
 of the age. Liberty assumed a new dress. We found slavery 
 to be a crime ; we released our bondmen ; we broke their 
 chains as we proudly described it to ourselves ; we compensated 
 the owners, so far as money could compensate, for the entire 
 
THE COLONIAL PROBLEM i^l 
 
 dislocation of a state of society which we had ourselves 
 created ; and we trusted to the enchantment of liberty to 
 create a better in its place. We had delivered our own souls ; 
 we had other colonies to take our emigrants. Other lands 
 under our open trade would supply us with the commodities 
 for which we had hitherto been dependent on the West Indies. 
 They ceased to be of commercial, they ceased to be of political,"^ 
 moment to us, and we left them to their own resources. The 
 modern English idea is that everyone must take care of him- 
 self. Individuals or aggregates of individuals have the world 
 before them, to open the oyster or fail to open it according to 
 their capabilities. The State is not to help them ; the State 
 is not to interfere with them unless for political or party 
 reasons it happens to be convenient. As we treat ourselves 
 we treat our colonies. Those who have gone thither have 
 gone of their own free will, and must take the consequences of 
 their own actions. We allow them no expectional privileges 
 which we do not claim for ourselves. They must stand, if 
 they are to stand, by their own strength. If they cannot stand 
 they must fall. This is our notion of education in * manliness,' 
 and for immediate purposes answers well enough. Individual 
 enterprise, unendowed but unfettered, built the main buttresses 
 of the British colonial empire. Australians and New Zealanders 
 are English and Scotchmen who have settled at the antipodes 
 where there is more room for them than at home. They are 
 the same people as we are, and they have the same privileges 
 as we have. They are parts of one and the same organic body 
 as branches from the original trunk. The branch does not 
 part from the trunk, but it discharges its own vital functions 
 by its own energy, and we no more desire to interfere than 
 London desires to interfere with Manchester. 
 
 So it stands with us where the colonists are of our race, with 
 the same character and the same objects ; and, as I said, the 
 system answers. Under no other relations could we continue 
 a united people. But it does not answer — it has failed wherever 
 we have tried it — when the majority of the inhabitants of 
 countries of which for one or other reason we have possessed 
 
248 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 ourselves, and of which we keep possession, are not united to 
 us by any of these natural bonds, where they have been 
 annexed by violence or otherwise been forced under our flag. 
 It has failed conspicuously in Ireland. We know that it would 
 fail in the East Indies if we were rash enough to venture the 
 experiment. Self-government in connection with the British 
 Empire implies a desire or a willingness in those who are so 
 left to themselves that the connection shall continue. We 
 have been so sanguine as to believe that the privilege of being 
 British subjects is itself sufficient to secure their allegiance ; 
 that the liberties which we concede will not be used for pur- 
 poses which we are unable to tolerate; that, being left to 
 govern themselves, they will govern in harmony with English 
 interests and according to English principles. The privilege is not 
 estimated so highly. They go their own way and not our way, 
 and therefore we must look facts in the face as they are, and 
 not as we wish them to be. If we extend to Ireland the 
 independence which only links us closer to Australia, Ireland 
 will use it to break away from us. If we extend it to Bengal 
 and Madras and Bombay, we shall fling them into anarchy 
 and bring our empire to an end. We cannot for our 
 safety's sake part with Ireland. We do not mean to part with 
 our Asiatic dominions. The reality of the relation in both 
 cases is the superior force of England, and we must rely upon 
 it and need not try to conceal that we do, till by the excellence 
 of our administration we have converted submission into 
 respect and respect into willingness for union. This may be a 
 long process and a difficult one. If we choose to maintain our 
 empire, however, we must pay the price for empire, and it is 
 wiser, better, safer, in all cases to admit the truth and act upon 
 it. Yet Englishmen so love liberty that they struggle against 
 confessing what is disagreeable to them. Many of us would 
 give Ireland, would give India Home Rule, and run the risk 
 of what would happen, and only a probability, which reaches 
 certainty, of the consequences to be expected to follow prevents 
 us from unanimously agreeing. About the West Indies we 
 do not care very earnestly. Nothing seriously alarming can- 
 
THE COLONIAL PROBLEM 249 
 
 happen there. So much, therefore, for the general policy of 
 leaving them to help themselves out of their difficulties we 
 I have adopted completely. The corollary that they must govern 
 themselves also on their own responsibilities we hesitate as yet 
 to admit completely; but we do not recognise that any 
 responsibility for their failing condition rests on us ; and the 
 incUnation certainly, and perhaps the purpose, is to throw 
 them entirely upon themselves at the earliest moment. Cuba 
 sends representatives to the Cortes at Madrid, Martinique and 
 Guadaloupe to the Assembly at Paris. In the English islands, 
 being unwilling to govern without some semblance of a consti- 
 tution, we try tentatively varieties of local boards and local 
 councils, admitting the elective principle but not daring to 
 trust it fully; creating hybrid constitutions, so contrived as 
 to provoke ill feeling where none would exist without them, 
 and to make impossible any tolerable government which could 
 actively benefit the people. We cannot intend that arrange- 
 ments the effects of which are visible so plainly in the sinking 
 fortunes of our own kindred there, are to continue for ever. 
 We suppose that we cannot go back in these cases. It is to 
 be presumed, therefore, that we mean to go forward, and in 
 doing so I venture to think myself that we shall be doing equal 
 injustice both to our own race and to the blacks, and we shall 
 bring the islands into a condition which will be a reproach and 
 scandal to the empire of which they will remain a dishonoured 
 part. The slave trade was an imperial monopoly, extorted by 
 force, guaranteed by treaties, and our white West Indian 
 interest was built up in connection with and in reliance upon 
 it. We had a right to set the slaves free ; but the payment of 
 the indemnity was no full acquittance of our obligations for 
 the condition of a society which we had ourselves created. 
 We have no more right to make the emancipated slave his 
 master's master in virtue of his numbers than we have a right 
 to lay under the heel of the Catholics of Ireland the Protestant 
 minority whom we planted there to assist us in controlling 
 them. 
 
 It may be said that we have no intention of doing anything 
 
250 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 of the kind, that no one at present dreams of giving a full 
 colonial constitution to the West Indian Islands. They are 
 allowed such freedom as they are capable of using ; they can 
 be allowed more as they are better educated and more fit for 
 it, &c. &c. 
 
 One knows all that, and one knows what it is worth in the 
 half-elected, half-nominated councils. Either the nominated 
 members are introduced merely as a drag upon the wheel, and 
 are instructed to yield in the end to the demands of the 
 representative members, or they are themselves the representa- 
 tives of the white minority. If the first, the majority rule 
 already; if the second, such constitutions are contrived in- 
 geniously to create the largest amount of irritation, and to 
 make impossible, as long as they last, any form of effective 
 and useful government. Therefore they cannot last, and are 
 not meant to last. A principle once conceded develops with 
 the same certainty with which a seed grows when it is sown. 
 In the English world, as it now stands, there is no middle 
 alternative between self-government and government by the 
 Crown, and the cause of our reluctance to undertake direct 
 charge of the West Indies is because such undertaking carries 
 responsibility along with it. If they are brought so close to 
 us we shall be obliged to exert ourselves, and to rescue them 
 from a condition which would be a reproach to us. 
 
 The English of those islands are melting away. That is a 
 fact to which it is idle to try to shut our eyes. Families who 
 have been for generations on the soil are selling their estates 
 everywhere and are going off. Lands once under high culti- 
 vation are lapsing into jungle. Professional men of ability 
 and ambition carry their talents to countries where they are 
 more sure of reward. Every year the census renews its 
 warning. The rate may vary ; sometimes for a year or two 
 there may seem to be a pause in the movement, but it begins 
 again and is always in the same direction. The white is 
 relatively disappearing, the black is growing ; that is the fact 
 with which we have to deal. 
 
 We may say if we please, ' Be it so then ; we do not want 
 
THE COLONIAL PROBLEM 251 
 
 those islands ; let the blacks have them, poor devils. They 
 have had wrongs enough in this world; let them take their 
 turn and have a good time now.' This I imagine is the 
 answer which will rise to the lips of most of us, yet it will be 
 an answer which will not be for our honour, nor in the long 
 run for our interest. Our stronger colonies will scarcely 
 attach more value to their connection with us if they hear us 
 declare impatiently that because part of our possessions have 
 ceased to be of money value to us, we will not or we cannot 
 take the trouble to provide them with a decent government, 
 and therefore cast them off. Nor in the long run will it 
 benefit the blacks either. The islands will not be allowed to 
 run wild again, and if we leave them some one else will take 
 them who will be less tender of his coloured brother's sensi- 
 bilities. We may think that it would not come to that. The 
 islands will still be ours ; the English flag will still float over 
 the forts ; the government, whatever it be, will be administered 
 in the Queen's name. Were it worth while, one might draw a 
 picture of the position of an English governor, with a black 
 parliament and a black ministry, recommending by advice of 
 his constitutional ministers some measure like the Haytian 
 Land Law. 
 
 No Englishman, not even a bankrupt peer, would consent 
 to occupy such a position ; the blacks themselves would 
 despise him if he did ; and if the governor is to be one of 
 their own race and colour, how long could such a connection 
 endure ? 
 
 No one I presume would advise that the whites of the 
 inland should govern. The relations between the two popu- 
 lations are too embittered, and equality once established by 
 law, the exclusive privilege of colour over colour cannot be 
 restored. While slavery continued the whites ruled effectively 
 and economically ; the blacks are now free as they ; there are 
 two classes in the community ; their interests are opposite as 
 they are now understood, and one cannot be trusted with 
 control over the other. As little can the present order of 
 things continue. The West India Islands, once the pride of 
 
252 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 our empire, the scene of our most brilliant achievements, are 
 passing away out of our hands ; the remnant of our own country- 
 men, weary of an unavailing struggle, are more and more eager 
 to withdraw from the scene, because they find no sympathy and 
 no encouragement from home, and are forbidden to accept 
 help from America when help is offered them, while under 
 their eyes their quondam slaves are multiplying, thriving, 
 occupying, growing strong, and every day more conscious of 
 the changed order of things. One does not grudge the black 
 man his prosperity, his freedom, his opportunities of advanc- 
 ing himself; one would wish to see him as free and prosperous 
 as the fates and his own exertions can make him, with more 
 and more means of raising himself to the white man's level. 
 But left to himself, and without the white man to lead him, he 
 can never reach it, and if we are not to lose the islands 
 altogether, or if they are not to remain with us to discredit 
 our capacity to rule them, it is left to us only to take the same 
 course which we have taken in the East Indies with such 
 magnificent success, and to govern whites and blacks alike on 
 the Indian system. The circumstances are precisely analogous. 
 We have a population to deal with, the enormous majority of 
 whom are of an inferior race. Inferior, I am obliged to call 
 them, because as yet, and as a body, they have shown no 
 capacity to rise above the condition of their ancestors except 
 under European laws, European education, and European 
 authority, to keep them from making war on one another. 
 They are docile, good-tempered, excellent and faithful servants 
 when they are kindly treated ; but their notions of right and 
 wrong are scarcely even elementary ; their education, such as 
 it may be, is but skin deep, and the old African superstitions 
 lie undisturbed at the bottom of their souls. Give them 
 independence, and in a few generations they will peel off such 
 civiUsation as they have learnt as easily and as willingly as 
 their coats and trousers. 
 
 Govern them as we govern India, with the same conscien- 
 tious care, with the same sense of responsibility, with the same 
 impartiality, the same disinterested attention to the well-being 
 
ENGLAND'S DUTY 253 
 
 of our subjects in its highest and most honourable sense, and 
 we shall give the world one more evidence that while English- 
 men can cover the waste places of it with free communities of 
 their own blood, they can exert an influence no less beneficent 
 as the guides and rulers of those who need their assistance, 
 and whom fate and circumstances have assigned to their care. 
 Our kindred far away will be more than ever proud to form 
 part of a nation which has done more for freedom than any 
 other nation ever did, yet is not a slave to formulas, and can 
 adapt its actions to the demands of each community which 
 belongs to it. The most timid among us may take courage, 
 for it would cost us nothing save the sacrifice of a few official 
 traditions, and an abstinence for the future from doubtful uses 
 of colonial patronage. The blacks will be perfectly happy 
 when they are satisfied that they have nothing to fear for their 
 persons or their properties. To the whites it would be the 
 opening of a new era of hope. Should they be rash enough to 
 murmur, they might then be justly left to the consequences of 
 their own folly. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Passage to Cuba — A Canadian commissioner — Havana — The Moro — The 
 city and harbour — Cuban money — American visitors — The cathedral — 
 Tomb of Columbus — New friends — The late rebellion — Slave emancipa- 
 tion — Spain and progress — A bull fight. 
 
 I HAD gone to the West Indies to see our own colonies, but I 
 could not leave those famous seas which were the scene of our 
 ocean duels with the Spaniards without a visit to the last of 
 the great possessions of Philip II. which remained to his suc- 
 cessors. 1 ought not to say the last, for Puerto Rico is Spanish 
 also, but this small island is insignificant and has no important 
 memories connected with it. Puerto Rico I had no leisure to 
 look at and did not care about, and to see Cuba as it ought to 
 be seen required more time than I could afford ; but Havana 
 was so interesting, both from its associations and its present 
 condition, that I could not be within reach of it and pass it by. 
 
254 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 The body of Columbus lies there for one thing, unless a trick 
 was played when the remains which were said to be his were 
 removed from St. Domingo, and I wished to pay my orisons 
 at his tomb. I wished also to see the race of men who have 
 shared the New World with the Anglo-Saxons, and have given 
 a language and a religion to half the American continent, in 
 the oldest and most celebrated of their Transatlantic cities. 
 
 Cuba also had an immediate and present interest. Before 
 the American civil war it was on the point of being absorbed 
 into the United States. The Spanish Cubans had afterwards 
 a civil war of their own, of which only confused accounts had 
 reached us at home. We knew that it had lasted ten years, 
 but who had been the parties and what their objects had been 
 was very much a mystery. No sooner was it over than, with- 
 out reservation or compensation, the slaves had been emanci- 
 pated. How a country was prospering which had undergone 
 such a succession of shocks, and how the Spaniards were 
 dealing with the trials which were bearing so hard on our own 
 islands, were inquiries worth making. But beyond these it was 
 the land of romance. Columbus and Las Casas, Cortez and 
 Pizarro, are the demigods and heroes of the New World. 
 Their names will be familiar to the end of time as the founders 
 of a new era, and although the modern Spaniards sink to the 
 level of the modern Greeks, their illustrious men will hold their 
 place for ever in imagination and memory. 
 
 Our own Antilles had, as I have said, in their terror of small- 
 pox, placed Jamaica under an interdict. The Spaniards at 
 Cuba were more generous or more careless. Havana is on the 
 north side of the island, facing towards Florida ; thus, in going 
 to it from Port Royal, we had to round the westernmost cape, 
 and had four days of sea before us. We slid along the coast 
 of Jamaica in smooth water, the air, while day lasted, intensely 
 hot, but the breeze after nightfall blowing cool from off the 
 mountains. We had a polite captain, polite officers, and agree- 
 able fellow-passengers, two or three Cubans among them, 
 swarthy, dark-eyed, thick-set men — Americanos ; Spaniards 
 with a difference — with whom I cultivated a kind of intimacy. 
 
ON THE WA V TO CUBA 255 
 
 In a cabin it was reported that there were again Spanish ladies 
 on their way to the demonic gaieties at Darien, but they did 
 not show. 
 
 Among the rest of the party was a Canadian gentleman, a 
 
 Mr. , exceptionally well-informed and intelligent. Their 
 
 American treaty having been disallowed, the West Indies had 
 proposed to negotiate a similar one with the Canadian Do- 
 minion. The authorities at Ottawa had sent Mr. M to 
 
 see if anything could be done, and Mr. M was now on his 
 
 way home, not in the best of humours with our poor relations. 
 
 * The Jamaicans did not know what they wanted,* he said. 
 
 * They were without spirit to help themselves ; they cried out 
 to others to help them, and if all they asked could not be 
 granted they clamoured as if the whole world was combining to 
 hurt them. There was not the least occasion for these pas- 
 sionate appeals to the universe ; they could not at this moment 
 perhaps *' go ahead " as fast as some countries, but there was no 
 necessity to be always going ahead. They had a fine country, 
 soil and climate all that could be desired, they had all that was 
 required for a quiet and easy life, why could they not be con- 
 tented and make the best of things ? ' Unfortunate Jamaicans ! 
 The old mother at home acts like an unnatural parent, and 
 will neither help them nor let their Cousin Jonathan help 
 them. They turn for comfort to their big brother in the north, 
 and the big brother being himself robust and healthy, gives 
 them wholesome advice. 
 
 Adventures do occasionally happen at sea even in this age of 
 steam engines. Ships catch fire or run into each other, or go 
 on rocks in fogs, or are caught in hurricanes, and Nature can 
 still assume her old terrors if she pleases. Shelley describes a 
 wreck on the coast of Cornwall, and the treacherous waters of the 
 ocean in the English Channel, now wild in fury, now smiling 
 
 As on the morn 
 When the exulting elements in scorn 
 Satiated with destroyed destruction lay 
 Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey, 
 As panthers sleep. 
 
256 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 The wildest gale which ever blew on British shores was a mere 
 summer breeze compared to a West Indian tornado. Behind 
 all that beauty there lies the temper and caprice, not of a 
 panther, but of a woman. But no tornadoes fell in our way, 
 nor anything else worth mentioning, not even a buccaneer or 
 a pirate. We saw the islands which these gentry haunted, and 
 the headlands made memorable by their desperate deeds, but 
 they are gone, even to the remembrance of them. What they 
 were and what they did lies buried away in book mausoleums 
 like Egyptian mummies, all as clean forgotten as if they had 
 been honest men, they and all the wild scenes which these 
 green estuaries have witnessed. 
 
 Havana figures much in English naval history. Drake tried 
 to take it and failed ; Penn and Venables failed. We stormed 
 the forts in 1760, and held them and held the city till the 
 Seven Years' War was over. I had read descriptions of the 
 place, but they had given me no clear conception of what it 
 would be like, certainly none at all of what it was like. King- 
 ston is the best of our West Indian towns, and Kingston has 
 not one fine building in it. Havana is a city of palaces, a city 
 of streets and plazas, of colonnades, and towers, and churches 
 and monasteries. We English have built in those islands as if 
 we were but passing visitors, wanting only tenements to be 
 occupied for a time. The Spaniards built as they built in Cas- 
 tile ; built with the same material, the white limestone which 
 they found in the New World as in the Old. The palaces of 
 the nobles in Havana, the residence of the governor, the con- 
 vents, the cathedral, are a reproduction of Burgos or Valla- 
 dolid, as if by some Aladdin's lamp a Castilian city had been 
 taken up and set down again unaltered on the shore of the 
 Caribbean Sea. And they carried with them their laws, their 
 habits, their institutions and their creed, their religious orders, 
 their bishops, and their Inquisition. Even now in her day of 
 eclipse, when her genius is clouded by the modern spirit 
 against which she fought so long and so desperately, the sons 
 of Spain still build as they used to build, and the modern 
 squares and market places, the castles and fortresses, which 
 
HA VANA 257 
 
 have risen in and round the ancient Havana, are constructed 
 on the old massive model, and on the same lines. However 
 it may be with us, and whatever the eventual fate of Cuba, 
 the Spanish race has taken root there, and is visibly destined 
 to remain. They have poured their own people into it. In 
 Cuba alone there are ten times as many Spaniards as there 
 are English and Scotch in all our West Indies together, 
 and Havana is ten times the size of the largest of our West 
 Indian cities. * Refugees have flocked thither from the revolu- 
 tions in the Peninsula. The Canary Islands overflow into it. 
 You know the people from Teneriffe by their stature ; they are 
 the finest surviving specimens of the old conquering breed. 
 The political future is dark ; the government is unimaginably 
 corrupt — so corrupt that change is inevitable, though what 
 change it would be idle to prophesy. The Americans looked 
 at the island which lay so temptingly near them, but they were 
 wise in their generation. They reflected that to introduce into 
 an Anglo-Saxon republic so insoluble an element as a milUon 
 Spanish Roman Catholics alien in blood and creed, with half 
 a million blacks to swell the dusky flood which runs too full 
 among them already, would be to invite an indigestion of 
 serious consequence. A few years since the Cubans born 
 were on the eve of achieving their independence like their 
 brothers in Mexico and South America. Perhaps they will yet 
 succeed. Spanish, at any rate, they are to the bone and mar- 
 row, and Spanish they will continue. The magnitude of 
 Havana, and the fullness of life which was going on there, 
 entirely surprised me. I had thought of Cuba as a decrepit 
 state, bankrupt or finance-exhausted by civil wars, and on the 
 edge of social dissolution, and I found Havana at least a grand 
 imposing city — a city which might compare for beauty with 
 any in the world. The sanitary condition is as bad as negli- 
 gence can make it — so bad that a Spanish gentleman told me 
 that if it were not for the natural purity of the air they would 
 hive been all dead Hke flies long ago. The tideless harbour is 
 foul with the accumulations of three hundred years. The ad- 
 ministration is more good-for-nothing than in Spain itself. If, 
 
 17 
 
258 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 in spite of this, Havana still sits like a queen upon the waters, 
 there are some qualities to be found among her people which 
 belonged to the countrymen and subjects of Ferdinand the 
 Catholic. 
 
 The coast line from Cape Tubiron has none of the grand 
 aspects of the Antilles or Jamaica. Instead of mountains and 
 forests you see a series of undulating hills, cultivated with 
 tolerable care, and sprinkled with farmhouses. All the more 
 imposing, therefore, from the absence of marked^atural forms, 
 are the walls and towers of the great Moro, the fortress 
 which defends the entrance of the harbour. Ten miles off it 
 was already a striking object. As we ran nearer it rose above 
 us stern, proud, and defiant, upon a rock right above the 
 water, with high frowning bastions, the lighthouse at an angle 
 of it, and the Spanish banner floating proudly from a turret 
 which overlooked the whole. The Moro as a fortification is, 
 I am told, indefensible against modern artillery, presenting too 
 much surface as a target ; but it is all the grander to look at. 
 It is a fine specimen of the Vauban period, and is probably 
 equal to any demands which will be made upon it. The har- 
 bour is something like Port Royal, a deep lagoon with a narrow 
 entrance and a long natural breakwater between the lagoon 
 and the ocean ; but what at Port Royal is a sand-spit eight 
 miles long, is at Havana a rocky peninsula on which the city 
 itself is built. The opening from the sea is half a mile wide. 
 On the city side there are low semicircular batteries which 
 sweep completely the approaches and the passage itself. The 
 Moro irises opposite at the extreme point of the entrance, and 
 next to it, farther in towards the harbour on the same side, on 
 the crest and slopes of a range of hills, stands the old Moro, 
 the original castle which beat off Drake and Oliver's sea- 
 generals, and which was captured by the English in the last 
 century. The lines were probably weaker than they are at 
 present, and less adequately manned. A monument is erected 
 there to the officers and men who fell in the defence. 
 
 The city as we steamed by looked singularly beautiful, with 
 its domes and steeples and marble palaces, and glimpses of 
 
THE HARBOUR 259 
 
 long boulevards and trees and handsome mansions and cool 
 arcades. Inside we found ourselves in a basin, perhaps of 
 three miles diameter, full of shipping of all sorts and nationali- 
 ties. The water, which outside is pure as sapphire, has 
 become filthy with the pollutions of a dozen generations. The 
 tide, which even at the springs has but a rise and fall of a 
 couple of feet, is totally ineffective to clear it, and as long as 
 they have the Virgin Mary to pray to, the pious Spaniards will 
 not drive their sewage into the ocean. The hot sun rays 
 stream down into the thick black liquid. Horrible smells are 
 let loose from it when it is set in motion by screw or paddle, 
 and ships bring up at mooring buoys lest their anchors should 
 disturb the compost which lies at the bottom. Yet one forgot 
 the disagreeables in the novelty and striking character of the 
 scene. A hundred boats were plying to and fro among the 
 various vessels, with their white sails and white awnings. 
 Flags of all countries were blowing out at stern or from mast- 
 head ; among them, of course, the stars and stripes flying 
 jauntily on some splendid schooner which stood there like a 
 cock upon a dunghill that might be his own if he chose to crow 
 for it. 
 
 As soon as we had brought up we were boarded by the in- 
 evitable hotel touters, custom-house officers, porters, and boat- 
 men. Interpreters offered their services in the confusion of 
 languages. Gradually there emerged out of the general noise 
 two facts of importance. First, that I ought to have had a 
 passport, and if I had not brought one that I was likely 
 to be fined at the discretion of Spanish officials. Secondly, 
 that if I trusted to my own powers of self-defence, I should be 
 the victim of indefinite other extortions. Passport I had 
 none — such things are not required any longer in Spain, and it 
 had not occurred to me that they might still be in demand 
 in a Spanish colony. As to being cheated, no one could 
 or would tell me what I was to pay for anything, for there 
 were American dollars, Spanish dollars, Mexican dollars, 
 and Cuban dollars, all different. And there were multiples 
 of dollars in gold, and single dollars in silver, and last and 
 
 17 — a 
 
26o THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 most important of all there was the Cuban paper dollar, which 
 was 230 per cent, below the Cuban gold dollar. And in this 
 last the smaller transactions of common life were carried on, 
 the practical part of it to a stranger being that when you had 
 to receive you received in paper, and when you had to pay 
 you paid in specie. 
 
 I escaped for the time the penalty which would have been 
 inflicted on me about the passport. I had a letter of intro- 
 duction to the Captain-General of the island, and the Captain- 
 General — so the viceroy is called — was so formidable a person' 
 that the officials did not venture to meddle with me. For the 
 rest I was told that as soon as I had chosen my hotel, the 
 agent, who was on board, would see me through all obstruc- 
 tions, and would not allow me to be plundered by anyone but 
 himself. To this I had to submit. I named an hotel at 
 random ; a polite gentleman in a few moments had a boat 
 alongside for me ; I had stept into it when the fair damsels 
 bound for Darien, who had been concealed all this time in 
 their cabin, slipped down the ladder and took their places at 
 my side, to the no small entertainment of the friends whom I 
 had left on board and who were watching us from the deck. 
 
 At the wharf I was able to shake off my companions, and I 
 soon forgot the misadventure, for I found myself in Old 
 Castile once more, amidst Spanish faces, Spanish voices, 
 Spanish smells, and Spanish scenes. On the very wharf itself 
 was a church grim and stern, and so massive that it would 
 stand, barring earthquakes, for a thousand years. Church, 
 indeed, it was no longer ; it had been turned into a custom- 
 house. But this was because it had been desecrated when we 
 were in Havana by having an English service performed in it. 
 They had churches enough without it, and they preferred to 
 leave this one with a mark upon it of the anger of the 
 Almighty. Of churches, indeed, there was no lack ; churches 
 thick as public-houses in a Welsh town. Church beyond 
 church, palace beyond palace, the narrow streets where neigh- 
 bours on either side might shake hands out of the upper 
 Stories, the deep colonnades, the private houses with the win- 
 
CITY OF HA VANA 261 
 
 dows grated towards the street, with glimpses through the 
 street door into the court and garden within, with its cloisters, 
 its palm trees, and its fountains ; the massiveness of the stone- 
 work, the curious old-fashioned bookstalls, the dirt, the smell, 
 the carriages, the swearing drivers, the black-robed priest 
 gliding along the footway — it was Toledo or Valladolid again 
 with the sign manual on it of Spain herself in friendly and 
 familiar form. Every face that I saw was Spanish. In 
 Kingston or Port of Spain you meet fifty blacks for one 
 European ; all the manual work is done by them. In Havana 
 the proportion is reversed, you hardly see a coloured man at 
 all. Boatmen, porters, cab-drivers or cart-drivers, every one 
 of whom are negroes in our islands, are there Spaniards, either 
 Cuban born or emigrants from home. A few black beggars 
 there were — permitted, as objects of charity to pious Catholics 
 and as a sign of their inferiority of race. Of poverty among 
 the whites, real poverty that could be felt, I saw no sign at all. 
 
 After driving for about a mile we emerged out of the old 
 town into a large square and thence into a wide Alameda or 
 boulevard with double avenues of trees, statues, fountains, 
 theatres, clubhouses, and all the various equipments of modern 
 luxuriousness and so-called civilised life. Beyond the Alameda 
 was another still larger square, one side of which was a railway 
 station and terminus. In a colonnade at right angles was the 
 hotel to which I had been recommended ; spacious, handsome, 
 in style half Parisian half Spanish, like the Fondas in the 
 Puerto del Sol at Madrid. 
 
 Spanish was the language generally spoken ; but there were 
 interpreters and waiters more or less accomplished in other 
 tongues, especially in English, of which they heard enough, 
 for I found Havana to be the winter resort of our American 
 cousins, who go, generally, to Cuba, as we go to the Riviera, 
 to escape the ice and winds of the eastern and middle States. 
 This particular hotel was a favourite resort, and was full to 
 overflowing with them. It was large, with an interior quad- 
 rangular garden, into which looked tiers of windows ; and 
 wings had been thrgwn out with terraced roofs, suites of 
 
262 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 rooms opening out upon them ; each floor being provided 
 'with airy sitting rooms and music rooms. Here were to be 
 heard at least a hundred American voices discussing the 
 experiences and plans of their owners. The men lounged in 
 the hall or at the bar, or sat smoking on the rows of leather 
 chairs under the colonnade, or were under the hands of barbers 
 or haircutters in an airy open saloon devoted to these uses. 
 When I retreated upstairs to collect myself, a lady was making 
 the corridors ring close by as she screamed at a piano in the 
 middle of an admiring and criticising crowd. Dear as the 
 Americans are to me, and welcome in most places as is the 
 sound of those same sweet voices, one had not come to 
 Havana for this. It was necessary to escape somewhere, and 
 promptly, from the discord of noises which I hoped might be 
 due to some momentary accident. The mail company's agent, 
 
 Mr. R , lived in the hotel. He kindly found me out, 
 
 initiated me in the mysteries of Cuban paper money, and 
 giving me a tariff of the fares, found me a cab, and sent me 
 out to look about me. 
 
 My first object was the cathedral and the tomb of Columbus. 
 In Catholic cities in Europe churches stand always open ; the 
 passer-by can enter when he pleases, fall on his knees and say 
 his silent prayers to his Master whom he sees on the altar. In 
 Havana I discovered afterward that, except at special hours, 
 and those as few as might be, the doors were kept locked and 
 could only be opened by a golden key. It was carnival time, 
 however ; there were functions going on of various kinds, and 
 I found the cathedral happily accessible. It was a vast build- 
 ing, little ornamented, but the general forms severe and im- 
 pressive, in the style of the time of Philip IL, when Gothic 
 art had gone out in Spain and there had come in the place of 
 it the implacable sternness which expresses the very genius of 
 the Inquisition. A broad flight of stone steps led up to the 
 great door. The afternoon was extremely hot ; the curtains 
 were thrown back to admit as much air as possible. There 
 was some function proceeding of a peculiar kind. I know 
 not what it was ; something certainly in which the public had 
 
TOMB OF COLUMBUS 263 
 
 no interest, for there was not a stranger present but myself. 
 But the great cathedral officials were busy at work, and liked 
 to be at their ease. On the wall as you entered a box invited 
 contributions, as limosna por el Santo Padre. The service was 
 I know not what. In the middle of the nave stood twelve 
 large chairs arranged in a semicircle ; on these chairs sat 
 twelve canons, like a row of mandarins, each with his little 
 white patch like a silver dollar on the crown of his black head. 
 Five or six minor dignitaries, deacons, precentors, or some- 
 thing of that sort, were droning out monotonous recitations 
 like the buzzing of so many humble-bees in the warm summer 
 air. The dean or provost sat in the central biggest chair of 
 all. His face was rosy, and he wiped it from time to time 
 with a red handkerchief; his chin was double or perhaps 
 treble ; he had evidently dined, and would or might have 
 slept but for a pile of snuff on his chair arm, with continual 
 refreshments from which he kept his faculties alive. I sat 
 patiently till it was over, and the twelve holy men rose and 
 went their way. I could then stroll about at leisure. The 
 pictures were of the usual paltry kind. On the chancel arch 
 stood the royal arms of Spain, as the lion and the unicorn 
 used to stand in our parish churches till the High Church 
 clergy mistook them for Erastian wild beasts. At the right 
 side of the altar was the monument which I had come in 
 search of ; a marble tablet fixed against the wall, and on it a 
 poorly executed figure in high relief, with a ruff about its neck 
 and features which might be meant for anyone and for no one 
 in particular. Somewhere near me there were lying I believed 
 and could hope the mortal remains of the discoverer of the 
 New World. An inscription said so. There was written : 
 
 O Restos y Imagen del grande Colon 
 Mil siglos durad guardados en la Urna 
 Y en remembranza de nuestra Nacion. 
 
 The court poet, or whoever wrote the lines, was as poor an 
 artist in verse as the sculptor in stone. The image of the 
 grande Colon is certainly not * guarded in the urn,' since you 
 
264 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 see it on the wall before your eyes. The urn, if urn there be, 
 with the ' relics ' in it, must be under the floor. Columbus 
 and his brother Diego were originally buried to the right and 
 left of the altar in the cathedral of St. Domingo. When 
 St. Domingo was abandoned, a commission was appointed to 
 remove the body of Christophe to Havana. They did remove 
 a body, but St. Domingo insists that it was Diego that was 
 taken away, that Christophe remains where he was, and that 
 if Spain wants him Spain must pay for him. I followed the 
 canons into the sacristy where they were unrobing. I did not 
 venture to address either of themselves, but I asked an acolyte 
 if he could throw any light upon the matter. He assured me 
 that there neither was nor could have been any mistake. They 
 had the right body and were in no doubt about it. In more 
 pious ages disputes of this sort were settled by an appeal to 
 miracles. Rival pretenders for the possession of the same 
 bones came, however, at last to be able to produce authentic 
 proofs of miracles which had been worked at more than one 
 of the pretended shrines ; so that it was concluded that saints' 
 relics were like the loaves and fishes, capable of multiplication 
 without losing their identity, and of having the property of 
 being in several places at the same moment. The same thing 
 has been alleged of the Holy Coat of Treves and of the wood 
 of the true cross. Havana and St. Domingo may perhaps 
 eventually find a similar solution of their disagreement ovei 
 the resting place of Columbus. 
 
 I walked back to my hotel up a narrow shady street like a 
 long arcade. Here were the principal shops ; several libraries 
 among them, into which I strayed to gossip and to look over 
 the shelves. That so many persons could get a living by 
 bookselling implied a reading population, but the books them- 
 selves did not indicate any present literary productiveness. 
 They were chiefly old, and from the Old World, and belonged 
 probably to persons who had been concerned in the late 
 rebellion and whose property had been confiscated. They 
 were absurdly cheap ; I bought a copy of Guzman de AI7 
 farache for a few pence. 
 
INTERESTING FRIENDS 265 
 
 I had brought letters of introduction to several distinguished 
 
 people in Havana ; to one especially, Don G , a member 
 
 of a noble Peninsular family, once an officer in the Spanish 
 navy, now chairman of a railway company and head of an 
 important commercial house. His elder brother, the Marques 
 
 de , called on me on the evening of the day of my 
 
 arrival ; a distinguished-looking man of forty or thereabouts, 
 with courteous high-bred manners, rapid, prompt, and incisive, 
 with the air of a soldier, which in early life he had been. He 
 had travelled, spoke various languages, and spoke to me in 
 
 admirable English. Don G , who might be a year or two 
 
 younger, came later and stayed an hour and a half with me. 
 Let me acknowledge here, and in as warm language as I can 
 express it, the obligations under which I stand to him, not for 
 the personal attentions only which he showed me during my 
 stay in Havana, but for giving me an opportunity of becoming 
 acquainted with a real specimen of Plato's superior men, who 
 were now and then, so Plato said, to be met with in foreign 
 travel. It is to him that I owe any knowledge which I 
 brought away with me of the present state of Cuba. He had 
 seen much, thought much, read much. He was on a level 
 with the latest phases of philosophical and spiritual specula- 
 tion, could talk of Darwin and Spencer, of Schopenhauer, of 
 Strauss, and of Renan, aware of what they had done, aware of 
 the inconvenient truths which they had forced into light, but 
 aware also that they had left the most important questions 
 pretty much where they found them. He had taken no part 
 in the political troubles of the late years in Cuba, but he had 
 observed everything. No one knew better the defects of the 
 present system of government ; no one was less ready to rush 
 into hasty schemes for violently mending it. 
 
 The ten years' rebellion, of which I had heard so much 
 and knew so little, he first made intelligible to me. Cuba had 
 been governed as a province of Spain, and Spain, like other 
 mother countries, had thought more of drawing a revenue out 
 of it for herself than of the interests of the colony. Spanish 
 officials had been avaricious, and Spanish fiscal policy oppres- 
 
266 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 sive and ruinous. The resources of the island in metals, in 
 minerals, in agriculture were as yet hardly scratched, yet every 
 attempt to develop them was paralysed by fresh taxation. 
 The rebellion had been an effort of the Cuban Spaniards, 
 precisely analogous to the revolt of our own North American 
 colonies, to shake off the authority of the court of Madrid and 
 to make themselves independent. They had fought des- 
 perately and had for several years been masters of half the 
 island. They had counted on help from the United States, 
 and at one time they seemed likely to get it. But the 
 Americans could not see their way to admitting Cuba into 
 the Union, and without such a prospect did not care to quarrel 
 with Spain on their account. Finding that they were to be 
 left to themselves, the insurgents came to terms and Spanish 
 authority was re-established. Families had been divided, sons 
 taking one side and fathers the other, as in our English Wars 
 of the Roses, perhaps for the same reason, to save the family 
 estates whichever side came out victorious. The blacks had 
 been indifferent, the rebellion having no interest for them at 
 all. They had remained by their masters, and they had been 
 rewarded after the peace by complete emancipation. There 
 was not a slave now in Cuba. No indemnity had been granted 
 to their owners, nor had any been asked for, and the business 
 on the plantations had gone on without interruption. Those 
 who had been slaves continued to work at the same locations, 
 receiving wages instead of food and maintenance ; all were 
 satisfied at the change, and this remarkable revolution had 
 been carried out with an ease and completeness which found 
 no parallel in any other slave-owning country. 
 
 In spite of rebellion, in spite of the breaking up and recon- 
 struction of the social system, in spite of the indifferent 
 administration of justice, in spite of taxation, and the inex- 
 plicable appropriation of the revenue, Cuba was still moderately 
 prosperous, and that it could flourish at all after trials so severe 
 was the best evidence of the greatness of its natural wealth. 
 The party of insurrection was dissolved, and would revive 
 again only under the unlikely contingency of encouragement 
 
SPANISH AD MINIS TRA TION 267 
 
 from the United States. There was a party, however, which 
 desired for Cuba a constitution like the Canadian — Home 
 Rule and the management of its own affairs — and as the black 
 element was far outnumbered and under control, such a con- 
 stitution would not be politically dangerous. 
 
 If the Spanish Government does not mend its ways, 
 concessions of this kind may eventually have to be made, 
 though the improvement to be expected from it is doubtful. 
 Official corruption is engrained in the character and habits 
 of the Spanish people. Judges allowed their decisions to 
 be * influenced' under Philip III. as much as to-day in the 
 colonies of Queen Christina ; and when a fault is the habit of 
 a people, it survives political reforms and any number of 
 turnings of the kaleidoscope. 
 
 The encouraging feature is the success of emancipation. 
 There is no jealousy, no race animosity, no supercilious 
 contempt of whites for * niggers.' The Spaniards have in- 
 herited a tinge of colour themselves from their African 
 ancestors, and thus they are all friends together. The 
 liberated slave can acquire and own land if he wishes for it, 
 but as a rule he prefers to work for wages. These happy 
 conditions arise in part from the Spanish temperament, but 
 chiefly from the numerical preponderance of the white 
 element, which, as in the United States, is too secure to be 
 uneasy. The black is not encouraged in insubordination by 
 a sense that he could win in a contest of strength, and the 
 aspect of things is far more promising for the future than in 
 our own islands. The Spaniards, however inferior we may 
 think them to ourselves, have filled their colonies with their 
 own people and are reaping the reward of it. We have so 
 contrived that such English as had settled in the West Indies 
 on their own account are leaving them. 
 
 Spain, four centuries ago, was the greatest of European 
 nations, the first in art, or second only to Italy, the first in 
 arms, the first in the men whom she produced. She has 
 been swept along in the current of time. She fought against 
 the stream of tendency, and the stream proved too strong for 
 
268 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 her, great as she was. The modern spirit, which she would 
 not have when it came in the shape of the Reformation, has 
 flowed over her borders as revolution, not to her benefit, for 
 she is unable to assimilate the new ideas. The old Spain of 
 the Inquisition is gone ; the Spain of to-day is divided 
 between Liberalism and Catholic belief. She is sick in the 
 process of the change, and neither she nor her colonies stand 
 any longer in the front lines in the race of civilisation ; yet 
 the print of her foot is stamped on the New World in. 
 characters which will not be effaced, and may be found to 
 be as enduring as our own. 
 
 The colony is perhaps in advance of the mother country. 
 
 The Catholic Church, Don G said, has little influence 
 
 in Cuba ; * she has had no rival,' he explained, ' and so has 
 grown lazy.' I judged the same from my own observations. 
 The churches on Sundays were thinly attended, and men 
 smiled when I asked them about 'confession.' I inquired 
 about famous preachers. I was told that there was no 
 preaching in Havana, famous or otherwise. I might if I 
 was lucky and chose to go there in the early morning, hear 
 a sermon in the church of the Jesuits ; that was all. I went ; 
 I heard my Jesuit, who was fluent, eloquent, and gesticulating, 
 but he was pouring out his passionate rhetoric to about fifty 
 women with scarcely a man amongst them. It was piteous 
 to look at him. The Catholic Church, whether it be for want 
 of rivals, or merely from force of time, has fallen from its 
 high estate. It can burn no more heretics, for it has lost the 
 art to raise conviction to sufficient intensity. The power to 
 burn was the measure of the real belief, which people had in 
 the Church and its doctrines. The power has departed with 
 the waning of faith ; and religion in Havana, as in Madrid, is 
 but 'use and wont;' not 'belief but opinion, and opinion 
 which is half insincere. Nothing else can take its place. 
 The day is too late for Protestantism, which has developed 
 into wider forms, and in the matter of satisfied and complete 
 religious conviction Protestants are hardly better off than 
 Catholics. 
 
LATEST GROWTH OF THE REFORMATION 269 
 
 Don G had been much in Spain ; he was acquainted 
 
 with many of the descendants of the old aristocracy, who 
 lingered there in faded grandeur. H^ had studied the history 
 of his own country. He compared the Spain and England 
 of the sixteenth century with the Spain and England of 
 the present ; and, like most of us, he knew where the yoke 
 galled his own neck. But economical and political pros- 
 perity is no exhaustive measure of human progress. The 
 Rome of Trajan was immeasurably more splendid than the 
 Rome of the Scipios ; yet the progress had been downwards 
 nevertheless. If the object of our existence on this planet 
 is the development of character, if the culminating point in 
 any nation's history be that at which it produces its noblest 
 and bravest men, facts do not tend to assure us that the 
 triumphant march of the last hundred years is accomplishing 
 much in that direction. I found myself arguing with Don 
 
 G that if Charles V. and Philip II. were to come back to 
 
 this world, and to see whither the movement had brought us 
 of which they had worked so hard to suppress the beginning, 
 they would still say that they had done right in trying to 
 strangle it. The Reformation called itself a protest against 
 lies, and the advocates of it imagined that when the lies, or 
 what they called such, were cleared away, the pure metal of 
 Christianity would remain unsullied. The great men who 
 fought against the movement, Charles V. in his cabinet and 
 Erasmus in his closet, had seen that it could not rest there ; 
 that it was the cradle of a revolution in which the whole 
 spiritual and political organisation of Europe would be flung 
 into the crucible. Under that organisation human nature 
 had ascended to altitudes of chivalry, of self-sacrifice, which 
 it had never before reached. The sixteenth century was the 
 blossoming time of the Old World, and no such men had 
 appeared since as then came to the front, either in Spain or 
 Italy, or Germany or France or England. The actual leaders 
 of the Reformation had been bred in the system which they 
 destroyed. Puritanism and Calvinism produced men of 
 powerful character, but they were limited and incapable of 
 
270 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 continuance; and now the liberty which was demanded had 
 become what the instinct of the great Emperor had told him 
 from the first must be, the final shape of it, a revolution 
 which would tolerate no inequalities of culture or position, 
 which insisted that no man was better than another, which 
 was to exalt the low and bring down the high till all mankind 
 should stand upon a common level — a level, not of baseness 
 or badness, but a level of good-humoured, smart, vulgar and 
 vulgarising mediocrity, with melodrama for tragedy, farce for 
 comedy, sounding speech for statesmanlike wisdom ; and for 
 a creed, when our fathers thought that we had been made a 
 little lower than the angels, the more modest knowledge that 
 we were only a little higher than the apes. This was the 
 aspect in which the world of the nineteenth century would 
 appear to Sir Thomas More or the Duke of Alva. From the 
 Grand Captain to Senor Castelar, from Lord Burghley to 
 Mr. Gladstone, from Leonardo da Vinci or Velasquez to 
 Gustave Dord, from Cervantes and Shakespeare to * Pickwick ' 
 and the ' Innocents at Home ; ' from the faith which built 
 the cathedrals to evolution and the survival of the fittest ; 
 from the carving and architecture of the Middle Ages to the 
 workmanship of the modern contractor ; the change in the 
 spiritual department of things had been the same along the 
 whole line. Charles V. after seeing all that has been 
 achieved, the railways, the steam engines, the telegraphs, 
 the Yankee and his United States, which are the embodi- 
 ment of the highest aspirations of the modern era, after 
 attending a session of the British Association itself, and 
 seeing the bishops holding out their hands to science which 
 had done such great things for them, might fairly claim that 
 it was a doubtful point whether the change had been really 
 for the better. 
 
 It may be answered, and answered truly, that the old thing 
 was dead. The Catholic faith, where it was left standing and 
 where it still stands, produces now nothing higher, nothing 
 better than the Protestant. Human systems grow as trees 
 grow. The seed shoots up, the trunk forms, the branches 
 
SUNDA V IN HA VANA 271 
 
 spread ; leaves and flowers and fruit come out year after year 
 as if they were able to renew themselves for ever. But that 
 which has a beginning has an end, that which has 
 life must die when the vital force is exhausted. The 
 faith of More, as well as the faith of Ken or Wilson, were 
 elevating and ennobling as long as they were sincerely believed, 
 but the time came when they became clouded with uncertainty ; 
 and confused, perplexed, and honestly anxious, humanity 
 struggles on as well as it can, all things considered, respectably 
 enough, in its chrysalis condition, the old wings gone, the new 
 wings that are to be (if we are ever to have another set) as yet 
 imprisoned in their sheath. 
 
 The same Sunday morning when I went in search of 
 my sermon, the hotel was alive as bees at swarming time. 
 There was to be a bull fight in honour of the carnival, and such 
 a bull fight as had never been seen in Havana. Placards on 
 the wall announced that a lady from Spain, Gloriana they 
 called her, was to meet and slay a bull in single combat, and 
 everyone must go and see the wonderful sight. I myself, 
 having seen the real thing in Madrid many years ago, felt no 
 more curiosity, and that a woman should be an actress in such 
 a scene did not revive it. To those who went the performance 
 was a disappointment. The bull provided turned out to be a 
 calf of tender years. The spectators insisted that they would 
 have a mature beast of strength and ferocity, and Gloriana 
 when brought to the point declined the adventure. 
 
 There was a prettier scene in the evening. In the cool 
 after nightfall the beauty and fashion of Havana turns out 
 to stroll in the illuminated Alameda. As it was now a high 
 festival the band was to play, and the crowd was as dense 
 as on Exhibition nights at South Kensington. The music 
 was equally good, and the women as graceful and well dressed. 
 I sat for an hour or two listening under the statue of poor 
 Queen Isabella. The image of her still stands where it was 
 placed, though revolution has long shaken her from her thronei 
 All is forgotten now except that she was once a Spanish sove- 
 reign, and time and distance have deodorised her memory. 
 
272 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Hotels in Havana — Sights in the city — Cigar manufactories — West Indian 
 industries — The Captain-General — The Jesuit college — Father Vinez — 
 Clubs in Havana — Spanish aristocracy — Sea lodging house. 
 
 There was much to be seen in Havana, and much to think 
 about. I regretted only that I had not been better advised in 
 my choice of an hotel The dining saloon rang with American 
 voices in their shrillest tones. Every table was occupied by 
 groups of them, nor was there a sound in the room of any 
 language but theirs. In the whole company I had not a single 
 acquaintance. I have liked well almost every individual 
 American that I have fallen in with and come to know. They 
 are frank, friendly, open, and absolutely unaffected, and, like 
 my friend at Miss Roy's in Jamaica, they take cheerful views 
 of life, which is the highest of all recommendations. The 
 distinctness and sharpness of utterance is tolerable and even 
 agreeable in conversation with a single person. When a large 
 number of them are together, all talking in a high tone, it tries 
 the nerves and sets the teeth on edge. Nor could I escape 
 from them in any part of the building. The gentlemen were 
 talking poUtics in the hall, or lounging under the colonnade. 
 One of them, an absolute stranger, who perhaps knew who I 
 was, asked me abruptly for my opinion of Cardinal Newman. 
 The ladies filled the sitting rooms ; their pianos and their duets 
 pierced the walls of my bedroom, and only ceased an hour after 
 midnight. At five in the morning the engines began to scream 
 at the adjoining railway station. The church bells woke at the 
 same hour with their superfluous summons to matin 3 which no 
 one attended. Sleep was next to an impossibiUty under these 
 hard conditions, and I wanted more and not less of it when I 
 had the duties upon me of sightseeing. Sleep or no sleep, 
 however, I determined that I would see what I could as long 
 as I could keep going. 
 
 A few hundred yards off was one of the most famous of the 
 Havana cigar manufactories. A courteous message from the 
 
CIGAR MANUFACTORY 273 
 
 manager, Sefior Bances, had informed me that he would be 
 happy to show me over it on any morning before the sun was 
 above the roofs of the houses. I found the senor a handsome 
 elderly gentleman, tall and lean, with Castilian dignity of 
 manner, free and frank in all his communications, with no 
 reserve, concealments, or insincerities. I told him that in my 
 experience cigars were not what they had been, that the last good 
 one which I had smoked I had bought twenty years ago from a 
 contrabandista at Madrid. I had come to Havana to see 
 whether I could find another equally good at the fountain head. 
 He said that he was not at all surprised. It was the same story 
 as at Jamaica ; the consumption of cigars had increased with 
 extreme rapidity ; the area on which the finest tobacco had been 
 grown was limited, and the expense of growing it was very 
 great. Only a small quantity of the best cigars was now made 
 for the market. In general the plants were heavily manured, 
 and the flavour suffered. Leaf of coarse fibre was used for the 
 core of the cigars, with only a fold or two wrapped round it of 
 more delicate quality. He took me into the different rooms 
 where the manufacture was going on. In the first were perhaps 
 a hundred or a hundred and fifty sallow-faced young men 
 engaged in rolling. They were all Cubans or Spaniards with 
 the exception of a single negro \ and all, I should think, under 
 thirty. On each of the tables was one of the names with which 
 we have grown familiar in modern cigar shops, Reynas, 
 Regalias, Principes, and I know not how many else. The 
 difference of material could not be great, but there was a real 
 difference in the fineness of the make, and in the quality of the 
 exterior leaf. The workmen were of unequal capacity and were 
 unequally paid. The sefior employed in all about 1,400; at 
 least so I understood him. 
 
 The black field hands had eighteenpence a day. The 
 rollers were paid by quality and quantity ; a good workman 
 doing his best could earn sixty dollars a week, an idle and 
 indifferent one about twelve. They smoked as they rolled, 
 and there was no check upon the consumption, the loss in 
 this way being estimated at 40,000 dollars a year. The pay 
 
 18 
 
274 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 was high ; but there was another side to it — the occupation 
 was dangerous. If there were no boys in the room, there were 
 no old men. Those who undertook it died often in two or 
 three years. Doubtless with precaution the mortahty might 
 be diminished ; but, Hke the needle and the scissor grinders 
 in England, the men themselves do not wish it to be dim- 
 inished. The risk enters into the wages, and they prefer a 
 short life and a merry one. 
 
 The cigarettes, of which the varieties are as many as there 
 are of cigars, were made exclusively by Chinese. The second 
 room which we entered was full of them, their curious yellow 
 faces mildly bending over their tobacco heaps. Of these there 
 may have been a hundred. Of the general expenses of the 
 establishment I do not venture to say anything, bewildered as 
 I was in the labyrinthine complication of the currency, but it 
 must certainly be enormous, and this house, the Partagas, was 
 but one of many equally extensive in Havana alone. 
 
 The senor was most liberal. He filled my pockets with 
 packets of excellent cigarettes ; he gave me a bundle of cigars. 
 I cannot say whether they were equal to what I bought from 
 my contrabandista^ for these may have been idealised by a 
 grateful memory, but they were so incomparably better than 
 any which I have been able to get in London that I was 
 tempted to deal with him, and so far I have had no reason to 
 repent. The boxes with which he provided me bettered the 
 sample, and the price, duty at home included, was a third 
 below what I should have paid in London for an article which 
 I would rather leave unconsumed. A broker whom I fell in 
 with insisted to me that the best cigars all went to London, 
 that my preference for what I got from my senor was mere 
 fancy and vanity, and that I could buy better in any shop in 
 Regent Street. I said that he might but I couldn't, and so 
 we left it. 
 
 I tell all this, not with the affectation of supposing that 
 tobacco or my own taste about it can have any interest, but 
 as an illustration of what can be done in the West Indies, and 
 to show how immense a form of industry waits to be de- 
 
THE CAPTAIN-GENERAL 275 
 
 veloped in our own islands, if people with capital and 
 knowledge choose to set about it. Tobacco as good as the 
 best in Cuba has been grown and can be grown in Jamaica, in 
 St. Domingo, and probably in every one of the Antilles. 
 * There are dollars in those islands,' as my Yankee said, and 
 many a buried treasure will be brought to light there when 
 capitalists can feel assured that they will not be at the mercy 
 of black constitutional governments. 
 
 My letter of introduction to the Captain-General was still 
 undelivered, and as I had made use of it on landing I thought 
 it right at least to pay my respects to the great man. The 
 
 Marques M kindly consented to go with me and help me 
 
 through the interview, being of course acquainted with him. 
 He was at his country house, a mile out of the town. The 
 buildings are all good in Havana. It was what it called itself, 
 not a palace but a handsome country residence in the middle 
 of a large well-kept garden. The viceroyalty has a fair but 
 not extravagant income attached to it. The Captain-General 
 receives about 8,000/. a year besides allowances. Were the 
 balls and dinners expected of him which our poor governors 
 are obliged to entertain their subjects with, he would not be 
 able to make much out of it. The large fortunes which used 
 to be brought back by the fortunate Captains-General who 
 could connive at the slave trade were no longer attainable ; 
 those good days are gone. Public opinion therefore permits 
 them to save their incomes. The Spaniards are not a hospit- 
 able people, or rather their notion of hospitality differs in form 
 from ours. They are ready to dine with you themselves as 
 often as you will ask them. Nothing in the shape of dinners is 
 looked for from the Captain-General, and when I as a stranger 
 suggested the possibility of such a thing as an invitation happen- 
 ing to me, my companion assured me that I need not be in the 
 least alarmed. We were introduced into a well-proportioned 
 hall, with a few marble busts in it and casts of Greek and 
 Roman statues. Aides-de-camp and general officers were 
 lounging about, with whom we exchanged distant civilities. 
 After waiting for a quarter of an hour we were summoned by 
 
 18—2 
 
276 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 an official into an adjoining room and found ourselves in his 
 Excellency's presence. He was a small gentlemanlike-looking 
 man, out of uniform, in plain morning dress with a silk sash. 
 He received us with natural politeness ; cordiality was uncalled 
 for, but he was perfectly gracious. He expressed his pleasure 
 at seeing me in the island ; he hoped that I should enjoy 
 myself, and on his part would do everything in his power to 
 make my stay agreeable. He spoke of the emancipation of 
 the slaves and of the social state of the island with pardonable 
 satisfaction, enquired about our own West Indies, &c., and 
 finally asked me to tell him in what way he could be of 
 service to me. I told him that I had found such kind friends 
 in Havana already, that I could think of little. One thing 
 only he could do if he pleased. I had omitted to bring a 
 passport with me, not knowing that it would be required. My 
 position was irregular and might be inconvenient. I was 
 indebted to my letter of introduction to his Excellency for 
 admission into his dominions. Perhaps he would write a few 
 words which would enable me to remain in them and go out 
 of them when my visit was over. His Excellency said that he 
 would instruct the Gobierno Civil to see to it, an instruction 
 the meaning of which I too sadly understood. I was not to 
 be allowed to escape the fine. A fresh shower followed of 
 polite words, and with these we took ourselves away. 
 
 The afternoon was spent more instructively, perhaps more 
 
 agreeably, in a different scene. The Marques M had 
 
 been a pupil of the Jesuits. He had personal friends in the 
 Jesuit college at Havana, especially one. Father Viiiez, whose 
 name is familiar to students of meteorological science, and 
 who has supplemented and corrected the accepted law of 
 storms by careful observation of West Indian hurricanes. 
 The Jesuits were as well spoken of in Havana as the Moravians 
 in Jamaica. Everyone had a good word for them. They 
 alone, as I have said, took the trouble to provide the good 
 people there with a sermon on Sundays. They alone among 
 the Catholic clergy, though they live poorly and have no 
 endowment, exert themselves to provide a tolerable education 
 
THE JESUIT COLLEGE 277 
 
 for the middle and upper classes. The Marques undertook 
 that if we called we should be graciously received, and I was 
 curious and interested. Their college had been an enormous 
 monastery. Wherever the Spaniards went they took an army 
 of monks with them of all the orders. The monks contrived 
 always to house themselves handsomely. While soldiers 
 fought and settlers planted, the monks' duty was to pray. In 
 process of time it came to be doubted whether the monks' 
 prayers were worth what they cost, or whether, in fact, they 
 had ever had much effect of any kind. They have been sup- 
 pressed in Spain ; they have been clipped short in all the 
 Spanish dominions, and in Havana there are now left only a 
 handful of Dominicans, a few nuns, and these Jesuits, who 
 have taken possession of the largest of the convents, much as 
 a soldier-crab becomes the vigorous tenant of the shell of 
 some lazy sea-snail. They have a college there where there are 
 four hundred lads and young men who pay for their 
 education ; some hundreds more are taken out of charity. 
 The Jesuits conduct the whole, and do it all unaided, on their 
 own resources. And this is far from all that they do. They 
 keep on a level with the age ; they are men of learning ; they 
 are men of science; they are the Royal Society of Cuba. 
 They have an observatory in the college, and the Father Vifiez 
 of whom I have spoken is in charge of it. Father Vinez was 
 our particular object. The porter's lodge opened into a 
 courtyard like the quadrangle of a college at Oxford. From 
 the courtyard we turned into a narrow staircase, up which we 
 climbed till we reached the roof, on and under which the 
 Father had his lodgings and his observing machinery. We 
 entered a small room, plainly furnished with a table and a few 
 uncushioned chairs ; tables and chairs, all save the Father's, 
 Uttered with books and papers. Cases stood round the wall, 
 containing self-registering instruments of the most advanced 
 modern type, each with its paper barrel unrolling slowly under 
 clockwork, while a pencil noted upon it the temperature of 
 the air, the atmospheric pressure, the degree of moisture, the 
 ozone, the electricity. In the middle, surrounded by his tools 
 
278 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 and his ticking clocks, sat the Father, middle-aged, lean and 
 dry, with shrivelled skin and brown threadbare frock. He 
 received my companion with a warm affectionate smile. The 
 Marques told him that I was an Englishman who was curious 
 about the work in which he was engaged, and he spoke to me 
 at once with the politeness of a man of sense. After a few 
 questions asked and answered, he took us out to a shed among 
 the roof-tiles, where he kept his large telescope, his equatorial, 
 and his transit instruments — not on the great scale of State- 
 supported observatories, but with everything which was really 
 essential. He had a laboratory, too, and a workshop, with all 
 the recent appliances. He was a practical optician and 
 mechanic. He managed and repaired his own machinery, 
 observed, made his notes, and wrote his reports to the 
 societies with which he was in correspondence, all by himself. 
 The outfit of such an establishment, even on a moderate scale, 
 is expensive. I said I supposed that the Government gave 
 him a grant. ' So far from it,' he said, * that we have to pay 
 a duty on every instrument which we import.' * Who, then, pays 
 for it all ? ' I asked. ' The order,' he answered, quite simply. 
 The house, I believe, was a gift, though it cost the State 
 nothing, having been simply seized when the monks were 
 expelled. The order now maintains it, and more than repays 
 the Government for their single act of generosity. At my 
 companion's suggestion Father Vinez gave me a copy of his 
 book on hurricanes. It contains a record of laborious jour- 
 neys which he made to the scene of the devastations of 
 the last ten years. The scientific value of the Father's work 
 is recognised by the highest authorities, though I cannot ven- 
 ture even to attempt to explain what he has done. He 
 then conducted us over the building, and showed us the 
 libraries, dormitories, playgrounds, and the other arrangements 
 which were made for the students. Of these we saw none, 
 they were all out, but the loiig tables in the refectory 
 were laid for afternoon tea. There was a cup of milk for 
 each lad, with a plate of honey and a roll of bread j and 
 supper would follow in the evening. The sleeping gallery 
 
FATHER VINEZ 279 
 
 was divided into cells, open at the top for ventilation, with 
 bed, table, chest of drawers, and washing apparatus — all 
 scrupulously clean. So far as I could judge, the Fathers 
 cared more for the boys' comfort than for their own. Through 
 an open door our conductor faintly indicated the apartment 
 which belonged to himself. Four bare walls, a bare tiled 
 floor, a plain pallet, with a crucifix above the pillow, was all 
 that it contained. There was no parade of ecclesiasticism. 
 The libraries were well furnished, but the books were chiefly 
 secular and scientific. The chapel was unornamented ; there 
 were a few pictures, but they were simple and inoffensive. 
 Everything was good of its kind, down to the gymnastic 
 courts and swimming bath. The holiness was kept in the 
 back ground. It was in the spirit and not in the body. The 
 cost of the whole establishment was defrayed out of the pay- 
 ments of the richer students managed economically for the 
 benefit of the rest, with complete indifference on the part 
 of the Fathers to indulgence and pleasures of their own. As 
 we took leave the Marques kissed his old master's brown 
 hand. I rather envied him the privilege. 
 
 Something I saw of Havana society in the received sense of 
 the word. There are many clubs there, and high play in most 
 of them, for the Cubans are given to the roulette tables. The 
 Union club which is the most distinguished among them, invites 
 occasional strangers staying in the city to temporary member- 
 ship as we do at the Athenaeum. Here you meet Spanish 
 grandeSy who have come to Cuba to be out of reach of revo- 
 lution, proud as ever and not as poor as you might expect ; 
 and when you ask who they are you hear the great familiar 
 names of Spanish history. I was introduced to the president 
 — young, handsome, and accomplished. I was startled to 
 learn that he was the head of the old house of Sandoval. 
 The house of Columbus ought to be there also, for there is 
 still a Christophe Colon, the direct linear representative of the 
 discoverer, disguised under the title of the Duque de Veragua. 
 A perpetual pension of 20,000 dollars a year was granted to 
 the great Christophe and his heirs for ever as a charge on 
 
28o THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 the Cuban revenue. It has been paid to the family through 
 all changes of dynasty and forms of government, and is paid 
 to them still. But the Duque resides in Spain, and the 
 present occupation of him, I was informed, is the breeding and 
 raising bulls for the Plaza de Toros at Seville. 
 
 Thus, every way, my stay was made agreeable to me. 
 There were breakfasts and dinners and introductions. Don 
 
 G and his brother were not fine gentlemen only, but 
 
 were men of business and deeply engaged in the active life of 
 the place. The American consul was a conspicuous figure 
 at these entertainments. America may not find it her 
 interest to annex these islands, but since she ordered the 
 French out of Mexico, and the French obeyed, she is univer- 
 sally felt on that side of the Atlantic to be the supreme 
 arbiter of all their fates. Her consuls are thus persons of 
 consequence. The Cubans like the Americans well. The 
 commercial treaty which was offered to our islands by the 
 United States would have been accepted eagerly by the 
 Spaniards. To them, the Americans have, as yet, not been 
 equally liberal, but an arrangement will soon be completed. 
 They say that they have hills of solid iron in the island and 
 mountains of copper with fifty per cent, of virgin ore in 
 them waiting for the Americans to develop. The present ad- 
 ministration would swallow up in taxation the profits of the 
 most promising enterprise that ever was undertaken, but the 
 metals are there, and will come one day into working. The 
 consul was a swift peremptory man who knew his own mind at 
 any rate. Between his * Yes, sir,' and his * No, sir,' you were 
 at no loss for his meaning. He told me a story of a * nigger ' 
 oflficer with whom he had once got into conversation at Hayti. 
 He had inquired why they let so fine an island run to waste ? 
 Why did they not cultivate it ? The dusky soldier laid his 
 hand upon his breast and waved his hand. * Ah,' he said, 
 * that might do for English or Germans or Americans ; we of 
 the Latin race have higher things to occupy us.' 
 
 I liked the consul well. I could not say as much for his 
 countrymen and countrywomen at my hotel. Individually 
 
VEDADO 281 
 
 I dare say they would have been charming ; collectively they 
 drove me to distraction. Space and time had no existence 
 for them ; they and their voices were heard in all places and 
 at all hours. The midnight bravuras at the pianos mixed 
 
 wildly in my broken dreams. The Marques M wished to 
 
 take me with him to his country seat and show me his sugar 
 plantations. Nothing could have been more delightful, but with 
 want of sleep and the constant racket I found myself becom- 
 ing unwell. In youth and strength one can defy the foul 
 fiend and bid him do his worst ; in age one finds it wiser to 
 get out of the way. 
 
 On the sea, seven miles from Havana, and connected with 
 it by a convenient railway, at a place called Vedado, I found 
 a lodging house kept by a Frenchman (the best cook in Cuba) 
 with a German wife. The situation was so attractive, and the 
 owners of it so attentive, that quiet people went often into 
 ' retreat ' there. There v/ere delicious rooms, airy and solitary 
 as I could wish. The sea washed the coral rock under the 
 windows. There were walks wild as if there was no city within 
 a thousand miles — up the banks of lonely rivers, over open 
 moors, or among inclosures where there were large farming 
 establishments with cattle and horses and extensive stables 
 and sheds. There was a village and a harbour where fishing 
 people kept their boats and went out daily with their nets and 
 lines — blacks and whites living and working side by side. I 
 could go where I pleased without fear of interference or 
 question. Only I was warned to be careful of the dogs, large 
 and dangerous, descendants of the famous Cuban bloodhounds, 
 which are kept everywhere to guard the yards and houses. 
 These beasts were really dangerous, and had to be avoided. 
 The shore was of inexhaustible interest. It was a level shelf of 
 coral rock extending for many miles and littered over with 
 shells and coral branches which had been flung up by the surf. 
 I had hoped for bathing. In the open water it is not to be 
 thought of on account of the sharks, but baths have been cut 
 in the rock all along that part of the coast at intervals of half 
 a mile ; deep square basins with tunnels connecting them with 
 
282 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 the sea, up which the waves run clear and foaming. They are 
 within inclosures, roofed over to keep out the sun, and with 
 attendants regularly present. Art and nature combined never 
 made more charming pools ; the water clear as sapphire, 
 aerated by the constant inrush of the foaming breakers, and 
 so warm that you could lie in it without a chill for hours. 
 Alas ! that I could but look at them and execrate the precious 
 Government which forbade me their use. So severe a tax is 
 laid on these bathing establishments that the owners can only 
 afford to keep them open during the three hottest months in 
 the year, when the demand is greatest. 
 
 In the evenings people from Havana would occasionally 
 come down to dine as we go to Greenwich, being attracted 
 partly by the air and partly by my host's reputation. There 
 was a long verandah under which tables were laid out, and 
 there were few nights on which one or more parties were not 
 to be seen there. Thus I encountered several curious speci- 
 mens of Cuban humanity, and on one of my runs up to Havana 
 I met again the cigar broker who had so roughly challenged 
 my judgment. He was an original and rather divertmg man ; 
 I should think a Jew. Whatever he was he fell upon me again 
 and asked me scornfully whether I supposed that the cigars 
 which I had bought of Senor Bances were anything out of the 
 way. I said that they suited my taste and that was enough. 
 ' Ah,' he replied, * Cada loco con su Uma. Every fool had his 
 opinion.' * I am the loco (idiot), then,' said I, * but that again 
 is matter of opinion.' He spoke of Cuba and professed to 
 know all about it. *Can you tell me, then,' said I, *why the 
 Cubans hate the Spaniards ? ' * Why do the Irish hate the 
 English ? ' he answered. I said it was not an analogous case. 
 Cubans and Spaniards were of the same breed and of the same 
 creed. * That is nothing,' he repUed ; * the Americans will 
 have both Cuba and Ireland before long.' I said I thought 
 the Americans were too wise to meddle with either. If they 
 did, however, I imagined that on our own side of the Atlantic 
 we should have something to say on the subject before Ireland 
 was taken from us. He laughed good-humoiiredly. *Is it 
 
VEDADO 283 
 
 possible, sir,' he said, * that you live in England and are so 
 absolutely ignorant ? ' I laughed too. He was a strange 
 creature, and would have made an excellent character in a 
 novel. 
 
 Don G or his brother came down occasionally to see 
 
 how I was getting on and to talk philosophy and history. 
 Other gentlemen came, and the favourite subject of conversa- 
 tion was Spanish administration. One of them told me this 
 story as an illustration of it. His father was the chief partner 
 in a bank; a clerk absconded, taking 50,000 dollars with 
 him ; he had been himself sent in pursuit of the man, over- 
 took him with the money still in his possession, and recovered 
 it. With this he ought to have been contented, but he tried 
 to have the offender punished. The clerk replied to the 
 criminal charge by a counter-charge against the house. It 
 was absurd in itself, but he found that a suit would grow out 
 of it which would swallow more than the 50,000 dollars, and 
 finally he bribed the judge to allow him to drop the prosecu- 
 tion. Cosas de Espana ; it lies in the breed. Guzman de 
 Alfarache was robbed of his baggage by a friend. The facts 
 were clear, the thief was caught with Guzman's clothes on his 
 back ; but he had influential friends — he was acquitted. He 
 prosecuted Guzman for a false- accusation, got a judgment and 
 ruined him. 
 
 The question was, whether if the Cubans could make them- 
 selves independent there would be much improvement. The 
 want in Cuba just now, as in a good many other places, is the 
 want of some practical religion which insists on moral duty. 
 A learned English judge was trying a case one day, when there 
 seemed some doubt about the religious condition of one of 
 the witnesses. The clerk of the court retired with him to as- 
 certain what it really was, and returned radiant almost im- 
 mediately, saying, ' All right, my lord. Knows he'll be damned 
 — competent witness — knows he'll be damned.' That is really 
 the whole of the matter. If a man is convinced that if he 
 does wrong he will infallibly be punished for it he has then * a 
 saving faith.' This, unfortunately, is precisely the conviction 
 
284 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 which modern forms of religion produce hardly anywhere. 
 The Cubans are Catholics, and hear mass and go to confes- 
 sion ; but confession and the mass b3,tween them are enough 
 for the consciences of most of them, and those who think are 
 under the influence of the modern spirit, to which all things 
 are doubtful. Some find comfort in Mr. Herbert Spencer. 
 Some regard Christianity as a myth or poem, which had passed 
 in unconscious good faith into the mind of mankind, and there 
 might have remained undisturbed as a beneficent superstition 
 had not Protestantism sprung up and insisted on flinging away 
 everything which was not literal and historical fact. Historical 
 fact had really no more to do with it than with the stories of 
 Prometheus or the siege of Troy. The end was that no 
 bottom of fact could be found, and we were all set drifting. 
 
 Notably too I observed among serious people there, what 
 I have observed in other places, the visible relief with which 
 they begin to look forward to extinction after death. When 
 the authority is shaken on which the belief in a future life 
 rests, the question inevitably recurs. Men used to pretend 
 that the idea of annihilation was horrible to them ; now they 
 regard the probabihty of it with calmness, if not with actual 
 satisfaction. One very interesting Cuban gentleman said to me 
 that life would be very tolerable if one was certain that death 
 would be the end of it. The theological alternatives were 
 equally unattractive ; Tartarus was an eternity of misery, and 
 the Elysian Fields an eternity of ennui. 
 
 There is affectation in the talk of men, and one never knows 
 from what they say exactly what is in their mind. I have 
 often thought that the real character of a people shows itself 
 nowhere with more unconscious completeness than in their 
 cemeteries. Philosophise as we may, few of us are deliberately 
 insincere in the presence of death ; and in the arrangements 
 which we make for the reception of those who have been dear 
 to us, and in the lines which we inscribe upon their monu- 
 ments, we show what we are in ourselves perhaps more than 
 what they were whom we commemorate. The parish church- 
 yard is an emblem and epitome of English country life; 
 
CEMETER y AT HA VAN A 285 
 
 London reflects itself in Brompton and Kensal Green, and 
 Paris in Pere la Chaise. One day as I was walking I found 
 myself at the gate of the great suburban cemetery of Havana. 
 It was enclosed within high walls ; the gateway was a vast arch 
 of brown marble, beautiful and elaborately carved. Within 
 there was a garden simply and gracefully laid out with trees 
 and shrubs and flowers in borders. The whole space inclosed 
 may have been ten acres, of which half was assigned to those 
 who were contented with a mere mound of earth to mark 
 where they lay ; the rest was divided into family vaults 
 covered with large white marble slabs, separate headstones 
 marking individuals for whom a particular record was required, 
 and each group bearing the name of the family the members 
 of which were sleeping there. The peculiarity of the place 
 was the absence of inscriptions. There was a name and date, 
 with E. P. D. — *en paz descansa' ^ — or E. G. E. — *en gracia 
 esta ' ^ — and that seemed all that was needed. The virtues of 
 the departed and the grief of the survivors were taken for 
 granted in all but two instances. There may have been more, 
 but I could find only these. 
 One was in Latin : 
 
 AD CCELITES EVOCATiC UXORI EXIMIiE IGNATIUS. 
 Ignatius to his admirable wife who has been called up to heaven^ 
 
 The other was in Spanish verse, and struck me as a graceful 
 imitation of the old manner of Cervantes and Lope de Vega. 
 The design on the monument was of a girl hanging an 
 immortelle upon a cross. The tomb was of a Caridad del 
 Monte, and the lines were : 
 
 Bendita Caridad, las que piadosa 
 Su mano vierte en la fun6rea losa 
 Son flores recogidas en el suelo, 
 Mas con su olor perfumardn el cielo. 
 
 It is dangerous for anyone to whom a language is only 
 moderately familiar to attempt an appreciation of elegiac poetry, 
 
 » He rests in peace. * He is now in grace. 
 
286 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 the effect of which, like the fragrance of a violet, must rather 
 be perceived than accounted for. He may imagine what is 
 not there, for a single word ill placed or ill chosen may spoil 
 the charm, and of this a foreigner can never entirely judge. 
 He may know what each word means, but he cannot know the 
 associations of it. Here, however, is a translation in which 
 the sense is preserved, though the aroma is gone. 
 
 The flowers which thou, oh Blessed Charity, 
 With pious hand hast twined in funeral wreath, 
 Although on earthly soil they gathered be, 
 Will sweeten heaven with their perfumed breath. 
 
 The flowers, I suppose, were the actions of Caridad's own 
 innocent life, which she was offering on the cross of Christ ; 
 but one never can be sure that one has caught the exact senti- 
 ment of emotional verse in a foreign language. The beauty lies 
 in an undefinable sweetness which rises from the melody of 
 the words, and in a translation disappears altogether. Who or 
 what Caridad del Monte was, whether a young girl whom some- 
 l.ody had loved, or an allegoric and emblematic figure, I had 
 no one to tell me. 
 
 I must not omit one acquaintance which I was fortunate 
 enough to make while staying at my seaside lodging. There 
 appeared there one day, driven out of Havana Hke myself by 
 the noise, an American ecclesiastic with a friend who addressed 
 him as ' My lord.' By the ring and purple, as well as by the 
 title, I perceived that he was a bishop. His friend was his 
 chaplain, and from their voices I gathered that they were both 
 by extraction Irish. The bishop had what is called a * clergy- 
 man's throat,' and had come from the States in search of a 
 warmer climate. They kept entirely to themselves, but from 
 the laughter and good-humour they were evidently excellent 
 company for one another, and wanted no other. I rather 
 wished than hoped that accident might introduce me to them. 
 Even in Cuba the weather is uncertain. One day there came 
 a high wind from the sea ; the waves roared superbly upon the 
 rocks, flying over them in rolling cataracts. I never saw foam 
 
AN AMERICAN BISHOP 287 
 
 so purely white or waves so transparent. As a spectacle it was 
 beautiful, and the shore became a museum of coralline curi- 
 osities. Indoors the effect was less agreeable. Windows rattled 
 and shutters broke from their fastenings and flew to and fro. 
 The weathercock on the house-top creaked as he was whirled 
 about, and the verandahs had to be closed, and the noise was 
 like a prolonged thunder peal. The second day the wind 
 became a cyclone, and chilly as if it came from the pole. 
 None of us could stir out. The bishop suffered even more 
 than I did ; he walked up and down on the sheltered side of 
 the house wrapped in a huge episcopalian cloak. I think he 
 saw that I was sorry for him, as I really was. He spoke to me ; 
 he said he had felt the cold less in America when the ther- 
 mometer marked 25° below zero. It was not much, but the 
 silence w^as broken. Common suffering made a kind of link 
 between us. After this he dropped an occasional gracious 
 word as he passed, and one morning he came and sat by me 
 and began to talk on subjects of extreme interest. Chiefly he 
 insisted on the rights of conscience and the tenderness for 
 liberty- of thought which had always been shown by the Church 
 of Rome. He had been led to speak of it by the education 
 question which has now become a burning one in the American 
 Union. The Church, he said, never had interfered, and never 
 could or would interfere, with any man's conscientious scruples. 
 Its own scruples, therefore, ought to be respected. The 
 American State schools were irreligious, and Catholic parents 
 were unwilling to allow their children to attend them. They 
 had established schools of their own, and they supported them 
 by subscriptions among themselves. In these schools the boys 
 and girls learnt everything which they could learn in the State 
 schools, and they learnt to be virtuous besides. They were 
 thus discharging to the full every duty which the State could 
 claim of them, and the State had no right to tax them in 
 addition for the maintenance of institutions of which they 
 made no use, and of the principles of which they disapproved. 
 There were now eight millions of Catholics in the Union. In 
 more than one state they had an actual majority ; and thev 
 
288 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 intended to insist that as long as their children came up to 
 the present educational standard, they should no longer be 
 compelled to pay a second education tax to the Government. 
 The struggle, he admitted, would be a severe one, but the 
 Catholics had justice on their side, and would fight on till they 
 won. 
 
 In democracies the majority is to prevail, and if the control 
 of education falls within the province of each separate state 
 government, it is not easy to see on what ground the Americans 
 will be able to resist, or how there can be a struggle at all where 
 the Catholic vote is really the largest. The presence of the 
 Catholic Church in a democracy is the real anomaly. The 
 principle of the Church is authority resting on a divine com- 
 mission ; the principle of democracy is the will of the people ; 
 and the Church in the long run will have as hard a battle to 
 fight with the divine right of the majority of numbers as she 
 had with the divine right of the Hohenstauffens and the Plan- 
 tagenets. She is adroit in adapting herself to circumstances, 
 and, like her emblem the fish, she changes her colour with 
 that of the element in which she swims. No doubt she has a 
 strong position in this demand and will know how to use it. 
 
 But I was surprised to hear even a Catholic bishop insist 
 that his Church had always paid so much respect to the rights 
 of conscience. I had been taught to believe that in the days 
 of its power the Church had not been particularly tender 
 towards differences of opinion. Fire and sword had been 
 used freely enough as long as fire and sword were available. 
 I hinted my astonishment. The bishop said the Church had 
 been slandered; the Church had never in a single instance 
 punished any man merely for conscientious error. Protestants 
 had falsified history. Protestants read their histories, Catholics 
 read theirs, and the Catholic version was the true one. The 
 separate governments of Europe had no doubt been cruel. In 
 France, Spain, the Low Countries, even in England, heretics 
 had been harshly dealt with, but it was the governments that 
 had burnt and massacred all those people, not the Church. 
 The governments were afraid of heresy because it led to revo- 
 
THE CHURCH AND PERSECUTION 289 
 
 lution. The Church had never shed any blood at all j the 
 Church could not, for she was forbidden to do so by her own 
 canons. If she found a man obstinate in unbelief, she cut him 
 off from the communion and handed him over to the secular 
 arm. If the secular arm thought fit to kill him, the Church's 
 hands were clear of it 
 
 So Pilate washed his hands ; so the judge might say he 
 never hanged a murderer ; the execution was the work of the 
 hangman. The bishop defied me to produce an instance in 
 which in Rome, when the temporal power was with the pope 
 and the civil magistrates were churchmen, there had ever 
 been an execution for heresy. I mentioned Giordano Bruno, 
 whom the bishop had forgotten ; but we agreed not to quarrel, 
 and I could not admire sufficiently the hardihood and the 
 ingenuity of his argument. The English bishops and abbots 
 passed through parliament the Act de hceretico comburendOy 
 but they were acting as politicians, not as churchmen. The 
 Spanish Inquisition burnt freely and successfully. The inquisi- 
 tors were archbishops and bishops, but the Holy Office was a 
 function of the State. When Gregory XIII. struck his medal 
 in commemoration of the massacre of St. Bartholomew he was 
 then only the secular ruler of Rome, and therefore fallible and 
 subject to sin like other mortals. The Church has many parts 
 to play ; her stage wardrobe is well furnished, and her actors 
 so well instructed in their parts that they believe themselves 
 in all that they say. The bishop was speaking no more than 
 his exact conviction. He told me that in the Middle Ages 
 secular princes were bound by their coronation oath to accept 
 the pope as the arbiter of all quarrels between them. I asked 
 where this oath was, or what were the terms of it? The 
 words, he said, were unimportant. The fact was certain, and 
 down to the fatal schism of the sixteenth century the pope 
 had always been allowed to arbitrate, and quarrels had been 
 prevented. I could but listen and wonder. He admitted 
 that he had read one set of books and I another, as it was 
 clear that he must have done. 
 
 In the midst of our differences we found we had many 
 
 19 
 
290 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES_ 
 
 points of agreement. We agreed that the breaking down of 
 Church authority at the Reformation had been a fatal disaster; 
 that without a sense of responsibihty to a supernatural power, 
 human beings would sink into ingenious apes, that human 
 society would become no more than a congregation of apes, 
 and that with differences of opinion and belief, that sense was 
 becoming more and more obscured. So long as all serious 
 men held the same convictions, and those convictions were 
 embodied in the law, religion could speak with authority. 
 The authority being denied or shaken, the fact itself became 
 uncertain. The notion that everybody had a right to think as 
 he pleased was felt to be absurd in common things. In every 
 practical art or science the ignorant submitted to be guided 
 by those who were better instructed than themselves. Why 
 should they be left to their private judgment on subjects 
 where to go wrong was the more dangerous. All this was plain 
 sailing. The corollary that if it is to retain its influence the 
 Church must not teach doctrines which outrage the common 
 sense of mankind as Luther led half Europe to believe that 
 the Church was doing in the sixteenth century, we agreed that 
 we would not dispute about. But I was interested to see that 
 the leopard had not changed its spots, that it merely readjusted 
 its attitudes to suit the modern taste, and that if it ever re- 
 covered its power it would claw and scratch in the old way. 
 Rome, like Pilate, may protest its innocence of the blood 
 which was spilt in its name and in its interests. Did that 
 tender and merciful court ever suggest to those prelates who 
 passed the Act in England for the burning of heretics that 
 they were transgressing the sacred rights of conscience ? Did 
 it reprove the Inquisition or send a mild remonstrance to 
 Philip II. ? The eyes of those who are willing to be blinded 
 will see only what they desire to see. 
 
HAVANA SOCIETY 291 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Return to Havana — The Spaniards in Cuba — Prospects — American influ- 
 ence — Future of the West Indies — English rumours — Leave Cuba — The 
 harbour at night — The Bahama Channel — Hayti — Port au Prince — The 
 black republic — West Indian history.* 
 
 The air and quiet of Vedado (so my retreat was called) soon 
 set me up again, and I was able to face once more my hotel 
 and its Americans. I did not attempt to travel in Cuba, nor 
 was it necessary for my purpose. I stayed a few days longer 
 at Havana. I went to operas and churches ; I sailed about 
 the harbour in boats, the boatmen, all of them, not negroes, as 
 in the Antilles, but emigrants from the old country, chiefly 
 Gallicians. I met people of all sorts, among the rest a Spanish 
 officer — a major of engineers — who, if he lives, may come to 
 
 something. Major D took me over the fortifications, 
 
 showed me the interior lines of the Moro, and their latest 
 specimens of modern artillery. The garrison are, of course, 
 Spanish regiments made of home-bred Castilians, as I could 
 not fail to recognise when I heard any of them speak. There 
 are certain words of common use in Spain powerful as the 
 magic formulas of enchanters over the souls of men. You hear 
 them everywhere in the Peninsula ; at caf^s, at tables d'hote, 
 and in private conversation. They are a part of the national 
 intellectual equipment. Either from prudery or because they 
 are superior to old-world superstitions, the Cubans have washed 
 these expressions out of their language; but the national 
 characteristics are preserved in the army, and the spell does 
 not lose its efficacy because the islanders disbelieve in it. I 
 have known a closed post office in Madrid, where the clerk 
 was deaf to polite entreaty, blown open by an oath as by a 
 bomb shell. A squad of recruits in the Moro, who were lying 
 in the shade under a tree, neglected to rise as an officer went 
 
 by. ' Saludad, C o ! ' he thundered out, and they bounded 
 
 to their feet as if electrified. 
 
 19—2 
 
'292 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 On the whole Havana was something to have seen. It is 
 the focus and epitome of Spanish dominion in those seas, and 
 I was forced to conclude that it was well for Cuba that the 
 English attempts to take possession of it had failed. Be the 
 faults of their administration as heavy as they are alleged to be, 
 the Spaniards have done more to Europeanise their islands 
 than we have done with ours. They have made Cuba Spanish 
 — Trinidad, Dominica, St. Lucia, Grenada have never been 
 English at all, and Jamaica and Barbadoes are ceasing to be 
 English. Cuba is a second home to the Spaniards, a perma- 
 nent addition to their soil. We are as birds of passage, tem- 
 porary residents for transient purposes, with no home in our 
 islands at all. Once we thought them worth fighting for, and 
 as long as it was a question of ships and cannon we made our- 
 selves supreme rulers of the Caribbean Sea ; yet the French 
 and Spaniards will probably outlive us there. They will remain 
 perhaps as satellites of the United States, or in some other 
 confederacy, or in recovered strength of their own ; we, in a 
 generation or two, if the causes now in operation continue to 
 work as they are now working, shall have disappeared from 
 the scene. In Cuba there is a great Spanish population; 
 Martinique and Guadaloupe are parts of France; to us it 
 seems a matter of indifference whether we keep our islands or 
 abandon them, and we leave the remnants of our once precious 
 settlements to float or drown as they can. Australia and 
 Canada take care of themselves ; we expect our West Indies 
 to do the same, careless of the difference of circumstance. 
 We no longer talk of cutting our colonies adrift ; the tone of 
 public opinion is changed, and no one dares to advocate openly 
 the deserdon of the least important of them. But the neglect 
 and indifference continue. We will not govern them effectively 
 ourselves : our policy, so far as we have any policy, is to ex- 
 tend among them the principles of self-government, and 
 self-government can only precipitate our extinction there as 
 completely as we know that it would do in India if we were 
 wild enough to venture the plunge. There is no enchantment 
 in self-government which will make people love each other when 
 
SPAIN AND ENGLAND 293 
 
 they are indifferent or estranged. It can only force them into 
 sharper collision. 
 
 The opinion in Cuba was, and is, that America is the residu- 
 ary legatee of all the islands, Spanish and English equally, and 
 that she will be forced to take charge of them in the end 
 whether she likes it or not Spain governs unjustly and 
 corruptly ; the Cubans will not rest till they are free from her, 
 and if once independent they will throw themselves on 
 American protection. 
 
 We will not govern our islands at all, but leave them to drift. 
 Jamaica and the Antilles, given over to the negro majorities, 
 can only become like Hayti and St. Domingo ; and the nature 
 of things will hardly permit so fair a part of the earth which 
 has been once civilised and under white control to fall back 
 into barbarism. 
 
 To England the loss of the West Indies would not itself be 
 serious ; but in the life of nations discreditable failures are not 
 measured by their immediate material consequences. To 
 allow a group of colonies to slide out of our hands because we 
 could not or would not provide them with a tolerable govern- 
 ment would be nothing less than a public disgrace. It would 
 be an intimation to all the world that we were unable to main- 
 tain any longer the position which our fathers had made for 
 us; and when the unravelling of the knitted fabric of the 
 Empire has once begun the process will be a rapid one. 
 
 * But what would you do ? ' I am asked impatiently. * We 
 send out peers or gentlemen against whose character no direct 
 objection can be raised; we assist them with local councils 
 partly chosen by the people themselves. We send out bishops, 
 we send out missionaries, we open schools. What can we do 
 more ? We cannot alter the climate, we cannot make planters 
 prosper when sugar will not pay, we cannot convert black men 
 into whites, we cannot force the blacks to work for the whites 
 when they do not wish to work for them. " Governing," as 
 you call it, will not change the natural conditions of things. 
 You can suggest no remedy, and mere fault-finding is foolish 
 and mischievous.' 
 
294 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 I might answer a good many things. Government cannot 
 do everything, but it can do something, and there is a differ- 
 ence between governors against whom there is nothing to object 
 and men of special and marked capacity. There is a differ- 
 ence between governors whose hands are tied by local councils 
 and whose feet are tied by instructions from home, and a 
 governor with a free hand and a wise head left to take his ov/n 
 measures on the spot. I presume that no one can seriously 
 expect that an orderly organised nation can be made out of the 
 blacks, when, in spite of your schools and missionaries, sixty 
 per cent, of the children now born among them are illegitimate. 
 You can do for the West Indies, I repeat over and over again, 
 what you do for the East ; you can establish a firm authorita- 
 tive government which will protect the blacks in their civil 
 rights and protect the whites in theirs. You cannot alter the 
 climate, it is true, or make the soil more fertile. Already it is 
 fertile as any in the earth, and the climate is admirable for the 
 purposes for which it is needed. But you can restore confi- 
 dence in the stability of your tenure, you can give courage to 
 the whites who are on the spot to remain there, and you can 
 tempt capital and enterprise to venture there which now seek 
 investments elsewhere. By keeping the rule in your own 
 hands you will restore the white population to their legitimate 
 influence ; the blacks will again look up to them and respect 
 them as they ought to do. ' This you can do, and it will cost 
 you nothing save a httle more pains in the selection of the 
 persons whom you are to trust with powers analogous to those 
 which you grant to your provincial governors in the Indian 
 peninsula. 
 
 A preliminary condition of this, as of all other real im- 
 provements, is one, however, which will hardly be fulfilled. 
 Before a beginning can be made, a conviction is wanted that 
 life has other objects besides present interest and convenience ; 
 and very few of us indeed have at the bottom of our hearts any 
 such conviction at all. We can talk about it in fine language 
 — no age ever talked more or better — but we don't believe in 
 it ; we believe only in professing to believe, which soothes our 
 
TJNIVERSITY 
 FUTURE POSSIBILm^^^^^^^i 
 
 vanity and does not interfere with our actions. From fine 
 words no harvests grow. The negroes are well disposed to 
 follow and obey any white who will be kind and just to them, 
 and in such following and obedience their only hope of im- 
 provement lies. The problem is to create a state of things 
 under which Englishmen of vigour and character will make 
 their homes among them. Annexation to the United States 
 would lead probably to their extermination at no very distant 
 time. The Antilles are small, and the fate of the negroes there 
 might be no better than the fate of the Caribs. The Ameri- 
 cans are not a people who can be trifled with ; no one knows 
 it better than the negroes. They fear them. They prefer in- 
 finitely the mild rule of England, and under such a govern- 
 ment as we might provide if we cared to try, the whole of our 
 islands might become like the Moravian settlement in Jamaica, 
 and the black nature, which has rather degenerated than im- 
 proved in these late days of licence, might be put again in the 
 way of regeneration. The process would be slow — your seed- 
 lings in a plantation hang stationary year after year, but they 
 do move at last. We cannot disown our responsibility for these 
 poor adopted brothers of ours. We send missionaries into 
 Africa to convert them to a better form of religion ; why 
 should the attempt seem chimerical to convert them prac- 
 tically to a higher purpose in our own colonies ? 
 
 The reader will be weary of a sermon the points of which 
 have been reiterated so often. I might say that he requires to 
 have the lesson impressed upon him — that it is for his good 
 that I insist upon it, and not for my own. But this is the 
 common language of all preachers, and it is not found to make 
 the hearers more attentive. I will not promise to say no more 
 upon the subject, for it was forced upon me at every moment 
 and point of my journey. I am arriving near the end, however, 
 and if he has followed so far, he will perhaps go on with me 
 to the conclusion. I had three weeks to give to Havana; 
 they were fast running out, and it was time for me to be going. 
 Strange stories, too, came from England, which made me un- 
 easy till I knew how they were set in circulation. One day 
 
296 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 Mr. Gladstone was said to have gone mad, and the Queen the 
 next. The Russians were about to annex Afghanistan. Our 
 troops had been cut to pieces in Burmah. Something was 
 going wrong with us every day in one corner of the world or 
 another. I found at last that the telegraphic intelligence was 
 supplied to the Cuban newspapers from New York, that the 
 telegraph clerks there were generally Irish, and their facts were 
 the creation of their wishes. I was to return to Jamaica in 
 the same vessel which had brought me from it. She had been 
 down to the isthmus, and was to call at Havana on her way 
 back. The captain's most English face was a welcome sight 
 to me when he appeared one evening at dinner. He had come 
 to tell me that he was to sail early on the following morning, 
 and I arranged to go on board with him the same night. The 
 Captain-General had not forgotten to instruct the Gobierno 
 Civil to grant me an exeat regno. I do not know that I 
 gained much by his intercession, for without it I should hardly 
 have been detained indefinitely, and as it was I had to pay 
 more dollars than I liked to part with. The necessary docu- 
 ments, however, had been sent through the British consul, and 
 I was free to leave when I pleased. I paid my bill at the 
 hotel, which was not after all an extravagant one, cleared my 
 pocket-book of the remainder of the soiled and tattered paper 
 which is called money, and does duty for it down to a half- 
 penny, and with my distinguished friend Don G , the real 
 
 acquisition which I had made in coming to his country, and 
 who would not leave me till I was in the boat, I drove away to 
 the wharf. 
 
 It was a still, lovely, starlight night. The moon had risen 
 over the hills, and was shining brightly on the roofs and towers 
 of the city, and on the masts and spars of the vessels which 
 were riding in the harbour. There was not a ripple on the 
 water, and stars and city, towers and ships, stood inverted on 
 the surface pointing downward as into a second infinity. The 
 charm was unfortunately interfered with by odours worse than 
 Coleridge found at Cologne and cursed in rhyme. The drains 
 of Havana, like orange blossom, give off their most fragrant 
 
THE HARBOUR AT HAVANA i<fj 
 
 vapours in the dark hours. I could well believe Don G 's 
 
 saying, that but for the natural healthiness of the place, they 
 would all die of it like poisoned flies. We had to cut our 
 adieus short, for the mouth of some horrid sewer was close to 
 us. In the boat I did not escape ; the water smelt horribly as 
 it was stirred by the oars, charged as it was with three centuries 
 of pollution, and the phosphorescent light shone with a sickly, 
 sulphur-like brilliance. One could have fancied that one was 
 in Charon's boat and was crossing Acheron. When I reached 
 the steamer I watched from the deck the same ghost-like phe- 
 nomenon which is described by Tom Cringle. A fathom deep, 
 in the ship's shadow, some shark or other monster sailed slowly 
 by in an envelope of spectral lustre. When he stopped his 
 figure disappeared, when he moved on again it was like the 
 movement of a streak of blue flame. Such a creature did not 
 seem as if it could belong to our famiHar sunlit ocean. 
 
 The state of the harbour is not creditable to the Spanish 
 Government, and I suppose will not be improved till there is 
 some change of dynasty. All that can be said for it is that it 
 is not the worst in these seas. Our ship had just come from 
 the Canal, and had brought the latest news from thence. 
 
 But the miscalculations of the work to be done and of the ex- 
 pense of doing it are now notorious to all the world. The 
 alternatives are to abandon an 'enterprise so splendid in 
 conception, so disastrous in the execution, or to raise and 
 spend fresh tens of millions to follow those that are gone with 
 no certain prospect of success after all. The saddest part of 
 the story will be soonest forgotten — the frightful consumption 
 of human life in those damp and pestilential jungles. M. 
 Lesseps having made his name immortal at Suez, aspired at 
 eclipsing his first achievement, by a second yet more splendidly 
 ambitious, at a time of Hfe when common men are content to 
 retire upon their laurels. He deserves and will receive an un- 
 stinted admiration for his energy and his enthusiasm. But his 
 countrymen who have so zealously supported him will be 
 rewarded with no dividend upon their shares, even if the 
 
298 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 two oceans are eventually united, and no final success can be 
 looked for in the bold projector's life time. 
 
 At dawn we swept out under the Moro, and away once more 
 into the free fresh open sea. We had come down on the south 
 side of the island, we returned by the north up the old Bahama 
 Channel where Drake died on his way home from his last un- 
 successful expedition — Lope de Vega singing a pasan over the 
 end of the great * dragon.' Fresh passengers brought fresh 
 talk. There was a clever young Jamaican on board returning 
 from a holiday ; he had the spirits of youth about him, and 
 would have pleased my American who never knew good come 
 of despondency. He had hopes for his country, but they 
 rested, like those of every sensible man that I met, on an 
 inability to believe that there would be further advances in the 
 direction of political liberty. A revised constitution, he said, 
 could issue only in fresh Gordon riots and fresh calamities. 
 He had been travelling in the Southern States. He had seen 
 the state of Mississippi deserted by the whites, and falling back 
 into a black wilderness. He had seen South CaroHna, which 
 had narrowly escaped ruin under a black and carpet-bagger 
 legislature, and had recovered itself under the steady determi- 
 nation of the Americans that the civil war was not to mean the 
 domination of negro over white. The danger was greater in 
 the English islands than in either of these states, from the 
 enormous disproportion of numbers. The experiment could be 
 ventured only under a high census and a restricted franchise. 
 But the experience of all countries showed that these limited 
 franchises were invidious and could not be maintained, the 
 end was involved in the beginning, and he trusted that prudent 
 counsels would prevail. We had gone too far already. 
 
 On board also there was a traveller from a Manchester house 
 of business, who gave me a more flourishing account than I 
 expected of the state of our trade, not so much with the 
 English islands as with the Spaniards in Cuba and on the 
 mainland. His own house, he said, had a large business with 
 Havana; twenty firms in the north of England were com- 
 peting there, and all were doing well. The Spanish Americans 
 
HAYTJ 299 
 
 on the west side of the continent were good customers, with 
 the exception of the Mexicans, who were energetic and indus- 
 trious, and manufactured for their own consumption. These 
 modern Aztecs were skilful workmen, nimble-fingered and in- 
 ventive. Wages were low, but they were contented with them. 
 Mexico, I was surprised to hear from him, was rising fast into 
 prosperity. Whether human life was any safer then than it 
 was a few years ago, he did not tell me. 
 
 Amidst talk and chess and occasional whist after nightfall 
 when reading became difficult, we ran along with smooth seas, 
 land sometimes in sight, with shoals on either side of us. 
 
 We were to have one more glimpse of Hayti ; we were to 
 touch at Port au Prince, the seat of government of the suc- 
 cessors of Toussaint. If beauty of situation could mould 
 human character, the inhabitants of Port au Prince might 
 claim to be the first of mankind. St. Domingo or Espanola, 
 of which Hayti is the largest division, was the earliest island 
 discovered by Columbus and the finest in the Caribbean Ocean. 
 It remained Spanish, as I have already said, for 200 years, when 
 Hayti was taken by the French buccaneers, and made over by 
 them to Louis XIV. The French kept it till the Revolution. 
 They built towns ; they laid out farms and sugar fields ; they 
 planted coffee all over the island, where it now grows wild. 
 Vast herds of cattle roamed over the mountains ; splendid 
 houses rose over the rich savannahs. The French Church put 
 out its strength ; there were churches and priests in every 
 parish ; there were monasteries and nunneries for the religious 
 orders. So firm was the hold that they had gained that Hayti, 
 like Cuba, seemed to have been made a part of the old world, 
 and as civilised as France itself. But French civiHsation be- 
 came itself electric. The Revolution came, and the reign of 
 Liberty. The blacks took arms ; they surprised the plantations ; 
 they made a clean sweep of the whole French population. 
 Yellow fever swept away the armies which were sent to avenge 
 the massacre, and France being engaged in annexing Europe 
 had no leisure to despatch more. The island being thus 
 derelict, Spain and England both tried their hand to recover 
 
300 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 it, but failed from the same cause, and a black nation, with a 
 republican constitution and a population perhaps of about a 
 million and a half of pure-blood negroes, has since been in 
 unchallenged possession, and has arrived at the condition 
 which has been described to us by Sir Spenser St. John. Re- 
 publics which begin with murder and plunder do not come to 
 much good in this world. Hayti has passed through many 
 revolutions, and is no nearer than at first to stability. The 
 present president, M. Salomon, who was long a refugee in 
 Jamaica, came into power a few years back by a turn of the 
 wheel. He was described to me as a peremptory gentleman 
 who made quick work with his political opponents. His term 
 of office having nearly expired, he had re-elected himself 
 shortly before for another seven years and was prepared to 
 maintain his right by any measures which he might think ex- 
 pedient. He had a few regiments of soldiers, who, I was 
 told, were devoted to him, and a fleet consisting of two gun- 
 boats commanded by an American officer, to whom he chiefly 
 owed his security. 
 
 We had steamed along the Hayti coast all one afternoon, 
 underneath a high range of hills which used to be the hunt- 
 ing ground of the buccaneers. We had passed their famous 
 Tortugas^ without seeing them. Towards evening we entered 
 the long channel between Gonaive island and the mainland, 
 going slowly that we might not arrive at Port au Prince before 
 daylight. It was six in the morning when the anchor rattled 
 down, and I went on deck to look about me. We were at the 
 head of a fiord rather broader than those in Norway, but very 
 like them — wooded mountains rising on either side of us, an 
 open valley in front, and on the rich level soil washed down by 
 the rains and deposited along the shore, the old French and 
 now President Salomon's capital. Palms and oranges and 
 other trees were growing everywhere among the houses giving 
 the impression of graceful civilisation. Directly before us were 
 three or four wooded islets which form a natural breakwater, 
 
 ^ Tortoise Islands ; the buccaneers' head quarters. 
 
PORT A U PRINCE 301 
 
 and above them were seen the masts of the vessels which were 
 lying in the harbour behind. Close to where we were brought 
 up lay the ' Canada,' an English frigate, and about a quarter 
 of a mile from her an American frigate of about the same size, 
 with the stars and stripes conspicuously flying. We have had 
 some differences of late with the Hayti authorities, and the 
 satisfaction which we asked for having been refused or delayed, 
 a man-of-war had been sent to ask redress in more peremptory 
 terms. The town lay under her guns ; the president's ships, 
 which she might perhaps have seized as a security, had been 
 taken out of sight into shallow water, where she could not 
 follow them. The Americans have no particular rights in 
 Hayti, and are as little liked as we are, but they are feared, 
 and they do not allow any business of a serious kind to go on 
 in those waters without knowing what it is about. Perhaps 
 the president's admiral of the station being an American may 
 have had something to do with their presence. Anyway, there 
 the two ships were lying when I came up from below, their 
 hulks and spars outlined picturesquely against the steep wooded 
 shores. The air was hot and steamy; fishing vessels with 
 white sails were drifting slowly about the glassy water. Except 
 for the heat and a black officer of the customs in uniform, and 
 his boat and black crew alongside, I could have believed my- 
 self off Molde or some similar Norwegian town, so like every- 
 thing seemed, even to the colour of the houses. 
 
 We were to stay some hours. After breakfast we landed. 
 I had seen Jacmel, and therefore thought myself prepared for 
 the worst which I should find. Jacmel was an outlying symp- 
 tom ; Port au Prince was the central ulcer. Long before we 
 came to shore there came off whiffs, not of drains as at Havana, 
 but of active dirt fermenting in the sunlight. Calling our 
 handkerchiefs to our help and looking to our feet carefully, 
 we stepped up upon the quay and walked forward as judiciously 
 as we could. With the help of stones we crossed a shallow 
 ditch, where rotten fish, vegetables, and other articles were 
 lying about promiscuously, and we came on what did duty for 
 a grand parade. 
 
302 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 We were in a Paris of the gutter, with boulevards and 
 places^ fiacres and crimson parasols. The boulevards were 
 littered with the refuse of the houses and were foul as pig- 
 sties, and the ladies under the parasols were picking their 
 way along them in Parisian boots and silk dresses. I saw a 
 fiacre broken down in a black pool out of which a blacker 
 ladyship was scrambling. Fever breeds so prodigally in that 
 pestilential squalor that 40,000 people were estimated to have 
 died of it in a single year. There were shops and stores and 
 streets, men and women in tawdry European costume, and 
 officers on horseback with a tatter of lace and gilding. We 
 passed up the principal avenue, which opened on the market 
 place. Above the market was the cathedral, more hideous 
 than even the Mormon temple at Salt Lake. It was full 
 of ladies ; the rank, beauty, and fashion of Port au Prince were 
 at their morning mass, for they are Catholics with African 
 beliefs underneath. They have a French clergy, an arch- 
 bishop and bishop, paid miserably but still subsisting ; subsist- 
 ing not as objects of reverence at all, as they are at Dominica, 
 but as the humble servants and ministers of black society. 
 We English are in bad favour just now ; no wonder, with the 
 guns of the * Canada ' pointed at the city ; but the chief com- 
 plaint is on account of Sir Spenser St. John's book, which they 
 cry out against with a degree of anger which is the surest 
 evidence of its truth. It would be unfair even to hint at the 
 names or stations of various persons who gave me information 
 about the condition of the place and people. Enough that 
 those who knew well what they were speaking about assured 
 me that Hayti was the most ridiculous caricature of civilisa- 
 tion in the whole world. Doubtless the whites there are not 
 disinterested witnesses ; for they are treated as they once 
 treated the blacks. They can own no freehold property, and 
 exist only on tolerance. They are called * white trash.' Black 
 dukes and marquises drive over them in the street and swear 
 at them, and they consider it an invasion of the natural order 
 of things. If this was the worst, or even if the dirt and the 
 disease was the worst, it might be borne with, for the whites 
 
HA YTI 303 
 
 might go away if they pleased, and they pay the penalty them- 
 selves for choosing to be there. But this is not the worst. 
 Immorality is so universal that it almost ceases to be a fault, 
 for a fault implies an exception, and in Hayti it is the rule. 
 Young people make experiment of one another before they 
 will enter into any closer connection. So far they are no 
 worse than in our own English islands, where the custom is 
 equally general ; but behind the immorality, behind the religi- 
 osity, there lies active and alive the horrible revival of the 
 West African superstitions ; the serpent worship, and the child 
 sacrifice, and the cannibalism. There is no room to doubt it. 
 A missionary assured me that an instance of it occurred only 
 a year ago within his own personal knowledge. The facts are 
 notorious ; a full account was pubUshed in one of the local 
 newspapers, and the only result was that the president im- 
 prisoned the editor for exposing his country. A few years ago 
 persons guilty of these infamies were tried and punished ; now 
 they are left alone, because to prosecute and convict them 
 would be to acknowledge the truth of the indictment. 
 
 In this, as in all other communities, there is a better side as 
 well as a worse. The better part is ashamed of the condition 
 into which the country has fallen ; rational and well-disposed 
 Haytians would welcome back the French but for an impres- 
 sion, whether well founded or ill I know not, that the 
 Americans would not suffer any European nation to reacquire 
 or recover any new territory on their side of the Atlantic. 
 They make the most they can of their French connection. 
 They send their children to Paris to be educated, and many 
 of them go thither themselves. There is money among them, 
 though industry there is none. The Hayti coffee which bears 
 so high a reputation is simply gathered under the bushes which 
 the French planters left behind them, and is half as excellent 
 as it ought to be because it is so carelessly cleaned. Yet so rich 
 is the island in these and other natural productions that they 
 cannot entirely ruin it. They have a revenue from their 
 customs of 5,000,000 dollars to be the prey of political 
 schemers. They have a constitution, of course, with a legis- 
 
•304 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 lature — two houses of a legislature — universal suffrage, &c., 
 but it does not save them from revolutions, which recurred 
 every two or three years till the time of the present president. 
 He being of stronger metal than the rest, takes care that the 
 votes are given as he pleases, shoots down recusants, and 
 knows how to make himself feared. He is a giant, they say — 
 I did not see him — six feet some inches in height and broad 
 in proportion. When in Jamaica he was a friend of Gordon, 
 and the intimacy between them is worth noting, as throwing 
 light on Gordon's political aspirations. 
 
 I stayed no longer than the ship's business detained the 
 captain, and I breathed more freely when I had left that 
 miserable cross-birth of ferocity and philanthropic sentiment. 
 No one can foretell the future fate of the black republic, but 
 the present order of things cannot last in an island so close 
 under the American shores. If the Americans forbid any 
 other power to interfere, they will have to interfere them- 
 selves. If they find Mormonism an intolerable blot upon 
 their escutcheon, they will have to put a stop in some way or 
 other to cannibalism and devil-worship. Meanwhile, the 
 ninety years of negro self-government have had their use in 
 showing what it really means, and if English statesmen, either 
 to save themselves trouble or to please the prevailing unin- 
 structed sentiment, insist on extending it, they will be found 
 when the accounts are made up to have been no better 
 friends to the unlucky negro than their slave-trading fore- 
 fathers. 
 
 From the head of the bay on which Port au Prince stands 
 there reaches out on the west the long arm or peninsula which 
 is so peculiar a feature in the geography of the island. The 
 arm bone is a continuous ridge of mountains rising to a height 
 of 8,000 feet and stretching for 160 miles. At the back 
 towards the ocean is Jacmel, on the other side is the bight of 
 Leogane, over which and along the land our course lay after 
 leaving President Salomon's city. The day was unusually 
 hot, and we sat under an awning on deck watching the 
 changes in the landscape as ravines opened and closed again, 
 
NATURE AND MAN 3^5 
 
 and tall peaks changed their shapes and angles. Clouds came 
 down upon the mountain tops and passed off again, whole 
 galleries of pictures swept by, and nature never made more 
 lovely ones. The peculiarity of tropical mountain scenery is 
 that the high summits are clothed with trees. The outlines 
 are thus softened and rounded, save where the rock is broken 
 into precipices. Along the sea and for several miles inland 
 are the Basses Terres as they used to be called, level alluvial 
 plains, cut and watered at intervals by rivers, once covered 
 with thriving plantations and now a jungle. There are no 
 wild beasts there save an occasional man, few snakes, and 
 those not dangerous. The acres of richest soil which are 
 waiting there till reasonable beings can return and cultivate 
 them, must be hundreds of thousands. In the valleys and on 
 the slopes there are all gradations of climate, abundant water, 
 grass lands that might be black with cattle, or on the loftier 
 ranges white with sheep. 
 
 It is strange to think how chequered a history these islands 
 have had, how far they are even yet from any condition which 
 promises permanence. Not one of them has arrived at any 
 stable independence. Spaniards, English and French, Dutch 
 and Danes scrambled for them, fought for them, occupied 
 them more or less with their own people, but it was not to 
 found new nations, but to get gold or get something which 
 could be changed for gold. Only occasionally, and as it were 
 by accident, they became the theatre of any grander game. 
 The war of the Reformation was carried thither, and heroic 
 deeds were done there, but it was by adventurers who were in 
 search of plunder for themselves. France and England fought 
 among the Antilles, and their names are connected with many 
 a gallant action ; but they fought for the sovereignty of the 
 seas, not for the rights and liberties of the French or English 
 inhabitants of the islands. Instead of occupying them with 
 free inhabitants, the European nations filled them with slave 
 gangs. They were valued only for the wealth which they 
 yielded, and society there has never assumed any particularly 
 noble aspect. There has been splendour and luxurious living, 
 
 20 
 
3o6 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 and there have been crimes and horrors, and revolts and 
 massacres. There has been romance, but it has been the 
 romance of pirates and outlaws. The natural graces of human 
 life do not show themselves under such conditions. There has 
 been no saint in the West Indies since Las Casas, no hero 
 unless philonegro enthusiasm can make one-out of Toussaint. 
 There are no people there in the true sense of the word, with 
 a character and purpose of their own, unless to some extent 
 in Cuba, and therefore when the wind has changed and the 
 wealth for which the islands were alone desired is no longer to 
 be made among them, and slavery is no longer possible and 
 would not pay if it were, there is nothing to fall back upon. 
 The palaces of the English planters and merchants fall to 
 decay ; their wines and their furniture, their books and their 
 pictures, are sold or dispersed. Their existence is a struggle 
 to keep afloat, and one by one they go under in the waves. 
 
 The blacks as long as they were slaves were docile and 
 partially civilised. They have behaved on the whole well in 
 our islands since their emancipation, for though they were 
 personally free the whites were still their rulers, and they looked 
 up to them with respect. They have acquired land and notions 
 of property, some of them can read, many of them are toler- 
 able workmen and some excellent, but in character the move- 
 ment is backwards, not forwards. Even in Hayti, after the 
 first outburst of ferocity, a tolerable government was possible 
 for a generation or two. Orderly habits are not immediately 
 lost, but the effect of leaving the negro nature to itself is 
 apparent at last. In the English islands they are innocently 
 happy in the unconsciousness of the obligations of morality. 
 They eat, drink, sleep, and smoke, and do the least in the way 
 of work that they can. They have no ideas of duty, and 
 therefore are not made uneasy by neglecting it. One or other 
 of them occasionally rises in the legal or other profession, but 
 there is no sign, not the slightest, that the generality of the 
 race are improving either in intelligence or moral habits ; all 
 the evidence is the other way. No Uncle Tom, no Aunt Chloe 
 need be looked for in a negro's cabin in the West Indies. If 
 
THE NEGROES 307 
 
 such specimens of black humanity are to be found anywhere, 
 it will be where they have continued under the old influences 
 as servants in white men's houses. The generality are mere 
 good-natured animals, who in service had learnt certain accom- 
 plishments, and had developed certain qualities of a higher 
 kind. Left to themselves they fall back upon the superstitions 
 and habits of their ancestors. The key to the character of any 
 people is to be found in the local customs which have spon- 
 taneously grown or are growing among them. The customs 
 of Dahomey have not yet shown themselves in the English 
 West Indies and never can while the English authority is 
 maintained ; but no custom of any kind will be found in a negro 
 hut or village from which his most sanguine friend can derive 
 a hope that he is on the way to mending himself. 
 
 Roses do not grow on thorn trees, nor figs on thistles. A 
 healthy human civilisation was not perhaps to be looked for in 
 countries which have been alternately the prey of avarice, 
 ambition, and sentimentalism. We visit foreign countries to 
 see varieties of life and character, to learn languages that we 
 may gain an insight into various literatures, to see manners 
 unlike our own springing naturally out of different soils and 
 climates, to see beautiful works of art, to see places associated 
 with great men and great actions, and subsidiary to these, to 
 see lakes and mountains, and strange skies and seas. But the 
 localities of great events and the homes of the actors in them 
 are only saddening when the spiritual results are disappointing, 
 and scenery loses its charm unless the grace of humanity is in 
 the heart of it. To the man of science the West Indies may 
 be delightful and instructive. Rocks and trees and flowers 
 remain as they always were, and Nature is constant to herself. 
 But the traveller whose heart is with his kind, and who cares 
 only to see his brother mortals making their corner of this 
 planet into an orderly and ■ rational home, had better choose 
 some other object for his pilgrimage. 
 
 20—2 
 
3o8 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Return to Jamaica —Cherry Garden again — Black servants — Social condi- 
 tions — Sir Henry Norman — King's House once more — Negro suffrage— 
 The will of the people — The Irish python — Conditions of colonial union 
 — Oratory and statesmanship. 
 
 I HAD to return to Jamaica from Cuba to meet the mail to 
 England. My second stay could be but brief. For the short 
 time that was allowed me I went back to my hospitable 
 friends at Cherry Garden, which is an oasis in the wilderness. 
 In the heads of the family there was cultivation and simplicity 
 and sense. There was a home life with its quiet occupations 
 and enjoyments — serious when seriousness was needed, light 
 and bright in the ordinary routine of existence. The black 
 domestics, far unlike the children of liberty whom I had left 
 at Port au Prince, had caught their tone from their master and 
 mistress, and were low-voiced, humorous, and pleasant to talk 
 with. So perfect were they in their several capacities, that, 
 like the girls at Government House at Dominica, I would have 
 liked to pack them in my portmanteau and carry them home. 
 The black butler received me on my arrival as an old friend. 
 He brought me a pair of boots which I had left behind me on 
 my first visit ; he told me ' the female ' had found them. The 
 lady of the house took me out for a drive with her. The coach- 
 man half-upset us into a ditch, and we narrowlye scaped being 
 pitched into a ravine. The dusky creature insisted pathetically 
 that it was not his fault, nor the horse's fault. His ebony wife 
 had left him for a week's visit to a friend, and his wits had 
 gone after her. Of course he was forgiven. Cherry Garden 
 was a genuine homestead, a very menagerie of domestic animals 
 of all sorts and breeds. Horses loitered under the shade of 
 the mangoes ; cows, asses, dogs, turkeys, cocks and hens, geese, 
 guinea fowl and pea fowl lounged and strutted about the paddocks. 
 In the grey of the morning they held their concerts; the asses 
 brayed, the dogs barked, the turkeys gobbled, and the pea fowl 
 
CHERRY GARDEN ONCE MORE 309 
 
 screamed. It was enough to waken the seven sleepers, but 
 the noises seemed so home-like and natural that they mixed 
 pleasantly in one's dreams. One morning, after they had been 
 holding a special jubilee, the butler apologised for them when 
 he came to call me, and laughed as at the best of jokes when 
 I said they did not mean any harm. The great feature of the 
 day was five cats, with blue eyes and spotlessly white, who 
 walked in regularly at breakfast, ranged themselves on their 
 tails round their mistress's chair, and ate their porridge and 
 milk like reasonable creatures. Within and without all was 
 orderly. The gardens were in perfect condition ; fields were 
 being inclosed and planted ; the work of the place went on of 
 itself, with the eye of the mistress on it, and her voice, 
 if necessary, heard in command; but black and white were all 
 friends together. What could man ask for, more than to live 
 all his days in such a climate and with such surroundings ? 
 Why should a realised ideal like this pass away ? Why may it 
 not extend itself till it has transformed the features of all our 
 West Indian possessions ? Thousand of English families might 
 be living in similar scenes, happy in themselves and spreading 
 round them a happy, wholesome English atmosphere. Why 
 not indeed ? Only because we are enchanted. Because in 
 Jamaica and Barbadoes the white planters had a constitution 
 granted them two hundred years ago, therefore their emanci- 
 pated slaves must now have a constitution also. Wonderful 
 logic of formulas, powerful as a witches' cauldron for mischief 
 as long as it is believed in. The colonies and the Empire ! If 
 the colonies were part indeed of the Empire, if they were taken 
 into partnership as the Americans take theirs, and were 
 members of an organised body, if an injury to each single limb 
 would be felt as an injury to the whole, we should not be play- 
 ing with their vital interests to catch votes at home. Alas ! 
 at home we are split in two, and party is more than the nation, 
 and famous statesmen, thinly disguising their motives under a 
 mask of policy, condemn to-day what they approved of yester- 
 day, and catch at power by projects which they would be the first 
 to denounce if suggested by their adversaries. Till this tyranny 
 
3IO THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 be overpast, to bring into one the scattered portions of the 
 Empire is the idlest of dreams, and the most that is to be 
 hoped for is to arrest any active mischief. Happy Americans, 
 who have a Supreme Court with a code of fundamental laws 
 to control the vagaries of politicians and check the passions of 
 fluctuating electoral majorities! What the Supreme Court is 
 to them, the Crown ought to be for us ; but the Crown is 
 powerless and must remain powerless, and therefore we are as 
 we are, and our national existence is made the shuttlecock of 
 party contention. 
 
 Time passed so pleasantly with me in these concluding 
 days that I could have wished it to be the nothing which 
 metaphysicians say that it is, and that when one was happy 
 it would leave one alone. We wandered in the shade in the 
 mornings, we made expeditions in the evenings, called at 
 friends' houses, and listened to the gossip of the island. It 
 turned usually on the one absorbing subject — black servants 
 and the difficulty of deaUng with them. An American lady 
 from Pennsylvania declared emphatically as her opinion that 
 emancipation had been a piece of folly, and that things would 
 never mend till they were slaves again. 
 
 One of my own chief hopes in going originally to Jamaica 
 had been to see and learn the views of the distinguished 
 Governor there. Sir Henry Norman had been one of the 
 most eminent of the soldier civilians in India. He had 
 brought with him a brilliant reputation; he had won the 
 confidence in the West Indies of all classes and all colours. 
 He, if anyone, would understand the problem, and from the 
 high vantage ground of experience would know what could or 
 could not be done to restore the influence of England and 
 the prosperity of the colonies. Unfortunately, Sir Henry had 
 been called to London, as I mentioned before, on a question 
 of the conduct of some official, and I was afraid that I should 
 miss him altogether. He returned, however, the day before 
 I was to sail. He was kind enough to ask me to spend an 
 evening with him, and I was again on my last night a guest at 
 King's House. 
 
SIR HENR Y NORMAN 3 1 1 
 
 A dinner party offers small opportunity for serious con- 
 versation, nor, indeed, could I expect a great person in Sir 
 Henry's position to enter upon subjects of consequence with 
 a stranger like myself. I could see, however, that I had 
 nothing to correct in the impression of his character which 
 his reputation had led me to form about him, and I wished 
 more than ever that the system of government of which he 
 had been so admirable a servant in India could be applied to 
 his present position, and that he or such as he could have the 
 administration of it. We had common friends in the Indian 
 service to talk about ; one especially, Reynell Taylor, now 
 dead, who had been the earliest of my boy companions. 
 Taylor had been one of the handful of English who held the 
 Punjaub in the first revolt of the Sikhs. With a woman's 
 modesty he had the spirit of a knight-errant. Sir Henry 
 described him as the 'very soul of chivalry,' and seemed 
 himself to be a man of the same pure and noble nature, 
 perhaps liable, from the generosity of his temperament, to 
 believe more than I could do in modern notions and in 
 modern political heroes, but certainly not inclining of his own 
 will to recommend any rash innovations. I perceived that 
 like myself he felt no regret that so much of the soil of 
 Jamaica was passing to peasant black proprietors. He thought 
 well of their natural disposition ; he believed them capable of 
 improvement. He thought that the possession of land of 
 their own would bring them into voluntary industry, and 
 lead them gradually to the adoption of civilised habits. He 
 spoke with reserve, and perhaps I may not have understood 
 him fully, but he did not seem to me to think much of their 
 political capacity. The local boards which have been estab- 
 lished as an education for higher functions have not been a 
 success. They had been described to me in all parts of the 
 island as inflammable centres of peculation and mismanage- 
 ment Sir Henry said nothing from which I could gather 
 his own opinion. I inferred, however (he will pardon me if 
 I misrepresent him), that he had no great belief in a federa- 
 tion of the islands, in * responsible government,' and such 
 
312 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 like, as within the bounds of present possibilities. Nor did 
 he think that responsible statesmen at home had any such 
 arrangement in view. 
 
 That such an arrangement was in contemplation a few 
 years ago, I knew from competent authority. Perhaps the 
 unexpected interest which the English people have lately 
 shown in the colonies has modified opinion in those high 
 circles, and has tauglit politicians that they must advance 
 more cautiously. But the wind still sits in the old quarter. 
 Three years ago, the self-suppressed constitution in Jamaica 
 was partially re-established. A franchise was conceded both 
 there and in Barbadoes which gave every black householder 
 a vote. Even in poor Dominica, an extended suffrage was 
 hung out as a remedy for its wretchedness. If nothing 
 further is intended, these concessions have been gratuitously 
 mischievous. It has roused the hopes of political agitators, 
 not in Jamaica only, but all over the Antilles. It has taught 
 the people, who have no grievances at all, who in their 
 present state are better protected than any peasantry in the 
 world except the Irish, to look to political changes as a road 
 to an impossible millennium. It has rekindled hopes which 
 had been long extinguished, that, like their brothers in Hayti, 
 they were on the way to have the islands to themselves. It 
 has alienated the English colonists, filled them with the worst 
 apprehensions, and taught them to look wistfully from their 
 own country to a union with America. A few elected 
 members in a council where they may be counterbalanced by 
 an equal number of official members seems a small thing in 
 itself. So long as the equality was maintained, my Yankee 
 friend was still willing to risk his capital in Jamaican enter- 
 prises. But the principle has been allowed. The existing 
 arrangement is a half-measure which satisfies none and irritates 
 all, and collisions between the representatives of the people 
 and the nominees of the Government are only avoided by 
 leaving a sufficient number of official seats unfilled. To 
 have re-entered upon a road where you cannot stand still, 
 where retreat is impossible, and where to go forward can 
 
SIR HENRY NORMAN 313 
 
 only be recommended on the hypothesis that to give a man a 
 vote will itself qualify him for the use of it, has been one of 
 the minor achievements of the last Government of Mr. 
 Gladstone, and is likely to be as successful as his larger 
 exploits nearer home have as yet proved to be. A supreme 
 court, were we happy enough to possess such a thing, would 
 forbid these venturous experiments of sanguine statesmen 
 who may happen, for a moment, to command a trifling 
 majority in the House of Commons. 
 
 I could not say what I felt completely to Sir Henry, who, 
 perhaps, had been in personal relations with Mr. Gladstone's 
 Government. Perhaps, too, he was one of those numerous 
 persons of tried abiUty and intelligence who hc*/e only a faint 
 belief that the connection between Great Britain and the 
 colonies can be of long continuance. The public may amuse 
 themselves with the vision of an imperial union; practical 
 statesmen who are aware of the tendencies of self-governed 
 communities to follow lines of their own in which the mother 
 country cannot support them may believe that they know it to 
 be impossible. 
 
 As to the West Indies there are but two genuine alter- 
 natives : one to leave them to themselves to shape their own 
 destinies, as we leave Australia ; the other to govern them as 
 if they were a part of Great Britain with the same scrupulous 
 care of the people and their interests with which we govern 
 Bengal, Madras, and Bombay. England is responsible 
 for the social condition of those islands. She filled them 
 with negroes when it was her interest to maintain slavery, she 
 emancipated those negroes when popular opinion at home de- 
 manded that slavery should end. It appears to me that 
 England ought to bear the consequences of her own actions, 
 and assume to herself the responsibilities of a state of things 
 which she has herself created. We are partly unwilling to 
 take the trouble, partly we cling to the popular belief that to 
 trust all countries with the care of their own concerns is the 
 way to raise the character of the inhabitants and to make 
 them happy and contented. We dimly perceive that the 
 
314 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 population of the West Indies is not a natural growth of 
 internal tendencies and circumstances, and we therefore hesi- 
 tate before we plunge completely and entirely into the down- 
 ward course ; but we play with it, we drift towards it, we ad- 
 vance as far as we dare, giving them the evils of both systems 
 and the advantages of neither. At the same moment we 
 extend the suffrage to the blacks with one hand, while with 
 the other we refuse to our own people the benefit of a treaty 
 which would have rescued them from imminent ruin and 
 brought them into relations with their powerful kindred close 
 at hand — relations which might save them from the most 
 dangerous consequences of a negro political supremacy — and 
 the result is that the English in those islands are melting 
 away and will soon be crowded out, or will have departed of 
 themselves in disgust. A policy so far-reaching, and affecting 
 so seriously the condition of the oldest of our colonial pos- 
 sessions, ought not to have been adopted on their own 
 authority, by doctrinaire statesmen in a cabinet, without fully 
 and frankly consulting the English nation ; and no further step 
 ought to be taken in that direction until the nation has had the 
 circumstances of the islands laid before it, and has pronounced 
 one way or the other its own sovereign pleasure. Does 
 or does not England desire that her own people shall be 
 enabled to live and thrive in the West Indies ? If she decides 
 that her hands are too full, that she is over-empired and cannot 
 attend to them — cadit qumtio — there is no more to be said. But 
 if this is her resolution the hands of the West Indians ought 
 to be untied. They ought to be allowed to make their sugar 
 treaties, to make any treaties, to enter into the closest rela- 
 tions with America which the Americans will accept, as the 
 only chance which will be left them. 
 
 Such abandonment, however, will bring us no honour. It 
 will not further that federation of the British Empire which so 
 many of us now profess to desire. If we wish Australia 
 and Canada to draw into closer union with us, it will not be 
 by showing that we are unable to manage a group of colonies 
 which are almost at our doors. Englishmen all round the 
 
IMPERIAL UNION 315 
 
 globe have rejoiced together in this year which is passing by 
 us over the greatness of their inheritance, and have celebrated 
 with enthusiasm the half-century during which our lady-mistress 
 has reigned over the English world. Unity and federation 
 are on our lips, and we have our leagues and our institutes, and 
 in the eagerness of our wishes we dream that we see the ful- 
 filment of them. Neither the kingdom of heaven nor any 
 other kingdom * comes with observation.' It comes not with 
 after-dinner speeches however eloquent, or with flowing senti- 
 ments however for the moment sincere. The spirit which 
 made the Empire can alone hold it together. The American 
 Union was not saved by oratory. It was saved by the deter- 
 mination of the bravest of the people ; it was cemented by 
 the blood which dyed the slopes of Gettysburg. The union 
 of the British Empire, if it is to be more than a dream, 
 can continue only while the attracting force of the primary 
 commands the willing attendance of the distant satellites. 
 Let the magnet lose its power, let the confidence of the 
 colonies in the strength and resolution of their central orb be 
 once shaken, and the centrifugal force will sweep them away 
 into orbits of their own. 
 
 The race of men who now inhabit this island of ours show 
 no signs of degeneracy. The bow of Ulysses is sound as 
 ever ; moths and worms have not injured either cord or horn ; 
 but it is unstrung, and the arrows which are shot from it 
 drop feebly to the ground. The Irish python rises again out 
 of its swamp, and Phoebus Apollo launches no shaft 
 against the scaly sides of it. Phoebus Apollo attempts 
 the milder methods of concession and persuasion. * Python,' 
 he says, ' in days when I was ignorant and unjust I struck 
 you down and bound you. I left officers and men with you 
 of my own race to watch you, to teach you, to rule you ; to 
 force you, if your own nature could not be changed, to 
 leave your venomous ways. You have refused to be 
 taught, you twist in your chains, you bite and tear, and 
 when you can you steal and murder. I see that I was 
 wrong from the first. Every creature has a right to live 
 
3i6 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 according to its own disposition. I was a tyrant, and you 
 did well to resist j I ask you to forgive and forget. I set you 
 free ; I hand you over my own representatives as a pledge of 
 my goodwill, that you may devour them at your leisure. They 
 have been the instruments of my oppression ; consume them, 
 destroy them, do what you will with them ; and henceforward 
 I hope that we shall live together as friends, and that you will 
 show yourself worthy of my generosity and of the freedom 
 which you have so gloriously won.' 
 
 A sun-god who thus addressed a disobedient satellite might 
 have the eloquence of a Demosthenes and the finest of the 
 fine intentions which pave the road to the wrong place, but he 
 would not be a divinity who would command the willing con- 
 fidence of a high-spirited kindred. Great Britain will make 
 the tie which holds the colonies to her a real one when she 
 shows them and shows the world that she is still equal to her 
 great place, that her arm is not shortened and her heart has 
 not grown faint. 
 
 Men speak of the sacredness of liberty. They talk as if the 
 will of everyone ought to be his only guide, that allegiance is 
 due only to majorities, that allegiance of any other kind is 
 base and a relic of servitude. The Americans are the freest 
 people in the world ; but in their freedom they have to obey 
 the fundamental laws of the Union. Again and again in the 
 West Indies Mr. Motley's words came back to me. To be 
 taken into the American Union is to be adopted into a partner- 
 ship. To belong as a Crown colony to the British Empire, as 
 things stand, is no partnership at all. It is to belong to a 
 power which sacrifices, as it has always sacrificed, the interest 
 of its dependencies to its own. The blood runs freely through 
 every vein and artery of the American body corporate. Every 
 single citizen feels his share in the life of his nation. Great 
 Britain leaves her Crown colonies to take care of themselves, 
 refuses what they ask, and forces on them what they had 
 rather be without. If I were a West Indian I should feel that 
 under the stars and stripes I should be safer than I was at 
 present from political experimenting. I should have a market 
 
MODERN STATESMANSHIP 3i7 
 
 in which to sell my produce where I should be treated as a 
 friend ; I should have a power behind me and protecting me, 
 and I should have a future to which I could look forward with 
 confidence. America would restore me to home and life ; 
 Great Britain allows me to sink, contenting herself with advis- 
 ing me to be patient. Why should I continue loyal when my 
 loyalty was so contemptuously valued ? 
 
 But I will not beUeve that it will come to this. An English- 
 man may be heavily tempted, but in evil fortune as in good 
 his heart is in the old place. The administration of our affairs 
 is taken for the present from prudent statesmen, and is made 
 over to those who know how best to flatter the people with 
 fine-sounding sentiments and idle adulation. All sovereigns 
 have been undone by flatterers. The people are sovereign 
 now, and, being new to power, listen to those who feed their 
 vanity. The popular orator has been the ruin of every 
 country which has trusted to him. He never speaks an un- 
 welcome truth, for his existence depends on pleasing, and he 
 cares only to tickle the ears of his audience. His element is 
 anarchy; his function is to undo what better men have done. 
 In wind he lives and moves and has his being. When the 
 gods are angry, he can raise it to a hurricane and lay waste 
 whole nations in ruin and revolution. It was said long ago, a 
 man full of words shall not prosper upon the earth. Times 
 have changed, for in these days no one prospers so well. Can 
 he make a speech? is the first question which the con- 
 stituencies ask when a candidate is offered to their suffrages. 
 When the Roman commonwealth developed from an aristo- 
 cratic republic into a democracy, and, as now with us, the 
 sovereignty was in the mass of the people, the oratorical 
 faculty came to the front in the same way. The finest speaker 
 was esteemed the fittest man to be made a consul or a praetor 
 of, and there were schools of rhetoric where aspirants for office 
 had to go to learn gesture and intonation before they could 
 present themselves at the hustings. The sovereign people and 
 their orators could do much, but they could not alter facts, 
 or make that which was not, to be, or that which was, not to 
 
3i8 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 be. The orators could perorate and the people could decree, 
 but facts remained and facts proved the strongest, and the end 
 of that was that after a short supremacy the empire which they 
 had brought to the edge of ruin was saved at the last ex- 
 tremity; the sovereign people lost their liberties, and the 
 tongues of political orators were silenced for centuries. Illu- 
 sion at last takes the form of broken heads, and the most 
 obstinate credulity is not proof against that form of argument. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Going home — Retrospect — Alternative courses — Future of the Empire — 
 Sovereignty of the sea — The Greeks — The rights of man — Plato — The 
 voice of the people — Imperial federation — Hereditary colonial policy — 
 New Irelands — Effects of party government. 
 
 On^e more upon the sea on our homeward way, carrying, as 
 Emerson said, * the bag of ^olus in the boiler of our boat,' 
 careless whether there be wind or calm. Our old naval heroes 
 passed and repassed upon the same waters under harder con- 
 ditions. They had to struggle against tempests, to fight with 
 enemy's cruisers, to battle for their lives with nature as with 
 man — and they were victorious over them all. They won for 
 Britannia the sceptre of the sea, and built up the Empire on 
 which the sun never sets. To us, their successors, they 
 handed down the splendid inheritance, and we in turn have 
 invented steam ships and telegraphs, and thrown bridges over 
 the ocean, and made our far-off possessions as easy of access 
 as the next parish. The attractive force of the primary ought 
 to have increased in the same ratio, but we do not find that it 
 has, and the centrifugal and the centripetal tendencies of our 
 satellites are year by year becoming more nicely balanced. 
 These beautiful West Indian Islands were intended to be 
 homes for the overflowing numbers of our own race, and the 
 few that have gone there are being crowded out by the blacks 
 from Jamaica and the Antilles. Our poor helots at home drag 
 
ALTERNATIVES 3^9 
 
 on their lives in the lanes and alleys of our choking cities, and 
 of those who gather heart to break off on their own account 
 and seek elsewhere for a land of promise, the large majority 
 are weary of the flag under which they have only known 
 suffering, and prefer America to the English colonies. They 
 are waking now to understand the opportunities which are 
 slipping through their hands. Has the awakening come too 
 late ? We have ourselves mixed the cup \ must we now drink 
 it tc the dregs ? 
 
 It is too late to enable us to make homes in the West 
 Indies for the swarms who are thrown off by our own towns 
 and villages. We might have done it. Englishmen would 
 have thriven as well in Jamaica and the Antilles as the 
 Spaniards have thriven in Cuba. But the islands are now 
 peopled by men of another colour. The whites there are as 
 units among hundreds, and the proportion cannot be altered. 
 But it is not too late to redeem our own responsibilities. We 
 brought the blacks there ; we have as yet not done much for 
 their improvement, when their notions of morality are still so 
 elementary that more than half of their children are born out 
 of marriage. The English planters were encouraged to settle 
 there when it suited our convenience to maintain the islands 
 for Imperial purposes ; like the landlords in Ireland, they 
 were our English garrison; and as with the landlords in 
 Ireland, when we imagine that they have served their purpose 
 and can be no longer of use to us, we calmly change the 
 conditions of society. We disclaim obligations to help 
 them in the confusion which we have introduced ; we tell 
 them to help themselves, and they cannot help themselves 
 in such an element as that in which they are now strug- 
 gling, unless they know that they may count on the sympathy 
 and the support of their countrymen at home. Nothing 
 is demanded of the English exchequer ; the resources of 
 the islands are practically boundless ; there is a robust 
 population conscious at the bottom of their native in- 
 feriority, and docile and willing to work if anyone will 
 direct them and set them to it. There will be capital enough 
 
320 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 forthcoming, and energetic men enough and intelligence 
 enough, if we on our part will provide one thing, the easiest of 
 all if we really set our minds to it — an effective and authorita- 
 tive government. It is not safe even for ourselves to leave a 
 wound unattended to, though it be in the least significant part 
 of our bodies. The West Indies are a small limb in the great 
 body corporate of the British Empire, but there is no great 
 and no small in the life of nations. The avoidable decay of 
 the smallest member is an injury to the whole. Let it be 
 once known and felt that England regards the West Indies as 
 essentially one with herself, and the English in the islands will 
 resume their natural position, and respect and order will come 
 back, and those once thriving colonies will again advance with 
 the rest on the high road of civilisation and prosperity. Let 
 it be known that England considers only her immediate 
 interests and will not exert herself, and the other colonies will 
 know what they have to count upon, and the British Empire 
 will dwindle down before long into a single insignificant island 
 in the North Sea. 
 
 So end the reflections which I formed there from what I 
 saw and what I heard. I have written as an outside observer 
 unconnected with practical politics, with no motive except a 
 loyal pride in the greatness of my own country, and a conviction, 
 which I will not believe to be a dream, that the destinies have 
 still in store for her a yet grander future. The units of us 
 come and go ; the British Empire, the globe itself and all that 
 it inherits, will pass away as a vision. 
 
 taairai rjfxap orav ttot oXwXy 'IXtog t/oj), 
 cat Hpiafiog Kui Xabs tv/t/icXtw Hpidfioio. 
 
 The day will be when Ilium's towers may fall, 
 And large-limbed ^ Priam, and his people all. 
 
 But that day cannot be yet. Out of the now half-organic 
 fragments may yet be formed one living Imperial power, with 
 
 ^ I believe this to be the true meaning of sviifuXiijs. It is usually 
 rendered, ' armed with a stout spear.' 
 
GOING HOME 321 
 
 a new era of beneficence and usefulness to mankind. The 
 English people are spread far and wide. The sea is their 
 dominion, and their land is the finest portion of the globe. 
 It is theirs now, it will be theirs for ages to come if they 
 remain themselves unchanged and keep the heart and temper 
 of their forefathers. 
 
 Naught shall make us rue, 
 If England to herself do rest but true. 
 
 The days pass, and our ship flies fast upon her way. 
 
 yXavKOV virep olSfia Kvavoxpod re KVfidrdJV 
 poOia TToXid QaXdaaag. 
 
 How perfect the description ! How exactly in those eight 
 words Euripides draws the picture of the ocean; the long 
 grey heaving swell, the darker steel-grey on the shadowed 
 slope of the surface waves, and the foam on their breaking 
 crests. Our thoughts flow back as we gaze to the times long 
 ago, when the earth belonged to other races as it now belongs 
 to us. The ocean is the same as it was. Their eyes saw it 
 as we see it : 
 
 Time writes no wrinkle on that azure brow. 
 
 Nor is the ocean alone the same. Human nature is still 
 vexed with the same problems, mocked with the same hopes, 
 wandering after the same illusions. The sea affected the 
 Greeks as it affects us, and was equally dear to them. It was 
 a Greek who said, ' The sea washes off all the ills of men ; ' the 
 * stainless one' as ^schylus called it — the eternally pure. 
 On long voyages I take Greeks as my best companions. I 
 had Plato with me on my way home from the West Indies. 
 He lived and wrote in an age like ours, when religion had 
 become a debatable subject on which every one had his 
 opinion, and democracy was master of the civilised world, and 
 the Mediterranean states were running wild after liberty, 
 preparatory to tl\e bursting of the bubble. Looking out on 
 such a world Plato left thoughts behind him the very language 
 
322 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 of which is as full of application to our own larger world as if 
 it was written yesterday. It throws light on small things as 
 well as large, and interprets alike the condition of the islands 
 which I had left, the condition of England, the condition of 
 all civilised countries in this modern epoch. 
 
 The chief characteristic of this age, as it was the chief 
 characteristic of Plato's, is the struggle for what we call the 
 ' rights of man.' In other times the thing insisted on was 
 that men should do what was ' right ' as something due to a 
 higher authority. Now the demand is for what is called their 
 'rights' as something due to themselves, and among these 
 rights is a right to liberty ; liberty meaning the utmost possible 
 freedom of every man consistent with the freedom of others, 
 and the abohtion of every kind of authority of one man over 
 another. It is with this view that we have introduced popular 
 suffrage, l!iat we give everyone a vote, or aim at giving it, as 
 the highest political perfection. 
 
 We turn to Plato and we find : ' In a healthy community 
 there ought to be some authority over every single man and 
 woman. No person — not one — ought to act on his or her 
 judgment alone even in the smallest trifle. The soldier on a 
 campaign obeys his commander in little thimgs as well as 
 great. The safety of the army requires it. But it is in peace 
 as it is in war, and there is no difference. Every person 
 should be trained from childhood to rule and to be ruled. So 
 only can the life of man, and the life of all creatures de- 
 pendent on him, be delivered from anarchy.' 
 
 It is worth while to observe how diametrically opposite to 
 our notions on this subject were the notions of a man of the 
 finest intellect, with the fullest opportunities of observation, 
 and every one of whose estimates of things was confirmed by 
 the event. Such a discipline as he recommends never existed 
 in any community of men except perhaps among the religious 
 orders in the enthusiasm of their first institution, nor would a 
 society be long tolerable in which it was tried. Communities, 
 however, have existed where people have thought more of their 
 obligations than of their ' rights,' more of the welfare of their 
 
PUBLIC OPINION 323 
 
 country, or of the success of a cause to which they have 
 devoted themselves, than of their personal pleasure or interest 
 — have preferred the wise leading of superior men to their 
 own wills and wishes. Nay, perhaps no community has ever 
 continued long, or has made a mark in the world of serious 
 significance, where society has not been graduated in degrees, 
 and there have not been deeper and stronger bands of co- 
 herence than the fluctuating votes of majorities. 
 
 Times are changed we are told. We live in a new era, 
 when public opinion is king, and no other rule is possible; 
 public opinion, as expressed in the press and on the platform, 
 and by the deUberately chosen representatives of the people. 
 Every question can be discussed and argued, all sides of it 
 can be heard, and the nation makes up its mind. The col- 
 lective judgment of all is wiser than the wisest single man — 
 securus judicat orbis. 
 
 Give the public time, and I believe this to be true j general 
 opinion does in the long run form a right estimate of most 
 persons and of most things. As surely its immediate impulses 
 are almost invariably in directions which it afterwards regrets 
 and repudiates, and therefore constitutions which have no 
 surer basis than the popular judgment, as it shifts from year 
 to year or parliament to parliament, are built on foundations 
 looser than sand. 
 
 In concluding this book I have a few more words to say on 
 the subject, so ardently canvassed, of Imperial federation. 
 It seems so easy. You have only to form a new parliament 
 in which the colonies shall be represented according to 
 numbers, while each colony will retain its own for its own 
 local purposes. Local administration is demanded every- 
 where \ England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, can each have 
 theirs, and the vexed question of Home Rule can be disposed 
 of in the reconstruction of the whole. A central parliament 
 can then be formed in which the parts can all be represented 
 in proportion to their number; and a cabinet can be se- 
 lected out of this for the management of Imperial concerns. 
 Nothin.s: more is necessarv ; the thinq will be done. 
 
324 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 So in a hundred forms, but all on the same principle, 
 schemes of Imperial union have fallen under my eye. I 
 should myself judge from experience of what democratically 
 elected parliaments are growing into, that at the first session 
 of such a body the satellites would fly off into space, shattered 
 perhaps themselves in the process. We have parliaments 
 enough already, and if no better device can be found than by 
 adding another to the number, the rash spirit of innovation 
 has not yet gone far enough to fling our ancient constitution 
 into the crucible on so wild a chance. 
 
 Imperial federation, as it is called, is far away^ if ever it is 
 to be realised at all. If it is to come it will come of itself, 
 brought about by circumstances and silent impulses working 
 continuously through many years unseen and unspoken of. 
 It is conceivable that Great Britain and her scattered off- 
 spring, under the pressure of danger from without, or 
 impelled by some general purpose, might agree to place 
 themselves for a time under a single administrative head. 
 It is conceivable that out of a combination so formed, if it 
 led to a successful immediate result, some union of a closer 
 kind might eventually emerge. It is not only conceivable, 
 but it is entirely certain, that attempts made when no such 
 occasion has arisen, by politicians ambitious of distinguishing 
 themselves, will fail, and in failing will make the object that 
 is aimed at more confessedly unattainable than it is now. 
 
 The present relation between the mother country and her 
 self-governed colonies is partly that of parent and children 
 who have grown to maturity and are taking care of themselves, 
 partly of independent nations in friendly alliance, partly as 
 common subjects of the same sovereign, whose authority is 
 exercised in each by ministers of its own. Neither of these 
 analogies is exact, for the position alters from year to year. 
 So much the better. The relation which now exists cannot 
 be more than provisional; let us not try to shape it artifi- 
 cially, after a closet-made pattern. The threads of interest and 
 kindred must be left to spin themselves in their own way. 
 Meanwhile we can work together heartily and with good will 
 
COLONIAL SYMPATHIES 325 
 
 where we need each other's co-operation. Difficulties will 
 rise, perhaps, from time to time, but we can meet them as 
 they come, and we need not anticipate them. If we are to 
 be politically one, the organic fibres which connect us are as 
 yet too immature to bear a strain. All that we can do, and 
 all that at present we ought to try, is to act generously when- 
 ever our assistance can be of use. The disposition of English 
 statesmen to draw closer to the colonies is of recent growth. 
 They cannot tell, and we cannot tell, how far it indicates a 
 real change of attitude or is merely a passing mood. One 
 thing, however, we ought to bear in mind, that the colonies 
 sympathise one with another, and that wrong or neglect in 
 any part of the Empire does not escape notice. The larger 
 colonies desire to know what the recent professions of interest 
 are worth, and they look keenly at our treatment of their 
 younger brothers who are still in our power. They are 
 practical, they attend to results, they guard jealously their 
 own privileges, but they are not so enamoured of constitu- 
 tional theory that they will patiently see their fellow-country- 
 men in less favoured situations swamped under the votes of 
 the coloured races. Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders, 
 will not be found enthusiastic for the extension of self-govern- 
 ment in the West Indies, when they know that it means the 
 extinction of their own white brothers who have settled there. 
 The placing English colonists at the mercy of coloured majo- 
 rities they will resent as an injury to themselves; they will 
 not look upon it as an extension of a generous principle, but 
 as an act of airy virtue which costs us nothing, and at the 
 bottom is but carelessness and indifference. 
 
 We imagine that we have seen the errors of our old 
 colonial policy, and that we are in no danger of repeating 
 them. Yet in the West Indies we are treading over again 
 the too familiar road. The Anglo-Irish colonists in 1705 
 petitioned for a union with Great Britain. A union would 
 have involved a share in British trade ; it was refused there- 
 fore, and we gave them the penal laws instead. They set 
 up manufactures, built ships, and tried to raise a commerce 
 
326 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 of their own. We laid them under disabiUties which ruined 
 their enterprises, and when they were resentful and became 
 troublesome we turned round to the native Irish and made 
 a virtue of protecting them against our own people whom we 
 had injured. When the penal laws ceased to be useful to 
 us, we did not allow them to be executed. We played off 
 Catholic against Protestant while we were sacrificing both 
 to our own jealousy. Having made the government of the 
 island impossible for those whom we had planted there to 
 govern it, we emancipate the governed, and to conciliate them 
 we allow them to appropriate the possessions of their late 
 masters. And we have not conciliated the native Irish ; it 
 was impossible that we should ; we have simply armed them 
 with the only weapons which enable them to revenge their 
 wrongs upon us. 
 
 The history of the West Indies is a precise parallel. The 
 islands were necessary to our safety in our struggle with France 
 and Spain. The colonists held them chiefly for us as a 
 garrison, and we in turn gave the colonists their slaves. The 
 white settlers ruled as in Ireland, the slaves obeyed, and all 
 went swimmingly. Times changed at home. Slavery became 
 unpopular ; it was abolished ; and, with a generosity for which 
 we never ceased to applaud ourselves, we voted an indemnity 
 of twenty millions to the owners. We imagined that we had 
 acquitted our consciences, but such debts are not discharged 
 by payments of money. We had introduced the slaves into 
 the islands for our own advantage ; in setting them free we 
 revolutionised society. We remained still responsible for the 
 social consequences, and we did not choose to remember it. 
 The planters were guilty only, Hke the Irish landlords, of 
 having ceased to be necessary to us. We practised our virtues 
 vicariously at their expense : we had the praise and honour, 
 they had the suffering. They begged that the emancipation 
 might be gradual ; our impatience to clear our reputation 
 refused to wait. Their system of cultivation being deranged, 
 they petitioned for protection against the competition of 
 countries where slavery continued. The request was natural, 
 
HISTORICAL POLICY OF ENGLAND 327 
 
 but could not be listened to because to grant it might raise 
 infinitesimally the cost of the British workman's breakfast. 
 They struggled on, and even when a new rival rose in the beet- 
 root sugar they refused to be beaten. The European powers, 
 to save their beetroot, went on to support it with a bounty. 
 Against the purse of foreign governments the sturdiest indi- 
 viduals cannot compete. Defeated in a fight which had become 
 unfair, the planters looked, and looked in vain, to their own 
 government for help. Finding none, they turned to their 
 kindred in the United States \ and there, at last, they found a 
 hand held out to them. The Americans were willing, though 
 at a loss of two millions and a half of revenue, to admit the 
 poor West Indians to their own market. But a commercial 
 treaty was necessary ; and a treaty could not be made without 
 the sanction of the English Government. The English Govern- 
 ment, on some fine-drawn crotchet, refused to colonies which 
 were weak and helpless what they would have granted without 
 a word if demanded by Victoria or New South Wales, whose 
 resentment they feared. And when the West Indians, harassed, 
 desperate, and half ruined, cried out against the enormous in- 
 justice, in the fear that their indignation might affect their 
 allegiance and lead them to seek admission into the American 
 Union, we extend the franchise among the blacks, on whose 
 hostility to such a measure we know that we can rely. 
 
 There is no occasion to suspect responsible English politi- 
 cians of any sinister purpose in what they have done or not 
 done, or suspect them, indeed, of any purpose at all. They 
 act from day to day under the pressure of each exigency as it 
 rises, and they choose the course which is least directly 
 inconvenient. But the result is to have created in the Antilles 
 and Jamaica so many fresh Irelands, and I beUeve that British 
 colonists the world over will feel together in these questions. 
 They will not approve ; rather they will combine to condemn 
 the betrayal of their own fellow-countrymen. If England 
 desires her colonies to rally round her, she must deserve their 
 affection and deserve their respect. She will find neither one 
 nor the other if she carelessly sacrifices her own people in any 
 
328 THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES 
 
 part of the world to fear or convenience. The magnetism 
 which will bind them to her must be found in herself or no- 
 where. 
 
 Perhaps nowhere ! Perhaps if we look to the real origin of 
 all that has gone wrong with us, of the policy which has flung 
 Ireland back into anarchy, which has weakened our influence 
 abroad, which has ruined the oldest of our colonies, and has 
 made the continuance under our flag of the great communities 
 of our countrymen who are forming new nations in the Pacific 
 a question of doubt and uncertainty, we shall find it in our 
 own distractions, in the form of government which is fast 
 developing into a civil war under the semblance of peace,, 
 where party is more than country, and a victory at the hustings 
 over a candidate of opposite principles more glorious than a 
 victory in the field over a foreign foe. Society in republican 
 Rome was so much interested in the faction fights of Clodius 
 and Milo that it could hear with apathy of the destruction of 
 Crassus and a Roman army. The senate would have sold 
 Caesar to the Celtic chiefs in Gaul, and the modern English 
 enthusiast would disintegrate the British Islands to purchase 
 the Irish vote. Till we can rise into some nobler sphere of 
 thought and conduct we may lay aside the vision of a con- 
 federated empire. 
 
 Oh, England, model to thy inward greatness, 
 Like little body with a mighty heart, 
 What might'st thou do that honour would thee do 
 Were all thy children kind and natural ! 
 
 Kelly & Co., Printers, Gate Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, W.C. ; and Kingston-on-ThameB. 
 
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