black usher shouts silence, or swears a witness after the usual caution
of “Take se bible in you righ’ ’and"....

[Illustration: TROPICAL RAIN]

THE MILITARY CAMP AT NEWCASTLE

CHAPTER XI

THE MILITARY CAMP AT NEWCASTLE

In the streets of Kingston I had frequently seen companies of one or
other of the brilliant West Indian Regiments swinging along to the music
of their drums, and on dance and dinner nights I had noticed Artillery
officers lounging about the terraces of my hotel. I had seen a couple of
Service Corps men trying their polo ponies, and afar off, among a
sparkling group of bejewelled women, I once caught sight of a glittering
aide-de-camp. But of our friend Tommy of the line I had seen nothing. A
friendly Artilleryman assured me that some of the British Line were on
the island. I met him in the Kingston High Street, and he pointed
towards the mountain chain which overhangs the town. “They’re up there,”
he said. Following his direction, I saw a few white specks faintly
showing through the summit haze of a mountain peak. The white specks, I
discovered, were the cantonments of Newcastle, the military hill station
of Jamaica.

The next morning we started at nine, and drove along shaded lanes and
dusty, open roads, flanked by gardens and plantations, banana trees,
pines, and cocoanuts. Around us the air was transparently clear, above
us a sky of the deepest blue, and everywhere--above, below and
around--we felt the sun. For two miles we had the level road, and then
we reached the mountains.

A rushing mountain torrent crashing through a deep chasm filled almost
to the brim with giant boulders, on which trees and plants and creeping
flowers had found abundant soil; a road twisting like a tangled thread
up and along the face of the mountain, and then lost in the mists of the
summit; a heavy scent of tropical flowers; a vast sea of flashing
colour--these things marked the beginning of the mountains. Slowly we
crawled along a road just wide enough to contain our buggy. On one side
the mountain walled us in; on the other a precipice deepened as we
ascended. The valley below and the walls around were clothed in yellow
grass and thickly set with trees; cotton and pine and cocoanut, banana,
orange, and a hundred others grew in clumps and groves and lines, just
as their father-seed had fallen or casual native had chanced to plant.
Sometimes we passed a mile or so of level stretch, and there we found
plantations and nigger huts. Below us we could see coffee mills and
sugar estates; halfway up another peak a little church appeared amidst a
tiny hamlet; but far above we made out Newcastle and the upper heights,
bare and frowning amidst the gloom of the mountain mists. Soon the
climate changed. In place of fruit and flowers, we found brown scrub and
English gorse. Rainbows became common as trees. Then the sun
disappeared,

[Illustration: A HOUSE ON THE HILLS]

and we found the clammy rain-mist. Somehow we had slipped away from
joyous sun-kissed Jamaica and found Newcastle.

If I were a soldier I should pray all day long that I might never see
the military station at Newcastle. Imagine a small parade-ground,
levelled by spade work; a straggling collection of huts, built on
never-ending steps; a few cottages for the officers; a very obvious
burial-ground, well stocked with tombstones streaked with names, planted
among the huts just outside the reading-room, and you have the
cantonments of Newcastle. On the parade-ground, half a yard from the
face of a step of rock thirty feet high, a couple of posts and a tape
enable the sporting Tommy to practise goal shooting from dawn till
sunset. Failing this he has half-a-dozen six-week old English newspapers
in the reading-room, and a magnificent view of Kingston always to be
seen through the mists and rain which seem for ever to bedim this eerie
camp. The officers, I believe, have a tennis-court; but for Tommy it is
shooting the goal, the newspapers, or the view, if he wishes to avoid
the cells. Otherwise----

I heard the story from Tommy himself. He showed us the camp; first the
burial-ground, and then--“Well there ain’t much more to see ’ere. That’s
the parade-ground, and that’s the sergeants’ mess. We sleeps over there,
and bein’ Sunday, the canteen don’t open to-day till six. We usually
shoots the goal, and smokes, and sometimes we rags the blacks. See that
nigger ’ut? Well, we goes there sometimes--of course, it’s out’er
bounds--and takes the beer and rags the blacks. Once we chucked three
or four of ’em over the gully because they set on one of ours. There’s
one or two in cells now for molestin’ the natives. Then some of us
deserts, you know. Goes off down to the coast, ships as firemen and gets
to the States. I ’aven’t done that yet. Don’t know why we come up ’ere;
there ain’t no fever nowhere now....” It was a long and interesting
description he gave us. I gathered that in spite of the parade-ground
and kicking the goal; in spite of the reading-room, with its platform
and soldier-painted scenery; in spite even of the tiny billiard-table
and the picturesque cemetery, the life of Tommy in garrison at Newcastle
is not a jolly one. Tired of doing the things he is allowed to do, and
without the means to appreciate expensive joys of the canteen, the
youthful, full-blooded soldier sallies forth on mischief bent. Then he
experiences a salutary change of scenery in the confines of the cells.
Sometimes, as our friend remarked, he deserts.

Every year for many weary months a few hundred Tommies do these things
in Newcastle. Kingston and the plains are peopled by tourists in search
of health and pleasure; the climate of the island is entirely
salubrious; Jamaica is a recognised sanatorium; but the Government says
that the British soldier must live in the Hill station so many months of
the year. It is a ridiculous story, something in the nature of a
repetition of the blunders of fifty years ago. Then the British
regiments were sent to garrison Fort Augusta, a camp delightfully
situated in the midst of a deadly swamp. From Fort Augusta the military
authorities jumped to Newcastle. Fifty years hence these gentlemen may
realise that the plains of Jamaica are perfectly healthy, and that
Newcastle is really a little dull; until then--poor Tommy.

Newcastle is not unhealthy: it is merely a little damp and a little
dull. From the point of view of the tourist it is magnificent. The
romantic grandeur of the giant mountain chains stretching east and west;
the wonderful view of town and harbour; the marvellous colour effects;
the cathedral-like solemnity of the place--all these things are
delightful in the extreme. But I turned my back on the place without
regret. For I remembered that far below the valleys were bathed in light
and warmth and colour. I knew that halfway down the mountain I should
find the orange, the passion flower, and the scented air of the tropics.
And I was glad when the horses bumped us along the path which zigzagged
downwards through the clouds to the land of sunshine.

[Illustration: GOING TO WORK, BARBADOES]

THE RECREATIONS OF THE BLACK MAN

CHAPTER XII

THE RECREATIONS OF THE BLACK MAN

Foremost in the list of a negro’s recreations should be placed the game
of love. The black man makes love with the persistency of a Don Juan and
with the fervour of a Mexican. He learns his first lessons in courtship
long before the school-day age is over. Every boy of twelve has his
honey girl, just as every coloured man of sixteen has his wife. There is
an Arcadian touch in their love meetings--a fascinating rhythm of
sensuous art in their songs of passion. The concert platforms and music
halls of London have reflected, not incorrectly, many negro love
stories; and the large straw hats and white pants and extravagant
phraseology may be counted as roughly typical of the costume and poetry
of Jamaica. The negro makes love with the natural freedom of a savage,
but the Jamaican negro tempers his love-making with poetic entreaty. I
can imagine that the Jamaican loves to hear the sonorous doggerel of his
own ecstatic wooing--that he pleads with his mistress as much for his
own pleasure as for hers. The black lady listens, and loves to listen,
because his extravagant praise appeals to her vanity, and the black
lady is as vain as any white daughter of a rich “buccra.” It may come as
a shock and surprise to most of my readers to learn that the love-sick
black man sometimes declares his love by letter. Whether this is always
due to bashfulness or to the accident of geographical distance, I know
not. But I have been privileged to read one or two impassioned missives
duly authenticated as being the love letters of coloured men to dusky
belles. They are interesting enough for reproduction here. I obtained
them from a copy of a Christmas number of a Jamaican paper--the
_Gleaner_ of Kingston.

The first is written by a love-sick native to a Creole widow. It is
addressed in full to

     “MRS. AGOSTISS R---- .

     “I hope you know Valintine is now in season. I will take the
     pleasure to write you this; my hearth is yours and you are mine,
     but do you know it. I love you as the bee love the flower. The
     flower may fade, but true love shall never. My love for you is a
     love that cannot be fade. You shall be my love here as in heaven
     for ever. The Rose in June is not so sweet as when two lovers’
     kisses meet. Kiss me quick and be my honey. I still remain true
     lover,

                                                “JAMES.”

James is an honest and prosperous black man in the mountains of Jamaica.
It is pleasant to know that “Mrs. Agostiss” listened to his simple
appeal and became “his honey.”

The second epistle has a religious flavour. King Solomon is artfully
brought forward as a sort of “backer” of the ardent writer’s suit:--

     “MY DEAR LOVE--At present my love for you is so strong that I
     cannot express. So I even write that you may see it. It is every
     man deauty to write a formil letter.

     “My pen is bad and my ink is pale, but my love will never fail.
     King Solomon say that Love is strong as death, and Jealousy is
     cruel than the grave. Love me little, bear me longer; hasty love is
     not love at all. This is the first time I sat down to write you
     about it.

     “I love my Dove. Your love is black and ruby--the chefer of ten
     thousand. You head is much fine gold. You lock are bushy and black
     as a raven. Your eyes was the eyes in the river, by the rivers of
     water. Your cheeks as a bead (_i.e._ bed) of spices as sweet
     flowers. Your lips is like lilies. You hand as gold wring. Your
     legs as a pillar of marble set upon sockets of fine gold. Your
     countenance as a Lebanon. Your mouth look to be more sweet. Your
     sweet altogether.

     “I have no more time to write as I am so tired and full time to go
     to bead. I will now close my letter with love.”

Poor “Garg Plummer” is in a desperate plight indeed. It is to be hoped
that his “dear lov” listened to his strong entreaty. But it could not be
otherwise. What human woman could resist the following:--

     “DEAR LOV--I is wrote you a letter to beg of you to make me your
     lover, but you is not wrote me again. I is dead of love every day
     wen you look so hansom I cane (_i.e._ cannot) sleep, cane eat. I
     dun no how I feel. I beg you to accep af me as your lover. The rose
     is not sweet as a kiss from you, my lov.

     “Do meet me to-night at the bottom gate an give me you love. Miss
     Lucy toots (_i.e._ teeth) so green I is like one ear of earn, an
     her eye dem is so pretty. Lard! I wish I never been born. Poor me,
     Garg (_i.e._ George), I lov Miss Lucy to distraction. Yours truly,

                                                “GARG PLUMMER.

     “Answer me sone lov.”

The fourth letter I reprint simply to show how a little greed may kill
all the romance of a negro’s love. We trace an artificiality in his love
passages. It is hoped that his note produced nothing but a silent
contempt:--

     “I writ to hear from you wether you intend to make me a fool. I is
     not a puppy show that you think you find any better than me. i
     witch (wish) to send the yam bed for plantin in your garden, but i
     do not know wether i will reap the benefit of it.”

Number five is honest but unhappy. He is filled with forebodings of
evil. The green-eyed monster has claimed him as his very own:--

     “MY DEAR JEMIMA--I has not heard from you for dis 2 weeks gorn. Has
     you forgot de day wen

[Illustration: ROSIE, A JAMAICAN NEGRESS]

     you mek me promise to be my true luv? You must know dat I has heard
     a lot of tings about you which has been sorely disappoint me in
     you.

     “I have heard dat you stan at your gate and talk to a fine dress
     coachman. I have heard dat you go to church wid him. I have heard
     dat you am promise to me but you luv him.

                                                GEORGE.

     “Many kisses me sweet luv.”

The sixth, and last, is a jumble of incomprehensible passion. No doubt
the writer knew what he meant, and perhaps the lady was able to
interpret the author’s meaning. But I do not know whether the average
reader will gain much by reading:--

     “DEAR ELIZA--I take the liberty of myself to inform you this few
     lines, hoping you may not offend (_i.e._ be offended), as often is.
     I had often seen you in my hearts. There are myriads of loveliness
     in my hearts toward you. My loving intentions were really unto
     another female, but now the love between I and she are very out now
     entirely.

     “And now his the excepted time I find to explain to my lovely
     appearance, but whether if their be any love in your hearts or mind
     towards me it is hard for I to know, but his I take this liberty to
     inform you this kind, loving, and affectionate letter.

     “I hope when it received into your hand you receive with peace and
     all goodwill, pleasure, and comforts, and hoping that you might
     ansure me from this letter with a loving appearance, that in due
     time Boath of us might be able to join together in the holy state
     of matremony.

     “I hoping that the answer which you are to send to me it may unto
     good intention to me from you that when I always goine to write you
     again I may be able to write saying, my dear, lovely Eliza.

     “Your affectionate lover, affraied (_i.e._ afraid), J.S.

     “Dear Eliza, wether if you are willing or not, Please to sent me an
     ansure back. Do my dear.”

So much for the black man’s love letters.

For an accurate picture of the love scenes you must visit the island of
rivers and take your place in one of those quiet corners of the banana
field, and wait for George and Jemima, or James and Mrs. Agostiss R----.
I cannot describe the scene. Go to Jamaica and see it for yourself. It
is enough that I have made public the love letters of six men I have
never seen; I will not attempt to deal with the meeting and courting of
a black man and his sweetheart, lest, unconsciously, I should travesty a
fine poem.

The scenes of the love meetings of the natives of Jamaica are always
framed in a rich setting of tropical moonlight, or waving palm trees and
flashing fire-flies.

If a negro lover could not be eloquent in the midst of such rare beauty
he would be unworthy of the name of man.

Next to love-making, eating and drinking, and then dancing may be
counted the recreations of the Jamaican coloured gentleman. Though it
cannot with justice be stated that the negro is an excessively large
eater, the manner in which he takes his food evidences the keen
enjoyment he gets from every meal. There is no question of lack of
appetite in a negro when feeding time arrives. Whether the dish before
him be fruit or salt fish, or mashed vegetables cooked with fat, the
diner attacks his food with the utmost relish. There is great licking of
lips, rolling of eyes and heavy munching by strong jaws. Give a negro a
meat bone, and when he has done with it the fragments that remain would
not be of the slightest service to the hungriest dog. When the native
has finished his dish of vegetables he cleans the plate with his fingers
and tongue. There is no food wasted in the land of eternal sunshine.
Give a black child a dozen mangoes and then watch from a safe distance.
Before you have seen the child’s manner of eating, you have not realised
how juicy a mango really is. With the negro, eating is not an art, but a
sensation of concentrated joy. It is very much the same with drinking.
He can go an extraordinary length of time without needing any liquid,
but when a negro gets the bottle to his lips, quarts disappear at every
gulp. No matter whether the drink be water or cokernut juice or rum, the
true black man cannot sip. He drinks as much as he can swallow without
stopping to take breath, and then he has finished.

A social gathering is never a success in any Jamaican hut or
drawing-room unless the assembled guests are given leave to indulge in
the pastime of the dance. Dancing is to the black lady what small talk
is to her white sister. Indeed, it is infinitely more even than that.
Dancing is everything. They dance when they are merry and full of joy,
and they dance when they mourn their dead; they dance when they are
hungry and when they have feasted. They dance when they are carrying
their fruits to the market-place, and they dance as they return with the
spoils of their trading. In moments of religious ecstasy their limbs
twitch for the relief found in treading the graceful measure, and when
great sorrow has fallen on a household, the members dance slowly to
express their woe.

Curiously enough their dancing lacks precision; they have not set
pieces; no master teaches them “left foot forward, right foot up,
twist”; there is no “one two three, hop, one two three, hop” about the
coloured dance, yet it is always perfectly graceful. If there is music
so much the better, but if there is no music the dancing goes on just
the same. The Jamaicans dance with their legs and bodies and heads; all
their limbs are brought into play. The arms wave in sympathy with the
active legs, the body bends, the head is thrust forwards and backwards.
The whole business is snake-like and fascinating.

Sometimes when a large party is collected, a dance will be arranged to
represent some story or history. Biblical pictures are the most popular,
and the unrehearsed effect of fifty perspiring negroes, seeking to
represent in a ballet the story of Jonah and the Whale,

[Illustration: COUNTRYWOMAN GOING TO MARKET, BARBADOES]

is not without a certain weird and extravagant humour. When the story is
of a more bellicose kind--when, for instance, the tableau is that of
David and Goliath, the David sometimes overdoes the punishment of the
vanquished giant, and there is a little riot caused by the indignation
of a too severely-handled artist, who had been persuaded with difficulty
to enact the unpopular part. To the black people acting ceases to be
make-believe as soon as the dancing begins; David is David, and Goliath
is in fact the unhappy giant. So it can be imagined that difficulties
frequently arise though there has been no malicious intent, and though
the violence may have been born of pure unconscious art.

Sometimes the coloured dancers break into song, and then the bizarre
effect is heightened and intensified. The soft, melodious chants of the
happy darkies are in perfect keeping with the languorous climate and
romantic scenery of the tropical island. The songs are of love and
passion. “Ma honey and ma little bird, ma sweet lips and true love” are
the usual descriptions of the black man for his mistress. Most of these
songs can be heard in the High Street of Kingston, in the early hours of
market days when the villagers come down from the country to sell their
garden-produce. But the real recreation of the negro is love-making; and
all these things, with the exception of the eating and drinking, are
simply parts of the game.

[Illustration: A MARTINIQUE LADY]

THE DANDY AND THE COQUETTE

CHAPTER XIII

THE DANDY AND THE COQUETTE

You can see him in the market-place or in the drinking-shops. Sometimes
he lolls about with his thin cigarette on the Kingston tram cars, but
more frequently he is to be found leaning on his walking-stick at the
corners of mean streets. As a rule his straw hat is tilted in the
fashion affected by the London office-boy when taking his lady-love for
a Sunday stroll on Peckham Rye. His coat is cut in the tight American
style, which may be admirable for the comfort of people who live in
climates colder than that of Kingston, Jamaica. His trousering is vivid
and lacking in style, and his yellow boots are cut with the easy grace
of a working cobbler who also deals in pictures. The glory of his get-up
is his collar. It may be that our Dandy is not rich enough to afford a
frequent laundry bill, so that his collar is worn to the bitter end of
its condition of starchiness. Nevertheless it is always there, encasing
the neck, and twisting each discordant ear in a manner painful to
behold. He walks with a curious strut--for all the world like a
half-lame peacock; and when he meets any member of the fair sex he
curls back his heavy lips and displays two rows of the whitest teeth.
When he winks one is irresistibly reminded of the famous drill-sergeant
who instructed his troop of country yeoman to “draw swords and twist
your eyes round with a loud click.” The negro’s wink is a serious
matter; it suggests a wealth of fearful possibilities. It is repellent,
but alluring--frightfully attractive.

As a rule it is a youth who mixes much with the tourists that ventures
in this unseemly manner to ogle the women and decorate the promenades.
In his working hours the true Dandy is usually a call-boy at one of the
hotels, or an assistant waiter. It is not at all certain that he is a
single man; probably he has a young wife who takes in washing, or cleans
the boots at some boarding-house. But his better half is never to be
seen at his side when he dons his yellow boots and crimson necktie and
goes for his Sunday stroll. He feels that it would be foolish to permit
the dowdy rags of his working spouse to discount the glory of his rich
attire. So he twists his cigarette (he cannot afford to light it since
he has not got another) in his brass ringed fingers, and struts and
grins in solitary grandeur.

It is his earnest hope that he may find some chance acquaintance, who,
having more money but less magnificent attire, may invite him to drink
in order that he may gain a sort of reflected splendour. So every friend
he meets is hailed with a great gusto; even the working busmen in their
shabby driving clothes are not beneath his notice, and he would be
proud to clasp the hand of a coloured scavenger provided there was the
remotest chance of finding such a person with a few Jamaican pennies.
Your true Dandy is never exclusive; he is an adventurer pure and simple;
and he dresses in the highest height of fashion, partly from great
vanity and partly because he will not advertise his poverty. Sometimes
he meets one of his own tribe, and then Dandy walks with Dandy and there
is a heavy music of negro laughter. Together they are bold as half-tamed
lions. They accost a white man and ask for a match or a cigarette; they
will even raise their tiny hats to the wives of high officials. Then
they make a tour round the rum shops and enter each, hoping to find a
friend or make a new acquaintance. If they pass the ancient market-women
selling sweet stuffs, they will exercise their wit at her expense, and
the ends of their slender canes will disturb her fly-blown dainties; if
she is not extremely quick of sight, they will thieve a sugar stick or
two, and munch them in the open street; they exhibit a profound contempt
for the law of petty larceny. Though the sticky stuffs will not improve
the condition of their lips and fingers, the dirty face smudges will
exhibit to an admiring world the fact that they have eaten luxuriously.

When our pair of gallants meet a lady whose acquaintance they desire,
they introduce themselves with a playful prod with their walking-canes;
if the damsel should resent this undue familiarity, she must endure a
long and loud chorus of personalities. For the Dude is lacking in the
elements of chivalrous refinement. But as a rule the lady is proud to be
conquered by such a duet of splendour. She submits to the playful
gallantries of the couple, and takes her full part in the round of
boisterous persiflage.

Great joy fills the heart of Dandy when a cynical busman sarcastically
hails them with “Want a bus, sah?” No matter how fascinating the lady
who at that particular moment may be engaging his attention, he steps in
the roadway and loudly asks the fare to the swellest hotel he can think
of. The grinning busman replies, and then there is much bargaining done
in the loudest tones in the public highroad. It is a game of
make-believe. The busman pretends that he has found a possible fare, the
Dandy pretends that he wanted to be driven to a certain place for a
certain sum. Such a scene does not suggest amusement to the Englishman,
but it is rare sport to the penniless Dude and superior busman. The end
comes only when the busman sees a really possible customer and whips his
horse along; then the Dude assumes an air of offended dignity and
resumes his conversation with the lady. It is truly a brainless,
exquisite Dandy.

With similar characteristics but employing very different methods is the
coloured lady of extreme fashion. She dresses as extravagantly as the
dandiest Dandy; she wears vivid colours in cheap silks or heavy brocades
or velvets; she affects coloured picture-hats of huge dimensions, and
her foot-wear is always made in brilliant patent-leather; but she is not
so poor or

[Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO MARKET, JAMAICA]

so adventurous as the Dandy. She is careful in her conversation. A
polite accent is her chief ambition. She simpers and lisps and uses
pigeon English, and when she is forced to laugh she screens her face
with a scented cambric handkerchief. She is a coloured lady, and not the
richest, boldest busman dare claim her friendship, though it may be that
one of them is her husband. Her friends are among the chapel people; the
preachers, the deacons, and the gentleman of the choir. She will
condescend to notice West Indian non-commissioned officers, but in doing
this she is reaching to her lowest limit. Her ambition is to be counted
rich and beautiful. She is a lady of colour and fashion. Call her a
negress and she will faint with indignant shame. Her husband is a
citizen with a vote, and she is his lady. Though she parades the High
Streets her object is simply to be admired. Though she is an absolute
coquette, her desire is not to make chance acquaintance with the
unimportant natives on the side walks. If a white man, or a rich man who
is nearly white, looks and looks again--well that of course is a
different matter.

Harmless types, both of them. Both the Dandy and the coloured lady of
extreme fashion are amusing, picturesque, and harmless. They have
elected to play droll parts in the game of life; it may be that they
lack perspective, but certainly they possess great imagination. Their’s
is a part of make-believe, and they play it with great seriousness.

[Illustration: A HOUSE NEAR THE BOG WALK, JAMAICA]

BOG WALK

CHAPTER XIV

BOG WALK

Jamaica, the land of wood and water, is rich in the possession of
countless streams of clear, rushing water. Each of its mountains and
rocky hills contains at least one or two fine waterfalls; each of its
peaceful valleys is streaked with a silver band of river-water flashing
in the sun. To say which of all the rivers might be counted the most
beautiful would be to offend a thousand streams, and all the Jamaican
districts save one. But this at least can be said. No stream in Jamaica
is more beautiful than that part of the Rio Cobra River that flows from
Spanish Town, seawards, through the country called by the islanders, Bog
Walk.

I know a man who was sent by his English doctor to Jamaica for rest and
change. He landed in Kingston and, falling in love with the island,
determined to stop for many weeks. After three days he left Kingston for
Spanish Town, and there he saw Bog Walk.

His intention had been to stop in Spanish Town one night and then
journey farther inland in order to thoroughly explore the country.
Spanish Town delighted him; Bog Walk fascinated him. He bought a
fishing-rod and sat in a punt, anchored in the centre of the Rio Cobra
River at Bog Walk, smoking his pipe and catching fish for five weeks. He
could not tear himself away. And that was all the Jamaica he ever saw.
He had seen Kingston and Spanish Town and Bog Walk, and that he counted
quite enough. And who, knowing these places, knowing the Rio Cobra River
at Bog Walk especially, would be foolish enough to count my friend
foolish. At any rate he saw enough to enable him to say that Jamaica is
the most beautiful country in the world. That is his unqualified
opinion. To him Jamaica is a white city filled to overflowing with
bungalows and coloured people; and a glorious golden valley rich in
tropical trees and fairy flowers which shelter a clear river alive with
fish and brilliant weed. For five weeks he lived in Paradise, at peace
with all the world. His Jamaica is the memory of that time. For our part
we saw the rich Cobra River and drifted down along the shores of Bog
Walk in a flat punt, listening to the music of the birds and the melody
of the insects; watching the shadows of heavy trees flirting with the
river ripples; shivering along the dark stretches where the sky was
blackened by the heavy bamboo clumps, and listening, awe-stricken, to
the noise of their clicking stems. The beauty of the bamboo is a
melancholy beauty; the high canes, fluttering with wavy foliage at their
heads, look cold and miserable along their stems. Our sporting friend,
Large, said they reminded him of those unpleasant

[Illustration: DRY HARBOUR, JAMAICA]

moments in his school days when he chose corporal punishment in
preference to Latin lines. Forrest would not paint them. They were too
foolishly ugly. And I will leave them alone and remember only the rich
river glades of sunlit water studded with white lilies and aflame with
brilliant weeds. I will call to mind the banks filled with palm trees,
thin bush-topped giants, straight as arrows or curved like the archer’s
bow. The palm groves, planted by the mysterious hand of nature in the
form of army corps in battle formation; the front-rank trees on either
side of the stream engaged in bowing in accordance with the chivalry of
romantic forests. The bent trees form a graceful arbour, miles long. The
sun, filtering through the palm-tree roof, spangles the river with
flashing gems of light. And both banks are cool and soft and filled with
scented plants and gaudy blossoms. Occasionally a dragon fly, pursued by
twittering birds, flashes ahead, twisting and doubling like tropical
lightning. Our punt makes no noise as it floats down stream, guided from
the stern by a negro with a bamboo pole. I sit in the bow and watch the
little brown, river-tortoise, the water-rats and gleaming fish.

In the water of the Rio Cobra River there is only one thing that is not
really beautiful, and that is the tortoise. Made into ornaments for my
lady’s hair, the shell of the tortoise is full of subtle fascination.
But on the back of its mother reptile the shell is coloured like the mud
of the Thames at Lambeth; and in the scum that hides the beauty of the
shell weeds of the darkest, dreariest kind grow, like seaweed on an old
wooden sailing-ship. When the tortoise swims the weeds trail from his
back like a cluster of rats’ tails.

Animal life is not in evidence. The most remarkable thing in connection
with Jamaica is the fact that, practically, it cannot boast the
possession of a single indigenous animal larger than the rat species.
The island should be filled with deer. The high bush-covered mountain
slopes would give cover to the greatest of the antlered tribe, and here
among the trees of the valleys and the water of the clear rivers one can
imagine that the quiet pools are the drinking-places of herds of
elephants. But Jamaica is barren so far as animals are concerned. Not
even a monkey scrambles among the leafy vastness of the heaviest
forests, and even in the thickest undergrowth a man may tread with
safety.

Large, who in England is a squire and a sportsman, frequently bemoaned
this lack of animal life. “Put a herd of deer in each of the forests of
Jamaica, and in five years the island will be the sportsman’s paradise,”
he said. And I have no doubt his estimate was correct. I put his opinion
on record for the benefit of those who run the island for profit.

Our boat floated along a stream so narrow that one’s arm, stretched
horizontally at full length, would have measured the exact width; the
attitude would have enabled our fingers to brush through thick beds of
flowering orchids. We passed a native ruthlessly cutting away fragrant
weeds with a murderous machette; we swept beneath a bridge of solid
masonry, and in a little time emerged into a great pool of silent water
which made our little craft pause, and enabled us to dream in peace. It
would be a horrible thing to travel at more than one knot speed down
this river of scented beauty.

We remained quietly still and gazed at a scene as glorious as a young
child’s dream-fairyland. A dream of wood and rock and water, shaded and
shrouded by the wildest mass of luxuriant tropical foliage.

This Jamaica is indeed the Queen of the Antilles, the fairest jewel in
the golden Caribbean, the land of perpetual music and light and beauty.
As I have already written, its name should be God’s island. Its beauty
cannot be translated by art or word or music. It is a dreamland and a
land of dreams.

People talk of its industrial backwardness, its commercial weakness,--of
the impossibility of its finances. I myself have written of its
commercial future. As well discuss the poverty of the convolvulus or the
nakedness of the lily. Jamaica was created by Providence to show mankind
something of the meaning of beauty. It was to stand as an explanation of
Eden--a glimpse of Paradise. Nature never intended that it should become
a rum garden, or even a field for speculative agriculture. It is just a
place that should be allowed to stand for ever as the garden of the
world; the vigorous yet languorous Hesperian reflection of all the
beauty of the east and west and north and south; the heart and soul of
terrestrial beauty. We drifted along, but I know not what else we saw.
I remember the place in a hazy manner; my memory serves me as though it
were a kaleidoscope whose every piece of broken glass was a glimpse of a
new world fitted with joyous life and beauty.

I know that we slipped anchor at last and drank the milk from green
cocoanuts. I know that we got into a buggy and drove along a white dusty
road and reached a place where a meal was served and eaten. But most of
all I remember that across the pools and streams of the Bog Walk gorge
of the Rio Cobra River is to be heard the music of the stars and the
rich lullaby of the rustling of angels’ wings. And Large said it would
have been better had there been a few deer about; Forrest had put down
his sketch-book with a sigh.

For the rest any Jamaica guide-book will tell you that the flat-bottomed
river-boat cost you only a few silver coins.

THE POLITICS OF A JAMAICAN NEGRO

[Illustration: SUNSET, NORTH COAST, JAMAICA]

CHAPTER XV

THE POLITICS OF A JAMAICAN NEGRO

I met him in a country road a few miles out of Spanish Town. He was a
well-dressed black, and had that air of sanctity about him which
immediately suggests the church of Nonconformity. He wished me good
morning with cheerful superiority, and I engaged him in conversation. He
was not a parson, but he prayed to God that he was a good Christian and
a deacon of His holy Church. He would have discussed every dogma known
to Christendom had I been in the philosophic mood. But I led the way to
politics, and my friend found congenial ground.

He was an Imperialist and a Protectionist, and withal, he added, a
staunch democrat. He believed in God and Jamaica and the negro race.
Jamaica for the Jamaicans. It must be a government for the people by the
people. Not a fantastical caricature of law-making and liberty which
always could be vetoed by a despotic Governor and his clique. He hoped
he was loyal to the Crown and to the King of Britain, but his heart bled
for his own country and his own race. He was prepared to make Jamaica
the horizon of his political outlook. His duty to God was to attend to
the needs of the people of his own race and blood settled in the country
of their birth. “We black people outnumber you whites by at least forty
to one; is it rational that we should always submit to your despotic
government? Though the British Government is the cleanest and the most
enlightened in the world, neither Imperial Parliament nor a Governor
four or five years resident in the colony, properly understands the
needs of Jamaica. Since the population is black let the Government be
black. The British gave their slaves unconditioned freedom; that was an
act for which no negro owes any thanks to Britain. Freedom is the
natural right of every individual, whether he is white or black; so the
black man owes no thanks to the white for having been permitted to claim
his natural heritage of freedom. Rather do the whites owe a great debt
to the black for the gross injustice of the slave days.” That was a
matter he did not wish to press. To-day he and the people of his race
are, as individuals, entirely free. His complaint was that politically
they were still bound. They are not permitted to govern themselves as
they would like to do. The Governor of Jamaica has never been a black
man. Yet, for all practical purposes, the population of Jamaica is
entirely black.

My friend had scathing criticisms to offer on the questions of the
Jamaican Representative Government. The minority--by law it is a
permanent minority--of the members of the legislative assembly are
elected by the people. The elected members were returned after having
pledged themselves to certain measures. These measures were, in the
majority of cases, thrown out by the Governors’ permanent legal
majority. Government under such conditions was characterised by my
friend as being little better than a farce. He repeated his phrase
“fantastical caricature of law-making.”

“What would you have?” I asked.

The verbosity of his reply was only equalled by its vehemence.

“I would have Jamaica governed as England is governed. The people of
this island have every moral right to govern themselves, to frame their
own laws and to administer those laws. We are no longer barbarians; we
are an educated people with ambitions, and the strength to attain our
ambitions. We recognise that it is a fine thing to be a part of the
great Empire of Britain, but we recognise, even more clearly, that it is
a finer thing to be a free, unfettered nation. England will always have
our heartiest support and affection. When we have become a nation and
ceased to be a crown colony, Jamaica will always feel that really she is
the child of Britain.”

“So you anticipate that one day Jamaica will be entirely independent of
England?” I asked.

“It is inevitable,” he replied. “Already the more educated coloured
people feel the bitterness of their semi-dependence. Already the
smouldering embers of the fire of absolute freedom are in evidence
throughout the land. We are not without our politicians. We are not
without our leaders; perhaps we have not yet found one quite strong
enough to lead us on to political victory. We have not found our
Cromwell. But, some day, soon, a strong man will appear, and Jamaica
will become an independent nation.”

“And what about the white men?”

“They will be unaffected. They will always be made welcome in our
country; law and order will prevail under the new system just as it
prevails to-day. You English have taught us how to become a great
people; you have given us the immeasurable benefit of your religion; you
have given us a framework for our laws and constitution. When the time
comes for us to make full use of that knowledge, you will find that your
wisdom was not thrown to waste.”

“But the freedom you aspire to can only come by revolution.”

“Political revolution--yes; armed revolution--no. We natives of Jamaica
think we frequently see indications in your English Parliament that your
Liberal party would not be averse to granting us that freedom which, one
day, we shall be strong enough to demand. I believe that in the end
justice must prevail. I know that our independence must come because I
know that it is just that it should come.”

“And,” I suggested, “if you cannot obtain it by peaceful methods you
will take it by armed force?”

“I do not think, when we are ready, that armed force will be necessary.
Jamaica is no longer of great value to England.”

[Illustration: ON THE BEACH, BARBADOES]

“But England guards the interests of her children, and nearly all the
land of Jamaica belongs to English planters.”

“The land of Jamaica belongs by natural right to the people of Jamaica.”

“You believe in the doctrine of land nationalisation?”

“I believe in the doctrine of justice.”

“Would you propose to compensate the planters when you despoil them of
their land?”

“That I cannot say. Compensation such as that would be a simple act of
grace. Morally it would not be necessary.”

I mentioned to him that I had heard much about the annexation of Jamaica
by the United States.

“That will never come about,” he said. “Jamaicans would not stand it,
America does not desire it. But it would be better for America if we
were entirely independent.”

“Why?” I asked.

“When the Panama Canal is completed Jamaica will be a place of some
strategical importance,” he replied.

The conversation drifted to the condition of the people. I mentioned
that the intelligence of the majority of the coloured people was not
equal to the standard of the white.

“There I disagree,” he said. “So far we have not produced one great man.
We have no great statesmen or warriors or divines. But in the mass our
people compare favourably with the agricultural labourers of England,
Germany or France. They are a clean-living, quiet people, easily led and
easily governed.”

“You know Europe?” I asked.

“I lived in England ten years,” he replied. “I have been to many of the
continental capitals. But my heart has always been in Jamaica. I like my
own people best. We live a happier life than any European people, and we
are cleaner in our mode of living.”

“Yet,” I ventured, “the majority of the children born on the island are
illegitimate.”

“True,” he admitted, “but have you seen in Kingston, or anywhere else in
the island, any traces of an immorality to equal the wickedness of
London, Paris, or Berlin?”

I took refuge in the remark. “If you are so happy why change your
condition; why attempt to alter your system of Government, why attempt
to become an independent nation?”

“Because we have ambition, and because it is good for any nation that
its children shall be eligible for the highest honours the nation can
give. As a people we cannot be perfectly happy while we know that
another race has drawn a chalk circle, as it were, round us, and has
said, Thus far you may go, but not beyond. The possibility of
maintaining a permanent minority in the legislative council is the chalk
mark.”

“How long will it be,” I ventured, “before the chalk mark is erased?”

“That I cannot say and do not care to guess.

[Illustration: OFF TRINIDAD]

Perhaps five years, perhaps less than five years, or perhaps it will be
a quarter of a century. Your Liberal party may rub out the chalk for us,
or----”

“Or,” I insisted.

“America may suggest to England that it would be a graceful thing to
do.”

We walked along together and for some time there was a silence. Then my
friend began: “It is the only thing. The only possible solution of the
many Jamaican problems. The weakness of the English rule in Jamaica is
that the island is governed by those who are paid to govern. The
ambition of the majority of the English officials seems to be to earn
their money and begone. Jamaica is not their home. Just as I in England
always thought of this island as home, and worked in England so that I
might return here, so do the English people think of England while
living here. It would be foolish to expect anything else. The more
ambitious servants of the British Government work hard here, not so much
for the good of the place as for the good of themselves. They want to
make a noise and distinguish themselves. Their hearts are set on
promotion, not on the well-being of the people of the Government. The
same applies to some extent to the planters. English planters who have
settled in the island feel that they are living in exile. If they cannot
make money enough to afford long holidays in England,--if they cannot
send their wives to England every year and their children to English
schools,--they complain of their poverty. Economically that is wrong; it
is not fair to the country that so much money made in Jamaica should be
spent in England. I am a planter--a very successful planter. I make
quite enough money to live here in the greatest comfort, but I could not
afford prolonged holidays in England, neither could I afford to send my
wife and children there. If I were an Englishman I should bewail my fate
and call myself a pauper. As it is I count myself rich. I want no more
than I have.”

“But,” I said, “you have your tourists here. Surely more money comes
into the island from the pockets of English and American tourists than
goes out by reason of the holidays of the planters.”

“Yes,” he admitted. “But the tourist money goes to the hotel-keepers and
retail dealers in the towns. The money the planters take out is taken
from the agricultural districts; money which should have been invested
in agriculture, spent in improving the sugar plantations and the fruit
fields. We cannot hope to become rich because we have rich hotels and
flourishing tradesmen. We can hope to become rich if our agricultural
resources are developed, if our plantations are improved, and more
machinery is imported. The English planters treat the island as though
it were a gold mine to be sucked dry and then abandoned. The coloured
people know that Jamaica is not that. The three quarters of a million of
a people can only be supported in comfort by the commercial advancement
of the country. Do not forget that our population is rapidly
increasing.”

“I see at least one insurmountable difficulty in your path,” I said.
“Even if your dream of freedom came true, how would you deal with the
half-breed population?”

“We should absorb them,” he replied. “They are at one with us in our
dream of freedom.”

“And you can trust them to be at one with you always?” I asked.

“They will be our Irish,” he replied.

[Illustration: STEAMERS UNLOADING, BARBADOES]

THE WHITE MAN’S POLITICS

CHAPTER XVI

THE WHITE MAN’S POLITICS

I have given at length a political conversation I had with an
intelligent and well-informed negro. May I add the record of the talk I
had with an important servant of the Government. Though he was not
concerned with the actual work of governing, he was a man who had a
voice in the affairs of the State, a friend and servant of the
Government, a man who could well remember the Jamaica of twenty years
ago.

I dined with him in a bungalow pleasantly situated in a Kingston suburb.
And I retailed to him the opinions of my friend the coloured reformer.

“Bosh,” he said; “stuff and nonsense. Your glib acquaintance was engaged
in the delicate art of pulling your leg.”

Remembering the earnestness of my companion of Spanish Town country
road--remembering his deep seriousness--I disagreed.

“But, my dear fellow, if they tried on that sort of business we should
go for them. Eyre strung up Gordon for that sort of thing, and the black
fellows have not forgotten the lesson they were taught then. The black
Tommies--who are not all Jamaicans--in Up-Park Camp, and the white
troops at Newcastle and Port Royal, would have something to say in the
matter of Jamaican freedom.”

“How about the intervention of America?”

“So much rubbish. The Yankees have pretty well cornered the trade of the
island; the natives count their money in dollars and American notes
instead of English sovereigns, and that is about all America wants.”

“But what’s the good of Jamaica to England if America controls the
trade?”

“Give it up my boy. England’s got Jamaica and she will have to keep it.
Even dear old arrogant Britain cannot do what she likes with her
Colonies. There would be a terrible kick-up if we started turning our
possessions adrift because they had ceased to be remunerative. Besides,
there is still a good trade done with England, and lately fresh British
enterprise has done something in the way of increasing the Briton’s
share.”

“But suppose the coloured people were to properly organise, and, under
the leadership of a strong man, demand absolute home rule?”

“Then we should have to tell them to go to the devil.”

“And if they refused?”

“Well, then, I suppose, there would be a bit of shooting.”

“With a Liberal Government in power at home?”

“Give it up again, my boy. You know as much about home politics and the
colonial policy of the Liberal party as I do.”

“Perhaps the Americans would openly side with the blacks?”

“Then not all the Liberal Governments in the world could prevent the
shooting.”

“You think there is no possibility then of the introduction of home rule
for Jamaica?”

“I am sure that if the black people were the absolute governors of the
country, not one white man would remain in the country. It would be
impossible; look at Hayti! The blacks are utterly incapable of
self-government; ten years of independence would reduce a black Jamaica
to the level of an inland Gold Coast village. With Jamaica a lawless
republic, as well as Hayti, the West Indies would be impossible. America
knows that; the Yankees would be the first to cry out against it. No,
Jamaica is bound fast to England, and neither England nor Jamaica can
undo the binding.”

“You think that Jamaica will again become as rich and prosperous as she
was in the early days?”

“Why not? The place is rich enough, the climate is good enough. Do you
realise what a tremendous upheaval the emancipation of the slaves meant
to this little island? The whole economic system was put out of joint.
That was only seventy years ago. The old planters who had made great
fortunes by means of slave labour were heavily compensated. They saw
labour difficulties ahead and sold up their plantations and cleared out
of the island. The consequence was that the country found itself in a
pretty mess. Can you wonder that its finances got a bit deranged, and
that the Jamaican problem loomed large in the London parliament? The
island was in a pretty bad way. The negroes felt the pinch as well, but
not so much as the white people. Consequently the negroes began to have
grievances, and one or two of them started in business as political
agitators. It was about the best-paying business in the island in those
days. But as things began to brighten up a bit the negro grievance
became less acute, and though the agitators did their best to earn a
decent living, they began to become less popular. That is about the size
of the affair. Of course the negroes are not all content. As your friend
said, they have ambition--at least some of them have. But you can be
sure that three quarters of a million black men are not going to
seriously upset the British constitution. Yes, I am certain that Jamaica
has a most prosperous future. We lack capital and we lack good men.
There is room in Jamaica for thousands of good, educated Britons with a
bit of capital. And these will turn up some day. Fortunes are being made
in Jamaica to-day. And as soon as Englishmen get wind of that sort of
thing they will find their way to Kingston quickly enough. We have not
done with the sugar trade yet, and there is plenty of money in fruit,
timber and coffee. We can grow anything, and land is cheap enough. The
railway is going to help the country along, and so is the Panama Canal.
But most of all we

[Illustration: AN EVENING PARTY, ST. THOMAS]

are going to be assisted by new British immigrants. I wish you would
tell your people that it would pay them a good deal better to come to
the West Indies than to go chasing gold mines and diamonds in South
Africa and the Transvaal.”

“How much capital would a settler want?”

“The more the better of course, but a thousand pounds at least. A good
man with a thousand pounds would suit us better than a waster with ten
thousand. We don’t want any remittance men. Good, solid, hard-working,
level-headed business men are the sort for us. People who will send for
their wives and settle on their plantations, without wanting to race
over to England every year.”

“My coloured friend suggested that the tendency on part of the planters
to go to England every year was a bad thing for the island.”

“And there he was right, of course. We want absolute settlers--men who
will adopt the country and call it their home, and count it as their
children’s homeland too. We want a solid population of solid white
men--not a migratory people who look for fortunes in ten years and then
a suburban home near London. I guarantee that any man of the right sort
who comes here in the right spirit will never regret his coming.”

“And when he comes, what must he do first of all?”

“Hire himself out as a book-keeper or overseer on some plantation for a
year or so, until he has got the hang of the country. After that he can
decide matters for himself. There are plenty of openings and plenty of
land. With the new settlers we can work out our own commercial
salvation. Without them we shall find it difficult. Labour difficulties
will disappear as soon as we find more good masters. Even to-day
efficient and sensible planters have very little bother with their
workmen. A black man is very much what his white employer makes him. The
servant of a discontented, slovenly master is discontented and slovenly
also. A good master makes a good servant. Yes, put all that nonsense
about a free Jamaica, and the Government of Jamaica by Jamaicans, out of
your head. It won’t come off. We are going to grow; we are going to be
prosperous. And we have no time to discuss absurd impossibilities, or to
have sympathy with the impossible ambitions of scheming gentlemen of the
coloured class. The black men have, and always will have, their proper
place in the island, and they will have a proper part to play in the
commerce and government of the island. And that is all. Jamaica is a
British Colony governed by white men, and so it will remain for ever.”

[Illustration: A ROADSIDE MARKET, JAMAICA]

THE RAILWAY IN JAMAICA

CHAPTER XVII

THE RAILWAY IN JAMAICA

In Jamaica there is a railway which carries passengers of the first and
second class in carriages that would not necessarily disgrace even the
London, Chatham, and Dover line in England. The upholstery of the
carriages is of heavy stuffed leather; the fitments are of polished
yellow wood; and the result infinitely more suitable for an Arctic clime
than for merry sweltering Jamaica. There are, as I have stated, two
classes; to these I must add the soda-water compartment, which is a sort
of betwixt and between of both classes. A place where the men (sometimes
the ladies also) foregather to sit on empty soda water boxes and consume
mineral waters and eat fruit. This is the saloon of the railway--the
drawing-room of travelling Jamaica. Here the guard sits always, and with
him the coloured lady who sells the mineral water at a truly reasonable
rate. The carriages are reserved for the uninitiated, or the
respectable, of both classes. The soda-water room is always full of
scandal talk; a half hour’s ride in this compartment of any train will
teach any tourist the inner history of Jamaican society in a manner
quite incapable of repetition or reproduction. The lady who sells the
ginger beer is conversant with the character, the salary, the
peculiarities and home life, of every person living in the island. She
is the natural historian of the country. In three sentences she can
destroy the reputation of a mansion; half an hour suffices for the moral
destruction of a town. One day, even half a day, among the empty
ginger-beer boxes kills every desire, no matter how ambitious one may
have been, to enter the ranks of the upper ten of the society in the
Queen of the Antilles. The reason for all this is the heat and
discomfort of railway travelling in the tropics. The dust and sweat of
travel jaundice a man’s outlook on life; and in the railway train a
white face looks dull yellow. So it is with the cleanest reputation. And
fortunately the soda-water gossip is forgotten even before one’s hair
has ceased to smell of cinders.

The journey inland over the steel rails should only be undertaken at
great provocation. It is not a desirable thing to do, although it is the
quickest, the cheapest, and the most usual way of covering long
distances. For perhaps eight hours you sit _vis-à-vis_ with a person
whom you have not met before, and whom you wish never to meet
again,--for eight hours or twenty minutes, just according to the
distance you desire to travel. You pass the time of day with the
stranger, read all the printed matter available, and then solemnly gaze
through the grimy window, and heavy cloud of dust, at the fields and
rivers and fair plantations

[Illustration: THE ARRIVAL OF THE ROYAL MAIL STEAMER, DOMINICA]

rushing towards the place you have just left behind.

Jamaica is proud of its railway. The people of the country, remembering
the difficulties of its building, and the frequent weaknesses of its
finances, are glad the line is complete, and that it is possible to
travel at good speed from one end of the island to another. In truth the
history of the line from its beginning in 1845 to the present day is not
lacking in interest. Parts of the track have been built by official and
parts by private enterprise. The Government, I believe, started the
building, and an American syndicate carried it forward. The American
syndicate failed, and so the railway fell into the hands of the
Government again, and there it has remained ever since. The carriages
are miniature editions of the American saloons, and, in my opinion, are
capable of vast improvement. Otherwise the stock is excellent, and the
lines and curves and bridges everything that could be desired.

Starting from Kingston, you can travel over a hundred miles of looped,
single-track line to Montego Bay, or over thirty miles to Ewarton or
seventy miles to Port Antonio. These are the three routes; the track to
either of the places named is, of course, strewed with wayside stations.
No matter which way you travel you will pass through most marvellous
country. You will rattle across iron bridges, spanning rushing streams
or wide romantic rivers. You will skirt great lagoons, half overgrown
with mangrove and other swamp-land trees. You will steam across great
yellow-green guinea-grass pastures, and then, by way of wonderful
gradients, you will climb mountain chains and, from the dizzy height of
your carriage window, look down at distant valleys half-screened by the
green foliage of impenetrable forests. You will pass smoothly through
delightfully cool forests, and wonder at the prodigality of nature when
you cut through prairie land ablaze with the blooms of rare plants. You
will in addition smell all the smells of the Indies, and you will be
half-choked by the smoke and dust of the engine.

Natives will grin at you from the hedgerows, and labourers will cease
work in the plantations to stare open-mouthed at the incomprehensible
railway train. You will pass homesteads and sugar mills, fruit farms and
stockyards. Large-hatted planters will ride along roads skirting the
railway track, and they will play with their ponies and give exhibitions
of their horsemanship for the sake of any lady passenger who may or may
not be your companion. The black guard, or conductor, will come and
examine your ticket at every other station; and at most stopping places
a little crowd of negroes will stare at you through the carriage window.

The railway journey will enable you to see agricultural Jamaica. The
plantations, great and small, skirt the railway track, and the traveller
can note the varied beauties and interests of the fruits of the Indies.
He will see full-grown banana clumps, heavy with fruit; and he will also
see newly-planted banana striplings. The fields of pine-apples, which
resemble fields of English bulrushes tinted dull red and gold, will
charm him, and the pimento groves will remind him of English orchards.
When the bamboo forests and the straggling palms come in view, he will
remember with great contentment that he is in the tropics indeed. The
birds and the butterflies are shy of the noise and mess of the
locomotive, but still the traveller may see enough of the beauty of the
fluttering insects to teach him something of the loveliness which is
born beneath the shelter of tropical foliage. If he is fortunate enough
to see a tiny humming bird sipping from the cup of a scented blossom, he
will have seen that which will persuade him to sit in a flower-spangled
hedgerow for hours in order that he may witness the picture again.

It is said, and I have put it on record, that Columbus crumpled a piece
of paper in order to give his patron a correct impression of the
appearance of the island. It is the crumpled, irregular, casual Jamaica
that the railroad traveller sees. The valleys, the plateaus, the hills,
the mountains, rivers and ravines, pass along the carriage window in
bewildering succession; the views one sees are beautiful and mystical
beyond comprehension--like the tints in a stormy sunset.

One thing at least the intelligent traveller will learn on his railway
journey; he will realise that the beauty of the tropics can never be
comprehended by the finite mind of man. He will thank God for the beauty
he has seen, and if he is a wise man, there he will allow the matter to
rest. To attempt to catalogue the beauties of Jamaica is a task too
infinitely foolish: as well essay an analysis of a moonbeam.

[Illustration: A QUAY, ST. ANN’S BAY, JAMAICA]

ALLIGATOR SHOOTING IN A WEST INDIAN SWAMP

CHAPTER XVIII

ALLIGATOR SHOOTING IN A WEST INDIAN SWAMP

Jamaica is a land of perpetual peace and sunshine. The hills and valleys
of this, the most beautiful of all the fair islands of the West Indies,
are always clothed in a great profusion of the richest greenery; its
soil gives birth to almost every luscious fruit the world contains; the
sweet scents of its myriad blossoms give to the land an atmosphere of
the wildest loveliness; yet it is a country almost entirely barren of
native animal life. Birds there are in great numbers, and insects too;
fish of many kinds swarm in the rivers and mountain torrents, but the
languorous climate of the Queen of the Antilles gives shelter to no
four-footed game of the plains or forest lands. The place has no claim
on the hearts of sportsmen.

It is stated that there are a few wild pigs still roaming at large in
one or two of the forests in the north of the island, and certainly
there are a few alligators to be found among the swamps at the mouth of
the Rio Cobra River in Kingston Bay. But the prospect of finding a boar
or two, and the certainty of having a shot at a savage alligator, mark
the beginning and the end of the possibilities of the island so far as
exciting sport is concerned.

Of the two, the alligator gives more trouble and excitement to the
sportsman bent on slaughter; for though the West India alligator never
grows to the size of the African crocodile, he is easily large enough to
do an ordinary man to death.

Alligator shooting is one of the most unhealthy pleasures it is possible
to imagine. The beasts choose such unhealthy resting-places that the
sportsman has to run the risk of many fevers for every reptile he may
chance to kill.

A sluggish stream, or silent, deep lagoon, heavy with weeds and creeping
plants, alive with the buzz of insects, and half hidden by a deadly
steam of malarious vapour, is the sort of place dear to the hearts of
alligators. There it is that they are to be found, floating, log-like,
with half-closed eyes, or lying on the marshy bank with wide-open jaws,
basking in the yellow glare of a fearful sun. Wise men are content to
leave the beasts alone; but once we essayed the task of hunting them.

We started from Kingston Harbour in an open whaler, and ran before a
spanking breeze towards the murky creeks which run beyond the
half-deserted Fort Augustine. It was Fort Augustine most of all that, in
the days of old, gave to Jamaica its reputation as a country of death.
In the time of our fathers’ fathers, the British regiments were sent
from England to this same Augustine Fort, where they were destroyed in

[Illustration: OUTHOUSES ON A PLANTATION, JAMAICA]

companies, even battalions, by the malarious exhalations of those swamps
in which to-day we went to shoot the alligator. Seen from our little
boat, Kingston, just missing the deep shadow of the great mountain range
which overhangs the town, lay green, and gold, and white in the pale
glare of the sun. Fronting Kingston, Port Royal, a tiny strip of sand,
be-palmed and dotted with houses, lay symbolic of the Caribbean coral
reef. In line with Port Royal, but towards the lagoon, Fort Augustine
lay enshrouded in gloom, as though brooding over the tragedy of its own
sad history. And beyond the Fort, a great half-circle of the giant
harbour, we saw the swamp land--Hunts Bay and the mouth of the Rio
Cobra--a flat stretch of sand, yellow deepening into mud colour as it
left the sea, and then breaking into scrub, and low grass, and spikey
bush. Among the grass and the bush, and even through gaps of the high
tree-land beyond, one caught glimpses of dull water, silent and murky
and very still.

We anchored the boat and waded ashore, the clean water reaching our
arm-pits. In this manner we reached the fever-hole of Jamaica; the home
of every insect pest the West Indies can produce, the place in which the
Jamaican alligator still lives and moves and has its being. Not a
pleasant spot either to linger in or look upon, just evil swamp-land,
with the evil stench of damp vegetation and rotting wood. You step from
the sand of the seashore into brittle stubble, through which the water
surges as you pass. You squelch to the river-bank over rotting weed,
ankle-deep in slime, half smothered by a cloud of gnats, and
mosquitoes, and buzzing flies. It is the Jamaica Avernus--the white
man’s grave.

The Rio Cobra River at its mouth is emptied by a dozen twisting streams,
just as the trunk of a cotton tree is supported by many twisted roots.
Sometimes these twisted streams join together, sometimes they flow
apart; so if progress is to be made inland, much wading must be done. It
is in these little streams that alligators love to lie, so you must walk
warily, with your rifle ready. We waded many streams, and trudged
ankle-deep through long stretches of oily slime; we stumbled over logs
half hidden, and our stretched hands disturbed the nests of scores of
creeping things. The black guide, a famous sportsman of the swamp land,
grinned his joy at being really chief, the indisputable and
indispensable head of a party of white men. He forgot to tincture his
commands with respect, and though clad in nothing save a decayed merino
undershirt, looked and played the man.

“De beast there,” pointing a joyful finger to a heap of filth, green and
brown. Rifles were raised, and the explosions of three Winchesters
reverberated round those sickening pools. The green mass surged heavily,
and a streak of dark water showing in the centre of the thick slime
marked the place where the alligator had dived. “Him gone; never see him
more,” said our happy chieftain, and we trudged through more slime,
waded across more streams, some deep as our waist-belts, others with
water only ankle high. Once the youngest of us stealthily massacred a
floating tree stump, mistaking a twisted root for an opened jaw, and
then dropped to the rear under the glance of a contemptuous native.

“You want him log for rifle butt?” The youthful sportsman attempted no
defence.

Again we fired, this time at a sleepy family of two--a father and a son.
The son was hit, but the father had twisted and dived with the speed of
a springing snake. We could not reach the wounded one, which, lashing
his tail and snapping his jaws in the death agony, rolled into the river
to die.

We paused to drink tepid water drawn from a scorched barrel, and talked
and listened to stories of mighty bags; of beasts thirty feet long, shot
after fearful battles, of mauled natives, and of all the dangers of the
sport. Our thoughts and words were all of slaughter.

After the water--just enough to create a thirst--we trudged along, and
forgot everything save the hunting. The sun blazed down and scorched us
right through the thin stuff of our shirts. Blisters came on our hands
and arms, and our skins tingled as though we had rolled in countless
beds of nettles. But these things we only remembered afterwards; then we
strained our eyes and ears, waded into streams, and pushed through
rotten scrub in search of prey.

“We make much too plenty noise,” said our guide after a fruitless two
hours’ search. “We must sit down and wait.”

So our party divided, and I went with the black man and squatted against
the stump of a rotting tree overhanging the river and waited.
Fortunately the hunter did not object to my pipe, and the smoke did
something towards relieving me of the clouds of insect pests.
Conversation was not permitted. My companion knelt motionless, his eyes
straining riverwards; and I, inspired by his eagerness as well as by my
own curiosity, watched also.

The spit of mud that separated us from the river was covered by a
surface crust of grey-black sediment, hardened by the sun; from where we
sat a double line of little pools filled with soft inky slime stretched
to the water, and showed the direction of our coming. I examined the
surface of mud bay, and noticed that ours was not the only spoor. Ten
yards to my right I saw a place where very recently a heavy body had
rested--a mark which might have been left if a tree trunk had been
removed. I touched the black man on the shoulder and pointed to the
spot. He grinned and nodded. Evidently the marks were familiar to him.

I placed my rifle across my knees and waited. The still water of the
river showed a slight ripple here and there, and occasionally a splash
would mark the place where a fish had risen to a fly. The glare and the
strained attention tired my eyes, and I saw things through a slight
mist. Once I saw the water dividing as something passed towards the
shore, and I jerked my rifle to the shoulder. Then the moving strings
of

[Illustration: MID-DAY HEAT, JAMAICA]

water turned and ceased. And my companion scowled. The noise of a
distant rifle-shot came like the muffled noise of a pop-gun, and then a
green-black snout lifted itself above the water in midstream a few yards
to our right. Behind the snout a long black body appeared, only partly
submerged, and I made out the head and tail of an alligator. Slowly it
drifted towards the mud patch on which we were waiting. Presently a long
snout and a mud-encrusted head reached out of the water and rested on
the bank, and our gruesome enemy was within easy reach of our guns. Not
fifteen yards divided us. His little eyelids flickered like those of a
nervous lizard, and his sinister jaws were open just wide enough to show
the long line of white teeth. I brought my rifle round very slowly, and
fired from where I sat. The alligator twisted with the swiftness of a
cat and dived. I stood still and waited. The troubled water showed that
he had been hit; I could mark the direction of his flight by the fury of
his struggle. Once he lifted himself half out of the stream, and I fired
again. The result was a mad plunge towards the shore on which we stood.
I started back, but ere the beast found land, the water swirled again,
and I knew that he had turned aside. I followed him with my eyes, and in
midstream saw him churning the water with his tail and then plunging
round in circles; then he dived to the right, and I saw him no more.

“Him gone now,” said my guide. “You should have waited until him come
right up to the shore.”

I relit my pipe, and we retraced our steps.

In the fever swamps of Jamaica there are a few alligators, but I fear
that most of the sport of the place is to be found in the imagination of
the sportsmen and the tales of the native guides. Danger there is, but
that is the danger of the sun and the risk of fever; and in daring these
things there is little sport.

So we tramped back again and regained the sweet-scented water of the
bay. We waded to the boat, and the sensation of the clear sea-water
washing clean our sun-dried, muddy bodies gave us a few moments of
ecstasy. But we could not linger for fear of the dread cousin of the
alligator, the West Indian shark. We swam aboard, and hoisted our sail,
and sailed homewards. The boat was bare of awning, and the strong,
pitiless sun completed its burning work, so well begun in the swamp
lands. The charred barrel had exhausted its cargo of tepid water, and
there was no food. But the few hours’ sail was not unpleasant. We were
enveloped in the sweet breezes of God’s fair ocean, and soothed by the
fresh sea-scent. There were no miasmic exhalations, and no clouds of
winged insects. The mosquito was gone, and our scorched eyes might now
be closed or held half opened towards the cool breeze.

[Illustration: A FRUIT-SELLER, BARBADOES]

COMMERCIAL JAMAICA

CHAPTER XIX

COMMERCIAL JAMAICA

Those sanguine friends of the West Indies who think that the abolition
of the beet bounties necessarily means the industrial salvation of
Jamaica, forget that the beet bounties did not destroy West Indian sugar
industry, but only accentuated and accelerated a decay which had already
commenced long before their institution. Even before a beneficent home
Government allowed those European countries concerned in the cultivation
of the beet to create bounties which have helped to send the British
West Indies staggering to ignominious bankruptcy, the dry rot had
already attacked West Indian sugar.

At the time of Jamaica’s prosperity, foreign sugars were admitted into
English markets only on payment of a duty of something like £60 per ton;
even the produce of other British sugar colonies was taxed to enrich the
West Indian planter. The Jamaican planters felt aggrieved when, in 1836,
the East and West Indian sugar duties were assimilated; but when England
imported foreign sugar on the same terms as that produced in British
colonies the planters were filled with despair. On top of this grievance
came the decree of emancipation, and the total disorganisation of the
West Indian labour market.

For centuries Jamaica had waxed rich. In addition to a magnificent soil,
the planters had enjoyed “free” labour, ready markets, protection, and
high prices. Within a period of twenty or thirty years, with one
exception, all these advantages were swept away. The wonderful qualities
of the soil alone remained to encourage the despondent planter to work
on in hope of better times. From being the “protected” he became the
outcast; in place of being the absolute master of his workmen, he found
himself entangled in endless labour disputes; and his markets, once so
wonderfully capacious, dwindled almost to vanishing point.

Previous to the year 1836, the period of the beginning of the
“equalisation” of the sugar duties, the industrial condition of the
island was excellent, and the Jamaican planter was apparently entirely
prosperous. I say “apparently” purposely, for if we examine Gardner’s
_History of Jamaica_, published in 1873, we find that the actual
position of the proprietors of many of the Jamaican sugar estates in the
latter part of the eighteenth century was less satisfactory than one
would have supposed. In the year 1791 there were 769 sugar plantations
in the island; of these, “457 were in the hands of the men, or their
descendants, who possessed them in 1772. Since that date 177 have been
sold in payment of debts, 22 remain in the hands

[Illustration: A WAITER]

of the mortgagees or receivers, and 55 have been abandoned, though 47
have been newly established during the same period. The returns of the
Provost-Marshal from 1772 to 1791 showed great pecuniary embarrassment
among vast numbers in the colony. Astounding as it may appear, 80,021
judgments, amounting to £22,563,786, had, during that period, been
lodged at his office....” So much for the condition of the planters
during the period of Jamaica’s greatest prosperity.

The reason for the gradual decay of Jamaica may be read between the
lines of this report. In spite of prolific soil and wide markets, in
spite of inexpensive labour and the inflated prices obtained for his
produce, the Jamaican planter was constantly in difficulties--I had
almost written because of these things, and it will easily be seen that
the very things which made the country rich helped to impoverish the
character of the man. Life was too easy for the planter; he encountered
few difficulties; his business conducted itself. If a crop happened to
be poor, prices were increased to make up the difference, and the
planter did not suffer. His plantation produced sugar which was sold at
a fabulous figure; his slaves did the work his overseers ordered them to
do; for the rest, he was the most generous, the most hospitable, and the
most indolent of mortals. This was the type of man called upon to face a
situation of extraordinary difficulty. No wonder he allowed himself and
his country to slip down to despair and desolation.

Since the beginning of its distress, Jamaica has lost between 500 and
600 of its sugar plantations. The industry, once so rich and prosperous,
has become crippled and starved, and for many years Jamaica lay half
derelict, half forgotten.

The Jamaicans made no serious effort to stem the tide of their ebbing
fortunes. They talked a lot, petitioned a lot, and grumbled a lot, and
then they failed. There is no doubt that a little energy and enterprise
would have materially altered the commercial history of the island.
To-day, even though the majority of the sugar estates of Jamaica waste
over 30 per cent of sugar by their antiquated system of crushing, the
planters still manage to make both ends meet and keep a balance on the
profit side.

Sugar bounties, Free Trade, labour troubles, antiquated machinery and 30
per cent loss notwithstanding, sugar planters still manage to eke out an
existence. If the new methods of manufacture that some of the more
enterprising of the planters are now beginning to try had been
introduced fifty years ago, the history of the island would not be one
of failure and famine.

The problem representing the most serious difficulties to the Jamaican
planter has been the labour question. When we remember that the island
has a population of something like 700,000 coloured people and only
about 15,000 whites--the whites representing capital and the coloured
people the labour--we are at the beginning of the difficulty. First, how
shall the island be governed? When all the blacks were slaves and the
whites their masters, things worked smoothly enough; crimes were
committed, hundreds of thousands of people were abased and downtrodden,
but still the island of Jamaica was free from labour troubles. Then came
the Liberation Act. The slaves were released, and the majority of them
threw away their industry with their bondage, and sat in the sunshine
thanking their gods all day long. No doubt the primary cause of the
unsatisfactory condition of the labour market which prevailed for many
years was the action of the planters themselves. Enraged at their loss
of authority, for the most part they turned the full measure of their
anger on the wretched freed slaves.

When the Act came into force, meetings were held by planters at which
rates of wages were fixed,--needless to remark, on the lowest possible
scale,--and masters who had been humane, even kind, to their slaves
became overbearing and impossible employers. Enormous rents were charged
for labourers’ cottages, heavy fines were levied, and frequently the
poor negro found that he had no wage to draw for his week’s work.
Naturally enough, the natives became impatient of labouring under such
conditions, and many of them refused to work. The planters then resorted
to forcible ejectment. The discontented worker was flung into the open
road, destitute and helpless, to get his living when and how he could.
This was the beginning of the alienation of the labourers from the
estates. The negro found it easy to live on the produce of a patch of
land, and it became increasingly difficult to persuade him to work on a
plantation. Slavery was impossible--it could not last; and inconvenient
as the abolition has been to Jamaica, its chief evils have happily
already vanished. There is to-day little difficulty in obtaining plenty
of labourers for the plantations, and if he is treated fairly the free
negro makes at least as good a servant as he did in the days of slavery.

Because of the injudicious action of the planters at the time of the
slave liberation, much money has been spent by Jamaica in assisting
coolie immigration. It is difficult for one who has recently visited the
West Indies to imagine that it was ever necessary for Jamaica to import
coolie labourers. The negro to-day is willing to work for any man who
will treat him decently and pay him fairly and regularly. But necessary
it was a few years back, and in Jamaica are to be found to-day many East
Indians who thrive in the island, and do much useful labour in a
characteristically unostentatious manner.

The commercial salvation of Jamaica rests entirely with the people of
Jamaica. The abolition of sugar bounties, even the institution by this
country of a system of preferential tariffs founded on protection, would
mean much less to Jamaica than would the landing of 2000 British
colonists.

Jamaica wants men--men of the best type that Britain can send. The
infusion of new blood in her industries would effect a far greater
improvement in the industrial condition of the island than would the
introduction of the most enlightened system of fiscal

[Illustration: THE MARKET-PLACE, BARBADOES]

policy ever imagined. If there were more intelligent, unprejudiced
Englishmen to employ and direct the natives, labour difficulties would
quickly cease to exist. The great need of Jamaica is men--strong, young,
intelligent, enterprising Britishers. There is room for them in their
thousands.

One of the first impressions one gathers on landing in the colony is
that, though British in name, the place is really quite American as it
is British. This is a condition of affairs to be expected, since the
United States take about four-fifths of the total exports of the island,
and supply more than 50 per cent of her imports. It may be worth
repeating that the well-worn story of the agitation in Jamaica favouring
the annexation of the island by the United States is now entirely played
out. Even if the majority of the people of Jamaica demanded annexation,
England would not permit it, and even if England favoured the scheme,
the United States would not countenance it. The wily Yankee is content
to find in Jamaica a profitable market; it pays better to leave her
politics and domestic difficulties severely alone. The American has
already grasped the fact that there are dollars in Jamaica. The fruit
trade, now probably the most important in the island, has been built up
almost entirely by American enterprise and American capital. It is only
within the last year or two that English capital has been invested to
any great extent in this direction, though the trade has been of
growing importance to the island for many years. The establishment of
the Imperial line of steamers between Avonmouth and Jamaica was the
first effort made by this country to participate in an industry which
America had already found full of profit.

The Imperial direct steamer put Jamaica in direct mail communication
with Bristol. All the boats belonging to the line are specially arranged
for carrying bananas, and already the fruit trade of the island has been
enormously improved by the influence of the English market. For the
establishment of the line, Jamaica owes a deep debt of gratitude to Mr.
Chamberlain and Sir Alfred Jones.

The Jamaican fruit-grower is in the happy position of having a market
for his produce far larger than he can comfortably supply. America and
England are eager to purchase more bananas than the island now produces,
and the demand, already in excess of the supply, is still on the
increase. There are many dollars in bananas, and in this trade alone
there is room for more than 1000 Englishmen. The cultivation of the
banana is simplicity itself; the fruit can be gathered every month in
the year; the profits are large; the life of the planter is healthy,
pleasant, and free from loneliness.

Jamaica will become increasingly prosperous by the intelligent
development of her fruit, coffee and tobacco trades. Bananas,
pine-apples, oranges, grapes, mangoes and cocoanuts, properly cultivated
and exported, will help to bring the island to an extremely favourable
condition. The sugar trade will not be neglected now that the beet
bounties have been removed, and the island’s sugar and rum exports are
bound to increase by leaps and bounds. The exportation of pimento,
logwood, cocoa and tobacco is already steadily on the increase, and when
we remember that at the end of last year--after such a long period of
depression and deficits--the finances of the island showed a small
balance on the right side, the commercial future of Jamaica assumes an
extremely roseate hue. The fruit trade is still in its infancy, and the
cultivation of tobacco is in an even younger stage of development; these
two trades will grow in value by millions. The cultivation of cocoa is
already an important and lucrative Jamaican industry, and there are
still large areas of land admirably adapted for extension in this
direction; and new industries will arise.

Already there is a small company in process of formation for the
manufacture of starch from the cassava. Cassava starch is superior to
that made from corn or potatoes, and the ordinary varieties of Jamaica
cassava yield more starch to the acre than either corn or potatoes. It
is claimed, with every appearance of justice, that starch can be
manufactured from cassava at less than one quarter of the cost of the
starch made from other materials. Here is a new and extremely promising
industry.

Jamaica offers unequalled prospects to intelligent Britons who have
sufficient capital to enable them to embark in one or other of her
industries.

[Illustration: A TERRACE GARDEN ON THE HILLS, JAMAICA]

THE FLORA OF JAMAICA

CHAPTER XX

THE FLORA OF JAMAICA

Because Jamaica is famous for its woods and plants and scented blossoms,
one may be pardoned for roughly cataloguing a few of the three or four
thousand different species of flowering plants, ferns and forest trees.
Little is known of the lichens, mosses and fungi of the island. The
casual explorer will notice the beauty of the mosses, and he will
observe many varieties of the lichen, and there, unless he happens to be
an expert botanist, his interest in these smaller plants will end. But
with the flowering plants, the shrubs, and the gorgeous trees it is
different. No matter whether one is a botanist or a heathen, frequently
the wild luxuriance of a lovely bush forces us to ask its name. And the
name frequently cements one’s first affection for a wild plant’s
loveliness. The _Hibiscus_, the blue and white _lignum vitae_ flower,
the yellow _Kill Buckra weed_, the evening primrose and the passion
flower, the wild convolvulus, the iris and the orchid. All these are
fascinating names representing fascinating plants and blossoms. In
Jamaica, one drives through wild jungleland, and mistakes it for a
cultivated garden. Green bushes are spangled with flowers of flaming
scarlet; yellow bands of dense scrub are patched with fragrant blooms of
the most exquisite blue. The wild passion flower, gawdy yet dignified,
is to be seen everywhere, and in many places, especially on the lower
slopes of the blue mountains, we find a rich profusion of the mysterious
orchids--_Arpophyllum spicatum_, _Phaius grandifolius_, _Dendrophylax
funalis_, and a hundred other species. The forty varieties of the
convolvulus deserve a chapter to themselves. What could be more
beautiful than a field smothered by these graceful flowers, showing
every tint from scarlet to rose colour, violet, crimson, blue and
yellow? Then there are the poppies, the Mexican thistle and John Crow
bush; the buttercups, the wild pansies, sweet-william, the scented
furze, the acres of white clover and the dandelion. We could go through
a list of thousands. I think there is no bush, certainly there is no
acre of rural Jamaica, that does not contain its floral decorations, its
dozen brilliant blossoms.

Of the trees, the first that thrusts itself upon the notice of the
English traveller is the cocoanut palm, which Mark Twain or some one
else once described as an inverted feather dusting-brush. Besides the
cocoa palm there are a dozen other species--the groo groo, silver
thatch, mountain cabbage, oil palm, and the rest. In the Savannahs, near
the coast, we notice the French cotton-tree, and among the malarial
swamps the long-rooted mangrove--a tree which is a certain indication of
the unhealthiness of its neighbourhood. Inland, we

[Illustration: HUT ON A PLANTATION, JAMAICA]

find the _lignum vitae_, hod-wood, calabash, locust, raintree, the West
Indian birch, coccus-wood, the sidis-tree (called woman’s tongue), the
Spanish elm, mahogany, cedar, and the crooked divi-divi. These are
mostly timber trees. Among the fruits we find the mango, plum,
nazeberry, star-apple, the banana and the orange. These are but names,
and though I have not mentioned one tenth of the whole, I will spare you
the rest. Jamaica is the land of wood and water, of rich forests and
richer plains. You drive along a road which forms a natural arbour miles
long, decked at every yard with clusters of flowers, and scented with
all the sweetest perfumes of the universe. Then you break into flat
plain land, and the fields on either side are a blaze of coloured ground
plants; you find the mountain slope and drive along a narrow,
precipitous road, and look down from an eerie height on to a deep valley
clothed in greenery of the most luxuriant beauty. Fruit-trees are
everywhere, oranges green or gold, bananas green or yellow, brown
nazeberries, golden grape-fruit, custard apples, mangoes and plums. Then
you pass a plantation of pine-apples, and come to the coffee district.
It is the richest country in the world, par excellence--the flower and
fruit gardens of the West. If you burn a patch of jungle and leave a
charred acre of black earth, in two months you will return and find no
trace of your destruction. Mother Earth quickly clothes her nakedness in
this land of sunshine. If you plant a banana sprig and leave it alone
for eight or nine months, you then find a seven or eight foot tree, and
a heavy bunch of fruit ready for gathering. In West Africa they say
that if you plant a rotten stick, a barren tree will grow to the height
of twenty feet in twenty months, but if you plant a grain of corn
nothing will appear. They might with justice say in Jamaica, that the
grain of corn would produce a loaf, and the barren stick a lotus tree.

Not only does this wealth of vegetation give to the island a most
picturesque appearance, but also it constitutes a natural wealth which
hitherto has been hardly sampled. The fruit-trees are beginning to be
exploited, and already they support fleets of swift steamers between
Port Antonio and America, and between Kingston and Bristol, and bring
large profits to intelligent planters. But the exploitation of the
timber forest has scarcely begun.

The mahogany is exported in a small way, and valuable logwood finds its
way into the holds of ocean-going steamers. Satin-wood is exported in a
very small way, and there are large fortunes awaiting men who will
develop this trade. Bamboo is valuable, and one occasionally sees a
single negro despoiling a mighty clump of giant trees with a light hand
chopper, but the trade in Jamaican timber is in its infancy.

In the Kingston bazaars you can purchase walking-sticks for a shilling
which in England would cost six times that sum, and the Kingston
merchants make a profit on the transaction of more than five hundred per
cent. Mr. Frank Bullen, whom I met in one of the Kingston hotels, told
me that in the days when he was a seaman on a sailing ship, before he
took to the trade of writing books, he once carried a cargo of
walking-sticks from Kingston to England. I could not find any trace of
the industry in the island to-day. But it should be a most profitable
one. The Jamaican ebony or caccu-wood is one of the most beautiful woods
one can imagine--a dark-coloured, close-grained heavy stick, which,
common enough in Jamaica, is rare and valuable in England. And so it is
with many other species.

I have not mentioned the Jamaican ferns, yet the island contains almost
every species known to the collector, from the tiny, dainty maidenhair
to the giant tree-fern forty feet high. There is a deep ravine in the
island so crowded with the refreshing greenness of a thousand varieties
of the species of the cryptogram that the natives have named it Fern
Gully. Here, and in the shadow of the mountain peaks, the fern collector
can find every variety of his favoured plant. He can spend months in
gathering and cataloguing, but he can never exhaust the resources of the
island.

[Illustration: A JOCKEY AT CUMBERLAND PEN, JAMAICA]

A WEST INDIAN RACE-COURSE

CHAPTER XXI

A WEST INDIAN RACE-COURSE

We drove to the race-course through a tropical heat haze. The narrow
Jamaica lanes and the wider roads were stunned into reverberating
silence by the power of the heavy sun. We drove through crazy scents,
and the wild music of a million insects,--past banana clumps and patches
and plantations, giant cotton-trees and creeping hedge flowers. We
forded rivers and rattled across bridges, covering the parched beds of
narrow streams. Often, from amidst the yellow greenery, the noise of our
horses started a cloud of gaudy moths and painted butterflies. The John
crows showed their ragged heads, red and blue, like raw meat baking
slowly in the sun, above the dusty grey-black of their faded plumage.
Even they found the sun too strong for exercise. So they slept after the
manner of their kind, with one eye every watchful for prey or danger. We
rattled along under long avenues of bamboo-trees, ungainly giants with
feathered heads, unable even in the great heat to prevent the clicking
of their hundred knees. The noise of bamboo clumps suggests the
rattling of the bones of a shivering skeleton. The native people grinned
us a holiday welcome as we drove along, and the animal life--draft oxen,
decaying horses, cheery donkeys and saucy hogs--wondered at the
foolishness of our hurry. We reached the paddock gate, and paid our
entrance silver to a supercilious half-breed whose status was betokened
by the brilliance of his necktie. Then through a green, well-timbered
park, we reached the course.

The measured mile was well-fenced and police-guarded; we flourished
across its quietest part and entered the inner circle of the ring, the
heart of the race-course. The turf was half hidden by a multitude of
sportsmen and their attendant females. Black, and yellow, and brown, and
copper, and red, and white people; patriarchs, and children in arms;
giant negroes and dwarf half-formed half-breeds; programme sellers and
vendors of the refreshing juice of the green cokernut. Buck niggers in
white riding costumes, and shabby country folk in decayed khaki. Racing
touts in militia blazers, and respectable tradesmen in neckties of red,
white, and blue, and black bowler hats. Other things they wore of
course, but their appearance was mainly Union Jack neckties and bowler
hats. The black policemen in dark blue trousers, white tunics and
snow-white helmets, looked impassively nervous and very conscious of
dangerous power. Grinning blackies invited all and sundry to win their
racing losings back by the old system of the three-card trick, but their
customers consisted mainly of their decoy friends. In

[Illustration: A COLOURED LADY ON A RACE-COURSE, JAMAICA]

vain did the wily ones lose many dollars to their weary accomplices; the
negro proper preferred the excitement of the race.

We saw tables for the dice game, but no gamblers accepted the invitation
of the greasy bankers. Groups of women and children sat under the shade
of giant trees and made the day a perpetual picnic. The children were
very happy, and their buxom mothers slept away the brief minutes in
which they could not eat. The young black bucks ogled the young black
maidens, but there were no ticklers, and the penny squirt was
conspicuous only by its absence. By the weighing shed, and in the centre
of the circle of interest, the grand stand, white painted and decked in
royal purple, supported the weight of Government and officialdom. Some
of those who live in King’s House whispered weighty small talk with the
bloods of the army or the seniors of the hospital staff. In contrast
with the brilliant blackness of the crowd of natives, the grand stand
presented a tableau of white dresses and Paris hats and gay parasols.
Field-glasses were raised, and waves of humour swept the grand stand
crowd in Jamaica just as it happens in happy England. The racing horses
and dwarf black jockeys paraded to the official box, and the white
ladies flung their generous applause to the winners, just as it was in
the days of old, and will be ever more. False starts were made by too
eager jockeys who could not hope to win, and a discordant trumpet
regularly screeched return as often as half the line of horses sprang
forward before the starter’s flag had really dropped. These things
happen everywhere; they are the gin and bitters of every race, the
sportsman’s appetiser, the shower bath to prepare for the cold plunge.
When the horses really got away, the heat vanished and pandemonium
reigned to the tune of risen Africa. Jamaica vanished, and in its place
we saw and heard wild, discordant Africa. We heard the echoes of the war
cries of half the tribes that fight in the savage belt of country
stretching from Tanganyika to Sierra Leone. The sportsman and the
gambler threw off the thin veneer of a chaste and modest civilisation,
and became their fathers’ fathers’ true descendants. The half-breeds
shouted and then were much ashamed. The blacks tore the air with their
eager hands and flung themselves prostrate, biting the grass in the
frenzy of the savage African. And when the race was won, only the
winning blacks admitted the fairness of the race. The losing horses had
been “bridle pulled” or “kicked” or unfairly dealt with, and the loser
paid his debts with great reluctance, conscious of a great grievance.
The winner, on the other hand, presented the appearance of fierce,
overbearing rectitude. The race was fair, the test supreme, the winner,
the fastest horse in the country. The women of the dusky whites were hot
and dusty in their finery, but they sometimes forgot to assume the
appearance of calm indifference peculiar to their quite white sisters,
and shouted with the rest. Then they sulked because they knew that they
had forgotten that they were white. Your true half-breed lady knows
that she is pure white, and seeks to prove it to the world by English
accent, simpering manners, and the exhibition of a large contempt for
black men. Sometimes, it is supposed, she succeeds in impressing
dependant country folk. She talks of the England she has never seen as
“home,” and thinks that heaven is built for white people only. “The sun
is not too hot, but the weather is warm,” she suggests to her buggy man
with fine condescension. The driver agrees and says that he has ventured
to take a drink from the water-bottle.

“You done perfectly right,” says the white lady graciously.

Since white men are near, and she wishes to display her accent, she
adds, “You ’ave my permission to refresh you’self from the bottle as
frequent as you desire.”

A black man resplendent in a red coat, white riding breeches and yellow
gaiters, frankly admits his inferiority to the white man by begging for
a penny, a holiday penny. Refused this trifle, he immediately assumes an
attitude of equality. Patronisingly he sweeps the ground and the grand
stand with his riding switch (his leggings are incorrectly strapped),
and asks whether we agree with him that, “These be ver’ funny peoples,
eh? Too much dirt. Too little money.” He sees Forrest making sketches
and suggests that we might do infinitely worse than take him as a
subject. He switches his leather boots with the riding cane (it is only
a hedge switch), and shouts to his brother black dude a hundred yards
away, that he will join him as soon as he has finished with his “pals.”
He adds a P.S. that he is quite prepared to introduce his friend, if
that gentleman is so inclined. We are his “pals.” Then he cocks his hat
and chuckles at two passing girls, who respond with great enthusiasm.
“Nice girls, eh? But not good enough for me, eh? Like to know them, eh?”
But it should be admitted that the worst of the black men is not vainer
than some of the whites. Before the people of the grand stand, some of
the junior officers of the army and the hospital and the medical
service, even the civil service, are engaged in a ceaseless parade--the
strut of self-conscious vanity. It is these jackanapes that the black
men imitate, and it may be that it is the caricature that shows the
fatuity of the picture. Black vanity is not worse than white. Just as
the buck nigger struts for the edification of the black damsel and her
parents, so does the white officer or official. The effect in each case
is equally ludicrous. One white official drove to the course wearing a
hunting rig-out, spurs, a single eye-glass, and coloured cammer band. He
wore an air of perfect self-satisfaction. In Jamaica, single eye-glasses
are as common as orchids.

Horse-racing has become a most popular sport with white Jamaicans. It is
easy for any one to enter a horse or a pony and enjoy the sensation of
being an owner. A twenty-guinea polo-pony race is just as good as a mile
handicap for thoroughbreds, and, truth to tell, the winning owner gets
even greater praise. It may be that this is as it should be. But the
pity is that

[Illustration: A BUNGALOW ON THE HILLS, JAMAICA]

subalterns enter ponies bought on credit, and lose money in order to
impress a pitying crowd of nonentities. When a race-horse costs but
twenty pounds, and the entrance fee for a run costs only two or three
pounds more, no junior officer can afford not to run. The youths of the
regiments expect it. So officers under the rank of senior captains must
run their ponies as well as attend the meetings. Then they must “back
their gees” (as it is said in the vernacular), and lose more money in
one day than they should have spent in six weeks.

The seamy side of life is not so well represented on a Jamaican
race-course as it is at the average English meeting. Sharpers are not
numerous; the three-card experts and die manipulators are few in number
and faded and dejected in appearance.

The coloured jockey is a type by himself. In his amber and gold, or pink
and yellow, or green and red, and with his bent legs and humped back, he
would delight the heart of any disciple of Darwin. On his horse, he
looks for all the world like a clothed monkey on a London barrel-organ.
He rides with an air of bravado, and a most cruel switch. He gets
excited, but seldom loses nerve or head. It is probable that the race is
more to him than it ever is to his English prototype, because the heart
of a black man is full of jealousy and love of praise. A black jockey
never looks a part of his horse. The two are separate and distinct; a
comparison between the two would be to the advantage of the horse.

The race-horses and the unharnessed buggy ponies save the Jamaican
race-course from absolute vulgarity. Without them the place would have
been impossible, quite apart from a racing point of view. The heart of a
race-horse is clean, and his nature is superior to that of a half-breed
three-card sharper, or a whisky-soaking junior army man of great
vanity.

[Illustration: THE MARKET, MANDEVILLE]

THE HILL STATIONS

CHAPTER XXII

THE HILL STATIONS

The white inhabitants of Jamaica swear by the hill stations: Newcastle,
Mandeville, Malvern, Belle Vue and the rest. The description of the
journey to Newcastle will stand as an example of the manner in which one
travels to each, except that, in some cases, the railway as well as the
double-horse buggy is necessary for the journeying. The tourist should
remember that what appeals to the sun-dried Jamaican Englishman does not
of necessity appeal with the same force to a tourist in love with the
tropics. For my part I found the hill stations all a little dull, as
well as very cold and damp. Mandeville resembles a little English
country village on a warm, wet day in autumn. Malvern is also very
English, and though Belle Vue is more picturesque, it is not worth
travelling four thousand miles to see. Kingston and the little towns of
the plains repay even a bad sailor the two weeks spent in mid-ocean; the
hill stations do not. They are a snare and a delusion and a hollow sham.

Nevertheless we went to them all in the manner of docile sightseers.

Mandeville is famous for its donkey market and cool breeze. I did not
see the donkey selling in full swing, but from what I saw of the
market-place and the little donkeys I can appreciate the picturesque
possibilities of the affair. The cool breeze is far too cold; the cold,
damp rain and rain-mist far too penetrating. No, I disagree with the
Jamaicans in their estimate of their hill stations. No doubt they are
picturesque--all of them. Little villages built on steppes of giant
mountains, or small towns scattered over a high plateau. One experiences
many climates in climbing to them, and the beauty of the country which
separates them from the hot plains is magnificent beyond description.
One passes forest land and dense scrub, rushing rivulets and the dry
beds of larger rivers. One experiences every colour the imagination can
conceive, and sees all the fruits, and flowers, and timber trees to be
found in all the world. Yes, they have magnificent approaches these hill
stations, and for that reason they are places to visit. It is only their
climate one can object to, and that is wonderful too. The English
climate gives an English influence to the growing shrubs, and in
Mandeville one finds a village green and English trees fenced round by
groves of tall pines, and feather bamboos, and wavy banana
clumps,--England growing calmly with a green freshness in the midst of
the yellow tropics. Perhaps I have done the places an injustice; they
are really beautiful. It was the rain I disliked so much. You can stand
on the edge of Mandeville and watch the sun setting in the

[Illustration: STALLS OUTSIDE THE MARKET, MANDEVILLE]

midst of great valleys of wondrous beauty. Or in the morning you can
gaze through the damp mountain mist and see the yellow sun rising softly
from amidst the forest of palm-trees. You can listen to the
full-throated song of birds thanking God for the beauty of life, or see
lizards all green and gold, playing along the boughs of giant forest
trees. It is a good place, but somehow it lacks the airy-fairy lightness
of the hot plains. The natives do not laugh so much, and they are more
European in their dress and manners. There are white invalids in the
place and you cannot forget that it is a sanatorium.

Belle Vue is rather better and more picturesque and not so good. These
contradictions are permissable when one is writing of Jamaica. Belle Vue
is better because it is less civilised and less damp. It is more
picturesque because the only white man’s bungalow was built more than a
hundred years ago, and because the natives are less intimately
associated with the white people. It is not so good because it is not so
beautiful.

Still the view there from the edge of the mountain shelf, which
comprises the settlement, gives you a picture of Kingston and eight
miles of its northern suburbs, and beyond Kingston the wonderful bay,
Port Royal, the palisadoes and the ships at anchor and by the wharf
side. This view is compensation for the fatigues of the journey upwards.
The house too, the white man’s bungalow, is unique and full of history.
People say that it is older than two centuries, and its appearance gives
colour to the report. Heavy, arched doorways, great high rooms, solid
fittings and small windows. The woodwork is hand-carved and very
beautiful; the outbuildings are flimsy and very decrepid. Behind the
bungalow is a farmyard built on the model of those to be found in
England. There is a large water pool for the cattle, and an extensive
yard for the convenience of the farm hands. Here we can see the
dairy-work and watch the poultry strutting about in search of toothsome
morsels. An occasional dog lies gasping in the sun, and now and then a
little pig thrusts his nose into the gateway and gazes longingly at the
place so cruelly denied him. The un-English parts are the sheds devoted
to coffee-cooking and the place for the storing of cocoa and cinchona.

About the yard, among the coffee and cinchona huts, the cattle stand
listlessly gazing earthward, and the mountain goats flick their tails in
endless endeavour to disturb offending insects. It is rural--Arcadian in
its simplicity and great beauty. The bungalow and farmyard are
surrounded by a forest of pimento--an all-spice whose foliage is more
fragrant than the spice which makes the cultivation prosperous. Some
day, when Jamaicans awaken to the significance of the richness of their
island, some one will distil the perfume from the pimento leaf, and in
England we shall be able smell the wild fragrance of a Jamaican forest.
Where the forests end the banana plantations commence, and dotted about
the fields we find the native settlements.

Native settlements are all unique; they are all strange villages erected
according to an architecture

[Illustration: A ROAD IN MANDEVILLE]

peculiar to the minds of say fifty people. Each man builds his hut
according to his own idea of what a hut should be like, and he digs the
foundations with no regard for juxtaposition or the symmetry of the
whole village. The result is always purely picturesque. Some huts are of
heavy grass thatched with banana leaves; others are mud-thatched with
cobbled floors. The richer natives build wood houses out of disused
packing cases, and live under stencilled letterings which once directed
a package out of England. One house was built with box-wood drawn from
cases that had contained sugar, biscuits, marmalade, jam, cube-sugar and
cigarettes. The result fanned one’s pride in the might of England’s
commerce, since all these things were plainly marked London or Liverpool
or Dundee.

About the huts, and amidst the plantations round the village, the black
children played their Jamaican games with open-mouthed enthusiasm. The
children of the country villages are not overburdened with unnecessary
clothing and they are very strong and happy. By mixing with the little
children one loses faith in the old belief that it is impossible to
really civilise a coal-black nigger. The little ones differ from the
white children only in the colour of their skins and the superiority of
their physique. A negro child of two runs and laughs and plays as
sturdily as does a London child of four. They have a little school of
their own and a little church as well. Their one teacher is a lady of
colour who lives well away from the village, but the parson is as black
as the blackest among them. The teacher, who is a lady, wears
eye-glasses; the parson affects spectacles heavily rimmed with yellow
metal. On week days the people of the village, old and young, are very
simple; on Sundays they are very religious. The women do more work than
the men, though the men are not entirely given up to idleness. The women
attend to the home life, the housework, and the nursing, and they tend
the cultivation of the little family garden patch which supplies the
family with yams and banana, and occasionally a little crop of luscious
mangoes as well. The husband hires out his labour to the nearest planter
and receives his wage of a shilling a day. He hoes the fields, sees to
hedges, carries the water, drives the horses, or donkeys, or mules, or
bullocks; gathers the ripened fruit, packs it for the market, and, when
neither the planter nor the overseer is within eyeshot, idles away the
time to his heart’s delight. The women are careful about their own
adornment only on Sundays or those rare occasions when it is necessary
for them to make the long journey into Kingston market. On week days
they seem to wear whatever happened to come handiest when they were
engaged in the act of dressing. The men wear long cotton drawers or the
remains of heavy trousering, a very shady shirt, a battered yippo-yappo
hat, and occasionally, an affair which undoubtedly at some remote period
resembled a coat of the style affected by Europeans.

[Illustration: SUNSET OVER THE HILLS]

A FRAGMENT

CHAPTER XXIII

A FRAGMENT

I went to tea with some people who were neither white, nor black, nor
yellow. They were not half castes, not even quadroons. Octoroons they
would be called if they were very poor. White they pass as, in the great
house they live in. White they are to the few negro workmen they employ.

I give the conversation, not because it is of interest, but to show the
vernacular as voiced by the cultured octoroon. They were pleased to see
us, and I had the impression that I was undergoing the pleasant
sensation of being lionised--such was the warmth of my welcome.

“You take sugar and milk?” I took milk.

“Oh we always take sugar in Jamaica. It grows here you know, and a few
years back it was the most perfectly important product of the country,”
explained the lady, and her husband confirmed her statement with--

“Yes, the English have killed that branch of our commerce by the
introduction of free trade in sugar. My grandfather grew very very rich
on sugar; most of the money he and my father left I am spending in
trying to improve the condition of the island. I cannot hope to make
money. I do it for the good of my country; I am what you call a
philanthropist!”

He played with the fine jewelled ring on his left hand and smiled at me,
showing a perfect set of large white teeth. His eyes were larger than is
common among Englishmen, and his dark hair contained just the suggestion
of a curl. His wife was whiter than he, but her eyes were blacker than
those of any Englishwoman. Her lips were brown-red, and her hair a wavy
black. She spoiled what might have been a strikingly pretty appearance
by wearing pince-nez, for which she had no real use. They had plain
glasses heavily framed in gold, and they hung from her blouse by a
twisted chain of gold and platinum.

“Yes,” she said, “we are philanthropists!”

“I am perfectly conscious that not many of us white men cultivate our
plantations as we ought to do. But I know I work unselfishly. I take my
country seriously.”

The lady added--“That is what the Governor said to him the other day.
The Governor said, ‘My dear friend, you take your country seriously.’
And so he does--perfectly. And so do I.”

“Well, I was smoking with some gentlemen the other day, and they agreed
with me that we Englishmen are very unselfish in not going home and
leaving the country to rack and ruination.”

[Illustration: HUTS, ST. ANN’S BAY, JAMAICA]

“Ah, what would I give to go home,” exclaimed my hostess.

“To England?” I asked, nervously.

“Of course,” she replied tartly.

“Do you come from London?” I ventured.

“From near London.”

The spirit of enterprise entered my soul, and I determined to ascertain
whether the good lady had ever seen our little homeland, so I put
questions to her which were distinctly not those a guest should play
with at an afternoon dinner-table. I entrapped her into many foolish
mistakes, but she would never admit that she had never seen England. Her
knowledge of places and things, gathered from reading guide-books and
London newspapers, was certainly astonishing. But it was not difficult
to pierce through the surface crust of her knowledge. She had been
introduced to the King of course, but she knew the late Queen better.
She didn’t care much for the Princess of Wales though the Prince himself
was a very interesting man.

They told us of the losses they had sustained through the hurricanes,
and the lady explained that because they had lost so many many thousand
pounds she was forced to be very very economical with her “money for
pins.”

But with all their negro-pigeon-English they were hospitable enough, and
nothing would have delighted the worthy couple more than our acceptance
of their proffered entertainment for many weeks.

“Yes, stop here; we will make you perfectly happy and at home; the house
is yours and all the servants, my horses and buggies (he had one of
each), and my fishing rods are at your disposal if only you will
remain.”

We could not stop, since we were more than seventy miles from the
capital and were due to catch a boat in two days. The hostess bewailed
the poverty of the household.

“In the period of my grandfather you would not have been permitted to
depart in this manner. Then we should have been able to place at your
convenience many horses and buggies, so that you could have travelled to
Kingston by road, and not in a railway train with negroes. If only we
had slaves again and protection also, then you would be able to stop in
Jamaica in comfort and luxury.”

“But, my dear,” remonstrated the husband, “slavery is a thing not to be
desired by us cultured gentlemen and ladies. We must protect the weak
and fallen; it is our _juty_ to heaven to _succure_ the black heathen of
the negroid race. Never say words in praise of slavery. Our _juty_ is to
helevate the trampled negroid to our condition of education and
refinement.”

The lady, so heavily admonished, wept copiously and the man frowned
heavily to emphasise the weight of his admonitory disquisition. We moved
uneasily in our chairs and I fingered my watch; it is unusual to be
confronted by a lady’s tears at an afternoon tea function. “Pray do not
go,” said the lady. “Pardon these weakly tears. I feel for my husband. I
think of the many thousands of pounds sterling he has been wasted of by
the loss of slavery and the sugar duty. I weep for the nobleness he
shows in speaking like that.” The frown on the husband’s face became
intensified and he gave evidence of the possibility of a new outburst.
But I boldly intervened with--“But after all what is a nigger compared
with the comfort of white men?”

“That’s just it,” replied our host; “you’ve just hit it. What is a
nigger? He is our unequal in every manner. He is but little better than
the animals and beasts of the fields. But just to study him the British
Government has spread ruination throughout Jamaica. That is just what I
say. What is a nigger that he should have dispoiled me of my wealth?”

While he was delivering himself of this vehement contradiction of his
former chastened sentiments it was quite obvious that the nigger he so
much despised was in reality his natural grandmother. Our hostess flung
aside her eye-glasses and the effect was similar to opening of the
lock-gates on the upper reaches of the Thames. The tears poured forth in
a copious stream of weeping.

“But, Algey,” she sobbed--“Algey you must not forget that you are the
nation’s protector of the weak, and poor, and coloured. Do not forget
that you do your best. The lowest of the low niggers have wives and
children.”

“True, true,” mumbled the husband; “sometimes I forget myself and the
words flow out like boiling lava from Vesuvius. But I will continue in
the way I have gone for many years, and I will be a help and protector
to the poor and down-trodden. The humble of the earth are my
brothers--that is what I must decline to forget.”

Before we took our leave the couple had regained their cheerfulness, and
the lady had made us promise always to think kindly of Jamaica. “After
all,” she lisped, “I must regard Jamaica as my home country since here I
saw the light of the first day; England is home, of course, always, but
Jamaica is my place of birth.”

[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AT SPANISH TOWN, JAMAICA]

MATTERS OF INTEREST TO TOURISTS

CHAPTER XXIV

MATTERS OF INTEREST TO TOURISTS

If I have not mentioned all the names of the places in Jamaica dear to
the hearts of tourists, and of towns which are the pride and glory of
Jamaicans, it is because I do not think such a catalogue would be of
general interest. The description of Kingston may stand as a description
of Jamaican cities; Port Antonio, Montego Bay, Spanish Town and the rest
differ from Kingston in a less degree than Fleet Street differs from the
Strand. It would be wearisome to attempt to give a chapter to each.

Port Antonio is the northerly port and the centre of the island’s trade
with America; Montego Bay is a thriving commercial centre; Spanish Town
is the ancient seat of Government. At one time Spanish Town was the
island’s capital, and there we find a fine monument erected to
commemorate the victory of Rodney over the French fleet under de Grasse,
and the old cathedral. The cathedral is the oldest building in the
island. It links the Jamaica of to-day with the Jamaica of four
centuries ago, since it was built by the original conquerors in 1523.
In the West Indies only the cathedrals of Carthagena and Havana can
equal it in point of antiquity. After much renovation and reconstruction
the structure now stands as the centre of the Anglican Church in
Jamaica. Its floor is paved with gravestones and memorial tablets, on
which are carved the names of many of those who played a large part in
the island’s history. Monuments bearing the names of the Earl and
Countess of Effingham, Sir Basil Keith, General Selwyn, and the Countess
of Elgin, may be seen. And on an ancient grave bearing a date early in
the seventeenth century we read:

    Here lies Sir Thomas Lynch at ease and blest;
    Would you know more ye world will speak ye rest.

In the body of the building one can read the epitaphs of many of the
officers sent by Cromwell to conquer the island. The altar-plate and
vessels are most ancient and valuable, particularly so are a fine flagon
and chalice which were brought to the cathedral from the plunder of San
Domingo in 1685. In proper cathedral fashion the war-stained flags of
the West India Regiment are hung in the chancel, and the verger will
tell you that the coloured regiment brought them to this house of prayer
when they returned from Ashantee.

Near Montego Bay there is another romantic building; though only a
private house, it stands as one of the landmarks of the island. Rose
Hall, a fine old West Indian mansion, rich in carvings and ancient
woodwork, remains as a monument of the Jamaica of

[Illustration: A GARDEN TERRACE, JAMAICA]

the days of the millionaire planter. Rose Hall is typical of what the
majority of the old West Indian mansions were before the island fell
into the clutches of poverty. It is a house with a history. One, Mrs.
Rose Palmer, lived there in the days of old, and it is recorded that
there she poisoned three husbands in rapid succession. If tradition does
not err, this lady must have been of curiously abandoned habits. Under
her régime Rose Hall and the surrounding plantations became a famous
centre of dissipation and vicious cruelty. At times her slaves were
pampered and encouraged into all kinds of most vicious excess; at others
she would flog her whole retinue, and sometimes barbarously murder a few
of them, simply for the pleasure she found in the killing. She died at
last, and report said she had been strangled by her negro paramour.
However, she left sufficient money to pay for the erection of a marble
monument in the Parish Church; a memorial which was to contain a list of
her virtues, and hand her name and fame down to posterity. Tradition has
it that shortly after the clean white marble was set up in the church a
crimson band grew out of the sculptured throat, permanently discolouring
the neck and proving that the lady died of strangulation.

Another excellent show place in Jamaica is the Hope Garden, a few miles
out of Kingston. This is the headquarters of the Jamaican botanical
department, and it undoubtedly contains one of the most magnificent
botanical collections in existence. Here can be found a most extensive
and representative collection of tropical plants, and the botanist will
have little difficulty in discovering a specimen of anything and
everything that grows in any part of the world. But quite apart from its
scientific value the Hope Garden is well worth a long visit. The gardens
are carefully cultivated and the smooth green lawns and gravelled paths
offer a fine contrast to the rugged wildness of the Jamaican lanes.
Except for the difference of the climate, and the greater variety of
rich out-door plants, one might imagine oneself in the trim gardens at
Kew. We find carpet beddings and ornamental borders, lily-covered water
tanks and banks of flowering orchids. Considerably more than an acre is
given over to the cultivation of roses, and an intelligent attendant
will tell you that Jamaica is not a good place for growing most species
of the rose. The soil is too rich, the climate too warm. The poor rose
gets no rest--it must flower continuously throughout the year, and so at
the end of the fourth or fifth year, the poor plant, prematurely old,
worn out by the constant exertion of producing its scented bloom, droops
and dies. You will discover little forests of every tree to be found in
Jamaica, and pass by clumps of fruit-trees bending beneath the weight of
their heavy harvest. Yes, the Hope Garden is well worth seeing,
especially so if one has an interest in or a love for beautiful flowers.

One of the great charms of Jamaica as a tourists’ resort is the