So far as we are concerned the history of the Indies is a medley of romance, the romance of British greatness. There we laid the foundation of our Empire; the Caribbean Sea is the font of the temple of our greatness.
But, for the islands themselves, there is little record
of history save where their existence first influenced the politics of Europe. The Spaniards were the first white men to tread their fragrant shores and bring destruction to a race of wild red men whose first instinct was that of fear. Columbus, the Genoese mariner, first and greatest of all explorers, anchored his tiny vessels in Morant Bay, Jamaica, on his second voyage to America. The beauty of the place bewildered him, and when his patron, the King of Spain, asked for a description of the island, the artistic Genoese crumpled a piece of paper, and presented that as a picture of the rugged formation of the Queen of the Antilles. Four times did Columbus journey to the Indies, which were annexed by him to the Spanish Crown. The horrors of the early Spanish rule can only be imagined. Millions of the gentle Caribs were transported to the mainland, and worked to death in the Spanish gold mines. Those that were permitted to remain were, if they survived the Inquisition, pressed into slavery.
So the Spaniards ruled for a century and a half; for one hundred and sixty years they claimed the bulk of the West Indian islands as their own. This claim was uncontested by the powers of Europe, but the Spaniards were harassed always by the buccaneers, French and English, whose ships swept the main in search of prey. Whether England was at war with Spain or not, the English sea-dogs were always at the throats of Spaniards in the western hemisphere.
The Protector Cromwell essayed to break the Western power of Spain, and sent Penn and Venables to crush them out of the Indies. In an engagement off Domingo the British were defeated, but the doughty English captains retired on to Jamaica, which they annexed to England. Then the French filibusters drove the Spaniards out of Hayti, and gave it to the crown of France. The French had held the smaller Antilles—Martinique, St. Lucia, Grenada, St. Vincent, and Antigua. In times of war with France, Britain had taken these islands, but they had been retaken by the French. It was in Rodney’s time that they all came permanently under the English flag. Nowadays the British hold all the larger islands, the French retain the smaller lands of Martinique, Guadaloupe, Deserva, Marie Galante, Les Saints, St. Bartholomew, and part of St. Martin, the Dutch hold five, the Danish three, and Spain still holds three. One or two are part of the Venezuelan Republic, Puerto Rico belongs to the U.S.A., and several are independent.
JAMAICA
CHAPTER II
JAMAICA
Sitting under the shade of a verandah, watching the brilliant butterflies and many-coloured birds fluttering and wheeling among the sweet-scented flowers of Jamaica, it is difficult for one to remember how one passed out of England—I had almost written out of the world—and reached this land, which surely should be called God’s Island. But, I remember, a day or two ago we reached Turk’s Island, and after handing a few bags of mails to a black, buccaneer-like boatman, who said he was the postmaster, we glided along the shore—a few miles of low-lying, palm-treed coral-land—and sailed into the Caribbean Sea. And so we reached the tropics—the other side of the world. At last we were among the hundred isles of the West Indies, and in the full glare of the tropic sun. The paint blistered and bubbled on the handrail, and the sea seemed a giant mirror, on which the sun flashed silver-white, with never-ceasing, blinding force. There seemed to be no air; the space it should have occupied was transparent, and, apparently, empty. It was difficult to move; truth to tell, I remember feeling a little uncomfortable; but, all the same, it was heavenly.
By Turk’s Island it rained. There was a sudden darkness, the blinding sun disappeared, the air became cooler, and then down came the rain. The deck of the ship became a waterfall, and for thirty minutes or so we were enveloped in a furious deluge.
But ten minutes after the rain had ceased, the deck, the sails, and the canvas deck-awnings were dry as though sun-scorched for centuries. That was our weather. We lived on fruit and tepid baths. It was too hot for sleep, too hot for work, too hot for conversation. In the tropics the only thing possible is “nothing"—and a long, iced drink.
Lolling on deck in the daytime, we could watch the flying fish, the dolphin, the drifting nautilus, and the hungry shark; or view the islands as slowly they glided backwards into impenetrable haze. To the right Cuba, a thin irregular line on the horizon, glistening gold above the blue-white of the sea; to the left Hayti, the land in which the black man is supreme, and where, in spite of science and the twentieth century, cannibalism and child murder exist. The white patches, which show above the green of the plantations as you crawl along the shore, are houses. They stand as monuments to the French, who once were masters of the land—masters until, by order of their Government, the French-owned slaves were free—when, by way of exercising their new-found freedom, the niggers slaughtered every white on the island. Since then Hayti has been a republic—a republic with many presidents and many disturbances.
At night there was the wonderful moon and the cool, fresh air. It was pleasant to watch the sea; astern, we left a living, toiling, twisting thread of silver foam; ahead, our bows struck the water, and it flashed fire. Sometimes all was dark; sometimes the sea blazed with phosphorescent light. But always overhead the yellow moon and the golden stars were studded in the blue-black dome of night.
A few hours after leaving Turk’s Island we found Jamaica. Afar off, through the brilliant air of the morning, we saw a tiny pepper-box, which presently turned into a sugar-caster, and gradually, by many complicated but interesting evolutions, developed into a full-fledged lighthouse. The lighthouse is on Morant Point, and Morant Point is the beginning of Jamaica. Columbus named the island Santa Gloria; he was the first European to be bewitched by that low coast-line, all gold shot with green and darker green, stretching back from the sea to the foot of the great Blue Mountains; the Blue Mountains, whose peaks, shrouded in white mist, are buried deep in the hazy sky. Along the shore we sailed, past cane plantations, banana groves, white houses, snow-white roads, and great everlasting clumps of graceful palm-trees. Ahead, standing out at the end of a neck of land, we saw Port Royal—the real, wonderful, most romantic Port Royal, doubly robed in glory by fiction as well as history. Here came Nelson, Rodney, Jervis, Collingwood, and every mighty sailor England ever had.
Moored to these wharves have lain prizes, rich beyond compare, newly snatched from Spain and France. Here England’s flag, proudly flung from masts of wooden warships, has proclaimed victory; and here also English ships, battered and war-stained, have lain under the dread banner of the buccaneer. For Port Royal was a pirate stronghold centuries before it became a British naval base.
Sailing along the six miles of narrow coral ridge which connects the town with the land, it is not difficult to conjure up the Port Royal Nelson knew. The palm-trees and the luxuriant tropical foliage still abound; the