The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). Frederick Whymper
well does that mixed and happy-go-lucky population assimilate. Trinidad belongs to Great Britain; but there are more negroes, half-breeds, Hindoos, and Chinese there than Britons by ten times ten; and the language of the island is mainly French, not English or Spanish. Under cool porticoes and through tall doorways are seen dark shops, built on Spanish models, and filled with everything under the sun. On the doorsteps sit negresses, in flashy Manchester “prints” and stiff turbans, “all aiding in the general work of doing nothing,” or offering for sale fruits, sweetmeats, or chunks of sugar-cane. These women, as well as the men, invariably carry everything on their heads, whether it be a half-barrow load of yams, a few ounces of sugar, or a beer-bottle.
VIEW IN JAMAICA.
One of the regrets of an enthusiastic writer must ever be that he cannot visit all the lovely and interesting spots which he may so easily describe. The present one, enamoured with San Francisco, which he has visited, and Singapore and Sydney, which as yet he hasn’t, would, if such writers as Charles Kingsley and Anthony Trollope are to be credited, add Trinidad to the list. Read the former’s “Letter from a West Indian Cottage Ornée,” or the latter’s description of a ride through the cool woods and sea-shore roads, to be convinced that Trinidad is one of the most charming islands in the whole world. Bamboos keep the cottage gravel path up, and as tubes, carry the trickling, cool water to the cottage bath; you hear a rattling as of boards or stiff paper outside your window: it is the clashing together of a fan-palm, with leaf-stalks ten feet long and fans more feet wide. The orange, the pine-apple, and the “flower fence” (Poinziana); the cocoa-palm, the tall Guinea grass, and the “groo-groos” (a kind of palm: Acrocomia sclerocarpa); the silk-cotton tree, the tamarind, and the Rosa del monte bushes—twenty feet high, and covered with crimson roses; tea shrubs, myrtles, and clove-trees intermingle with vegetation common elsewhere. Thus much for a mere chance view.
The seaman ashore will note many of these beauties; but his superior officers will see more. The cottage ornée, to which they will be invited, with its lawn and flowering shrubs, tiny specimens of which we admire in hot-houses at home; the grass as green as that of England, and winding away in the cool shade of strange evergreens; the yellow cocoa-nut palms on the nearest spur of hill throwing back the tender blue of the distant mountains; groups of palms, with perhaps Erythrinas umbrosa (Bois immortelles, they call them in Trinidad), with vermilion flowers—trees of red coral, sixty feet high—interspersed; a glimpse beyond of the bright and sleeping sea, and the islands of the Bocas “floating in the shining waters,” and behind a luxuriously furnished cottage, where hospitality is not a mere name, but a very sound fact; what on earth can man want more?
Kingsley, in presence of the rich and luscious beauty, the vastness and repose, to be found in Trinidad, sees an understandable excuse for the tendency to somewhat grandiose language which tempts perpetually those who try to describe the tropics, and know well that they can only fail. He says: “In presence of such forms and such colouring as this, one becomes painfully sensible of the poverty of words, and the futility, therefore, of all word-painting; of the inability, too, of the senses to discern and define objects of such vast variety; of our æsthetic barbarism, in fact, which has no choice of epithets, save such as ‘great,’ and ‘vast,’ and ‘gigantic;’ between such as ‘beautiful,’ and ‘lovely,’ and ‘exquisite,’ and so forth: which are, after all, intellectually only one stage higher than the half-brute ‘Wah! wah!’ with which the savage grunts his astonishment—call it not admiration; epithets which are not, perhaps, intellectually as high as the ‘God is great!’ of the Mussulman, who is wise enough not to attempt any analysis, either of Nature or of his feelings about her, and wise enough, also … in presence of the unknown, to take refuge in God.”
Monkeys of many kinds, jaguars, toucans, wild cats; wonderful ant-eaters, racoons, and lizards; and strange birds, butterflies, wasps, and spiders abound, but none of those animals which resent the presence of man. Happy land!
But the gun has fired. H.M.S. Sea is getting all steam up. The privilege of leave cannot last for ever: it is “All aboard!” Whither bound? In the archipelago of the West Indies there are so many points of interest, and so many ports which the sailor of the Royal Navy is sure to visit. There are important docks at Antigua, Jamaica, and Bermuda; while the whole station—known professionally as the “North American and West Indian”—reaches from the north of South America to beyond Newfoundland, Kingston, and Jamaica, where England maintains a flag-ship and a commodore, a dockyard, and a naval hospital.
KINGSTON HARBOUR, JAMAICA.
Kingston Harbour is a grand lagoon, nearly shut in by a long sand-spit, or rather bank, called “The Palisades,” at the point of which is Port Royal, which, about ninety years ago, was nearly destroyed by an earthquake. Mr. Trollope says that it is on record that hardy “subs” and hardier “mids” have ridden along the Palisades, and have not died from sunstroke in the effort. But the chances were much against them. The ordinary ingress and egress, as to all parts of the island’s coasts, is by water. Our naval establishment is at Port Royal.
Jamaica has picked up a good deal in these later days, but is not the thriving country it was before the abolition of slavery. Kingston is described as a formal city, with streets at right angles, and with generally ugly buildings. The fact is, that hardly any Europeans or even well-to-do Creoles live in the town, and, in consequence, there are long streets, which might almost belong to a city of the dead, where hardly a soul is to be seen: at all events, in the evenings. All the wealthier people—and there are a large number—have country seats—“pens,” as they call them, though often so charmingly situated, and so beautifully surrounded, that the term does not seem very appropriate. The sailor’s pocket-money will go a long way in Kingston, if he confines himself to native productions; but woe unto him if he will insist on imported articles! All through the island the white people are very English in their longings, and affect to despise the native luxuries. Thus, they will give you ox-tail soup when real turtle would be infinitely cheaper. “When yams, avocado pears, the mountain cabbage, plantains, and twenty other delicious vegetables may be had for the gathering, people will insist on eating bad English potatoes; and the desire for English pickles is quite a passion.” All the servants are negroes or mulattoes, who are greatly averse to ridicule or patronage; while, if one orders them as is usual in England, they leave you to wait on yourself. Mr. Trollope discovered this. He ordered a lad in one of the hotels to fill his bath, calling him “old fellow.” “Who you call fellor?” asked the youth; “you speak to a gen’lman gen’lmanly, and den he fill de bath.”
The sugar-cane—and by consequence, sugar and rum—coffee, and of late tobacco, are the staple productions of Jamaica. There is one district where the traveller may see an unbroken plain of 4,000 acres under canes. The road over Mount Diabolo is very fine, and the view back to Kingston very grand. Jack ashore will find that the people all ride, but that the horses always walk. There are respectable mountains to be ascended in Jamaica: Blue Mountain Peak towers to the height of 8,000 feet. The highest inhabited house on the island, the property of a coffee-planter, is a kind of half-way house of entertainment; and although Mr. Trollope—who provided himself with a white companion, who, in his turn, provided five negroes, beef, bread, water, brandy, and what seemed to him about ten gallons of rum—gives a doleful description of the clouds and mists and fogs which surrounded the Peak, others may be more fortunate.
The most important of the West Indian Islands, Cuba—“Queen of the Antilles”—does not, as we all know, belong to England, but is the most splendid appanage of the Spanish crown. Havana, the capital, has a grand harbour, large, commodious, and safe, with a fine quay, at which the vessels of all nations lie. The sailor will note one peculiarity: instead of laying alongside, the ships are fastened “end on”—usually the bow being at the quay. The harbour is very picturesque, and the entrance to it is defended by two forts, which were taken once by England—in Albemarle’s time—and now could be knocked to pieces in a few minutes by any nation which was ready with the requisite amount of gunpowder.