The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). Frederick Whymper
the good ship must proceed; and as British naval interests are under consideration, let her bows be turned to Bermuda—a colony, a fortress and a prison, and where England owns an extensive floating dock, dock-yards, and workshops.114 Trollope says that its geological formation is mysterious. “It seems to be made of soft white stone, composed mostly of little shells—so soft, indeed, that you might cut Bermuda up with a hand-saw. And people are cutting up Bermuda with hand-saws. One little island, that on which the convicts are established, has been altogether so cut up already. When I visited it, two fat convicts were working away slowly at the last fragment.” Bermuda is the crater of an extinct volcano, and is surrounded by little islets, of which there is one for every day of the year in a space of twenty by three miles. These are surrounded again by reefs and rocks, and navigation is risky.
Were the Bermudas the scene of Ariel’s tricks? They were first discovered, in 1522, by Bermudez, a Spaniard; and Shakespeare seems to have heard of them, for he speaks of the
“Still vexed Bermoothes.”
Trollope says that there is more of the breed of Caliban in the islands than of Ariel. Though Caliban did not relish working for his master more than the Bermudian of to-day, there was an amount of energy about him entirely wanting in the existing islanders.
There are two towns, St. George and Hamilton, on different islands. The former is the head-quarters of the military, and the second that of the governor. It is the summer head-quarters of the admiral of the station. The islands are, in general, wonderfully fertile, and will, with any ordinary cultivation, give two crops of many vegetables in the year. It has the advantages of the tropics, plus those of more temperate climes. For tomatoes, onions, beet-root, sweet potatoes, early potatoes, as well as all kinds of fruits, from oranges, lemons, and bananas to small berries, it is not surpassed by any place in the world; while arrowroot is one of its specialities. It is the early market-garden for New York. Ship-building is carried on, as the islands abound in a stunted cedar, good for the purpose, when it can be found large enough. The working population are almost all negroes, and are lazy to a degree. But the whites are not much better; and the climate is found to produce great lassitude.
BERMUDA, FROM GIBBS HILL.
It is the sea round the Bermudas, more than the islands themselves, perhaps, that give its beauty. Everywhere the water is wonderfully clear and transparent, while the land is broken up into narrow inlets and headlands, and bays and promontories, nooks and corners, running here and there in capricious and ever-varying forms. The oleander, with their bright blossoms, are so abundant, almost to the water’s edge, that the Bermudas might be called the “Oleander Isles.”
The Bermuda convict, in Trollope’s time, seemed to be rather better off than most English labourers. He had a pound of meat—good meat, too, while the Bermudians were tugging at their teeth with tough morsels; he had a pound and three-quarters of bread—more than he wanted; a pound of vegetables; tea and sugar; a glass of grog per diem; tobacco-money allowed, and eight hours’ labour. He was infinitely better off than most sailors of the merchant service.
THE NORTH ROCK, BERMUDA.
St. George, the military station of the colony, commands the only entrance among the islands suitable for the passage of large vessels, the narrow and intricate channel which leads to its land-locked haven being defended by strong batteries. The lagoons, and passages, and sea canals between the little islands make communication by water as necessary as in Venice. Every one keeps a boat or cedar canoe. He will often do his business on one island and have his residence on a second. Mark Twain has a wonderful facility for description; and his latest articles, “Random Notes of an Idle Excursion,” contain a picturesque account of the Bermudas, and more particularly of Hamilton, the leading port. He says that he found it a wonderfully white town, white as marble—snow—flour. “It was,” says he, “a town compacted together upon the sides and tops of a cluster of small hills. Its outlying borders fringed off and thinned away among the cedar forests, and there was no woody distance of curving coast or leafy islet sleeping on the dimpled, painted sea but was flecked with shining white points—half-concealed houses peeping out of the foliage. * * * There was an ample pier of heavy masonry; upon this, under shelter, were some thousands of barrels, containing that product which has carried the fame of Bermuda to many lands—the potato. With here and there an onion. That last sentence is facetious, for they grow at least two onions in Bermuda to one potato. The onion is the pride and the joy of Bermuda. It is her jewel, her gem of gems. In her conversation, her pulpit, her literature, it is her most frequent and eloquent figure. In Bermudian metaphor it stands for perfection—perfection absolute.
“The Bermudian, weeping over the departed, exhausts praise when he says, ‘He was an onion!’ The Bermudian, extolling the living hero, bankrupts applause when he says, ‘He is an onion!’ The Bermudian, setting his son upon the stage of life to dare and do for himself, climaxes all counsel, supplication, admonition, comprehends all ambition, when he says, ‘Be an onion!’ ” When the steamer arrives at the pier, the first question asked is not concerning great war or political news, but concerns only the price of onions. All the writers agree that for tomatoes, onions, and vegetables generally, the Bermudas are unequalled; they have been called, as noted before, the market-gardens of New York.
Jack who is fortunate enough to be on the West India and North American Stations must be congratulated. “The country roads,” says the clever writer above quoted, “curve and wind hither and thither in the delightfulest way, unfolding pretty surprises at every turn; billowy masses of oleander that seem to float out from behind distant projections, like the pink cloud-banks of sunset; sudden plunges among cottages and gardens, life and activity, followed by as sudden plunges into the sombre twilight and stillness of the woods; glittering visions of white fortresses and beacon towers pictured against the sky on remote hill-tops; glimpses of shining green sea caught for a moment through opening headlands, then lost again; more woods and solitude; and by-and-by another turn lays bare, without warning, the full sweep of the inland ocean, enriched with its bars of soft colour, and graced with its wandering sails.
“Take any road you please, you may depend upon it you will not stay in it half a mile. Your road is everything that a road ought to be; it is bordered with trees, and with strange plants and flowers; it is shady and pleasant, or sunny and still pleasant; it carries you by the prettiest and peacefulest and most home-like of homes, and through stretches of forest that lie in a deep hush sometimes, and sometimes are alive with the music of birds; it curves always, which is a continual promise, whereas straight roads reveal everything at a glance and kill interest. * * * There is enough of variety. Sometimes you are in the level open, with marshes, thick grown with flag-lances that are ten feet high, on the one hand, and potato and onion orchards on the other; next you are on a hill-top, with the ocean and the islands spread around you; presently the road winds through a deep cut, shut in by perpendicular walls thirty or forty feet high, marked with the oddest and abruptest stratum lines, suggestive of sudden and eccentric old upheavals, and garnished with, here and there, a clinging adventurous flower, and here and there a dangling vine; and by-and-by, your way is along the sea edge, and you may look down a fathom or two through the transparent water and watch the diamond-like flash and play of the light upon the rocks and sands on the bottom until you are tired of it—if you are so constituted as to be able to get tired of it.”
But as there are spots in the sun, and the brightest lights throw the deepest shadows everywhere; so on the Bermuda coasts there are, in its rare storms, dangers of no small kind among its numerous reefs and rocks. The North Rock, in particular, is the monument which marks the grave of many a poor sailor in by-gone days. At the present time, however, tug-boats, and the use of steam generally, have reduced the perils of navigation among the hundreds of islands which constitute the Bermuda group to a minimum.
The recent successful trip of Cleopatra’s Needle in a vessel of unique construction will recall that of the Bermuda floating-dock, which it will be remembered was towed across