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THIS volume aims at setting forth the abundant 
charms and varied interests of the North Devon 
coast, from Countisbury on the east to Hartland 
on the west, and includes in its scope Lynton, 
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The author has not cumbered himself with 
minute topographical details already accessible 
in numerous existing guide-books, but has at- 
tempted to deal with the localities in a large 
spirit of sympathetic interpretation, seizing in 
each case on the essential attributes and vitalising 
the narrative with human touches. As many of 
the scenes have been rendered immortal by 
Charles Kingsley, there are naturally frequent 
allusions to that distinguished writer and his 
master -work, Westward Ho! Legends and 
historical tit-bits, with glimpses at the fisher-folk, 
serve to complete a kindly and informing sketch 
of one of the most famous and beautiful districts 
of the romantic West Country. The book is 
illustrated with delicate reproductions of water- 
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JAMAICA 



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JAMAICA 



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ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 
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DEDICATION 

DEAR SIR ALFRED JONES, 

It is fitting that a book dealing with 
Jamaica should, in some way, be identified with your 
name, so I venture to dedicate this volume to you as 
a small mark of the appreciation of one, who, having 
seen something of the value of your work in the West 
Indies, is filled with admiration for your enterprise and 
perspicacity. It seems to me that few men in England 
have done more to make for that condition of Imperial 
Unity which is the ideal of all who think seriously of the 
problems of the mother-land and her colonies. In West 
Africa, South Africa, and Canada, as well as in the 
West Indies, you are known as a strong upholder of all 
the best traditions of Imperialism, and as a man whose 
assistance for any patriotic cause is never asked in vain. 
You began to take an interest in Jamaica at a time when 
that country was, financially, in a somewhat critical 
condition; and undoubtedly the commercial revival which 

V 

165153 



Jamaica 

has occurred in the " Queen of the Antilles " is in some 
measure due to the influence of the trade introduced by 
your line of direct mail- steamers. Tou have shortened 
the journey from England to Jamaica by several days, 
and so you have enabled the fruits of the island to be 
brought to the home market in a manner unknown before 
the introduction of your Imperial line. In addition, you 
have brought the country -prominently before the notice of 
the British tourist^ and generally your influence has had a 
markedly beneficial effect upon the trade of the island. 

It is the earnest desire of every one who has the good 
fortune to live in the " land of wood and water" and of 
every one who has the interests of the island at heart, that 
you may long continue to take an active par tin the develop- 
ment of 'Jamaica. 

Yours sincerely, 

THE AUTHOR. 

To Sir ALFRED JONES, K.C.M.G. 



VI 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



I. HISTORICAL ........ I 

II. JAMAICA ......... 9 

III. THE TOWN OF KINGSTON . . . . . 23 

IV. THE PEOPLE OF JAMAICA . . . . . . 35 

V. THE PHILOSOPHY OF A JAMAICAN GAMIN ... 4.9 

VI. THE WOMEN OF WILD MAN STREET . . . 55 

VII. THE WEST INDIAN ARMY 61 

VIII. A JAMAICAN COURT HOUSE ..... 69 

IX. THE MILITARY CAMP AT NEWCASTLE . . . 75 

X. THE RECREATIONS OF THE BLACK MAN . . . 8 1 

XI. THE DANDY AND THE COQUETTE . . . . 91 

XII. BOG WALK 97 

XIII. THE POLITICS OF A JAMAICAN NEGRO . . . 103 

XIV. THE WHITE MAN'S POLITICS 113 

XV. THE RAILWAY IN JAMAICA . . . . .119 

XVI. ALLIGATOR SHOOTING IN A WEST INDIAN SWAMP . 125 

vii 



XXIII. IN CONCLUSION 



TACTS. 



Jamaica 

CHAP. 

XVII. COMMERCIAL JAMAICA . . . . . .133 

XVIII. THE FLORA OF JAMAICA ..... 143 

XIX. A JAMAICAN RACE-COURSE . . . . .149 

XX. THE HILL STATIONS . . . . . .157 

XXI. MATTERS OF INTEREST TO TOURISTS . . .163 

XXII. CERTAIN THINGS THE WEST INDIAN TOURIST MUST 

NOT DO . . . . . . . .171 



'75 



Vlll 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

1. Rosie, a Jamaican Negress ..... Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

2. Cocoa Nut Palm, Falmouth . . . . . 10 

3. Constant Spring . . . . . . . 14. 

4. Stalls outside the Market, Mandeville . 20 

5. The Tobacco Market, Kingston ..... 28 

6. Resting by the Way ....... 34 

7. Going to Church ....... 42 

8. A Fruit-Seller on a Side-Walk, Kingston ... 50 

9. An Old Gateway, Kingston 56 

10. A Soldier of the West Indian Regiment ... 62 

11. A Market Woman ....... 70 

12. A Garden Terrace ....... 76 

13. A Coloured Lady on a Race-Course .... 92 

14. A House near the Bog Walk 98 

15. A Negro 104 

16. Dry Harbour . . . . . . . .112 

17. On the Road to Market 118 

1 8. Black River 130 

ix 



Jamaica 



FACING PAGE 

19. Mid-day Heat ........ 146 

20. A Jockey at Cumberland Pen 150 

21. A Bungalow in the Hills .... .158 

22. Hut in a Plantation . . . . . . . 162 

23. The Cathedral at Spanish Town . . . .164 

24. Huts, St. Ann's Bay . 172 






OF THE 



UNIVERSITY J 



CHAPTER I 

HISTORICAL 

IN Britain we have lost the art of correct perspective. 
We see distant things through jaundiced eyes ; as a 
nation we are too prone to regard over-sea lands and 
peoples with compassion tempered with contempt, or 
with envy and timidity. To ensure our respect and 
sympathy a country must be successful ; we have no 
room in our Empire for failures. America, because of 
her commercial genius and industrial enterprise, we 
respect and revere and imitate. We exaggerate the 
successes of the States and credit the American with 
commercial omnipotence. The word American stands 
in the unprinted national dictionary as meaning efficient, 
successful, up-to-date. I have heard that English trades- 
men have labelled English-made goods u American " in 
order that a quick sale might be ensured in Britain's 
capital. We refuse to believe that America has ceased 
to be related to us by ties of kinship ; to the Englishmen 
of the homeland Americans are first cousins. And so 
it is, conversely, with England and the West Indies. 



J 



amaica 



At home we are apt to think of the West Indies ^s 
a scattered group of poverty-stricken islands, barren of 
riches, planted somewhere in some tropical sea, and 
periodically reduced to absolute desolation by hurricanes, 
earthquakes, and volcanoes. The poverty of the Western 
Indies is proverbial. Occasionally Imperial Parliament 
brings forward some measure, which, in the opinion of 
some individual, might tend to relieve the distress and 
commercial poverty of our West Indian possessions ; 
at other times a fund is started at the Mansion-House 
to help the West Indian victims of some fearful tornado 
or earthquake. That is all that is generally known of 
the great islands of the Caribbean Sea. In our dreams 
of Empire we prefer to think of Canada, Africa, and 
strenuous Australasia. Commercially and politically 
our West Indies are, according to the general idea, 
more than half derelict, and wholly without the attrac- 
tions of wealth and promise. We forget that these 
Western islands were at one time the richest of 
England's possessions ; we do not realise how rich they, 
some day, will again become. If Britain only under- 
stood aright she would know that it is only through 
her own neglect, through her half-hearted, penurious 
West Indian policy, that our Caribbean Empire is not 
in the front rank of her richest possessions to-day. 
The riches of the West Indies played a large part in 
the formation of Britain's greatness. We swept the 
islands clear of all their surface wealth at a period when 
England was most in need of gold. And because to- 
day we cannot send ships from Plymouth with empty 






Historical 

holds and crowded quarter-decks, to return from a six 
months' voyage in the Indies crowded with treasure 
and glory, we count the islands barren. We forget 
that West Indian wealth was invested in Britain's 
greatness years before we had an empire. We forget 
that Britain's navy was founded by men who were 
trained to war and seamanship among those islands of 
the West. More than once have these islands seen the 
pride and glory of England hanging in the balance, and 
once, at least, the Indies knew before the homeland that 
a blow, which had threatened the very foundations of 
British greatness, had been hurled in vain. 

That was in the time of Burke and Fox and Rodney. 
Spain and France and Holland had combined, and in 
one great battle threatened to crush the power of 
England, and to wrest from her the supremacy of 
the seas. England trembled, and the popular party 
advocated surrender and peace. France and Spain 
wanted the Indies. Rodney sailed from England to 
uphold the power and dominion of his race. He sailed 
amidst the sullen silence of a people whose power he was 
to uphold. A few weeks after his sailing a message was 
despatched from Parliament commanding him not to fight. 
He was to strike his colours and surrender the Indies. 
But the message arrived too late. Rodney had already 
fought and won when the craven message reached him. 
The battle had happened off Dominica, and the flag of 
England remained triumphant in the Caribbean Sea. 
The English ships were victorious, and Rodney had 
saved his country against his country's will. And since 

3 



J 



amaica 

that day no one has challenged England's supremacy in 
the islands of the West. 

The history of the West Indies is filled with chapters 
as strong even as this ; in no corner of the world have 
so many brave deeds been done for " England, home, 
and beauty." Stories of mighty Spanish galleons sunk 
by British ships of war ; of pillage and bloodshed and 
treasure ; of the battles of France and Spain and 
England ; of the wealth of the Spanish main, intercepted 
among these islands, and stored in some West Indian 
port for convenience of British merchant adventure 
houses, are encountered at every step on our journey 
through the records of the Caribbean group. We read 
of buccaneers and filibusters ; of Morgan, the last of 
the tribe, knighted and made Vice-Go vernor of Jamaica ; 
of the doings of the redoubtable Kidd ; of the bloodiness 
of Blackbeard ; of the countless list of names, some 
high-sounding, which at last were painted in crimson 
splashes on the gallows slip at Port Royal headland. 
Port Royal itself deserves a niche in the temple of fame. 
The richest and the most vicious town the world ever 
knew ; so it was before the clean ocean washed away its 
vice and corruption, and buried it deep in the pure water 
of the blue Caribbean. When Morgan knew it, when 
the prizes of Kidd and the others were moored alongside 
its treasure-laden wharves, the strip of land contained 
the richest city in the world. 

Bearded seamen, bronzed and weather-stained, but 
decked with priceless jewellery and the finest silks of 
the Orient, swaggered along its quays, and gambled with 






Historical 

heavy golden coins whose value no one cared to estimate. 
The drinking shops were filled with cups of gold and 
silver, embellished with flashing gems. Each house was 
a treasure store. The place was a gilded hell, and 
mammon held sovereign sway over its people. Such 
wealth and vice and debauchery had never been dreamed 
of. Common seamen bathed in the richest wine, and 
hung their ears with heavy gold rings studded with the 
costliest gems. Dagger thrusts were as common as 
brawls, and the body of a murdered man would remain 
in a dancing-room until the dancing was over. Gold 
and precious stones were cheap, but life was cheaper. 
And every man in that crowd of pirates lived beneath 
the shadow of the gallows. 

Finer it is to remember the Western voyages of 
Drake and Hawkins and all the old sea-dogs who first 
proclaimed the might of British seamen. Picture them, 
scurvy-stricken, reduced by disease and famine, resting 
and recruiting in the wide bays of any West Indian isle. 
Imagine their joy at finding luscious fruits and sweet, 
health-giving water. Then see them in their tiny ships 
darting from behind the cover of some wooded neck 
of land, surprising a galleon ten times their weight, 
scuttling the little vessel and manning the Spanish 
leviathan with British seamen. How many little 
English barques lie beneath the dark blue waters of 
the Gulf of Mexico ! Having found their prize and 
tasted the joy of victory, the British captains thirst for 
more. They sail the Spanish seas in a Spanish ship, 
and sack the coast towns, levying heavy toll ; they 

5 



Jamaica 

fight great battles and pound the deeply laden treasure 
ships with Spanish cannon trimmed by British gunners. 
They select the richest spoil and fling the rest to the 
waves. How many bars of gold and silver, how many 
crates of silks, and iron boxes filled with gems ; how 
many sacks of doubloons have sunk in these Western 
waters, and lie there now, buried amidst the skeleton of 
a rotting vessel ! 

All these things were done in these seas by English- 
men in the days of old, done for greed of gain and the 
lust of bloodshed. Done also in the name of religion, 
and because two sects, worshipping the same God, 
quarrelled in regard to ritual ; and because one sect put 
a sword at the throat of the other and said, Do as we 
do, or die. Just as the Inquisition proved to be the 
undoing of the might and wealth of Spain, so did 
the Inquisition, indirectly, give the West Indies to the 
English. The West Indian waters formed the training 
school of Drake and Frobisher, Hawkins and Raleigh ; 
and these men founded the navy. In later days Rodney 
revived the Caribbean school, and there Nelson learned 
how to outwit the French in ocean battles. Because of 
these things, but not only because of these things, do 
we owe a great debt to these Antillean islands. 

So far as we are concerned the history of the Indies 
is a medley of romance, the romance of British great- 
ness. 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 

6 



Historical 

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 chief 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 forma- 
tion 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 

7 



J 



amaica 



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. 



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, 

9 



J 



amaica 



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 con- 
versation. 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 negroes 



10 



Jamaica 

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 

ii 



Jamaica 

history. Here came Nelson, Rodney, Jervis, Colling- 
wood, 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 native craft and the negro boatmen do 
not seem to belong to to-day, and Kingston, hidden and 
guarded by this strip of land, seems somehow to 
suggest romance and mystery. The sea all round is 
studded with treacherous coral reefs, some of which, just 
showing above the water, are thickly grown with palm- 
trees. The effect is beautiful in the extreme ; the 
clumps of trees, planted apparently on nothing, are 
growing straight out of the sea. 

As you round Port Royal you discover Kingston, a 
large, white, straggling town entirely hemmed in on 
the land side by the Blue Mountains, and seawards 
washed by the waters of a lagoon seven or eight miles 
long, and nearly half as wide. Slowly we steamed to 
the town, passing an ancient, dismantled and deserted 
fort, which once mounted its hundred guns. 

12 



Jamaica 

I remember that our good ship was at last made fast 
to the wooden quay, and the black-faced, white-coated 
labourers grinned us greeting as we stepped ashore. 
After some excitement with many half-castes represent- 
ing the Customs, the hotels, and the buggies, who each 
and all claimed a portion of our baggage, we safely 
emerged from the dock district into the dusty main 
road of Kingston. It was strange to find up-to-date, 
twentieth century, American, electric cars screaming 
along roads which, if they were ever built at all, were 
certainly completed two centuries back ; and it was 
even more strange to learn that these cars have not 
entirely depopulated Kingston. 

I remember being possessed of a great idea of 
walking to my hotel. A fresh sea breeze was blow- 
ing, and the prospect of a stroll through the town 
was peculiarly inviting. But, unfortunately, the dock 
gates were barricaded with buggies, and to successfully 
evade the manoeuvres of one only meant falling into 
the clutches of another. Passage between the vehicles 
there was none, and when I attempted to step through 
one carriage to get clear of the others, the fiendish 
driver whipped his ponies and whirled me out of the 
dockyard before I could regain my presence of mind. 
Outside, the delighted man claimed me as a passenger, 
and when I found that I was sitting on a singularly 
pompous and overheated Britisher, who had been 
captured in the same enterprising manner, I forgot to 
be angry, and began to apologise. The result was 
entirely satisfactory the pompous Britisher never 



I 



amaica 



forgave me. We dropped him, I remember, the first 
time the ponies took it into their heads to slow up, but 
the worthy man seriously offended our driver by 
refusing to pay. For half an hour they wrangled in 
the crowded main street, and frequently I feared the 
sudden death of my white friend. However, the 
storm came to a sudden and dramatic finish by the 
skilful capture of the weary Englishman by another 
buggyman. We left him cursing Jamaica and buggies, 
and particularly all black men. After a series of 
adventures and narrow escapes we at last reached the 
Constant Spring Hotel. The driver suggested that I 
should pay him a sovereign, but he accepted ten shillings 
with the utmost cheerfulness. Afterwards I discovered 
that the fare was certainly not more than a dollar. 

I sat in a comfortable wicker chair in the com- 
modious entrance hall of the hotel and tried to collect 
my scattered senses. The excitement of my buggy 
journey, and the interest of my first glimpse of the 
capital of the Queen of the Antilles, had somewhat 
unstrung my thinking faculties. I was alone in a 
strange hotel in a strange country. My luggage was 
heaven knows where, and my companions, Forrest and 
the others, were left on a crowded quay somewhere 
down in the dock district. 

I called for a cooling drink and mentioned my 
trouble to the coal-black waiter. 

" That's aT light, sah. They come soon, sah." 

So I remained in that comfortable chair in the 
vestibule of the hotel and waited. A ragged, disreput- 



Jamaica 

able-looking John crow, perched on a bush of scarlet 
blossoms just in front of where I sat, regarded me with 
a look of thoughtful contempt. As my nerves got 
more settled I became conscious of the rich perfumes 
of the flowers ; the insects were buzzing and chirping 
outside, and the strong sun gave to my shaded resting- 
place an air of quiet coolness. Graceful negresses were 
watering the flower-beds ; they carried the watering- 
cans on their heads until they found the particular 
plant they wished to sprinkle with the refreshing liquid. 
Their movements were slow and deliberate and very 
graceful. 

It was a peaceful summer day ; from where I sat I 
could see, afar off, a thin edge of blue beyond the 
distant confines of the town, and I made out the white 
patches of the sails of little vessels. I lit my pipe and 
waited. Suddenly there was a jangle and a crash, and 
a buggy stopped at the hotel door ; in it the head of 
my friend Forrest appeared from amidst a heap of 
sketch-books, easels, portfolios, and virgin canvases. 
I could see by the agonised expression on his flushed 
countenance that he was very angry. I called the 
waiter and told him to help the poor struggling 
artist to disentangle himself from the debris of his 
paraphernalia. 

Forrest came to where I sat and sank into another 
wicker chair. He seized my cooling drink and 
emptied the glass at one gulp. 

" Where am I ? " he asked. 

I shook my head. 

15 



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amaica 



" Where's Large and the Colonel ? " 

I shook my head. 

" Seen my luggage ? " 

I shook my head again. 

He glanced through the doorway and caught sight 
of the disreputable John crow perched on the bank of 
scarlet blossoms, and, fumbling for a pencil, made his 
first Jamaican sketch there and then. I ordered 
another cooling drink, and so we waited for our 
luggage and our friends. ^/ 

Jamaica is the largest and most important island in 
the British West Indies. It contains an area of some 
two thousand odd square miles, and supports a popula- 
tion of three quarters of a million people, only two 
per cent of whom are white. The blacks claim the 
predominating proportion of seventy-seven per cent, the 
" coloured " people represent nearly twenty per cent, 
and the remainder of the population is made up of 
whites, Indian coolies, and Chinese. The ten thousand 
coolies at work on the plantations in the interior have 
become a force in the island, and they are destined to 
play a considerable part in the commercial salvation of 
the country. The negroes are, of course, the descend- 
ants of the slaves imported from Africa in the days of 
the slave trade ; the coloured class are the offsprings 
of the union of the whites with the blacks, or of the 
half-breeds with the negroes. The coolies are of recent 
importation from India, and the Chinese have come, 
no one knows how, to trade with the negroes in up- 
country districts. 

16 



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amaica 



In the days of old, Jamaica waxed fat on the profits 
of her sugar estates and the rich prizes of her rum 
trade. Fortunes were made almost without effort or 
exertion by old-time planters. Sugar was sold at 
absurdly high prices, and the planters cultivated their 
plantations entirely by slave labour. 

The Emancipation Act of 1834 flung the industries 
of the island out of joint, and although the Imperial 
Government granted compensation to the extent of 
nearly six millions sterling to the owners of the three 
hundred thousand slaves they had liberated, the dry rot 
of decay set in, and Jamaica fell from her high position 
among commercial communities. The richest planters 
sold out their plantations and returned to the old 
country ; the poorer planters who remained in the island 
were terribly handicapped for lack of labour. The freed 
slaves refused to work for their late masters, and the 
labour difficulty set in. Factories were forced to stop 
work ; fields lay unplanted and untended for lack of 
workers. And this labour difficulty has remained more 
or less acute from that day to this. It was believed 
by the authorities that the introduction of the ten 
thousand coolies would help to solve the difficulty. 
The negroes had built for themselves little huts, and 
were content to live on the native fruits and vege- 
tables. The pleasant indolence of their new life 
suited their tastes to a nicety ; the rewards offered 
in return for their labour were neither sufficient nor 
in any way attractive. The warm climate and rich 

soil were all the Jamaican African required to make 

17 2 



Jamaica 

his life all that he desired. Sugar plantations were 
abandoned and rum factories were shut down, and 
poverty came to the land of wood and water. Natu- 
rally the white people resented the idleness of the 
blacks, and several eruptions occurred ; the Gordon 
riots, and other disturbances less notorious, were directly 
caused by the impatience of the whites and the im- 
pertinence of the blacks. 

Fine as is the picture of those three hundred thousand 
Africans climbing the mountain sides of their island 
prison-home in order that they might face the sun on 
the morning of the emancipation, we must not ignore 
the prospect of the valleys, lying in the deep shadows 
of those mountains, which were to be half desolated by 
the glory of that sunrise. If the black men were 
willing to work as hard now, or even half as hard, as 
their fathers once were forced to work, we should hear 
no dreary stories of Jamaica's poverty. The island has 
got an ideal climate, a marvellously productive soil, and 
labourers in plenty ; it lacks but the spirit of labour. 
The natural wealth of the country is vast enough, but 
the harvesters are idle and unwilling to work. The 
fact that the Government was forced to bring ten 
thousand coolies from distant India to work in the 
plantations and factories is a lasting disgrace to most of 
the five hundred thousand black men and many of the 
hundred and fifty thousand coloured folk. The pity 
of it is that neither of these classes seems to feel the 
sting of the disgrace. The negro has in his being no 

instinct for labour ; the women only are willing workers. 

18 






J 



amaica 



Solve the Jamaica labour problem and the com- 
mercial problem will solve itself. 

The climate of the island is as nearly perfect as any 
climate can hope to be. It is a country of perpetual 
sunshine and blue skies. The heat of the day is tropical, 
but it 'is always tempered by cool sea breezes ; and when 
the sun has gone the evenings and the nights are 
deliciously cool and refreshing. The island is really 
possessed of many different climates. The towns and 
villages among the hills on the mountain slopes are 
always cooler than the cities of the plains. The climate 
of the place has always been grossly maligned by people 
of the homeland. On my first journey out to Jamaica 
I imagined that I should find the place filled with 
yellow fever and malaria ; I thought of it as a sort of 
West Africa only a little worse. And I found it the 
most pleasant and healthy place imaginable. In spite 
of all the statements and statistics to the contrary, the 
conservative people of England still believe that a 
journey to the Queen of the Antilles includes the risk 
of yellow jack. Fevers there are, of course, just as in 
England there are coughs and colds ; and I would 
choose a Jamaica fever before an English cold. Yellow 
fever is a disease which attacks you when you least 
expect it, and either leaves you dead, or nearly so. 
It is an uncanny, unwholesome thing, and is not a 
respecter of persons. Really, for all practical purposes, 
Jamaica is free of yellow fever ; the disease has been 
stamped out. People die of it even to this date ; 
but even England is not entirely free from smallpox. 

19 



J 



amaica 

Yet one cannot describe smallpox as one of the 
characteristics of our little island. In the same way 
it would be foolish to associate Jamaica with yellow 
fever. 

The Jamaicans discuss the disease with dispassionate, 
respectful dread. It is a thing to be avoided ; if met 
face to face it must be combated with heroism, and a 
particular remedy peculiar almost to every inhabitant. 
Many there are alive on the island who have had the 
yellow jack and lived ; many more there are who still 
mourn the loss of those who bowed before its malignant 
power. The younger colonists those people who have 
lived there only ten or fifteen or twenty years talk of 
the '97 outbreak ; the old inhabitants speak of the last 
real epidemic, the '77 affair. So and so went down 
then, and poor old what's-his-name died in two hours. 
I met one man who told me of a picnic he gave in the 
mountains some seven years ago. Sixteen guests sat 
down ; eight died of yellow fever before the year closed 
down. That would be in the '97 outbreak. But these 
are rare cases. 

Malarial fever is common in the towns and some 
parts of the country in Jamaica, but it is a little fever 
without strength ; it is not dangerous. There is 
no malignant malarial. Though Jamaicans contract 
malarial as frequently perhaps as Englishmen catch cold 
in London, the malarial is not so dangerous as the cold. 
So it is not of much account. Jamaica is a pleasanter 
place to live in than London, but new arrivals should 
adapt themselves to the condition of things. Clothes 

20 






Jamaica 

and habits admirably adapted for the English climate 
are generally out of place in a tropical island. 

The staple products of the island are entirely 
agricultural. Jamaica has embraced the fruit trade. 
Half the total value of her exports is represented by her 
over-sea trade in bananas, oranges, grape fruit, and 
pine-apples. The sugar and rum trades take secondary 
positions, but coffee is rapidly coming to the front. 

To-day the island has little political significance save 
for the fact that it is a strong naval base. It is probable 
that the completion of the Panama Canal will give 
to it a more important status in the political world. 
With the opening of the new ocean route to the East, 
Jamaica will become a naval base of the utmost im- 
portance to Britain. 



21 



CHAPTER III 

THE TOWN OF KINGSTON 

THE town of Kingston is made up of mean streets 
crammed with little bungalow houses, filled to over- 
flowing with people coloured in all the shades of black 
and yellow. If the place resembles any well-known 
capital it must be New York ; but a New York built 
by children in doll's-house style, and painted green and 
white. In the manner of New York the streets stretch 
to the wharves and quays of the giant harbour, and 
electric tram-cars clang along the busy roads by day 
and night. Electric poles stick up along the roadway 
in blatant disregard of the finer feelings of romantic 
tourists. The shops are usually called emporiums, and 
they flash with all the gaudy fitments common to the 
meaner streets of New York city. Some there are that 
might be English quiet and respectable places in 
which the white man finds his needs supplied by 
intelligent half-breeds, who do not count themselves 
among the coloured class. These aristocrats among 
Jamaica's shop assistants have all the polish of a London 
draper, mixed with an obvious consciousness of vast 

23 



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amaica 



responsibility. As a rule he affects gold spectacles, 
and closely resembles an Indian Babu studying law. 
With this class of salesman it is impossible to exercise 
one's powers of bargaining. The suggestion of a reduc- 
tion in the price of a linen collar would be to these 
commercial gentlemen entirely in the nature of an insult. 
They do not live to amass money. Their mission is to 
supply Jamaican Englishmen with necessary comforts 
at the lowest possible price ; there is no suggestion of 
gain in their commerce. Homilies on the ethics of 
tradesmanship, delivered with great eloquence and a 
religious accent from behind a dark face screened with 
gold spectacles, are impressive in the extreme. The 
real salesman is to be found in smaller stores. There 
the tradesman regards as a man without wisdom the 
dull buyer who pays more than half the sum asked for 
any article. It is on such that the people wax fat in the 
land. This acute process of buying is tedious if the 
buyer lacks experience. The easiest method is to offer 
the merchant just one quarter the sum asked for any 
article. This gives the keeper of the shop a shock, but 
impresses him with the fact that he is not likely to be 
able to swindle you to an unlimited extent. It has 
become legitimate trade with him, and so when you 
double your offer and proffer half the original figure, 
the desired commodity is wrapped up and money 
changes hands. It is only by adopting this method 
that a tourist can afford to live in Jamaica. There is 
still another class of seller, but with this class the white 
man has no dealings. The women who sell sticky 

24 



The Town of Kingston 

sweetmeats or sweating pastries along the kerb-stones, 
do not appeal to the adult of the race of England. 
Such sellers are the native costermongers. They have 
no barrows or elaborate stalls ; their paraphernalia 
consists of a broken basket, or piece of board supported 
across the knees. They are the sellers of fruit, sweet- 
meats, tobacco, eggs, live poultry, and the sticky, greasy 
pastries dear to the heart of the negro, be he old or 
young. As a rule the basket stalls are placed at the 
roadside, well in the glare of the sun. The saleswoman 
is usually very old, and her costume is of dull rags 
constructed to resemble a lady's dress. Her face is 
creased at the jaws, and the cheek bones stand out like 
gnarled fists ; her remaining teeth are very yellow, and 
her skinny hands are for ever shuffling the contents 
of her basket. Such women make no bid for trade ; 
the buyer comes or he comes not. The dull face shows 
no emotion. It may be that the basket and its contents 
are the property of a negro speculator ; she, the seller, 
perhaps, is simply an agent working for her daily yam. 
These are not the merry women of the market-place 
who come in from the country with a load of produce 
to sell and to spend a day in town. If it were not for 
the sweetmeats they would pass as ancient beggars. 
Of course Kingston has its gamin the wild, bareheaded, 
barelegged boy, who is always shouting or running or 
playing his mysterious games of the streets. He, of 
course, is the essence of youthful happiness. His day is 
divided between the harbour, where he dives for pennies 
among the sharks alongside ocean-going passenger 

25 



Jamaica 

boats, and the streets, where he is prepared for anything, 
from stealing a water melon to chasing the donkeys of 
the market-place. When a stranger accosts him he 
becomes all grinning innocence and flashing teeth. " Me 
work, sah, yes, sah, very hard work, very little money. 
I ask you for a penny, sah, for my mother's sake, sah, 
one penny.'' It seems to me that every boy, be he 
black or white, or yellow or red, whether he live in 
London, Paris, Tokio, or Kingston, Jamaica, is afflicted 
with the same genius of mischief. 

The capital of Jamaica has its pest also. In most 
places frequented by tourists the great pest is the guide 
pest ; in Jamaica it is the buggyman. The buggy, of 
course, is the cab of the Indies, and the buggyman is 
the curse of the country. With him we will deal at 
length elsewhere. But the buggies and the buggyman 
should always be considered as the Jamaican pests. 

It is curious to see the long electric Canadian road 
car swing at ten-mile speed down these narrow streets 
crowded with the picturesque people of the Western 
Indies. The effect of the streets is kaleidoscopic ; 
the sudden appearance of a car reminds one of the 
mutoscope which shows a railway train rushing at the 
audience. Such is the impression of the road car in 
the crowded Jamaican streets. The people have become 
accustomed to this touch of a vigorous Western world. 
The noise of its rushing and the horrible jangle of its 
clanking bell have ceased to provoke interest. The car 
is a thing on which, for a copper or two, the workers 
may ride home. It saves great fatigue and much 

26 



The Town of Kingston 

walking. The market baskets may be placed beneath 
the seats ; the town slips rapidly behind, and home is 
reached. Heaven knows what moves the car along. 
There are no horses, and no engines like those on 
the railway. It is a thing causing annoyance to the 
buggyman, that is all. For the rest you can ride five 
or six miles at ten miles an hour speed for four 
Jamaican pennies. 

The country-people, who come once a week to sell 
their produce in the great Saturday foregathering of 
agricultural Jamaica, still show wonder and fear at the 
approach of a tram. They still jump into the hedges 
as the tram flies along still turn their eyes away from 
the chaff of the negro conductor. But that is the only 
respect shown to this foreign importation. 

The dusty streets of the capital melt into country 
lanes with scented hedges as you swing out of the city 
on a journey to the Constant Spring terminus of the 
tramway. White dust takes the place of the darker 
city dust. The scent of half the flowers of the world 
crush out the musty odour of crowded alleys, always 
stewing beneath a tropic sun. That is the great charm 
of the tramway, the only real excuse for its existence. 
By it you can rush out of evil town-life into the sweet- 
ness of the most beautiful country in the world. To 
see a high range of purple mountains, fronted by heavy 
fields of banana trees and towering pines, and brilliant 
flowers of every tint and shade and shape to see all 
these from the seat of a tram car which might just as 
well be taking you from Shepherd's Bush to Kew, is a 

27 



Jamaica 

thing every one should experience. The attitude of 
the native to the cars is representative of ingrained in- 
difference to everything. 

Of all places in and about Kingston, the market-place 
is the most fascinating. Really there are two buildings 
two groups of compact sheds, walled in and guarded 
by lazy constables of justice. They are distant from 
each other to the extent of about half a mile, but the 
road which links the one to the other is, on market 
days, just as busy a place as either building. So it is 
easier to count both buildings and roadway one long 
market. And it is better to trade in the open highway 
than it is to haggle with women in a crowded building 
reeking with strong smells of fruit and fowls and 
vegetables, musty basket-work, decomposing meat, and 
a few hundred healthy negroes. Of course it is 
necessary that we should go the round of the covered 
stalls and stand the cross-fire of two rows of anxious 
saleswomen, whose lung power is of artillery force. 
After the first ten yards of the passage any ordinary 
Englishman has lost his power of blushing. The 
blandishments of the women are crude and full of 
personalities. One calls you a pretty English gentleman, 
and shouts her strong opinion that you would look 
very handsome in her fine hat of Ippi Appa straw. 
Another hails you as her long-lost lover ; and a younger 
woman, more brazen than her seniors, invites you to 
greet her with a "fine big kiss, my love." It is 
embarrassing, especially if you show embarrassment. 
A blush on your cheek is, as it were, a red flag to 

28 




THE TOBACCO MARKET, 
KINGSTON. 



The Town of Kingston 

the wit of three hundred women. Soon you find your 
utter abandon and exchange compliments. The negro 
woman respects a white man who has no reserve. At 
one stall you will find all the fruits of the Indies : 
succulent mangoes, golden grape fruit, oranges, bananas, 
guavas, nazeberries, pine-apples, and a half hundred 
others. The combined force of all the smells is terrific. 
Next, an aged basket-woman displays examples of the 
only true art -work produced by the West Indian 
negroes. The baskets are really good. You can buy 
one of any shape, any size, and any and every design. 
Coloured grass is let into snow-white reed with fine 
cunning, and without regard for any canon of con- 
ventionality. The character of the casual negroes is 
shown in the patterns of their basket-work. All the 
younger women are told off" to superintend the stalls 
which cater to the weaknesses of tourists. The women 
are given silver ornaments to wear on their coal black 
wrists, and frequently their ears are hung with heavy 
Eastern rings. This is a fashion copied from the 
coolie women. All the woman's personal jewellery is 
offered for sale. She will explain the meaning of the 
most complicated article of native manufactures with 
cheerful languor. She assumes an air of indifference so 
long as she knows you intend to buy. When you 
begin to show indifference, the instinct of the saleswoman 
springs to life in her, and she is all entreaty. She offers 
wonderful whips made from the lace bark tree, whips 
whose butt and long plaited lash are both made from 
one piece of wood. She offers walking sticks of ebony, 

29 



J 



amaica 

groo groo palm, pimento, bamboo, or cinnamon. Or 
if you prefer it, you can purchase a shark's backbone 
mounted on a steel rod and fitted with a handle of 
scented sandal wood. This, the lady will tell you, is in 
England a great novelty, and surely worth five little 
dollars. Of course there is basket-work, and some 
pottery shaped out of red Caribbean clay. There are 
strings of coloured seeds and flower-pots made from 
wide bamboos. Gourds are carved and coloured and 
cut into useless shapes alleged to be ornamental, and 
cocoa-nuts are carved into men's heads, the red hair 
left to make a frizzy beard. These, the lady says, are 
very fine. There are little gourds set on wooden 
skewers, and so formed into babies' rattles. These the 
arch maiden sells to young men and maidens. Last of 
all, she produces dainty d'oyleys and table-centres and 
fine ornaments made from the lace bark -tree, and 
fashioned with ferns and pressed blossoms. These 
things cost a great deal of money, but as a rule they 
are very decorative. When you leave her stall, the 
lady pursues you for many yards with a mammoth 
lamp-shade, which, she assures you, will be greatly ap- 
preciated by your home folks. 

But the stall of the tourist caterer suggests artifici- 
ality. After all, the real market is under the vestibule 
of the great square building. Here are the native 
people with their pepper-pods and cocoa, their live 
fowls and jackass rope. The latter, be it understood, is 
tobacco. Sold in rope form at one penny or twopence 
per yard, the tobacco is called jackass rope, for what 

30 



The Town of Kingston 

reason I could not discover. It is in this corner of the 
market-place that one meets the negro only. The 
woman minds the stall and does the selling, while the 
husband gossips with his fellows, or sips strong liquids 
at the rum bars. The anxious wife squats, negro 
fashion, beside her heap of pepper-pods, and her hands 
play with them listlessly, just as we imagine a miser 
plays with his gold, until the heap is sold. She is 
patient and ladylike. The white man walks along her 
strip of market land, and she voices no light banter. If 
you ask questions as to her wares she answers with 
modesty and with intelligence. This is the country- 
woman, polite and unsophisticated. Beyond the depart- 
ment devoted to the sale of spices and pepper-pods and 
tobacco, we come to the chicken saleroom. Jamaican 
market-women nurse captive fowls just in the same 
manner as Englishwomen fondle lap - dogs. They 
stroke them and play with their feathers, open a wing 
to show the strength and youth of a bird, and hold the 
beak towards their face as if pleading with the doomed 
fowls for farewell kisses. 

Fronting the poultry-women are the sellers of native 
vegetables and fruits. These wares are heaped on 
strips of torn sacking spread upon the stone floor of the 
market. Each woman sits next her piece of sacking and 
noisily shouts the merits of her own particular goods. 
When no customers are about, these women are content 
to wrangle among themselves as to the comparative 
merits of rival heaps of fruit ; from commercial 
squabbles of this description it is easy for the conversa- 

3 1 



Jamaica 

tion to descend to the level of vulgar personalities and 
strong abuse. 

The meat market is the only selling place which 
offers no attraction to the idle lounger. For myself I 
was content to smell it afar off and pass quickly by. 
Opposite the main entrance to the principal building is 
the market courtyard, a square patch of grey dust 
enclosed by an iron railing, and containing a drinking 
fountain for the people and a long water-filled trough 
for the donkeys. This is the resting-place for the workers 
and idling-place for the idlers. Littered about the dust 
are groups of children, and donkeys, and adults. The 
children are playing their games, the donkeys are 
munching at heaps of half-dried green grass, and the 
adults, stretched at full length on the dust, or on the 
grass heaps at which the donkeys are taking their meal, 
are for the most part sleeping the sleep of the tired 
negro. A few there are who have chosen to lie in the 
shadow of empty market carts, but more are to be 
found sleeping in the full glare of the sun. 

The fountain in the centre of the courtyard is the 
drawing-room of the market-place. Here come the 
youth and the maiden to gossip and flirt over the mid- 
day cup of water, and here lounge the matrons to 
discuss prices, and costumes, and husbands. The men 
for the most part have found the rum bars, but the 
women and the striplings congregate round the drinking 
fountain, drink cups of water, and bathe their hands and 
faces in the donkey's drinking trough. The noise of 
the laughter and talking is louder than the sound of a 

32 



The Town of Kingston 

heavy tide breaking over a pebbly beach. And the 
place is filled with grey dust-clouds as the people pass 
and repass, moving from the fountain to make way for 
new-comers. The blackness of their bare legs is hidden 
by the dirty grey dust. No matter how supple or 
glossy the skin may really be, two minutes' walking in 
the courtyard gives bare legs the appearance of age, and 
suggests the existence of loathsome disease. The grey 
dust rises up and powders the women's hair until the 
black curls are lightened to the colour of brown pepper. 
In fact the unpleasant dust envelopes everything under 
a cloud of unclean greyness. In the courtyard of the 
market-place the black people seem grey and diseased ; 
the white folk never pass beyond the entrance gate. 

It is on market days that one can see in the Kingston 
high roads, and in the suburban lanes, groups of country 
women walking beneath heavy head-loads of garden 
produce. In all the world there is nothing more grace- 
ful than the carriage of a negro woman swinging along, 
with free and easy motion, under a head-load which 
would be heavy to an ordinary white man. With head 
erect, straight neck, chest flung forward, and arms 
swinging with unconscious freedom, the women present 
perfect examples of graceful strength. Their stride is 
long, and easy, and very regular. They are the most 
graceful walkers in the world. I have never seen a lady 
in Europe with a carriage as perfect as that of the 
ordinary Jamaica negro market-woman. 



33 




I 



I 







CHAPTER IV 

THE PEOPLE OF JAMAICA 

\T one time Jamaica was peopled by a race of red men 
vhose beauty and timidity were the wonder and con- 
venience of the little band of Europeans who were the 
irst whites to tread the fragrant shores of the Pearl of 
;he Antilles. To-day not a trace of these Caribs remains. 
Unfit for competition with the strenuous white or 
muscular black, the race, so far as Jamaica is concerned, 
has run its course. The red people are remembered 
only by the stone implements and rude pottery pre- 
served in the Jamaican museum. Nowadays the island 
is peopled by whites English, American, and those 
of Spanish blood ; blacks grandchildren of the slaves 
imported from West and West Central Africa ; and 
half-breeds yellow and brown people the descendants 
of those intrigues of the white man and his black servant 
which, not many years back, were common among the 
people of the country. 

The white man needs but little description ; you can 
see him in England or in any colony : an Englishman 

who takes his cold bath, and considers himself not the least 

35 



Jamaica 

important member of the most important race extant. 
His arrogance is undiminished by the tropic sun, though 
his habits of life may have become West Indianised. 
He rises at six and breakfasts at ten or eleven, lunches 
at two or three, and dines at seven. His food is as it 
is in England, save that fruit and vegetables are more 
plentiful. His house is built bungalow fashion, and his 
servants (with whom he has more trouble than his 
brethren in London) are blacker than the blackest hat. 
His complexion is either white with a yellowish tinge, 
or red mahogany. His women-folk dress in the latest 
Parisian creations, and suffer only from lack of exercise. 
It is not a climate for exertion, and the English lady 
goes to the length of taking none at all. She crosses 
the street in her buggy, and has a black maid to hand, 
so that she may never be called upon to make any 
unnecessary movement. The man has his polo, and 
tennis, and pigeon-shooting, his saddle-horse, and golf. 
If he is very brave and a great enthusiast, there is the 
cricket field. The lady always prefers the unhealthy 
luxury of repose. So her face is milk-coloured ; she is 
whiter than her husband. 

The society of the island is divided into three 
sections the military, the civil officials, and the others. 
The three sets meet occasionally when one matches itself 
against another at sport, or when there is a great recep- 
tion at Government House. These foregatherings are 
of interest to those who deal in scandal. In the clubs 
the men mix more frequently, but it is not the men who 
make the social life of Jamaica. The life of the English- 

3 6 



The People of Jamaica 

man differs from that of the Anglo-Indian at a hill 
station ; it is not the same as the life in a provincial 
town. But somehow it is a strange mixture of these 
two, except that in the social life the bachelor plays 
but a puny part. Not many mothers take their 
daughters to Jamaica, so, in the capital, the bachelor 
lives in one of the hotels and plays billiards in the 
evenings. It would be a blessing to the single men if a 
few enterprising mothers with many daughters would 
take up their abode in some of the charming villa 
residences a few miles out of Kingston. 

The life of the Jamaica negro is almost ideal. As a 
rule he either entirely ignores the little work he ought 
to do, or leaves it to the exhaustless energy of his inde- 
fatigable wife. He spends his life in shady parts of 
the market-place, or lolls in the sun outside the place of 
his abode. Nothing worries him. He is imperturbable ; 
glorious in his idleness, happy in a blissful ignorance 
which takes no account of yesterday or to-morrow. 
His only grievance, if he has one, is the limited working 
power of one woman. Happy is the man who is the 
father of many able-bodied youngsters. If by some 
mischance the accident of domestic misfortune, or the 
promptings of ennui born of inaction he is forced to 
work, he works with cheerfulness, and with a happy 
grin complains through the day, and then spends his 
night in revelry. When you have questioned one black 
man as to the extent and remuneration of his labour, 
you have interviewed the island. The temperament of 
the negro is inborn ; it never varies ; all negroes are 

37 



J 



amaica 



blood brethren. Ask any man if he works hard and 
you will hear 

" Yes, me work very hard, sah." 

" You look well on it." 

" No, me no well, sah ; me not fit for work ; too 
sick." 

" But you get well paid." 

u No well paid, sah. Plenty work ; very little 
money, sah." 

All this with a satisfied grin except when he 
describes the weakness of his health ; then his eyes roll 
and his face clouds in a manner almost convincing to 
new arrivals. 

With the women it is different. They have no time 
for conversation with idle strangers ; they work with 
unceasing energy. If they pause, it is only to stare 
with an air of half-timid wonder, or to break into 
long peals of boisterous laughter. If it were not for 
the women folk, Jamaica would indeed be hard put 
to it for workers. 

In character the Jamaican negroes are a mixture of 
good and bad ; of Africa and Europe, with the vices of 
both the blacks and the whites, and only some of the 
virtues of the people of Europe. They are civilised 
with a sort of quasi-civilisation, which somehow sug- 
gests an indifferently humorous burlesque performed 
by irresponsible amateurs. It takes many months to 
educate a new-comer into treating the black Jamaicans 
with becoming seriousness. As a rule they are well- 
meaning people, full of curious mannerisms, with which 

38 



The People of Jamaica 

it is difficult for the white man to be in entire sympathy. 
The ideas of a black man are different from those of 
white. He sees things from a different point of view, 
and cannot really be happy with a white, who, legally 
his equal, is actually in many ways infinitely his superior. 
In many ways the Jamaican native resembles his coloured 
brother of the American States ; he is just as arrogant 
even more so but he is not quite so really 
independent, and by no means so energetic. It is 
certainly a fact that the Jamaican negroes are the 
happiest, relatively the richest, and quite the most 
comfortable inhabitants of the globe. Though there 
may be poverty among them, there is no unsatisfied 
hunger. The fields and the hedges, as well as the 
market-places, afford food and comfort for the dweller 
in this land of perpetual sun. Clothes they have in 
too great an abundance. It is only for the purposes of 
pride and vainglory that clothes are worn at all. The 
climate is warm enough to justify nudity, and although 
this happy condition of freedom is not compatible with 
the canons of modern society, it is easily possible for a 
native to be clad and outwardly furnished for a very 
few shillings per annum. Overcoats are unknown. 
Coals are only associated with the steamships in King- 
ston Harbour, and the railway. Meat is an unnecessary 
luxury almost an unhealthy one. The people live on 
fruit and vegetables, with an occasional dish of salt fish 
caught in the rivers or from the waters of the Caribbean 
Sea, and cured with a total disregard for delicate sweet- 
ness. At the first and the twenty-first glance, the 

39 



Jamaica 

European would pronounce the dried fish of the 
Jamaican negro bad, if not entirely putrid. The 
popularity of this form of diet among the people is 
evidence of the over-sensitiveness of the civilised nose. 
The West Indian soldier of the line receives full rations 
as well as his shilling a day. The meat he receives 
from a beneficent Government is the same as that 
served out to his English brother-in-arms, and it is from 
this source that the old English settler draws the supply 
of fresh meat for his own table. It is better to go 
among the West Indian messrooms and buy the soldiers' 
meat rations than it is to chance the tenderness of the 
joints on the market butcher's slabs. By a little enter- 
prise and a good deal of bargaining with a coal-black 
mess sergeant, you are certain of obtaining the juiciest 
steak to be found on the island ; and in doing so you 
materially add to the popularity of the army among 
possible recruits by enlarging the pocket-money of the 
black soldiers of the line. Our West Indian Tommies 
prefer the saltest of stale salt-fish to the juiciest of fresh 
juicy-steaks, and as a rule the officer of the day is quite 
prepared to wink at a little irregularity which makes for 
the happiness of his men and the comfort of the island. 
Besides, it is probable that the same officer of the day 
is occasionally invited to dine out in the bungalows of 
older inhabitants. The readiness with which the soldier 
is prepared to part with meat rations is proof that flesh 
foods are an unnecessary luxury for the West Indian 
native. 

The negroes of the island are sharply divided into 

40 



The People of Jamaica 

two classes : those who live in the towns, and the 
country labourers. The two classes differ as much as 
do English agriculturists and Londoners. In Jamaica 
the country people are superior to the town-bred class. 
The influences of town life are not good for emotional 
people whose fathers' fathers hunted men in the forest 
lands of Western Africa. They receive impressions too 
easily. They are impressed by the bad as well as by 
the good. A black servant has always his own idea of 
his white master. A black man must imitate ; his race 
has only just come in contact with civilisation. 
Instinctively he imitates because he has not yet reached 
that state which some day may enable him to initiate. 
If he is to appear in the guise of a civilised man he 
must follow ; his experience is not great enough to 
enable him to lead ; his instincts are still African and 
barbarian. So the town man, subject to the influences 
of a city in which live types of every class of every 
European race, is necessarily at a disadvantage compared 
with the man who lives with nature among people of his 
own colour and only one or two white men of one race. 
The dwellers in the Jamaican cities look down upon 
the country folk as unsophisticated nonentities. The 
country people imagine the townsmen to be priests of 
iniquity, cunning, and steeped in wickedness. Just as 
it is in England, only more so. In the country all the 
coloured people are, approximately, of one class ; they 
all belong to one station. In towns the buggyman 
looks down upon the costermonger as an inferior, just 
as the wives of shopkeepers ignore the existence of Mrs. 



Jamaica 

Buggyman. In imitation of the English, foolish class 
distinction has given birth to a form of snobbishness 
which is entirely ludicrous. In Kingston the outward 
and visible sign of prosperity or social superiority is 
shown in the costume of the women-folk, and in the 
simpering accent of the maidens. The more uncom- 
fortable a woman looks when she goes on church 
parade, the more diffidence she shows before opening 
her mouth to answer a simple question, the higher she 
is in the social scale, as it is understood by native 
Jamaicans. This is as it is among the shopkeepers and 
the proprietors of buggy horses and worn-out four- 
wheel tourist conveyances. With the workers it is 
altogether different. The aged lady, who sits for 
twelve hours of every day selling gingerbread beneath 
the half-shade of a decaying arch fronting an important 
shop in the main street, thinks little of costume and 
nothing of accent. She is persuaded to talk with great 
difficulty, though her story would be really interesting. 
An old black lady lacks that venerable appearance 
peculiar to the aged dames of England. She does not 
appear too clean, her hair is reduced to mangy patches 
of dusty black curls, showing here and there on the top 
of her smooth black pate. The forehead is furrowed 
and her cheeks sunken, the chin protrudes, and is the 
heaviest and most noticeable of all the features. Her 
lips have vanished, and the eyes peer through dull-red 
rims from behind a half-screen of fallen skin. She is 
bent double by age and the infirmities born of rough 
work. There, all day long, she sits selling gingerbread 

42 




GOING TO CHURCH. 



OF THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 




The People of Jamaica 

cake beneath the half-shade of decaying archways. No 
one ever seems to buy her dainties, but there she sits 
all day long staring vacantly into nothing. Occasion- 
ally she fingers her cakes, and the movement of her 
hands disturbs a cloud of flies who claim her cookies as 
their own. She is listless and entirely dumb ; there 
is no crowd of chattering loafers round her stall, no 
group of children playing hide-and-seek under the 
shadow of her protection. She is alone a picture of 
desolation. She will sit there gazing at nothing, heed- 
ing nothing, until she finds the consolation of the sleep 
of death. As a conversationalist she is quite impossible. 
If a white man stops to give her greeting, she replies 
not by word of mouth, but with an out-thrust hand. 
She has money greed. Half her day is spent in silent 
pleading for alms. Altogether she is not picturesque ; 
she lacks the elements of cleanliness, and her cookies 
are not wholesome. She is something to pass by with 
a shudder a human being of the lowest species under- 
going a very slow process of decay. If she has intelli- 
gence, it is hidden with her life -story behind the 
shrunken eyes half-hidden by the dull-red rims and 
hanging skin. 

The most obvious inhabitants of Kingston are the 
drivers of the buggies. A Jamaican buggy is a spider-like 
species of the four-wheeled vehicle, known in England 
as the country fly. It is drawn by one horse, which is 
neither a horse, nor a pony, nor a mule, but something 
remotely resembling all these things, and raising senti- 
ments of deep pity in the hearts of all beholders. The 

43 



J 



amaica 



driver of the buggy, the buggyman, supplies the 
necessary enthusiasm to the horse and buggy alike. 
One instinctively feels that but for the elevating spirit 
of sublime optimism which the buggyman possesses to 
the fullest degree, the poor horse would drop dead and 
the vehicle would fall to bits. The buggyman ignores 
everything in life save possible customers. If you hire 
a buggy you are the life and soul of the driver until 
you enter his crazy carriage ; then you become as less 
than nothing, and the driver shamelessly bargains with 
pedestrians for the use of his coach when the time 
comes for you to leave. The buggymen know 
Kingston as well as the London cabby knows his 
London, and that is saying much. He drives with 
a rattling carelessness which is entirely good for weakly 
nerves. He ignores the protests of his nervous fare, 
and smiles in derision of the warning hand of an out- 
raged police. He cannons other buggies as though 
they were billiard balls, and finally lands his victim, in 
a condition entirely demoralised and feverish, at a place 
where he has no desire to go. Then the driver blames 
the passenger for not giving correct directions, and 
explains that to drive on will be another sixpenny fare. 
The law in Jamaica reads, " Sixpence per passenger to 
any place in town," so the driver gallops to an unfre- 
quented corner of the place and demands an extra 
sixpence. The fare must pay, or walk back in the sun 
through the stench of poorer Kingston. It is really 
better for tourists to buy a buggy and a horse and to 
hire a driver if they intend to stay in the island for 

44 



The People of Jamaica 

more than three weeks. These can be as easily sold as 
they can be purchased, and the possession of them saves 
the waste of much precious energy, and it is better for 
the language and morals of a vigorous person. 

When he is not pursuing possible customers, the 
buggyman is asleep inside his carriage. His battered hat 
is carelessly balanced on the tip of his little nose, his 
feet are resting on the cushion of the front seat, his 
hands hanging limp, and he slumbers deeply, exhibiting 
the deep caverns of his mighty jaw. Flies settle and 
nest in his open mouth, children swarm round his 
buggy and tickle him with half -chewed sweetstuffs, 
women chaff him from the side walks, but he stirs not, 
not an eyelid moves. But let a tourist or a white man 
come within one hundred yards of him and he is alive 
again and in pursuit. He discovers a possible fare by 
the sense of smell. He is all eyes and ears and nose for 
white men. When he sleeps, his horse sleeps also. It is 
in many cases all the rest the poor beast hopes to get. 
It is usual for the unhappy creature to be dragged from 
his resting-place (it is neither stable, nor nest, nor open 
field) and harnessed at 8 A.M. He retires when the 
night is far spent, and the last straggler has settled 
beneath the mosquito netting of his bungalow bedroom. 
During the day he is driven to the full extent of his 
capabilities. He must always run his quickest. There 
are no words spoken to him : he is driven with the 
whip, and with the whip only. His food is coarse 
guinea-grass, and he is lucky if he finds much of that ; 
his water comes should his journeying carry him 

45 



J 



amaica 



past a water tank. For all that, he has the heart and 
soul of a carnage horse, and he is as keen in his 
master's hunt for fares as a trained polo pony is in 
following the ball. In colour he is usually a bright 
yellowy red, with mane and tail of light yellow. He 
always shows his ribs, and the whip is pleasant to him 
because the lash disturbs the flies. He never falls or 
stumbles ; he has learned to be sure of his feet by 
carrying tourists up high mountains by way of narrow 
winding paths. If he has one vice it is sleepiness, but 
in that matter he is well under the control of hi? 
driver. 

When the buggy driver has finished his work he lolls 
about the drinking shops an important man. He is 
the hardest drinker in Kingston. He mixes more with 
white men than do most of the other natives, and his 
calling puts him in touch with the doings of men of 
all types. He calls for his rum, and chaffs the barmaid, 
for all the world like a city clerk ; and his conversa- 
tion is of horse-racing and betting odds, and worse. 
He is well-to-do, and proud that the Government has 
sufficient confidence in his personal character and in his 
prowess as a coachman to entrust him with a license to 
drive a hackney coach. This license is to the Jamaica 
buggyman exactly what his commission is to a newly- 
joined young officer. It gives the black man status. 
It is a link between him and the Government. It 
shows him and all Jamaica that he, buggy-driver, with 
a license and a number, is not an unknown man, but 

an official with a position recognised by officialdom. 

46 



The People of Jamaica 

When a buggyman marries he usually chooses his 
wife from among the yellow women. The negress is 
beneath him. He likes to have as his wife a woman 
who may call herself white when she receives his guests 
or attends his chapel on the Sabbath. He will tell you 
that he married white, and you will wonder how he 
managed it, until you see his lady. If you are so 
inclined, you may abuse the driver and his wife and 
his children, his horse and his buggy, his incapacity and 
everything that is his. He will only laugh and crack 
his whip and sway about in his seat with merriment. 
He will do anything to please you, on the chance of 
your dealing generously with him when the time comes 
for payment. He is a thick-skinned black man. He 
has no delicacy, and no false pride, and little shame. 
This you will find out when you hand him your silver 
and tell him to be gone. Compared with him the 
London four-wheel cabby is an angel of mercy. The 
buggyman will abandon his horse and his buggy, and 
follow you down side streets, shouting that you have 
paid him too little. He will fling your silver to the 
ground and stamp on it. Then, picking it up, he will 
follow you shouting that you owe him money. No 
one heeds him. It is a common scene, and not worthy 
the attention of Jamaicans. 



47 




A SOLDIER OF 



UNIVERSITY 

OF 

&UFQB1&I 



CHAPTER V 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF A JAMAICAN GAMIN 

[N the day-time it is good to sit on one of the jutting 
oiers which fringe the bay of Kingston, and, lolling 
ander the deep shade of a heavy roof, give the sea 
Dreeze free play with your hair. It is a touch of health, 
i vision of sweet coolness, a sensation of rare joy. 
Y ou are in the atmosphere of Southern Europe. Round 
fou spread the tropics. Shorewards the palm bends 
anguidly as it feels the breath of the sea's vigour ; the 
>un, seen through an ocean breeze, is dulled into purple 
laze ; the moving boats and rocking masts give life and 
notion to a dead world. At midday the West Indies 
Dresent the picture of death. There is no movement, 
10 life current. It is as though the island of Jamaica 
;vere scorched dead. The birds float like ragged strips 
}f paper on the edge of the breeze which dies on its 
ourney inland. Here, by the sea, the senses are lulled 
:o sweet indifference to all things save the noise and 
:oolness of the breeze. Jamaicans call this breeze the 
doctor ; it is the doctor that makes Jamaica a place fit 
r or the homes of the white men. Without it, the place 

49 4 



J 



amaica 

would be a fever-ridden land of pestilence. With it, 
and not even the sun is more regular, the land is called 
a health resort. 

As I sit here musing, the strip of land on which 
are planted the forts and military cantonments of Port 
Royal, swings seaward, a thin line of deep green, a 
false horizon for a sea of richest blue. Parts of the 
place are blotted out by sailing ships with canvas spread, 
or steamers, painted white, and little fishing craft. 
Above Port Royal a single strip of cloud rises from 
behind the land in a dull haze of grey ; where the 
cloud-chain touches the light blue of the sky it bellies 
out white to the sun. The broad domes of this cloud- 
range are whiter than the snowy caps of the ocean rollers. 

As I sit, breathing in the sweet coolness of the breeze, 
a flash of warm brown shoots from the blue of the sea, 
and a diving boy shimmers in the laughing sun. He 
will dive for pennies he says. Better sit here and cool 
I suggest, and in this manner I first get to know some- 
thing of the inner life of Timothy Dorias, gamin and 
diving boy, as good a young rogue as you will find 
anywhere. Supremely happy as the sun, joyous as 
the sparkling wavelet, he is thirteen, and, apparently, 
already deeply experienced in the vice of the world. 
Yes he goes to school that is to say, he has been to 
school ; really on second thoughts he intended to convey 
the fact that he is going to school next month. 

He is thirteen and has a wife not really a wife, you 
know there is no suggestion of wedlock but a wife 
nevertheless. 

5 



OF THE 



UNIVERSITY ) 

\ OF ./ 

X^UFORN^^ 



The Philosophy of a Gamin 

No he does not go to church there are no boots. 
His father is a fisherman, and he is of a family of eight. 
His two sisters stay at home and help their mother, who 
sees to the children and the grandchildren ; the grand- 
children are offsprings of the two sisters. u No, sah, 
they be not married yet some day perhaps." He 
wishes to show us strange places in the town of 
Kingston a merry enough guide, but one lacking in 
restraint. His accent is mellow and he is not black. A 
rich, dark brown colour he is, with curly hair, white 
teeth, and deep black eyes. His stories of Jamaica are 
of intrigue, dancing eyes, and sunlight ; green-shuttered 
windows and soft glances. He is a born Romeo, a 
West Indian Don Juan. 

The history of Jamaica he knows not, he says, neither 
can he tell us why some people are black and some 
white. Best of all is to be brown, " like me/' he says ; 
then one is black to the black people, and white to the 
white. Really it is a wise thirteen-year-old, witness the 
postscript. " I should pass as white in England, but 
not here. Too many nearly white here, sah." He likes 
the black people best because they are " plenty more 
happier," but the money is in the hands of the whites. 
When he is old he will catch fish and live alone in a 
house with his wife and children. If ever he should 
tire of fishing, Jamaica is " plenty full of fruit." A little 
work would be necessary, perhaps, but he does not mind 
work. Witness the time he spends in practising diving 
in the Kingston bay, he says. Women will do his 
housework and attend to his fruit patch ; his wife will 

5' 



Jamaica 

see to the clothes of his children. Yes, perhaps it would 
be good to go out to the sea in big ships, and find 
adventure in lands beyond the colour line of the setting 
sun. But in the big ships there is little fruit, and 
women are not at hand to wait on men. No, it is better 
to remain where people are safe. Sometimes the big 
ships go away and never return. The reason is that 
some one on board has sinned in the eyes of God. Yes, 
everyone sins plenty often, but God is kind and shuts 
His eye, otherwise every living man and woman would 
be blasted dead. Women are not so important as men. 
We tell them they are, because it pleases them, and so 
they do more work. But really it is better to be a man. 
Women are weak and little in their minds, they are too 
much afraid, and too little given to thinking of big 
things. You must be kind, but not too kind, to a 
woman. If you are too kind, she will think you weak 
and foolish, and she will do no work for you. Yes, he 
loved his mother and his sisters, but he loved his father 
most of all, because he was big and strong, and fished in 
the bay even when the weather was very rough. His 
father only laughed and cuffed him when he stole the 
bananas from the cart in the market-place, but his 
mother talked of it for days, and told all the neighbours 
that he was a thief and a bad boy ; and she told the 
parson man, who at any moment might tell God. Then 
he would be sent to hell, all for one or two bananas. 
His father was angry with his mother for telling the 
people, and his mother cuffed him still, because his father 
had beaten her for telling people his son was a thief. 

52 



The Philosophy of a Gamin 

His own people were better than the blacks, because 
they were whiter, and God himself is white. He was 
not certain whether black people would go to heaven, 
but he was certain that white and brown folk could go 
there and live in the skies in the same great house. 
When he went there he should want to dive plenty 
much, and fish in the river with a rod with a wheel on 
it. No, he was not afraid to die, except that if he died 
now he would find none of his friends in heaven. He 
never thought of sharks when he dived in the bay, but 
his friend had only one leg left, because a shark took 
the other one of? when he was diving for pennies flung 
from an American fruit-boat. He guessed he made 
too much noise himself to please the sharks ; anyway he 
could dive under one if it tried to bite him. 

He was telling us of his passion for the English and 
of his love of truth and justice, when suddenly he flung 
himself from our jetty and splashed into the bay to 
reappear well out of reach of land. A policeman 
appeared at my elbow and grinned quietly ; he assured 
us that he would have given much had the boy not 
caught sight of him as he crept towards us. The rascal 
was a thief and a blackguard, and he would be arrested, 
" sure as eggs sah," and then birched or sent to gaol. 
This he assured us was true and unvarnished fact, on 
his word as a constable of justice. So much for 
Jamaican youth. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE WOMEN OF WILD MAN STREET 

WILD Man Street is the central place of Jamaican 
gaiety. In the day-time it seems an ordinary street, 
white in the roadway and green in its walls of painted 
houses. The evening shadows blacken the place into 
an abode of infamy. 

We drove there through the wild scents of a tropic 
night. The bejewelled skies sparkled no brighter than 
the flashing insects ; the fresh sea breeze struggled in 
vain to kill the half Eastern scents of the garden 
flowers and aromatic woods. The singing of the 
insects made music which the soft air translated into a 
sweet lullaby. As you drive to the town of Kingston, 
the noises and the scents become more and more 
suggestive of the East. The place might be Ceylon, 
Yokohama, or Hong Kong. We were to see a 
bungalow which might be found with equal ease in the 
byways of any of these places ; the difference existing 
only in the skins and tongues of the women. The 
place was larger than an ordinary house of the working 
people ; the gaining of fugitive wealth is the only com- 
pensation looked for by the Jamaican dancing women. 

55 



Jamaica 

The reception room was fitted with cheap muslins 
and common bamboo furniture. The stained wood 
floor was relieved in patches by tiny squares of matting 
or cheap imitations of the carpets of Turkey. Several 
of the rickety tables supported brass ash trays in which 
cheap and evil-smelling pastils smouldered unhealthily, 
half drowning the odour of the scents the women used. 
With finger rings made of silver, flashing with lack 
lustre glass or paste ; arms and necks encircled with 
coral or cheap pearl bands, the women, gowned in 
flowing robes of white or yellow, listlessly sustained a 
difficult part. It is difficult for a gay woman to appear 
gay without the aid of strong liquors. This place is 
one of the houses where the women dance only at the 
bidding of white men, the black man is not a welcome 
guest. The women call themselves white ; really they 
are brown or yellow or nearly black. They use 
powder freely, and cheap rouge also. The effect is 
awful ; a black man in war streaks of white or vermilion 
is not more hideous ; they speak the pigeon English 
of an affected Eurasian, with a tincture of the sing- 
song drawl of an educated negro. To these women 
all the other natives of Jamaica are coloured. They 
speak of the England they have never seen as home. 
White men are " chaps " or " felhers " ; whisky is their 
drink, and they suggest with proud frankness that they 
are the daughters of great white men. But coloured 
people, especially coloured people of this class, are not 
infallible. We gave them money, which they received 
with the grace of a dissatisfied four-wheel cab driver, 

56 



Women of Wild Man Street 

but they produced liquor and became animated. White 
teeth flashed and the accent became more coloured and 
so more natural. It was not pretty talk, and it was 
lacking in the elements of refinement. The gaiety of 
the women of this class always seems forced. As they 
talked and gesticulated the paint and powder flaked off 
their cheeks as whitewash scales off a crumpled ceiling. 
They lost their reserve and found abandon. One, of 
uncertain age but decided embongoint, took up a 
mandoline, which was well varnished and hung with 
ribbons, but badly tuned, and sang a song. The words 
were indistinct ; the title of the song I never knew ; 
the tune I am glad to have forgotten. 

The doors were closed and window shutters drawn ; 
the unholy stench of the pastils filled the room with 
suffocating smoke ; it was as though these women acted 
their parts and had obtained cheap properties and mis- 
managed scenic effects. The amusement of the place, 
if it existed at all, was colourless in the extreme. The 
dancing we did n,ot see. So we left the place and found 
the sweet-smelling night breeze. 

If it is possible to find a place in which the stupefying 
smoke of a burning pastil is not altogether bad, I would 
suggest that that place might be a hall in which black 
people are dancing the x *dignity dance.' To the white 
man the negro is not without a curious odour, which 
seems to get more powerful when the black man takes 
violent exercise. Picture a room, bare as a barn, 
painted light blue, and filled to overflowing with people 
of all shades of colour, from ebony to dark walnut. 

57 



J 



amaica 



Though the window shutters are half open the light 
night breeze is too delicate to cool all the people in a 
room whose temperature must be above one hundred 
degrees. Arranged in couples the dancers are executing 
most weird and complicated antics some with a certain 
degree of grace and rhythm to the noise of a band of 
three tired musicians. Probably the dancing would be 
more regular if the music were abolished. If .the three 
men were playing the same tune, each had learned the 
piece in different time, and was playing his hardest in 
order to show the others how the thing should really 
run. However the dancers did not mind, so the 
spectator had no right to grumble. The dancing 
waxed more furious, and the lagging music raced to 
keep pace with the spirit of the dancers. The more 
excited of the twirling crowd began to chant a weird 
chorus ; the words seemed to be entirely impromtu, the 
melody was monotonous, and somehow it reminded me 
of the muffled sound of a band of tom-toms. The 
dignity dance itself, if it has any set arrangement at all, 
is something like the visiting and the grand chain in 
our lancers. The dancers, twirling in couples at 
most giddy speed, frequently separated, and the men 
in a long line approached the women, who in turn 
retired. . When the wall is reached the men retire, and 
the women do the advancing. A sudden bang on the 
part of the orchestra, and a shout by the eager dancers, is 
the signal for the breaking of the lines ; and the men 
snatch their partners and twirl more giddy circles. 
Interesting as the dancing was it could not be called 

58 



Women of Wild Man Street 

either fascinating or unique. Save for the coloured skin 
of the dancers, and the curious odour of the rodm, 
a similar scene can be witnessed in any European 
ballroom. From the dignity ballroom we went to a 
concert hall where all the performers were coloured and 
all the audience jet black. The performers seemed to 
enjoy the entertainment most of all. 

The songs were delivered in European concert 
fashion, and they were mostly well known ballads : 
" Robin Adair," "I dreamt that I dwelt in Marble 
Halls," and other old airs of that description. It was 
not an interesting performance. But the audience 
applauded everything, they encored everyone, and 
when a reciter appeared and gave a rendering of 
Hamlet by " Mr. William Shakespeare " members of 
the audience could scarcely contain themselves. It was 
a bad recitation, but I fancy the people in the body of 
the hall had paid their entrance money and were deter- 
mined to make the best of the business. Certainly they 
seemed to like hearing themselves shout. We asked a 
supercilious half-breed, who wore an evening suit and a 
crimson necktie, where we could hear some native 
singing. 

" If/' said he, " you refer to the songs of the negroes, 
I can only indicate the low rum shops, and even there it 
is not permitted." 

Evidently his opinion of the musical abilities of the 
black man was not a high one. However we accepted 
his advice and journeyed to the rum shops. 

In the architecture of their drinking saloons, as in 

59 



Jamaica 

nearly everything else, the Jamaicans have imitated New 
York rather than London. You enter a swing door 
and discover a long room fitted with a serving counter, 
and otherwise bare of furniture. A man presides over 
the rum bottles, and the drinkers are mostly negroes of 
the richer class ; small shopkeepers, clerks, buggymen, 
and adventurers. We put our heads in the doors of 
many of the drinking shops but we never heard the 
native music. 

We had to be content with a pilgrimage through the 
deserted streets of the capital. Save for a few buggies 
and now and then a noisy road car, Kingston was 
almost deserted. At some of the street corners groups 
of men were engaged in violent conversation, and 
occasionally we saw a policeman ; otherwise the empty 
pavements echoed only the noise of our walking. 
There are no theatres in Jamaica, and all the wealthier 
people live in the distant suburbs. The poorer black 
men who live in the side streets of the town have 
to be up betimes, so they do not waste their strength 
by keeping up late at night. It is a cold and a deathly 
place at night, this little town of Kingston. No 
shop keeps open after dark ; no lights appear in the 
windows of the houses ; no crowds of people promenade 
the High Street, and jostle each other in friendly rivalry. 

Occasionally when passing a house we heard the echo 
of laughter, and sometimes merry noise of music, but as 
a rule the homes were dark and silent. It seemed a 
decayed, deserted city ; a place from which all people 
had fled. 

60 



CHAPTER VII 

THE WEST INDIAN ARMY 

IN Jamaica the Army is mainly considered as a prop to 
society. Among the whites the officers are in great 
request as dancing men, players at the game of tennis 
and possible husbands for fair daughters. Among the 
blacks the same applies to the coloured Tommy, except 
that there is no tennis. The West Indian regiments 
have seen service, and have proved their metal as right- 
ing men in various parts of Africa. The West Indian 
Colonels are as proud of their black regiments as any 
commander of any white battalion of the line. But the 
languorous atmosphere of Jamaica does not suggest 
strife ; so, the tendency among Jamaicans, high and 
low, rich and poor, is to regard the military as purely 
social people. When the Governor is one guest short 
at a dinner or luncheon or tennis function, an officer 
is requisitioned from the nearest garrison or camp. 
When Mama is hard up for men at one of her select 
dances, the subaltern receives a dainty invitation. 

In the day-time the young West Indian Army officer 
gets through his early morning work as quickly as pos- 

61 



Jamaica 

sible, and then scrambles, schoolboy fashion, into the 
playing fields. Drill is over by midday, and then the 
uniform (khaki and sun helmet) is flung aside for cool 
flannels or polo breeches. From midday until four the 
hours must be spent inside a house, away from the sun. 
So after luncheon it is forty winks, or cards or a game 
of pool. Then, when the full heat of the sun has 
smouldered into the early evening glow, the games 
begin. Polo, cricket, tennis, or golf; these are the first 
favourites. A few will take a spin on a fast pony ; 
others, it may be, will sail across Kingston Bay and take 
a surf bath among the palisadoes. But for the majority 
it is either polo, cricket, tennis, or golf. Golf for 
seniors, polo for the young subaltern newly joined, 
tennis for the older captains, and cricket for full 
lieutenants. The two hours between four and six 
mark the playtime for the Jamaican Army. After six 
the clubhouses or mess smokerooms tinkle with the 
music of many glasses, as the young officers refresh 
themselves after two hours' work in a climate marking 
well above 100 on the thermometer. An hour with 
pipes and comrades over the friendly glass, and then 
a bath and dinner. After dinner the officer becomes 
the social animal, and the messroom and barrack- 
yard know him no more till midnight. That is the 
life of the Army officer. It is rather dull and a little 
monotonous ; but the young men make the most of it 
and meanwhile pray for leave and England. 

With the Colonial Tommy it is different. He 
works at his drill or musketry and then, at midday, 

62 



The West Indian Army 

dines. If he can he gets off for the afternoon ; then he 
lounges into Kingston and lume_s himself on the side 
walks to the admiration of the black and yellow girls. 
No sun has any terrors for your true West Indian 
soldier. His skull is thick enough even without the 
protection of his smart undress cap. His amusement 
is similar to that of an English Tommy in any garrison 
town, except that he does not drink so much. He is 
the idol of the populace ; especially on the afternoon of 
the Sabbath, when, after Church is over, he is permitted 
to parade at large in the brilliant full-dress uniform of 
his regiment. Scarlet and yellow or scarlet and white, 
zouave jackets, and white or yellow spats, his get up is 
that of a French Zouave West Indianised ; and he is the 
King of feminine Jamaica. He is popular among men 
and women alike, since the civilian men are conscious 
of a reflected grandeur when in company with a soldier 
in full dress. A military comrade helps them with the 
women, just as one returned yeoman peopled a smoke- 
room with heroes during our South African War. 
The black Tommy is paid his shilling a day, just as 
though he were a redcoated white man. He was 
recruited in some West Indian island, or in Western 
Africa in the district Sierra Leone, he cares not where, 
for now his home is the cool barrack-room, and he is 
quite content to stand before a few thousand people as 
a soldier of the King. Generally he has at least one 
silver medal to show that he has heard the music of the 
Martini fired in anger. He has fought savage races in 
lands where a white man has no right to go, and he knows 



Jamaica 

that he has his value. He is not jealous of the draft of 
the white British regiment which, for some unknown 
reason, is always to be found in the hills somewhere 
about Newcastle ; he is not jealous because he is too 
conscious of superiority. Could a white regiment have 
marched in the full glare of the noon sun through 
Ashanti and not dropped a man ? Could a white man 
pierce jungle and fight through malarious tangled 
undergrowth, wading slimy swamps, swimming rushing 
rivers, and live ? Can any company of white soldiers 
march with the swing of a West Indian Regiment when 
the black pipers shriek the quick-step ? 

When the white men think they can, and say so, 
then West India rises by half companies and ties service 
razors on stout sticks of ebony, and there is riot in 
the land of perpetual sunshine. Black men are mauled 
with heavy belts in the fashion of the British Infantry, 
and white men stagger home gashed with razor cuts 
and faint for lack of blood. When the civil war is 
over, each side, conscious of victory, willingly forgives 
and for several months forgets. Then peace is found 
among the huts at Newcastle, and sweet repose amidst 
the tents of the plains. 

The black troops insist that it is necessary that their 
women should be treated with respect, even deference, 
by their white brothers in arms. This the white 
Tommy has not yet learned to do. Possibly the lesson 
is difficult owing to the infinite extent of the acquaint- 
anceship with feminine Jamaica peculiar to the West 
Indian regiments. Every lady is a friend of some 

64 



The West Indian Army 

soldier's friend, if she is not his sister, aunt, wife, or 
mother. So trouble sometimes springs from this source. 
Then it is out belts and razors until the officers inter- 
vene. Shots have been fired, but this is unusual. And 
the result of the court-martial offers no encouragement 
to would-be marksmen. As a rule the Tommies, 
black and white, mix and fraternise as well as may be 
expected. Each has a large respect, well mixed with a 
great contempt, for his alien brother. Each serves the 
same white King whose dominion over all the earth is 
unquestioned. The King is the common sentiment to 
which hangs the brotherhood of the British soldiers, 
white and black. 

On the other hand the Jamaican police are not 
popular with the people of the island. The uniform 
they wear is not sufficiently striking ; there is no great 
blaze of colour no suggestion of power or rank or 
beauty. A plain white tunic and dark blue trousers 
with a red stripe, a simple white helmet and plain black 
leather boots, make up the uniform of the Constabulary. 
It is impossible for a negro to respect such a costume, 
or to be proud of a police so uniformed. So the 
people have come to look upon the policemen as 
workers; men made for use, and not turned out for 
the sake of ornamenting a town already bright and 
picturesque enough. And it may be that this is the 
reason why the Jamaican constable is regarded as 
a judicial potentate a man whose word is law a 
person to be avoided, even feared. The presence of a 
policeman stops the noisy jabber of a street crowd of 

65 5 



J 



amaica 



fruit-sellers ; his approach melts a group of excited 
quarrellers ; his uplifted hand stems the tide of rushing 
traffic just as it is in England. The police are 
efficient and unpopular. The constable alone among 
the inhabitants of Kingston does not lounge and laugh 
and chatter. If he smiles it is with an air of conscious 
superiority. The mouths of the men are curved down- 
wards in the form of a perpetual sneer. The law 
cannot be merry ; the limbs of the law may not be 
humanly happy. 

The Jamaican police force is well organised and very 
efficient. There are inspectors and sub-inspectors, staff- 
sergeants and sergeants and constables, and above all 
one white Chief. Most of the senior officers are white 
men ; the rank and file are black and brown, and 
yellow and dusky white. It is on the rank and file 
that the work of Government falls. A plain constable 
in Jamaica is a far more powerful man than any white- 
gloved, long-sworded police inspector in England. 
Every regulation beat in the island of rivers is a court- 
house, presided over by an impartial and all powerful 
policeman-judge. Fifty times a day he will be called 
upon to arbitrate in matters of great delicacy. It may 
be that there is a doubt in the minds of two women as 
to the ownership of a valuable article of diet or 
furniture. The policeman weighs the evidence of 
witnesses and pronounces judgment. He will, in cases 
of real necessity, administer the oath to people whose 
mere word is open to doubt, and he makes people 
swear, Scotch fashion, with uplifted hands. 

66 



The West Indian Army 

Round such street-corner courts small crowds are 
allowed to congregate, and respectfully listen to the 
words of one whose knowledge of police-court ritual 
stands him in good stead. I have heard a policeman 
restore to a woman that good name which the jealousy of 
a chattering neighbour had flung to the four winds ; the 
same man afterwards settled a knotty point in regard to 
the freshness of a heap of fish which a despondent 
purchaser pleaded was bad. This was a serious case ; 
the constable smelt the fish and handled them with the 
reverence of an usher for a barrister's brief bag. In 
this instance the judgment of the constable gave 
satisfaction to one man and made him unpopular with a 
crowd. It was openly suggested that he had received a 
promise of largess from the man whose case he upheld. 
As a body the force has a Spartan-like love for un- 
popularity, born of the exhibition of unbending power 
in performing their illegal office of judge and jury. I 
once toured the side streets of the city with a pompous 
black sergeant who obviously knew the town only from 
the kerbstone to the railing. The Jamaica police have 
no eyes that see through brick walls. They have a 
love for intrigue, but lack the capacity of meeting 
cunning with detective craft. If a thing is to be seen 
with the naked eye they see it well enough ; but, as a 
rule, they have no imagination and no power of 
working up theories. Sherlock Holmes would have 
been a chemist only had he been born a negro. 

Every constable seems to imagine that, socially and 
politically, he is far above the ordinary inhabitant. He 

67 



Jamaica 

feels towards his coloured brethren in about the same way 
as a cavalry colonel feels towards a newly-joined militia 
private. Between a member of the constabulary force 
and an ordinary person there can be no close friendship. 
The black policeman lives in an atmosphere of the police 
court, and seems always to regard every member of the 
public as a possible prisoner and a certain criminal. 
Really in his heart I think he feels the bitterness of his 
exalted loneliness. He inwardly regrets the necessity 
of his aloofness from human pleasures. He would 
probably prefer to be a soldier. This he will never 
admit, even to himself. But, I repeat, probably he 
would prefer to be a soldier of the line. The uniform 
is better ; it is far more picturesque. And the men 
of the West Indian Regiments combine dignity and 
popularity in a manner entirely mystifying to the 
Jamaican police. Besides, the brilliant-soldier companies 
march down the high road to the music of pipes and 
drums, and the weary constable has to stand by and see 
that the road is clear. The soldier is a picturesque 
hero ; the police constable is a constable of justice and 
nothing more. 



68 






CHAPTER VIII 

A JAMAICAN COURT HOUSE 

A SQUARE room painted white and fitted with dull red 
benches and a raised platform ; on the platform the 
magistrate, a weary-looking man with faded hair and 
wrinkled face, and eyes screened by gold-rimmed 
spectacles. As he sits, listlessly playing with his papers, 
apparently indifferent to the pleadings of the prisoners, 
or the garrulous stormings of nervous witnesses, he 
seems to suggest a tired speculator reading the first 
official details of his own bankruptcy. Occasionally 
he raises his voice and a hushed court hears, " All right, 
get down now," and a witness, only just sufficiently 
recovered from nervousness to have reached the period 
of unintelligible verbosity, gets down with a sulky jerk 
and proud bearing. All Jamaican negroes speak a 
language officially known as English. From the fact 
that it is alleged that he can understand the unbroken 
flow of their fearful eloquence, the magistrate must be 
counted a man of consummate linguistic ability. In 
front of the platform is a huge table, at which all the 
whites and yellow-whites of the district are foregathered 

69 



J 



amaica 



to witness the administration of justice. At the head 
of the table, and at the feet of the magistrate, is the clerk ; 
an ancient man with the remains of a weak voice, and 
a habit of looking over his steel eye-glasses in the 
approved scholastic style. He is an important, if not 
a picturesque personage. The decorative touch is 
afforded to the court by the appearance of the inspector 
of police. He sits at another corner of the large table 
behind a great white helmet carefully placed on the 
summit of a large pile of important blue papers, in the 
proper crown and cushion fashion. The helmet is the 
police inspector's shield and guard, and badge of office. 
It is an inflexible example of the power and nobility 
of the law ; it is an object on which the prisoners may 
fasten their eyes, should they be unable to gaze for ever 
into the inscrutable depths of the spectacles of the 
presiding magistrate. Compared with the magistrate, 
the clerk and the inspector of police, the other 
whites and yellow-whites are unimportant. Planters 
and tradesmen, and commission agents, they lounge 
gracelessly round the table, fingering their riding whips 
or pulling at the ends of their scrubby beards. The 
table marks the boundary line of the charmed circle, 
into which only the whites, and the not very yellow- 
whites, may enter with impunity. Beyond, in the public 
benches, grouped carelessly in picturesque disorder, are 
the natives. A sweltering crowd it is, throbbing with 
silence, just as the tropical midday throbs with heat. 
The prisoner at the bar, a ragged, unkempt negro, 
whose cleaner father must have come from the malarial 

70 




A MARKET WOMAN. 



A Jamaican Court House 

swamps behind the Gold Coast, is answering to a charge 
of stealing, feloniously and with malicious intent, one 
and a half pairs of meat known and described (in 
Jamaica and elsewhere) as pig's trotters. As we entered, 
the prisoner at the bar was tearing at the mangy 
patches of his mud-coloured hair, and pleading " I no 
took them master, sir, yer honor, I no took them ; I 
ask to be set free. I no see them, I no eat them, Tore 
God in 'eaven." 

It was interesting to watch the varied emotions 
playing over the expressive faces of the watching crowd 
of the man's enemies and friends. Enemies first, 
because the natives seemed as cruelly thoughtless, and 
quite as vicious, as the ladies in any balcony at a 
Spanish bull-ring. When the monotonous mumble of 
the magistrate has finished, only the pleased smile of 
the prisoner told us the news of his acquittal. To the 
unexperienced ear, the magistrate's mumble was just 
as incomprehensible as any of the jargon of the witnesses 
themselves. 

The next two or three cases were concerned with 
the question of paternity, and in each instance the 
plaintive lady received the consolation of eighteen- 
pence a week for a period of years. Then followed a 
charge of assault. One lady had beaten another with 
an implement remotely resembling a carpenter's stool. 
On each side there were many witnesses and, apparently, 
many liars. One coquette in a West Indian gown of 
yellow, green, blue, and pink, ventured to repeat to the 
court some of the vulgar abuse which, in her opinion, 

7 1 



Jamaica 

contributed to, and completely justified, the assault 
referred to. Hers was an eloquent and ingenious 
pleading. First, she swore before God and Heaven 
that the assault was not an assault at all, " Ester did 
not lay a finger on the woman " ; then she justified 
the assault in language which stirred even the lethargic 
magistrate. " Such language will do your friend no 
good ; it only serves to show that you are a low 
abandoned woman " he ventured to remark in a low, 
even monotone. 

" So's she, she is low and abandoned too ; she is 
. . . and she said " . . . The woman was on her 
metal, and desired above all things to incriminate the 
enemy of her friend. 

In the end someone was fined eight shillings and 
costs. Who it was I never knew ; but my impression 
is that it was either a witness or the police constable. 

Two young and innocent-looking boys were charged 
by a one-legged baker with stealing a loaf, value one 
penny. The baker was evidently a man of parts, one 
of which was religion. He kissed the book with a 
vivacious reverence and commenced, " Your Honour 
and gentlemen : Them two boys Simon Fogarty and 
Thomas SmifF was in my bakery on the pretence of 
executing a purchase. I ask them to lift a board in 
order that I may take up bread enough to supply them. 
They become impertinent. I rebuke them. They 
only laugh and say I too much fool. I again rebuke 
them, and then I get over the counter in order to 
chastise them. They fly ; but I seize one, Simon 

72 



A Jamaican Court House 

Fogarty, and he struggle so hard that I oblige to call 
in the aid of Constable Perkin, who shall come before 
your Honour and say I speak the truth only. When 
I go back to my shop I find that one loaf had gone. 
I run into the street and see Thomas SmifF with my 
loaf to his lips. I call witness to see him also, and they 
tell you how the wicked boy, who is the pest of the 
street, eat my loaf for which I receive no payment." 
The police constable confirmed the baker's statement, 
and the magistrate looked bored to extinction. It is just 
the police court in which that ancient suburban drama 
" Black justice " might be performed with propriety. 

In spite of the eloquence of the baker and the 
accurate testimony of the police constable, those boys 
might have been let off with a caution ; but, just as 
justice was looking its weakest, the police inspector 
rose, and, placing one hand gracefully upon the summit 
of his helmet, addressed the court. 

" May I venture to say that those boys are the most 
incorrigible rascals in the district. They do no work ; 
they are dirty, lazy, and a terror to the neighbourhood. 
They give more trouble to the police than any other 
man or woman on the island." The quality of mercy 
is immediately strained, and although the pardon flows 
out (mainly because the baker requests it) the dregs 
remain in a sentence to come up for judgment when 
called upon to do so. 

The boys jointly attempt to hide a wide and 
intelligent grin behind the battered remains of what 
must once have been a felt hat. 

73 



J 



amaica 



And so the court goes on. 

The merry hum of the day insects mingles with the 
shrill tones of singing birds, and the chatter of anxious 
litigants in the yard below. The magistrate continues 
his anxious calculations, and the clerk is assiduous in 
his endeavours to balance a pair of rusty pince-nez on 
a nose obviously too slippery with sweat. The police 
inspector frowns round the room from behind the 
majestic screen of his helmet, and the black usher 
shouts silence, or swears a witness after the usual caution 
of "Take se bible in you righ' 'and" . . . 



74 



CHAPTER IX 

THE MILITARY CAMP AT NEWCASTLE 

IN the streets of Kingston I had frequently seen com- 
panies 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 be- 
jewelled 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 

75 



Jamaica 

gardens and plantations, banana trees, pines, and cocoa- 
nuts. 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 planta- 
tions and negro '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, 

76 




A GARDEN TERRACE. 



Military Camp at Newcastle 

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 New- 
castle. 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 shoot- 
ing 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 some- 
times we rags the blacks. See that nigger 'ut ? Well, 
we goes there sometimes of course, it's out'er bounds 

77 



Jamaica 

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 no- 
where now ..." It was a long and interesting descrip- 
tion 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 ex- 
pensive 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 

78 



Military Camp at Newcastle 

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 New- 
castle 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 wonder- 
ful 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. 



79 



CHAPTER X 

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 
Jong 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 

8j 6 



Jamaica 

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 bash- 
fulness 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 ob- 
tained 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." 

82 



Recreations of the Black Man 

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 : 

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amaica 



" 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 toot^ (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 hed 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 v 2 weeks gorn. Has you forgot de day wen 



Recreations of the Black Man 

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 

85 



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amaica 



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 

86 



Recreations of the Black Man 

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 extra- 
ordinary 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 

8 7 



Jamaica 

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 un- 
rehearsed effect of fifty perspiring negroes, seeking to 

represent in a ballet the story of Jonah and the Whale, 

88 



Recreations of the Black Man 

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. 



CHAPTER XI 

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 

9 1 



Jamaica 

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 

92 




A COLOURED LADY ON A RACE-COURSE. 



The Dandy and the Coquette 

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 pro- 
found 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 

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amaica 



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 ot 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 

94 



The Dandy and the Coquette 

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. 



95 



CHAPTER XII 

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 

97 7 



Jamaica 

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 flirt- 
ing with the river ripples ; shivering along the dark 
stretches where the sky was blackened by the heavy 
bamboo clumps, and listening, a we -stricken, to the 
noise of their clicking stems. The beauty of the 
bamboo is a melancholy beauty ; the high canes, flutter- 
ing with wavy foliage at their heads, look cold and 
miserable along their stems. Our sporting friend, 
Large, said they reminded him of those unpleasant 



OF THE N\ 

( UNIVERSITY j 

%^\!x 



Bog Walk 

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 

99 



Jamaica 

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 remark- 
able 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 horizontal] y 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 ruth- 
lessly cutting away fragrant weeds with a murderous 

100 



Bog Walk 

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 com- 
mercial 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 Provi- 
dence 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, 

10 1 



Jamaica 

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. 



102 



CHAPTER XIII 

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 morn- 
ing 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 pre- 

103 



Jamaica 

pared 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 out- 
number you whites by at least forty to one ; is it rational 
that we should always submit to your despotic govern- 
ment ? 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 

104 



OF THE 

UNIVERSITY 



OF 




The Politics of a Negro 

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 

105 



J 



amaica 

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." 

1 06 



The Politics of a Negro 

" 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 nationalisa- 
tion ? " 

" 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. 

u 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 inde- 
pendent." 

" 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 

107 



Jamaica 

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." 

<c 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. 

108 



The Politics of a Negro 

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 dis- 
tinguish 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 

109 



Jamaica 

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 agri- 
cultural 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 drained 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 " 

no 



The Politics of a Negro 

" 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. 



OF THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 





STALLS OUTSIDE THE MARKET 
MANDEVILLE. 



OF THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 






DRY HARBOUR 




CHAPTER XIV 

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 con- 
cerned 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 

H 8 



Jamaica 

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 ? " 

114 



The White Man's Politics 

"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 intro- 
duction 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 

"5 



Jamaica 

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 busi- 
ness 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 

116 



The White Man's Politics 

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 home- 
land 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 

117 



Jamaica 

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 dis- 
contented, 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 Govern- 
ment 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." 



118 



CHAPTER XV 

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 respect- 
able, of both classes. The soda-water room is always 
full of scandal talk ; a half hour's ride in this compart- 
ment of any train will teach any tourist the inner 

119 



Jamaica 

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 dis- 
comfort 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-a-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 planta- 

120 



The Railway in Jamaica 

tions 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 every- 
thing 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- 

121 



J 



amaica 



green guinea-grass pastures, and then, by way of wonder- 
ful 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 agri- 
cultural 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, 

122 



The Railway in Jamaica 

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 rail- 
road 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 charm 
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. 

123 



CHAPTER XVI 

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 

125 



Jamaica 

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 unwholesome 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 

126 



Alligator Shooting 

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 vile 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, 

127 



J 



amaica 



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 under- 
shirt, 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 

128 



Alligator Shooting 



of us stealthily massacred a floating tree stump, mis- 
taking 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 youth- 
ful 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." 

129 9 



J 



amaica 



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 com- 
panion 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 

130 



Alligator Shooting 

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. 



J 



amaica 



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 home- 
wards. 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 ex- 
hausted 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. 



132 



CHAPTER XVII 

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 bank- 
ruptcy, 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 



Jamaica 

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 won- 
derfully 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 






Commercial Jamaica 

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 en- 
countered 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. 

135 



Jamaica 

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, anti- 
quated 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 



Commercial Jamaica 

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 Libera- 
tion 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 con- 
dition 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 eject- 
ment. 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 

'37 



J 



amaica 



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 

138 



Commercial Jamaica 

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 as 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 im- 

139 



Jamaica 

portance to the island for many years. The establish- 
ment of the Imperial line of steamers between Avon- 
mouth 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 con- 

140 



Commercial Jamaica 

dition. 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 forma- 
tion 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. 

141 



CHAPTER XVIII 

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 Euckra 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 jungle- 



Jamaica 

land, 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 grandifolms^ 
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 

144 



The Flora of Jamaica 

find the lignum vitae, hod-wood, calabash, locust, rain- 
tree, 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 planta- 
tion 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 

H5 10 



J 



amaica 



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 con- 
stitutes 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 

146 




MID-DAY HEAT JAMAICA 



The Flora of Jamaica 

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 cryptogamia 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. 



'47 



CHAPTER XIX 

A JAMAICAN 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 

149 



Jamaica 

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 coker- 
nut. Buck negroes 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 black ies 
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 

150 




A JOCKEY AT CUMBERLAND PEf> 



A Jamaican Race-Course 

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 



J 



amaica 

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 <c 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 

152 



A Jamaican Race-Course 

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 
buggyman 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 in- 
feriority 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 

'53 



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amaica 



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 negro 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. 
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 
subalterns enter ponies bought on credit, and lose 
money in order to impress a pitying crowd of non- 
entities. When a race-horse costs but twenty pounds, 



A Jamaican Race-Course 

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, 



Jamaica 

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. 



t 5 6 



CHAPTER XX 

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. 

'57 



Jamaica 

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 pene- 
trating. 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 

158 



The Hill Stations 

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, 

'59 



Jamaica 

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 
to 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 

1 60 



The Hill Stations 

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 Britain'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 negro. 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 

161 ii 



J 



amaica 



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 occasion- 
ally 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. 



162 









OF THE 

( UNIVERSITY 



of // 



CHAPTER XXI 

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 

163 



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amaica 



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 re- 
construction 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 build- 
ing ; 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 

164 







THE CATHEDRAL AT SPANISH TOWN. 



Of Interest to Tourists 

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 regime 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 head- 
quarters 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 

165 



Jamaica 

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 one- 
self 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 multiplicity of the places every one really 
ought to see. People arrive from Europe or America, 

and the first friendly Jamaican they meet provides them 

1 66 



Of Interest to Tourists 

with a programme of the places they really ought to visit. 
The friendly native gives them a list of excursions which 
will fill every minute of their time from the moment of 
their arrival to the projected time of their departure. 
When the newcomer meets a second friendly native he 
criticises the list prepared by his predecessor, and 
suggests many alterations. Substitute " Belle View " 
for " Mandeville " on such a day, or go to " Castleton " 
and leave out " Hope Gardens," so that the bewildered 
tourist knows not what to do. 

I am utterly incapable of giving advice in the 
matter. I invariably arrange such things particularly 
badly myself. My plan is always to have no plans. I 
do in the morning what seems most interesting. In 
this manner it is probable that I waste much precious 
time. I have wasted many mornings in the streets of 
Kingston when I might have been sight-seeing in the 
hills. But that is my rule. I prefer to have no plans, 
and I like to avoid the beaten track of the tourist. It is 
better to lounge always, especially so in the tropics. 
On a former visit to the island I was with a party who 
insisted on " doing " everything. We used to get up 
in the morning at six and go to bed at night at twelve. 
We lived in buggies and trains and tram-cars. At 
every point of interest we were stopped and invited to 
admire something which was eloquently described in the 
local guide-books. The natives we met were all un- 
natural. I remember that I expressed a desire to see a 
native village, and we were driven to a collection of trim 
huts, and a dozen well-dressed negroes appeared for our 



J 



amaica 



inspection. And the fee that was paid to the negroes 
for having been examined was placed in our bill of 
expenses. That, I venture to think, is not the best way 
to see a new country. It is always better to walk than 
to take a buggy, but if a buggy must be used then it is 
well to hire it by the hour or day and tell the driver to 
drive on to drive in any direction that leads to no 
particular place. If you take a ride in the tram-cars it 
is better to sit in the seats used by the natives, the 
market-women and the labourers, than to loll in the 
front benches among the white people. If you want to 
see the market-place don't take a policeman with you 
as if you expected to mix with the most abandoned 
criminals, and if you want an iced Kola go to one of 
the negro rum-shops for it, and avoid the beautifully- 
furnished European hotels. The people who " do 
places " and " see everything " usually mix only with 
tourists and never get to know the natives. True, they 
see the scenery and many of the places of interest, but 
they don't get to know the life of the place, and they 
can have no knowledge of its people. 

If the visitor wants to go to service on Sunday 
he would find it more interesting to go to a negro 
meeting-house than to the most popular of the fashion- 
able churches. He would find out more about the 
inner life of the Jamaican army by ten minutes' talk 
with any soldier of the line than by an hour's interview 
with the smartest captain or most courteous command- 
ing-officer. It is better to talk with the market women 

and the black men who deal in native tobacco, with the 

1 68 



Of Interest to Tourists 

water-side porters and the black constables, than it is to 
attend lectures, or read books, or interview politicians, if 
you want to know anything about the Jamaican labour 
problem. And all these things are more or less 
impossible if you explore Jamaica along the lines of a 
crowded time-table. 

That is my opinion. So I am reluctant to suggest 
that tourists should make a point of seeing this thing or 
that. I would rather advise a newcomer to buy a 
buggy and a couple of horses and engage the services of 
an honest driver. Having secured these he should pack 
a bag with a couple of flannel suits, a tooth-brush 
and some under -linen, and then explore the island, 
practically giving his horses their heads all the way. 
The only instruction he need give his driver would be, 
Avoid the railroad track and go through as many 
villages as possible. 

After this the tourist may go home knowing that he 
has seen something of the island even though he has 
not visited Spanish Town, Castleton, Gordon Town, 
Mandeville or Port Antonio, These places are but the 
names of important centres ; Jamaica is the land of 
wood and water. The plantations and the banana fields, 
the forests and the rivers, and hedges, and the native 
villages are more interesting and far more fascinating 
than marble monuments or anglicised native houses. 



169 



CHAPTER XXII 

CERTAIN THINGS THE WEST INDIAN TOURIST 
MUST NOT DO 

Do not believe every story you hear which makes 
against the character of the Governor or his wife. It is 
difficult for a high official, for the direct representative 
of H.M. the King, to always please every half- white 
woman and her husband. The jealousy of the half- 
white for the pure white is very bitter. Do not utterly 
believe in the alligator stories as told by the junior 
subalterns of West Indian regiments, or yet the 
shooting yarns of medical officers of health. All white 
Jamaicans do not spend their time in following the 
festive alligator or in spearing frisky sharks in Kingston 
Harbour. Do not trouble to drive in any hackney- 
carriage if your destination is within easy walking 
distance. The argument with the buggy driver is more 
exhausting work even than a walk of two hundred 
yards. Do not go out in the sun without a hat or with 
only a small cap. Do not drink too much either of the 
cool, iced lemon squash, or the more-alluring whisky and 

mineral water. Gin is not a particularly wholesome 

171 



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amaica 



stimulant, but it is better for the white man in Jamaica 
than the finest whisky. Water that is not filtered 
should be avoided, and it is well always to sleep beneath 
your mosquito covering. Iced drinks taken in large 
quantities are the best means of securing a really bad 
digestion, especially if they are taken when one is very 
hot. India-rubber shoes are easy to put on, but in the 
tropics they are occasionally very difficult to discard. 
A qualified chemist should be requisitioned to remove 
any half-melted rubber that may have stuck to the soles 
of your inflamed feet. Panama hats which are loosely 
plaited are excellent things for wearing on the suburban 
parades of cool countries ; in the tropics head-gear made 
of felt or pith is better. It is not a good thing to 
wear heavy clothes, neither is it good to wear too little. 
The wise man does not plunge into a cold bath when he 
is very hot, neither does he bathe in the harbour among 
hungry sharks. Inquiries should be made into the 
habits and customs of alligators before the tourist takes 
a dip in some of the up-country rivers, and he should 
avoid hunting the gaudy butterfly in malarious swamps 
noted for the propagation of high fevers. It is never a 
good thing for a new arrival to take risks, but if he 
insists, let him leave a written document exonerating the 
climate from all blame of causing his death. 

A Jamaican negro should not be treated as though 
he were a dangerous wild beast, and the tourist should 
remember that the blackest negro tries to live up to a 
code of morals common to white men. All the blacks 

who come in contact with you will be strongly in- 

172 



OF THE 

UNIVERSITY 

Of 



What Tourists Must Not Do 

fluenced by your conduct ; you should treat a native 
just as you would treat a white boy whose esteem and 
affection you desired to retain, always remembering that 
a black man holds his women folk in great respect. 

It is unnecessary that you should remind every 
coloured person that he or she is coloured. Half-breeds 
prefer to pass as whites. On the other hand be chary 
of believing that a person is pure white solely because 
you have his assurance that such is his condition. It 
may be that it is a matter of no moment to you whether 
he is black or white or yellow, in which case give him 
the benefit and call him the colour of his choice. 
Jamaican plantations are not waste lands, and should not 
receive the treatment meted out to virgin territories. 
All fruit trees are not planted for the convenience of 
curious tourists. It is not a polite thing to pull down a 
banana -tree in order to discover the secrets of its 
growth, nor is it kind to shake a ripe orange-tree in 
order to see how many fruit will fall. Even the most 
luxuriant pine-apple field should not be trampled 
through with a golf club, and that place which looks 
like a private garden may really be one in fact. In 
such a case it is not the thing for a stranger to pluck 
flowers or uproot rare ferns. A country planter does 
not regard his private bungalow as a public museum for 
the use of tourists, and as a rule he will resent any 
question as to his ancestry. It is not good for a new 
arrival to accept all the spirituous liqueurs proffered 
him, and Jamaicans will not admire a man merely 
because he is a dissolute, dissipated dog. Do not offer 

'73 



Jamaica 

emphatic judgment on the qualities of a Jamaican horse 
until you have been on his back for more than seven 
hours, and do not gamble at the three-card trick on 
Jamaican race-courses. 

Chasten your feeling of ultra superiority and do not 
put down every untidy-looking white man you meet in 
remote country districts for a tramp bent on gaining 
possession of your valuables. Important planters in 
country districts, away from busy centres, sometimes pay 
but little attention to outward appearances. Individual 
planters tire of much reiteration of advice from young 
and enthusiastic tourists ; likewise they are not pleased to 
hear that you cannot understand how it is that in such 
a wonderful climate all the planters are not the richest 
men in the world. The Jamaican does not like the 
Englishman who imagines that Britain keeps Jamaica 
going by charitable bequests ; it is not pleasant for a 
hard-working man to come across an individual who 
tells him to his face that he is little better than a 
pauper. Above all, let it be remembered that the 
inhabitants of Jamaica did not brew their 1 903 cyclone 
with the idea of giving Englishmen a little shock in 
order that British philanthropists might send cheques 
to the West Indies. Everyday ideas on the politics of 
the island, on means by which the island's finances might 
be put on a better plane, on new industries, and better 
conditions of labour, will occur to the bright young 
tripper. It is better for a young man not to give 
emphasis to these ideas until he has been in the country 
for several weeks. 

'74 



CHAPTER XXIII 

IN CONCLUSION 

IT may be that I am entirely unfitted to deal at any 
great length with that most complicated, most difficult 
of all problems, the negro question. The problem is a 
matter which must be left to the consideration of states- 
men who, guided by the experience of years of per- 
sonal contact with black men, are entitled to be 
considered as experts. But the negro question is one 
which forces itself upon the notice of all people who 
visit any country where, numerically, the black man is 
predominant. The British West Indian islands each 
and all are at once both British Colonies and black man's 
countries. Where black people are so pre-eminently 
strong, it is impossible for the white men, no matter 
what their race, to undertake the work of government 
unless by the express desire of the black men, or because 
of the crass ignorance and weakness of the negro race. 
How comes it that less than twenty thousand white 
men rule three quarters of a million coloured people 
in Jamaica? That is the question pregnant with 
possibilities that confronts one after a stay in that 

175 



J 



amaica 



fascinating island of the west. The cause must inevit- 
ably be found in the weakness, the ignorance, of the 
blacks. The negro is not fit to govern therefore he 
must not govern ; so say the English, and in accordance 
with the dictates of that creed have the English framed 
their West Indian laws. And undoubtedly it is good 
that it should be so. The negro is not fit to rule ; he 
is not capable of efficient self-government. But how 
long will the negro himself believe that he is incom- 
petent ? Will he, or will he not, in the future the near 
or distant future ever come to think that home rule is 
his birthright. Already many negroes hold that opinion 
as individuals. Will the coloured race ever think so 
collectively ? Will the coloured class ever call for 
freedom in tones of absolute, organised unison. If so, 
what will happen ? 

I have already recorded the opinions of a coloured 
man in this direction ; I have also shown the ideas on 
the subject common to the majority of white men. 
The one, thoroughly representative of -his class, appealed 
for greater freedom. In cool argument he suggested 
that absolute political freedom was the birthright of 
man, black or white. He claimed Jamaica as his own 
country, the fatherland of his race. He was con- 
vincingly in earnest. His country was as dear to him 
just as much his very own as England ever was to 
Englishman. He was absolutely serious. The other 
man, the Englishman, seemed more forceful, but less 
convincing. The white man's argument was more 

desperate. He even suggested bayonets as a hedge for 

176 



In Conclusion 

enclosing the ambition of a people whom we are, by 
religion and by science and by common sentiment, 
taught to regard as our very equals. By the law of the 
West Indies the black man is the equal of the white. 
Yet my friend suggested that rifle-shots would be 
necessary should that race demand a practical exhibition 
of that absolute liberty which is reckoned by the English 
to be part of the heritage of all British-born subjects, 
black or white. 

Surely it is a curious condition of affairs ? Under 
British rule, the black man is, theoretically, the equal 
of the white. Practically he is nothing of the sort. 
Practically it is not even admitted that he is. Or why 
is it necessary to continue the West Indian system of 
Government by the Crown ? 

Now this is all very well. No doubt it is a con- 
venient thing for us and for the peoples of all European 
countries to theorise about the brotherhood of man. 
In England and in all countries where the negro 
population is insignificant, such a question is only a 
matter of abstract principle ; it is a pleasant sop to 
one's inherent quality of benevolence to so decide, to 
generously overlook obvious shortcomings and proclaim 
it abroad that Britain accepts her black people as equals 
brothers in spirit and in fact. No doubt, in Britain, 
this is a very comforting creed to absorb in its entirety, 
and then forget. But not so in any West Indian island. 
There the fatuity, the impossibility, the impracticability 
of the scheme is immediately obvious. The farce of 
the whole thing is at once evident. The average white 

177 12 



Jamaica 

man cannot count the average negro as being his absolute 
equal. By reason of the dictum of the homeland he must 
pretend to do so. Officially he must, with his lips, pro- 
claim the actuality of this impossible equality, but he 
must do it with his tongue in his cheek. He must see 
to it that the black man is convinced of the honesty of 
his protestations that the blacks believe. And yet he 
must see that the black man does not attain any of the 
natural results such a condition would inevitably bring 
into existence. It is like the old tree in the garden of 
Eden. The tree of liberty is put before the eyes of the 
black man who is told that the fruit and the blossom is 
his very own but that he must not touch it. That is 
the condition of affairs. Nominally the equal, the 
black man is actually not the equal. And this he is 
beginning to realise. The spread of education among 
the coloured race in the West Indies is bringing into 
existence a generation of dissatisfied agitators. The 
negro is becoming ambitious ; he is beginning to 
become ambitious for his race. As soon as the race 
feels its strength it will use it for its own ends. It will 
demand political freedom. The creed of my coloured 
friend of the Spanish Town highroad may be allowed 
to stand as the creed of the present, or at any rate the 
next, generation of the blacks in the British West 
Indies. 

What will be its effect on the several islands ? The 
present unsatisfactory system of semi " make-believe " 
is impossible. It cannot last for ever. The question 
Britain has to consider is, Shall it be a black or a white 

178 



In Conclusion 

government in the West Indies ? If this country is 
reconciled to the eventual existence of a black govern- 
ment then the existing system is good enough. If not, 
something ought to be done immediately, though 
exactly what could be done I cannot pretend to know. 
I leave that matter to the consideration of people more 
qualified to make suggestions. I believe that the negro 
is, and at any rate for many generations will continue 
to be, incapable of self-government ; I know that no 
white people could live in a country ruled by black 
men. And I firmly believe our West Indian possessions 
are in danger of falling under the government of their 
black people. 

That, in my opinion, is the greatest of all the West 
Indian problems. Commercial difficulties will solve 
themselves. The natural riches of the beautiful islands 
of the West must sooner or later bring a great harvest 
of gain to their owners. The sugar industry will revive, 
the West Indian fruit trade is to-day only in its infancy. 
The Caribbean islands are destined to become the fruit 
gardens of the world. And many smaller industries 
will spring into existence. There can be no doubt as 
to the richness of the industrial future of the Indies. 
The one difficulty is this political difficulty : the 
inevitable struggle for supremacy between the white 
man and the black. 

THE END 



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