No scenery can be more picturesque than that afforded by the entrance to Port of Spain, the chief town in the island of Trinidad. Trinidad, as all men doubtless know, is the southernmost of the West Indian islands, and lies across the delta of the Orinoco river. The western portion of the island is so placed that it nearly reaches with two horns two different parts of the mainland of Venezuela, one of the South American republics. And thus a bay is formed closed in between the island and the mainland, somewhat as is the Gulf of Mexico by the island of Cuba; only that the proportions here are much less in size. This enclosed sea is called the Gulf of Paria.
The two chief towns, I believe I may say the two only towns in Trinidad are situated in this bay. That which is the larger, and the seat of government, is called the Port of Spain, and lies near to the northern horn. San Fernando, the other, which is surrounded by the finest sugar districts of the island, and which therefore devotes its best energies to the export of that article, is on the other side of the bay and near the other horn.
The passages into the enclosed sea on either side are called the Bocas, or mouths. Those nearest to the delta of the Orinoco are the Serpent's mouths. The ordinary approach from England or the other islands is by the more northern entrance. Here there are three passages, of which the middle is the largest one, the Boca Grande. That between the mainland and a small island is used by the steamers in fine weather, and is by far the prettiest. Through this, the Boca di Mona, or monkey's mouth, we approached Port of Spain. These northern entrances are called the Dragon's mouths. What may be the nautical difference between the mouth of a dragon and that of a serpent I did not learn.
On the mainland, that is the land of the main island, the coast is precipitous, but clothed to the very top with the thickest and most magnificent foliage. With an opera-glass one can distinctly see the trees coming forth from the sides of the rocks as though no soil were necessary for them, and not even a shelf of stone needed for their support And these are not shrubs, but forest trees, with grand spreading branches, huge trunks, and brilliant coloured foliage. The small island on the other side is almost equally wooded, but is less precipitous. Here, however, there are open glades, and grassy enclosures, which tempt one to wish that it was one's lot to lie there in the green shade and eat bananas and mangoes. This little island in the good old days, regretted by not a few, when planters were planters, and slaves were slaves, produced cotton up to its very hill-tops. Now I believe it yields nothing but the grass for a few cattle.
Our steamer as she got well into the boca drew near to the shore of the large island, and as we passed along we had a succession of lovely scenes. Soft-green smiling nooks made themselves visible below the rocks, the very spots for picnics. One could not but long to be there with straw hats and crinoline, pigeon pies and champagne baskets. There was one narrow shady valley, into which a creek of the sea ran up, that must have been made for such purposes, either for that, or for the less noisy joys of some Paul of Trinidad with his Creole Virginia.
As we steamed on a little further we came to a whaling establishment. Ideas of whaling establishments naturally connect themselves with icebergs and the North Pole. But it seems that there are races of whales as there are of men, proper to the tropics as well as to the poles; and some of the former here render up their oily tributes. From the look of the place I should not say that the trade was flourishing. The whaling huts are very picturesque, but do not say much for the commercial enterprise of the proprietors.
From them we went on through many smaller islands to Port of Spain. This is a large town, excellently well laid out, with the streets running all at right angles to each other, as is now so common in new towns. The spaces have been prepared for a much larger population than that now existing, so that it is at present straggling, unfilled, and full of gaps. But the time will come, and that before long, when it will be the best town in the British West Indies. There is at present in Port of Spain a degree of commercial enterprise quite unlike the sleepiness of Jamaica or the apathy of the smaller islands.
I have now before me at the present moment of writing a debate which took place in the House of Commons the other day—it is only the other day as I now write—on a motion made by Mr. Buxton for a committee to inquire into the British West Indies; and though somewhat afraid of being tedious on the subject of immigration to these parts, I will say a few words as to this motion in as far as it affects not only Trinidad, but all those colonies. Of all subjects this is the one that is of real importance to the West Indies; and it may be expected that the sugar colonies will or will not prosper, as that subject is or is not understood by its rulers.
I think I may assume that the intended purport of Mr. Buxton's motion was to throw impediments in the way of the immigration of Coolies into Jamaica; and that in making it he was acting as the parliamentary mouthpiece of the Anti-Slavery Society. The legislature of Jamaica has at length passed a law with the object of promoting this immigration, as it has been promoted at the Mauritius and in a lesser degree in British Guiana and Trinidad; but the Anti-Slavery Society have wished to induce the Crown to use its authority and abstain from sanctioning this law, urging that it will be injurious to the interests of the negro labourers.
The "peculiar institution" of slavery is, I imagine, quite as little likely to find friends in England now as it was when the question of its abolition was so hotly pressed some thirty years since. And God forbid that I should use either the strength or the weakness of my pen in saying a word in favour of a system so abhorrent to the feelings of a Christian Englishman. But may we not say that that giant has been killed? Is it not the case that the Anti-Slavery Society has done its work?—has done its work at any rate as regards the British West Indies? What should we have said of the Anti-Corn-Law League, had it chosen to sit in permanence after the repeal of the obnoxious tax, with the view of regulating the fixed price of bread?
Such is the attempt now being made by the Anti-Slavery Society with reference to the West Indian negroes. If any men are free, these men are so. They have been left without the slightest constraint or bond over them. In the sense in which they are free, no English labourer is free. In England a man cannot select whether he will work or whether he will let it alone. He, the poor Englishman, has that freedom which God seems to have intended as good for man; but work he must. If he do not do so willingly, compulsion is in some sort brought to bear upon him. He is not free to be idle; and I presume that no English philanthropists will go so far as to wish to endow him with that freedom.
But that is the freedom which the negro has in Jamaica, which he still has in many parts of Trinidad, and which the Anti-Slavery Society is so anxious to secure for him. It—but no; I will give the Society no monopoly of such honour. We, we Englishmen, have made our negroes free. If by further efforts we can do anything towards making other black men free—if we can assist in driving slavery from the earth, in God's name let us still be doing. Here may be scope enough for an Anti-Slavery Society. But I maintain that these men are going beyond their mark—that they are minding other than their own business, in attempting to interfere with the labour of the West Indian colonies. Gentlemen in the West Indies see at once that the Society is discussing matters which it has not studied, and that interests of the utmost importance to them are being played with in the dark.
Mr. Buxton grounded his motion on these two pleas:—Firstly, That the distress of the West Indian planters had been brought about by their own apathy and indiscretion. And secondly, That that distress was in course of relief, would quickly be relieved, without any further special measures for its mitigation. I think that he was substantially wrong in both these allegations.
That there were apathetic and indiscreet planters—that there were absentees whose property was not sufficient to entitle them to the luxury of living away from it, may doubtless have been true. But the tremendous distress which came upon these colonies fell on them in too sure a manner, with too sudden a blow, to leave any doubt as to its cause. Slavery was first abolished, and the protective duty on slave-grown sugar was then withdrawn. The second measure brought down almost to nothing the property of the most industrious as well as that of the most idle of the planters. Except in Barbados, where the nature of the soil made labour compulsory, where the negro could no more be idle and exist than the poor man can do in England, it became impossible to produce sugar with a profit on which the grower could live. It was not only the small men who fell, or they who may be supposed to have been hitherto living on an income raised to an unjustly high pitch. Ask the Gladstone family what proceeds have come from their Jamaica property since the protective duty was abolished. Let Lord Howard de Walden say how he has fared.
Mr. Buxton has drawn a parallel between the state of Ireland at and after the famine and that of the West Indies at and after the fall in the price of sugar, of which I can by no means admit the truth. In the one case, that of Ireland, the blow instantly effected the remedy. A tribe of pauper landlords had grown up by slow degrees who, by their poverty, their numbers, their rapacity, and their idleness, had eaten up and laid waste the fairest parts of the country. Then came the potato rot, bringing after it pestilence, famine, and the Encumbered Estates Court; and lo! in three years the air was cleared, the cloud had passed away, and Ireland was again prosperous. Land bought at fifteen pounds the acre was worth thirty before three crops had been taken from it. The absentees to whom Mr. Buxton alludes were comparatively little affected. They were rich men whose backs were broad enough to bear the burden for a while, and they stood their ground. It is not their property which as a rule has changed hands, but that of the small, grasping, profit-rent landlords whose lives had been passed in exacting the last farthing of rent from the cottiers. When no farthing of rent could any longer be exacted, they went to the wall at once.
There was nothing like this in the case of the West Indies. Indiscretion and extravagance there may have been. These are vices which will always be more or less found among men living with the thermometer at eighty in the shade. But in these colonies, long and painful efforts were made, year after year, to bear against the weight which had fallen on them. In the West Indies the blow came from man, and it was withstood on the whole manfully. In Ireland the blow came from God, and submission to it was instantaneous.
Mr. Buxton then argues that everything in the West Indies is already righting itself, and that therefore nothing further need be done. The facts of the case exactly refute this allegation. The four chief of these colonies are Barbados, British Guiana, Trinidad, and Jamaica. In Barbados, as has been explained, there was no distress, and of course no relief has been necessary. In British Guiana and Trinidad very special measures have been taken. Immigration of Coolies to a great extent has been brought about—to so great an extent that the tide of human beings across the two oceans will now run on in an increasing current. But in Jamaica little or nothing has yet been done. And in Jamaica, the fairest, the most extensive, the most attractive of them all; in Jamaica, of all the islands on God's earth the one most favoured by beauty, fertility, and natural gifts; in Jamaica the earth can hardly be made to yield its natural produce.
All this was excellently answered by Sir Edward Lytton, who, whatever may have been his general merits as a Secretary of State, seems at any rate to have understood this matter. He disposed altogether of the absurdly erroneous allegations which had been made as to the mortality of these immigrants on their passage. As is too usual in such cases arguments had been drawn from one or two specially unhealthy trips. Ninety-nine ships ride safe to port, while the hundredth unfortunately comes to grief. But we cannot on that account afford to dispense with the navigation of the seas. Sir Edward showed that the Coolies themselves—for the Anti-Slavery Society is as anxious to prevent this immigration on behalf of the Coolies, who in their own country can hardly earn twopence a day, as it is on the part of the negroes, who could with ease, though they won't, earn two shillings a day—he showed that these Coolies, after having lived for a few years on plenty in these colonies, return to their own country with that which is for them great wealth. And he showed also that the present system—present as regards Trinidad, and proposed as regards Jamaica—of indenturing the immigrant on his first arrival is the only one to which we can safely trust for the good usage of the labourer. For the present this is clearly the case. When the Coolies are as numerous in these islands as the negroes—and that time will come—such rules and restrictions will no doubt be withdrawn. And when these different people have learned to mix their blood—which in time will also come—then mankind will hear no more of a lack of labour, and the fertility of these islands will cease to be their greatest curse.
I feel that I owe an apology to my reader for introducing him to an old, forgotten, and perhaps dull debate. In England the question is one not generally of great interest. But here, in the West Indies, it is vital. The negro will never work unless compelled to do so; that is, the negro who can boast of pure unmixed African blood. He is as strong as a bull, hardy as a mule, docile as a dog when conscious of a master—a salamander as regards heat. He can work without pain and without annoyance. But he will never work as long as he can eat and sleep without it. Place the Coolie or Chinaman alongside of him, and he must work in his own defence. If he do not, he will gradually cease to have an existence.
We are now speaking more especially of Trinidad. It is a large island, great portions of which are but very imperfectly known; of which but comparatively a very small part has been cultivated. During the last eight or ten years, ten or twelve thousand immigrants, chiefly Coolies from Madras and Calcutta, have been brought into Trinidad, forming now above an eighth part of its entire population; and the consequence has been that in two years, from 1855, namely, to 1857, its imports were increased by one-third, and its exports by two-thirds! In other words, it produced, with its Coolies, three hogsheads of sugar, where without them it only produced one. The difference is of course that between absolute distress and absolute prosperity. Such having hitherto been the result of immigration into Trinidad, such also having been the result in British Guiana, it does appear singular that men should congregate in Exeter Hall with the view of preventing similar immigration into Jamaica!
This would be altogether unintelligible were it not that similar causes have produced similar effects in so many other cases. Men cannot have enough of a good thing.
Exactly the same process has taken place with reference to criminals in England. Some few years since we ill used them, stowed them away in unwholesome holes, gave them bad food for their bodies and none for their minds, and did our best to send them devilwards rather than Godwards. Philanthropists have now remedied this, and we are very much obliged to them. But the philanthropists will not be content unless they be allowed to pack all their criminals up in lavender. They must be treated not only as men, but much better than men of their own class who are not criminal.
In this matter of the negroes, the good thing is negro-protection, and our friends cannot have enough of that. The negroes in being slaves were ill used; and now it is not enough that they should all be made free, but each should be put upon his own soft couch, with rose-leaves on which to lie. Now your Sybarite negro, when closely looked at, is not a pleasing object. Distance may doubtless lend enchantment to the view.
As my sojourn in Trinidad did not amount to two entire days, I do not feel myself qualified to give a detailed description of the whole island. Very few, I imagine, are so qualified, for much of it is unknown; there is a great want of roads, and a large proportion of it has, I believe, never been properly surveyed.
Immediately round Port of Spain the country is magnificent, and the views from the town itself are very lovely. Exactly behind the town, presuming the sea to be the front, is the Savanah, a large enclosed, park-like piece of common, the race-course and Hyde Park of Trinidad. I was told that the drive round it was three English miles in length; but if it be so much, the little pony which took me that drive in a hired buggy must have been a fast trotter.
On the further side of this lives the Governor of the island, immediately under the hills. When I was there the Governor's real house was being repaired, and the great man was living in a cottage hard by. Were I that great man I should be tempted to wish that my great house might always be under repair, for I never saw a more perfect specimen of a pretty spacious cottage, opening as a cottage should do on all sides and in every direction, with a great complexity as to doors and windows, and a delicious facility of losing one's way. And then the necessary freedom from boredom, etiquette, and Governor's grandeur, so hated by Governors themselves, which must necessarily be brought about by such a residence! I could almost wish to be a Governor myself, if I might be allowed to live in such a cottage.
On the other side of the Savanah nearest to the town, and directly opposite to those lovely hills, are a lot of villa residences, and it would be impossible, I imagine, to find a more lovely site in which to fix one's house. With the Savanah for a foreground, the rising gardens behind the Governor's house in the middle distance, and a panorama of magnificent hills in the back of the picture, it is hardly within the compass of a man's eye and imagination to add anything to the scene. I had promised to call on Major——,who was then, and perhaps is still, in command of the detachment of white troops in Trinidad, and I found him and his young wife living in this spot.
"And yet you abuse Trinidad," I said, pointing to the view.
"Oh! people can't live altogether upon views," she answered; "and besides, we have to go back to the barracks. The yellow fever is over now."
The only place at which I came across any vestiges of the yellow fever was at Trinidad. There it had been making dreadful havoc, and chiefly among the white soldiers. My visit was in March, and the virulence of the disease was then just over. It had been raging, therefore, not in the summer but during the winter months. Indeed, as far as I could learn, summer and winter had very little to do with the matter. The yellow fever pays its visit in some sort periodically, though its periods are by no means understood. But it pays them at any time of the year that may suit itself.
At this time a part of the Savanah was covered with tents, to which the soldiers had been moved out of their barracks. The barracks are lower down, near the shore, at a place called St. James, and the locality is said to be wretchedly unhealthy. At any rate, the men were stricken with fever there, and the proportion of them that died was very great. I believe, indeed, that hardly any recovered of those on whom the fever fell with any violence. They were then removed into these tents, and matters began to mend. They were now about to return to their barracks, and were, I was told, as unwilling to do so as my fair friend was to leave her pretty house.
If it be necessary to send white troops to the West Indies—and I take it for granted that it is necessary—care at any rate should be taken to select for their barracks sites as healthy as may be found. It certainly seems that this has not been done at Trinidad. They are placed very low, and with hills immediately around them. The good effect produced by removing them to the Savanah—a very inconsiderable distance; not, as I think, much exceeding a mile—proves what may be done by choosing a healthy situation. But why should not the men be taken up to the mountains, as has been done with the white soldiers in Jamaica? There they are placed in barracks some three or four thousand feet above the sea, and are perfectly healthy. This cannot be done in Barbados, for there are no mountains to which to take them. But in Trinidad it may be done, quite as easily, and indeed at a lesser distance, and therefore with less cost for conveyance, than in Jamaica.
At the first glance one would be inclined to say that white troops would not be necessary in the West Indies, as we have regiments of black soldiers, negroes dressed in Zouave costume, specially trained for the service; but it seems that there is great difficulty in getting these regiments filled. Why should a negro enlist any more than work? Are there not white men enough—men and brothers—to do the somewhat disagreeable work of soldiering for him? Consequently, except in Barbados, it is difficult to get recruits. Some men have been procured from the coast of Africa, but our philanthropy is interfering even with this supply. Then the recruiting officers enlisted Coolies, and these men made excellent soldiers; but when interfered with or punished, they had a nasty habit of committing suicide, a habit which it was quite possible the negro soldier might himself assume; and therefore no more Coolies are to be enlisted.
Under such circumstances white men must, I presume, do the work. A shilling a day is an object to them, and they are slow to blow out their own brains; but they should not be barracked in swamps, or made to live in an air more pestilential than necessary.
My hostess, the lady to whom I have alluded, had been attacked most virulently by the yellow fever, and I had heard in the other islands that she was dead. Her case had indeed been given up as hopeless.
On the morning after my arrival I took a ride of some sixteen miles through the country before breakfast, and the same lady accompanied me. "We must start very early," she said; "so as to avoid the heat. I will have coffee at half-past four, and we will be on horseback at five."
I have had something to say as to early hours in the West Indies before, and hardly credited this. A morning start at five usually means half-past seven, and six o'clock is a generic term for moving before nine. So I meekly asked whether half-past four meant half-past four. "No," said the husband. "Yes," said the wife. So I went away declaring that I would present myself at the house at any rate not after five.
And so I did, according to my own very excellent watch, which had been set the day before by the ship's chronometer. I rode up to the door two minutes before five, perfectly certain that I should have the pleasure of watching the sun's early manœuvres for at least an hour. But, alas! my friend had been waiting for me in her riding-habit for more than that time. Our watches were frightfully at variance. It was perfectly clear to me that the Trinidadians do not take the sun for their guide as to time. But in such a plight as was then mine, a man cannot go into his evidence and his justification. My only plea was for mercy; and I hereby take it on myself to say that I do not know that I ever kept any lady waiting before—except my wife.
At five to the moment—by my watch—we started, and I certainly never rode for three hours through more lovely scenery. At first, also, it was deliciously cool, and as our road lay entirely through woods, it was in every way delightful. We went back into the hills, and returned again towards the sea-shore over a break in one of the spurs of the mountain called the Saddle; from whence we had a distant view into the island, as fine as any view I ever saw without the adjunct of water.
I should imagine that a tour through the whole of Trinidad would richly repay the trouble, though, indeed, it would be troublesome. The tourist must take his own provisions, unless, indeed, he provided himself by means of his gun, and must take also his bed. The musquitoes, too, are very vexatious in Trinidad, though I hardly think that they come up in venom to their brethren in British Guiana.
The first portion of our ride was delightful; but on our return we came down upon a hot, dusty road, and then the loss of that hour in the morning was deeply felt. I think that up to that time I had never encountered such heat, and certainly had never met with a more disagreeable, troublesome amount of dust, all which would have been avoided had I inquired over-night into the circumstances of the Trinidad watches. But the lady said never a word, and so heaped coals of fire on my head in addition to the consuming flames of that ever-to-be-remembered sun.
As Trinidad is an English colony, one's first idea is that the people speak English; and one's second idea, when that other one as to the English has fallen to the ground, is that they should speak Spanish, seeing that the name of the place is Spanish. But the fact is that they all speak French; and, out of the town, but few of the natives speak anything else. Whether a Parisian would admit this may be doubted; but he would have to acknowledge that it was a French patois.
And the religion is Roman Catholic. The island of course did belong to France, and in manners, habits, language, and religion is still French. There is a Roman Catholic archbishop resident in Trinidad, who is, I believe, at present an Italian. We pay him, I have been told, some salary, which he declines to take for his own use, but applies to purposes of charity. There is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Port of Spain, and a very ugly building it is.
The form of government also is different from that, or rather those, which have been adopted in the other West Indian colonies, such as Jamaica, Barbados, and British Guiana. As this was a conquered colony, the people of the island are not allowed to have so potent a voice in their own management. They have no House of Commons or Legislative Assembly, but take such rules or laws as may be necessary for their guidance direct from the Crown. The Governor, however, is assisted by a council, in which sit the chief executive officers in the island. That the fact of the colony having been conquered need preclude it from the benefit (?) of self-government, one does not clearly see. But one does see clearly enough, that as they are French in language and habits, and Roman Catholic in religion, they would make even a worse hash of it than the Jamaicans do in Jamaica.
And it is devoutly to be hoped, for the island's sake, that it may be long before it is endowed with a constitution. It would be impossible now-a-days to commence a legislature in the system of electing which all but white men should be excluded from voting. Nor would there be white men enough to carry on an election. And may Providence defend my friends there from such an assembly as would be returned by French negroes and hybrid mulattoes!
A scientific survey has just been completed of this island, with reference to its mineral productions, and the result has been to show that it contains a very large quantity of coal. I was fortunate enough to meet one of the gentlemen by whom this was done, and he was kind enough to put into my hand a paper showing the exact result of their investigation. But, unfortunately, the paper was so learned, and I was so ignorant, that I could not understand one word of it. The whole matter also was explained to me verbally, but not in language adapted to my child-like simplicity. So I am not able to say whether the coal be good or bad—whether it would make a nice, hot, crackling, Christmas fire, or fly away in slaty flakes and dirty dust. It is a pity that science cannot be made to recognize the depth of unscientific ignorance.
There is also here in Trinidad a great pitch lake, of which all the world has heard, and out of which that indefatigable old hero, Lord Dundonald, tried hard to make wax candles and oil for burning. The oil and candles, indeed, he did make, but not, I fear, the money which should have been consequent upon their fabrication. I have no doubt, however, that in time we shall all have our wax candles from thence; for Lord Dundonald is one of those men who are born to do great deeds of which others shall reap the advantages. One of these days his name will be duly honoured, for his conquests as well as for his candles.
And so I speedily took my departure, and threaded my way back again through the Bocas, in that most horrid of all steam-vessels, the 'Prince.'
All persons travelling in the West Indies have so much to do with the island of St. Thomas, that I must devote a short chapter to it. My circumstances with reference to it were such that I was compelled to remain there a longer time, putting all my visits together, than in any other of the islands except Jamaica.
The place belongs to the Danes, who possess also the larger and much more valuable island of Santa Cruz, as they do also the small island of St. Martin. These all lie among the Virgin Islands, and are considered as belonging to that thick cluster. As St. Thomas at present exists, it is of considerable importance. It is an emporium, not only for many of the islands, but for many also of the places on the coast of South and Central America. Guiana, Venezuela, and New Granada, deal there largely. It is a depôt for cigars, light dresses, brandy, boots, and Eau de Cologne. Many men therefore of many nations go thither to make money, and they do make it. These are men, generally not of the tenderest class, or who have probably been nursed in much early refinement. Few men will select St. Thomas as a place of residence from mere unbiassed choice and love of the locale. A wine merchant in London, doing a good trade there, would hardly give up that business with the object of personally opening an establishment in this island: nor would a well-to-do milliner leave Paris with the same object. Men who settle at St. Thomas have most probably roughed it elsewhere unsuccessfully.
These St. Thomas tradesmen do make money I believe, and it is certainly due to them that they should do so. Things ought not, if possible, to be all bad with any man; and I cannot imagine what good can accrue to a man at St. Thomas if it be not the good of amassing money. It is one of the hottest and one of the most unhealthy spots among all these hot and unhealthy regions. I do not know whether I should not be justified in saying that of all such spots it is the most hot and the most unhealthy.
I have said in a previous chapter that the people one meets there may be described as an Hispano-Dano-Niggery-Yankee-doodle population. In this I referred not only to the settlers, but to those also who are constantly passing through it. In the shops and stores, and at the hotels, one meets the same mixture. The Spanish element is of course strong, for Venezuela, New Granada, Central America, and Mexico are all Spanish, as also is Cuba. The people of these lands speak Spanish, and hereabouts are called Spaniards. To the Danes the island belongs. The soldiers, officials, and custom-house people are Danes. They do not, however, mix much with their customers. They affect, I believe, to say that the island is overrun and destroyed by these strange comers, and that they would as lief be without such visitors. If they are altogether indifferent to money making, such may be the case. The labouring people are all black—if these blacks can be called a labouring people. They do coal the vessels at about a dollar a day each—that is, when they are so circumstanced as to require a dollar. As to the American element, that is by no means the slightest or most retiring. Dollars are going there, and therefore it is of course natural that Americans should be going also. I saw the other day a map, "The United States as they now are, and in prospective;" and it included all these places—Mexico, Central America, Cuba, St. Domingo, and even poor Jamaica. It may be that the man who made the map understood the destiny of his country; at any rate, he understood the tastes of his countrymen.
All these people are assembled together at St. Thomas, because St. Thomas is the meeting-place and central depôt of the West Indian steam-packets. That reason can be given easily enough; but why St. Thomas should be the meeting-place of these packets,—I do not know who can give me the reason for that arrangement. Tortola and Virgin Gorda, two of the Virgin islands, both belong to ourselves, and are situated equally well for the required purpose as is St. Thomas. I am told also, that at any rate one, probably at both, good harbour accommodation is to be found. It is certain that in other respects they are preferable. They are not unhealthy, as is St. Thomas; and, as I have said above, they belong to ourselves. My own opinion is that Jamaica should be the head-quarters of these packets; but the question is one which will not probably be interesting to the reader of these pages.
"They cannot understand at home why we dislike the inter-colonial work so much," said the captain of one of the steam-ships to me. By inter-colonial work he meant the different branch services from St. Thomas. "They do not comprehend at home what it is for a man to be burying one young officer after another; to have them sent out, and then to see them mown down in that accursed hole of a harbour by yellow fever. Such a work is not a very pleasant one."
Indeed this was true. The life cannot be a very pleasant one. These captains themselves and their senior officers are doubtless acclimated. The yellow fever may reach them, but their chance of escape is tolerably good; but the young lads who join the service, and who do so at an early age, have at the first commencement of their career to make St. Thomas their residence, as far as they have any residence. They live of course on board their ships; but the peculiarity of St. Thomas is this; that the harbour is ten times more fatal than the town. It is that hole, up by the coaling wharves, which sends so many English lads to the grave. If this be so, this alone, I think, constitutes a strong reason why St. Thomas should not be so favoured. These vessels now form a considerable fleet, and some of them spend nearly a third of their time at this place. The number of Englishmen so collected and endangered is sufficient to warrant us in regarding this as a great drawback on any utility which the island may have—if such utility there be.
But we must give even the devil his due. Seen from the water St. Thomas is very pretty. It is not so much the scenery of the island that pleases as the aspect of the town itself. It stands on three hills or mounts, with higher hills, green to their summit, rising behind them. Each mount is topped by a pleasant, cleanly edifice, and pretty-looking houses stretch down the sides to the water's edge. The buildings do look pretty and nice, and as though chance had arranged them for a picture. Indeed, as seen from the harbour, the town looks like a panorama exquisitely painted. The air is thin and transparent, and every line shows itself clearly. As so seen the town of St. Thomas is certainly attractive. But it is like the Dead Sea fruit; all the charm is gone when it is tasted. Land there, and the beauty vanishes.
The hotel at St. Thomas is quite a thing of itself. There is no fair ground for complaint as regards the accommodation, considering where one is, and that people do not visit St. Thomas for pleasure; but the people that one meets there form as strange a collection as may perhaps be found anywhere. In the first place, all languages seem alike to them. One hears English, French, German, and Spanish spoken all around one, and apparently it is indifferent which. The waiters seem to speak them all.
The most of these guests I take it—certainly a large proportion of them—are residents of the place, who board at the inn. I have been there for a week at a time, and it seemed that all then around me were so. There were ladies among them, who always came punctually to their meals, and went through the long course of breakfast and long course of dinner with admirable perseverance. I never saw eating to equal that eating. When I was there the house was always full; but the landlord told me that he found it very hard to make money, and I can believe it.
A hot climate, it is generally thought, interferes with the appetite, affects the gastric juices with lassitude, gives to the stomach some of the apathy of the body, and lessens at any rate the consumption of animal food. That charge cannot be made against the air of St. Thomas. To whatever sudden changes the health may be subject, no lingering disinclination for food affects it. Men eat there as though it were the only solace of their life, and women also. Probably it is so.
They never talk at meals. A man and his wife may interchange a word or two as to the dishes; or men coming from the same store may whisper a syllable as to their culinary desires; but in an ordinary way there is no talking. I myself generally am not a mute person at my meals; and having dined at sundry tables d'hôte, have got over in a great degree that disinclination to speak to my neighbour which is attributed—I believe wrongly—to Englishmen. But at St. Thomas I took it into my head to wait till I was spoken to, and for a week I sat, twice daily, between the same persons without receiving or speaking a single word.
I shall not soon forget the stout lady who sat opposite to me, and who was married to a little hooked-nosed Jew, who always accompanied her. Soup, fish, and then meat is the ordinary rule at such banquets; but here the fashion is for the guests, having curried favour with the waiters, to get their plates of food brought in and put round before them in little circles; so that a man while taking his soup may contemplate his fish and his roast beef, his wing of fowl, his allotment of salad, his peas and potatoes, his pudding, pie, and custard, and whatever other good things a benevolent and well-fee'd waiter may be able to collect for him. This somewhat crowds the table, and occasionally it becomes necessary for the guest to guard his treasures with an eagle's eye;—hers also with an eagle's eye, and sometimes with an eagle's talon.
This stout lady was great on such occasions. "A bit of that," she would exclaim, with head half turned round, as a man would pass behind her with a dish, while she was in the very act of unloading within her throat a whole knifeful charged to the hilt. The efforts which at first affected me as almost ridiculous advanced to the sublime as dinner went on. There was no shirking, no half measures, no slackened pace as the breath became short. The work was daily done to the final half-pound of cheese.
Cheese and jelly, guava jelly, were always eaten together. This I found to be the general fashion of St. Thomas. Some men dipped their cheese in jelly; some ate a bit of jelly and then a bit of cheese; some topped up with jelly and some topped up with cheese, all having it on their plates together. But this lady—she must have spent years in acquiring the exercise—had a knack of involving her cheese in jelly, covering up by a rapid twirl of her knife a bit about an inch thick, so that no cheesy surface should touch her palate, and then depositing the parcel, oh, ever so far down, without dropping above a globule or two of the covering on her bosom.
Her lord, the Israelite, used to fight hard too; but the battle was always over with him long before the lady showed even a sign of distress. He was one of those flashy weedy animals that make good running for a few yards and are then choked off. She was game up to the winning-post. There were many animals running at those races, but she might have given all the others the odds of a pound of solid food, and yet have beaten them.
But then, to see her rise from the table! Well; pace and extra weight together will distress the best horse that ever was shod!
Over and above this I found nothing of any general interest at St. Thomas.
It is probably known to all that New Granada is the most northern of the republics of South America; or it should rather be said that it is the state nearest to the isthmus, of which indeed it comprehends a considerable portion; the territory of the Gulf of Darien and the district of Panamá all being within the limits of New Granada.
It was, however, but the other day that New Granada formed only a part of the republic of Columbia, the republic of which Bolivar was the hero. As the inhabitants of Central America found it necessary to break up their state into different republics, so also did the people of Columbia. The heroes and patriots of Caracas and Quito could not consent to be governed from Bogotá; and therefore three states were formed out of one. They are New Granada, with its capital of Bogotá; Venezuela, with its capital of Caracas, lying exactly to the east of New Granada; and Ecuador—the state, that is, of Equator—lying to the south of New Granada, having its seaport at Guayaquil on the Pacific, with Quito, its chief city, exactly on the line.
The district of Columbia was one of the grandest appanages of the Spanish throne when the appanages of the Spanish throne were grand indeed. The town and port of Cartagena, on the Atlantic, were admirably fortified, as was also Panamá on the Pacific. Its interior cities were populous, flourishing, and, for that age, fairly civilized. Now the whole country has received the boon of Utopian freedom; and the mind loses itself in contemplating to what lowest pitch of human degradation the people will gradually fall.
Civilization here is retrograding. Men are becoming more ignorant than their fathers, are learning to read less, to know less, to have fewer aspirations of a high order; to care less for truth and justice, to have more and more of the contentment of a brute,—that contentment which comes from a full belly and untaxed sinews; or even from an empty belly, so long as the sinews be left idle.
To what this will tend a prophet in these days can hardly see; or rather none less than a prophet can pretend to see. That those lands which the Spaniards have occupied, and to a great extent made Spanish, should have no higher destiny than that which they have already accomplished, I can hardly bring myself to think. That their unlimited fertility and magnificent rivers should be given for nothing; that their power of producing all that man wants should be intended for no use, I cannot believe. At present, however, it would seem that Providence has abandoned it. It is making no progress. Land that was cultivated is receding from cultivation; cities that were populous are falling into ruins; and men are going back into animals, under the influence of unlimited liberty and universal suffrage.
In 1851 emancipation from slavery was finally established in New Granada; and so far, doubtless, a good deed was done. But it was established at the same time that every man, emancipated slave or other, let him be an industrial occupier of land, or idle occupier of nothing, should have an equal vote in electing presidents and members of the Federal Congress, and members of the Congress of the different states; that, in short, all men should be equal for all state purposes. And the result, as may be supposed, is not gratifying. As far as I am able to judge, a negro has not generally those gifts of God which enable one man to exercise rule and masterdom over his fellow-men. I myself should object strongly to be represented, say in the city of London, by any black man that I ever saw. "The unfortunate nigger gone masterless," whom Carlyle so tenderly commiserates, has not strong ideas of the duties even of self-government, much less of the government of others. Universal suffrage in such hands can hardly lead to good results. Let him at any rate have first saved some sixty pounds in a savings-bank, or made himself undoubted owner—an easy thing in New Granada—of a forty-shilling freehold!
Not that pure-blooded negroes are common through the whole of New Granada. At Panamá and the adjacent districts they are so; but in the other parts of the republic they are, I believe, few in number. At Santa Martha, where I first landed, I saw few, if any. And yet the trace of the negroes, the woolly hair and flat nose, were common enough, mixed always with Indian blood, and of course to a great extent with Spanish blood also.
This Santa Martha is a wretched village—a city it is there called—at which we, with intense cruelty, maintain a British Consul, and a British post-office. There is a cathedral there of the old Spanish order, with the choir removed from the altar down towards the western door; and there is, I was informed, a bishop. But neither bishop nor cathedral were in any way remarkable. There is there a governor of the province, some small tradesman, who seemed to exercise very few governing functions. It may almost be said that no trade exists in the place, which seemed indeed to be nearly dead. A few black or nearly black children run about the streets in a state almost of nudity; and there are shops, from the extremities of which, as I was told, crinoline and hats laden with bugles may be extracted.
"Every one of my predecessors here died of fever," said the Consul to me, in a tone of triumph. What could a man say to him on so terribly mortal a subject? "And my wife has been down in fever thirteen times!" Heavens, what a life! That is, as long as it is life.
I rode some four or five miles into the country to visit the house in which Bolivar died. It is a deserted little country villa or chateau, called San Pedro, standing in a farm-yard, and now containing no other furniture than a marble bust of the Dictator, with a few wretchedly coloured French prints with cracked glass plates. The bust is not a bad one, and seems to have a solemn and sad meaning in its melancholy face, standing there in its solitary niche in the very room in which the would-be liberator died.
For Bolivar had grand ideas of freedom, though doubtless he had grand ideas also of personal power and pre-eminence; as has been the case with most of those who have moved or professed to move in the vanguard of liberty. To free mankind from all injurious thraldom is the aspiration of such men; but who ever thought that obedience to himself was a thraldom that could be injurious?
And here in this house, on the 17th December, 1830, Bolivar died, broken-hearted, owing his shelter to charity, and relieved in his last wants by the hands of strangers to his country. When the breath was out of him and he was well dead, so that on such a matter he himself could probably have no strong wish in any direction, they took away his body, of course with all honour, to the district that gave him birth, and that could afford to be proud of him now that he was dead;—into Venezuela and reburied him at Caracas. But dying poverty and funeral honours have been the fate of great men in other countries besides Columbia.
"And why did you come to visit such a region as this?" asked Bolivar, when dying, of a Frenchman to whom in his last days he was indebted for much. "For freedom," said the Frenchman. "For freedom!" said Bolivar. "Then let me tell you that you have missed your mark altogether; you could hardly have turned in a worse direction."
Our ride from Santa Martha to the house had been altogether between bushes, among which we saw but small signs of cultivation. Round the house I saw none. On my return I learnt that the place was the property of a rich man who possessed a large estate in its vicinity. "But will nothing grow there?" I asked. "Grow there! yes; anything would grow there. Some years since the whole district was covered with sugar-canes." But since the emancipation in 1851 it had become impossible to procure labour; men could not be got to work; and so bush had grown up, and the earth gave none of her increase; except indeed where half-caste Indians squatted here and there, and made provision grounds.
I then went on to Cartagena. This is a much better town than Santa Martha, though even this is in its decadence. It was once a flourishing city, great in commerce and strong in war. It was taken by the English, not however without signal reverses on our part, and by the special valour—so the story goes—of certain sailors who dragged a single gun to the summit of a high abrupt hill called the "Papa," which commands the town. If the thermometer stood in those days as high at Cartagena as it does now, pretty nearly through the whole of the year, those sailors ought to have had the Victoria cross. But these deeds were done long years ago, in the time of Drake and his followers; and Victoria crosses were then chiefly kept for the officers.
The harbour at Cartagena is singularly circumstanced. There are two entrances to it, one some ten miles from the city and the other close to it. This nearer aperture was blocked up by the Spaniards, who sank ships across the mouth; and it has never been used or usable since. The present entrance is very strongly fortified. The fortifications are still there, bristling down to the water's edge; or they would bristle, were it not that all the guns have been sold for the value of the brass metal.
Cartagena was hotter even than Santa Martha; but the place is by no means so desolate and death-like. The shops there are open to the streets, as shops are in other towns. Men and women may occasionally be seen about the square; and there is a trade,—in poultry if in nothing else.
There is a cathedral here also, and I presume a bishop. The former is built after the Spanish fashion, and boasts a so-called handsome, large, marble pulpit. That it is large and marble, I confess; but I venture to question its claims to the other epithet. There are pictures also in the cathedral; of spirits in a state of torture certainly; and if I rightly remember of beatified spirits also. But in such pictures the agonies of the damned always excite more attention and a keener remembrance than the ecstasies of the blest. I cannot say that the artist had come up either to the spirit of Fra Angelico, or to the strength of Orcagna.
At Cartagena I encountered a family of native ladies and gentlemen, who were journeying from Bogotá to Peru. Looking at the map, one would say that the route from Bogotá to Buena-ventura on the Pacific was both easy and short. The distance as the crow flies—the condor I should perhaps more properly say—would not be much over two hundred miles. And yet this family, of whom one was an old woman, had come down to Cartagena, having been twenty days on the road, having from thence a long sea journey to the isthmus, thence the passage over it to Panamá, and then the journey down the Pacific! The fact of course is that there are no means of transit in the country except on certain tracks, very few in number; and that even on these all motion is very difficult. Bogotá is about three hundred and seventy miles from Cartagena, and the journey can hardly be made in less than fourteen days.
From Cartagena I went on to the isthmus; the Isthmus of Panamá, as it is called by all the world, though the American town of Aspinwall will gradually become the name best known in connexion with the passage between the two oceans.
This passage is now made by a railway which has been opened by an American company between the town of Aspinwall, or Colon, as it is called in England, and the city of Panamá. Colon is the local name for this place, which also bears the denomination of Navy Bay in the language of sailors. But our friends from Yankee-land like to carry things with a high hand, and to have a nomenclature of their own. Here, as their energy and their money and their habits are undoubtedly in the ascendant, they will probably be successful; and the place will be called Aspinwall in spite of the disgust of the New Granadians, and the propriety of the English, who choose to adhere to the names of the existing government of the country.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and Colon or Aspinwall will be equally vile however you may call it. It is a wretched, unhealthy, miserably situated but thriving little American town, created by and for the railway and the passenger traffic which comes here both from Southampton and New York. That from New York is of course immensely the greatest, for this is at present the main route to San Francisco and California.
I visited the place three times, for I passed over the isthmus on my way to Costa Rica, and on my return from that country I went again to Panamá, and of course back to Colon. I can say nothing in its favour. My only dealing there was with a washerwoman, and I wish I could place before my readers a picture of my linen in the condition in which it came back from that artist's hands. I confess that I sat down and shed bitter tears. In these localities there are but two luxuries of life, iced soda-water and clean shirts. And now I was debarred from any true enjoyment of the latter for more than a fortnight.
The Panamá railway is certainly a great fact, as men now-a-days say when anything of importance is accomplished. The necessity of some means of passing the isthmus, and the question as to the best means, has been debated since, I may say, the days of Cortes. Men have foreseen that it would become a necessity to the world that there should be some such transit, and every conceivable point of the isthmus has, at some period or by some nation, been selected as the best for the purpose. This railway is certainly the first that can be regarded as a properly organized means of travelling; and it may be doubted whether it will not remain as the best, if not the only permanent mode of transit.
Very great difficulty was experienced in erecting this line. In the first place, it was necessary that terms should be made with the government of the country through which the line should pass, and to effect this it was expedient to hold out great inducements. Among the chief of these is an understanding that the whole line shall become the absolute property of the New Granadian government when it shall have been opened for forty-nine years. But who can tell what government will prevail in New Granada in forty-nine years? It is not impossible that the whole district may then be an outlying territory belonging to the United States. At any rate, I should imagine that it is very far from the intention of the American company to adhere with rigid strictness to this part of the bargain. Who knows what may occur between this and the end of the century?
And when these terms were made there was great difficulty in obtaining labour. The road had to be cut through one continuous forest, and for the greater part of the way along the course of the Chagres river. Nothing could be more unhealthy than such work, and in consequence the men died very rapidly. The high rate of wages enticed many Irishmen here, but most of them found their graves amidst the works. Chinese were tried, but they were quite inefficacious for such labour, and when distressed had a habit of hanging themselves. The most useful men were to be got from the coast round Cartagena, but they were enticed thither only by very high pay.
The whole road lies through trees and bushes of thick tropical growth, and is in this way pretty and interesting. But there is nothing wonderful in the scenery, unless to one who has never before witnessed tropical forest scenery. The growth here is so quick that the strip of ground closely adjacent to the line, some twenty yards perhaps on each side, has to be cleared of timber and foliage every six months. If left for twelve months the whole would be covered with thick bushes, twelve feet high. At intervals of four and a half miles there are large wooden houses—pretty-looking houses they are, built with much taste,—in each of which a superintendent with a certain number of labourers resides. These men are supplied with provisions and all necessaries by the company. For there are no villages here in which workmen can live, no shops from which they can supply themselves, no labour which can be hired as it may be wanted.
From this it may be imagined that the line is maintained at a great cost. But, nevertheless, it already pays a dividend of twelve and a half per cent. So much at least is acknowledged; but those who pretend to understand the matter declare that the real profit accruing to the shareholders is hardly less than five-and-twenty per cent. The sum charged for the passage is extremely high, being twenty-five dollars, or five pounds for a single ticket. The distance is under fifty miles. And there is no class but the one. Everybody passing over the isthmus, if he pay his fare, must pay twenty-five dollars. Steerage passengers from New York to San Francisco are at present booked through for fifty dollars. This includes their food on the two sea voyages, which are on an average of about eleven days each. And yet out of this fifty dollars twenty-five are paid to the railway for this conveyance over fifty miles! The charge for luggage, too, is commensurately high. The ordinary kit of a travelling Englishman—a portmanteau, bag, desk, and hat-box—would cost two pounds ten shillings over and above his own fare.
But at the same time, nothing can be more liberal than the general management of the line. On passengers journeying from New York to California, or from Southampton to Chili and Peru, their demand no doubt is very high. But to men of all classes, merely travelling from Aspinwall to Panamá for pleasure—or, apparently, on business, if travelling only between those two places,—free tickets are given almost without restriction. One train goes each way daily, and as a rule most of the passengers are carried free, except on those days when packets have arrived at either terminus. On my first passage over I paid my fare, for I went across with other passengers out of the mail packet. But on my return the superintendent not only gave me a ticket, but asked me whether I wanted others for any friends. The line is a single line throughout.
Panamá has doubtless become a place of importance to Englishmen and Americans, and its name is very familiar to our ears. But nevertheless it is a place whose glory has passed away. It was a large Spanish town, strongly fortified, with some thirty thousand inhabitants. Now its fortifications are mostly gone, its churches are tumbling to the ground, its old houses have so tumbled, and its old Spanish population has vanished. It is still the chief city of a State, and a congress sits there. There is a governor and a judge, and there are elections; but were it not for the passengers of the isthmus there would soon be but little left of the city of Panamá.
Here the negro race abounds, and among the common people the negro traits are stronger and more marked than those either of the Indians or Spaniards. Of Spanish blood among the natives of the surrounding country there seems to be but little. The negroes here are of course free, free to vote for their own governors, and make their own laws; and consequently they are often very troublesome, the country people attacking those in the town, and so on. "And is justice ultimately done on the offenders?" I asked. "Well, sir; perhaps not justice. But some notice is taken; and the matter is smoothed over." Such was the answer.
There is a Spanish cathedral here also, in which I heard a very sweet-toned organ, and one magnificent tenor voice. The old church buildings still standing here are not without pretence, and are interesting from the dark tawny colour of the stone, if from no other cause. I should guess them to be some two centuries old. Their style in many respects resembles that which is so generally odious to an Englishman's eye and ear, under the title of Renaissance. It is probably an offshoot of that which is called Plateresque in the south of Spain.
During the whole time that I was at Panamá the thermometer stood at something above ninety. In Calcutta I believe it is often as high as one hundred and ten, so that I have no right to speak of the extreme heat. But, nevertheless, Panamá is supposed to be one of the hottest places in the western world; and I was assured, while there, that weather so continuously hot for the twenty-four hours had not been known during the last nine years. The rainy season should have commenced by this time—the early part of May. But it had not done so; and it appeared that when the rain is late, that is the hottest period of the whole year.
The heat made me uncomfortable, but never made me ill. I lost all pleasure in eating, and indeed in everything else. I used to feel a craving for my food, but no appetite when it came. I was lethargic, as though from repletion, when I did eat, and was always glad when my watch would allow me to go to bed. But yet I was never ill.
The country round the town is pretty, and very well adapted for riding. There are large open savanahs which stretch away for miles and miles, and which are kept as grazing-farms for cattle. These are not flat and plain, but are broken into undulations, and covered here and there with forest bushes. The horses here are taught to pace, that is, move with the two off legs together and then with the two near legs. The motion is exceedingly gentle, and well fitted for this hot climate, in which the rougher work of trotting would be almost too much for the energies of debilitated mankind. The same pace is common in Cuba, Costa Rica, and other Spanish countries in the west.
Off from Panamá, a few miles distant in the western ocean, there are various picturesque islands. On two of these are the depôts of two great steam-packet companies, that belonging to the Americans which carries on the trade to California, and an English company whose vessels run down the Pacific to Peru and Chili. I visited Toboga, in which are the head-quarters of the latter. Here I found a small English maritime colony, with a little town of their own, composed of captains, doctors, engineers, officers, artificers, and sailors, living together on the company's wages, and as regards the upper classes, at tables provided by the company. But I saw there no women of any description. I beg therefore to suggest to the company that their servants would probably be much more comfortable if the institution partook less of the monastic order.
If, as is probable, this becomes one of the high-roads to Australia, then another large ship company will have to fix its quarters here.
I had intended to embark at Panamá in the American steam-ship 'Columbus' for the coast of Central America. In that case I should have gone to San Juan del Sur, a port in Nicaragua, and made my way from thence across the lake, down the river San Juan to San Juan del Norte, now called Greytown, on the Atlantic. But I learnt that the means of transit through Nicaragua had been so utterly destroyed—as I shall by-and-by explain—that I should encounter great delay in getting across the lake; and as I found that one of our men-of-war steamers, the 'Vixen,' was immediately about to start from Panamá to Punta-arenas, on the coast of Costa Rica, I changed my mind, and resolved on riding through Costa Rica to Greytown. And accordingly I did ride through Costa Rica.
My first work was to make petition for a passage in the 'Vixen,' which was accorded to me without difficulty. But even had I failed here, I should have adhered to the same plan. The more I heard of Costa Rica, the more I was convinced that that republic was better worth a visit than Nicaragua. At this time I had in my hands a pamphlet written by M. Belly, a Frenchman, who is, or says that he is, going to make a ship canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific. According to him the only Paradise now left on earth is in this republic of Costa Rica. So I shipped myself on board the 'Vixen.'
I had never before been on the waters of the Pacific. Now when one premeditates one's travels, sitting by the domestic fireside, one is apt to think that all those advancing steps into new worlds will be taken with some little awe, some feeling of amazement at finding oneself in very truth so far distant from Hyde Park Corner. The Pacific! I was absolutely there, on the ocean in which lie the Sandwich Islands, Queen Pomare, and the Cannibals! But no; I had no such feeling. My only solicitude was whether my clean shirts would last me on to the capital of Costa Rica.
And in travelling these are the things which really occupy the mind. Where shall I sleep? Is there anything to eat? Can I have my clothes washed? At Panamá I did have my clothes washed in a very short space of time; but I had to pay a shilling apiece for them all round. In all these ports, in New Granada, Central America, and even throughout the West Indies, the luxury which is the most expensive in proportion to its cost in Europe is the washing of clothes—the most expensive, as it is also the most essential.
But I must not omit to say that before shipping myself in the 'Vixen' I called on the officers on board the United States frigate 'Merrimac,' and was shown over that vessel. I am not a very good judge of ships, and can only say that the officers were extremely civil, the sherry very good, and the guns very large. They were coaling, the captain told me, and he professed to be very much ashamed of the dirt. Had I not been told so I should not have known that the ship was dirty.
The 'Merrimac,' though rated only as a frigate, having guns on one covered deck only, is one of their largest men-of-war, and has been regarded by them, and by us, as a show vessel. But according to their own account, she fails altogether as a steamer. The greatest pace her engines will give is seven knots an hour; and this is felt to be so insufficient for the wants of the present time, that it is intended to take them out of her and replace them by a new set as soon as an opportunity will allow. This will be done, although the vessel and the engines are new. I mention this, not as reflecting in any way disgracefully on the dockyard from whence she came; but to show that our Admiralty is not the only one which may have to chop and change its vessels after they are built. We hear much—too much perhaps—of the misfortunes which attend our own navy; but of the misfortunes of other navies we hear very little. It is a pity that we cannot have some record of all the blunders committed at Cherbourg.
The 'Merrimac' carries the flag of Flag-officer Long, on whom also we called. He is a fine old gentleman, with a magnificent head and forehead, looking I should say much more like an English nobleman than a Yankee sailor. Flag-officer Long! Who will explain to us why the Americans of the United States should persist in calling their senior naval officers by so awkward an appellation, seeing that the well-known and well-sounding title of admiral is very much at their disposal?
When I returned to the shore from the 'Merrimac' I had half an hour to pack before I again started for the 'Vixen.' As it would be necessary that I should return to Panamá, and as whatever luggage I now took with me would have to be carried through the whole of Costa Rica on mules' backs, it became expedient that I should leave the greater part of my kit behind me. Then came the painful task of selection, to be carried out with the thermometer at ninety, and to be completed in thirty minutes! To go or not to go had to be asked and answered as to every shirt and pair of trousers. Oh, those weary clothes! If a man could travel as a dog, how delightful it would be to keep moving from year's end to year's end!
We steamed up the coast for two days quietly, placidly, and steadily. I cannot say that the trip was a pleasant one, remembering how intense was the heat. On one occasion we stopped for practice-shooting, and it behoved me of course to mount the paddle-box and see what was going on. This was at eleven in the morning, and though it did not last for above an hour, I was brought almost to fainting by the power of the sun.
Punta-arenas—Sandy Point—is a small town and harbour situated in Costa Rica, near the top of the Bay of Nicoya, The sail up the bay is very pretty, through almost endless woods stretching away from the shores to the hills. There is, however, nothing majestic or grand about the scenery here. There are no Andes in sight, no stupendous mountains such as one might expect to see after coming so far to see them. It is all pretty quiet and ordinary; and on the whole perhaps superior to the views from the sea at Herne Bay.
The captain of the 'Vixen' had decided on going up to San José with me, as at the last moment did also the master, San José being the capital of Costa Rica. Our first object therefore was to hire a guide and mules, which, with the assistance of the acting English consul, we soon found. For even at Punta-arenas the English flag flies, and a distressed British subject can claim protection.
It is a small village lying along a creek of the sea, inside the sandy point from whence it is named. Considerable business is done here in the exportation of coffee, which is the staple produce of Costa Rica. It is sent chiefly to England; but it seemed to me that the money-making inhabitants of Punta-arenas were mostly Americans; men who either had been to California or who had got so far on their road thither and then changed their minds. It is a hot, dusty, unattractive spot, with a Yankee inn, at which men may "liquor," and a tram railroad running for twelve miles into the country. It abounds in oysters and beer, on which we dined before we started on our journey.
I was thus for the first time in Central America. This continent, if it may be so called, comprises the five republics of Guatemala, Honduras, San Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. When this country first broke away from Spanish rule in 1821, it was for a while content to exist as one state, under the name of the Republic of Guatemala; as it had been known for nearly three hundred years as a Spanish province under the same denomination—that of Guatemala. After a hard tussle with Mexico, which endeavoured to devour it, and which forty years ago was more prone to annex than to be annexed, this republic sat itself fairly going, with the city of Guatemala for its capital. But the energies and ambition of the different races comprised among the two million inhabitants of Central America would not allow them to be governed except each in its own province. Some ten years since, therefore, the five States broke asunder. Each claimed to be sovereign and independent. Each chose its own president and had its own capital; and consequently, as might be expected, no part of the district in question has been able to enjoy those natural advantages with which Providence has certainly endowed it. To these States must be added, in counting up the countries of Central America, British Honduras, consisting of Belize and the adjacent district, and the Mosquito coast which so lately was under British protection; and whichis—.But here I must be silent, or I may possibly trench upon diplomatic subjects still unsettled.
My visit was solely to Costa Rica, which has in some respects done better than its neighbours. But this has been owing to the circumstances of its soil and climate rather than to those of its government, which seems to me to be as bad as any can be which deserves that name. In Costa Rica there certainly is a government, and a very despotic one it is.
I am not much given to the sins of dandyism, but I must own I was not a little proud of my costume as I left Punta-arenas. We had been told that according to the weather our ride would be either dusty or muddy in no ordinary degree, and that any clothes which we might wear during the journey would be utterly useless as soon as the journey was over. Consequently we purchased for ourselves, in an American store, short canvas smock-frocks, which would not come below the saddle, and coarse holland trousers. What class of men may usually wear these garments in Costa Rica I cannot say; but in England I have seen navvies look exactly as my naval friends looked; and I flatter myself that my appearance was quite equal to theirs. I had procured at Panamá a light straw hat, with an amazing brim, and had covered the whole with white calico. I have before said that my beard had become "poblada," so that on the whole I was rather gratified than otherwise when I was assured by the storekeeper that we should certainly be taken for three filibusters. Now the name of filibuster means something serious in those localities, as I shall in a few pages have to explain.
We started on our journey by railroad, for there is a tramway that runs for twelve miles through the forest. We were dragged along on this by an excellent mule, till our course was suddenly impeded by a tree which had fallen across the road. But in course of time this was removed, and in something less than three hours we found ourselves at a saw-mill in the middle of the forest.
The first thing that met my view on stepping out of the truck was a solitary Englishman seated on a half-sawn log of wood. Those who remember Hood's Whims and Oddities may bear in mind a heart-rending picture of the last man. Only that the times do not agree, I should have said that this poor fellow must have sat for the picture. He was undeniably an English labourer. No man of any other nation would have had that face, or worn those clothes, or kicked his feet about in that same awkward, melancholy humour.
He was, he said, in charge of the saw-mill, having been induced to come out into that country for three years. According to him, it was a wretched, miserable place. "No man," he said, "ever found himself in worse diggings." He earned a dollar and a half a day, and with that he could hardly buy shoes and have his clothes washed. "Why did he not go home?" I asked. "Oh, he had come for three years, and he'd stay his three years out—if so be he didn't die." The saw-mill was not paying, he said; and never would pay. So that on the whole his account of Costa Rica was not encouraging.