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Wedrove 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 clumpssuggests 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 cokernut. Buck niggers 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 blackies 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
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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 beforethe 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 “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 ladyknows 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 buggy man 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 inferiority 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 brotherblack 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 nigger 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. One white official drove to the course wearing a hunting rig-out, spurs, a single eye-glass, and coloured cammer band. He wore an air of perfect self-satisfaction. In Jamaica, single eye-glasses are as common as orchids.
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
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subalterns enter ponies bought on credit, and lose money in order to impress a pitying crowd of nonentities. When a race-horse costs but twenty pounds, 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. 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.
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Thewhite 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.
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 penetrating. 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
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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,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 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
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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 England’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 nigger. 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 blackestamong 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 occasionally 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.
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I wentto tea with some people who were neither white, nor black, nor yellow. They were not half castes, not even quadroons. Octoroons they would be called if they were very poor. White they pass as, in the great house they live in. White they are to the few negro workmen they employ.
I give the conversation, not because it is of interest, but to show the vernacular as voiced by the cultured octoroon. They were pleased to see us, and I had the impression that I was undergoing the pleasant sensation of being lionised—such was the warmth of my welcome.
“You take sugar and milk?” I took milk.
“Oh we always take sugar in Jamaica. It grows here you know, and a few years back it was the most perfectly important product of the country,” explained the lady, and her husband confirmed her statement with—
“Yes, the English have killed that branch of our commerce by the introduction of free trade in sugar.My grandfather grew very very rich on sugar; most of the money he and my father left I am spending in trying to improve the condition of the island. I cannot hope to make money. I do it for the good of my country; I am what you call a philanthropist!”
He played with the fine jewelled ring on his left hand and smiled at me, showing a perfect set of large white teeth. His eyes were larger than is common among Englishmen, and his dark hair contained just the suggestion of a curl. His wife was whiter than he, but her eyes were blacker than those of any Englishwoman. Her lips were brown-red, and her hair a wavy black. She spoiled what might have been a strikingly pretty appearance by wearing pince-nez, for which she had no real use. They had plain glasses heavily framed in gold, and they hung from her blouse by a twisted chain of gold and platinum.
“Yes,” she said, “we are philanthropists!”
“I am perfectly conscious that not many of us white men cultivate our plantations as we ought to do. But I know I work unselfishly. I take my country seriously.”
The lady added—“That is what the Governor said to him the other day. The Governor said, ‘My dear friend, you take your country seriously.’ And so he does—perfectly. And so do I.”
“Well, I was smoking with some gentlemen the other day, and they agreed with me that we Englishmen are very unselfish in not going home and leaving the country to rack and ruination.”
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“Ah, what would I give to go home,” exclaimed my hostess.
“To England?” I asked, nervously.
“Of course,” she replied tartly.
“Do you come from London?” I ventured.
“From near London.”
The spirit of enterprise entered my soul, and I determined to ascertain whether the good lady had ever seen our little homeland, so I put questions to her which were distinctly not those a guest should play with at an afternoon dinner-table. I entrapped her into many foolish mistakes, but she would never admit that she had never seen England. Her knowledge of places and things, gathered from reading guide-books and London newspapers, was certainly astonishing. But it was not difficult to pierce through the surface crust of her knowledge. She had been introduced to the King of course, but she knew the late Queen better. She didn’t care much for the Princess of Wales though the Prince himself was a very interesting man.
They told us of the losses they had sustained through the hurricanes, and the lady explained that because they had lost so many many thousand pounds she was forced to be very very economical with her “money for pins.”
But with all their negro-pigeon-English they were hospitable enough, and nothing would have delighted the worthy couple more than our acceptance of their proffered entertainment for many weeks.
“Yes, stop here; we will make you perfectly happy and at home; the house is yours and all the servants,my horses and buggies (he had one of each), and my fishing rods are at your disposal if only you will remain.”
We could not stop, since we were more than seventy miles from the capital and were due to catch a boat in two days. The hostess bewailed the poverty of the household.
“In the period of my grandfather you would not have been permitted to depart in this manner. Then we should have been able to place at your convenience many horses and buggies, so that you could have travelled to Kingston by road, and not in a railway train with negroes. If only we had slaves again and protection also, then you would be able to stop in Jamaica in comfort and luxury.”
“But, my dear,” remonstrated the husband, “slavery is a thing not to be desired by us cultured gentlemen and ladies. We must protect the weak and fallen; it is ourjutyto heaven tosuccurethe black heathen of the negroid race. Never say words in praise of slavery. Ourjutyis to helevate the trampled negroid to our condition of education and refinement.”
The lady, so heavily admonished, wept copiously and the man frowned heavily to emphasise the weight of his admonitory disquisition. We moved uneasily in our chairs and I fingered my watch; it is unusual to be confronted by a lady’s tears at an afternoon tea function. “Pray do not go,” said the lady. “Pardon these weakly tears. I feel for my husband. I think of the many thousands of pounds sterling he has been wastedof by the loss of slavery and the sugar duty. I weep for the nobleness he shows in speaking like that.” The frown on the husband’s face became intensified and he gave evidence of the possibility of a new outburst. But I boldly intervened with—“But after all what is a nigger compared with the comfort of white men?”
“That’s just it,” replied our host; “you’ve just hit it. What is a nigger? He is our unequal in every manner. He is but little better than the animals and beasts of the fields. But just to study him the British Government has spread ruination throughout Jamaica. That is just what I say. What is a nigger that he should have dispoiled me of my wealth?”
While he was delivering himself of this vehement contradiction of his former chastened sentiments it was quite obvious that the nigger he so much despised was in reality his natural grandmother. Our hostess flung aside her eye-glasses and the effect was similar to opening of the lock-gates on the upper reaches of the Thames. The tears poured forth in a copious stream of weeping.
“But, Algey,” she sobbed—“Algey you must not forget that you are the nation’s protector of the weak, and poor, and coloured. Do not forget that you do your best. The lowest of the low niggers have wives and children.”
“True, true,” mumbled the husband; “sometimes I forget myself and the words flow out like boiling lava from Vesuvius. But I will continue in the way I have gone for many years, and I will be a help and protector to the poor and down-trodden. The humble of theearth are my brothers—that is what I must decline to forget.”
Before we took our leave the couple had regained their cheerfulness, and the lady had made us promise always to think kindly of Jamaica. “After all,” she lisped, “I must regard Jamaica as my home country since here I saw the light of the first day; England is home, of course, always, but Jamaica is my place of birth.”
Image unavailable: THE CATHEDRAL AT SPANISH TOWN, JAMAICATHE CATHEDRAL AT SPANISH TOWN, JAMAICA
IfI 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 originalconquerors in 1523. In the West Indies only the cathedrals of Carthagena and Havana can equal it in point of antiquity. After much renovation and reconstruction 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.
Here lies Sir Thomas Lynch at ease and blest;Would you know more ye world will speak ye rest.
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 building; 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
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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 régime 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 headquarters 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 tropicalplants, 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 oneself 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 themwith 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 unnatural. 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 ourinspection. 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 fashionable 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 commanding-officer. It is better to talk with the market women and the black men who deal in native tobacco, with the
Image unavailable: RESTING BY THE WAY, JAMAICARESTING BY THE WAY, JAMAICA
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.
Image unavailable: OUTHOUSES NEAR KINGSTON, JAMAICAOUTHOUSES NEAR KINGSTON, JAMAICA
Donot 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 all 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 wholesomestimulant, 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 nigger 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