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                        GARDENS OF THE CARIBBEES

                                VOLUME I

                         Travel Lovers' Library

              _Each in two volumes profusely illustrated_

      Florence
              By GRANT ALLEN

      Romance and Teutonic Switzerland
              By W. D. MCCRACKAN

      Old World Memories
              By EDWARD LOWE TEMPLE

      Paris
              By GRANT ALLEN

      Feudal and Modern Japan
              By ARTHUR MAY KNAPP

      The Unchanging East
              By ROBERT BARR

      Venice
              By GRANT ALLEN

      Gardens of the Caribbees
              By IDA M. H. STARR

      Belgium: Its Cities
              By GRANT ALLEN

                         L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY
                               Publishers
                    200 Summer Street, Boston, Mass.

[Illustration: WHERE THE POMEGRANATE GROWS

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, ST THOMAS.]




                               GARDENS OF
                             THE CARIBBEES

                    Sketches of a Cruise to the West
                      Indies and the Spanish Main

                                   By
                            Ida M. H. Starr

                             IN TWO VOLUMES
                                VOL. I.
                             _ILLUSTRATED_

                             [Illustration]

                                 Boston
                          L. C. Page & Company
                               _MDCCCCIV_

                           _Copyright, 1903_
                        By L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
                             (INCORPORATED)

                         _All rights reserved_

                          Published July, 1903

                             Colonial Press
             Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co
                         Boston Mass., U. S. A.

                                   To
                          My Beloved Children




TO THE READER


These sketches were written during a memorable cruise to the West Indies
and the Spanish Main in the winter and spring of 1901. There has been no
attempt to write a West Indian guide-book, but rather to give preference
to the human side of the picture through glimpses of the people and
their ways of life and thought. With this idea it was thought best to
give attention only to such of the ports visited as were full of human
interest and typical of the life about the Caribbean Sea.

There was a strong feeling that we were sailing in romantic waters, and
there has been no desire to eliminate the element of fancy from these
pages.

It may be of interest to remember that at no time since--and perhaps
never before--could this voyage have been made under the same
conditions. Since then man and the greater powers of Nature seem to
have conspired to make much of this delightful region forbidding to
strangers. Several ports have become dangerous because of fever and
plague; proclamations in French and _pronunciamientos_ in Spanish have
adorned West Indian street corners; Haïti has reverted to its almost
chronic state of riot and revolution; the Dominican republic has again
chosen a President whose nomination came from a conquering army;
Venezuela has been full of alarms and intrigues; while already the
Germans are beginning to show their hand in the Caribbean; Martinique
and St. Vincent have been desolated by volcanoes then thought to be
practically extinct; and of delicious St. Pierre there remains but a
sadly sweet memory.

I. M. H. S.

_10 June, 1903._




CONTENTS


CHAPTER                                      PAGE

   I. THE VOYAGE                               11

  II. PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAÏTI                    35

 III. SANTO DOMINGO                            83

  IV. SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO                   124

   V. CHARLOTTE AMALIE, ST. THOMAS            162

  VI. MARTINIQUE                              197

 VII. MARTINIQUE, "LE PAYS DES REVENANTS"     246

VIII. ISLAND OF TRINIDAD. PORT OF SPAIN       275




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME I.


                                                  PAGE

WHERE THE POMEGRANATE GROWS, CHARLOTTE
AMALIE, ST. THOMAS                       _Frontispiece_

MAP OF THE CRUISE                       _facing_    34

THE LANDING-PLACE, PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI            39

WAITING FOR CUSTOMERS, PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI        43

THE "COACHES," PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI                47

MAIN BUSINESS STREET OF THE CAPITAL OF THE
REPUBLIC OF HAITI, PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI            51

A PUBLIC FOUNTAIN, PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI            59

A WEST INDIAN AFRICA, PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI         71

COURTYARD OF THE AMERICAN LEGATION, HAITI           77

A MILL FOR SAWING MAHOGANY, HAITI                   81

THE OLD FORT AT THE RIVER ENTRANCE, SANTO
DOMINGO                                             87

A CLOSER VIEW OF THE OLD FORT, SANTO DOMINGO        91

THE CATHEDRAL AND THE STATUE OF COLUMBUS,
SANTO DOMINGO                                       95

RUINS OF CASTLE BUILT BY DIEGO COLON, SANTO
DOMINGO                                             99

WHERE COLUMBUS PLANTED THE CROSS, SANTO DOMINGO    103

ENTRANCE TO THE FORT AND MILITARY SCHOOL,
SANTO DOMINGO                                      109

LOOKING ACROSS THE PLAZA, SANTO DOMINGO            113

ALONG THE OZAMA, SANTO DOMINGO                     119

LOOKING TO SEA FROM SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO          125

BOAT LANDING AND MARINE BARRACKS, SAN JUAN,
PUERTO RICO                                        135

THE FIRST TROLLEY-CAR IN SAN JUAN, PUERTO
RICO                                               141

THE MILITARY ROAD ACROSS PUERTO RICO, NEAR
SAN JUAN                                           145

INLAND COMMERCE, PUERTO RICO                       151

A RANCH NEAR SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO                 159

THE HARBOUR, CHARLOTTE AMALIE, ST. THOMAS          165

HILLSIDE HOMES, CHARLOTTE AMALIE, ST. THOMAS       171

IN CHARLOTTE AMALIE, ST. THOMAS                    175

CHARLOTTE AMALIE FROM "BLUE BEARD'S CASTLE,"
ST. THOMAS                                         183

ON THE TERRACE, CHARLOTTE AMALIE, ST. THOMAS       187

COALING OUR SHIP, CHARLOTTE AMALIE, ST.
THOMAS                                             191

THE SUGAR MILL NEAR ST. PIERRE, MARTINIQUE         203

COMING TO WELCOME US, ST. PIERRE, MARTINIQUE       207

LOOKING FROM THE DECK OF OUR SHIP, ST. PIERRE,
MARTINIQUE                                         213

THE HARBOUR AND SHIPPING, ST. PIERRE, MARTINIQUE   217

THE LIGHTHOUSE ON THE BEACH. ST. PIERRE,
MARTINIQUE                                         221

THE STREET ALONG THE WATER-FRONT, ST. PIERRE,
MARTINIQUE                                         225

THE CATHEDRAL AND WATER-FRONT. ST. PIERRE,
MARTINIQUE                                         231

THE CITY AND ROADSTEAD, ST. PIERRE, MARTINIQUE     249

NEAR THE LANDING-PLACE, ST. PIERRE, MARTINIQUE     259

THE RIVIÈRE ROXELANE, NEAR ST. PIERRE, MARTINIQUE  271

THE DRAGON'S MOUTH, ENTRANCE TO GULF OF
PARIA, BETWEEN SOUTH AMERICA AND TRINIDAD          277

THE BUSINESS SECTION, PORT OF SPAIN, TRINIDAD      283

A VILLAGE GREETING, SAN FERNANDO, TRINIDAD         289

WHERE THE LEPERS LIVE AND DIE, TRINIDAD            303




Gardens of the Caribbees




CHAPTER I.

THE VOYAGE


I.

"Thank you, Rudolph, I believe I will take some lemonade and one or two
of the sweet biscuit; that will do;" and I settled back in my ship
chair, feeling as serene and happy as a woman in a white linen frock can
feel. Every one must have gone down into every one's trunk this morning;
was there ever such a change? Why, the count and his brother are fairly
blinding to the eyes, in their smart white flannels. They actually look
a bit interesting. Here they come now; the count has evidently had his
lemonade, I see he is still nibbling a biscuit.

This is the first time I have realised where we are going. This arraying
of one's self in cool things and white things makes one really believe
that, after all, the voyage is not a delusion.

"Rudolph, you're a dear," this to myself, but aloud, as the faithful
steward comes with my lemonade, I thank him and take the glass while he
goes on in search of the youngsters. What a comfort that old soul has
been to us! He began by being willing to speak German, and certainly
that was an indication of a great deal of character. I think he was the
first German I had ever met, who, knowing enough English to carry on an
ordinary conversation, would, at times, express himself in his native
tongue. That was good of Rudolph; of course we had to tell him not to
speak English at first, but he never forgot. And such care as he gave us
those horrible days, when we didn't drink lemonade or sit on the deck;
when the ship wouldn't go anywhere but up and down; when it fairly ached
to turn itself inside out, I know it did. It was then that Rudolph was
neither man nor woman, but the incarnation of goodness and patience.
Dear old Rudolph!

Let me see--how many meals is this so far? Breakfast at eight o'clock
makes one; bouillon and wafers at half-past ten, two; lunch at
twelve-thirty makes three, and here I am hungry as ever, simply
revelling in number four. I wish I had another biscuit. This is
delicious! I mean the sky and the sea and the ship and all the people
dressed so airily and looking so unconscious of what has gone before. If
no one else will testify, Rudolph certainly can, that much has gone
before. But this sea, this straightaway plowing into Southern waters is
beginning to make me forget, and for fear that I may do so I must tell
you how it happens that I am feeling so blissfully relieved at this
moment. Of course I am not perfectly at ease, for I don't think a woman
in a white linen frock can be until it has passed the stage where she
has to be thinking of spots.

Six days ago I was not sitting here in a white frock. I was bundled in
furs, and even then cringed and shivered with the cold. Ough! it was raw
and bleak that sad day of our sailing. The January wind, chilling us to
the marrow, swept in from the desolate ocean like the cruel thrusts of
so many icy knives. Even the prospect of a voyage to the _Islands of the
Blest_ left us indifferent and shivering and blue. I vaguely thought
that when we were once on shipboard we could get warm, but the doors
were all open and the passages so blocked with visitors that even had it
occurred to any one to shut the doors I don't think it could have been
done.

My handsome cousin from New York came with a big bunch of lovely
violets, and I thought, as I touched their cold faces to mine, that
they, too, must certainly be suffering and homesick.

This voyage had been one of our dreams. We two--Daddy and I--had sat
many a night by the crackling wood fire in our dear library talking it
over. We planned how we should take the little girls and leave the four
boys; how we should for once really go off for a glorious lark; but now,
alas! every vestige of romance faded from our firelight dreams as we
pulled ourselves away on such a bleak day, with not a gleam of sunshine
to cheer us.

Had there been at that last moment any sane reason for turning back, I
should have done so. I do not see why I had expected anything else but a
bleak wind on the North River in January, but certainly I did have a
sort of a fancy that, once on shipboard bound for Southern seas, the
glamour of our voyage would warm me to the very heart, but it didn't. I
grew colder every minute, and after the cousin had said "Good-bye" and
his tall silk hat was lost in the crowd at the gangway, it seemed to me
that we were all bereft of our senses to think of leaving the library
fireplace; but Daddy was beckoning me, and the little girls were making
off in his direction; there was no escape. All I could do was to shiver
and follow them. They were in tow of a red-nosed, white-coated steward;
that was Rudolph. We didn't know it then, and even if we had I hardly
think we would have cared. Rudolph had our luggage, loads of it, our
bags, our rug rolls, our numerous duffle; he had it all well in hand and
he forged ahead through the crowd with good-natured indifference to the
wrath of those going the other way, loaded down in similar fashion. We
were trying to find Numbers 41 and 44. Everybody else was trying in
like haste to find some other number. There were more crooks and turns
and funny little corridors running off in different directions than you
would imagine could be built into a self-respecting ship, with here and
there a constricted spot where a narrow steel door led through some
"water-tight bulkhead." Now and then I lost sight of the little girls'
bobbing ribbons and found myself peering down the wrong corridor,
following some other person's luggage; then I would turn and elbow
through the crowd, and bolt down the wide passage again to catch a
glimpse of Little Blue Ribbons and Sister, both fairly dancing at the
prospect of a real voyage in a real ship. And then came the appalling
thought, "If I don't hurry and push through these swarms of people,
those youngsters may disappear for ever in a sort of Pied-Piper-of-Hamelin
Fashion."

In a dazed way I stumbled and hurried on, and finally, to my great
relief, I heard the children's voices issuing from Number 41, which
proved to be well aft on the upper deck. It was a beautiful, large room,
with big lower berths on opposite sides, and convenient mahogany
wardrobes for the clothing--quarters quite befitting the dainty little
maids who were to call it home for many weeks. My traps were left in the
other room with Daddy's, and as it was but a few moments of sailing
time, we left things as they were, ran up the stairway near our door
just as the stiff German bugler was sounding the warning for visitors to
leave the ship. Then the last preparations for departure began. The
gangplank was taken in, and we began to move, ever and ever so slowly,
and, shuddering, I turned around to see how the deluded people looked
who were going to death and destruction with me. "It is all the fault of
that wretched sun," I thought. "Why doesn't it know enough to shine on
sailing day? If the clouds don't shift, we'll all go to Davy Jones's,
and only think of the trouble I have had getting ready!" Much as I
commiserated as a whole my fellow sufferers, outside of our own little
group there was only one couple of which I have now any distinct
remembrance, and I noticed them because I was quite sure they were bride
and groom. "It is just too bad of her to wear that lovely gown to a
watery grave! She ought to have left it at home for a relative.
Anything would have done to swim in if it was only warm," I thought; but
the bride leaned over the rail and waved her handkerchief at some one
and laughed, and then wiped her eyes and laughed once more, but she kept
the gown on.

A horribly blatant German band, on board an Atlantic liner which lay
alongside, bellowed forth national airs, and I wished I could choke it.
The dwindling crowd on shore waved and shouted, and I went off alone and
directly rubbed against some fresh white paint. That was too much! I
just sat down and cried, and wondered why I hadn't brought some
turpentine and why I had ever left the babies, why I had ever forsaken
the comfortable library in midwinter; but alas, I wondered a great deal
more a few days later!


II.

Contrary to all precedent, instead of watching the fast-fading shores of
New York Harbour, I simply went to the stateroom and began to find
myself, and certainly I did not regret it afterward. I unpacked our most
necessary clothing, got out the brushes and combs, unstrapped the roll
of rugs, stowed away in a handy corner my smelling-salts, and small
convenient bottles of various kinds,--all the time accusing myself that
I had not been satisfied with the calmer view I had had of "The Islands
of the Blest" from our library window; that I must need hunt the real
thing by steamship; an ever impossible method, as Kipling had warned me
long ago:

    "That route is barred to steamers: you'll never lift again
     Our purple-painted headlands or the lordly keeps of Spain.
     They're just beyond the skyline, howe'er so far you cruise
     In a ram-you-damn-you liner with a brace of bucking screws.

    "Swing round your aching search-light--'twill show no haven's peace!
     Ay, blow your shrieking sirens to the deaf, gray-bearded seas!
     Boom out the dripping oil-bags to skin the deep's unrest--
     But you aren't a knot the nearer to the Islands of the Blest."

I shall always believe that the force of suggestion was the cause of our
undoing. When a lot of people sit down to luncheon, all with one fixed
idea, with one definite question in their minds, sooner or later that
question is bound to be answered in one way or another. All one has to
do is simply to wait long enough and the answer will come. "Mental
Science" and "Christian Science" notwithstanding, there wasn't a soul in
that dining-room but was wondering with all his faculties whether he
would be or would not be. Incidentally, the ship felt the pulse of old
Atlantic, and he began to be. And, as time wore on, the dining-saloon
became deserted, and the question was answered. I never knew nor cared
where the people went. As for myself, I took a rug, made for the warmest
corner of the deck I could find, covered myself head and ears, and
wanted to be alone. I was conscious that Little Blue Ribbons had tucked
herself under my wing, a sad little birdling; but Sister and Daddy were
very grand. They gaily walked the decks and laughed when they passed
us,--but we didn't laugh! No, we didn't even smile. The ocean had never
troubled me before,--that is not to any extent, for I had had a theory
that if I could only keep on deck and wear a tight belt, the worst
would soon be over. But there are seasons when all signs fail, and this
time everything turned out wrong.

The following day I managed to dress and get upon deck with the others.
Oh! if I only had a chance at a good railroad, those who would might
hunt up the islands; I had had enough already. I made up my mind to one
thing, I should give up my ticket at Nassau and go home alone by rail
through Florida. I didn't say anything of this plan to Daddy, but I
thought it all out and had it all arranged, when I found that I could
not get warm and could get so miserably seasick. I considered it a
brilliant and original inspiration, and I clung to it with all my feeble
strength.

Sunday it commenced to blow furiously, coming first from the southwest,
and increasing as the day wore on, until by night, with the wind shifted
to north of west, a howling gale was on, outer doors battened down,
promenade decks swept by water, and everybody curled up in bed, bracing
themselves as best they could, trying to keep from rolling out of their
berths. I wish it understood that the word _everybody_ is used
reservedly, for there were a few exceptions, Daddy being one of
them,--cranks who prided themselves on not missing a meal. Then came
that awful night! This was the time Rudolph shone. It was he who
suggested champagne and ship-biscuit. Daddy didn't know how many bottles
he brought to our room, and we didn't, until it came time to pay the
bills. Then Daddy was surprised, but Rudolph wasn't. "Rudolph," I said,
that terrible night, as he brought in the bottle, and steadied himself
to pour a glassful, "were you ever in such a storm as this before; don't
you really think we're in great danger?" He assured me that he had been
in much worse storms, but I knew he hadn't. I could tell by the way he
looked that he was only trying to cheer me up, for he was dreadfully
solemn, and had a big black lump on his forehead where he had hit his
head as he came in with the bottle. I listened while he told of other
storms ever and ever so much worse; how he had been thirty years a
steward, how he swore every voyage would be his last; but how somehow he
kept on shipping; he didn't mind storms. "So you have never gone down at
sea, Rudolph? Oh, I am so glad, for then you wouldn't be here, would
you?" He forgave me of course. I was not the first sufferer Rudolph had
brought champagne and ship's biscuit.

When Sister was a babe, Daddy gave her a little Jap toy, which we called
the "Red Manikin." He was round as an apple, with his face one big grin.
Whichever way we stood him, Manikin would jump up serenely on his plump
little legs, always smiling and jolly. But one day there came a sad
ending to Manikin's smiles. He was smashed in a nursery storm, and we
found him under the bed standing straight on his head. Through snatches
of sleep, my disordered dreams made a grinning, red Manikin of our ship.
I wondered when the final smash would come and our big toy no longer
swing back on its round legs? Over and over the great ship went, and I
held my breath. "Now this time it will never come back. I know it. Oh!
how terrible to have the water pour into our staterooms and never a
chance to swim. No, there we go the other way. Now we go, go, go! Oh, if
I wouldn't try to keep the ship from rolling over! What good can I do by
holding my breath and bracing back in this way? I wonder how the bride
feels by this time? That lovely brown dress, she'll never wear it
again. Well, I'm glad I'm not a bride."

Whatever happened just then I could not tell, but there was a curious
sort of a dull explosion, and all the electric lights went out. Then our
trunks broke loose and went crashing back and forth at each other,
whack, bang, with a vicious delight.

"I'll not endure this suspense another moment," thought I, "I must have
a light and I must know what is the matter, and I must bring Daddy in
here this minute. If we are going down I want him to be with us." So I
swung myself out of the berth, dodged a trunk, groped my way to the
door, and ran barefooted to Number 44. I didn't stop to knock, but
turned the knob, as a terrific lurch of the ship threw me against
Daddy's berth, where the only man who knew anything about running that
ship lay fast asleep.

Of course you'll think that an absurd thing to say, but then you don't
know Daddy. He is the kind of a man who was born with expedients in both
hands. However much I doubted the wisdom of confessing it to Daddy,
away down in my heart I felt that if he would only wake up and come
into our room, he would devise a way to save us, if every one else went
to the bottom. Hadn't he time and again rescued us from dreadful
disasters by fire and water, didn't he in his quiet way master every
situation at the right moment; was there any one more skilled in
handling boats, more subtle in knowledge of winds and waves than Daddy?
Wasn't there just cause that I should wake him up? Of course there was!
It wasn't right that he should be sleeping so peacefully while his wife
and children were waiting for the last trump. No, it wasn't right. So I
touched him rather lightly, somewhat hesitatingly, because he never
likes to be awakened, and I said--well, I don't recall just what I said;
you know how I felt; and he, the man of expedients, the man of many
rescues, turned over and grunted out, "What on earth are you making such
a fuss about? Go and see the captain? No, I'll not go and see the
captain or any other man, and I don't want to sit on your trunk. Go to
bed, we're all right; the sea isn't as bad as it was before midnight,
and what's the use of worrying anyway? Go to bed, that's a good girl."
What could I do but go? He wouldn't budge, so I went back to Number 41
with all the injured dignity possible under the circumstances, and I
didn't care a bit when his door banged good and hard after me. I have
never since then been able to understand his utter indifference to our
distress that night. It must have been something he ate for dinner.

It was a weird night outside; a white gray night, shone upon fitfully by
a sullen moon and a few lonely stars. Every other minute we were in
utter darkness, as a thunderous wave came surging deep over the
port-holes; then for a brief moment again the sickly light of the moon
would steal through the thick wet glass to where the little girls lay,
and I wondered if the morning would ever come.


III.

The next day I did not dare look from my port-hole. I had not only drawn
the lattice-screen to keep out the water--for the ports were leaking
badly--but had even fixed up a curtain with some towels, so that I might
not see the storm-vexed sea without. I simply lay there wondering why,
why, why, I had ever come? But after awhile adorable Rudolph knocked at
the door and gave us each our glass of wine and biscuits, and we felt
encouraged, and asked him what had happened to the lights last night. He
looked blandly ignorant of any disaster, and shook his head and told us
nothing. He was a wise man, that Rudolph! Then he suggested that we get
up and dress, after he had lashed the trunks back where they belonged,
and had straightened up a nice little round spot in the middle of the
room, where we could stand and reach for things. With a grim
determination, I pulled down the towel, opened the lattice, and looked
out. There is no use in trying to tell you anything about the sea,
because I couldn't. All I can do is advise you never to round Cape
Hatteras in a gale. "But what shall we do about the Islands of the
Blest?" you ask. That is a simple problem, start from well down in
Florida, and take the shortest cut across!

At seven o'clock by the ship's bell I went to work to keep my promise to
Rudolph. I have a distinct remembrance of having put both stockings on
wrong side out. I was an hour hunting for my shoes. Everything else had
to be scrambled for in the same way. It was two o'clock when I was
dressed sufficiently to make a decent appearance; but I needed to have
had no fear of criticisms, for as I made my way on deck, crawling up the
main cabin stairway, there wasn't a soul to be seen, except the jackies
in their oilskins, who looked rather amazed when I poked my head out of
the door.

I then had a view of the ship's deck which I had not hitherto had. She
was very narrow and long, I hadn't before realised how long and how
narrow. No wonder she rolled like a gigantic log canoe, but she was a
beauty though! I began to forget her temper because of her looks--a
common blunder in judging her sex, I am told. She was stripped naked for
the plunge, and to see her pitch headlong into the seething water,
throwing foam to the mast-heads, sending a deluge of crashing seas adown
our decks, made me scream with delight. It was glorious, glorious,
glorious! Down she went,--the beauty,--roaring, cracking, twisting,
groaning, howling, and hissing. She fought as with a thousand furies,
plunging and rolling into and through the seas, which rushed down upon
her as if they would crush her to atoms.

Just then the sun broke from out the fast-moving clouds, and sprang upon
the water in a million glistening rays of brilliant light, and my whole
being was filled with joy that I had eyes to see such wonders. The storm
was at its height the night before when we were to the southeast of Cape
Hatteras, after we had steamed well into that beautiful Gulf Stream one
reads about. There we were hove to, with head to the storm, engines
slowed down, and oil dripping over our bows for twenty-four hours, and
were carried one hundred miles out of our course. Unfortunately the oil
did little good, for we were in a cross sea which occasionally broke
with a thundering crash over our stern as well as over our bows, and we
were horribly twisted and shaken. But at last, on Monday afternoon, at
four o'clock, the storm quieted so we were able to square away again for
the Windward Passage. So much for that terrible gale from the Gulf,
which, as we afterward learned, did much damage to coastwise shipping.

As the storm broke, one by one, poor forlorn remnants of our fellow
passengers began to appear in all possible states of dilapidation; and
for the rest of the day, inspired by a subject of common interest, we
sat about, clinging to fixed chairs, talking over our experiences, and
watching the fast disappearing tempest.

It was then I learned that my original plan of buying a ticket home from
Nassau in the Bahamas and through Florida by rail was shared by every
second person I met, and whether the purpose is fully carried out or not
remains to be seen.


IV.

There was one peculiar and unlooked-for feature in the experience of
seasickness which may be universal to all like sufferers, but it was
novel to me. It was when in one of my sane moments the morning before
the storm that I threw myself down on a couch in the main saloon, too
inert to lift my head, too woebegone to think that I could ever smile
again, that I raised my eyes and caught sight of a figure opposite me,
compared with which I was in a state of heavenly rapture. It was none
less than his Excellency, Herr Baron von Pumpernickel Donnerwetter
Hohenmaltsteinhaufen, high officer in the service of his Majesty, the
Kaiser. He was all in a heap, a big soft heap, wound about by a big
brown ulster. Poor soul, he didn't care much how it was buttoned, it was
all wrong anyway, but he was not thinking of trifles. On a bald pate was
a comical felt hat,--one of those little Alpine hats German tourists
affect,--jammed over the left eye; his face was unshaven, his hair
unshorn and uncombed, his nose big and red, and his eyes watery,
meaningless, colourless, glassy eyes rolling about in helpless agony. He
sat there with his arms dangling at his sides, mumbling to himself. I
hadn't anything else to do, so I watched him and listened. What can he
be saying? I suppose it's the "Lorelei;" maybe he dreams he's on the
Rhine! His sorrowful, wife-forsaken look aroused my sympathy; I listened
more attentively. I have always had a lingering affinity for the German
Folkslieder, but, oh, dear, it wasn't a Folkslied at all! He was
swearing volley after volley of feeble, limp oaths, uttered in a broken
and scarcely audible voice. I thought the sight of a woman might stop
his flow of wrath, so I lifted myself up a little and looked at him as
severely as I could under the circumstances, but to no purpose. His
monotonous oaths went rolling on and on, until a kind steward came and
asked his Excellency if he would have something to eat. Now that steward
ought to have known better. I knew there would be trouble. There are
times when men must be left alone, and this was his Excellency's time.
I tried to warn the steward, and even worked up an especial groan to
attract his attention, but, like a stupid old dunderhead, he stood
there with his mouth open; and then he caught it:
"_Verdamter--damter--damity--dam--_" it pealed, bellowed forth with
royal spontaneity, and the steward was a white streak out of the saloon
door.

There were sufferers in the room besides myself, and it was remarkable
to note, how that full and complete expression of his Excellency's wrath
worked like a healing balm upon us all. I shall not confess to any such
lapses on the part of my immediate family and friends,--no, I shall
never confess to that! but I will say that there are times when the use
of strong language is an outlet most beneficial to overwrought digestive
organs. I _will_ say that much.

The little blue map of the West Indies given to me at our departure,
which same map has lain very snugly between the unopened pages of my
journal until to-day, shows me, as for the first time I unfold the
wrinkled paper, that we have just passed Watling's Island (the San
Salvador of the early explorers) and a lot of other little islands;
while a row of tiny dots shows that we are somewhere near the Tropic of
Cancer. Daddy tells of watching until late last night to make out the
light on San Salvador, and how it blinked up finally from the waves far
ahead on our starboard bow and as quickly disappeared, to gradually grow
brighter as we brought it abeam of us--our first smell of land since we
dropped the bleak shore of New Jersey. My eyes tell me as they look
seaward that we have left the great lonely waste of the Atlantic and
have come into sweeter waters, on seas of heavenly rest, which flow away
from us as do the rolling white clouds above. I watch dreamily the
shoals of flying fish darting aside from under the bow in long low
lines of flashing silver; and I look away to where ships come up from
over the meeting of sky and ocean.

I know now why Rudolph can not give it up.

[Illustration]




CHAPTER II.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAÏTI


I.

From the rising of the sun to its sudden drop into the sea, this has
been a funny day in Haïti, our first land-fall. All night we had been
threading through the dangerous shoals and past the lower islands of the
Bahama group, until at last we turned into that great thoroughfare, the
Windward Passage between Cuba and Haïti, and finally were at rest in the
harbour of Port-au-Prince. Knowing that we were to make port this
morning, I was awakened very early by the delightsome expectation of the
sight of a green earth; and long before Little Blue Ribbons and Sister
had stirred with the spirit of a new day, I had scurried through the
corridor to my delicious salt tub. The ship lay very still. It but just
felt the finger-tips of the ocean's caress. A sweet, warm, gentle,
alluring air filtered in through the open port-hole and permeated my
body with the delicious intoxication of summer. I threw myself into the
bath with every pore a-quiver for its cool refreshment, and as the briny
water spread its arms about me, I looked out upon the sea, where my
first tropical sunrise burst upon me. It was such a businesslike
performance that I laughed right in old Sol's face, and splattered water
at him through the port-hole; it served him right for being so
abominably prosaic. Five minutes before his appearance, there was not
the slightest indication in the sky that anything was about to happen,
no fireworks, no signals, no red lights, nothing but the dull blue sky
of early morning. When, all at once, a bright red tip peeps over the
water, and in three minutes the big, round ball is on hand, ready for
business, whereupon he blazes away _fortissimo_ from the start. It was
rude and ill-mannered of him to intrude upon my bath, but it seemed to
be his way with the ladies, so I fled to find Sister and Wee One in
wildest joy, on their knees in bed crowding their pretty heads together
for a peep at the wonderful land about them. The ship had swung to her
anchor, and lay bow-on to Port-au-Prince, while to starboard was a range
of lofty mountains which clambered and struggled and budded and
blossomed into the white sky of morning.

The sudden call of Summer, the eternal loveliness of warmth, the
expansion of the soul from out the chill of ice and snow, into the bliss
of laughing seas and delicious sunlight; the sight of green, graceful
palms bending their stately heads to the summons of the morning, the
merry wavelets frolicking, splashing, laughing, calling to
us,--Summer--Summer--Summer--was all so intoxicating that, had the
choice been possible, who knows but we would have bartered our very
souls, with but little hesitancy, for a lifetime of such sensation!

There was something akin to emancipation in the pile of airy frocks
which lay waiting for Sister and Little Blue Ribbons, and if our fingers
hadn't been all thumbs, and if we hadn't been on our knees half the time
in the berth, peering out from the port-hole, we could have donned the
summer glories a full hour sooner, and might have been on deck in the
open with all the sweets of the early tropical morning about us. But,
what could one do but look and marvel, when the sea about us was
swarming with tiny boats, laden with treasures of the deep and of the
forest? What would you do, now, tell me, if, after long dreaming of the
Islands of the Blest, you suddenly awakened to find them really true,
and your own dear self in the midst of them? Why bless your heart! You
would have looked, and laughed, and wondered, just as we did, and have
been for ever dressing, too.

[Illustration: THE LANDING-PLACE Port-au-Prince, Haïti]

Long, long ago, when I was a "Little Sister," my boon companion had a
parrot given her, and one day it screamed horribly and bit me, and ever
after I held a vengeful spirit for the whole parrot family. But that
morning at Haïti--ah! that first soft morning, when the jabbering black
Haïtiens came to us with corals and parrots and strange, freaky fruits,
a fierce fancy possessed me to buy a parrot. Of course, the morning was
to blame for it. I was really not a free agent. It was a delusion that,
somehow, if I bought the parrot, the summer would be thrown in with
it. But dear, sensible Sister, my judge and jury and supreme court on
all occasions, thought it a foolish idea, so we didn't nod "yes" through
the port-hole; we only shook our heads and laughed. But the parrot man
didn't have time to answer back, for, before he knew it, a newcomer
bumped into the bow of his skiff and made him very angry; so he gave way
in short order, for the late arrival didn't carry any parrots or coral,
or anything to sell; it carried a very tall, black man, who stood
immovably in the centre of the craft. "Oh! Come, Sister, I know it's the
President, it must be!" He wore a tall silk hat, with an ancient
straight brim, and a black frock coat and a terribly solemn expression.
But we were mistaken after all; it was only the health officer. We were
sure one of those rollicking waves would spill him over, but, alas, the
shiny old stovepipe rose and fell with the precision of a clock and
nothing happened, and we were so disappointed! Then it disappeared up
the ladder, and we buttoned up a bit more and were dressed at last.


II.

Port-au-Prince is as daintily hidden away in the folds of the mountains,
as a lace handkerchief in the chatelaine of a beautiful woman. There
seemed to be nothing left undone by Nature to make it, in point of
location, a chosen spot, hidden from the curious world: a realm of bliss
for lovers to abide in. Port-au-Prince was once called the "Paris of the
West Indies;" that is, when the French were its masters and the blacks
their slaves. It is not so now, for when the blacks revolted and drove
their masters from the land, the death-knell of civilisation was
sounded. It is the capital of the Black Republic of Haïti, the paradise
of the negro, where to be black is the envied distinction; where the
white man can scarcely hold property without confiscation in some form;
where the negro is the high-cockalorum. Yes, it was called Paris, but
that was long, long ago. Poor little town! It is now the forlornest,
dirtiest little rag-a-muffin in the whole world, still trying to strut a
bit, but in truth a ridiculous caricature of civilisation.

[Illustration:

Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.

WAITING FOR CUSTOMERS Port-au-Prince, Haïti]

As we approached land, the character of the place was indicated by
the boats lying at anchor, and by those which clung, like a forlorn
hope, to the rickety old piers along shore. They were the most
dilapidated, nondescript lot of craft I have ever seen.

The "fort" at the harbour entrance was in a state of collapse, and about
big enough to shelter a basket of babies. The Haïtien "man-of-war"
anchored near the shore was an absurd old iron gunboat with rusty stacks
and dishevelled rigging, painted in many colours and temporarily
incapacitated because of leaky boilers and broken engines. The rest of
the "Haïtien Navy," _i. e._, another old rusty gunboat, was lying
neglected and half sunken near by. The pier where we landed was so
shattered by time and water that I had to pick my way very carefully in
order to keep from falling through. On shore, we were at once surrounded
by a mob of jabbering Haïtiens, speaking--well, it's hard to say just
what. It started out French and ended in an incomprehensible jargon,
intelligible only to the delicate Haïtien ear. As we picked our way
along the tumble-down pier, between piles of coral which had been
recently removed from the shoal water near shore (in order that small
boats could land at the piers), the tatterdemalion Haïtiens escorted us
to the city, under a tumble-down archway, into tumble-down
Port-au-Prince, to find waiting for us at the other side of this water
gate an assortment of vehicles which I find it quite impossible to
describe. They had had an earthquake in Port-au-Prince the preceding
October, and those carriages looked as if they had passed through the
whole shocking ordeal. The horses, not as high as my shoulder, were
simply animated bones,--"articulated equine skeletons" somebody
said--harnessed with ropes and strings and old scraps of leather, to
what were once "carriages," all of antiquated patterns,--anything from a
cart to a carryall; and to the enormous Americans, who doubled up their
precious knees in order to sit inside, they seemed like the veriest
rattletraps for dolls. Off they moved, the whole wobblety procession, to
the cracking of native whips and howls of the admiring vagabonds. The
white dust blew about us, and the sun beat down upon our heads, and we
were in the Tropics indeed. I do not know whether it was the result
of seasickness, or what it was, but everything in Haïti looked crooked.
Sister said that the Mother Goose "Crooked Man" must have come from
Haïti, and I agreed with her.

[Illustration: THE "COACHES" Port-au-Prince, Haïti]


III.

We preferred to walk up into the town,--not because we were more
merciful than those who had wobbled and rattled and jiggled on before
us, but because we thought it would be a little more Haïtien than if we
drove. We might have taken the tram, but it was more fun to watch it
hitch its precarious way along after its stuffy, rusty, leaky little
"dummy" engine, down through the crooked streets, than to jerk along
with it. The only sensible thing to do was just to stand there within
the ruins of a one-time beautiful city and look about us. It was the
worst, the forlornest, the most mind-forsaken place of which you can
conceive. Earthquakes had cracked and tumbled down some of the best
buildings, fire had destroyed many others, and the remains had been left
as they had dropped, under the blistering sun, to crumble away into
dust; and thronging in and through the ruins like black ants about their
downtrodden dwelling, were swarms of rag-tag human beings whom I call
such merely because no species of "missing link" has yet been recognised
by our anthropologists.

It was an official building before which we were standing, and as we
were about to move on to a shadier spot, the guards, or the soldiers, or
whatever one might call them, approached and presented arms under the
crooked arch, and disappeared noiselessly within the inner court. This
barefooted squad, some ten strong,--negroes of all shades of
blackness,--were equipped in gorgeous red caps. Yes, they all had caps,
and muskets, every one of them; the remaining parts of the uniform,
unessential parts, were eked out with linen dusters and old rags which
happened to be lying around handy. I don't see why they should have
bothered about having the dusters, but I suppose it was traditional.

[Illustration: MAIN BUSINESS STREET OF THE CAPITAL OF THE REPUBLIC OF
HAITI

Port-au-Prince, Haïti

Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co]

Just as we approached the main street under a blazing sun, there came
toward us two chariots, with wheels eight or ten feet high, harnessed
each to a mixture of tiny, woebegone donkeys and mules, about the size
of hairpins, going at full speed with the true negro love of display,
for the benefit of the strangers. The charioteers wore shirts and
tattered hats, and yelled like wild hyenas at the poor, astonished
mules. "Hurrah for Ben Hur!" we shouted, and the triumphant victor
rattled ahead in a cloud of dust. Then we went on to the next
performance, a Haïtien officer strutting past, bedecked with gold lace
and buttons, and great cocked hat, well plumed, and barefooted. There
was no use being serious; we couldn't be. We were in the midst of an
_opera bouffe_, with negroes playing at government, with the
happy-go-lucky African savage fully possessed of his racial
characteristics, fondly imagining himself a free and responsible man;
and it was one, long pitiful laugh for the poor black children who were
taking themselves in such dead earnest.


IV.

It was not to imitate Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith in the least that we said
we must find a white umbrella, and yet even had we wished to imitate
Mr. Smith, could we have followed in the way of a more delightsome
traveller? It was simply because we were conscious that a white
umbrella, with a soft green lining, is a necessary adjunct to life in
the tropics. It is in harmony with its environment, because it is almost
a necessity; and being such, we were not to be dissuaded from our
desire. So, with that definite intent to our steps, we started to find
the white umbrella.

Was every one else hunting for one, too, that the crowd was all going in
our direction,--surely not! No sun could ever blaze strongly enough to
penetrate those woolly tops. We go on a little farther, and then we
begin to understand from a wave of odours sweeping over us that it's to
market we're going with all the rest; and so for the time we are led
from the purpose of the morning.

The stench grows more pronounced; we become a part of a black host, with
babies, children, men, women, and donkeys crowding into the square,
where a long, low-tiled market-building and its surrounding dirty
pavement becomes the kitchen for the whole of Port-au-Prince; a place
where filthy meats and queer vegetables and strange fruits are sold,
and where all manner of curious, outlandish dishes are being concocted.
The black women crouching on the ground over little simmering pots and a
few hot coals, jabbering away at their crouching neighbours, were more
like half-human animals than possible mothers of a republic. And in
amongst the women were the babies, rolling around on bits of rags,
blissfully happy in their complete nakedness. But there was something
about those black, naked babies which seemed to dress them up without
any clothes. Does a naked negro baby ever look as bare to you as a naked
white baby?

Stopping a minute, where a louder, noisier mob of women were busy over
their morning incantations, my eye chanced to dwell for a second longer
than it should have done, on a pudgy little pickaninny, which was lying
in its mother's lap, kicking up its heels, with its fat little arms
beating the air in very much the same aimless manner that our babies do.
Seizing upon my momentary interest in the youngster, its mother caught
up the wiggling, naked thing, and with all the eloquence of a language
of signs, contrasted her naked baby with what seemed to her the regal
splendour of my white shirt-waist. For an instant I weakened and caught
at my pocketbook mechanically, but, as I did so, I glanced up just
quickly enough to see her ladyship give a laughing wink to one of her
neighbours, as much as to say: "Jest see me work 'em!"--and I caught the
wink in time to turn the solemn face into a crooning laugh, when, with
the worst French I could muster,--and that was a simple matter,--I told
the mother her baby was all right. It didn't need any clothes; I was
just wearing them because it was a sort of habit. People would be lots
more comfortable in Haïti without them. For a minute, those black,
beseeching eyes had had me fixed, but, fortunately for our further peace
of mind, I looked once too many times.

The air was thick with horrible smells and horrible sounds as well. We
became a target for begging hands, and "Damn, give me five cents," was
every second word we heard. Where the poor creatures ever learned so
much English, would be difficult to say, but it was well learned. Over
the black heads, over the little cooking breakfasts, over the endless
procession of donkeys, carrying sugar-cane and coffee and all sorts of
stuff from off somewhere we didn't know about, to the market we did know
about--there arose an arch which was even more barbaric than the naked
babies and their half-naked mothers. It was just the thing for the
market--it fitted in with the smells; it was something incredibly
hideous and archaic. It was not French, it was purely an African
creation, made of wood, in strange ungraceful points and ornamented with
outlandish coloured figures; and yet it was an arch, and we ought to
forgive the rest.

But the white umbrella! were we never to begin our search? We left the
market and took the shady side of the street. But, being a party of
four, we all wanted to do different things, yet, being a very congenial
party of four, we went from one side of the street to the other, as one
or the other happened to catch sight of something novel; thus, back and
forth, zigzag, we made for the white umbrella.

Laddie, in far-off America, had been promised stamps; in fact he had
been promised almost the limit of his imaginary wants, if he would only
stay with Grandmamma by the sea, and not mind while we were off for the
Islands; so it was not only a white umbrella which kept us moving on up
the sunny streets, but Laddie and his stamps. Thus the post-office
stepped in where the white umbrella should have been ladies' choice.

A nondescript following conducted us to the post-office, where we met a
very different type of man. The officials spoke such beautiful French
that we became at once hopelessly lost in our idioms. When the Creole
postmaster discovered our self-appointed escort of ragamuffins crowding
the entrance to the office, his black eyes flashed for a second, and
some terrible things must have been said to the crowd, which we did not
understand, for the office was emptied in short order. Here, we thought,
was the true Haïtien; the market-people were the refuse.

[Illustration: A PUBLIC FOUNTAIN

Port-au-Prince, Haïti]

Another zigzag, and we stopped in at a _pharmacie_ to ask about the
white umbrella. We were met by another Haïtien, a courteous, delightful
gentleman, the chemist of Port-au-Prince, a man of rare charm and
courtly manner. He gave Little Blue Ribbons and Sister some pretty
trinkets as souvenirs, at the same time pointing the way to a shop
very near, where without fail we could find--you know! Ah! But between
that shop and us there was--well, what to call it I find it hard to say,
for it certainly wasn't a soda-water fountain, or an ice-cream haven,
but into it we went, all of us, and we sat down, while Daddy ordered
wonderful things for us to drink, and we had real ice, too; and in my
glass there was more than the limes and sugar and ice, which Sister was
sipping. There was certainly something more than mere lime-juice in my
glass, for I didn't care, after taking one taste, nearly so much about
the umbrella as I did before, and Daddy was so relieved. We sat there
very contentedly for quite awhile, but the little girls grew restless
and said we must go on to something else, so gathering up the fragments
of our Northern energy, we were out in the street again.

A sleepy, honest little donkey, loaded with baskets of very diminutive
bananas, came our way. With malice aforethought, we made a raid to the
extent of three pennies' worth. The keeper sold reluctantly, for he said
we would surely die, if we ate bananas and walked in the sun. So we
walked in the sun and ate bananas, and didn't die; no, indeed not. We
lived to be very thankful for those bananas, as you shall hear later.
And then we went on past the guard-house, where the slumbering army
dozed by their stacks of rusty muskets; past unnumbered hammocks, out of
which long black legs hung in listless content; on past the sellers and
buyers of coffee who stood marking the weights of enormous sacks, swung
on huge, antiquated scales; on past the women, crouching over their
stores of pastry, fruits, sweets,--on to the shop where at last we found
the white umbrella, with a green lining, and then there was peace in the
family for awhile!


V.

I could not tell you her name, for she did not tell us, and somehow we
didn't think to ask for it. She reminded us of Guadeloupe, our Mexican
maid, who had carried Laddie in the soft folds of her _rebozo_ so many
sweet days through the paradisiacal gardens of old Córdova. Shall I ever
forget the music of her voice, when, with Laddie snuggled closely to
her, she would stand in the early evening (amidst the flowers and the
rich, ripe fruits which seemed to be waiting for her touch), and say, in
a voice like a soft lute: "_Mira la luna, Guillermo!_" And his big,
brown eyes would turn from the face of the gentle Guadeloupe to where
her hand pointed to the high, sailing moon, throwing its silvery kisses
upon the willing earth below. The Creole and the Mexican were
affinities, although with seas between them. One was Guadeloupe, the
other--what shall we call her; Florentine? Proserpine? What mattered a
name! We were content.

We had been strolling along away from the shops, out to where the
tramway came to an abrupt end; out to where the level country took to
its heels up the hillsides and went scampering off into the deep green
mountains. Out beyond the President's palace, whose one-time glories
were not yet quite effaced by the sad fortunes of Haïti, to where a row
of houses, evidently homes of the Haïtien "Four Hundred," hidden away
behind high French gateways and walls, were dropped from the glare of
the white sun under glistening leaves of heavy foliage. Deep red, red
flowers high in the tops of the trees hung like drops of blood over the
crumbling, broken fountains. A sad little marble Cupid, with his bow and
quiver gone, was still pirouetting in stony glee over a stained and
dried-up basin. The gateway--her gateway--a wonder in chiselled stone
and blossoming work of iron, was all but hidden by a mass of heavy,
tangled vines. The white umbrella paused; we stood enchanted before the
outspreading garden, and, while there, she of the wondrous face came
down the steps of the mansion and out into the garden toward us. Down
the path she came with a swift and graceful movement, not walking but
gliding; her garments fell from her in loose, sweeping lines of grace.

As she approached us, a delicate pink flush spread over her olive face,
while with an exquisite charm,--in most perfect French,--she invited us
in to the cool seclusion of her veranda. She was the colour of a
hazel-nut. Her hair hung in two long, glorious braids, and it was just
half-inclined to wave in sweet caresses about her oval face. Her eyes
were of a radiant brilliancy, and, as she spoke, the light from them
broke full upon us like something sudden and unlooked-for. She was
straight as a cypress, and her head was set with the poise of a young
palm-tree.

Her family came out to meet us,--the brothers and sisters,--they were
all very much at ease, but none of them had the charm of our hostess.
Our conversation amounted to very little; it was one of the times when
words seemed a bit out of place, particularly so with the sudden demand
upon our slumbering French verbs. But she was forgiving, and we were
appreciative, and the time passed delightfully.

In the corner of her garden, there was a little out-of-door school,
whither she led us to hear verses and songs by the solemn-eyed Haïtien
_noblesse_, and we listened, as it were, to the remnant of a once
brilliant people in its last feeble efforts to resuscitate the memories
of courtly ancestors. It did not seem credible that there could exist
any relation between these intelligent children, this brilliant young
goddess, and the half-human beings crouching over their sizzling pots in
the market-place.


VI.

This is the way it read:

                         "HOTEL-CASINO BELLEVUE

                     Champ de Mars--Port-au-Prince.

                DIRIGÉ PAR FRÄULEIN J. STEIN, DE BERLIN

Chambres garnies, avec ou sans pension.
Bassin-douche--Jardin d'agrèment.
Table d'Hôte de 8 à 9 hs--de 1 à 2 hs--de 6 à 7 hs.
Salon de Lecture--Billard--Piano, etc.
Journaux français, allemands, americaines et anglais.

     Cette établissement jadis si bien connu, somptueusement remis à
     neuf, se recommande aux voyageurs et aux residents par le confort
     d'un hôtel de 1er ordre et par les divertissements que sa situation
     et ses dépendances offrent au public."

You know there are some things in this world of uncertainties of which
one is sure. One is sure of certain things without ever having seen
them--something like the pyramids; one takes them for granted. Just how
it came about that we took the "Hotel-Casino Bellevue" for granted it
would be difficult to say, but we did. It was the one established fact
about Port-au-Prince. It had been passed from one to another before we
made port that the "Hotel Bellevue" was the _summum bonum_ of Haïti.
Thither, never doubting, we faced about at high noon, following the
small brother of our lustrous Creole beauty, and we found it, the Hotel
Bellevue, as did others.

Little Blue Ribbons, Sister, and I were placed--dumped into--three
waiting chairs on the white veranda. And then Daddy disappeared, with
others, all with the same air of confidence, to order dinner--it was to
be dinner, you know, for did not the card say: "_Table d'Hôte de 1 à 2
hs?_"--of course it did. And we all had those little cards and they were
all alike. They were our souvenirs.

Why the Hotel Bellevue hadn't any shade-trees in front; why it was so
glaringly hot and dusty and brazen-faced, we didn't see. Oh, yes! It was
on account of the "Bellevue"--out to the ocean! "_Dirigé par Fräulein
Stein_;" that was it. She didn't like trees; she wanted the "Bellevue."
She had chopped down the trees--we knew she had. "_Dirigé par Fräulein
Stein_"--we didn't care for Fräulein Stein at all.

Some one on the other side of the veranda drops down an awning, and we
drop the awning on our side. Blue Ribbons takes off her hat, and Sister
wonders what keeps Daddy so long. I think of Fräulein Stein. She's in
there, of course; that's why he's so long. That's why all the other men
stay so. She is another Circe.

Here he comes. He looks mildly happy.

"It's ordered. I ordered it in German first, then French, and then
Fräulein Stein,"--but there he hesitated.

"Yes, it's Fräulein Stein, of course," I reply. "What did she have to
say?"

"No, it wasn't Fräulein Stein at all," he answers, "it was Fräulein
Stein's manager; he's a Norwegian, so of course he speaks English
fluently."

"What did you order?" Sister asks. Then Daddy looked a bit sad.

"I couldn't order just what I thought you'd like of course, because they
didn't have it, but I did the best I could. Let me see--I think the
first was sardines. I thought after the bananas you'd need a kind of
appetiser, so I ordered sardines first, and some other stuff,--and
turkey."

"Turkey? Oh, Daddy, this is not Thanksgiving Day!"

"No, it's not Thanksgiving, but there was something said about turkey,
and I thought we might as well have what the others ordered."

We didn't think we cared much for turkey, but we weren't hungry enough
to argue, so we let the bill of fare go at that, and started out to
investigate the premises. Ever since we had been at the Hotel Bellevue,
we were unconsciously aware of curious droning sounds. We scarcely
noticed them at first, for they were not aggressive,--they were merely
persistent, like the sleepy humming of insects. They fitted in with the
white light and the hot stillness of noonday. But, after waiting for
Daddy, and thinking about Fräulein Stein, the sounds became more
distinct; they grew more insistent. The people on the other side of the
veranda quieted down, and there wasn't so much chattering as there had
been when we first arrived at the Hotel Bellevue. No, it was much
quieter. As the voices ceased with the spreading of the scorching
noonday light on the dry walks and the denuded garden,--its few, stiff
little lonesome shrubs gasping for water,--the sounds grew to a positive
delirium.

We stole out into the "_jardin d'agrément_." If I could only glorify
that back yard I would,--indeed, from my heart I would! But "_es hat
nicht sollen sein_!" It was not La Bellevue there! Oh, no! It was not!
There was a little gutter running through the yard, and there was some
slimy liquid in the gutter which might once have been water. But the
ducks didn't mind; they waddled around in the puddles just the same. By
the cook-house, a Witch of Endor was browning some coffee over an open
fire. Out of respect to the cook, I say she was browning the coffee. She
was indeed browning the coffee with a vengeance; she was burning it
black--fairly to cinders. Around with the ducks was _the_ turkey. He was
the master of that back yard, but alas! he was having his last fling! He
did not know it, nor did we; we knew soon after.

[Illustration: Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.

A WEST INDIAN AFRICA

Port-au-Prince, Haïti]

But what right had we to be in the back yard of the Hotel Bellevue? If
we didn't find the gutter agreeable to our over-refined sensibilities
why not go where it was "Belle"? But there were those sounds and we were
keen on the trail. We should not be thwarted by a flock of waddling
ducks. It was evidently from a neighbour's the sound came, so, picking
our steps carefully over a heap of rubbish and broken bottles and
discarded ducks' feet and hens' feathers, we peeped through a crack in
the high board fence and saw in the neighbouring yard one portion of a
family party; another crack revealed more, and, putting them together,
we counted some eight or ten very serious people sitting around a large
oval table, singing a curious chant,--if one dare call it such,--some of
them; the others were shaking curious little gourd rattles in time with
the monotonous recitative. The "Witch of Endor" tells us that the
neighbours are celebrating the birth of twins. Deliver us from triplets!

How far are we from the voodoo and all the savagery of Africa?

There was a glory in that hotel back yard after all. But, to tell the
truth, we didn't discover it until some one behind us, black and
half-naked, made a murderous assault upon the turkey. He, the turkey,
screaming awful protest, flew into the merciful arms of a
breadfruit-tree which hung its great leaves in a sadly apologetic
manner over the scene of coffee-burning and waddling ducks. To stand
under a breadfruit-tree which was doing its noblest to forget its
environment--well, one ought to forgive much, and we did, until we
learned that even the breadfruit wasn't ready done--it had to be cooked.

At last the cloth was laid and the table set, and Little Blue Ribbons
unfolded her napkin, and we all did the same, for Little Blue Ribbons
seldom makes a mistake. She is a proper child, and had hitherto fed on
proper meat. Then we chatted and sat there,--and sat there and chatted.
Presently, when we had talked it all over,--the market and the Creole
beauty, and everything else,--we stopped talking and just sat there
thinking. Sister had some bananas left, and she graciously suggested
that fruit before dinner was in good form, so we each took a banana and
sat longer.

There was nor sight nor sound of Fräulein Stein, nor of any one
belonging to the Stein family. We and our fellow travellers were the
silent occupants of the high-ceilinged dining-room. Noon had long since
gone with the morning,--one o'clock, and still no signs of life.
One-thirty,--from out the silent courtyard, after an hour and a half
waiting; from out the back kitchen, near the duck puddle and the
breadfruit-tree, there appeared a negro in solemn state. He had been
dressing. I suppose he was the one we had been waiting for. He wore an
ancient long-tailed coat with brass buttons, a white waistcoat, and very
clean trousers--and shoes, too--and a flower in his buttonhole, and he
carried in his hand,--yes, dear ones, he carried in his hand (only in
one hand, for the other one was needed for purpose of state)--he carried
in his hand one small plate of sardines, our appetisers, which had been
neatly arranged in two tiny rows of six each. A menial of lower order
followed with the bread, enough for one hungry man, and it fell to the
first and nearest table. We were hopelessly distant from the sardines
and the bread. The solemn head waiter avoided us. We thought we must
have offended him. The sardines continued to pass us. Soon a dish of
smoking yams was carried on beyond. We knew then that his Majesty had us
in disfavour. The "spirit of '76" arose; we would have sardines or
perish. We raided the serving-room. Sister captured a whole box of
sardines and I a loaf of bread. We waylaid a boy with coffee, took the
pot, hunted up sugar, ran into a black woman, who was handing in a few
boiled yams, seized all she had and sat down to the finest meal ever
spread: yams, sardines, bread, and black coffee. At two-thirty, a faint
odour of turkey hovered over the dining-room, but we didn't care for
turkey; we had said so from the first, and besides, we had known that
turkey in his glory. Sardines we had not despised, and we had sardines.
And then the bananas helped out, and so did the bread and the bitter
coffee. I would not have had the dinner other than it was--no, not for
all the waiting; it was all so in keeping with the whole crazy country.

Fräulein Stein never appeared. I do not think there was a Fräulein
Stein, or ever had been. She was just made up, along with the "_table
d'hôte_" and the "_chambres garnies_" and the "_douche_" and the
"_jardin d'agrément_." But in a feminine way we laid it up against
Fräulein Stein,--that meal and the trees,--and we always shall. For
who else do you think could have cut down the trees?

[Illustration: COURTYARD OF THE AMERICAN LEGATION

Haïti]

There seemed to be a sort of stupefaction over the whole establishment.
I know the poor creatures did the very best they knew how, but they
didn't know how,--that was the trouble. It didn't occur to them to cook
a lot of yams at one time; they cooked enough for one or two, and when
those were ready, they cooked some more for somebody else. You can
imagine the length of time required for such a meal. But then there's
nothing much else to do in Haïti, and why not be willing to wait for
dinner?

Out of respect to the courtly "_pharmacien_" and to our lovely
Proserpine, there's not to be one word more about the "Hotel Bellevue,"
and not a word more about anything else in poor little Port-au-Prince;
but I could not help wishing that some day dear old Uncle Sam would come
along and give Haïti a good cleaning up, and whip them into line for a
time at least; but Heaven deliver us from ever trying to assimilate or
govern such a degenerate and heterogeneous people. Alas, for that ideal
Black Republic, where every negro was to show himself a man and a
brother!

As we were leaving for ship, the Haïtien daily paper was issued--a
curious little two-page sheet, some eighteen inches square, printed in
French, _Le Soir_--and in it appeared this pitiful paragraph, which
seemed in a way to be the hopeless lament of Haïti's remnant for the sad
condition of things in this beautiful island:

"The Americans who arrived this morning are visiting our city. But what
will they see here to admire? Where are our monuments, our squares, our
well-watered streets? We blush with shame! They can carry back with them
only bad impressions; there is nothing to please or charm them, except
our sunny sky, our starry nights, and the exuberance of nature."

Is it possible that the writer of those lines had forgotten the Lady
Proserpine?

[Illustration: A MILL FOR SAWING MAHOGANY

Haïti]




CHAPTER III.

SANTO DOMINGO


I.

"There's nothing in the least to be afraid of, Mother, nothing in the
least. Why, see, even his Excellency doesn't mind." It was Sister who
spoke, but even so there was a kind of unearthly qualm creeping over me
as I made my way cautiously down the ladder and waited until a generous
swell from the big outside sent the ship's boat within stepping
distance, and then, with a jump, made for the vacancy next to Little
Blue Ribbons. When one is on dry land, fear of the water seems so
unreasoning that the timid soul speaks of it in a half-apologetic
manner; but never yet when landing in an open boat in an exposed
harbour, where the mighty roll of the ocean lifts and drops and there
seems but a veil between the great world above and the great world
beneath--never yet have I been able to take the step from steamer to
boat with any real sensation of pleasure.

We had been skirting the southern shore of the great island of Haïti or
Santo Domingo since sundown the night before, and at daybreak the word
flew around that we were off Domingo City. We must have left all the
sunshine with the happy darkies in Port-au-Prince, for, as we glanced
from our port-holes, we saw nothing but a tumble of leaden water under a
gray sky--just water and sky. Domingo City lay to the other side.

Once ready for the day and out on deck, we were met by a gloomy world.
Heavy banks of clouds piled on one another as if determined to hide the
sun. There were no dancing, rollicking little harbour waves that
morning; they were ugly and sullen ground swells, and told of heavy
weather somewhere by their grumbling, threatening heavings. A stiff wind
blew, for we had come to the region of the "Northeast Trades," and it
was no laughing matter to lower the boats and land us safely, especially
with such clumsy boats' crews. There is practically no harbour at Santo
Domingo, the capital of _la Republica Dominicana_; that is, no harbour
for deep-keeled craft. The Ozama River affords a safe inner harbour for
light-draught vessels, but on account of a bar at the entrance to this
charming stream,--upon whose shores the historic old city slumbers,--we
were forced to anchor in the open roadstead and take the ship's boats
for land.

The fear which had so troubled me when we first left the solid decks of
our good ship was soon forgotten as we approached the City of the Holy
Sunday,--Santo Domingo,--fairy godmother at the christening of Western
civilisation, the first to feel the pulse of those undying souls whose
spirits spanned the centuries to come!

I recall how I looked with all my eyes and with all my soul at the
wondrous picture opening before me as we swung into the river entrance,
and wondered if I could keep its beauty for ever. Could it be more
lovely, more enchanting, more mysterious under a white sun shining from
out a motionless blue heaven? Who shall say? Old! Old! Kissed by the
winds of centuries, Santo Domingo rests upon the brow of a verdant
plateau, and stretches its sinuous arms dreamily beyond the hills on the
shore. Great red rocks, in whose rifts glossy ferns and graceful vines
have sought safe harbour, break the roll of the sea into a thousand
glistening clouds of spray, enveloping the summit of the cliff in a
translucent mist. Like a weather-worn, decrepit, but stately warrior,
the ancient fort, with massive towers and mossy turrets and bastions and
broken walls, still holds its guard over the harbour; and as we passed
from the sea into the placid Ozama River, the enchanting view of Santo
Domingo arose in full sight. Cloaked in a faintly shimmering mist, under
a gray, tumultuous sky, the ancient city rose to greet us as a dreamy,
nebulous siren of the sea. Crumbling ruins of ancient stone stairways
led from the fort through a water-gate to the river; down those mossy
flights I could all but see a gay troop of Spanish cavaliers approaching
their quaint old galleons moored hard by. Truly it was an enchanted
city; asleep, untouched by the hand of man since the days of its first
great builder; asleep, moss-grown, hoary, throbbing still with the
dying passion of mediævalism.

[Illustration: THE OLD FORT AT THE RIVER ENTRANCE

Santo Domingo]


II.

Contrary to our prearranged plan, we decided, upon landing, to engage a
carriage. Just why, I hardly knew, but there was a subtle power at work
in the mind of one of our party, and although it has never been hinted
at since then, in calmly going over that carriage-hiring I think I begin
to read the riddle. We had left our French at Haïti, and this was our
first experiment on this voyage with Spanish, and I suspect some of us
were anxious to see how Cervantes's language--_la idioma
Castellana_--would work when it came to such a common-place proceeding
as the hiring of a carriage.

We came off with colours flying, and took seats in a vehicle made some
twenty-five or fifty years ago (quite modern as compared with those of
Port-au-Prince), bumped up the steep stony hill, under an old archway,
and had our first glimpse of the solid Spanish architecture of Santo
Domingo. Everything was interesting; the balconies upheld by graceful
supports of wrought iron; the neat appearance of the low-roofed, white
and blue washed houses; the ever-beautiful palms and banana groves seen
in vistas across the river; even our driver was a source of interest,
for I expended my entire vocabulary of Spanish--few words indeed--upon
that youth, all to no purpose. All he did was to look dazed and answer,
"_Si, señora_" to everything, hit or miss, until we came to the
Cathedral, when, just to make it right with my conscience for having
been the innocent cause of all his awful lies, I asked him, pointing to
the building, which could be nothing in the mind of a sane man but a
cathedral, if that was the Cathedral, and he said: "_Si, señora_," and I
felt relieved.

[Illustration: A CLOSER VIEW OF THE OLD FORT

Santo Domingo]

No description can convey to your mind an adequate impression of the
beauty of this wonderful old cathedral, for one needs colour, colour,
colour, everywhere for its proper setting. It is built of the yellowest
of soft porous stone, to which time has bequeathed a luminosity, the
brilliancy of which no language can rightly picture. It is purely
Spanish in its style, depending for its beauty entirely on its symmetry
of form and not on extraneous ornamentation; it is built rather low to
withstand frequent earthquakes, and from its solidity and simplicity
and directness of construction has a charm which few of the later
Spanish cathedrals possess. Time has laid her kindly hands upon this
temple of God gently--ever so gently, and through many a lifetime has
fulfilled the priestly office of consecration.

I sat down in the shade, for, as we left the carriage, a big cloud
tumbled over by mistake and the sun laughingly plunged headlong through
the mist before the quarrelsome elements had time to gainsay. With
Little Blue Ribbons close by, and Sister and our Spanish Student
disappearing within the arches of the Cathedral, I sat there on the base
of one of the great pillars at the doorway, and filled my eyes with the
beauty of the strong, graceful arches overhead, in whose time-worn
curves hung the ancient bells, beautiful bronze bells, now green with
age, still pealing forth the praise of God as in the days of Columbus's
followers.

Down the weather-worn and sun-ripened sides of the Cathedral were long
streaks of black, like the silent tears of centuries, shed for glories
now no more. Was it not enough to rest there, where one could look at
the bells and wait for the quiver of the long tongues, ringing out the
hour of mass, and catch the thrill of the mottled gray and blue sky
sifting its mellow light through the ancient towers? There are some
things so absolutely satisfying that it seems an arrant sacrilege to be
discontent and want for more. But Little Blue Ribbons, with the
impatience of childhood, began to tug at my hand, and the dear old bells
must have gone asleep, for with all our longing they hung there covered
by their deep, green silence, and Little Blue Ribbons said we would have
our waiting all for nothing. For nothing is it, dear one, to forget the
stress of living for awhile, and let one's spirit drop into the peace of
a sleeping bell?


III.

We found that the interior of the Cathedral had a very new, clean face,
having been recently "restored" and whitewashed; thus being out of
harmony with the venerable exterior; however, some one remarked, it was
"gratifying to see that the Dominicans appreciate their ancient
monument." That complacent remark struck the ear awry, like the whine of
a deacon's report at a Sunday-school convention. Appreciate? Why, the
people of Santo Domingo worship this spot! It is the one place of
interest to them; it is the one thing they ask the stranger if he has
seen; it is the centre of their life and love,--that ancient pile of
yellow glory,--for are not the ashes of their great _Cristobal Colon_
guarded there? Would that we Americans had any relic we held as
sacredly!

[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AND THE STATUE OF COLUMBUS

Santo Domingo]

So I suppose we ought not to quarrel with the Dominicans over the new
coat of whitewash, for they meant it well, but we can at least wish they
hadn't cleaned house so thoroughly. Within those walls rest the bones of
Columbus after their many disinterments and post-mortem wanderings--so
it is claimed; but whether these are the bones of Columbus, or of some
one else, who can say? What does it matter? Somewhere about one hundred
years ago,--in 1795,--'tis said, when this island was ceded to the
French, the Spaniards took Columbus's bones back to Spain. Later these
mortal fragments were returned to Santo Domingo, in accordance with his
expressed wish that they finally be buried in this his beloved
birthplace and funeral-pyre of his cherished hopes in the New World;
which wish had been once before honoured in the first removal of the
remains to the then Spanish colony. Sealed in a leaden casket they were
imbedded in masonry under the stone floor of the cathedral chancel, and
there was no attempt to disturb them until about 1878, when they were
_presumably_ removed to Havana to be re-interred there, and, as the
Spaniards stoutly maintain, again disinterred from their resting-place
in the cathedral at Havana and hurried away to Spain just before the
American occupation of Cuba, there to receive the sad honour of a costly
mausoleum in Seville. But a few years ago a second box was discovered,
buried fast in ancient masonry and cement, about three feet from the
place in which the first one was found; and this leaden box, the
Dominicans claim, holds the real bones of the real Columbus, for they
stoutly maintain that the other box contained the bones _Diego Colon_,
nephew to Columbus, or, as some say, his son,--not _Cristobal Colon_,
our Columbus--and the inscription on a silver plate found inside
seems to bear out the authenticity of the later discovery, as does also
the location of this second casket and the pains taken to render it
secure. Whosesoever bones they were, I was in the proper frame of mind
to venerate them, and it was with a feeling of deep awe and pathos that
I stood before the much-disputed leaden box, now enshrined in gold and
silver, and covered by a very gorgeous white marble tomb, newly made in
Barcelona. The box is about a foot and a half long, one foot high, and
one foot wide--rather a small space for so great a man as Columbus, but
then,--

[Illustration: Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.

RUINS OF CASTLE BUILT BY DIEGO COLON

Santo Domingo]

    "Imperial Cæsar, dead, and turn'd to clay,
     Might stop a hole to keep the wind away."

And so the Dominicans had a very beautiful and lofty and modern monument
built in Spain and brought across the water to San Domingo, as a fitting
shrine for their great treasure. With many minarets and dainty arches
cut from snowy marble, and ornate with carvings and gilt, it stands more
as a monument to the faithful loyalty of the Dominicans than to the
memory of that valiant discoverer. He was a world soul. He belongs to
all time, as do all the great. The march of Western civilisation is his
monument. The Dominicans plan to erect a building which they deem
worthier this work of gold and marble than is the sad old cathedral
Columbus founded,--worthier the sacred leaden box; but could there be a
more fitting sanctuary for the great Genoese, than within these ancient
walls whose beginnings he directed and which rose after death in direct
fulfilment of his ambition?

We found built into the wall a huge cross, rudely hewn of wood, which
the stories say was set in a clearing in a little plain by Columbus,
before the year 1500, to mark the place where his great church should
stand. This primitive cross was afterward built into the wall itself.
How constantly memories of the great discoverer hover about these walls;
for it was in Santo Domingo that Columbus was imprisoned by his jealous
rivals, and thence at last he was taken in chains to Spain, where he
died, and hither again came his weary bones.

[Illustration: WHERE COLUMBUS PLANTED THE CROSS

Santo Domingo]

How pathetic, yet how characteristic, is this grim example of the
Spaniard's reverence for the past, even if that past may have been so
cruelly dishonoured! Columbus, the poor Genoese dreamer; Columbus, still
the crazy explorer, but upheld by royal hands; Columbus, the fêted and
flattered discoverer of new worlds, giving to Spain greater riches than
she dreamed; Columbus, the victim of jealous gossip and intrigue, bound
in chains and finally dying,--broken and disgraced. Columbus, in ashes
these four hundred years, guarded in pomp, and convoyed by great ships
in this final retreat, step by step, from the empire he founded! For
with each successive loss of her rich holdings in the New World, Spain
has tried to carry with her in her retreat, these precious relics, until
the name Columbus, framed in dishonour, disaster, and defeat, has become
to her almost a pain. How tragic that Spain should strain to her heart
with fierce jealousy, as the last but most precious remnant left of all
her American possessions, the few crumbling bones of Columbus!

We left the Cathedral reluctantly, but as the day was moving rapidly on
we were anxious to see as much as possible of the city; so we reëntered
the carriage and drove to the _Correo_ to post letters and get some
money changed. While Daddy was in the post-office, I endeavoured, with
my four Spanish words, to make our driver understand that I wanted him
to move along to the corner, so that we might look out over the river,
but he only smiled and said: "_Si, señora_," and went on putting up the
rubber curtains to keep out the unexpected shower that had blown up from
nowhere. So I sat there in despair, for I did want to get that view, but
I did not want to get wet. At that moment, seeing my predicament, a
gentleman approached the driver and told him just what to do, and then
disappeared into the post-office. When the Spanish Student returned, he
was accompanied by my kindly interpreter, to whom we were presented.

"Sister," says the smiling Daddy, "this is Señor Alfredo P---- A----,
private secretary to the President, and he has most kindly offered to
show us about the city." We all bow to the señor, and I wonder if he is
really the private secretary, or a private humbug, waiting around to
ensnare us. Shame upon my suspicion! May that moment of doubt be for
ever fruitless in the process of my gradual regeneration!

Señor Alfredo was one of the handsomest men I had ever seen. And this I
say not in the enthusiasm of a first meeting, but after carefully
weighing my words. Señor Alfredo was dark, and our man blond, so there
could be no comparison between dissimilar types and no cause for
jealousy, and then I said that the señor was _one_ of the handsomest.
That "_one of the_" should make all the difference in the world. The
señor was simply one of the procession of nature's adornments in which
you are marching. There, now, may I go on, and may I say just what I
wish of the señor without offence?

The señor had been educated in New York City, and his English was most
charming; it had the grace of a rich Spanish accent, and the correctness
of a scholar. I hesitate to tell you of the señor's charms, lest you
think them over-abundant,--impossible in any one man, and you might not
enjoy the day in old Domingo, and that would be an unhappy state, truly.

The señor's first question was: "Have you seen the Cathedral?" Yes, we
had seen it in our way, but possibly not in his. Then he dismisses the
disappointed coachman, and we follow the señor again to the worshipped
temple, and have its wonders revealed to us by one who knew every stone
in its construction. After long prowling around, through cloisters and
shrines, and after hunting up the place in the chancel where those poor
old bones were disinterred, and carefully comparing the former
hiding-places of each of the disputed caskets, we leave the cathedral
and wander about Domingo City. The señor guides us, not at our request,
but of his own free will, to all the places of interest in the city; and
then to the old fort which we had seen on our arrival. I should have
been quite satisfied to have stayed there all day, looking from the
massy turrets out to sea, but the señor was solicitous that we should go
about with the officer in command of the fort, and see everything of
interest. Old as it is, it is still used by the army; the native
military school and the naval academy both being within its walls. The
smart-looking men presented arms as we passed from the gateway into the
street again, and we took pleasure in telling the commandant how much
better his troops appeared than the ridiculous Haïtien soldiery. This
seemed to please both of our friends, for the Dominicans apparently have
a feeling of contempt for their neighbours of the Negro Republic, and
rightly, too, judging from what we saw.

[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE FORT AND MILITARY SCHOOL

Santo Domingo]

Then, we walked and walked and walked, up one narrow street and down
another, catching numerous glimpses of most entrancing gardens through
the half-way opened doors. We asked for the daily paper, and were taken
at once to the office of the _Listin Diario_, whose editor was the
brother of Señor P---- A----. He and our Spanish Student had, to them,
an interesting conversation about the political situation in Santo
Domingo and in Venezuela; and after having promised to dine with us on
the boat at six o'clock, we continued our walk in and about and all
around, until, much to our surprise, we were taken into a cool, big
courtyard, up a wide flight of worn stone steps into the señor's home.
There we met his wife and children, listened to beautiful native dances
sympathetically played on the piano by the señor; we rocked in the
ever-present Vienna bent-wood chair, talked to the parrot, played with
the baby, and drank cocoanut milk from the green cocoanut, and lived to
drink from many more. The cocoanut, when used for milk by these Southern
people, is cut quite green, before the solid meat has formed and when
all is liquid within, and is said to be most healthful. Of our party,
the adventurous man and children liked it very much, but the cautious
woman a very little. Then we made our _adieux_, not without the promise,
however, that the señor would meet us at three o'clock for the trip up
the Ozama River in the ship's boats.

All day the clouds were reeling heavily in bulky, black heaps, now and
then dropping down upon our innocent heads torrents of spattering rain.
But we were not to be discomfited by a rain-shower, for were we not
prepared? We left the ship with but one umbrella, the white one with the
green lining, but as we bade the señor "_Adios_," a sudden shower called
forth his best silk umbrella. He was insistent, and there was nothing to
do but for Daddy to tuck Sister under his wing, accepting the señor's
offer, and for Little Blue Ribbons to trot along by my side, under the
Haïtien umbrella. And the green lining proved fast green; it did not
run, not a particle!

[Illustration: LOOKING ACROSS THE PLAZA

Santo Domingo]

By three o'clock, Domingo City was a veritable _Port Tarascon_, and it
seemed that Daudet must have been here before he wrote of his poor
drenched French _émigrés_. The rain still fell. It ran down the streets
anywhere it pleased; it dripped off the ruined roof of Diego's Palace;
it scampered down the awning of the German Legation; it stood in little
pools on the terrace overlooking the river; it trickled down the face of
the timeless old sun-dial, and made the long seams on its face dark and
wet, as if from tears.

What bliss if we could only have set our watches by the hour told on the
Dominican sun-dial! But there was no sun and consequently no time.

I have an inspiration! It has just come to me. Now my course is plain;
now I know what I shall do with the little girls. I have often longed to
obliterate for them the thought of time. I have wanted them to grow into
a feeling of possession of all the time there ever can be,--countless
ages and ages of time, with never a shadow of hurry lurking about; with
never a doubt but that the days will be long enough in which to live
their fullest measure of happiness. I shall invoke the aid of the gods,
in whose arms rests so peacefully this "Island of the Blest," and they
shall build for me an enchanted palace somewhere,--perhaps not just
here, but somewhere. I think I shall leave that to the little girls, but
it shall be an enchanted palace, all overgrown with sweetbrier and moss,
and roundabout shall be a garden--a dear garden, with violets and lilies
and arbutus and anemones--and then the trees,--there shall be no end of
them!--maple and ash, and slender birch and elm, and linden and--but it
seems to me I hear you wondering that we should leave out the palms and
the breadfruit and banana and citron. I know it does not seem just as it
should be, but I am afraid, if we had the palms and the breadfruit, we'd
never feel really at home in our palace, and, of course, we must feel at
home even in an enchanted palace. We could have two palaces if we wanted
to, and have the palms in the company palace, and the cool, sweet maples
we could have for our very own. Yes, that is it! That's what we'll do!

In the midst of the garden, we will have a Dominican sun-dial, an exact
reproduction of this one. I shall make a sketch of it before we move a
step further, and it shall he chipped and worn and sun-baked and
tear-stained, and it shall look centuries old. Then there must be a
Dominican sky; half-sun and half-shade. And then, don't you see, the
little girls will never know the time at all,--only just as the clouds
run off for a frolic. And I shall arrange an indefinite supply of such
weather, and that's just where we'll all live. Yes--Daddy and all the
dear ones, and it will be such a relief not to be obliged to wind our
watches.

"Mother!" said Sister, coming up back of me and peeping under the white
umbrella which Little Blue Ribbons was holding resolutely over my head
while I sketched; "Mother! what is it you're drawing?"

"Do you need to ask? Can't you see it's the sun-dial?"

"Oh! I thought it was the boy out there in the rain."


IV.

What can the señor do without his best umbrella? Will he take the black
umbrella of his wife's aunt? No, he will not take the black umbrella of
his wife's aunt, dear Mr. Otto, he has taken the umbrella of his wife's
sister, we will say, to adhere to tradition; but, to tell the truth, I
could never say whose umbrella the señor borrowed, but when he appeared
he was really so beaming under the dark covering over him, that I quite
forgot to ask him whose umbrella it was.

Ah! what would the señor think if he should ever read these words? Would
he forswear the friendship? We should sincerely beg forgiveness, for we
would sooner never see the walls of Domingo again than to lose the
señor's good-will.

[Illustration: ALONG THE OZAMA

Santo Domingo]

The excursion up the Ozama was a world of delight from beginning to end.
The Ozama is one of God's most perfect little rivers, deep and rather
narrow, winding through an enchanting country. The shore is outlined for
miles by never-ending mangroves, and on the higher upper banks are the
breadfruit, and palms, and a world of unknown trees and fruits. Had
there been no palms, no breadfruit or mangroves, it would have been
enough joy to me to know that up this self-same river in centuries
long since dead, there had swept the doughty keels of Columbus's crazy
little ships. But the Spanish Student was not so easily satisfied; he
wanted to know things; how much mahogany and ebony and _lignum vitæ_ was
gotten from the outlaying country, and what sort of dyewoods they
exported. The señor gave much valuable information, but not much more
than the natives themselves, who came gliding down the stream in
dugouts, having in tow one or two or three mahogany logs. Who says that
all the true Santo Domingo mahogany was cut generations ago? There was a
constant and silent passing of these dark craft, for the most part with
but a single occupant. Sometimes a woman in the bow, half-buried by a
cargo of plantains, bending over a pot of some sort, would be cooking on
an improvised camp-fire built on earth above the plantains; and thus
busy--one at the fire, the other at the paddle--she and her black mate
would slip along out of sight under the dark mysterious shadows of the
mangroves, closely hugging the shore.

Not far from the city, the señor pointed to a mighty tree, one of the
most gigantic of the tropics, a _ceiba_, to which it is said Columbus
made fast his ships. There was no reason to doubt the statement, and,
besides, it is so much pleasanter to believe such natural things than to
be for ever doubting. And why should not Columbus have made his ships
thus fast? The _ceiba_ looked a thousand years old. Who knows but that
it is even older?

A little way down the stream and closer to the city, there was a spring
of sweet cool water, and above it a stately canopy of stone, built by
Bartholomew Columbus,--Christopher's brother,--and called "The Fountain
of Columbus."

Oh, such a day, under the rocking, tumbling clouds, ever moving, ever
changing, moulding, blending from black to gray and billowy white, under
fitful showers and sudden baths of sunlight! It was a dream day of
sleeping bells and timeless dials and ruined towers and enchanted
palaces, with the bones of poor old Columbus beating time to the hopes
of the ambitious San Dominicans of to-day.

Evening came, and we were at dinner on the boat with our delightful
friend from the shore, drinking to the prosperity of the Dominican
Republic, and to the hope that Señor P---- A---- might live to be
President of his beloved country. But, alas, how many Presidents they
have to have in these Spanish "republics" to round out the tally with
Destiny!

It seemed to me that, for my part, if all Spaniards were as gracious, as
hospitable and genuine as our new-found friend, there would never have
been a Spanish-American War.

And so next day we sailed away, leaving the City of the Holy Sunday
wrapped in peace and good-will; but who can tell the day or hour when
the land may again be devastated by revolution?




CHAPTER IV.

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO


I.

[Illustration: LOOKING TO SEA FROM SAN JUAN

Puerto Rico

Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.]

We were creeping in toward the entrance of the harbour of San Juan,
Puerto Rico, waiting for the pilot, who had sighted us afar off. It was
when almost at a standstill that our brown-skinned pilot in his open
lug-sail boat came alongside and sprang for our rope ladder with the
nimble agility of his prehistoric progenitors. He left two small boys,
one at the tiller aft and one in the bow of the boat hanging on to a
line dropped them from about midships of our steamer. The pilot
continued shouting at the boys as he disappeared over our heads to where
the captain stood waiting on the bridge; but things did not seem to go
well with the boys below, for instead of at once assuming command of our
ship the pilot again turned his attention to the boys. He now followed
up his first harangue by a supplement in very angry tones, evidently
out of patience with the poor little fellows, who, much excited, could
not seem to keep their boat from sheering at a dangerous angle, with her
bow against the side of our ship. A quick flash of resentment toward
that dusky pilot spread from one to the other of us as we saw how
panic-stricken the boys were, and how as our ship suddenly put on a
bigger head of steam the little boat alongside had become unmanageable
and was in imminent danger of being sucked under our side. To prove that
he was powerless to prevent disaster, after incessant yells from his
father, the lad in the stern-sheets of the boat jumped to his feet and
flung out with tragic despair his two hands, in each of which he held up
the fragments of a broken tiller. Then in all the languages of our ship
the boys are howled at to let go. Already their narrow boat is beginning
to careen dangerously against the side of our moving steamer. Not a
moment too soon they let go the rope, and their excited, high-pitched
voices sound strangely out of place as they rapidly drift astern of us
in the open sea. The pilot had evidently assured his boys that he would
look after them, for within a few rods of the harbour entrance a
loitering sail is hailed. To our tremendous relief we follow the rescuer
until we see that a tow is in progress, and then we feel better.

As we approach the harbour, and at the entrance dodge into a channel
between yellow reefs plainly visible through the clear water, it is no
small thing to see our dear Stars and Stripes peacefully waving over
that relic of mediæval Spain, the venerable Morro of San Juan on the
bold headlands to our left; its wide-spreading fortifications, gray with
centuries and fast going to decay, running in walls and terraces far
above the sea. We throw our whole soul into the soft folds of that flag
with a deep sense of joy. There are among our company some with whom as
loyal Americans we cannot but feel restraint, owing partly to the
whisperings afloat that the aliens are envoys from his Majesty the
Emperor of Germany, bent on a mission not altogether that of pleasure.
However that may be, we are all the more moved to enthusiasm over our
flag when we are conscious of the lack of that sentiment among the
Germans. So when we are near enough to the fort to hear the wild cheers
of welcome issuing from every parapet and tower of that old pile, we
know no hounds and answer the welcome as you would have done had you
been there. Spontaneously "The Star Spangled Banner," started by the
boys on the fort, finds a hearty echo from our ship, and my eyes are
blurred so that the restless, shouting, singing boys on shore look dim
and indistinct. Yes, we are coming home. Uncle Sam owns Puerto Rico, and
I am happy to feel that here in the West Indies he has asserted his rank
among the nations of the world, and intends to make this colonial home a
sweet clean place for all of his children who wander upon Southern seas.
Some day this fair harbour will be filled with ships flying the Stars
and Stripes, and again our merchant vessels will be doing their rightful
share of the West Indian commerce.

The way in which I found my love for those soldier boys expanding was
really wonderful. The sight of those old blue flannel shirts, those
faded Khaki breeches, those tossing felt hats aroused within me in this
strange tropical island unexpected waves of patriotism. There sprung at
once a dangerous leak in my affections, and had it not been for the
quiet pressure upon my shoulder of a strong hand I so well knew, who can
tell what might have happened? Even so, there was not a boy upon the
island but I could have mothered with my whole heart, and I could not,
however persistently that hand still lingered, quite stifle the upheaval
of that undying mother instinct.

Although aware that Uncle Sam was fully alive to the great dower that
this island alliance would bring him, I must still believe that his
choice was not a little influenced by the actual charms of Puerto Rico
herself: that, however much he, a man of some years, might appear
indifferent to the allurements of lovely women, he is still like the
rest of his sex chivalrously bent upon fresh conquests. In this case let
us rejoice that he has been so fortunate, and that so pretty a face has
brought so much of real worth.

Although, womanlike, acknowledging a deeper interest in our troops than
in anything else, I could not be indifferent to the city of San Juan as
we slipped past the reef at the entrance into the wide expanse of
harbour and dropped anchor opposite the beautiful landing quay. _El
Puerto Rico del San Juan Bautista_ (The Rich Port of St. John the
Baptist), as the Spaniards centuries before had christened her, opened
before us like a bespangled fan, and threw from her glittering white
walls the swaying efflorescence of stately palms. From the ancient fort
on the headland to the _Casa Blanca_ and the city beyond, it was a
progression of delicious sights and sounds.


II.

Has it ever impressed you how rarely nature appeals to one's sense of
humour? She brings us infinite delights, but seldom cultivates in us our
faculty of laughing. But down here off Puerto Rico, she for once leaves
her beaten track of sobriety and indulges in the most extravagant
caprices. How she ever thought out such a ridiculous line of hills none
but Father Time could tell you; here her centuries of bottled-up giggles
have burst forth, and she has made herself the most outlandish head-gear
she could contrive, and here she stands, caught in the act of being
silly. From this distance I should say the hills are barren, save for
now and then a palm, which, dotted irregularly over the epidemic of
peaks, gives the hills the forlorn look of a mole on an old woman's
cheek. There is every size of these jagged, saw-tooth peaklets jumping
up in the air like so many scarecrows, and when our ship swings to her
anchor and leaves us broadside to Puerto Rico's shore, the little girls
and I enter into the joke and laughingly wonder how it ever happened.

Then to match the distant landscape out came the Puerto Rican shore
boats with ridiculous little open hen-coop cabins aft, much like the
funny "summer cabins" affected by some New Jersey catboats--only more
so. There were no end of fine modern launches of all sorts darting about
us, some of them waiting for passengers, and others from our ships in
the harbour bringing officers and ladies aboard, but Daddy would have
none of them. He and the little girls are already under a hen-coop in
one of the miserable little boats and nothing will do but I must go too.
I protest, but to no avail. The stiff shore breeze makes prompt decision
necessary, and I creep down under the coop an unwilling passenger; I
would so much rather have been in one of the puffy boats. So off we go
heeling well to the breeze as our funny, high-slung lateen sail drives
us shoreward at a great rate.

We were not alone under the hen-coop, for we had some Puerto Rican
musicians with us, and my qualms at the flying boat are actually
forgotten in the strange but fascinating music of those natives. They
carried not only the universal guitar of the usual form, but also a
funny little guitar not a quarter as big as the ordinary sort, and a
curious round gourd with shot or pebbles inside, which, attached to a
handle, they used as a rattle, and other gourds some eighteen inches
long, corrugated with many deep scratches, upon which they accented the
strong beat of the measure by scraping with a bit of wire in a most
dexterous manner. I can well imagine the contempt of some of our
European musicians for such music, but as for myself, although trained
in the most conservative of foreign schools, I could but acknowledge the
deep influence of these untutored artists, and yielded myself in
fascination to the weird rhythm of their music. Music to these peoples
is not a dreary taskmaster, as it is to many of their Northern brothers;
it is as necessary to them as is the outpouring sunlight, and they use
it with a freedom and comradeship and love which is unknown to us. My
senses are suffused with strange emotions of pleasure as I listen
dreamily to the lullings of the water, percolated through and through by
the cadences of low voices and the rhythmic repetition of single notes.
I was unreal to myself even after Captain B---- and his wife, friends
whom we half-hoped to meet in San Juan, had grasped our hands and led us
to an army coach near by.


III.

Instead of being the dumping-ground for all the garbage of the city and
the location for unsightly warehouses, the quay at San Juan is a perfect
delight. I happened to-day to turn to a precious volume of Washington
Irving's "Life of Columbus." While reading along I came across a letter
in which the valiant discoverer endeavours to bring to his king some
conception of the beauty of his newly found lands; saying that he fears
his Majesty may have reason to doubt the veracity of his statements, for
each new island surpasses in beauty the one before; in fact that one
could live there for ever. Time cannot efface the noble bearing of
Puerto Rico, and although far, far removed from the picture which met
the eyes of her early discoverers, she is to-day not only from the
standpoint of the picturesque, but from the practical aspect of
cleanliness and order, a place to which every American may turn with
pride.

[Illustration: BOAT LANDING AND MARINE BARRACKS, SAN JUAN

Puerto Rico

Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.]

To find upon landing a noble water-front finely paved, relieved by
grassy quadrangles in which choice varieties of palms are set with the
unfailing intuition of the true nature lover, places one at once _en
rapport_ with the best things of life. Why, why are we of the North so
blind to the soul's necessity for beauty? Why are we so dumbly
indifferent to that craving? If we but looked deeply enough into the
psychological influence of beauty, we would be forced to recognise man's
necessity for its expression in public places. There is no city among
the Spanish-speaking peoples but has its restfully attractive plaza,
varying in beauty as the wealth of the community permits--a playground
and a club-house and a concert-hall in one for all the people. And when
my mind reverts in unwilling retrospection to the innumerable hideous
and barren cities large and small of our United States, it seems to me
that we are hopelessly lost in the fog of the common-place. If we
Americans were a poor people, there might be palliating circumstances,
but we are not poor, we have more wealth than any people on earth, and
surely a republic should give its equal citizens all the beauty and
pleasure possible. We are merely blind, that is all. Pray God that our
eyes may be opened and that right soon!

In these islands the plaza, where the people live largely in the open
air, is the synonym for all that is congenial to the eye and soothing to
the ear, and this explains much of the enthusiasm which we starved
Northerners express when once within the satisfying influences of such
surroundings.

Captain B---- and his wife are graciously willing to wait our pleasure,
while we linger idly content, but we must not trespass too long upon
their indulgence; so we enter the coach and rumble up the steep narrow
streets after four lustrous army mules. Our driver, a native Puerto
Rican, speaks to the mules in English, and ready with the explanation
before I could form the question, Captain B---- says: "Yes, the boys use
English, because their mules were brought here from the States, and of
course they wouldn't understand if the boys spoke Spanish to them."
Stopping for the passage of an army freight wagon, it seemed very
comical to me to hear those Puerto Rican lads "gee-hawing" to the sleek
American mules.

If the politics of our American cities could be as well administered as
those of San Juan appear to be from the cleanliness and order of her
streets we would indeed have cause to rejoice. The streets of San Juan
were so clean that even the trailer of skirts might for once be forgiven
her lack of common decency. She could have walked the full length of San
Juan and not gathered up as much filth as she would in one block of one
of our Northern sidewalks. Such was the cleanliness of the place that
again and again we exclaim over the fine condition of the city; and
Captain B---- bore out our impression that Uncle Sam had done his
house-cleaning most effectively, and was now trying to maintain that
condition by educating a force of native police,--"_spigitys_," our
boys call them.

As we were going through the Plaza we saw a great crowd on the far side,
gathered about a regular American "trolley-car," and wondering at their
enthusiastic demonstrations, we were told that this was the first trip
of the first electric car in Puerto Rico--a great step toward becoming
Americanised.


IV.

We were in the Captain's hands, and although Sister and Daddy were
decorously unquestioning as to where we were going and what we were to
do when we got there, Little Blue Ribbons and I couldn't refrain from
asking, when we found ourselves clattering out of San Juan to the tattoo
of the hard little hoofs, if the Captain intended to drive us to Ponce?
"Oh, hardly, this evening," he laughingly replied. "I thought we would
merely take a spin out a way on the military road to give you a glimpse
of the country. The madam has planned a Puerto Rican dinner for you at
the Colonial, and afterward there is to be a concert on the Plaza."
"Simply fine," I said, "I do so enjoy trying the native bills of
fare" (but alas, for their after effects!).

[Illustration: THE FIRST TROLLEY CAR IN SAN JUAN

Puerto Rico]

The military road, a beautiful macadamised highway, swept through a
country whose surface was richly covered with broad pasture lands where
many cattle were grazing. The plains were fairly peppered with
palm-trees, which, owing to their long trunks and pluming tops,
interfered but little with the pasture beneath. The military road is
fringed by these noble trees, at least as far as we go, and although now
to us a necessary feature in the West Indian landscape, I never weary of
their aristocratic grace. We must have gone some miles when the madam
suggested our return. A crack of the whip, a vociferous shouting to the
mules, and the coach faces right about with military precision for San
Juan. With many a bewildering twist and turn through the upper town, we
reach the Morro headland, and are glad enough to leave the coach and
throw ourselves into the deep grass, where we sit a long time looking
out to sea.

Those of you who have been there know; those of you who have not, never
can know the loveliness of that far-spreading vision. No, not if all
the poets joined in one grand panegyric, you would never know what it
all meant. You would need to feel the dull booming of the sea against
the cliffs and hear the cool rattle of the palms crooning over the
children in the Casa Blanca; you must run your hands through the stiff
deep grass down to the earth which makes so sweet and so warm a bed; you
must throw back your face to the uplifting Northeast Trade; then you
will know what it means to sink down upon the green carpet of San Juan
and look out to sea.

A veil dropped over the still water; the sea and sky melted into one
substance; then we arouse sufficiently to realise that the madam is
waiting. By this time San Juan had made ready for the night; we could
see the fitful flicker of her electric lights down near the barracks,
and here and there the dull red stare of an olden time street-lamp
swinging midway between the dark lanes which intersect the upper town
like long tentacles.

[Illustration: THE MILITARY ROAD ACROSS PUERTO RICO

Near San Juan

Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.]

We ran down along the sea-wall, under the lattice of the stately Casa
Blanca, and came into the city; turning abruptly to the left we were
about to follow the Captain up the steep street, when I was stopped
suddenly with my whole soul ablaze with wonder, for there on the top of
the hill, as if on the very stones themselves, there rolled a great
yellowish-green moon, and about it there fell a heaven splashed with
emerald and gold. There were green and yellow and strange hues of blue
all blending into a splendour which dazzled the senses and made one feel
dumb. I am so thankful that we saw the moon before dinner. I couldn't
have looked in the face of a green moon afterward, no, I could never
have done it.

I beg of you to be as considerate of me as possible in your judgment. I
do not mean to be ungrateful to our dear hosts, or unkind or
disagreeable; but after that dinner, planned for us with so much care
and pride, all I could say was, "O Lord, have mercy upon us--miserable
offenders!" We had things to eat I had never dreamed of, and may I be
spared a recurrence of them in my future dreams! There were:

Tomatoes and peppers.

Pork chops, and peppers.

Codfish, vegetables and peppers.

Chicken and peas and more peppers and some black coffee and cheese, and
the sweetest sweets I ever tasted, with a final dessert of beans with a
sugar sauce. After dinner madam had chairs arranged on the balcony over
the Plaza. She led the way, and said the concert would be delightful in
the moonlight. But as the pepper and the various concoctions of grease
and greens and sugar and beans began to make themselves felt, I turned
my chair around, saying that I never could look at the moon any length
of time, especially a green moon. Then Sister gave me a despairing look
and turned her chair around too; gave my hand a hard squeeze, and
leaning over, said: "Mother, it's the peppers and sweet things; do you
think Daddy could get me some Jamaica ginger?" A whispered consultation
is held, after which the Captain and Daddy disappear, and then something
warm and comforting is fixed up for Sister and me, and we decide that
after all we will turn our chairs around to face the moon, but alas, the
inconstant creature had slipped on her black hood and was scurrying off
like a little fat nun. She was no more to be seen that night.

But her displeasure does not affect the humour of San Juan, for by this
time the Plaza is filled with people making "_el gran paseo_" around and
around the square in true Spanish fashion.

Meantime the Plaza is being filled with chairs--rocking-chairs--which
seem to spring up out of nothing. I never saw or expect to see so many
rocking-chairs in any one place. Here the "Four Hundred" sit, having
paid a small fee for the use of the chairs, and here they rock back and
forth and back and forth in endless waves until the music begins. Some
rock with the elegant ease of the portly _señora_ and others with the
sprightly jerk of the laughing _niñita_, and as seen from the veranda of
the Colonial, the eyes ache as they involuntarily follow the moving
crowds circling countless times around the improvised barricade of
oscillating chairs. But the music begins, the people are suddenly still,
and out over the luminous night, still eloquent of the retreating moon,
there fall the first notes. I know that it is rank heresy in me to
acknowledge to any race but the Germans a preëminence in musical
intuition; but I shall do so in spite of all the traditions of my youth.
I believe that if the Spanish-American races could be given the skill
and the knowledge to formulate their musical ideas to such an extent as
has come to the painstaking Germans by generations of grinding, we would
have greater music--and certainly more human music--than the world has
ever heard. The Puerto Rican, as well as the Mexican, the Cuban, the
Dominican, is the natural musician; he feels to his finger-tips every
vibration of sound he utters, and he makes you feel what he does. His
music is akin to that of the wild sea-bird, it is brother to the moaning
of the winds, to the wan song of the dusky maidens in the dance--to
dream sounds in cocoanut and palm-tree groves; it is life, moving,
quickening, pulsating life their music speaks, and without life, what is
the stuff we call music?

"Thank you, thank you, you have given us an evening we shall never
forget. Shall we not see you in the morning? _Buenas noches._"


V.

It was high noon as Little Blue Ribbons and I left the empty Plaza and
started out with grim determination to do our duty. The streets were
silent as the sun crept over our heads and sent its burning,
perpendicular rays through the white umbrella. But that was of no
consequence. We two had made up our minds to accomplish a certain
purpose, and when we make up our minds neither man nor weather can
prevail against us. We had been idle long enough. Time and time again we
had drifted to the time-ripened Morro. Days had gone by and we lacked
the energy to begrudge their inconsequential passing, but now a time of
reckoning had come. We would have no more such idleness. Little Blue
Ribbons and I had awakened on this particular day to a realisation of
our unperformed duty, and although detained through one pretext and
another all the morning, by noon we forswore further procrastination and
hurriedly left the Plaza before our good intentions could again be
lulled by inaction.

[Illustration: INLAND COMMERCE

Puerto Rico

Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.]

It was to the Square of Ponce de Leon we were going; and although not
sure of its exact location, we remembered a fine old church near by, and
that was our landmark.

It is strange indeed what a web of dreams the past weaves about its
heroes, however recent their careers; but when the hand of time leads
us back to the remote events of centuries gone by, we are hopelessly
bewildered by the discordant wrangling between the real and the
improbable.

Although the early companion of Christopher Columbus, the discoverer of
Florida and the intrepid voyager on many seas, the conqueror and the
first governor of Puerto Rico, and later the powerful and hated rival of
Columbus's son, Ponce de Leon's one unrealised hope, his tireless search
for the fountain whose waters were to contain the elixir of life, has so
over-shadowed his actual achievements by the glamour of the legendary,
that his very name has become the synonym for the stuff of which dreams
are made. Standing thus as the embodiment of the unattainable, the
knight errant of roseate hopes and undying aspirations, he has ever
been, in spite of the irascible humour given him by history, a figure
from whom none could wrest the talisman of romance.

Where are his contemporaries, where are those greater discoverers, abler
rulers, better men who thronged these alluring waters during the two
generations of Ponce de Leon's eventful life? Dead, even in name, many
of them, or else safely embalmed in the musty pages of some old history
seldom read. But in him there was the spirit of the poet and the mystic,
which ever has and ever will appeal to the imagination of mankind and
through imagination attains immortality.

Thus it suggested much to us to find his statue in San Juan and to have
heard some one assert with an air of authority that his bones rested in
the old church hard by; all of which bore incontrovertible testimony to
the fact of his having once been an actual living personality. So we two
decide without saying a word to any one that we will make a pilgrimage
to that church of the uneasy shades and prove for ourselves Ponce de
Leon's identity with fact.

With a feeling of affinity for the doughty old cavalier, and with half a
sigh that I can never again lift my feet with the light-hearted grace of
the little maid at my side, we wander on through the deserted streets
until we come to the square of Ponce de Leon. It looked as it had
before, only much whiter, much brighter, and oh, so silent! The church
stood passively asleep; there were only the still hot rays reflected
into our faces from the sun-baked pavement. The same, and yet not the
same, was the empty square, for as we made nearer approach we found that
the pedestal upon which before the figure of Ponce de Leon had stood
with lofty bearing and haughty mien was now but a bare block of stone
glaringly white in the noonday silence with naught but the inscription
left.

The figure was gone! "Can it be that we have been dreaming, that it was
never there?" I ask, in consternation. "No, Mother, surely not, I
remember perfectly well a statue was standing there as we drove through
only last evening." With a startled tremor I wish the place were not so
deserted, I wish some one would come, I dislike being so alone, and I
wish that we had Daddy with us. But pulling ourselves together with a
frightened glance over our shoulders, we pass the abandoned pedestal and
go toward the church, unquestioningly sure of safe sanctuary within its
open door. To our amazement we find it barred and locked. We try a side
entrance; that too is mysteriously fast; but hearing a faint sound, as
of retreating feet within, we venture a timid knock on the door. But
our rappings bring no response save a hollow echo and a momentary
cessation of the footsteps.

Still hesitating as to our next move, we stand there in the white glare,
while a sensation of strange unreality creeps over us. Hesitating, but
still unwilling to relinquish the pilgrimage without further effort, we
spy an ancient iron-bound gate in the high stone wall adjoining the
cathedral. We try its rusty latch and find it unlocked. We cautiously
push it open. It turns heavily on great creaking hinges stiff from long
desuetude, and swings to after us as with an ominous sigh.

We find ourselves in the secluded corridors of an ancient cloister. The
sun still lingers on a patch of green courtyard dropped in the midst of
the shadows, and up from the luminous verdure a cool fountain plays its
restful measure. An ancient sun-dial speaks of the deathless tread of
time, and in the deeper shade of a dark recess, on tables of venerable
age, huge volumes lay, on whose yellow pages were strewn adown the
wide-spread lines of the quaint Gregorian staff, the great square notes
of an ancient Latin chant. Then,--

    "On a sudden, through the glistening
     Leaves around, a little stirred,
     Came a sound, a sense of music which was rather felt than heard.
     Softly, finely it inwound me;
     From the world it shut me in,--
     Like a fountain falling round me--"

My hand is held close and with wide eyes Little Blue Ribbons asks if she
may drink at the fountain. Half-refusing, half-assenting, we are about
to draw near, when from out an opening door, whence seemed to come the
music, there appeared a figure bent in contemplation and wrapped in the
shadows of the past. It was so like the statue on the square without
that the one at my side gasps, "It is he, Mother, what shall we do?" and
shrinking spellbound, I hold the dear little hand, glad to feel the
human warmth of its pressure. With dread and yet with fascination I
watch the lone, sad, weary figure, as it were the phantom of old age
eternally unreconciled to the flight of youth. I watch while it moves
eagerly toward the fountain to lean forward and drink deep, deep, with
an insatiable thirst; and then with a hopeless sigh it paces back and
forth among the shadows.

[Illustration: A RANCH NEAR SAN JUAN

Puerto Rico]

A bell clangs out the hour of one, and the great wooden gate swings open
of itself, while we two, much affrighted, slip unnoticed behind the
columns of the corridor into "the twilight gloom of a deep embrasured
window" which for long years had been sealed from the light by the gray
masonry of the ancient church.

Even as we look the silent figure has vanished, and we are left there
with only the sound of the plaintive, ever murmuring fountain.

Awed and silent, we creep from our hiding-place and drag open the
unwilling gate and once again we are out in the dazzling sunlight.

There--wonderful to relate--on its pedestal was the statue as it stood
the day before, with outstretched hand and far-away look, scanning the
distant horizon where to his ever disappointed eyes was just lifting the
palm-fringed shore of that mythical island of Bimini, where at last
flowed the long-sought fountain of youth.

Lest the unhappy shade again returning should seek sudden vengeance for
our bold espionage, we took our flight toward the Plaza, nor stopped to
breathe until again we found refuge in the crowded shops.




CHAPTER V.

CHARLOTTE AMALIE. ST. THOMAS


I.

After the long stretches of ocean, you from the North will find that
there is something positively cosy about these dear islands. You tuck
your head under your wing with the parrots at night, off one island,
and, the next thing you know, it's morning, the sweet land-breeze steals
in through the port-hole, and you're up with the monkeys off another
island--perhaps more enchanting than the last. Why, it seems not half
the trouble going from port to port that it is to make fashionable calls
in the great city, and such a lot more fun.

But speaking of parrots and monkeys: the only ones we have seen thus far
were some very solemn little creatures which have been brought to the
ship for sale,--poor captives, chained and unnaturally pious, sitting
alongside their black captors.

We have not heard a single bird-note since leaving the North. Is it
possible that there are no song-birds here, and in fact no birds of
plumage left about the settlements? We fully expected the latter, but
not a glimpse have we had of them,--no, not even in the forest along the
Ozama, did we distinguish a single bird-note. Can it be that the
plume-hunters for our Northern milliners have ranged through all these
sunny islands? Ah, my friends of the feather toques and the winged
head-gear, what have we to answer for? It all seems so empty without the
birds where trees and flowers grow so gladly; just as if Nature's feast
were spread to empty chairs. After all, how fondly we do love that
particular expression of creation with which we are long familiar! My
heart reaches out in homesick yearning for the notes of our dear
Northern songsters. How brutal are the details of the "march of
civilisation!"

From San Juan, Puerto Rico, to St. Thomas it was only a night's journey,
and I am sure, had we been so disposed, we might have touched some
other islands equally lovely on the way. But there must be some time for
rest,--even though Little Blue Ribbons said she did not want to sleep
(she knew she couldn't), and Sister thought it a great waste of valuable
experience not to make all the ports there were. Nevertheless, when
morning came and the sun was wide awake, I had no little trouble in
arousing the children.

And now it came to pass that all those threatenings and fitful tears and
dire forebodings of the day before were simply whims and weather jokes.
The sea fell into a gentle calm, and on St. Thomas there never shone a
brighter sun or blew a sweeter breeze; and we realised that at last we
were under the lee of that smiling windbreak of the Caribbean--"The
Windward Islands." Getting our anchor early, we moved from our first
stopping-place, well out in the harbour, over to the wharves; where the
huge piles of coal rose up before the port-hole, with other ranges of
piles, like mimic mountains, farther on, while we were so close to the
dock that I could see the gangway being lowered, as I bent over the
sleepy little girls.

[Illustration: THE HARBOUR

Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas]

"Look, children!" I said,--"look, wake up, you're losing so much!" And
they rub their pretty eyes and want to know what's the matter.

"Here we are, dears, at St. Thomas, the coaling-station. Daddy is
waiting for us. I'll go up on deck. Send word by Rudolph if you want me
to help with the ribbons."

So I hurried up the after companion stairs. Close to our side were the
mammoth piles of coal, from which we were to make requisition; off about
a mile to the other side of the great amphitheatre lay Charlotte Amalie
(the chief city of the Danish Islands), making for herself as beautiful
a picture as one could wish. We were in a superb harbour, with high,
dome-shaped hills embracing us on either side, and the little city of
Charlotte Amalie to the right of us on the beautiful slopes above, like
a white lady reaching out her jewelled hands in gracious welcome.
Whatever tales of buccaneer and pirate, of scuttled galleons, of buried
treasure, of maidens fair, of romance, I had ever heard, came hurrying
back to me in that delicious spot; and when the Castles of Bluebeard,
and that erstwhile king of pirates, Blackboard, came into view, it
seemed truly as if we ought to fly at our main-truck the black flag with
the skull and cross-bones, and run out the cold bronze nose of a
"long-tom" over our bulwarks, just to add the finishing touch.

The little girls and I were simply determined to let romance run riot in
Charlotte Amalie. We would eat pomegranates and wear flowers in our
hair; we would dream dreams on Bluebeard's turret, and win into smiles
his villainous, wrinkled, old ghostship. But, firm as was our purpose,
it required no small effort to keep it uppermost in our minds. We
thought Daddy would certainly be dragged into the water before he had
engaged his shore boat. He was howled at, pulled at by the sleeves,
jerked at by the coat, by great roaring blacks, fairly gnashing their
teeth in impotent rage at Daddy's indecision. But who could decide in
such a mob? We were beckoned, at last, to come along, and picking our
way down the ladder, plumped ourselves into "Champagne Charlie's" boat,
leaving "Uncle Sam," "Honest William," "Captain Jinks," and a score of
others screaming a medley of imprecations and their own praises in a
mad scramble for the next victim.

We were not only beset by those in the boats, but also by a swarm of
semi-amphibious imps,--not little imps by any means, but huge, muscular,
bronze Tritons, who pursued, with wonderful rapidity, "Champagne
Charlie's" catch, and clung to the gunwale of our boat, and dove
underneath and about us, wholly indifferent to our terror at the thought
of being capsized. They howled, they swore with Southern abandon because
we would not throw them pennies to dive for; and away off lay the little
White Lady--the beautiful Charlotte Amalie. What a naughty lot of
children she had! Daddy told "Charlie" that if he would not hurry us out
of that mob, he'd not get a penny for his trouble, and Daddy used
forcible English, too; for, strange to say, English is the common as
well as the official language of the Danish West Indies. But I must not
mislead you. It's not your English or my English they use; it's a funny
kind of jargon; a baby talk disguised by Scandinavian intonations and
besmirched by generations of African savagery. Sometimes you think you
understand it, and then you think you don't, and again you wish you
hadn't--so there you are.

Well, "Charlie" is at last aroused and a few good strokes of his oars
free us from the vermin and bring us into less troubled waters. On the
way across the land-locked harbour we passed a Danish man-of-war, a
Russian frigate, a Venezuelan cruiser, a little schooner-rigged sailing
"packet," which carries the mail to other islands, and a number of
powerfully built trading schooners; still nearer shore, there was a fine
floating dry dock, where a very shapely little schooner--evidently once
a yacht--was out of water being repaired.


II.

[Illustration: HILLSIDE HOMES

Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas]

As we stepped on land and walked up under the shade of mahogany and
mango trees, while the boatman's fees were being struggled with, it
seemed to me that I had never walked in so clean a street, or stood in
such delicious shade. Oh, it was so clean and cool and beautiful! The
macadamised streets were sprinkled and moist, the houses were all
white and green, hugged close by high-walled gardens overflowing with
flowering vines,--in particular that marvellous _Bougainvillia_, which
flourishes in such triumphant splendour over these tropic walls; and
everywhere the odours were sweet. The sky, as it glistened through the
heavy, glossy mangoes, was as blue as blue can be, and the women
carriers of water moved with rapid, noiseless tread, bearing their
burdens upon their turbaned heads, and the little children offered us
flowers. I find, as I write, that my mind constantly reverts to the
cleanliness of the place. First, I said: "Oh, how charming!" and then,
"Oh, how clean!" but, before I proceed further, you should be told that,
the widely followed example of Spain--mother of the picturesque--is not
responsible for this delightful condition of things, for in the
Spanish-speaking islands, alas! it is otherwise!

Just here I must make a confession. I couldn't tell you of the petty
blemishes on the time-furrowed brow of wonderful old Santo Domingo--no,
I could not, for there were those tears that for centuries had worn
their cankering way across the face of the weary old Mother
Church,--and then the long-suffering bell, and the tired, sad-faced
sun-dial! No, I could not tell you then; and now that the memory of
those tears comes to me again, I hardly feel it in me to confess to you
after all. No, I never can! Those half-forgiven regrets could be told
only to the dispassionate bells of the City of the Holy Sunday; you
shall never hear them.

Yes, Charlotte Amalie's face was clean. She wore a fresh pinafore and a
green frock, and her bonnet was pink and starry white; and she was very
prim and quiet, was the Lady Charlotte, despite her merry, laughing
eyes. But the little lady has a funny lot of children. She doesn't mind,
though--not she. She folds her hands, and shakes her pink and white
bonnet, and makes no apology. A funny lot of children she has indeed:
blond pickaninnies and black babies,--black whites with kinky hair and
white blacks with straight hair, all higgledy-piggledy, and they all
speak a blond pickaninny's language. Charlotte Amalie herself, when in
state, speaks real English, and some of her officials Danish and French,
as well. Her little daily paper, which came to us wet from the
press,--_Lightbourn's Mail Notes_,--was printed in English; so you see
her ladyship knows the real world-language when she sees it, even if she
is a foster-child of Denmark and burdened with the everlasting curse of
Ham.

[Illustration: IN CHARLOTTE AMALIE

St. Thomas]


III.

While some of the party were writing postal cards and letters in a cool,
flowery retreat, reached by devious shady passages and looking out into
an open court, known as a post-office, I strolled up the quiet street to
the first turning, where the cross road came to an abrupt, but very
beautiful end in a little white chapel, sheltered by waving palms. There
seemed to be but one main street, which followed the shore awhile and
then went loitering off up the hill in a most indifferent manner.

The houses, with one story in the rear and two in the front, were built
on the hillside, so that the chapel before me--well up on the slope--was
approached by a long flight of stone steps. Snow-white columns upheld
the simple portico, and the royal palms rose higher and higher from one
terrace to another, their regular trunks like stately shafts of stone,
until their warm plumes met over the golden cross. The picture, with
chapel and palms and terraces and flowers and delicately wroughtiron
gateway, was so compact, that it seemed as if some one just a little
bigger than myself might tuck the whole affair right into a pocket for a
keepsake.

Turning slowly about to look for the children, I glanced through the
half-open blinds of a house on the corner, and there met a pair of very
engaging eyes, which besought me in the universal language, to come in
and see what there was for sale. The eyes belonged not to a maiden, but
to a tiny, stoop-shouldered Spanish-Danish-English woman, who fluttered
about in great excitement at the prospect of a sale. Strangers do not
drop from the sky every day in these remoter of the West Indies. I
bought a piece of needlework, and my change, in St. Thomas silver and
Danish copper, was brought me by a regal old negress, in a voluminous
red calico gown, standing out like the "stu'nsails" of a full-rigged
ship, flying as her proper colours aloft, a brilliant green and yellow
bandanna. My! but she was tall--six feet, it seemed, and she smiled all
over her face with the meaningless good-nature of her race. What teeth
she had left were glistening white. By the way, why is it that on these
islands you find so many women, and not necessarily old women by any
means, but girls from fourteen up--both white and black--with many of
their teeth gone? Has the American dentist yet untrodden fields?

Black Susan salaamed me out, and seeing Daddy and the little girls ahead
of me, I followed the clean--I repeat, clean--narrow street, as it wound
up the well-tilled hillside to "Bluebeard's Castle."


IV.

It was a long, hot walk, that climb, in spite of the good breeze and the
white umbrella's shade, and we stopped a number of times on the way up
to cool ourselves, and, incidentally, to envy the carriage of the brisk
and leathery old women, who came striding past us up the hill, with
great water-cans on their heads and water-jugs in their hands, stolidly
indifferent to the hot sun and the heavy burdens they were carrying. It
comes to me now that I did not see a young negress in the whole town,
but this was explained on our return to the ship.

It was next to impossible to be keen enough to appreciate fully the
remarkable vegetation and flowers and animal life all about us. The
flowers seemed hung at the wrong end, and all the vegetable world
strange and topsy-turvy; even some insects that we saw seemed quite
outlandish. For a long time, as I sat between two rusty old cannon,
dangling my feet with most awful irreverence over Bluebeard's fortress
wall, I kept my eye on an old bumblebee--a black and yellow pirate that
bumbled of the peaceful present and the strenuous past; but even the
every-day bumblebee was twice as big as he had any right to be, and he
had the deep-drawn drone of a sleepy country parson. Then, just as the
bumblebee hummed himself out of sight into the heart of a deep red
_hibiscus_ nodding its heavy head at me from the top of the wall, out of
the mouth of one of Bluebeard's piratical cannon there peeped two
shining, yellow eyes in a little green body, and they stared at me, and
I stared at them, each most curious about the other, until the
inspection became rather embarrassing, and I rapped on the rusty,
weather-worn old murderer, and away scampered Mr. Eyes, back with the
ghosts and memories--all dying together. A little green lizard, with
life for a wee bit of awhile; an ancient cannon of curious shape,
rusting, but outliving a little longer; a great gray rock underneath,
disintegrating piece by piece, going back again into the universe; and
an immortal soul in a human body; are we all part and parcel of the same
cosmic dust?

Twenty cannons dropped into the heavy embrasured masonry of Bluebeard's
wall looked down with grim irony upon a pious, self-complacent,
twentieth-century gunboat, entering thus unchallenged their own waters.
Whether it was the lizard rustling among the grasses inside the cannon,
or whether it was a reawakened pirate's ghost, I shall not venture to
assert; but there certainly came to me a whisper which translated itself
into the most disdainful reproach of our much-vaunted humanitarianism. I
tried to explain to this little voice that nowadays we had reduced the
killing of men to a science; that it was less painful to be blown to
pieces by dynamite shells from a torpedo-boat than to be hacked to
pieces by a pirate's cutlass, therefore, more honourable, and that
fighting was still necessary because diplomacy was too young to be
weaned. But from certain mysterious sounds, very like the chucklings of
an old man, I thought best to beat a retreat. Besides there were Daddy
and the little girls waving to me from the top of the sturdy old
watch-tower, so I gathered my umbrella, hat, and basket, and put to
flight the flock of geese which had been examining my umbrella with
long-necked curiosity. They, little caring for the sanctity of my
far-reaching thoughts, went hissing and squawking down the hill in a
most irate humour. I took a long breath, pinched myself to get awake,
and started up the steep tower steps.

[Illustration: CHARLOTTE AMALIE FROM "BLUE BEARD'S CASTLE"

St. Thomas]

From the top of this tower of "Bluebeard's Castle" (kept in repair by
the Italian consul, whose residence is here), one could look out across
the pretty town to the rival fastness of old "Blackbeard," crowning
another hill of surpassing beauty. A road, white and smooth and shaded
with palms, clung caressingly about the white-crested bay, and I longed
to follow it. Yonder another road struggled up a hillside, through
sugar-cane and fruit-trees, and tumbled off somewhere on the other side.
I longed to follow that one, too. Another, white and edged with
tamarinds and oranges, wandered off somewhere else, and I wanted to go
there. But the last carriage had clattered off, and it was too hot to
walk "over the hills and far away;" so, after a long quiet feast of the
glory about us, we leisurely made the descent, and were again among the
cannon crowning the ancient parapet. We strolled along down the steep
winding highway, stopping now to trim our hats with flowers, gathered
with much difficulty from behind a prickly hedge, and then to look with
rapture upon the scene below, and again to talk about it all. The sun
beat down upon our heads, but we did not mind that, for the cooling
breeze came up from the sea, sweetly and gently, as if it loved us, and
the mountains and the earth were oh, so richly clad, and the eyes so
content with seeing and the nostrils so glad with the fragrant air!


V.

I wondered then why we Americans should not settle the matter at once
with Denmark. As I understand it, there were negotiations for the
purchase of these islands approved by General Grant, then President, in
1867; but, for some reason, the proposed treaty with Denmark was not
ratified by Congress, and the little island was forgotten; but since the
recent growth of our navy and the necessity for its constant care of the
Caribbean Sea, and especially now that we seem destined to become
sponsors to an Isthmian canal, the island of St. Thomas comes again to
the front as one of the most desirable possessions the United States
could have in these waters. The harbour of Charlotte Amalie is so
protected by mountains and guarded by bold islands, with deep water
inside, and an unimpeded channel from the sea, that, with sufficient
fortification, it could be made absolutely impregnable, a West Indian
Gibraltar, and at the same time a most valuable and protected station
for naval supplies, docks, and the like.

[Illustration: ON THE TERRACE

Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas]

I do not believe in war, battle, or bloodshed, but I do most forcibly
believe in the present necessity for our policy of expansion,--not alone
because of the advantage to ourselves, but as well for the good of the
yet unborn West Indians; and if we can extend our power through
diplomacy and peaceful measures, I should be glad to see "Old Glory"
floating over all the Greater and Lesser Antilles, provided--and this is
the terrible _if_--that the present mixed and degenerate population
could be miraculously reformed or removed.

In the case of Charlotte Amalie, there seems to be among the educated
middle classes a sincere desire for American supremacy, and, although
there is some opposition--largely sentimental--from leading Danes, the
only important points that have arisen seem to be the question of how
much we are to give, and whether certain influences in Denmark will
permit the confirmation of a treaty for the transfer of the islands to
the United States. I was told that the price suggested was somewhere
about $5,000,000. This, I presume, does not include the rest of the
Danish possessions among the Virgin Islands; but, while we are
interested, why not take in the whole family; St. Thomas, St. John, St.
Croix, and the other small islands adjacent?

Will the Germans try to block our acquisition of this group? The
Kaiser's subjects talk fair enough, but they unquestionably want St.
Thomas--and who knows?

All through this day our fellow passengers, the German officers, were
very busy making photographs and writing notes, and their interest even
went so far as to lead to the suggestion by one enthusiastic Teuton that
some day the German flag would fly over this beautiful harbour--but that
was a slip of the tongue, and no doubt he would gladly have recalled the
hasty remark a moment later.

There is truly no limit to the possibilities of these islands, if only
the natives can be taught the value of their soil and the Adam-given
necessity of labour. Here the mango grows; the mahogany, tamarind,
guava, orange, lignum vitæ, cypress, bay, cocoanut, pomegranate, fig,
and palms of all varieties--rare woods and rich fruits. Vegetables would
grow more freely if only tilled and encouraged a bit. The export for
which St. Thomas seems famous is its bay rum, made from the bay leaves
and berries, brought mostly from Lesser St. John's Island, and distilled
in great stills well-nigh filling the fragrant cellars of several of
Charlotte Amalie's largest establishments.

[Illustration: COALING OUR SHIP

Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas]


VI.

"I'll give you a quarter if you'll throw Mary in!" shouted one of the
passengers from the rail of our ship to a great powerful negro, the
bully among bullies of a crowd of blacks which swarmed as thick as bees
on the pier close to our moorings.

"Mary" was one of several hundred negro girls who had been coaling our
ship since early morning. All day long, the endless procession of
short-skirted, straight-backed, flat-hipped, bare-legged, bandannaed
negresses, carrying on their heads the baskets of coal to be emptied
through the coal-chutes or into a barge, had gone on amidst deafening
roars of laughter, insane oaths, and noiseless tread. The barge, when
filled, was towed alongside the vessel and unloaded into our starboard
coal-bunkers. The port bunkers were filled direct from the dock by
similar baskets of coal dumped into the port coal-chutes.

We were watching the black children from the deck, and Paterfamilias
turning to me, said, in a wholly justified tone: "There, now, my
reformer, you see a practical working example of equal rights for women!
It means equal or greater labour, as well, and a sad breaking down of
all womanliness. The women do the work and the men loaf around at home
to spend the money." "Do you mean to infer, my dear, that if we women in
America had equal suffrage, you men would stay at home and wait for the
money we earn? Surely I'd never believe it of our American men--never!"

Whatever other men would do, the negroes of St. Thomas certainly did not
do the work, as far as we could see. There were a few fellows who helped
with the barge, and who handled the shore boats, but the heavy loads
were borne on the heads of the women, and they appeared to be in every
way equal to the occasion. We were witnessing a marvellous exhibition of
endurance, for the sun was by no means gentle, and the baskets of coal
weighed well up toward a hundred pounds each, but they were carried with
the ease of so many feathers, with a light, active step, from morning
until evening, without cessation.

"Throw her in and I'll give you a quarter!" Mary was a young girl, black
as night, with a hard, cruel, unsmiling face, and the restless watching
eyes of a wild animal. She, too, had been carrying coal all day, and
when her work was done, she, with some fifteen or twenty others, had
followed along the dock to the ship's bow, where pennies were being
tossed to the pier by some of our plethoric passengers. A coin would fly
through the air, drop on the pier amidst a scrambling, wriggling pile of
howling negroes, with legs and arms and heads in a hopeless heap. Mary
fought well; she already had a mouthful of pennies; she was as swift as
thought, and as merciless of the others as the unfeeling elements. It
was easy to see that she was a match for any man in the crowd, and it
was easy, too, to see that, when the promise of "a quarter"--a mighty
pile of money to those poor children--was held out to the one who should
throw her into the water, there was more willingness to get the money
than to approach Mary. She knew enough English to take in the situation,
and stood there on the pier, not ten inches from the edge, with her bare
arms folded, her thin, powerful legs tense, her head thrown back with
defiance in its motionless poise, her fierce eyes rolling from side to
side, watching for the first who would dare approach her.

One more word from the ship, and Mary was caught around the waist by a
black giant who had been waiting his chance. In an instant, she seemed
to grow a foot taller. She made a plunge for the man's throat,--bent him
down, down, down, with her eyes fiercely terrible; and there she held
the unhappy creature until he begged for mercy, and amidst cheers from
Mary's admirers, slank away out of sight. Her spring was so sudden, so
silent, so fierce, that I could not think of her as being human; she was
more of the wild beast than one of her Ladyship's children. And yet we
cheered for Mary, too, and she it was who won the quarter.

I wish the Lady Charlotte would look after her children better.




CHAPTER VI.

MARTINIQUE


I.

There are so many different ways of seeing things--I suppose as many
ways as there are souls to see; and yet, in a measure, one can
generalise these many ways under two great heads. Just as we call the
infinite variations of light, from the first bird-note of breaking day,
through all the changing fancies of brilliant sun and wandering
clouds--as we call it all day; and the wonders of darkness, night; so
can our ways of seeing things be generalised under two great heads.
There is the orthodox, scholarly, scientific way, and there is the
heterodox, unscholarly, and unscientific way. Following the law of
compensation, there is much to be said on both sides. If the mind is
fully prepared, through study and research into the nature of the
object to be seen, one has the satisfaction of viewing it as one would
the face of an old and familiar friend. On the other hand, when the mind
greets the object to be seen, unprepared, in an absolutely unprejudiced,
plastic state, it has all the delight of surprise, enthusiasm, and
novelty, over a newly acquired possession. And none will deny that this
unscholarly, unprepared way of seeing things has its merits. In
travelling where the countries visited are interesting mainly from an
historical standpoint, no doubt much would be lost to the traveller
whose knowledge of the background for his picture is indistinct; in that
case, truly, the scholar is the one whose enjoyment should be keenest.
On the other hand, where the charm of a place lies largely in its
picturesque beauty, in its possibilities of surprise, through novel and
curious phases of life, I believe that the traveller who is wholly
unprepared has pleasures in store for him equalled only by the exquisite
and spontaneous enthusiasms of childhood.

This long preamble is not so much to explain the two ways of seeing
things, as it is to console myself for having known so little of the
West Indies before starting on this cruise. There is no use in trying to
appear wiser than one is, because, before one knows it, along comes some
one who does really know; out flashes the critical knife, and off
vanishes that beautifully flimsy wind-bag into thin air. For instance, I
might have stood complacently unmoved when the great mountain peaks and
the sleeping volcanic craters of Martinique rose in green majesty from
the Caribbean Sea, and I might have said: "Why, certainly, that is just
as I expected!" But I did not say so, because I had not expected such
mountain peaks in the West Indies, though somewhat prepared by the
islands we had thus far seen.

Once on a time I had a very charming picture in my mind of the West
Indies, but, charming as it was, it was not the real islands as I have
found them; and ever since having known the reality I have been trying
to revitalise that former picture and compare it with the genuine
impressions; but I find it of so ephemeral a nature that I can scarcely
recall it. All I remember is, that I expected to find the islands low
and flat, and mostly of a coral formation. Some of the islands are
indeed of this nature, but comparatively few. As we sailed under sunny,
cloudless skies, over a brilliantly blue sea, the monarchs of the
Caribbees arose one by one in glorious majesty; and especially these
Windward Islands, a great windbreak to keep out the big Atlantic, with
Martinique the crowning summit. At times, single gigantic rocks, the
homes of sea-birds, lonely and desolate, stood out from the deep; and
then great ranges of mountains, covered to the summit with densest
foliage, lifted themselves to the sky many thousands of feet. It is said
with authority that, on these islands--particularly on St.
Vincent--there still survive some of the ancient Caribs, the aboriginal
West Indian race, no doubt descendants of those brave Indians so harried
and murdered by the early Spanish explorers. In Martinique, the mixture
of Carib blood is still apparent, showing, even through generations of
negro pollution, in many a coppery skin, wild fierce eye, and proud head
with straight black locks.

To me it seemed that Martinique is an epitome of the whole West Indies.
In appearance, in products, in people, in history, it might taken as
the highest type of these garden isles, once enjoyed by vast tribes of
pure-blooded and self-respecting savages, but now held by the
conglomerate descendants of all colours and all nations.


II.

Now had I been more familiar with the rare though limited treasures of
West Indian literature, I would not have marvelled at the glorious
mountain summits of Martinique that day we came to picturesque St.
Pierre; I might have said to my companion: "Ah! here they are, quite as
I expected; old, old friends; little white city, square cathedral tower,
narrow, hilly streets; above and beyond little irregular fields--all
hanging to the mountainside as they should!" But, instead, I stood
fairly on tiptoe in the bow of our great ship, as she cut through
high-running waves, with my hair blowing in a thousand directions,
grasping for an impish pin to gather up as much as was amenable to
reason, marvelling with all my senses at the approach to Martinique, as
the dim mountains, coming nearer and nearer, were humanised by the
habitations of men.

We four were there together. Sister's curls were a flutter of gold in
the low afternoon sun, and her sweet gray eyes were straining far ahead
at the slopes of Martinique; Little Blue Ribbons clung to Daddy's strong
hand, while she leaned over the bow to watch the laughing foam dance up
to kiss her pretty lips. How good it was to have them with us!--the two
little girls--so keenly joyous in all the new marvels of sea and land.
If Laddie had only been there, too--But for the other three boys, far
off in our warm Northern nest, I had no longings. With them aboard, life
on the ship would have been one vanishing streak of six black-stockinged
legs, with an avenging Mother in pursuit from dawn till evening.

[Illustration: THE SUGAR MILL NEAR ST. PIERRE

Martinique]

Now, whether it happened while I was trying to pin my hair together and
could see nothing, or whether I was so absorbed with the great wonders
that lesser ones failed to attract me, or whether it came by magic, I'll
not say; but at all events, in less than no time after we had taken our
pilot aboard, the sea seemed to be alive with innumerable small sailing
craft. I would look out toward Martinique on the port bow, and see
what appeared to be the crest of a combing wave,--for the "Northeast
Trades" were blowing fresh, and we were not yet under the lee of the
island--a second more and this same white crest would change into a
sail, darting off, close-hauled, into the wind, as swiftly as a pelican
plunging at his prey. These materialised wave-crests continued to appear
until I counted over thirty of them on all sides of us, on the same
tack, making for land; low, narrow fishing-boats, coming in with the
day's catch. These were replaced, as we finally made port and dropped
anchor, about three-fourths of a mile from shore in an open bay or
roadstead, by a horde of little canoes, filled with chattering,
copper-coloured natives, who came swarming out to us, each in a single
boat, except a few who shared some larger canoes, and each arrayed in a
bit of loin-cloth. These remarkable natives were so interesting to us
all that I cannot resist giving you a description of their
peculiarities.

As I told you, I came to the islands sadly lacking in information
regarding the island of Martinique or the city of St. Pierre. I knew a
little about it, to be sure; I knew that the Empress Josephine--the
beautiful and unfortunate wife of the great Napoleon--was a creole from
the shores of this island; I read in our West Indian guide-book
(fortunately a very tiny affair) that Martinique is 43 miles long and 19
miles wide; that it has a population of 175,000; that its mountains rise
to the height of some 4,500 feet; that the annual rainfall is
great--some 87 inches; that the mean temperature is high, about 81
degrees; that the soil is rich and readily responds to cultivation; that
the island was discovered by Columbus in 1502 (or in 1493, as some say),
and settled by the French in 1635; that the belligerent English had, at
different times, interfered in its peaceful life, capturing it first at
the end of the Seven Years' War, and subsequently holding it for two
periods covering a considerable part of the Napoleonic wars; that it had
been occasionally frightened by volcanic eruptions from Mont Pelée, and
more often shaken by earthquakes; all of which sounds very much like an
encyclopedia, in fact all of these historical data were copied word for
word from our guide-book, which I took down at Daddy's dictation. It
is really all his fault. He said I was not definite enough; that people
wanted facts, not tinselled trivialities, so I acquiesced: "Very well,
read it off," and there it is. You see how it sounds. I don't like it
myself, but some people may.

[Illustration: COMING TO WELCOME US

St. Pierre, Martinique]

There was one fact about Martinique which was worth more to me than all
the data put together. I had a servant--a French woman--who for years
took care of the children.

Once upon a time she had lived in the household of the Governor of
Martinique, after he had returned to Paris; and she had darned his
stockings; think of it! My good Elise had darned the stockings of the
Governor of Martinique, and many a time she had darned mine! Wasn't that
enough to establish a lasting bond of interest between Martinique and
the wanderer from the North?

But these dark things in the water--where do they belong? Elise and the
Governor of Martinique's stocking could never help us settle that
question. As I said, they swarmed about the ship like so many insects.
They were an entirely different type of people from the black imps of
St. Thomas.

At St. Thomas the native was quite as ready with his guffaw as he was
with his oaths. He was a big African animal, black as coal, with the
flat nose and heavy lips, with all the idiosyncrasies we know so well; a
somewhat exaggerated, wilder, freer type than the Ethiopian we meet in
our Southern States. But these natives of Martinique were altogether
different from the blacks of St. Thomas. Their bodies were often of the
most beautiful copper colour, verging on red; their features were
regular, and in some cases rather attractive,--rare cases these,
however; their expressions were fierce and saturnine, even in the
youngest children of eight or ten years. They had to a marked degree
that animal trait of fixing their eyes upon an object and never leaving
it until what they wished had been granted them.

These swarms of men and boys had come out to dive for coins--silver
preferred--and how had they come? Mostly in slender canoes, some seven
to ten feet in length, varying in dimensions according to the size of
the occupant, one boy in each canoe. These flimsy shells were about a
foot to fifteen inches wide, and six or eight inches deep, made of thin
boards or even the rough sides of light packing-cases skilfully joined
together and payed up with pitch. They were flat-bottomed, sharp at both
ends and barely wide enough for the single occupant to sit in, and
without seats, oars, or paddles. In what one might call the bow--if bow
there is to such a craft--the low sides were bridged over and boxed in
underneath, with a narrow slit in the top of this tiny locker into which
to drop the captured pennies. This was the diver's bank, where he
deposited his capital after his mouth was too full to hold more. In lieu
of paddles, he had a bit of thin board about the size of a cigar-box
cover in each hand; sometimes this artificial fin had a loop to fit back
of the hand, and sometimes the little fellows would use only their hands
to paddle themselves about, sitting well down, leaning forward, darting
rapidly through the water. Meanwhile some bigger boys and men appeared,
two or three together, in larger skiffs propelled by oars or paddles.

The divers whisk in and out among the host (for there were also other
larger boats now come from shore to see us) with marvellous skill, and
when we toss a coin into the clear sea, away go the paddles and boats,
and down go a half-dozen copper-coloured bodies, each making for the
same shining point, and all we can see for awhile is several pairs of
whitish soles gleaming under the water, and sometimes the short turmoil
of a fight below the surface; then up comes a sputtering heathen with
the coin in his hand, to show he has found it. Into his mouth it goes
and then off he chases for the abandoned canoe, which by this time is
full of water and looks a hopeless derelict. But that is nothing to this
semi-aquatic creature, for he grasps the two sides of the boat, gives it
a dexterous roll and lift combined, emptying most of the water, bails
out the rest with a rapid movement of his hands, throws his body across
the canoe and is inside before it has time to capsize.

[Illustration: LOOKING FROM THE DECK OF OUR SHIP

St. Pierre, Martinique]

These boys and men gave us a most remarkable exhibition of swimming. For
the consideration of a little silver, they even dove under our steamer
amidships, coming up on the other side in about the same time that it
took us to walk across the deck. It must be remembered, however, that
these divers do not go to the bottom for the coins, as we are often
led to believe by traveller's accounts; they dive underneath the coins
and catch them as they go zigzagging toward the bottom. It would be
well-nigh impossible, so I am told, to recover a coin in thirty-five to
fifty feet of water, even were it not very difficult and dangerous for a
swimmer to reach the bottom, on account of the pressure of the water at
that depth.

During the entire performance, the shouting was continuous, at times
almost deafening, and yet not a sign of laughter or merriment with it
all. They were fearsome creatures, these divers. With no very great
stretch of the imagination, I could picture a cannibal feast with these
very men the chief actors. Their fierce looks were unlike those of any
human being I had ever seen. They suggested at once the ancient
inhabitants from whom the Caribbean Sea has taken its name.


III.

After our ship's papers had been duly passed upon, the process of
disembarkation began, and although late in the afternoon, we were all
most eager to land and see the charms of Martinique at closer range,
and, incidentally, to post our letters. We anchored as I said, quite a
distance out, which was rather a surprise, for as we approached the
shore we saw that sailing craft of all sizes and descriptions, from
sloops to full-rigged ships, were moored within a hundred yards or so of
the levee, with anchors ahead from each bow, and stern-lines out to
shore. This was a most unusual sight in an open roadstead. It was partly
accounted for by the fact of there being deep water close up to the
shore, but principally because St. Pierre is in the latitude of the true
northeast trade-winds, which at this season are as sure as the rising of
the sun, and this harbour is on the leeward side of the island, and thus
smooth and protected.

We had been sailing under the beneficent care of the trade-wind for many
days now, without fully appreciating it, and it was only when the daring
of these trading vessels was explained, that we realised why it was that
they had nothing to fear from contrary winds, or from the danger of
being blown on the rock-paved beach.

[Illustration: THE HARBOUR AND SHIPPING

St. Pierre, Martinique

Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.]

Some years ago, at home, I was quarantined with a case of fever, and
I recall most vividly my demand for suitable literature, paper bound,
something that could be burned up if necessary; and I can yet see the
amused expression on my nautical husband's face as he handed me volume
after volume of sea stories. I had no choice in the matter; I read my
books and ate my food as it was handed me, and asked no questions. Now,
long years after, in the harbour of St. Pierre, with brig and
brigantine, and bark and barkentine safely moored to the levee, the
charm and fascination of those delightful sea yarns comes stealing over
me once again, and I can appreciate how surely the mariners must have
counted upon the time when the trade-wind would rise and carry them on
their course. Steady and hearty it blows. At ten or eleven o'clock of
the morning, the heat of the tropics lifts its hat to the "Doctor" as
the natives call the trade-wind. At six o'clock it bids him good night.
At eight o'clock, he calls again for the few hours of darkness, so that
both day and night are tempered by his salubrious presence.

Our joy would now be complete if we could but see the Southern Cross,
for we had felt the rushing hurry and the firm caresses of the
Northeast Trades, and despite all our former indifference to the sea,
the mariner's spirit was surely asserting itself.

It was at the close of a long, delicious tropical day that we four
stepped from the shore boat to the paved beach of St. Pierre, to the
beach where empty the clear streams of mountain water flowing down
through the streets of the town above. Had our coming been that of royal
guests, our hostess could not have been trimmer or neater. Sister left
us at the pretty white lighthouse right on the beach, and ran on ahead
to pick up an especially beautiful shell which she could not resist, and
we walked on along the street that follows the shore, under the shade of
the mangoes, until, when we turned to wait for her, she seemed to have
been caught into the very arms of the tower and held there for hostage.
To be sure, she was only arranging her shells in the basket, but she was
so quiet and the tower beyond was so old, old--so white and so
still--that I called to her in a kind of dumb terror at some impending
evil: "Sister, come, you must not loiter behind, keep with us!"

[Illustration: THE LIGHTHOUSE ON THE BEACH

St. Pierre, Martinique]

It is possible that had our landing in St. Pierre been at noonday it
would not have been so ever-memorable. We might have felt industrious,
we might have thought we ought to see things and do things. But, ah! we
were spared that! It was at the drop of day when men do not work nor
women weep; and so we had nothing to do but follow where the people were
going, on beyond the little lighthouse tower dozing by the sea.

The bells in the white church under the hill had been ringing as we
rowed toward shore, and it was not long before the church emptied itself
into the street, nor long before we were part of the happy worshippers
who scattered in every direction. St. Pierre arose from the very water's
edge. A row of substantial stone buildings shaded by wide-spreading
glossy mangoes stretched as far as I could see in the twilight. The
street made a turn away from the beach and the buildings followed after.
In the other direction it led to the church and then came to an end.

But St. Pierre couldn't have built on a straight line had she wished to
do so. She has chosen a mountain for her home and she had to plan
accordingly. So she builds until her streets become a series of stone
steps, up--up--up; and then, when they finally run against a sheer wall
of rock, they stop going up and go round, for they seem to go on
indefinitely.

But we were not to be baffled by stone steps, we only pushed on a little
more vigorously, and started the climb into St. Pierre to post the
precious letters which had been written under such stress of
circumstances. We went up and about, and found the post-office, just too
late to satisfy the demands of Martinique red tape; for the black
officials were still redolent of sealing wax as the last sack of
outgoing mail was closed; and what were we to do next? We were advised
to hunt up the American consul, and possibly he could, by special
suasion, find some way of caring for our letters. So we went on through
the clean, narrow stone streets, passing many a home which shone out in
the early twilight very enticingly, through the high gateways, down to
the consul's house, which we found barred and bolted for the night.

[Illustration: THE STREET ALONG THE WATER-FRONT

St. Pierre, Martinique]

Oh, these comfortable American consuls of the tropics! They live among
flowers and palms, arise late and go to their town offices by noon;
then "business" grows dull and they bolt the office at three or four
o'clock and take flight to a gardened home, in some cool mountain
suburb, to rest from the wearisome grind of diplomacy. Would that we all
might rise to the _dolce far niente_ of an American consulate! But after
all we need them; for if our flag is now seldom seen in out-of-the-way
ports, who but the American consul will protect the wandering American?

Two gentlemen, standing in a notary's office hard by the consulate,
explained that the ship _Fontabella_, which was to carry the mail, had
not yet arrived, and that perhaps our letters must go to New York by way
of Southampton. Then it was not too late after all. Why not leave them
in the box at the consulate? "Would they be sent?" we ask. An
affirmative reply decides us. What mattered a short delay? Those letters
couldn't be hurried however urgent their contents. They must wait for
the _Fontabella_ until she was ready, and when that time would be none
could say. What could be more romantic than to send our letters by this
fancifully named ship, however long her voyage, however indolently she
loitered in these fair seas; wherever she strayed she was still the
_Fontabella_. Who knows but some of her charms might miraculously sift
in through a rent in my package and breathe a spell upon my words? Ah,
_Fontabella_! Heaven bless you; and I stand sighing over the mysterious
music of a name!


IV.

Do you remember a game we children used to play, which had this little
refrain?

    "Look to the East,
     Look to the West,
     And choose the one
     That you love best!"

We, too, were uncertain which way to choose, so we looked to the East,
and we looked to the West, and we chose the one that we loved the best;
it happened to be a side street up a very steep hill, beguiling us to a
broad avenue, evidently one of the approaches to the famous _Jardin des
Plantes_, of which our felicitous little pamphlet guide had made
particular mention. For fear lest, in our delight over the novel
experiences of the evening, I should forget to mention one feature of
St. Pierre peculiarly and distinctly unique, we'll stop for a moment to
look down the funny little street, up which we have just laboured. You
see on each side of the narrow pavement a deep stone gutter, two feet
deep and nearly as wide, down which plunges a constant torrent of light
bluish water, with the colour peculiar to all mountain streams; this
rush and tumble of water you will see not only in this street, but in
all the streets of St. Pierre. It gives one a generous sense of
well-being. You feel as if you might take a bath on Monday and Tuesday,
and all through the week, and the town would not be threatened with the
water famine that is ever hanging over one in some of these tropical
towns. How delightful for the children, too!

It is a positive relief to my mind to have finished telling you about
those wayside streams, for, ever since our arrival in St. Pierre I have
been followed by the thought of them, until almost in a state of
distraction. Something was continually hammering into my ears: "Why
don't you tell about the aqueducts? Don't you know they carry down the
mountainside and into the city the finest water of the West Indies? Why
don't you give more information?"

But now we may go on, and would you mind if we didn't try to learn one
bit of anything more for the rest of this beautiful evening? Is it not
enough to stroll idly on under the shadow of the mountainside, wild with
tangled vines and interweaving foliage, black as night and deep as the
sea? Would it cause you, in the rush of Western civilisation, a pang to
lean with us over this high wall above the city, and watch yon bark lift
her sails athwart the blood-red sun, merging his grandeur into the peace
of the ocean? Let us call her the _Fontabella_; to be sure the
_Fontabella_ is probably a matter-of-fact, puffy, old mail-steamer and
is not to arrive for days, but that's no matter. Yonder ship is our
_Fontabella_. We shall name her such, truly she is worthy the honour;
she is getting ready for sea; her sails rise slowly with the sleepy
yards and stand out in black relief against the iridescent sea of glory
about her; from afar comes the faint creak of her incoming
anchor-chains, and, as she rests there motionless, down drops the
sun, and a ship we shall see no more fades into the night.

[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AND WATER-FRONT

St. Pierre, Martinique

Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.]

Stopping to inquire of a small boy if we are on the main highway, and
not on some path which may lead us either to destruction or to nothing
at all,--either of which events would be undesirable,--a well-dressed
man, of more than middle age, offers to give us the needed information.
We are so continually beset by volunteer "guides" of all classes and
colours, that we have of late grown most short in our rejection of
unasked-for advice; who knows how many angels we may have thus turned
away unawares? This evening, our new acquaintance not only tells us
where we are going, but calmly joins the party, and, taking the lead,
pilots us in spite of our protestations. He speaks the French of a
cultivated gentleman, and goes on leading the way and the conversation
most agreeably. And so we start along the Boulevard toward the public
gardens, which lie back of the town in a gorge of the mountain.

We are followed by a half dozen or so children, who, for the most part,
stare at us very curiously, and then chatter among themselves in low
voices; I noticed that, as our self-appointed guide walked along, he was
continually knocking and poking with his long cane at stray bunches of
leaves which had fallen upon the road, and now and then he would let
fall a remark about "_les serpents_," which he said were often on the
road after nightfall.

If there is one thing above all others upon this beautiful earth which
my feminine soul abhors, it is a snake; the very thought is chilling to
my blood! I had no intention of running any risk of an encounter with
serpents,--poisonous or otherwise,--if it could be avoided. Still we all
felt that this might be something similar to the rattlesnake stories
told to trusting travellers in our country, and fancied that our leader
shared the popular theory that we were gullible American travellers, who
supposed that all tropical forests were alive with venomous reptiles.

By this time it was night, heavily black with the deepening curtain of
the mountain, hanging over us on one side, and the sombre shade of the
trees on the other. Curious sounds came from the undergrowth, and long,
low, melancholy whistles dropped from among the trees; heavy odours
hung their narcotic spells about us, and our leader, in his long frock
coat, was just visible as he strode ahead of us, sweeping the path for
serpents.

Little Blue Ribbons was clinging to my hand, and her persistent whisper
begged me every minute to please not go any further. I called to Daddy:
"What's the use going any further? I want to go back. I don't see why we
have to follow this man if we don't want to." But Daddy's and Sister's
steps rustled among the leaves ahead, and Little Blue Ribbons went on,
whispering, and we all kept following.

Taking courage, I skipped ahead of Sister, and caught up with our new
friend, and very gently expressed to him our wish that he reconduct us
to some place a little lighter and less deadly; but it didn't make the
least impression upon him; he simply went on and kept up a string of
talk about the wonderful Botanical Garden, whither he was leading us,
part of which I understood and part of which I didn't. "But," I
exclaimed, "we do not wish, desire, expect, or hope to see the Botanical
Garden in the night; we have not survived the perils of the deep to be
devoured by wild animals, or poisoned by reptiles, or slain by
man-eating Caribs, at this late day. All we want is to be peacefully
allowed to go home in our own way." But you might as well have talked to
yonder bark asleep on the breast of the ocean as to the grim back of our
black-coated companion. It was another case of the "Pied Piper of
Hamelin," and it would not have surprised me, such was the mood of the
night, and the mystery of the place, had he marched us up into the side
of Mount Pelée, hanging far above, and slammed the door in thunder
behind us.

Lights--grateful, beautiful, heartening, most entrancing lights--finally
glimmered at the end of our long détour, and we were brought to the gate
of the Botanical Garden, which of course we did not enter, but, turning
into another way, followed the people who were coming down this road
from Morne Rouge into the city. It was remarkable to observe how the
conversation revived. We talked about the island and its people, of
their various occupations, their exports, their schools; we stopped to
lean over the walled-in river, to see through the dark the white
clothes drying on the rocks, like much-discouraged ghosts, and then we
became hilarious, and as we neared the possibility of food, passed jokes
and had a very jolly time. Then our friend--let us now call him
"friend"--said that he must leave, that we needed but to follow the road
ahead of us and we would reach the Grand Hotel; and he turned his way,
and disappeared,--a very tall attenuated figure in a long, black coat.


V.

We hurried on, still in a state of suppressed excitement, I, for one,
wondering if we should ever find the Grand Hotel. But we did find it, to
my relief. Why, I was so hysterically glad to see the familiar faces of
our friends again that it was all I could do to refrain from embracing
Herr Baron von Donnerwetter, who stood with others, sad-faced and
dejected, waiting in the hope of a meal.

The usual state of things prevailed: hungry Americans were clamouring
for impossible foods; helpless waiters were doing their best to pacify
the ravenous demands; a feeble, unhappy host was beating the air with
oratorical violence, and the Americans--always good-humoured, in spite
of their clamourings--waited and waited, only to be satisfied with poor
stuff at last; and finding it thus we fled.

The man of the family had, it seems, been quietly reading the signs as
we first wandered up into St. Pierre, and the name of a modest little
inn had stuck well in his memory; but, manlike, he kept still about it.
So with his bump of locality well in evidence, we followed his sturdy
steps; in short, found the place in question, and entered a dark,
covered, arched passageway, which opened into a number of dimly lighted
apartments.

The room we first entered was a kind of _salle à manger_ and _salon_
combined, for it had a sofa--a very hard, rock-like affair--a number of
chairs, a quaint old sideboard, a table in the centre, and a lamp on the
wall which gave a feeble, flickering light.

Do you remember about the children who followed us so silently on our
long walk? Well, when our tall friend left us, the children kept right
along, and, as soon as it was discovered that we were trying to find a
place all on our own responsibility, their number was augmented by
others--big grown men, black men--whose services being rejected, quietly
but firmly joined the procession.

The keeper of the inn was a magnificent, great creole woman, well on in
years, with a pleasant, winning smile, and an air of hospitality more
for the guest than the purse. She said, if we could wait for awhile
until the noisy students in the adjoining rooms were pacified, she would
do her best for us, but she feared she had nothing suitable.

Ah, friends, how humble doth an empty stomach make the human animal! We
told her that we adored fried eggs. In fact we could not picture to
ourselves anything more delectable. (We hadn't had fried eggs at every
turn in the West Indies for nothing, our stomachs were becoming
acclimated.) Whereupon she bowed her gracefully turbaned head and
leisurely left the room. Then the process began, and we may as well keep
you right in the room, for to adequately appreciate the repast that
followed, good appetite must be seasoned by hilarity and waited upon by
patience.

We had on the table a red oilcloth cover, various well-used
salt-cellars, and a motley array of knives and forks. Two long-limbed
negresses began to arrange our feast, speaking as usual one of their
home-made languages, impossible to comprehend as a whole and difficult
even in part. These two black cupbearers began, as I said, to arrange
the feast, and we sat by, looking on, hungrier every moment, as the
prospect grew less promising. After a while some bread, several big
chunks,--or loaves, I suppose I ought to say,--were laid on the table.
They were shaped like small turtles with heads pulled out at both ends.
Next came a bottle of red wine (from the old country!) and the glasses.
Then we sat there and sat there fully three-quarters of an hour.

The dusky nymphs had flippety-flapped off; the hostess with the smile
had also disappeared, and there was silence. I began to think that,
perhaps, the bread and wine was the first course, that so things were
served in St. Pierre; and besides there wasn't even a whiff of garlic
anywhere. I was confident that no creole cooking was going on; and, the
more I thought, the more I became convinced that we ought to begin. But
Daddy thought we ought to wait, and Sister and Blue Ribbons thought so,
too, they are such proper lassies. Why did they ever have a mother who
would be so unconventional? But I was famished and that bread turtle was
put there to eat. I knew it. So in awful silence, with the family
holding its bated breath, I began to pull at the bread. I got one of the
heads off the turtle, and poured forth the ruddy nectar into the
pressed-glass goblet, and took my first delightsome taste of French wine
in Martinique. I was just about to continue, when into the room
sauntered the black waitress with a steaming dish of soup, and as she
discovered my glass of wine well begun, she set her bowl down on the
table, fastened a reproving look on me, and putting her arms akimbo,
exclaimed:

"_Oh, lá, la!_"

Then the other black heathen came in, and with her eye upon me, added
her astonished:

"_Oh, lá, la!_"

And then the head of the family said, in a "told you so" tone:

"_Oh, lá, la!_"

And then the youngsters joined with a choice duet of:

"_Oh, lá, la!_"

And I said, "Why, certainly, '_Oh, lá, la_,'" and took another swallow
of wine.

I felt perfectly justified in my conduct under the circumstances, but no
amount of explanation, I am convinced, could have ever placed me in the
proper light in the minds of those two black women. I had even some
difficulty in explaining the matter satisfactorily to my own family.

I do not think there are in all the French language three small words
which can express quite the scorn and derision of "_Oh, lá, la!_" From
the high courts of justice to the dim little dining-room of a Martinique
inn, "_Oh, lá, la!_" withers and humiliates. So I took my bowl of soup
very meekly, and said: "_Merci, mille fois_," and went to work. After
the soup, we waited again long, and, with appetite appeased, more
patiently.


VI.

A noise in the dark passageway caused me to look in that direction, and
I saw, leaning one at each side of the doorway, two big, black
negroes--two of the crowd of an hour before. They stood there silent
and motionless; they had "standing-room only," but they were there to
see the finish.

"What are these?" I exclaimed.

"Cherubs," replied his lordship.

"Go 'way!" I say. "We don't want you!"

Then comes a humble voice from the dark: "Gif me dol' an' half. Gif me
dol' an' half!"

"Go 'way, go 'way, Cherub! We don't want you!" again we cry out.

"Gif me two cents! Gif me two cents!" comes from the cherub.

What a fall, my countrymen! At that juncture, her Royal Highness, the
big landlady, swept through, her very presence clearing the premises,
and peace was restored.

Then the dinner progressed through the invariable course of eggs and the
delicious sidedish of fried bananas, until we came to the salad, which,
I confess, has been my inspiration for many pages.

Now, here was a case where the wholly unexpected created a sensation
which no amount of information, regarding the relative merits of the
dish in question could produce. In a way, I rather expected to find in
the West Indies all manner of curious fruits and vegetables, but I did
not expect to eat immature palm-leaf fans with French dressing.

We had finished with our bananas, and were waiting with that good humour
which characterises the third course of dinner, when the black heathen
appeared, flanked by the entire retinue of kitchen retainers, the big
creole hostess bringing up the rear, bearing in her hand a deep dish, in
which she had prepared our salad. It was none less than the famous palm
salad, about which so many travellers have told. We, too, must add our
encomiums. It is taken from the centre of the palm head when the inner
leaves are very young. It looked very much like fine cabbage as our
hostess sliced it in long strips for salad; in colour it was
creamy-white, and in flavour as delicate as a rose. It was so tender
that it seemed to melt in the month, having none of the tough qualities
of either lettuce or watercress or cabbage. The taste is something I
could never describe, for it was a combination of such sweet flavours
that even those who partook thereof were at a loss afterward to recall
its peculiar delicacy.

The following day, we tried to buy some palm in the market and went from
one group to another, asking for palm salad; but it had all been sold
early in the morning, and, as I recall the experience, I am quite
content that we were not successful in our morning's marketing, for who
knows but the dressing had something to do with the irresistible palm
salad--or perchance even the surroundings--and who but those replete
with the blood of many sunny races could give that touch?

Guava jelly made by the madame herself, black coffee from berries
roasted freshly for us; ripe, mellow, richly flavoured mangoes, sweet
honey oranges, and star-apples finished the dinner.

Do you think we noticed the red oilcloth table cover, the dingy lamp,
and the rock-bottom sofa?

There are so many different ways of seeing things!




CHAPTER VII.

MARTINIQUE, "LE PAYS DES REVENANTS"


I.

Beautiful, beautiful Martinique! Well named art thou, _Le Pays des
Revenants_, for my spirit will ne'er rest content until I have again
revisited thy marvellous treasure-trove of beauty! If I were asked where
in all the West Indies I would return with greatest delight, where I
would wish to remain indefinitely, where I would choose to live, I
should say first and last, in fair Martinique,--Empress of the
Caribbees--with, however, an occasional visit to our dear Lady Charlotte
of St. Thomas.

In the brilliant morning light when the sun crept to the tip of the deep
green mountains and threw its slanting streams of glory over the white
walls of St. Pierre, it seemed that, for the first time, my eyes were
beholding the true essence of beauty. I had never before known what
colour meant, I had never seen blue before, nor azure, nor green. I was
in the mixing-room of Nature, where her first, and deepest, and richest
dyes were thrown together in experiment; where, freed from all schools,
she let loose the riot of her senses, producing effects of colour never
dreamed of in her saner moods.

It has been my desire in these sketches to reproduce, as nearly as my
powers permit, the exact impression which the Islands of the Caribs have
left with me. I have hoped to take you to the islands with the same
surprises awaiting you which awaited me, wishing thus to cling to Nature
hand to hand, and to draw the picture freshly as our eyes first beheld
its wonder. This has been my desire. But now I intend to change my
habits for a moment.

Instead of asking you to join us in our morning walk, in sweet innocence
of what might befall the traveller were he always to go thus unprepared
on the island of Martinique, I shall ask you to sit with us here upon
the broad white deck of our good ship, to talk over some of the
marvellous tales which have been whispered to us, sullying the name of
yonder fair isle. I cannot say that it will increase our pleasure, but
it will certainly heighten the interest of the morning excursion. Do you
recall the warnings of our black-coated friend of last evening--warnings
against "_les serpents_," as he called them? He spoke from experience.
Our derisive remarks about people who are for ever looking for snakes in
every brush-pile were ill-timed, to say the least.

It seems that there is upon the island a species of reptile classed by
the scientists as one of the family of _Trigonocephalus_, and known to
the natives as the "_Fer de Lance_." The bite of this serpent is so
deadly that, unless immediate help is procured, the victim cannot
recover, and even with prompt medical aid recovery is doubtful. The
island, one might say, is fairly under the domination of the _Fer de
Lance_.

[Illustration: THE CITY AND ROADSTEAD

St. Pierre, Martinique]

True, the East Indian mongoose has been imported in the hope of
exterminating this common enemy; but when it was found that this little
rascal, after a short period of snake-hunting, preferred to content
himself with eggs and chickens,--a less dangerous prey,--leaving the
forest wilds and taking up quarters in the more congenial surroundings
of the farmyard, the hope of help from the mongoose was abandoned. The
West Indian cannot live without chickens and eggs,--at least so he
thinks,--and consternation prevailed when it was discovered that instead
of his deadly enemy, his pet object of diet was being imperilled. So the
mongoose, however worthy, must go. Just why the tiller of the soil could
not, in the face of such danger, erect fortified chicken-houses, to
protect his fowls against the felonious depredations of the mongoose, I
cannot quite understand, unless it was too much trouble. At all events,
he prefers to keep his chickens and the _Fer de Lance_, and do away with
the mongoose, rather than run the risk of an occasional raid upon the
hen-coop. So now the question is, how shall he get rid of the mongoose?

The mongoose is a plucky little fellow; and so Kipling vividly pictured
him as "_Rikki-tiki-tavi_,"--a bright-eyed, big, brown weasel in
appearance,--very efficient in killing the dangerous snakes of India. We
saw them in confinement, the snappiest, most vicious little animals one
could imagine. It is inexplicable to me that the inhabitants of
Martinique should be willing to give up the fight against this great
danger for the sake of a few hens; for my part, I would not object if
all the fowls were destroyed and the feathers flew away to far Jamaica,
if only after the little robber had had his feast, he would be willing
to hunt his legitimate prey, the _Fer de Lance_.

From the various forms in which chicken appears on a West Indian table,
and from the frequency of that appearance, I have come to the conclusion
that, to do without fowls would be a greater grief than to be in
constant peril from the bite of a snake. As for me, well--there are
times when I feel that, without the least sacrifice, I could miss an
occasional meal of fried eggs and stewed chicken. In fact, I am
convinced that, if I had had fried eggs three hundred and sixty-three
days of the year, I might not pine if the hens didn't lay the last two
days. But there is no accounting for tastes. The West Indian doesn't
look at it in that light.

The _Fer de Lance_ has been described as a rat-tailed, red-skinned,
powerful-looking brute, from four to eight feet long; and, unlike most
snakes, he is fearless, and as a rule will not get out of the way when
he hears one coming. He takes his walks at night, unfortunately
preferring the open road to the garden; the smooth patch before the
house to the brushwood; and he even comes down into the gardens and
paths about the city. This is the great danger of Martinique; yet, while
it may seem more sure, more quickly certain to us, than the danger of
other places, I do not know that it is so.

Wherever the foot of man finds habitation, danger goes hand in hand with
beauty. Unseen danger of a thousand kinds, in poisonous vapours, in
decaying flesh and vegetation, lurks hidden within the dwellings of all
mankind; deeper, deadlier danger, too, than bolt of _Fer de Lance_,
looks sullenly forth from the soul of God's own image--man; danger unto
himself more terrible than the writhing, striking reptile of the
night-shade; and, as knowledge comes only from an understanding of
comparisons, I do not feel that Martinique, afflicted as she is, can vie
in her troubles with the clangers which threaten mankind in some of her
sister isles.


II.

The little girls and their father have all but lost their patience. "I'm
ready now," I call to the beckoning eyes. "Just wait until I get the St.
Thomas basket, and I'll be there." After a quick dash to the stateroom
and back, I'm armed with the basket and umbrella. But after all these
snake stories you would rather not join us in our morning walk? You're
not nervous? That's fine; I like your spirit! Suppose we go first to the
market, and then in a roundabout way to the Botanical Gardens.

There are always guide-books to be bought in every town; there are
always those on shipboard who never separate themselves from a red
cover; there are always those who tell you what you ought to see, and
especially afterward what you ought to have seen; but we four are born
dissenters; we kind o' forget about the mummies when there are live
human beings to watch. We know the mummies will be there when we're
tired of the rest, but we're not so sure of the people. It's such fun
to find out what the natives are doing, thinking, saying; what they
wear, what they eat, how they live, how they dance, and walk, and play,
and work.

Here in Martinique we find the market a perfect babel of voices, all
speaking a curious French _patois_.

It is next to impossible to distinguish one word from another in all
that hum of highly pitched creole voices. The famous
"_porteuses_"--long-limbed, slender, shapely, tall, and agile half-caste
and negro girls--have brought their heavy burdens from the mountains and
the country roundabout; and here they sit, like flowers in a garden,
surrounded by their goods. Some have little piles of fruits, or of
vegetables, cooked and ready to be eaten, wrapped in banana leaves; some
have a stock of dried meats, made up into tiny portions; some sell fancy
cakes; some, pies; others crouch down, fairly hidden by showy piles of
calico and bright silks, with needles, threads, coarse laces, and beads
scattered about them in great confusion.

And here are the sinewy men; the fishers with heaps of fish. Such
beautiful fish! Does it seem credible that you can stand in a smelly
fish-market, and be fairly enchanted by the colour and beauty of great
trays of fish spread out upon a stone pavement? Their beauty is amazing.
Here are enormous trays of flying fish, glittering silver, sweeter to
the taste than any trout; here are others, all pink and red, and here
are wee bits of fish sold by the glass--some sort of "white bait,"
maybe.

We elbow on through the babel of voices, looking, as I told you we did,
for the palm salad, but there is none to be had. Still I remember its
flavour, and I remember that the creole madame brought us a piece which
she had bought in the market for four _sous_. It was very like a round
stick of ivory, a foot and a half long and two inches in diameter. We
shall have to be content with that one sight.

But what is the use in going to a market unless we can buy something? So
we stop in front of a _porteuse_ as she squats behind her pile of fruit
on the market floor, and buy oranges, and get almost a pint of coppers
in change for one silver piece; but not without grave doubts on the part
of the seller. She looks at our silver and shakes her head, and all her
neighbours come together, and the colours of their bright turbans and
the little funny ends of handkerchiefs tied so that they stand up on top
of the head like plumes,--all these ends flutter and bob as they comment
in their funny French, while we tell the women that our money is good,
good silver. Finally a big-eyed, handsome girl comes elbowing along and
proudly explains to her doubting sisters that we are right; then at last
we get our change, distribute it in our various pockets, take our
oranges, and leave the market.


III.

Eager as the children are to reach _Le Jardin des Plantes_, the famous
Botanical Gardens of Martinique, we must stop on our way for a closer
inspection of one of these bright birds of the forest,--the Martinique
_porteuse_.

The women of the tropics have an affinity for nature such as we of the
North cannot comprehend. As the forest and the flowers and the birds and
the insects abound in marvellous hues, so do these children of the sun
love to bedeck themselves in all the schemes of colour known to the
dyer's art. Let us, just for the sake of the picture it will give us,
stop this woman coming and make excuse to buy one of the green cocoanuts
of which she seems to carry a great load on her head. Look at her! Isn't
she magnificent!

Have you heard of the feats of endurance which these young girls
perform? How they will carry upon their heads, over one hundred pounds
out from St. Pierre across the mountains, a distance of fifty miles in
one day? And this while barefooted and at all times of the year, through
all kinds of weather, through dry seasons and wet seasons. Not only on
such days as these, when the air is sweet and cool in the shade, but
days when the sun scorches and withers, even under the deep recesses of
vine-clad porch and lattice. She is the ever-willing burden-bearer, the
unloader of ships, the handler of cargoes, the welcome carrier of bread
for the early breakfast in mountain homes, the vender of all stuffs and
utensils by the roadside where no cart could well be taken; where even
the patient donkey might refuse to go. Agile, nimble, erect of body,
motionless of head, with eyes that pierce into every crook and turn
of the way, and poised like a queen, she is the dweller among the green,
yellow, red, and purple of the forest, and in her love of colour she
follows in her adornments the strong instincts of nature. She it is
whose burden is so great that were she herself to attempt to lift it or
take it from her head, it might mean a rupture, a dislocation, or a
broken vein; she it is whom all men, from the richest to the poorest,
help to unload, so great is the respect in which she is held.

[Illustration: NEAR THE LANDING-PLACE

St. Pierre, Martinique]

And yet we talk of the idleness, the weakness bred in the tropics! It is
true that continual summer enervates, and necessitates slow methods of
living; but I can truthfully say, that (outside of Haïti), I saw less
vagabond-age, less indolence, in the West Indies, than in any of our
Southern States. We were constantly witnessing most remarkable feats of
endurance in both men and women. In these countries the horse is scarce,
and the donkey costs money, so that the human back becomes the carry-all
for the plunder of man.

This motionless bronze statue before us, with the great tray of fruit,
appears--to one unaccustomed--more than indifferent whether we buy or
not, for she stands there, mute, her fruits higher than our own heads;
she is tall to begin with, and the great tray itself is six inches
higher, and the head pad on which it rests is more than an inch thick;
so, altogether, it is so high that we can only make a guess at the fruit
she carries, from the fringe on the edge and the pyramid on top. This is
our first experience with _la porteuse_, and we wait for her to stoop,
camel-like, to unload. But not she! She knows too well the possible
penalty of such rashness, and quietly stands with her quick eyes
questioning us, and we stand wondering what she wants us to do.

The kerchief about her shoulders over a light chemise rivals the
rainbow. I try to fix my eyes on some predominating colour, but when I
decide that it is yellow, in will blaze a green stronger than the
yellow, and then huge red roses splash their lurid colour into the
yellow and green, and royal purple and blue daisies and magenta
buttercups career around in wild indifference as to conventional form
and tint. A loose calico frock hangs to her ankles, with the bare,
tireless feet, straight, shapely and well-formed, showing beneath.

Intelligence dawns upon us at last, and the tall man reaches for a green
cocoanut, just toppling on the edge of the tray, for we realise we must
reach for the fruit if we want it. This cocoanut, encased in its green
husk, is just about the size of a small melon, and has a striated,
light-green, smooth skin. A vender near by, interested in the purchase,
and charitable to the strangers, takes the cocoanut, and, with a sharp
knife, dexterously pares off one end, and with a slash straight across
the top, cuts through the still soft shell, and hands it to us ready to
quench our thirst with a long pull, for there is as yet no meat in the
cocoanut, only a quantity of the rich milk. I cannot say that it is
particularly good, or particularly bad; it has an inoffensive sweet
taste, is said to be perfectly harmless, and is one of the few fruits of
the tropics that the uninitiated can eat with impunity. After we have
all drunk, there seems to be quite a bit of the milk left. So it goes to
the most insistent of the crowd of small boys, who are, as usual,
escorting us with much enjoyment, and a constant merry chatter of
French.

Let us move on now up the clean stone street, up, and up, and up,
passing many a walled recess where sparkling jets of water fill the jars
brought to the fountain by barefooted girls,--up and on, on and up, past
votive shrines--_les chapelles_--and high-walled gardens, coming finally
to the broad avenue leading to the Botanical Garden,--the same road from
which we were so glad to escape the night before. We follow the white,
dusty road in the bright sunlight, with now and then glimpses of the
mountains above, and come at last to the broad stone gateway of _Le
Jardin des Plantes_, which, entering, plunges us at once into the deep
shades and marvellous beauty of a tropical forest.


IV.

Oh, that I had words and power and skill to paint even a shadow of the
beauty before me to a likeness of itself! Here Nature defies all art of
pen, of thought, and brush of man! She seems to glory in the impossible
loveliness of her face and form--impossible to reproduce through art or
reason. Here one should find new words--words more intense, more
poignant, more vividly keen to cut into the heart of the matchless
colours and shades. No description can ever bring accurately to the mind
the wealth, the magnificent beauty of such a spot upon God's earth.

With skilful art, the French have utilised the hand of Nature in the
formation of this wonderful garden to such a degree of perfection that
none can tell, unless a master, where the two fair sisters, Art and
Nature, first embraced. The natural tropical forest, running up a great
ravine into the mountains, is intersected by broad and winding paths
that lead from one fair view to another by mossy flights of rough stone
steps. Through a rift in the hillside, down an abyss of heavy, wet
foliage of a green so intense that the eye can scarcely conceive its
depth of colour, cataracts of water leap through the abiding shade,
through the ever-growing, ever-dying processes of nature, down into a
pool whose depths reflect the blue glimmering sky and the vivid green of
over-hanging vines in opalescent sheen. Great clumps of bamboo, with
long, slim, arrow-shaped leaves, hang gracefully, waving like giant
grass, over the walk; and an ancient bridge, ablaze with purple vines,
reaches out from under the rustling thickets and spans a branch of the
_Rivière Roxelane_, a delicious mountain stream which murmurs on through
the forest, filling one with poetic musings as to whence came its
romantic name.

On we sauntered heedless as to time, sheltered from the sun by the
impenetrable shade of arborescent ferns and towering palms, and lured
ever deeper into the forest, into the wonders of God's marvellous
creation by some unspeakable burst of beauty just beyond.

Here we find not only the trees indigenous to the soil, but trees native
to all tropical climates, from all parts of the world, for this garden
is the pride of the island and a wonder of the Indies. The names and
habitations of foreign trees are most skilfully marked on enamelled
plates fastened to the trees, part of the plate bearing the carefully
engraved botanical name, the lower part containing a coloured map,
indicating the country to which the tree is native.

What a pitiably weak understanding we have of God's unending and
infinite creation! However much we read of life in remoter countries the
mind, like a rubber ball, ever reverts with persistent force to its
original point of view. So that we, the dwellers in the North, in the
land of ice and snow, of pines and duller hues, where Nature bestows her
gifts with somewhat sparing hand,--we of the North forget the limitless
power of creative energy, and when we come into such an overwhelming
feast of colour as in this mighty forest, sighing and breathing for very
burden of beauty, we try in vain to reconcile our former crude
conceptions of the Creator with this new, vast revelation of his
unspeakable power.

As we penetrate deeper and ever deeper into the forest, the mind reels
under the effort to grasp the marvels of plant and tree and earth. Vines
hang in long festoons from tree to tree, and drop down before the face
in thousands of living ropes, which seem to have the power of returning
upon themselves and growing up again without any visible support.
Parasites, air-plants, and orchids--not singly, but in millions--cover
giant trunks so that the tree itself is lost in the growth external. Off
through a break in the deepest green, I see for the first time that
queen of the tropics, the _Amherstia nobilis_, called--and well named,
indeed--"the Flamboyant," the most magnificent flowering tree in the
world: tall and heavenly leafed, of graceful form, its top covered by a
mass of brilliant flowers so vividly red and of such size as to seem
like a blaze of fire in the forest shade. And taller than all the others
of its kind, the Royal Palm lifts its regal head out into the freedom of
light and air, and sways its majestic plumes in rhythmic motion. How
well the Spanish do to call it "_the palm_," in distinction from all
others.

Everywhere about you, life, life ever coming, ever going. A deep,
impenetrable wall of green, denser, thicker than any fretwork, keeps you
to the path. A native lad springs into the black, green, brown depth,
and you shudder involuntarily; there might be danger. The two
figures--hand in hand, Life and Death--haunt the dim green shadows about
you.


V.

We are joined by friends as we wander on, following the sound of
tumbling water. It comes to us as a surprise, for the forest has been
wrapped in a deep silence; its slumberous shade has not been broken by a
single bird-note; all animal life is quiescent. A few steps more and we
come to a cleft in the mountain, an opening in the green vault, and a
veil of glistening water drops between us and a wall of cool, sweet
ferns. The spell of the forest is about us. We turn down a steep path in
silent awe before so great a masterpiece.

Our party separate, we linger behind while our friends stroll on and are
lost in an abrupt turn of the path. The straight noonday sun makes white
patches upon the walk; strange heavy odours, as of earth dead a thousand
years lifting up her soul again in rebellion against her long, deep
sleep, steal about us. Suddenly from the deathlike stillness of the
forest there comes a shriek, followed by sounds of commotion. We run
quickly in the direction of the voices. My friend's white face tells the
story; it was the _Fer de Lance_. We could see nothing. The flight had
been swift; it was impossible for her to say how it ever came there,
whether it had dropped from the limb of a tree, as she thought, or had
sprung from a bush, but suddenly it was there, lying in a double coil
at her feet. It made a strange rapping sound upon the earth, and darted
swiftly off into the undergrowth. A few of us, much affrighted, lead the
way most precipitately down the ravine to the gateway. We carry our
umbrellas aloft in spite of the shade, and, shuddering, secretly envy
the one who saw the _Fer de Lance_.


VI.

After all, I am glad that we did not accept the offer of a carriage for
Morne Rouge, for it is a long drive to the summit of the
mountain,--fully four hours there and back,--and had we gone, the
journey must needs be made with great haste; so we chose rather to leave
before satiety deadened our enjoyment. But there will come other days in
Martinique--there must come other days, for is not this _Le Pays des
Revenants_? Must we not see Gros Morne, Capot, Marigot, and La Grande
Anse, hidden away in the mountains, asleep in their sunlit valleys, and
the wild forest--_le grand bois_--and _La Pelée_, the old volcano with
the queer lake in its extinct crater, and the cavern-like opening in
its cleft side, where it is said that even yet there may be occasionally
heard strange groanings and fearsome hissings--shall we not come some
day to see all this?

[Illustration: THE RIVIÈRE ROXELANE

Near St. Pierre, Martinique]

We take the road to the left and follow down the _Rivière Roxelane_ to
St. Pierre. As we join our friends returning from the mountain, they
share with us a calabash of wild red strawberries which they bought by
the roadside. The berries have that rare, delicious _bouquet_ found only
in the wild fruits, and, as one would naturally suppose, have their own
funny way of growing; small and pointed and very compact. We hover
around the one who holds the calabash until all are gone, and then
indolently follow the stream, passing a group of women under a shady
mango-tree, spreading heaps of cacao (chocolate) beans on the ground to
dry; where we linger, tasting the beans and trying to chat, ever
fascinated by the natives and their ways; and then wander on toward the
stony pavements and narrow streets of the city; and thence down to the
landing-place.

Night draws over. The quickly falling luminous night of the tropics. How
can I bring again the witchery of that vision? The greenly liquid sky,
the great yellow moon, the near, the brilliant stars, and the deep, dark
Morne, covering her wild luxuriance with violet clouds, and back of all
"_La Montagne_"--_Pelée_, the sleeping; the sounds--distant, low,
mellow; the moving, glistening phosphorescent water, and Martinique, in
white slumber, fading astern.




CHAPTER VIII.

ISLAND OF TRINIDAD. PORT OF SPAIN


I.

"I'se here, Missus; I'se here, waitin' fo' you" (from one of a crowd of
chattering Spanish, English, French, Portuguese creoles, outnumbered by
the ever-present black, in every shade, from deep chocolate to light
saffron), greets us as we step on land at Port of Spain, Trinidad.

We do not feel quite sure which particular one, in all that pushing,
scrambling, good-natured crowd, is waiting for us; whether it is the man
with the two monkeys, or the man with the green and blue parrot, or the
woman with the baskets, or the boy with the shells; but whichever one it
is, he's there, and all his friends are there, with everything salable
they possess, strung around them, fastened to them, hitched to them, in
some fashion--any way to allow them free use of their arms.

"Well, we're glad you're waiting, Sambo. We fully expected to find you
here. It wouldn't be Trinidad without a monkey or a parrot. We'll buy
later. Oh, no! Not the monkey; we have one at home, and Heaven knows
that's enough! But maybe, by and by, we'll see about a basket."

If there is one thing in the world Sister and I can never resist, it's a
basket. That distressing mania breaks forth at the slightest
provocation; it doesn't seem to make any difference where we are, or how
impossible it is to gratify it; difficulties only whet the appetite. The
more inopportune the occasion, the more we want the basket.

[Illustration: THE DRAGON'S MOUTH, ENTRANCE TO GULF OF PARIA

Between South America and Trinidad]

So we stood there on the quay at Port of Spain, with the lofty headlands
of grand old South America away to the south of us, taking their morning
bath among the clouds, and off in the north the mountain sweep of
Trinidad, watching the queer old city at its feet, and betwixt the two,
the Gulf of Paria, loosened from the Dragon's Mouth, spreading and
expanding, with its waters a commingling of the blue of the Caribbean
and the brown of the near-by Orinoco, washing the outstretched feet of
the great mother and child; and we stood there, with all this grandeur
ablaze in the first light of the morning, wondering if we would better
buy the basket right then, on the spot, or whether we should wait until
our return.

To be sure, we had one big basket--and a beauty, too--from St. Thomas,
but it was always full, a sort of catch-all for our curious leaves, and
seeds, and coral, and beads, and newspapers, and precious bills of
fare,--treasured reminders of old balconies and lingering melodies; and
it really seemed to be our duty to provide a number two size to carry to
market. We could use it in so many ways, and then we wanted another
basket. But, before we had time to strike a bargain,--for it's a
half-day's work in these ideal lands to buy anything,--some one cried
out: "If you are going to the Coolie Village, you'd better come right
now, or the carriages will all be taken!"

"Who are the coolies?" Blue Ribbons asked, as we rattled along up
Frederick Street. The answer to her question was squatting not far
distant, where some cars, just arrived from San Fernando, were being
unloaded. His hands were clasped around his thin bare legs; his face,
serious, dark, immovable; his hair, black as ink, and straight; on his
head, a voluminous white turban bespoke the worshipper of Brahma,
Vishnu, and Shiva. It was with mingled sensations of awe and fear that I
beheld this unexpected Hindoo. His apparent unconcern of mundane affairs
recalled not only deeply treasured teachings from his great masters,
but, in his eyes, there was the black, unforgotten story of Lucknow. It
was hard to reconcile the two.

It seems that the Hindoo "coolie" is imported by the ship-load into
Trinidad, and indentured for a period of ten years; at the expiration of
which time he may return to India at his company's expense, if he so
chooses (and he usually does choose to do so, taking home with him a
goodly store of gold). He makes a most valuable and reliable labourer,
and has really been the salvation of the vast sugar and cacao estates on
the island. It has been next to impossible to exact any continuous
labour from the negro, without some system of slavery, and had it not
been for the Hindoo, the resources of Trinidad would have been
practically undeveloped.

The coolies were in evidence everywhere. In fact, they seemed to form a
considerable proportion of the population. We do not wonder any longer
at the emaciated pictures of the famine-stricken East Indians, for here,
in a land of plenty, where food, almost ready cooked, is only waiting to
drop, the Hindoo is the sparest, leanest creature imaginable. His
ever-bare legs are not like flesh and blood, but small-boned and thin to
emaciation, and almost devoid of calves below the knee; they have the
hard statuesque look of bronze stilts. And the arms, too, are thin, and
terminate in slender little hands that seem incapable of heavy and
prolonged labour.


II.

Port of Spain, compactly, squarely built, and well paved, extends for
quite a distance over a flat, alluvial plain to a grassy _savannah_, two
and a half miles wide; one side of which, facing the Botanical Garden
and the Governor's Mansion, brings you to the base of the mountain.

The city is neither beautiful nor clean. Its architecture, dominated by
the taste of the Englishman, is about as unattractive as that of our own
country. The business streets are dusty, shadeless, and devoid of
cleaners, except for the vulture, who, with his long, bare legs, his
skinny neck and head, and huge black body, plays the part of city
scavenger. These ungainly, hideous, repulsive creatures stalk around
everywhere; they are under the horses' feet; they roost on the eave
troughs asleep in the sun, sit reflectively on chimney-tops, or come
swooping down after some horrible piece of carrion in the street.

How can a civilised people be willing to turn the civic house-cleaning
over to a lot of vultures? No wonder that plagues and fevers rage upon
these beautiful islands. Under existing conditions, they surely have the
right of way.

[Illustration: THE BUSINESS SECTION

Port of Spain, Trinidad

Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.]

Did I understand you to say that the carriages were all gone when you
came ashore? Come in with us! There, the front seat with the driver
is just waiting for you, and really, to walk is hardly safe under this
vertical sun. Would you mind if we make a stop or two on the way out to
the village, for the man of the family must have some fresh white ducks
to wear in South America; let us wait for him here in the carriage.

It seems pleasant to-day not to make any exertion. I've no doubt we can
get a lot of information from the driver, if we question him. He
responds, oh! yes, he responds with great ardour, but with what result?
One word in ten, we recognise. He thinks, of course, he's speaking
English, and I suppose we might better let him think so, but, bless you,
if that's English, what are we speaking? It's just another of the West
Indian surprises. You come to a country which has been under the
beneficent English rule for over one hundred years, and you find the
natives--the men who drive for you, who row you ashore, who carry your
plunder, the women in the market--all speaking an almost unintelligible
jargon of French, Spanish, Portuguese, English, with a little Hindustani
and Chinese thrown in. Try the native on your best French, and at every
five or six words he brightens up with understanding. Take any of the
other languages and you have the same result; for your Trinidadian
understands when he wants to, but woe betide you when you ask a question
and want to know the answer. The native in Trinidad is bright and quick;
he is not like his big lazy lout of a brother down in our Southland. He
is a mix-up of many people, intelligent and active, and his language
tells what a conglomerate he is, and what a happy-go-lucky life he
leads.


III.

What can be keeping the shoppers so long? We shall certainly have to
hunt them up; let us look inside.

I have often wondered what our mammoth cheap stores of the North do with
their leftover plush albums, china shepherdesses, antiquated ready-made
clothing, tin jewelry, their untold unnumbered tons of clap-traps; and
now I know. It's all dumped right here in the West Indies. From South
America to Cuba, there is one vast collection of trash imported to catch
the pennies of these long-suffering people. It is always difficult to
obtain any of the native work; we have to go among the natives
themselves for that. One glance at Port of Spain's emporium, the _Great
Colonial Stores of Blank and Co. Limited_, is enough!

"Mother," said Sister, "I have an idea! Let's try the deaf and dumb
sign-language on the cabby." And she does. It works like a charm. Off we
swing for the savannah, a great, green, grassy plain, the playground for
the Trinidadians. Here, they have their horse-racing and golf and
cricket and polo under the fierce, tropical sun; here, the
merry-go-round and pop-stands burst forth every Saturday afternoon; here
the inevitable "picnic" is held, and as we happen here on a festival
day, we see the children--big and little--gathering from every
direction. There is something indestructible about the customs of an
Englishman. He does not change his methods of living, as do other races,
but, wherever he goes, he carries from pole to equator the customs and
habits of his own country. So he plays golf and cricket and polo in
Trinidad, when, at its mildest, the heat is about equal to our August.

It is on this savannah that we have our first good opportunity of
viewing the mighty ceiba tree near at hand. You remember it was a great
ceiba to which Columbus made fast his ships on the bank of the Ozama
River in Santo Domingo? The ceiba may not be the largest tree in the
tropics. I do not wish to say it is, for it would seem then that one was
limiting to a given scale the grandeur of the tropical tree. There is
apparently no limit to anything in the way of size or beauty under these
skies. There may be greater trees in the "High Wood" than the ceiba,
but, in our experience, it was by far the most wide-stretching of
anything we had yet seen. One stands before it awed, stupefied by its
immensity, its age, its strange manner of growing. And we think over all
the words we know to express its size and beauty, and we feel so poor
and powerless in expression.

[Illustration: A VILLAGE GREETING

San Fernando, Trinidad]

The ceiba on the wide savannah has endless room in which to spread. It
is perfect in form, like a mammoth gray and green umbrella, and reaches
out its immense branches toward every side in perfect symmetry. And such
branches! They alone are as large as our forest oaks, and they throw
themselves out from the trunk horizontally, in stupendous strength. Its
foliage is rather thin; the power of the tree seems to be spent in trunk
and branch. Its bark is like an elephant's hide, and its trunk has a
strange way of buttressing out its side in huge wings. It is even said
to be the worshipped tree of the superstitious black natives--a
mysterious sort of _fetich_, the mighty, silk-cotton ceiba.


IV.

Fine residences skirt the savannah, each garden a marvel of beauty, in
palms and trees whose names we do not know. Each little villa, has its
English name plastered upon the gateway. This part of the city is clean,
and the road is fine, so we will try to forgive and forget the shabby
appearance of the lower town. We pass countless gardens, and then the
houses grow fewer, and the gardens turn into banana patches, and the
people begin to look different; the negroes disappear, and we are in the
beginning of the "Coolie Village," where a row of thatched roofs,
supported by bamboo poles, ranges on either side of a long street,
which disappears under an avenue of palms and breadfruit-trees, quite
out of sight.

And here are the Hindoo men and women,--quiet, serious people,
displaying very little curiosity about us, going on with their work,
just as if we were not near them. What a relief from the hideous faces
of the negro are these straight-featured, well-poised East Indians!

The men dress in white and are not overly clean. It does not look to me
as if shirt and turban were often washed, but as their artisans work
sitting on the ground, there is really small chance for immaculate
linen. It is upon the women that the Hindoo displays his sensuous love
for colour and jewels. She is his savings-bank. Every bit of silver or
gold earned is taken to the jeweller to be fashioned into ornaments for
her.

Let us leave the carriage and wander about among these interesting,
silent people. Little Blue Ribbons would like to carry away one of those
curious silver bracelets the women wear, and as if our thoughts are
divined, we are in no time surrounded by a lot of girls who are simply
covered with silver and gold. They wear as many as twenty bracelets on
each arm, of different designs, some very beautifully twisted into
serpents' coils and heads, others engraved with intricate arabesques,
others merely crude bands, with a few ornamental lines. Every part of
the body, where a ring can hang, is covered with ornaments; head, ears,
nose, fingers, arms, waist, ankles, toes. And some of the dear little
brown babies, from two to five years old, were dressed only in pretty
silver whistles, tied about the waist with a black string.

We examine many bracelets. The arms held out are more beautiful than any
bits of silver about them, and the women have low, sweet voices, and
their eyes are brilliant, and their skin is lustrous, and the
fascination of the Orient is about them. The Hindoo women may have a
hard time of it in some ways, perhaps, off in East India where the
missionaries are, but here in Trinidad they have every appearance of
being well cared for.

Daddy is the one who buys the trinkets. He has a way of finding always
the most curious and the most beautiful things, and the Hindoo women
crowding about him, and the little girls, too, seem to have suspected
his talent. After examining the wealth of a dozen arms, two silver bands
are selected, which, after being carefully washed by a very particular
Daddy, are snapped about the white wrists of the expectant girlies. He
has not only a way with him for finding beautiful curios, but, alas! I
must confess he has a decided talent also for discovering beautiful
women. My only consolation in the matter is his catholicity of taste,
for he shows no preference, as a rule. His is a universal admiration,
the simple homage to beauty of an artistic soul, and that comforts me.
There is safety in numbers!

So it did not surprise me, while we are prowling around back of the
huts, in search of some Hindoo needlework, to return and discover him
chatting in a one-sided conversation with a little girl, about the age
of Little Blue Ribbons. She was leaning in a dreamy attitude in the
doorway of a shop--the most prosperous one in the village.

Just then he spies hanging in the shop some odd pipes made of clay. He
goes in and buys one or two. The proprietor and his wife are standing
behind the counter; she, fat and comfortable, a mass of silver
bracelets, smiled at us as we approached; but he, thin as a churchwarden
pipe, and solemn, my! solemn enough to be Buddha himself, with long,
gray hair, curled up at the end, and impassive face, answered our
questions about the pipes in precise, curiously clipped Oriental
English, without once looking at us. His eyes were fixed on something
beyond us, and they were the eyes that speak but rarely, and then
terribly. Daddy praises the shop, the wife's ornaments, and finally the
little girl, and asks if he may take her picture. The mother smiles a
"Yes;" the father just looks outside. Immediately the little one is
called into an inner room by her mother. She stands in the doorway so we
can see what is going on. I cannot tell you how much the mother loads
upon her.

The straight, low forehead is covered by three circlets of gold and
silver; the little ears are weighed down by filigree hoops of gold,
reaching to her shoulders; her pretty pierced nostrils hold a delicately
fashioned gold plate, which drops below the sweet red lips; a tiny
jewelled rose screws into the side of her straight little nose; her
graceful neck is loaded with chain after chain, hung with many silver
dollars of different countries, while one necklace is of twenty-dollar
United States gold pieces. Ten of these necklaces drop from the round
throat to the slender waist. A band of silver, two inches wade, spans
her upper arm, and from the tapering wrist to the shapely little elbow,
the brown, soft skin is covered with bracelets. A bright silk skirt
falls to the ankles, which, in turn, are encircled by bracelets or
anklets, while little rings are fitted to each toe of her slender,
shapely feet; and then, to cap the climax, the mother brings out a long
yellow scarf and starts to wind it about the little one's head.

That was too much. Daddy begs the mother off. He wanted to catch the
beautiful oval outline of that little head. So the yellow scarf was
discarded, and the little one came outside, and stood under the porch
against a green, leafy background, and her small hands were folded
before her very demurely, and she looked at us with her father's black,
serious eyes. All the while, he stands within, like a motionless gray
shadow,--absolutely unmoved by our admiration of his daughter.

A few feet beyond there is the goldsmith, squatting cross-legged on the
ground outside the door of his shanty. This is his shop,--this dirt
floor. Here, on a bit of cloth, are his wares, very beautiful some of
them, masterful pieces of work, and this diminutive bed of charcoal is
his furnace, these tiny hammers and pincers are his tools, and that
little black anvil is the scene of his daily toil. Can it be that, with
these few crude tools, he can fashion so wonderfully? His pattern is the
insect that hovers for an instant on its flight at noonday; or the
sleeping serpent, hidden under the bamboo; or the palm above the
village; or the spider's web over the doorway. Nature close to him--dear
to him--is the master of his art.


V.

The road on through the village is too beautiful to leave; we must go
farther, deeper down among this strangely silent, mysterious people; and
we drive on to where the palms meet over our heads, and we get glimpses
of the blue and green Gulf beyond, and some one tells us--or have we
dreamed it?--that, farther on, we shall come to the Big White House,
and we wonder if we are really ourselves, or some one very unreal out of
a book.

Surely we shall soon awake and rub our eyes and find that we have just
been asleep in the library corner, and that we never reached the Leper
House, and never heard the whispering of Hindoo feet; that it was all a
daydream, a sweet heavenly dream, made long by some good fairy; but, no,
we look at one another, and it must be true, for we hear the waves
lapping the beach near by, and the brown, naked coolie babies look
wonderingly at us, and we jog along under the fitful showers and sun,
and Blue Ribbons raises the white umbrella, and Sister looks ruefully at
the sad, discouraged, rain-bespattered ribbons, so it must be real.

Yes, real; and yet to see the Big White House, now visible through the
mangoes, and know that within its walls live victims of the most awful
disease of all time,--a disease whose origin is lost in the dim vistas
of antiquity,--to come thus unexpectedly, in the twentieth century, upon
a manifestation of the "sins of the fathers" of thousands of years, we
cannot make it seem real to us. Had we been off in the South Seas,
sailing toward Molokai, or had we been looking over the hills of
Galilee, it might have seemed more probable. But to find a leper
settlement here, not three miles from a thickly peopled modern city,--a
settlement which must be a constant and deadly menace to society,--was
beyond my powers of credence.

I remember so well, in reading Stevenson's account of his visit to the
leper settlement in the Sandwich Islands, that I wondered how he dared
go among them, for even so great an object as the vindication of Father
Damien, and lo, here we were, without any warning, almost in the midst
of the same plague. Although fully aware that leprosy did exist, just as
we know that the moon must have form and solidity, it still seemed an
uncertain, far-removed possibility,--in a way half-legendary, half fact,
a tradition of the far East, a memory of the days of the Holy One of
Nazareth; not a tangible awful reality, to be met and battled with all
the force of modern knowledge. I could not convince myself that within a
stone's throw were lepers whom we might see, to whom we might speak,
and I wondered if it would be safe to enter the enclosure. All this time
we drew nearer to the gateway, while the white house in the centre of a
large, shady park, fenced in by high iron pickets, seemed to us like the
great Cross on Calvary, raised for the sins of the world.

In various parts of the yard, inside that fence, groups of men are
sitting on the grass under the shade of great trees. It is white noon.
It cannot be possible that these men, lolling about and visiting
together, are _lepers_, for, from a distance, they bear no signs of
disease about them. They look like the rest of the people we have been
amongst all day. They are mostly Hindoos (some with a touch of negro
blood), very dark of skin, and apparently in good health, that is,
viewed at a distance. I must confess that a terrible feeling comes over
me as the man of the family--for here we are at the gate, with the
horse's head facing the sad white house--suggests that we enter the
enclosure. I remember how it was said that the lepers in olden time must
cry out: "Unclean!" "Unclean!" and that he whose garments but swept the
shadow of one thus afflicted must undergo a long purification before he
could be allowed intercourse with the world once more.

As these old stories recur to my memory, and beseech me for my life not
to take so great a risk,--but how long it takes to tell it all!--a big,
jolly-faced black gatekeeper quiets my apprehensions by saying that we
would not be exposed to the least danger whatever; that some of the
labourers and attendants have been employed to work among the lepers for
years with no bad results. With this comfortable assurance of a doubtful
safety from the gateman, the driver whips up, and we move on into the
yard, and up the avenue to the hospital, made gruesome by horrid
buzzards perching on its roof and eaves in grim expectancy.

But it is the coming closer into the deep shade which reveals to us its
true significance. From without, this white house is long and low and
restful to the eye, and the trees bending over it, with clinging arms,
seem to breathe only life and beauty, and the white-coated men here and
there under the shade are the labourers resting during the still noon
hour.

But a nearer approach and a closer acquaintance changes the whole scene.
Was it upon such wrecks of life that the gentle _Saviour_ gazed in
pitying love? These are not men; they are pieces,--parts of men, hung
together by the long-suffering cord of life.

The first leper we see near at hand seems to take an interest in us. The
others we have passed lie around in a dull, listless way. I presume they
see us, but they evidence no concern other than keeping in the shade.
But this leper--I hardly know how to designate him--has more life in him
than the others; he is walking about and nods to us as we pass. He has
strange, unnatural ears; they are twice the normal size and have nodules
on the outer edge. His face is swollen into mushroom-like patches, and
deeply seamed by ridges, and yet the skin has apparently the same
appearance it had in a state of health, except a little grayer and more
lifeless looking. Another patient hobbles toward us, and we find that he
is walking on stumps of feet, without toe. We throw some pennies to
another group, and the one nearest the coin picks it up by making a
scoop of his flipper-like palm. His fingers are gone, only little points
are left, as if they had been whittled off with a jack-knife. An old man
looks at us with one eye, the other eye, eaten away by the relentless
advance of the disease, has commenced to run out. These are only the
moderately sick patients.

[Illustration: WHERE THE LEPERS LIVE AND DIE

Trinidad]

As we drive nearer to the hospital, a dozen or so horrible-looking
creatures crowd to the end of an upper gallery and stand there, leaning
out over the railing, a ghastly picture of misery. I scarcely dare look
at them, their faces have been so mutilated by the disease; and others
worse there are inside, whom the heroic Sisters--Romish and
Protestant--care for and comfort until the living hideous death is at an
end and life begins.

We move slowly along up the drive, and come quite near to the great
archway which leads into the courtyard. There we call to the cabby to
stop, and the tall man, who is never afraid of anything, gets out, and
his leaving the carriage becomes, unwittingly to us, a signal for the
poor lepers to approach. One hurries away from his companion--an
emaciated, becrutched Hindoo--and comes to within a few feet of us, and
just as he does so, our protector turns to me and says: "Did you ever
think I would find myself talking to a leper just three feet from me?"
and, interesting as the experience is, I recoil within myself for fear
that the money which we want to give them may necessitate a closer
proximity than we desire. But the unfortunate victim understands the
situation and keeps his distance, while the tall man coming back to us,
stands there with one foot on the carriage-step, still turning toward
the leper.

By a certain sort of mental telepathy, I know that he cannot say
good-bye without leaving some word of cheer for the poor fellow, and
just what to say, how to say it, how to express a wish which we know can
never be fulfilled, makes a moment's very embarrassing silence. If you
had ever been in the presence of such a living, unpitying death, such a
picture of horrible hopelessness, and felt it your duty to make the
burden easier by some word of cheer, when you had all things--life,
health, and happiness--about you, and he only the refuse of a rotten
body, if you must presume to tell such a martyr to be brave and all that
sort of thing, when you know that his absolutely uncomplaining silence
is greater bravery than you, in all your health and vigour, know how to
comprehend--well, I tell you it's no use! However optimistic by nature,
it's hard to find the words. Why, even a parson would be dumb!

And so he lingers there uneasily. He looks at the two dear little
sweet-faced maidens at my side, so white and clean and fresh and young,
and then at the gray, misshapen, mutilated silent figure before him,
living his lonely death of agony each day, and says, with a choke,
"Good-bye,"--that is all. Tell me, what would you have said?

END OF VOLUME I.




INDEX


Botanical Garden, The, St. Pierre, 228, 235-236, 254, 257, 264-270.

Boulevard, The, St. Pierre, 233.

Cape Hatteras, 27, 29.

Capot, Martinique, 270.

Casa Blanca, San Juan, 144.

Castle, The, Charlotte Amalie, 179-185.

Cathedral, The, Santo Domingo, 90-105.

Ceiba-Tree, The, 288.

Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, 164-196.
  Castle, The, 179-185.

Columbus, Christopher, 97-105, 288.

Columbus, Diego, 98.

Coolies of Trinidad, 279-281, 292-297.

Coolie Village, The, Port of Spain, 292-297.

Fer de Lance, The, Martinique, 248, 252-253, 269-270.

Grand Hotel, The, St. Pierre, 237-238.

Grande Anse, La, Martinique, 270.

Gros Morne, Martinique, 270.

Gulf Stream, 29.

Hotel Casino Bellevue, Port au Prince, 66-79.

Leper House, The, Port of Spain, 298-307.

Marigot, Martinique, 270.

Martinique, Island of, 197-271.
  Capot, 270.
  Fer de Lance, 248, 252-253, 269-270.
  Grande Anse, La, 270.
  Gros Morne, 270.
  Marigot, 270.
  Morne Rouge, 236, 270.
  Mount Pelée, 236, 270, 274.
  Natives, The, 205, 210-215, 254-263.
  Rivière Roxelane, 266, 273.

Morne Rouge, Martinique, 236, 270.

Morro Castle, San Juan, 128, 153.

Mount Pelée, Martinique, 236, 270, 274.

Natives, The, of Martinique, 205, 210-215, 254-263;
  of St. Thomas, 193-196, 210;
  of Trinidad, 275-276, 285-286.

Ozama River, 85, 86, 112, 118-122, 163, 288.

Plaza, The, San Juan, 140, 148-150.

Ponce de Leon, 154-156;
  Square of, San Juan, 153-160.

Port au Prince, Haïti, 35, 42-80, 84, 89.
  Hotel Casino Bellevue, 66-79.

Port of Spain, Trinidad, 275-307.
  Coolie Village, The, 292-297.
  Leper House, The, 298-307.
  Savannah, The, 287-291.

Quay, The, San Juan, 134-136.

Rivière Roxelane, Martinique, 266, 273.

St. Croix, Island of, 189.

St. John, Island of, 189, 190.

St. Pierre, 205, 216, 219, 220-245, 246, 273.
  Botanical Garden, The, 228, 235-236, 254, 257, 264-270.
  Boulevard, The, 233.
  Grand Hotel, The, 237-238.

St. Thomas, Island of, 164, 186, 189, 190.
  Natives of, 193-196, 210.

San Salvador, 33.

San Juan, Puerto Rico, 124-161, 163.
  Casa Blanca, 144.
  Morro Castle, 128, 153.
  Plaza, The, 140, 148-150.
  Quay, The, 134-136.
  Square of Ponce de Leon, 153-160.

Santo Domingo, 84-123, 173.
  Cathedral, The, 90-105.

Savannah, The, Port of Spain, 287-291.

Southern Cross, The, 219.

Square of Ponce de Leon, San Juan, 153-160.

Trinidad, Island of, 275-307.
  Coolies, The, 279-281, 292-297.
  Natives, The, 275-276, 285-286.

Windward Passage, 29, 35.

       *       *       *       *       *

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

her persisent whisper=> her persistent whisper {pg 235}

Hayti=> Haïti {pg 310}