The English in the West Indies Part 5

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain, And they breathe truth who breathe their words in pain.

He roused himself to talk, and he talked sadly, for all things at home and everywhere were travelling on the road which he well knew could lead to no good end. No statesman had done better practical work than he, or work which had borne better fruit, could it be allowed to ripen. But for him Trinidad would have been a wilderness, savage as when Columbus found the Caribs there. He belonged to the race who make empires, as the orators lose them, who do things and do not talk about them, who build and do not cast down, who reverence ancient habits and inst.i.tutions as the organic functions of corporate national character; a Tory of the Tories, who nevertheless recognised that Toryism itself was pa.s.sing away under the universal solvent, and had ceased to be a faith which could be believed in as a guide to conduct.

He no more than any one could tell what it was now wisest or even possible to do. He spoke like some ancient _seer_, whose eyes looked beyond the present time and the present world, and saw politics and progress and the wild whirlwind of change as the play of atoms dancing to and fro in the sunbeams of eternity. Yet he wished well to our poor earth, and to us who were still struggling upon it. He was sorry for the courses on which he saw mankind to be travelling. Spite of all the newspapers and the blowing of the trumpets, he well understood whither all that was tending. He spoke with horror and even loathing of the sinister leader who was drawing England into the fatal whirlpool. He could still hope, for he knew the power of the race. He knew that the English heart was unaffected, that we were suffering only from delirium of the brain. The day would yet come, he thought, when we should struggle back into sanity again with such wreck of our past greatness as might still be left to us, torn and shattered, but clothed and in our right mind, and cured for centuries of our illusions.

My forebodings of the nearness of the end were too well founded. A month later I heard that Charles Warner was dead. To have seen and spoken with such a man was worth a voyage round the globe.

On the prospects of Trinidad I have a few more words to add. The tendency of the island is to become what Grenada has become already--a community of negro freeholders, each living on his own homestead, and raising or gathering off the ground what his own family will consume.

They will multiply, for there is ample room. Three-quarters of the soil are still unoccupied. The 140,000 blacks will rapidly grow into a half-million, and the half-million, as long as we are on the spot to keep the peace, will speedily double itself again. The English inhabitants will and must be crowded out. The geographical advantages of the Gulf of Paria will secure a certain amount of trade. There will be merchants and bankers in the town as floating pa.s.sage birds, and there will be mulatto lawyers and shopkeepers and newspaper writers. But the blacks hate the mulattoes, and the mulatto breed will not maintain itself, as with the independence of the blacks the intimacy between blacks and whites diminishes and must diminish. The English peasant immigration which enthusiasts have believed in is a dream, a dream which pa.s.sed through the ivory gate, a dream which will never turn to a waking reality; and unless under the Indian system, which our rulers will never try unless the democracy orders them to adopt it, the English interest will come to an end.

The English have proved in India that they can play a great and useful part as rulers over recognised inferiors. Even in the West Indies the planters were a real something. Like the English in Ireland, they produced a remarkable breed of men: the Codringtons, the Warners, and many ill.u.s.trious names besides. They governed cheaply on their own resources, and the islands under their rule were so profitable that we fought for them as if our Empire was at stake. All that is gone. The days of ruling races are supposed to be numbered. Trade drifts away to the nearest market--to New York or New Orleans--and in a money point of view the value of such possessions as Trinidad will soon be less than nothing to us.

As long as the present system holds, there will be an appreciable addition to the sum of human (coloured human) happiness. Lighter-hearted creatures do not exist on the globe. But the continuance of it depends on the continuance of the English rule. The peace and order which they benefit by is not of their own creation. In spite of schools and missionaries, the dark connection still maintains itself with Satan's invisible world, and modern education contends in vain with Obeah worship. As it has been in Hayti, so it must be in Trinidad if the English leave the blacks to be their own masters.

Scene after scene pa.s.ses by on the magic slide. The man-eating Caribs first, then Columbus and his Spaniards, the French conquest, the English occupation, but they have left behind them no self-quickening seed of healthy civilisation, and the prospect darkens once more. It is a pity, for there is no real necessity that it should darken. The West Indian negro is conscious of his own defects, and responds more willingly than most to a guiding hand. He is faithful and affectionate to those who are just and kind to him, and with a century or two of wise administration he might prove that his inferiority is not inherent, and that with the same chances as the white he may rise to the same level. I cannot part with the hope that the English people may yet insist that the chance shall not be denied to him, and that they may yet give their officials to understand that they must not, shall not, shake off their responsibilities for this unfortunate people, by flinging them back upon themselves 'to manage their own affairs,' now that we have no further use for them.

I was told that the keener-witted Trinidad blacks are watching as eagerly as we do the development of the Irish problem. They see the ident.i.ty of the situation. They see that if the Radical view prevails, and in every country the majority are to rule, Trinidad will be theirs and the government of the English will be at an end. I, for myself, look upon Trinidad and the West Indies generally as an opportunity for the further extension of the influence of the English race in their special capacity of leaders and governors of men. We cannot with honour divest ourselves of our responsibility for the blacks, or after the eloquence we have poured out and the self-laudation which we have allowed ourselves for the suppression of slavery, leave them now to relapse into a state from which slavery itself was the first step of emanc.i.p.ation.

Our world-wide dominion will not be of any long endurance if we consider that we have discharged our full duty to our fellow-subjects when we have set them free to follow their own devices. If that is to be all, the sooner it vanishes into history the better for us and for the world.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] A squadron did go while I was in the West Indies. I have not heard that any advance has been made in consequence towards the settlement of the Border.

CHAPTER IX.

Barbadoes again--Social condition of the island--Political const.i.tution--Effects of the sugar bounties--Dangers of general bankruptcy--The Hall of a.s.sembly--Sir Charles Pearson--Society in Bridgetown--A morning drive--Church of St. John's--Sir Graham Briggs--An old planter's palace--The Chief Justice of Barbadoes.

Again at sea, and on the way back to Barbadoes. The commodore of the training squadron had offered me a berth to St. Vincent, but he intended to work up under sail against the north-east trade, which had risen to half a gale, and I preferred the security and speed of the mail boat.

Among the pa.s.sengers was Miss ----, the lady whom I had seen sketching on the way to the Blue Basin. She showed me her drawings, which were excellent. She showed me in her mosquito-bitten arms what she had endured to make them, and I admired her fort.i.tude. She was English, and was on her way to join her father at Codrington College.

We had a wild night, but those long vessels care little for winds and waves. By morning we had fought our way back to Grenada. In the St.

Vincent roadstead, which we reached the same day, the ship was stormed by boatloads of people who were to go on with us; boys on their way to school at Barbadoes, ladies young and old, white, black, and mixed, who were bound I know not where. The night fell dark as pitch, the storm continued, and we were no sooner beyond the shelter of the land than every one save Miss ---- and myself was prostrate. The vessel ploughed on upon her way indifferent to us and to them. We were at Bridgetown by breakfast time, and I was now to have an opportunity of studying more at leisure the earliest of our West Indian colonies.

Barbadoes is as unlike in appearance as it is in social condition to Trinidad or the Antilles. There are no mountains in it, no forests, no rivers, and as yet no small freeholders. The blacks, who number nearly 200,000 in an island not larger than the Isle of Wight, are labourers, working for wages on the estates of large proprietors. Land of their own they have none, for there is none for them. Work they must, for they cannot live otherwise. Thus every square yard of soil is cultivated, and turn your eyes where you will you see houses, sugar canes, and sweet potatoes. Two hundred and fifty years of occupation have imprinted strongly an English character; parish churches solid and respectable, the English language, the English police and parochial system. However it may be in the other islands, England in Barbadoes is still a solid fact. The headquarters of the West Indian troops are there. There is a commander-in-chief residing in a 'Queen's House,' so called. There is a savannah where there are English barracks under avenues of almond and mahogany. Red coats are scattered about the gra.s.s. Officers canter about playing polo, and naval and military uniforms glitter at the side of carriages, and hors.e.m.e.n and horsewomen take their evening rides, as well mounted and as well dressed as you can see in Rotten Row. Barbadoes is thus in pleasing contrast with the conquered islands which we have not taken the trouble to a.s.similate. In them remain the wrecks of the French civilisation which we superseded, while we have planted nothing of our own. Barbadoes, the European aspect of it at any rate, is English throughout.

The harbour, when we arrived, was even more brilliant than we had left it a fortnight before. The training squadron had gone, but in the place of it the West Indian fleet was there, and there were also three American frigates, old wooden vessels out merely on a cruise, but heavily sparred, smart and well set up, with the stars and stripes floating carelessly at their sterns, as if in these western seas, be the nominal dominion British, French, or Spanish, the American has a voice also and intends to be heard.

We had no sooner anch.o.r.ed than a well-appointed boat was alongside with an awning and an ensign at the stern. Colonel ----, the chief of the police, to whom it belonged, came on board in search of Miss ----, who was to be his guest in Bridgetown. She introduced me to him. He insisted on my accompanying him home to breakfast, and, as he was a person in authority, I had nothing to do but obey. Colonel ----, to whose politeness then and afterwards I was in many ways indebted, had seen life in various forms. He had been in the navy. He had been in the army.

He had been called to the bar. He was now the head of the Barbadoes police, with this anomalous addition to his other duties, that in default of a chaplain he read the Church service on Sundays in the barracks. He had even a license from the bishop to preach sermons, and being a man of fine character and original sense he discharged this last function, I was told, remarkably well. His house was in the heart of the town, but shaded with tropical trees. The rooms were protected by deep outside galleries, which were overrun with Bougainvillier creepers. He was himself the kindest of entertainers, his Irish lady the kindest of hostesses, with the humorous high breeding of the old Sligo aristocracy, to whom she belonged. I found that I had been acquainted with some of her kindred there long ago, in the days when the Anglo-Irish rule had not been discovered to be a upas tree, and cultivated human life was still possible in Connaught. Of the breakfast, which consisted of all the West Indian dainties I had ever heard or read of, I can say nothing, nor of the pleasant talk which followed. I was to see more of Colonel ----, for he offered to drive me some day across the island, a promise which he punctually fulfilled. My stay with him for the present could be but brief, as I was expected at Government House.

I have met with exceptional hospitality from the governors of British colonies in many parts of the world. They are not chosen like the Roman proconsuls from the ranks of trained statesmen who have held high administrative offices at home. They are appointed, as I said just now, from various motives, sometimes with a careful regard to fitness for their post, sometimes with a regard merely to routine or convenience or to personal influence brought to bear in their favour. I have myself seen some for whom I should have thought other employment would have been more suitable; but always and everywhere those that I have fallen in with have been men of honour and integrity above reproach or suspicion, and I have met with one or two gentlemen in these situations whose admirable qualities it is impossible to praise too highly, who in their complicated responsibilities--responsibilities to the colonies and responsibilities to the authorities at home--have considered conscience and duty to be their safest guides, have cared only to do what they believed to be right to the best of their ability, and have left their interests to take care of themselves.

The Governor of Barbadoes is not despotic. He controls the administration, but there is a const.i.tution as old as the Stuarts; an a.s.sembly of thirty-three members, nine of whom the Crown nominates, the rest are elected. The friction is not so violent as when the number of the nominated and elected members is equal, and as long as a property qualification was required for the franchise, the system may have worked tolerably without producing any violent mischief. There have been recent modifications, however, pointing in the same direction as those which have been made in Jamaica. By an ordinance from home the suffrage has been widely extended, obviously as a step to larger intended changes.

Under such conditions and with an uncertain future a governor can do little save lead and influence, entertain visitors, discharge the necessary courtesies to all cla.s.ses of his subjects, and keep his eyes open. These duties at least Sir Charles Lee discharges to perfection, the entertaining part of them on a scale so liberal that if Pere Labat came back he would suppose that the two hundred years which have gone by since his visit was a dream, and that Government House at least was still as he left it. In an establishment which had so many demands upon it, and where so many visitors of all kinds were going and coming, I had no claim to be admitted. I felt that I should be an intruder, and had I been allowed would have taken myself elsewhere, but Sir Charles's peremptory generosity admitted of no refusal. As a subject I was bound to submit to the Queen's representative. I cannot say I was sorry to be compelled. In Government House I should see and hear what I could neither have seen nor heard elsewhere. I should meet people who could tell me what I most wanted to know. I had understood already that owing to the sugar depression the state of the island was critical. Officials were alarmed. Bankers were alarmed. No one could see beyond the next year what was likely to happen. Sir Charles himself would have most to say. He was evidently anxious. Perhaps if he had a fault, he was over anxious; but with the possibility of social confusion before him, with nearly 200,000 peasant subjects, who in a few months might be out of work and so out of food, with the inflammable negro nature, and a suspicious and easily excited public opinion at home, the position of a Governor of Barbadoes is not an enviable one. The Government at home, no doubt with the best intentions, has aggravated any peril which there may be by enlarging the suffrage. The experience of Governor Eyre in Jamaica has taught the danger of being too active, but to be too inactive may be dangerous also. If there is a stir again in any part of these islands, and violence and ma.s.sacre come of it, as it came in St. Domingo, the responsibility is with the governor, and the account will be strictly exacted of him.

I must describe more particularly the reasons which there are for uneasiness. On the day on which I landed I saw an article in a Bridgetown paper in which my coming there was spoken of as perhaps the last straw which would break the overburdened back. I know not why I should be thought likely to add anything to the load of Barbadian afflictions. I should be a worse friend to the colonies than I have tried to be if I was one of those who would quench the smoking flax of loyalty in any West Indian heart. But loyalty, I very well know, is sorely tried just now. The position is painfully simple. The great prosperity of the island ended with emanc.i.p.ation. Barbadoes suffered less than Jamaica or the Antilles because the population was large and the land limited, and the blacks were obliged to work to keep themselves alive. The abolition of the sugar duties was the next blow.

The price of sugar fell, and the estates yielded little more than the expense of cultivation. Owners of properties who were their own managers, and had sense and energy, continued to keep themselves afloat; but absenteeism had become the fashion. The brilliant society which is described by Labat had been melting for more than a century. More and more the old West Indian families removed to England, farmed their lands through agents and overseers, or sold them to speculating capitalists.

The personal influence of the white man over the black, which might have been brought about by a friendly intercourse after slavery was abolished, was never so much as attempted. The higher cla.s.s of gentry found the colony more and more distasteful to them, and they left the arrangement of the labour question to persons to whom the blacks were nothing, emanc.i.p.ated though they might be, except instruments of production. A negro can be attached to his employer at least as easily as a horse or a dog. The horse or dog requires kind treatment, or he becomes indifferent or sullen; so it is with the negro. But the forced equality of the races before the law made more difficult the growth of any kindly feeling. To the overseer on a plantation the black labourer was a machine out of which the problem was to get the maximum of work with the minimum of pay. In the slavery times the horse and dog relation was a real thing. The master and mistress joked and laughed with their dark bondsmen, knew Caesar from Pompey, knew how many children each had, gave them small presents, cared for them when they were sick, and maintained them when they were old and past work. All this ended with emanc.i.p.ation. Between whites and blacks no relations remained save that of employer and employed. They lived apart. They had no longer, save in exceptional instances, any personal communication with each other. The law refusing to recognise a difference, the social line was drawn the harder, which the law was unable to reach.

In the Antilles the plantations broke up as I had seen in Grenada. The whites went away, and the land was divided among the negroes. In Barbadoes, the estates were kept together. The English character and the English habits were stamped deeper there, and were not so easily obliterated. But the stars in their courses have fought against the old system. Once the West Indies had a monopoly of the sugar trade. Steam and progress have given them a hundred _natural_ compet.i.tors; and on the back of these came the _unnatural_ bounty-fed beetroot sugar compet.i.tion. Meanwhile the expense of living increased in the days of inflated hope and 'unexampled prosperity.' Free trade, whatever its immediate consequences, was to make everyone rich in the end. When the income of an estate fell short one year, it was to rise in the next, and the money was borrowed to make ends meet; when it didn't rise, more money was borrowed; and there is now hardly a property in the island which is not loaded to the sinking point. Tied to sugar-growing, Barbadoes has no second industry to fall back upon. The blacks, who are heedless and light-hearted, increase and multiply. They will not emigrate, they are so much attached to their homes; and the not distant prospect is of a general bankruptcy, which may throw the land for the moment out of cultivation, with a hungry unemployed mult.i.tude to feed without means of feeding them, and to control without the personal acquaintance and influence which alone can make control possible.

At home there is a general knowledge that things are not going on well out there. But, true to our own ways of thinking, we regard it as their affair and not as ours. If cheap sugar ruins the planters, it benefits the English workman. The planters had their innings; it is now the consumer's turn. What are the West Indies to us? On the map they appear to belong more to the United States than to us. Let the United States take them and welcome. So thinks, perhaps, the average Englishman; and, a.n.a.logous to him, the West Indian proprietor reflects that, if admitted into the Union, he would have the benefit of the American market, which would set him on his feet again; and that the Americans, probably finding that they, if not we, could make some profit out of the islands, would be likely to settle the black question for him in a more satisfactory manner.

That such a feeling as this should exist is natural and pardonable; and it would have gone deeper than it has gone if it were not that there are two parties to every bargain, and those in favour of such a union have met hitherto with no encouragement. The Americans are wise in their generation. They looked at Cuba; they looked at St. Domingo. They might have had both on easy terms, but they tell you that their const.i.tution does not allow them to hold dependent states. What they annex they absorb, and they did not wish to absorb another million and a half of blacks and as many Roman Catholics, having enough already of both. Our English islands may be more tempting, but there too the black cloud hangs thick and grows yearly thicker, and through English indulgence is more charged with dangerous elements. Already, they say, they have every advantage which the islands can give them. They exercise a general protectorate, and would probably interfere if France or England were to attempt again to extend their dominions in that quarter; but they prefer to leave to the present owners the responsibility of managing and feeding the cow, while they are to have the milking of it.

Thus the proposal of annexation, which has never gone beyond wishes and talk, has so far been coldly received; but the Americans did make their offer a short time since, at which the drowning Barbadians grasped as at a floating plank. England would give them no hand to save them from the effects of the beetroot bounties. The Americans were willing to relax their own sugar duties to admit West Indian sugar duty free, and give them the benefit of their own high prices. The colonies being unable to make treaties for themselves, the proposal was referred home and was rejected. The Board of Trade had, no doubt, excellent reasons for objecting to an arrangement which would have flung our whole commerce with the West Indies into American hands, and might have formed a prelude to a closer attachment. It would have been a violation also of those free-trade principles which are the English political gospel.

Moreover, our att.i.tude towards our colonies has changed in the last twenty years; we now wish to preserve the attachment of communities whom a generation back we should have told to do as they liked, and have bidden them G.o.d speed on their way; and this treaty may have been regarded as a step towards separation. But the unfortunate Barbadians found themselves, with the harbour in sight, driven out again into the free-trade hurricane. We would not help them ourselves; we declined to let the Americans help them; and help themselves they could not. They dare not resent our indifference to their interests, which, if they were stronger, would have been more visibly displayed. They must wait now for what the future will bring with as much composure as they can command, but I did hear outcries of impatience to which it was unpleasant to listen. Nay, it was even suggested as a means of inducing the Americans to forego their reluctance to take them into the Union, that we might relinquish such rights as we possessed in Canada if the Americans would relieve us of the West Indies, for which we appeared to care so little.

If Barbadoes is driven into bankruptcy, the estates will have to be sold, and will probably be broken up as they have been in the Antilles.

The first difficulty will thus be got over. But the change cannot be carried out in a day. If wages suddenly cease the negroes will starve, and will not take their starvation patiently. At the worst, however, means will probably be found to keep the land from falling out of cultivation. The Barbadians see their condition in the light of their grievances, and make the worst of it. The continental powers may tire of the bounty system, or something else may happen to make sugar rise. The prospect is not a bright one, but what actually happens in this world is generally the unexpected.

As a visit my stay at Government House was made simply delightful to me.

I remained there (with interruptions) for a fortnight, and Lady L---- did not only permit, but she insisted that I should be as if in an hotel, and come and go as I liked. The climate of Barbadoes, so far as I can speak of it, is as sparkling and invigorating as champagne. c.o.c.ktail may be wanted in Trinidad. In Barbadoes the air is all one asks for, and between night breezes and sea breezes one has plenty of it. Day begins with daylight, as it ought to do. You have slept without knowing anything about it. There are no venomous crawling creatures. c.o.c.kroaches are the worst, but they scuttle out of the way so alarmed and ashamed of themselves if you happen to see them, that I never could bring myself to hurt one. You spring out of bed as if the process of getting up were actually pleasant. Well-appointed West Indian houses are generally provided with a fresh-water swimming bath. Though cold by courtesy the water seldom falls below 65, and you float luxuriously upon it without dread of chill. The early coffee follows the bath, and then the stroll under the big trees, among strange flowers, or in the grotto with the ferns and humming birds. If it were part of one's regular life, I suppose that one would want something to do. Sir Charles was the most active of men, and had been busy in his office for an hour before I had come down to lounge. But for myself I discovered that it was possible, at least for an interval, to be perfectly idle and perfectly happy, surrounded by the daintiest beauties of an English hothouse, with palm trees waving like fans to cool one, and with sensitive plants, which are common as daisies, strewing themselves under one's feet to be trodden upon.

After breakfast the heat would be considerable, but with an umbrella I could walk about the town and see what was to be seen. Alas! here one has something to desire. Where Pere Labat saw a display of splendour which reminded him of Paris and London, you now find only _stores_ on the American pattern, for the most part American goods, bad in quality and extravagantly dear. Treaty or no treaty, it is to America that the trade is drifting, and we might as well concede with a good grace what must soon come of itself whether we like it or not. The streets are relieved from ugliness by the trees and by occasional handsome buildings. Often I stood to admire the pea-green Nelson. Once I went into the a.s.sembly where the legislature was discussing more or less unquietly the prospects of the island. The question of the hour was economy. In the opinion of patriot Barbadians, sore at the refusal of the treaty, the readiest way to reduce expenditure was to diminish the salaries of officials from the governor downwards. The officials, knowing that they were very moderately paid already, naturally demurred.

The most interesting part of the thing to me was the _hall_ in which the proceedings were going on. It is handsome in itself, and has a series of painted windows representing the English sovereigns from James I. to Queen Victoria. Among them in his proper place stood Oliver Cromwell, the only formal recognition of the great Protector that I know of in any part of the English dominions. Barbadoes had been Cavalier in its general sympathies, but has taken an independent view of things, and here too has had an opinion of its own.

Hospitality was always a West Indian characteristic. There were luncheons and dinners, and distinguished persons to be met and talked to. Among these I had the special good fortune of making acquaintance with Sir Charles Pearson, now commanding-in-chief in those parts. Even in these days, crowded as they are by small incidents made large by newspapers, we have not yet forgotten the defence of a fort in the interior of Zululand where Sir Charles Pearson and his small garrison were cut off from their communications with Natal. For a week or two he was the chief object of interest in every English house. In obedience to orders which it was not his business to question, he had a.s.sisted Sir T.

Shepstone in the memorable annexation of the Transvaal. He had seen also to what that annexation led, and, being a truth-speaking man, he did not attempt to conceal the completeness of our defeat. Our military establishment in the West Indies is of modest dimensions; but a strong English soldier, who says little and does his duty, and never told a lie in his life or could tell one, is a comforting figure to fall in with.

One feels that there will be something to retire upon when parliamentary oratory has finished its work of disintegration.

The pleasantest incident of the day was the evening drive with Lady L----. She would take me out shortly before sunset, and bring me back again when the tropical stars were showing faintly and the fireflies had begun to sparkle about the bushes, and the bats were flitting to and fro after the night moths like spirits of darkness chasing human souls.

The neighbourhood of Bridgetown has little natural beauty; but the roads are excellent, the savannah picturesque with riding parties and polo players and lounging red jackets, every one being eager to pay his or her respect to the gracious lady of the Queen's representative. We called at pretty villas where there would be evening teas and lawn tennis in the cool. The society is not extensive, and here would be collected most of it that was worth meeting. At one of these parties I fell in with the officers of the American squadron, the commodore a very interesting and courteous gentleman whom I should have taken for a fellow-countryman. There are many diamonds, and diamonds of the first water, among the Americans as among ourselves; but the cutting and setting is different. Commodore D---- was cut and set like an Englishman. He introduced me to one of his brother officers who had been in Hayti. Spite of Sir Spenser St. John, spite of all the confirmatory evidence which I had heard, I was still incredulous about the alleged cannibalism there. To my inquiries this gentleman had only the same answer to give. The fact was beyond question. He had himself known instances of it.

The commodore had a grievance against us ill.u.s.trating West Indian manners. These islands are as nervous about their health as so many old ladies. The yellow flags float on ship after ship in the Bridgetown roadstead, and crews, pa.s.sengers, and cargoes are sternly interdicted from the land. Jamaica was in ill name from small-pox, and, as Cuba will not drop its intercourse with Jamaica, Cuba falls also under the ban.

The commodore had directed a case of cigars from Havana to meet him at Barbadoes. They arrived, but might not be transferred from the steamer which brought them, even on board his own frigate, lest he might bring infection on sh.o.r.e in his pocket. They went on to England, to reach him perhaps eventually in New York.

Colonel ----'s duties, as chief of the police, obliged him to make occasional rounds to visit his stations. He recollected his promise, and he invited me one morning to accompany him. We were to breakfast at his house on our return, so I antic.i.p.ated an excursion of a few miles at the utmost. He called for me soon after sunrise with a light carriage and a brisk pair of horses. We were rapidly clear of the town. The roads were better than the best I have seen out of England, the only fault in them being the white coral dust which dazzles and blinds the eyes. Everywhere there were signs of age and of long occupation. The stone steps leading up out of the road to the doors of the houses had been worn by human feet for hundreds of years. The houses themselves were old, and as if suffering from the universal depression--gates broken, gardens disordered, and woodwork black and blistered for want of paint. But if the habitations were neglected, there was no neglect in the fields.

Sugar cane alternated with sweet potatoes and yams and other strange things the names of which I heard and forgot; but there was not a weed to be seen or broken fence where fence was needed. The soil was clean every inch of it, as well hoed and trenched as in a Middles.e.x market garden. Salt fish and flour, which is the chief food of the blacks, is imported; but vegetables enough are raised in Barbadoes to keep the cost of living incredibly low; and, to my uninstructed eyes, it seemed that even if sugar and wages did fail there could be no danger of any sudden famine. The people were thick as rabbits in a warren; women with loaded baskets on their heads laughing and chirruping, men driving donkey carts, four donkeys abreast, smoking their early pipes as if they had not a care in the world, as, indeed, they have not.

On we went, the Colonel's horses stepping out twelve miles an hour, and I wondered privately what was to become of our breakfast. We were striking right across the island, along the coral ridge which forms the backbone of it. We found ourselves at length in a grove of orange trees and shaddocks, at the old church of St. John's, which stands upon a perpendicular cliff; Codrington College on the level under our feet, and beyond us the open Atlantic and the everlasting breakers from the trade winds fringing the sh.o.r.e with foam. Far out were the white sails of the fishing smacks. The Barbadians are careless of weather, and the best of boat sailors. It was very pretty in the bright morning, and the church itself was not the least interesting part of the scene. The door was wide open. We went in, and I seemed to be in a parish church in England as parish churches used to be when I was a child. There were the old-fashioned seats, the old unadorned communion table, the old pulpit and reading desk and the clerk's desk below, with the lion and the unicorn conspicuous above the chancel arch. The white tablets on the wall bore familiar names dating back into the last century. On the floor were flagstones still older with armorial bearings and letters cut in stone, half effaced by the feet of the generations who had trodden up the same aisles till they, too, lay down and rested there. And there was this, too, to be remembered--that these Barbadian churches, old as they might seem, had belonged always to the Anglican communion. No ma.s.s had ever been said at that altar. It was a milestone on the high road of time, and was venerable to me at once for its antiquity and for the era at which it had begun to exist.

At the porch was an ancient slab on which was a coat of arms, a crest with a hand and sword, and a motto, '_Sic nos, sic nostra tuemur._' The inscription said that it was in memory of Michael Mahon, 'of the kingdom of Ireland,' erected by his children and grandchildren. Who was Michael Mahon? Some expatriated, so-called rebel, I suppose, whose sword could not defend him from being Barbados'd with so many other poor wretches who were sent the same road--victims of the tragi-comedy of the English government of Ireland. There were plenty of them wandering about in Labat's time, ready, as Labat observes, to lend a help to the French, should they take a fancy to land a force in the island.

The churchyard was scarcely so home-like. The graves were planted with tropical shrubs and flowers. Palms waved over the square stone monuments--stephanotis and jessamine crept about the iron railings. The primroses and hyacinths and violets, with which we dress the mounds under which our friends are sleeping, will not grow in the tropics. In the place of them are the exotics of our hot-houses. We too are, perhaps, exotics of another kind in these islands, and may not, after all, have a long abiding place in them.

Colonel ----, who with his secular duties combined serious and spiritual feeling, was a friend of the clergyman of St. John's, and hoped to introduce me to him. This gentleman, however, was absent from home. Our round was still but half completed; we had to mount again and go another seven miles to inspect a police station. The police themselves were, of course, blacks--well-grown fine men, in a high state of discipline. Our visit was not expected, but all was as it should be; the rooms well swept and airy, the horses in good condition, stables clean, harness and arms polished and ready for use. Serious as might be the trials of the Barbadians and decrepit the financial condition, there were no symptoms of neglect either on the farms or in the social machinery.

Altogether we drove between thirty and forty miles that morning. We were in time for breakfast after all, and I had seen half the island. It is like the Isle of Thanet, or the country between Calais and Boulogne. One characteristic feature must not be forgotten: there are no rivers and no waterpower; steam engines have been introduced, but the chief motive agent is still the never-ceasing trade wind. You see windmills everywhere, as it was in the time of Labat. The planters are reproached as being behind the age; they are told that with the latest improvements they might still defy their beetroot enemy. It may be so, but a wind which never rests is force which costs little, and it is possible that they understand their own business best.

Another morning excursion showed me the rest of the country, and introduced me to scenes and persons still more interesting. Sir Graham Briggs[8] is perhaps the most distinguished representative of the old Barbadian families. He is, or was, a man of large fortune, with vast estates in this and other islands. A few years ago, when prospects were brighter, he was an advocate of the const.i.tutional development so much recommended from England. The West Indian Islands were to be confederated into a dominion like that of Canada, to take over the responsibilities of government, and to learn to stand alone. The decline in the value of property, the general decay of the white interest in the islands, and the rapid increase of the blacks, taught those who at one time were ready for the change what the real nature of it would be. They have paused to consider; and the longer they consider the less they like it.