We drove to the race-course through a tropical heat haze. The narrow Jamaica lanes and the wider roads were stunned into reverberating silence by the power of the heavy sun. We drove through crazy scents, and the wild music of a million insects,—past banana clumps and patches and plantations, giant cotton-trees and creeping hedge flowers. We forded rivers and rattled across bridges, covering the parched beds of narrow streams. Often, from amidst the yellow greenery, the noise of our horses started a cloud of gaudy moths and painted butterflies. The John crows showed their ragged heads, red and blue, like raw meat baking slowly in the sun, above the dusty grey-black of their faded plumage. Even they found the sun too strong for exercise. So they slept after the manner of their kind, with one eye every watchful for prey or danger. We rattled along under long avenues of bamboo-trees, ungainly giants with feathered heads, unable even in the great heat to prevent the clicking of their hundred knees. The noise of bamboo clumps suggests the rattling of the bones of a shivering skeleton. The native people grinned us a holiday welcome as we drove along, and the animal life—draft oxen, decaying horses, cheery donkeys and saucy hogs—wondered at the foolishness of our hurry. We reached the paddock gate, and paid our entrance silver to a supercilious half-breed whose status was betokened by the brilliance of his necktie. Then through a green, well-timbered park, we reached the course.

The measured mile was well-fenced and police-guarded; we flourished across its quietest part and entered the inner circle of the ring, the heart of the race-course. The turf was half hidden by a multitude of sportsmen and their attendant females. Black, and yellow, and brown, and copper, and red, and white people; patriarchs, and children in arms; giant negroes and dwarf half-formed half-breeds; programme sellers and vendors of the refreshing juice of the green cokernut. Buck niggers in white riding costumes, and shabby country folk in decayed khaki. Racing touts in militia blazers, and respectable tradesmen in neckties of red, white, and blue, and black bowler hats. Other things they wore of course, but their appearance was mainly Union Jack neckties and bowler hats. The black policemen in dark blue trousers, white tunics and snow-white helmets, looked impassively nervous and very conscious of dangerous power. Grinning blackies invited all and sundry to win their racing losings back by the old system of the three-card trick, but their customers consisted mainly of their decoy friends. In

vain did the wily ones lose many dollars to their weary accomplices; the negro proper preferred the excitement of the race.

We saw tables for the dice game, but no gamblers accepted the invitation of the greasy bankers. Groups of women and children sat under the shade of giant trees and made the day a perpetual picnic. The children were very happy, and their buxom mothers slept away the brief minutes in which they could not eat. The young black bucks ogled the young black maidens, but there were no ticklers, and the penny squirt was conspicuous only by its absence. By the weighing shed, and in the centre of the circle of interest, the grand stand, white painted and decked in royal purple, supported the weight of Government and officialdom. Some of those who live in King’s House whispered weighty small talk with the bloods of the army or the seniors of the hospital staff. In contrast with the brilliant blackness of the crowd of natives, the grand stand presented a tableau of white dresses and Paris hats and gay parasols. Field-glasses were raised, and waves of humour swept the grand stand crowd in Jamaica just as it happens in happy England. The racing horses and dwarf black jockeys paraded to the official box, and the white ladies flung their generous applause to the winners, just as it was in the days of old, and will be ever more. False starts were made by too eager jockeys who could not hope to win, and a discordant trumpet regularly screeched return as often as half the line of horses sprang forward before the starter’s flag had really dropped. These things happen everywhere; they are the gin and bitters of every race, the sportsman’s appetiser, the shower bath to prepare for the cold plunge. When the horses really got away, the heat vanished and pandemonium reigned to the tune of risen Africa. Jamaica vanished, and in its place we saw and heard wild, discordant Africa. We heard the echoes of the war cries of half the tribes that fight in the savage belt of country stretching from Tanganyika to Sierra Leone. The sportsman and the gambler threw off the thin veneer of a chaste and modest civilisation, and became their fathers’ fathers’ true descendants. The half-breeds shouted and then were much ashamed. The blacks tore the air with their eager hands and flung themselves prostrate, biting the grass in the frenzy of the savage African. And when the race was won, only the winning blacks admitted the fairness of the race. The losing horses had been “bridle pulled” or “kicked” or unfairly dealt with, and the loser paid his debts with great reluctance, conscious of a great grievance. The winner, on the other hand, presented the appearance of fierce, overbearing rectitude. The race was fair, the test supreme, the winner, the fastest horse in the country. The women of the dusky whites were hot and dusty in their finery, but they sometimes forgot to assume the appearance of calm indifference peculiar to their quite white sisters, and shouted with the rest. Then they sulked because they knew that they had forgotten that they were white. Your true half-breed lady knows that she is pure white, and seeks to prove it to the world by English accent, simpering manners, and the exhibition of a large contempt for black men. Sometimes, it is supposed, she succeeds in impressing dependant country folk. She talks of the England she has never seen as “home,” and thinks that heaven is built for white people only. “The sun is not too hot, but the weather is warm,” she suggests to her buggy man with fine condescension. The driver agrees and says that he has ventured to take a drink from the water-bottle.

“You done perfectly right,” says the white lady graciously.

Since white men are near, and she wishes to display her accent, she adds, “You ’ave my permission to refresh you’self from the bottle as frequent as you desire.”

A black man resplendent in a red coat, white riding breeches and yellow gaiters, frankly admits his inferiority to the white man by begging for a penny, a holiday penny. Refused this trifle, he immediately assumes an attitude of equality. Patronisingly he sweeps the ground and the grand stand with his riding switch (his leggings are incorrectly strapped), and asks whether we agree with him that, “These be ver’ funny peoples, eh? Too much dirt. Too little money.” He sees Forrest making sketches and suggests that we might do infinitely worse than take him as a subject. He switches his leather boots with the riding cane (it is only a hedge switch), and shouts to his brother black dude a hundred yards away, that he will join him as soon as he has finished with his “pals.” He adds a P.S. that he is quite prepared to introduce his friend, if that gentleman is so inclined. We are his “pals.” Then he cocks his hat and chuckles at two passing girls, who respond with great enthusiasm. “Nice girls, eh? But not good enough for me, eh? Like to know them, eh?” But it should be admitted that the worst of the black men is not vainer than some of the whites. Before the people of the grand stand, some of the junior officers of the army and the hospital and the medical service, even the civil service, are engaged in a ceaseless parade—the strut of self-conscious vanity. It is these jackanapes that the black men imitate, and it may be that it is the caricature that shows the fatuity of the picture. Black vanity is not worse than white. Just as the buck nigger struts for the edification of the black damsel and her parents, so does the white officer or official. The effect in each case is equally ludicrous. One white official drove to the course wearing a hunting rig-out, spurs, a single eye-glass, and coloured cammer band. He wore an air of perfect self-satisfaction. In Jamaica, single eye-glasses are as common as orchids.

Horse-racing has become a most popular sport with white Jamaicans. It is easy for any one to enter a horse or a pony and enjoy the sensation of being an owner. A twenty-guinea polo-pony race is just as good as a mile handicap for thoroughbreds, and, truth to tell, the winning owner gets even greater praise. It may be that this is as it should be. But the pity is that

subalterns enter ponies bought on credit, and lose money in order to impress a pitying crowd of nonentities. When a race-horse costs but twenty pounds, and the entrance fee for a run costs only two or three pounds more, no junior officer can afford not to run. The youths of the regiments expect it. So officers under the rank of senior captains must run their ponies as well as attend the meetings. Then they must “back their gees” (as it is said in the vernacular), and lose more money in one day than they should have spent in six weeks.

The seamy side of life is not so well represented on a Jamaican race-course as it is at the average English meeting. Sharpers are not numerous; the three-card experts and die manipulators are few in number and faded and dejected in appearance.

The coloured jockey is a type by himself. In his amber and gold, or pink and yellow, or green and red, and with his bent legs and humped back, he would delight the heart of any disciple of Darwin. On his horse, he looks for all the world like a clothed monkey on a London barrel-organ. He rides with an air of bravado, and a most cruel switch. He gets excited, but seldom loses nerve or head. It is probable that the race is more to him than it ever is to his English prototype, because the heart of a black man is full of jealousy and love of praise. A black jockey never looks a part of his horse. The two are separate and distinct; a comparison between the two would be to the advantage of the horse.

The race-horses and the unharnessed buggy ponies save the Jamaican race-course from absolute vulgarity. Without them the place would have been impossible, quite apart from a racing point of view. The heart of a race-horse is clean, and his nature is superior to that of a half-breed three-card sharper, or a whisky-soaking junior army man of great vanity.