HAD he not come aboard, it is doubtful if even the “kirk-ganging habit” inherited from a long line of devout ancestors could have dragged us to the service. But there was an unforgettable something in his face which compelled us, in spite of the intense heat, to leave ship by a shore-boat on Sunday morning and inquire the way to the Parish Church.

Kingston, Jamaica, from the Bay
Kingston, Jamaica, from the Bay

Shortly after we had dropped anchor in Kingston Harbour, early on Saturday, we saw the rector of the English Church being rowed through the crowd of fruit-boats, which were bobbing about us like so many brilliant birds; but it was with considerable difficulty that he was finally enabled to reach the ship, so strenuous were the black fruiterers to give their wares the best possible showing. They were well worth the showing, too, for such masses and varieties and colours were a marvel indeed, even in the tropics. The shaddocks were as big as melons, and the tangerines, measuring some fifteen inches in circumference, were dyed as deep a yellow as the colour sense could grasp, and piled in great, heaping baskets, were watched over by beflowered negresses, who sat motionless in the boats, except for their great rolling eyes.

The oranges of Mandeville, Jamaica, were well known to us through the accounts of former travellers, but no description had ever brought a suggestion of the true radiance of the Jamaican fruit as it shone forth that brilliant morning. After one look, the little girls ran down to the stateroom for the St. Thomas basket, to fill it to the very handle-tip with luscious tangerines. And while they scampered off with the basket brimful, the lid pressed back by piles of tender, yellow beauties, a strange boat-load of new passengers blocked the way once more for the good priest, and he leaned patiently back in his boat, as if he knew that to protest would be of no avail.

The newcomers were two enormous live sea-turtles which the fishermen hauled up the gangway by a stout cable. The turtles groaned and puffed and flapped, and the little girls wanted them turned on their legs just to see what would happen; it would be such fun to ride a-turtle-back. And Wee One says, “Why, Mother! They are just like ‘John the Baptist,’ our pet turtle at home, only lots and lots bigger. I wish they’d turn over.” But the sailors had evidently handled turtles before, for they were left on their backs and were—after having been duly wondered at—dragged down the deck out of sight, to reappear again in stew and fricassee, not in steak as the Jamaicans serve them. But Sister laments. She and Little Blue Ribbons wanted to see the turtles run. “Mother, if they had only been right side up we could have helped turn them on their backs just like the ‘Foreign Children’ Stevenson tells about,—

Rio Cobre, near Spanish Town Jamaica Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
Rio Cobre, near Spanish Town
Jamaica
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.

Meanwhile, as the way clears, the priest reaches the ship, and is soon lost among the crowd of passengers who are waiting for the first boat ashore.

All of Saturday, we wandered about the dusty, uninteresting streets of Kingston, waiting for the great impression. But it didn’t come. We were ready and willing to admire the beautiful, but it did not appear. Kingston was even more unattractive than Port of Spain, Trinidad; dirtier, hotter, and in every way dull and uninteresting. Had it not been for the Blue Mountains, against which Kingston leans, and the glorious old Northeast Trades which fan her wayworn features, and for the sea at her feet, we could not have forgiven her frowsy appearance. The whole place had a “has been” air, with unkempt streets, and low, square, dumpy-looking houses, facing each other like tired old tramps.

II.

In order to form a just estimate of the Englishman’s work and methods in Jamaica, one must leave Kingston, and take to the roads outside, for example that one along the Rio Cobre which winds in and out among the mountains in a most enchanting course. This particular drive of eleven miles, called the “Bog Walk Drive,” leads to a little settlement called “Bog Walk.” It is to be hoped that there was at one time some excuse for this name, but as bogs do not disappear in a day, it must have been in quite a distant past that the name had any real significance. We saw no suggestion of a Bog Walk, although actively on the alert for it. We had uncertain anticipations of having to scramble over wet and oozing turf, and one of us, without saying a word to any one else, tucked a pair of rubbers into a capacious basket. But the rubbers stayed right there, for there was no bog, nor any suggestion of one,—funny way these English have of naming things!

And speaking of names,—well, there never was a place—except other English colonial towns—where the good old British custom of naming houses is more rampant than in Kingston. Had the houses of some pretension been so labelled, it might not have seemed so strange; but, no, every little cottage had a name painted somewhere on its gate-post, and very grandiloquent ones they were, I assure you. No two-penny affairs for them! There was “Ivy Lodge” and “Myrtle Villa” and “Ferndale” and “Oakmere” and “The Hall,” tacked on to the wobblety fence-posts of the merest shanties. And yet, in spite of their apparent incongruity, there was a sort of pitiful fitness in those names. It was a holding-on, in a crude way, to some half-forgotten ideal of the old English life. It might have been a memory of the far-away mother country, left as the only legacy to a Creole generation; it might have been the last reaching for gentility; who can tell what “The Hall” meant to the inmates of that shambling roof. But for the “Bog Walk” there was no reason apparent, and we did not waste a bit of sympathy on the supposititious man who first sank to his armpits in what may have been a bog.

The Bog Walk road is wide enough for the passing of vehicles, and as solid as a rock. The English in the West Indies—as elsewhere—have ever been great road-builders. Now this bit of road—eleven miles long, as smooth as a floor, as firmly built as the ancient roads of Rome—is part of a great system of roads which extends for hundreds of miles throughout the island, and these roads have been constructed with so much care that, in spite of the torrents of tropical rain which must at times flood them, they remain as firm and enduring as the mountains themselves, seemingly the only man-made device in the West Indies which has been able to withstand the ravages of the tropical elements.

Jamaica is one hundred and forty-four miles long and fifty miles wide, and its entire area is a network of these wonderful roads. Roads which would grace a Roman Empire, here wind through vast lonely forests and plantations of coffee and cacao, past towns whose ramshackle houses are giving the last gasps of dissolution. Jamaica has evidently suffered under the affliction of road-making governors, whose single purpose has been to build roads though all else go untouched, and they have held to that ambition with bulldog pertinacity. No one can deny the wonder of the Jamaican highway. But whither, and to what, does it lead? Good roads are truly civilisers, and essential to the good of a country, but there must be a reason for their existence which is mightier than the way itself. Had there been half as many forest roads in Jamaica as there are now, and the money which has been buried in practically unused paths put into good schools and the encouragement of agriculture, Jamaica might to-day show a very different face. The most casual observation tells us of vast, unreasoning waste of money on the beautiful island, and one cannot but pity the patient blacks who have suffered so much from the poor administration of their white brothers.

A Native Hut Jamaica Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
A Native Hut
Jamaica
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.

It was our pleasure to drive some distance on these hard turnpikes, and in miles we met but one conveyance of any kind, and that was a rickety old box on wheels, carrying a family of coolies to Spanish Town.

This place out-Spanished any Spanish town we had ever seen in filth and general dilapidation. It was simply a lot of rambling old shacks, huddled together under the long-suffering palms—dirty, forlorn, forsaken, never good for much when young, and beyond redemption in its puerile old age. Down through these haunts of the half-naked blacks, there sweeps a road fit for a chariot and four. Diamond necklaces are queenly prerogatives, and the proper setting for a royal feast; but, thrown about the neck of a starving child, they are, to say the least, out of place. Nothing can be more entrancing, when perfect of its kind, than either diamonds or children, but they do not belong together. It may be, that, when the child is grown, circumstances will make the wearing of such a necklace a graceful adornment, but, until that time does come, the child’s belongings should be those of simple necessity, all else being sacrificed to the normal growth of body and mind; let this be once well under way and adornments may follow. Jamaica has given her children a diamond necklace, and, although magnificent and wonderful, it is out of place, and the worst of it is, the children have had to pay dearly for it.

What Jamaica would have been under wise and prudent management, and with a different racial problem, no one can say. She has certainly never been lacking in resources, nor has she lacked amenable—though not always desirable—subjects. But there is a hitch somewhere, and to find that hitch would take a long unravelling of a torn and broken skein, the kind of work few care to undertake; but it is the work which must be done if Jamaica is ever to have a future.

The Bog Walk Road, near Spanish Town Jamaica
The Bog Walk Road, near Spanish Town
Jamaica

Dusty and hot and still wondering where the “Bog Walk” would appear, we left the carriages for an inn which stood close to the road. It was somewhat—no, I should say much—above the average Jamaican house, passably clean, just passably, and in a way rather inviting to the traveller who is glad enough to go anywhere, where he can be satisfied, if he is hungry and tired. But the house was not what I wanted to tell you about; it was the grande dame within, who played the indifferent hostess. We did not see her as we ran up-stairs to the upper balcony; it was well after we had sipped our rum and lemonade—for we did sip it; we not only sipped it, but we drank it, and it was fine, and we felt so comfortable that, when she—la grande dame—appeared, it never occurred to us to express our disappointment over the Bog Walk; we just agreed with her in everything she said, and felt beatific. I think we would have agreed with her even without the rum and lemonade, for she had an air about her that made one feel acquiescent. She was tall and angular. Her features were as clean-cut as though chiselled in marble; she was clearly Caucasian in type. Her lips were thin, her nose was aquiline, and her mouth had a haughty, indifferent curve, suggesting a race of masters, not slaves. But her skin was like a smoke-browned pipe, and her hair was glossy, and waved in quick little curves in spite of the tightly drawn coil at the back of her stately neck. She was dressed in the fashion of long ago, with a full flounced skirt and a silk shawl. She sent her menials to wait upon us, although I noticed that, in spite of herself, she was taking an interest in the strangers.

The Madame went before, and we followed, through the ever-open door of the West Indian home. The Madame’s skirts swept over the uneven threshold, over the bare, creaky floors, and her noiseless feet led the way into a past, rich in romance and disaster. The Madame had little to say; she just glided on before us like a black memory. Here on the bare, untidy floors were the Madame’s treasures; treasures she used daily, for the table was spread (the Madame served dinner there just the hour before). Here was a table of Dominican mahogany with carved legs and oval top, and there on the sideboard was rare old plate, and quaintest pieces of Dresden china and Italian glass glistened as it once had done near the lips of its lordly master. The side-table of mahogany gave out a dull, rich lustre of venerable age, and there was a punch-bowl—silver, and much used—and curious candlesticks with glass shades. Ah! The Madame was rich. What a place, I thought, for a lover of the antique!

In her bedroom hard-by, a massive four-poster reached to the ceiling, and off in a dark corner there was an old chest, richly ornamented with brass. In every room there were chairs and davenports in quaintest fashion, all dull and worn and beautiful, while the billiard-room outside was well filled by a massive old-fashioned rosewood billiard-table whose woodwork, undermined by the extensive ravages of ants, was fast falling in pieces. “Where has it come from?” we ask; and she replies, with a lofty air, that her grandfather brought all these over from England long, long ago. No doubt the Madame would have sold any and all of it, and we caught ourselves wondering how we could get one of those old pieces home. It really seemed as if we ought to buy something, for the black Madame, towering above us, certainly expected to make a sale. But we didn’t buy; we just admired it all, and particularly the Madame, and then we began again to try and think out the dreary tangle.

There was just one thing the Madame had which she would not sell, and that was the one thing we wanted most: the story of that grandfather. She was the grande dame; his history was sealed behind those unfathomable eyes. She admitted only the patrician in her blood, not the savage. The grandfather had left his stamp upon that face, but there was that other stamp! Alas, the Englishman has sold his birthright in Jamaica; he is selling it to-day, and what more hopeless future could rest over a people than does this day over the island of Jamaica?

III.

And now we are back in Kingston, the city. “How would it be for us to leave Daddy here—he wants to be measured at the military tailor’s for some khaki suits—and run off down the street on the shady side, to what seems to be a ‘Woman’s Exchange?’” The little girls, always ready for a new expedition, take the lead, and for once we found a sign which was not misleading. It proved to be a veritable Woman’s Exchange, filled with no end of curious specimens of native workmanship which had been brought there for sale. Among the natural curios—to us the most wonderful—was a branch of what is known as the lacebark-tree. The botanist will have to tell you its real unpronounceable name. For us “lacebark” answers very well, because we don’t know the other, and have no way of finding it out just now. Who ever thought of carrying an encyclopedia in a steamer-trunk? I am sadly conscious that we even forgot the pocket-dictionary. Please forgive us this time! But it was the tree that interested us, not its name. Its fibrous inner bark (much like the bark of our Northern moosewood) is made of endless layers of lacelike network, which can be opened and stretched a great width, even in the bark of a bit of wood an inch and a half in diameter. These layers of lace are separated and opened into flowerlike cups, with rim upon rim of lacy edge, all coming from the one solid stick of wood, or carefully unrolled into filmy sheets of net-like tissue. The native whips are made by taking long branches of this tree, scraping off the brittle outer bark, opening the inner fibrous bark, and braiding the ends into a tapering lash as long as one wishes. Hats are trimmed with scarfs of this dainty woodland lace, and even dresses are said to be made from this cloth of the forest, which rivals in loveliness the fairest weaving of Penelope.

The gracious woman in charge told us that, while the Exchange was self-supporting, it owed its existence to the liberality of an American girl, who had many years ago married an English nobleman. And it made me glad to think that our glorious American women had, with all their foolish love for titles, a generous hand for woman the world over, and that, wherever they wandered, their ways could be followed by the light of their liberality. In a way, the Exchange—founded by an American woman—made us forgive much in Kingston; so, when we took the street up to the Myrtle Bank Hotel, expecting from its name to find a sweet, delicious caravansary, embowered in myrtle green and magnolia, and found the “Myrtle Bank” an arid sand beach, with a large, self-sufficient modern hotel built therein, we still forgave, because we said we would for the sake of that dear American girl who couldn’t quite forget.

And then, too, the Doctor met us straight in the doorway; not the newly made Philadelphia doctor. No, not that one; it was the other one, the Northeast Trade, the million-year-old West Indian Doctor. Do you suppose he is as old as that? Yes, even older. But, for all that, he’s as faithful to his trust as though but yesterday he had slipped from out the wrangling of chaos. So we kiss the Doctor, and run up after him into the big, spacious parlour of the Myrtle Bank Hotel, drop down into a delightful rocker, and think it all over.

Here we are in Kingston, owned by the English, governed by the English, bullyragged by the English,—but where is he, the Englishman, where the Englishwoman? To be sure, we found some white faces in the shops, and we remembered seeing a few fair-haired, sallow little girls. And we saw on the street, just as we left the Exchange, an Englishman with a golf-bag on his shoulder; but these were the landmarks only—the exception. The people we saw were of all shades of a negro admixture, and some very black ones at that.

But the Myrtle Bank Hotel was not the place for such reflections. At least, so the good Doctor seemed to think, for he had no sooner brought us under the magic of his presence, than we were carried into the most affable state of contentment with all things visible, and it was not until the next morning that the question fully dawned upon us in its true significance.

IV.

Where We Landed Kingston, Jamaica Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
Where We Landed
Kingston, Jamaica
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.

I suppose we might have walked from the boat-landing to the Parish Church embowered in its palms a few blocks away, but even that short distance was exaggerated by the early hot glare of the sun. The Northeast Trade was taking his morning nap, and the air was utterly motionless. So Daddy hails a cab, and we rumble off in the direction of some ringing bells. The town, as we drove along, had the dead look of an English Sunday morning; there were few people visible, and those we saw were evidently following the bells, as we were. Back of our desire to go where the face of the priest was leading us, there was a hope that, in attending an English church, presided over by a white, English priest, we should there see the representative people of Kingston, the white owners of the island. This church was one of the few beautiful sights in Kingston. Truly, some good priest of the olden time must have planned with lingering touch the graceful garden which so lovingly enshrined the venerable spot. An avenue of palms, singing their silvery song all the long day, skirted on either side the wide stone walk to the entrance, and bent their long, waving arms very close to our heads as we stepped within the doorway. The church, as an ancient tablet indicated, was built in the latter part of the seventeenth century. It followed the sweet lines of the English cathedral, built from time to time, as one could readily observe from the varying indications of age in the structure itself.

We were early for the service, for the second bell had not rung. The priest met us at the door. He was a man of ripe years, with close-cut whitening hair, and a face that one would always remember. It was framed in strength and moulded by the love of God. There was in it that indefinable beauty which comes from a sacrificial life, from a life breathed upon by the spirit of holiness and quiet. There were no lines of unrest there; the poise of divine equilibrium was his living benediction, and we followed him down the stone aisle, over the memorial slabs of the departed great buried beneath, to a seat just the other side of a massive white pillar, midway between open windows on one side and an open door on the other, where the grateful breeze, now faintly rustling the palms without, swept in upon us in delicious waves.

We were placed quite well in front of the transept, and as we waited there in the quiet old building, I began to make a mental estimate of just where the different classes of Jamaican society would find themselves. Here, where we were, would be the whites, and back beyond the transept, the negroes, and in the choir, of course, the fair-haired English boys. Then the old bell began to ring again, and a few of our fellow voyagers came in and took seats in front of us,—notably Mr. and Mrs. F——, who had been the guests of the priest the day before. The church was filling. The owners of the seat in which the priest had placed us arrived, and we were requested by a silent language, which speaks more forcibly than words, to move along and make room. In the meantime, the pew was also filled from the other side, and in the same dumb language we were requested to move back the other way. Thus we were wedged in closely between the two respective owners of the seat. And they were not white owners,—they were black, brown, yellow—but not white. The church filled rapidly. It filled to the uttermost. Mr. and Mrs. F——, in front of us, were obliged to separate, for, when the owners of their seat arrived, they simply stood there until Mr. F—— was forced to leave his wife and crowd in somewhere else. The pew-owners were the rightful possessors, and the white man or the stranger apparently of little consequence. There was every conceivable shade of the African mixture. The choir was made up partially of black negresses, partially of yellow girls, with men of all hues besides, and the whole congregation in this Church of England was similarly mixed, with the black blood strongly predominant. I saw, outside of our party, only one Englishwoman and one Englishman, and a few about whom I was doubtful, and those were all. The blacks were very far from being the true type of African. In some cases, there would be the negro face in all its characteristics, with one exception, and that would be the oblique eyes of the Chinese. There were Japanese negroes, and Chinese negroes, and English and French negroes. It was a horrible mixture of negro with every other people found in the island, with the negro in the ascendant.

I saw no marks of deference paid to the white strangers; they were placed in the same position in which a negro would find himself in a Mississippi gathering of white people. If you have ever witnessed the enthusiasm with which the negro is welcomed in such places, you can understand our position that day in Jamaica. We had been told of the contempt in which the white man is held in HaÏti, and, not having experienced it, were disinclined to believe such an abnormal state of things. But, here in Jamaica, without ever having been informed of the state of society, we felt it as plainly as if it had been emblazoned on the sign-boards. We were not welcome and we felt it. We were out of our element.

El Morro, Entrance to Harbour Santiago de Cuba Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
El Morro, Entrance to Harbour
Santiago de Cuba
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.

The people were all well clothed,—many in elegance. The most of them in white and black; court mourning for the queen.

And then the grand old service began,—that wonderful world-encircling service of our old English Mother Church—always the same and always sufficient—and it was all so strange,—the feeling I had about that word “we.” There was a slow dawning in my soul that never before had the word “humanity” meant anything but a white humanity to me—a universal love for black, yellow, chocolate, brown, saffron humanity had never come fully into my consciousness. And, while I sat there in that vast, black assemblage, the long, terrible past of Jamaica arose before me, and, too, the doubtful future loomed up in gloomy outlines, and I wondered what would be the outcome of it all. Where would the Englishman be in another century in Jamaica? Would Jamaica revert back to the HaÏtien type, or is some hand coming to uphold the island? It is far from my intention to touch upon the political situation in Jamaica,—especially as I don’t know anything about it. I can only tell you what I saw, and you can draw your own conclusions. All I can say is, where is the white man in Jamaica? What is his position, and what has brought him into his present deplorable condition? Has the white blood after all so little potency?

One needs but to glance at James Anthony Froude’s masterful book, “The English in the West Indies,” in order to see the why and wherefore of it all. His words have greater force to-day than even at the time of his writing, for the course of events has more than justified his predictions.

Our opinions of the situation were wholly unbiased, for we did not read Froude’s account until long after, so that our sensations, our surprises, at the Jamaican English Church service, were wholly original.

The Plaza Cienfuegos, Cuba
The Plaza
Cienfuegos, Cuba

The service proceeded through the prayers—our prayers—and then came the sermon. I shall never forget the text. It was taken from that masterpiece of Biblical literature, the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”

The priest had been there for over thirty years, and he began:

“Beloved in the Lord, my children!” And we, white and black, were all his children. We were in a strangely reversed situation, for even the good priest had the tawny hue of Africa faintly shining in his fine face. No mention of colour distinction was made: but which of us was to have the charity? Did it not seem that he pleaded for the white man—that the stronger black should have more charity? Or was it for us as well? And it seemed to me I realised for the first time the position of our well-bred Southerner; and everything was jumbled and queer in my mind as the priest spoke. And his beautiful strong face shone over the people, and his voice quivered with a deep love, touching the raiment of one who said, “Come unto me all ye”—all—all—all! The white arches echoed back the pleadings, the commands, the love, while in quiet eloquence he told of One who set his face steadfastly toward Jerusalem.

The church emptied itself, and we were left with the priest, and the old sunken tombs, and the sleeping organ, and the white light streaming through the windows. And we wondered if we had yet learned what the Master meant when he said:

“Come unto me all ye—”

The Grave of Cervera’s Fleet West of Santiago de Cuba
The Grave of Cervera’s Fleet
West of Santiago de Cuba