Pearl Of The Antilles

( Originally Published 1905 )

"Look out, look out my trusty crew, Strain every anxious eye;

Though spray and mist obscure the view We know that land is nigh."

THE moon was yet in the heavens when our ship the Dahome floated into the silent and mysterious island where sea and sky are always bathed in the same strangely tender, weird and purplish haze. We knew that Montserrat, the scourged, grimly submissive, and resigned, was at hand. Straining our eyes we thought we saw the scarped and torn breast of La Soufriere but it was an apparition of clouds. Later the mists floated off and Plymouth, La Soufriere and the sharp conical hills of the solitary island were uncovered. Rising abruptly in wooded summits from a sea of glassy smoothness, Montserrat was resting on the azure waters, under a sky of cerulean loveliness. A panorama of bluffs and narrow precipitous valleys sloping to the sea was uncovered. The cane-fields filled the lowlands, moved up to the sides of the rising ground and covered the hills. We saw a few plantations, the ruins of sugar-mills of other and more prosperous days, and the picturesque little town of Plymouth slowly recovering from cloudburst and hurricane.

The second bell for breakfast called us from the deck and during the half hour the talk was of the Lesser Antilles. Stretching in a graceful curve across the Caribbean Sea from Porto Rico to the north coast of South America is the chain of small islands called the Lesser Antilles. They fill a conspicuous place in modern history, for here England, Spain, Holland and France contended, with varying success, for possession. The earth on these islands is saturated with blood, and if crime and brutality could blast a land with sterility, they ought now to be barren rocks. I speak of the past when pirates, buccaneers and cut-throats of the sea infested these islands, when the sons and daughters of Africa were chattels, but chattels owning wills with which they protested, but in vain, against the cruelty and brutality of the white man. They reek blood, the blood of lashed slaves and of black flesh that dripped blood from the jaws of hounds. Are the islands accursed ? Notwithstanding the richness of soil, the beauties of nature, the hospitality of the whites and the accessibility to markets, the islands are impoverished and the whites decreasing. Everywhere are the ruins of well constructed buildings, and of once prosperous plantations where creole hospitality sat enthroned. The heart and good desire of gracious kindness and cordial welcome are still with the sons and grandsons, but the wealth which made the islands famous is no more. The stranger is to-day received with open arms, but the outward semblances and inward graces but conceal the approaching doom.

Alas, for Montserrat, once so rich and fair to look upon! This pearl on the necklace of the Antilles has lost its lustre. A few years ago Montserrat was beautiful and prosperous, but one day a tremendous storm, here called a hurricane, raced for an afternoon at the speed of ninety miles an hour across the face of this fair isle. It mowed down every tree of the Montserrat Lime Company, uprooted the cane-fields, and unroofed the buildings of Plymouth. An earthquake, followed by a cloudburst, completed the desolation, and Montserrat was a ruin.

The island is now slowly recovering from its misfortune; the lime trees and sugar-canes are replanted, the houses rebuilt, the coffee, cacao and arrowroot plants flourish, and Montserrat is slowly regaining its former prosperity.

It is the most interesting island in this most attractive archipelago. Over the torn caves of old volcanoes the soaking rains and fervid sun of the tropics have woven on the rich soil a carpet of bloom and verdure, which covers the ghastly disfigurement with surpassing beauty. There is no continuous ridge binding the mountains together. Between the volcanic mounts lie deep gorges or broad stretches of garden lands, which dip towards the sea. Back and forth through all runs the broken and twisted geological system. Here are strata deposited in the miocene tertiary, and metamorphic rocks breaking out along the island face. The complex and composite results of diverse influences and forces are metamorphosed into weird and varied forms.

The craters are now cold and shapeless, and with one exception dead. The morning after my arrival I visited this brimstone crater. Within it the lava boils and bubbles, and sulphurous vapours rise. An oppressive exhalation of sulphurated hydrogen serves to increase the gloomy terror of the place, and a pyramid of lava, robed from base to crest in wild vegetation, rises a thousand feet above the dismal old Soufriere, from which steam and the fumes of sulphur are rising night and day. There is a horrible majesty in its isolation. It is a dangerous neighbour, and may some day be the ruin of Plymouth and the neighbouring plantations.

Ninety-nine per cent. of the population of Montserrat are negroes. They are a happy and jovial people, bubbling over with laughter and good nature. On Sunday I had a favourable opportunity for studying them at their best. The women were smartly gowned, and, according to their standard of fitness, no doubt, dressed in good taste. They lean to a profusion of white muslin, ribbons and feathers, while the young men delight in rakish hats, check trousers and jaunty coats. I saw no signs of poverty; the negroes seemed well-fed and outwardly clean. They heard mass with great reverence, and listened to the explanation of the Gospel with attention and interest. I was informed that each family owned its own hut, grazing for a cow, and a garden for the cultivation of yams, plantains, and cassava.

On this island there is practically no twilight, the descending sun ;

" Dyes the bright wave with bloody light,

Then sinks at once and all is night."

Before coming to Montserrat, every one to whom I spoke of my intended visit warned me against land crabs, cane toads and cicafoe. T. I was told to be careful and not to walk across my bedroom floor in my bare feet, for scorpions and lizards, in spite of all precaution, stole into the houses. I was not to leave my stockings on the floor, but to hang them on the back of a chair, lest centipedes and jiggers should crawl into them. The advice was well meant, and applies equally to all the Southern Carib Islands. But midges, gnats, mosquitoes and black flies are the terror of the amateur hunter and angler in our own forests, and I defy the West Indies, including Demerara, to produce any winged monster surpassing in the ferocity of its attack our own gallinipper of Muskoka. Montserrat is undeservedly notorious for mosquitoes. I was told they were bloodthirsty and ferocious villains—winged pirates—but for the two charming weeks I was the guest of my large-hearted friend, Father Fogarty, I suffered no annoyance from insects of any kind.

Twenty-five years ago Father Fogarty left the pleasant glens and green fields of Ireland to devote himself to the Carib mission, and this accomplished priest, a man of ripe scholarship and generous impulses, has literally exiled himself from his native land in order to give his life to the spiritual uplifting of these dark descendants of darker slaves. To live here on this lonely island, separated from association with refined minds, to endure the everlasting sameness of continuous routine with no redeeming variety of occupation or cheering influence of friendly association with one's own race—to endure all this and to endure it cheerfully, waiting for the reward at the end, a man must be either a saint or cast in the heroic mould of a stoic.

Roaming aimlessly one morning through the streets of Plymouth and picking my way lest I might step on one of the babies or little children that swarmed and tumbled in the volcanic dust of the streets, I was brought to a sudden halt by a sign that confronted me from the side of a decent-looking stone cottage: "Hugh Kelly, boot and shoe-maker."

" Hello! Quoe regio in terris non plena laboris," I involuntarily exclaimed. Entering I asked of a negro cobbler, who was pounding a piece of obstinate sole leather on a smoothing iron, if I could see Mr. Kelly. " 'Dessay," he answered, "I am Massa Kelly."

"Well, Mr. Kelly," I said, "I merely called in to see you, but may I ask how you came to be called Kelly ?"

The shoe-maker informed me that after the manumission of the slaves his father took the name of his master, whose name was Kelly. I afterwards learned that it was a common practice among the liberated slaves to take their owners' names, and that fifteen or sixteen of the same name in a town did not necessarily imply any relationship.

And now let me finish this chapter with the memory of a charming hour I passed alone one night on my host's verandah when the village slept and the household had retired.