The English in the West Indies Part 12

This is the Radical faith, which, except every man do keep whole and undefiled, he is a Tory and an enemy of the State, and without doubt shall perish everlastingly.

Once the Radical was a Liberal and went for toleration and freedom of opinion. He has become a believer now. He is right and you are wrong, and if you do not agree with him you are a fool, and you are wicked besides. Voltaire says that atheism and superst.i.tion are the two poles of intellectual disease. Superst.i.tion he thinks the worse of the two.

The atheist is merely mistaken, and can be cured if you show him that he is wrong. The fanatic can never be cured. Yet each alike, if he prevails, will destroy human society. What would Voltaire have expected for poor mankind had he seen both the precious qualities combined in this new _Symbolum Fidei_?

A creed is not a reasoned judgment based upon experience and insight. It is a child of imagination and pa.s.sion. Like an organised thing, it has its appointed period and then dies. You cannot argue it out of existence. It works for good; it works for evil; but work it will while the life is in it. Faith, we are told, is not contradictory to reason, but is above reason. Whether reason or faith sees truer, events will prove.

One more observation this American gentleman made to me. He was speaking of the want of spirit and of the despondency of the West Indian whites.

'I never knew, sir,' he said, 'any good come of desponding men. If you intend to strike a mark, you had better believe that you can strike it.

No one ever hit anything if he thought that he was most likely to miss it. You must take a cheerful view of things, or you will have no success in this world.'

'Tyne heart tyne a',' the Scotch proverb says. The Anglo-West Indians are tyning heart, and that is the worst feature about them. They can get no help except in themselves, and they can help themselves after all if we allow them fair play. The Americans will not touch them politically, but they will trade with them; they will bring their capital and their skill and knowledge among them, and make the islands richer and more prosperous than ever they were--on one condition: they will risk nothing in such enterprises as long as the shadow hangs over them of a possible government by a black majority. Let it suffice to have created one Ireland without deliberately manufacturing a second.

CHAPTER XVI.

Jamaican hospitality--Cherry Garden--George William Gordon--The Gordon riots--Governor Eyre--A dispute and its consequences--Jamaican country-house society--Modern speculation--A Spanish fable--Port Royal--The commodore--Naval theatricals--The modern sailor.

The surviving representatives of the Jamaican gentry are as hospitable as their fathers and grandfathers used to be. An English visitor who wishes to see the island is not allowed to take his chance at hotels--where, indeed, his chance would be a bad one. A single acquaintance is enough to start with. He is sent on with letters of introduction from one house to another, and is a.s.sured of a favourable reception. I was treated as kindly as any stranger would be, and that was as kindly as possible. But friends do not ask us to stay with them that their portraits may be drawn in the traveller's journals; and I mention no one who was thus good to me, unless some general interest attaches either to himself or his residence. Such interest does, however, attach to a spot where, after leaving Mandeville, I pa.s.sed a few days. The present owner of it was the chief manager of the Kingston branch of the Colonial Bank: a clever accomplished man of business, who understood the financial condition of the West Indies better perhaps than any other man living. He was a botanist besides; he had a fine collection of curious plants which were famous in the island; and was otherwise a gentleman of the highest standing and reputation. His lady was one of the old island aristocracy--high-bred, cultivated, an accomplished artist; a person who would have shone anywhere and in any circle, and was, therefore, contented to be herself, and indifferent whether she shone or not. A visit in such a family was likely to be instructive, and was sure to be agreeable; and on these grounds alone I should have accepted gratefully the opportunity of knowing them better which they kindly made for me by an invitation to stay with them. But their place, which was called Cherry Garden, and which I had seen from the grounds at Government House, had a further importance of its own in having been the home of the unfortunate George William Gordon.

The disturbances with which Mr. Gordon was connected, and for his share in which he was executed, are so recent and so notorious that I need give no detailed account of them, though, of course, I looked into the history again and listened to all that I could hear about it. Though I had taken no part in Mr. Eyre's defence, I was one of those who thought from the first that Mr. Eyre had been unworthily sacrificed to public clamour. Had the agitation in Jamaica spread, and taken the form which it easily might have taken, he would have been blamed as keenly by one half the world if he had done nothing to check it as he was blamed, in fact, by the other for too much energy. Carlyle used to say that it was as if, when a s.h.i.+p had been on fire, and the captain by skill and prompt.i.tude had put the fire out, his owner were to say to him, 'Sir, you poured too much water down the hold and damaged the cargo.' The captain would answer, 'Yes, sir, but I have saved your s.h.i.+p.' This was the view which I carried with me to Jamaica, and I have brought it back with me the same in essentials, though qualified by clearer perceptions of the real nature of the situation.

Something of a very similar kind had happened in Natal just before I visited that colony in 1874. I had seen the whites there hardly recovering from a panic in which a common police case had been magnified by fear into the beginning of an insurrection. Langalibalele, a Caffre chief within the British dominions, had been insubordinate. He had been sent for to Maritzberg, and had invented excuses for disobedience to a lawful order. The whites believed at once that there was to be a general Caffre rebellion in which they would all be murdered. They resolved to be beforehand with it. They carried fire and sword through two considerable tribes. At first they thought that they had covered themselves with glory; calmer reflection taught many of them that perhaps they had been too hasty, and that Langalibalele had never intended to rebel at all. The Jamaican disturbance was of a similar kind. Mr. Gordon had given less provocation than the Caffre chief, but the circ.u.mstances were a.n.a.logous, and the actual danger was probably greater. Jamaica had then const.i.tutional, though not what is called responsible, government. The executive power remained with the Crown.

There had been differences of opinion between the governor and the a.s.sembly. Gordon, a man of colour, was a prominent member of the opposition. He had called public meetings of the blacks in a distant part of the island, and was endeavouring to bring the pressure of public opinion on the opposition side. Imprudent as such a step might have been among an ignorant and excitable population, where whites and blacks were so unequal in numbers, and where they knew so little of each other, Mr.

Gordon was not going beyond what in const.i.tutional theory he was legally ent.i.tled to do; nor was his language on the platform, though violent and inflammatory, any more so than what we listen to patiently at home.

Under a popular const.i.tution the people are sovereign; the members of the a.s.semblies are popular delegates; and when there is a diversion of opinion any man has a right to call the const.i.tuencies to express their sentiments. If stones were thrown at the police and seditious cries were raised, it was no more than might be reasonably expected.

We at home can be calm on such occasions because we know that there is no real danger, and that the law is strong enough to a.s.sert itself. In Jamaica a few thousand white people were living in the middle of negroes forty times their number--once their slaves, now raised to be their political equals--each regarding the other on the least provocation with resentment and suspicion. In England the ma.s.sacre in Hayti is a half-forgotten story. Not one person in a thousand of those who clamoured for the prosecution of Governor Eyre had probably ever heard of it. In Jamaica it is ever present in the minds of the Europeans as a frightful evidence of what the negroes are capable when roused to frenzy. The French planters had done nothing particularly cruel to deserve their animosity, and were as well regarded by their slaves as ever we had been in the English islands. Yet in a fever of political excitement, and as a reward for the decree of the Paris Revolutionary Government, which declared them free, they allowed the liberty which was to have elevated them to the white man's level to turn them into devils; and they ma.s.sacred the whole of the French inhabitants. It was inevitable that when the volcano in Jamaica began to show symptoms of similar activity the whites residing there should be unable to look on with the calmness which we, from thousands of miles away, unreasonably expected of them. They imagined their houses in flames, and themselves and their families at the mercy of a furious mob. No personal relation between the two races has grown up to take the place of slavery. The white gentry have blacks for labourers, blacks for domestic servants, yet as a rule (though, of course, there are exceptions) they have no interest in each other, no esteem nor confidence: therefore any symptom of agitation is certain to produce a panic, and panic is always violent.

The blacks who attended Gordon's meetings came armed with guns and cutla.s.ses; a party of white volunteers went in consequence to watch them, and to keep order if they showed signs of meaning insurrection.

Stones were thrown; the Riot Act was read, more stones followed, and then the volunteers fired, and several persons were killed. Of course there was fury. The black mob then actually did rise. They marched about that particular district destroying plantations and burning houses. That they did so little, and that the flame did not spread, was a proof that there was no premeditation of rebellion, no prepared plan of action, no previous communication between the different parts of the island with a view to any common movement. There was no proof, and there was no reason to suppose, that Gordon had intended an armed outbreak. He would have been a fool if he had, when const.i.tutional agitation and the weight of numbers at his back would have secured him all that he wanted. When inflammable materials are brought together, and sparks are flying, you cannot equitably distribute the blame or the punishment. Eyre was responsible for the safety of the island. He was not a Jamaican. The rule in the colonial service is that a governor remains in any colony only long enough to begin to understand it. He is then removed to another of which he knows nothing. He is therefore absolutely dependent in any difficulty upon local advice. When the riots began every white man in Jamaica was of one opinion, that unless the fire was stamped out promptly they would all be murdered. Being without experience himself, it was very difficult for Mr. Eyre to disregard so complete a unanimity.

I suppose that a perfectly calm and determined man would have seen in the unanimity itself the evidence of alarm and imagination. He ought perhaps to have relied entirely on the police and the regular troops, and to have called in the volunteers. But here again was a difficulty; for the police were black, and the West India regiments were black, and the Sepoy rebellion was fresh in everybody's memory. He had no time to deliberate. He had to act, and to act promptly; and if, relying on his own judgment, he had disregarded what everyone round him insisted upon, and if mischief had afterwards come of it, the censure which would have fallen upon him would have been as severe as it would have been deserved. He a.s.sumed that the English colonists were right and that a general rebellion had begun. They all armed. They formed into companies.

The disturbed district was placed under martial law, and these extemporised regiments, too few in number to be merciful, saw safety only in striking terror into the poor wretches. It was in Jamaica as it was in Natal afterwards; but we must allow for human nature and not be hasty to blame. If the rising at Morant Bay was but the boiling over of a pot from the orator of an excited patriot, there was deplorable cruelty and violence. But, again, it was all too natural. Men do not bear easily to see their late servants on their way to become their political masters, and they believe the worst of them because they are afraid. A model governor would have rather restrained their ardour than encouraged it; but all that can be said against Mr. Eyre (so far as regarded the general suppression of the insurgents) is that he acted as nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand would have acted in his place, and more ought not to be expected of average colonial governors.

His treatment of Gordon, the original cause of the disturbance, was more questionable. Gordon had returned to his own house, the house where I was going, within sight of Eyre's windows. It would have been fair, and perhaps right, to arrest him, and right also to bring him to trial, if he had committed any offence for which he could be legally punished. So strong was the feeling against him that, if every white man in Kingston had been empannelled, there would have been a unanimous verdict, and they would not have looked too closely into niceties of legal construction. Unfortunately it was doubtful whether Gordon had done anything which could be construed into a capital crime. He had a right to call public meetings together. He had a right to appeal to political pa.s.sions, and to indulge as freely as he pleased in the patriotic commonplaces of platforms, provided he did not himself advise or encourage a breach of the peace, and this it could not be easily proved that he had done. He was, however, the leader of the opposition to the Government. The opposition had broken into a riot, and Gordon was guilty of having excited the feelings which led to it. The leader could not be allowed to escape unpunished while his followers were being shot and flogged. The Kingston district where he resided was under the ordinary law. Eyre sent him into the district which was under martial law, tried him by a military court and hanged him.

The Cabinet at home at first thanked their representative for having saved the island. A clamour rose, and they sent out a commission to examine into what had happened. The commission reported unfavourably, and Eyre was dismissed and ruined. In Jamaica I never heard anyone express a doubt on the full propriety of his action. He carried away with him the affection and esteem of the whole of the English colonists, who believe that he saved them from destruction. In my own opinion the fault was not in Mr. Eyre, and was not in the unfortunate Gordon, but in those who had insisted on applying a const.i.tutional form of government to a country where the population is so unfavourably divided. If the numbers of white and black were more nearly equal, the objection would be less, for the natural superiority of the white would then a.s.sert itself without difficulty, and there would be no panics. Where the disproportion is so enormous as it is in Jamaica, where intelligence and property are in a miserable minority, and a half-reclaimed race of savages, cannibals not long ago, and capable, as the state of Hayti shows, of reverting to cannibalism again, are living beside them as their political equals, such panics arise from the nature of things, and will themselves cause the catastrophe from the dread of which they spring. Mutual fear and mistrust can lead to nothing in the end but violent collisions. The theory of const.i.tutional government is that the majority shall rule the minority, and as long as the qualities, moral and mental, of the parties are not grossly dissimilar, such an arrangement forms a tolerable _modus vivendi_. Where in character, in mental force, in energy, in cultivation, there is no equality at all, but an inequality which has existed for thousands of years, and is as plain to-day as it was in the Egypt of the Pharaohs, to expect that the intelligent few will submit to the unintelligent many is to expect what has never been found and what never ought to be found. The whites cannot be trusted to rule the blacks, but for the blacks to rule the whites is a yet grosser anomaly. Were England out of the way, there would be a war of extermination between them. England prohibits it, and holds the balance in forced equality. England, therefore, so long as the West Indies are English, must herself rule, and rule impartially, and so acquit herself of her self-chosen responsibilities. Let the colonies which are occupied by our own race rule themselves as we rule ourselves.

The English const.i.tuencies have no rights over the const.i.tuencies of Canada and Australia, for the Canadians and Australians are as well able to manage their own affairs as we are to manage ours. If they prefer even to elect governors of their own, let them do as they please. The link between us is community of blood and interest, and will not part over details of administration. But in these other colonies which are our own we must accept the facts as they are. Those who will not recognise realities are always beaten in the end.

The train from Porus brought us back to Kingston an hour before sunset.

The evening was lovely, even for Jamaica. The sea breeze had fallen. The land breeze had not risen, and the dust lay harmless on road and hedge.

Cherry Garden, to which I was bound, was but seven miles distant by the direct road, so I calculated on a delightful drive which would bring me to my destination before dark. So I calculated; but alas! for human expectation. I engaged a 'buggy' at the station, with a decent-looking conductor, who a.s.sured me that he knew the way to Cherry Garden as well as to his own door. His horse looked starved and miserable. He insisted that there was not another in Kingston that was more than a match for it. We set out, and for the first two or three miles we went on well enough, conversing amicably upon things in general. But it so happened that it was again market day. The road was thronged as before with women plodding along with their baskets on their heads, a single male on a donkey to each detachment of them, carrying nothing, like an officer with a company of soldiers. Foolish indignation rose in me, and I asked my friend if he was not ashamed of seeing the poor creatures toiling so cruelly, while their lords and masters amused themselves. I appealed to his feelings as a man, as if it was likely that he had got any. The wretch only laughed. 'Ah, ma.s.sa,' he said, with his tongue in his cheek, 'women do women's work, men do men's work--all right.' 'And what is men's work?' I asked. Instead of answering he went on, 'Look at they women, ma.s.sa--how they laugh--how happy they be! n.o.body more happy than black woman, ma.s.sa.' I would not let him off. I p.r.i.c.ked into him, till he got excited too, and we argued and contradicted each other, till at last the horse, finding he was not attended to, went his own way and that was a wrong one. Between Kingston and our destination there is a deep sandy flat, overgrown with bush and penetrated in all directions with labyrinthine lanes. Into this we had wandered in our quarrels, and neither of us knew where we were. The sand was loose; our miserable beast was above his fetlocks in it, and was visibly dropping under his efforts to drag us along even at a walk. The sun went down. The tropic twilight is short. The evening star shone out in the west, and the crescent moon over our heads. My man said this and said that; every word was a lie, for he had lost his way and would not allow it. We saw a light through some trees. I sent him to inquire. We were directed one way and another way, every way except the right one. We emerged at last upon a hard road of some kind. The stars told me the general direction.

We came to cottages where the name of Cherry Garden was known, and we were told that it was two miles off; but alas! again there were two roads to it; a short and good one, and a long and bad one, and they sent us by the last. There was a steep hill to climb, for the house is 800 feet above the sea. The horse could hardly crawl, and my 'n.i.g.g.e.r' went to work to flog him to let off his own ill humour. I had to stop that by force, and at last, as it grew too dark to see the road under the trees, I got out and walked, leaving him to follow at a foot's pace. The night was lovely. I began to think that we should have to camp out after all, and that it would be no great hards.h.i.+p.

It was like the gloaming of a June night in England, the daylight in the open spots not entirely gone, and mixing softly with the light of moon and planet and the flas.h.i.+ng of the fireflies. I plodded on mile after mile, and Cherry Garden still receded to one mile farther. We came to a gate of some consequence. The outline of a large mansion was visible with gardens round it. I concluded that we had arrived, and was feeling for the latch when the forms of a lady and gentleman appeared against the sky who were strolling in the grounds. They directed me still upwards, with the mile which never diminished still to be travelled.

Like myself, our weary animal had gathered hopes from the sight of the gate. He had again to drag on as he could. His owner was subdued and silent, and obeyed whatever order I gave him. The trees now closed over us so thick that I could see nothing. Vainly I repented of my unnecessary philanthropy which had been the cause of the mischief; what had I to do with black women, or white either for that matter? I had to feel the way with my feet and a stick. I came to a place where the lane again divided. I tried the nearest turn. I found a trench across it three feet deep, which had been cut by a torrent. This was altogether beyond the capacity of our unfortunate animal, so I took the other boldly, prepared if it proved wrong to bivouac till morning with my 'n.i.g.g.e.r,' and go on with my argument. Happily there was no need; we came again on a gate which led into a field. There was a drive across it and wire fences. Finally lights began to glimmer and dogs to bark: we were at the real Cherry Garden at last, and found the whole household alarmed for what had become of us. I could not punish my misleader by stinting his fare, for I knew that I had only myself to blame. He was an honest fellow after all. In the disturbance of my mind I left a rather valuable umbrella in his buggy. He discovered it after he had gone, and had grace enough to see that it was returned to me.

My entertainers were much amused at the cause of the misadventure, perhaps unique of its kind; to address homilies to the black people on the treatment of their wives not being the fas.h.i.+on in these parts.

If there are no more Aaron Bangs in Jamaica, there are very charming people; as I found when I turned this new leaf in my West Indian experience. Mr. M---- could not have taken more pains with me if I had been his earliest friend. The chief luxury which he allowed himself in his simple life was a good supply of excellent horses. His business took him every day to Kingston, but he left me in charge of his family, and I had 'a good time,' as the Americans say. The house was large, with fine airy rooms, a draught so constantly blowing through it that the candles had to be covered with bell gla.s.ses; but the draughts in these countries are the very breath of life. It had been too dark when I arrived to see anything of the surroundings, and the next morning I strolled out to see what the place was like. It lies just at the foot of the Blue Mountains, where the gradual slope from the sea begins to become steep. The plain of Kingston lay stretched before me, with its woods and cornfields and villas, the long straggling town, the s.h.i.+ps at anchor in the harbour, the steamers pa.s.sing in and out with their long trails of smoke, the sand-spit like a thin grey line lying upon the water, as the natural breakwater by which the harbour is formed, and beyond it the broad blue expanse of the Caribbean Sea. The foreground was like an English park, studded over with handsome forest trees and broken by the rains into picturesque ravines. Some acres were planted with oranges of the choicer sorts, as an experiment to show what Jamaica could do, but they were as yet young and had not come into bearing. Round the house were gardens where the treasures of our hot-houses were carelessly and lavishly scattered. Stephanotis trailed along the railing or climbed over the trellis. Oleanders white and pink waved over marble basins, and were sprinkled by the spray from spouting fountains. Crotons stood about in tubs, not small plants as we know them, but large shrubs; great purple or parti-coloured bushes. They have a fancy for crotons in the West Indies; I suppose as a change from the monotony of green. I cannot share it. A red leaf, except in autumn before it falls, is a kind of monster, and I am glad that Nature has made so few of them. In the shade of the trees behind the house was a collection of orchids, the most perfect, I believe, in the island.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KINGSTON AND HARBOUR FROM CHERRY GARDEN.]

And here Gordon had lived. Here he had been arrested and carried away to his death; his crime being that he had dreamt of regenerating the negro race by baptising them in the Jordan of English Radicalism. He would have brought about nothing but confusion, and have precipitated Jamaica prematurely into the black anarchy into which perhaps it is still destined to fall. But to hang him was an extreme measure, and, in the present state of public opinion, a dangerous one.

One does not a.s.sociate the sons of darkness with keen perceptions of the beautiful. Yet no mortal ever selected a lovelier spot for a residence than did Gordon in choosing Cherry Garden. How often had his round dark eyes wandered over the scenes at which I was gazing, watched the early rays of the sun slanting upwards to the high peaks of the Blue Mountains, or the last as he sank in gold and crimson behind the hills at Mandeville; watched the great steamers entering or leaving Port Royal, and at night the gleam of the lighthouse from among the palm trees on the spit. Poor fellow! one felt very sorry for him, and sorry for Mr. Eyre, too. The only good that came of it all was the surrender of the const.i.tution and the return to Crown government, and this our wonderful statesmen are beginning to undo.

No one understood better than Mr. M---- the troubles and dangers of the colony, but he was inclined, perhaps by temperament, perhaps by knowledge, to take a cheerful view of things. For the present at least he did not think that there was anything serious to be feared. The finances, of which he had the best means of judging, were in tolerable condition. The debt was considerable, but more than half of it was represented by a railway. If sugar was languis.h.i.+ng, the fruit trade with the United States was growing with the liveliest rapidity. Planters and merchants were not making fortunes, but business went on. The shares in the Colonial Bank were not at a high quotation, but the securities were sound, the shareholders got good dividends, and eight and ten per cent.

was the interest charged on loans. High interest might be a good sign or a bad one. Anyway Mr. M---- could not see that there was much to be afraid of in Jamaica. There had been bad times before, and they had survived notwithstanding. He was a man of business, and talked himself little about politics. As it had been, so it would be again.

In his absence at his work I found friends in the neighbourhood who were all attention and politeness. One took me to see my acquaintances at the camp again. Another drove me about, showed me the house where Scott had lived, the author of 'Tom Cringle.' One round in particular left a distinct impression. It was through a forest which had once been a flouris.h.i.+ng sugar estate. Deep among the trees were the ruins of an aqueduct which had brought water to the mill, now overgrown and crumbling. The time had not been long as we count time in the history of nations, but there had been enough for the arches to fall in, the stream to return to its native bed, the tropical vegetation to spring up in its wild luxuriance and bury in shade the ruins of a past civilisation.

I fell in with interesting persons who talked metaphysics and theology with me, though one would not have expected it in Jamaica. In this strange age of ours the spiritual atmosphere is more confused than at any period during the last eighteen hundred years. Men's hearts are failing them for fear, not knowing any longer where to rest. We look this way and that way, and catch at one another like drowning men. Go where you will, you find the same phenomena. Science grows, and observers are adding daily to our knowledge of the nature and structure of the material universe, but they tell us nothing, and can tell us nothing, of what we most want to know. They cannot tell us what our own nature is. They cannot tell us what G.o.d is, or what duty is. We had a belief once, in which, as in a boat, we floated safely on the unknown ocean; but the philosophers and critics have been boring holes in the timbers to examine the texture of the wood, and now it leaks at every one of them. We have to help ourselves in the best way that we can. Some strike out new ideas for themselves, others go back to the seven sages, and lay again for themselves the old eggs, which, after laborious incubation, will be addled as they were addled before. To my metaphysical friends in Jamaica the 'Light of Asia' had been s.h.i.+ning amidst German dreams, and the moonlight of the Vedas had been illuminating the pessimism of Schopenhauer. So it is all round. Mr. ---- goes to Mount Carmel to listen for communications from Elijah; fas.h.i.+onable countesses to the shrine of Our Lady at Lourdes. 'Are you a Buddhist?' lisps the young lady in Mayfair to the partner with whom she is sitting out at a ball. 'It is so nice,' said a gentleman to me who has been since promoted to high office in an unfortunate colony, 'it is so nice to talk of such things to pretty girls, and it always ends in one way, you know.' Conversations on theology, at least between persons of opposite s.e.x, ought to be interdicted by law for everyone under forty. But there are questions on which old people may be permitted to ask one another what they think, if it only be for mutual comfort in the general vacancy. We are born alone, we pa.s.s alone into the great darkness. When the curtain falls is the play over? or is a new act to commence? Are we to start again in a new sphere, carrying with us what we have gained in the discipline of our earthly trials? Are we to become again as we were before we came into this world, when eternity had not yet splintered into time, or the universal being dissolved into individual existences? For myself, I have long ceased to speculate on these subjects, being convinced that they have no bottom which can be reasoned out by the intellect. We are in a world where much can be learnt which affects our own and others' earthly welfare, and we had better leave the rest alone. Yet one listens and cannot choose but sympathise when anxious souls open out to you what is going on within them. A Spanish legend, showing with whom these inquiries began and with what result, is not without its value.

Jupiter, having made the world, proceeded to make animals to live in it.

The a.s.s was the earliest created. He looked about him. He looked at himself; and, as the habit of a.s.ses is, he asked himself what it all meant; what it was to be an a.s.s, where did he come from, and what he was for? Not being able to discover, he applied to his maker. Jupiter told him that he was made to be the slave of another animal to be called Man.

He was to carry men on his back, drag loads for them, and be their drudge. He was to live on thistles and straw, and to be beaten continually with sticks and ropes'-ends. The a.s.s complained. He said that he had done nothing to deserve so hard a fate. He had not asked to be born, and he would rather not have been born. He inquired how long this life, or whatever it was, had to continue. Jupiter said it had to last thirty years. The poor a.s.s was in consternation. If Jupiter would reduce the thirty to ten he undertook to be patient, to be a good servant, and to do his work patiently. Jupiter reflected and consented, and the a.s.s retired grateful and happy.

The dog, who had been born meanwhile, heard what had pa.s.sed. He, too, went to Jupiter with the same question. He learnt that he also was a slave to men. In the day he was to catch their game for them, but was not to eat it himself. At night he was to be chained by a ring and to lie awake to guard their houses. His food was to be bones and refuse.

Like the a.s.s he was to have had thirty years of it, but on pet.i.tion they were similarly exchanged for ten.

The monkey came next. His function, he was told, was to mimic humanity, to be led about by a string, and grimace and dance for men's amus.e.m.e.nt.

He also remonstrated at the length of time, and obtained the same favour.

Last came the man himself. Conscious of boundless desires and, as he imagined, of boundless capabilities, he did not inquire what he was, or what he was to do. Those questions had been already answered by his vanity. He did not come to ask for anything, but to thank Jupiter for having created so glorious a being and to ascertain for how many ages he might expect to endure. The G.o.d replied that thirty years was the term allotted to all personal existences.

'Only thirty years!' he exclaimed. 'Only thirty years for such capacities as mine. Thirty years will be gone like a dream. Extend them!

oh, extend them, gracious Jupiter, that I may have leisure to use the intellect which thou hast given me, search into the secrets of nature, do great and glorious actions, and serve and praise thee, O my creator!

longer and more worthily.'

The lip of the G.o.d curled lightly, and again he acquiesced. 'I have some spare years to dispose of,' he said, 'of which others of my creatures have begged to be relieved. You shall have thirty years of your own.

From thirty to fifty you shall have the a.s.s's years, and labour and sweat for your support. From fifty to seventy you shall have the dog's years, and take care of the stuff, and snarl and growl at what younger men are doing. From seventy to ninety you shall have the monkey's years, and smirk and grin and make yourself ridiculous. After that you may depart.'

I was going on to Cuba. The commodore had insisted on my spending my last days with him at Port Royal. He undertook to see me on board the steamer as it pa.s.sed out of the harbour. I have already described his quarters. The naval station has no colonial character except the climate, and is English entirely. The officers are the servants of the Admiralty, not of the colonial government. Their interests are in their profession. They look to promotion in other parts of the world, and their functions are on the ocean and not on the land. The commodore is captain of the guards.h.i.+p; but he has a commander under him and he resides on sh.o.r.e. Everyone employed in the dockyard, even down to his own household, is rated on the s.h.i.+p's books, consequently they are all men. There is not a woman servant about the place, save his lady's ladies'-maid. His daughters learn to take care of themselves, and are not brought up to find everything done for them. His boys are about the world in active service growing into useful and honourable manhood.

Thus the whole life tastes of the element to which it belongs, and is salt and healthy as the ocean itself. It was not without its entertainments. The officers of the garrison were to give a ball. The young ladies of Kingston are not afraid of the water, cross the harbour in the steam launches, dance till the small hours, return in the dark, drive their eight or ten miles home, and think nothing of it. In that climate, night is pleasanter to be abroad in than day. I could not stay to be present, but I was in the midst of the preparations, and one afternoon there was a prospect of a brilliant addition to the party. A yacht steamed inside the Point--long, narrow, and swift as a torpedo boat. She carried American colours, and we heard that she was the famous vessel of the yet more famous Mr. Vanderbilt, who was on board with his family. Here was an excitement! The commodore was ordered to call the instant that she was anch.o.r.ed. Invitations were prepared--all was eagerness. Alas! she did not anchor at all. She learnt from the pilot that, the small-pox being in Jamaica, if any of her people landed there she would be quarantined in the other islands, and to the disappointment of everyone, even of myself, who would gladly have seen the great millionaire, she turned about and went off again to sea.

I was very happy at the commodore's--low spirits not being allowed in that wholesome element. Decks were washed every morning as if at sea, i.e. every floor was scrubbed and scoured. It was an eternal was.h.i.+ng day, lines of linen flying in the brisk sea breeze. The commodore was always busy making work if none had been found for him. He took me one day to see the rock spring where Rodney watered his fleet, as the great admiral describes in one of his letters, and from which Port Royal now draws its supply. The spring itself bursts full and clear out of the limestone rock close to the sh.o.r.e, four or five miles from Kingston.

There is a natural basin, slightly improved by art, from which the old conduit pipes carry the stream to the sea. The tug comes daily, fills its tanks, and returns. The commodore has tidied up the place, planted shrubs, and cleared away the bush; but half the water at least, is still allowed to leak away, and turns the hollow below into an unwholesome swamp. It may be a necessity, but it is also a misfortune, that the officers at distant stations hold their appointments for so short a term. By the time that they have learnt what can or ought to be done, they are sent elsewhere, and their successor has to begin over again.

The water in this spring, part of which is now worse than wasted and the rest carried laboriously in a vessel to Port Royal to be sold by measure to the people there, might be all conducted thither by pipes at small cost and trouble, were the commodore to remain a few years longer at the Jamaica Station.

He is his own boatman, and we had some fine sails about the lagoon--the breeze always fresh and the surface always smooth. The shallow bays swarm with small fish, and it was a pretty thing to watch the pelicans devouring them. They gather in flocks, sweep and wheel in the air, and when they plunge they strike the water with a violence which one would expect would break their wings. They do not dive, but seize their prey with their long, broad bills, and seem never to miss.

Between the s.h.i.+ps and the barracks, there are many single men in Port Royal, for whom amus.e.m.e.nt has to be found if they are to be kept from drink. A canteen is provided for them, with bowling alley, tennis court, beer in moderation, and a reading room, for such as like it, with reviews and magazines and newspapers They can fish if they want sport, and there are sharks in plenty a cable's length from sh.o.r.e; but the schoolmaster has been abroad, and tastes run in more refined directions.