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                            THE WEST INDIES

                         _By the same Artist._

                                MOROCCO

                 containing 74 full-page reproductions
                   in colour of MR. A. S. FORREST’S
                               pictures.

                        TEXT BY S. L. BENSUSAN.

                           _Price 20s. Net._

             [Illustration: COMING FROM MASS, ST. LUCIA




                            THE WEST INDIES

                       PAINTED BY A. S. FORREST
                           DESCRIBED BY JOHN
                         HENDERSON · PUBLISHED
                          BY ADAM AND CHARLES
                         BLACK · LONDON · MCMV

                            [Illustration]




Contents


CHAP.                                                               PAGE

I. HISTORICAL                                                          1

II. JAMAICA                                                           11

III. THE TOWN OF KINGSTON                                             27

IV. THE PEOPLE OF JAMAICA                                             41

V. THE PHILOSOPHY OF A JAMAICAN GAMIN                                 57

VI. THE DEVOTION OF THE JAMAICAN <DW64>                                65

VII. TURTLE FISHING                                                   73

VIII. THE WOMEN OF WILD MAN STREET                                    81

IX. THE WEST INDIAN ARMY                                              89

X. A WEST INDIAN COURT HOUSE                                          99

XI. THE MILITARY CAMP AT NEWCASTLE                                   107

XII. THE RECREATIONS OF THE BLACK MAN                                115

XIII. THE DANDY AND THE COQUETTE                                     127

XIV. BOG WALK                                                        135

XV. THE POLITICS OF A JAMAICAN <DW64>                                 143

XVI. THE WHITE MAN’S POLITICS                                        155

XVII. THE RAILWAY IN JAMAICA                                         163

XVIII. ALLIGATOR SHOOTING IN A WEST INDIAN SWAMP                     171

XIX. COMMERCIAL JAMAICA                                              181

XX. THE FLORA OF JAMAICA                                             193

XXI. A WEST INDIAN RACE-COURSE                                       201

XXII. THE HILL STATIONS                                              211

XXIII. A FRAGMENT                                                    219

XXIV. MATTERS OF INTEREST TO TOURISTS                                227

XXV. CERTAIN THINGS THE WEST INDIAN TOURIST MUST NOT DO              237

XXVI. THE CARIBBEAN GROUP                                            243

XXVII. HAYTI                                                         257

XXVIII. IN CONCLUSION                                                265




List of Illustrations


1. Coming from Mass, St. Lucia                             _Frontispiece_

                                                             FACING PAGE

2. Lightermen, off Barbadoes                                           4

3. Sunrise over the Hills, Jamaica                                     8

4. Castries Bay, St. Lucia                                            12

5. Kingston Harbour and Port Henderson                                16

6. Constant Spring, Jamaica                                           18

7. A <DW64>                                                            22

8. A Street in Kingston, Jamaica                                      26

9. An Old Gateway, Kingston                                           30

10. A Fruit-Seller on a Side-Walk, Kingston                           34

11. The Tobacco Market, Kingston                                      38

12. A Market Woman, Jamaica                                           40

13. An Old Woman                                                      44

14. Cocoanut Palms, Falmouth, Jamaica                                 46

15. A Milkmaid, Barbadoes                                             48

16. Waiting Maids                                                     52

17. Diving Boys, Kingston                                             56

18. Diving Boys, off Barbadoes                                        60

19. Going to Church                                                   64

20. A Gingerbread-seller, St. Lucia                                   70

21. The Turtle Wharf, Kingston, Jamaica                               72

22. Boats off Dominica                                                76

23. Night, Anotta Bay, Jamaica                                        80

24. A <DW52> Girl                                                   84

25. A Soldier of the West Indian Regiment                             88

26. A Tropical Landscape near Castleton                               92

27. Outside a West Indian Court House                                 98

28. A <DW64> Nurse with Chinese Children, Jamaica                     104

29. Tropical Rain                                                    106

30. A House on the Hills                                             110

31. Going to Work, Barbadoes                                         114

32. Rosie, a Jamaican Negress                                        120

33. Countrywoman going to Market, Barbadoes                          124

34. A Martinique Lady                                                126

35. On the Road to Market, Jamaica                                   132

36. A House near the Bog Walk, Jamaica                               134

37. Dry Harbour, Jamaica                                             138

38. Sunset, North Coast, Jamaica                                     144

39. On the Beach, Barbadoes                                          148

40. Off Trinidad                                                     150

41. Steamers unloading, Barbadoes                                    154

42. An Evening Party, St. Thomas                                     160

43. A Roadside Market, Jamaica                                       162

44. The Arrival of the Royal Mail Steamer, Dominica                  166

45. A Quay, St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica                                   170

46. Outhouses on a Plantation, Jamaica                               174

47. Mid-day Heat, Jamaica                                            178

48. A Fruit-seller, Barbadoes                                        180

49. A Waiter                                                         184

50. The Market-place, Barbadoes                                      188

51. A Terrace Garden on the Hills, Jamaica                           192

52. Hut on a Plantation, Jamaica                                     196

53. A Jockey at Cumberland Pen, Jamaica                              200

54. A <DW52> Lady on a Race-course, Jamaica                        204

55. A Bungalow on the Hills, Jamaica                                 208

56. The Market, Mandeville                                           210

57. Stalls outside the Market, Mandeville                            214

58. A Road in Mandeville                                             216

59. Sunset over the Hills                                            218

60. Huts, St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica                                     222

61. The Cathedral at Spanish Town, Jamaica                           226

62. A Garden Terrace, Jamaica                                        230

63. Resting by the Way, Jamaica                                      234

64. Outhouses near Kingston, Jamaica                                 236

65. The Capital of St. Thomas                                        240

66. Black River, Jamaica                                             242

67. Roseau, the Capital of Dominica                                  246

68. Mont Pelée, Martinique                                           248

69. An Old Man, St. Thomas                                           250

70. Nevis                                                            252

71. A Guadeloupe Lady                                                256

72. Huts on a Country Road, Jamaica                                  260

73. Passengers embarking from a Quay, St. Ann’s Bay                  264

74. Evening after Rain, Jamaica                                      268


     _The illustrations in this volume were engraved in England by the
                    Hentschel Colourtype Process._

[Illustration]




HISTORICAL




CHAPTER I

HISTORICAL


In Britain we have lost the art of correct perspective. We see distant
things through jaundiced eyes; as a nation we are too prone to regard
over-sea lands and peoples with compassion tempered with contempt, or
with envy and timidity. To ensure our respect and sympathy a country
must be successful; we have no room in our Empire for failures. America,
because of her commercial genius and industrial enterprise, we respect
and revere and imitate. We exaggerate the successes of the States and
credit the American with commercial omnipotence. The word American
stands in the unprinted national dictionary as meaning efficient,
successful, up-to-date. I have heard that English tradesmen have
labelled English-made goods “American” in order that a quick sale might
be ensured in Britain’s capital. We refuse to believe that America has
ceased to be related to us by ties of kinship; to the Englishmen of the
homeland Americans are first cousins. And so it is, conversely, with
England and the West Indies.

At home we are apt to think of the West Indies as a scattered group of
poverty-stricken islands, barren of riches, planted somewhere in some
tropical sea, and periodically reduced to absolute desolation by
hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanoes. The poverty of the Western
Indies is proverbial. Occasionally Imperial Parliament brings forward
some measure, which, in the opinion of some individual, might tend to
relieve the distress and commercial poverty of our West Indian
possessions; at other times a fund is started at the Mansion-House to
help the West Indian victims of some fearful tornado or earthquake. That
is all that is generally known of the great islands of the Caribbean
Sea. In our dreams of Empire we prefer to think of Canada, Africa, and
strenuous Australasia. Commercially and politically our West Indies are,
according to the general idea, more than half derelict, and wholly
without the attractions of wealth and promise. We forget that these
Western islands were at one time the richest of England’s possessions;
we do not realise how rich they, some day, will again become. If Britain
only understood aright she would know that it is only through her own
neglect, through her half-hearted, penurious West Indian policy, that
our Caribbean Empire is not in the front rank of her richest possessions
to-day. The riches of the West Indies played a large part in the
formation of Britain’s greatness. We swept the islands clear of all
their surface wealth at a period when England was most in need of gold.
And because to-day we cannot send ships from Plymouth with empty

[Illustration: LIGHTERMEN, OFF BARBADOES]

holds and crowded quarter-decks, to return from a six months’ voyage in
the Indies crowded with treasure and glory, we count the islands barren.
We forget that West Indian wealth was invested in Britain’s greatness
years before we had an empire. We forget that Britain’s navy was founded
by men who were trained to war and seamanship among those islands of the
West. More than once have these islands seen the pride and glory of
England hanging in the balance, and once, at least, the Indies knew
before the homeland that a blow, which had threatened the very
foundations of British greatness, had been hurled in vain.

That was in the time of Burke and Fox and Rodney. Spain and France and
Holland had combined, and in one great battle threatened to crush the
power of England, and to wrest from her the supremacy of the seas.
England trembled, and the popular party advocated surrender and peace.
France and Spain wanted the Indies. Rodney sailed from England to uphold
the power and dominion of his race. He sailed amidst