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CHAPTER V
CLIMBING THE SOUFFRIÈRE OF SAINT VINCENT
MY ENTRY into the port of Kingstown was spectacular,
but hardly to my liking. The mail sloop from Bequia had
spread the news of my coming and as I neared the shore, I
saw that the jetty and the beach were black with black
people. A rain squall came down from the hills, but it
did not seem to dampen the interest of the people nor dim
the eye of my camera. I had scarcely stepped out of the
canoe when the crowd rushed into the water, lifted her on
their shoulders and she continued on her way through a
sea of bobbing heads. Direct was her course for the gate
of the building which contains the government offices and
she at last came to rest in a shaded corner of the patio,
where the police are drilled. As I followed in her wake,
I said to myself, "She may be without rudder and without
skipper and still find her way to a quiet berth." We were
in a land-locked harbor, the crowd as a sea outside,
beating against the walls.
My own procedure was as strange a performance as that
of the Yakaboo. Among the officials in the patio was one
who pushed himself forward and gave me a package of mail.
He was His Majesty's Postmaster, Mr. Monplaisir.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" asked
H.M.P.M., addressing me by my first name.
"Yes, Monty," -- he was pleased at this -- "you can
lead me to a fresh-water shower."
"Come along, then," and the sergeant opened the gate
for us. As we walked through the streets, the crowd
streaked out behind us like the tail of a comet. We soon
gained the house of one Mr. Crichton, where a number of
government clerks lived as in a boarding house and where
a transient guest might also find lodging. There happened
that time to be such a guest, by name, Dr. Theodorini --
optometrist. His mission in life, it seemed, was to
relieve the eye strain of suffering natives throughout
the West Indies. His most popular prescriptions called
for gold-rimmed glasses -- not always a necessity, but
undeniably a distinct social asset. We became good
friends.
My comet's tail, like any well behaved appendage,
tried to follow me into Mr. Crichton's house but the
landlord was too quick for it and, as I stepped over the
threshold, he bounded against the flimsy door, thus
performing a very adroit piece of astronomic surgery.
Divested of my tail, I was led to the bath, which proved
to be a small separate building erected over a spacious
tank with sides waist high. Over the center of the tank
drooped a nozzle with a cord hanging down beside it. What
an excellent chance to wash the sea water out of my
clothes! I pulled the cord and stood under the shower.
Monty handed me a cigarette which I puffed under my hat
brim.
In the meantime, Dr. Theodorini, whom I had not yet
met, began throwing pennies to the baffled crowd from the
second story window. It must have been a queer sight
could one have viewed it in section. The swearing of the
landlord, accompanied by the orchestration of the voices
outside and the staccato "Hurrah's" of Theodorini
reminded me in a silly way of Tschaikowsky's 1812
overture.
Having washed my clothes, I bathed au naturel and then
found to my chagrin that I had brought nothing with me
from the canoe. Through the partly opened door I ordered
one of the servants to go to my canoe and bring the
little yellow bag which contained my spare wardrobe.
Dried and unsalted, I emerged from the bath to sit down
to a West Indian breakfast at the table of mine host.
My days in Kingstown were mainly occupied in
developing the more recent exposures I had made in the
Grenadines and in rewashing the films I had developed en
route. In the tropics I found that as soon as I had
opened a tin of films, it was imperative to expose and
develop them as quickly as possible in order to avoid
fogging in the excessive heat. Whenever I came to a place
like Kingstown where ice was obtainable this was a simple
matter, for by the use of the film tank and the changing
bag I was independent of a dark room.
On the beaches, however, my chief difficulty was in
lowering the temperature of the water, which usually
stood at 80° F. -- the "frilling" point for films.
Having mixed the developing solution in the tank, I would
close it and wrap it carefully in a wet flannel shirt.
Then with a line tied to it -- my mizzen halyard served
admirably with its three-inch mast ring to hold in my
hand -- I would step clear of my tent and whirl the tank
around my head at the end of the line. In this way I
could bring down the temperature of the liquid to about
75ž -- a safe temperature for developing. Often I did not
have enough fresh water for washing the developed films
and would have to use sea water -- which meant a thorough
rewashing such as at Kingstown. Even under these adverse
conditions my failures were only ten per cent of the
total.
Ice, in these parts, is used mainly in the making of
swizzles, as the West Indian cocktails are called, and
when, as at Crichton's, I would send for enough ice to
chill gallons of swizzles and withdraw silently to my
room after dinner, another topic would be added in the
speculation which summed me up as "queer chap that."
On the 22nd of March, I sailed out of the roadstead of
Kingstown before a stiff breeze which the trade sent
around the southern hills like a helping hand. It was
only natural that the wind should become contrary off Old
Woman Point where it hauled around to the North. Then it
changed its mind, crawled up and down the mast a couple
of times, and died out in a hot gasp.
The shift from sails to oars in the Yakaboo was
quickly made. With a tug and a turn the mizzen was hauled
taut and made fast. I worked my lines on "Butler" cleats,
a combination of hook and jam cleat that was quick and
effective.
A semicircular motion of the hand cleared the line,
the same motion reversed made the line fast again. My
mizzen boom amidships, I then let go the main halyard and
the sail dropped into its lazy jacks like a loose-jointed
fan. With three turns of the halyard the furled sail was
secured and by making the line fast to its cleat on the
port coaming the sail was kept to one side, clear of the
cockpit. The lazy jacks held the sail up so that the oar
could pass under it without interference. By letting go
the mizzen halyard, it likewise fell into its lazy jacks.
To furl the mizzen, I pulled taut on a downhaul, the
standing parts of which passed around each side of the
sail and over the gaff. Thus the gaff was drawn down
close to the boom, the line snugly holding the
intermediate sail and battens.
These five operations were done in the time it takes a
man to remove a case from his pocket and light a
cigarette. Then I loosed the light seven-foot oars tied
in the cockpit with their blades under the forward
decking. With a shove my blanket bag was in the forward
end of the cockpit, where it served as my seat when
rowing. The rowlock chocks with their sockets and
rowlocks were quickly secured in their places on deck, by
means of winged nuts that screwed into flush sockets. By
the time the man with the cigarette has taken three puffs
the Yakaboo is off at a three and a half knot
gait.
"As I neared the shore I saw that the
jetty was black with black people."
The usual appearance of the jetty, boat
unloading for the market.
So far, I had done but little rowing in smooth waters
and the sense of stealing quietly along the lee coast to
enjoy its intimacy was a new pleasure. All these islands,
especially the lower ones, have more or less the same
formation -- Grenada, Saint Vincent, Saint Lucia, and
Dominica. This formation consists of a backbone which
rises to a height of from two to three thousand feet and
is the main axis of the island with spurs which run down
to the Atlantic and the Caribbean, east and west, like
the veins of a leaf. The coast is a fascinating
succession of points, bays, cliffs, and coves. One may
range along shore and find a spot to suit any whim one's
fancy may dictate.
I chanced to look around -- to locate my position on
the chart -- when I found that I was rowing into a fleet
of canoes calmly resting on the heave of the sea like a
flock of ducks. They were apparently waiting for me.
There was not the usual babble of the native and if I had
not turned just then another stroke or two would have
shot the Yakaboo into their friendly ambuscade. The
canoes were filled with "Black Caribs" -- hence the
absence of the babble -- that sub-race which sprang from
Bequia nearly two and a half centuries ago.
In 1675, a slave ship from the West Coast of Africa
foundered in a gale on the shores of Bequia which at that
time was a Carib stronghold. The negroes were good water
people and as the ship went down they swam ashore, men,
women, and children, where they were well received by the
Caribs. What became of the white skipper and his crew one
does not hear -- they were presumably murdered.
The Caribs were quick to realize that fortune had sent
them a new ally in these negroes whose love for the white
man was at a low ebb. The blacks were adopted by the
Caribs and a new sub-race was formed. The result was a
tribe in which the fighting qualities of both races were
distilled to a double strength (an expression which comes
naturally enough when one is writing in a rum country).
These Black Caribs successfully held the English at bay
for a number of years. Nearly a quarter of a century
before, the Caribs in Grenada had been completely
exterminated by the French and they were now being
rapidly driven out of Saint Vincent by the English.
The negro blood very quickly gained ascendancy, as it
invariably does, and as far as I could ascertain the
traces of the Carib were almost completely obliterated
among the Black Caribs whom I saw. The hair is one of the
most obvious indices of admixture, varying from the close
curly wool of the pure African through diverse shades of
dark tow to the straight black of the Indian. Where
racial color is well mixed, the hair is often like the
frayed end of a hemp rope.
I stopped to talk with them and they begged me to come
ashore to see their village of which they were evidently
proud. It is called Layou and lies in the bight of a bay
by the same name. We landed on a beach furnace of hot
black sand. The sand reminded me of iron, and iron
reminded me of tetanus. This reminded me that the lockjaw
germ is not a rare animal on these inhabited beaches so I
put on my moccasins.
As I have implied there was heat. Not alone the
stifling heat of a beach where the still air, like a
spongy mass, seems to accumulate caloric units but also
the heat of a vertical tropic sun, pouring down like
rain. My felt hat, stuffed with a red handkerchief, made
a small circle of shade which protected my neck when I
held my head up but left the tips of my shoulders
scorching. My forearms hung gorilla-like from my rolled
up sleeves, not bare but covered by a deep tan from which
sprang a forest of bleached hairs -- the result of
weather. Heaven preserve me from a nooning on a beach
like that!
The village consisted of a single row of one-room
huts, thatch-roofed and wattle-sided, each standing on
four posts as if to hold its body off the blistering
sands. The people conducted me along this row of huts on
stilts in exactly the way a provincial will take you for
a walk down the main street of his town. Instead of
turning into the drug store, we fetched up by a large
dugout where a quantity of water-nuts (jelly coconuts)
were opened. It was the nectar of the Gods.
I felt like an explorer on the coast of Africa being
entertained by the people of a friendly tribe. I was
touched by their kindly hospitality and shall tell you
later of other friendly acts by these coast natives. I do
not believe it was curiosity alone that tempted them to
beg me to visit their village. True, they crowded around
the Yakaboo, but they had the delicacy not to touch it, a
trait which usually obtains among rural or coastal
natives whether in these islands or civilization. They
seemed deeply interested in me and I felt that they were
constantly devouring me with their eyes. When I left
them, they filled the cockpit of the Yakaboo with bananas
and water-nuts trimmed ready to open at a slice from my
knife.
As I rowed out into the bay, I nearly ran down a
diminutive craft sailing across my bows. There was
something about that double rig -- the Yakaboo turned
around to look at it as we slid by -- and sure enough it
was Yakaboo's miniature! Not far off a small grinning boy
sat on a small bobbing catamaran. He had seen the Yakaboo
in Kingstown and had made a small model of her -- and so
she was known to a place before she herself got there. I
left a shilling on the deck of the Little Yakaboo, but
she was not long burdened with her precious cargo.
I was again dreaming along shore. Instead of facing
the north, as I had while sailing, and looking at new
country, I was now looking toward the south and could
still see the outlines of the Grenadines and even distant
Grenada, a haunting tongue of misty blue that faded into
the uncertain southern horizon. The idea seemed to
possess me that I should never get out of sight of that
outline. Now I saw it with my own eyes, eaten up by the
last point astern that had devoured the Grenadines one by
one. I looked around me and could see only shores that
were new to me within the hour. There was a strange joy
in it. I had made a tangible step northward.
The sun was getting low, and as the reflection came
from the broken water, miles to leeward, I felt that I
was traveling along the edge of the world. No horizon
line to denote finality, the sense was of infinity and I
fancied the trade wind, which blew high overhead and met
the sea offshore, a siren trying to draw me away from
land to the unknown of ragged clouds. It was the effect
upon my mind of the ceaseless trade and the westerly
current.
Along the lee coast of St. Vincent near
Layou.
With the setting of the sun my row came to an end. I
was in the little bay of Château Belaire, at the
foot of the Souffrière volcano.
There was a fierce joy of deception in my heart as I
sneaked up to the jetty in the dusk and quietly tied my
painter to the landing stage. For once I had cheated the
native of the small spectacular scene of which he is so
fond. As I stepped ashore, dusk gave way to a darkness
relieved only by the glow of coalpots through open doors
and the smell of frying fish. The stars were not yet in
their full glow. I could move about in the murk observing
but not observed. I could walk among the fishermen and
their garboarded dugouts without the ever-recurrent
"Look! de mon!" But I did not walk about for long and for
two very good reasons. A lynx-eyed policeman who had
discovered the Yakaboo was one, a foot full of sea eggs
was the other.
One morning in Kingstown, I went for a sea bath with
Monty. It was then I learned that sharks are not the
greatest pest of the sea for while incautiously poking
among the rocks I managed to fill my foot full of the
sharp spines of a sea egg, spines as brittle as glass
that break off in the flesh. I had tried to cut them out
with my scalpel, but that only tended to increase the
damage. Monty had told me the only thing for me to do was
to wait till the points worked out of their own
accord.
So I hobbled back to the jetty to take possession of
my canoe. My plan was to leave the Yakaboo at
Château Belaire while I made the ascent of the
Souffrière and while I visited the Caribs on the
windward side where the surf was high and the rocky
beaches more friendly to the thick bottom of a log dugout
than a quarter inch skin. So the Yakaboo -- she was
becoming an habitué of the police courts -- was
unloaded and carried to the station. While I was in the
Carib country, the local court was in session and she
served as a bench for the witnesses. I hope that her
honest spirit permeated upwards through those witnesses
so that in the day of judgment they may say, "Once, O
Peter, did I speak the truth."
Information regarding the approach and the ascent of
the Souffrière was untrustworthy and difficult to
obtain. Any number of the natives seemed to have climbed
the volcano, but none of them could tell me how to do it
-- a little subtlety on their part to force me to hire
guides. I engaged my men, brewed a cup of tea, chatted
with the police sergeant, and turned in, on the stiff
canvas cot in the rest-room, with a sheet over me. I now
know how a corpse feels when it is laid out.
My guides awoke me at five in the morning, I cooked a
hasty breakfast and was with them in their boat half an
hour later. There were two of them and as surly as any
raw Swede deck hands I have ever had to do with. For an
hour we rowed in silence and then we landed at the mouth
of the Wallibu Dry River. With some of these natives,
although you may have hired them at their own price to
serve you, the feeling seems to be not to serve you and
do what you wish them to do but to grudge their effort on
your behalf and to make you do what they want you to do.
It requires continual insistence on the part of the white
man to have, at times, the simplest services performed --
an insistence that makes one nerve-weary and
irritable.
My surly guides.
As soon as we stepped ashore, I sat down on a
convenient rock to grease and bandage my sore foot They
seemed to have forgotten my presence entirely and started
up the bed of the river without even looking around to
see whether I was coming or not. I let them walk till
they were almost out of hearing and then I called them
back. When they came to me, not without some little show
of temper, I told them in unmistakable words of one
syllable and most of them connected by hyphens -- that we
had as yet not started to climb the mountain and that at
the end of the day's work I should pay them for being
guides and not retrievers to nose out the bush ahead of
me.
We proceeded up the bed of the Wallibu River which had
been made dry in the last eruption (1902) by a deep
deposit of volcanic rocks and dust which had forced the
water to seek another channel. As we walked between the
cañon-like sides, I was reminded of our own Bad
Lands and for the first time I felt a bit homesick. These
islands have very little in common with our northern
country ; even the nature of the people is
different. It seemed queer to me to be walking in this
miniature cañon with a couple of West Indian
natives instead of riding a patient pony and exchanging a
monosyllable or two with a Westerner. I longed for the
sight of a few bleached cattle bones and perhaps a gopher
hole or a friendly rattlesnake.
The Wallibu Dry River where we began the
ascent. The Soufrière in the distance, it cone
hidden in the mist.
A small spur broke the perpendicular face of the
northern wall and here we climbed to the upper surface.
We were now in bush, most of which was a sort of cane
grass, over our heads in height, through which we
followed a narrow trail. This upper surface on which we
now traveled was in reality the lowest slope of the
volcano, a gentle incline where the catenary curve from
the crater melts into the horizontal line of the earth's
surface. Soon I could see over the top of the grass and
found that we were following the ridge of a spur which
radiated in a southwesterly direction from the volcano.
The ridge itself was not one continuous curve upward but
festooned along a series of small peaks between which we
dropped down into the bush from time to time. The
vegetation between these peaks consisted of the same
heavy cane grass we had passed through on the lower
slope.
To offset the lack of wind in these valley-like
depressions the grass again rose above our heads, keeping
the trail well shaded. Thank fortune, the dreaded
fer-de-lance does not exist on this island. At about
1,500 feet the vegetation ceased altogether except for a
few stray clumps of grass and the greenish fungus that
gave the ground a moldy, coppery appearance. There was no
sign of the flow of lava on this side of the volcano,
merely the rocks and dust which had been thrown up in
immense quantities. As we neared the top the wind blew
strongly and was cold with the mist torn from the bellies
of low-hanging trade clouds. I was fortunate in choosing
a day when the crater was at times entirely free of
clouds, for only once during the next ten days did I see
the top again uncovered, and then for only a few
minutes.
Contrary to my wishes, my sullen guides had again
taken the bit in their teeth and they started the ascent
at a brisk pace which killed them before we were half way
up the mountain. My sore foot demanded a steady ground
eating pace with no rests. Up till this time they had
walked a considerable space ahead of me, this lead
gradually decreasing as they tired. I could lose no time
and dared not rest, and since I could now find my way
perfectly well alone, I went on ahead of them. As I
neared the top, the force of the wind became more and
more violent till I found it impossible to stand up and I
finished the last hundred yards on my hands and
knees.
The rim of the crater.
The sight that greeted my eyes as I peered over the
rim of the crater literally took my breath away -- that
is, what breath the wind had not shoved down to my
stomach, for it was blowing a hurricane. I could not at
once quite grasp the immensity of the crater -- for its
proportions are so perfect that I would not have believed
the distance across to the opposite rim to be more than a
few hundred yards, -- it is nearly a mile. A thousand
feet below me -- held in the bowl of the crater -- was a
lake almost half a mile in diameter. During the last
splutters of the eruption of 1902 the ejecta had fallen
back and this together with the subsiding of the inner
slopes of the crater had effectually sealed up the
chimney of the volcano.
"A thousand feet below, held in the bowl
of the crater, is a lake nearly a half a mile in
diameter".
The enormous precipitation which is nearly always
going on, due to the striking of the clouds against the
crater, has collected in the bottom to form this lake. I
hardly knew my old friend the trade wind. He rushed up
the windward side of the mountain, boarded the crater,
and pounced upon the lake like a demon, spreading squalls
in all directions. The surface of the water looked like
the blushing surface of a yellow molten metal. Then up
the leeward side and over the rim where I hung, he came
with the scream of a thousand furies. It was as though
the spirits of the unfuneraled dead had come back to
haunt the place, day and night. As I pulled the slide out
of my camera, to make an exposure, the wind bent it
nearly to the breaking point. My hat had long since been
a tight roll in my pocket and I lay, head on, my toes dug
into the slimy surface of the slope, with my face buried
in the hood of my camera and the empty case streaming out
behind me.
I spent an hour in scrambling along the rim and then
returned to the guides who were resting some distance
below. It was still early for I had reached the rim at
8 :30 after a climb of an hour and thirty-two
minutes. My barometer registered a height of three
thousand and twenty feet and while the climb had been an
easy one, the time was not bad for a foot full of sea
eggs.
Higher mountains to the north cut off all possibility
of seeing Saint Lucia or Martinique, but as I looked to
the south, Grenada showed herself and the Grenadines
stretched out like stepping stones. Below lay all the
vast area that had been laid waste by the eruption. In
place of the forests, now buried deep in the volcanic
dust and scoria, was a green blanket of grass, bush and
small trees that would belie an eruption that had
obliterated every sign of green nine years ago. Scrutiny
with the field glasses, however, showed innumerable
cañons cut through laminae of volcanic deposit
with thin layers of soil between. I could almost throw a
stone, I thought, into the little village of
Château Belaire four miles away, that by some
miracle had escaped destruction by a few hundred yards.
But my eyes always came to rest on the Caribbean. The
rays of the sun, reflected back from myriad waves, too
distant to be seen, gave the sea the appearance of a vast
sheet of molten metal with here and there a blush where
some trade cloud trailed its shadow. The clouds dissolved
away into the horizon, sustaining the feeling that there
was nothing beyond but infinity.
The sea eggs were now giving sharp notice of their
presence and I decided to rush the descent. I had
exchanged but few words with my guides. If there had been
discontent during the ascent, there was more cause for it
now. The customary grog had not been forthcoming, for I
never carry spirits on an expedition like this. In case
of accident or exposure there are better things that give
no after effects of let down. My guides followed me in my
downward rush with hardly breath enough for the proper
amount of cursing which the occasion demanded. If they
said anything about "de dyam Yonkee" I heard it not, for
the trade wind would have carried it high over my head.
The enjoyment of the chase kept my mind off the pain in
my foot. I reached the boat in forty minutes.
When we arrived at Château Belaire I found the
Government doctor on his round of the Leeward coast. What
a blessed relief it would be to have him inject Some
cocaine into my foot and then cut out the miserable sea
egg points. But he was as effective as a Christian
Scientist -- I should have to wait till I reached Saint
Lucia where there was an excellent hospital in Castries
and then have the points removed.
Batiste promised better. He was a Yellow Carib whom I
had found in Kingstown and whom I had engaged to take me
into the Carib country the next day. One of the first
books I read on the West Indies was by Frederic Ober and
what better boatman could I have than the son of his old
Batiste with whom he spent months on the slopes of the
volcano camping and hunting the Souffrière bird.
"W'en we reach up Carib countrie you see de sea egg come
out."
That night I was far away from the Caribbean and I
dreamed it was Saturday morning in the city. Outside I
could hear the familiar sound of the steps being scrubbed
with rotten stone. I could feel the glare of the morning
sun that had just risen over the roofs of the houses and
was shining on the asphalted street -- "avenue" it was
called. Then came the toot-toot of the toy-balloon man, a
persistent sound -- too persistent -- and I finally awoke
with the sun in my eyes and the noise of Batiste's conch
in my ears. With a feeling that my youth was forever a
thing of the past and that I had assumed some
overwhelming burden, I bounded off the high cot and
landed on the sea egg foot. There had been no sea eggs
and no overwhelming burden in my young life on that city
street. For the sake of company I yelled to Batiste to
come and have some tea with me.
At last we were off, I comfortably seated in the after
end of the canoe with my family of yellow bags around and
under me ; Batiste behind me, steering while we were
rowed by two Caribs with Christian names. The canoe was
as all canoes of the Lesser Antilles -- in reality a
rowboat. The hull proper is a dugout made of the log of
the gommier tree. To this has been added a sheer streak
to give the craft more freeboard. In adding the sheer
streak a wedge is put into the after end so that above
water the boat has the appearance of having a dory stern.
Oars have long since taken the place of the primitive
paddle and because the boat is deep and narrow, having no
real bilge at all, she is ballasted with stones. They are
ticklish craft, slow-moving and not particularly
seaworthy.
We were passing the point between Richmond River and
the Wallibu Dry River where I had begun the ascent of the
mountain the day before when Batiste said, "You see w'ere
de railin' is?" He pointed to a broad tongue of land
about two or three acres in extent which for some reason
was fenced in. "De boat walk dere before de
eriipshun."
Not far from this place we came upon a curious
phenomenon which Batiste called "de spinning tide." In
the clay-colored water, that surrounded it, was a
circular area of blue, sharply defined, about thirty feet
in diameter, set in rotary motion by the coastwise
current. The coolness of the water suggested the outflow
of some submarine spring, probably from under the bed of
the Dry River.
One hears but little of the eruption of the
Souffrière of Saint Vincent. It was only because
there was no large town near the crater of the
Souffrière that only sixteen hundred were killed
-- a mere handful compared with the twenty-five thousand
in the French island. It seems that all these islands,
along the arc from Grenada to Saba, lie along a seam
where the earth's outer crust is thin. Had the
Souffrière of Saint Lucia (which lies between
Saint Vincent and Martinique) not been in a semi-active
state there would in all probability have been a triple
eruption. I found that Pelée and the
Souffrière of Saint Vincent have a habit of
celebrating together at intervals of approximately ninety
years : 1902, 1812, 1718, and there is some mention
of disturbances in 1625.
Our chief interest in the eruption of the
Souffrière of Saint Vincent is on account of its
effect upon the Yellow Carib. This island was the last
stronghold of the Caribs in the West Indies and when they
were finally subdued and almost exterminated the majority
of the few remaining ones were transported by the English
to the island of Ruatan near Honduras. The rest were
eventually pardoned by the Government and were allowed to
settle in various places in the island.
There was for a time a considerable admixture of negro
blood, but little by little this was eliminated as the
Caribs (Yellow) drew closer and closer together among
themselves and began to settle on the windward side of
the island at Sandy Bay. Here the Government gave them a
considerable grant of land which became known as the
"Carib Country." The spread of the Black Carib seems to
have stopped shortly after their first union at Bequia.
But the Black Carib, more or less a race apart, was more
agriculturally inclined than the Yellow Carib, yet
possessed the Indian's fondness for the sea.
We find then, before the eruption of 1902, the Yellow
Carib to the northeast of the volcano, living more or
less in his former state on the windward side of the
island ; the Black Carib to the southwest, along the
leeward coast, while the negro was more or less evenly
distributed throughout the rest of the island. The
eruption of the Souffrière differed from that of
Pelée in that the volcano of Saint Vincent laid
waste a considerable area to windward, devastating most
of the Carib Country and killing a goodly number of the
Indians. This seems always to have been their favorite
spot for as early as 1720 Churchill mentions the fact,
and says, "The other side (windward) is peopled by two or
three thousand Indians who trade with those about ,' the
river Oronoque, on the continent. . . .
Immediately after the eruption, the Government gave
the Yellow Caribs land among the Black Caribs along the
leeward coast and even went so far as to erect small
houses for them -- houses that were far better than their
former huts. But the Yellow Caribs were too much Indian
to settle down to the tame life of farming among the
Black Caribs and little by little they left their
comfortable English-made homes and began to steal back to
their former haunts ; one by one at first -- then in
numbers till there was a well-defined migration. When I
visited them -- nine years after the eruption -- all the
Yellow Caribs of Saint Vincent were back at Sandy Bay,
there being but two individuals outside the island -- one
in Carriacou and the other in Grenada.
At one place, where the high cliffs drop sheer into
the sea, grudging even a beach, we came upon some Black
Caribs fishing from their boats in the deep water. Their
method is peculiar and is known as "bulling," probably a
corruption of "balling." A single hook on the end of a
line is weighted and lowered till it touches bottom. Then
the line is hauled in a few feet and a knot is tied so
that when the baited hook is lowered it will hang just
above the bottom. The line is taken into the boat and the
sinker removed from the hook which is now baited with a
piece of sardine or smelt. Around this baited hook a ball
is formed of meal made of the same small fish. The hook
is then gently lowered till the knot indicates that the
double bait has reached the haunts of the fish which
feeds close to the bottom. With a quick upward jerk the
ball is broken away from the hook. The scattered
fish-meal draws the attention of the fish which
investigates the floating food and presently goes for the
large piece hanging in the center. And so like the rest
of us who get into trouble when we reach out for the big
piece the fish finds that there is a string tied to this
food and that the line is too strong for him. The wrist
and finger that hold the other end of the line are
sensitive to the slightest nibble.
We rounded De Volet Point, which corresponds to
Tangalanga on Grenada, and I once more felt the roll of
the trades. A sea slopped over the gunwale and wet my leg
which I drew into the canoe. We were now all island
savages together holding up our ticklish craft by the
play of our bodies. I looked across the channel to Saint
Lucia with her twin Pitons rising distinct, thirty miles
away. Batiste pulled himself together and told me that on
very clear days he could see the glint of the sun on the
cutlasses in the cane fields on the mountain slopes near
Vieux Fort.
"You like some sweet water?" he asked, and at the
question my throat went too dry for speech. We turned
into a little cove -- you will find it called "Petit
Baleine" on the chart, although if a whale swam into it
he could never get out unless he could crawl backwards.
While the men held the boat off the rocks, Batiste and I
jumped ashore with four empty calabashes. A tiny stream
which came from high up on the slope of the
Souffrière Mountains, with the chill of the mists
still in it, poured out from the dense foliage above us,
spread itself into a veil of spray, gathered itself
together again on a rocky face, and fell into a deep
shaded basin into which we put our faces and drank till
our paunches gurgled.
How
the Caribs Rig a Calabash for Carrying Water
At times it is hard not to be a pig. Then, as if not
satisfied with what Nature intended us to carry away, we
filled our calabashes. These were as they have always
been with the Carib -- left whole with merely a small
hole about an inch and a half in diameter in the top.
They are carried by means of a wisp of grass with a loop
for the fingers in one end and with the other end braided
around a small piece of wood that is inserted into the
hole to act as a toggle. It is easy to carry water in
this way without spilling it for when the calabash is
full there is but a small surface for the water to
vibrate on. Père Labat mentions a curious use of
the calabash in his day. In order to make a receptacle in
which valuable papers could be hidden without fear of
destruction by moisture a calabash was cut across at a
point a quarter or a fifth of its length from the stem
end. To cover the opening, another calabash was cut with
a mouth somewhat larger than the first one and they were
bound together with thongs of the mahaut. This calabash
safe was then hidden in the branches of trees that had
large leaves for the sake of obscurity. They were called
coyembouc by the Caribs who invented them.
We put off again, passing the ruined estate of
"Fancy," a mute reminder of that smiling day when
destruction had come over the top of the mountains to the
south -- one of Nature's back-hand blows. A little
beyond, our row of twelve miles came to an end and we
beached through the heavy surf at Owia Bay where I found
myself in the midst of a group of Yellow Caribs and
negroes. I was a bit disappointed till Batiste told me
that this was not Point Espagñol. We should have
to go the rest of the way by land for the surf at Sandy
Bay, he said, was too high to run with the loaded canoe.
I wondered at this till I actually saw the surf two days
later.
Batiste and his crew packed my family of yellow bags
on their heads and marched off on their way to Point
Espagñol while I waited for a pony hospitably
offered by the manager of an arrowroot estate on the
slopes above the bay.
The pony was a heavenly loan but there was a cunning
in his eye that did not belong to the realm above. His
eye took me in as I mounted him, somewhat stiffly, for
the pain of the sea eggs was getting beyond my foot. That
eye made careful note that I wore no spurs, neither did I
carry a whip nor even a switch. He started off at a brisk
pace which he kept up till we were well along the main
road. Then he stopped. I clucked and chirruped and
whistled and swore. I also beat his leathery sides with
my heels. No perceptible inclination to go forward. I
talked to him but he did not understand my language.
There was something, however, that I knew he would
understand and I pulled off my belt. If you must subject
by force or punishment, let it be swift, sure and
effective. The brute had carelessly neglected to take
note of a suspicious lump under my coat which hid a 38-40
Colt. First I circled my legs around his barrel body
after the manner of a lead cavalry soldier "Made in
Germany." Then with my gun in my left hand and my belt in
my right, buckle-end being synonymous with business-end,
I gave a warning yell and let him have the buckle in his
ribs while the revolver went off close to his left ear.
We rapidly caught up with Batiste -- in fact, my steed
was even reluctant in slowing down when I pulled him up
behind the last Indian.
While my little caravan shuffled along ahead of me, I
leisurely enjoyed the scenery of this level bit of road
which skirts the slope of the Souffrière Mountains
at the very edge where it breaks down to the sea. Some
two hundred feet below me an intensely blue sea broke
against the rocks into a white foam that washed out into
a tracery of fine lace at every lull ; the rocks,
the blue, and the foam like that of the Mediterranean
along a bit of Italian coast. Landwards the slope rose in
a powerful curve, heavily wooded, bearing numerous small
peaks, to the Souffrière range which hides the
volcano from view till one has reached the extremity of
Point Espagñol.
The point is a peninsular-like promontory the top of
which rises into two hills. Each of these hills is the
site of a small Carib village of about forty-five
inhabitants, the last of the Yellow Caribs of the
Antilles. After a quick survey I decided upon the farther
village which is a bit more to seaward and here I
dismounted in the cool shade of the grove which gives the
huts a pleasant sense of seclusion. After circling
around, much as a dog that is preparing to lie down in
the tall grass, I selected a spot on the edge of the
little group of huts and set up my tent looking out over
the Atlantic which lay some three hundred feet below.
Since I could not see the setting of the sun, I faced the
tent toward his rising. Here the cool trade wind belied
the terrific heat of Sandy Bay below with its incessant
roar of surf.
CHAPTER VI.
DAYS WITH A VANISHING RACE.
I NEEDED no introduction to the Caribs, for they had
known that I would come since my first meeting with the
men in Bequia. They had also learned of my arrival at
Château Belaire and that in another day I should be
with them. One poor old woman had been watching all day
to see me come flying over the Souffrière
Mountains. Batiste told her of the Yakaboo and that if it
did not fly it was at least rudderless. She consoled
herself with, "He sail widout rudder!"
There was some satisfaction in watching me and as I
pitched my tent and put my house in order, I had an
interested crowd about me that did not use their fingers
as well as their eyes with which to see. About a third of
the village was there when I arrived. Besides Batiste and
his men, those who gathered around my tent were the
younger women who were spending the day in baking cassava
cakes for the market, the children, and the old women who
could do no other work than tend a coalpot or sweep out
the huts. The men were either fishing or were down the
coast at Georgetown to sell fish and the produce which
the women had raised. The women are the farmers and we
could see their patient forms moving goat-like along the
furrows high up on the mountain slopes where they
cultivate cassava, tanniers, and arrowroot.
One of the old women noticed that I was limping and as
soon as I had everything ship-shape in my house, she went
to her hut and returned with some soft tallow and a
coalpot. Batiste said, "You goin' lose sea egg dis
night." First she smeared the sole of my foot with the
tallow and then lighting a splinter of dry wood from her
coalpot she passed the blaze close to the skin, almost
blistering the sole of my foot. Then she told me to
bandage the foot and not to walk on it -- an unnecessary
caution.
With Indian tact, they left me to loaf away the waning
afternoon on my old companion, the blanket bag. I had
begun the day in an idle way -- let it end that way.
There had been many places where I had loafed away the
end of an afternoon on my blanket in just this way, but
none of them will hold its place in my memory with this
camp of mine on the edge of the Carib village. The huts
were behind me and in the vista of my tent door there was
no form of the ubiquitous native to distract, for there
is no depth of character to romance upon when one sees a
silent form shuffle along some bush path. Behind me the
Caribs were quiet -- I would not have known there were
children or dogs in the village. Peace was there with
just the rustle of the leaves above me as an
accompaniment ; the song of a bird would have been
thrilling. Below me the Atlantic rolled under the trade
wind through the channel and became the Caribbean. A
school of porpoise rounded the point and headed for the
Spanish Main, mischief-bent like a fleet of corsairs.
Well out in the channel my eye caught a little puff of
steam and I knew that it came from a "humpback."
Finally as the sun sent his last long slant across the
water whence we had come in the morning, it caught the
smoke of the coasting steamer entering the bay of Vieux
Fort in Saint Lucia -- a hint of industry to speculate
upon. With the shutting down of darkness one of the old
women brought me a coalpot and I cooked my supper while
the stars came out in an inquisitive way to see what I
was doing.
By this time the village had assembled and fed itself.
When the people found that I was not unwilling, they
flocked around the door of my tent and I chatted with
those who could talk English, these in turn interpreted
our conversation to the others. After a while, my old sea
egg woman of the afternoon -- I could hardly tell one old
woman from another, they were like old hickory nuts with
the bark on -- said, "Now de sea egg come out." I took
off the bandage and she put my foot in her lap. Some one
brought a gommier flambeau with its pungent odor that
somehow reminded me of a vacant-lot bonfire into which a
rubber shoe had found its way.
It would have been one of the best photographs of my
whole cruise could I have caught those faces around that
burning flambeau. Now for the first time I could really
observe them in unconscious pose. Notwithstanding a
considerable amount of admixture that must have undergone
with the blacks, there was still a satisfying amount of
Indian blood left in these people. I said Indian
purposely for I do not care to use the expression Carib
in this sentence. I believe these people to be more of
the peaceful Arawak than the fierce Carib, although time
and environment and subjugation may have had this
softening effect upon them. How much truth there may be
in it I do not know, but the impression seems to be that
in these islands the Caribs originally came from the
north, advancing from island to island and conquering as
they went the peaceful islander, the Arawak, who was the
real native of the Lesser Antilles. Upon raiding an
Arawak settlement the Caribs would kill most of the men
and what women and children they did not eat they took to
themselves as wives and slaves. Through their offspring
by their Carib masters the Arawak women introduced their
language and their softening influence into the tribes so
that little by little the nature of the Carib was
perceptibly changed. Thus the Arawaks became ultimately
the race conquerors. In 1600 Herrera says, "It has been
observed that the Caribbees in Dominica and those of
Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent scarce understand one
another's language," which tends to show that the lingual
change was then going on throughout the islands. When I
questioned the Caribs of Point Espagñol in regard
to the Indians of Dominica they expressed entire
ignorance of their fellow savages. These people whom I
saw in the light of the flambeau had the softened
features of a race dying for the same reason that our
pure American is dying -- his country is changing and he
cannot change with it. I thought of what Père
Labat said of them three hundred years ago -- "Their
faces seemed melancholie, they are said to be good
people."
Holding my foot close to the light, the old woman
pinched the sole on either side of one of the purple
marks which indicated the lair of a sea egg point. At the
pressure the point launched forth, with scarcely any
pain, eased on its way by a small drop of matter. The
blistering with the hot grease had caused each minute
wound to fester. In the next minute or two the largest of
the points, about fourteen in number, were squeezed out.
Some of the smaller points along the edge of the sole had
not yet festered, but they came out the next morning.
The fun was over, we had had our preliminary chat, the
flambeau had burned down, and the village turned in.
So did I.
On "calm" mornings, that is, when the wind is not
blowing more than ten or twelve miles an hour, a stiff
squall bustles ahead of the sun as if to say, "Get up! By
the time you have cooked breakfast the sun will be having
a peep to see how you have begun the day. You must take
advantage of the cool morning hours, you know," and in a
moment is rushing away toward Honduras. And so it was
this morning. Confound Nature and her alarm clock that
sprinkled in through my open door ! -- but after all she
was right.
Fishing was the order of the day and after the sun is
up it takes but a short time to warm the black sands of
the bay below to a hellish heat. My old woman produced
her coalpot -- it seemed to be kindled with the
everlasting flame of the Roman Vestals -- and I soon had
my chocolate cooking and my bacon frying while I bade a
not reluctant adieu to the last few sea egg points. My
foot was free of pain and when I walked I could have
sworn that there had been nothing like sea egg points in
it the day or even the week before. I stuffed a few
biscuits in a clothes bag, dressed my camera in its sea
togs, and was off with the fishermen to the beach. There
were twelve besides myself, four to a boat, two to row
and two to fish -- I should be the fifth in Batiste's
boat.
The morning was still fresh from the cool night air as
we filed down the cliff road to the beach. The surface of
the sand was still dew damp. There were three dug-outs
waiting for us under the protection of a thatched roof
supported by poles, as if some queer four-legged shore
bird had just laid them. There was no end of puttering
before we could start, a bit of gear to be overhauled, a
stitch or two to be taken in a sail so patched that I
doubt whether there was a thread of the original cloth in
it, and a rudder pintle to be tinkered with. I counted
fifty-six patches in our mainsail, although its area was
not more than six square
yards.
When we dragged the three boats down to the edge of
the water the sun was just crawling up through the fringe
of horizon clouds. The surf was not running so high as on
the day before, and yet I could see that we should have
to use care in launching the canoes. We dragged the first
boat down till its bow was in the foam and with the crew
seated at their oars we waited. There was a lull and as a
wave broke smaller than the rest we launched the boat on
its outgoing tide. The men caught the water and lifted
their boat clear of the surf line as a sea curled and
broke under their stern. We got off the beach with equal
success. Contrary to the lucky rule of three the last
boat was swamped and had to try over again.
Once off shore, we stopped rowing and stepped our rig,
which consisted of two masts with sprit sails, one
smaller than the other, the smaller sail being stepped
forward so that we looked like a Mackinaw rig reversed.
While these boats have no keel or centerboard, they
somehow manage to hang onto the wind fairly well due to
their depth of hold. They cannot, of course, beat to any
purpose, still they can manage to sail about seven points
off the wind which is good enough in the Carib waters
where there is always a shore to leeward. With free
sheets we ran for a bank to the southeastward where the
"black fin" abounds and here we took down our sails and
proceeded to fish. The other boats ran to similar banks
to the south of us.
The black fin is a small fish, about the size of a
large perch, its scales etched in a delicate red against
a white skin. The name comes from a black spot at the
hinge of the pectoral fin. Instead of anchoring, the two
bow men rowed slowly while the rest of us fished. In this
way we could skirt the edge of the reef till we found
good fishing and then follow the school as it drifted
with the tide while feeding.
We used the ordinary hand line, weighted with a stone
about the size of one's fist. Above the stone, a gang of
from four to six small hooks is baited with pieces of
this same black fin. Like bulling this too is deep-water
fishing for we lowered fully two hundred feet of line
before the stone reached bottom. The line is then pulled
up a few feet and held there to await the nibble of the
fish. As soon as a bite is felt (one must develop a
delicate touch to feel the nibble of a one pound fish at
the end of a weighted line two hundred feet long), the
line is given a lightning yank and pulled in as fast as
possible. Hand over hand, as quickly as one forearm can
pass the other, the line is hauled in over the gunwale
while it saws its way into the wood.
Sometimes there are two or even three fish on the end
of the line when it is hauled into the canoe. I managed,
however, to reduce the average considerably at first for
I usually found that I had lost both fish and bait.
Finally to the joy of Batiste, who considered me his
protégé, I began to bring in my share. In
the middle of the day we ate our scanty luncheon and then
took to hauling in black fins again.
Early in the afternoon a fierce squall came down,
dragging half a square mile of breaking seas with it. The
Indians began to undress and I did the same, folding my
shirt and trousers and stowing them in one of my oiled
bags, much to the admiration of the others. We got
overboard just as the squall struck and I slipped into
the water between Batiste and one Rabat -- they were used
to fighting sharks in the water. With three of us on one
side and two on the other, we held the boat, bow on to
the seas, depressing the stern to help the bow take the
larger combers and then easing up as the foam swept over
our heads. In a jiffy the squall was past, like a small
hurricane, and as we crawled into the boat again I
watched it race up the mountain slopes and sweep the
mists off the Souffrière. In the break that
followed, the top of the volcano was exposed for a few
minutes, my second and last view of the crater.
We again pulled up black fins till the fish covered
the bottom of the canoe and we ran for home toward the
end of the afternoon.
I now found out why the puttering of preparation was
done in the morning. No sane man would do more than the
absolutely necessary work of dragging his boat under the
shade of the thatched roof and seeing that his gear was
stowed under the roof poles in the heat of that beach. We
made all haste for the cliff road and were soon in the
breezy shade of our village grove. My share of the black
fins went to the old sea egg doctor who selected one of
the largest and fried it for me with all sorts of queer
herbs and peppers. This with tanniers, tea, and cassava
cakes made my supper. It was an easy existence, this with
the Caribs, for I did but little cooking. I merely had to
indicate what I wanted and some one or other would start
a coalpot before my tent and the meal was soon
cooking.
I have hinted at the flexibility of the Indian's
language and that night I found a similar flexibility in
savage custom. No doubt these Caribs had quickly lost
most of their ancient rites and customs with the advance
of civilization. I found that in like manner they easily
adopted new customs, one of them being the "wake." In the
day's fishing I had caught fully thirty black fins and
had hauled in my line half again as many times, say
forty-five. Forty-five times two hundred means nine
thousand feet of line hauled in hand over hand as quickly
as possible. This kind of fishing was exercise and I was
tired. I went to bed early, but I slept not. It was that
truly heathen rite, the "wake," which I believe comes
from the Emerald Isle. May all Hibernian priests in the
West Indies take note -- it is the savage side of their
religion that takes its hold upon the negro and the
Indian. May these same Hibernians know that it was simply
the "wake" that the Indians took from their faith for
they are in religion Anglicans. Adapted would have been a
better word for the wake of the Caribs is a combination
of what we know as wake and the similar African custom
called saracca. A tremendous feast of rice, peas,
chickens, and any other food that may be at hand is
cooked for the spirits who come in the night and eat. But
the poor spirits are not left to enjoy this repast in
peace for the living sit around the food with lighted
candles and song. In the morning the food is gone and
usually there is evidence that spirits have entered into
the stomachs if not the ceremony of the mourners.
There is one pleasing feature in this mourning
ceremony ; while it is usually begun with a truly
sorrowful mien it often ends with all concerned in a
happier mood to take up their worldly burdens again. The
Caribs of Point Espagñol were content merely with
singing. When one of their number dies they pray on the
third night after death and on the ninth they sing during
the entire night. This happened to be the ninth. In the
evening, then, they all assembled in one of the larger
huts, not far from my tent.
At first I thought it was only a sort of prayer
meeting and I managed to doze off with a familiar hymn
ringing in my ears. They would sing one hymn till their
interest in the tune began to flag and their voices
lower. Then they would attack another hymn with renewed
vigor. At each attack I would awaken and could only doze
off again when the process of vocal mastication was
nearly completed. They were still singing when the sun
rose.
Sunday came, as it always should, a beautiful day and
I lay on my blankets till the sun was well above the
horizon, watching my breakfast cook on the coalpot as a
lazy, well-fed dog lies in his kennel meditating a bone.
There seemed to be more than the usual morning bustle in
the huts behind me and I found that the whole village was
preparing to go to church. I must go with them, so I took
off my shirt, washed it, and hung it up to dry. Then I
carefully washed my face in warm water and proceeded to
shave, using the scalpel from my instrument case for a
razor. The polished inside cover of my watch made a very
good mirror. A varnish brush, if it be carefully washed
out with soap and hot water immediately after it has been
used will be just as soft and clean as when new. I had
such a brush which I used for painting and varnishing the
Yakaboo, -- it was not a bad distributor of lather It is
remarkable how a shave will bolster one's self
respect ; I actually walked straighter afterwards. I
donned the trousers that I had washed in the shower bath
in Kingstown and with my clean shirt, which had quickly
dried in the sun and wind, I made a fairly decent
appearance -- that is, in comparison with my usual dress.
A clean bandana handkerchief completed the toilet.
With church-going came the insufferable torture of
shoes -- that is, for the aristocrats who owned them. My
own I was saving for climbs like the Souffrière
and I used moccasins. Shoes, however, are the correct
things to wear in these parts at weddings, funerals, and
church. Aside from these occasions they are never
worn.
The exodus began a little after ten o'clock and in
five minutes there was not a soul left in the village.
The goodly piece of road to Owia was, I thought, a
measure in a certain way of the faith of these people.
One is apt to be biased in their favor but still I cannot
think that it was merely a desire for a bit of diversion
to break the monotony of their lives that they all went
to church as they did on this Sunday.
I believed as I walked with them that they were
obeying a true call to worship. The call to worship
became a tangible one as soon as we had circumvented the
ravine and were on the road to Owia. It was the clang of
a bell, incessant and regular -- irritating to me -- not
a call but a command -- the Sunday morning chore of a
negro sexton. The church proper had been destroyed by the
earthquakes attendant upon the eruption of the
Souffrière -- the ruins being another mute piece
of evidence of the former splendor of these islands, for
it had been built of grey stone and granite brought from
overseas, a small copy of an English country church.
The bell was rescued after the earthquake from the
pile of debris which had once been its home and mounted
where it now hangs, on a cross piece between two
uprights. On Sunday mornings the sexton places a ladder
against this gallows and climbs up where he pounds the
bell as if with every stroke he would drive some lagging
Christian to worship. Sheep-like, we obeyed its call till
the last of our flock was in the schoolhouse, where the
service is held -- when the clanging
ceased.
The Carib boy of St. George's who had been
brought to Grenada after the eruption of the
Soufrière.
The congregation was part negro, but we Indians sat on
our own side of the building, where we could look out of
the windows, across the little patches of cultivation to
the blue Atlantic. We were as much out of doors as in,
where, in truth, we are apt to find the greater part of
our religion -- if we look for it.
When I said schoolhouse, I meant a frame shed, about
thirty feet by fifty, with unpainted benches for the
pupils and a deal table at the far end for the
schoolmaster. Letters of the alphabet and numerals
wandered about on the unpainted walls and shutters in
chalky array like warring tribes on tapestry, doing their
utmost to make a lasting impression in the little brown
and ebony heads of the school children.
The service was Anglican, read by a negro reader, for
the parson is stationed in Georgetown and makes his visit
only once a month. We shall let him pass in favor of the
woman who led the choir. I knew her as she arose ; I
had seen that expression from my earliest days, the
adamant Christian whom one finds the world over in any
congregation. This woman s voice was as metallic as the
bell outside and in her whole manner and bearing was that
zeal which expresses the most selfish one of us all, the
Christian more by force of will than by meekness of
heart. She sang. The choir and the miserable congregation
merely kept up a feeble murmur of accompaniment.
I said miserable, for did we not feel that there was
no chance for God to hear our weak voices above that
clarion clang? Between hymns my mind was free to wander
out through the windows, where it found peace and
rest.
The offending shoes had come off after the first hymn
and now furtive movements here and there proclaimed the
resuming of that civilized instrument of torture. The
last hymn was about to be sung.
After the heat of the day I wandered back to the
village alone. My old sea egg woman was sitting on the
grassy slope just below my tent and I took up my notebook
and sat down beside her. She was in a reminiscent mood
and I soon got her to talk about her natal language. She
and two other old women were the only ones who knew the
Caribbean tongue in this village -- there was an equal
number in the other village. When these old people go,
with them will go the living tongue of the native of the
Antilles -- the words that Columbus heard when he
discovered these islands. She was intensely pleased at
the interest I showed in her language and I had no
trouble in getting her to talk.
Yellow Caribs at Point Espagnol.
Most of the words were unchanged from the time of
Bryan Edwards in 1790, when the conquest of the Arawaks
must have been more or less complete. Some words such an
Sun -- Vehu, now Wey-u ; fire -- what-hò, now
wah-tuh -- were merely softened. Other words showed a
slight change such as water -- tona, now doonab ;
fish -- otò, now oodu. There were some words that
had been changed completely, such as moon --
mòné, now haat or há tí.
Most interesting perhaps to the lay mind are the
onomatopoetic words that seem to take their meaning from
their sound. A word common to many savage languages all
over the world was Wèh-wey for tree, suggesting
the waving of the tree's branches, he-wey for snake
(pronounced with a soft breath), suggesting the noise of
the snake in dry grass, and àh-túgah to
chop. I watched her wrinkled old face with its far off
look and could see the memory of a word come to the
surface and the feeling of satisfaction that came into
her mind as she recalled the language of her youth.
I sat there with my notebook open and after I had
covered three or four pages I went back to words here and
there to test her accuracy -- I found that she really
knew and was not trying to please. There were some words
that would be good for successors to the Yakaboo --
Mahouretch -- Man o' War Bird ; Hourali --
surf ; and Toulouma -- pretty girl. At last she
turned to me and said, "Ruh bai dahfedi?" -- "Give me a
penny?" -- whereupon I produced a shilling. Her joy knew
no bounds ; it would keep her in tobacco for a
month.
That night we gathered in one of the huts and swapped
yarns to the best of our abilities. I had been with the
Caribs for some days and yet there was no hint at that
familiarity that would be apt to come with a similar
visit to a similar settlement of the natives of these
islands. One is very apt to idealize in regard to the
Indian, but I can say with absolute certainty that these
people lived clean lives and kept themselves and their
huts clean.
The huts were all of about the same size,
approximately twelve by fifteen feet, of one story, and
divided by a partition into two rooms with a door
between, each room having a door opening outside. One of
the rooms was for sleeping solely, while the other was
both a sleeping and living room. While at first the
houses seem very small, it must be remembered that the
cooking was all done in separate ajoupas, and that most
of the time these people live out of doors. They merely
use their houses at night for sleeping purposes and as a
shelter from rain.
The beds were for the most part rough wooden settees,
some with a tick filled with grass and leaves for a
mattress. The floors were usually the native soil, tamped
hard by the pressure of countless bare feet. A few of the
more prosperous families had wooden floors in their huts.
The walls were of wattles, woven and plastered with a
clay that resembled cement, and the roofs were thatched
with Guinea grass. There were usually two small square
windows for each room. An attempt was made to conceal the
bareness of the walls inside by covering them with old
newspapers plastered on like wall paper.
It was in such a newspapered room that we sat and
smoked -- that is, as many of us as could comfortably
squeeze on the settee or squat on haunches on the floor,
the overflow crowding about the open door. In this
particular room there was one decoration, a pièce
de resistance that brought the hut and its owner to even
a higher level of grandeur than newspapered wall or floor
of American lumber. It hung from the central beam just
above headroom and yet low enough so that one might reach
up and reverentially touch its smooth surface.
From the darkened look of the inner surface I could
see that it was a burned-out sixteen candlepower electric
light bulb. When far out to sea in his canoe, the owner
had one day picked it up thinking that it was some sort
of bottle. When he saw the trembling filament inside and
could find no cork or opening he knew that it was for no
utilitarian purpose and must be a valuable piece of
bric-a-brac. It had probably been thrown overboard from
some steamer passing to windward bound for Barbados.
Did I know what it was? Our conversation hung on it
for a long time. Yes, I knew, but to make them understand
it was a source of light -- that was the trouble.
Sometimes it is disastrous to know too much. I explained
it as simply as I could and the Caribs nodded their
heads, but there was a doubt in their eyes that was not
to be mistaken. The fact that the tiny black thread
inside that globe should be the source of light equal to
sixteen candles was utterly beyond their
comprehension.
I was turning over the leaves of my portfolio when a
photograph of my sister dropped out. The old doctor
picked it up and as she passed it to me her eyes fell
upon it. She gave a start. Might she look at it closely,
she asked? It was one of those ultra modern prints, on a
rough mat paper, shadowy and sketchy, showing depth and
life. The Caribs all crowded around to look. Such a
natural picture they had never seen before. When the old
woman at last gave it to me she said of my sister who was
looking right at us, "We see she, she no see we," which
struck me as a bit uncanny.
I was loafing through my last afternoon in the
village. Wandering around the huts in the grove, I
stopped at an ajoupa, where one of the women was baking
something on the hot surface of a sheet of iron. It
somehow reminded me of the thin pancake bread that the
people of Cairo bake on the surface of a kettle upturned
over a hot dung fire. I sat down to watch her bake and
lit my pipe. I was a queer man, she said, to sit down in
this humble ajoupa just to watch her bake cassava cakes.
"No Englis do dat," she added. I had, of course, eaten
the cassava before and on my way up through the
Grenadines I had seen the negro women raking the coarse
flour back and forth in a shallow dish over a bed of hot
coals, but I waited till I was in the Carib country
before I should see the mysteries, if there were any, of
the making of cassava cakes.
The cassava is a root, Manihot utilissima, which grows
very much like our potato and may weigh as much as
twenty-five or thirty pounds. Ordinarily, it is dug up
when it is about the size of a large beet. In the raw
state it is highly poisonous, the juice containing
hydrocyanic acid. The root is cleaned by scraping it with
a knife, then it is sliced and grated. The grating is
done on a board with pieces of tin nailed to it. The tin
has previously been perforated so that the upper surface
is roughened like the outside of a nutmeg grater. This
coarse flour is then heated over a hot charcoal fire. In
this way the hydrocyanic acid is dissipated by the heat
-- a sort of wooden hoe or rake being used to keep the
flour from burning.
The woman in the ajoupa had built a hot fire between
three stones on which was placed a flat iron plate about
two feet in diameter. In the old days a flat stone was
used. She prepared the flour by adding just enough water
to make it slightly moist. On the hot plate she laid a
circular iron band about eighteen inches in diameter --
the hoop off some old water cask and inside this she
spread the cassava meal to the thickness of a quarter of
an inch. She then removed the hoop and levelled the
cassava with the straight edge of a flat stick.
The cake baked very quickly and when it was done
enough to hang together she turned it with a flat wooden
paddle three inches wide in the blade and about eighteen
inches long. As soon as a cake was done she carried it
outside and hung it to cool and dry on a light pole
supported by two forked uprights. From a distance the
cassava cakes looked like a lot of large doilies drying
in the sun.
In the evening, when Batiste came from his fishing, I
told him that I was ready to go back to Château
Belaire. There may have been much more for me to observe
among these people -- the life was easy and I had never
before had a more fascinating view from the door of my
tent. But there was the call of the channel, I must have
my try at it and it had been many days since I had sailed
the Yakaboo. So we had our last palaver that evening
around the glow of the coalpot and the gommier
flambeau.
The old wrinkled sea egg doctor insisted upon hovering
over my coalpot the next morning, while I broke camp and
packed my duffle. Her presence had given my parting food
a genuine Carib blessing. By sunup I bade them all
good-bye and with Batiste and his men before me -- my
house and its goods balanced on their heads -- I left the
village. At a sharp bend, where the road curves in by
"Bloody Bridge," I turned and had my last peep at the
Carib huts.