CHAPTER VI.

CURAÇAO. CITY OF WILLEMSTAD

I.

Small wonder indeed that the early explorers, the men to whom we owe the discovery of these island gems, gave them such charmingly poetical names. Small wonder that they named them as one would a necklace of deep-sea pearls, strung as they are one upon another in a circlet about the blue Caribbean Sea, the shadow of one velvety peak throwing its dark coolness fairly to the base of sister isles, some but a few hours distant, others perhaps a day, across seas as blue and green and limpid as the ether above. It seems incredible that from these peaceful waters rise the vast, cyclonic storms which frequently make such desolation on our coasts; and that within the green and softly moulded outlines of some of these mountainous islands there lie volcanic craters which still grumble and threaten; but, as there are times and seasons for all things, so there seems to be an ordering for the giant winds to rage, when the sun is dyed its deepest, and the earth pants for want of drink to moisten her quivering lips. But that time of unrest is far away now, and, as we leave Puerto Cabello and its quiet harbour, bound for Curaçao, and drop below the horizon the cocoanut-fringed shores of the Spanish Main, it seems as if it must ever be on unruffled seas and toward peaceful havens that the islanders voyage back and forth.

Surely it is not more than the turning once over in sleep before, with the morning breeze fresh in our nostrils, we are right upon the dear little Dutch city of Willemstad, the capital of the Dutch West Indies on the island of Curaçao; and, once ashore, we long to lodge indefinitely behind the spotless white curtains that peek out from under some snug little peaked roof, shifting scenes only when the impulse to go farther comes over us; and then sailing away in one of the little packet schooners which coast along from island to island, or possibly, taking passage in a mail steamer, or anything bound anywhere, just so it does not come blundering along before we are ready.

There should be no words for days and hours in the tropics. Time should be measured by enjoyments in changeful measure, slow and fast, as one's mood demands. Rigid hours are obtrusive where the rustle of the cocoa-palm invites rest.

II.

The little girls and I are hurrying into our hair ribbons and our white petticoats and white waists and white hats, just as fast as our fingers can tie or button, when Curaçao jumps into our cabin windows, or maybe our ship has jumped into Curaçao; or is it Holland we have dropped upon, or is it a new stage-setting for the latest _al fresco_ production of "The Flying Dutchman?"

We no sooner have our first glimpse than, for a bit, all the dressing stops, and we crowd our three heads up to the port-holes in perfect delight. As our slim ship slowly winds herself into the river-like harbour, this West Indian Holland becomes more and more enchanting. The harbours in these islands have been an increasing wonder to us. On the Venezuelan coast Puerto Cabello (translated literally, "The Port of the Hair," because there it was said a hair would hold a ship) is a perfect example of a harbour for small vessels. Deep, natural channels--like rivers--wind circuitously until they widen into land-locked basins where ships of all nations, and of all rigs, and for all purposes, from the grim war-ship to the native dugout, come unexpectedly into sight as the channel turns and broadens into the real harbour. There the ship is left by the native pilot.

This harbour of Curaçao is no exception. We enter by a narrow, deep way protected by rocky barriers, directly into a little inner bay, encircled by the quaint town. The houses gliding by, within easy hailing distance of our decks, are preëminently Dutch, of brilliant, striking colouring, noticeably yellow, and mathematically exact as to rows and heights and proportions--most un-West-Indian. The town is certainly just recovering from a fresh coat of kalsomine. It is bright as a top and clean as a whistle.

We are but a stone's throw from either dock, and it requires a lot of common sense, even downright logic, to persuade us that we are in the Caribbean Sea, and not far off on the other side of the globe coming out of the flat estuaries of the bleak North Sea into the Meuse or the Y.

A bit of Holland has been lost from out Mother Earth's pocket, and has fallen by the way in this Western Hemisphere; and it has managed to get along without the big Dutch mother very well. It has grown up into full stature, following the instincts of its birth, almost wholly uninfluenced by tropical environment. Here it stands, a perfect little Dutchman, an exact reproduction of its staunch progenitors. Its forms and habits have followed the traditions of its ancestors, not those of its West Indian foster-mother. There is only one racial trait lacking in Curaçao,--we saw no windmills; all the rest is there. But, to our great relief, we are told that even the windmills appear on the country places farther inland.

III.

The arrival of our ship awakens the Yellow City early in the morning, and, before our boats are lowered, the shore is white with crowds of Curaçaoans, big and little, pushing and jostling each other for a sight of us. Our breakfast is done with in short order. A hurried bit of fruit, a quick swallow of boiling coffee, a fresh roll, and up we scramble to the deck. So it is invariably, as we near a port. Each time we come upon an island more curious, more irresistible than any we have seen before. We may be sighting it first as we refresh our bodies with a bath of the clear salt water from without, warmed into the most delicious mildness by the eternal smile of the sun. Then comes a scramble to dress, then a bolt to the dining-room, where we eat and run. Now, in pops a big "if." If we were only snoozing in a Dutch four-poster, with a frilled nightcap on, under a peaked roof in Willemstad, then we'd never need to hurry, for all we'd have to do would be to open our eyes and look around, and wait for the coffee to come with a rap at the door and a lifting of the curtain. But there is small comfort in listening to the endless schemes of that miscreant "if." We'll banish him in disgrace.

Before we have time to readjust our impressions of one island to the anticipated pleasures of the one following, we are among a new people, speaking a strange tongue, living to us a new life,--to them a weather-worn old life; among people in densely populated cities, shut off from our world by weeks--at times by months--of silent isolation.

Then all at once a fleck of smoke lifts above the horizon, a steamer is sighted far out at sea, the pilot puts out in his little open boat, and the whole island throbs with new emotion, for a ship is coming!

From a poetical standpoint, I wish it were possible to believe that this emotion is a disinterested pleasure in welcoming strangers; in feeling once again the hand of man from the great world outside. Viewing the people, as we must, largely from an impersonal standpoint, it impressed us that the West Indian cares very little for the welcome or for the hand of man from the great continent; but that he is up early in the morning to devise new ways of reaching the pockets of the invaders, come they ever so peaceably.

The natives await the coming of strangers, as a pack of hungry wolves watch for the shorn lamb. I myself have been that shorn lamb on several occasions.

Quite undaunted by the great crowd of Curaçaoans on shore, our jackies made a cable fast to the near-lying quay, by which means our big boats are pulled back and forth, to and from the ship. Those coming to us bring the sellers of baskets; and it is here, although forewarned and forearmed, that our basket mania again breaks forth in full force. First came the famous Curaçaoan nests of baskets, of which Charles Kingsley confesses to have been beguiled into buying; and, if so wise a man as he fell victim to the wiles of the Curaçaoan basket-woman, how much more readily would we weaker mortals become her prey? Then, ranged temptingly, along the dock stood rows of Curaçaoan hampers,--great, fine, coloured affairs, which we looked at, and looked at, and looked at, and didn't buy. Then, beside the basket-women, were the men with fans and all sorts of straw weavings,--and then, oh! the work-boxes. Truly, you have seen them! Has not your grandmother stowed away in the dark attic somewhere an old mahogany box, inlaid with ivory and brass and coloured woods, with fascinating secret drawers and numerous lids for the hiding of her precious keepsakes and age-worn trinkets? Such a box is one of the chaste memories of my childhood,--Grandmother's mahogany box, with the inlaid lid and the musty odour of bygone years. When we found these same dear old boxes away down in Curaçao, the worn, hingeless, forsaken chest in the attic arose into a new dignity--into the dignity of a noble family lineage. So I have found at last its _habitat_, and these bright and gleaming creations are great-great--and no end to great--grandchildren of my far-away, lonely relic in the attic. But sentiment has to give way to reason, and we shake our heads at the box-man and the hamper-woman, who, nevertheless, follow us up to the bridge from the Otra-Banda shore over the canal, whence they watch dejectedly while we pay bridge-toll and disappear across the canal into the narrow Dutch streets, where the high roofs seem ready to topple over upon us.

IV.

What a picture of Dutch colonial life comes to us in that short walk! The overreaching eaves all but touch. Old lanterns swing across the narrow way, wrought-iron sign-posts reach long arms out over our heads, the shop doors are wide open, and the keepers of the shops could readily shake hands across the way.

I wonder if there is any excuse at all for the fact that my preconceived ideas about Curaçao were wholly founded upon a very indistinct memory of a certain liquid of that name, said to be distilled upon this island from the wild sour orange? I expected to find this ambrosial nectar stacked in rows in every shop, in bottles, long and slim, chunky, dumpy, and round; in nice little flat bottles,--gifts for bachelor friends; in ornamented fancy bottles for envying housewives; in thick, pudgy, squatty bottles for gouty old uncles; in every conceivable shape and size I expected to find it.

Willemstad was not to be Willemstad--city, town, burg--it was to be an inhabited flask of curaçao, a kind of West Indian bubble blown from the lips of the Northeast Trades, sweet with the breath of wild orange. The man with the bottles was to be a more subtle tempter than the hamper-woman, and--but it didn't happen that way at all. It turned out very differently.

I, for one, did not see a single bottle of any shape or form in the whole town, but the men must have found some, for just before sailing a box was brought in, labelled "Curaçao," and I surmised it was liqueur, but I didn't open the box. Truly I did not!

Some of us cynically argued that the liqueur was all sent in from somewhere else and palmed off as a native product; others clung to the home-production fancy, and yet neither one was altogether wrong, for the famous liqueur is made both in Holland and in this little Dutch colony away off in the New World; at any rate this is its birthplace and home.

But the gold filigree, for which the islanders are famous, was true to our expectations. We are drawn up the shut-in street by the magnetism of a crowd which is gathering about a shop-door, and filling the tiny place fairly to suffocation with eager buyers of gold rings and pins, and all sorts of trinkets.

We turn from the goldsmith and the seller of corals, and the shops, and make for the tram,--a little, two-seated bandbox on wheels, drawn by a two-penny mule on a tiny track through the clean white streets of Curaçao. We are told that there is a law against the painting of the houses white, on account of the blinding glare of the sun, and no wonder, for, even after a few short hours of wandering, our eyes ache with the strain and glare of so great light. The blue houses are an exquisite rest to the eye. The whole colour scheme of Curaçao is yellow and blue, and sometimes light green, with white used sparingly as decoration. Green, the green of trees and grass, you ask? No. I said nothing of the green of nature. It's too thoroughly Dutch for that.

The bandbox car hitches along, threatening to topple over any minute on the toy donkey and stop,--at least until sundown, which would be most sensible. Let's cover up the donkey and get out of the glare until night! But, no! He has his own ideas, and experience has taught us the futility of an attempt to change them, so we settle down to the succession of yellow houses and blue houses, and white pillars and clean flights of white steps, but hardly a peep of green, not a sprig of palm, or tamarind, or orange, not a vestige of the great fundamental nature-colour--except in a well-concealed little park--everything paved and finished and whitewashed--only a few prim and well-pruned shrubs carefully set in either corner of the tiny front yards, and our eyes ache for the sight of trees and grass. Where the wild orange grows, we failed to discover, for the town itself is almost entirely bare of trees or flowers. Of course, it must be remembered that our very short stay made any long excursion into the country out of the question. Let us come again; we must find the wild oranges!

Strange, is it not? No shade whatever in latitudes where the growing of great vegetation is but the matter of a few months. As far as we could see, there were no real trees in Willemstad; still, if palms do not grow in Holland, whatever would be the sense in having them here? They would spoil the likeness.

So we jerk our hats down, readjust the dark glasses, tuck our handkerchiefs under our collars, and start up a breeze with a Curaçaoan fan, and decide to play "Jack-in-the-box" and jump out; primarily, to make straight for our ship to escape the midday sun; secondarily, to take one very impressionable member of our party away from the alarming charms of a stunning Curaçaoan woman--a woman of that noble and grandly developed type which often appears in the descendants of the Dutch--whose comely form occupies a goodly share of the bandbox seat.

The streets in this residence part of the city are still and empty. The penny donkey and "we'uns" are the only live things visible. We are seized with a desire to pound on those eternally closed doorways to see if people really do live there. This seeing things on the outside is no fun. Let's make a sensation of some kind! Upset the bandbox, roll the plump lady in a heap inside; put on the cover; stand the penny donkey on top; capture some Curaçaoan hampers, jump inside, pull down the lid and play forty thieves.

But, no,--we are sworn foes to scenes, and our vain wish to pinch somebody dies unsatisfied; and finally, when the penny donkey comes to the end of the route down by the quay, we take the longest way around, through the narrow thoroughfares, following the curve of the shore, over bridges which span the canals leading from the main channel of the harbour, down past the basket-woman with her tempting wares on the Otra-Banda quay to our floating home, where the governor and all the prominent citizens of Willemstad have assembled in great numbers.

Well, we've found out one thing. The houses were empty sure enough. The people are all on our ship. What a good thing it was we left the bandbox right side up! There would have been no one to rescue the plump lady.

V.

Our friends, Mr. and Mrs. U----, come toward us with a group of strangers--Curaçaoan--whose acquaintance happened just as the best things of life come to us--by the merest chance. They were driving about the city in company with the American consul, when, in passing one of the most attractive residences, their attention was drawn toward two young women who were standing out on the veranda, waving a great flag--our Stars and Stripes--in utter disregard of heat and sun; waving it forth in the yellow and white glare with all the love of country and home which motion could express. Their enthusiasm at once called forth a response on the part of the visitors; the carriage stopped and forthwith all the occupants of the house, following the two girls with the flag, came to welcome the strangers. The newcomers were bidden to enter and there was no limit to their hospitable entertainment.

The flag-bearers were two homesick Southern girls, married to the sons of a leading Dutch family. They had not visited their native land since their marriage, and, oh! how they longed to see the dear old South again! When their countrymen set foot at Curaçao, all of the slumbering mother-country love broke forth again, and the old flag came out, and they feasted the strangers, and did their utmost to honour the precious sentiment of loyalty to home. And, after the ices and cooling drinks and fruits and confections, they and their friends were invited aboard ship, where it was our pleasure to make their acquaintance.

We find here, as we have in all the other islands, that the leading families--the men in power--are comparatively pure representatives of the original colonising stock; that is, pure Dutch, Dane, Castilian, French, as the case may be; but that the people are a strange mixture of all nationalities, speaking languages for the most part unwritten, handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth, strangely intangible, and yet as fixed and well recognised among the people as is the old Common Law in the courts of Anglo-Saxon countries. Our friends in Curaçao tell us that the well-born natives speak Dutch, English, Spanish, and often French, with equal facility; added to this is another language which must be learned in order to deal with the common people.

This curious language--"_Papaimiento_," it is called--has been reduced to a certain degree of form in order to facilitate its being taught in the schools. Children learn this language from their nurses, just as our Southern children acquire the negro dialect from the old "mammies." The comparison cannot be carried out to its full extent for the reason that, while our negro dialect bears a close and intelligible likeness to English, _Papaimiento_ is so unlike Dutch as to render its acquisition almost as difficult for a Dutchman as that of any other foreign language, but fortunately the Dutch are good linguists. It bears, of course, some likeness to Dutch in the fundamentals, but aside from that, it is a strange combination of speech--perhaps more Spanish than anything else--put together, it would seem, to meet the needs of as many people as possible. The meaning of the name _Papaimiento_ is, in the dialect, "The talk we talk," _i. e._, "our language."

Curaçao lies some fifty miles off the coast of South America, and her favourable position between Venezuela and the Windward Islands has made her free port a most desirable one for the smugglers who wish to supply cheap goods to the South American ports. Thousands of flimsy tin-covered trunks ready for Venezuelan voyagers bear evidence of her popularity as a free and unquestioning port. Here, also, many steamers touch. But, above all, Curaçao is the haunt and refuge of the disappointed or temporarily exiled Spanish American politician or revolutionist.

Here, like puppets in a show, appear from time to time many noble patriots ready to fight for their undying principles and incidentally to absorb any loose property in the track of their conquering "armies;" and here hies the deposed "President," or the lately conquered general, with his chests of treasure, waiting for a ship to his beloved Paris. Watch our own American newspapers for the warlike notes that Willemstad, Curaçao, ever feeling the pulse of northern South America, sends out to the world. Did she not give us the earliest news of Cervera's mysterious fleet? Does she not thrill us with the momentous gymnastics of President Castro, and the blood-curdling intentions of General Matos, General Uribe-Uribe, General Santiago O'Flanigan _et hoc genus omne_?

The date of our visit to Curaçao is about the time of the little Queen of Holland's wedding, so that Wilhelmina and her prospects, and all the gossip attending so charming a personage, becomes with us, as we sit chatting together on the deck, a lively topic of interest. Mrs. C---- tells us of a gold box which is to be sent the young queen as a bridal gift from her subjects in Curaçao; a box fashioned after the most perfect art of the native goldsmith, in filigree so rare that none but a queen were fit to open it. This box, perchance the size of Pandora's once enchanted casket, is to be filled with the needlework of Curaçaoan women--work as far-famed as the lace of Maracaibo, the lace we expected to see everywhere in Caracas, while we were then so near the Maracaibo country, but which one can never find unless the open-sesame of the Spanish home is discovered, as impossible a task as the quest of the immortal Ponce de Leon. We did not see the Maracaibo lace, nor the Curaçaoan lace, and we are told that such a disappointment is not unusual; it is only for the elect--the Curaçaoan people themselves--that these wonderful specimens of the skill of patient women are visible.

I shall never forget hearing that unwritten page in the tragic history of Spain's noble son, Admiral Cervera, as the Doctor in his quiet, low voice told how the great admiral touched first at Curaçao after his long and perilous voyage from Spain. It was the Doctor's son who sent the cable message to the United States, telling that the Spanish fleet was in the offing. But it was the Doctor himself who went with the surgeons who had been sent ashore by Cervera on their humiliating errand, to all the pharmacies in Curaçao for surgical supplies. The fleet had been hurried from Spain unprepared, and in fact almost unseaworthy, with not so much as a single bandage aboard or the most ordinary necessities for the immediate succour of the wounded. They had absolutely nothing in the way of such medical and surgical equipment at hand, although they knew their imminent and terrible need for just such things. Doctor C----, with the true physician's love for his fellow men, went from pharmacy to pharmacy with the surgeon, and bought up all the bandages and gauze and iodoform and other supplies which were to be found. Meantime detachments from the ships' crews began to land--hungry and worn, sad with the shadow of the great coming tragedy--and they fell upon the island like a lot of starved wolves. They actually had not food enough aboard to keep body and soul together, for the corrupt and procrastinating government at Madrid had not even properly victualled this fleet of war-ships before sending them to their certain destruction. The market was cleaned of everything it could afford, and even then it was a mere drop in the bucket to that unhappy host. Later Doctor C---- went out to the flag-ship with the surgeon, and spoke with Cervera, who prophetically told him that he knew he was going to his doom--but it had to be! And the twisted skeletons of those noble ships which we later saw strewn from Santiago on along the southern Cuban coast was but the fulfilment of the miserable fate he then so clearly foresaw, but which, after his unavailing pleas to the Spanish government before sailing, the staunch old admiral, with a Spaniard's pride and bravery, would not avoid. For so it was written! Is there not a strain of the Moor's fatalism still traceable in the true Spaniard?

Thus as we chat with our new-found friends on topics grave and gay through the noon hour and on into mid-afternoon, the people of the city continue to crowd one another, row upon row, on the dock. A native band plays our national airs and Dutch national airs, and our decks are filled with visitors--the governor of the island and his suite and ladies, and fine little solemn-eyed and suspiciously dark-skinned Dutch children; and, in the midst of all the visiting and moving back and forth, some one asks Doctor W---- how the islanders feel about absorption by the United States--apparently a possibility now present in the mind of every West Indian; and the not surprising answer is made, that, for his part, he--a Dutchman, Holland-born--would favour annexation; and from the wild enthusiasm of the people ashore, as the bugle sounds the first warning of departure, one might readily believe that so favourable, so friendly, is the feeling for the United States, that the slightest advances toward peaceable annexation would be met with universal favour. And so the merchants also talked.

The houses begin to move,--no, it's our boat herself, slowly, very slowly. We drop our shore-lines, and shout after shout rings after us. The populace moves in a mass along the quay, and the native band beats away its very loudest, and the bigger marine band aboard beats even louder, and it's a jumble of national airs in different keys, and hurrahs, and the people following along the quay. We wave our handkerchiefs until our arms are tired. One black-faced, bandannaed, Dutch conglomerate in her enthusiasm whips off her bright skirt, and in a white petticoat and red chemise she waves the fluttering skirt in the breeze.

If the United States ever seriously contemplates the annexation of any of the West Indian islands, the surest way, and the quickest way, to bring it about would be to send ship-loads of pleasure-seeking Americans, for bimonthly visits, leave their mania for buying things unrestrained, and, before diplomacy has had time to put on its dress suit, the islanders would beg for annexation.

Do not deceive yourself into the belief that you will find El Dorado in these islands, where the products of the country, food, and lodging, can be bought for a song; where one can get full value for money expended. On the contrary, values have become so distorted by the extravagance of some American tourists that to be recognised as an American is a signal for the most extortionate demands from the hotel-keeper to the market-woman. The system of extravagant feeing and still more our readiness to pay what is asked us instead of bargaining and haggling over prices as the natives do, and as is confidently expected of any sane human being, has so demoralised service and the native scale of prices that it is fairly impossible to obtain the ordinary necessities for which one expects to pay in the hotel bill, without giving needlessly large fees to the servants who happen to be in your attendance; or to find anything offered at a reasonable price in the markets.

At the sight of an American--and we are readily distinguished--the prices advance, and the unoffending tourist is obliged to suffer for the extravagance of those who have gone before him. This infection has spread through all the islands, and there has not been a port on our entire cruise wholly free from its effect. Perhaps, however, Willemstad was the pleasantest of all in this respect, for it is a free port, used to low prices and the ways of outsiders.

It might be possible to go through the islands at a reasonable expense, provided one spoke the language necessary at the various ports with ease, and had the time and patience to bargain and shop indefinitely; provided, _also_, one could beat against the tide which sweeps the American toward the "Gran Hotel." Let him but once depart from his ancestral traditions of simple habits, let him but enter the portico of the "Gran Hotel," and he at once becomes the prey of every known species of human vulture. It is the old story of Continental Europe over again.