CHAPTER X
THE ISLE OF THE HOLY CROSS
St. Croix, or—to use its more euphonious Spanish name—Santa Cruz, seems an island fashioned from green plush. If ever there was a true Emerald Isle, it is this island of the Holy Cross; and while it lacks the majestic mountains of the larger islands, their dense forests and their impressive scenery, it possesses a wonderful beauty all its own. It is like a perfect gem, a jewel of radiant green, in a band of silver set in purest turquoise. Here Nature with a lavish hand has spread green of every imaginable hue; green such as no artist ever conceived or could reproduce. Then, to complete her chef-d’œuvre, she has added touches of brilliant scarlet in flaming poinciana trees, soft browns in unplanted fields, dull yellows in the groves of tibet-trees, and high lights in the shape of snow-white plantation houses and sugar-mills, the whole framed in dazzling coral sand, creamy surf, and water of wondrous hues, from deepest sapphire to palest aquamarine.
No towering mountain peaks distract the eye or lead one’s gaze upward to the clouds; no great cataracts hurtle over ragged precipices; no rugged cliffs rear themselves above the sea, and no mysterious, shadowy jungles clothe the hills. As in a true masterpiece, its composition is simple, its harmony of tones is perfection, and as though scorning comparison it hangs alone against a background of blue sky and bluer sea in the midst of the Caribbean.
From East Point to Fredericksted, near its western end, Santa Cruz is one unending succession of rounded green hills, smiling valleys, golden-green cane-fields, and white beaches. Sugar is, or was, king in this isle of the Holy Cross, and upward from the very edge of the sea to the summits of its highest hills the fields spread like a patchwork quilt over the land, outlined by smooth white roads or long lines of royal palms, and dotted with the towers of ancient windmills, the tall chimneys of the sugar-mills, white limestone estate houses, and groves and clumps of trees. Along the coast low limestone bluffs alternate with palm-fringed, white-beached coves, each lovelier than the preceding, until, as a culmination of all, Fredericksted is disclosed to view. Close to the sea, half hidden behind its screen of coco-palms, the little town nestles against its background of vivid green beyond a bay of marvelous, shimmering, multicolored water. Intensely tropical and foreign-looking is this town—known locally as “West End” to distinguish it from its only competitor, Christiansted or “Basse End”—with its softly tinted buff, pink, and pale-blue residences; its low, massive warehouses and stores with wide-arched doorways; its flower-filled balconies and patios, and its quaint red Danish fort.
Here in the transparent water the Vigilant came to rest in her own home port, where the Stars and Stripes flew in place of the scarlet flag of Denmark. Somehow, to me, Old Glory appeared out of place here, for always the Danish banner with its snowy cross had seemed most appropriate for this little isle of Santa Cruz. But aside from the different flag, a few khaki-clad “soldiers of the sea” in place of the blue-uniformed, “woodeny” Danish troops, and the fact that the official notices pasted on stuccoed walls were in English instead of Dansk, I could see few changes in the place.
Except in its beauty from the sea, Fredericksted has little to offer in the way of sights or attractions. Its streets of white lime are blindingly glaring, and reflect the heat and light of the intense tropical sunlight in a way that makes walking about at midday a torture. It has no noteworthy or impressive buildings, and under its new owners it appears no more prosperous than before. But as a resort wherein to pass a few weeks or months to avoid the rigors of a Northern winter St. Croix has many attractions. Its climate is noted for its salubrity; there are splendid motor roads about the shores and across the island from West End to Basse End; there is pigeon- and deer-hunting to be had; the tepid water on its perfect beaches makes sea-bathing an unending delight, and the hospitality and good-fellowship of its people are charming. Of tropical pests there are few. There are no poisonous reptiles, only one species of small, harmless snake being found on the island; there are no venomous insects; mosquitos are few, and though at certain seasons and in some places sand-flies are troublesome, house-flies are scarcely known. But do not assume from this that the island has no drawbacks, or is a perfect Eden. Its blacks—and about ninety per cent. of its population of fifteen thousand souls are of African blood—are discontented and surly and lack the happy-go-lucky good nature of the other West Indian natives. Since the United States came into possession they have caught the Land-of-Liberty idea, and have organized labor-unions, declared strikes, and made things generally unpleasant for the planters and whites.
Moreover, the otherwise delightful isle is subject to severe hurricanes and more or less disastrous earthquakes. In 1867, St. Croix was virtually devastated by a quake followed by a tidal wave which lifted the U. S. S. Monongahela from her moorings in the harbor, and, carrying her completely over the tops of the coco-palms along the shore, deposited her unharmed and right side up on dry land. From this unique position, this unexpected and unwelcome dry-docking, the cruiser was salvaged by digging a canal to the sea through which she was launched, whereupon she proceeded on her way none the worse for the experience.
In 1772, over five hundred houses were destroyed by a hurricane which whipped up such a sea that the water rose seventy feet above its normal level and destroyed a vast amount of shipping. Oddly enough, this hurricane was the direct means of bringing to our shores one of our greatest celebrities, Alexander Hamilton. At the time, Hamilton, who was then a lad of fifteen years, was an underpaid clerk in the counting-house of one Nikolas Cruger of Christiansted, and his letter to friends in the States, wherein he vividly described the devastation of the storm, attracted so much attention that it resulted in his being given a chance to come to this country and secure a college education. Had it not been for that hurricane on Santa Cruz, the great statesman no doubt would have lived and died an unknown accountant in the Antilles.
Again and again the island has been swept by these “overgrowne and monstrous stormes,” as Captain Smith called them, and though they occur only during the summer, and therefore need not be taken into consideration by winter tourists or visitors, yet they have done a great deal to keep the island from gaining the prosperity it should enjoy, and have wrought incalculable damage to crops and property.
Historically, Santa Cruz has a most interesting past. It has been French, Spanish, Dutch, English, Danish, and American in turn, and enjoys the distinction of having at one time been under the banner of the Knights of Malta, who sought to establish a little kingdom of their own here in the Caribbean.
Originally discovered by Columbus in 1493, the island of the Holy Cross—a name, by the way, the significance of which is puzzling—remained unknown until 1587, when Sir Walter Raleigh landed on its shores on his way to Virginia. At that time, however, the island was the abode of fierce cannibal Indians, who made forays to the neighboring islands, especially Porto Rico, where they not only secured a supply of captives for their larder but also hewed the big trees into dugout canoes, a fact which would indicate that even at that period there were no extensive forests on Santa Cruz. Europeans did not see fit to attempt a settlement on the island until 1625, when Dutch, French, and English colonists occupied it jointly and apparently in peace. As no mention is made of trouble with the cannibals, we must assume that they had disappeared, though how they were so suddenly extirpated, or whether or not they betook themselves elsewhere, is a mystery. As usual, however, the settlers soon began to quarrel and the island was a scene of bloodshed and battles for possession for a quarter of a century, or until 1651, when it was sold by the French to the Knights of Malta. But after six years of occupancy, during which they were on the verge of starvation most of the time, the knights decided that establishing a West Indian kingdom was no sinecure, and, seizing a ship which had arrived from France, they compelled the mariners to take them with their goods and chattels to Brazil.
From that time until the Danes took possession in 1733–35, the island frequently changed hands, and for the next hundred years hurricanes and slave uprisings did almost as much to prevent any settled prosperity as had the battles and wars before. Even now, under Uncle Sam’s régime, there is much room for improvement; for the isle is far from peaceful or prosperous. Perhaps, when we learn from bitter experience how to handle tropical colonies, Santa Cruz may come into its own; or, perchance through the cultivation of some commodity other than sugar, the island may attain prosperity; but at present matters are far from promising. As one of the greatest faults of Santa Cruz is its lack of good harbors, which were essential to pirates, and as there was nothing in particular to attract such visitors to the island, it is doubtful if the buccaneers ever did more than touch here occasionally. I did not come to the island because of its piratical associations, however, but merely for a visit with old friends, the owners of my little ship, as well as to break the long trip from St. Kitts to Santo Domingo. This having been accomplished, we once more hoisted sail and, leaving the isle of the Holy Cross behind, headed for Porto Rico, sixty miles away.
There was no need for Sam’s uncanny instinct now; the veriest tyro could have steered a course straight for that largest of Uncle Sam’s West Indian colonies, for scarcely had the green hills of Santa Cruz vanished in a filmy cloud behind us when the lofty mountains of Porto Rico rose against the sky before our bows. By mid-afternoon we were close under the land, with its tiers of sky-piercing peaks rearing their vast bulwarks beneath masses of heavy clouds, while above all towered the phantasmal form of El Yunque (The Anvil) lifting its head nearly three thousand feet above the ragged coast-line.
The island appeared vast as a continent, with its coasts stretching eastward and westward to the horizon for one hundred miles, but in comparison with the lush greenness of Santa Cruz, the down-like surface and clear-cut forested mountains of St. Kitts, or the luxuriance of the smaller Caribbees, Porto Rico is dismal, monotonous, far from attractive, viewed from the sea.
There is no doubt that the island has beauties of its own, but it lacks the transcendent loveliness of the smaller islands, isles not one twentieth its size but whereon are mountains clothed, from cloud-shrouded summits to breaking surf, with vast forests,—mountains almost twice the height of Porto Rico’s loftiest peak,—and with a thousand times the scenic glories of Porto Rico compressed within an area of a few square miles, which the eye can take in as an entirety. Driving over Porto Rico’s splendid roads by motor-car, the visitor is impressed more with the engineering feats that made these highways possible than with the scenery. The well-tilled tobacco-fields with acres of cheese-cloth stretched over them, giving the appearance of snow-covered hillsides, attract the eye more than the natural vegetation, which is scant and uninteresting. There is little of the intensely tropical vegetation, the luxuriance and riot of color one associates with the West Indies; and while the mountains are rugged, impressive, cut by stupendous cañon-like valleys, and in places wildly grand, the great forests of gigantic trees, the feeling of being in an untamed wilderness, and the charm of the primeval are lacking. One feels, no matter where he may be upon this island, that Man has conquered it, that there is nothing novel or unusual about it. While to some the ever-present indications of prosperity, of civilization, of Man’s conquest of mountains, plains, and valleys, appeals more strongly than nature’s greatest beauties, personally I prefer to be where the influence of human beings and the almighty dollar is less in evidence.
Nevertheless I have a warm spot in my heart for Porto Rico. Many delightful days—yes, even months—have I spent there; many are my friends upon the island, and thousands of miles have I toured over its splendid roads. San Juan is a delightfully interesting and picturesque city, with its ancient forts, its grim old Morro, its massive walls and quaint lantern-like sentry-boxes; and there are other towns and cities on the island which call to mind the days when America was in the making. But Porto Rico had little to do with the buccaneers, unless we include Sir Francis Drake and his lifelong friend Hawkins among them. For these two the island held a dream of conquest, and at San Juan they battered long and loudly at its doors and performed some mighty deeds of daring, seamanship, and battle under the frowning walls and grim guns of the never-conquered old Morro. But their efforts came to little, and in their hopeless attempt to take the place Drake received the wound that brought him to his death off Porto Bello, and Hawkins lost his life and was buried off the eastern shores of the island he had sought so long and hard to take. Never in all their long lives of valiant fighting and reckless courage had the two suffered such heartbreaking defeat and disappointment, for in the treasure-vaults at San Juan were stored over four million dollars’ worth of plate, bullion, and coins—greater riches by far than Drake had ever taken in all his conquests, not excepting those of the famed Armada, which his seamanship and fighting ability had scattered and destroyed a few years before.
Neither Drake or Hawkins may be classed among the buccaneers, however,—although to the Spaniards they were nothing more nor less than pirates,—and so they really have no place in our story.
Three years after Drake’s failure—in 1598, to be exact—a far more romantic figure decided to try his luck at capturing San Juan. This was no less a personage than George, Earl of Cumberland, a Cambridge graduate, a courtier, a gambler, and, to use a modern expression, an all-round “sport.” He was extraordinarily brave, a good soldier, an expert seaman, and renowned for his immense physical strength. He was also a Knight of the Garter, and, for some reason which history fails to relate, Queen Elizabeth had seen fit to present him with one of her gloves, which, set with diamonds, he invariably wore like a plume in his hat. During Drake’s encounter with the Armada this picturesque young peer had commanded a British ship, and, having once tasted the charms of sea-fighting, he then and there took to pirating, or privateering, whichever you will. At the age of forty he had won considerable fame and ever was distinguished by the claret-colored glove of his sovereign which he wore through thick and thin, evidently considering it a talisman. Perhaps it was his faith in this unique decoration which led to his attack upon Porto Rico, when on March 6, 1598, he sailed forth from Plymouth, England, with a fleet of twenty ships, the flag-ship bearing the odd name of The Scourge of Malice.
After a pleasant voyage, and the taking of a few prizes to break the monotony of the long sea trip, the earl arrived at Dominica, gave his men shore leave for a day or two, filled his casks with fresh water, and then bore away for San Juan. Profiting by Drake’s dismal failure, My Lord of Cumberland made no attempt to attack the Morro or the shore batteries, but in true buccaneer fashion landed six hundred men at dead of night a mile or more to the east of San Juan, and then, dividing his forces into two detachments, rushed the city at dawn. The Dons, taken completely unaware, resisted stubbornly, but the guns of the Morro and the other forts were powerless to aid, and after two hours of savage hand-to-hand fighting Cumberland was in possession of the supposedly impregnable capital. The British lost no time in pillaging it as thoroughly as any of the later buccaneers could have done. Then, out of pure wantonness apparently, they fired all the wooden houses and buildings, destroyed the paintings, furnishings, and other articles they could not or did not care to carry off, seized or destroyed twelve ships which were in the harbor, and made a determined but unsuccessful attempt to raze the fortifications.
Meanwhile, all but a handful of the citizens had fled to the outlying country-side, leaving the hated British monarchs of all they surveyed, and we can easily picture the beruffled and begemmed pirate peer strutting about with the queen’s glove still in his broad hat, vastly pleased with himself for his prowess—as, in truth, he well might be. Not only had he succeeded where the greatest of England’s sea-fighters had signally failed, and secured vast treasure, but he saw in San Juan a glorious spot for a stronghold from which to make remunerative raids against the neighboring Spanish colonies and Spanish shipping.
But the dispossessed and robbed Porto Ricans had an ally that Cumberland had not taken into account, which, all unseen and unsuspected, was approaching, and which with all his courage and resources he could not overcome or even hold at bay. Before he realized it, the enemy was upon him: the deadly Yellow Jack had entered his camp by stealth, and like wildfire the plague spread among his hapless men. Within the fortnight Cumberland’s force had been reduced one half; daily men died, raving and inhuman, their faces a ghastly yellow, eyes starting from their hollow sockets, their frames shaken and wasted by fever. Brave fighters though they were, the British were terrified by this enemy they could not fight; and, hastily packing his few surviving men upon his ships, the glove-plumed knight sailed away from the town he had won, never to return.
Perhaps it was the knowledge of Drake’s failure, or the story—with hair-raising embellishments, like as not—of Cumberland’s plague-stricken force that discouraged the buccaneers. They no doubt reasoned that a spot strong enough to repulse the famous Drake held little promise for their ruffianly if brave and hardy crews. At any rate, there is no record of their having made a serious effort to take San Juan; and while, from time to time, some particularly ambitious or daring pirate exchanged a few rounds of shot with the garrison of the Morro, and raided outlying towns, the buccaneers never accomplished anything of note and never looted enough treasure from the Porto Ricans to pay for the ammunition wasted and the blood spilled in their attempts. In fact, even the best of them, such as Morgan, Montbars, Lolonais, Sharp, and other notorious leaders, looked upon this island as too hard a nut for them to crack and confined their depredations to more promising fields.
But one attempt of the buccaneers to raid Porto Rico, though not San Juan, is well worth mentioning; for not only was it disastrous to the pirates, but it gives an excellent idea of their methods and persistence. As a matter of fact, it was in the first instance an accidental invasion, for Monsieur Ogeron, the buccaneer governor of Tortuga, having set forth at the head of a fleet, in a flag-ship named for himself and manned by five hundred pirates, had no intention of molesting the island, but was bound for the island of Curaçao, where he hoped to wrest town and treasure from the Dutch. Fate, however, interfered seriously with Monsieur’s plans. Running into a storm, his new flag-ship was driven ignominiously upon the rocky Guandanillas close to the western shore of Porto Rico.
Fortunately,—or, rather, unfortunately, as it turned out,—his men all managed to reach dry land in safety, only to fall into the hands of their enemies the Spaniards on the following day. Thinking that as usual the buccaneers had landed on a piratical raid, the Dons fell upon the castaways tooth and nail, and killed a large proportion of the five hundred before they realized that they were dealing with unarmed, shipwrecked men. When at last they discovered that their hated enemies were quite incapable of defending themselves, they bound the buccaneers securely and marched them inland, meanwhile feeding them so sparingly on scraps from their own meals that the pirates were barely kept alive. Ogeron, crafty old rascal that he was, pretended to be a half-witted fellow, and his men stoutly maintained, when questioned, that their leader had been drowned—an excellent example of the buccaneers’ faithfulness and loyalty to one another. Their captain, being looked upon as a fool and harmless, was left free and was treated far better than his comrades by the soldiers, who found much amusement in his capers and drolleries. Among the pirates was a French surgeon who was also left unbound in order that he might practise his profession among the Dons. So the medico and the governor put their heads together, and, having acquired a hatchet, slipped into the bush and managed to reach the shore. Their intention was to fell trees and construct a craft and then, putting to sea, gain Tortuga and rally their friends to attack Porto Rico and rescue the captive crew.
Such an undertaking, which would have appeared impossible to most men, did not daunt the resourceful pirates. Having managed to secure a quantity of small fish, which they killed near shore with their hatchet, and having kindled a fire by rubbing two sticks together, they dined heartily, and the following day proceeded to fell trees for their boat. Fortune, however, smiled upon them, and before the first tree was cut they spied a large canoe, in which were two men, making directly toward them. Hiding in the bushes until the canoe was pulled upon the beach, the two buccaneers discovered that the occupants were harmless fishermen, one a mulatto, the other a Spaniard. Leaving the white man in charge of the boat, the colored fisherman picked up calabashes and, all unsuspecting of the danger lurking in the underbrush, made his way toward a spring. This was the buccaneers’ opportunity: they leaped upon the mulatto, and to quote Esquemelling, “discharged a great blow on his head with the hatchet and soon bereaved him of life.” The Spaniard, alarmed at the noise, tried to escape, “but this he could not perform so soon without being overtaken by the two and there massacred by their hands.” Now in possession of a seaworthy craft, the buccaneers set sail for Samana Bay in Santo Domingo, where there was a lair of their associates. Here Ogeron made a most eloquent speech to his fellow buccaneers, and persuaded them to join him in a raid on Porto Rico, partly for loot and partly to rescue his ill-fated men, who had so inadvertently fallen into their enemies’ hands.
But Ogeron’s luck seems to have deserted him once and for all, for the expedition was a failure. The buccaneers were surprised by the watchful Spaniards, a large number of the pirates were slain, and while Ogeron escaped with a few of his fellows, the raid was abandoned and they “hastened to set sail and go back to Tortuga with great confusion in their minds, much diminished in their number and nothing laden with spoils, the hopes whereof had possessed their hearts.”
The unfortunate survivors of the shipwreck were taken to San Juan and, in a chain-gang, were forced to labor at building the great fortress of San Cristobal; while at night they were closely guarded in dungeons by their captors, who had a wholesome fear of the buccaneers and knew this handful of maltreated prisoners was quite capable of wreaking vengeance unless kept under lock and key. As Esquemelling puts it, “by night they shut them up close prisoners fearing lest they should enterprise upon the city. For of such attempts the Spaniards had had divers proofs on other occasions which afforded them sufficient cause to use them after that manner.”
That manacled, overworked, half-fed captives could commit any great damage among the armed Spaniards in a city of thousands of inhabitants may seem incredible; but as their chronicler says, the Dons had had “divers proofs” on other occasions and they took no chances. Indeed, each time a ship left port they packed some of the prisoners off to Havana, to labor on the fortifications there; and they also transported some of them to Spain, taking good care to disperse them far and wide. But the buccaneers seem to have had a supernatural ability to find one another; and, notwithstanding all the precautions of the Spaniards, the deported ones, again to quote Esquemelling, “soon after met almost all together in France and resolved among themselves to return again to Tortuga with the first opportunity should proffer ... so that in a short while the greatest part of these Pirates had nested themselves again at Tortuga where after some time they equipped a new fleet to revenge their former misfortunes on the Spaniards.” Of such stuff were these adventurers made, and after a few such “divers proofs” we can scarcely blame the Dons if they promptly killed all pirates who fell into their hands. Unquestionably, the only good pirate was a dead pirate.
Departing from Porto Rico, with far more interesting places ahead, we coasted along the southern shores of this island of “Boriquen” from which Ponce de Leon set forth in search of his fountain, and, only stopping at Ponce overnight, sailed onward toward Santo Domingo.
Barely sixty miles of water separates Porto Rico from Santo Domingo,—or, as the Spaniards called it, Hispaniola,—and midway in this strait lies the island of Mona, from which the passage takes its name. Barren, gray, and forbidding, Mona is little more than a mass of austere rock rising above the sea, with Monita or Little Mona at her feet. The only signs of life are the lighthouse and the flocks of screaming sea-birds, but there is a stunted growth of scrub upon the island, and hunting-parties come here at times; while the guano deposits of Mona have been worked for years.
Beyond—vast, mysterious, overwhelming in its magnitude and majesty—is Santo Domingo, second largest of the Antilles, nearly two hundred miles in width, nearly five hundred in length; a territory close to thirty thousand square miles in area, or three times the size of Belgium, twice the size of Denmark, almost as large as Portugal or Ireland, and, compared with more familiar places, about as large as the state of Maine; or larger than Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island combined.
Continental in the altitude of its mountains, with the summit of Loma Tina towering to a height of eleven thousand feet, in the vastness of its interior plains, its great valleys, its coastal lands, its rolling savannas, and its huge rivers, Santo Domingo is by far the most beautiful, the richest, and the most imposing of the West Indies. Here was the very cradle of civilization in the New World; here ebbed and flowed the life of New Spain. From Santo Domingo, Cortez, Balboa, and all those other famous conquistadors of old set forth upon their adventures. Here was founded the first European settlement in the New World; here Columbus came to grief and lost one of his ships on that first memorable voyage in 1492; here he was cast in chains into a dungeon; here his son ruled as viceroy, and here the discoverer’s bones still rest in the great cathedral. It was upon Santo Domingo’s shores, too, that the first skirmish between the Indians and the white men occurred. It was on this great island that the first gold was found in the New World; and for centuries millions of treasure poured from its mountains and streams, its valleys and hills into the treasury of Spain, until Hispaniola became celebrated as the richest land in all the world.
No other part of America is so closely associated with the making of New Spain, so linked with those brave though cruel old Dons whose names will never die. And in no other spot are there so many or so well-preserved relics of the old days. The very house in which the son of Columbus dwelt still stands above the quay at Santo Domingo City. The massive wall which Drake found such an obstacle still hems the capital about. The first cross erected in the New World is yet preserved within the great cathedral. The stone cistern built by Columbus to supply water is still there. One may wander through the half-ruined arches of the first university in America, where Las Casas taught; and over the doorway of many a stately, ancient house one may still trace the elaborate coats of arms of Spanish hidalgos and grandees who won everlasting fame by hewing an empire with fire and sword from the untamed wilderness of the New World.
No part of the Western Hemisphere has a bloodier, more tragic history. The soil of Santo Domingo has literally been soaked with the blood of countless thousands of helpless Indians, tortured and put to death without mercy by the ruthless Spaniards; torn to pieces by bloodhounds; lashed to death in the mines; burned, quartered, flayed alive, massacred wholesale—all in the name of Christianity. And as though these atrocities were not enough, thousands of human beings were slain in battle, and negro uprisings swept the fair land with death in awful forms, and unspeakable cruelties and tortures. As one reads the record of this magnificent island, one feels that it must be a place accursed.
It was here in Hispaniola, too, that the buccaneers had their beginning; here that the Brethren of the Main first came into existence and pledged themselves to that piratical brotherhood; and toward one of their most notorious strongholds Sam shaped the Vigilant’s course, and we entered the great Bay of Samana.