CHAPTER VIII

ST. KITTS AND THE GORGEOUS ISLE

Despite all their interest, neither Statia nor Saba held aught that linked them with the buccaneers,—indeed, I doubt if these adventurers ever visited either,—and so, dipping our colors to old Fort Orange in memory of the salute the ancient guns gave the Andrew Doria, we bore on to Basseterre, the port and capital of St. Kitts.

To one who has seen only the more northern islands, St. Kitts is a revelation,—a fascinating sight,—and even after one has viewed the more southerly isles with their overpowering grandeur of mile-high mountains and wondrous forests, St. Kitts still holds its own, for it possesses charms unlike those of any other of the Caribbees.

From the cloud-draped summit of Mount Misery—dark and sinister, four thousand feet above the sea—to the beaches rimmed with creaming foam, St. Kitts is a glorious mass of green,—green of a thousand shades and tints, from that of ripening cane to that of the deep, shadowy ravines of its mountain forests. Upward from the sandy beaches and rugged bluffs sweep the broad cane-fields, undulating over hill and dale and reminding one so strongly of the downs of Sussex that one no longer marvels that the homesick English settlers, weary of the long and tedious voyage, gazed with brimming eyes upon this smiling, sun-bright isle. Vividly, tenderly green are the fields of young canes, golden or russet the others, sienna-red the plowed acres between, but all are drenched with tropic sunshine, and all, from a distance, seem as well tended and as regularly laid out as a great garden.

And everywhere are the palms. As far as eye can see, the swaying coco-palms line the shores above the tumbling surf. Against the sky the plume-topped cabbage-palms show their sharp silhouettes above the lesser trees upon the mountain sides. For miles along the winding, perfect roads the towering royal palms form avenues of great columnar trunks and drooping, feathery fronds. They cluster above the lowly negro huts or shade the great plantation homes without discrimination and with equal beauty, and they nod like giant feather dusters above the roof-tops of the town.

Massive, majestic, and mountainous is the northern portion of St. Kitts, and it takes no very vivid imagination to see in towering Mount Misery the likeness of St. Christopher bearing the infant Jesus on his shoulder which caused Columbus to name the island after his own patron saint. But to the south the mountains with their dense, forest-clad slopes give way to hills covered with endless acres of cane, until at Basseterre the island is almost flat, and only isolated rounded Monkey Hill breaks the rolling, down-like land.

Basseterre is a fittingly pretty town for this lovely island, with its red roofs and its pastel-tinted houses shaded by palms above the wonderfully colored sea, on whose calm surface ride gaily painted sloops and schooners and bevies of rowboats of every color of the rainbow.

But it must be admitted that there is very little of interest here. There is a fairly attractive public garden; flowering shrubs and trees are everywhere; there are pretty embowered residences, and the people are friendly and hospitable. But there is nothing distinctive about the place: it might be any one of a score of dolce-far-niente tropical towns, and it is by no means either prosperous or over-clean. Time was when St. Kitts was a well-to-do island; its planters lived like princes or feudal lords, fleets of ships rode to anchor in its harbor, and thousands of toiling blacks planted and cultivated and garnered the golden canes which sent a steady flow of molasses and sugar from the isle and brought an equally steady flow of golden sovereigns back to the Kittefonians’ pockets. But the omnipresent and lowly beet spelled St. Kitts’s doom, as it spelled the doom of many another sugar-producing land, and though the island is by no means poverty-stricken, and during the late war became prosperous for a time, the golden days of the past will never return.

Efforts have been made to win back prosperity with sea-island cotton, citrous fruits, and other tropical products; but it is a hard matter indeed to wean a sugar-planter from canes; and even those who have taken up the cultivation of other things have not been over-successful.

As a winter resort, St. Kitts is delightful, for it boasts a good climate and a healthful one; its scenery is magnificent; it possesses splendid motor-roads that completely encircle the island; it offers excellent fishing and hunting, plenty of outdoor sports, and an active volcano, Mount Misery, with a wonderful climb through the virgin tropical forests to its crater.

The island has, like its fellows, had a checkered career, but it can boast of being the first of the British West Indies to be settled by the English, who established themselves here in 1623. However, they did not succeed in holding it in undisputed possession, and what with the Caribs, the pirates, and the French, those earlier colonists had a mighty hard time of it. More than once St. Kitts came wholly under the sway of France. At other times the two nations buried the hatchet temporarily, and while the English confined themselves to the northern half of the isle, with their headquarters at Sandy Point, the French were content with the other half, with Basseterre as their port; yet there was constant friction, and not until 1782 was St. Kitts definitely turned over to the British.

Except in the name of the capital, there are few if any traces of French occupancy, but at Brimstone Hill, close to Sandy Point, are the massive ruins of extensive fortifications built by the British. Here, on an isolated, precipitous mass of rock, for all the world like a young mountain gone astray, is a solid mass of loopholed and battlemented masonry completely covering every available portion of the eight-hundred-foot hill. It is an impressive and redoubtable fortification, well-nigh impregnable in the days of muzzle-loading cannon and black powder, and complete with sally-ports, moats, and drawbridges. But it is quite deserted and useless, the abode of countless monkeys—descendants of apes brought from Gibraltar as pets, by the garrison—which are eagerly hunted and esteemed by the Kittefonians as a great delicacy.

Looking upon this stupendous work of defense, one marvels that any enemy ever dared attack or even approach St. Kitts, but, to tell the truth, it never saw battle, for it was not built until 1793, ten years after France and England ceased quarreling over the island and its neighbors, and all too late to be of any value whatsoever to its builders.

As an imposing ruin it is well worth a visit, but its historical attractions are nil. Indeed, St. Kitts seems strangely lacking in anything connecting its present with its rather turbulent and not at all bloodless past. I do not think there is even the customary tale of buried treasure on the island; at least I have never heard one. The people do not claim to have found pirates’ hoards in their cane-fields or caverns; and they do not even associate the name of any great pirate chieftain with their delightful home.

Nevertheless, St. Kitts was at one time a resort of pirates—or, rather, buccaneers—who were attacked by the Spaniards in 1629 and driven from the island. Many of these, of French blood, made their way to Tortuga, off the coast of Haiti, and there formed the nucleus of that famous headquarters of the Brethren of the Main. As far as records go there is nothing to show that the freebooters ever returned in large numbers or for an extended stay, and, according to a most interesting document which I was so fortunate as to acquire in St. Kitts, when they did appear they were met with so warm a welcome that it is not at all surprising they gave the lovely island a wide berth.

The faded and crumpled bit of worm-eaten parchment, which I value even more than the ancient coins so opportunely acquired at Anegada, is a fragment of the court records of St. Kitts in the good old days, and its scarcely legible writing relates the following:

An assize and generall Gaole delivrie held at St. Christophers Colonie from ye nineteenthe daye of Maye to ye 22n. daye off ye same Monthe 1701 Captaine Josias Pendringhame Magustrate &C. The Jurye of our Soveraigne Lord the Kinge Doe presente Antonio Mendoza of Hispaniola and a subjecte of ye Kinge of Spain for that ye said on or about ye 11 Daye of Apryl 1701 feloneousely delibyrately and malliciousley and encontrarye to ye laws off Almightie God and our Soveraigne Lord the Kinge did in his cuppes saucely and arrogantyly speak of the Governour and our Lord the Kinge and bye force and armes into ye tavernne of John Wilkes Esq. did entre and there did Horrible sware and cursse and did felonoslye use theattenninge words and did strike and cutte most murtherouslye severalle subjects of our Soveraigne Lord the Kinge. Of w’h Indictment he pleadeth not Guiltie butte onne presente Master Samuel Dunscombe mariner did sware that said Antonio Mendoza was of his knowenge a Bloodthirste piratte and Guiltie of diabolicalle practises & ye Grande Inquest findinge yt a trewe bill to be tryd by God and ye Countrye w’h beinge a Jurie of 12 men sworne finde him Guiltie & for the same he be adjuged to be carryd to ye Fort Prison to haave both his earres cutt close by his head and be burnet throughe ye tongee with an Hot iron and to be caste chained in ye Dungon to awaitte ye plesyure of God and Our Soveraigne Lord the Kinge.

We cannot but pity the luckless Spaniard who under the spell of Kittefonian rum, or possibly palm toddy, did “Horrible sware and cursse” and who may very likely have been quite innocent of any piratical or “diabolicalle” past, for the British had no love for the Dons and even when nominally at peace with Spain thought little of putting an end to any subject of the Spanish king who came their way. No doubt the very fact that the prisoner was a Spaniard was his undoing; and that worthy mariner Samuel Dunscombe probably perjured himself for the satisfaction of seeing a Don tortured. At any rate, it seems as though having both ears “cutt close” and having one’s “tongee” perforated with a red-hot iron was pretty severe punishment for the alleged crimes. But it only goes to prove how times have changed, and how little we can judge, by present-day standards, of what in those days was cruelty or inhumanity.

Also in St. Kitts, though on another visit, I came into possession of an equally interesting souvenir of olden times—a remarkable little volume bearing the rather cumbersome title of: “The True Travels, Adventures and Observations of Captain John Smith, in Europe, Asia, Africa and America from Anno Domini 1593 to 1629; his accidents and sea fights in the straits; his service and stratagems of war in Hungaria, Transylvania, Wallachi, and Moldavia, against the Turks and Tartars; his description of the Tartars, their strange manners and customs of religions, diets, buildings, wars, feasts, ceremonies, and living; how he slew the Bashaw of Malbritz in Cambria, and escaped from the Turks and the Tartars; together with a continuation of his General History of Virginia, Summer Isles, New England and their proceedings since 1624 to this present 1629, published in Anno Domini 1630.”

From all of which it will be gathered that our hero of Pocahontas fame was an adventurer of many parts in divers lands, and that his activities in Virginia were but minor incidents in his romantic career. In fact, for a space, Smith was something of a pirate himself, judged by our standards at least, and his accounts of sea battles and prizes taken are fascinatingly quaint. Of St. Kitts, too, he has much to say, and he gives us more of an insight into the troubles and tribulations of the first settlers on this “fayre islant” than any other writer. Aside from raids by the man-eating Caribs, being harassed by pirates, and constant quarrels with the French, the early English settlers seem to have had a most unfortunate experience with hurricanes, which Smith naïvely explains are “overgrowne and most monstrous stormes.” Indeed, the very year of its settlement by the English, 1623, a hurricane swept the island and wiped out the settlers’ gardens, their tobacco-fields, their houses, and their fort. Hardly had they recovered from this when, in September, 1625, another hurricane hurled itself upon the island. This was even worse than its predecessor of two years before, and Smith states that, in addition to blowing down all the houses, the tobacco, and “two drums into the air we know not wither,” it also “drove two ships on shore, that were both split.” He adds: “All our provisions thus lost we were very miserable, living only on what we could get in the wild woods.... Thus we continued till near June that the Tortels came in, 1627.” Six months later the colonists were once more made homeless through a hurricane, and until the end of the narrative hurricane followed hurricane. [5]

To-day, however, St. Kitts is by no means noted for its “overgrowne stormes,” which may be of interest meteorologically as tending to show that hurricanes are not so frequent in the Antilles as formerly and may, in centuries to come, cease altogether.

Another interesting fact brought out by Smith is that St. Kitts was largely populated by malefactors and convicts bought at so much a head from British prisons, shipped to the West Indies like cattle, in the stinking holds of small ships, and auctioned off as slaves among the planters. When we stop to think of such things, of the unspeakable atrocities practised by the masters or owners of these unfortunates upon their own countrymen (whom they branded with red-hot irons and mutilated or tortured on the least provocation), to say nothing of compelling white men, women, and children to labor half naked from sunrise to sunset in the cane- and tobacco-fields, under a broiling sun and urged on by the cruel lash, the buccaneers seem tender-hearted gentlemen by comparison.

South of this emerald isle, plainly visible from Basseterre and separated from St. Kitts merely by a narrow strait, lies Nevis. In a gigantic, absolutely symmetrical cone of green the massive volcano of Nevis rises against the sky, its brow crowned with a perpetual diadem of drifting fleecy clouds and at its feet the undulating green fields sloping to the sea.

Once the Mecca of the wealth and fashion of Europe and the Antilles, the world’s most famous watering-place, a spot so thronged with notables, so gay with great balls, state receptions, and palatial gambling-resorts, so ablaze with silks, satins, and jewels, so flooded with gold and riches that it became known as “The Gorgeous Isle,” Nevis to-day is almost as dead as its volcano’s crater. And yet it is as charming, its climate is as salubrious, its thermal springs and mineral waters as life-giving, its fields and forests as alluring as in those days when its harbor was thronged with stately ships and its streets and hostelries rang to the song and laughter of satin-clad, bewigged gentlemen, and ladies with powdered hair; and liveried negro link-bearers lit the way for sedan-chairs ablaze with gilded scrolls and cupids. But the vast estates, the palatial mansions, the great Bath-House, and the marvelously appointed casinos are but memories—crumbling ruins forlorn and overgrown. Nevis is but a ghost of the “Gorgeous Isle” of the eighteenth century, though a very beautiful ghost.

Aside from its one-time fame as a spa, Nevis is mainly noted as the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton and the place where Admiral Lord Nelson was married. The house wherein our statesman was born still stands on a hill near the town, though in a badly ruined state, and in the ancient but well-preserved “Fig Tree Church” there is still the thumbed and faded marriage register wherein one may read, under the entries for the year 1787: “March 11, Horatio Nelson Esq., Captain of H. M. S. Boreas, to Frances Herbert Nisbet, widow.” What a matter-of-fact record of the mighty, one-armed old sea-fighter’s love romance!

But to my mind the most interesting thing in Nevis is the submerged ancient capital of Jamestown, which in 1680 was destroyed by a severe earthquake. Then, as though Nature wished to hide the ruin she had wrought, the town with its tumble-down buildings, many of its inhabitants, and—so it is said—vast wealth, sank bodily below the sea. To-day, in calm weather, one may gaze downward through the crystal-clear water and trace the faint outlines of coral-incrusted walls of buildings that mark the resting-place of the drowned city.

History, unfortunately, has little information to give us concerning Jamestown and its destruction, or of the events of that awful day. One of the few survivors was a noted freebooter, a Captain Greaves,—otherwise known as “Red Legs,”—who, having seen the error of his ways, had abandoned his piratical career and had settled down in Nevis to a life of peace in the guise of a well-to-do planter. But the reformed pirate, being recognized and denounced by a former victim, was arrested and cast into an underground dungeon, only to be miraculously saved by the earthquake, which destroyed his prison and heaved him up quite unharmed. Finding himself floating upon the sea with the remains of the town fathoms deep beneath him, the ex-pirate clung to a piece of wreckage, and after numerous adventures safely reached another island, where he once more essayed a respectable existence, and lived and died a highly honored citizen.

This was but one incident in the romantic career of Greaves, or “Red Legs,”—which is a far more appropriate name for a freebooter,—who was a unique and fascinating character. Sold as a slave in Barbados, as were thousands of Scotch and Irish prisoners taken in the days of Cromwell, Greaves, in an effort to escape from a cruel master, sought refuge on a Dutch ship in the harbor. By some mischance, he swam in the darkness to the wrong vessel and found himself upon a pirate craft. Fate having thus taken a hand in shaping his destiny, the erstwhile slave boy took to the buccaneers’ life as a duck takes to water. As all his unfortunate fellows were known in the islands as “red legs,”—as their descendants are to-day,—this new recruit of the pirates at once received the nickname, which stuck to him through all his years of buccaneering. While he was famous for his reckless daring, his almost uncanny luck in piratical undertakings, yet he was never dreaded as were many of his fellows. For Red Legs, despite his handicap, was a gallant and chivalrous gentleman at heart, and though he scuttled ships and sacked towns without end, yet he earned the reputation of never harming women or putting prisoners to death or torture. He was, in fact, that incredible paradox, a moral pirate, and in his declining years he devoted large sums—whether honestly earned from his plantation or loot from his piratical ventures is unknown—to charity and churches.

The island of Nevis can boast of association with one other pirate, who in a way was even more remarkable than Red Legs and accomplished the most noteworthy feat in all the annals of buccaneering. This was no less a personage than Bartholomew Sharp, who, after what was probably the greatest adventure experienced by any of those most adventurous men the buccaneers, sailed into Nevis, back in 1682, and, having decided to abandon the sea and rest on his laurels, departed thence to England.