CHAPTER XV

“LITTLE ENGLAND”

The “Ancient and Loyal Colony of Barbados” lies so far out to sea that it requires a real ocean voyage to reach it. Low and uninteresting at first glance, compared to many of the West Indies, it is by no means so flat as most descriptions lead one to suppose. Seen from the sea it stretches up to a fairly lofty central ridge that is regular from end to end, except for being a trifle serrated or ragged in the center of the island. Dutch looking windmills, the only survivors of the cane-crushers that have fallen into disuse and left only the vine-grown ruins of their stone towers in all the rest of the Lesser Antilles, are slowly turning here and there on the even sky-line. Though the island is entirely of coral and limestone formation, glaringly yellow-white under the blazing sunshine at close range, there is a suggestion of England in the velvety slopes of its varied-green fields as seen from far out in the bay. First settled by the English in 1624, it boasts itself the oldest British colony that has remained unceasingly loyal to the crown and accepts with pride the pseudonym of “Little England.”

Barbados has come nearer than any other land to solving the vexing “negro problem.” Cultivated in all its extent, with a population of 140,000 negroes and 20,000 whites on a little patch of earth twenty-one miles long and fifteen wide, or 1200 human beings to the square mile, without an acre of “bush” on which the liberated slaves could squat, the struggle for existence is so intense that the black man displays here an energy and initiative unusual to his race. The traveler hears rumours of the Barbadian’s un-African activity long before he reaches the island; he sees evidences of it before his ship comes to anchor in Carlisle Bay. Not only is the harbor more active, more crowded with shipping than any other in the Lesser Antilles, but it has every air of a place that is “up on its toes.” All the languor, the don’t-care-whether-I-work-or-not of nature’s favored spots are here replaced by a feverish anxiety to please, an eager energy to snap up any job that promises to turn a nimble shilling. Scores of rowboats surround the steamer in a clamoring multitude, their occupants holding aloft boards on which are printed the names of their craft—unromantic, unimaginative names compared to those of the islands that were once or are still French, such as “Maggie,” “Bridget,” “Lillie White,” “Daisy,” “Tiger.” In face of the fierce competition the boatmen strive their utmost to win a promise from a passenger leaning over the rail, to impress the name of their craft on his memory so that he will call for it when he descends the gangway, to win his good-will by flattery, by some crude witticism,—“Remember the ‘Maggie,’ mistress; Captain Snowball”; “The ‘Lillie White,’ my lady; upholstered in and out!” “The ‘Daisy,’ my gentleman; rowboat extraordinary to His Majesty!” Meanwhile the divers for pennies, a few girls among them, are besieging the passengers from their curious little flat-bottomed boats of double wedge shape to toss their odd coins into the water and “see the human porpoises” display their prowess. Yet, unlike the pandemonium in the other islands, there is no scramble of venders and beggars up the gangway to the discomfiture of descending passengers; no crowding of boatmen about it fighting with one another for each possible fare, to the not infrequent disaster of the latter. A bull-voiced negro police sergeant, in a uniform that suggests he has been loaned from the cast of “Pinafore,” keeps perfect order from the top of the gangway, permitting boats to draw near only when they are called by name and ruling the clamoring situation with an iron hand. For there is this difference between the harbor police of Barbados and those of all the other ports, that they speak to be obeyed, permit no argument, and if they are not respected, they are at least duly feared.

Bridgetown was static. The entire population was massed about the inner harbor; beyond the bridge that gives the town its name stood an immense new arch with the words “Welcome to Barbados” emblazoned upon it. We thought it very kind of them to give us such unexpected attention, until we discovered they were not waiting for us at all, but for one whom some loyal but not too well schooled Barbadian had named in chalk on a nearby wall the “Prints of Whales.” This was the first time in half a century, it seems, that a member of the royal family to which the “ancient and loyal” little colony has shown unbroken allegiance had come to visit it. The black multitude was agog with poorly suppressed excitement; white natives were squirming nervously; even the few Englishmen in the crowd were so thawed by the “epoch-making event” that they actually spoke to strangers. The harbor officer was so eager to lose none of it that he let us pass without examination; an enterprising black youth won a sixpence by finding us a place on a crowded barge a few yards from the royal landing-stage. The tramways had been stopped; black troops lined the vacant expanse of white main street that stretched away toward the government house. Nelson’s one-armed statue in Trafalgar Square had been given an oil bath; buildings were half hidden behind the fluttering flags of all the Allies—the Stars and Stripes rarest among them. Even nature had contributed to the occasion by sending an unexpected little shower to lay the white limestone dust that habitually rouses the ire of new arrivals. The island newspaper announced a special holiday in honor of “the Prince, who will confer upon the loyal inhabitants of this ancient colony the privilege of receiving a message from his august father”; it still carried the advertisements of the closed shops, imploring the citizens not only to buy flags and decorations but to “get new clothes in honor of our royal visitor.”

He landed twenty minutes after us. A salvo of twenty-two guns from his battleship in the bay sent as many gasps of excitement and delight through the eager multitude. The subconscious thought came to us that it might be better to pay outstanding war debts than to squander so much powder and coal, but it ill behooves an American of these days to criticize our neighbors for squandering public funds. Besides, it is no easy matter to keep up this loyalty-to-the-king business nowadays, though England, surely, need have no fear of changes. Then a white launch dashed up the cheering inner harbor, a curiously boyish-faced young man in a gleaming white helmet stepped briskly out on the landing-stage into a group of black policemen in speckless girlish sailor suits, who seemed to lack an ostrich feather on their round white straw hats, the governor in full-dress uniform and the lord mayor in purple and red robes bowed low over the hand that was proffered, and the prince and his suite were whisked away.

Black as it was, we were struck by the orderliness of the throng—what a pandemonium such an event would have caused in the temperamental French islands!—and its politeness, compared to the other British West Indies. But if the excitement was suppressed with British sternness, it was not voiceless. The brief glimpse of the fêted youth had aroused a thousand exclamations like that of the ragged old negro woman behind us, “Oh, my God! Dat’s he himself! Oh Christ!” On the outskirts of the crowd another who had been so far away as to have caught, at best, a glimpse of the top of the royal helmet was still confiding to her surroundings, “My Jesus, but him good lookin’!” An old negro in a battered derby through which his whitening wool peered here and there elbowed his way through the dispersing crowd mumbling to himself, “No use talkin’, it’s de British flag _nowadays_!” Farther on a breathless market-woman was asking with the anxious tone of a master of ceremonies who had missed his train and feared the worst, “Has my gentleman landed yet?” But the enthusiasm was not unanimous, for still another woman, who fell in with us down the street, asserted, “Even if de prince landing, it all de same for we workin’ people. De Prince Albert him landed fifty year ago, an’ de school-girls dat fall wid de grandstand still hobblin’ about on dey broken legs.”

The prince spent a whole day in the ancient and loyal colony before continuing his journey to Australia, most of it in the isolation of the governor’s residence, but if he carried away an imperfect picture of this isolated fragment of the empire, he could at least report to his “august father” that it still retains its extraordinary loyalty to the crown.

* * * * *

Bridgetown is very English, despite its complexion and dazzling sunshine. Broken bottles embedded in the tops of plaster walls, which everywhere shut in private property, shows that this, too, is an overcrowded country where the few who have must take stern precautions against the many who have not. The streets bear such ultra-English names as “Cheapside,” “Philadelphia Lane,” “Literary Row,” “Lightfoot’s Passage,” “Whitepark Road.” The very signboards carry the mind back to England—“Grog Shop—The Rose of Devon,” “Coals for Sale,” “Try Ward’s Influenza Rum—Best Tonic”; the tin placard of some “Assurance Company” decorates every other façade. Even the little shingle shacks in the far outskirts bear some unromantic name painted above their doors; shopkeepers are as insistent in giving their full qualifications as the clamoring boatmen in the bay. “O. B. Lawless—American Tailor—Late of Panama” announces a tiny one-room hovel. There is a British orderliness of public demeanor even among the naturally disorderly negroes; the women have neither the color sense nor the dignified carriage of their sisters of Martinique, rather the gracelessness of the English women of the lower classes. Yet in one thing Barbados is not English. It is hospitable, quite ready to enter into conversation even with strangers.

When it is not silent and deserted under the spell of a holiday or its deadly Sabbath, Bridgetown pulsates with life. Its wharves are as busy as all those of the rest of the Lesser Antilles put together, as busy as our St. Thomas was before Barbados became the focal point of the eastern Caribbean. Bales and bundles and barrels and boatloads of produce pour into it as continuously as if every one of its 160,000 were wealthy consumers of everything the world has to offer. Its own product is constantly being trundled down to waiting lighters—great hogsheads of sugar or molasses carried on specially designed iron frames on wheels, each operated by three negroes who have not lost the amusing childishness of their race for all their competition-bred industry, for they invariably take turns in riding the contrivance back to the warehouse, though the clinging to it must require far more physical exertion than walking. Steamers, schooners, lighters, rowboats, mule-trucks, auto-“lorries” are incessantly carrying the world’s goods to and fro. Innumerable horse-carriages, scores of automobiles, ply for hire. Excellent electric-lights banish the darkness from all but the poorer class of houses. Yet despite the constant struggle for livelihood,—or perhaps because of it,—Bridgetown has little of the insolence of the other British West Indies. Applicants for odd jobs swarm and beggars are plentiful, but the latter are unoffensive and the former approach each possible client with a “Do you want me, my gentleman?” so courteous that one feels inclined to think up some imaginary errand on which to send them. They seem to recognize that politeness is an important asset in their constant battle against hunger, which gives them also a responsibility, a reliability in any task assigned them, and a moderation in their demands that is attained by few other West Indians.

Barbados has a tramway and a railroad, the only ones between Porto Rico and Trinidad. True, they are modest little affairs, the tramcars being drawn by mules. Yet the latter step along so lively, the employees and most of the passengers are so courteous, and overcrowding is so sternly forbidden that one comes to like them, especially those lines which rumble along the edge of the sea in the never-failing breeze, above all in the delightfully soft air of morning or evening. It would be difficult in these modern days of indifferent labor to find more courtesy, more earnest efficiency, and stricter living up to the rules than among Bridgetown’s tram-drivers and conductors, yet their highest wage is sixty-four cents a day. But for the war, the system would long since have been electrified; the new rails have already arrived. There is no real reason, except civic pride, however, that the mule-cars should be abolished. They are more reliable than many an electric-line in larger cities; they are a pleasant change to the speed-weary traveler; and the perfection with which their extra mule is hitched on at the bottom of the one hill in town and unhitched again at its summit without the loss of a single trot is a never-ending source of amusement.

Sojourners in Barbados are certain to make the acquaintance of at least the long tram-line to St. Lawrence. There are plenty of hotels in the town proper, but they are habitually crowded with gentlemen of color. White visitors dwell out Hastings way, some two miles from Trafalgar Square. Unlike the French and Spanish towns of tropical America, the downtown section of the Barbadian capital is almost wholly given over to business—and negroes. The numerous white inhabitants and most of the darker ones of any standing dwell in the outskirts. There one may find parks shaded by mahogany and palm-trees, splendid avenues lined by one or both of these species, comfortable residences ranging all the way from tiny “villas” draped with an ivy-like vine or gorgeous masses of the bougainvillea to luxurious estates in their own private parks. Even the poorer classes in another stratum still farther from the center of town dwell in neat little toy-houses of real comfort, compared with the huts of the masses of Haiti or Porto Rico. For miles along the sea beside this longest tram-line one passes a constant succession of comfortable, light-colored houses with boxed verandas, wooden shutters that raise from the bottom, and a sort of cap visor over the windows. In many cases these boast tropically unnecessary panes of glass through which one can make out of an evening interiors of perfect neatness, homelike, well lighted, furnished and decorated in taste, with none of the gaudy and crowded bric-a-brac to be seen behind Spanish _rejas_ in the larger islands.

The night life of Bridgetown is worth a ride behind the now weary mules, if only to see a negro urchin diligently striving to light a candle in a tin box on the end of his soap-box cart, lest he be hauled up for violation of the ordinance forbidding vehicles to circulate after dark without lamps. Promptly at sunset the black policemen have changed their white helmets and jackets for German looking caps and capes. On the way downtown one passes half a dozen wide-open churches and chapels in which black preachers are vociferously exhorting their nightly congregations to “walk in de way of de Lard”; one is certain to rumble past the shrieking hubbub of a Salvation Army meeting or two. There are crowds of loafers on many a corner—jolly, inoffensive, black idlers with the spirit of rollicking fun in their ebony faces, bursting into howls of laughter at the slightest incident that seems comical to their primitive minds. The filthy street-habits of the French and Spanish islands are little in evidence, for the police of Barbados are as vigilant as they are heavy-handed.

Downtown the activities of the day have departed. The larger stores have closed at four, the small shops at sundown. Only a scattered score of negro women squat in Trafalgar Square before their little trays of peanuts, bananas, and home-made sweets, a wick torch burning on a corner of them whether they are deposited on the ground or are seeking lack of competition elsewhere on top of their owners’ heads. There is no theater in Bridgetown; the cinema is as sad a parody on amusement as it is everywhere, but the audience is worth seeing, once. The negroes sit in the “pit,” the élite, chiefly yellow of tint, in a kind of church gallery. Shouts, screams, roof-raising roars of primitive laughter, deafening applause whenever the frock-coated villain is undone, mark the unwinding of the film from beginning to end; it is a scene far different from the comparative dignity of a black French audience. In the French and Spanish West Indies the cinemas begin after nine and end around midnight; in Barbados they start sharply at seven and terminate at ten with a rush for the last mule-cars, with all but the swift out of luck, and Bridgetown settles down to deathly Sunday stillness while the weary mules are still crawling toward the end of their laborious day.

Or, if the visitor does not care to break up his evening by descending into town, there are few more ideal spots in which to hear a band concert than the little park known as Hastings Rocks, on the very edge of the sea, especially under a full moon. I am an inveterate concert-goer; one naturally becomes so in tropical America, where other music is so rare, and I must confess a preference for the Spanish-American type of concert over the Anglo-Saxon, for the gay throngs of promenaders about the sometimes not too successful attempts to render a classical program over the staid gatherings that listen motionless to an uproar of “popular” music. But even this serves to while away an evening and seldom fails to offer a touch of local color. Thus in negro-teeming Barbados there is scarcely a suggestion of African parentage to be seen at this stately entertainment on Hastings Rocks. It is partly the sixpence admission that keeps the negroes outside, but not entirely. Struck by the fact that there was only one mulatto boy and two light-yellow girls, all very staid and quiet, on the seaside benches, I sought information of the negro gatekeeper. Yes, indeed, he refused admittance to most of those of his own color, and to some white people, too.

“You see,” he explained, “it is like this. Perhaps last night you might go with a girl downtown, and then you come here to-night with your wife; and if that girl allowed to come in here she might want to get familiar and gossip with you. Or she might giggle at you. We can’t have _that_,” he added, in a tone that reminded one that the Briton, even when his skin is black, is first cousin to Mrs. Grundy. The English sense of dignified orderliness and the negro’s natural gaiety, his tendency to “giggle” at inopportune moments, do not mix well, and the Hasting Rocks concert is one of those places where African hilarity must be ruthlessly suppressed.

* * * * *

Besides Bridgetown, with its 35,000 or more inhabitants, Barbados has a number of what might best be called large collections of houses, such as Speightstown, Holetown—popularly known as “the Hole”—and the like, but its population, surpassed in density, if at all, only by China, a density compared to which that of Porto Rico seems slight indeed, is spread so evenly over all the island that it is hard to tell where a town begins or ends. The island is one of the most remarkable instances of coral formation. Comparatively flat, when likened to most of the West Indies, it consists of a number of stages or platforms that have been built one after the other as the island rose slowly and gradually from the sea to a height, at one point, of nearly 1200 feet. When first discovered it was surrounded by mangrove swamps and tangled, rotting vegetation, but all this has since turned to solid ground. The coral of which it is built contains some ninety per cent. of lime, so that almost the whole island might be reduced to powder in a lime-kiln. The rest of it consists of a species of sandstone known as “Scotland rock,” which comes to the surface in the northwestern part of the island.

Thanks to its geological formation, the close network of roads which reaches every corner of Barbados, as well as all its bare open spaces, are glaringly white and hard on the eyes, especially, if one may judge by the prevalence of glasses among them, those of the white and “high yellow” inhabitants. Yet, for the same reason, it is perhaps the most healthful of the West Indies. It has no swamps to breed malaria; the trade winds from the open ocean sweep incessantly across it. Once it was troubled with typhoid, but the establishment of a single unpolluted water supply for the whole island has done away with this danger. There is great equability of temperature day or night the year round. The wet season, from June to October, is less so than in most tropical lands; though visitors and European inhabitants complain of the midday heat, except in December and January, it is always cool compared to midsummer in the United States. Fresh, dry, and constantly laden with ocean ozone, it is a climate that makes little demand upon the strength and vital powers. All indications point to the fact, however, that it is no place for white women as permanent residents, for virtually without exception they grow scrawny, nervous, and weak-eyed, their pasty complexions sprayed with freckles under their veils.

All roads lead to Bridgetown, but to follow them in the opposite direction to any chosen point is not so simple a matter. Signboards are almost unknown, no doubt being considered a superfluity in so small and crowded a community. The country people, though willing enough, are often too stupid to give intelligible directions, though they make up for this by a persistency in showing one the way in person which no amount of protest can overcome. Ask a question or give them any other slightest excuse to do so, and they will cling to the white pedestrian’s heels for miles in the hope of picking up a penny or a “bit,” always taking their leave with, “I beg you for a cent, sir.” Indeed, that is the constant refrain everywhere along the dazzling but excellent highways. Women and men shout it from the doors of their little cabins; children scamper after one, the black babies are egged on by their elders as soon as they can toddle, each shrieking the invariable demand in a tone of voice which suggests that refusal is impossible. They seem to fancy that white strangers cross the island for no other purpose than to distribute a cartload of English coppers along the way. Almost as incessant are the demands upon the kodak-carrier to “Make me photo, sir,” or, “Draw me portrait, master.”

On week-days the highways of Barbados are as crowded as city streets. Heavy draft horses and mules, auto-trucks large and small, are constantly descending to Bridgetown with the cumbersome hogsheads of sugar and molasses, or returning with supplies for the estates. There is an endless procession of almost toy-like carts, each drawn by a single small donkey, the two wheels habitually wobbly, the name, address, and license number of the owner in crude letters on the front of the diminutive box. The donkey is the invariable beast of burden of the Barbadian of the masses. He carries to town the products of little gardens; he brings the supplies of the innumerable small shops throughout the island; the country youth takes his “girl” riding in his donkey-cart; in later years the whole ebony family packs into it for a jolt across the country. Unlike the rest of tropical America, Barbados does not ride its donkeys or use them as pack-animals; nor, to all appearances, are they abused. Centuries of British training seems to have given the black islanders a compassion rare among their neighbors. Horsemen and pack-mules are likewise unknown along the white highways; oxen are rare; pedestrians are much less numerous than one would expect in so populous a community, while bicycles are as widely in use as in England.

There is a curiously English homelikeness about the landscape, which, if it is seldom rugged, is by no means monotonous. Every acre of ground is utilized; forbidding stone-and-mud walls topped by spikes or broken glass line the roads for long distances; villages, or at least houses, are so continuous that one is almost never out of human sight or sound. Coral is so abundant and wood so expensive that immense limestone steps often lead up to tiny wooden shacks, as out of proportion to their foundations as statues to their pedestals. The majority of the rather well-kept little negro cabins, however, are simply set up on small blocks of coral at the four corners. More than one band of hilarious sailors from visiting battleships have amused themselves by removing one of these props and tumbling a Barbadian family out of their beds in the small hours of the night.

Shopkeeping might almost be called the favorite sport of the “Badeyan”; the lack of jobs enough to go round has led so many to adopt this means of winning a possible livelihood that the island has been called “Over-shopped Barbados.” Everywhere wayside shanties bear the familiar black sign with white letters, varying only in name and number: “Percival Brathwaite—Licensed Seller of Liquors—No. 765.” Inside, perhaps behind a counter contrived from a single precious board, are a few crude shelves stocked mainly with bottles of rum or with cheap “soft drinks,” a few shillings’ worth of uninviting foodstuffs flanking them. The Barbadians have long been known as the “Yankees of the West Indies.” They are far more diligent merchants than most natives of tropical America, so much so that neither the Chinese, Jews, Portuguese, nor Syrians, so numerous in the other islands, can compete with them to advantage. But their knowledge of book-keeping is scanty, and it is often only the visible end of his light resources that convinces the petty shopkeeper that he is losing, rather than gaining at the popular pastime.

Every little way along the island roads other shanties bear the sign of this or that “Friendly Society.” These are a species of local insurance company or mutual benefit association. The negroes pay into them from three pence to a shilling a week,—some of the poorer neighbors nothing at all,—and receive in return sickness or accident benefits, or have their funeral expenses paid in case of death. But they are typically tropical or African in their indifference to a more distant to-morrow, for at the end of each year the remaining funds are divided among those members who have not drawn out more than they paid in, and with perhaps as much as five dollars each in their pockets the society indulges in a hilarious “blow-out.” Equally numerous are the signboards of “agents” of the undertakers of Bridgetown. They do not believe in waiting for the sickle of Father Time, those deathbed functionaries of the capital, but drum up trade with Barbadian energy. The island’s newspaper habitually carries their enticing pleas for clients:

“OUR DEAD MUST BE BURIED,” begins one of these appeals. “In the SAD HOUR why trouble yourself over the Dead when you can see E. T. ARCHER GITTENS, the up-to-date and experienced UNDERTAKER face to face? Look for the Hearse with the GOLDEN ANGEL!” There follows a “poem” of twenty-four verses setting forth the advantages of being buried by Gittens and ending with the touching appeal:

Just take a ride to Tweedside Stable And you’ll see that this is no Fable. Phone 281 night or day And you’ll hear what Gittens has to say. He and his staff are always on hand To accommodate any class of man. “All orders will be promptly executed at MODERATE PRICES. A TRIAL WILL CONVINCE.”

No doubt it would.

* * * * *

The Barbados government railway—one could not call it a rail_road_ in so English a community—is an amusing little thing twenty years old and some two hours long, though that does not mean as much in miles as one might expect. On week-days its passenger-train sometimes makes a one-way journey, at a cost of four shillings and sixpence for first and two shillings for second-class travelers, but on Sundays it indulges in the whole round trip. From the station near the famous bridge from which the capital takes its name, the little train tears away as if excited at its own importance, through slightly rolling cane-fields, rocky white coral gullies, past frequent Dutchy windmills flailing their shadows on the ground. Vistas as broad as if it were crossing a continent instead of a tiny parcel of land flung far out into the ocean, spread on either hand, that to the right flat and almost desertlike in its aridity, the north broken in rugged low ridges, with many scattered villages and gray heaps of sugar-mills on their crests. The soil is so thin one marvels that it will grow anything, yet every acre of it shows signs of constant cultivation, the long expanses of cane broken here and there by small patches of corn, cassava, yams, and the sweet potatoes on which the mass of the population depends for nourishment. Every few minutes the train halts at a station seething with cheerful black faces; everywhere it crosses white coral roads, some of them cut deep down through the limestone ridges. Trees are almost plentiful, but they all show evidence of having been planted. The Spanish discoverers, it is said, gave the island its present name because its forests were bearded (_barbudos_) with what is known in our southern states as “Spanish moss,” but this, like the original woods, has long since disappeared.

Sunday is as dead as it can only be in a British community. The cattle and mules stand in the corrals eating dry cane-tops; the square brick chimneys of the boiling-houses emit not a fleck of smoke. Only in rare cases even are the windmills allowed to work, though for some reason nature does not shut off the bracing trade-wind. This is so constant that it forces all the branches of the trees to the southwest, until even the royal palms seem to be wearing their hair on one side. Fields brown with cut cane-tops contrast with the pale green of those still unharvested; the general sun-flooded whiteness of the landscape is painful to the eyes. Here and there is a patch of blackish soil, but it has the vigorless air of having long been overworked, a looseness as of volcanic lava.

In less than an hour the Atlantic spreads out on the horizon ahead. Rusty limestone cliffs, a jagged coral coast against which the sea dashes itself as if angry at the first resistance it encounters since passing the Cape Verde Islands many hundred miles away, stretch out to the north and south. We come out to the edge of it, fifty feet above, then descend to a track so close to the surf that the right of way must be braced up with old rails. It is a dreary, barren-dry, brown-yellow coast, yet of a beauty all its own, with its chaotic jumble of huge rocks among which hundreds of negroes are bathing stark naked and spouting holes out of which the thundering surf dashes high into the air. Farther north the landscape grows almost mountainous, but we have already reached Bathsheba, where Sunday travelers habitually disembark, leaving the train to crawl on alone to a few tiny oil-wells around the next rugged promontory.

I climbed the sheer cliff a thousand feet high above Bathsheba, its face covered with brown grasses, ferns, creeping plants, and the smaller species of palm that cling to each projecting rock as if their available nourishment were as scanty and precious as that of the teeming human population. The view from the summit forever banishes the notion that Barbados is flat. All “Scotland,” as the northern end of the island is called, is laid out before you, broken and pitched and jumbled until it resembles the Andes in miniature. White ribbons of roads and a network of trails are carelessly strewn away across it, hundreds of huts are scattered over its chaotic surface, and an immense building stands forth on the summit of its highest hill. Jagged, gray-black sandstone boulders of gigantic size contrast with the white limestone to give the tumbled scene the aspect of having been left unfinished by the Builder of the western hemisphere in his hurry to cross the Atlantic. Below, this scene spreads away to infinity, its scalloped, foam-lashed shore clear-cut in the dry, luminous atmosphere as far as the eye can see in either direction. Behind, the picture is tamer, though by no means level. Rolling cane-fields, with here and there a royal palm, numerous clusters of huts, and the ubiquitous chimneys and windmills of sugar-factories breaking the sky-line, stretch endlessly away to the yellow-brown horizon.

I returned to Bridgetown on foot—he who still fancies the island is level and tiny should walk across it on a blazing Sunday afternoon—passing not more than a score of travelers on the way. Once I paused to chat with a group of “poor whites,” as they call themselves, or what their black neighbors refer to as “poor buckras” or “red legs.” These reminders of our own “crackers” are numerous in Barbados, especially in the “Scotland” district. They are descendants of the convicts or prisoners taken in the civil wars of England during the Commonwealth or the Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion. Chiefly Scotch and Irish, some of them royalists of the nobility, they were sent to the island by Cromwell between 1650 and 1660 and sold to the planters for 1500 pounds of sugar a head. It is doubtful whether any of them would be worth that now. Branded and mutilated to prevent their escape, treated more brutally than the blacks by whom they are held in contempt to this day, they steadily declined in health and spirits until their present descendants, with the exception of the few who rose to be planters, are listless and poverty-stricken, degenerate victims of the hookworm and of intermarriage. The original prisoners wore kilts; hence the tropical sun soon won them the nickname of “red legs,” which has persisted to this day, perhaps because their bare feet have still a distinctly ruddy tinge. But their faces are corpse-like in color and their bodies thin and anemic. Of the adults in this group, not one had more than a half dozen crumbling fangs in the way of teeth.

Yet they seemed moderately well-informed and of far quicker intelligence than the sturdier blacks who so despise them. Their air of honest simplicity acquitted them of any suggestion of boasting when they asserted that the “poor whites” never steal cane and other growing crops, the theft of which by the negroes, despite heavy penalties, is one of the curses of the island. The chief topic of conversation, nevertheless, was that inevitable post-war one the world over, the high cost of food. Coffee, their principal nourishment, they took nowadays without sugar, and though it had sold at sixteen cents a pound when the war ended, it was now forty. Rice, sweet potatoes, meal, even breadfruit, “the staff of Barbados,” had trebled in price. Their “spots,” as they call their gardens, were constantly being robbed by the negroes. It was no use trying to keep a goat or a sheep; some black thief was sure to carry it off.

I succeeded at length in bringing up the matter of education. They sent their boys to the public schools, but it was not safe to send the girls. There were elementary schools in every parish, where each pupil paid a penny a week. The teachers were nearly all men and all were colored. In the higher public schools, which an average tuition of $72 a year put out of reach for most of them, the teachers were usually Englishmen; but the color-line was drawn only in the private schools, of which there were plenty for those who could afford them. While they talked I noted that the enmity between the two races was camouflaged under an outward friendliness; the greetings between the group of “red legs” and the black passers-by had a heartiness of tone that might easily have deceived an unenquiring observer.

One of the sights of Barbados is the large, old, gray stone Anglican church in each of the eleven parishes. Their erection was decreed way back in the days when the Earl of Carlisle, having a superior “pull” with the King of England, ousted Sir William Courteen as founder of the colony. They are as English in their sturdy bulkiness, with their heavy crenelated stone towers and the replica of an English country churchyard about each of them, despite the difficulty of digging graves in hard limestone, as the English sparrows which flock about the neighboring cane-fields. The Anglicans, having gotten in on the ground floor, have almost a monopoly in the island, though other denominations have no great difficulty in establishing their claims to endowments. The Catholics, of whom there are barely a thousand, have only one small church. Even the shouting sects seem to have less popularity among the Barbadians than in most negro communities. Religion is reputed the true bulwark of the social order in Barbados, but it is rather because the long established churches serve to maintain the class distinctions on which this is based than because they succeed in holding the negroes up to any particularly high standard of morals. Mrs. Grundy is strongly entrenched in all the British West Indies, but her influence is rather superficial among the black masses, who have a considerable amount of what other races call the “hypocrisy” of the Anglo-Saxon.

* * * * *

But Sunday is no time to see Barbados. I walked entirely across the island without meeting one donkey-cart, so numerous on week-days. There was scarcely a wheeled vehicle in all the long white vista of highways, except a rare bicycle and the occasional automobile of a party of American tourists. Pedestrians were as rare; the people were everywhere shut in behind their tight-closed wooden shutters, a few of them singing hymns, most of them sleeping in their air-tight cabins. The few I roused, out of mere curiosity, treated the annoyance as something bordering on the sacrilegious. Nowhere was there a group under the trees; never a picnic party; not a sign of any one enjoying life. Bridgetown itself, compared to the swarming uproar of the “prince’s day,” was as a graveyard to carnival time.

With the dawn of Monday, however, the island awakens again to its feverish activity, and one may easily catch an auto-truck across the floor-flat, dusty plain stretching some five miles inland from the capital and drop off on the breezy higher shelves of the island. Something of interest is sure to turn up within the next mile or two.

The Barbadian, for instance, digs his wells not to get water, but to get rid of it. They are to be found everywhere, often at the very edge of the highway and always open and unprotected. They are big round holes cut far down into the jagged coral rock, splendid places, it would seem, into which to throw something or somebody for which one has no use. This is exactly their purpose, for they are designed to carry off the floods of the rainy season. Barbados has no rivers and no lakes, or rather, these are all underground, some of them in immense caverns. In former days the mass of the population depended for its water supply on shallow, intermittent ponds, the better class on private arrangements. Now two central pumping stations and more than a hundred miles of underground pipe furnish the entire island with excellent, if lukewarm, water from the unseen rivers. Instead of the roadside shrines of the French islands, the limestone embankments of Barbadian highways have faucets at frequent intervals. Water is free to those who fetch it from these. The better class residents are everywhere supplied by private pipes at a nominal sum per house. Business places pay thirty cents per thousand gallons, which is considered so expensive that only one estate on the island is irrigated though drought is frequently disastrous in the west and south.

The stodgy windmills everywhere fanning the air are used exclusively for the grinding of cane. It is a rare patch of landscape that does not show at least half a dozen of these toiling away six days of the week. The fact that they have survived in Barbados, of all the West Indies, may be as much due to its unfailing trade wind as to the crowded conditions which make the innovation of labor-saving devices so unpopular. Methods long since abandoned elsewhere are still in vogue in Barbadian sugar-mills. The cane is passed by hand between the iron rollers in the stone windmill tower. The big hilltop yard about this is covered with drying _bagasse_, or cane pulp, which is finally heaped up about the boiling-house in which it serves as fuel. The juice runs in open troughs from the windmill to this latter building, where it is strained and left to settle until the scum rises to the surface. Then, this being skimmed off, it is boiled in open copper kettles. A negro watches each of them, dipping out the froth now and then with a huge soup-ladle and tossing the boiling liquid into the air when it shows signs of burning. Toward the end of the process the “sugar-master” is constantly trying the syrup between a finger and thumb, in order to tell when the crystals are forming and when to “strike” the contents of the kettle, which must be done at the right moment if the sugar is to be worth shipping. From beginning to end the work is done by hand, and a Barbadian sugar-mill has little resemblance, except in its pungently sweet odor, to the immense _centrals_ of Cuba.

In the early days the sugar-men had much trouble in transporting their product because of the deep gullies and bad roads. Once upon a time camels were used, but though they answered the purpose splendidly, being very sure-footed and capable of carrying the price of a “red leg” each, they died for lack of a proper diet. To this day Barbadian sugar or molasses is shipped in the cumbersome 110–gallon hogsheads which were adopted in the days of camels, though the hauling is now done on mule or auto-trucks.

With an unlimited supply of cheap labor, it is natural that the Barbadian planters should cling to the old processes. Indeed, the estate owner who attempts to bring in new machinery is heartily criticized by his competitors, while the establishment of new mills is out of the question, there being already too many factories for the available acreage. The sugar planters, nine out of ten of whom are as white as the Anglo-Saxon can be after many generations of tropical residence, hold all Barbados, leaving only the steeper hillsides and the less fertile patches as “spots” on which the “red legs” and the negroes plant their yams, arrow-root, sweet potatoes, and cassava. They live in luxurious old manor houses, usually on high knolls overlooking their not particularly broad acres, half-hidden in groves of mahogany-trees, which are protected by law from destruction. With few exceptions they are the descendants of English colonists, and still keep the British qualities their ancestors brought with them, keep them so tenaciously that in some ways they are more English than the modern Englishman himself. There are suggestions that they are as short-sighted as most conservatives in taking the last ounce of advantage of the crowded conditions to keep the laboring masses at ludicrously low wages. Molasses, which the Barbadians call “syrup,” has advanced from seven cents to a dollar a gallon in the past few years, yet the planters are still paying about a shilling per hundred “holes” of cane, making it impossible for the hardest workers to earn more than “two and six” a day, though the prices, even of the foodstuffs grown on the island, have nearly all trebled. The pessimists foresee trouble and cite the continual presence of a battleship in Barbadian waters as proof that even the government fears it. But though they constitute only one eighth of the population and the percentage is steadily decreasing, the whites have always ruled in Barbados. As early as 1649 the slaves planned to kill them all off, and kept the secret of the conspiracy so well that it would probably have succeeded but for a servant who gave the planters warning on the eve of the attack. In 1816 there came another fierce negro rebellion, which was put down with an iron hand. Since then the blacks have been given little real voice in the government, despite their overwhelming majority, and the traveler of to-day finds Barbados the one island of the British West Indies in which the negroes are not beginning to “feel their oats.”

Some attribute the patent difference between the Barbadian and other negroes of the western hemisphere to his origin in Sierra Leone, while the rest came from the Kru or the Slave Coast, but there is little historical evidence to support this contention. Still others credit his superior energy and initiative to the absence of malaria in the island. Most observers see in those qualities merely a proof that the negro develops most nearly into a creditable member of society under physical conditions which require him either to work or starve. Whoever is right, the fact remains that Barbados is one of the few places where emancipation was not disastrous, and that the Barbadians are probably, on the whole, the most pleasant mannered people in the West Indies, if not in the western hemisphere. Except for rare cases of rowdyism, they are always courteous, yet without cringing. Even those in positions bringing them into official contact with the public are, as is too often the reverse in many another country, extremely obliging, cheerful, yet never patronizing, rarely brusk, yet efficient and prompt, fairly true to their promises, for a tropical country, and have little of that aggressive insolence which is becoming so wide-spread among the negroes in our own country and the other British West Indies. The crowded condition of the country evidently makes the constant meeting of people a reason to cut down friction to the minimum, while the necessity of earning a livelihood where work is scarce leads them to be careful not to antagonize any one.

That they are amusing goes without saying. The magnificent black “bobby” in his white blouse and helmet, for instance, does not reply to your query about the next tramway with, “Goin’ to Hastings? Better geta move on then,” but with a mellifluous, “Ah, your destination is Hastings? Then you will be obliged to proceed very rapidly; otherwise you are in danger of being detained a half-hour until the next car departs.” Yet they are not a people that grows upon one. As with all negroes, there is a shallowness back of their politeness, a something which reminds you every now and then that they have no history, no traditions, no ancient culture—such as that which is apparent, for instance, in the most ragged Hindu coolie—behind them.

Small as it is, there are many more points of interest in Barbados. There is Speightstown, for example, where whaling is still sometimes carried on; Holetown, with its monument to the first English colonists; a marvelous view of all the ragged Atlantic coast from the parish churchyard of St. John’s, in which lies buried a descendant of the Greek emperors who was long its sexton; Mt. Hillaby, the highest point of the island, from which one may look down upon all the chaotic jumble of hills in St. Andrew’s Parish, better known as “Scotland,” or in the south the broad, parched flatlands of Christ Church, the only one of the eleven parishes not named for some saint of the Anglican calendar. Or there is amusement, at least, among the huts tucked away into every jagged coral ravine, in noting the curious subterfuges adopted to wrest a livelihood from an overburdened and rather unwilling soil. Every acre of the island being under cultivation, there is, of course, no hunting; wild animals are unknown, except for a few monkeys in Turner’s Woods. These are rarely seen, for so human have they become in their own struggle for existence that they post a guard whenever they engage in their forays and flee at his first intimation of danger. Negro boys earn a penny or two a day for keeping the monkeys off the cane-fields. There being no streams or lakes, the island has no disciples of Isaac Walton, but the Barbadians are inveterate fishermen, for all that. Time was when the little boats which are constantly pushing out to sea in water so clear that one may see every crevice of the coral bottom sixty feet below brought back more fish than the island could consume. Then one might buy a hundred flying-fish for a penny; to-day these favorites of the Barbadian table cost as high as two pence each, while the equally familiar dolphins cost twice that a pound. “Sea eggs,” which are nothing more or less than the sea-urchin of northern waters, are a standard dish in this crowded community, for the same reason, perhaps, that the French have discovered the edible qualities of snails.

* * * * *

Barbados is the only foreign land ever visited by the father of our country. In the winter of 1751–52, nearly a quarter of a century before the Revolution, Captain George Washington, then adjutant general of Virginia at one hundred and fifty pounds a year, accompanied his brother on a journey in quest of his health. Major Lawrence Washington of the British army, owner of Mt. Vernon, fourteen years older than George, had been suffering from consumption since he served in the expedition against Cartagena in South America. They sailed direct to Barbados, then a famous health resort, by schooner. The skipper must have been weak on navigation, for, says George’s journal, “We were awakened one morning by a cry of land, when by our reckonings there should have been none within 150 leagues of us. If we had been a bit to one side or the other we would never have noticed the island and would have run on down to ——”, the future father of our country does not seem to have a very clear idea just where. In fact, schoolmarms who have been holding up the hatchet-wielder as a model for their pupils—unless some millionaire movie hero has taken his place in the hearts of our young countrymen nowadays—will no doubt be horrified to learn that George was not only weak in geography, but even in spelling. He frequently speaks of “fields of cain,” for instance, and sometimes calls his distressing means of conveyance a “scooner,” or a “chooner.” But let him speak for himself:

Nov. 4, 1751—This morning received a card from Major Clark welcoming us to Barbados, with an invitation to breakfast and dine with him. We went—myself with some reluctance, as the small pox was in the family. Mrs. Clark was so much _indisposed_ [the italics are mine] by it that we had not the pleasure of her company. Spent next few days writ^g letters to be carried by the Chooner Fredericksburg to Virginia.

Thursday 8th. Came Capt^n Crofton with his proposals which tho extravagantly dear my Brother was obliged to give. £15 pr Month is his charge exclusive of Liquors & washings which we find. In the evening we remov’d some of our things up and ourselves; it’s pleasantly situated pretty near the sea and ab^t a mile from the Town, the prospective agreable by Land and pleasant by Sea as we command the prospect of Carlyle Bay & all the shipping in such a manner that none can go in or out with out being open to our view.

The Washingtons evidently lived near the same spot now inhabited by American tourists, any two of whom would be only too happy nowadays to pay forty-three dollars a month for board and lodging, “Liquor” or no liquor. Capt. Crofton, the rascally profiteer, must have made a small fortune out of his “paying guests,” for they were always being invited out to meals at the “Beefstake & Tripe Club” or elsewhere. Church members, however, will be glad to see the next entry, despite of that unhappy break about the “Liquor”:

Sunday 11th. Dressed in order for Church but got to Town too Late. [What man ever kept his sense of time in the tropics?] Went to Evening Service.

Thursday 15th. Was treated with a play ticket to see the Tragedy of George Barnwell acted. [George, you see, was no money-strewing tourist. But then, he was not an American in those days.]

Saturday 17th. Was strongly attacked with the small Pox sent for Dr. Lanahan whose attendance was very constant till my recovery and going out which was not ’till thursday the 12th December.

December 12th. Went to Town visited Maj. Clarke (who kindly visited me in my illness and contributed all he cou’d in send’g me the necessary’s required by ye disorder).

Kind of him, surely, after his other little contribution to “ye disorder” in the shape of that first invitation. The only real result of the Washingtons’ trip to Barbados was that our first President was pockmarked for life, for Lawrence got no good out of the trip. George went back to Virginia and Lawrence to Bermuda, where he grew steadily worse, and finally went home to die at Mt. Vernon the following summer bequeathing the estate to his younger brother.

Washington speaks constantly in his journal of the hospitality of Barbados. That characteristic remains to this day, where it is carried to an extreme unknown in England and rarely in the United States. Of all the Lesser Antilles, one leaves Barbados, perhaps, with most regret.