No scenery can be more picturesque than that afforded by the entrance to Port of Spain, the chief town in the island of Trinidad. Trinidad, as all men doubtless know, is the southernmost of the West Indian islands, and lies across the delta of the Orinoco river. The western portion of the island is so placed that it nearly reaches with two horns two different parts of the mainland of Venezuela, one of the South American republics. And thus a bay is formed closed in between the island and the mainland, somewhat as is the Gulf of Mexico by the island of Cuba; only that the proportions here are much less in size. This enclosed sea is called the Gulf of Paria.
The two chief towns, I believe I may say the two only towns in Trinidad are situated in this bay. That which is the larger, and the seat of government, is called the Port of Spain, and lies near to the northern horn. San Fernando, the other, which is surrounded by the finest sugar districts of the island, and which therefore devotes its best energies to the export of that article, is on the other side of the bay and near the other horn.
The passages into the enclosed sea on either side are called the Bocas, or mouths. Those nearest to the delta of the Orinoco are the Serpent's mouths. The ordinary approach from England or the other islands is by the more northern entrance. Here there are three passages, of which the middle is the largest one, the Boca Grande. That between the mainland and a small island is used by the steamers in fine weather, and is by far the prettiest. Through this, the Boca di Mona, or monkey's mouth, we approached Port of Spain. These northern entrances are called the Dragon's mouths. What may be the nautical difference between the mouth of a dragon and that of a serpent I did not learn.
On the mainland, that is the land of the main island, the coast is precipitous, but clothed to the very top with the thickest and most magnificent foliage. With an opera-glass one can distinctly see the trees coming forth from the sides of the rocks as though no soil were necessary for them, and not even a shelf of stone needed for their support And these are not shrubs, but forest trees, with grand spreading branches, huge trunks, and brilliant coloured foliage. The small island on the other side is almost equally wooded, but is less precipitous. Here, however, there are open glades, and grassy enclosures, which tempt one to wish that it was one's lot to lie there in the green shade and eat bananas and mangoes. This little island in the good old days, regretted by not a few, when planters were planters, and slaves were slaves, produced cotton up to its very hill-tops. Now I believe it yields nothing but the grass for a few cattle.
Our steamer as she got well into the boca drew near to the shore of the large island, and as we passed along we had a succession of lovely scenes. Soft-green smiling nooks made themselves visible below the rocks, the very spots for picnics. One could not but long to be there with straw hats and crinoline, pigeon pies and champagne baskets. There was one narrow shady valley, into which a creek of the sea ran up, that must have been made for such purposes, either for that, or for the less noisy joys of some Paul of Trinidad with his Creole Virginia.
As we steamed on a little further we came to a whaling establishment. Ideas of whaling establishments naturally connect themselves with icebergs and the North Pole. But it seems that there are races of whales as there are of men, proper to the tropics as well as to the poles; and some of the former here render up their oily tributes. From the look of the place I should not say that the trade was flourishing. The whaling huts are very picturesque, but do not say much for the commercial enterprise of the proprietors.
From them we went on through many smaller islands to Port of Spain. This is a large town, excellently well laid out, with the streets running all at right angles to each other, as is now so common in new towns. The spaces have been prepared for a much larger population than that now existing, so that it is at present straggling, unfilled, and full of gaps. But the time will come, and that before long, when it will be the best town in the British West Indies. There is at present in Port of Spain a degree of commercial enterprise quite unlike the sleepiness of Jamaica or the apathy of the smaller islands.
I have now before me at the present moment of writing a debate which took place in the House of Commons the other day—it is only the other day as I now write—on a motion made by Mr. Buxton for a committee to inquire into the British West Indies; and though somewhat afraid of being tedious on the subject of immigration to these parts, I will say a few words as to this motion in as far as it affects not only Trinidad, but all those colonies. Of all subjects this is the one that is of real importance to the West Indies; and it may be expected that the sugar colonies will or will not prosper, as that subject is or is not understood by its rulers.
I think I may assume that the intended purport of Mr. Buxton's motion was to throw impediments in the way of the immigration of Coolies into Jamaica; and that in making it he was acting as the parliamentary mouthpiece of the Anti-Slavery Society. The legislature of Jamaica has at length passed a law with the object of promoting this immigration, as it has been promoted at the Mauritius and in a lesser degree in British Guiana and Trinidad; but the Anti-Slavery Society have wished to induce the Crown to use its authority and abstain from sanctioning this law, urging that it will be injurious to the interests of the negro labourers.
The "peculiar institution" of slavery is, I imagine, quite as little likely to find friends in England now as it was when the question of its abolition was so hotly pressed some thirty years since. And God forbid that I should use either the strength or the weakness of my pen in saying a word in favour of a system so abhorrent to the feelings of a Christian Englishman. But may we not say that that giant has been killed? Is it not the case that the Anti-Slavery Society has done its work?—has done its work at any rate as regards the British West Indies? What should we have said of the Anti-Corn-Law League, had it chosen to sit in permanence after the repeal of the obnoxious tax, with the view of regulating the fixed price of bread?
Such is the attempt now being made by the Anti-Slavery Society with reference to the West Indian negroes. If any men are free, these men are so. They have been left without the slightest constraint or bond over them. In the sense in which they are free, no English labourer is free. In England a man cannot select whether he will work or whether he will let it alone. He, the poor Englishman, has that freedom which God seems to have intended as good for man; but work he must. If he do not do so willingly, compulsion is in some sort brought to bear upon him. He is not free to be idle; and I presume that no English philanthropists will go so far as to wish to endow him with that freedom.
But that is the freedom which the negro has in Jamaica, which he still has in many parts of Trinidad, and which the Anti-Slavery Society is so anxious to secure for him. It—but no; I will give the Society no monopoly of such honour. We, we Englishmen, have made our negroes free. If by further efforts we can do anything towards making other black men free—if we can assist in driving slavery from the earth, in God's name let us still be doing. Here may be scope enough for an Anti-Slavery Society. But I maintain that these men are going beyond their mark—that they are minding other than their own business, in attempting to interfere with the labour of the West Indian colonies. Gentlemen in the West Indies see at once that the Society is discussing matters which it has not studied, and that interests of the utmost importance to them are being played with in the dark.
Mr. Buxton grounded his motion on these two pleas:—Firstly, That the distress of the West Indian planters had been brought about by their own apathy and indiscretion. And secondly, That that distress was in course of relief, would quickly be relieved, without any further special measures for its mitigation. I think that he was substantially wrong in both these allegations.
That there were apathetic and indiscreet planters—that there were absentees whose property was not sufficient to entitle them to the luxury of living away from it, may doubtless have been true. But the tremendous distress which came upon these colonies fell on them in too sure a manner, with too sudden a blow, to leave any doubt as to its cause. Slavery was first abolished, and the protective duty on slave-grown sugar was then withdrawn. The second measure brought down almost to nothing the property of the most industrious as well as that of the most idle of the planters. Except in Barbados, where the nature of the soil made labour compulsory, where the negro could no more be idle and exist than the poor man can do in England, it became impossible to produce sugar with a profit on which the grower could live. It was not only the small men who fell, or they who may be supposed to have been hitherto living on an income raised to an unjustly high pitch. Ask the Gladstone family what proceeds have come from their Jamaica property since the protective duty was abolished. Let Lord Howard de Walden say how he has fared.
Mr. Buxton has drawn a parallel between the state of Ireland at and after the famine and that of the West Indies at and after the fall in the price of sugar, of which I can by no means admit the truth. In the one case, that of Ireland, the blow instantly effected the remedy. A tribe of pauper landlords had grown up by slow degrees who, by their poverty, their numbers, their rapacity, and their idleness, had eaten up and laid waste the fairest parts of the country. Then came the potato rot, bringing after it pestilence, famine, and the Encumbered Estates Court; and lo! in three years the air was cleared, the cloud had passed away, and Ireland was again prosperous. Land bought at fifteen pounds the acre was worth thirty before three crops had been taken from it. The absentees to whom Mr. Buxton alludes were comparatively little affected. They were rich men whose backs were broad enough to bear the burden for a while, and they stood their ground. It is not their property which as a rule has changed hands, but that of the small, grasping, profit-rent landlords whose lives had been passed in exacting the last farthing of rent from the cottiers. When no farthing of rent could any longer be exacted, they went to the wall at once.
There was nothing like this in the case of the West Indies. Indiscretion and extravagance there may have been. These are vices which will always be more or less found among men living with the thermometer at eighty in the shade. But in these colonies, long and painful efforts were made, year after year, to bear against the weight which had fallen on them. In the West Indies the blow came from man, and it was withstood on the whole manfully. In Ireland the blow came from God, and submission to it was instantaneous.
Mr. Buxton then argues that everything in the West Indies is already righting itself, and that therefore nothing further need be done. The facts of the case exactly refute this allegation. The four chief of these colonies are Barbados, British Guiana, Trinidad, and Jamaica. In Barbados, as has been explained, there was no distress, and of course no relief has been necessary. In British Guiana and Trinidad very special measures have been taken. Immigration of Coolies to a great extent has been brought about—to so great an extent that the tide of human beings across the two oceans will now run on in an increasing current. But in Jamaica little or nothing has yet been done. And in Jamaica, the fairest, the most extensive, the most attractive of them all; in Jamaica, of all the islands on God's earth the one most favoured by beauty, fertility, and natural gifts; in Jamaica the earth can hardly be made to yield its natural produce.
All this was excellently answered by Sir Edward Lytton, who, whatever may have been his general merits as a Secretary of State, seems at any rate to have understood this matter. He disposed altogether of the absurdly erroneous allegations which had been made as to the mortality of these immigrants on their passage. As is too usual in such cases arguments had been drawn from one or two specially unhealthy trips. Ninety-nine ships ride safe to port, while the hundredth unfortunately comes to grief. But we cannot on that account afford to dispense with the navigation of the seas. Sir Edward showed that the Coolies themselves—for the Anti-Slavery Society is as anxious to prevent this immigration on behalf of the Coolies, who in their own country can hardly earn twopence a day, as it is on the part of the negroes, who could with ease, though they won't, earn two shillings a day—he showed that these Coolies, after having lived for a few years on plenty in these colonies, return to their own country with that which is for them great wealth. And he showed also that the present system—present as regards Trinidad, and proposed as regards Jamaica—of indenturing the immigrant on his first arrival is the only one to which we can safely trust for the good usage of the labourer. For the present this is clearly the case. When the Coolies are as numerous in these islands as the negroes—and that time will come—such rules and restrictions will no doubt be withdrawn. And when these different people have learned to mix their blood—which in time will also come—then mankind will hear no more of a lack of labour, and the fertility of these islands will cease to be their greatest curse.
I feel that I owe an apology to my reader for introducing him to an old, forgotten, and perhaps dull debate. In England the question is one not generally of great interest. But here, in the West Indies, it is vital. The negro will never work unless compelled to do so; that is, the negro who can boast of pure unmixed African blood. He is as strong as a bull, hardy as a mule, docile as a dog when conscious of a master—a salamander as regards heat. He can work without pain and without annoyance. But he will never work as long as he can eat and sleep without it. Place the Coolie or Chinaman alongside of him, and he must work in his own defence. If he do not, he will gradually cease to have an existence.
We are now speaking more especially of Trinidad. It is a large island, great portions of which are but very imperfectly known; of which but comparatively a very small part has been cultivated. During the last eight or ten years, ten or twelve thousand immigrants, chiefly Coolies from Madras and Calcutta, have been brought into Trinidad, forming now above an eighth part of its entire population; and the consequence has been that in two years, from 1855, namely, to 1857, its imports were increased by one-third, and its exports by two-thirds! In other words, it produced, with its Coolies, three hogsheads of sugar, where without them it only produced one. The difference is of course that between absolute distress and absolute prosperity. Such having hitherto been the result of immigration into Trinidad, such also having been the result in British Guiana, it does appear singular that men should congregate in Exeter Hall with the view of preventing similar immigration into Jamaica!
This would be altogether unintelligible were it not that similar causes have produced similar effects in so many other cases. Men cannot have enough of a good thing.
Exactly the same process has taken place with reference to criminals in England. Some few years since we ill used them, stowed them away in unwholesome holes, gave them bad food for their bodies and none for their minds, and did our best to send them devilwards rather than Godwards. Philanthropists have now remedied this, and we are very much obliged to them. But the philanthropists will not be content unless they be allowed to pack all their criminals up in lavender. They must be treated not only as men, but much better than men of their own class who are not criminal.
In this matter of the negroes, the good thing is negro-protection, and our friends cannot have enough of that. The negroes in being slaves were ill used; and now it is not enough that they should all be made free, but each should be put upon his own soft couch, with rose-leaves on which to lie. Now your Sybarite negro, when closely looked at, is not a pleasing object. Distance may doubtless lend enchantment to the view.
As my sojourn in Trinidad did not amount to two entire days, I do not feel myself qualified to give a detailed description of the whole island. Very few, I imagine, are so qualified, for much of it is unknown; there is a great want of roads, and a large proportion of it has, I believe, never been properly surveyed.
Immediately round Port of Spain the country is magnificent, and the views from the town itself are very lovely. Exactly behind the town, presuming the sea to be the front, is the Savanah, a large enclosed, park-like piece of common, the race-course and Hyde Park of Trinidad. I was told that the drive round it was three English miles in length; but if it be so much, the little pony which took me that drive in a hired buggy must have been a fast trotter.
On the further side of this lives the Governor of the island, immediately under the hills. When I was there the Governor's real house was being repaired, and the great man was living in a cottage hard by. Were I that great man I should be tempted to wish that my great house might always be under repair, for I never saw a more perfect specimen of a pretty spacious cottage, opening as a cottage should do on all sides and in every direction, with a great complexity as to doors and windows, and a delicious facility of losing one's way. And then the necessary freedom from boredom, etiquette, and Governor's grandeur, so hated by Governors themselves, which must necessarily be brought about by such a residence! I could almost wish to be a Governor myself, if I might be allowed to live in such a cottage.
On the other side of the Savanah nearest to the town, and directly opposite to those lovely hills, are a lot of villa residences, and it would be impossible, I imagine, to find a more lovely site in which to fix one's house. With the Savanah for a foreground, the rising gardens behind the Governor's house in the middle distance, and a panorama of magnificent hills in the back of the picture, it is hardly within the compass of a man's eye and imagination to add anything to the scene. I had promised to call on Major ——, who was then, and perhaps is still, in command of the detachment of white troops in Trinidad, and I found him and his young wife living in this spot.
"And yet you abuse Trinidad," I said, pointing to the view.
"Oh! people can't live altogether upon views," she answered; "and besides, we have to go back to the barracks. The yellow fever is over now."
The only place at which I came across any vestiges of the yellow fever was at Trinidad. There it had been making dreadful havoc, and chiefly among the white soldiers. My visit was in March, and the virulence of the disease was then just over. It had been raging, therefore, not in the summer but during the winter months. Indeed, as far as I could learn, summer and winter had very little to do with the matter. The yellow fever pays its visit in some sort periodically, though its periods are by no means understood. But it pays them at any time of the year that may suit itself.
At this time a part of the Savanah was covered with tents, to which the soldiers had been moved out of their barracks. The barracks are lower down, near the shore, at a place called St. James, and the locality is said to be wretchedly unhealthy. At any rate, the men were stricken with fever there, and the proportion of them that died was very great. I believe, indeed, that hardly any recovered of those on whom the fever fell with any violence. They were then removed into these tents, and matters began to mend. They were now about to return to their barracks, and were, I was told, as unwilling to do so as my fair friend was to leave her pretty house.
If it be necessary to send white troops to the West Indies—and I take it for granted that it is necessary—care at any rate should be taken to select for their barracks sites as healthy as may be found. It certainly seems that this has not been done at Trinidad. They are placed very low, and with hills immediately around them. The good effect produced by removing them to the Savanah—a very inconsiderable distance; not, as I think, much exceeding a mile—proves what may be done by choosing a healthy situation. But why should not the men be taken up to the mountains, as has been done with the white soldiers in Jamaica? There they are placed in barracks some three or four thousand feet above the sea, and are perfectly healthy. This cannot be done in Barbados, for there are no mountains to which to take them. But in Trinidad it may be done, quite as easily, and indeed at a lesser distance, and therefore with less cost for conveyance, than in Jamaica.
At the first glance one would be inclined to say that white troops would not be necessary in the West Indies, as we have regiments of black soldiers, negroes dressed in Zouave costume, specially trained for the service; but it seems that there is great difficulty in getting these regiments filled. Why should a negro enlist any more than work? Are there not white men enough—men and brothers—to do the somewhat disagreeable work of soldiering for him? Consequently, except in Barbados, it is difficult to get recruits. Some men have been procured from the coast of Africa, but our philanthropy is interfering even with this supply. Then the recruiting officers enlisted Coolies, and these men made excellent soldiers; but when interfered with or punished, they had a nasty habit of committing suicide, a habit which it was quite possible the negro soldier might himself assume; and therefore no more Coolies are to be enlisted.
Under such circumstances white men must, I presume, do the work. A shilling a day is an object to them, and they are slow to blow out their own brains; but they should not be barracked in swamps, or made to live in an air more pestilential than necessary.
My hostess, the lady to whom I have alluded, had been attacked most virulently by the yellow fever, and I had heard in the other islands that she was dead. Her case had indeed been given up as hopeless.
On the morning after my arrival I took a ride of some sixteen miles through the country before breakfast, and the same lady accompanied me. "We must start very early," she said; "so as to avoid the heat. I will have coffee at half-past four, and we will be on horseback at five."
I have had something to say as to early hours in the West Indies before, and hardly credited this. A morning start at five usually means half-past seven, and six o'clock is a generic term for moving before nine. So I meekly asked whether half-past four meant half-past four. "No," said the husband. "Yes," said the wife. So I went away declaring that I would present myself at the house at any rate not after five.
And so I did, according to my own very excellent watch, which had been set the day before by the ship's chronometer. I rode up to the door two minutes before five, perfectly certain that I should have the pleasure of watching the sun's early man?uvres for at least an hour. But, alas! my friend had been waiting for me in her riding-habit for more than that time. Our watches were frightfully at variance. It was perfectly clear to me that the Trinidadians do not take the sun for their guide as to time. But in such a plight as was then mine, a man cannot go into his evidence and his justification. My only plea was for mercy; and I hereby take it on myself to say that I do not know that I ever kept any lady waiting before—except my wife.
At five to the moment—by my watch—we started, and I certainly never rode for three hours through more lovely scenery. At first, also, it was deliciously cool, and as our road lay entirely through woods, it was in every way delightful. We went back into the hills, and returned again towards the sea-shore over a break in one of the spurs of the mountain called the Saddle; from whence we had a distant view into the island, as fine as any view I ever saw without the adjunct of water.
I should imagine that a tour through the whole of Trinidad would richly repay the trouble, though, indeed, it would be troublesome. The tourist must take his own provisions, unless, indeed, he provided himself by means of his gun, and must take also his bed. The musquitoes, too, are very vexatious in Trinidad, though I hardly think that they come up in venom to their brethren in British Guiana.
The first portion of our ride was delightful; but on our return we came down upon a hot, dusty road, and then the loss of that hour in the morning was deeply felt. I think that up to that time I had never encountered such heat, and certainly had never met with a more disagreeable, troublesome amount of dust, all which would have been avoided had I inquired over-night into the circumstances of the Trinidad watches. But the lady said never a word, and so heaped coals of fire on my head in addition to the consuming flames of that ever-to-be-remembered sun.
As Trinidad is an English colony, one's first idea is that the people speak English; and one's second idea, when that other one as to the English has fallen to the ground, is that they should speak Spanish, seeing that the name of the place is Spanish. But the fact is that they all speak French; and, out of the town, but few of the natives speak anything else. Whether a Parisian would admit this may be doubted; but he would have to acknowledge that it was a French patois.
And the religion is Roman Catholic. The island of course did belong to France, and in manners, habits, language, and religion is still French. There is a Roman Catholic archbishop resident in Trinidad, who is, I believe, at present an Italian. We pay him, I have been told, some salary, which he declines to take for his own use, but applies to purposes of charity. There is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Port of Spain, and a very ugly building it is.
The form of government also is different from that, or rather those, which have been adopted in the other West Indian colonies, such as Jamaica, Barbados, and British Guiana. As this was a conquered colony, the people of the island are not allowed to have so potent a voice in their own management. They have no House of Commons or Legislative Assembly, but take such rules or laws as may be necessary for their guidance direct from the Crown. The Governor, however, is assisted by a council, in which sit the chief executive officers in the island. That the fact of the colony having been conquered need preclude it from the benefit (?) of self-government, one does not clearly see. But one does see clearly enough, that as they are French in language and habits, and Roman Catholic in religion, they would make even a worse hash of it than the Jamaicans do in Jamaica.
And it is devoutly to be hoped, for the island's sake, that it may be long before it is endowed with a constitution. It would be impossible now-a-days to commence a legislature in the system of electing which all but white men should be excluded from voting. Nor would there be white men enough to carry on an election. And may Providence defend my friends there from such an assembly as would be returned by French negroes and hybrid mulattoes!
A scientific survey has just been completed of this island, with reference to its mineral productions, and the result has been to show that it contains a very large quantity of coal. I was fortunate enough to meet one of the gentlemen by whom this was done, and he was kind enough to put into my hand a paper showing the exact result of their investigation. But, unfortunately, the paper was so learned, and I was so ignorant, that I could not understand one word of it. The whole matter also was explained to me verbally, but not in language adapted to my child-like simplicity. So I am not able to say whether the coal be good or bad—whether it would make a nice, hot, crackling, Christmas fire, or fly away in slaty flakes and dirty dust. It is a pity that science cannot be made to recognize the depth of unscientific ignorance.
There is also here in Trinidad a great pitch lake, of which all the world has heard, and out of which that indefatigable old hero, Lord Dundonald, tried hard to make wax candles and oil for burning. The oil and candles, indeed, he did make, but not, I fear, the money which should have been consequent upon their fabrication. I have no doubt, however, that in time we shall all have our wax candles from thence; for Lord Dundonald is one of those men who are born to do great deeds of which others shall reap the advantages. One of these days his name will be duly honoured, for his conquests as well as for his candles.
And so I speedily took my departure, and threaded my way back again through the Bocas, in that most horrid of all steam-vessels, the 'Prince.'