Produced by David Widger from page images generously provided by the Internet Archive WHERE THE TWAIN MEET By Mary Gaunt Author of âAlone in West Africa,â âA Woman in China,â âA Broken Journey,â âThe Uncounted Cost,â etc. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, W. 1 1922 [Illustration: 0001] [Illustration: 0002] [Illustration: 0009] [Illustration: 0010] TO MY FRIEND MRS LANG I gratefully dedicate this book. My Dear Elsie, I wonder if you remember as vividly as I do the very drastic criticism of a book of mine that first introduced us to each other. My publisher showed it to me with some hesitation because it was so scathing, but it went right to the point. Most of the book was scrapped there and then, and my literary education was begun under your care. It was you indeed who taught me that I needed educating in my art. That is twelve years ago, and I have never since let a book go into the world till it has received your approval. I am afraid I have sometimes tried you severely, but it has always been my ambition to be your prize pupil. I owe more than I can say to my sympathetic teacher. It is a small thing to offer my latest book to you, but I hope you will accept it with my love and warmest thanks. Affectionately yours, MARY GAUNT. Sainte Agnes, France. 8th September 1921. PREFACE Spain first set foot in the Western World, and if the discovery brought great wealth it brought also much individual suffering and bitter hardship. In Jamaica, she found no people living in barbaric splendour, no stores of gold and silver and precious stones, only a lovely land, fruitful and fertile, valuable only to her because she did not dare let another nation settle so close to the rich possessions of which she was mistress. But the other nations of Europe were naturally anxious to share in the rich spoil of the West, and if Britain took Jamaica and held her, it was only I think because she could not take Cuba and Hispaniola. The Spaniards fought for every inch of the island before they lost it, and now for remembrance of them there remains but a few place names and legends of the treasure they left stored there. If colonisation was difficult for the Spaniards it was still more difficult for the British, coming from the cold North. No one was eager to brave the dangers of the tropics, and like the king in the parable, desiring to fill his tables for the feast, Government sought in the highways and byways for a population, and they imported white bondsmen and women, virtually a slave population, the first shadow that was to impede the progress of the land. Labour was branded. The men worked--and died--in the fields, and the women became the mistresses of the young planters, so that marriage went out of fashion, and the free women were neglected and forlorn. And when they ceased to send the white bondsmen, they sought a substitute in the black man from Africa. The man who comes out to a new land is apt always to see the land he leaves behind through a softening veil that enhances its desirability. He sees only its good points. And naturally this emphasises the drawbacks of the new land. He speaks disparagingly of it, he writes home disparagingly, dwelling on his many hardships. Jamaica was no exception to the almost universal rule. Most men went there to make their fortunes, with every intention of returning to spend them. Only Hans Sloane, a wise and far-seeing man, saw the glory of the land, and left behind him a record of its wealth and its beauty and fertility. Lady Nugent, writing more than one hundred years later, was much more swayed by public opinion, and saw what she was told she would see, a deadly climate where men died like flies, though even she does arrive at the poignant fact that the women who lived with less licence, bore this climate far better than their mates. From her pen, too, we first have some pity for the unfortunates the British imported from the Guinea Coast to work in their plantations. Terrible are the stories told of the sufferings of this alien people from the moment they fell into the hands of the slavers till they stood in the slave markets at Kingston or Montego Bay, told calmly, told coldly, told simply as facts by men who saw only the difficulties of the trade, and of dealing with men and women who âwilfullyâ drowned themselves to escape their fate. On arrival, the stronger like cattle were sold in the open market, but only here and there do we get awful glimpses of the fate that befell the weaker. Life was no bed of roses for the planter and his white assistants, working to provide funds to be spent in the old country, but it was simply a hell at first for the savages they worked. On the plantations no white woman was welcome. As the masters had taken the white bondswoman for their temporary companions, so now they took the black while they were young and comely. At first it was savages and white masters, and the little coloured children who were but their fathers' chattels. So slowly the people progressed, we hardly realise there was any progress, till we see the men and women of dark complexion clothed and ardent church members, even though they are slaves, and we remember how short a while before they started here as naked savages. Two generations were worlds apart. Cruel rebellion there was, crueller retaliation, but still white and black advanced to better things in the land that was becoming the loved home. The years rolled on. First the trade was forbidden, then the slave was freed, then the black man was given equal rights with the white, and now---- Now there are still difficulties, difficulties born of ignorance, of poverty, but so there are in the upward march of every people under the sun. Sometimes they make great strides onwards, sometimes they seem to pause and fall back, but really always the march is upwards, though we can only see the progress by looking back. An enchanting tale, a tale of rare adventure and romance is the past of Jamaica, and before her lies a glorious future, for the Empire is slowly awakening to the value of the tropical possessions that are within the borders, and this fruitful island of wood and mountain and water, set in a summer sea, must surely play a great part in the future development of one of the great nations of the earth. WHERE THE TWAIN MEET CHAPTER I--BRITAIN'S FIRST TROPICAL COLONY When first I took passage to Jamaica it seemed as if purest chance were sending me there. But I begin to believe there is no such thing as chance, for when I remembered that Jamaica was an old slave colony I realised that this last coincidence was but the culmination of a curious series that have guided my steps through long years. No one in my youth that I ever heard of wanted to go to West Africa, and yet from the time I was twelve years old I had an intense desire to go there, without the faintest hope of its being gratified. As a young girl I came home to England and stayed with friends in Liverpool, shipowners, whose people had been African traders for hundreds of years, and African traders one hundred and twenty years ago certainly meant slave traders, for the slave trade was a âvery genteel trade.â I pored over the models of the factories they had on the West Coast of Africa, and the pictures of their ships in the Oil Rivers, and voiced my great desire to go there, a desire that amused them very much, for they who could have gone any day would not have dreamt of taking the trouble. They had estates in Jamaica too, had had them for many years, and I found on a shelf an old slave account book from that island which meant so little to them that they jotted down on the blank pages the number of eggs their hens laid. How I wished I could see the place whither those slaves from Africa had gone, but Africa and Jamaica were far away in those days. I went back to Australia, married and settled down, and then being widowed came to England again to make my way in the literary world, and the first spare money I had, it was Â£225, I remember, I realised my childish dreams and took passage for the West Coast of Africa. I was so interested, found it so well worth while, that I went again to the land to which no man wanted to go, the land that was known as the âWhite Man's Grave.â Why I should have taken so keen an interest in the land where the slave trade was born, why I should later have gone to a slave colony, I cannot imagine, but I did, and the result has been a curious light on past and present, a linking up of those old days with the future that lies ahead of Jamaica. Perhaps in a former life I too was a slave, or perhaps I was one of those careless folk who lived in one of the death-traps they called Castles on the Guinea Coast, and something in me made me wish to see them again, and having seen them, something certainly stronger than myself made me finish with Jamaica, the lovely island where Britain though she does not seem to know it, is experimenting in negro rule. Yes, surely, some haunting memory of a past life has shaped my career. And this is how it came about. I was ill and had to go to a warm climate, and as the War had disturbed shipping I could get passage nowhere except to Jamaica. And safe on board the _Camito_, steaming down the Welsh Coast with the tang of the salt sea breeze in my nostrils, it flashed across me that here at last when I least expected it had come my great chance. Into my hands had been put the opportunity, if I could but use it, to complete a half-finished task. I was indeed going to find out the end of the story that had thrilled my childish years, for this island set in a tropical sea is indissolubly bound up with the Castles on the Guinea Coast. From the swamps at the mouths of the Niger and the Gambia, from the surf-beaten Gold and Ivory and Slave Coasts had come the lumbering little square ships that took to the New World the dark people of the Old, hundreds and thousands of them, and in Jamaica there had grown up under the British Crown a people apart. Call it coincidence if you like, but to me it will always seem that a Greater Power guided my unwilling feet into the ways that brought me in touch with the things I most wanted to know. And sailing west on that comfortable ship, where ice, beef-tea, fruit, cakes, or any other desired luxury came at a word to the steward, where a question to the captain or one of the officers discovered for me in exactly what part of the world we were, it was impossible not to think of the first man who had dared those seas. The Genoese navigator had come sailing west under the Spanish flag, and he had come slowly, slowly, where we steamed fast. They were only just beginning to believe the world was round in those days, and doubtless many of the sailors shipped for the voyage were ignorant men, not knowing whither they were bound. And their leader felt his way dubiously where we were quite certain of our going. On and on they went into the unknown. How unknown we can hardly conceive nowadays, any more than we can conceive of the dangers they faced. Think of it. There were fish which could swallow a ship, crew and all, there was the âFlying Dutchman,â portent of death, there were mermaids and syrens to lure them to destruction, there were enchantments of all sorts, in addition to the ordinary perils of the sea, and then of course--supposing the world wasn't round! Suppose they arrived at the place where the water gathered itself together and poured in one mighty waterfall right off the earth into space and nothingness! I am sure as the days went on the crews must have discussed the matter, have talked among themselves of the terrible dangers they were facing, have gone every night and morning to pray before the Virgin and Child on the poop, and at last they came to declare how worse than foolish was Columbus not to turn back when day after day showed still only a blue waste of waters. And if they had gone over that tremendous waterfall I am sure there would have been those among the crew who would have declared at the supreme moment that they knew it would be so, they had always known it would be so. Had Pedro not met a pig on the way to the ship, had the black cat not died before they reached Madeira, and surely the Admiral should have turned back when the wind shifted so that he saw the new moon for the first time through the glass of the cabin port! But at last--what a long last it must have seemed to those first voyagers who had dared to leave the coasts--they saw sea-weed and land birds, and at last, at last--not the terrible waterfall they had feared but land, land, land such as they had left behind them. What a moment it must have been for the great mariner! We passed that land, that island. There must linger round it still, I think, some of the wild delight that filled the hearts of the explorers, for still men point it out, âThe first land Columbus saw!â We came into sight of Jamaica in the late afternoon and sailed along the south coast as the shadows were falling. A well-wooded country we saw, as its first discoverer must have seen more than four hundred years before, a land of steep mountains and deep valleys, with here and there patches of vivid green that, those who knew, told us were the sugar plantations that were the gold mines of Jamaica in the sugar boom. And the mists rose up from the valleys, and the shadows grew deeper and the day died in a glory of red and gold, a sight so common that no one takes note of it; and the night with a sky of velvet, embroidered with diamonds, crystal clear, came sweeping down upon us--a cloak of darkness--as we steamed into Kingston Harbour. Columbus did not land in Jamaica on his first voyage, but he undoubtedly saw it, as we saw it, many and many a time. The memory of him was with me still as we landed. What to me were the comforts of the Myrtle Bank Hotel set right in Kingston, or of the Constant Spring out at the foot of the mountains? No, that is ungrateful. As an old traveller, no one can appreciate better than I the comforts of a good hotel. But as I dreamt on a comfortable steamer, so I dreamt more vividly of the past on the verandah of the Myrtle Bank, looking down the palm avenue to the sea. The night air was heavy with spicy scents, and the fireflies wheeled and danced, living lights in the dark shadows under the greenery, all the voluptuousness of the tropics was here in this land of romance which Columbus found for Spain, and that later was the first great tropical possession of Britain. But Jamaica has been an unlucky land, and I doubt whether Britain has yet realised its value. It might be called the land of lost opportunities, so often have those who governed it let its good things pass by. I doubt whether Spain herself got any great good from this new possession; certainly Columbus found small peace here. With âhis people dismayed and downhearted, almost all his anchors lost and his vessels bored as full of holes as a honeycomb, driven by opposing winds and currents, he put into Puerto Bueno, in the parish of Saint Ann's. But not finding sufficient food or waterâ (probably water, as it is now known as Dry Harbour), âhe sailed east again and put into a cove since known as Don Cristopher's Cove.â His ships were mere wrecks, those brave âcastledâ ships that had sailed from Spain with such high hopes, and it was very certain that whatever might happen to them, back to Spain they could not go. It was a terrible situation, an awful strait in which those brave mariners found themselves over four hundred years ago. âYou must see the parish of St Ann,â said a Jamaican lady to me; âit is all green grass and white Indian cattle, and dark green pimento trees.â In those days there was probably not much green grass, natural grasses grow roughly and in tufts, and there were no Indian cattle; but the dark green pimento trees were there, their fragrance and that of many a tropical flower and tree must have been brought by the land breeze to the sailors in the ships. For Columbus sank his unseaworthy, worm-riddled ships in the harbour, sank them till the water came right up to their decks, a sign of the desperateness of his position, for no leader if he had any hope of redeeming the situation would have sunk the only means he had of returning to his own land. [Illustration: 0026] In a Cove like this Columbus beached his ship a bow-shot of the shore. I don't know how far that is, but certainly too far to swim easily in a tropical sea, they were sunk side by side and were placed in the âbest possible state of defence,â which probably means that every cooling current of air, the pleasant pungent sea breeze in the morning, and the aromatic land breeze in the evening were shut out. It must have had its effect upon the crews this lack of fresh air, though probably they were not greatly concerned about it. They very likely considered as men did long after their time that the land breeze was dangerous and that the sea breeze gave them ague, and I expect they looked out over the shimmering sea and hated it with a bitter hatred and blamed pitilessly the man who brought them there. And yet in all the world I have not seen a more lovely sea than the sea that rings Jamaica. Sometimes the wind blows it into ripples, sometimes a stronger wind beats it into white foam, the clouds gather, it grows dark, inky black, and the rain comes beating down, rain that must have swirled across the decks and threatened to swamp out the little ships--their prison. But oftenest, I know, that sea was still, lovely, with the shallows like great jewelled opals of tenderest translucent green in a setting of sparkling sapphires and pearls, and entrancing little coves fringed by mangroves where the coconut palms stand up tall and stately as near the water as they can get, and all this against a background of mountains wooded to their very peaks, makes a scene never to be forgotten. There were no coconut palms in the time of Columbus. They came from the mainland, a right royal gift of the Spaniards to the island they made their own, but there were the sea grapes, great straggling bushes with big round leaves and bunches of purple berries so like grapes that it is not till you taste them you find by their slightly acrid savour and the big stone in the middle that they are not. Still, to men after a voyage at the beginning of the sixteenth century, in the days of our King Henry VII., those sea grapes must have been a godsend, they and the luscious naseberries, which are sweet and sickly, but good to counteract scurvy. I can't like the naseberry. The tree it grows on is large and handsome, but the fruit itself, which is about the size of a russet apple, cannot be eaten ripe from the tree because it is full of a whitish astringent juice, but must be kept like the medlar till it is well on its way to rottenness and then it may be eaten with a spoon. Probably Columbus's men ate hundreds of them, grumbling that they had come out to find gold and silver, and their leader had brought them to a watery prison where they had to subsist on fish which they grew to loathe, cassava bread and naseberries, occasionally traded by the Indians, sea grapes gathered by themselves--poor substitutes for the wheaten bread and peaches and grapes of their own land. Day after day, day after day, they looked out on that sea where there was never a sail. They were apparently cut off from all hopes of home, and their leader lay in his cabin crippled with gout. And then the despised food began to give out. In his despair Columbus sent out the first exploring expedition into Jamaica. Diego Mendez, one of the best and bravest of his officers, and three men, started to walk through Trelawny, St James, and Hanover, visiting the villages and interviewing the native chiefs and making treaties with them by which the forlorn company were to receive regular supplies of food in exchange for fish hooks, knives, beads, combs, and such trifles as all the world over have taken the fancy of primitive man. I have been through these parishes--in a motor car. There are coconut walks there now, the tall and graceful palms standing out against the sky, sugar plantations, patches of vivid green, pimento groves with trees like great myrtles clothed in glossy dark green, and rows of broad-leaved bananas and plantains, and the air is fragrant with the scent of orange and lemon blossom and hundreds of other growing things. On the hill tops are the Great Houses of the pen keepers and planters set in gardens, with the overseers' and book-keepers' houses lower down, and as near the road as they can get, the shacks of the negro helpers and independent cultivators. Strangely enough, in a little island that has been settled by Europeans for over four hundred years, the roads that wander along the entrancing sea shore and by the mountain side often look into gullies, at the bottom of which it seems as if we might find the villages where Diego Mendez made treaties. I should hardly have been surprised if in one of the little lonely coves we had come across the sunken ships of Columbus fastened close together for safety and with little houses thatched over in bow and stern. There are wild places still in this island which, after all, is only 4207 square miles--of hillside--not much larger than a good sized station in Australia, and gullies waiting for man to come and turn to good account their wealth. Here is room, and more than room, for the dwellers in the great cities who have never seen a glorious sunset and know not the scent of a pimento grove. That meant for Columbus a weary time of waiting among dissatisfied men, for what adventurer, who had come out seeking gold and silver and precious stones, would be content to lie sweltering--rotting, I expect they called it--even in the most beautiful cove in the world. Presently the story went round that Columbus had been banished, his prestige was gone, and two brothers named Porras rose as leaders of the mutineers. Even the life of the veteran was in danger. As I write this on my verandah, looking out over the blue Caribbean, with a little pauperised tingting bird sitting on the rail calling aloud that I have always provided his breakfast and that even little slim black birds with bright yellow eyes can be led astray by too much ease and comfort, I seem to realise with what bitterness the iron entered into the soul of the old man. There was no actual danger, they had enough to eat, and could sleep, sheltered and in peace, and sooner or later he thought help would come. Patience, he preached, patience. But the mutineers would have their way. They built or stole ten canoes and went out along the coast, ravaging and pillaging. The first of the pirates who ravaged the coasts of Jamaica and their victims, were not the white people but the gentle brown folk whom Columbus had designed to make peacefully their slaves. âThey wandered from village to village,â says his chronicler, âa dissolute and lawless gang, supporting themselves by fair means or foul, according as they met with kindness or hostility, and passing like a pestilence through the land.â I can almost understand it and forgive. Almost anything was better than sitting still watching the sun climb over the mountain in the morning and sink into the sea in the evening, waiting, waiting, waiting, for the relief that was so long in coming. For Mendez having got to Hispaniola had then to make his way to Spain, and it was not till the 28th June 1504 that relief ships came sailing in and Columbus was able to leave Jamaica. He died in 1506, and by way of recompense, I suppose, in 1508 his son Diego was appointed Governor of the Indies, and in 1509 went out to San Domingo, taking with him his wife, who was a cousin of King Ferdinand. In _Jamaica under the Spaniards_, a translation by Frank Cundall and Joseph Pieterez of documents found in the archives of Seville in Spain, the curious may read the slow story of the Spanish settling of Jamaica and its gradual evacuation. They did not come in with a rush, for there was no fabulous wealth of gold and silver here. Again and again the Spanish King urges the Governors to seek for gold, but though doubtless, they sought diligently, for the finding would have been the making of them, they found none, and we cannot but feel that the Spanish colonists were poor and of but little account. If you read Hans Sloane on the remains he found round about the old city of Seville, your sense of romance is satisfied, but the cold facts taken from the archives of Seville in Spain speak of a little handful of poor people struggling with an exuberant nature. Here, as I write, there comes to me the smell of very poor tobacco, only fragrant in the open air, and looking up I see a negro woman in leisurely fashion digging up the weeds among the grass of what will, some day I hope, be a lawn under the coconut palms. How leisurely is that fashion I can hardly describe, save by mentioning she only gets 3s. 6d. a week, boards and lodges herself and works accordingly. She has bare feet, a nondescript, drab-coloured garment that calls itself a dress, and a ragged hat made out of a banana trash and bound with a string of bright red. She is of African descent, but not unlike her probably were the Indians who worked in the fields for those first Jamaican colonists. Yes, she is content, fairly content I should say, almost too content, or she would strive a little to better herself. I should like to have seen the beginnings of the Spanish occupation of Jamaica. How they slowly set up their _hatos_ round the island, choosing out the fertile river bottoms and fencing in their lands lightly, so lightly that soon the lonely parts of the island were overrun with wild cattle and pigs descended from those that escaped. They planted coconut palms and brought over oranges and lemons and limes from their native land which took root and flourished, so that Hans Sloane, writing thirty years after the Spaniards had been driven out, talks of the orange and lime walks, and nowadays if you want orange trees on your land you have only to throw out one or two rotten oranges to have a crop of young seedlings. âThe buildings of the Spaniards,â says Hans Sloane, âon this island were usually one Story high, having a Porch, a Parlour, and at each end a Room with small ones behind for Closets etc. They built with Posts put deep into the ground, on the sides their Houses were plaistered up with Clay on Reeds, or made of the split Truncs of Cabbage Trees nail'd close to one another and covered with Tiles or Palmetto Thatch. The Lowness as well as the fixing the Posts deep in the Earth was for fear their Houses should be ruin'd by Earthquakes, as well as for Coolness.â Immediately they settled, the Spaniards rounded-up the luckless Indians. Their lot was hard enough, though possibly not as hard as that of those driven to work in the mines, and as labourers on the _hatos_ they soon began to fail their masters. Perhaps that is not to be wondered at. Las Casas, the benevolent bishop, who is responsible for the first introduction of negro slaves into the New World says, âthey hanged the unfortunates by thirteens in honour of the thirteen apostles. I have beheld them throw the Indian infants to their dogs; I have seen five caciques burnt alive; I have heard the Spaniards borrow the limb of an human being to feed their dogs and next day return a quarter to the lender.â It seems a gruesome enough story, and where the mercy came in from Las Casas' point of view in substituting negroes for the Indians I do not know, especially as they say the negroes were infinitely inferior to the Indians, and as long as the Spaniards could get the latter they preferred them. But that the Spaniards destroyed all the Indians there is no doubt. They were a mild and indolent brown people, very like those now to be seen in British Guiana, but historians differ as to their numbers: one man says that âin Jamaica and the adjacent islands within less than twenty years the Spaniards destroyed more than 1,200,000,â but later researches have brought the figure in Jamaica down to about 60,000, a much more likely number, and after all quite enough to destroy in twenty years. They lived, these Spanish conquerors, on the island for over one hundred and fifty years, a poor little company, or so I gather, but rich in the fruits of the earth. And the people at home took a fatherly interest in them. If an emigrant left his wife at home, he had to have her written consent to his going and give security that he would return for her within three years. And this security was evidently very necessary, for among the archives at Seville there is a note touching a lady of Ciudad Rodrigo complaining to the Queen in 1538 that her husband had deserted her twenty-five years before to go to the Indies and had married another lady in Jamaica, where he was settled. But though the Queen ordered that the matter should be looked into and justice done, there is no end to the story. Though we talk about the Spanish towns in Jamaica, they were really very small. In July 1534 there were but eighty citizens in the town of Seville, and of these soon after only twenty remained, the others having died of âdiseases and pestilencesâ! And we are told that in twenty years they had not reared ten infants, a pitiful return. In the first record we get of Spanish Town, it had only one hundred inhabitants. In 1597 a Governor named Fernando Melgarejo de Cordova came out for six years. He brought with him by permission four servants, jewels to the value of 200 ducats (roughly worth Â£40), a black slave, four swords, four daggers, and four of each kind of other arms, and his salary was 300,000 maravedis, which sounds a great deal, but as a maravedi was equal to half a farthing he only had Â£156 a year, surely a small sum even for those times when money was worth so much more, and Jamaica, too, as his advisers were never tired of impressing on the King of Spain, was a valuable colony, and if it fell into the hands of the King's enemies none of the other colonies would be safe. When Melgarejo arrived, he found the Englishman Sir Anthony Shirley had sacked and held to ransom the Villa de la Vega, the city of the plains, the capital, guided thereto by a native Indian, and proud as we are of our old-time mariners, still the times were rough and merciless, their ways matched the times, and we may pity the people who waked up that hot August morning in 1597 to find that their hereditary enemies the English were upon them. Sir Anthony Shirley claimed that while he was in Jamaica he was âabsolute master of the whole,â and he seems to have made arrangements for his return with the comfortable conviction that he could certainly provision his ships with beef and cassava, to say nothing of the cooling fruits which by this time were plentiful and must have been of inestimable value to these wanderers upon the seas. Sir Anthony Shirley was only one of many. For these corsairs who soon came to Jamaica regularly were drawn from all the nations of Europe and âthey rob and they trade,â wrote the worried Governor. And when they didn't trade and they didn't rob they helped themselves not only to wood and water but to beef and pork, that was running wild it is true, but naturally the Spaniards considered it theirs, and then sometimes, when they had raided a little too often, the tables were turned and they left their bones there. Don Fernando goes at length into his prowess in going out in a boat to defend a frigate--a frigate was a very small ship in those days--that two English launches had boarded and he says he retook that frigate and made them retire. More, he sent Captain Sebastian Gonzalez--there is a swagger in his name--with troops by land to Port Negrillo, there âto wait till the Captain of the English corsair should go to obtain water and capture him; and they lay in wait for him and killed those who landed and brought back their ears, broke the jars to pieces and burnt the boat.â And so the story of Jamaica goes on in the Seville archives, a tale of a small people with stocks of horses and cattle and pigs, a tale of struggles to build churches, and to hold the island, because though no gold or silver had been found, it was yet too central to allow any other nation to settle there. But it rose in value, for the next Governor, Alonzo de Miranda, had his salary increased to close on Â£400 a year. He was much worried by a Portuguese corsair named Mota, who âwith two launches and a tender was going along the whole coast sacking and plundering the ranches and seizing the inhabitants and doing many other injuries, to remedy which I was obliged to assemble a fleet by sea, and go myself by land with soldiers to defeat the design of the enemies and they went away from the coast. With all that, I have had information that in the remote cattle hunting places they land, and with some of the cow catchers who have run away from Espanola, whom they bring, they dress hides and supply themselves with meat.â This, he goes on to say, âcannot be remedied without much cost and expense.â When first I went to Jamaica, a friend, Mr Clarence Lopez, with kindness I can never forget, lent me a house in the northern part of the island in the parish of Trelawny. It was the Great House on the Hyde, a pen about eight miles as the crow flies from the sea. Jamaica is 144 miles long at the longest portion and 49 miles broad at the broadest, it is little more than half the size of Wales, but when I went to that house set on the side of a mountain with a glorious view of hill and valley, coco-palm and banana, I went to the very loneliest place I have ever lived in in my life, and I have been in many lands. It is one of the loveliest too. Behind are the mountains, clothed to their peaks in woodland, bound together with all manner of creeping vines and the mountains fling their arms round, so that they seem to guard the old house from the winds of the south, and all in the ground grow pimento and orange and lemon trees, handsome, broad-leaved bread-fruit and tall naseberry trees, while the little garden on a plateau just behind the house is a wilderness of roses, pink and white, and red and yellow, and fragrant as the first roses that ever grew in a Persian garden. The house is two storied, and though it has many annexes the main building stands by itself. Much money has been expended upon it. Two great flights of stone steps lead up to the porch at the front door, the floor of which is tessellated as carefully as if it had been done in Italy; all the handles of the doors are of heavy cut glass and so are the door plates, while gilded beading decorates what they call in Jamaica the two great halls, that is the dining room downstairs and its fellow upstairs. The floors are of polished mahogany and so is the staircase; but no one had lived in it for years and âIchabodâ was written over everything. It had been built with a view to defence, there was no doubt about it. On the porch a couple of men with guns could hold the front of the house, in the hall there is a trap-door leading to the storey below, cellars half underground, and in the walls in front are loop-holes through which a man might easily shoot. The second storey overhangs the first a little and there is not a corner but could easily be held by a man with a gun. Yes, decidedly it was built for defence, such defence as might be needed in the end of the eighteenth or beginning of the nineteenth centuries. The first night we spent there, my companion, Eva Parsons, and I alone with the weird black servants who had seen but very few white people and whose ways were strange to us, we felt the loneliness keenly. Eva was ill, and she was a Londoner born and bred. There were rats racing about downstairs, there were bats making curious sounds in the roof, and when a potoo bird gave vent to its long drawn-out uncanny cry, Eva abandoned courage and came flying into my room. And she was no coward. I comforted her to the best of my ability, and we decided that until we got the house a little more habitable one bedroom was quite big enough for the two of us. But what must it have been like on those ranches in the old days when the Spaniards were few and scattered, and the corsairs, English and Portuguese and French and Dutch, and a nondescript crowd that were worse than any, came cruising along the coasts and landed and attacked the lonely houses? Think of the women who lay still shivering or crept to each other's rooms and wondered was that the pirates or was it only a rat, or possibly a bat in the roof? Or that weird sound?--Was it a potoo bird killing rats? or was it an English sailor calling to his mate in his harsh, unknown tongue? âExcept in the principal one, Caguya,â says Sedeno de Albornoz, speaking of the corsairs, âthey anchor in the ports without being disturbed by anyone, and refit and careen their ships with perfect ease as if in their country. I can certify that, while a prisoner of theirs, I have heard with much concern many conversations with regard to colonising this island and fortifying two ports, one on the north side and one on the south. I always told them that there was a garrison of ten companies of infantry stationed by the King our master, besides three in the town, and two of mounted mulattoes and free negroes armed with hocking knives and half moons, of whom they are much afraid. They did not like that reply, and though doubtful contradicted me, saying they knew very well what was in the island. It is very certain that it is more important to them than any other, as it is better and more fertile and abundant than all those they have settled in the Indies; nor is there another like it in the Indies. Cuba and Espanola are indeed much larger, but Jamaica in its entirety is more plentiful than these, for it has much horned stock, and herds of tame swine, and wild ones in great numbers, from the hunting of which every year is obtained a quantity of lard that serves instead of oil for cooking.â So much lard that there are people who declare that Montego Bay, from which much lard was exported, took its name from a corruption of the Spanish word for lard. âLikewise,â goes on Sedeno, âthere is a large number of good horses, donkeys, and mules, fisheries of turtle and dainty fish, and a very fine climate from its healthy airs and waters.â Indeed he cannot say enough for the island. He finishes, âthere are now a little over 300 colonists, mostly poor people. Nearly 450 men bear arms,â so I suppose he only counts those as colonists who actually settled on the land, âincluding the hunters and country folks, all of whom are labouring people, strong and suitable for war by reason of their courageous spirits if indeed lacking military discipline.â And even as he wrote the enemy was within the gates, and the Governor of Jamaica writes despairingly to the King of Spain. He says 53 ships of war--there were really 38--came in sight of the island, and they bore 15,000 seamen and soldiers, while the invaders claim they conquered with 7000 soldiers and a sea regiment of 1000. But he probably is right when he says âthere are 8000 souls scattered about the mountains, children, women, and slaves, without any hope of protection except from God, with the enemy's knife every hour at their throats.â We hear so little about the women and children in these wars of conquest and yet on them most heavily of all must have pressed the difficulties and the dangers. And the Governor died a prisoner of war, and finally this Governorship which never seems to have been much sought after and was worth nothing, now descended upon Christ oval Arnaldo Ysassi, who was not even a trained soldier. The rest of the pitiful story is one of flight, flight, flight, the Spaniards always pressed northward, always begging and praying help from Cuba, begging for bread and getting a stone. For we say Jamaica was conquered in 1655, but it takes a long while for a people who are holding a land by guerilla warfare to understand that they are beaten, and it was evident that Ysassi was heartened by many a skirmish that seemed to him a success. Towards the end of October 1656, however, we find the King of Spain writing--âThe English have a foothold in Jamaica, obstructing the commerce of all the islands to windward with the coasts of the mainland and of New Spain. The fleets and galleons run great risk in passing by Jamaica.â But even in March of the next year the Viceroy of Mexico writes to Ysassi congratulating him on his appointment to the Government of Jamaica, though he himself was beginning to realise what a hollow farce it was. However he made it unpleasant for the arrogant invaders. âI now send a smart English sergeant,â he writes, âwho will give your Excellency lengthy news of the whole state of the island.â Poor English sergeant, smart even in his captivity! I hope they did not make things very hard for him in Mexico. That is the worst of history. The ultimate fate of the pawns is never told, only in these state papers there is that one entry that pictures for us the upright young figure with the keen blue eyes and firm set mouth, firm even in misfortune. God rest his soul! and God bless him for keeping up the honour of the English nation. Even when reliefs did come, they brought little comfort to the harassed Governor. In August 1657, two captains landed at Ochos Rios, not far from where Columbus spent his weary year. They were supposed to help the Spanish Governor but, as soldiers, they pointed out to him the hopelessness of the situation. They said he could not succeed in the interior, that âit will cost some trouble to capture any horses from the enemy, and with infantry the risk is manifest.â I have seen the country and I can't imagine how they thought to use horses. But in spite of these Job's comforters, Ysassi kept writing bravely to the Viceroy that he was harrying the enemy, that still they could not get any good from the _hatos_ that they held. âThose who come to get beef, die without anyone being left to carry the news...â What a picture of bloodthirsty, merciless war it gives us! When the great golden moon sends her light streaming through the coconut walks, and the glorious night is heavy with the scent of the orange flowers and the pimento groves, I cannot but think of those bloody days in the seventeenth century when the English drove the Spaniards to the remote corners of the island, and the Spaniards in their turn killed remorselessly, so that none should go back to tell the tale. Again he reports in the middle of September, âI sallied out upon the road to encounter them with the few troops I had, which were about 80 menâ (Oh, for the might of Spain!) âbecause the others are without shoes and not accustomed to the discomforts of the open country.â He descants on their ragged condition. âThe few soldiers I have are naked and barefoot and cannot stand the mosquitoesâ (I sympathise with them)--âPlease help them.â He has not even paper to write his reports and the whole history is punctuated with prayers for provisions, âfor soldiers will fight badly if they have nothing to eat and are badly clothed. I assure your Excellency that some die reduced to sticks.â It was evidently a prolonged series of skirmishes, with sometimes one party conquering, sometimes the other, but the Spaniards seem to have thought their re-establishment was merely a matter of time. Once they gave their minds to the matter they must win, and meanwhile Ysassi was doing useful work holding the place till the good time came. They could not believe they had lost Jamaica. âFor the love of God,â he prays the Governor of Cuba, âI again ask you to send me not linen, or a new shirt, because I do not make use of itâ (a gallant of Spain!) âbut some old cloth.â But brave Ysassi was nearing the end. In July 1658 he had reinforcements from Mexico but is obliged to write sadly--âIn fine, sir, on this 26th June the enemy defeated me with the loss of 300 men although his loss, so far as troops are concerned, was greater.â (The pitiful pride!) âIf they beat me,â he says in effect, âme starving, short of ammunition, provisions, everything that might enable me to make good, at least I have given them something better than they gave me.â And so he sends the remnant of his army into the mountains to forage for themselves and he speaks of the negro slaves, the first mention we have of the Maroons that have figured so largely in Jamaican history. âThe negroes, Sir,â he writes to his King, âwho have remained fugitives from their masters who have abandoned the island and your Majesty's arms, are more than two hundred, but many have died, and I inform your Majesty so that you may command what is most suitable to your Royal Service
{'title': 'Where the Twain Meet by Mary Gaunt', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}