LITMIR.BIZ

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after the ancient English fashion.  But is such a course fair?  If a poor man neither steals, begs, nor rebels (and these people do not do the two latter), has he not as much right to be idle as a rich man?  To say that neither has a right to be idle is, of course, sheer socialism, and a heresy not to be tolerated.

      Next, the stranger will remark, here as at Grenada, that every one he passes looks strong, healthy, and well-fed.  One meets few or none of those figures and faces, small, scrofulous, squinny, and haggard, which disgrace the so-called civilisation of a British city.  Nowhere in Port of Spain will you see such human beings as in certain streets of London, Liverpool, or Glasgow.  Every one, plainly, can live and thrive if they choose; and very pleasant it is to know that.

      The road leads on past the Custom-house; and past, I am sorry to say, evil smells, which are too common still in Port of Spain, though fresh water is laid on from the mountains.  I have no wish to complain, especially on first landing, of these kind and hospitable citizens.  But as long as Port of Spain—the suburbs especially—smells as it does after sundown every evening, so long will an occasional outbreak of cholera or yellow fever hint that there are laws of cleanliness and decency which are both able and ready to avenge themselves.  You cross the pretty ‘Marine Square,’ with its fountain and flowering trees, and beyond them on the right the Roman Catholic Cathedral, a stately building, with Palmistes standing as tall sentries round; soon you go up a straight street, with a glimpse of a large English church, which must have been still more handsome than now before its tall steeple was shaken down by an earthquake.  The then authorities, I have been told, applied to the Colonial Office for money to rebuild it: but the request was refused; on the ground, it may be presumed, that whatever ills Downing Street might have inflicted on the West Indies, it had not, as yet, gone so far as to play the part of Poseidon Ennosigæus.

      Next comes a glimpse, too, of large—even too large—Government buildings, brick-built, pretentious, without beauty of form.  But, however ugly in itself a building may be in Trinidad, it is certain, at least after a few years, to look beautiful, because embowered among noble flowering timber trees, like those that fill ‘Brunswick Square,’ and surround the great church on its south side.

      Under cool porticoes and through tall doorways are seen dark ‘stores,’ filled with all manner of good things from Britain or from the United States.  These older-fashioned houses, built, I presume, on the Spanish model, are not without a certain stateliness, from the depth and breadth of their chiaroscuro.  Their doors and windows reach almost to the ceiling, and ought to be plain proofs, in the eyes of certain discoverers of the ‘giant cities of Bashan,’ that the old Spanish and French colonists were nine or ten feet high apiece.  On the doorsteps sit Negresses in gaudy print dresses, with stiff turbans (which are, according to this year’s fashion, of chocolate and yellow silk plaid, painted with thick yellow paint, and cost in all some four dollars), all aiding in the general work of doing nothing: save where here and there a hugely fat Negress, possibly with her ‘head tied across’ in a white turban (sign of mourning), sells, or tries to sell, abominable sweetmeats, strange fruits, and junks of sugar-cane, to be gnawed by the dawdlers in mid-street, while they carry on their heads everything and anything, from half a barrow-load of yams to a saucer or a beer-bottle.  We never, however, saw, as Tom Cringle did, a Negro carrying a burden on his chin.

      I fear that a stranger would feel a shock—and that not a slight one—at the first sight of the average negro women of Port of Spain, especially the younger.  Their masculine figures, their ungainly gestures, their loud and sudden laughter, even when walking alone, and their general coarseness, shocks, and must shock.  It must be remembered that this is a seaport town; and one in which the licence usual in such places on both sides of the Atlantic is aggravated by the superabundant animal vigour and the perfect independence of the younger women.  It is a painful subject.  I shall touch it in these pages as seldom and as lightly as I can.  There is, I verily believe, a large class of Negresses in Port of Spain and in the country, both Catholic and Protestant, who try their best to be respectable, after their standard: but unfortunately, here, as elsewhere over the world, the scum rises naturally to the top, and intrudes itself on the eye.  The men are civil fellows enough, if you will, as in duty bound, be civil to them.  If you are not, ugly capacities will flash out fast enough, and too fast.  If any one says of the Negro, as of the Russian, ‘He is but a savage polished over: you have only to scratch him, and the barbarian shows underneath:’ the only answer to be made is—Then do not scratch him.  It will be better for you, and for him.

      When you have ceased looking—even staring—at the black women and their ways, you become aware of the strange variety of races which people the city.  Here passes an old Coolie Hindoo, with nothing on but his lungee round his loins, and a scarf over his head; a white-bearded, delicate-featured old gentleman, with probably some caste-mark of red paint on his forehead; his thin limbs, and small hands and feet, contrasting strangely with the brawny Negroes round.  There comes a bright-eyed young lady, probably his daughter-in-law, hung all over with bangles, in a white muslin petticoat, crimson cotton-velvet jacket, and green gauze veil, with her naked brown baby astride on her hip: a clever, smiling, delicate little woman, who is quite aware of the brightness of her own eyes.  And who are these three boys in dark blue coatees and trousers, one of whom carries, hanging at one end of a long bamboo, a couple of sweet potatoes; at the other, possibly, a pebble to balance them?  As they approach, their doleful visage betrays them.  Chinese they are, without a doubt: but whether old or young, men or women, you cannot tell, till the initiated point out that the women have chignons and no hats, the men hats with their pigtails coiled up under them.  Beyond this distinction, I know none visible.  Certainly none in those sad visages—‘Offas, non facies,’ as old Ammianus Marcellinus has it.

      But why do Chinese never smile?  Why do they look as if some one had sat upon their noses as soon as they were born, and they had been weeping bitterly over the calamity ever since?  They, too, must have their moments of relaxation: but when?  Once, and once only, in Port of Spain, we saw a Chinese woman, nursing her baby, burst into an audible laugh: and we looked at each other, as much astonished as if our horses had begun to talk.

      There again is a group of coloured men of all ranks, talking eagerly, business, or even politics; some of them as well dressed as if they were fresh from Europe; some of them, too, six feet high, and broad in proportion; as fine a race, physically, as one would wish to look upon; and with no want of shrewdness either, or determination, in their faces: a race who ought, if they will be wise and virtuous, to have before them a great future.  Here come home from the convent school two coloured young ladies, probably pretty, possibly lovely, certainly gentle, modest, and well-dressed according to the fashions of Paris or New York; and here comes the unmistakable Englishman, tall, fair, close-shaven, arm-in-arm with another man, whose more delicate features, more sallow complexion, and little moustache mark him as some Frenchman or Spaniard of old family.  Both are dressed as if they were going to walk up Pall Mall or the Rue de Rivoli; for ‘go-to-meeting clothes’ are somewhat too much de rigueur here; a shooting-jacket and wide-awake betrays the newly-landed Englishman.  Both take off their hats with a grand air to a lady in a carriage; for they are very fine gentlemen indeed, and intend to remain such: and well that is for the civilisation of the island; for it is from such men as these, and from their families, that the good manners for which West Indians are, or ought to be, famous, have permeated down, slowly but surely, through all classes of society save the very lowest.

      The straight and level street, swarming with dogs, vultures, chickens, and goats, passes now out of the old into the newer part of the city; and the type of the houses changes at once.  Some are mere wooden sheds of one or two rooms, comfortable enough in that climate, where a sleeping-place is all that is needed—if the occupiers would but keep them clean.  Other houses, wooden too, belong to well-to-do folk.  Over high walls you catch sight of jalousies and verandahs, inside which must be most delightful darkness and coolness.  Indeed, one cannot fancy more pleasant nests than some of the little gaily-painted wooden houses, standing on stilts to let the air under the floors, and all embowered in trees and flowers, which line the roads in the suburbs; and which are inhabited, we are told, by people engaged in business.

      But what would—or at least ought to—strike the newcomer’s eye with most pleasurable surprise, and make him realise into what a new world

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