Antilles

“ The four largest Islands, Cuba, Hayti, Jamaica, and Porto Rico, have been called the Grand Antilles. When first discovered by Europeans, they were inhabited by people whose similarity of language, of customs, and character, bespoke them the offspring of one common stock. Small Antilles, or Caribbee Islands. The second division is a chain of small Islands Eastward of these, and extending South to the coast of Paria on the Continent of South America. They have been called sometimes the Small Antilles; sometimes after the native inhabitants, the Caribbee Islands ”

“ I said, to strengthen her resolutions in favor of the journey, "and I can assure you that the voyage, from beginning to end, is simply delightful. The Caribbean is truly a summer sea; the Antilles are beautiful to look at, charming in flora and delicious in atmosphere. Then think of the escape you will have from the freezing and thawing of a New York spring. ”

“ The traveler in the Lesser Antilles finds himself almost wholly cut off from the world’s news. It is a rare cable that has not been broken for months, if not for years, and the local newspapers are faintly printed little rags through which one may search in vain for a hint of the happenings outside the particular island on which one chances to be marooned. ”

“ Cuba, February 28.—The most precious jewel of the Antilles is the Isle of Cuba, which we are now approaching. It is about seven hundred and ninety miles in length, its greatest width being one hundred and seven miles. The mountains add beauty and boldness to its scenery, the highest elevation on the island being about eight thousand feet. It was first discovered by the famous Columbus, in 1492, but not conquered from the Indians until 1511, at which time the Spaniards killed nearly five hundred thousand of the natives. ”

“ Any one desirous of seeing an exceedingly beautiful, and comparatively unknown, corner of the world, should take the fortnightly Inter-colonial steamer from Trinidad, and make the voyage "up the islands." The Lesser Antilles are very lovely, but there is something rather melancholy about them, for they are obviously decaying in prosperity; the white planters are abandoning them, and as the coloured people take their place, externals all begin to assume a shabby, unkempt appearance. ”

“ They view with wonder and admiration the cheerful resolution with which vast bodies of men are sent across thousands of miles of ocean and an enormous debt accumulated that the costly possession of the gem of the Antilles may still hold its place in the Spanish crown. ”

“ From the tropical forests of Central America to the coral-bound Antilles the natives told the Spaniards marvellous tales of a fountain whose magic waters would heal the sick, rejuvenate the aged, and confer an ever-youthful immortality. ”

“ ANTILLES.--ANTILIA. "Familiar as is the name of the Antilles, few are aware of the antiquity of the word; while its precise significance sets etymology at defiance. Common consent identified the Antilia of legend with the Isle of the Seven Cities. In the year 734, says the story, the Arabs having conquered most of the Spanish peninsula, a number of Christian emigrants, under the direction of seven holy bishops, among them the archbishop of Oporto, sailed westward with all that they had, and reached an island where they founded seven towns. ”

“ It has created in the Antilles a negro population which maintains its equality face to face with the whites, yet which does not entirely reject their patronage; a dependent population which is also a free population, free in the most absolute sense of the word. The blacks of the Antilles labor on the plantations, and secure the success of large plantations; but, at the same time, they themselves become landholders, forming by degrees one of the happiest and most remarkable classes of peasants that ever existed. Their little fields, their pretty villages, manifest real prosperity ”

“ Everywhere is wealth of trees, clothing the mountains to their summits, and bordering the long green miles of ocean-shore.
On a smaller scale, but not less beautiful than lordly Luzon, are the many minor islands, such as Panay, Negros, Cebú, Sámar, and others of names that would be strange to foreign ears. Here there are no stretches of barren lands, no drought-stricken shores, as in some of the isles of the West, no flat and chalky fields like those of Barbadoes; and even the loveliest of the Antilles must yield the palm of beauty to these charming isles of the eastern ocean. ”

“ In spite of these impossibly symmetrical details and some discrepancies as to individual direction of elongation and latitude, the fact remains that in the Atlantic there is no such great group except the Antilles and that the general correspondence is too surprising to be explained by mere accident or conjecture. Surely some mariner had visited Cuba and some of its neighbors before 1435.
Fig. 20—Section of the Beccario map of 1435 showing the four islands of the Antilles, St. Brendan’s Islands, Daculi, and others. (After Uzielli’s photographic facsimile.) ”

“ The numerous illustrations and thumbnail sketches in the present volume are from photographs taken during our wanderings in Martinique and other islands of the Antilles. They give some hint of the alluring beauty that greets one on every hand. The passing years seem powerless to change the simple character of these ease-loving Creole folk or the green islets of which they are so justly proud. ”

“ The blacks there are numerous, more numerous even in proportion to the whites than in the Carolinas or Florida. The climate is even more scorching, and the cultures demand still more imperiously the labor of the blacks. As to the prejudices of the masters, I dare affirm that the planters of the Continent and those of the Antilles have not long had any thing with which to reproach each other. Notwithstanding, what has happened in the Antilles? Not only has liberty been proclaimed—this was the act of the metropolis—but the coexistence of races has subsisted. ”

“ Its water is salt, and although at this distance from the coast, there is the same motion in its waters as in the neighbouring ocean. The country on its banks is exceedingly attractive and highly picturesque, and exhibits a scene of natural fertility and beauty scarcely to be equalled in any other part of the Antilles. ”

“ If ever your destiny conduct you to the Antilles, says a naturalist, cold-blooded sportsman as you may be, do not slay the little bird which the grateful negroes, though he sings but little, have wished to name the nightingale; for if you do so, they will regard you with suspicion and dislike. He is their protector, and he watches also over you. No sooner does he see, from his aërial station, the scales of the reptile gliding into the herbage or glittering among the large leaves, than he can no longer control himself. ”

“ The exterminated Indian peoples of the Antilles have already been replaced by populations equally fitted to cope with the forces of the nature about them,—that splendid and terrible Nature of the tropics which consumes the energies of the races of the North, which devours all that has been accomplished by their heroism or their crimes,—effacing their cities, rejecting their civilization. ”

“ Of the secondary works concerned with the history of the buccaneers, the oldest are the writings of the French Jesuit historians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Dutertre (Histoire générale des Antilles. Paris, 1667-71) , a chronicler of events within his own experience as well as a reliable historian, unfortunately brings his narrative to a close in 1667, but up to that year he is the safest guide to the history of the French Antilles. ”

“ Yet time has proved, even under very unfavourable circumstances, that the fierceness and aggressive cruelty of the Caribs of the Lesser Antilles corresponded to the wild fury of the old viking rovers of Europe, and gave proof of energy and stamina capable of sturdy endurance; while the gentle and friendly Indians of the larger Antilles, without, in reality, any superior moral attributes, but only the characteristics of a weak and passive nature, have disappeared, leaving behind them scarcely a memorial of their existence. The Caribs are the historic race of the Antilles. ”

“ For as the aborigines in the Greater Antilles decreased in numbers under the heavy yoke of their conquerors, and as the Spaniards themselves turned their backs upon the Antilles for the richer allurements of the continent, less and less land was left under cultivation; and cattle, hogs, horses and even dogs ran wild, increased at a rapid rate, and soon filled the broad savannas and deep woods which covered the greater part of these islands. ”

“ Again, it is perhaps a fanciful notion that the Atlantis of Plato was the northern part of the South American continent, projecting out towards Africa, and that the Antilles are the peaks and headlands of its sunken bulk. But there are evidences enough that the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea were within historic periods the seat of a very considerable civilization—the seat of cities, of commerce, of trade, of palaces and pleasure—gardens—faint images, perhaps, of the luxurious civilization of Baia! and Pozzuoli and Capri in the most profligate period of the Roman empire. ”

“ Nature has, in general, endowed these regions of the Antilles with great beauty, but man, in their past history, has made them the scene of the utmost cruelty, first by the Spaniards, in the ill-treatment and extermination of the gentle and harmless natives, and second, in the slave trade. ”

“ It was thus that the name Antilles came to be applied to the islands discovered by Columbus; just as the name Brazil was transferred from an imaginary island to the new continent, and the name Seven Cities was applied to the pueblos of New Mexico by those who discovered them. ”

“ If your Majesty does not promptly remedy this evil, I fear that the island will be entirely depopulated or remain like a country inn. This island is the key and the entrance to all the Antilles. The French and English freebooters land here first. The Caribs carry off our neighbors and friends before our very eyes. If a ship were to come here at night with fifty men, they could burn the city and kill every soul of us. I ask protection for this noble island, now so depopulated that one sees scarcely any Spaniards, only negroes ... ”

“ The Antilles form a beautiful example in Central America of festoons lagging behind to the east; from which it is important to notice that the small islands lag more than the greater. The continental shelf of Florida remains behind in the east just as the southern point of Greenland does. ”

“ Only when they came to Porto Rico, the first of the Greater Antilles in their route, were they partially stopped by the mass and strength of the more highly developed Taïno peoples; some, indeed, obtained a foothold here, while beyond, in Hispaniola, one of the five caciques [8] dividing the power of the island was reputed a Carib, and in Cuba itself have been found bones believed to be those of Carib marauders. The typical culture of the Antilles, that of the Arawakan Taïno, was scarcely less aggressive than the Carib. ”

“ A glance at a map of the Western Hemisphere reveals two great continents, North and South America, somewhat tenuously united by the Isthmus and the Antilles. The Isthmus is solid, mountainous land, forming a part of that backbone of the hemisphere which extends along its western border, continuous from Alaska to the Land of Fire. The Antilles are an archipelago, or rather a group of archipelagos, extending without gap from the tip of Florida to Trinidad and the mouths of the Orinoco. ”

“ Promise him the respect and praise of all good men if he does well; and if he calls to his help intelligent persons who understand the cultivation of soils and the management of men, in half a score of years Dominica would be the brightest gem of the Antilles. From America, from England, from all parts of the world, admiring tourists would be flocking there to see what Government could do, and curious politicians with jealous eyes admitting reluctantly unwelcome conclusions. ”

“ The Antilles are small, and the fate of the negroes there might be no better than the fate of the Caribs. The Americans are not a people who can be trifled with; no one knows it better than the negroes. They fear them. They prefer infinitely the mild rule of England, and under such a government as we might provide if we cared to try, the whole of our islands might become like the Moravian settlement in Jamaica, and the black nature, which has rather degenerated than improved in these late days of licence, might be put again in the way of regeneration. ”

“ The population of the [Pg 543] island of Haiti is almost wholly Negro or Mulatto; that of the other islands has sprung from the manifold crossings between the ancient Carib or Arawak aborigines (see p. 552) , and between Negroes and Europeans. The children of a white man and a mulatto woman are called Quadroons in the Antilles, but most of the half-breeds among whom European blood predominates prefer the name of Creoles. The Creole type of the Antilles is indeed very fine, especially among the women (Fig. 162) , who sometimes have a vivacious look and a bewitching smile unique of their kind. ”

“ It is the only island in the Antilles owned by two European powers; 17 sq. m. in the N., belonging to France, form a dependency of Guadeloupe, while the rest of the island, belonging to Holland, is a dependency of Curaçao. Sugar, formerly its staple, has been succeeded by salt. ”

“ Then the currents swept the bottle through the straits of the Greater Antilles, until it floated with the myriad islands of seaweed on the waters of the Gulf, then swung it to the North beyond the Florida Keys. ”