Lesser Antilles

“ Not only is the harbor more active, more crowded with shipping than any other in the Lesser Antilles, but it has every air of a place that is “up on its toes.” All the languor, the don’t-care-whether-I-work-or-not of nature’s favored spots are here replaced by a feverish anxiety to please, an eager energy to snap up any job that promises to turn a nimble shilling. ”

“ And England has not done a thing for a man of them. The blacks are angry because they got no promotion and all the dirtiest jobs. Mighty few of us would go again to fight for the blooming Empire.”
Antigua is the capital of what the British call, for political purposes, the Leeward Islands, comprising all their holdings between Santa Cruz and Martinique. Geographically this is a misnomer, the real leeward islands being the Greater Antilles, from Cuba to Porto Rico inclusive, and all the Lesser Antilles the windward islands, as the Spaniards recognized and still maintain. ”

“ We have also found that though no general migration took place from the continent southward, nor from the islands northward, yet there was considerable intercourse in both directions; that not only the natives of the greater and lesser Antilles and Yucatan, but also numbers of the Guaranay stem of the southern continent, the Caribs proper, crossed the Straits of Florida and founded colonies on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico ”

“ Antigua, one of the Leeward Islands, the seat of the government; the most productive of them belongs to Britain.
Antilles, an archipelago curving round from N. America to S. America, and embracing the Caribbean Sea; the Greater A., on the N. of the sea, being Cuba, Hayti, Jamaica, and Porto Rico; and the Lesser A., on the E., forming the Leeward Islands, the Windward Islands, and the Venezuelan Islands—the Leeward as far as Dominica, the Windward as far as Trinidad, and the Venezuelan along the coast of S. America.
Antimony, a brittle white metal, of value both in the arts and medicine. ”

“ But yesterday the fairest of the fair of the wondrous cities of the storied Antilles, bright, beautiful, glorious, glistening and shimmering in her prism of tropical radiance, an opalescent city in a setting of towering forest and mountain, now a waste of ashen-gray without life, form, color, shape, a drear monotone, a dim blur on the landscape—it seems even more than the contrast between life and death. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The charm of a single summer day on these island shores is something impossible to express, never to be forgotten. Rarely, in the paler zones, do earth and heaven take such luminosity: those will best understand me who have seen the splendor of a West Indian sky. And yet there is a tenderness of tint, a caress of color, in these Gulf-days which is not of the Antilles,—a spirituality, as of eternal tropical spring. ”

“ They lived there tranquil and isolated till 1795, when the island was settled by French colonists, and they were finally absorbed by them. They were the last representatives in the Antilles of a race which, during five centuries, had ruled both on land and sea. On the continent, along the Esequibo and its affluents, they are numerous still; but in their contact with the European settlers in those regions they have lost the strength and the virtues of their former state without acquiring those of the higher civilization. ”

“ 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 ... ”

“ When Columbus arrived people of this stock filled the larger islands and the Bahamas, but along the coast and in the island of Trinidad they disputed the occupation of the territories with the Caribs. In Porto Rico also the Caribs had become aggressive, and even in Hispaniola the Arawaks had to defend their shores against that warlike people. If we believe the accounts of the Spaniards the inhabitants of the Greater Antilles were not altogether a savage people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A few hours at Grenada, and a few hours at St. Lucia, were all the stoppages possible to us. The steamer only passes once a fortnight, and it is necessary to spend that time on each island which is visited, unless the traveller commits himself—which he cannot well do if he has a lady with him—to the chances and changes of coasting schooners. More frequent and easy intercommunication is needed throughout the Antilles. The good people, whether white or coloured, need to see more of each other, and more of visitors from home. ”

“ The investigation which I here close, shows that man in his migrations on the Western Continent followed the lead of organic nature around him. For it is well known that the flora and fauna of the Antilles are South American in character, and also, that the geological structure of the archipelago connects it with the southern mainland. ”

“ It is beautifully diversified with woods, valleys, and plains, and extremely fertile."
GRANDY. "The Antilles are lovely islands, and some of the happiest moments of my life have been passed in admiring the wonderful works of our Creator, as shown to such advantage in the bright lands of the West. Beautiful are the mornings in Jamaica, when the sun, appearing through a cloudless and serene atmosphere, illumines with his rays the summits of the mountains, and gilds the leaves of the plantain and orange-trees. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the Antilles are ever to thrive, each of them also should have some trained and skilful man at its head, unembarrassed by local elected assemblies. The whites have become so weak that they would welcome the abolition of such assemblies. ”

“ The island is very fertile; its principal products are sugar cane, coffee, tobacco, cotton, rice and Indian corn. In proportion to its area, it produces more sugar than any other West India island.
Government is administered under a constitution granted by the Spanish Cortes, 1869. Slavery was abolished in 1873. Capital, San Juan; pop. about 27,000. Climate warm; more healthful than that of the other Antilles. Destructive hurricanes are frequent. The natural productions are very numerous; medicinal plants and many valuable woods, as mahogany, ebony, logwood, and cedar, abound in the forests. ”

“ The majority of them are very illiterate, very few intelligent privates, comparatively speaking. I have a young fellow about my age to teach English, and I am attempting Spanish. Both of us are getting along fairly well. I can make myself understood.
While I was dining with Captain Garcia his orderly was fanning the flies away from me. The country is beautiful, nothing but mountains and valleys. With American people here it will be worthy to have the island called the Gem of the Antilles. ”

“ Even as observed from the steamer's deck, the mountains and forests of Trinidad have an aspect very different from those of the other Antilles. The heights are less lofty,—less jagged and abrupt,—with rounded summits; the peaks of Martinique or Dominica rise fully two thousand feet higher. The land itself is a totally different formation,—anciently being a portion of the continent; and its flora and fauna are of South America.
... There comes a great cool whiff of wind,—another and another;—then a mighty breath begins to blow steadily upon us,—the breath of the Orinoco.... ”

“ 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.) ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Arawaks gained a foothold in Florida, and their influence, in trade at least, seems to have extended far into Muskhogean territories to the north, while it may have affected Yucatan and Honduras to the west. Nor was it meanly savage in type. The Antilles furnish every incentive of climate, food supply, rich resources, and easy communication for development of civilization; and at the time of the discovery of the Taïno peoples, they were already advanced in the arts of agriculture, pottery-making, weaving, and stone-working, combined with some knowledge of metals. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Its people (virtually all negroes and mulattoes) number about three thousand, and so wretchedly poor is their island, with so little in the way of opportunity or employment, that the bulk of them are scattered up and down the Antilles laboring for a livelihood, or, in their sloops, carrying cargoes from port to port or plying a fisherman’s trade. Although St. Barts is a French dependency, nearly all its inhabitants speak English, and they are noted throughout the northern islands as industrious workers. ”

“ Once the center of the Caribbean slave trade, the island of Curacao was hard hit by the abolition of slavery in 1863. Its prosperity (and that of neighboring Aruba) was restored in the early 20th century with the construction of oil refineries to service the newly discovered Venezuelan oil fields. The island of Saint Martin is shared with France; its southern portion is named Sint Maarten and is part of the Netherlands Antilles ”