The American Mediterranean

Front matter

THE AMERICAN MEDITEREANEAN

X

Courtesy of The Pan-American Union

Contents

1. The Caribbean World — Yesterday

— To-day — To-morrow II. Cuba — Fourteen Years After III. The Black Republic IV. The Black Republic — Continued V. The Truth AbouT Voodoo .

VI. The Truth About Voodoo — Con

CHAPTER I The Caribbean World — Yesterday — ^To-day — To-morrow

The West Indies extend from the tip of Florida's toe, west to east, a thousand miles out to sea. This is the first and most important section of the Caribbean world and comprises the four large islands of Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Hayti and Santo Domingo), and Porto Rico. Once this last island sinks down behind the horizon, the insular chain which surrounds the Caribbean waters takes a downward turn extending to the South American coast. The continental shore-line of South and Central America, the old Spanish Main, from the mouth of the Orinoco to the Yucatan Channel, completes the land boundaries of the American Mediterranean on the south and west, and brings us back to Florida waters and our point of departure.

The great majority of these island links, which are known as the Lesser Antilles, belong to England and they form two administrative divisions called, that in the north the Leeward Islands, that in the south the Windward Islands.

Geographers and sailors are far from being satisfied with these terms, because, for one reason, the islands off the Venezuelan coast are left high and dry without a collective name. As a matter of fact, all the islands which form the beautiful crescent extending across the stormvexed seas from St. Thomas to Tobago (Robinson Crusoe's real home) and to Trinidad are Windward islands and the little outposts of the South American continent, Margarita, Tortuga, Orchilla, Aves, Buen Ayre, Curagao, and Oruba, compose the true Leeward group.

One hundred and fifty years ago these to-day neglected islands were regarded, and justly so, as the most valuable portions of the world's surface then known and accessible to man. When muscovado sugar brought $300 a ton and cost less than $100 to produce, when slave labour was cheap and hard driven, a small 200- acre Barbadian plantation represented an annual income of $75,000 to $125,000.

Lands as valuable as these had many suitors, and the ownership of the islands was only established after many severe and bloody struggles. One of these wars lasted for a hundred years, and for several decades at least — until, as usual, people forgot what they thought they were fighting about — was known as the war over Captain Jenkins' ear.

I remember once when I had the advantage and perhaps the audacity to talk history with Mr. Lecky, he expressed considerable scepticism as to the damage that was done to Captain Jenkins' ear, and was rather inclined to throw doubt upon the tradition or the legend which we learned as history when I went to school, according to which Captain Jenkins was a bluff sailorman who went on a trading venture to Martinico and had his ear severed from his honest bullet head by some tyrannical don or frog-eater, even in those days, it would seem, averse to anything like free or fair trade.

" I am afraid the good Captain Jenkins was a pirate or at best a smuggler," said Mr. Lecky sadly, " and that his missing ear, if it really was missing, was but a pretext. We fought France and Spain a hundred years, and we cheerfully gave up thousands and tens of thousands of our men to get cheap brown sugar for ourselves (you see, the sweet tooth was, with the advance of civilisation, developing fast) and to sell it not so cheaply to our Continental neighbours."

Perhaps Mr. Lecky was right and Captain Jenkins was no better than he should have been, and the worthy merchants who produced him on the London 'Change and in the coffee-rooms were the direct forbears of the sugar trustees of to-day. If the great historian spoils an excellent story which has made many a British breast swell with pride in generations past, it must also be admitted that he deals at the same time quite a blow to the theory with which in his later years he became unduly enamoured, to the effect that there never had been a " yellow " war until the days of the penny newspapers, whose editors and correspondents he would quite frequently class with cholera and black death and the other plagues sent to scourge the human race.

The vast extent of the American Mediterranean, in which I include the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, the encircling rim of islands, and the coast of the old Spanish Main, is not indicated by the small-scale maps upon which the West Indies are generally drawn. As a matter of fact our Mediterranean has a circuit drawn from Cape Sable round to the Bahamas, of about 12,000 miles or approximately one-half the circumference of the globe. It has been estimated that a steamer of average speed leaving Key West and steaming along the coast of Mexico and the Central American and north South American states, then keeping to the inside of the Antilles and laying a homeward course, would take about forty days to get back to the startingpoint. The actual progress of the tourist or traveller is still more dilatory. These are the seas of the nine-knot boats. An eleven-knot boat is a phenomenon that is regarded with the admiration and the awe which we, farther north, pay to the trans-Atlantic greyhounds. Navigation has another anomaly in these waters, and it is one that does not make for speed. Your skipper may have a great big voice and even at times use a belaying-pin not gently upon his native crew, but, after all, he is only " number two man" to the fruit supercargo who is charged with keeping and bringing to port in good condition the tons of fruit that every northbound steamer carries in its cold-storage chambers. I recall that once on a journey from Colon to Jamaica, the fruit supercargo for six hours reduced our speed to four knots an hour because the temperature in the fruit chambers was not low enough, and all the power the engines could make above the pitiful four knots an hour was required for the purpose of refrigeration. There was also a threat from the tyrannical representative of the fruit king that our electric light would have to be cut off, but in the face of the united body of remonstrating passengers, in this detail the supercargo relented. So, as a matter of fact, the forty days' limit is not often realised. In my last cruise practically, though not absolutely, encircling our Mediterranean, during which my course lay from New York to St. Thomas, to Santa Cruz, to St. Kitt's, to Antigua, to Guadeloupe, and Martinique, down the Windward Islands, making calls, and on to Barbados, Trinidad, and Grenada, then northwest along the South American coast to La Guayra, Puerto Cabello, Curasao, and southeast to Baranquilla, Cartagena and to Colon, thence north to Jamaica and eastward, visiting the ports of Hayti and Santo Domingo, thence across the Mona Passage to Porto Rico, then westward again along the northern coast of Hispaniola to Guantanamo, thence to Havana and New lYork. I spent forty-four not over comfortable days at sea, generally in small-powered sugar boats, and was most fortunate in being nowhere subjected tO' the delays of quarantine.

Of course in winter many magnificent excursion steamers, replete with every comfort and even luxuries, sail for the West Indies, and they offer a splendid opportunity to escape the rigours of our northern winter. They are, however, not to be recommended to the student of conditions, and the most picturesque places are often left out of the itinerary for sanitary or political reasons. After all, if you have good health and fair sea-legs, the slow sugar boats and the coffee coasters for the long voyages, and the antiquated annexes and the inter-colonial steamers for the short trips, are the best. There is much that is picturesque and most interesting in the ports of call of the big boats, but, after all, it is on a small scale. I have seen Constantinople and even Naples swallow a thousand tourists belched forth from the decks of an ocean liner for a few hours' run on shore and after the first momentary hesitation that the sight produced it was all over, the great sight had swallowed up all the spectators; but Santo Domingo and Cartagena could not do this, and you had better see them alone or in a small company. Some of the Quebec line of steamers that ply in these seas are good and some are not so good as they ought to be. The little Dutch boats that ply through the islands on their circuitous voyage from New York to Amsterdam via Surinam are neat and charming, and though slow and deliberate in their movements, I can heartily recommend them. The enterprise of the Hamburg-American line is responsible for an innovation that should be encouraged. Thanks to it the contrast between what must have been the life on the ancient caravels and what is the comfort on the ocean greyhounds to-day is not greater than the experiences of my first and my last visit to Hayti, though only five years intervened. The enterprising Germans now run a little steamer, smart as a yacht, neat, clean, and comfortable, once every month from Kingston to St. Thomas, stopping on the way at all the interesting ports of Hayti, Santo Domingo, and Porto Rico. These steamers and, of course, the Royal Mail of England for the long stretches, one or two legs of the cruise, furnish very agreeable surprises to the traveller aweary of his recent experiences.

One disappointment at least awaits the traveller in the West Indies ; probably the one thing he thinks he knows about the region in which he is travelling is only partly true. The nuts may come from Brazil, but the Gulf Stream does not come from the Gulf of Mexico. Hydrographers now say that the stream which traverses our Mediterranean is practically identical with that great equ-atorial current which flows from the West Coast of Africa across the Atlantic, penetrates through the Lesser Antilles into the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, whence it returns through Florida Strait to the Atlantic and begins to play its great role in the Western

Ocean and the adjacent lands. Now it is known that only a small fraction of this enormous current comes from our Gulf. Still, though relatively small, the American contribution to this oceanic river is considerable. It is said to form a liquid mass about 55 miles wide and 450 fathoms deep, moving at a rate varying from two to six miles an hour, or if these figures are correct it is equivalent to 300,000 rivers as copious as that of the Mississippi.

As weather conditions and reports of hurricanes that have been lost or are found form the only news that reaches the outside world from the islands of the American Mediterranean it would seem fitting that something should be said on this subject. It would be thought that such a vast body of tepid waters, whose warming influence is felt as far north and east as Nova Zembla, would raise the temperature in this section of the torrid zone so high as to render the islands uninhabitable. There are, however, the counteracting influences of the atmospheric currents, and of altitude, by which most fortunately the action of the Gulf Stream is neutralised and all the surrounding lands of the isthmian region and the islands are made suitable for the settlement of white men. I have suffered slightly from the heat In Kingston, Jamaica, and In Pointe-a-PItre, Guadeloupe, but nowhere else within the confines of the American Mediterranean.

Terrific hurricanes such as the one by which Porto RIco' was devastated In October, 1899, are unfortunately not Infrequent. Their season Is from July to November; sometimes, though not often, they occur out of season. It is held by scientists, though the mariners who sail these seas generally dissent, that these cyclonic disturbances are of local origin and appear to be connected with the cold northern and eastern trade-winds which rush in to fill the vacuum caused by the rarefaction of the atmosphere during the summer months. The centre of a hurricane at sea is a very unpleasant place to be. Practically few ships have survived to tell the tale. Fortunately the ocean is large and the real storm centre occupies a comparatively small area. However, weather reports by cable and by wireless through these regions have been so perfected during the last decade that the dangers of navigation have been minimised, though not wholly eliminated.

Weather conditions are notoriously a matter of personal opinion or whim, but I have always thought that an earthquake was a too substantial fact to admit of doubt or discussion among its survivors; however, the inhabitants of Kingston, Jamaica, have convinced me of my error. After years of litigation they have also, which is more important for them, convinced the highest courts in England that their city was not destroyed by an earthquake and a hurricane in 1903. The weight of evidence which they have produced has convinced the learned judges that if these terrestrial and aerial commotions did occur it was only after the town of Kingston had been destroyed by fire, and the fire insurance companies will have to pay something like two million dollars damages. It was a wonderful achievement of the Kingstonians. They proved for once that Nature in her phenomena puts the cart before the horse.

The struggle for the sugar lands ended practically with the great fight off the rock-bound coast of Dominica where in 1782 Rodney sank the fleet of De Grasse, composed in part at least of the very frigates which had sailed up the York River the year before and made our victory at Yorktown possible. Napoleon tried, but in vain, to win back the profitable plantations. Then as now the people of Dominica and of St. Kitts and a number of the other islands spoke French, but the ancient flag was never restored to them.

Defeated in his turn by the oaken frigates of old England, Napoleon, most resourceful of men, thought of a way in which he might ruin a country he could not conquer. Somewhere in his private papers the watchful historian who seeks the little causes of great effects has found the entry :

" This day the emperor granted two thousand livres from his private purse to investigate the possibility of making sugar from the beet root. Thus France may escape the heavy tribute she is yearly forced to pay to foreigners,"

was the imperial comment.

The successful result of his experiments ruined the West Indies, and gradually in the course of three generations the most profitable of islands became the Cinderellas of the nations.

To-day, again, the tables are turning. The cost of manufacturing sugar from cane has been so reduced that the growers of the sugar-beet will have to look to their profits. With the market of 80,000,000 people once open to them on this side of the Atlantic, the growing of cane sugar in the West Indies may well become again a lucrative pursuit, though, of course, not nearly so profitable as it was a century ago.

When the lean years came and deficits began to present themselves with great regularity in every annual budget that came from the West Indian islands, the lo THE AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN

matter-of-fact overlords in Europe also began to take stock of a business where the balance was invariably on the wrong side of the ledger. It is quite difficult to prove this statement, but there is much reason to believe that our English cousins, the most businesslike of overlords, some twenty years ago made what might, had it been received with enthusiasm, have developed into a formal offer to sell their out-at-the elbow West Indian islands to Uncle Sam for a reasonable sum, and to-day some think there is a standing offer on file in Washington whereby John Bull pledges himself to take our Philippine troubles off our hands If we In turn would only oblige by shouldering his West Indian burden.

Perhaps the fruit trade between the Islands and the mother countries across the Atlantic In refrigerated steamers, which Is just beginning, will save the economic situation and perhaps It will not. Perhaps the English threat of reducing the scale and the class of government given — that the cost of administration may be reduced to the level of the revenue collected — will. In some hardup day when the old-age pensions have to be paid, be carried Into effect, and then perforce West Indian civilisation will take a backward step by which our interests cannot but be affected.

One hundred and fifty years ago all the powers of the world were competing for the possession of the islands, which many of them to-day would gladly abandon if the way to doing so were clear. And those powers which to-day, like Germany, cannot successfully deny the Impeachment of coveting West Indian real estate, It is equally clear, only regard them as strategic positions or stepping-stones to more desirable places and

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heights beyond. Vast economic changes are impending in the Caribbean as a result of the construction of the isthmian canal, and it behooves us not to neglect any advantages which may accme as a result of our tremendous canal investment. When the impending changes have taken place, the political situation of all our insular and continental neighbours is not likely to remain as it is.

Of our recent relations with the various governments which exist in the countries that are washed by the Caribbean waters there is little to be said. All that might be said is either well known or not worth saying.

Grant had a strange yearning for these islands and he never forgave those men who defeated the perhaps then ill-considered projects of annexation and purchase which he cherished. A little later, it would appear from a recent volume of Mr. Rhodes, the idea of national aggrandisement in the West Indies found a spokesman in Sumner, the man who had, and perhaps the only man who could have, defeated Grant's Santo Domingo scheme.

It was at the time when the burning question of the Alabama claims had brought Great Britain and the United States to the brink of war, and Mr. Fish was urging upon Thornton, the English Minister at Washington, in anything but an academic spirit, the withdrawal of Her Majesty's government from Canada, that Sumner outlined the most out-and-out America for the United States policy which was ever penned. In this formal paper, which is known in our diplomatic history as the " Sumner hemisphere flag withdrawal memorandum," the Senator from Massachusetts, who was also chairman of the foreign relations committee, wrote

12 THE AMERiCAiNt Mediterranean

" To make the s^e^^ement complete," referring to the claims and the Eeman troubles, " the withdrawal [British] shouldjg^rom this hemisphere, including provinces and islarKl^"

More important even than the Spanish war which left us proprietor of Porto Rico and protector and sponsor for Cuba, in bringing about the new conditions in the West Indies, were the consequences of the Venezuelan correspondence between Lord Salisbury and Mr. Olney. After having ignored, if he did not flout the Monroe Doctrine, the English earl ended by canonising it. So far from opposing the extension and general acceptance of this hemisphere-embracing creed. Lord Salisbury and his successors in the British Foreign Office have placed their own possessions under the defensive shield out of which they once feared offensive weapons might be forged.

When the Venezuelan boundary question came on the international carpet, the British islands of the Caribbean were the scenes of much naval and military activity. It was then the plan and the frank purpose of the British government to make Jamaica and St. Lucia impregnable. Vast sums were spent at Castries and elsewhere. Then swiftly came the change of policy, the great naval station was abandoned, the immense fortresses were left unfinished, the white troops were withdrawn, the powerful squadrons sailed away, never to return. It was announced that the West Indian colonies had been abandoned as factors in the scheme of imperial defence, and it never was denied that as a result of the Olney- Salisbury correspondence and the development of the for many decades neglected Monroe Doctrine, the British government had decided to place its islands under the protection of the overlord of the Caribbean, whose seat is in Washington.

The situation of the Dutch and of the Danish colonies in the Caribbean is similar and equally unhappy. These are thrifty nations which have never hitherto governed colonies at a loss, as they are doing to-day. In population and in commerce these colonies are inconsiderable, and they cost a pretty penny, which is onerous upon the limited treasuries of the countries to which they belong. They are only rich in potential qualities, which require the developing hand of a world-power.

The West Indian " advance " men, who are continually preaching in Berlin and in Hamburg about the possibilities of the Caribbean situation, commercial and political, are quite right when they say that once the German flag is raised over St. Thomas and Santa Cruz, over Curasao and Margarita, the strategic and defensive position of the German empire in the West Indies would be as strong as that of the United States, and stronger than that of England, whose positions were chosen, and exceedingly well chosen, for the days of sailing vessels. Now and again the traveller through these to-day lonely and, as far as sails are concerned, forsaken seas comes upon some moss-grown fortress with dismantled battlements and wonders what it was for and why it was built there. His enquiry and research soon reveal the fact that in the golden days of sugar in the eighteenth century these forts commanded certain passages and channels of the sea which it was necessary for traders to pass through in the era before steam, when the trade winds ruled this part of the world with something closely akin to tyranny.

So the Dutch and the Danish colonies are run at a loss, which is bad, but the political exigencies of the situation require of the Dutch and the Danish home governments to make believe that they enjoy throwing money into the Caribbean, which is worse. They are both equally concerned to see postponed the day when the question of the ultimate destination of these islands shall pass beyond the academic stage. The statesmen of The Hague know perhaps better than we do, or at least in more detail, how extremely anxious Berlin is to secure these positions which might be regarded as indispensable if the future of the empire is to be upon the water, as Emperor William says it is.

Not being able to part with what once were profitable plantations, but are now simply costly toys — neither to Germany, because we would regard such a step as a breach of the Monroe Doctrine and most certainly a casus belli, nor to us, because Germany could and probably would make things unpleasant for the vendors at home — the Hague and the Copenhagen governments will probably continue to foot their West Indian bills with the best grace imaginable until the next general adjustment of balances and unfinished business is reached between the powers as the result of war or the awakening of an intelligent self-interest.

There is, of course, another view of the situation of the British colonies, but neither in England nor in the islands is it shared by many thoroughly conversant with West Indian conditions. This view has been well expressed by Mr. Holland in the National Review:

"The imperial conference of 1907," he writes, " when the air was full of projects for a closer imperial union, showed that definite projects must be postponed. Nevertheless the imperial conference itself is now more than ever before an established fact, and the wording of its first resolution constituted a real step in development. The council of the empire exists and as time goes on will acquire strength and substance. . . . The universal free trade idea was powerful when no rival idea was in the field, but it has now encountered one stronger than itself, that of the might and unity of the empire.

In more direct relation with our subject is the project of a West Indian federation of British crown colonies with what might be called an Interinsular parliament and a governor-general appointed by the Emperor-king. This project seems to command at any and all times a large amount of space In the London papers, but among the islanders it excites hardly any interest. I broached the subject to a distinguished gentleman of Antigua, as, indeed, I did to many other men of weight with whom I came In contact during my trip through the islands, but It was invariably dismissed with a few and generally bitter words.

The leading Antiguan said when he had relieved his feehngs with a good scold of Whitehall Street In general and the Colonial Office in particular:

" These Islands are so many oranges which the mother country has sucked dry, and now we, the peels or the rind, what you will, are thrown away. I hear quite a trade Is springing up between Haytian and Dominican ports and the United States in orange peels, but that Is commercial, not political. You can take It from me that the great majority of the people of England are concerned In the pursuit of the elusive guineas and do not care a penny for political orange peels such as we are.

" I think it was Froude, was It not, who said the West Indies grew sugar but not men. As we no longer grow even sugar, how can they be Interested In us and in our calamitous affairs? It would hardly be wise to remind them of the good white rum we gave them in ages past. Their gouty toes probably keep that in all the freshness and remembrance that is desirable. Now and again we get a colonial minister like Chamberlain, who was either patriotically and honestly concerned with our well-being and our welfare as outposts of the empire, to which in the days of our strength we rendered loyal service, or was desirous of securing a new political battle-cry with which to rally a parliamentary majority or to secure a niche in Westminster Abbey. But, as a rule, they leave us alone in our ruined sugar mills and our neglected plantations, which are growing up into jungle again."

The leading editor in Jamaica, when I called his attention to the West Indian federation project, found it amusing, but in bad taste. The situation in the islands, he added, is far too serious to be made a subject of jesting. The federation scheme serves to point a few paragraphs in the London daily papers and furnishes an occasional long article in the Colonial Office journal, but it has no more practical purpose than that.

" The whole business is an absurd dream of two or three English faddists," he continued, " who are weakly supported by a few West Indians who have lived so long in London that they are completely out of touch with the islands.

" The paper project is, as I understand it, a federation stretching from Demerara on the southeast to Honduras on the northwest, and so embracing integral portions of two continents and divers islands of many seas. When the advocates of this scheme are invited to give us facts, laying aside the vague generalities in which they usually indulge, they say: 'Well, at all events it would be economical.' Economy, though not the sole end and aim of government, is a desirable thing, but it cannot

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be advanced in favour of the federation scheme, at least not to the satisfaction of business men.

" The governor-general would have to be well paid and needs must live in great state, and be continually taking costly official journeys through the islands, or, according to the ideas in which we West Indians, whites as well as blacks, have been trained for generations, he would simply cut a ridiculous figure. The resident lieutenant-governor in each of the colonies would have to be paid nearly, or quite, as much as the present governors if we wanted to secure the same or a higher class of men for the posts, and we do. The members of the legislature of the federation would have to be paid (the members of the colonial assemblies, as at present constituted, are not), because the performance of their duties would carry many of them, indeed most of them, thousands of miles away from their homes, their families, and their private concerns. Under these circumstances I fear we would not secure the high-class men that at present with few exceptions compose the colonial assemblies.

" The whole idea of a federation is, to my mind, absurd unless a community of interest can be proved, and in this instance evidence quite the contrary is apparent to every observer. It is true that Demerara, and perhaps one or two of the other colonies, have quite made up their minds they want the federation and are convinced they would prosper mightily once preferential tariff relations with Great Britain were established. They forget, or do not see, that the government of the United States would be forced to retaliate, and as a result Jamaica, Dominica, and the other islands dependent upon the American markets would be ruined."