Sailing south

Preface

IN justice alike to the author and the gentle reader it should be said well in advance that the aim of this book is diversion rather than instruction. The few and fleeting glimpses that are herein recorded cannot qualify one as an expert on tropical countries. Only the most superficial effort has been made to purvey useful information, historical or otherwise. The chapters which follow contain chiefly the personal observations incident to casual winter cruising, such as one embodies in letters home; and that they are embodied in this enduring form is possibly not to be justified even by the belief that the field remains thus far too meagerly tilled. Nevertheless this book is offered in the hope that innocent enjoyment may be afforded to such as may be present or prospective visitors to lands which the author has himself found delightful and interesting places wherein to spend a brief winter's holiday. The islands and countries visited are few and are far from being unfamiliar. It is a book concerned exclusively with the beaten track. But if it suffices to enliven the tedium of a day at sea, or to awaken pleasant memories, or to arouse the desire vi PREFACE

for more intimate acquaintance with the environs of the Caribbean, it will not have been written in vain. All of which is said, not by way of apology, and still less in the hope of disarming criticism, but solely in the interests of honesty and in the desire to forestall misconception as to the scope and intention of the book.

Philip Sanford Marden

Lowell, Mass.

August, 1920

Part Three. Jamaica

XV. Kingston 215

XVI. The Isle of Springs 243

XVII. A Jamaican Motor Flight 256

XVIII. The North Coast 267

XIX. Port Antonio 279

XX. Rafting in Jamaica 291

ILLUSTRATIONS

MoRRO Castle, Havana Frontispiece ''

In Cristobal 24 /

O'Reilly Street, Havana 38

The Cathedral, Havana 42

A Jungle River, Panama 52

The Army Transport Mount Vernon in the Upper Chamber, Miraflores Locks 56

The Ruins, Old Panama 72

Wayside Cockpit, Panama 84

In the Banana Country 94

In Rural Costa Rica 102

A Central American Street Group 106

Costa RiCAN Bullock Carts 112

San Juan Harbor 138

Ancient Sea Wall, San Juan 146

Over the Roofs, San Juan 152

SiDE-HiLL Street, San Juan 158

The Massive Fortifications, San Juan 164

On the Road to Ponce 200

In the Gardens of the Casa Blanca 210

The Waving Palms of Jamaica 228

Native Hut near Kingston 244

X ILLUSTRATIONS

Old Cathedral at Spanish Town, Jamaica 258

Old Church, Annotta Bay, Jamaica 282

View from Porch of Titchfield Hotel, Port Antonio 286

MAPS

Caribbean Sea End papers

Canal Zone 55

Porto Rico 167

Chapter I Sailing South

THOSE whose experience of the sea consists solely in voyaging to and from Europe will find sailing south decidedly a different, and in many ways a more impressive, performance. To one's surprise, the undoubted fact of the earth's sphericity, usually taken on trust, becomes an intimate and interesting reality.

There is comparatively little realization of this fact to be gleaned from a mere east-and-west passage — always under familiar stars and roughly in the same general climate. One might pursue a consistently eastward course over sea and land, from New York to New York, and the only notable alterations would be in the daily gain of half an hour or so until one reached home again, after passing that mysterious point in mid-Pacific where it is always either day-before-yesterday or day-afterto-morrow (I have never been quite certain which, but know at least that it is never at that point what the rest of the world regards as to-day). The heavens as viewed from Naples are much the same as those observed from Boston, Yokohama, Petrograd, and

London. It is sailing south that suddenly convinces you of the terrestrial rotundity — partly because of phenomena in the heavens above and no less notably because of climatic changes on the earth beneath.

One goes down over the rim of the horizon into different seas and different skies — so rapidly that the changes force themselves upon even the most casual notice. Surely the Dipper is curiously out of place ! It is dipping — as no doubt a dipper should ! As for that star low in the south and just above the prow — surely that is one you never saw before! It may be an outpost of the Southern Cross! Curiosity as to the .Southern Cross is almost the first symptom of the acquisition of sea-legs on a southbound liner. Passengers seem to expect it to dawn in full splendor upon them about the second night out. Obliging first-officers usually inform you that it can be seen if you care to come on deck at some outrageous hour like two in the morning — and the few who act upon this advice will invariably report that they saw this famous, but much overrated, constellation. Whether or not they did so in fact one may hardly dispute, since dispute in such a case is at once futile and unkind. I hasten to make confession that I have never yet seen the true Southern Cross and doubt that many of the thousands who claim to have viewed it ever really saw it without going much farther south than the City of Panama. I have been told by credible persons that in any case it is a disappointing galaxy — not to be compared with either the Dipper or Orion — which owes its fame largely to the principle of omne ignotum.

By day, it is the abrupt change of climate that emphasizes the fact of the earth's globularity — a change for the better, due to the swift approach to latitudes where the sun of winter is more nearly overhead and therefore more concentrated in effect. You have left behind a miserable and half-frozen population, dwelling on the top of a sadly tilted planet and temporarily well out of the sun's path — but you yourself are crawling steadily down over the face of the terrestrial ball into a more genial condition of things.

Besides, there is the Gulf Stream — a much-maligned current of warm water, often derided as a myth but apparently quite seriously regarded by such as do business in the great waters. On every passenger craft there will be smoke-room babble about the legendary character of the Gulf Stream. Respectable scientists have gravely informed me that it does not exist at all — that some ancient German geographer imagined it and engraved lines on the map to represent it, whence all the world has been duped into accepting it as a reality. My own disposition is to become as a little child when at sea and accept all its myths as genuine truth. As for the Gulf Stream, I really don't see how we can do without it. Very possibly its effect upon the climate of Great Britain and Ireland has been overstressed — and very possibly the notion that it alone is what makes so notorious the rough passage to Bermuda is an exaggeration. But when you find hourly canvas buckets of water hauled gravely to the bridge and see thermometers inserted therein, as seriously as if the ocean were a fever patient, you gather that the navigator has a firm belief in the reality of the warm current that pours out of the Florida straits and makes its way uphill toward Newfoundland and the distant North.

If you make the voyage from New York to Havana, you will find the ship kept close inshore with the idea of avoiding as far as may be the opposing force of a four-knot current; and conversely as you sail northward again you will observe that the vessel is kept well offshore in search of such assistance as the favoring stream can give. Wherefore it seems both safe and sane to accept the Gulf Stream as entirely real and a moderately useful provision of a wise Creator.

Setting, as this current does, from southwest to northeast, much depends upon the direction of the wind when it comes to the net effect upon the surface of the sea. A wind blowing with the current, if it be not in itself a violent breeze, will presumably insure a reasonably smooth passage. A wind vehemently opposing the surface current of the waters will infallibly make it rough. I imagine there are such things as mill-pond passages to the Bermudas, although common account discredits this.

The great bugaboo of southern sailing, of course, is Hatteras. The very name has a raucous sound suggestive of howling gales and turbulent seas. Most of us have dreaded Hatteras from our cradles. Hatteras is the cape formed by a malignant elbow thrust into the Atlantic by the otherwise chivalrous State of North Carolina. I suspect that it really does influence the weather to some extent, whether because of its impulsion of the Gulf Stream, or its mysterious influence on the depths of air. At all events, I note that the Government commonly "orders storm-warnings displayed from Hatteras to Eastport" when it scents trouble brewing among the elements. But after one has made divers voyages to and from the southern ports one comes to regard Hatteras as a somewhat slandered promontory, chiefly because one may conceivably pass that way a dozen times and note nothing at all amiss in the conduct of the weather. The notion that you are bound to meet with a storm off tliis muchmalif^^ned apex of our southern coast-Hne may l)e (llsinissed as nonsense. You may, or you may ii()(. Tlie wise traveler goes to sea and takes what comes.

Cape Ilatteras, hy (hv. way, is not commonly visible from the ships that go southward seeking. West Indian ports. In fact after you leave the Jersey Ilighlands you will not see land again for some time. If you ;u-e making for Havana, you will probably pick up the Florida shore somewhere in the neighborhood of Cape Carnavcral, and will, for the sake of avoiding hostile currents, skirt the low-lying roast of Palm lU-ach so closely as almost to imperil the bathers of that Lucullan retreat. If you are bound for Porto Rico, you will see absolutely no land of any sort or kind until you sight the lofty mountains that rise behind San Juan. If Jamaica be your goal, you will see — ^ unless, as usually haj^iK'ns on shi|)s, you pass in the night — Watling's Island, which Columbus more piously and appnjpriately christened San Salvador; and following that you will be treated to a near view of sundry other outposts of the Bahama group, with finally a near view of Cape Maisi in Cuba. Unusually clear weather may even alford a distant prospect of Haiti. Tlie Bermudas you will not see at all, unless you are going thither.

Cape Hatteras, then, you must take on faith. Havana steamers commonly pass close to a lightship that lies a long way east of the mainland ; but of the mainland itself you arc made aware only in case it happens to be one of Hatteras's moments for a meteorologic tantrum. It may be added also, for the reassurance of the timorous, that stormy times in these latitudes have a comfortable habit of ending as suddenly as they begin — although this may not be relied upon as the invariable rule. A blow that has kept an entire ship's company below at breakfast may abate and bring all hands merrily to dinner.

In any case the third day ought to find people appearing in their summer gear. If three degrees of latitude will, as some wise man once remarked, "reverse all jurisprudence," they will work even greater wonders with the winter climate. New York, choked with snow, only increases the miracle of that third day — or at all events the fourth — when one is sailing a summer sea near shores begirt with palm, through school upon school of flying fish. The flannels and Palm Beach suits which seemed such absurdities in New York are absurdities no longer.

As for the flying fish, they are among the traditional allurements of the southern voyage. One is lo SAILING SOUTH

amazed to find them so tiny, so swallow-like, so incredibly numerous, so capable of sustained flight. Blase travelers will ask you to believe that you will tire of them in a little time — but this is a thumping untruth. You never really tire of flying fish. You become accustomed to them; but you will blister the back of your devoted neck standing in the prow to see the diminutive creatures go skimming away across the waves from the intrusion of the onrushing stem, scales gleaming in the sun, and grace unspeakable in every movement which so strongly recalls the skipping stones of one's childhood. By comparison with the flying fish, the floating seaweeds, once so comforting to Columbus and his crews, lack power to enthrall. They will undoubtedly have the effect, however, of producing much energetic speculation as to the Sargasso Sea — another of those comfortable sea mysteries so alluring to the imaginations of the First Cabin, which has heard of the Sargasso Sea without being very sure where it is, and of the Spanish Main without being altogether certain of the location of that. In sailing south you are venturing upon a romantic belt of our earth, where Pieces of Eight are vaguely supposed to be the ruling currency, and where a multitude of half-forgotten traditions stimulate the imagination to flights of fancy which often break

SAILING SOUTH ii

every established record for altitude among a properly stimulated smoke-room gathering.

By the fifth day out it is high time to begin discussions as to the trade winds, since the comparatively steady northeast breeze is due to be encountered at this juncture and is destined to become a daily familiar while you remain in the northerly verges of the torrid zone. This in its turn is certain to be productive of much pseudo-science among the deck-chairs — trade winds, their cause and cure, periodicity, perpetuity, effect upon marine and terrestrial weather, rainy seasons, and so on, affording virtually unlimited material for polite conversation among holiday-makers, to whom the tropics are an uncharted and fascinating domain. It will suffice here to remark that the northeast trade wind is no myth, is practically regular in its operation throughout the year, is prone to blow chiefly by day, and tends to make the Caribbean a bumpy but not commonly an unpleasant sea.

Like so many other things, steamship lines to the tropics have suffered from the effects of the war and may not at present be said to be in a normal condition of excellence. A few years ought to cure that, however. Diversion of the wonted craft to the purposes of transport for men and materials has wrought changes which the incessant rush of postwar business has left no opportunity to repair. Now and again wandering U-boats took toll even on our coasts, and at least one of the Porto Rico liners was sent to the bottom by a torpedo in the full tide of the submarine destruction. Nevertheless one may be reasonably comfortable on a southern cruise, in almost any season, by the regular ships; and of course the special cruises during the winter months offer luxury surpassing what one looks for in a regular voyage devoted chiefly to trading in bananas and other tropical commodities. But the effects of the war were not altogether deleterious. For one thing, Europe being closed to the tourist, the tropics suddenly revealed possibilities for such as regard the ideal vacation to be that which involves a sea voyage. The dimly appreciated attractions of the warm countries have become a vivid reality to thousands, and the ultimate effect beyond question will be a great advance both in the means of transport and in the excellence of the accommodations ashore. Even to-day there is an agreeable primitiveness in the latter, once you get away from the principal centers of population in tropic islands or on the mainland of Central America ; but in such considerable cities as Havana, San Juan, Kingston, Port Antonio, and the two main stations of the Canal Zone, there are already hotels meriting the description "luxurious" and even the less-frequented sites afford very tolerable comfort. The effect of certain other novel elements, such as the recent establishment of American prohibition, need hardly be stressed. In that direction a variety of choice is possible — between such cities as Havana, where gayety rules supreme, and where the concomitants of a lively life are most in evidence, and such towns as San Juan or those of the Zone, which adhere to the austere American habit now so much in vogue.

There are those who claim that at any season, even the northern midsummer, a journey to the tropics is both comfortable and rewarding. The wiser custom, however, confines the pleasureseeker to the six months between November and May. It is entirely true that in the torrid zone the temperature varies but little with the seasons, if you trust entirely to the thermometer. But there are certain other elements to be borne in mind, such as the brief intermissions in the blowing of the trade winds, the concentrated seasons of humidity in which rain is the daily occurrence, and above all the fact that one going south in our own summertime experiences no reactions due to climatic differences between the tropics and home. Our northern summer, indeed, is often hotter — for a very brief period — than the tropic summer. Alaska may have isolated days of greater heat than Kingston or Colon. The sensible time to go to the warm areas of the earth is when the glass rules around zero in New England and New York. To exchange cold for heat is wisdom. To voyage from one hot climate to another which, to say the least, will not be much cooler, is folly.

The Antilles, one must always remember, are not by any means an equatorial group of islands. Even Panama lies some nine degrees north of our earth's capacious waist-line, and Havana is only about one hundred miles south of Florida; so that there is still room for some solar variations in that region, even when one has passed below the Tropic of Cancer, although their effect upon the temperature is not greatly marked. It is always warm there — hot, in fact — save in the highlands, which are by contrast reasonably cool. It is usually cool enough for comfort, even on the coasts, by night. Veracious young men, long resident in Panama, have told me that they invariably sought a light blanket for covering before morning throughout the year, thanks to the steadiness of the nocturnal breeze. Admittedly, however, you would not freeze without one — but what would you? The object in going to the tropics is to find tropical conditions;

and in midwinter such conditions are paradisiacal to all but those hardy souls who must choose January for their expeditions into Labrador and the region of Hudson's Bay.

By the expenditure of six days in time and a reasonable amount of money It is wholly possible to exchange the extreme rigors of the northern winter for the delights of a land where it is always a sort of summer afternoon, and where the conditions of living are so different as to produce that desirable effect upon habits, customs, architecture, language, and complexion which forms the great attraction In going anywhere "abroad." To get away from home for a space — away from home ways of doing things, home standards, home speech, home people — is of the essence of travel for many of us and Is what chiefly militates against that otherwise meritorious slogan "See America first." Havana is the most completely "foreign" city that could be conceived — and yet it lies only a few hours' steaming from the southern end of the Key West viaduct. Cuba, Porto Rico, and the countries of Central America are outposts of ancient Spain, where Spanish Is still a very desirable language to have at one's command. The fact of its long possession by England Is the chief handicap against Jamaica and the other scattered British possessions of the

Caribbean, because, while otherwise among the loveliest of all earthly paradises, such do away with the illusion of foreignness, both in speech and institutions, which is so ardently coveted by the sight-seeing American.

One obsessed by the passion for imparting helpful hints to the inexperienced is sorely tempted to embellish an introduction like this with needless advice. Let it be said only that in a country where it is usually about 90° in the shade at noon and something over 60° at night, and where in addition it very frequently pours with rain, common sense should afford the safest guide as to the equipment of the transitory guest. All the lightest clothing you can find, a gossamer raincoat, and an umbrella are clearly indicated, as the doctors say. The straw hat of the tropics is abundant and inexpensive — so that might as well be purchased on arrival.

Meantime, do not expect too much — because you cannot!

Chapter II Around The Caribbean

PROBABLY every one has in his or her head a tolerably vague map of such portions of the earth as are reasonably familiar — "tolerably vague" being said with reason and by design. By the light of this mental atlas one has an indefinite sense of geography as a sort of glittering generality, with certain bench-marks to which dependable reference may be made, but with very little else that is accurate behind it.

Therefore it is likely that every one visualizes the Antilles as a roughly semi-circular group of islands, mostly small and apparently lying in close proximity to one another, their line extending from the toe of Florida down to the huge shoulder of the South American continent and sufficing to contain the body of water known to all mankind as the Caribbean Sea. The notable regularity of this group in the matter of curvature and alignment and the fact that, together with the peninsula of Yucatan and the long curve of the Central American mainland, a fairly symmetrical ellipse is pro duced on the charts, must stamp the image on even the most casual observer.

The ordinary recollection will instantly place Cuba at the upper end of this curving archipelago, partly because it is the largest of the entire group, partly because it lies nearest us, and more especially, perhaps, because certain events in 1898 forced us to take a direct personal cognizance of this great but previously little considered island. I venture the guess, however, that at this point the average man's knowledge ceases to be definite. Until one ventures into the locality and is compelled to learn a little more clearly just where Haiti and Porto Rico are, their exact locus is but dimly sensed. And as for such fascinating names as Trinidad, Barbados, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Tobago, Martinique — well, they are names and naught else. Not many could take a blank map of the West Indies and write in the names of the various islands in the so-called "Windward" and "Leeward" groups with any certainty. Most of us could identify the few that are large enough to have distinctive shapes; but on any ordinary atlas the vast majority of the islets are mere dots, signifying nothing. No doubt upon more intimate association the mystery vanishes. It takes a very meager acquaintance with tropic travel to isolate and identify Jamaica as the errant brother — the island that has somehow got out of line and wandered off into the Caribbean south of Cuba, aloof from the others and giving the general effect of being just a trifle superior. The rest simply sweep in one gigantic curve from the northern to the southern continent — evidently a long, submerged mountain range logically correlated, the peaks being the several islands, but all remote enough from the everyday concerns of men to be nameless each.

The recent acquisition of the several small islands of the Virgin group, which our country bought from Denmark within a very brief space of time, has begun somewhat to reduce the mystery. Many, if not most of us, now place them without effort as lying next east of Porto Rico, and with the increasing vogue of southern sailing it is wholly probable that they will become goals of visitation. Their various names, referring to certain saints of high repute, are dimly recalled — St. Thomas especially. But aside from the fact that they are islands famous for bay rum and tidal waves, the ordinary American still pays them too little heed. Martinique achieved a transitory celebrity not many years ago by reason of a fearful volcanic eruption. Trinidad, lying far to the south, seems to be suggestive of asphaltic pavement. The rest connote nothing in particular save the vague notion of waving palms, slothful negroes, odd tropical fruits, and early venturings on the part of buccaneers from Spain.

The designations of the Windward and Leeward groups will hazily suggest that they lie somehow with reference to prevailing winds — but even after you have gone there the exact reason escapes you. The wind certainly does "prevail" with a vengeance — a stiff northeast breeze which must necessarily have its counterpart somewhere. But the leeward islands seem distressingly windward ones if you view them from the right angle.

It is not the intent of this book to deal with the minor members of the Antillean archipelago. Let us be content, like George Sampson on a famous occasion, to "know that they are there" and continue to know them vaguely as the huge natural breakwater enclosing the Caribbean Sea — a breakwater which does not make the Caribbean a sheltered sheet of water by any means, but on the contrary a distinctly bumpy and usually a trying one to such as experience disquiet when they go down to the sea in ships. One cannot expect aught else of a sea where the wind blows day in and day out from the same direction with an intensity that is reasonably constant. After all it is the trade wind that makes the tropical islands tolerable places of resort. Without it, they would be wretchedly hot, winter and summer alike. With it, they have their allurements. The northernmost ones — Cuba, Haiti, and Porto Rico — are places of delight at the proper seasons — not too tropical, but just tropical enough. The shape of Cuba, the greatest of them all, somehow suggests, and not inappropriately, a cornucopia. Haiti seems rather like the head of a weary old man, yawning capaciously in the direction of the setting sun. Porto Rico invariably reminds me, with its curiously regular outline, of our old-fashioned pastime of trying to draw a pig with one's eyes shut. Jamaica is sufficiently like unto it to be its twin. And yet, as you go from one island to another, you will probably be struck by the fact that islands so near allied in point of geography are arrestingly different — different in vegetation, different in atmosphere, above all different in people. The latter, however, is a natural consequence of history. Jamaica has been British ever since Cromwell. Cuba was Spanish down to a quarter-century ago and probably will continue Spanish throughout all time. Haiti and Santo Domingo — none of us can say where the one leaves off and the other begins on their common insularity — seem to be incurably negroid. Porto Rico manfully strives to be American, but is as Spanish as a tortilla still. Cuba, in a proper wind, can be bleak and almost cold ; for outwardly Cuba is the least tropical to the inquiring eye of the tourist.

It is much the same, I fear, on the mainland side of the Caribbean. We all know very well where Mexico is — almost too well, perhaps. But what happens when you get below Mexico? Can you bound the various free and independent countries loosely known in popular speech and in the public prints as the " Latin- American republics"? The names you probably know. The exact order in which they come and the relations which the several republics bear to one another you most probably do not know with anything like certainty. The reason is presumably that it has n't interested you to make this knowledge your own, despite the efforts of zealous persons headed by the Honorable John Barrett during many years to create an entente cordiale between the United States and the numerous states to which we stand, whether they like it or not, in loco parentis. Not many of us are aware of the situation or general shape of, say, Salvador, or Honduras. The names are apt to connote such incongruities as earthquakes, mahogany, and revolutions.

It will not be ever thus, but it is so now. To adopt the frequent phrase of politicians and chambers of commerce, these Latin-American countries

"have a future before them." For the moment they are not quite in the way of realizing it, being largely undeveloped, ill-provided with roads, almost unprovided with rail transport, and altogether too abundantly equipped with the regnant spirit of revolt. But the materials of a future are there, prepared, no doubt, from the beginning of the world. Deep in the jungle lie ruins that indicate the possession of a monumental past, as well, suggesting infinite speculations as to the ancient course of empire. Archaeology has a stake in the Latin-Americas as surely as have commerce and trade. But one has first to subdue nature, overcome the jungle, triumph over the Latin temperament — and all those things are hard.

Nevertheless they are not impossibilities. By dint of cutting a Gordian knot with a not too lovely blow, and by the exercise of ingenuity in sanitary engineering, Panama has been put distinctly on the map. Those who remember the hell-hole that was once Aspinwall must marvel at the health and prosperity of Cristobal and Colon. But in that case the need of the canal was the incentive, and similar incentives have not arisen farther north. The conquest of other localities has been left to merchant adventurers in quest of bananas, lumber, and minerals, or to railroad concessionnaires hampered now and again by changing political fortunes in the countries granting the concession. Panama, much to the disquiet of the great and friendly nation of Colombia, became an affair of national magnitude; and the miracle that happened there, despite certain qualms as to the manner of its doing, has probably impressed every American who has visited the Isthmus with an entirely new idea of the power and resourcefulness of his own countrymen. It is not the purpose of the present chapter to reopen the vexed questions that beset the acquisition of title to the Canal Zone and the separation of Panama from its parent country, or to argue the possible proposition of a right of international eminent domain. Progress sometimes has to be made at the expense of scruple; is usually cruel in raw nature, and not infrequently is so in art.