Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1899-04-21
SUMMER IN WINTER.
Notes of an outing in the Island
of Jamaica


Country Roads and I'm the Towns---
the Beautiful Southern Waters---Ba-
mana Growing.
"See Jamaica and diet" An apology would
be due to the sentimental Italian who first
said something to this effect about the city
of Naples and its beautiful bay, were it not
that he had never seen this .tropica island
of the West as it is approached from the
north on Boston Fruit company's steam
err as she is about to enter the harbor OF
Port Antonio. Imagine the most broken
and mountainous stretch of our New Eng
land country that you have sever seen;
multiply this by ten in extent and diversi-
ty: take away all the ruggeduess and bar
renness, and clothe every hill and noun
tain with verdure of vivid greenness to the
very top throw over all such wealth of
luminous haze as is never seen except un-
der tropical sun, and you have the is
land of Jamaica as party of New England
ers saw it one morning in March of the
present year.
1t would be difficult to say whether it is
the people of sthe island or its psculiarities
of topography and vegetation which most
impress the Northern visitor. So strange
ly broken is the surface; so sharp and steep
are the hills and mountains, and so deep
and abrupt are the valleys that one won
ders where even an acre of level land is to
be found. Drive inland and you thread
these valleys, you follow the plentiful
streams in their sinuous iwindings, nyou
creep along aud over the foot hills land
here and there you come in sudden sur
prise upon a stretch of the rich bottom
lands, covered for theimost part with great
reaches of banana plantations. On every
side rise the hills with steep sides, every
foot and inch covered with vegetation and
the matched huts of the natives showing
everywhere in impossible places. Every
where are the stately cocoanut palms, the
one characteristic and indigenous feature
of the island. They line the shores to the
waters edge, they stand sentinel at every
turn, they shade the roadsides, they are
grown in immense groves, they look down
from the hill tops They come to- have a
personality such as have never realized
before in any tree or vegetable growth. 1t
islas if they said: "The land is ours. Be-
fore man was we were Whoever goes we
stay. The generations pass, but we keep
our watch"
Groves of the pretty cocoa trees with
their curious pods growing.straight out and
down from the trunks and branches, log
wood, pepper trees, breadfruit trees with
big, many-fngered leaves, mangoes, fields
of sugar cane, plantations of coffee-these,
and many other trees and growths, new
and strange to Northern eyes, are seen &C
cording to the location in which one hap
pens to be.
When one is told that in this island, 144
miles long and 40 miles wide, there is a
population of $50 ,000 of whom IA, 400 are
white and the rest are black, he is pre-
pared to find the black people predominant,
but it takes something more than the cold
figures to accustom him to their universal
itv and their characteristic picturesqueness.
Not only do they carry the burdens, till
the soil, hew the wood and draw the water
you buy of them your groceries and dres:
goods; they cut and make your clothes
they police the streets, they fill the Offices
Negroes they Enthusiastically are, with sur.
prisingly small admixture of white blood
but unless the impression gained in brief
acquaintance was wrong, their character.
istics are very different from those of ouI
own Southern blacks. The marks of Their
slavery are too recent on the negroes Of
the South, and in speech and bearing they
concede themselves the inferior race. But
go out along the country roads in Jamaics
and you find black men and women with
the air of proprietors-of belonging there
Barefooted they always are, and ragged
they usually are, except it be on a Sunday
or holiday, but they are self-contained
self-respecting, and they possess a spirit Of
affable courtesy which our own northern
country jewellers might we'll emulate. In
variably they give to the traveller the gra
cious bow and lifted hat of the host to hi.
guest, and the grinning, hail-fellows-well
met wave of the hand of every little mig
ger within sight of the road warns the
heart.
But there is another side to this, as, fol
instance, when one sees, as we saw al
Kingston 200 negro women, many of then
mere girls, and large proportion of then
clad in the raggedest rags that one ever
imagined toting bananas, always on theil
heads, from the wharf aboard ship the
whole night long and until far into the
next day. The hundred negro men who
slowed the fruit away in the ships hole
sang weird melodies sometimes the long
lines of women joined in deep, rich alto
now and then there was a scrimmage over
some trivial happening, with profuse anG
voluble billingsgate and fierce jawing, fol
lowed quickly by laughter and more sing
ing.
They're happy lot of brutes, said the
company's agent in charge as the singing
rose to flood tide in the small hours of the
morning. "Trouble doesn't trouble them
They are just as happy when they DOM
know where the next meal is coming from
as any other time"
1t was picturesque scene, amusing and
irresistibly fascinating, butpathetic, never,
theless, beyond all telling. And the man
added, "Nine in ten of those women has q
lazy, shiftless, worthless man at home
whom she is supporting"