Evening star., 1903-08-29
CAYMAN ISLANDERS
Turtle Fishers-in- n-Chief to the
Whole World.
ISOLATED FROM ALL
LIVE LIKE nth CENTURY
FOLKS.
Keep Up Old English Customs of Their
Ancestors and Have Pleas
ant Life.

Written for The Evening Star by William Fhorp.
What splendid looking mem exclaimed
an American tourist, as he watched half
| dozen sailors unloading turtles from a small
| schooner anchored in the harbor of King
ston, Jamaica, West Indies.
Not one of them was less than six feet
tall, and two We're veritable giants. Well
built, tanned by the tropical sun, brawny,
handsome frank of countenance, and agile
as cats they looked the popular ideal of the
sailor. In contrast with the black loafers
on the wharf and the undersized pasty-
faced Creole clerk, who was tallying their
cargo, they seemed like gods among men.
Don't you know who they are?' said
Jamaican friend to the tourist ''They
Cayman Islanders. No wonder you admire
them. 1 suppose that physically and
morally they are about the finest race of
men Il the world
The CaymanianS, tucked away and iso-
lated from the rest of the world on tiny
| islands in the Caribbean sea, between Ja-
maica and Cuba, have succeeded in estab
fishing 1t ideal commonwealth of which
philosophers and statesmen have dreamed.
Crime, immortality and disease unknown
among them; they have just as much civili-
zation as is good for them, and no more;
and they hold fast to primitive ideas of
duty and religion, and practice the old
fashioned virtues of bygone age
ber-Grand Cayman, Little Cayman and
Cayman Brac On the first, over a thou
sand people dwell and they have even a
couple of small towns, called Georgetown
and Bodden Town. On the second there
are about hundred residents; and on
the third rugged, barren rock jutting
sharply out of the placid blue surface of
the Caribbean, only couple of families
dwell.
Unlike the other islands of the West In
dies they are inhabited maialy by white
people. There are no negroes in the smaller
Caymans, and only a small minority OF
them in Grand Cayman, and these recent
arrivals. The original settlers were some
of CromwellS "Ironsides" and the man
ners and virtues of that stern breed of men
survive in their descendants to this day.
Descendants of Cromwells "Ironsides."
When Cromwell had England and Europe
under his heel, he sent out -an expedition
which captured Jamaica from the Span
iards. Some of the men in that expedition
were veterans Of Naseby and Marston
Moor, and they were naturally advanced
to the highest positions in the new colony
But when Charles II came to his own
again, these men found the times out of
joint. They were deprived of their offices
and harshly treated by the royalist au-
thorties. Unwilling to bow the knee to
Baal,' they sold their possessions, bought
a ship and sailed away to colonize the
Caymans and live as they pleased, un-
another shipload of Pilgrim Fathers.
The Caymans We're desert islands, occa-
sionally used by buccaneers for refitting
and provisioning their ships The Iron
sides soon made short work of those gentry
and had the island to themselves They
established a patriarchal form Of govern
ment, titled the ground. built houses and
villages and sailed the neighboring seas in
81. ps of their own construction. They
hoisted the British flag, but practically
they were an independent people.
Their descendants today are nominally
subject to the governor of Jamaica, but
they make their own laws and govern
themselves through elected overseers and
vestrymen-an old parochial form of gov
ernment which prevailed in England when
the original colonists left that country.
All me other colonies in the West Indies
are automatically ruled by officials sent
as independent the Canadians or the
Australians. They are Englishmen Of the
sturdiest type, even if they nave been is
olated on tropical islets for a few hundred
years, and they would not stand for any
other kind of government.
Just as they have kept the old English
methods of government, so they have kept
the old English customs and manners.
Quaint Dress Of the Women.
Even the women dress like the Puritan
maids of Oliver Cromwelrs time. That is
because they never see a foreign woman
or a fashion paper. Daughters have dress
ed like their mothers for generations They
have had no other way, and, even If they
had, a new-fangled idea would have been
frowned upon snare of the evil one.
The spirit of Smte-Them- Hip nd-Thish
Tompkins and his fellows still pervadeS
the little commonwealth, but it has its ad-