The West Indies and the Spanish Main. Anthony Trollope

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СКАЧАТЬ is tedious; especially if this is done in heavy rain, when the road is a narrow track through thickly-wooded ravines, and when an open umbrella is absolutely necessary. But so often had we to cross the Waag-water in our route from Kingston to the northern shore.

      It was here that I first saw the full effect of tropical vegetation, and I shall never forget it. Perhaps the most graceful of all the woodland productions is the bamboo. It grows either in clusters, like clumps of trees in an English park, or, as is more usual when found in its indigenous state, in long rows by the riversides. The trunk of the bamboo is a huge hollow cane, bearing no leaves except at its head. One such cane alone would be uninteresting enough. But their great height, the peculiarly graceful curve of their growth, and the excessive thickness of the drooping foliage of hundreds of them clustered together produce an effect which nothing can surpass.

      The cotton-tree is almost as beautiful when standing alone. The trunk of this tree grows to a magnificent height, and with magnificent proportions: it is frequently straight; and those which are most beautiful throw out no branches till they have reached a height greater than that of any ordinary tree with us. Nature, in order to sustain so large a mass, supplies it with huge spurs at the foot, which act as buttresses for its support, connecting the roots immediately with the trunk as much as twenty feet above the ground. I measured more than one, which, including the buttresses, were over thirty feet in circumference. Then from its head the branches break forth in most luxurious profusion, covering an enormous extent of ground with their shade.

      But the most striking peculiarity of these trees consists in the parasite plants by which they are enveloped, and which hang from their branches down to the ground with tendrils of wonderful strength. These parasites are of various kinds, the fig being the most obdurate with its embraces. It frequently may be seen that the original tree has departed wholly from sight, and I should imagine almost wholly from existence; and then the very name is changed, and the cotton-tree is called a fig-tree. In others the process of destruction may be observed, and the interior trunk may be seen to be stayed in its growth and stunted in its measure by the creepers which surround it. This pernicious embrace the natives describe as "The Scotchman hugging the Creole." The metaphor is sufficiently satirical upon our northern friends, who are supposed not to have thriven badly in their visits to the Western islands.

      But it often happens that the tree has reached its full growth before the parasites have fallen on it, and then, in place of being strangled, it is adorned. Every branch is covered with a wondrous growth—with plants of a thousand colours and a thousand sorts. Some droop with long and graceful tendrils from the boughs, and so touch the ground; while others hang in a ball of leaves and flowers, which swing for years, apparently without changing their position.

      The growth of these parasite plants must be slow, though it is so very rich. A gentleman with whom I was staying, and in whose grounds I saw by far the most lovely tree of this description that met my sight, assured me that he had watched it closely for more than twenty years, and that he could trace no difference in the size or arrangement of the parasite plants by which it was surrounded.

      We went across the island to a little village called Annotta Bay, traversing the Waag-water twenty-four times, as I have said; and from thence, through the parishes of Metcalf and St. George, to Port Antonio. "Fuit ilium et ingens gloria." This may certainly be said of Port Antonio and the adjacent district. It was once a military station, and the empty barracks, standing so beautifully over the sea, on an extreme point of land, are now waiting till time shall reduce them to ruin. The place is utterly desolate, though not yet broken up in its desolation, as such buildings quickly become when left wholly untenanted. A rusty cannon or two still stand at the embrasures, watching the entrance to the fort; and among the grass we found a few metal balls, the last remains of the last ordnance supplies.

      But Port Antonio was once a goodly town, and the country round it, the parish of Portland, is as fertile as any in the island. But now there is hardly a sugar estate in the whole parish. It is given up to the growth of yams, cocoas, and plantains. It has become a provision-ground for negroes, and the palmy days of the town are of course gone.

      Nevertheless, there was a decent little inn at Port Antonio, which will always be memorable to me on account of the love sorrows of a young maiden whom I chanced to meet there. The meeting was in this wise:—

      I was sitting in the parlour of the inn, after dinner, when a young lady walked in, dressed altogether in white. And she was well dressed, and not without the ordinary decoration of crinoline and ribbons. She was of the coloured race; and her jet black, crisp, yet wavy hair was brushed back in a becoming fashion. Whence she came or who she was I did not know, and never learnt. That she was familiar in the house I presumed from her moving the books and little ornaments on the table, and arranging the cups and shells upon a shelf. "Heigh-ho!" she ejaculated, when I had watched her for about a minute.

      I hardly knew how to accost her, for I object to the word Miss, as standing alone; and yet it was necessary that I should accost her. "Ah, well: heigh-ho!" she repeated. It was easy to perceive that she had a grief to tell.

      "Lady," said I—I felt that the address was somewhat stilted, but in the lack of any introduction I knew not how else to begin—"Lady, I fear that you are in sorrow?"

      "Sorrow enough!" said she. "I'se in de deepest sorrow. Heigh-ho me! Well, de world will end some day," and turning her face full upon me, she crossed her hands. I was seated on a sofa, and she came and sat beside me, crossing her hands upon her lap, and looking away to the opposite wall. I am not a very young man; and my friends have told me that I show strongly that steady married appearance of a paterfamilias which is so apt to lend assurance to maiden timidity.

      "It will end some day for us all," I replied. "But with you, it has hardly yet had its beginning."

      "'Tis a very bad world, and sooner over de better. To be treated so's enough to break any girl's heart; it is! My heart's clean broke, I know dat." And as she put both her long, thin dark hands to her side, I saw that she had not forgotten her rings.

      "It is love then that ails you?"

      "No!" She said this very sharply, turning full round upon me, and fixing her large black eyes upon mine. "No, I don't love him one bit; not now, and never again. No, not if he were down dere begging." And she stamped her little foot upon the ground as though she had an imaginary neck beneath her heel.

      "But you did love him?"

      "Yes." She spoke very softly now, and shook her head gently. "I did love him—oh, so much! He was so handsome, so nice! I shall never see such a man again: such eyes; such a mouth! and then his nose! He was a Jew, you know."

      I had not known it before, and received the information perhaps with some little start of surprise.

      "Served me right; didn't it? And I'se a Baptist, you know. They'd have read me out, I know dat. But I didn't seem to mind it den." And then she gently struck one hand with the other, as she smiled sweetly in my face. The trick is customary with the coloured women in the West Indies when they have entered upon a nice familiar, pleasant bit of chat. At this period I felt myself to be sufficiently intimate with her to ask her name.

      "Josephine; dat's my name. D'you like dat name?"

      "It's as pretty as its owner—nearly."

      "Pretty! no; I'se not pretty. If I was pretty, he'd not have left me so. He used to call me Feeny."

      "What! the Jew did." I thought it might be well to detract from the merit of the lost admirer. "A girl like you should have a Christian lover."

      "Dat's what dey all says."

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