Gardens of the Caribbees (Vol. 1&2). Ida May Hill Starr

All night we had been threading through the dangerous shoals and past the lower islands of the Bahama group, until at last we turned into that great thoroughfare, the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haïti, and finally were at rest in the harbour of Port-au-Prince. Knowing that we were to make port this morning, I was awakened very early by the delightsome expectation of the sight of a green earth; and long before Little Blue Ribbons and Sister had stirred with the spirit of a new day, I had scurried through the corridor to my delicious salt tub. The ship lay very still. It but just felt the finger-tips of the ocean’s caress. A sweet, warm, gentle, alluring air filtered in through the open port-hole and permeated my body with the delicious intoxication of summer. I threw myself into the bath with every pore a-quiver for its cool refreshment, and as the briny water spread its arms about me, I looked out upon the sea, where my first tropical sunrise burst upon me. It was such a businesslike performance that I laughed right in old Sol’s face, and splattered water at him through the port-hole; it served him right for being so abominably prosaic. Five minutes before his appearance, there was not the slightest indication in the sky that anything was about to happen, no fireworks, no signals, no red lights, nothing but the dull blue sky of early morning. When, all at once, a bright red tip peeps over the water, and in three minutes the big, round ball is on hand, ready for business, whereupon he blazes away fortissimo from the start. It was rude and ill-mannered of him to intrude upon my bath, but it seemed to be his way with the ladies, so I fled to find Sister and Wee One in wildest joy, on their knees in bed crowding their pretty heads together for a peep at the wonderful land about them. The ship had swung to her anchor, and lay bow-on to Port-au-Prince, while to starboard was a range of lofty mountains which clambered and struggled and budded and blossomed into the white sky of morning.

      The sudden call of Summer, the eternal loveliness of warmth, the expansion of the soul from out the chill of ice and snow, into the bliss of laughing seas and delicious sunlight; the sight of green, graceful palms bending their stately heads to the summons of the morning, the merry wavelets frolicking, splashing, laughing, calling to us—Summer—Summer—Summer—was all so intoxicating that, had the choice been possible, who knows but we would have bartered our very souls, with but little hesitancy, for a lifetime of such sensation!

      There was something akin to emancipation in the pile of airy frocks which lay waiting for Sister and Little Blue Ribbons, and if our fingers hadn’t been all thumbs, and if we hadn’t been on our knees half the time in the berth, peering out from the port-hole, we could have donned the summer glories a full hour sooner, and might have been on deck in the open with all the sweets of the early tropical morning about us. But, what could one do but look and marvel, when the sea about us was swarming with tiny boats, laden with treasures of the deep and of the forest? What would you do, now, tell me, if, after long dreaming of the Islands of the Blest, you suddenly awakened to find them really true, and your own dear self in the midst of them? Why bless your heart! You would have looked, and laughed, and wondered, just as we did, and have been for ever dressing, too.

      

The Landing-Place Port-au-Prince, Haïti

      Long, long ago, when I was a “Little Sister,” my boon companion had a parrot given her, and one day it screamed horribly and bit me, and ever after I held a vengeful spirit for the whole parrot family. But that morning at Haïti—ah! that first soft morning, when the jabbering black Haïtiens came to us with corals and parrots and strange, freaky fruits, a fierce fancy possessed me to buy a parrot. Of course, the morning was to blame for it. I was really not a free agent. It was a delusion that, somehow, if I bought the parrot, the summer would be thrown in with it. But dear, sensible Sister, my judge and jury and supreme court on all occasions, thought it a foolish idea, so we didn’t nod “yes” through the port-hole; we only shook our heads and laughed. But the parrot man didn’t have time to answer back, for, before he knew it, a newcomer bumped into the bow of his skiff and made him very angry; so he gave way in short order, for the late arrival didn’t carry any parrots or coral, or anything to sell; it carried a very tall, black man, who stood immovably in the centre of the craft. “Oh! Come, Sister, I know it’s the President, it must be!” He wore a tall silk hat, with an ancient straight brim, and a black frock coat and a terribly solemn expression. But we were mistaken after all; it was only the health officer. We were sure one of those rollicking waves would spill him over, but, alas, the shiny old stovepipe rose and fell with the precision of a clock and nothing happened, and we were so disappointed! Then it disappeared up the ladder, and we buttoned up a bit more and were dressed at last.

II.

       Table of Contents

      Port-au-Prince is as daintily hidden away in the folds of the mountains, as a lace handkerchief in the chatelaine of a beautiful woman. There seemed to be nothing left undone by Nature to make it, in point of location, a chosen spot, hidden from the curious world: a realm of bliss for lovers to abide in. Port-au-Prince was once called the “Paris of the West Indies;” that is, when the French were its masters and the blacks their slaves. It is not so now, for when the blacks revolted and drove their masters from the land, the death-knell of civilisation was sounded. It is the capital of the Black Republic of Haïti, the paradise of the negro, where to be black is the envied distinction; where the white man can scarcely hold property without confiscation in some form; where the negro is the high-cockalorum. Yes, it was called Paris, but that was long, long ago. Poor little town! It is now the forlornest, dirtiest little rag-a-muffin in the whole world, still trying to strut a bit, but in truth a ridiculous caricature of civilisation.

      

Waiting for Customers Port-au-Prince, Haïti

      As we approached land, the character of the place was indicated by the boats lying at anchor, and by those which clung, like a forlorn hope, to the rickety old piers along shore. They were the most dilapidated, nondescript lot of craft I have ever seen.

      The “fort” at the harbour entrance was in a state of collapse, and about big enough to shelter a basket of babies. The Haïtien “man-of-war” anchored near the shore was an absurd old iron gunboat with rusty stacks and dishevelled rigging, painted in many colours and temporarily incapacitated because of leaky boilers and broken engines. The rest of the “Haïtien Navy,” i.e., another old rusty gunboat, was lying neglected and half sunken near by. The pier where we landed was so shattered by time and water that I had to pick my way very carefully in order to keep from falling through. On shore, we were at once surrounded by a mob of jabbering Haïtiens, speaking—well, it’s hard to say just what. It started out French and ended in an incomprehensible jargon, intelligible only to the delicate Haïtien ear. As we picked our way along the tumble-down pier, between piles of coral which had been recently removed from the shoal water near shore (in order that small boats could land at the piers), the tatterdemalion Haïtiens escorted us to the city, under a tumble-down archway, into tumble-down Port-au-Prince, to find waiting for us at the other side of this water gate an assortment of vehicles which I find it quite impossible to describe. They had had an earthquake in Port-au-Prince the preceding October, and those carriages looked as if they had passed through the whole shocking ordeal. The horses, not as high as my shoulder, were simply animated bones—“articulated equine skeletons” somebody said—harnessed with ropes and strings and old scraps of leather, to what were once “carriages,” all of antiquated patterns—anything from a cart to a carryall; and to the enormous Americans, who doubled up their precious knees in order to sit inside, they seemed like the veriest rattletraps for dolls. Off they moved, the whole wobblety procession, to the cracking of native whips and howls of the admiring vagabonds. The white dust blew about us, and the sun beat down upon our heads, and we were in the Tropics indeed. I do not know whether it was the result of seasickness, or what it was, but everything in Haïti looked crooked. Sister said that the Mother Goose