THE AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN

CHAPTER I

THE CARIBBEAN WORLD-YESTERDAY-TO-DAY

TO-MORROW

THE West Indies extend from the tip of Florida's toe, west to east, a thousand miles out to sea. This is the first and most important section of the Caribbean world and comprises the four large islands of Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Hayti and Santo Domingo), and Porto Rico. Once this last island sinks down behind the horizon, the insular chain which surrounds the Caribbean waters takes a downward turn extending to the South American coast. The continental shore-line of South and Central America, the old Spanish Main, from the mouth of the Orinoco to the Yucatan Channel, completes the land boundaries of the American Mediterranean on the south and west, and brings us back to Florida waters and our point of departure.

The great majority of these island links, which are known as the Lesser Antilles, belong to England and they form two administrative divisions called, that in the north the Leeward Islands, that in the south the Windward Islands.

Geographers and sailors are far from being satisfied with these terms, because, for one reason, the islands off the Venezuelan coast are left high and dry without a collective name. As a matter of fact, all the islands which

form the beautiful crescent extending across the stormvexed seas from St. Thomas to Tobago (Robinson Crusoe's real home) and to Trinidad are Windward islands and the little outposts of the South American continent, Margarita, Tortuga, Orchilla, Aves, Buen Ayre, Curaçao, and Oruba, compose the true Leeward group.

One hundred and fifty years ago these to-day neglected islands were regarded, and justly so, as the most valuable portions of the world's surface then known and accessible to man. When muscovado sugar brought $300 a ton and cost less than $100 to produce, when slave labour was cheap and hard driven, a small 200acre Barbadian plantation represented an annual income of $75,000 to $125,000.

Lands as valuable as these had many suitors, and the ownership of the islands was only established after many severe and bloody struggles. One of these wars lasted for a hundred years, and for several decades at leastuntil, as usual, people forgot what they thought they were fighting about-was known as the war over Captain Jenkins' ear.

I remember once when I had the advantage and perhaps the audacity to talk history with Mr. Lecky, he expressed considerable scepticism as to the damage that was done to Captain Jenkins' ear, and was rather inclined to throw doubt upon the tradition or the legend which we learned as history when I went to school, according to which Captain Jenkins was a bluff sailorman who went on a trading venture to Martinico and had his ear severed from his honest bullet head by some tyrannical don or frog-eater, even in those days, it would seem, averse to anything like free or fair trade.

"I am afraid the good Captain Jenkins was a pirate or at best a smuggler," said Mr. Lecky sadly, "and that his missing ear, if it really was missing, was but a pretext. We fought France and Spain a hundred years, and we cheerfully gave up thousands and tens of thousands of our men to get cheap brown sugar for ourselves (you see, the sweet tooth was, with the advance of civilisation, developing fast) and to sell it not so cheaply to our Continental neighbours."

Perhaps Mr. Lecky was right and Captain Jenkins was no better than he should have been, and the worthy merchants who produced him on the London 'Change and in the coffee-rooms were the direct forbears of the sugar trustees of to-day. If the great historian spoils an excellent story which has made many a British breast swell with pride in generations past, it must also be admitted that he deals at the same time quite a blow to the theory with which in his later years he became unduly enamoured, to the effect that there never had been a "yellow" war until the days of the penny newspapers, whose editors and correspondents he would quite frequently class with cholera and black death and the other plagues sent to scourge the human race.

The vast extent of the American Mediterranean, in which I include the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, the encircling rim of islands, and the coast of the old Spanish Main, is not indicated by the small-scale maps upon which the West Indies are generally drawn. As a matter of fact our Mediterranean has a circuit drawn from Cape Sable round to the Bahamas, of about 12,000 miles or approximately one-half the circumference of the globe. It has been estimated that a steamer of average speed leaving Key West and steaming along

the coast of Mexico and the Central American and north South American states, then keeping to the inside of the Antilles and laying a homeward course, would take about forty days to get back to the startingpoint. The actual progress of the tourist or traveller is still more dilatory. These are the seas of the nine-knot boats. An eleven-knot boat is a phenomenon that is regarded with the admiration and the awe which we, farther north, pay to the trans-Atlantic greyhounds. Navigation has another anomaly in these waters, and it is one that does not make for speed. Your skipper may have a great big voice and even at times use a belaying-pin not gently upon his native crew, but, after all, he is only "number two man" to the fruit supercargo who is charged with keeping and bringing to port in good condition the tons of fruit that every northbound steamer carries in its cold-storage chambers. I recall that once on a journey from Colon to Jamaica, the fruit supercargo for six hours reduced our speed to four knots an hour because the temperature in the fruit chambers was not low enough, and all the power the engines could make above the pitiful four knots an hour was required for the purpose of refrigeration. There was also a threat from the tyrannical representative of the fruit king that our electric light would have to be cut off, but in the face of the united body of remonstrating passengers, in this detail the supercargo relented.

So, as a matter of fact, the forty days' limit is not often realised. In my last cruise practically, though not absolutely, encircling our Mediterranean, during which my course lay from New York to St. Thomas, to Santa Cruz, to St. Kitt's, to Antigua, to Guadeloupe, and Martinique, down the Windward Islands, making

calls, and on to Barbados, Trinidad, and Grenada, then northwest along the South American coast to La Guayra, Puerto Cabello, Curaçao, and southeast to Baranquilla, Cartagena and to Colon, thence north to Jamaica and eastward, visiting the ports of Hayti and Santo Domingo, thence across the Mona Passage to Porto Rico, then westward again along the northern coast of Hispaniola to Guantanamo, thence to Havana and New York. I spent forty-four not over comfortable days at sea, generally in small-powered sugar boats, and was most fortunate in being nowhere subjected to the delays of quarantine.

Of course in winter many magnificent excursion steamers, replete with every comfort and even luxuries, sail for the West Indies, and they offer a splendid opportunity to escape the rigours of our northern winter. They are, however, not to be recommended to the student of conditions, and the most picturesque places are often left out of the itinerary for sanitary or political reasons. After all, if you have good health and fair sea-legs, the slow sugar boats and the coffee coasters for the long voyages, and the antiquated annexes and the inter-colonial steamers for the short trips, are the best. There is much that is picturesque and most interesting in the ports of call of the big boats, but, after all, it is on a small scale. I have seen Constantinople and even Naples swallow a thousand tourists belched forth from the decks of an ocean liner for a few hours' run on shore and after the first momentary hesitation that the sight produced it was all over, the great sight had swallowed up all the spectators; but Santo Domingo and Cartagena could not do this, and you had better see them alone or in a small company.

Some of