Читать книгу Roraima and British Guiana, With a Glance at Bermuda, the West Indies, and the Spanish Main онлайн

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The visitor to the island will probably hear—for at St. Thomas, as elsewhere:

“There is a lust in man no charm can tame,

Of loudly publishing his neighbour’s shame—”

of the strange administration of justice (by the way, do we not, in our own neighbouring island of Tortola, present the strange spectacle of a president who himself combines the three functions of judge, prosecutor, and judge of appeal?), of harmless idlers being picked up by the police and exiled to the small island of St. John’s, there to tend sheep and cattle; of theft being far more severely punished than murder, and of the general incapacity of the government. But the proverbial “grain of salt” must be taken with the tales, and I think the stranger will allow that things are carried on much the same as elsewhere; that harmony exists in spite of inharmonious elements, and that St. Thomas is not so bad as he had been led to expect.

The days here are monotonous, but variety cannot be expected in so circumscribed an area. In the early morning, just as you are about to drop off to sleep, after an intensely hot night, varied with earthquakes, and passed probably in opening and closing the shutters of your room—closing them against the driving rain, and opening them to get some air—the gun fires, and if that fails to waken you thoroughly, the negroes hold such a jubilee under your window that sleep is quite impossible.[5] A sudden screaming and wild vociferation makes you spring out of bed fearing an earthquake, but it is only the old black women having a “talk,” or merely wishing each other “good morning.” Then the men indulge in angry abuse, gesticulate madly, and just as you expect to see a knife plunged into somebody’s bosom, the chief disputant walks off, singing the “Sweet by-and-by.” There was no quarrel! You then go to bed again; but immediately bread and coffee are brought, and, as early rising is infectious, you go through the agony of dressing when, as Sydney Smith says, you would rather “take off your flesh and sit in your bones.” St. Thomas is one of those places where, as the Irishman said, it is never cooler—it may be hotter, but it is never cooler. However, that is at last accomplished, and then comes a terrible gap of time until breakfast. There is little to explore, and ferns and shells are soon exhausted, so you ramble up Main Street, visit the much-enduring consul, or make one of the coterie in the grand réunions held in some store, where the affairs of the world are settled.