Travel Reference
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which the town clusters that the cobbled lanes and streets twist in many directions, and it was only by
climbing to the top of the town that we could get an idea of its economy as a whole.
The coast is a succession of volcanic craters, of which one of the largest, the Carenage, is the harbour
of St. George's. The capital itself is built on the steep crater's rim, which is submerged at its outer segment
to form a gap over which the ships can sail out and in; the broken circumference, emerging from the water
in bluffs, ascends under its load of houses and churches, to unite with the forested slopes inland. Lagoons
engrail the coast with pale blue crescents and discs, and from their landward circumferences the island
soars in a steep and regular geometry of volcanic peaks. Old fortresses lie along the hilltops commanding
the town, and, on the escarpment of the crater's rim that ends and completes St. George's—rising into a
final knoll before its steep plunge under water—the old French Fort Royal (later re-baptized Fort George)
rears its defences. The road along the waterfront follows a tunnel through the heart of this castellated tufa,
and re-emerges under a little bandstand which rests on the sunlit slope like an empty birdcage.
Windward Islands sloops lay at anchor, and a long way below a schooner under full sail was gliding
out of the Carenage into the Caribbean. From our point above the town we could see the law courts, the
tower of the eighteenth-century parish church, the tropical-Gothic belfry of the Scottish kirk with its high
finials and crockets, and the high roofs of the town, whose steep mansard-gables and beautiful rose-col-
oured and semi-circular tiles all overlapping like fish-scales must be an architectural device which has
lingered here from the time of the French. The town was first laid out by the French Governor, M. de Bel-
lair, in 1705, and continued by the English when it was granted them by treaty in 1763. It has remained
British ever since, except for the four years after it was attacked by the fleet of Count D'Estaing and cap-
tured by a landing force under Count Dillon, the Irish Commander of Dillon's Regiment of the French
Army. The French relinquished it again at the Treaty of Versailles in 1783.
But these roofs seemed to derive from an older tradition than the eighteenth century, and the first pro-
genitors of these Grenadian roofs and gables may well be the steep summits of the Marais and the Place
des Vosges. Of French origin, too, are the beautiful wrought-iron balconies on many of the older houses.
Everywhere among the roofs and towers the tops of trees appeared, and hibiscus and bougainvillia and
flamboyant overflowed the walls, as though the little town were built on an effervescent foundation of
tropical flora which sprang foaming through every available gap, pillowing the upper storeys on a tide of
leaves and flowers.
To the north of our elevation, the land dived down to a large circle of grass, another volcano's mouth,
in the middle of which, far below us and overshadowed by the wooded peaks, a game of football was in
progress. The striped jerseys of the players moved about the field in pursuit of the invisible ball with the
purposeless motion of insects, and the ragged square of spectators swarmed in bulges, and thinned out
and swarmed again with the fluctuations of the game. The rumour of their shouts came faintly to our ears
across the green hollow. Our sylvan vantage-point was deserted except for an overgrown cemetery and
a young Negro reclining Byronically on a tombstone, under a mango tree, reading
The Prose Works of
Oliver Goldsmith
.
Grenada is only twenty-one miles from north to south, and twelve miles at its broadest point from east to
west; but owing to the mountainous ridge running along its spine, and the deep valleys that radiate from
it on either side, it seems very much larger. Our road along the west coast was overshadowed by the steep
mountains of the interior, a towering geometrical organization of green volcanic cones. Valley after valley
discharged their rivers under the bridges. They loitered in wide loops for a furlong or two by the water-
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