Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
side and joined the sea through shallow troughs of sand. These junctions of sweet and salt water were the
emplacement of villages, each of them built in a little coppice, where Negroes sat weaving lobster-pots
in the shade, and the women spread their laundry to dry on the boulders of their little estuaries. A forest
of coconut palms stretched in a tenuous belt between the road and the smooth sea, and here and there
we passed fishermen hammering away at their half-built sloops, standing under the leaves among their
palisades of props. One of them was almost ready for launching, and the shipbuilder and his brother were
painting tar on to the clean white timbers of the hull. By her side, all ready for use, lay the freshly cut
rollers over which, a week or two later, the sloop would ride into the water. These vessels were the points
of departure for impressively expert colloquies between Rosemary Grimble and the shipbuilders, and we
would sit and smoke on one of the bulwarks listening to our beautiful and Brontean companion and these
elderly Sinbads as they conversed of tonnages and winds and currents and rigs. Most of these ship-build-
ers are from Carriacou, the little island half a dozen miles long which lies to the north of Grenada, where
the majority of the islanders are engaged in the craft, and their vessels do much of the carrying trade in
the archipelago. They are an industrious and thrifty race of Negro, Scotch, English and French descent.
Their Scotch ancestry dates from the time when much of the land in Carriacou was in the hands of Scots-
men, and though they seem to have vanished now they have bequeathed to the islanders, along with their
other characteristics, a Scots accent. Cattle and poultry raising, with shipbuilding and farming, form their
main industries, and until recently Carriacou ponies were the best bred in the Windward Islands.
So close did the road run to the sea that twice we stopped while the path was momentarily blocked by
teams of fishermen hauling in their nets; and waited until the final loop, with its agitated haul of captives,
was dragged on to the shore. The fishermen dispatched the larger fish by grasping their tails and strik-
ing them against the sand, while the smaller ones were poured into rotund wicker amphoras, which were
hoisted on to the fishermen's heads and carried away, still shaking and reverberating with the languishing
throes of the fish.
A notice in the small township of Gouyave announced a sweepstake of which the first prize was a free
funeral for the ticket holder or for any friend or relation. This, and the fact that the town (so Rosemary
told us) was equipped with a lilac-coloured hearse emblazoned with the words
Bon Voyage
, seems to hint
that the burghers of Gouyave have an individual attitude to death of which one would be glad to learn the
secret. Reach-me-down coffins were advertised in the usual glowing terms.
We settled for our picnic in a grassy clearing above the sea at a north-eastern point of the island, called
Sauteurs. An overgrown cliff lay on one side of us, and on the other the village green, and a spinney in
the middle of which stood the pretty tropical-Gothic church of St. Patrick. Carriacou was a long blur on
the horizon, only just visible through the line of scattered inlets and rocks that lay due north of the bay.
Rosemary, drawing on her fund of nautical lore, pointed them out and named them: Sugar Loaf, Green Is-
land, Sandy Island, Mouche Carrée, Ile Ronde, Les Tantes, Isle de Caille, London Bridge, and the jagged
spike of Kickem Jenny—a transliteration, it is believed, of
Caye
(reef)
qu'on gêne
or
qui gêne
.
Sauteurs—or Sotairs as it is alternatively pronounced—gained its name in a gruesome way. After the
discovery of Grenada, Spain displayed her customary indifference, and when (except for an abortive at-
tempt at settlement by a company of London merchants) the island had been left to the Caribs for well
over a century, Richelieu claimed it for Louis XIII in 1626. Next year Charles I granted it, along with
nearly all the Caribees, to the Earl of Carlisle,
[1]
but neither France nor England attempted to enforce
their claims. The great buccaneer Longvilliers de Poincy attempted to land a few years later, but was
driven off by the Caribs. The formidable Duparquet (whom I have mentioned in connection with Marti-
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