Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
It is a pleasure for which one can thank the Emancipation Act. For here, as in Trinidad and most of the
islands, the freed Negroes preferred to settle on their own land, or just to squat; or, rather than work as
paid labourers on the hated sugar estates, to earn their living as charcoal burners. Labour was imported
from Malta and Madeira, but the scheme was a failure. A few of the Maltese became porters or wander-
ing pedlars, but most of them emigrated to Trinidad, and the Portuguese settled down as shopkeepers or
plantation assistants, but seldom as labourers. The cultivation of sugar had to be practically abandoned,
and its place was taken by the nutmeg and cacao which have become the chief industries of the country.
Their cultivation is many times less laborious than the back-breaking grind of the cane-fields, and much
more suited to the character of the islanders; as it would be to anybody's.
In clearings by the road, we saw little farm-houses where solitary Negroes were superintending bar-
becues—flat trays that could be slid under cover at the approach of rain—on which nutmeg and cacao
beans, and the frail scarlet network that covers the nutmeg, were spread to roast in the sun. This red sub-
stance is formed by a juice that oozes through the shell of the nut, which, when it dries, becomes a tight,
russet lacy substance: the mace of commerce.
Moving through this beautiful forest, then, we blessed the events that had put down sugar from its high
place, and made way for these spices, and for the limes and grape-fruit and coconut palms, for coconuts
and bananas are also an important cultivation. Palms, though they may be monotonous sometimes or in-
appropriate, are never ugly; and, among the civilized Grenadian flora, even the banana trees looked ac-
ceptable. But above all one must revere the memory of the early Spaniards who brought the cacao tree
from the banks of the Amazon and the fastnesses of Equador.
Derelict sugar-mills mouldered among the usurping trees. Their chimneys were broken, and the semi-
circular tiles were moulting from their roofs; and in the long grass by these surrendered palaces, giant
cauldrons lay, in which the cassava-flour for the slaves used to be baked. These vessels are an essential
part of the Antillean landscape. They are the exact shape of tin helmets in the British Army, but six or
eight feet in diameter, and made out of cast iron. Covered with rust and moss, they are another reminder
in the abandoned mills of the Antilles of the recentness of slavery and the ravished omnipotence of sugar.
Villages are scarce in the eastern reaches of Grenada. Now and then Rosemary would point out an old
plantation house and occasionally we drove through a group of wooden cabins; but most frequent were
the mills. Outside one of them in an alcove of the forest a lonely peasant was sharpening a cutlass on a
grind-stone; pedalling away, pausing every now and then to examine minutely the edge of the glittering
blade, and then applying it once more to the screaming and spark-shedding disc. An oddly disquieting
vision.
Sessions in the public libraries and, if they existed, the town museums of the different islands had long
ago become a point of routine. They vary—many of the insular capitals have beautiful libraries which
they owe to the munificence of the late Mr. Andrew Carnegie—but they are invariably pleasant retreats,
equipped with several thousand books, and always with the Encyclopædia Britannica, the ordinary works
of reference, and most of the topics concerning the island in which they are situated. The British colonies
are gratifyingly superior to those of any other Caribbean power in this matter.
Grenada, though it somehow missed the benevolence of Carnegie, is no exception. One of the most re-
warding books I found there had an unpromising title and a prosiac official binding:
The Grenada Hand-
book and Directory
, 1946—nearly four hundred closely printed pages of information about the little is-
land. Much of it is dry, official stuff. But many pages are concerned with the animals, birds, reptiles,
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