Travel Reference
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mistress, of the Governor—played a telling role in the formation of the colonies. Not far from the stones,
we found the little churchyard, where, under a rickety wooden canopy, his mosscovered tomb stands
among the long grass. A nest of giant hornets was suspended in the canopy, so that it was not without
risk that I took down the words incised underneath his coat of arms.
[7]
'An Epitaph vpon The Noble and
Mvch Lamented Gent Sir Tho Warner Kt Lievtenant Generall of Ye Carribee Ieland Gover
r
of Ye Ieland
of St. Christ
r
who departed this life on 10 of March 1648
First Read then weepe when thou art hereby taught
That Warner lyes interr'd here, one that bought
With loss of noble bloud the Illustrious Name
Of a Commander Greate in Acts of Fame
Traynd from his youth in Armes his Courage bold
Attempted braue exploites, and Vncontrold
By fortunes fiercest frownes hee still gave forth
Large Narratiues of Military worth
Written with his swords point but what is man
In the midst of his glory and who can
Secure this Life A moment since that hee
Both by Sea and Land so long kept free
At mortal stroakes at length did yeeld
Grace to Conqueringe Death the field.
FINE CORONAT'
The walls of this little church were hung with the Stations of the Cross, and various other pieces of
Spike-ish equipment hinted that here, too, the official party-line of the national church had been left far
behind.
An interesting little edifice of doctrinal casuistry surrounded, in former centuries, the spiritual matters
of the slaves. The French planters only with difficulty persuaded Louis XIII to sanction the Slave Trade
between Africa and the Americas. There was a French law that formally forbade the enslavement of any
subject of the Crown, and it was only by assuring the king that slavery was the only means of bringing
these lost sheep into the fold of the True Church that the royal veto was reluctantly withdrawn. Slavery,
the planters maintained—as their colossal fortunes multiplied by dint of slave labour—was a method of
proselytizing merely, an insignificant detail. What mattered was the salvation of the souls of these poor
people.
The English, states Father Labat, through negligence or for some other motive, never baptized their
slaves; they allowed them to welter in the error of their primitive cults, whether these were Mo-
hammedanism
[8]
or one of the many forms of idolatry. He tackled an English parson about this in St.
Kitts, and the parson piously answered that it was improper for a Christian to hold in bondage his brothers
in Christ; so they let them remain heathens; a piece of dogma, the Dominican goes on, that is promptly
thrust into oblivion whenever French slaves, known to be Christians, were captured by the English. It
is hard to decide which is the more devious and unpleasant of these two bits of sophistry. The English
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