Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
interest, to go there some time, he felt that the matter had no particular urgency. The beautiful little town
of Willemstad in Curaçao is a real capital for the Dutch in the West Indies. They look no farther than
those gables and spires and bridges—so freakishly reminiscent, in the paradoxical Caribbean sunlight, of
Rotterdam or Delft—for home. The Dutch Antilles—Curaçao, Aruba and Bonair in the Windward, and
St. Eustatius, Saba and St. Maartin in the Leeward Isles, form a quiet and aloof little galaxy, comparable,
in the complicated relationships of the other Caribees, to the pacific status of the Netherlands in the mael-
strom of Europe. Each of the islands is administered by a lieutenant-governor, who is always a Dutch
West Indian, under the jurisdiction of a central governor in Willemstad. These civil servants never take
up appointments in Holland, still less in Java or Bali.
When Mr. Voges said good-night, we climbed to our rooms: spotlessly clean chambers with gigantic
four-posters and substantial mahogany wardrobes, all pleasantly solid and Dutch. The beds were draped
in cubic pavilions of muslin, accessible through beautifully made thresholds in the fabric fastened with
bows of tape. Once inside, the sleeper was immured against the fiercest invasion. Trimming the wick,
I installed myself with the security of a mediæval burgher, and opened the ancient copy of Mr. S. J.
Kruythoff's
Netherland Windward Islands and a few interesting Items on French St. Martin
of which the
kind Mr. Challenger of St. Kitts, had made me a parting present. The text is relieved by photographs by
Mr. Toppin and Mr. Buncamper, and by Mr. Kruythoff's own stirring Byronic quatrains:
'No more your spicy groves bewail
On soft Hesperian breeze set free
The bloodstained pelf, the bloody tale
Of vile marauders of the sea.
The hectic rovers of the deep
In mighty frigates lie at rest,
Whilst pearl and pirate share the sleep:
The victim and the victim's quest….'
The island, whose total area is only nine square miles, was taken by the Dutch early in the seventeenth
century, and though, like all the islands, it changed hands many times, it has remained steadily Dutch
since 1816. During the first part of the American War of Independence, Holland remained neutral, but the
sympathies of the governor and colonists were on the side of the American States. An illicit arms traffic
to the struggling rebels was connived at by the governor. Statia, as the island is called by its inhabitants,
was one of the first to salute the flag of the infant Republic; and the failure of the fort to dip its flag
low or long enough when British warships sailed past called down upon the little island the thunders of
Admiral Rodney when hostilities broke out between England and Holland. He appeared in the roadstead
before the Governor was aware that the two countries were at war. The Governor surrendered. The ac-
count of the damage and plunder that the English inflicted on the island made me shift uneasily between
the smooth Dutch sheets. Three million pounds' worth of booty and merchandise was carried away, and
everything that was not portable was destroyed. 400,000 guilders' worth of dyewoods were burnt. A long
line of warehouses and breakwaters were fired and destroyed, and the harbour was dismantled. The is-
land has never recovered from this crushing blow. The population dwindled, and, in spite of countless
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