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and Cuba from the south-east; leaving, like the sea, centres of stillness in the middle of the Caribbean and
the Gulf of Mexico. The island we were approaching is in the middle of another more baleful thorough-
fare, for when the overheated surface of South America draws to itself the cooler and denser air of the
north in late summer and autumn, the atmospheric commotion turns into hurricanes—a Carib word—that
roll thundering northwards from the Guianas, and, following a line drawn through St. Vincent and Puerto
Rico to South Carolina, turn off north-westwards to spend their fury over the Atlantic waters. Houses are
torn up like trees, and, in the past, fortresses have been demolished, ships lifted out of the water and car-
ried miles inland, and cyclopean rocks blown through the air; islands have been broken up into scattered
reefs, and reefs, piled one on top of the other, turned into islands. The Great Hurricane of the 10th of
October, 1786, swept whole towns away, sunk fleets, and even, by a community of distress, reconciled the
French and the English, on the point of disembowelling each other. In 1685 the Guadeloupeans, creeping
out of cover after the passage of one of these visitations, found the ruins teeming with dazed and innu-
merable pelicans—birds till then unknown in the island. Flurried and helpless parcels, a whole population
of them had been whirled hundreds of miles across the sea, the pouches of their lower jaws blown taut by
the wind like the sails of an armada.
The region of Antillia existed in the minds of Europeans long before the Antilles were discovered. In
ancient maps it is represented as an archipelago or, alternatively, as a single mass of land, wandering in
the Tenebrous Sea between the Canaries and the south-eastern confines of Asia. Sometimes they are set
down as the Lentils, on account of their profusion and their size. As exploration expanded the Atlantic,
the chartographers thrust the legendary region farther and farther towards the setting sun, and Columbus,
landing on Guanahani and the northern coasts of Hispaniola, was convinced that the Arawaks were akin
to the Indians of the Orient and the Chinese. Cathay and Hindustan, he felt sure, were not far off (oddly
enough, time has lent some colour to his adumbrations; for now, after four centuries, Chinese and East
Indians abound in Cuba. As he never circumnavigated it, he died in the conviction that it was a peninsula
of the Asian continent.) But the Antilles they have appropriately remained: fore-islands, the outposts of
America.
We were losing height, and the roofs and belfries and battlements of San Juan de Puerto Rico appeared
along the coast. Due north lay the track of Columbus, and that of all the Conquistadors who succeeded
him; the highway to the new world, ruffling gently under the Trade Winds,
Los Vientos Alicios
. Here-
dia, himself the descendant of one of these paladins—of the founder, in fact, of that powerful but deleted
Carthage of the Spanish Main, Cartagena de las Indias—conjures up, in elaborate Parnassian periods,
their yard-arms stooping under the wind's impulsion.
… Les vents alisés inclinaient leurs antennes
Aux bords mystérieux du monde occidental
Chaque soir, espérant des lendemains épiques,
L'azur phosphorescent de la mer des Tropiques
Enchantait leur sommeil d'un mirage doré;
Ou penchés à l'avent des blanches caravelles,
Ils regardaient monter en un ciel ignoré
Du fond de l'Océan des étoiles nouvelles.
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