Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jamaica
A STUPENDOUS and echoing dome of metal swallowed us up, and the roar of aeroplanes landing and
taking off was replaced by a babel of English, American, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Dutch as the
swarm of travellers from Europe and North and South America and from every point in the Caribbean Sea
were slowly churned through the formalities of departure and arrival. Jamaica is in the very heart of the
Central American waters, and every air line seems to cross there.
As we penetrated this great enclosure a black nurse plunged, with intimidating briskness, a thermometer
into every mouth. As soon as this was removed, a smiling emissary of the Sugar Manufacturers' Asso-
ciation placed in each of our hands a large glass of rum punch, and, as soon as it was empty, another,
equally delicious and even stiffer, as though a normal temperature had proved our fitness for the rigours
and delights of Jamaican life. Rubber stamps thundered down on to the pages of passports, and customs
officers inquired if there was anything to declare— not only the usual things, but stranger commodities.
Birds? Insects? Earth? 'Are you quite sure,' they asked, 'there's no earth in the baggage? No?' Reassured,
they marked each sordid bundle with a chalk hieroglyph, and we moved along into the orbit of a waiting
reporter from the Daily Gleaner , who subjected each newcomer to a deft and high-powered inquisition.
Light-headed with vertigo and rum, we were driven off down the slender peninsula, and then westward
along the shore of the mainland in the direction of Kingston; wondering if the pace of all Jamaican life
would be as rapid as this.
It would be idle to pretend that Kingston is an attractive city. It is bigger and uglier than any other town
in the British West Indies. The centre resembles the nastiest of London outskirts, and the outskirts are
equal to the most dreary of West Indian slums. It was a relief to discover, after a few days, that it is quite
unrepresentative of the rest of this beautiful island. The evil streets, the red brick Victorian Gothic, the
Chinese general stores, the goitrous and stunted statues, the rusty field guns and howitzers of the First
World War placed as memorials in meanly conceived squares, the profusion of chapels dedicated to de-
pressing sects—all these dismal adjuncts told us nothing of the country that we were to encounter outside
its walls. But even Kingston had its compensations.
One of these was the obsolete splendour of breakfast, a sparkling still-life that could only have fallen
from the volutes of a tropical cornucopia: paw-paw, sour-sop, mango, pineapple, and ice-cold mandarines
peeled and impaled on forks were the merest forerunners of a multiplicity of eggs, kedgeree, sausages,
bacon, fried banana, a cold wing of fowl, hot rolls, a week's butter ration, and marmalade. It was a break-
fast fit for a tropical potentate or a Regency prize-fighter. Thus fortified, I left the pleasant coolness of the
South Camp Road Hotel and wandered into the blinding town. The heat soon turned the smart white suit
(with which, after humiliating sartorial reverses in Puerto Rico, I had prudently equipped myself) into a
sopping envelope of rags.
The strains of a brass band came panting through the air from the garden of the Myrtle Bank Hotel,
and I hastened my steps towards that great centre of Kingston social life. The khaki drill of army officers'
uniforms, the first, apart from the occasional police, that I had seen in the West Indies, interspersed the
Search WWH ::




Custom Search