Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER FIVE
Dominica
THE mountains of Dominica rose from the sea in spikes, and the clouds that overhung their summits were
loosened into a gap, through which, over a pale disc of the sea, the moon spilt a silver cone that looked
like another ghostly outcrop of the inland ranges. The
St. Laurent
was already sailing on northward to
Guadeloupe as the dug-out canoe carried us across a quarter of a mile of water—for there is no natural
harbour—to the few flickering lights that marked the meeting-place of the mountains and the sea and the
little capital of Roseau. It was 1 a.m.
A magnificent black sergeant-major of police, the only figure on the quay, advised us to try to stay
at Kingsland House for the night. He was wonderfully Britannic in appearance, standing as straight as a
guardsman, with his cap-badge, boots and buttons and the knob of his swagger-cane glittering in the moon-
light. His blue serge uniform was brightened by a scarlet capband and a broad red stripe down the side
of his trousers. Three little boys appeared out of the shadows and, arranging most of our luggage on their
heads, trotted before us through the empty streets. The wooden houses with their projecting first storeys,
in not one of which a light showed, might have belonged to a village in the Balkans, or to the outskirts of
Yannina or Monastir. This impression was heightened by the moonlight on the warm dust, by the chirp-
ing of insects and the croaking of frogs. When we knocked on the door of Kingsland House, a substantial
building in a beautiful garden with lawns and mango trees, an elderly West Indian woman answered the
door with an oil lamp in her hand, surprisingly dressed in all the starched and goffered and pleated severity
of a mid-Victorian parlourmaid. Behind her, in the lamplight, a strangely English interior materialized. Pol-
ished mahogany gleamed darkly, and the panes of rosewood cabinets full of china and cut glass reflected
her burning wick. But no, there were no rooms, and Miss Maggie was away in London. The door gently
closed on the world of beeswax and starch and soft lamplight, and we were back again among the frogs.
We had the same bad luck in the Hotel de Paz, and settled finally in Sutton House, wondering, as we fell
asleep in our brass bedsteads, how the capital of our first British Colony would appear next morning.
It appeared enchanting in the early light (for it was impossible to stay in bed long with every noise of re-
surgent Roseau coming through the thin wooden walls). It was pretty, simple and innocent, and utterly dif-
ferent in feeling from the sultry, brooding, rather wicked atmosphere that hangs over Fort-de-France. The
houses were built like chalets, and some had jutting, pillar-supported gables of trellis work, but most re-
markable were the wooden houses built throughout of overlapping dark grey wooden shingles in the style
of Bukovina. Little Union Jacks fluttered from carved roof-trees, placards marked the homes of the Bible
Reading Society and the Gospel Mission, and the Arts and Crafts of Dominica displayed a windowful of
swizzle-sticks and tasselled shack-shacks and Carib basketwork. Not far off, the brass plate of Barclay's
Bank gleamed in the morning air. A clean, sloping road climbed the hill past the windows of Ayoub Dib the
Syrian, and every shop appeared to be called Shillingford. Window after window displayed cheeses, rope,
bass, scythes, gym-shoes, shirts, straw hats, hams, and whisky, we noticed with pleasure, at pre-war prices.
The covered market was crowded with old women selling vegetables and fish, wearing a less resplendent
version of the
gwan' wobe
and the
madwas
, and talking to each other in Créole. The quay was lined with
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