Travel Reference
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eral times on the way. They are accomplished smugglers, and load their pirogues with pigs and chickens
and turkeys, which they exchange for the cheap untaxed liquor in Marie Galante or the Saints or even
Guadeloupe, and then slip back to their creeks without paying the excise duty. The Government send
motor boats to patrol the island waters and catch them red-handed, but as the Caribs work by night and
have known every cove and rock and current for centuries before the Europeans arrived in the Antilles,
it is usually a vain task. A serious smuggling incident occurred in the '30's. Five policemen penetrated
the Carib territory and seized a quantity of contraband rum and tobacco. A battle with sticks began and
a riot ensued, with two Caribs killed and two injured, while some of the police suffered injuries; it was
only quelled by the Navy dispatching a ship to the Carib waters, which fired into the high woods with
its heavy guns. It was then that, as a punishment, the kingship was abolished, and the royal mace carried
away to Government House in Roseau.
It is a problem to know what course the authorities should take if a Carib commits a capital offence.
For, being the last specimens of a race that is almost extinct, each pure Carib has a world-wide importance
that transcends by far all legal considerations.
When the time came to leave the Carib capital, we sent the porters and ponies ahead to Solybia, and the
king and his council accompanied us on foot. George Frederick is a dignified, rather melancholy grandee.
As we came from Mrs. Napier, I think he must have assumed we were in some official position, as, all
the way up and down the ravines, his discourse was of minor vexations that he suggested we might have
rectified in the island's Chamber in Roseau. This small Jeremiad was only stemmed by the diversion of
one of his council killing a snake which was wriggling across the path. He drove the point of his walking-
stick into the nape of its neck and pinned it to the ground. The snake lashed in the dust, straightening and
shrinking to a tight spring, and finally coiling its length round the stick in a spiral. When it died, the elder
raised his stick slowly in the air like the staff of æsculapius.
During a rest on the mountainside, we produced a bottle of whisky which we had bought at the Syrian
shop. It did one good to see the way their eyes lit up. We drank in turns, and the enormous swigs of the
Caribs brought the whisky-level down two inches at a time. I took out Mr. Douglas Taylor's treatise on
the Caribs, which gives a vocabulary of the few dozen Carib and Arawak words that have survived the
deluge of Créole. None of them had ever seen it, and they were flattered and excited when they heard
us clumsily pronouncing the words of their ancient tongue:
Ahahoua
or
Twahleiba
, a snake;
Aotou
, a
fish;
Canoa, Couriala, Oucouni
, a boat;
Calleenago
, men;
Careepfouna
, women…. An impish elder, who
seemed the brightest of the council, pronounced a word that doubled them all up with laughter. The king
archly whispered the meaning. This was followed by other words that sent them all into paroxysms of
hilarity. It is clear that the improper terms of the ancient language will be the last to die.
Our three porters looked substantial and normal after the Caribs, who, even after such a short time, began
to seem as curious and unfamiliar as Martians. As we rode southwards we saw one or two more in the
woods, a shade darker each time, but still straight-haired and Mongoloid, and the children, gathering
sticks by the road, were as pretty as Japanese dolls. Finally the miscegenate fringe petered out and we
were again in the heart of the Negro world.
Every few miles the porters sat down for a rest, and we dismounted and smoked cigarettes until it was
time to move on. One of them was a good-looking young man, who sang Créole songs in a soft voice or
whistled without ceasing. I asked him what he thought of the Caribs. 'Dey're maad people,' he answered,
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