By Lola and Valerie
A DIARY OF TWO REAL GIRLS ON
A REAL TRIP Part II
From
Everyland magazine, Feb. 1917, researched by Alan Schenker, digitized by Doug
Frizzle, Mar. 2012.
WE were up early this morning
before the sailors had finished
washing the decks, to get our first
glimpse of Saint Kitts. A little girl friend of ours on board ship insists upon
calling this island Saint Kittens and expects to see a lot of cats on their best behavior when she goes ashore.
Father
told us that this island was named by Columbus
in honor of his patron saint, and that Kitts really means Christopher, and that
the island belongs to England.
The mountains on this island
are much higher than at Saint Thomas
and one of the officers pointed out the tallest mountain, which is a volcano called Mount Misery.
We have to turn around a
corner and now we see the town and
right back of it a place called Monkey Hill because wild monkeys live there. This town is built on low land and has
bright-colored houses and everywhere there
are many launches flying the English
flag. We are going ashore in the
harbor-master's launch with some
friends among the passengers who
have invited us for a motor trip around the
island. It is very hot even with our thinnest summer clothes.
We had a lovely day ashore.
The roads were fine for motoring and we passed beautiful homes of English residents, with wonderful flowers
and trees and queer native huts with hundreds of fat, brown babies looking like
chocolate candy that wouldn't melt in the
sun. We stopped at one of the little
huts and watched the way the people cooked their
dinner. They use small charcoal stoves, made of clay, which they put outside anywhere, if it's not raining, and inside
anywhere, if it is. They boil their
food in big earthen pots and bake
and fry things on pieces of old tin cans laid over the
fire.
In the
pots they put salt fish, a sort of
green banana called plantain, some
yams, peppers, and anything else they
fancy, and when it is cooked the
family gather around the pot and dinner is served without ceremony or
knives and forks. Sometimes they have fresh fish and peas and cassava, but they never tire of salt fish and plantains. Many of the people have a very funny belief that codfish
have human heads, for they never see
the heads of the
dried codfish which are sent down from
the United States. At another place a woman
was frying fish-cakes for sale by the roadside, and at a half-penny apiece they were bought as fast as she could make them. They use the
brightest-colored oils I ever saw, and scarlet butter, and they buy it by the
pennyworth, just as they do ice and
other things. It makes their food look very pretty but I don't know how it
tastes.
We
saw two women cooks on their way home
from market, standing in the middle of the
road, and each had a lump of ice on her head with the
sun beating down on it, but they had
evidently to finish their chat
before taking the ice home. It didn't seem to melt as fast as ours does.
Each island has an ice factory and, if it's not broken down, the natives buy ice all day long at a penny a pound.
A
refrigerator is unknown, we are told, even in the
best houses, so the servants go to the ice-house as often as ice is needed. Before they had ice factories, all the
ice was brought here in blocks packed in barrels and as the
people had never seen ice in any other
form they had an idea that the ice fell down from
the sky in big cakes in the north.
We
came back to the ship in time for
dinner. Our friends sent us a big basket of all kinds of tropical fruits and
two huge bouquets of the
loveliest-smelling flowers. As mother's
favorite is jasmine I was glad there
was lots of that. We will not leave this harbor until after midnight, and our
next stop will be Antigua. We shall arrive there to-morrow morning.
We
went to bed so late last night and were so tired that we slept later than
usual, so we were almost at anchor off Antigua
before we were dressed. Antigua is one of the
Leeward Islands but it doesn't seem of much
account, for we have to stay way outside the
harbor nearly five miles from the island and go ashore in a launch. It took us
half an hour to reach St. Johns,
the capital of the island.
We
walked about the town and looked in the funny little shops and drank some kola made from
the nuts grown here which we like
better than any of the sodas we ever
tasted. At lunch in the principal
hotel we had a real West Indian meal and tasted turtle meat for the first time, as well as all kinds of queer
vegetables, such as breadfruit, boiled yams and fried plantains, and some nice guava jelly.
In the afternoon father
went about taking pictures, while mother
took us to visit one of the native
schools. It seemed strange to see only black faces, for the
white children all go to private schools. The children seemed glad to see us,
and they sang and spoke pieces and
did sums in mental arithmetic in pounds, shillings, and pence instead of in
dollars and cents, so we couldn't follow very well. I sang one of our school songs
and Valerie recited a funny
piece which they enjoyed very much.
Mother, who used to teach school,
drew some lovely pictures on the board. We found that the
children had very little seat work, so mother
is going to send them some of the
things we use at home, for the teachers really work very hard and have very
little pay. On our way back we met father
and he took us to visit a famous old stone church, which has a wooden church
inside, so that if an earthquake comes
and knocks down the stone one the wooden one will still stand. And then, although we were very tired, we drove out
eight miles to see a valley where all the
trees are petrified, that is, turned to stone.
We missed the launch, so we had to take a sailboat out to the steamer. The captain said that he was just
waiting for us, and as soon as we got on board the
ship sailed.
We reached Dominica,
our next stopping place, in a pouring rain, but the
chief officer said it is always raining in Dominica
and that it clears up so soon that no one seems to mind it. As we came close to
the harbor the
sun came out and it did make a pretty picture,—just as though a curtain had
rolled up in a theater; beautiful
green mountains on every side with their
tops hidden in the clouds, cunning
little villages among the palms
along the shore and Roseau, the capital, looking as fresh and clean as if it had
enjoyed its bath. A number of small boats came racing out from shore to greet us and though the island is English we notice that the native people all speak a sort of French patois.
It was Sunday when we arrived, and a special feast-day in the Roman
Catholic Church, and as most of the
colored people belong to this church there
were banners, flags, and decorations of all kinds in the
streets and houses and the people
were all dressed in the most gaudy
clothes. Dresses made of the brightest plaids and dots with long, stiffly
starched trains, bright-colored turbans and neckerchiefs, so that in the distance they
looked like gorgeous butterflies.
As the
steamer is to be here nearly three days, we are to stay ashore at a hotel so as
to have a chance to see all the
sights and meet some old friends.
The news of our arrival
spread very quickly over the island,
and when we reached the hotel we
found a crowd of old servants and their
friends, a regular mob, all jabbering and dancing with joy, thinking we were
going to remain, and they were so
disappointed to hear we were not.
At lunch in the hotel we had the
nicest kind of stew made from
"mountain chicken”. This is really crapaud, a kind of huge land
frog, but they taste so much like
real chicken that the natives call them that, for strangers might not like the idea of eating frogs.
In the
afternoon Anne and Charlotte,—who used to take care of us when we were here
before,—took us out for a walk while mother
and father went to visit some friends.
It was funny, as we walked
through the streets, to find people
running out from their little houses to welcome
us back and to say all sorts of nice things in patois and queer English, which
Charlotte translated for us, like "Ay, ay, but these
children grew big fine lady, yes," and "So nice clothes they
make for to wear, yes," and "Come,
me child, look me here for you see."
Old Ma'am Lucie showed us some pictures of ourselves which she had kept since
we were here before and one showing us dressed up playing bride-and-groom is very funny, but I remember we used to like to
play grown-ups. Then Anne had a picture of Valerie when a baby and there is one of mother
dressed for a masquerade. Every one is so surprised to see us grown up, though
mother says all of the people here look just as if it were only
yesterday since we saw them.
The park, which is called the Botanic Station, is the
most beautiful spot we have seen so far. There are such wonderful kinds of
trees and plants. We thought the
funniest one was the cannon-ball
tree, well-named because fruits which look just like rusty cannon-balls grow in
bunches from the
trunk and branches. There are also giant rubber trees which we thought only
grew in pots as we see them at home. The park was full of people and, as we sat
under the trees near the cricket grounds, we held quite a little court
talking with many old friends, who were glad to see us.
Everybody walks in the garden between four and six in the afternoon and we were quite surprised to see how
up-to-date and well-dressed the
people were. Charlotte
told us all the dresses are made by the dressmakers without using any patterns. You
bring them the
cloth and an old dress to measure by and a picture in a fashion magazine and they are able to copy it exactly and they only charge from
fifty cents to two dollars for the
making. Many of the English people,
of course, get their clothes from
England.
One of the
funniest trades here is making cups, saucers, watering-pots, and all sorts of
utensils from old tin cans. There
are lots of little shops where the
men make these things by hand, and
we watched one of them for some time with a great deal of interest. Hardly
anything is wasted here, and old packing-cases are taken apart and the boards used for making furniture and fitting up
rooms, and some
of the houses have their roofs and even their
walls made out of old kerosene tins hammered out flat and nailed onto the timbers.
We took a walk up a high
hill, which we would call a mountain at home,
and from the
top had a beautiful view of the town
and the ocean with our ship in the distance. We brought back bunches of beautiful
flowers and nutmegs and mangoes given us by the
people living here.
To-morrow afternoon we are
going to the gardens again to see a
game of cricket, but I am sure it is not going to be as interesting as
baseball. (To be continued)
No comments:
Post a Comment