What We Saw in the West Indies Part IV
THE DIARY OF TWO REAL GIRLS ON A REAL TRIP
By Lola and Valerie
From Everyland
magazine, Apr. 1917; researched by Alan Schenker; digitized by Doug Frizzle
GETTING into Demerara is
different from getting into any other place that we have visited. The trip across from Barbados
was the roughest we've had, and when
we came within sight of land, we found the
water a dark, muddy brown, for Georgetown,
the capital, is on a big river
twenty miles from the sea and the
river-water colors the sea for many
miles outside.
All we could see was a few
tall chimneys against the horizon,
and a lightship. The country is so low and flat that the
buildings and trees seem to grow right out of the
water, but as we came near, we found that the
shores were covered with low green bushes and trees and the
town was hidden behind docks and warehouses.
There are a number of nice
boarding places and hotels here in Georgetown,
and we found a fine place right on the
main street for the week we are to
be here. We were very pleasantly surprised as we drove about the town to find it a beautiful, big city, with the streets regularly laid out and canals
everywhere, sometimes beside the streets and sometimes
in their centers, for the old Dutch settlers chose this place below the level of the
river and had to make canals to drain the
water off, and there are dykes to
keep the water out just as in
Holland. The streets are filled with crowds of people from
all quarters of the globe, dressed
in their native costumes. There are
Hindus, East Indian coolies, Chinese, Afghans, Brahmans, and native Indians. It
is very hot in the middle of the day, but the
breeze blows from the river and it is cool in the
morning and at night. There is a lovely place called the
Sea Wall, where the band plays and the people promenade
and enjoy the breeze.
We have been very much
interested in the shops here as they are so very different from
those in any other place we have
seen. One part of the town has fine,
up-to-date French and English shops, but the
ones we like best are in the East
Indian section. We prowled about, examining the
curious brassware, and picked out some
funny little gods and brass candlesticks and some
beautiful bowls of East Indian manufacture. The Hindu women
are the banks for their families, and the
amount of jewelry they wear in their ears and noses and on their
arms, toes, and ankles is wonderful.
Valerie wears some Hindu bracelets and an anklet, and I have a funny silver collar, such as is worn by the oldest child in East Indian families, and the coolies all chatter and seem pleased when they see us wearing their
ornaments.
The
botanic gardens here are the finest
we have seen. They are beautifully planned with nearly ten miles of drives and
every sort of palm, flower, and tree. There are many canals and lakes in the gardens, and these
are filled with beautiful water-lilies of blue, red, pink, purple, and white,
but the one which were the most wonderful are called victoria regia. These
have leaves so large that they look
as if a person could stand on them.
They remind us of giant green pancakes on the
water, and the enormous white and
pink flowers are as big as my head.
The
thing we liked best of all in the
gardens was a pond where there were
live manatees and alligators. The manatees would come
up to eat grass we threw into the
water, but we could see only their
noses. In the trees about the ponds we saw wild herons and white egrets and
flocks of parrots, and a great many other
strange and lovely birds were everywhere in the
trees and shrubbery. Here, for the
first time, we saw rice growing, and, much to our surprise, we found it looked
just like light green grass growing in shallow water.
Everybody
gets up early in the morning, for
business begins at seven o'clock and early morning is the
pleasantest part of the day. This
morning we took an early drive down the
coast. The road ran close to the
river, and it was very strange to see the
water higher than our heads beyond the
dyke along the shore. We passed lots
of little villages and long lines of houses called ranges, where the coolie laborers on the
sugar estates live, and saw native barbers "barbing" their customers
on the streets.
This
afternoon we went to a football game to which we had been invited by some young people. The game was played in the English way, and none of the
players were allowed to touch the
ball with their hands. The boys all
wore short trousers, and their knees
were bare, and many of them were
badly scratched and bruised.
When
we came back to the hotel tonight,
we found a new guest who had just come
down from the
"bush," as they call the interior. He has a gold mine there and showed us a number of gold nuggets which
he had washed out of the sand in a
creek. They were the first we'd ever
seen, and he gave us each one to have made into a pin as a souvenir. He also
showed us some beautiful diamonds from the
"diggings" up the river.
Early
this morning we went to the
market-place, and though it was much the
same as the other
markets we have seen, it was larger and was more interesting, for it was filled
with picturesque Hindus and in the
stalls were lots of curious things. There were great blue and red and yellow
macaws, monkeys and parrots and many other
wild animals and birds for sale. One kind of monkey is just too cunning: it is
called a sakawinki and is a little, soft, cuddly thing about the size of a squirrel. We wanted to buy one, but father says they'll
not live over winter at home, so we
bought a pair of lovebirds for some
friends at home, and a very tame
blue parrot that just loves to be petted. We have named him Boy Blue. He is
mine, and Valerie has a parrakeet, called Joseph because his coat is of many
colors.
This
afternoon we went to an entertainment given for the
benefit of the Baby-Saving League.
Everybody is trying to help save Creole and coolie babies by teaching how to
feed and care for them properly. I
think they used to give babies all
kinds of dreadful things to eat before this league was formed.
Our
steamer is coming in to-morrow, and
we have had such a fine time here it doesn't seem possible we've been here a
whole week. We are just getting well acquainted and enjoying our stay, and mother is sorry to go, too, but father says we'll find plenty to interest us in Paramaribo, where we are
going next.
We
find the Maraval a nice big
ship with even larger and better staterooms
than the Guiana.
We are on board now and ready to sail, and so many of our friends have come to bid us good-by that it makes us feel quite homesick. The people down here are certainly very
hospitable and friendly.
This
morning we found ourselves in the
same old muddy water, although we were entering the
river at Surinam.
We stopped by a funny little red lightship to take on the
pilot and lifted his launch and its occupants right up onto our deck. At the quarantine station the
doctor came along in a boat flying the
Dutch flag, but we hardly noticed anything besides the
men who rowed the boat. They were
all black and were dressed in blouse, trousers, and cap, one side of their costume being bright blue and the other
brown. The captain told us they were
convicts and this was the convict
dress to prevent them from getting away without being recognized. They
didn't seem at all unhappy, but laughed and joked and appeared as jolly as
possible.
Very
soon after, we saw the town and were
delighted with its appearance, for it was so clean and neat and all the houses had quaint dormer windows and looked just
like the pictures of Holland. The Maraval tied
to a big iron dock close to the
market-place, and the ship was so
high above the buildings that the town seemed like a little toy village.
Paramaribo is very
different from any other place. The streets are all shaded with huge
mahogany trees, and the houses look
like those of some little New England or Dutch village. We drove out to a big
rubber plantation and were much interested in seeing the
men tap the trees and gather the
white sap that flowed out. This was caught in little glass cups and was treated
with acid, and then it turned into
real rubber.
We
find the people fearfully and wonderfully
dressed. The idea of the colored women seems to be to look as fat as they can, and they
wear bright-colored, stiffly starched clothes
with padded rolls about their waists
to keep their skirts out, and
flowing starched capes, with stiff handkerchiefs tied like Dutch caps on their heads. One dear little girl named Trinka, who
sold us candies and baskets, looked so sweet in her Dutch dress that I wanted
to take her home. She helps her mother make the
baskets and sweets to sell but goes to school every day and to church and
Sunday-school and speaks English well. She is so polite and nice we told her we
would put her picture in the Everyland magazine, so children all over
the world could see how dear and
clean and nicely starched she looks, and you ought to see how happy that made
her!
There
are Hindus here, too, and hundreds of Javanese who dress in flowered silk and
cotton and look like pictures of the
Far East, and then
there are native Indians and Bush
Negroes from the
interior who wear very little clothing.
The
people all speak Dutch, and the
shops are full of a funny mixture of things from
Holland and Java and the
East Indies.
The
botanic gardens here are not as large nor as pretty as those in Demerara, but they are very interesting because of the Javanese village there.
The Javanese are the laborers here,
and in their village in the gardens they
live just as they do in Java. The
little brown babies run about without any clothes
and are so shy they seem like little
brown birds or rabbits, but the women and men followed us about on their funny wooden clogs and seemed to find us just
as strange as we thought them.
Valerie
tried to take some snapshots of some Bush Negro children whom
we met on the
street, but their
fathers
and mothers
dragged them
out of sight behind themselves,
so she couldn't take them.
They think that if any one takes their
picture it robs them
of part of their
spirit or soul.
We
happened to see a very interesting coolie betrothal ceremony. The little
bride-to-be was only twelve years old and had her face covered with a heavy
veil and was fastened by her long white wedding garments to the bridegroom's pink robes. He
wore a funny bird-cage-like head-dress of fancy colored paper and Christmaslike
trimmings, through which his face could hardly be seen. On paying a piece of
silver any one could look at the
bride's face, so we each took a shilling look.
We
left Paramaribo day before yesterday and this
morning early saw Trinidad
ahead. We are now just entering the
Bocas, narrow strips of water which connect the ocean with the Gulf
of Paria.
The captain says boca is Spanish for mouth and that these at the north are the dragon's mouths
and that those at the
other
end of the
gulf are the
serpent's mouths. There are three of these
mouths at this end of the
gulf, and we are going through the
narrowest of all. It doesn't look as if the
ship would have room to pass, the mouth is so narrow, and on either side are great mountains rising right out of the water and covered with forests and with huge
caves at their bases. Trinidad is on
the
left and Venezuela
on the
right, and ahead we can see the
gulf of
Paria,
on which the
town, Port of Spain,
is situated.
(To
be concluded)
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