ST. THOMAS. a high knife-ridge of reddish-brown | cathedral, even a Turkish residence in bush-sprinkled hills, there stand, crowd- Upper Egypt, each tells in its outline, ed together, about fifteen hundred whitewalled, red-roofed, green-shuttered houses, one rather bigger, another smaller, than its neighbour; but all without more method or order in their juxtaposition than that observable in a chance human crowd, each house having apparently jostled itself into the midst, and occupied the first piece of ground on which it could secure a footing, selfishly regardless of any other consideration. The next object of each appears to have been which should display the greatest A Danish Pitt number of windows. might from the taxation of those apertures alone clear off half the national debt of Denmark, whatever its amount. Every window presents instead of glass -a substance rarely employed here in the form of panes, and indeed superfluous - Venetian jalousies in so mild a climate of the conventional green, besides a pair of stout wooden shutters, to be closed and barred at the first threat of a hurricane, not else. For of nightly thieves, house-breakers, and villanous "centrebits" there is little fear, partly owing to the efficiency of the Danish town-police, partly to the character of the islanders themselves, of whom more hereafter. As to the houses themselves, a few very few of them are solidly built; red brick picked out with plaster, of which last-named material, eked out with lath and rubble, far the greater number wholly consist; some are even mere wooden barracks, spacious, ugly, and insecure to see. Wood or otherwise, almost all these dwellings prove on a near inspection to be trumpery run-up constructions, with thin walls baking in the blazing sun, shallow, unprotective roof-eaves, and the majority without a verandah of any sort. Only here and there some more pretentious mansion- the large, ungainly edifice recently erected as Government House, for instance has pushed out Heaven save the mark! - a cast-iron balcony, as ugly as any that ever figured at Hammersmith or on the Brompton Road. Worse yet are the churches; the socalled English, i.e. Colono-Episcopalian, being of ante-Puginian Gothic, hideous enough in any latitude, absolutely monstrous in this; the Dutch Reformed, or Presbyterian, is the heaviest plaster Doric; the Moravian Chapel a large shapeless barn; and the Danish, or Lutheran Church, a simple nondescript. An East Indian bungalow, a Brazilian and yet more in its details, something Pleasanter objects to look at are the A gay, active, and improvident set, they at least know how to live; the West Indian archipelago is their home; they have no other; they are part and parcel of the island; to its conditions they suit the circumstances of their exCross-breeds and the istence, and make the best of climate and everything else. Europeans together amount to a third or so of the entire population of St. Thomas ; but the two castes do not socially coa lesce, and the aims and sentiments of the | the law and police courts, and the rest, one have little in common with those of are mere hired rooms, or slight constructhe other. tions of the usual makeshift character; they, too, are the work of the colonists and settlers; not a farthing has been contributed by the Treasury of Copenhagen towards their construction. A small, quaint, square fort, with battlements and turrets, much like those out of which the St. Barbara of art or the imprisoned princesses of fairy tales are wont to gaze, and which in fact now serves as town gaol, is the only edifice contributed by Denmark herself to the town and island. The walls of this toycastle are painted red, and the red Danish flag flies from the small round keep; it looks hot enough in the sun, and suggests the idea that the prisoners inside, now its only occupants, must be uncomfortably hot too. But the prison, fort, Danish rule meets the gazer's eye as it take in the panorama of the town from the steamer anchorage about a quarter of a mile off. Scattered round the outskirts of the town, and jotted, where one least expects to find them, among the mango-trees and guava-bushes of the open country, small wattled or boarded cabins, each hardly bigger than a sentry-box, but by no means equally compact in its construction, give shelter to negro families. Free men now, and ready enough to work, to gain, and to squander too; unwilling only, partly owing to the hated and still fresh reminiscences of slavery, partly from their own natural instability of character, to enter into long engagements or to pledge their labour beforehand, these darkies constitute about two-thirds of the inhabitants of the island. Their shirts and trousers are more or less of European cut; but, dress and language apart, and flag excepted, no other symbol of they differ in hardly any respect from their free brethren in Syria or Turkey. Mahometans there, they have here adapted Christianity, some one fashion, some another, according to that patronized by Nor when we land on the negrotheir former masters; but, Christian or crowded wharf do we find much to modMoslem, of dogma for itself they have ify our first impressions in this respect. little care; their creed is emotional only, There is, indeed, a carved Danish inand perhaps not much the worse for scription - the only one, so far as I have being so. Their huts, too, are the most been able to discover, in the entire genuinely tropical objects of West In-island-over the door of the staircase dian domestic architecture. I have seen that leads up to the Custom House the exact likenesses of them in Nubia rooms; and Danish names, to which no and Yemen. one in common use pays the slightest And the Danes? Well; if St. Thomas attention, are roughly painted up at the be, so far as the European population is corners of several streets. Also you may concerned, a mere lodging-house, the occasionally meet a tall, light-complexDanes here act the part of the lodging- ioned individual, whose stiff carriage and house keepers, neither more nor less. ceremonious bearing proclaims him a Like the rest, they resign themselves to Danish official: or a blond, heavy-eyed, live in hired dwellings; they collect cus- slightly, or very, as the case may be, intoms, and taxes, keep up a strict police toxicated, white-clothed soldier; there by land and harbour, levy fines on unli- are about sixty of them on the island. censed salesmen and market women, im- Poor fellows! they have but a dull time of prison drunkards and vagrants, and it in garrison; and if they occasionally try well, that is pretty nearly all. In the to render it a little less tedious by commercial enterprise, the shipping in-"heavy-headed revel," Hamlet himself terests, the trade and traffic of the island they govern, they have next to no share; in planting and in agriculture no skill; in the island and its tenants no interest; nor do they care to take any measure for creating such among others on their account. Indeed, there is not throughout the whole of St. Thomas a single Danish school, nor in the solitary bookseller's shop (which, by the way, is a Moravian, not a Danish establishment) of the town is a Danish grammar or dictionary to be found. The public offices themselves, would hardly have included them in the severity of his comments on this national failing: they have excuse for it if ever any one had. These things apart, however, there is nothing visible to right or left to indicate that the island belongs, and has for two centuries belonged, to the Danes, rather than to the Americans, the Chinese, or the Khan of Crim Tartary. The universal language of communication among the inhabitants, white, black, or coloured, is English; but such English! a compound of negro grammar, 64 : ST. THOMAS. in particular, and those too, perhaps, who - Yankee accent, and Creole drawl; to arrange" is to "fix," "Sir" is "Sa'ar," The "boat" is "ba'awt," and so on. announcements of the shop fronts, the placards on the walls, the debile little newspapers (there are two published here, and the ferocious antagonism of their reNor are the details of the town in other spective editors in print is, I trust, limThe streets, the ited to that medium, and does not repre- respects such as to bear with advantage sent their private and personal feeling), a close examination. are English; and, but for an occasional main one excepted, are mostly mere lanes, Spanish sentence, English is the only narrow, and crooked; while many of language you hear in market, street, or them those, namely, which run from no the harbour inland consist of flights of shop. I beg pardon there are stony stairs, which had Byron seen he shops" in St. Thomas, only "stores ;' just as every man here, dust-carters and would have blessed those of Malta by coal-heavers not excepted, is a "gentle- comparison instead of cursing them. The man," and every woman, including the pavement, too, absolutely wanting in not a few places, is rough and full of holes aged black Hebe who distributes rum and gin for two cents to her sailor custo- in others; and the drains - for sanitary mers, a "lady." The physical atmos- motives, say the townsmen !—are all phere you breathe may be that of the open; what the result is after a fortnight tropics; but the moral or non-moral, or so of hot, dry weather I leave to the public and private, is that of New York; imagination of those highly respectable as for the social, it has in it a corrective members of Parliamentary Committees dash of Spanish Creolism, in which lan- who lay yearly reports on corresponding guor supplies an opportune check on odorous topics before our British noses. on dishonesty. Gaslights exist, it is true, in the principal vice, and nonchalance For the rest, as you walk down, that is thoroughfares, but they are few and far west (for the ever-blowing east trade wind between; while for the shiny nights of determines the "up" of the island), half the month the wandering moon bears along the main street on the narrow allu- alone the charge of public illumination; vial level between the hill slope and the whence it follows that the clouds and the crescent harbour base, you might, but for municipality have too often to divide the the blazing sun and dazzling azure over- responsibility of outer darkness and its head, almost fancy yourself in a 'long- consequences, physical or moral. I have shore quarter of Southampton or Wap-not myself had the good fortune of visitping. Ship chandleries, dry goods, rum shops, slop shops, tobacco shops, sailors' homes (such homes! fleecing dens they might more truly be called), coal wharves, timber yards-objects that no climate can beautify, no associations render other than mean and vulgar. The latitude is the latitude of the poet-sung tropics; but the scene is a scene of the coarsest EuIn vain you call to mind the metrirope. cal enchantments of Tennyson's "Locksley Hall" or dreamy "Voyage," of Byron's heated "Island," of Coleridge's magical "Fragment:" everything around dispels the conjured-up illusion. drunken seaman and a filthy old hag are squabbling on one side of you: words very English certainly, but not to be found in Johnson's dictionary, issue from the grog shop on the other: the vile features of a Creole crimp, arm in arm with a mottled-faced dull-eyed Halifax skipper, meet you in front: sight, hearing, smell, all are of that peculiar description which charms the sailor, the British specimen ing Copenhagen; but I trust that the Danes at home treat their capital better than they do the principal town of their West Indian possessions. But the place, though it cannot be called lovely, is lively enough. Siestas, strange to say, in spite of the relaxing climate and the infectious proximity to the Spanish colonies, are not the fashion here, and from sunrise to sunset the main street can show a medley of nationalities. to the full as varied as that which daily throng the wooden bridge of Galata, but with a much greater diversity of hue. A Black, indeed, predominates among the complexions, and white among the garments; but between these extremes of colour every shade of skin and dress alike may be observed. Broad-brimmed Panama hats distinguish in general the better class of citizens; commoner straw shelters poorer heads. Sallow, parboiledlooking countenances with now and then an unhealthy flush, telling a tale of brandy overmuch in the daily allowance 66 come of iced water, denote the North European, | smooth layer of fresh-fallen snow, that Teuton, or Scandinavian, Briton, Ger- the main street of St. Thomas, the open man, Dane, Dutch, and Swede, with the space in front of the Custom House pale, over-worked-looking, sharp-featured known as King's Wharf - the only stone Yankee. A darker tinge of face and wharf, by the bye, in the whole harbour, hair, and a slenderer form, indicates the and constructed not indeed with Danish Italian, French, or Spanish salesman; money, but under Danish superintenthe white Creole, whatever his semi or dence-and the acacia-planted square, quarter nationality, may always be recog. that serves as market-place by day, all nized by his peculiarly weedy aspect and show to the best advantage. Then the lack-lustre eye. Two or three genera- negroes, who here, as in the cheerful tions of West Indian birth and breeding, Levant, and even on the misty Euxine unrenewed by fresh European or African coast, keep up unaltered their ancestral grafts, suffice to thin out the richest African customs of nightly merry-makEuropean blood, and to dull into lethargy ings -a custom which the Arabs alone, the most active North European brain, of all races that it has been my fortune to till the Englishman, Dane, Norwegian, or dwell amongst, share with them Dutchman becomes a thing for the very out in their gayest dresses and gayest negroes to pity or despise. Miscegena- mood, to shout, laugh, sing, romp, and tion," to borrow an ungainly American divert themselves like the overgrown word, may have its drawbacks; but ex- children that they are. Tall, black men clusiveness of alliance means for the in white clothes and straw hats, tall, North European in these regions speedy black women too, handsome in form if degeneration and disappearance. not in feature, their heads bound round Busy, restless, affable, at once cringing with many-coloured turbans, sweep and forward in manner, who does not through the crowd with an easy freedom recognize the children of Israel, the gen- of gait and bold step very different from uine descendants of clever, birthright- the shuffling, embarrassed style of the purloining Jacob, whatever be the land of nerveless Creole lady and her overtheir sojourn in their world-wide disper-dressed European sister; while the lightsion? Here in St. Thomas we have flowing gown of the negress and her them of every sort, dark and fair, lean variegated head-gear give her, even inand burly, but all alike intent on gain; now prosperous, now bankrupt; the very climate that may occasionally somewhat slacken their outward man has no relaxing effect on the irrepressible energy of their will. It is curious to enter their synagogue a large, crowded, and evidently thriving one- and to hear the unchanged songs of old David and older Moses in the oldest langnage of the Old World, intoned here with as much fer-stately in themselves, acquire their ultivency of utterance and singleness of belief as ever they had been in the Eastern hemisphere under the palms of Jordan, long before a Western world and the cocoanut trees of its islands had been heard or dreamt of. The first names | entered on the world's racecourse, they bid fair to be among the first on its books when the winners are told off at the close. Meanwhile the antithesis their activity affords to the lounging, careless, take-it-easy movements of the big negroes at every turn and corner, does much to enliven the sun-heated streets and thoroughfares of the town. But it is at night, and especially when the white rays of the full moon, the Queen of the Tropics, delusively cover roofs and pavement with what seems a dependently of her dark complexion, a semi-tropical look that suits the climate, and harmonizes much better than stiff crinolines and artificial flowers with the surroundings of West Indian nature. When will civilized women, or civilized men either, learn that individual beauty, to have its complete effect, must harmonize with the general? that form and colour, size and shape, however fair or mate perfection from the place they occupy? that what is well under one sky may be ill under another? what is justly admired in Europe be a failure in Asia? and what looks lovely under a tropical blaze be void of charm amid the mists of northern gloom? When the Egyptians erected the colonnades of Luzor on the shores of the great Nile, the Greeks the Parthenon among the blue picture-like hills of Attica, and medieval architects the clustering pinnacles of Laon beside the orchards and green hill-slopes of Picardy, they accomplished in every instance an abiding success, different the one from the other, but each perfect in its kind an example, a lesson, and a wonder to all ages. Why, then, have their later successors, who in modern times have attempted to reproduce these growths of the day, with little root in the very masterpieces of beauty in elaborate past, and hardly a promise of greater copies, every measurement, every line, fixity in the future. And yet whatever every detail the same, failed not less" Charlotte-Amalia," to give the place its completely than the others succeeded? distinctive name, may prove to be when Is it not that they ignored, with the igno- you are fairly in it and of it seen from rance that amounts to stolidity, the effect outside, and especially from the harbour of altered conditions, of changed times, point of view, it has a curiously delusive of different climate, of dissimilar sur- Levantine look; so much so, that a voyroundings, both of nature and art? while ager, who, under some strange enchantthe former architects, Egyptian, Gaul, or ment of the "Sleeping Beauty" kind, Greek, knew, with the knowledge that should have closed his eyes while just off amounts to instinct, not only the laws of Smyrna or Latakia, and then first construction and the grace of individual awakened up when the fairy ship was in outline, but also those of collective har- the act of entering the port of St. mony; and built aptly besides building Thomas, might almost fancy that he had well. Thus it is and always must be, never left the Syrian or gean coast. East or West alike, with architecture of He would, in fact, find before him much whatever kind, public or private; thus, the same picturesque sprinkling of pretty too, in great measure with sculpture, with toy-like houses that he had last seen painting, with ornament, with dress under the sun of Anatolia; for instance, in a word, with art of every sort. the same green masses, or orchard-trees, Meanwhile, as we walk and philoso- both running up the same abrupt rocky phize in the tepid night air and pale slopes, practicable indeed for horses, but moonshine, from behind a hundred open evidently prohibitive of carriage use; lighted windows comes the sound of the same high, bush-sprinkled, half-savjingling pianos, where mulatto girls are age ridge of hills behind the same unperforming their endless Spanish waltzes; tidy wharves, makeshift landing-places, performances accompanied in many a lit- and rubbish-strewn beach; the same ile house by the clamour of many voices superfluity of little boats, plying hither and the stamp of dancing feet. All is and thither between the larger craft, or frank, unrestrained merry-making, high swarming, as though with piratical inspirits, and fun; the more cheerful be- tent, round the sides of each new arrival ; cause to the credit of the blacks be it the same clear sharpness of light and said it is seldom excited or accompa- shade; the same pure sea-water, brisk nied by drink, more seldom by drunken- air, and bright sky. No, not exactly the ness. West Indian negroes, in spite of same, any one of these; since a the contrary example set them more or careful inspection would detect strange less by almost every class and descrip- foliage cocoanut, for example, or papai tion of whites in these islands, are gen-among the trees, giving notice of a laterally free from this particular form of itude more southerly far than the Levantvice; and though the morality of domes-ine; the water, too, is the inky Atlantic tic life is not so much low as absolutely black, not the ultra-marine Mediterwanting among them - indeed, that nonranean blue in its clearness; and the est inventus might be the correct verdict | low, drifting fleeces of white cloud that. of a virtue" court - the frailties of the emerge, curl after curl, from behind the island-born African, or black Creole, are rarely excused or aggravated by drink. Among the mulattoes, on the contrary, as among mixed races in general, the bad qualities of either parentage seem come uppermost; and the immorality of the negro is with them often enhanced by the drunkenness of the Briton and the murderous treachery of the Spaniard. "God made white men, and God made black men, but the devil made brown ones," is a common proverb here, and it often finds its justification in fact. more easterly hill-range, and sweep swiftly across the dazzling sky to the west, are driven by no Asiatic land-breeze, but obey the trade-winds of the ocean exto panse. But, general outline and natural features apart, there are some special objects in which St. Thomas may claim a real, though superficial, resemblance with the time-honoured Levant. Thus, at the very entry of the harbour, near a diminutive powder-shed, there stands a battery, which but that the Danish, and Town and inhabitants - the Israelite not the Turkish, flag overshadows itcolony alone after its measure excepted might, by a new-comer, be almost con-all impress you as mere mushroom jectured to belong to the same class of |