Dutch Guiana (Palgrave)/Chapter II
CHAPTER II.
THE CAPITAL.
"In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon."
It was not afternoon, in fact it was forenoon, and the sun, though mounted high, had not yet throned himself in his meridian tower, when, accompanied by those who had come to meet and welcome my arrival, I mounted a red brick flight of steps, leading from the water's edge tip to the raised quay, and found myself on the threshold of the capital of Dutch Surinam. Yet there was something in the atmosphere that can only be described as post-meridian; an influence extending over everything around, town and people alike; nor post-meridian only, but distinctly lotophagous, befitting the lotus-eating capital of a lotus-eating land, very calm and still, yet very comfortable and desirable withal.
For what regards the material atmosphere, its heavy warmth even at so early an hour as ten or eleven of the morning need excite no surprise. Paramaribo stands on the South-American map at little more than five and a half degrees north of the equator, and the equator here crosses the immense breadth of the moist plains, brimming river-meshes, and dense forests, that constitute nine-tenths of the Guianas and Brazil. Fifteen miles at least, in a straight line, removed from the nearest coast, and cut off from the very limited sea-breeze of the tropics by intervening belts of plantation and thick wood the air of Paramaribo is not that of wind-swept Barbadoes, or dry Antigua, but that of the moistest among all equatorial continents; and may best be likened to the air of an orchid-house at Kew and that of a Turkish bath combined. Not, be it well understood, a dry-heated pseudo-Turkish bath of the European kind, but a genuine hammam of Damascus or Constantinople. In such an atmosphere Ulysses himself and his crew must, after a very short stay, have betaken themselves, in company with the natives, to lotus-eating; it is a duty imposed by the climate, and there are many less agreeable duties in the world elsewhere.
Not that the climate is unhealthy; quite the reverse. That tall, large-made, elderly European gentleman, in a light grey suit, who, parasol in hand, grandly saunters by, evidently does so not from any want of vigour either in mind or limb, but because a sauntering step is more congenial to the place than a brisk one. Those sleek, stout, comfortable, glossy negroes loitering in sun or shade appear, and are in fact equal, did the occasion require it, to any exertion of which human muscle is capable: they are doing nothing in particular, because nothing in particular is just now the proper thing to do. The town itself, its tall houses, its wide streets, its gardens, its squares, its shady avenues, its lofty watch-tower, its tree-embosomed palace, its shrub-embosomed cottages — each and every particular of the scene, animate or inanimate, is stamped with the same character. "Take life easy," seems the lesson they all alike inculcate; and the lesson is a popular one, soon learnt and steadily practised on every hand.
But appearances, however real for what regards the surface of which they are part, may yet he very deceptive, if reasoned from unconditionally to what exists beneath them; and a town that numbers more than twenty-two thousand inhabitants, itself the capital of the colony that yearly exports to the average value of a million sterling, cannot he wholly peopled by dreamy lotus-eaters, delicious lotus-eaters only; nor can the sole occupation of the dwellers in city or field be lotus-eating, either physical or moral.
The solid and underlying fact of Paramaribo is that amid this atmosphere, and on this segment of the great Guiana delta, have planted themselves and taken root, no longer exotic but indigenous, the same Dutch industry, Dutch perseverance; and Dutch good sense, that of old turned the sandy swamps of the Batavian delta into a flower-garden, and erected the Venice of the north on the storm-swept shores of the Zuider-Zee. Surinam, rightly understood, is only Holland under another sky; Paramaribo is Amsterdam by other waters; the colouring and toning of the picture may indeed be equatorial creole, but the lines and grouping are those of the Netherlands school and no other.
This it is that gives to Paramaribo its two-fold character, at once European and tropical, Dutch and creole; a blending of opposites, a dual uniformity, an aspect that when first beheld leaves on the mind an impression bordering on unreality, as if place and people were imaged in a hot picturesque dream. Yet Paramaribo is no dream, nor its inhabitants dream shapes; very much the contrary. In fact no capital town throughout the West Indies, no offspring of European stem, French, English, Danish, or even Spanish, so genuinely, so truthfully represents the colony to which it belongs as Dutch Paramaribo. Contrary examples are easily adduced. Thus, for instance, Jamaica is pre-eminently the land of English country gentlemen, of magistrates, landlords, farmers; in tone, ways, and life, it is an English country district; while Demerara is in no small measure an English, or rather, I should say, a Scotch manufacturing district; Barbadoes an English parish (Little Pedlington its satirists, of whom I beg to state that I am not one, would call it), magnified into an island. But neither Jamaica, nor Demerara, nor Barbadoes, possesses a correct epitome of itself in Kingston, Georgetown, or even Bridgetown; each of these three seaports has a character of its own, distinct from, and in some respects opposed to, the colony at large. This is due to many causes; and most of all to the "mixed multitude" of trade, the camp-followers of enterprise, who, under whatever banner they congregate, acknowledge in heart and life no flag but that of individual self-interest. These are they who muster strongest in the generality of colonial towns, especially seaports; and tinge, if they do not absolutely colour, the places of their resort. And thus from the merest port of call along these shores, where the condottieri element is at its maximum, to Georgetown, where it is decidedly at its minimum, a something of a restless, makeshift, egoistic, "cheap-jack" admixture obscures, or at least jars with the public-spirited nationality, unsettles the population, debases the buildings, ungroups the unity, and deforms the beauty of place and site.
With Paramaribo it is otherwise. The broad straight streets, flanked with spacious and lofty houses, shaded by carefully-planted avenues, adorned with public buildings that Scheveningen or the Hague need not blush to own, and trim almost as the waysides of Brock; the governor's residence, a miniature palace for elegance of style and stately appearance; the spacious masonic lodge, "Concordia," where a grand orient himself — I speak as a profane, and if the term be incorrect apologize — might hold his assembly; the seemly synagogues, Dutch the one, Portuguese the other, the decorous if somewhat heavy-built churches, Reformed and Lutheran, the lighter-constructed but more spacious establishments, Moravian and Catholic, the lofty town-hall with its loftier tower, that from a hundred and twenty feet of height looks down over fort and river, the court-house hard by, the noble military hospital, with its wide verandahs, open staircases, and cool halls, the strong-built fort and barracks, the theatre, the club-house, the many other buildings of public use and ornament, all these are Dutch in appearance and character; all expressive of the eleven provinces, though chiefly of Zealand and the steady purpose of her sons. The well-planned and carefully-kept canals that intersect the town in every direction, the neat bridges, the broad river-side quays, the trim gardens, the decent cemeteries, the entire order and disposition of the place, tell the same tale; witness to the same founders; reflect the same image, true to its original on the north seacoast; all tell of settled order and tasteful method.
The site was well chosen. The Surinam, here a tidal river of nearly a mile broad, flows past a slightly raised plateau of sand and gravel mixed with "caddy," a compound of finely broken fragments of shell and coral, extending for some distance along the left or west bank. The general elevation of the ground is about sixteen feet above low-water level, enough to insure it from being overflowed in the rainy seasons, or by the highest tides. Several streams, improved by Dutch industry into canals, intersect this level; one of them connects the waters of the Surinam with those of the Saramacca farther west; all are tidal in their ebb and flow. Drainage is thus rendered easy; and now that the low bush and scrub, the natural growth of every South-American soil, however light, has been cleared away, the citizens of Paramaribo may securely boast that throughout the entire extent of Guiana, from the Orinoco to the Amazon, no healthier town than theirs is to be found.
This healthiness is, however, in great measure due to their own exertions; and above all to the good sense that presided over the construction of the town. When the true founder of town and colony alike, Cornelius van Aerssen, lord of Sommelsdyk, and the fifth governor of Dutch Guiana, landed on these shores in 1683, Paramaribo, so he wrote, consisted of only "twenty-seven dwellings, more than half of which were grog-shops," and close to it the Fort of Zeelandia, so named after its builders, the intrepid Zeelanders, who had already repelled more than one Indian or English assault from its walls. But under the vigorous administration of Sommelsdyk the rapidly rising prosperity of the colony was reflected in the town itself, that henceforth grew and prospered year by year. Its records describe it in 1750 as already covering one-half of its present extent; and in 1790 the number of houses within its circuit exceeded a thousand; till about the beginning of the present century, the addition of the extensive suburb of "Combe," on the north side, brought it up to its actual limits. Then followed a long and dreary period of colonial depression, general indeed throughout the West Indies, but nowhere, Jamaica perhaps excepted, greater than in Surinam; where the uncertainty consequent on a reiterated change of masters, French, English, and Dutch, helped to depreciate the already declining value of estates and produce in this part of the world. Misfortunes never come singly; and while the colony at large suffered, Paramaribo in particular, ravaged by two severe conflagrations, the one in 1821, and the other in 1832, presented a melancholy spectacle of unrepaired ruins, and abandoned suburbs. Between 1840 and 1860 things were at their worst, both for colony and capital. Then came the turn; the shock of emancipation passed, its benefits remained, town and country alike revived together; houses were rebuilt; suburbs re-populated; and of her past wounds the Paramaribo of our day now scarcely shows a scar. The number of her inhabitants, reckoned at barely sixteen thousand in 1854, at present exceeds twenty-two thousand; thus showing an increase of six thousand in the course of the last twenty years only.
"A goodly city is this Antium;" but during the hot hours of the day, that is, from eight or at latest nine in the morning till pretty near sunset, I would not willingly incur the responsibility of sending a friend or even an enemy, unless he happened to be a mortal one, on a sight-seeing stroll through the streets of Paramaribo. Carriages or riding-horses there are few to be found in the town, and none at all for hire; negro carts are plenty, to be sure, and negro mules too, but the former, independently of other considerations, are jolting conveyances, the latter a hard-mouthed, stiff-necked generation; and neither adapted to the furtherance of European locomotion, whether on pleasure or business. As to walking-exercise under this equatorial sun, it might possibly be an agreeable recreation for a salamander, but hardly for any other creature. It is true that shade may be found even in the hottest hours of perpendicular noon; and when the sun has fairly beaten you, as he will in less than five minutes, from the field, you may take refuge, if you choose, under the broad-leaved, glistening, umbrella-like almond-trees, so called from a superficial resemblance between the kernels of their fruit and those of the almond, but neither in foliage nor growth having the most distant likeness to the European tree of that name, which Dutch forethought has kindly planted all along the river quay. There, in company with any number of ragged black loungers, you may improve your leisure by watching the great barges as they float leisurely along the tide, bearing their neatly protected loads of sugar, cocoa, or other plantation produce for the cargo-ships, that wait off the town "stellings," or wharfs, patiently moored day by day, with so little bustle or movement of life about them, that you wonder whether their crews have not all by common consent abandoned them, and gone off to join a lotus-eating majority on shore. Or if you are driven to seek refuge while wandering through the interior of the town, the great broad streets, all mathematically straight, will offer you the shelter of their noble avenues, where tamarind, mahogany, sand-box, or other leafy trees, planted with Batavian regularity, cast down a long black streak of shade on the glaring whiteness of the highway; or you may rest, if so inclined, beside some well in one of the many rectangular spaces left open for the sake of air or ornament, here and there in the very heart of the town, like squares in London, but without the soot.
One such green oasis contains half-hidden amid its trees the handsome Portuguese synagogue, of recent construction; another the Dutch, less showy but more substantial, as befits the old standing and wealth of the worshippers within its walls, and the memory of Samuel Cohen Nassy, its talented founder, the Surinam Joshua of his tribe when they camped, two centuries ago, on the banks of their newly-acquired Jordan. A third "square" — I use the inappropriate word for want of a better in our own language; but the French place or Arab meidan would more correctly express the thing — boasts the presence of the Dutch Reformed church (the building, I mean), a model of heavy propriety, suggestive of pew-openers and the Hundredth Psalm, Old Tune; while a fourth has in its enclosure the flimsy, showy construction that does appropriate duty for the gaudy rites of Rome. A fifth has for its centre-piece the Lutheran place of worship; a sixth, the Moravian; and so forth. But whatever be the gods within, the surroundings of every temple are of a kind in which Mr. Tylor could legitimately discern something of a "survival" of tree-worship and the "groves" of old — a sensible survival in these sun-lorded equatorial regions. Select, then, your city of refuge where you will; but except it be by chance some stray black policeman, whom an unusual and utterly heroic sense of duty keeps awake and on his beat, or a few dust-sprinkled ebony children, too young as yet to appreciate the impropriety of being up and alive at this hour — you yourself, and the ungainly Johnny-crows that here, as at Kingston, do an acknowledged share of the street-cleaning business, will be the only animal specimens discernible among this profusion of vegetable life. For these shade-spots, with all their cool, are delusive in their promise — they are mere islets plunged amid an overwhelming ocean of light and heat; and flesh, however solid, though protected by them from actual combustion in the furnace around, must soon thaw and resolve itself into a dew under the influence of the reflected glare.
Better take example, as indeed it is the traveller's wisdom to do in any latitude, whether tropical or arctic, from the natives of the land, and like them retire, after a substantial one-o'clock breakfast, luncheon, or dinner — since any of these three designations may be fairly applied to the meal in question — to an easy undress and quiet slumber till four or later have chappit in the afternoon. Indoors you will find it cool enough. The house-walls, though of wood, at least throughout the upper stories, are solidly constructed, and are further protected from the heat by any amount of verandahs outside, which, in true Dutch taste, are not rarely dissembled under the architectural appearance of porticos. The house-roofs are highly pitched, and an airy attic intervenes between them and the habitation below; the windows, too, are well furnished with jalousies and shutters, and the bedrooms are most often up two flights of stairs, occasionally three. If, under circumstances like these, you cannot keep cool, especially when you have nothing else on earth to do, you have only yourself, not the climate, to blame. Such at any rate is the opinion, confirmed by practice, of the colonists universally, European or creole, white or coloured; and as they have, in fact, been up and at work each in his particular line of business ever since earliest dawn, it would be hard to grudge them their stated and, for the matter of that, well-earned afternoon nap. Merchants, tradesmen, accountants, proprietors, bankers, and the like, thus disposed of, his Dutch Majesty's officials, civil, military, or naval (for a small frigate is always stationed at Paramaribo, ready at the colonial governor's behests), may, I think, sleep securely calm when all around are sleeping; nay, even the watchmen — and they are many in these gates of keen, energetic Israel — have retired to their tents in the universal post-meridian trance. As to the eighteen or nineteen thousand negroes of the town, it would he superfluous to say that, no special persuasion or inducement of local custom is needed to induce them to sleep either at this or any other hour of the day.
Follow then the leader, or rather the whole band. If, however, you still prefer to prove yourself a stranger by using your eyes for sight-seeing at a time when every genuine Paramariban has closed his for sleep, the open parade-ground will afford you while crossing it an excellent opportunity for experimental appreciation of the intensity of the solar rays, lat. 5º 40m. north. This done, you may, or rather you certainly will, take speedy refuge under the noble overarching tamarind alley that leads up from the parade-ground to the front of Government House, and passing through the cool and lofty hall of the building, left open, West-India fashion, to every corner, make your way into the garden, or rather park, that lies behind. It is probable that the peccaries, tapirs, monkeys, deer, and the other animal beauties or monstrosities, collected the most of them by his Excellency, the present governor, and domiciled in ample wire enclosures between the flower-beds, will, in their quality of natives, be fast asleep; and if the quaint, noisy, screaming birds, the tamed representatives of Guiana ornithology, collected here, are asleep also, you may admire their plumage without needing to regret the muteness of their "most sweet voices." But the humming-birds and butterflies are wide awake, and, unalarmed your approach, will continue to busy themselves among flowers such as Van Elst himself never painted, nor Spenser sang. Here is a crimson passion-flower, there a pink-streaked lily; golden clusters hang from one plant, spikes of dazzling blue rise from another; — the humming-birds themselves are only distinguishable from them, as they dart through, by the metallic lustre, not by the vividness or variety of their colours. As to the butterflies, who is the greatest admirer of the race? Let him see the butterflies of Surinam, and — die! Beyond this, the flower-garden merges in the park — a Guiana park of Guiana trees. Their names and qualities it is easy to look out in books, or recapitulate from memory; but how to describe them as they are? Mr. Ruskin says that the tree-designer begins by finding his work difficult, and ends by finding it impossible; and I say the same of tree-describer, at any rate here. And yet, luxuriant as in the Government House garden, I am not sure if any of its beauties charmed me so much as the exquisite betel-nut avenue, each palm averaging fifty feet in height, and each equally perfect in form and colour, that adorns the central space enclosed by the spacious buildings of the public hospital at the farther end of the town. Leave all these, if you can, and — which will be better still — enter instead the cool vaulted brick hall, of genuine Dutch burgher build, that serves partly as an entry to the public law offices and courts, partly as a depository for whatever colonial records have escaped the destructive fires of '21 and '32. Hence you may mount, but leisurely, in compassion for your guide if not for yourself, the central tower, till you reach the lantern-like construction that at a height of a hundred feet crowns the summit of the town hall. There stand, and look down far and wide over the most fertile plain that ever alluvial deposit formed in the new world, or the old either. On every side extends a green tree-grown level as far as the eye can reach, its surface just high enough raised above water-mark to escape becoming a swamp, yet nowhere too high for easy irrigation; capriciously marked at frequent intervals by shining silver dashes, that indicate sometimes the winding of rivers broad and deep, sometimes the more regular lines of canals, of creeks, and of all the innumerable waterways which in this region supply the want of roads, and give access to every district by that lies between the northern sea and the equatorial watershed, far beyond the limits of European enterprise, all too narrow as yet. Long years must pass before the children of Surinam have cause to complain that the "place is too strait for them" — long before the cultivation that now forms an emerald ring of exceptional brightness round the city, and reaches out in radiating lines and interrupted patches along the courses of the giant rivers, has filled up the entire land circle visible from the tower of Paramaribo alone.
The day has declined from heat to heat, and at last the tall trees begin to intercept the slant sun-rays; when, behold! with one consent, Paramaribo, high and low, awakes, shakes itself, puts on its clothes, ragged or gay, and comes out to open air and life. The chief place of resort is, of Course, the parade-ground, the where, according to established custom, a Dutch or creole military band performs twice a week; and where, in the absence of musical attractions, cool air, pleasant walks, free views, and the neighbourhood of the river, draw crowds of loungers, especially of the middle and even upper classes. But in truth, for a couple of hours, or near it, every road, every street, is full of comers and goers, and loud with talk and laughter. For the negro element, a noisy one, predominates over all, even within the capital itself; the Dutch, though rulers of the land, are few, and other Europeans fewer still. Indeed, a late census gave the total number of whites in the town, the soldiers of the fort included, but little over a thousand. As to Indians, the pure-blooded ones of their kind have long since abandoned the neighbourhood of Paramaribo, and now seldom revisit the locality to which two centuries past they gave a name; a few half-breeds, with broad oval faces and straight black hair, alone represent the race. Bush negroes, in genuine African nudity, may be seen in plenty from the river wharfs; but they seldom leave their floating houses and barges to venture on shore, though common sense has for some time past relaxed the prudish regulations of former times, according to which no unbreeked male or unpetticoated female was permitted to shock the decorum of Paramaribo promenades. Coolies and Chinese, too, though now tolerably numerous on the estates — where, indeed, about five thousand of them are employed — are rarely to be met with in the streets of the captal; which in this respect offers a remarkable contrast to Georgetown and Port of Spain, where the mild Hindoo meets you at every turning with that ineffable air of mixed self-importance and servility that a Hindoo alone can assume, and Chinamen and women make day hideous with the preternatural ugliness of what flattery alone can term their features. The absence of these beauties here may be explained partly by the recentness of their introduction into the Dutch colony, where they are still bound by their first indentures to field-work, and consequently unable as yet to display their shop-keeping talents; partly by the number and activity of the negro creole population which has preoccupied every city berth. Of all strangers, only the irrepressible Barbadian, with the insular characteristics of his kind fresh about him, has made good his footing among the Surinam grog-shops and wharfs, where he asserts the position due to his ready-handed energy, and keeps it too. But the diversity between the Barbadoes negro and his kinsman of the neighbouring islands, or of the main, is one rather of expression and voice than of clothes and general bearing, and hence may readily pass unnoticed in the general aspect of a crowd.
However diversified the species, the genus is one. Watch the throng as it passes: the kerchief-turbaned, loose-garmented market-woman; the ragged porter and yet more ragged boatman; the gardener with his cartful of yams, bananas, sweet potatoes, and so forth; the white-clad shop clerk and writer, the straw-hatted salesman, the umbrella-bearing merchant, sailors, soldiers; policemen quaintly dressed, as policemen are by prescriptive right everywhere, except in sensible, practical Demerara; officials, aides-de-camp, high and low, rich and poor, one with another, and you will see that through and above this variety of dress, occupation, rank, colour even, there runs a certain uniformity of character — a something in which all participate, from first to last.
A few exceptions, indeed, there are; but they are confined almost exclusively to the white colonists; and among them, even, the anomalies are few. In general, one pattern comprehends the entire category of white colonists, men and women, gentle and simple; and it is an eminently self-contained, self-consistent pattern, the Dutch. Steady in business, methodical in habit, economical in expenditure, liberal in outlay, hospitable in entertainment, cheerful without flightiness, kindly without affectation, serious without dulness, no one acquainted, even moderately, with the mother country, can fail to recognize the genuine type of the Hague in the colonial official, and that of Maestricht or Amsterdam in the business population of Paramaribo. This indeed might have been fairly anticipated; the steady, unimpressionable Dutchman being less subject to — what shall we call it? — equatorization, than the soon-demoralized Spaniard or lighter Portuguese. It is a matter of more surprise, an agreeable surprise, when we find much that recalls to mind the Dutch peasantry and labouring classes, distinctly traceable among the corresponding classes of creole negroes throughout the delta of Surinam. By what influence is it — attraction, sympathy, or master-ship — that some nations so eminently succeed in transforming the acquired subjects of whatever race into copies, and occasionally caricatures, of themselves, while other nations not less signally fail in doing so? That Frenchmen, however much they may annoy those they annex by their incurable habit of administrative over-meddling, yet make, not always indeed obedient subjects of France, but anyhow Frenchmen and Frenchwomen out of those they rule, is a fact attested everywhere, and one that will long remain to grieve German hearts in Alsace and Lorraine. How long ago is it since the tricolor has been hauled down to make place for the union-jack at St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Dominica, and Trinidad? Yet in each of these and their kindred isles the French impress still survives, uneffaced as yet by change and time. Much in the same way to run through the list of other national annexations or conquests: Brazil is not merely ruled by a Portuguese emperor, but is Portuguese itself; and even the revolted Spanish colonies are Spanish in almost everything but official allegiance to this day. On the contrary, who ever heard of a land Germanized by the Germans, however influential their settlers, and absolute their rule? And is there the remotest prospect that the Hindoo, though reconciled by sheer self-interest to toleration of the most equitable rule that ever race exercised over race, will ever become not merely an English subject, but an Englishman in ways and heart? Still more complete has been the failure of Danish attempts at extra-national assimilation, in whatever land or age, from the days of Æthelred to our own. But, indeed, where there is diversity of blood, mistrust and antipathy are more easily accounted for than sympathy and unison. To return to our Dutch friends. How it may he with them elsewhere, in Java for instance, I know not; here, on the Guiana coast, they have almost outdone the French in assimilative results; a problem of which the solution must be sought, partly in history, partly in actual observation. Our best opportunity for the latter will be when visiting the country districts farther up the river, among the estates.
Meanwhile let us linger yet a little in Paramaribo itself; and here among the European townsmen, their visitor will find everywhere, so he be one that deserves to find, a pleasant uniformity of unostentatious but cordial welcome, of liberal entertainment, of thoughtful and rational hospitality, attentive to the physical, and not neglectful of the mental requirements of the guest; whatever, in a word, he would meet with, though under a different aspect, on the shores of the Yssel or the Waal. Indeed he might even have some difficulty in remembering, when endeavouring to recall to mind the events of his stay in the Surinam capital, at which citizen’s house in particular he passed that pleasant evening, at whose table he shared that copious meal, breakfast, dinner, or supper; where it was that he admired the fine old china and massive plate; under which roof the hostess smiled most courteously, the host conversed with most good-nature and good sense. After all, "Si vis ut redameris, ama" holds good in every age and land; and if the Dutch colonists and creoles of Surinam are universally popular, it is because they have been at the pains of earning popularity, which, like other good things, has its price, and is worth it too.
Much the same, proportion and circumstances taken into account, may be said of the black creoles of Dutch Guiana. The evils and degradation inseparable from slavery were not, it is true, wanting here, but in spite of these unfavourable antecedents the Surinam negro has amply proved by his conduct, both before and during emancipation, that he had learnt from his white masters lessons of steadiness, of order, of self-respect, of quiet industry, of kindliness even, not indeed alien from his own native character, but too often unpractised elsewhere. And thus the ex-slave has, with a rapidity of change to which, I believe, no parallel can be found in the history of any other West-Indian colony, blended into national, and even, within certain limits, into social, unison with his masters; a unison so little impaired by the inevitable, however involuntary rivalry consequent on differences, some artificial indeed but some immanent, of caste and race, as to afford the best hopes for the future of the entire colony. It is remarkable that even the terrible servile wars, which lasted with hardly an interruption for sixty entire years, that is from 1715 to 1775, and not only checked the prosperity, but even more than once menaced the very existence of the colony, should have passed and left behind them no trace, however slight, of hostile feeling or memory among the negro population, whether slave or free; that no outbreak, like those of Jamaica, St. Croix, and so many other neighbouring colonies, here followed or anticipated emancipation, though delayed in Surinam till 1863; and more remarkable yet, that no discontent interfered with the compulsory though paid labour of the ten years following. Slavery quietly faded into apprenticeship, apprenticeship into freedom; and in a land where riot and revolt would have a better chance than anywhere else of success, that chance was never embodied in act. Facts like these speak certainly well for the creole blacks, but if attentively considered, they speak even better in favour of their white masters. Our present business is, however, not with these last, but with the negro creoles, as they show themselves in the capital, where they muster five or six to one among the entire population. Cheerful contentment is, the prevailing expression of every dusky face, whether turned towards you in friendly morning greeting as the busy swarm presses on talking, laughing, jesting, along the highways to the market and quay; or in the afternoon gatherings on the parade-ground, under the avenues, and alongside of the river-banks. You watch, and soon cease to wonder that the official statistics of Paramaribo, while enumerating and classifying its twenty-two thousand inhabitants, make no distinctive headings of colour or race. I wish many another West-Indian town could with equal good reason permit themselves a like omission.
Glossy, however, as the surface may be, there is a wrong side of the stuff; and to this we must now turn our attention. Though a comfortable and, so far at least as the majority of its indwellers are concerned, a contented town, Paramaribo cannot, if compared, say with Georgetown or Bridgetown, Kingston, or even Port d'Espagne, take rank as exactly prosperous or progressive. True, the streets of the creole quarters of the city are constantly extending themselves; there new rows of small neat dwellings, each with gay garden and well-stocked provision-ground, spring up year by year, but in the commercial and what may in a general way be termed the European quarter of the town, large half-empty stores, tall neglected-looking houses, a prevailing want of fresh repair, here deficient paint, there broken woodwork, besides a certain general air of listlessness verging on discouragement, and an evident insufficiency of occupation not from want of will but of means, all combine to give an appearance of stagnation suggestive of "better days" for the European colonists at least, in the past, and contrasting almost painfully with the more thriving back streets and suburbs beyond. If any of my readers have visited Italy in the sad bygone years when Italy was a geographical name only, and there compared, as they may well have done, the trim "Borghi" of grand-ducal Florence with her stately but dilapidated Lungarno; or have at Genoa seen the contrast of those times between the palatial loneliness of Strada Babbi and the pretty grove-embosomed villas of recent commercial date, they might, under all local differences of circumstance and colouring, recognize something not dissimilar in both the meaning implied and effect produced in this transatlantic capital of Dutch Guiana. The actual and immediate cause of decadence is a very common one, by no means peculiar to Paramaribo or Surinam: want of capital. Were, however, that want is in a certain sense doubled by the circumstance that not only are the means of the colony itself insufficient to its needs, but that there is no satisfactory prospect of an adequate supply from without. It is, I might almost say, the condition of a man indigent at home, and friendless out of doors. The home poverty is readily accounted for. It began with invasions, resistances, foreign occupations, treaty-embarrassments, and the other war-begotten ills of the troublous years that closed the last and opened the present century. Followed next the evil days already alluded to, evil for Transatlantic colonies everywhere; and, in. consequence of the hostilities of 1833 between France and Holland, doubly evil for Surinam. Then came emancipation, long and unwisely deferred till financial exhaustion had reached its lowest depths; and with all these the appalling conflagration of 1821, followed by one scarce less destructive in 1832; commercial difficulties of every kind; the fatal yellow-fever epidemic of 1851; in a word, a whole Pandora's box of adversities opened for Dutch Guiana in a scarce less disastrous profusion than for Jamaica herself. And thus, to revert to the more special topic of this chapter, Paramaribo was brought low indeed, almost to the very gates of death; and her condition, as we this day see her, is that of a patient recovering from a long and dangerous illness, and weak, not indeed with the weakness of actual disease, but the weakness of convalescence.
Nor is that convalescence likely to be a rapid one. With Jamaica, we know, it has been otherwise; but then Jamaica is the child of a parent alike vigorous and wealthy, able to chastise, able also to assist. Not so with Dutch Guiana. In more than one respect the good-will of Holland exceeds her power; and her comparatively recent severance from Belgium, a political gain, was yet a financial loss. Besides, Java is a more popular name by far in the home mart of Dutch enterprise than Surinam; and the eastern colony is indisputably the more attractive, the larger, the wealthier, and, more I believe owing to external and accidental circumstances than to its own intrinsic qualities, as contrasted with those of its rival, proportionally the more remunerative of the two. Hence, while the invigorating cordial, to continue our former metaphor, or rather the true and certain panacea for the patient’s lingering illness is poured out freely in the direction of the Pacific, a feeble and interrupted dribble is all that finds its way to the Atlantic coast. Nor again can the annual subsidy with which for years past the maternal government of the States has striven to uphold and still upholds the drooping vigour of her western offspring be regarded as a remedy adapted for the case; it is at best a palliative, nor, I think, — and in this the wisest heads of the colony agree, — one conducive to genuine recovery and health. State support after this fashion tends rather in its results to cramp the energies of the recipient than to develop them; it has something of the prop in it, but more of the fetter. Compare, for example, the French colonies, where it is most lavishly bestowed, with the English, where the opposite and almost niggardly extreme is the rule; the conclusion is self-apparent, and the corollary too. Periodical subsidy in particular is an error, less injurious it may be than the opposite conduct of Denmark, exacting for herself a yearly tribute from her overtaxed and exhausted colonies, but an error nevertheless; it is the injudicious conduct of an over-indulgent parent, as the other is that of a step-mother at best. Private enterprise, private capital, these are what Surinam requires; and, on the part of the mother country, not a supplement to her coffers, but a guarantee. Lastly, emancipation and its immediate and inevitable consequences, the multiplication of small freeholds, both of them events of yesterday in Surinam, have not yet allowed time for the balance of hired and independent labour to redress itself; nor has the increase of creole well-being yet reacted, as react it ultimately must, in a corresponding increase of prosperity among the European townsmen and estate-owners themselves. The present moment is one of transition; and transition implies that something has been left behind, a temporary loss even where more has been attained, or is in process of attainment.