Chickens on the street
Destination: Caribbean Islands
Book: The Traveller’s Tree by Patrick Leigh Fermor
When last seen in A Traveler’s Library, Patrick Leigh Fermor was hiking across the rough landscape of the Mani peninsula in Greece’s Peloponese. His journey to the Caribbean came between his adventures in Crete during the war and the many Greek journeys that he took in the following thirty years.
In The Traveller’s Tree, Fermor tells us about a journey by plane and boat through the islands of the lesser Antilles, Haiti, Jamaica and Cuba in 1946. Be warned that the islands he described no longer look and sound the way they did when he was there. Life moves on. But with his fine eye for detail and his love of learning, he brings a depth to the experience of island culture far beyond what you might glean from today’s slick advertising.
St. Lucia beach
His is not a book full of white sands and hammocks slung from palm trees. Instead he quotes frequently from the earliest travel writer to visit the Caribbean, the French Monk, Father Labat, as he weaves a picture of the islands as they are in 1946 against their history, from native Caribs through Columbus to the Europeans who established dominion.
You can read present day guidebooks for weeks on end, and never learn about Labat, to whom Fermor says all students of the area owe a large debt. “He is a sort of monastic West Indian Pepys. He has the same devouring curiosity and sense of humour and practical flair, and, above all, the same lucid and indefatigable garrulousness. Nothing is too important or too trivial for him to set on record in his vigorous and entertaining prose.”
What more could we ask for in a travel writer than a “devouring curiosity and sense of humor and practical flair?” In my opinion, those same qualities distinguish Fermor. He talks knowledgeably about the flora and fauna, the music, the food, the clothing and the houses of the people. He describes in detail the fast-disappearing native Caribs on Dominica and predicts they will be completely gone in a generation or two. Actually a few still live on the island in the 21st century, their lifestyle changed (improved if made easier and more healthy count for anything).
He says that Castries, St. Lucia seems cursed by fire, citing the last time it burned to the ground in 1927. However, that turned out not to be the last time, for shortly after Fermor visited, Castries burned to the ground one more time. I read the book on my way to St. Lucia, and found myself writing in the margins and earmarking pages to remember gems of information.
Fermor really fell for Haiti. I want to reread that section and see if I can see the relationship between the Haiti he experienced and the sad Haiti of today. I also want to re-read the few pages on Cuba, now that the possibility of opening up travel between the U.S and Cuba has my mind wandering in that direction. Fermor is always worth rereading.
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PDF Tags: book, Caribbean, Caribs, Cuba, Haiti, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Travel, travel literature, travel writer
