Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, August 30, 1903, Page 24

The Queer Cayman Islanders HAT splendid looking men!” exe claimed an American tourist, as he watched half a dozen sallors unloading turtles from a small schooner anchored in the harbor of Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies. Not one of them w less than six feet tall, and two were veritable giants. Well built, tanned by the tropical sun, brawny, handsome, frank of countenance and agile as cats, they looked the popular ideal of the sallor. In contrast with the black loafe ers on the wharf and the undersgized, pastye faced creole clerk who was tallying thele cargo, they seemed llke gods among men, “Don't you know who they are?” raid a Jamalcan friend to the tourist. “They are Cayman Islanders, No wonder you admire them. I suppose that, physically and more ally, they are about the finest race of men fn the world.” The Caymanians, tucked away and lated from the rest of the world on tiny islands in the Caribbean sea, betwein Ja- malca and Cuba, have succeeded in estabe- lishing that ideal commonwealth of which philosophers and statesmen have drcamed. Crime, immorality and disease are unknown among them; they have just as much civili mation as is good for them, and they hold fast to duty and religion, practice the old- fashioned virtues of a bygone age. The Cayman {slanda are three In numbep =@Grand Cayman, Little Cayman and Caye- man Brac. On the first over a thousand people dwell and they have even a couple of small towns, called Georgetown and Bodden Town. On the second there are about a hundred residents, and on the third, a rugged, barren rock jutting sharly out of the placid blue surface of the Caribe bean, only a couple of familles dwell. Unlike the other islands of the West Ine dles, they are inhabited mainly by white people. There are no negroes in the smaller Caymans, and only a small mi- mority of them In Grand Cayman, and these recent arrivals. The original set- tlers were some of Cromwell's “Ironsides,” and the manners and virtues of that stern breed of men survive in their descendants to this day. When Cromwell had Fngland and Europe under his heel, he sent out an expedition which captured Jamalea from the Bpaniards. Some of the men in that ex- pedition were veterans of Naseby and Mar- ston Moor, and they were niturally ad- vanced to the highest positions in the new colony. But when Charles Il came to ).is own again, these men found the times out of joint., They were deprived of their of- fices, and harshly treated by the royalist authorities, Unwilling to “bow the knoce to Baal," they sold their possessions, bought a ship and sailed away to colonizo the Caymans and live as they pleased, un- hindered by kings or governors. They were another shipload of Pilgrim Fathers, The Caymans were desert islands, oc- easionally used by buccaneers for refitting and provisioning their ships. The ‘“Iron- sides’” soon made short work of those gentry, and had the islands to themselves. They established a patriarchal form of government, tilled the ground, built houses and villages and sailed the neighboring seas In ships of their own construction. They hoisted the British flag, but prac- tically they were an independent people, Their descendants today are nominally {20 and no more; primitive ideas of and subject to the governor of Jamalca, but they make their own laws and govern them- selves through elected overseers and ves- trymen—an old parochial form of govern- ment which prevailed in England when the original colonists left that country. All the other colonies in the West Indies are autocratically ruled by officials sent out from England, but the Caymanians are as independent as the Canadians or the Aus- tralians. They are Englishmen of the sturdiest type, even if they have been isolated on tropical islets for a few hun- dred years, and they would not stand for any other kind of government, Just as they have kept the old English methods of government, so they have kept the old English customs and manners. Even the women dress like the Puritan maids of Oliver Cromwell’s time. That is they never foreign womin or a faghion paper. Daughters have dresse.l like their mothers for gcnerations, They have had no other way, and, even if they had, a new-fangled idea would have been frowned upon as a snare of the Evil On>, The spirit of Smite-Them-Hip-and-Thigh Tompkins and his fellows still pervades the little commonwealth, but it has its advantages. On the other West Indian tslands, from half to two-thirds of the children are born out of wedlock, and half the population steals the other half's crop. On the Caymans, the morals are of the best, and neither theft nor any because sce a SHIPPING TURTLE ON AN OCEXAN"LINER. By William Thorp LANDING TURTLE AT KINGSTON, JAMAICA. other crime is practiced. There is not a single policeman in the archipelago, and no need for one. ““What would you people do to one of your numbcr if he or she went wrong?"' a patriarchal Cayman islander was once asked, “Verily,” he replied, in the slow, grave archaiec speech of his people, ““the thought hath never been present with me. In my life of more than threescore years, the Lord hath preserved us from that calamity. 1 kncw not what we would do. But such an one could not live among us there- after.” “Do ships often call here and bring you news Qf the outside world?’ he was askaed. ““No,” he replied. *Once in three or four vears a British warship comes hither, bringing the governor of Jamaica on a tour of inspection. In my life 1 have seen but three others. “There was a Bri.ish steamer many years ago which came here for supplies, being out of her cource and overdue, Soon after- wards a timber schooner, going to Jamaica, was blown hither by a hurricane, The third was an American steam yacht, a few years ago. The owner was rich and great in his own country, so they told me2, but he liked our s!mple ways, and stayed among us for many months.” But if Caymanians do not get many vise itors, they do a lot of visiting themselves, One of their principal industries is ship- building, in which they are experts, Their schooners are the stanchest and swifie;t in the Caribbean sea, and there are no hardier or more fearless sailors than ther. Shippers in all the ports of the West 1.- dies and the Spanish main are eager to give them charters, They usually work for themselves, how- ever, catching turtles on the Central Aner- jcan coast. They are the turtle fishers-in- chief to the world, The green turtle sou» esteemed by the aldermen of London inl by the patrons of the best restaurants n all the cities of the United States is placedl upon the table through the energy and di: - ing of these simple, plain-living Cayma fans. Themselves the least luxurious of people, they provide the world with on> of its greatest luxuries. Turtle fishing is no easy task, B8quals and hurricanes are frequent in the Carib- bean, and many a Cayman sailor has jer- ished with his schooner, or lingered ms- erably in an open boat under the blazing tropical sky until he died of hunger «ni thirst. Innumerable coral reefs and san - bars add to the danger of navigation, (s- pecially along the Nicaraguan coast, where the turtles are caught as they bask upoa the beach. The Nicaraguans are another perl They strongly object to the Caymanians catching turtles on their territory, and try to mete out to them the punishment awarded to sgeal poachers {in Siberiin waters, The Nicaraguan and British gov- ernments are always nagging at one an- other on the subject, and at the present moment they are engaged In a more than usually bitter controversy over fit. But the Caymanians can generally take good care of themselves. Seldom a month passes without their having a fight on the beach with Nicaraguan officials and s>l- diers. Nine times out of ten the Cayman- fans win the battle and carry off their turtles in triumph to their schooner, leav- fng half a dozen Nicaraguans stunned and senseless on the sand. The Nicaraguan government does not want to have any Caymanians killed in these affrays, lest the British government should take serious offense; and the soldiers do not, therefore, use their rifles. They try to arrest the Caymanians, whose oars and boat stretchers are more than a match for clubbed guns. Lately the Nicaraguans have given up their attempts to suppress the fishery, and now they are trying to collect a tax on each turtle caught. But the Caymanians send the tax coliectors limping home with bruised shins broken heads. After the turtles have been fought for and won, they are taken to Jamaica by the schooners and sold to merchants there, who ship them in ocean liners to New York, Boston, Philadelphia and London. With the money obtained by the sale of the turtles, the Caymanians buy flour, rice, eloth, pork and other supplies for thelr families and neighbors at home. Until a few years ago they never used money, but transacted all their business by barter. The growth of thelr turtle fishery com- pelled them at last to adopt a currency. Cayman postage stamps have only been used for a year or two, and they are much prized by collectors. The mails—a new ine stitution—are carried at irregular intewvals Wy the turtle schooners. and o