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You will get the same feeling if you choose as your hotel the wooden, two-storied house half-way up the hills to the American Club that was the house in earlier years of a French admiral. There is a long drive leading to the house, a drive that is grass-grown now. Nor is there any fountain playing in the large stone basin. Nor can you tell where lawn and hedge divide. But the proportions of the house remain. The wide balconies, the spacious courtyard, the cameoed picture
through the trees of Port au Prince. The rooms are cool and the cooking good. You never quite see how things run themselves, for there never seem to be any servants. And in the bar you will find the visitors at the hotel mixing their drinks in such proportions as they choose; but things do run themselves. Meals arrive, hot water arrives; in the end somebody signs for drinks. At the end of the month a bunch of chits arrives, and you have a pleasing sense of life crumbling round you like the garden and house; but that it will last your time.

There is the South Sea atmosphere. There is also the French atmosphere; a Parisian atmosphere of cafés and elegance and well-dressed women. There is more grace of living, more culture in Port au Prince than anywhere else in the Antilles. As you sit on the verandah of the cafés in Port au Prince, or walk on the hills in Petionville, with its little green square in front of you, its church and
gendarmerie
and playing children, you feel that you might be in the heart of France.

Thirdly, there is America: the America of efficiency, and wide streets, and motor-cars, and the feeling that always goes with them, that good though the past was, the best's ahead of us.

These three atmospheres are combined in Haiti, and when there is so much else to have, it seems a waste of time to set oneself the task of discovering the ritual of a religion that is based upon nothing but the superstitions of undeveloped minds.

§

To-day Haiti is one of the world's pleasant places. But no one can tell what the future holds for it. Will the Haitians, now that America has restored discipline and order, prove that a negro people is capable of self-government in a modern world? Or will history repeat itself? Will the
cacos
return to the hills? Will the road across the arid valley of Gonaïves crumble into a bridle path? Will the bridges justify the old complaint that it was safer to go round than over them? Will the peasant be afraid to come down into Port au Prince? Will the green lawns of the Champ de Mars straggle on to
the puddled and untended roads? Will angry mobs shriek for vengeance outside the white palace of the president? Will the police with the
cocomacoque
batter the skulls of the suspected?

Sometimes one feels that Haiti is set surely now on the high road to prosperity. What else can you feel when you sit at twilight on the verandah of the Eldorado Café, looking on to the harbour, in which are anchored the ships whose presence there mean riches, when Buicks and Pontiacs are sweeping with their broad beams the broad, smooth roads, and the white buildings and the pretty women? Everything looks so secure, so confident, far too far down the road of civilisation for anarchy. You think that then.

But you recall the hot and dusty mornings in the cockpit, where you have seen negroes taking into their mouths the torn and bleeding heads of the dying cock, to suck and lick the wounds, in the desperate hope of restoring the will to battle to the beaten beast. You remember into what paroxysms of rapture and misery and wrath you have seen those black faces contorted as the chances of victory recede. You remember the hot-blooded passion of their dancing, their contorted bodies, their clutching fingers, the fierce lustre in their eyes, and, remembering that, you wonder into what frenzies of savagery this people might not still be worked. You remember how late at night, after the sounds of Port au Prince are still, you have heard in the hills the slow throbbing of the drums. It breaks the silence. It is slow, rhythmic, monotonous. It is like the beating of a heart, the beating of the black heart of Africa.

Boat days are of too regular occurrence in Fort de France to be the carnivals that they are in Papeete. But, even so, they are gay enough in the late days of spring when a French boat is sailing for St. Nazaire or Havre. All those that can afford to are flying from the parched heat of summer. On the
Pellerin
there was not a cabin vacant. The decks were crowded. The noise from the smoking-room grew denser as
coupe
after
coupe
was drained. But I was tired; too tired to join wholeheartedly in the revelry.

It was only ten days since Eldred Curwen and I had driven from Port au Prince at four o'clock on a late April morning. But those ten days, probably because they had come at the end of five months of travelling, had been intolerably exhausting. To begin with, there had been the long twelve hours' drive across the Haitian frontier into San Domingo, with the sun beating down through the thin canvas of the hood; there had been the heat and noise of San Domingo; the journey on the neatest of small boats,
The Antilles,
past Porto Rico; past St. Martin and St. Barthelmey, those two forgotten little islands, only touched at by one boat once a month, half Dutch, half French and speaking English: where cows and bullocks swim out at the edges of canoes towards the ship, to be drawn up by the horns on to the deck for shipment to Guadeloupe. Strange little islands. The arrival of the boat is the one incident in the life of a community which has no cars, nor cinemas, nor newspapers, nor news. The whole island puts on its smartest frocks, rows out to the ship for its three hours' sojourn, to dance in the small saloon, to be stood liqueurs, to be photographed, to take and leave addresses, then when the siren goes to scamper back into their canoes for four more uneventful weeks.

After St. Barthelmey there was Guadeloupe. The hurried rush at Basse Terre to bathe in the hot springs at Dolé; at Pointe á Pitre a casual investigation of the cyclone's damage, and afterwards there was four days of the noise and heat of Fort de France. I was very weary when the time came to move my luggage from the Hôtel Bediat to the boat, so weary that I stayed in my cabin unpacking slowly while the sirens went and the gongs were beaten along the passage. It was not till I could feel the vibration of the engines that I came on deck.

It was a coloured scene. In the background the
charbon-nières
, black and weary, chattered together behind the stacks of coal. Between them and the water half the population of the town was gathered to wave farewell to friends and relations. The Frenchmen in their helmets and white suits, the negroes with their handkerchiefs tied in their hair. And hands were being waved and messages shouted, and the conventional familiar thought came to me: What did it mean, this parting? What was behind those waved hands and shouted messages? Relief, excitement, sadness; to everyone it must have a different meaning. Some heart must be breaking down there on the quay. And I felt sad and stood apart as the ship swung away from the docks, past the fort, into the Caribbean.

§

It was after six; in two more minutes the sun would have sunk into the sea. And it would be against a sky of yellow hyacinth that Belmont, leaning against the verandah of the little bungalow, would see the lighted ship pass by on its way to Pointe à Pitre. Through the dusk I tried to distinguish the various landmarks along the road: the white church of Case Navire, the palm trees of Carbet, the fishing tackle of Fond Lahaye. It was too dark. Martinique was a green shadow.

A few minutes more and the sun would have set into the sea; already it had set in the London that I was bound for. In the suburbs people would be mixing themselves a nightcap.
In Piccadilly the last act of the theatres would have just begun. At the dinner-parties that preceded dances there would be a gathering of wraps and coats. But westward, in the coloured countries, it would be shining still; pouring in the full radiance of early summer over the Golden Gate; streaming southwards a hundred miles or so through the open windows of a Spanish colonial house, on to a long, low room with circled roof, on to black Chesterfields, on to black-and-white squared carpet, on to blue Chinese porcelain, on to walls bright with the colouring of old Spanish maps. Lunch would just be over. The room would be filled with talk, with talk of plans, of golf or tennis, or a driving under the pines along the rugged Californian coast. There would be laughter there and hospitality and friendship; a bigness and an openness of heart.

And westward and southward under that same sun Papeete would be drowsing away its hour of siesta. There would be shutters over the windows of the stores; the Mariposa Café would be empty. On the balcony of the club the Chinese waiter would be lying forward across a table, his head on his arms, asleep. The water of the lagoon would be like glass; in the districts there would be silence on the green verandahs.

And westward and southward, further beyond the Heads through a mist, daylight would be filtering faintly over Sydney. There would be a chill in the air, the young women would be hurrying quickly to their shops and offices, the old men would be pulling their scarves tightly round their throats. While westward and northward, down the long, narrow peninsula of Malaya, a new day would be beginning. In Penang silent-footed boys would be preparing
chota hazri
; the tea, the bread, the fruit. On the verandahs of the plantation bungalows young planters would be rubbing their eyes sleepily, looking down on the straight rows of rubber trees; at the white line of sap along the bark; at the Tamils moving quickly from cup to cup. At Lumut the district officer of the Dindings would be sitting on his balcony looking out over the brown river and the hills, fresh and friendly in the clear morning light. And in all these places, in Malaya and Monterey,
in Sydney and Tahiti, I have left something of myself, so that it was only a part of myself that was travelling back to London. For that is one of the penalties of travel; that nowhere can one feel oneself complete.

And leaning against the taffrail of the
Pellerin,
watching the green dusk deepen over Martinique, I asked myself what exactly it is that one gets from travel. What stands on the credit to weigh against the debit balance? For looking back over the six months that had passed since I sailed from Plymouth, a characteristic six months in a traveller's diary, it was idle to pretend that there was not a debit or at least an absence of credit entries.

Among the letters that I had found waiting for me at Martinique were two from Inez Holden.

One bore the vast blue embossment of the Ambassadors Hotel, New York.

“I have just arrived here,” it ran, “which is even more strange than it may seem at first, since my departure was arranged at midnight at the Embassy Club, which is, after all, the American manner of travelling. And nothing kills one's enthusiasm more than long preparations. …”

She had done this, she was planning that. She had met this and the other person.

“The old policeman moving-on stunt is the order of every day. No sooner is one in Palm Beach than it is time to be on Long Island. Once there, it is time to go on to Europe….

“I return on the
Berengaria
in ten days. I hope by then to be improved, modernised and dollar-dotty.”

The second letter was from Berlin.

“We are here,” it said, “as the guests of Otto Kahn … the advent of the talkies has subdued life considerably. We went round the U.F.A. studios, to find the usual scrambling, shouting, megaphone madness missing.”

There was an account of trips to Wannsee in a speedboat, of interviews on reparations, of gloomy Russians “spy-shy and furtive, glancing over their shoulders nervously.”

And as I had read those letters I could not help feeling that Inez Holden's life had been more full than mine had been,
during the six months that had passed, since we had said good-bye to one another at the small farewell dinner I had given on my last evening in London at the Gargoyle Club. For six months I had been out of touch with the main currents. I had read no newspapers. I had seen no plays. I had been spared experience as Bloomsbury and Greenwich Village understand the term. Nor would boyhood account as experience those arguments with porters, those races down rough and winding roads, with the last siren of the steamer sounding; such dangerless discomforts as drenchings far from home and the pitch and roll of a canoe when the sea is choppy that comprise the sum of adventure for the modern traveller. There had been the seeing of lovely places. But I do not think that it is through any conscious seeking of accepted beauties that you come across those moments of sheer rapture that leave life permanently enriched. We cannot come fresh to the places in whose service the pens of innumerable poets have been held in trust. We are too much on our guard. It may be, though, that as you return from a morning at Pompeii, interested but unthrilled, to loiter for an hour or two through the streets of Naples, a chance turning of the head will bring you one of those moments whose beauty is so complete that it seems possessed of eternal properties.

Of itself the thing is nothing. A long, narrow, climbing street with tall houses and green-hung balconies, lit and shadowed by a shaft of sunlight. Before one of the doorways there is an old man sleeping. A girl sings as she sews. In the gutter a child is playing. It is nothing, it is everything. By some happy accident of light and grouping this ordinary, familiar street has been lifted out of time and space to partake of an immortal quality. It is sheer effect. Five minutes before it was not. In five minutes' time it will have passed. The sun will have moved westward, the girl will have ceased to sing. The old man will be awake, the child in tears. Such moments are imperishable and fleeting. And one is as likely to meet them in Tooting as in Tangier. I do not expect ever to see anything lovelier than Constantinople. There are
places where beauty is achieved by Nature in spite of man, and others by man in spite of Nature, but once in many times Nature and man combine to create something that is beyond beauty, that transcends the power of pen and brush. At first I could not believe that it was real. From a distance it may be lovely enough, I thought, but seen from this or that other spot the details will grow distinct. There will be mean houses and dingy streets. I shall see it for the thing it is. But the boat drew closer. One by one against a saffron-coloured sky the buildings grew separate and clear, the low sea wall, the Doric columns, the round morgue, the dignity of San Sofia. Slowly the boat swung round into the harbour, and there it lay, the city that was loved of Loti, a far-flung crescent, aureoled in a faint haze of smoke with the sunlight pouring down the Corne d'Or, on to that exquisitely proportioned line of mosque and minaret. “Rose of cities” was Flecker's phrase for it, and there is a flowerlike quality in its effortless perfection, a flowerlike bloom on the golden mist that hovers over it.