The Thief at the End of the World

by Joe Jackson

  It makes sense that Henry was chosen to go. As justice of the peace, it was his duty to maintain peace along the border. He had a history in Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Brazil of working well with Indians; it was just with whites that he could not get along. The timing was right, and he was reckless enough to do it, plunging into forbidden territory in the same way that he launched himself at Victoria’s Peak, without training, alone.

  Henry’s best protection was his respect for Indians. He believed them capable of anything. He rode to Santa Cruz on a road that was eight feet wide and kept clear by Indian work crews. Every few miles a cross was propped up with stones and covered by a little shelter of palm leaves. A garrison of 150 armed men was stationed at the Chan Santa Cruz fort, but the village itself was a ghost town.

  The road to Tulum was rougher than the one he’d just ridden, a four-day journey on a narrow jungle path fraught with danger. A few years earlier, when a Catholic priest arrived by sea, he was taken to the Cross and interrogated. Displeased with the priest’s unannounced incursion, the Cross demanded the priest’s execution. Since then, few outsiders had attempted to enter the Yucatán.

  Deep down, Henry believed himself invincible, so he went. The church housing the Cross in Tulum was shaped like a crucifix, with the sanctuary itself forming the upright and the guards’ quarters forming the perpendicular arms. The Cross sat in the center in profound darkness, in a separate room called the gloria. Two sentries guarded the door to the Cross. Only four people—the high priest, the Cruzob’s commanding general, and their wives—were allowed inside. The priest talked for the Cross, but how this was accomplished, whether by ventriloquism or through a concealed speaking tube, has never been learned. The rest of the sanctuary was filled with people muttering in prayer. A strange hollow whistling issued from the Cross before it spoke. As the holy words poured out, the worshippers pounded on their chests or blew ardent kisses in the air.

  Since Henry’s visit was sanctioned, he was not interrogated by the Cross, and he lived. He said he saw the Cross through a peephole, but with all the guards and worshippers present, this is probably braggadocio. Nevertheless, his was a great honor, and as Edward Lane asserted, few if any other Europeans had been admitted to the presence of the Cross and survived. The border calmed down after Henry’s mission, and from then until the Caste War ended in 1901, there was peace between the British and the Cruzob.

  The Maya had a direct relationship with the Almighty. When Henry left, his hosts would not have thanked him for coming. Instead, they’d say, “Dios botik,” God thanks you.

  Sometime after this, Henry began hearing his own voices, commanding him to wrest status from the soil. “Alas,” wrote Violet, “back came [Henry’s] old longing for plantation life, being his own master, and in spite of all I would do, he saw something that took his fancy and got what he called a valuable concession . . . and away we went, 60 miles or so away from everyone and everywhere, to plant India rubber, cocoa and bananas.” During his travels as inspector of forests he came upon what he described as “the finest block of land in the Colony,” a 2,500-acre plot on the south bank of the Temash River, the most remote river in the most remote southern district of British Honduras, only six and a half miles from the Guatemalan frontier. Five houses were located on the Temash River, and Henry’s would be the sixth. His concession fronted the deep river. He paddled into the forest past old abandoned plantations to large, horizontal blocks of limestone hewn by the ancient Maya. The land across the river, to the north, was owned by the mahogany cutters Messrs. Cramer and Company, but according to surveys the south bank was all Crown Land, open for agriculture. Based on his reputation “as the man who brought the rubber seeds from the Amazon” and a promise to grow rubber, Henry signed Lease No. 22 on January 1, 1890, at an annual rate of $500, payable for ten years. If, after that time, “value to the extent of $10,000 to consist of India Rubber trees can be proved to the satisfaction of the Government to have been planted on the land . . . [an additional] grant for 5000 acres will be issued.”

  It seemed his dream had come true, the chance for which he’d struggled so long. But there were bad omens. In 1889-90, fever swept through Belize, taking several acquaintances—the Rev. Mr. Nicholson, the prominent barrister-at-law W. M. Storach, the merchant Robert Niven. There was enough death that correspondent G. S. Banham for the New York Herald portrayed the city as a charnel house. On June 23, 1889, Banham was prosecuted for “maliciously fabricating false reports to the detriment of the colony by representing it as ravaged by pestilence,” for which, on August 5, he apologized. During that time, death nearly caught up to Henry, too. He “had an attack of the fever and as nearly as possible died,” Violet wrote. “The Roman Catholic priest came over and administered a very heavy dose of quinine which checked the fever till the doctor returned.” When he recuperated, his obsession with his plantation intensified. His latest brush with death made him think about what he wanted most from life—and how, at age forty-two or forty-three, half his life was over.

  When he felt able, he set to work like a dog. He thought the fertile soil well-suited for coffee, cocoa, tropical fruit, and rubber. He planned to pay his way by cultivating bananas, then plant the fast-growing Castilloa rubber to ensure a good return before the ten-year lease expired. It may seem strange that he did not plant hevea, his “blessed tree,” but Castilloa elastica was native to British Honduras, and in the 1880s many still believed it to be more profitable. He built another log house, with an iron roof and veranda. “He lived contentedly enough,” wrote Violet, “working early and late through all sorts of difficulties.”

  But there were rumblings that could make anyone uneasy whose land sat close to the plantocracy’s. On May 5, 1890, a special hearing of the Supreme Court considered the complaint of Don Filipe Yberra Ortol against Messrs. Cramer and Company. Ortol wished to restrain the firm from cutting logwood on his land, which sat on the border with Yucatán. He had sole right to work his land, he said, but the suit was dismissed. Then, on July 8, C. L. Gardrich, editor of the Independent, was found guilty of contempt for publishing Ortol’s open letters to Mexican woodcutters about his treatment. In essence, a gag order restricting unfavorable press against the plantocracy was imposed on the colony, and the editor was ordered to pay court costs and a two-hundred-dollar bond.

  It simply was not wise to stray too close to the mahogany men. They controlled the law, the courts, and public opinion; they were a law in themselves. Some of their holdings stretched over a million acres. With the high rents and taxes, the sale or lease of land to small settlers like Henry was blocked as much as possible. In order to ensure a constant supply of timber, owners would only cut one-twentieth of their land each year, just selecting trees that had grown more than seventeen inches in diameter; in the course of twenty years, they’d come back when smaller trees had grown. This rotation allowed them to stay solvent by fixing the levels of capital and labor in advance, but it also led to confusion and court suits regarding ownership of plats. When the plantocracy returned to a site, their surveyors checked to see if there was anything they’d missed earlier or if any squatters had moved in.

  By December 1891, Henry had built his house, cultivated forty acres, planted ten thousand banana trees, four acres of cacao, a few dozen oranges, lemons, and mangoes, and a small number of Castilloa rubber trees. He seemed to deliberately avoid hevea while building his reputation on its theft, but one could never call him lazy. His improvements amounted to “exceedingly good work,” wrote the government, which estimated the house value at $1,500 and his concession’s at $4,000. Yet his profits were meager—his account books showed a monthly balance between $13 and $47.96—and he’d been unable to pay anything on the two years’ rent then due. That month, in a letter to the Colonial Secretary, he pointed out the hardship of paying $500 in advance and asked to be allowed to invest as much as possible in developments in the early years, then pay the equivalent increase on improvements at the end of his ten-
year term.

  He was asking for a favor, but the time for favors had passed. He was Roger Goldsworthy’s man, and when Sir Roger was governor, his request might have been granted. But Goldsworthy had been transferred earlier in 1891 and was now the governor of the Falkland Islands, those cold, lonely specks in the South Atlantic that would be repeatedly claimed and contested with Argentina. His replacement, Sir C. Alfred Maloney, made twelve thousand pounds, the highest salary for any colonial governor at that time. The plantocracy and its press rejoiced. The Colonial Guardian of October 4, 1890 said that “honest men, as a rule, [kept] aloof” from Goldsworthy. A new wind was blowing in British Honduras, but it wasn’t favorable for Henry.

  In early 1892, the inevitable occurred. The colonial secretary rejected Henry’s compromise solution. If he did not pay his rent, the lease would be forfeit. And there was an addendum—most of his concession belonged to Messrs. Cramer and Company.

  This clause seems openly malicious and corrupt. Of Henry’s 2,500 acres, Messrs. Cramer and Company said that 1,470 belonged to them, and the government agreed. The surveyor who “discovered” the flaw in Wickham’s title was the same who originally drew the map safely placing Henry’s property on Crown land. The surveyor general said he had no other map of the Temash, pleading that his department was too busy to conduct an accurate survey. Everything came back to Henry: The mahogany company could sue him for trespass. The government could escape liability by canceling the lease for nonpayment of rent. As former inspector of forests, Henry should have known which lands were Crown and not blame the government for his own error. Messrs. Cramer offered to sell “their” land back to the government at two dollars an acre, on the condition that they had right of way on the only path from the river to the back lands, where the mahogany grew. But Henry’s house was on that path, along with his bananas and rubber. To buy back his land from the government, he’d have to tear down his house and uproot every crop he’d planted.

  He went to court, the only option left to him. On May 11, 1892, his solicitor submitted a lengthy statement to the secretary of state citing Wickham’s experience as a tropical planter, his official posts in British Honduras, and his value to the British Empire for bringing the seventy thousand hevea seeds to Kew. He was a man of “great and rare experience,” an asset to any colony. Wickham’s position was critical; he could neither work on the property, nor invite partners to invest, and creditors were circling. An investor from Guatemala had been ready to sink £2,000 into Wickham’s plantation when he heard about his legal troubles. Two others—“Mr. D. Wells” and “Mr. Strange”—had already arrived in Belize when they learned that all that Wickham owned was a lawsuit. All three backed away. The dispute dragged on and Henry was going broke.

  So in the spring of 1892, Henry appealed to the queen.

  In 1892, Victoria had been on the throne for fifty-five years. Her Jubilee Celebration five years earlier had been one of the triumphs of her career. She was compared to Elizabeth, but Elizabeth had ruled a little island of merely 5 million people, while Victoria ruled nearly half the world. Her name and face were stamped on coins and documents in cities that had not even been established when she came to the throne as a girl. When British subjects acted out their separate dramas for the empire—when General Gordon died at Khartoum, or Henry fretted over his seeds on the Amazon—at some point, they thought of Victoria and ransomed their lives and hopes to her.

  Victoria understood perfectly the importance of her colonies. They had to be protected. Everything rested on their backs—the riches, the dominance, the vital British interests. The most fundamental interest of all was the ability to trade and invest throughout the world, an ability that lay at the heart of every major foreign decision, and it had been so for decades. The word “imperialism” in the 1880s and 1890s was usually associated with a desire for territorial expansion, but at the core of this expansion lay the guaranteed markets, limitless resources, and free market capitalism the Victorians enjoyed and revered. In such a world, corporate interests were of greater importance than individual interests. After all, corporate profits benefited the greater whole. Imperialism was a faith as well as a business, and as it spread, so spread the mystique of empire. Prefiguring Calvin Coolidge, she knew that the business of England was business.

  In due course, Henry’s statement of his value to the empire was returned to the colonial government, denied by the queen in her handwriting: “Let Justice be done. Victoria R. & I.”

  It was an oracular condemnation as final as any by the Talking Cross. With that royal snub, Henry—once again—was ruined.

  CHAPTER 12

  RUBBER MADNESS

  Few Victorians who’d done as much for their empire could claim that they’d been personally betrayed by their queen. He’d been ruined before—Santarém, Queensland—but this third time worked its negative charm.

  There was a brief denouement to Victoria’s note: On May 4, 1893, Henry’s lease was cancelled. Four months later, on September 7, the courts awarded him $14,500 in damages, plus legal costs, but this was not enough to cover his land and the amount he’d spent on the house, crops, and improvements. A hurricane hammered the colony that summer, ripping the roof off Belize’s Catholic church, dragging five ships ashore, and leveling banana plantations up and down the coast to such an extent that no fruit would be shipped for six months. What did he care if this corrupt colony blew away and went to hell? He might have felt as if his bottled rage had found expression in the howling wind. To make matters worse, a “skin complaint” that Violet never detailed became unbearable, and she needed treatment in London. Shortly after the verdict in his case, Henry left, never to return.

  He was deeply embittered, scarred as visibly as the soft bark of hevea slashed by seringuieros. It was during this period when the world began to know him as an opinionated, silver-maned imperialist blustering from the edge of the world. “His keen analytical mind and authoritarian manner made him a difficult partner,” Edward Lane said of this time of his life. “[T]here was much of the intolerant dictator in his makeup, although he was unswervingly loyal and . . . generous towards his friends.”

  But that was the way planters were expected to act in the backwaters of the empire, and that’s where he moved next—to the antipodes. In the British Empire, the antipodes referred to New Guinea, Australia, and New Zealand, despite the fact that none overlapped the antipodal points of the British Isles. Henry must have felt at times that his strength was at an end. His funds certainly were, as was his patience. He might not abandon his desire to create a plantation, but he would do so miles from contact with his fellow countrymen, in an isolated empire of his own design.

  He’d always been driven and obsessed; now, it seems, he went a little crazy. We can trace the psychic route today. He started at Papua New Guinea, an island of “appalling roughness and disrupted character,” where mountains soared up as inaccessible cliffs, then fell away into “rock-walled gorges, through which roil rivers, their courses blocked by boulders and ever-rolling stones.” Henry O. Forbes, a professional Victorian adventurer, said that “during many years of travel in rough countries, I have encountered nowhere such difficulties as in New Guinea.” Nevertheless, settlers in England and Australia saw in New Guinea a “great and salubrious ‘Treasure Island’” with gold trickling down the rivers.

  This was too crowded for Henry’s tastes, so on the island of Samarai, at the eastern tip of the New Guinea peninsula, he bought a ten-ton lugger and named it The Carib in honor of his time in the Caribbean. Remembering the tales of Captain Hill, his Cornish savior in Nicaragua, Henry sailed east toward the neighboring archipelagoes—the D’Entrecasteaux Group and the Louisiades, those exotic-sounding pinpoints raided by blackbirders a decade earlier when Henry farmed in Queensland. The former consisted of three or four high, rocky islands that thrust from the depths to great heights. The gradients were obscenely steep, ascending from four hundred to nine hundred feet in a mile, with scant flat
land. The Louisiades were the polar opposite, a sprinkling of hundreds of small, low islands reaching east like a tentacle from the toe of New Guinea to Rossell and Sudest (now Taguta) islands deep in the South Pacific. Smack in their middle he found a lonely coral atoll called the Conflict Islands, named after an unlucky British warship that wrecked on a reef in its western extremity. In 1888, the year New Guinea was declared a British possession, a survey of the Louisiades noted that the Conflicts, “like the Cocos Islands, in the Indian Ocean . . . may, someday perhaps, be planted with cocoa nuts, and bring in a fine revenue as the Cocos Islands did.” This was Henry’s plan.

  The Conflict Group was made up of 23 coral islands looped around a central lagoon that was five to seven miles wide by twelve miles long. There were two excellent channels into the lagoon, one on the east and the west, if anyone decided to visit—which no one really had. The island group was truly the middle of nowhere: eighty miles from the eastern tip of New Guinea, six hundred miles from Cairns in the northern tip of Australia. No regular shipping lanes crossed close. It even lay outside the path of tropical cyclones. The islands varied in size from one to twenty-four acres across; if they all were lumped together, they’d comprise a land mass one and a half times the size of Monaco. Henry settled on Itamarina, a six-acre island in the lagoon’s center encircled by a smaller inner reef. On a map, Henry’s new home resembled a castle wall, with a wide moat and inner keep. He’d curtained himself off from the world.