“Notes made by Cyril Denzil Branch” (Extracts)

(Cyril Branch was born in Barrouallie in 1883 and died in 1976. He was the son of S. F. Branch who was the Anglican parish priest in Barrouallie in the late 1890s and early part of the twentieth century).{{more}}

“I was born and spent my youth in a time when there were no motor cars, aeroplanes, television and radio and I remember the installation of the telephone in our house as a great event. As regards transport we either walked, rode, or took a boat. There were no wheeled vehicles where we were. Distances were not measured by miles but by hours…

I was born and lived in a rectory about two miles from the village of Barrouallie. I have never known whether this was a Carib word or a corruption from the French; probably the latter as the hill above the house was called Pere Hughes. The rectory was in a most lovely valley looking towards the village which lay along by the sea…

On some days my brother Selwyn and I…would start long before dawn and walk to the forest beyond the valley, and hunt all day, shooting pigeons, parrots and agoutis, a kind of hare. Sometimes we slept out, building a little hut with palm branches and sleeping on the floor with the dogs. There were snakes but not poisonous ones…

Some days we went to the capital on horseback or by boat. My sister Ethel would ride up to the town for dances, sleeping perhaps at Government House and then riding back the next morning. We generally went to Kingstown by rowing boat. These were really canoes, hollowed out of trees with boards nailed along the sides. They were twenty to thirty foot long. We also sometimes went to Bequia, an island about ten miles from the capital where Eden now has a house. It was then, or part of it, was a whaling station where the whales were hunted in rowing boats and harpooned by hand, a rope being attached to the harpoon. The boat would then be dragged by the whale for miles until it was finally killed…

Sometimes we accompanied my father who in a boat with two rowers visited villages in his parish along the coast. Many had French names; Chateaubelair, Layou, etc. After holding service we rowed back. On those

occasions it was a great joy to steer the boat and learn how to deal with the waves when it was rough. Once, when returning at night with my sister Bertie steering, my father found an overturned boat in a heavy sea with three men clinging to the keel. My father manoeuvred his boat as close as possible to the overturned boat. There was of course great danger of being smashed against it in the heavy seas. Finally the men swam and were hauled aboard. One of them still clung to his boat and would not swim in spite of

shouts to come, but the voices were drowned in the noise of the gale. He was heard to say something about his trousers, and my father thought he hesitated because he was naked and there was a woman aboard. My father shouted “Confound your trousers, and come!” Finally he did so. The poor chap had his trousers wrapped round his ankles, and could only swim when he had taken them off. The journey back in the overladen boat was not an easy job. Both my father and sister were presented with the Humane Society medal for Life Saving at Sea…”